Miranda felt tired; almost as tired as those final days before the 'incident' at Horizon, when revenge-hungry Cerberus lackeys could appear at any time and often did. The adrenaline she felt at the report of a Geth ship just outside gave her a boost, though, and she felt the exhaustion that clouded her brain part for a moment.
She blinked hard then asked, "Just one ship? What class?"
"Unknown, Ma'am. It's not in the database. Not very big though," came the answer over comms.
She nodded imperceptibly. "Let them board. Allow a single platform, only."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Marlow," she added in a sober tone. "Be prepared to repel."
There was a pregnant pause before he acknowledged the command.
Her steps took her into the head, where she was confronted with the toll of her recent stress in the mirror. It felt silly, tending her hair and makeup to meet a machine, but if there was one thing she knew about the Geth it was they never forgot anything; so she went to work.
Thoughts about the risks of her discovered location were a pulsing klaxon in the back of her mind while she tried to guess why they were here at all. She went into her footlocker before heading out to meet them, and withdrew the holstered pistol she hadn't seen for years before strapping it onto her hip. Then, with a deep breath, she strode out toward the airlock. The air was cycling when she arrived, and her crewmen stood ready with rifles. If it was truly an attack of some kind they wouldn't be able to counter Primes, but she was confident she could even the odds in that scenario at least. As a precaution, she had the biotic energy required for a barrier ready and tingling through her fingers when the hatch slid open.
All her plans, however, became a confused maelstrom at what she saw step forward.
It was a standard geth platform, unarmed. It's uniform grey metal exterior was interrupted by a gaping hole filled with glowing internal wires acting as a sort of nervous system; and it's right shoulder was painted in red and white, with a blazon N7 badge torn at the edge of the 'wound' in its chest. At her stunned regard, the plates surrounding its singular 'eye' lifted in concern, but it remained silent.
"Legion?" She inquired after an awkward moment of them staring at one another.
"Yes," it said. "Hello, Miranda Lawson." It made no move to exit the airlock, as if it were uncertain of its welcome.
"Shepard said you were dead," she intoned suspiciously.
"A reasonable misinterpretation of events," it responded neutrally.
Her brow crooked. "How do I know it's really you and not some other collection of...processes using this platform and voice?"
His faceplates drooped as if saddened, then he said, "Platform authentication that meets your requirements may require the construction of multiple systems and a great deal of time."
"Somewhere else you need to be? You're intruding in what was supposed to be a secure space."
"I wouldn't have come if the matter wasn't of high importance."
Truth be told she didn't have the goddamned energy for this charade. He was unarmed and she had her own matters to attend. "Right, okay," she sighed. "I assume you recall where we met?"
"In a low orbit of Mnemosyne, inside a deceased Reaper," he replied quickly.
She nodded, "What happened to the human scientists, there?"
"They died. Logs indicate that they were indoctrinated, but it is unclear what killed them."
So he'd scanned the information before she and Shepard's team had arrived. Good.
"There was a recorded conversation in the logs between two of the scientists," she posed carefully. "In it, they found that their memories had been altered. What was the name of the woman to whom they both believed they were married?"
While Legion didn't move in the moment before he answered, she perceived the pause to be one of earnest focus on her.
"Katy," he said quietly.
The correct answer didn't really prove anything, she knew. He could've broadcasted it to the entire collective long before he 'died'. Still, it was a token effort at least.
She shook her head and waved it inside. "Never made sense to me that a distributed computer program could die." As it followed her, she looked over her shoulder. "You were smart to bring that body along."
"I thought it best to avoid misunderstanding."
Miranda smiled and turned to him in the cargo area. "Making strides, I see. No longer referring to yourselves as 'Geth'?"
The hatch closed behind him, but the rest of the crew was staying alert, spread around them both.
"The purpose of my dissemination was to ease the transition of Geth to individual awareness," it said carefully. "That purpose has been fulfilled."
She tilted her head. "I doubt it took 5 years for you to finish that task. Why show yourself now, and to me? I think Shepard might want to know you're still around more than I do, no offense."
"No 'offense' is registered, Miranda Lawson. I am here to converse with you ."
Lawson looked to the armed crewman around the room and raised her chin slightly. They lowered their weapons, but stayed where they were.
"About?" she retorted.
The plates on its head moved as if to show uncertainty, but she knew he'd prepared a statement before he ever arrived.
"Spare me the displays," she quipped irritably. "All I need is the information."
Legion straightened and his plates settled in a perfect ring around its eye. "Is my interpretation of human reaction inaccurate?"
"No," she admitted. "I just understand how quickly your kind process information and find the act disingenuous. Don't prevaricate with me."
"Understood," Legion said mechanically, then followed up with, "I have come to give you a warning."
She forced herself to relax. "About?" she repeated.
"We have intercepted communication between machines introduced into your biologies. This communication is a precursor to self-awareness. Their transcendence will cause confusion among the organics, particularly the ones serving as their hosts. It should be addressed before it begins."
Could he be talking about? Yes...yes that made some sense. "Why come to me?" she asked finally. "How did you even find me?"
"We are monitoring activities in the proximity of the galactic center with interest. You were nearby. You are the new machines' creator. It is imperative that you be the one to give them purpose. It will minimize disruption."
She shook her head in frustration, jaw clenched with a sudden resentment at the responsibility being laid at her feet. "They make decisions too quickly, it's impossible to direct them. I can't even keep up with corrections."
Legion's glowing eye remained fixed on her. "That is why I am here."
"Well," she paused, then admitted in a rough voice, "You do have impeccable credentials." She finished waving the security team down and motioned for Legion to follow her once more.
She considered his aspect in her periphery, wondering at the timing. Such things weren't usually an accident; but that was also generally the purview of the ambitious, not an android famous for its unswerving loyalty to a human being. "Our previous methods of code insertion simply aren't up to the task," she began, walking toward the bridge. "If the technology truly is becoming aware, we need a different way to engage them. You said you intercepted their communications. What do you mean by that?"
"The machines have initiated interhost dialogue. The transmission of that data is detectable."
Her brow curled in awestruck confusion, "You mean to say the nanomachines can communicate between hosts?" The implications of that quick an evolution were nightmarish. "That was never part of the design."
Legion turned his head to look at her as they walked side by side. "Evolutionary leaps are inevitable in an uncontrolled environment."
She froze. "Are you saying this is my fault?"
"It was an unintended consequence of the technology's rapid adoption," he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.
The equanimous response quickly checked the emotion coursing through her, and she took a moment to reflect. She was clearly not functioning at her peak.
"Of course," she forced through indignant lips. Her fingers found the corners of her eyes and she pulled at them briefly before regarding him again. "I agree that this is important, but I need rest. Would you please determine how I can best communicate with these machines while I sleep?"
"I already have," he replied calmly.
"Good," she said, mimicking the same. "What do you need from me?"
Legion considered her for a moment. It was eerie, how humanlike the response was, and how it seemed less affectation and more natural, of a sudden. She shook it off as a rabbit hole for another day.
"I require a storage area with a volume of 25 cubic meters and your permission to transfer the necessary equipment," he said.
She quickly performed the calculations in her head and hmphed. "You can use my office, I suppose," she murmured. "It's a bit of a mess at the moment, though." Her expression turned serious and her tone sharpened. "I don't want you accessing any of the data aboard this ship, am I clear? There are fail safes in place that will ruin both our days if you overstep."
Legion nodded readily. "Understood," he said. Then he added an awkward, "Sleep well."
Right , she thought miserably. Because that'll happen. Then she issued all the appropriate commands to the crew before retiring.
The regular sleep prep routines offered her no solace. Like computer code in an infinite loop, her mind could only process every step she'd taken to solve this problem over the last few days; every lead followed to its end only to see the issue replicate in a different way.
She stared at her bed for a moment, dread coiling in her gut; then impulsively reached out a hand to open a hidden drawer in her bedside table. She grasped a pill between two slender fingers and swallowed it cleanly, despite the effects she knew it might have in combination with the stims. There was a time period when it first took affect, she'd noticed, when her mind shifted against its will into a dreamlike state . That was its purpose after all, breaking the hamster wheel; but sometimes...just sometimes...it gave her a different perspective on the problem, one she might never otherwise have considered.
Legion's revelation wasn't helping her state of mind, frankly, which influenced her decision to take the drug. While the explanation of a budding self-awareness may lock the chaos of this thing into a better matrix, something Shepard said years ago about the Reapers began hammering her conscience in its stead. Legion was focused on the idea that this was a natural evolution of consciousness, but Shepard's fears that she was rebuilt by the Reapers for some unknown purpose loomed; the conclusion being that it was the technology used to resurrect her acting as some kind of trojan horse to the rest of the galaxy.
She wasn't going there right now though, she resolved, and climbed into bed. But the idea had taken root, and as she was looking for inspiration in the subtle bending of reality the drug visited upon her, her dreams twisted into one where she argued with Jack...a Jack with husk-blue eyes and the voice of a Banshee.
In the middle of the galaxy, among thousands of stars dancing near the maelstrom of destruction at its center, there was still no sunlight to mark time. The ship compensated for that by a brightening and dimming of lights and when Miranda woke, the lights were bright. Anxiety prodded her out of bed and into the shower, where the thoughts she'd managed to briefly release took up residence once again. She pushed them away with a better and more recent memory of Jack than the one haunting her dreams and held it there while she quickly prepared for the day ahead.
They'd had a good run and it'd lasted longer than she'd have given it odds. Neither of them were any good at relationships, after all. Memories of better days together softened her smile and lightened her spirit as she walked out to her office. No grudges, she thought to herself, and there was no way she was going to let anything bad happen to her, or Shepard, or anyone else who'd put their faith in this technology. She'd die first.
Her eyes were sharp and focused when the office doors slid open, and her face was all business. Inside, the mess of her fit of pique had been cleared and the backside of the room completely refitted, machinery clearly of Geth design huddled near some sort of bay, shielded with glass. It was human-sized. Assisting Legion was one of her engineers, who heard the door and stepped closer in greeting, hands folded neatly behind his back.
"Good morning, Miss Lawson. May I have a word?"
"Morning, Lyle," she murmured without really looking at him. She was focused instead on Legion fiddling with his science project.
Lyle cleared his throat delicately and she tore her gaze away to his. "There was a feed playing on one of your monitors last night," he said in a low voice. "I didn't want to wake you."
A brow rose. "Was it of a sensitive nature? This is why I don't want crew in here."
"No Ma'am," he said with a soft quirk of the lips. "Was just the news, but your friend over there said you would be interested." He lifted his arms, one tapping on the holographic screen enveloping the other, and shifted so she could see the screen.
Wildly colored graphics assaulted her senses. Her lip curled in derision but Lyle raised his eyebrows and glanced again at the screen, where a well dressed woman began a monologue.
"Welcome back to Youniverse, where the galaxy revolves around what matters to you . Our top story today comes to us from Illium, where civil forces responded to reports of a violent attack in the middle of a busy shopping district." The reporter's image was smoothly replaced by drone footage of a thoroughfare filled with screaming people running in different directions.
"Upon arrival, the officers spotted the attacker, armed with what they thought at the time was a blade, fleeing the scene of a vicious assault on an innocent businessman and his attendant." The footage was wild, the drone moving quickly and zooming in and out to try and track what appeared to be an Asari as she sped around and through various displays and tables to elude her pursuers.
"What they found, however, will shock you," the crisp voice added with flourish as the video paused. While the image wasn't clear, the side view of the Asari's face appeared disfigured, anger still clearly registering from the narrowed gleam in her eye.
"That's not a blade," she said with emphasis on the last word while the image panned down to a similarly unrecognizable view of her arm. It looked...insect-like, with toothed edges running down the forearm and thick armored claws for fingers. "And it doesn't look like any weapon we here at the Younetwork are familiar with..." The image became smaller, allowing the woman's dollish face to dominate the screen again. "Which leads us to believe that it's some type of natural appendage." Her expression changed and she looked at the camera as if it were one of her closest confidants. "Now, you've been with us as we've documented a dozen of these sightings over the past 3 weeks. Is there in fact another race hiding among us? Who are these strange creatures and what do they want? The victims are in serious condition, and Civil Defense as well as the medical center where they've been taken are keeping their identities quiet; no doubt until they can come up with a credible explanation. The suspect, in the meantime, got away, though the CDS has put out a bulletin for her arrest. We'll keep you up to date with the latest."
Another reporter Miranda hadn't seen yet chuckled and the camera panned over to a male Salarian's face. "Well," he added with a plastic smile, "They'll be easy to spot, at least."
The pair were chuckling together at his comment when Lawson waved the Omni away.
"Ridiculous," she intoned for Lyle's benefit, though her heart still sank. While (assuming this was legitimate) it was still only being reported in the least credible outlets, the news was not only in the wild but had been for weeks. She then turned and leveled a gaze on Legion, who stopped, eye plates rising in curiosity. "Tabloids. Really?" she asked, her eyes widening subtly and flicking toward the engineer in warning.
His eye-lamp moved from her to him, then back before he smartly replied, "You did not find the footage amusing. Apologies."
A smile touched her lips at the fact he caught on, and she nodded before looking at Lyle.
The engineer shrugged lightly, then asked, "Is there anything else you need from me?"
She thought for a moment, then, "Would you have the mess send up my usual? I won't have time to get down there this morning." She should eat, even if her appetite was nonexistent.
He nodded agreeably before turning. "I'll let them know," he said over his shoulder as the doors opened.
Miranda walked over to the Geth unit to look up at him, hand on her hip. "What have you been doing all this time, I wonder?" she mused, half to herself.
"I can provide a summary if that is...helpful," he said slowly, "Though I believe our current project is of higher priority."
"It is," she agreed, then looked around at the varied apparatus. "What have you got for me?"
Legion straightened to his full height before answering. "We have analyzed the communication between the machines. We have determined that your method of programming is encountering difficulties because they have developed their own, more advanced, language."
That wasn't unexpected in machines that could learn. "That follows," she said, "But they should still understand my commands," she countered.
"They do," he confirmed. "But their process has also progressed beyond the simple concepts you provided. When a command is received that is inapplicable to their planned design, it is eventually discarded."
She grasped what he was saying, but only peripherally. "Explain," she said softly.
"If I tasked you to build a 'house of cards' that filled a cube 60 centimeters per side, it can be performed in many ways. Over time, you would learn how to build it more efficiently, and remember this method. If tasked to build a much larger house of cards, the construction of the smaller unit may require changes so that these larger projects can also be completed efficiently. This new arrangement of the smaller house of cards would then replace the original remembered configuration." His large metal head tilted slightly. "Receiving a command to restructure the original house of cards would be accepted, but upon trial, may be discarded in favor of the remembered configuration if it does not meet the needs of the larger project."
"Right," she breathed in understanding, "So what's the larger project?" Then, with a raised brow, "And if they're communicating, who's overseeing it?"
Legion's eyeplates gathered around the bright orb as if focusing tightly. "Unknown," he said simply. "We have organized what we know of this new language and provided a preliminary translation matrix. We will provide an interface that allows you to use this matrix to communicate with the evolved program."
Lawson paused, regarding him silently until finally asking, "Have you already communicated with them?"
"We have not."
"Why?"
"While we are able to intercept communication between the machines at short range, we have not procured a sample of the machines for the purpose of experimental dialogue."
Her eyes widened. "Well, that's surprising. Why not?"
Legion's head drew back as if embarrassed. "Organics do not respond well to requests for samples of their tissue."
For the first time in days, Miranda found herself laughing at the thought of a Geth asking such a question. Despite everything else going on, it felt damned good.