*** Evidence ***
When the door to the Earth embassy opened, Udina looked up from his desk, expecting someone had finally gotten past the procedural obstacles and was going to really tear into him. He steeled himself against an onslaught and rose to attack first, then realized it was Anderson's crewman Shepard. With him were the other Alliance soldiers he had seen before.
"You're not making my life easy, Shepard. Firefights in the wards? An all-out assault on Chora's Den? Do you know how many calls I've—" Udina stopped in mid-gripe as he noticed the exo-suited figure standing between two of the soldiers. "Who's this? A quarian? What are you up to Shepard?"
"Making your day, ambassador. She has information linking Saren to the geth."
Udina seemed uncertain, but willing to be pompous if given a chance. "Really? Maybe you'd better start at the beginning, Miss…"
"My name is Tali. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."
Kaidan leaned toward her and whispered, "Turn on DisplaiD."
The young quarian glanced at him, then turned back to Udina as she worked suit controls visible to her on her HUD.
"We don't see many quarians here," Udina said. "Why did you leave the flotilla?"
"I was on my pilgrimage...my rite of passage into adulthood." She stepped over to Udina's left, indicating her deference to him as the highest authority figure in the room.
Shepard interrupted, "Pilgrimage? I've never heard of this before. What is it? Or what does it entail?"
"It is a tradition among my people," the quarian explained. "When we reach maturity, we leave the ships of our parents and our people behind. Alone, we search the stars, only returning to the flotilla once we have discovered something of value. In this way, we prove ourselves worthy of adulthood." She nodded with conviction.
"What kinds of things do you look for?"
"It could be resources like food, or fuel, or some type of useful technology…or even knowledge that will make life better on the flotilla. Through our pilgrimage, we prove that we will contribute to the community, rather than being a burden on our limited resources."
"Hm. So – briefly – what happened?"
"During my travels, I began hearing reports of geth…actual geth!"
"They were on Eden Prime," Udina sneered. "This is not news."
Tali was determined not to be brushed off. Her Human Interaction VI displayed a list of reasons why her discovery was important, adding unit conversions as appropriate. "But I heard about it weeks ago. You may not realize that in the…" it took one of her VIs almost half a second to anticipate what she was about to say, perform the conversion from quarian to human time units, and display it on her HUD, "three centuries since they drove my people into exile, the geth have never ventured beyond the Veil. Though there have been such reports before, I was curious. I joined up with a team and we tracked a patrol of geth to a remote world.
"While trying to lead them away from our ship, I waited for one to become separated from its unit. But there were too many of them, and I got into an actual fight. I had an opportunity to crack one remotely...I was trying to invert its IFF values."
Tali's VI warned her about explaining in too much technical detail, and suggested a way to explain what happened; she stumbled only briefly as she read the summary aloud, "And…um…it shut down instead of bleaching its SNAILS. So I disabled it and removed its memory cores."
"I thought the geth fried their memory cores when they died," Anderson folded his arms across his chest. "Some kind of defense mechanism."
Shepard asked, "How did you manage to preserve the memory?"
"My people created the geth." Tali balked again, unsure of whether to be embarrassed at the damage caused by the geth, or proud because of the power that knowledge gave her. "If you're quick, careful, and lucky, small caches of data can sometimes be saved. Most of the hypervisor core group was wiped clean. But I salvaged something from its audio banks because there are hundreds of cores in a geth unit…if you know where to look." Her fingers danced a quick schertzo on her omnitool, which played back a voice, "Eden Prime was a major victory. The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the Conduit."
Anderson pointed excitedly at the quarian, "That's Saren's voice! This proves he was involved in the attack!"
Shepard shook his head. "Not by itself it doesn't, sir. An audio clip like this could have been faked."
"What?" It was hard to tell if Udina was annoyed or amazed.
"Most DCEs have dedicated speech synthesis VI," Kaidan nodded agreement. "Sometimes they have to use them in vids, like in Deadly Cold. Remember how one of the actors, Santos Lisseth, was killed before they finished production? They used one of those to have her reshoot lines put in anyway. It was even in her contract."
"That's true," Tali agreed, "but I extracted the core group that it came from. It's inert, but still readable. And it contained a hierarchy vector naming Arterius-Spectre as a root user. Not only would that be nearly impossible to fake, but Lewadar captured me doing it."
Udina asked, "Who did?"
"Lewadar. It's a lifelogging app that I use," Tali explained, digging into a pocket. "And even if you don't accept that as credible, I have the core group itself." She produced the fragment, held it up proudly. "This is part of a geth that was in the room when that was said."
The humans exchanged glances. It was a lot to take in all at once.
"Wait," Shepard held up a hand toward the quarian. "He said Eden Prime brought him one step closer to finding…the Conduit? Any idea what that means?"
Tali looked uncertainly from one human to the next. "I…I don't know. I've never heard of it."
"It must have something to do with the beacon," Anderson said. "Maybe it's some kind of Prothean technology…" he looked away thoughtfully. "Like a weapon."
"Wait, there's more," Tali added. "Saren wasn't working alone." She adjusted her omnitool briefly.
Saren's voice played from the omnitool again, "Eden Prime was a major victory. The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the Conduit."
"And one step closer to the return of the reapers," said another voice.
Udina's frown deepened. "I don't recognize that other voice…the one talking about reapers."
Shepard asked, "Are they some kind of new alien species?"
"According to the IPL data, the reapers were a hyper-advanced machine race that existed fifty thousand years ago. The reapers hunted the Protheans to total extinction…and then they vanished. At least…that's the data the geth have."
Udina folded his arms. "Sounds a little far-fetched."
Shepard wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. "The vision on Eden Prime…I think I understand it now. I was watching the Protheans being wiped out by the reapers."
Tali added, "The geth revere the reapers as gods. The pinnacle of non-organic life. And they think Saren knows how to bring the reapers back."
Udina closed his eyes, shook his head. "A hallucinating human, a quarian with a piece of geth, and a Spectre trying to bring back the dead. The Council is just going to love this."
Shepard turned to Captain Anderson, "Wait…if this is true, the reapers are a threat to every species in Citadel space. Maybe that was a reaper ship that we saw on Eden Prime. But even if the geth are building super-dreadnoughts like the one we saw, in some 'cargo cult' kind of behavior, they are officially a big problem for the Council. We have to tell them."
Anderson pointed at the geth fragment, "No matter what the Council thinks about the rest of this, this proves Saren's a traitor."
Udina put a hand to his chin. "The Captain's right. We need to present this to the Council right away."
"What about her?" Kaidan looked to his right.
"The quarian?" Ash sounded dismissive.
"My name is Tali," she insisted, turning to Shepard. "You saw me in the alley, Commander. You know what I can do. Let me come with you."
"But what about your…um…pilgrimage?"
"The pilgrimage proves we are willing to give of ourselves for the greater good. What does it say if I turn my back on this?" She spread her arms in a gesture that seemed to say, this should be obvious. "Saren is a danger to the entire galaxy. My pilgrimage can wait."
Shepard sighed. "I'll take all the help I can get, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I can only put in a request for a civilian contractor, and I'll need the Captain's approval." He glanced at Anderson, who was – strangely – looking at Ash's feet. "And on a front-line ship? Normandy is simply too small to accommodate you. You'd have to sleep on a crate in the hangar or something."
No one could see Tali smile impishly. "My very own crate? Mmm…luxury accommodations," she said cheerfully. "I accept."
Before Shepard could object, Kaidan barked a quick laugh, and then looked embarrassed at having done so.
"I have to admit I think this is a good idea," Udina stroked his chin. "She's already survived one run-in with the geth."
"Geth?" Shepard looked to his Captain. "The way I understand it, the geth aren't the problem, Saren is the problem."
Before Anderson could agree, Tali spun and nearly pounced on him. "That's why I simply must get this information to the Council. If Saren has found the geth to be allies against humans, they could do to you what they did to us."
Anderson turned to Udina. "We can't let a fleet of those dreadnoughts get to Earth. If Saren has gotten control of a fleet like that, this is a problem he caused, and we'll need the Council's help fighting him…and the geth." He paused, shook his head. "God help us, even the turian fleet may not be enough."
Udina turned away, his head down as he walked to the balcony. He seemed almost to be thinking aloud. "It will not be easy getting back in there, and actually having their attention. They'll think we're just protesting their decision."
As his VIs noticed his focus on the man, Shepard's ARO suddenly covered his view with an array of callouts informing him of things like the power draw of the ambassador's devices and cybernetics (16.48 Watts), the operating efficiency of his heart (86%), his blood alcohol content (0.0003%), the fact that there were a 73 nanograms of blue sand on his left sleeve, that he was not carrying an emergency vacuum bubble and rebreather, that 15% of his body fat was synthetic, and as it started to scroll out and triage by importance the other debris that was attached to his hair and suit before Shepard flicked his right hand, shutting the analysis off.
Anderson smacked a fist into his palm. "But this is new information! It's critical!"
Udina was silent for a moment, gesturing to his own interface. "We might have to start this from somewhere else in the bureaucracy," he said, almost to himself. He turned decisively. "Hmm…yes. All right, then. Anderson and I will go ahead to get things ready with the Council. I'm sure it will take more than a few minutes to get their attention again."
He stepped over to the quarian, lit his omnitool and continued, "Can you show me the geth cores you told us about?"
Tali reached into a pocket, carefully drew out the silver-and-beige fragment, held it up in its transparent box. Udina waved his omnitool around it. Pausing to frown at his omnitool, he waved it again. "And can you give me a copy of the audio files you played for us? And the other thing you talked about, the file or whatever it was that specifically named Saren?" Tali worked her omnitool and pinched a glowing icon, held it up to him.
Udina took it gingerly from the three-digit hand. "Good. Is there anything else you have that might be useful in convincing the Council that we have real evidence here?"
"My Lewadar record shows me actually getting it from the geth…I mean, how I did it," she answered. "Even if the Council doesn't officially accept it as legally binding, they should be able to play it. And it adds credibility, especially if they do later."
"Good. Give me that."
She held another holographic icon toward him. "It's secured against editing, so you won't be able to change it. You also won't be able to play it discontinuously, though you can pause and restart it," she explained. "Any good tech should be able to help with it, and you can always analog hole it to get it in a format that works better for you. If you really get stuck, message me and I can remote in."
Udina was already shaking his head. "Spare me the training." He looked toward Shepard, "Can you keep her safe for an hour or two while I work my way back to the Council?"
Normandy's XO nodded. "Of course, sir."
"You should have plenty of time to collect yourselves, while we arrange an emergency hearing, and I'll have you paged when you can meet us in the Tower." Without waiting for an answer, he headed for the door, with Captain Anderson in tow.
Shepard picked his malfunctioning helmet up off the desk and looked at it. "Glad I don't have to convince them." He shook his head, looked up at the others in the room. "But we might be stuck waiting for a while. Anyone have something they always wanted to do here?"
Tali waved both hands out at their view of the Presidium, "See the Citadel! We may never get back here!"
Kaidan had an amused look on his face as he looked from the animated quarian to his omnitool. "It's a big place," he said, turning to speak to Shepard, "Though we had thought to go on a tour or something. You suppose they offer a military discount?"
"The volus told me that there's a place you can go for a nice view for free…near some place called Flux." Shepard raised his left arm, checked a map. "Looks like a little walking, a little elevator riding." He looked up. "Any other ideas? Objections?"
"We want to be ready to deal with the Council…again," Ash said, "Though we might have an hour or two before that's a possibility." She sounded resentful.
Kaidan looked out the still-open door. "Well, I'm hungry…but fixing that might be expensive around here. Maybe I can parlay that beer I was offered into a burger or something."
Shepard nodded. "Yeah, I'm kind of hungry, too. Maybe we can do that." He started out the door; the rest of the team followed.
"Oh, wait…before we miss out," Tali stopped at the intersection in the light-gray corridor and pointed to the right. "The sign says the embassy for the volus and elcor is right there. I've never seen a real elcor. Do we have time to just go meet one?"
"Not in the mood," Ash muttered, thinking no one would hear.
Kaidan looked from the quarian to Ash, and back. "Bet you we'll be back here," Kaidan indicated the human embassy with a wave of his hand, "Would you mind waiting until next time?"
Tali managed to not look accusingly at Ash, and shrugged. "Well, okay."
"We'll start in that restaurant, and then see if we have time to go to that observation deck by Flux." Shepard turned left, went down a flight of stairs. "Maybe we'll stop by again on the way to the observation deck."
The four of them went through the door and down the stairs into the lobby. As they approached the desk, a man sitting in one of the waiting area chairs rose quickly and started across the room toward them. "Chief Williams?" he looked puzzled. "Chief Ashley Williams?"
Ash stopped and read her DisplaiD. "Mister Bhatia. Narali's husband?" For half a second, she looked surprised and happy to see him. Then she caught her breath. "Oh, Mister Bhatia, I am so sorry. I…"
He held up a hand to stop her, "Thank you, Chief," he nodded, managed a smile. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you; Narali spoke of you with great respect." He pinched his eyes shut quickly, then opened them again. "What are you doing here?"
Ash looked quickly at the other two soldiers. "I…uh…was transferred to Normandy. This is Commander Shepard, the XO, and Lieutenant Alenko…um…a biotic marine. They helped save Eden Prime."
Shepard nodded as the man looked at him. He was wearing the same white-and-cream Armani suit that Udina was wearing, but he had the look of a man badly beaten. "Excuse me, Commander Shepard? You are an officer in the Alliance, yes? Could you spare a moment of your time?"
"It's no trouble, sir. Who are you? What can I do for you?"
"My name is Samesh Bhatia. Forgive the intrusion, but I have nowhere else to turn." He paused, wrung his hands, glancing at Ash. "My wife was a marine."
"In the 212," Ash nodded at Shepard, "I served in her unit." She looked at the man again and shook her head, "I'm so sorry for your loss, Mister Bhatia." The concern on Ash's face was quickly becoming grief. "The last time I saw her was at breakfast." She'd made a wonderful carrot paratha for the patrol, and eggs…by hand, Ash remembered. We called her the Camp Mom, and she blushed and laughed and swatted our heads.
And now she's dead.
In response to her emotion, another surge of ET3 spread through her medial prefrontal cortex, and she sighed. "I'm…so very sorry," she said again, shaking her head. "Nirali was a good woman. What can we do for you?"
"I've requested my wife's body be returned to me for cremation," Samesh took a breath, "But the Alliance has refused my request."
Shepard frowned. "Did they say why? There's got to be some reason."
"I don't know. All I know is that they've declared it impossible for my wife to be returned to me."
"Have they told you anything at all?"
"No! When I came home last night, there were Alliance people…at my door, waiting. They said…" He inhaled, clenched his fists, looked ready to explode. "They said she was kay-eye-ay, as if that means something other than dead!" He seemed to get control of himself again. "I don't understand why they won't release my Nirali's body to me!"
Shepard glowered back up the stairs toward the embassy. "Do you want me to go intimidate someone? I happen to be dressed for it."
Bhatia shrugged helplessly. "The man in charge of my case is named Bosker. When I last saw him, he was in the expensive bar over there," Bhatia pointed up the stairs toward Fezziwig's. "I just…want to give my wife a proper funeral, and the respect she deserves."
"We're headed that way already," Shepard pointed at the lobby seating, "Wait here, I'll get to the bottom of this." He turned and started away, then stopped and said, "Williams, wait here with Mister Bhatia." He stomped to the other side of the lobby, not even caring if the others were following.
"Thank you for your time. I just…" Samesh went quiet when he realized the Alliance officer was out of earshot.
As he approached the door to Fezziwig's, Shepard checked to make sure DisplaiD was active. He strode into the place, looking quickly from one patron to the next.
Wearing a practical but still expensive blue-gray Noguchi suit, the man leaned away from the wall and stood in surprise as Shepard zeroed in on him. "My goodness…you're Commander Shepard! Your activities made for quite a briefing in the Diplomatic Corps! Um…with the way you walked in here, it's like you're looking for me; is there something I can do to assist you?"
Facing the man, Shepard waved a thumb over his shoulder, where he imagined Samesh was just sitting back down, Ash sitting next to him. "I hope so. A man named Samesh Bhatia is having some trouble claiming his wife's body after the Eden Prime attack. You know anything about this?"
Bosker nodded, looking down and away. "Ah…Mister Bhatia. A good man in an understandably frustrating position. I wish I could help him." He shook his head, "Serviceman Nirali Bhatia died on Eden Prime, as Mister Bhatia no doubt told you."
"And…?"
"And what he did not tell you is that her wounds are inconsistent with any type of weapon damage we've seen before. That is why her body is being held."
The Commander squinted. "You think her body might be dangerous, or contaminated?"
Bosker shook his head. "No, Commander, Nirali Bhatia is not dangerous. Her body is in fact extremely valuable to the Alliance. The tests we are conducting may lead to better defenses against geth attacks. Respectfully, Serviceman Bhatia may save more lives in death than she did in life."
Shepard paused, looked away. "You're studying her injuries to learn more about geth weaponry…"
The young clerk nodded. "Exactly. It's regrettable, but it will take some time."
"Okay, how long do you think this is going to take? Can't you at least tell him that?"
"This is basic research, almost certainly a long-term study. I wouldn't expect the bodies to be released for at least a year. Or maybe even longer."
"You've got to have a lot of bodies. Can't you just release one?"
Bosker nodded. "Yes, I thought about that, but apparently very few bodies had this new type of weapon damage, fewer still were in good enough condition to study. Even beyond that, Commander, we need as many bodies as we can get to know as much about what sort of effects these weapons have over a variety of conditions."
"When will this research result in actual new technology?"
"If we're lucky, we'll actually realize usable technology from this work in a few years."
"Years? The geth are here now."
"Exactly, Commander! You of all people should understand how far we must go to protect humanity!"
Shepard frowned in thought. Eventually he said, "I'll have to tell Mister Bhatia about this. It…might make it easier for him to understand. But you should have told him. Maybe it'll take a year, but at least tell him why! Give him some hope, tell him how it helps!"
Bosker held up his left arm, illuminated his omnitool gauntlet. "Well, they are doing the work at cryogenic temperatures, so the body is staying very well preserved. I just found out a few minutes ago myself. Is he here? Should I tell him now?"
Shepard sighed, waved a hand to one side. "No, I'll tell him. Hopefully you won't see me again." He turned to go, and stopped himself, turned back around to face the man. "And thanks for letting me know."
"Certainly, Commander. I'm sorry you had to get involved." To his credit, he certainly looked it.
Shepard glanced once more around the smallish restaurant, and headed for the door.
# # #
"Williams, wait here with Mister Bhatia, will you?"
Tali turned to follow, but was touched on the shoulder by the other human. "No…wait," said the dark-haired man. "Let him handle that. We'd only get in the way."
Tali watched him go. "He looked really upset."
"Don't worry, he'll have it under control by the time he gets there." Kaidan nodded to himself as Shepard jogged up the stairs. He turned back to the quarian. "Hey, sorry about the embassy thing. Uh…the Chief…" he inclined his head toward the female human, sitting with the unarmored civilian, "…lost her whole unit on Eden Prime yesterday. I'm trying to cut her some slack."
"Keelah, her whole unit? That's terrible," Tali glanced at the two sitting humans. She leaned her head toward him and lowered her voice, "Um…do you suppose I could run up there now and just peek in the embassy? Before he gets back?"
"I wouldn't. But don't worry, there will be other times."
"Easy for you to say. We don't even have an embassy anymore."
"What?" Kaidan looked at the quarian in surprise. "What happened? The Council took it away?"
Tali folded her arms. "It's complicated. When the geth turned against us, the Council treated it as if we'd been doing illegal AI research all along. Quarian synthetics may have been the best in the galaxy, but we weren't doing anything illegal. Incremental advances simply reached the threshold where the self-awareness properties emerged." She turned toward the Presidium's open space as if the Council were out there, "The geth declared war on us, and the Council acted as if we had declared war on the galaxy."
"Suddenly we were fighting on too many fronts. We tried to stop the geth, but they fought back. We'd already lost every civilized world we had, and the Council treated all of us as if we were all accountable for the actions of a few."
"I thought the Council was supposed to help when disasters happen."
"Exactly! And instead, they treated us like…vagabonds."
Kaidan glanced up toward the embassy, then quickly back at the Chief, who was listening to Samesh. "Well, I guess it couldn't hurt." He pointed up the stairs. "Go quickly. I'll cover for you if it's a problem."
Tali dashed off. "Thanks!" she called over her shoulder, "I'll be right back!"
# # #
Shepard returned, his face drawn; Bhatia stood to meet him. "Hello, Commander. Has any progress been made with Mister Bosker? Will he return my wife's body?"
"It's not as simple as I'd hoped. The military needs your wife's body for important tests—"
Bhatia interrupted, "Tests? They're holding my Nirali's body so they can run tests?"
"Her wounds are unlike anything they've seen before. The Alliance needs to understand what we're dealing with, and it sounded like they thought it could take a year. I think they will return her to you, but it will take some time. I'm sorry…he should hav—"
Bhatia shouted, "My wife served the Alliance faithfully! She gave her life for humanity! And this is how they repay her?"
"Mister Bhatia, your wife died defending humanity. We still need her help."
"What?! What right does the military have to hold her body? She has already given her life!"
"It's not much comfort, but technically, when you sign up, you grant the Alliance Medical Power of Attorney. But even if there weren't, she died a hero, Mister Bhatia, and now she has a chance to save even more lives. If the Alliance had asked her to take some tests so that people's lives could be saved, what would she hav—"
"It doesn't matter! She's dead!" Bhatia sobbed.
"Yes she is," Ash touched his arm softly. "And she died fighting for what she believed in. She died to keep you safe. I think she'd want you to make the most of her sacrifice."
Bhatia seemed to remember himself. He looked up at Ash, sighed heavily, shook his head. "You're right, Miss Williams. She would not flinch from her duty." He looked up at her, then at Shepard. "Let them run their tests. Let my wife save lives so that others will be spared the loss I feel today." He looked away. "Thank you for finding me answers."
The soldiers all watched the widower as he meandered toward the fountain overlook.
There was an unhappy silence. Shepard found himself staring at a spot on the floor where Bhatia stopped to lean against a rail and seemed to implode.
"Not all that hungry anymore," Kaidan said quietly.
Shepard lifted his malfunctioning helmet to look at it again. "All right then. Anger, sadness, grief…all justified feelings, but they don't do us any good." He opened a hand toward Kaidan. "We couldn't have gotten there any faster," toward Ash, "you couldn't have fought any harder against million-tonne warship and its complement…and that is where we are. So we close ranks and press ahead. I assume Jenkins is still at the clinic?"
Ash nodded silently.
Shepard considered pressing for words out of her, decided against it. "All right, then. Let's go get him." He turned and walked toward the taxi stand just beyond the entrance to the embassies.
Following the Commander, Kaidan lit his omnitool, selected the DisplaiD logs, selected Tali, slid the icon to the back of his left hand and gestured for RTM with it. He subvocalized, We're heading to the clinic. You need to get here now, or meet us there.
Tali'Zorah_nar_Rayya: I need to go there anyway. I promised to help the doctor set up her new VI bed. Do you think it will be okay if I meet you there?
It better be, Kaidan continued, We're boarding the taxi now.
Tali'Zorah_nar_Rayya: This embassy is actually interesting, and I don't think you need me yet. Give me another ten minutes and I'll meet you there.
The air taxi door opened such that everyone was able to board practically at once; Shepard touched the interface and said, "Alenko, where were we when that reporter asked about crashing Fist's operation?"
"Uh…sir?" He looked up from his omnitool.
"Do you remember where we talked with that reporter?"
"I think we were walking past some markets," Ash said. "And that was me you were with, sir."
"Right. Thanks, Chief." He scowled to himself as he touched the airtaxi's interface and spoke to it, "Take us to the markets near the clinic. Doctor Michel's clinic."
The holograph displayed their path and a few options, flashing its advised choice for two seconds as the doors closed; the taxi lifted away from the stand.
"Are you going to give that reporter the DCE from Fist's office?" Kaidan lit his gauntlet briefly.
"I'm sure thinking about it. Why?"
"Then let me give it to you now. I want to have a look at the stores while we're here. Their stuff might be expensive, but if I can't get it anywhere else…"
"Good idea." Shepard held his left hand up over the seat; Kaidan handed him an icon to start the transfer.
"You have 400 petabytes free?" Kaidan watched the progress bar on his omnitool as the air taxi reached the side of the Presidium ring, slid sideways and down a shaft.
"Sure do. You know they were giving away 100-petabyte omnitool PIRADs at MDSC right before we shipped out, right? Adams stayed to help clean up and pocketed a handful of 'em that the Tegmark people didn't manage to give away. He's been handing 'em out to anyone who wants 'em."
"Really? I have six empty slots right now, but they have to be fast rollover-capable." He tapped his head. "L2, remember?"
Shepard toggled off his gauntlet, pulled a fingernail-sized chip from the omnitool hardware on his left forearm, and handed it back to the biotic. "Well, I don't know about that, but here's one of 'em. Will that work for you?"
Kaidan took the chip and touched it to his omnitool. The information on the chip's RFID was matched against a database that was part of his recently-updated Netbite, and the FMC upgrade was in fact, "Compatible!" he smiled.
Shepard nodded. "Good. I'm using 2-exabyte Tyrell FMCs, and these things fill up the extra slots, but I think they make PVR run slow. Mismatched type, I assume. I ought to max out the other slots with more, but I didn't think I needed to yet."
"Shouldn't affect combat performance," Kaidan said. "But you don't seem like the type to use PVR a lot anyway."
"I'm not, but that's what my omnitool had a metric for, and I'm not sure it's limited to just PVR."
"So how many open slots do you have?"
"Six, but five of them have the little 100-petabyte chips I got from Adams."
"I'll keep an eye out," Kaidan said.
Ash shook her head slowly, looking out the window to her right. "Geekfest central, right here."
Kaidan turned and looked like he was about to deliver a witty retort, but was cut off as the taxi settled with a thump and the doors clunk-hissed noisily open.
Shepard waited until they were all standing again before he said quietly, "Just because you don't know what we're talking about doesn't mean we don't know what we're talking about." He grinned playfully at Ash. "Okay. I think the atrium where we saw that reporter is over there," he pointed, "I'm going to go get her all squared away and then we head for the clinic to pick up Jenkins. Williams, you're free to come with me or Alenko or go solo, but be at the clinic in twenty."
"Will do, sir. I'll accompany the Lieutenant."
"Very good." Shepard nodded and started away quickly.
When he was out of earshot, Ash turned to where Kaidan was quickly browsing the stall kiosks. "So how long have you two known each other?"
"The Commander? Um…well I met him about nine years ago. I joined up in '73, and my first posting was aboard Tokyo in '74. He was an FCO back then, and I was there a couple of weeks before I met him; I was a marine, he was Corps of Engineers Ground, swap-shifting to bridge crew. But he saw me sitting by myself in the mess, and we started eating together. He kind of took me under his wing. And I appreciated it." He glanced at his omnitool and moved to the next seller's booth. "Lots of folks still have some kind of 'ick' reaction to biotics…so I had to get comfortable with that even when I was a kid." He shrugged. "Anyway, when I re-upped in '77, I also added FCO to my skill path. That's when Anderson started to notice me. He was Weaps at the time, but made XO right after."
"Well, the FCO does spend more time on his bridge. Most of the time, the marines don't see the captain much."
"Then I think you're going to really like Captain Anderson. Stephen told me I should talk to him, and when I did, he was very encouraging. He takes an active interest in his crew…well, in people generally. I think that's why he asked you to be reassigned to Normandy rather than attached to the next unit they drop in there."
"I don't know. I could have helped with the transition. Eden Prime's a beautiful place, but there are some crazy bad animals you gotta watch out for, and…" Her voice trailed off as she stared to focus on the past.
Kaidan's ARO told him Ash was near her daily limit for ET3, so he tried to change the subject. "…aaaand there's a lot of unhappy stuff that you just might be too close to," he finished. "This is a much better solution. And I can certainly see why the skipper picked you up."
Ash smiled, recalling Shepard's encouragement, I like your go-get-em attitude.
Kaidan scrolled through some of the items for sale at the kiosk. With his finger holding a place on the list, he looked up at the attendant. "You have the OEM version of this Tyrell FMC chip? I don't need the retail kit."
The turian looked surprised, and tapped his omnitool. "Sorry, I was distracted. What did you say?"
"Do you have the OEM kit on the Tyrell 2EB FMCs?"
"I'm sorry, we only have what you see there. Wait a minute..." The blue-tattooed turian leaned over the countertop kiosk, manipulating the controls on his side. "The retail version comes with run rights to a suite of H-K VIs. They work best in concert to increase your—"
"Yeah, I read the thing." Kaidan pointed at the kiosk display. "But that's for the younger audience, and I'll be installing them myself. I thought I'd try to save a few credits."
"Sorry, I don't think I can do that."
Kaidan shrugged. "Hm, okay. Thanks anyway."
*** Glossary ***
analogue hole: media data migration that nullifies any encryption or codec compatibility issues. Example: play back an encoded original signal, point a recorder at the playback display and record it for later use. By reducing the signal to analog photons, one creates a "hole" in the protection afforded by encryption, compression, exotic media, or whatever.
bleaching: writing all zeroes to a drive multiple time as a way of erasing content beyond recoverability.
FMC: Fast Memory Cluster; similar to PIRADs, but at the "faster execution times" end of the spectrum.
IPL: Initial Program Load, a core set of information written to a device on first power-up, and central to its core operations.
MDSC: Military Data Security Conference. Usually more of a software show, more often attended virtually via PVR than in person, targeted a high-security companies, but originally targeted at the military.
OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer; for the purposes of this story, it means a version of the product that includes no accessories or bonuses; simply the hardware, ready for installation, but requiring some expertise.
PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality; VR that encodes for at least three and usually five senses. Total immersion VR. PVR games can be very addictive, particularly to the young.
RFID: Radio Frequency ID, a non-powered wireless ship that contains information readable at very short range. Usually contains information like manufacturer, and design type, date of manufacture or print, and so on.
SNAILS: Storage Network Array Interweave and Local Storage. A VDI hardware design that allows computation to be distributed across client devices, but that particularly exploits the design to keep data striped across multiple devices to offer advantages in both speed and data integtrity/persistence.
Tegmark Machine Intelligences, GmbH: A software company that specializes in task-specific learning VIs. Built on the recursion innovations of Max Tegmark circa the 2030s.
VDI: Virtualized Data Infrastructure
