"No"
Commander White wouldn't look the human… Yonah in the eye when she said it. Looking in her eyes would be treating it as a suggestion from an equal, or, given the environment, word from on high. Somewhere between a discussion among the members of command and the word of God to ancient man.
As long as she looked away, she was still in command.
"I understand."
White thought it sounded settled. Settled enough she could look back.
Yonah's eyes showed her the mistake. White cleared her throat. Tried to force the reasons back into words instead of the sheer authority she could no longer defend.
"Whatever Attacker unit 2 knows is less important than neutralizing the threat she presents. And letting you go to Earth once before the war was more risk than I should have allowed."
Yonah looked down at the cast on her right arm.
"I swear, aunt Jackass said it was safe."
"And the fact you believed her is just another reason I should have kept you close."
Don't think of her as a daughter. Think of what she means. Think of her like another soldier in the armies of humanity, another disposable asset in YoRHa. Keep prospective.
"If you're here, even if you die here, humanity lives on in the minds of everyone fighting to free the world. If you die on Earth, I doubt one soldier in a hundred will still be able fight with that guilt on their consciences."
"I know."
"You understand how unlikely all of this is. How desperate I would need to be to consider it."
Yonah nodded. The words came out of her with as little energy as if they came from a pod.
"I do. Attacker number 2 has destroyed multiple execution and scanner models, and proven too difficult to subdue even when she can be tracked. Any intentional contact would involve substantial risk at best."
"None of the information you've presented makes any of that invalid."
"No… I just thought that, if an opportunity presented itself… A2 might talk to me. And it's not like we have answers. We've just stopped asking. She found something at Pearl Harbor. We know it's not the logic virus, or she'd have burned out by now. We know it's not something the Resistance picked up, or Anemone would have the same condition. And she's still hunting machines instead of tracking YoRHa deployments, so she's not on their side. Something's not adding up."
White frowned.
"What made you think any of this would?"
"I'm… sorry?"
"The world never made sense. Not since the first android was built to defend against the plague-spawn of a dead god, and not before then if humanity wrote one true word."
"15H said that confusion was always the result of incomplete information."
White could see the doubt on the statement in Yonah's face already. Even when she needed to leave others to guard the girl, she wouldn't let her grow up a fool.
"And who told her that? What does she believe 'makes sense'?"
"That we're fighting a war for mankind. That everything will be better once the aliens are defeated, and that the machines are always the enemy. She believes everything you told her, and everything the Council puts out."
"Exactly. The world makes sense for her, and all the poor souls we send into the world blind, because we make it make sense. We pretend that there's a war worth fighting for, an enemy worth killing for, and a god worth dying for. We lie, and hope that someone can forgive our sins. The worst thing we could do would be to believe it."
Yonah clenched her teeth.
"Of course."
"There's a chance A2 had some secret knowledge that could win us the war. That you could bring her home, and salvage something from Pearl Harbor. But what's most likely is she abandoned us for the same arbitrary reasons as any other traitor. A bad day. A lost lover. Perhaps some flash of human memory that made her believe God demanded YoRHa die alongside the machines. Humanity knows we couldn't screen every second of that. You are a victory. The greatest triumph in endless centuries of war. Trading you for a lesser triumph would be madness."
Yonah opened her mouth. A pod interrupted.
"Alert: YoRHa units approaching. Cease discussion of all classified data."
Yonah mimed a zipper on her lips with her uninjured arm. White… heaven help her. She smiled.
21O opened the door a few moments later.
"Commander. Yonah."
Yonah looked down at her arm, and back at 21O.
"I know. Why do you think I was in here for so long? I got the mom lecture in full detail. I won't go crashing into walls next time."
"...If you insist."
"I do. Don't worry, Earth was as safe for humans as it's been since the war began. The Resistance put me at less risk than 6O does."
Yonah shot a quick look over at the Commander. White nodded slightly.
"I assume the council is about to begin another broadcast?"
Yonah smiled, a touch wider than she needed to.
"I'll be there in a hurry. Always good to hear another human voice."
21O presumably frowned under her veil.
"Running in the halls may lead to injury. Be careful."
"I will be. Don't worry."
21O made a noise that didn't sound anything like someone who had stopped worrying. White wasn't sure if anything making that noise knew what it would be not to worry.
The hallways were mostly empty, but every YoRHa android they passed had to stop and stare at the cast, and Yonah had to stop every time to explain how it wasn't a big deal, and she didn't even see any machines back on Earth, and whatever other lies would let her keep moving with a minimum of disruption. It was almost remarkable how easily the lies flowed.
There were times White couldn't help but think of the girl as her daughter.
The doors opened, and the elevator brought White to her posting in front of the giant screen. Soon, the congregants would hear the voice of their god.
"Attention all androids."
For once, Yonah's eyes were as drawn to the screen as everyone else.
"There were days when I was tempted to despair. I thought of all humanity had lost, and I wondered if we were waiting for victory, or simply waiting for the invaders to finally consolidate their triumphs, destroying the facilities you safeguarded on Earth, and leaving us to starve and die in this grey hell."
White tried to keep down her smile. It was a poor fit for the situation. Every android under her command thought this was a near breakdown, the ever confident speaker of the league of assemblymen admitting that even he had moments of doubt. The stars themselves were shaking.
But White merely heard a pod trying to force emotion out of a voice synthesizer never designed for anything past vague determination, and only felt the satisfaction of making a project work on a tight timetable.
"Those days, of course, are long gone. With YoRHa's latest victories, I have no doubt that you will triumph, no matter the foe."
White was just glad that no-one would be in a position to ask her which victories they meant.
"But in those dark days, I always remembered that whatever losses we took, even if we died to the last, you would still have been left with the harder task. While humans slept, androids fought and died for a world that was not theirs, thinking their creators had abandoned them to die while we hid."
A pause.
"Nothing could be further from the truth. We have struggled every day to bring you new weapons, new soldiers, new hope of victory. But none of that mattered to the android watching her commander die because the Moon could not spare reinforcements. None of that mattered to the soldier whose mission was to die so that others would live. None of that provided any comfort to the countless millions who died without knowing how their sacrifices would bring the war to a close. I wish I could say that we will never be forced to abandon another android. All I can say with confidence is that we will never forget your sacrifice. It matters more than you can ever imagine.
Glory… to mankind."
Yonah's fingers had been drumming out the beat of the speech as it carried on. As the final words were echoed by the waiting androids of the Bunker, her hand clenched in triumph.
"Glory to mankind."
The screen went black. Yonah's free left hand unclenched for a three count. At the end, she turned to face the nearest Operator model.
"...It sounded different, didn't it?"
"What?"
"The Council spokesman. He sounded a little less… stiff. I'm not sure, I mean, but he sounded that way to me."
"I guess."
The operator's eyes darted back and forth, pausing on the Commander, (who made sure she appeared to be poring over paperwork) before they returned to Yonah.
"I don't always pay much attention to the weekly. The council doesn't really have much to say most of the time. Not anything we didn't hear first."
"Yeah… but it's good to know they're around, right?"
The operator looked like she'd just been asked if 6O liked to chatter.
"Of course. But the words don't matter. What matters is that they're out there watching us."
"I just thought, you know, the words matter too."
The operator shrugged. Yonah slowly nodded.
"Yeah. Yeah, it's not like anyone really listens. Still. I thought… I thought it wasn't bad."
The operator nodded diplomatically.
"I'm glad you liked it. I just hope it doesn't make you want to go darting off into a wall again."
"Ha. No. That was… enthusiasm from being on Earth. Happened my first day down. And they did everything they could to help me cope. Trust me, the Commander won't let me forget that kind of mistake."
"I'm glad to hear it. I just hope the resistance wasn't impeded."
"I didn't get in the way. Learned better up here."
"I meant from grief! I know if I let something like that happen to you, well. Mankind deserves better."
White shook her head. If half of what she'd heard about Anemone was true, the entire council (assuming they existed, for the sake of an image) could have fallen down every intact stairwell on Earth directly in front of her, and she'd only be interrupted just long enough to step over the bodies on the way back from an operation. And Jackass… well. The Commander loved her, but there was a reason she'd sent Yonah down with a list of instructions taller than a scanner model.
Yonah smiled all the same.
"Heh. Thanks. You take care too. "
Yonah turned and walked back towards White, pausing for every mention of the broadcast. It took a trained eye to pick it up, but White could see her slumping a little more each time.
She stopped next to the Commander.
"They thought it sounded the same. When they thought about it at all."
"Oh."
"It doesn't matter what it says, does it? Just that they know humanity is still cheering them on. They could say the machines have resorted to building new models out of cheese, or that there was a plan to build a second Earth right next door, or any other reason that victory was closer than ever, and I don't think it would change much of anything."
"You tried your best. And it wasn't a disruption."
"It wasn't anything."
Yonah picked up papers from White's stack, moving them aside. She stopped on one of the more dog eared pages. One White had hoped to keep shuffling away for a little while longer.
"Like the…"
She looked around the room for any Operators or combat models glancing in their direction. After a moment, she continued.
"'Pyongyang resistance cells'."
White frowned. One of the wonders of command was finding out how bad the situation really was. Before YoRHa, she could rally her troops by telling them about other resistance units, the hundreds of small cells throughout the world that would help the armies of humanity when the time came, and feel no twinge of conscience. She actually thought every broadcast had a living voice behind it.
Emphasis on the past tense. It turned out that most of the resistance only existed on paper, snuffed out by the machines when they made too much noise.
"I'm well aware."
"So is everyone else. At least, everyone who cares. On the ground and up here. The resistance…"
Yonah's eyes snapped wide.
"Oh."
White sadly smiled and nodded.
"It's best to let them think they've found something. When we're lucky, it makes them stop looking. When they aren't, it means we know what we have to do."
"Of… course."
Yonah picked up a few other papers.
"Huh. That's interesting."
White couldn't comment. With the mass of work she had most days, a paper could reveal that every battle in the war since she was built was conducted so the aliens could spell 'We love you, Commander White' in corpses, and she'd never see anything but the fatality count and the impact on YoRHa efficiency.
Still. She should say something. White looked at role call of the phantom soldiers, long dead Resistance members still used to reinforce fronts that weren't worth risking YoRHa.
"Well. I hope this project goes better. I…"
"Ma'am?"
White and Yonah both turned to look at 15H. The god that burned the world only knew what Yonah was thinking. For her part, White couldn't help but see a hole in the healer's skull and a smoking gun in her own hand. It was easier in the moment. It was always easier in the moment.
"Yes?"
"Well, it's been a while since Yonah had her studies. I know you needed to debrief her from the visit to Earth, but I think she's about ready to get back to the routine."
"Anemone kept me up to date, I swear. She had a lot on Pascal."
"I could believe you. If I do, and it's true, then you're not behind, but you need to resume your studies anyway. And if it's false, I'll be the one letting you abandon your makeup work. Or I could get you back to your regular duties immediately, and only risk you repeating a few lessons."
Yonah sighed, grabbed a few papers in silence, and turned to wave goodbye to White.
"We can talk more about this later, right?"
"Of course."
White watched them go, and turned back to the rest of her workload. She'd assumed it was just paperwork and rubber stamps when she started. How long had it been since she'd actually had a chance to clear some of the pile?
How long had it been since she was that innocent?
Longer than it had been for Yonah. And here she was, dragging the poor girl in deeper. Or letting her drag herself in.
She only hoped she could protect her when the war ended and the truth came out. (It would come out. White had promised herself that. Not… not all at once, they couldn't take that, but bit by bit. As soon as it was safe.) White knew she wouldn't be treated kindly. It was almost a promise from old number 2 that she wouldn't. All that she offered knowing she could never deliver, all the horrible things she did to her androids (there was no other way to think of them, even with the cores) and all the things that happened to resistance members under her watch.
Some days she thought they would simply toss her in a deep hole and forget about her. Let her live with her guilt. On the days when the war seemed to be going less badly and it was hard to imagine a hell, she even thought they'd simply use her, force her to work off her sins rebuilding a world for those androids who actually had earned it. Those were the good days. The bad ones were spent imagining punishments cruel enough to make up for all the suffering she'd inflicted.
Most of the time she just assumed she'd be sent to a wall and shot. No point in living with a monster. They'd move on.
But at night, when she slept, she wondered what they would do with a false god. If she would go to the grave dragging one more soul with her. In her nightmares, the resistance always made a point to kill her first, to make White watch.
If she ever cursed a human, it was the one who let them dream.
White shook her head. She'd have to win the war for any of that to matter. Even if the machines didn't wipe out every one of them, Yonah might be dead of old age before it was even possible.
(And another would have to come and replace her, probably just as innocent. But there was still no point in worrying.)
"Commander?"
White turned.
"Do you have something to report?"
Steel in her voice. Too much steel, these days. She remembered when people weren't afraid of her.
Well, some of the Operators still weren't. And a fair number of the combat models…
White frowned. Too much self pity. She had people treating her better than she deserved as they were sent to die over and over. No point in pretending she had the worse end of the bargain.
"Yes ma'am! Of course, ma'am! 15H said that Yonah missed you, and would like to see you again as soon as you had an opportunity."
And, of course, her self pity just intensified the fear she complained about. It was almost funny.
"Is that all?"
"She thought that she shouldn't leave Yonah alone considering her condition. When you had a moment, it might be worth checking in."
"Noted. Return to your duties."
"Yes, ma'am!"
The scanner turned and almost ran away. White wondered how founded the fear was. Sooner or later, he'd probably run into something, and the executioner would be called up. The only question was if he'd found something yet.
She hoped for his sake he hadn't. But it was a long time since she thought her hopes held any power in the world.
Not that anything else she could do seemed much better. The papers never seemed to go away. And her daugh… and Yonah would. Like her predecessors had, much quicker than the girl on the station.
White sighed.
Yonah wouldn't call over nothing. A point for the real (if vat grown) human over the council.
"Pod?"
"Yes?"
"Sort these. I can work on any of them worth saving when I come back."
White shoved the papers onto the floor and walked in the general direction of Yonah's room with much more purpose in her stride than she felt.
Yonah was trying to look like she was studying. White was not impressed. Neither was 15H, but she didn't have much better to do than smile in disappointment, which left the room rather static.
After a moment, White coughed.
"Ah, Commander."
"15H. I heard our representative of humanity had something to discuss."
15H frowned.
"I hope 86S didn't imply it was too urgent, ma'am. If I had to guess, I'd say that Yonah's just tired of studying."
Yonah glanced up.
"No, I could study for days. Really, it's great to be covering the same thing repeatedly."
"Sarcasm is lowest form of wit."
"But the highest form of intelligence. Commonly attributed to Oscar Wilde, because sooner or later everything is attributed to Oscar Wilde."
15H smiled.
"See? You can remember these things. On occasion. Of course, you were meant to be studying the lives of the Great Four with an emphasis on how Kobayashi Issa found meaning through his religion to contrast the difficulty of his life, but you managed to remember something. It's progress."
"I remember how 16D said she was already seeing someone and you started…"
Yonah looked over at White and grimaced like Atlas clocking in for his day shift.
"Commander doesn't need to hear that."
White nodded
"No. I heard you had something you wanted to discuss?"
"It… it's private."
Yonah cleared her throat and tried to lift her face back to a casual smile.
"You know the resistance contact on Earth? Jackass? She said…"
White turned to the healer.
"We'll need some time to ourselves."
"Of course, ma'am."
And she was gone.
Yonah's face returned to a frown.
"We already talked about Jackass. You two were…?"
"Yes."
"Still disturbing to think about."
Yonah reached into her books, pulling out page after page of resistance reports.
"This is too."
Resistance cells, logged as best anyone could through the fog of war and the long centuries, with reports highlighted in red.
"I know we've been losing for a long time. YoRHa wouldn't be needed if we had the upper hand."
White barely avoided continuing, avoiding admitting Yonah wouldn't be born if they had any hope in the world without the great lie. There was enough suffering already.
"I know we're losing too. This isn't that we're losing. It's that we should have lost. Repeatedly."
"It doesn't help any of us to dwell on our errors. They weren't enough to wipe us out before."
"They should have been. Resistance cells keep going long enough to be a real threat, then are crushed as soon as someone else can apply the same pressure. The machines scatter, get weak, and then suddenly bring out their best soldiers when we have a chance at winning. It's like they're trying to keep a balance. At least, something is."
"You think the aliens don't want to win?"
"No. I mean, probably not. But it's not making much sense if they do. I suppose some of the old world weapons might have bought a little time. But they'd be gone by now, I think."
"And what do you expect me to do with this?"
Yonah frowned.
"I don't know yet. I don't know what it is. I just thought… I know this looks bad. I know that there's no way we should let this become wider knowledge. But you treated me like I could be trusted with the truth, no matter how hopeless it is. I thought I should do the same."
After a second, she coughed.
"Also… you're the only person here who I can trust with it. Not like I can just tell one of my kid sisters out there, right?"
White winced at the words. It… there were so many worse things she'd done. More damnable things she'd done. No point in dwelling on a minor point of reference. No point in making every other sin so much worse.
They were all children of the war. No worse. No better. And for all her crimes, White was still a better foster than the mother of all.
"Thank you for bringing this to my attention."
"Of course…"
The unspoken title sat between them. Another role White had forced herself into without knowing the real cost.
White stepped over it.
"I'll take it under advisement. Is there anything else you wished to add?"
"I'm not sure you'd want to hear it."
"Did you think I wanted to hear any of this?"
"...Fair. I feel that… Attacker model 2 might have insight into some of this."
"Again. The answer is no."
"We won't get any answers, then. It might turn out to just be a fluke in the data, or the aliens overestimating our forces, or God finally trying to make things right for everything he's done to us before now."
White doubted the last one even more than the rest.
"But if we can find anything, A2's our best lead."
She knew what a parent should do. Would have done. Deny the chance. Keep her… keep hope alive. Don't risk everything on one slim thread.
She also knew what was demanded of her as the commander of YoRHa. Everything in the Bunker only existed to bring victory. Every sacrifice was justified.
"I'll take it under consideration."
"Thank you!"
White turned away, unable to look Yonah in the eye again.
Androids were built to emulate humans, after all.
Sooner or later, they would have to sacrifice their god.
(Author's notes: Hey. Good to be back. As usual, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and also as usual, thanks for reading.
Poor White. She was so loyal and tries so hard. She deserved better. Really, though, she's in an interesting position, knowing enough of the truth to be sure she's doing monstrous things, but without quite enough information to know how useless her actions are in the grand scheme of things. The world of Automata tends to bring everyone into the gutters sooner or later, but White is more aware of, and less able to escape, her sins than most of the cast. I don't think having an additional lie on top of the rest would make her life much better.
So, until I see you again, take care. And always remember that, no matter what your hacker says, you don't have to murder the party tank.)
