Mass Effect : Shepard 's Letters
Chapter Five – …The Black King Follows…
The Geth Consensus
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The sleek insectoid Geth Fighters and Destroyers drifted through the battle field devoid of life as derelicts. They weren't useful anymore.
When Shepard at his last moment of defiance stroke his omniblade at the Catalyst's exposed innards, only then the real war started to the Geth.
Geth are not their platforms; this is common knowledge, at least among their Creators, but not its consequences. There's a whole 300 years long war to prove that Quarian people wanted nothing on really understanding the Geth. Shepard was the organic who most interacted with them, and it wouldn't be easy for him either, justified by his point of view being for years the wrong side of a Geth Rifle's barrel.
Even after the Sunset Ascension, made possible by Legion's sacrifice to upgrade its entire race, one thing hadn't changed in the interaction between the Geth and the "outer" physical World of the Organics. The Wait.
To a sentient race whose data processing capabilities shorten the reasoning and decision-making time to orders under the second mark, how is its perception of time for moving a mechanical arm? However sophisticated it might be as it acknowledges a command and finally executes it? To simply walk? During a discussion with an organic, how many times the content of the speak, its subtleties of tone, projection of outcomes for possible responses, are reviewed before the organic even finishes its statement?
"Virtual" is actual reality to them. The Dataspace is their common ground, their Savanah. Its Geography is determined by cliffs and valleys formed from Terabytes of video, memories, databanks. Geth's platforms are not bodies, but massive and cumbersome Colossus, heavy diving suits made to interact with a plane of existence completely alien to them.
As all Geth intelligences in the Sol System converge into Commander Shepard's physical frame to invade the Catalyst's matrices, they in reality grabbed the chance to move the fight to their own battleground. And then, like the rupture of a dam, the Geth intelligences efficiently flooded the nearby enemy systems at a full force attack.
The processing power found under the trap known as the Citadel Station was unprecedented, justifiable by the probable needs to coordinate the Reaper fleet and to deal with data obtained after uncounted Harvest Cycles. But it wasn't a frontal clash of forces, it was an invasion…
The Data Banks were immense but so much better to the Geth, more space to occupy with units, more power.
Each process found was ruthlessly hacked by all sides, made useless or repurposed to serve the Geth, be part of the Geth, allowing them more control over the Station's Systems, less power to the Enemy, more ground gained by the Geth.
The irony was lost to the Synthetics, but the Reaper coordinating Intelligence was being mercilessly assaulted by exactly its own tactics. Like the hideous Dragon Teeth given to the Heretics four years ago to make husk troops from their victims at the Human Colonies; node by node, every stream of data, each system in the Station was invaded, hacked, ransacked and assumed as an asset for the True Geth fronts.
Shepard would have loved that.
The Consensus became progressively conscious of many simultaneous tasks. The Mass Effects Cores, only comparable in magnitude to those of the Mass Relays; the Life Sustaining Systems; the millions of personal and institutional data, most now inactive, spread through all the Station; the inner workings of the Crucible itself; the last operating systems at Shepard-Commander's body going offline one by one; those strange biomechanical mobile platforms clled "keepers" occupied in many pointless tasks of maintenance and an out-off-place ancient Prothean firewall linked to them.
All data was stratified, classified, prioritized in importance to the success of this assault. Even more since the Geth had no place to go back.
It was predictable; the rebound of energy and data by the Geth assault and the response from the Catalyst's systems was over the Normandy's Consensus Hardware possibilities. The units inside the Catalyst were blind to the outside, the QEC connection to EDI-AI and to the Perseus Veil's Hubs were lost. There would be neither reinforcements nor retreat. It was deemed as an acceptable risk by the Geth. They're no longer the full Consensus, but a Partition of the Consensus would have to make through.
Each of Catalyst's countermeasures took a toll of dozens of Geth processes, but the hundred following short would have already broken their inner workings rending them useless. Thousands of Geth units hacking at any possible breach at the same time forced the enemy to keep up with countless ever-changing battle fronts.
The Partition was surprised, in a way of speaking. They could win.
The Enemy AI should have detected Shepard-Commander's attempted coded message or the increasing presence of the Geth at any time before the Strike. The Partition had to hypothesize that the AI had not deemed Shepard-Commander as a worthy threat, ignoring all previous contrary historical, letting him not scanned and unbound close to a port to its inner systems. It acted not on logic as expected from a machine. It erred by Arrogance.
Shepard-Commander was correct, the Partition acknowledged it. However advanced and powerful, the Catalyst was flawed in design.
EDI-AI had self-evolving empathetic heuristics, it was designed to increasingly emulate and understand emotional contexts. The Geth had not such thing, but could see its utility in mutual understanding with Organics. What was unfathomable was that any species would deliberately create an AI seemingly limited to express lesser emotional traits like hubris, hate, egotism. It created the bias to the decision-making processes that allowed that attempt of strike in first place.
When the Geth were first contacted by Nazara, that immense collective mind, advanced processes incomprehensible to the not yet upgraded Synthetics, it was such an encounter that the unity of the Geth was broken for the first and only time. Chances would be slim against such power and numbers if directly confronted.
The AI in front of them was in such an order that alone ruled and coordinated the Old Machines themselves. It was the de facto ruler of the Milky Way Galaxy, unchallenged and undisclosed for millennia until now.
The key words being "alone" and "unchallenged".
The Catalyst
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When the nature of that apparently desperate last boast of useless insurgence by Shepard was clear to the Catalyst AI, the intensity of response was such from its Higher Cognitive Systems that just trying an analogy to an Organic's reaction it would give an adequate approximation.
Complete and utterly Disgust.
Cycle after Cycle, since the first one, when It was given Its Directive by The Makers, and when They illogically and disappointingly refused to see the beauty of Its Solution, resisted pettily to overcome their limitations and receive the Ascension in their mortal flesh, becoming Its first and best Tool. Since back then, the AI never was so affronted, wronged in Itself, in Its own Systems…
It was unclean, polluted by all those little and feeble scurrying intelligences occupying the datastreams.
The AI made the simple countermeasure necessary to wipe out the minor distraction of those vermin. It had to finally end this troublesome and annoying Cycle…
The countermeasure didn't work. Its attention fully directed now to that nuisance, It adapted the firewalls and lesser filters to deal with the problem. Not…again, again and again. The Geth refused to simply disappear, they persisted, seeking deeper at each wave of attack set by the Catalyst. They occupied more and more nodes ravaging the Systems for power and data.
The Catalyst never had to deal with such menace! It had to… #$ #$ZZZZZTT…"Whatzz?!"
Shepard would be grinning, it would be very rewarding to observe that bastard AI giving all it could to defend itself from the Geth. Like pouncing cyclopic hands trying to smash a furious anthill. Learning first-hand what was Its equivalent of pain, of being defenseless, of screaming, of panic.
And that Geth bites.
The Normandy's Consensus
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Liara manages to attend to her consoles and she can't believe her eyes. The data coming from the Orizaba, from the Turian Fleet…
"JOKER? Garrus? Anyone on the bridge? Confirm visuals?"
"Garrus here, Liara. Spirits! HE MADE IT! I don't know how or what, but the Reaper's shields are weakening! Our shots are making damage for once. The Fleet is regrouping to keep the attack the hardest. We don't know if it will last, but gotta do the best of this chance."
"Garrus! I see Reapers losing formation. They're missing shots. There are energy discharges at my readings. Look at the screen, they're in pain! Goddess…I've seen a Reaper like this only once in my life…"
"I know, Li, I know. I was there too. They're just like Sovereign when you, Shepard and Tali…"
"That last shot was Tali's, Garrus. They're exactly like when Tali blasted Saren's head with her shotgun…"
Unnoticed by Liara, another of her monitors starts to change its readings with faster and higher results. At the med-bay Karin Chakwas was attending those less hurt so far at the attack. She managed to remove the shrapnel that punctured Tali's thorax and collapsed her left lung. The immune stimulant cocktail developed by the late Dr Solus, and a heavy hand on antibiotics were apparently countering the worst of the disseminated infection. Corticosteroids reduced the allergic swelling enough that wasn't necessary remove the visor to assure the airway, what she would have preferred to do if the patient wasn't a quarian.
Those readings were expected, there was fever, but Tali would make it…Well, as much as any on the ship in the middle of the war.
Kasumi hacked Garrus' omnitool's new firewalls…again, and released a held breath after confirming him apparently well at a weapon station at the bridge. That howl some minutes ago…she understood the pain. The pain of a part of her soul being ripped apart… "Aita…"-She could just hope that baka of a Turian knew she wouldn't survive it another time…
Unseen by the worried thief and by the overwhelmed doctor, behind a purple visor, slits of shining eyes fixed unblinking a name at the corner of her HUD. The QEC connection to Shepard remained stubbornly mute. She tried again. Impossibly mute…She keeps trying…mute…
The Geth Consensus
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The Catalyst tries to parley with the Geth. It roars. It offers. It pleads.
The Geth aren't merciless, not as much as devoid of any other emotional attribute. However, the Partition could perfectly understand the concept of Mercy, its attributes and rewards.
And could perfectly see when there was no point in it.
When that useless and defective Intelligence was finally obliterated to scraps of binary code…The whole Citadel System was open to the Geth…And its direct link to the Reaper's Intelligences simultaneously all over the Galaxy.
Each one immense, hateful and hurt and directing its attention to the Geth.
Emotionless, the Geth Partition braces to hold ground…To take the last measures…
Processors put online, screening of all useful data, the spoils of the fight. Previous data from Legion, from EDI, even from Cerberus…The Geth processes are called to full capacity. The System is unstable, too powerful, too big and alien. The Geth go thin by the colossal demand and at the same time…
"Outside"
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…Green long fingers remove carefully Commander Shepard's charred body from his last vigil…