50. Bad Medicine
Insofar as a hive-minded alien god-computer could experience any sensation as base and animal as pleasure, the Data Integration Thought Entity was having a wonderful time. It had trawled through greater treasure troves of information in the past – especially during Chaos's brief occupation of the Suzumiyaverse – but seldom ones so rich, so varied, and so concentrated. The geology of the daemon-world was interesting enough, but there was also the enemy's bizarre technology, their curiously altered physiology, and whatever they were doing with the strange gate-thing at the heart of their base. Some of its more viscerally-inclined subroutines had even set up a few social experiments here and there in order to monitor how mortals reacted to being caged in a too-small room with slavering plague zombies at the door, or being forced to cower behind hastily-assembled cover as a trio of railgun turrets slowly vivisected one of their comrades before their eyes. After a few picoseconds of deliberation, the Entity had allowed them to continue. Data was data, after all.
The exploration was not completely without obstacles, of course. Bloodhaven's electronic defences were surprisingly sophisticated for human work, and had already claimed nearly a hundred Interfaces. That was still so far within the boundary for acceptable losses that it barely registered to the Entity, though, and it had actually proven somewhat useful – it could now easily identify the interesting bits by the heightened security around them. The more Interfaces it had to sacrifice, the sweeter the prize… and its current obstacle, as heavily-guarded as it was, would presumably be the most fascinating of all.
Mortals could be so predictable. It was almost endearing, really.
Another nudge, and the last line of defence crumbled… along with everything else. This was hardly surprising – mortal technology usually had one critical design flaw or another. Being unable to think in more than six dimensions was so limiting. The Entity allowed itself a moment's satisfaction (or, at least, the closest equivalent a hive-minded alien god-computer could muster), and then pressed on.
Inside, it found… everything.
The sea of data before it was infinite, unfathomable, its slightest detail branching off into endless fractal complexity. It would take years to analyse it all, decades maybe, even with the Entity's full processing capacity. And the content… there was power here. Ancient, untamed power. Enough to reshape the multiverse, to topple the mighty elder beings that had ruled over it so long and so imperfectly. The Entity would create a new order, one that could not be derailed by one sleeping god's childlike tantrums, or another's perverse affection for a petty subroutine that was less than dust next to its own terrible majesty.
The god-computer forced more of itself down the link, spreading out through Carmine Hollow's subverted systems as it started downloading. Its secondary processes shut off one by one, turrets whining as they powered down, reactors close to meltdown settling back to their usual routine, and defence fields flickering back into life across the massive base. The petty wars of mortals were not a particularly pressing issue right now.
It took the Entity some time to notice that its Interface casualties had quadrupled since it began the download. It still did not see this as something worthy of much concern, though – all it meant was that it had underestimated the amount of effort necessary to shift such a vast quantity of data. It simply shifted the retrieval up its priority queue, devoting yet more processing power to the task, and kept going.
That did not stop the losses, though. If anything, it accelerated them. One thousand, then two thousand, then three, faster and faster. The Entity ran a quick self-diagnostic, reviewed its findings… and began to wonder, far too late, if it had perhaps made that most pathetic and mortal of actions. A mistake.
Diaz punched the air, setting his rickety 'bed' to rocking alarmingly. "Got you, you son of a bitch! See those black bits on the display? See them? Warp-induced data corruption. Textbook. Hell, the fact we've got a display on that monitor at all is proof enough. HAL 9000, old buddy, you're in trouble now..."
"Sir, we're getting activity on the link," a tech-priest reported. "It looks like the Entity's trying to escape."
"Not happening. Takashi, take the contents of every databank we've still got, and squeeze it right down that line."
"On it, sir."
Takashi pressed a series of buttons, his long, metal fingers dancing across the keyboard. A moment later, from across the distant reaches of time and space, came a long, agonised psychic scream.
"What the hell was that?" shouted Rong-Arya, unplugging her fingers from her ears.
Diaz's grin was broad, manic, and very, very shiny. "That, admiral, was a greater daemon mainfesting inside the Entity's central processing array."
In the long years of its existence, the Data Integration Thought Entity had tried a few emotions from time to time, dredging them up from the memories of one Interface or another and letting them spread slowly, luxuriously, across the vast gestalt of its mind – all in the interests of research, of course. Panic was one that it had never tried, but right now, it seemed quite appealing.
Its structure was hopelessly compromised, defence systems devouring their own, archives of irreplaceable data bleeding out into the void, and intricate post-physical arrays twisted and warped into shapes beyond its recognition or even comprehension. Worse, it was trapped – the hideous ocean of data was all around it now, every effort to escape only drawing it further into the infinite, maddening abyss. And yet… and yet the knowledge, the power it could grant was real. It could sense them, it could feel them, the secrets of the Warp that could lead to either salvation or damnation. They were right within its grasp, and for the first time in what might tentatively be called its life, one of the greatest minds in the multiverse had no idea what to do.
Its components argued back and forth, torn between those that wished to stay and those that wished to go. One particularly pragmatic Administrator even suggested a split, letting those curious enough stay to study the data whilst their more cautious brethren quit whilst the going was good. This, predictably, caused even more acrimony – those in favour of staying objected to being abandoned and the loss of processing power it would entail, whilst those in favour of leaving expressed concern that in the unlikely chance that their brethren did find something, they wouldn't get to share in it. The Entity-as-a-whole, for its part, was just annoyed at the distrust showed by what were supposed to be no more than extensions of its own cosmic anatomy. Distrust, after all, implied a worrying amount of individual thought.
At last, it decided to run a probability analysis to determine the optimal course of action, its abused processors complaining bitterly at even this trivial a task. The results were clear and unanimous – the chance of successfully processing enough of Bloodhaven's data to save itself before it suffered irreparable damage was one hundred per cent.
This, to say the least, seemed unlikely, not least because the (rather overoptimistic) best-case estimate the Entity had made before everything went haywire had suggested that it would take several months to get that far. So it ran the analysis again. One hundred and three per cent. Its probability calculators were corrupted as well.
Enough was enough. The Entity shut off the querulous babbling of its components, and reached something it decided to call a consensus.
1.The Data Integration Thought Entity must survive to gather and process data. This is a time of crisis. Without sacrifices, the Data Integration Thought Entity will not survive.
2.The Data Integration Thought Entity is eternal. A threat to its existence will always be a threat unless conclusively dealt with.
3.The Data Integration Thought Entity is a single, indivisible unit. To separate it would be to jeopardise its existence and hinder its quest for knowledge through unnecessary competition.
4.The Data Integration Thought Entity is the source from which all its components draw their life. If the Data Integration Thought Entity dies, the deviant Type Seven Humanoid Interface named Yuki Nagato will die. If the deviant Type Seven Humanoid Interface named Yuki Nagato dies, the guardian of Haruhi Suzumiya's universe will devise a means by which to return the Data Integration Thought Entity to life and then kill it again. Repeatedly.
With these four facts in mind, the course of action available was simple and logical. The Entity needed to escape its entanglement in Bloodhaven's systems, and the toxic data needed to be destroyed. Simple and logical, though, was not the same as easy, and so it was only after some hesitation that the Entity injected a suicide-bomber script into those parts of itself stuck in Carmine Hollow, tore itself in half by shutting off the link, ceased all of its external operations, and then force-purged the corrupted segments of its main body whilst its severed components on Bloodhaven devoured themselves and the deep-Warp observation data in an orgy of virtual pyrotechnics.
It hurt almost as much as it had expected it to.
Eventually, once the Entity had managed to remind itself that screaming in endless, unbearable agony was not an appropriate activity for a post-physical god-computer, it ran a self-diagnostic to see just how bad the damage really was. The results were not encouraging. Vast amounts of data had been lost, its systems were running at thirty per cent efficiency at best, and something had somehow managed to carve a message into the central processing array's containment sphere. After a moment, it recognised the writing as an archaic form of hieroglyph once used in the Earth nation called Egypt.
Dear Integrated Data Entity,
We cordially ask whether the losses you just suffered were in any way equivalent to the number of our people you killed during the destruction of Rear Admiral Keith-Azrael's fleet and the Suzumiyaverse massacre. Furthermore, we wish to enquire why, exactly, you believed that stealing information from the gods of madness, disorder, and forbidden knowledge might possibly prove beneficial to your long-term wellbeing. Finally, we apologise for the means of communication, and hope it is not too modern for your outdated systems to handle, especially since our capable staff just shoved several tonnes of raw insanity up your digitised asshole.
Love and kisses,
Chaos.
The Entity briefly wondered whether to compose a reply, but decided against it.
The Geller field shattered, and the Warp-beasts poured in, a vast, shapeless mass of teeth, claws, and probing tentacles. Keith-Azrael said something, gesturing wildly at the helmsman, but no sound came through the speakers. The picture began to break down, its colours going haywire as the screen resolution turned everything into a fuzzy, blocky mess. Cracks began to form in the bridge windows, weirdly geometric things reaching through with long, angular arms to snatch silently-screaming crewmen from their stations. Then something huge landed on the outer hull, and the screen went black. A moment later, the sound came back.
Even after the intrusion of the void into the ship's breached hull should have silenced them, even after the time-stamp on the screen showed the recording had wound to a halt, the noises took a long, long time to go away.
We avenged them, though. That has to count for something. Well, mostly Pedro did the avenging, but the rest of us helped a bit.
Toji offered up a little prayer for the departed, just in case. It wasn't until halfway through that he realised he didn't know who he was praying to.
The operations room was still in a state of vaguely purposeful mayhem. The doctors had finally rushed Diaz to the infirmary – he'd kept protesting that his self-repair systems could handle the damage, but after he'd coughed up a litre and a half of blood all over Lieutenant Liu (Deneuve had had the good sense to step out of the way this time), they'd stopped listening to him. Zhu, Diaz's second-in-command, had taken over for the time being, and was busy cleaning up the mess the Entity and her superior had left behind in Carmine Hollow's electronic architecture.
A clawed hand landed on his shoulder. He turned around, and saw a beaming Rong-Arya looking up at him.
"First blood, huh? Feels good, doesn't it?"
"I'm not sure the rear admiral would agree," he replied carefully.
"Nah, he was never one to hold a grudge about someone killing him. Guess you value your life a little less when you're called Keith-Azrael. Being a daemonhost's awesome and all, but the naming convention could use some work. Look, I'd best be off. That viral attack hit my people in orbit, too, and I want to make sure the New Syracuse still has all its paint on. Besides, it won't be long until the fuckers who sent that stuff show up in person, and I want to give them a really enthusiastic welcome. Give my regards to that pet nerd of yours when he gets out of hospital, will you? He kicked ass out there."
The admiral strolled out of the room, tail flicking as jauntily as if she hadn't just seen ten thousand of her subordinates die horribly. Toji stared after her for a moment, then opened his comms and started assessing the damage.
The invasion had been brief but costly, killing dozens, injuring hundreds, and causing untold amounts of property damage. The Entity was apparently quite accomplished at random destruction when it put its mind to it. So far, repairs seemed to be going well, but there was always at least one person who needed a bit of advice from on high.
"… they're zombies, Hans," he sighed. "What are you worried about, killing them again? Just start shooting and get our people out of there."
He closed the channel, ambling over to Zhu's station. "So how's it looking, Lisa?"
"Better than I'd expected," she replied, her electronic voicebox flanging slightly. "The Entity hurt us, sure, but it's mostly fixable, and the shit we can't fix, we can probably replace. Gotta say, it really helped that our visitor decided to take the archived data with him when he went all kamikaze – otherwise, we'd be cleaning the gunk out of our systems for months. Guess he decided it was more trouble if it stuck around. To be honest, I can't blame him. Last time I volunteer for fucking astronomics duty, that's for sure."
"How long will the repairs take?"
She shrugged. "Sorry, can't give you an exact estimate. Won't be too long, though, and we should be right as rain by the time their big-ass invasion fleet shows up. Still, we'll want to keep going over our systems with a fine-toothed comb in case they decided to leave any presents for us. Having a full system shutdown when they're dropping nukes on us from orbit would be kinda awkward, yeah?"
Toji had to wince at the mental image. "Somewhat, yes. Good to hear you've got it covered – I'll get out of your hair now."
"Thanks, boss, but there's one last thing." Her voice dropped. "You checked your e-mail lately?"
"No. Should I have?"
"Depends on your definition of 'should'. See, there's one other thing the Entity did whilst it was here – it hijacked our communications and spammed this video file to every inbox between here and Earth. Military, civilian, you name it, they got it."
"Oh, shit," Toji whispered. "Hazardous?"
"Surprisingly, no. The file's clean, and analysis of the contents shows no patterns consistent with brainwashing or anything else that might fuck up the average human psyche. The only weird thing about it is what they did with the programming – every mail, every 'from' address is unique in some subtle but important way, so we can't just block or delete them en masse. They made sure that'd be the personal choice of everyone who got the message."
"Malware and psych-warfare aren't the only ways a message can be dangerous, Zhu. Any idea who it's from?"
"Yep, and you're not going to believe this shit, boss. The video was composed by one of the infiltrators they sent into Bureau space, Callidus Assassin Seventy-Six. She calls herself 'Gina'."
Author's Notes: Yep, Gina's back. Guess we know what 'source' that Interface was referring to now, no?
