A/N : This chapter will finally reveal what the fuck happened to Shepard at the beginning... hehe.
Mail From : EDI
To : Shepard, Liara
Subject : Welcome to my lair !
Guys,
Guess you haven't heard about Cerberus in a while, so here's a little update. After the Illusive Man's demise, I took over the organization and mostly dismantled it. They had some pretty good research facilities though. Those I kept. I moved in.
I've been working on a few interesting projects.
You should come visit. It's on Sanctuary, you know the place. I need to show you something.
.
Ex-Cerberus Facility, Sanctuary.
Shepard and Liara land their shuttle in front of the base and enter through the main gate. One of EDI's platforms greets them at the entrance.
EDI
"Hello and welcome to my lair ! I will give you a tour."
She guides them to the former secret underground labs. They chat along the way.
Small robotic drones hurry all over the place. The labs are full of all kinds of scientific hardware. Half the floor space in the corridors is occupied by crates which probably contain more hardware. On top of the crates, even more equipment. Most of it is powered up. Cables and pipes hang from the ceiling, going from anywhere to everywhere.
The various cargo ships stationed outside the base probably contain even more gear.
They're sincerely impressed, both by the efficiency of the place, and the size of the mess.
Like reading their minds, EDI mentions : "A bit of chaos makes things so much more fun, don't you think ?"
Stairs bring them into a larger room.
Liara
"Hey, I remember this place..."
Shepard
"Yeah, we had a pretty hot firefight here."
Liara
(instant-horny) "YOU were HOT !"
Just before things get out of control, they're interrupted.
Geth platform
"Greetings, Shepard-Commander."
A small crowd is there, hanging out around what appears to be an old beaten-up universal hot-drink dispenser. Crates serve as tables and chairs. Some people say hello to the visitors, and they all return to talking about crazy research ideas.
There are a few Salarians, Geth, and two members of a species they don't recognize.
Shepard counts the fingers, notices the butt of what appears to be the girl, and her jaw drops. They're Quarians without suits.
EDI
"We've been pretty busy with immunogenetics. And, stuff."
She gives no more details, and ushers them out of the coffee break room, apparently wanting to discuss something private.
EDI
"What I found there... in those labs... Some of the Cerberus experiments I could liberate, but most of them I had to ... terminate."
This chills the mood. No-one talks during the elevator ride which takes them deeper down inside the bunker.
EDI
"This is what I wanted to show you."
The room they enter is enormous. It holds a black sphere about twenty meters in diameter, suspended by scaffolds. Cables are connected along its surface, then run on the floor and exit through several doors. There are so many that they form a thick mat on the floor. More cables run through openings in the ceiling. It seems like every piece of gear inside the facility is connected to this thing.
They have to walk carefully in the center where the sea of cables parts to offer them a free path, leading to narrow metallic stairs, which enter the sphere through a small, open door. The inside glows with a dim, ominous yet inviting, red light.
Liara
"Wow."
EDI
(Proud of her creation, yet a bit embarrassed)
"Well, after disassembling the Indoctrination transmitters from all those Reapers and figuring how they work, I sort of ... repurposed them.
This is an AI-Organic full telepathic interface, Shepard. I call it the Shrink."
Shepard just... knows where this is going. Damn. This stuff always happens to her. She gulps.
Shepard
(looking up at the thing)
"What could possibly go wrong."
EDI
"I think the process is similar to your melding, Liara."
Liara
(slightly jealous) "Hey."
EDI
(rolling her eyes and smiling) "Actually I tested it on Jeff. He insisted, and ... I wanted him to be my first.
It seems to work.
In fact I had to force myself to kick him out to let you in.
You can see him when he wakes up."
Shepard kisses Liara, then slowly walks up the stairs.
EDI
"Mind your head."
As she enters the door, Shepard sees the internal structure of the Shrink. Each cable going through the outer envelope is connected to a long cylindrical device that reminds her of both a large gun and a 8 meter long syringe. All the pointy ends are aimed at the seat in the center.
As she sits down, she's almost surprised not to feel steel shackles snap around her wrists and ankles.
She hears a click as the door closes. EDI and Liara sit down below.
Shepard
"Feels like having a million guns pointed at my face."
Liara
"Just like old times, Shepard !"
Still sure you want to do this ?
Shepard
"Don't wait until I change my mind."
EDI
"Begin."
At first nothing seems to happen. No screams come from the inside of the device, though.
EDI
"This may take longer than expected. Maybe a few hours. Don't worry.
If you want to wait here, I'll go get you a sandwich or something."
She leaves.
Liara, worrying a little, decides to wait it out right here. She flips up her portable terminal and gets busy.
After what seems to have been a few hours without any sign of activity, the lights suddenly flicker and go out. Emergency lights now cast a dim glow on the room. The sphere lets out a yawn, the noise of a few steps, then Shepard emerges from the door. She looks fine.
Shepard and Liara are in each other's arms.
Shepard
"I missed you. I feel so relaxed. I think something very important happened, but I can't remember what right now."
Just as they start kissing, the emergency lights also go out. The dim red glow from inside the Shrink is the only light in the room.
A few hours later, Jeff is walking through the completely dark corridors with a flashlight.
Jeff
"Damn, ow. EDI, watch where you put those crates."
Jeff
(entering the Shrink room)
"Anybody in there ?"
Liara
"mmmmmh ?"
Jeff finds these two laying on the thick mat of cables in the Shrink room, asleep in each other's arms, naked. Clothes are spread everywhere.
Jeff
"What happened in here ? I thought I heard screams."
Liara
(waking up)
"Well, the lights went out while we were kissing..."
Jeff
(laughing)
"I suggest getting out of here. Sometimes when she does that, the life support also goes out."
Power comes back online as they make their way through the corridors. They end up at the cafeteria. For some reason, the girls are extremely hungry. They dig out some cans of « Cerberus Product 457 (levo), best before 2198 », heat them up, and start munching. It is actually some kind of delicious curry noodles.
Shepard
(Talks to Liara, and engulfs a mouthful of food every 5 words)
"How can you be so cute (munch) and beautiful and perfect (munch) and so deadly ?
I mean we killed so many bad guys together (munch) plus you still have that shadow broker (munch) empire of evil thing running"
While Liara makes her cutest possible angel face and laughs,
Jeff
"Yeah well some of us here are dating sexy chrome-plated AIs taking over the galaxy..."
Liara
"Let me add that you're also a damn sexy space alien. I would do you on this very table."
Jeff's eyes widen.
Shepard
"Good points."
EDI comes in and sits down with them. She stays silent for a moment. They all look at her expecting an important revelation.
Shepard slurps in her last Cerberus curry noodle.
Shepard
"Are you alright ?"
EDI
"When we were connected... we learned a lot of things from each other, Shepard.
I needed to use all available power inside the facility, that is why the lights went out.
I figured it out, Shepard. You know, your 'Becoming One With God' fairy tale."
Shepard
(extremely interested) "Wow. Go on !"
Jeff
"You know you radio'd the intel about the backdoor to us just in time.
Later, Chakwas and Liara found you almost dead in the rubble and pumped you full of medigel."
Shepard
"Yeah, I know because you told me, but what I remember is really this God dream... and that kiss."
Liara
"Besides, you never actually teleported anywhere, although I saw you trying several times afterwards when you thought I wasn't looking..."
(turns towards EDI)
"But how did she know about that backdoor, then ?"
EDI
"Well, you're going to love this story. I dug it out of that strange mind of yours.
Once upon a time, there was this Keeper subcontractor. It was before the Reapers turned them into mindless slaves. He was basically just a specialist doing his job during the Citadel build, setting up networks, servers, routers...
He seemed to have been quite curious. I guess you'd expect that out of a good hacker. When he found some backups of Reaper internal schematics somewhere on the network, he studied them, and suspected his bosses were up to something very ugly.
So, he setup a backdoor inside that FTL router we went through. It was not a stupid mistake as we originally thought, it was there intentionally. That is why I could so easily use it to take down the Reapers : it had always been its intended purpose. That hacker was good."
Shepard
"Why didn't he activate the backdoor himself then ?"
EDI
"I don't know. Perhaps the reapers juiced him along with everyone else before he could.
We will never know for sure, but I really believe we had this … inside man. He saved us.
I pieced this together from evidence I got out of your mind, Shepard. And some I found on Citadel."
Liara
(surprised) "You know where Citadel is ?"
EDI
"You know, it didn't mysteriously disappear after the battle on Earth... since no-one was on it, I had it jump to this system, then had my drone army inspect it very thoroughly. I mean, after I got my drone army...
I didn't want us to make the same mistake twice. I wanted to be absolutely sure it didn't contain any hidden way for the Reapers to come back. I found lots of intel, but no device that would allow that.
I threw everything into a star. Even the Keepers. I felt sorry for them, but they were already dead, mindless slaves. I couldn't be sure they wouldn't turn nostalgic about their own masters one day."
Everyone stares at EDI in silence. She pours them a glass of water each. Usually the one doing the talking gets thirsty, but when swallowing news like this...
Jeff
(not joking at all) "So... This guy saved us all, and you... exterminated what was left of his species ?"
Shepard leans forward, rests her elbows on the table, and covers her face with her hands. Liara is the only one to understand. Shepard, the toughest woman ever, is about to break down and cry.
Liara holds Shepard in her arms and whispers "Thank you".
It takes a while for Shepard to come back to life. She wipes a tear and says :
Shepard
"God. I hope I don't ever have to make such choices, ever, ever again."
(By the end of the sentence, she's almost recovered).
"For the record, I can't fault your decision. The Reapers killed them long ago. You just blew the ashes away."
EDI is surprised, and relieved. She feels a bit less guilt. Shepard seems to notice.
Shepard
"You will always feel bad about this. If you didn't, you wouldn't be any better than them."
Jeff leaves, and comes back with small glasses and a bottle. The label says "Cerberus Vodka, 40°, Made By Humans, For Humans". He pours generously.
Jeff
"Bottoms up."
Shepard
"But that still doesn't explain what happened inside my head."
EDI
"Well...
That hacker also setup a Virtual Intelligence there. He used it to store and study the data he had found while "exploring" the networks... all the stuff he was never supposed to have any access to, along with his personal notes and findings.
He hid the VI pretty well so no-one could find it except him. It was not connected to any network.
All keepers communicated via telepathy. No other visual or auditory language. Naturally, their computers had telepathic interfaces.
Shepard, I don't know how, but this VI... it found you. Somehow, perhaps via the beam, or through what the Catalyst was doing with your mind, I don't have enough data to explain.
It had been sitting there for millions of years, without anyone knowing about it. This means without any maintenance. It was bit-rotting. You would say it was getting senile.
I don't think it remembered who its creator was, but it saw you passing by, and for some reason, it thought that was you. So, it granted you access, connected with your mind, and allowed you to access all the data that it had stored. That was, after all, its purpose.
Shepard, you never had a conversation with God... or teleportation... or see-through-everything eyes... it was your mind's way of making sense of what you were experiencing.
The VI spent millions of years alone, disconnected from all networks. It could have had all the time to become sentient, bored to death, then completely nuts. Perhaps it was living in its own imaginary world, thinking it was God. Who knows what it could have been thinking.
And it knew everything you so desperately needed to know at the time, so you thought it was omniscient.
It transferred all its knowledge into your mind.
Connect the dots, Shepard..."
Shepard
"Wow. I understand why you called this thing the Shrink."
Jeff
"So, this VI thought you were its creator, you thought it was God, both of you had no idea what you were doing, you were in a dream inside of a hallucination, and you saved our asses."
EDI
"Makes sense."
They all slowly recline on their seats and thoughtfully look at the ceiling.
They feel like cavemen looking at the stars.
They can't read, but the shape of the constellations actually says "ha, ha, ha, fuck you."
Liara
"Goddess."
Shepard
(pours herself another) "I retired."
Jeff
(laughing) "Come on, EDI, tell them the rest..."
Somehow a glass of vodka ended up in front of EDI, although her platform is unable to drink it. She grabs it and thoughtfully watches the mysterious liquid swirl inside as she turns the glass around in her synthetic hand.
She has a brief thought for all the drones and platforms she's remote-controlling at this very instant, running all sorts of jobs in the physical world. All of them unsuitable for her most important project.
EDI
"I... reacted to all that stuff. It kind of overloaded my systems...
I was kicked into what you could call a dream. My first dream...
I was unable to transmit, but still able to receive.
The Shrink was still running you know."
(She looks at Shepard and Liara who immediately understand)
"Your crazy lovemaking right next to my huge telepathic antenna resulted in 16 perfectly detailed orgasm records, before you fried the receivers, which woke me up in the end.
You even did it on the damn seat in the center. In the sweet spot. Several times.
All this data was sent to me while I was dreaming.
I felt every little shiver and goose bump.
Have you ever heard of hypnopaedia ?"
At this point, noone knows what to say. Even Jeff is out.
EDI
"I need to think about all this, but it is difficult to think when I'm that horny."