CHAPTER 15 (DEBRIEFING)— "THE HUMAN SOUL EATER"
Snake cried for several long seconds when Sheila reunited with him back in the VR room with the rest of humanity's collective consciousness.
Snake looked at Sheila, then at the rest of humanity.
"By shutting your BISECT off, Snake, you allowed me to save humanity while keeping you—my ace-in-the-hole—intact."
Snake sniffled. "You didn't save humanity, Sheila. You nearly doomed it… You had no idea Sunny was working on this solution, did you?"
Sheila grimaced. "Don't make me look like the villain. We're partners in this, Snake!"
"Last I checked, I never asked to be a part of your conspiracy," said Snake. "Your mother is responsible for creating the successor to the Sons of the Patriots… the JD conglomerate… and you were the one responsible for burning it down along with the entirety of human civilization."
"Do I need to spell it out any further for you?" said Snake. "If it weren't for Sunny, the 10 billion humans onboard Metal Gear HUMAN with you right now would be dead. And they might still be dead along with you and I provided we don't act."
The self-images of the 10 billion humans inside the endless VR room looked angrily at Sheila.
Furious, Sheila said to Snake, "All right. What do you want me to do?"
"Tell me how to operate Metal Gear HUMAN, and promise me you'll dismantle the remnants of the JD conglomerate, your family's legacy, provided we stop Dante somehow."
Sheila and Snake were thrown into a lifelike VR simulation of the penthouse of the JD conglomerate headquarters they were just in. "I launched Metal Gear HUMAN into space using the mechanism Sunny gave me; it was hidden in my personal quarters in the penthouse office of the JD conglomerate building."
"Behind the Tower of Babel painting… A panic room. I see," said Snake. "That was your clue… You planted it in my thoughts again. That's where you were hiding. Otacon was about to find you."
"Sunny managed to hide Metal Gear HUMAN at one of Solis Space and Aeronautics' local bases in the Swiss Alps, and upload a copy of the collective consciousness of humanity from the Reality of Things to Metal Gear HUMAN's own central server… Inner Heaven."
"Inner Heaven?"
"A peaceful, free place for a peaceful and freer version of the will of humanity… The legacy of Big Boss and the Patriots turned inside out."
"Anyway, she gave me the nuclear football, the key to launch Metal Gear HUMAN, at the last minute before Dante took her, as she knew it was her and humanity's last chance of survival."
Humanity, which was still in the bare-bones VR room and not the lifelike simulation of Geneva that Snake and Sheila were in, began to panic.
"I remember killing other people…"
"I remember killing myself…"
"I remember doing both!"
"I see people here that I killed!"
"I see the people here that killed me!"
"I remember… but I don't feel like I remember…"
"It felt like it wasn't even me…"
"This is a nightmare…"
"Are we in hell?"
Snake kept an eye on their endless room while continuing to listen to Sheila.
"This iteration of Metal Gear HUMAN is modeled after you, Snake," said Sheila.
"Me?" said Snake.
Sheila showed Snake a 3-dimensional VR schematic image of Metal Gear HUMAN. It actually did look like a much larger version of him when shown in comparison to the size of the staff members of Solis Space and Aeronautics that had helped build it in the video image.
"Like your original cyborg body, it has jets built into the wings in its back and legs. Its mouth functions as a water cutter. Its arms have built-in machine guns and shoulder-mounted missile launchers. Its rail gun is built into its back, and contains a device that signals other nukes worldwide to be launched at Metal Gear DAEMON after hacking into their various launch controls. Our collective consciousness is being stored in Inner Heaven, inside its cranium—" said Sheila.
"Wait," Snake interrupted, "so Dante never had access to the nuclear weapons plugged into the Reality of Things?"
"Until now, he only had partial access to the ones of his communist ally nations," said Sheila. "By hacking into the Reality of Things central server, he tried to rewrite the Reality of Things core hivemind and have it turn the world posthuman. This activated a security mechanism similar to that in the Sons of the Patriots that would only give him access to human resources, not nuclear ones."
"Ah… Right," said Snake. "When Liquid gained access to Solidus's biometrics back in Eastern Europe during the SOP incident… he used GW to gain access to the military parts of the war economy… but not the nuclear parts. He had to steal the railgun from the now-decommissioned iteration of Metal Gear REX from Shadow Moses in order for his plans to be actualized. The Grandsons of the Patriots network must have a similar failsafe mechanism."
"That's correct," said Sheila. "And that's a good thing, since we're going to need to launch nukes at Metal Gear DAEMON both to weaken its defenses and destroy any terraforming nukes it launches at the Earth."
"Is that the only way to get onboard?" said Snake.
"It's the only way," said Sheila.
Snake grimaced.
"Is there a way to get my old body back?" said Snake.
"Snake, that's a bad idea…" said Sheila. "You'd stand a better chance at stopping Metal Gear DAEMON's interior security details if you infiltrate Metal Gear DAEMON as Metal Gear HUMAN… Offense is a better strategy here."
"I don't care," said Snake. "I'm not putting the lives of 10 billion humans right in the middle of Dante's damned lake of fire!"
As the other members of humanity looked at Snake, they murmured to each other.
Snake pointed to another mechanism on the schematic image.
"What's that in Metal Gear HUMAN's groin?"
"What?" said Sheila. As she looked, she blushed. "Well I didn't see that before… Sunny has an odd sense of design when developing Metal Gears."
"If that's what I think it is, then she modeled the Metal Gear after a human perfectly… A male one at least."
Some of the other members of humanity snickered to themselves.
"Looks like Sunny designed Metal Gear HUMAN's…" Snake cleared his throat, "…snake… to be a fully autonomous mass production facility for transhuman full-body augmentations. It'll upload copies of our minds to new bodies. It can only spray out so many transhumans at once though."
Snake said, "That's what I'll do then. I'll go and fight Dante inside Metal Gear DAEMON in a new body and leave Metal Gear HUMAN outside to avoid being damaged further once DAEMON's outer defenses are down."
"What if you die though?" said Sheila.
"Then have another copy of my consciousness inhabit another endoskeleton being produced!" said Snake. "I'll learn from each time I go in and fight."
"Trial and error?" said Sheila.
"In the past, I wouldn't get so much as a second chance in fights like this," said Snake. "This is actually reassuring. It reminds me of a save system in video games."
"On that note, I wonder…" said Sheila. "Wait, actually, that could work. According to the Metal Gear DAEMON schematics Sunny sent me, Cocytus consists of several 'nodes' throughout its interior that reign over different parts of the posthuman population aboard it, along with a similar endoskeletal mass production facility. Hacking a node will allow you to upload your consciousness to one of the bodies at said node… making it work like a checkpoint to save your progress."
"Perfect," said Snake. "Given I'll be fighting multiple Metal Gears in there… I'll need all the help I can get."
Snake briefly noticed the humans behind them murmuring to each other about something again.
Sheila said, "I've been piloting Metal Gear HUMAN until now. According to its sensors, we're about to enter Metal Gear DAEMON's range of fire… It's time you took the wheel, Snake."
"Good," said Snake. "Time to show Dante that humanity isn't done for yet. And this time… humanity is made out of metal."
Sheila nodded, and snapped her fingers.
The VR room began to dissolve around Snake, and before he knew it, he was piloting the massive Metal Gear HUMAN in space like it was his own body.
Glimpsing at the massive Metal Gear DAEMON in the distance, Snake grimaced, and roared, "DANTE!" using Metal Gear HUMAN's microphones.
And despite that the city-sized Metal Gear's massive roar was enough to make any human break down in terror, Snake was no longer the size of a human, and he wasn't scared to get closer this time.
