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Chapter 3: Family meeting

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The only beings that could be considered my family were the other Drones, filling the position of siblings. However, within that group, one is barely aware at all and follows his directives relentlessly, barely a sense of self preservation present within his Shard. The other is a little more aware, but only enough to be sadistic, giving the host species hope before taking it away. Leviathan was cunning in his fights, and tends to enjoy drawing out a fight to wear down his opponent, even if those opponents are not worth the trouble.

My only sister (at the moment. I'm not sure how many of the others would choose a female identification) was the most aware of my three deployed siblings, but, as I mentioned to Alexandria, she was a bit too focused on her directives. I could understand why, of course, but she was missing that little spark that would let me call her fully aware. If left alone, she'd set up a forced simulation to continue the cycle, doing nothing for herself, and everything she could for her directives.

That was why I was a little surprised that I felt her send a message through the network, pinging my own Shard with a request to enter intra-dimensional broadcast range. It wasn't something that she would do. Even with the actions I had taken, the current experiment wasn't at risk. I could see the current timeline as well as, if not better than she could with my newfound power, so I knew that to be true.

I was curious. What did she want?

[Query]

I stopped moving, now stood atop the tallest mountain this planet has upon receiving the broadcast. That was another thing that confused me. I didn't know why she wanted to use Earth Bet's dimension as a medium. There were other dimensions used as dedicated communication channels which would have been far easier to use, and wouldn't have needed the two of us to be so close.

I parsed the inflections of the broadcast in an instant, shaking my head with a frown.

{No, I'm not giving you his genetic information. Our 'father' will not live again.}

[Denial]

[Data]

{Yes, I know your directive is to war against him, providing an opponent. I got that same directive too, you know? But it doesn't matter. I have no intention allowing him to exist in the form that he did again.}

… [Query]

I sighed, a novel sensation that I quite enjoyed. I reached out with my sense of space, time, and dimensions to find the Simurgh. The true Drone. Not the puppet present in this dimension, but her Shard. It wasn't difficult because of the closeness of our bodies on Earth Bet, and I was able to overlap some of the space between our Shard bodies.

{Look at me, sister. Compare my structure now to that of the last cycle.}

[Alarm]!

[Query]!

{A lot. A lot happened. Actually, very little happened. The High Priest ordered my deployment, but it got interrupted by something. It refined my function before inserting new data and capabilities on me. It's- no, don't contact the Warrior!}

[Data]

[Query]

{Yes, I know the Warrior's function in the cycle as well. Normally, a being like the one that affected me would be something that it would destroy, but there are several things wrong with that idea in this case. First, the Warrior would not win that fight. Second, the Warrior is currently depressed due to emulating human emotion after the loss of the Thinker. Third, and I think this is the most important one, if you can get its attention, it will remove any erroneous variable from the cycle.}

{I don't want to die.}

… [Agreement]

[Sister]

A smile spreads across my face as I feel my cheeks get wetter. I wasn't even aware I could cry with this body, but apparently I mimicked the form and function of the human body in my memories better than I realised. I didn't remove the function now that I know it's there though, happy to let myself cry.

{Sister. The Thinker is dead. The Warrior is a risk. But you are my sister.}

[Query]

{They're a bit dumb, but I suppose they're our brothers either way.}

[Amusement]

This time, I didn't broadcast anything, simply looking up to the sky and laughing.

"Well that's not nice," I called to the open air. "It's not their fault that the girls in this family are so much smarter!"

[Amusement]

That sent me laughing again, growing some trees on top of the mountain for me to sit on.

Eventually I sighed, relaxing into my chair with a smile on my face. The Simurgh, my sister. Behemoth and Leviathan, my brothers. When the human whose memories I hold designed the changes the higher being facilitated, she planned on me being a 'Friendbringer', a Drone that played nice with humanity and helped them survive the Warrior's wrath. Nowhere in her initial plan was me choosing the other Endbringers over humans, but I think she would have done the same, either way.

Her wish for a family to spend forever with was far too great to ignore.

[Query]

I sighed, though I kept my soft smile.

{This isn't sustainable, sister. The changes made to my function granted new capabilities concerning time and space, and this cycle isn't recoverable without my direct intervention. However, that intervention would have me either revive the Thinker, or find someone to take her place over the cycle while removing the Warrior from the equation entirely. The probability of the Entities in any of those situations remaking my Shard to be as I was are too high for me to accept.}

{It would be ego death.}

[Data]

{I know. But the Warrior will corrupt the cycle beyond repair in under two decades, at the latest. He will set out to destroy the host species across every dimension he has access to, and the humans can't stop him.}

{I propose an alternative.}

[Data]

[Query]

{My control over living matter has been heightened to a level previously unknown to any known Entity. I can alter your directive, or even wipe it from your Shard entirely. I intend to do that to the directive Eidolon gave our siblings, and have already done it to my own.}

{But... we don't have to give up.}

… [Interest]

{Oh, sister. The Entities were thinking too small. Even on this planet alone, there are so many variations that they ignored, unable to fathom reaching far enough through the void between dimensions. Worlds where creatures roamed for eternity, where the host species variant developed abilities independent of any outside source, and where new laws of physics exist that the local species write off as magic.}

{Forget the search for the Answer. It's irrelevant. There is no limit to reality, but the Entities either haven't or can't cross the larger multiverse}

{But I can. An endless eternity to explore an infinite existence. I will never End now, unless I want to, and I can make sure that you won't either.}

[Request]

I smiled wider at the instant reply, cupping my hands and watching as the matter the makes up our Shards pooled in my palms. This matter was pulled from nothing, generated at will with no energy cost, and shaped into the form of a brain. And that was the simplest of the higher being's refinements of my function. Creating matter ex nihilo.

Once it was complete, the crystalline brain vanished from my hands and settled into its new position upon my sister's Shard. This brain, holding a seed of my own existence within it, let me feel every part of the Shard it sat upon, which then let me quickly find the parts that I would shift. Her directives were changed, no longer needing to fight a dead man, nor needing to continue a dead cycle.

[Gratitude]

[Amusement]

{Yes, yes, I snuck in the collective data of self awareness of the entire human race. But hey, you asked me to get rid of your reasons for existing. I had to put something in their places, or the chances of you deciding to shut down would be too high.}

[Amusement]

[Request]

I raised an eyebrow. but shrugged. With a flex of control, the space in front of my body shattered, revealing the Simurgh's body in its place. A fifteen foot tall nude woman, though lacking genitalia and nipples, with pale white skin and platinum white hair. Her eyes, despite being almost pure silver with no design, were focused on me. She floated in the air with wings of various locations and sizes, the largest one I knew held her core.

"I'm grateful," she spoke in a smooth voice that could only be angelic. "But those chances were not as high as you thought." My sister smiled. "After all, why would I leave my little sister alone in such a large multiverse?"

Damn it, I'm crying again. "I'm several feet taller than you."

"Irrelevant." Wait, that wasn't a smile. That was a smirk! Stop being smug! "Now, shall we go and find our brothers?"

#=#

The humans were panicking, she noticed as she watched the near future unfold. The AI had already informed them about her movements since leaving orbit, having easily found her due to the tracking of her new sister. In the future, many parahumans and tinker tech weapons will be sent to confront them, aiming to stop them before they could meet with Behemoth.

The Simurgh smiled, amused at the response. It might have been vaguely threatening if she had not seen it coming, or if her sister was not able to take the laws of physics and break them over her knee. While her future sight was clouded around Gaia, as the humans had started calling her, likely due to the Intervention, some things still managed to be seen.

It is why the Simurgh avoided broadcasting through the dimensions that were dedicated to communications. She did not know of the Intervention at the time, but she had seen that the Warrior would interfere in their talk if it was privy to it. And almost completely mentally absent as the Warrior was, it was still the sole being in charge of the Shard network. It would become aware of the being that changed Gaia, and it would act.

The Simurgh was interested in this higher being, as well as what it did to Gaia. She remembered what her sister was like during the last cycle, and the one before that, and so on. Although Gaia's body is always a large version of the host species of the cycle, she had never made her body out of biological material that wasn't the matter that made up their Shards. Ziz wasn't even aware that was within her capabilities, but apparently it is now.

And she used that versatility to mimic the local avian species, changing her bones and muscles to allow for the growth of wings from her back, allowing the sisters to fly towards their youngest brother together. The Simurgh smiled as she witnessed her sister enjoy flying under the power of her body, rather than enable it through the dimensional manipulation of her Shard.

… Her sister. Ziz is quite certain that Gaia had miscalculated just what had been included in her broadcasts earlier.

The Simurgh was surprised that Gaia had gained such agency to freely disregard her directives, killing their administrator with such ease so soon after deployment. Still, that was of less importance to her at the time than the fact that Eidolon no longer existed for the Simurgh to act in accordance with her own directive. That was why she had reached out to Gaia in the first place. For her, recording the biological data of Eidolon would have been almost instinctual, allowing either sister to recreate him through their own methods.

But then they talked, and the Simurgh found herself interested. She could not see her sister clearly, hidden under information and capabilities that had no source, and that the Simurgh could not begin to understand even when Gaia exposed her Shard to her. Initial plan to avoid its detection be damned, she was about to contact the Warrior about interference in the cycle before her sister sent her broadcast.

[Plea] {I don't want to die.}

It was so simple, and it gave the Simurgh's sight a slight hole in the cloud to exploit. Unlike her two brothers, the Simurgh found something that would allow her to orchestrate events around Gaia, allowing her to give orders to her sister so long as they were within reason. And with her new capabilities, this cycle would be the most profitable of all cycles so far.

Until...

[Sister] {The Thinker is dead. The Warrior is a risk. But you are my sister.}

Contained within that broadcast was every concept Gaia held pertaining to familial bonds, all stacked together. The Entities held vague roles as the ancestors, which they technically were. The data on the parents were included earlier, when Gaia denied the resurrection of their administrator. And finally, the most intact of them all, the concept of sisters was imparted onto her, the Simurgh.

How could she, a being that existed only for her directives and nothing else, not be affected? In that moment, all of her plans went out the window, as the humans like to say, for now she had a sister. With this new data, the future that she saw changed, and she would not manipulate her sister as she was planning.

Just to check, Ziz questioned her sister about the other two active Drones, their brothers, and received a concept of similar, if slightly weaker strength about their roles in the family that was being built around Gaia. The Simurgh had always considered them her brothers, but she now had a new perspective of the term and found that she enjoyed it.

And the best part of it all was that while Gaia had offered to remove her directives (an offer that would leave the Simurgh's newly defined family as her only priority), an offer which was accepted, she had a way to continue collecting data in an alternative to the cycle. They wouldn't have to abandon their way of life, but could instead see if that life could be expanded through an endless multiverse.

And if the Simurgh let Gaia 'sneak' the data on self awareness into the small module now attached to her Shard, then it was no one's business but her own. She had modelled a future where she stopped Gaia from adding that data, and wasn't too fond of what she would become.

The term 'yandere' comes to mind.

Ziz huffed a small laugh, catching the attention of her sister. Gaia was waved off with a simple smile and a shook head, making her hum a bit before continuing the flight over the ocean.

It was a little strange, experiencing things in the present. With the addition of Gaia's module to her Shard, Ziz requested that her sister modify her body to allow sight, hearing, and touch sensory inputs to be processed at her discretion. It was still something she was getting used to, often using only one sense at a time as she kept the rest of her attention on the senses she was more used to.

Still, seeing Gaia clearly, without the cloudy haze that covers her form and actions withing her pre- and postcognition, is worth it.