If you missed the last episode, you can find it [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/223334928/0/0]here[/url], or if you need to find a previous episode, you can find them all in the [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/220441594/0/0]Master Post[/url]. Please give a bump, upvote, or leave comment if you enjoy this and any other chapter! *** [b]From the Records of the Ishtar Collective:[/b] [i]ESI: Maya, I need your help. I don’t know how to fix this. SUNDARESH: What is it? Chioma. Sit. Tell me. ESI: I’ve figured out what’s happening inside the specimen. SUNDARESH: Twelve? The operational Vex platform? That’s incredible! You must know what this means – ah, so. It’s not good, or you’d be on my side of the desk. And it’s not urgent, or you’d already have evacuated the site. Which means… ESI: I have a working interface with the specimen’s internal environment. I can see what it’s thinking. SUNDARESH: In metaphorical terms, of course. The cognitive architectures are so – ESI: No. I don’t need any kind of epistemology bridge. SUNDARESH: Are you telling me it’s human? A human merkwelt? Human qualia? ESI: I’m telling you it’s full of humans. It’s thinking about us. SUNDARESH: About – oh no. ESI: It’s simulating us. Vividly. Elaborately. It’s running a spectacularly high-fidelity model of a Collective research team studying a captive Vex entity. SUNDARESH: ….how deep does it go? ESI: Right now the simulated Maya Sundaresh is meeting with the simulated Chioma Esi to discuss an unexpected problem. [indistinct sounds] SUNDARESH: There’s no divergence? That’s impossible. It doesn’t have enough information. ESI: It inferred. It works from what it sees and it infers the rest. I know that feels unlikely. But it obviously has capabilities we don’t. It may have breached our shared virtual workspace….the neural links could have given it data… SUNDARESH: The simulations have interiority? Subjectivity? ESI: I can’t know that until I look more closely. But they act like us. SUNDARESH: We’re inside it. By any reasonable philosophical standard, we are inside the Vex. ESI: Unless you take a particularly ruthless approach to the problem of causal forks: yes. They are us. SUNDARESH: Call a team meeting. ESI: The other you has too.[/i] *** I wake up in darkness – Fumbling around, I stretch my hands out and instantly feel the hulking masses beside me. “Solis? Anixias?” I whisper as I feel around, my fingers finally finding their faces. Neither are breathing. I move my hands lower, and feel their chests completely still, no breath left in them. “Dammit,” I murmur, sitting back wearily and shaking my head. “Another round then, it seems.” I stand and push my transmat button and immediately feel myself fading – … – and reappearing back in the Waking Ruins, right where I’d left myself. I open the comm. “Were you tracking?” “Yes,” the familiar voice on the other end of the line answers. “How many times is this now?” “Fifty-one,” I answer wearily. “And that’s just with these independent teams. Who knows how many thousands of times the Guardians have tried.” “It’s not your fault. You need to rest.” “No,” I reply sharply. “That’s why I’m in this body. I don’t need – “ “I didn’t mean your body,” the voice replies calmly. “I meant your mind. Perhaps we really weren’t meant to understand this after all – “ “No,” I repeat. “We weren’t meant to fly – until we did. We weren’t meant to survive the Collapse – yet we did. We seem to have a knack for doing what we’re not meant to do, don’t we?” A sigh on the other end – this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. “We need the Aegis,” I press on. “There must be a way to remove it from the Vault without condemning the universe to Atheon. I know there’s a way.” There’s a pause on the other end, and I can only hope that – “Understood,” the voice finally replies. “Another round, then?” “Yes,” I reply quickly. “Before I change my mind.” [i]Or before you change yours.[/i] I feel myself begin to dematerialize, before finally – … – my feet echo as they land on the stone floor of the Vault. Growling, rasping noises reverberate off the walls ahead, drawing closer. [i]There’s the Eliksni,[/i] I think, calculating quickly. [i]The pirate should already be down here with the sim, and the Exo will be joining us shortly.[/i] I square my shoulders with purpose as I grip my weapon tightly. [i]Round fifty-two and counting. Here is the time, now is the place.[/i] I step forward as I hear the growls draw closer. “Perhaps I can help,” I tell them. *** [b]From the Records of the Ishtar Collective:[/b] [i]SUNDARESH: So that’s the situation as we know it. ESI: To the best of my understanding. SHIM: Well I’ll be a [profane][profanity]. This is extremely [profane]. That thing has us over a barrel. SUNDARESH: Yeah. We’re in a difficult position. DUANE-MCNIADH: I don’t understand. So it’s simulating us? It made virtual copies of us? How does that give it power? ESI: It controls the simulation. It can hurt our simulated selves. We wouldn’t feel that pain, but rationally speaking, we have to treat an identical copy’s agony as identical to our own. SUNDARESH: It’s god in there. It can simulate our torment. Forever. If we don’t let it go, it’ll put us through hell. DUANE-MCNIADH: We have no causal connection to the mind state of those sims. They aren’t us. Just copies. We have no obligation to them. ESI: You can’t seriously – your OWN SELF – SHIM: [profane] idiot. Think. Think. If it can run one simulation, maybe it can run more than one. And there will only ever be one reality. Play the odds. DUANE-MCNIADH: Oh…uh oh. SHIM: Odds are that we aren’t our own originals. Odds are that we exist in one of the Vex simulations right now. ESI: I didn’t think of that. SUNDARESH: [indistinct percussive sound] SUNDARESH: I have a plan. ESI: If you have a plan, then so does your sim, and the Vex knows about it. DUANE-MCNIADH: Does it matter? If we’re in Vex hell right now, there’s nothing we can – SHIM: Stop talking about ‘real’ and ‘unreal’. All realities are programs executing laws. Subjectivity is all that matters. SUNDARESH: We have to act as if we’re in the real universe, not one simulated by the specimen. Otherwise we might as well give up. ESI: Your sim self is saying the same thing. SUNDARESH: Chioma, love, please hush. It doesn’t help. DUANE-MCNIADH: Maybe the simulations are just billboards! Maybe they don’t have interiority! It’s bluffing! SHIM: I wish someone would simulate you shutting up. SUNDARESH: If we’re sims, we exist in the pocket of the universe that the Vex specimen is able to simulate with its onboard brainpower. If we’re real, we need to get outside that bubble. ESI: …we call for help. SUNDARESH: That’s right. We bring in someone smarter than the specimen. Someone too big to simulate and predict. A warmind. SHIM: In the real world, the warmind will be able to behave in ways the Vex can’t simulate. It’s too smart. The warmind may be able to get into the Vex and rescue – us. DUANE-MCNIADH: If we try, won’t the Vex torture us for eternity? Or just erase us? SUNDARESH: It may simply erase us. But I feel that’s preferable to…the alternatives. ESI: I agree. SHIM: Once we try to make the call, the Vex may…react. So let’s all savor this last moment of stability. SUNDARESH: [indistinct sounds] SHIM: You two are adorable. DUANE-MCNIADH: I wish I’d taken that job at Clovis.[/i]