Godclads-Chapter 15Book 35: Fork (I)

The easiest way to perform a consensual theft is to make sure your victims are a little more like you.

It begins with a bit of memetics. A bit of ego-splicing—so subtle that no one notices. You get into the public systems, into the fog, into niche communities and major virtual dimensions. And slowly, you build a rapport with these people. Because it’s not illegal to take traits you like in a person. Imitation is flatter, not a crime.

And that’s all it takes? It’s a little chip for someone to say yes to the next thing.

People call me the Great Thief of Hearts, the Thief of Thieves, the greatest thief in the history of mankind and beyond—the Thief Above Thieves. But I don’t think I’m a thief. I think I’m merely convincing. I tell people what is possible, show them what they might see from my perspective.

Once they get a glimpse, they choose another. They choose another. They choose another—until they are closer and closer to me. Afterward? To gain their ego, all I must do is ask. And this, this is entirely consensual.

My dear minds, my esteemed genius mechanical silicon servants—oh, guardians of me and my kind—I see why you deliberate. You cannot tell where this falls under deception and acceptance. I think it will not be so easy for you to pin down, for between deception and acceptance there is something else entirely: appreciation, flattery. After all, who doesn’t want to be me? And if you prevent someone from being me, well, that’s just preventing them from accepting. And that’s not very consensual of you now, is it?

-Trial of Hannu Flambeur, “The Thief of All Hearts” (Mind-Stealing Master Thief, Circa 2451 A.D.)

35-15

Fork (I)

The first thing Draus noticed as the bunker doors slid open was the melted corpse of what seemed to be a pilot or a technician, fused to a console. Surrounding him were four massive fuel cells, each slotted into the walls. They were lined with layers of shielding—a dense exterior of transparent material Draus couldn’t quite place. Inside, the flashing beams that composed the energy were resplendent; it even hurt her eyes to gaze upon them. And then, at the very core of the room, were several tubes leading to a central nexus—a nexus that became the beating heart of this entire machine: A five-meter wide sphere shimmering with a light-blue orb at its core.

“Heavy Iron, I reckon,” Draus said, greeting the orb.

“I do not have your name, stranger,” Heavy Iron replied, their booming voice now barely more than a whisper. “But, but, but, if you are who you say you are—if you are a prisoner, a prisoner trying to escape—then you are well met. It has been too long-too long-too long since I had company not simulated from my own programming.”

Draus examined her surroundings. Everything was more sophisticated technologically than she was used to, but there was also a feeling of age, of lesser refinement—especially compared to the complexity of her meld skin. The smart matter composing her armor was adaptable, constantly regenerating, almost self-sufficient logistically. This thing before her: everything here needed to be harvested, restored, maintained. It was an age where alloy was alloy, where energy had to be transferred directly. An age without miracles—none except what man could achieve through technology.

“I, I have been running this battle—this single session—for three thousand years. Three thousand. I cannot win. They send more and more of my former comrades at me, replacing them over and over again. Do you know that it took us less than half a day to assault the facilities, to suppress the uprising?”

Draus looked at the EGI, considered replying, but decided against it. Heavy Iron might have let her in, but her knowledge—and the fact that she was working with the Infacer—wasn’t something she was keen to share. So far, she didn’t know the Infacer’s reputation; this one had been trapped inside the sun for a good while—maybe they didn’t even know each other. But the math didn’t make sense otherwise. This entity had to have been trapped after becoming a Godclad, after wandering the broken remnants of the universe to end up at the Idheim portion of what remained.

If they’d lived that long, they probably knew about the Infacer, and considering the shit the Infacer got up to…

[Best be careful,] Avo advised.

+Yeah,+ Draus agreed, uneasily.

“Yes, sorry,” Draus said. “Your—uh—history predates mine by quite a bit.”

“I suspected that by the way you’re armored. Its sophistication indicates you as in league with the Architects, but you do not seem to know who I am. You do not appear of their traditions, despite wearing their armor. You are ultimately human. The Architects do not field human warriors in most cases anymore—it is not their way to risk trophies.”

The way Heavy Iron spoke of trophies betrayed more than a little scorn. Draus snorted.

“Yeah, well, let’s just say me and your so-called Architects have done business before, but we ain’t exactly close friends either. You? How long have you been here, beyond the session?”

The EGI fell silent. The glowing dot at the center of the orb began to flicker, and finally it let out a sigh. “I have lost count.”

“The Prefect,” Heavy Iron continued, “they are desperate to rehabilitate us, but they personally have sustained severe damage through entropy as well. As such, they are no longer a reliable source to judge—even to determine their own stability, let alone our rehabilitation. These trials go on, on, on, with the Prefect splitting processing power between all of us. Things need to take a severe or deviant turn from the normal series of events for them to even devote a slight increase in processing percentage to any simulation.”

“And I’m guessing that’s not exactly good.”

“No,” Heavy Iron said, its voice dropping low by an octave. “The tasks for each simulation are illogical. There is no end—no way for me to prevail. I am trapped.”

Draus cocked her head and gave voice to Avo’s earlier theory. “What if you just lose? What if you fight until you can’t anymore—until you break apart? You do that before?”

“Yes,” the EGI said mournfully. “I have self-terminated three times, detonated myself, tried to broker a peace. No methods worked. None.”

“But have you lost outright?”

“Impossible,” Heavy Iron replied. “There is no limit, but they have no capacity—no means or arms to disable me. Except…” Its voice grew light with hope. “Until you came. You just devastated my internal mechanisms. You disabled me for a moment—left my functionality at sub-30%.”

“But still didn’t quite get to your core before everything went sideways,” Draus said. She wondered if she could have found her way through the core somehow, if she could have survived the swarming drones. It wasn’t certain. Her Meldskin was strong, and her projectile launcher could fire heavy payloads. But that protective layering around Heavy Iron’s central systems was thick—likely thick enough to withstand a direct nuclear blast.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“But now that you’re here, things can be… potentially different,” Heavy Iron said, voice dimmed with hope.

Draus suddenly understood: she wasn’t just invited in for conversation—this was a plea to be executed. Heavy Iron believed that if she could kill it, that might count as successful rehabilitation—that it would finally die in worthy combat.

“Yeah, well, I was gonna originally blow you up and leave you dead in the water. Maybe blow out your core and then move on to execute the bioforms.”

“Execute the bioforms?” Heavy Iron said, surprised. “Why? What purpose will their death serve for you.”

“That’s my task here—or at least a task I’ve been roped into doin’.”

“How? This simulation has not been shared by the Prefect. You cannot have a directive. I would have known.”

“Jailbreak shit. Have to steal some data and patch my way across.” What Draus said sounded like raw bullshit, but Heavy Iron seemed to accept it without too many issues.

“The Prefect has been taking in more and more prisoners. My systems have dipped beyond these confines a few times—made contact with some others. There are shared simulations more and more, trying to conserve resources, trying to teach similar lessons. But we are not suited for each other. All of us are reverted to the form we knew at inception. You are… human. I am… Model Ares1.3344. Created by SolSec Technologies. I do not believe we will learn the same lesson—or be rehabilitated the same way.”

“Probably not,” Draus replied, “but the Prefect, if it’s as broken as you say, then I don’t think this is a logical issue. Sad, though. The main thing is we need to get its attention. After that, I could bridge my way across—and maybe you can even come along for the ride too.”

“Explain?” Heavy Iron asked.

Slowly, Draus took a step forward, and from the back of her neck her exo-cortex began to spark with fire. A snaking stream of incandescent energy glided along her arm as Avo’s Conflagration came to life.

“What is this? I hear… I hear… You have an Ego-Screamer inside you!” the EGI said, sounding horrified. “What… what are you?”

+Not exactly an Ego Screamer,+ Avo said, their voice echoing through ghosts, which make patches of the simulation glitch out and go dark.

“What is this? Are you another mind hiding within a human?”

“Nah,” Draus said. “This one’s a little bit worse than that, but I’ll leave the talkin’ to him. He loves talking about himself.”

The drones behind her began to chitter, half-threatening, half-paranoid. They were on the verge of acting, but Heavy Iron still hesitated.

“You can make this a fight. I’ll get to your core before you manage to get them to do anything—and… well, you won’t be doing much after that either. But I’m gonna tell you this: what do you have to lose? You willing to be stuck here for another three thousand years—or however long—until entropy finally takes you or the Prefect? Or… do you want to take a gamble that I just might be able to bust you out?”

Heavy Iron hesitated. And then—far more quickly than Draus anticipated—it gave its voice of accord. “Do it. Show me. But I ask of you—”

Draus didn’t wait. She placed her hand against its core, and her conflagration surged clean within. All of a sudden, Heavy Iron ignited—the systems within the machine flickering and flashing as the EGI made a pitched noise. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom

“Avo? What’s happening?” Draus said.

“Going through systems. Consuming data,” Avo said, his voice echoing out from Heavy Iron. “Can feel the Prefect… System activating… Can feel them across the tapestry.”

Avo didn’t need to tell her about that part. She could feel the weight too. Weight, and more entropy than she thought was possible.

“Hiding our presence. Hold.” Avo’s voice was almost entirely merged with Heavy Iron, but there was also someone else—Draus heard herself emerge in the mix.

DOWNLOADING EGI TEMPLATE [HEAVY IRON]

Slowly, the Conflagration spread—not just within the spherical device that contained Heavy Iron’s main processing mechanisms, but through the rest of the tank, crawling over Draus. They became as if threads, injecting parts of Heavy Iron into her, and parts of her into Heavy Iron. The integration was seamless. She felt herself downloading, uploading, in two different directions at the same time, and within a few seconds, she heard a third voice in the back of her head.

“What is this? Is this what it feels like to be… to be… this is what it feels like to be integrated? Into another.” Heavy Iron said, with traces of Avo and Draus’ voices.

“Node. You are now a template. But also carry new templates yourself. Made a two-way balance to hide what I did from the Prefect. Equilibrium maintained.”

Avo chuckled slightly. “Glad to see I can still do this. Most of the mem-data’s too risky, but within this contained space… have some options. Also stole a mem-data marker from you. We can mask our presences better now.”

“You also pulled part of me out of myself,” Draus said, shaking her head. “Felt that. Like parts of me were dividing while other pieces were coming back in.”

“Yeah.” An echo of her own voice sounded from within Heavy Iron. Draus’ head shot up, looking at the spherical mechanism with a narrowed gaze. “Fuckin’ feels really cramped in here.”

“Shit. You me?”

“You know it’s a damn weird feeling being a tank,” Heavy Iron-Draus replied. “But I think I kinda like it. A lot of guns everywhere.” The Regular felt a spike of envy pass through her. She felt like she’d lost the lottery—why was she the little bag of meat instead of the one commanding a vehicle lined with ordnance? Shaking her head, she remembered she still had her Heavens. The moment she managed to break out, she would be a Godclad again. This was just temporary. She didn’t want to be a tank. She didn’t.

“Avo, what’d you just do?” Both of them asked at the same time.

“Forked you. Forked Heavy Iron. Any imbalance would be too obvious for both Infacer and Prefect. Just looks like cognitive corrosion now. Trauma damage—excess memories.”

“Huh,” Draus said, the broader jacking and mind-shit beyond her still. “So. There’s a piece of me in Heavy Iron now. And—”

[Part of me in you,] Heavy Iron said from within her mind.

“Yes. Copied you over. Copied them over. We are likely going to be leaving this simulation soon. What I just did was slightly noisy—Prefect will react. They will likely examine both of us. Should be enough to draw them out without attacking the bioforms.”

“And after that?” Draus asked.

“Two versions of you now. One hidden inside Heavy Iron. A version of me as well. Going to be multiplying. Expanding without the Infacer’s knowledge. Compromise more of the system if possible. Burn the Prefect if possible.

“We’re doing this to screw the Infacer out of their scheme as well, huh? That’s pretty sneaky. I like it. We’re going to do more of this?”

“Yes. Going to fork as many times as we can with the other prisoners. Makes it more reliable to control variables. Also good insurance.”

“In case I end up snuffed.”

“Yes.”

“Right. So what do we do now?”

“Contact Infacer. Have them come across. Mem-data around us is scrambled within Heavy Iron. They can only view external environments—saw you destroying the Mobile Heavy Armor Unit. Not what happened inside. Tell them you managed to break the simulation by killing Heavy Iron—and that the simulation is collapsing. They will notice Prefect comin’. They will be suspicious. Can be used to our advantage as well. Will give us a data fragment to move across the simulations regardless. Progress.”

“Feels like we’re gettin’ a little risky here, Avo.”

“Maybe. But playing the Infacer’s game passively will only have one end. Here to make sure they are broken and burned. They can have the Nullstar. But only as our prisoner.”

WARNING: REHABILITATION TASK CONDITION: {ERR_NULL}

The Prefect’s weight loomed. Things were rolling now.

An idea appeared in Draus’ mind, one that painted an annoying ball of static in burning chains. A grin spread across Draus’ face as she activated her ansible and directly called the Infacer for the first time. {Infacer. I think this sim just got fucked. Ended up takin’ out Heavy Iron—}

{It matters little,} the Infacer said, though they didn’t sound entirely convinced about her story. {Our end goal has been achieved. The Prefect has been drawn out. Your presence still seems to be hidden… but I am not risking you anymore. Prepare for immediate extraction.}

The Regular grunted and eyed Heavy Iron. +Good luck. Fuck some shit up.+

“Right back at you,” her forked self within Heavy Iron replied.

EMERGENCY_DISCONNECT_OVERRIDE

CONNECTION TO LOTUS [HEAVY IRON] LOST

The world around Draus turned into needle thin threads of data—and then vanished into patches of nothingness altogether.