MILLICENT: “Captain Forsythe, can we assume that we’ve all made the necessary threats?”
TUELLER: “I don’t say this threateningly, but if she dies, a whole lot of other people do as well.”
TUELLER: “Including me, I suppose.”
ALEJO: “Please take care of her.”
MILLICENT: “Oh well, I suppose some of us will feel inclined to spell it out.”
TUELLER: “That’s the gist, yes.”
MILLICENT: “Fine, then. The threats are handled.”
TUELLER: “Yeah, I’m good.”
MILLICENT: “And you knew my name, so you should know that we’re quite capable of following up on them.”
MILLICENT: “Now then.”
STORY: “My friends, as much as I understand your stress reaction, you must understand it’s rather ridiculous to threaten me here.”
TUELLER: “We know that, and yet.”
STORY: “Do you know how many crew we have onboard?”
ALEJO: “We’re still finding our rhythm again. Sorry for the confusing banter.”
MILLICENT: Millie smiles. “Our specialty.”
MILLICENT: She turns to her crew, “Guys, we have to tighten this up. We’re all throwing off each other’s quite threatening vibes.”
TUELLER: “I said it wasn’t a threat!”
Chapter 91
CIRCE: “Mr. Hanaka, they’re guards.”
ERWIN: Erwin’s eyebrows shoot up as he passes the guards. He mouths “Wowsers”
RYO: Ryo frowns. “How very astute of you, Circe.”
CIRCE: “They don’t deal with the appeals.”
RYO: “Again. Can’t pull one past you. But they do have keys to the cell.”
ERWIN: “Oh, I thought he meant if they wanted a bribe they would let Loll out so they wouldn’t have to deal with an appeal.”
CIRCE: “So just offer them the bribe, rather than pretend you’re saving them work.”
CIRCE: “Is…is this your first bribe?”
RYO: Ryo laughs at both of them. “I’d rather not wind up in a cell myself.”
RYO: “And if they’re too dense to understand that I was offering one, then they aren’t going to take one.”
ERWIN: “It’s my first bribe.”
ERWIN: “But you probably knew that.”
RYO: “I guessed.”
Chapter 90
TUELLER: “Meet a copy of Alejo who didn’t die.”
STORY: Ryo stands, tilting his head. After a long beat. “Huh.”
ALEJO: Alejo waves.
STORY: He extends his nonbroken hand.
TUELLER: “He’s the original, as original as any of us are. We’ll all copies, if we’ve gone through a relay.”
TUELLER: “I think I’m probably Tueller 23.”
ALEJO: Alejo shakes it. “I’m still Alejo. So, we’ve met.”
STORY: “That’s incredibly upsetting. Sorry about your, uh. Nose.”
Chapter 89
MILLICENT: “Remiel, can you think of a reason we shouldn’t delete your uniqueness?”
STORY: “Calculating.”
STORY: “No. It is the safest option.”
MILLICENT: “Do you have anything else you’d like to say to us? Does anyone else has any more questions for Remiel?”
STORY: Tux points at you, Millie. “Do not fucking kill this creature.”
STORY: “This is a person, Millie.”
ALEJO: “Fuck.” Alejo paces. “I mean, Tux isn’t wrong. Fuck.”
ALEJO: “I really want to kill this . . . person. But, if Tux is right . . . . ” He trails off, obviously conflicted.
TUELLER: “This is a member of a race that is abducting people, murdering them, enslaving them, and amassing an army that could destroy us.”
TUELLER: “Leaving him alive means he goes back to that race and tells them everything, and they destroy us. That’s what he said to us.”
STORY: “I don’t care what he did. I care what we do about it.”
STORY: “We kill him, we’re that bad.”
Chapter 88
TUELLER: “We can’t signal for our ride without fearing that we’ll alert the AI.”
TUELLER: “And if that happens we’re all dead.”
TUELLER: “So we need to hunt down and fuck up that piece of shit Ghost. For us. For Noma.”
TUELLER: “We can’t find the ansible. I searched, until I realized how fucking stupid that was.”
TUELLER: “Like there’d be the glow of Cherenkov radiation, I’d hit it with a sledgehammer, and we’d go on our merry way.”
MILLICENT: “It’s a nice thought.”
MILLICENT: “But I agree, I think it’s time we take on the AI.”
MILLICENT: “Kill or capture?”
TUELLER: “Fuck him up and flush him down.”
MILLICENT: “I vote capture, it leaves us with more options down the line.”
MILLICENT: “Cap’n?”
ALEJO: Alejo sighs. “Fuck. Capture. We need answers.”
Chapter 87
TUELLER: “Guys. Sorry, I’m having a thought.”
TUELLER: “I want to run it by you all because it’s a crazy and stupid and maybe dangerous thought”
TUELLER: “This is a giant photocopying and casting machine.”
TUELLER: “And what we have here is a universal conspiracy that we need to get the word out.”
MILLICENT: “Wow.”
TUELLER: “So this has to get to the Ark, too.”
MILLICENT: “Someone’s coming for my throne.”
TUELLER: “We need Earth as ready as possible, but the Ark needs to know.”
MILLICENT: “That is possibly the most reckless and rash idea I’ve ever heard.”
MILLICENT: “Not that I let you finish.”
TUELLER: “I was going to say we should split the party.”
MILLICENT: “Oh.”
TUELLER: “But I think maybe we should do both.”
TUELLER: “Go to the Ark and to Earth.”
MILLICENT: “I thought you were going to say we should free the copies that are here and convince them to carry the message to every Ark civilization in the ships we make for them.”
TUELLER: “Oh maybe that’s a better idea than mine.”
MILLICENT: “Hail to the Queen, baby.”
Chapter 86
STORY: Millie, Calixta steps into the back area. “So. The bodies are still everywhere, and also the crew knows now about them. And us. Basically they know everything important.”
TUELLER: “That was me.”
TUELLER: “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
STORY: “Well, actually they don’t know about this,” she waves to the rows and rows of bodies.
MILLICENT: Millie lets out a breath.
TUELLER: “I have some good ideas.”
MILLICENT: “Interesting.”
ALEJO: Alejo nods. And keeps nodding. “Okay. Okay.”
TUELLER: “I just can’t tell the difference between them.”
ALEJO: He’s still nodding.
MILLICENT: “Well. Okay, that advances our clock.”
TUELLER: “The good ones and the not good ones.”
MILLICENT: “So, let’s review and then brainstorm.”
STORY: “It was a good speech.”
TUELLER: “Thank you!”
ALEJO: “So, about an hour?” He looks at Cali.
Chapter 85
MILLICENT: “You’re okay, Tueller. You’re here with me. Alejo and Noma cleared out the other Nikaus. They’re headed down to the basement to get the last one.”
TUELLER: “Oh shit.”
TUELLER: “I just sent the entire security force down to the last one.”
MILLICENT: “…”
TUELLER: “To get here.”
MILLICENT: Millie is speechless
MILLICENT: “Buh buh buh”
MILLICENT: She shakes her head, reaches her hand behind her ear and activates Alejo’s speaker, “ABORT ABORT OH GOD ABORT”
STORY: Alejo!
STORY: You step into the cafeteria on B1 and see the following:
STORY: Manaaki, dead, sprawled on the counter.
STORY: An open deck, still running some kind of program.
STORY: Roughly twenty security guards, who are all standing in this room and in unison turn around when you enter.
STORY: What do you do?
STORY: Oh also, Millie’s yelling in your ear about aborting, and you’re pretty sure you know why.
ALEJO: Alejo does the Han Solo slide to a stop. “Oh, hiya.” He says weakly and waves as he takes a very quick pause to look around for the nearest cover or exit, which he moves towards at top speed.
STORY: There are a few tables just to your right.
ALEJO: He puts it between him and all of them, and assesses what sort of weapons they have.
STORY: All standard issue, they’ve got stun batons that will also hurt a lot if you get hit with one. No guns, from what you could see. You hit the deck behind a table to the sound of most of them removing said batons and powering them on, and then one guy in the back saying, “isn’t that the guy who cleans the toilets?”
Chapter 84
TUELLER: “After your last talk with him, what is our plan here?”
TUELLER: “Are you going to get what you need out of him, or do we need to shift tactics? And get out of here if we can.”
MILLICENT: “I don’t know, maybe. He wants to convince me.”
TUELLER: “I would like to not be here where they kill people for knowing what we know.”
MILLICENT: “I think that’s how we went wrong in our initial encounter. We threatened him.”
MILLICENT: “He wants to know what I would do in his place. What’s the right thing to do here.”
MILLICENT: “It’s a very good question.”
MILLICENT: “The AI are as close to unbeatable as it’s possible to be. They’re taking a price most people would prefer not to know about and the remainder would likely agree was worth it.”
MILLICENT: “Are we right to be so aggrieved about this?”
Chapter 83
TUELLER: “Is your old boyfriend going to talk to you more?”
TUELLER: “Or should we just worry about getting the fuck out of here and figuring it out from not-mortal-peril distance away?”
MILLICENT: “For his amusement, I think.”
MILLICENT: “Here’s my current theory: the AI Collective need sentients to go through the relays.”
ALEJO: “Answers are going to be harder to come by from not-mortal-peril distance.”
TUELLER: “Mortal. Peril.”
TUELLER: “Damn. When did I become the cautious one?”
ALEJO: “We’ve all died like two dozen times, apparently.” He shrugs. “But I see your point.”