text; un: firecracker

[cactusy]

1. How hard does this place go with simulating bodily functions? We have to eat and expel waste, but do we menstruate? Get colds? Get infections? Get cancer? Get pregnant?

2. If our robot overlord is all about crime and punishment, what happens if we kill someone here?

Comments

[computation]

I really... didn't ever think I'd hear anyone say that.

[ Not anyone, not even Shaw. Not apart from the Machine. Maybe someday was enough to hope for, the kind of realistic sentiment that was more than she expected in this dismal, dreary, disappointing world. But she's here and Shaw is saying she isn't alone and there's emotion welling up. Root lets it sit in her chest rather than suppress it. She's not tied up in anything, doesn't need to be ready to move at a moment's notice, she's... dead and over. She went out the best way she knew how.

And now she gets to have the only kind of rewarding afterlife she could ever believe in: a simulation with Sameen here with her. ]

We've really come a long way, haven't we? [ she muses, swinging their arms lightly. ] It doesn't surprise me I could've been a Samaritan agent, not really. But I know I'm happier this way.

[cactusy]

I've always known how easily I could have been. I just didn't talk about it much - no reason to.

[Every time she'd even so much as hinted that she thought Samaritan had a point, no matter how small, it had horrified Harold enough that she never pressed the issue: she had, after all, firmly chosen her side and her people, and nothing was going to change that. And it hadn't, in the end: even after eleven months, and seven thousand simulations.]

The thing that bothers me most is that Decima knew it, too. If John or Harold had been the one to leave that elevator, Martine would've left them dead on the ground. Samaritan wouldn't have wanted to try to turn them; it would've known it would have been a waste of time. But it thought it could turn me.

[computation]

No reason to, [ Root agrees, similarly practical. She isn't the type to spend time dwelling in her regrets or might-have-beens. It's not really optimism but rather a sheer cold pragmatism that doesn't let her spend energy on pointless distractions.

If Shaw's thinking that, though, it's not a pointless distraction at all. Root scoffs immediately, getting annoyed at Shaw's self-doubt. ]

Is this like when you thought the intel came from Guantanamo? Look a little deeper. Come on, Sameen, they picked that because it freaks you out. If they got John or Harold they would've done whatever worked on them, not wasted a resource by killing them.

You're the most straightforward, loyal person I know. And they knew that. You didn't even turn on the ISA when they got your partner killed.

[ It was evident in Shaw's history and it made for an obvious manipulation tactic as far as Root's concerned. ]

[cactusy]

That was loyalty to a cause and an organization, not loyalty to a person.

[She gets what Root's saying, and the logic makes sense; it's not that she disagrees. But there's some more nuance here.]

I understood the ISA's methods in a way that I still don't understand Harold's, even though I trust now that his methods are better than theirs. The reason I didn't turn on the ISA is that I thought they were right. The reason I didn't turn on you guys is that you guys are my team, and I'm loyal to you, even though I don't always completely understand your ideals. It's the same reason I didn't turn on Cole when I didn't understand his.

[She feels a bitter twist in her stomach, thinking about that. She doesn't at all regret trying to protect Cole by keeping his reservations and intentions secret from their higher-ups; she never has, not even when the ISA still had her full loyalty. But she also doesn't really regret choosing to undo the work he'd died for, after he could no longer be affected by the decisions she made. It's not necessarily the same choice she'd make now - but back then, it had been her best option, and she stands by it.

Cole wouldn't have, though. She knew him well, and she knows that he would have seen it as a betrayal.]

Decima thought they could... turn back the clock, I guess. Break my loyalty to people and make me loyal to a cause again. There was a reason all their efforts were based around annoying philosophical arguments instead of, I dunno, trying to get Greer or Martine to bond with me.

[computation]

[ Root thinks this over with due consideration, taking Shaw's words seriously, fitting in some pieces to her mental puzzle of Shaw with her usual attentive fascination.

Then she says, ] I still don't buy it. What they want isn't loyalty to a cause or a person, it's loyalty to a god. Unquestioning and unreasoning. [ That had been Root once, but not anymore; not since Shaw was taken. ]

I have that in me, and maybe you did at one time. But the point is, we both changed. I know I could've been an agent for Samaritan -- easily, [ she emphasizes, ] but now? It could never happen. I couldn't work for Samaritan any more than you could shoot me in any one of thousands of simulations. They're absolutes, inviolable lines. And where your lines are tells you who you are.

They weren't trying to break your loyalty, they were just trying to break you.

[cactusy]

[If Shaw were a different sort of person - if she were someone who'd been brooding over this, wracked with guilt rather than just occasionally a little bit bugged by it - hearing the situation put this way would lift a weight off her shoulders. Instead, it's more like ill-fitting puzzle pieces rejigger themselves in her brain, clicking into the proper places. They weren't trying to break your loyalty, they were just trying to break you. And they'd used whatever they had at their disposal to do it.]

That makes sense.

[She says it slowly, rolling the words around in her mouth.]

Thanks.

[computation]

[ Shaw can tell herself it doesn't mean that much, but Root has seen her silently tracing the space behind her ear, testing for the bump of an implant. She does it herself, but for a wholly different reason: reassurance that her cochlear implant is still there if the Machine wants to reach her. Maybe it doesn't emotionally resonate, but she knows it means something. She knows she won't ever doubt that Shaw would turn on them.

She intentionally steps to the side so she bumps into her, shoulder-to-shoulder, on the next stride. ]

No one can hold up to that forever, [ she goes on, because she does know how torture techniques work. She doesn't want Shaw thinking she had to somehow, impossibly, withstand what was done to her end on end in order for Root to trust her. ] You killed that scientist because you were confused.

[ Double-Sameen hadn't confessed that for no reason, she's sure. ]

But that doesn't change who you are. It doesn't make me trust you less.