Bellum omnium ontra omnes

[Enkidu]

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The Interrogation of Nesrin Khan. Entry One.

The notice had been sent out what could only be described as days ago. Nesrin Khan - former Quartermaster Paladin - Would find herself sat in a fifteen square-foot cell, surrounded by titanium reinforced walls, and obstructed by a shielded blast door. The shield composition appeared to be electromagnetic in nature.

Escape was an impossibility. Guards were patrolling outside, armed to the teeth with some of the most advanced hardware that the QP used to manage for the fleet. She'd know the capabilities of a Type-60, and the disaster an escape attempt would be when hundreds of meters below the surface of Wichita, in the detainment center of Ataraxia. It was difficult to tell if there were other prisoners through tons of metal and rock. It felt even darker not being connected to the Uplink or the AI collective. Solitary confinement. Away from technology and others.

Time would slowly tick by, hour by hour, minute by minute. A crowd of footsteps seemed to be approaching the direction of her cell at a rapid rate.
Tanith: Nesrin coiled and uncoiled her steel fingers, eliding her hands along the edge of the concrete bench, chipping at the filleted edge. She stretched herself, looming even in the steel box shuttering her.

The environment was unfamiliar to her. her blue eyes scried into the depths of the dark, but there was nothing there for her. No linchpin focus amidst the nothing surrounding her. Nothing for her to grab, to make sense of. Just the seamlessness of the cage.

She rolled off her ass, pressing herself into the centre of the cell, murdering time with the steady poise of triangle exercises. Three edgelines intersected between invisible vertices bored into the floor by her right foot, shrouded in her sneakers. She wasn't wearing anything remarkable - conventional civilian clothes - a faceless top and unrestrictive false-cotton slacks.



Nesrin kept her head high and watched the bulkhead door. :: Cameras. There must be cameras. This is Auxesia - they instrument milk cartons. How do they recess them into the walls without me seeing them? ::

The blast door unlocked as the magnetic clamps folded away. The door slid in to the floor, leaving the shield barrier between her and the tunnel. The hooded and exotically masked figure in an unfamiliar suit of armor stood before her, surrounded by four guards, armed with batons and rifles. The hooded figure was obviously a proud one. His belt was decorated with a datapad, the hilt of a sword with a blue-purple pommel stone, but no blade. The black and purple robe obstructed the rest of his gray metallic armor. Keeper Leviathan crossed his arms. "Oh, Nesrin." He spoke through a modulator.

Nesrin stopped, suspended on one leg, her body gateposted against itself, a near-perfect line drawn from the ball of her left foot to the roof of her brain, her arms splayed wide, bent at the elbows.

"Can I continue?"

The figure nodded. "Nothing is stopping you from exercising."

She suspended her leg high, inclined towards the ceiling of the room, her torso twisted, but not misshapen, not unbending. She recoiled, spinning from her feet, aerial-rolling onto her heels, knees low, before straightening, watching the mask's eyes. Nesrin dropped her arms to her sides.

"Yes?" She demanded, her intonation blank. "Why am I here?"

The figure chuckled. "I was hoping you'd be willing to tell me that." He removed his datapad from his belt, flicking the screen on.

Nesrin flexed her hands steel fingers, her eyes affixed to the door. She inclined her head, standing level, as levelly as she could at the guided man. What she assumed was a man, though it wore the shroud of a mere thing.

He eyed his datapad, reviewing a document. "Do you know who I am, at the very least?"

The bion returned to the bench, her legs projected in front of her. Relaxed. "A name doesn't tell me anything."

"Keeper Leviathan." He said plainly.

Nesrin smiled. "We must talk now. Fear is fear. But we abandon one another." She spoke. "Your name's a Pollard reference."

"In a sense." He lowered the datapad. "Do you know why you're here, or were you asking ironically?"

She shrugged. "Neither do I know why I'm here, nor I want to be here. All I know is I'm in some nasty sense-dep hole for androids." Nesrin shot off a stare that would have penetrated tank armour. "Would it kill to drop a jigsaw puzzle down here?"

"Standard detention cell for Auxesians. No matter how unique one is, this place takes that away from you." He looked around the interior of the cell. "You're here because of an incident in Omicron Kappa."

The bion squared her eyes. "I held the belief that we fight to preserve the diversity of human opinion. I disagreed with Ingennus policy. What are you incarcerating me for, Curator? Thought crime?"

"Keeper.” He corrected her slight without waver. “We fight to preserve life. Our ideal is that technology, humanity, AI - all of what makes up the core of our society can be preserved and unified, even when faced with the darkness that is a Sirian's daily life." He crossed his arms. "The path of omniscience - even those who follow Eirene - you put us at odds with a close associate, and insulted the ideal of acceptance. To top it off, your insubordinate behavior that day was unacceptable."

Khan folded her eyes. "Eriene? You're not Cephisdotus any more than you're a poet. There's a difference between being inspired by a philosophy and going in over your head." Nesrin's voice curdled, her lips tight. "I joined a movement with faith in men and what men can do - ideology forged on what men can be, not bending men to philosophy. I'm not an idealist - I'm an empiricist. You let your intentions for the universe distort your perceptions, you end up dead, or a monster."

Leviathan elaborated, providing fixture. "Eirene. Deity of the Devoted, a minor religious sub-group within our society. They do not impact our choices or our actions, but people appreciate faith."

Khan almost interrupted him. Almost. "I know my mythology. Nor do I have any qualms with theology. But I don't serve a church."

"No, you serve a society that consists of those who founded religion around technology. A minority, who believe peace can be achieved through advancement and transhumanism, much like what the core of preservation entails." He raised a hand. "I need to know why you thought your behavior towards an ally - a friend, rather - and a superior was acceptable."

Khan masticated her chin under her fingers, her teeth sealed, feet flat, penguin-splayed. "You have the intelligence to realise that singular pronouns carry little legitimacy applied to me."

"Don't change the subject." He said sternly.

She watched the mask, wondering where the hinges lie. "I'm not equivocating. My perceptions are not mine. My history is not mine either. The Zoners are on a trajectory they have walked before. Its resolution was destructive for them. I share the same object as yourself. Am I not an example of your endgoal, Curator?" She spat the noun.

"Keeper." He corrected.

"I've seen the consequences when academics, armed with idiom, play tin soldiers. News break; the Zoners will not walk out of this one if they're carrying machine guns."

"Why do you think we're not fighting their war for them, Nesrin?" He asked.

She shrugged. "I denounce the concept that they're at war."

"True, it's a ridiculous concept, but they are facing a war. One brought on them by The Order, no less. And The Core have taken hostages."

Nesrin exuded disgust in her philosophy. "War. The Zoners exist as an alternative to war. That's their ideology. Run and survive. Don't conflict over resources - exploit that which has been considered unexploitable. They chose a life of pushing beyond the edge, of finding alternatives to war. They're pioneers. They avoid the debate by perpetually finding their own realm. They're not running, they're exploring. They're disseminating life. It's a noble cause. Why waste any of that by attempting to hold ground? Let the Order and the Core have what they want. Space is endless. What do they stand to gain but their destruction from standing their ground?"

"They're cornered. The figurehead of their independence is imprisoned, and is an asset to us. There is no where for them to run. To the South is the Corsairs, who've robbed and pillaged any attempt at evacuating their current position. To the North is The Order, which would further drive them in to a blacklist for the mere idea that they're cooperating with one another. Their minor pockets would be choked out from supplies for supporting terrorism. To the West is The Core, who want them exterminated. They have no where to go. Their independence is threatened, as is their survival. You've seen the assaults, you know how ruthless The Core can be. They won't stop until they're all dead. They will chase them, they will enslave them. They. Will. Kill them. That enclave of Zoners faces extinction. And you insulted one in particular. An affiliate of ours who has been personally assisting us on multiple occasions. An Ex-Order agent, specifically."

She shrugged, nonchalant in relativism. "Cry me a river."

"That's enough, Warden. Your attitude is unacceptable." He said loudly.

"I've seen what the Core can do to the Zoners. I have a dead husband. Every friend I ever made of worth to me is dead. The life that I chose is dead. I know what the Core is capable of, I know what they are complicit in. I am a product of the Core, in a sense. Extinct? My enclave of Zoners is already extinct. They will be destroyed eventually if they settle in Delta. They will die, or be infected. I would fight for them if they were fighting puristically for defence, but this was never just about the lives of individuals, was it?" Nesrin insisted. "The human cost is irrelevant. Lives are being played off for technology. I don't believe in sacrificing the lesser good for the greater good. People are the side they show, not their inner objectives and motivations. Hunt is wrong. You are the person you portray. You are only what you show. That is the impression you make on the universe."

She smiled, continuing herself. "IRG have proven nothing to me that they carry interest in human lives, other than those of their core researchers. I've seen what their ringmasters believe in, Leviathan. I have saved their lives before. You really want those people making ethical decisions for you, who should live or die? They have the capability to run. They don't. They're just as complicit in this mess as the Order and the Core are."

"Then your views do not align with the rest of ours. People are required to make the difficult choices. We can't save everyone. They do not dictate how we operate. We do. They don't have a choice or a direction they can turn in. Obviously you haven't been paying attention to the situation, or you'd know there's a lot more at stake. "When the Zoners fall, the balance of power in the region will shift dramatically. Gammu - our allies, and home to some - will be threatened."

She wrinkled out a cynical, hard-lined smile. "Again. If I had decided to serve the Order, I would be wearing their uniform. You don't look ahead for the fifteenth move. What's the use of collecting on your life insurance if you have to be dead to do it?"

Leviathan came as close as he ever had in her company to humour. "That's why we don't have life insurance."

Nesrin grinned, sardonicism desecrating the instance. "Good joke. The problem is the attitude it communicates. We choose to be expendable because that's what we signed up for. The Zoners didn't. They didn't sign up for anything. We're fighting over platforms in the vacuum of space. Arcologies are mobile - they can be escorted out. Beyond that? Leave them. Let the Core have their empty frames."

"You misunderstand the complexity of the scenario, Nesrin. The Core have someone who is in possession of crucial information pertaining to our society. As a prisoner."

"Right. Hence my objection, conscientious or not. Do you value the life of one prisoner over the net lives of anything between a few hundred, to a few thousand, Zoners? Factor in the food production loss and we're looking at higher casualties. You know this."

"And if it were a random attack, we'd be there like we were last time. This scenario was caused by The Zoners being used once again as human shields by The Order."

"If you want to recover this person so badly, stage a rescue operation if you think you can succeed. Don't condone the Zoners as a whole falling into the meat grinder."

"We can't stage an operation without intel. We can't collect intel without being present. Which is why we're there. Which is why your attitude isn't helping our cause or our operation, and until you can recognize that you are a soldier and comprehend the chain of command with a modicum of respect, I am more than liable to leave you here to contemplate your existence and motives in remaining with us." He gestured to one of the guards.

Nesrin stood abrupt, leaning against wall, claw-handed. Leviathan was already thumbing the door. "I don't care about your damn presence, I care about inducting Zoner civilians into our foreign policy. Stick that up your ass."

"Enjoy your vacation." The blast door slowly rose up from the floor, reaching the top of the frame. The magnetic locks sealed.

Nesrin ground her teeth and stared waywardly at him as the doors slid tight. "What possible advantage do you get from having m- Great." Pique smacked her, and she cursed back, slamming the blast door, close palmed, hissing and cavitating as the agony burned along her knuckles. Irked, Khan stalked the metalled decks, pushing herself along the plates, laying her hands against the concrete partitions, listening to the earth. Nothing. They'd eliminated everything, even the wire hum. "Curator!" She yelled, if only to herself, and wondered what frame of mind Raven was in if she still held a tenure on Earth. Of course she would.

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THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)

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