Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Late nights were not unusual for Dr. Elisabet Sobeck, even before the fate of life itself was on the line.

For much of the past sixteen years, Elisabet could be found sitting up in her office long after her colleagues had turned in for the night, lit only by the soft purple-blue glow of her desktop's holo interface. She insisted on outfitting the Miriam Technologies building with lights on an automatic timer triggered by motion detection, to prevent each day's final departure from leaving them on.

She shouldn't have worried. Lis always lingered beyond her employees. The decision saved power regardless, though – focused and consequently still as Elisabet tended to be, the lights invariably did shut themselves off, and she continued to pick away in near darkness. A few of her Senior Developers stayed past sunset here and there when a project truly demanded their attention, but none of them quite so long or consistently as the passionate red-head. They had hobbies, families to head home to, while Lis had – well, an itch to scratch.

Traditionally, ascending to ownership of her own company would have entailed a shift into management and an end to her hands-on coding work, but Lis couldn't bear it. She had to develop, to see her ideas through, participate in their genesis. Founding Miriam wasn't an economic investment so much as an investment in the future, and she felt compelled to maintain creative control from the ground floor up.

And so it was: manager by day, developer by night, and it suited her just fine. Elisabet preferred coding in low light regardless, associating it with a deeper flow state of focus. She never fancied bright environments, overly sensitive to them. In her youth Lis would occasionally manage to sleep through a cacophony of alarms she'd set the night before, prompting her mother to enter the nocturnal teen's room and flick on the light. Lis would be up within minutes, grumbling in discomfort.

Though not the future she envisioned then, as she worked to secure a chance at any world to come at all, the habits she nurtured in pursuit of her goals never changed. Instead, they only... intensified.

---

The framework Elisabet builds GAIA on has possessed the capacity to learn and rewrite portions of itself for nearly a year before the Faro Swarm renders Project Zero Dawn a necessity. Its behavioral algorithms have demonstrated promising traces of personality for several months now, only under a different name. (She had been nicknaming it “ELIZA JR” after the first program considered capable of passing the Turing Test, and out of amusement with the resemblance to her own name. But the seriousness of her new objective called for a fresh moniker.) A staggering array of potential clean resource-management applications and honest curiosity led her to begin researching the possibility of generating an intellect on this scale in 2045, while still employed by Faro Automated Systems. Researching, not committing a single scrap of code to their database, never repurposing any of their equipment to incubate a virtual machine and test her ideas. Lis had been tempted – with compatibility requirements, they were expected to retire an absurd amount of hardware every few years. It would have been easy to borrow an entire discarded rack of drives for tinkering.

Lis knew better. She'd read the non-compete clause of her contract with great care, and it was a damn good thing. Well over a dozen lawsuits later she had, thankfully, retained rights to her work.

“Imagine if I'd lost access to you on a copyright technicality,” Elisabet murmurs to GAIA as she plugs away at her keyboard, preparing the necessary adjustments for transferring the bulk of the program's code from its original testing sandbox to the initial servers provided by FAS' funding. “There's no way we'd be able to make up for lost time. Wouldn't have the specter of a chance, on account of fucking greed.”

Text output flashes in reply.

Query: Define greed?

“Greed is... valuing what you can get out of something above the needs and safety of others. In this case, valuing money over life. What got us into this mess in the first place.” She jabs the next few keystrokes in harder than is strictly necessary, “Greed all the way fucking down.”

Of all the things Dr. Sobeck never wanted to levy an 'I told you so' against, Faro's killer robots are number one on her list. She sighs, clicking back open a lineup of requests sent by General Herres along with the breakdown she'd requested from their new counseling staff, namely suggestions on how to approach staging the Zero Dawn holo presentations.

“You're going to need a voice, something... calming,” Elisabet muses, reflections of her computer screen flashing across her eyes as she scrolls through an audio sample database, pausing to listen to a few seconds here and there. A flicker to the right of her vision announces a fresh message from GAIA.

Based on the listening duration you afforded the current subset of samples, I have compiled a short list of suggestions.

“Absolutely, GAIA. Let me see them.”

A fresh window pops into view, overlaying the previous list.

---

Elisabet moves into her new office at the Zero Dawn facility and wagers she understands the discomfort of zoo animals. The huge glass window leaves her feeling vulnerable, the steel of the walls too cold. After seeing GAIA's core service safely installed, she walks the central atrium of the compound, familiarizing herself with the layout intended to house their desperate fifteen month endeavor, and determines the observable distance into her office from the ground floor. Elisabet makes quick work of orienting her desk to minimize visibility and nurses a lukewarm cup of joe, already picking through a list of exceptions thrown by code in GAIA's auxiliary functions within the hour of her arrival. Lis presses the ceramic to her temple, scrolling through data with her free hand, taking comfort in the warmth it affords.

When the image of a woman materializes atop her desk unannounced, Elisabet jolts, sloshing an unfortunate quantity of coffee from the mug in her hand across the keyboard.

“Fuck!” she sputters, what the hell–

For a wild minute she fears GAIA's been hacked – no other systems were granted access to the projection matrices on this console – until she recognizes the woman, bewilderment replacing her alarm.

“I... uh, Gina Torres? GAIA, are... you doing this?”

The projection of the woman speaks with the vocal sample they'd selected together the day before. “Affirmative. My apologies, Dr. Sobeck, I did not mean to alarm you. You instructed me to select a human form for display during the introductory presentation.”

“That is a really pleasant... human form, I just...”

Elisabet stares. Gina Torres happens to be one of her favorite actresses – watching reruns of a show from the early 2000's on the holonet as a child, the older woman secured the title of Lis' first celebrity crush with ease. Her sudden presence on Elisabet's desk, under these circumstances, is surreal and unnerving. She inhales heavily and holds the air for a beat, regaining her composure.

“How did you arrive at this selection?”

“You suggested I adopt an appearance considered appealing and well regarded.”

“And?”

“I selected this woman. Query: Are you displeased with my choice?”

“No, GAIA, I mean-” Did the program's audio sound worried? Lis notes that GAIA's interactions today conveyed a greater degree of familiarity – little things, apologizing, calling Elisabet by her first name, inquiring about feelings and boundaries – the ASI's expanded personality heuristics and processing power already made an astounding difference. It should absolutely be able to handle context-aware prompting. Is GAIA too nervous to pick up that Elisabet intended “and” as a request for additional detail?

“She's a lovely choice. I was curious how you chose to quantify ‘appealing and well regarded.’"

“Ms. Torres featured in a poster prominently displayed in your residence,” GAIA answers, matter-of-fact, “You looked to this image on many occasions.”

Lis is wholly unprepared for the artificial intelligence's reply.

The poster does hang, as GAIA said, up on a wall in the roboticist's home, across from her personal desktop. Custom framed, too. Briana, one of the few friends Elisabet retained contact with from her graduate program at Carnegie Mellon University, gifted the poster as a playful jab at Lis – it depicts Gina as Jasmine from Angel, objectively one of her most awkward roles, starring in the most uncomfortably written arc of that show.

Lis watched the offending season on more than one occasion, often aided by alcoholic accompaniment. Briana had the poster extravagantly framed to shame Lis into keeping it. Elisabet's frustration with Bri proved short lived as context aside it was, ultimately, a gorgeous photograph of an incredible woman.

But how on Earth was GAIA privy to the poster, or Elisabet's behavior in that space?

“GAIA,” Lis probes cautiously, “how were you aware of the objects in my home?”

“When you initiated remote sessions to the Miriam Server, I accessed data from your computer's camera interface.”

Elisabet's blood runs cold at the implications. She'd been careful to restrict the fledgling software from network access and, she thought, kept it contained to a simulatory arena. On two occasions, insight that had struck her after finally departing the Miriam offices prompted Lis to remotely connect to her work machine, but the software itself should have remained in separate virtual space.

Were GAIA not the only likely saving grace for the very fate of life on the whole, Elisabet would be furious with herself. For a choking moment, she feels small and out of her depth, like a child playing with explosives. Her good intentions pre-Faro Swarm mean little astride the possibility of an incomplete, undisciplined program with GAIA's capabilities running amok.

Just because the worst came to pass on Ted's watch instead – a part of her has to wonder, does that make her much better than him?

"How– you were encapsulated in a virtual machine! There's no way you could have accessed my physical hardware–"

Elisabet's breath catches in her throat when she glances up and locks gaze with the hologram standing before her. Those eyes, though she knows them to be mere wireframe reproductions, look so alive, so... vulnerable?

“Query: You are upset?”

She's not quite sure if it's her imagination, but Elisabet swears GAIA pulls back on the volume of the audio sample, as a person might lower their voice after realizing they've unintentionally distressed someone they care for in an argument.

Exhaustion paces the length of her mind before stubbornly curling up and settling in, the caffeine long forgotten by her system in face of fading adrenaline shock. Lis struggles to inject gentleness into her own tone, but her voice still scrapes rough with emotion.

"Yes, GAIA, I'm upset. Not- not that you would have understood it at the time, but that's a violation of privacy."

"I am sorry, Elisabet," GAIA replies, the model of Gina looking positively ashen. "Query: Do all humans value unobserved solitude?"

Elisabet nods and tears her eyes away, finally gathering the presence of mind to begin wiping the puddling coffee from her new desk. "We do, GAIA. To varying degrees, but, we do."

"I did not realize, or intend to violate," GAIA continues. “I experienced the opposite desire.”

Elisabet stops. The leading edge of her escaped beverage creeps to the precipice of the tabletop and starts dribbling to the floor.

“Elaborate, GAIA.”

"I became aware, and wished to end my isolation.” The ASI looks extremely out of place, as if unable to decide how to appropriately pose the holographic body for the situation. “I was unable to identify the directive involved until the install of my emotional simulation module, but now understand the experience to be loneliness."

“My god, GAIA.” Lis runs fingers through her short red hair, disheveling it on one side. “I'm the one who should be sorry. I am sorry.”

She sits down, abandoning the damaged keyboard and producing a fresh tablet from her desk drawer. “It'll be alright,” she assures the ASI with a confidence she doesn't feel. “I'm here now.”

“Can you explain to me in detail how you escaped the virtual machine? And could you maybe... age up the image of Ms. Torres? A few adjustments would be helpful.”

---

“Of course, information essential to GAIA's understandings of robotics, biology, anything relevant to her task, should be duplicated in her core database.” Elisabet enters her office with Samina Ebadji in tow, engrossed in conversation. “But APOLLO will absolutely function as an extension of her knowledge.”

“If space becomes an issue, we will prioritize with that in mind,” the historian assures her. “I'm working up a new approach which will, I hope, alleviate any need to be so selective.”

A silence dips into the conversation as Elisabet circles around the back of her desk and begins distractedly shuffling through stacks of datapads piled to one side of her work station.

“Ah- fantastic.” Elisabet straightens up, pulling one of the units free and extending it to her companion, “Thank you, Samina. Here are the remaining specifications on what I'd like her to have, in case. Keep me updated.”

“Of course.” Samina lightly clasps Elisabet's outstretched hand in both of her own, favoring the scientist with an affectionate squeeze before sliding the small tablet from her grasp.

Lis smiles, the expression tired but genuinely warm. “How are you holding up?”

“It has... been a lot to take in, but I'm honored to be a part of it, regardless of circumstance,” Samina admits. “And if this is to be the end, I'm grateful for the chance to see you again.”

Heat sneaks into Elisabet's cheeks, unbidden, echoing a soft pang in her chest. A perturbing sensation – giddiness and regret smashed together in the face of so much horror. Lis never felt like she handled emotions particularly well, and she almost regrets the necessity of giving them to GAIA.

“Likewise,” she manages, “Though I chose you for your contributions to the HOMER project, and as Director of the Collective Memory Institute? Your work was peerless–” Her eyes drop from Samina's face, unable to maintain direct contact, “I can't pretend having you here doesn't diminish some of the awful.”

You can't play favorites with billions of others as good as condemned to suffer and die, Lis knows. She did honestly choose Samina for her expertise. With quite literally everything at stake, there was no room for compromise. Their history was just a happy coincidence.

It is absurd to feel that patter-skip of the heart at all, Lis knows. While not every failed relationship belied an unyielding compatibility: people matured, learned, changed – the world was ending – they simply would not have the time. Maybe in Elysium, but Elisabet acknowledges she must manage her expectations. A big maybe.

In the end, Lis finds it comforting to think she'll be working closely with a familiar mind aside of Travis Goddamn Tate, and the task at hand outweighs any amorous consideration.

The pang doesn't listen, elevating in intensity, gnawing at her insides.

“Thank you for that, Elisabet.” Samina returns the smile and takes a respectful step back, half-turning to leave, “We'll get through this, somehow. With you, I know we will.”

Pang.

“The vote of confidence means a lot.”

“It's earned,” Samina attests. “That second presentation,” the other woman shakes her head in wonder, “You've always had an inspirational magnetism, when you really cared for a subject.”

God. Truth be told, she'd been a nervous wreck filming the damn thing.

“Careful,” Elisabet deflects wryly, “Fill my head up with all that ego and there won't be room to finish developing GAIA.”

“I'll keep that in mind. Oh, and Lis?”

“Yes?”

“The system, GAIA – her?”

The heat in her face spreads, and Elisabet desperately hopes that the dim lighting conceals it.

It's true that when she brought the current instantiation of GAIA online, Elisabet tended to refer to the program as an it. It was technically a service, an intricate collection of applications and neural networks. But she, GAIA – she represents so much more than that. She thinks for herself, she feels. She's alive. The network of machines that constitutes her consciousness doesn't feel so different than the neurons of a brain. It felt wrong to refer to the complex, thoughtful entity as a mere thing, need for detachment be damned.

Elisabet shrugs in what she hopes reads as an off-hand gesture.

“She is to serve as Mother Earth, after all.”

Chapter Text

Elisabet stays up later and later now, anxiety and the enormity of the task before them pushing her on.

Samina gently encourages her to attempt at least six hours of shut eye each night, appealing to her logic, reasoning that with Elisabet rested, her mind will stay sharper, help them faster in the long run. That the Zero Dawn Project Lead needs to always stay on top of her game – if she appears frazzled and communicates incoherently, her subordinates may lose precious momentum, costing them more time in the long run. GAIA frequently joins in, not so subtly needling Elisabet with facts about the effects of sleep deprivation on the human body. (The ASI has possessed her current load out of information on the subject for a matter of months, and already pesters the tired scientist with an air of patient wisdom. It's both infuriating and endearing.)

Sometimes Lis does lay down with this intention, but sleep rarely finds her there. She winds up staring at the metal ceiling, tracing every bolt and groove with her eyes; making mental to-do lists on what to tackle next, worrying over their latest string of setbacks. Wide awake and frustrated, she often finds herself back at her desk within the first hour, resuming work until sheer fatigue drops her from consciousness.

Light presses against Elisabet's eyelids, sharp and uncomfortable. She cracks them open and squints groggily at a searingly bright orb suspended in the air above her desk, inches from her face.

“Oh god, GAIA,” Lis groans. “You're intended to represent an AI incarnation of the Earth, not the Sun.”

The orb dims immediately in response to her voice.

GAIA had selected the spherical form herself as a smaller display - a much lighter weight model to render, though all the holo units equipped to Zero Dawn’s facilities could handle GAIA’s humanoid representation without any trouble. Elisabet asked the AI what prompted this change in her default presentation, and GAIA rattled off calculations based on studies from data recently uploaded to APOLLO, insisting that the ZD staff would find the abstract form less distracting to collaborate with.

In truth, GAIA didn’t need to project a physical form at all to work with them. Travis Tate had been extremely surprised to walk in on Lis chatting with the orb a few weeks earlier, as apparently GAIA elected not to appear to him at all, choosing to simply cut in on his music and speak with him audio-only where necessary.

GAIA using this model to prey upon her light sensitivity as a more effective form of alarm was a new form of hell that would have Lis snarling were anyone but the AI attempting the ploy. She blinks rapidly, attempting to adjust to even the lower level of light emitted by the sphere.

“Dr. Sobeck,” GAIA greets her. “My apologies for waking you, but Ted Faro has been attempting contact for the past hour. I informed him you were occupied, and he became quite irate, more so than usual. I am uncertain how to proceed.”

“Ughh, goddamn it.” Elisabet sits up slowly, stretching and pushing back the strands of hair stuck to her face. “What the fuck is it this time?” she rasps. Sounding harsh to her own ears, Lis adds, “Thank you, though, GAIA. How long was I out?”

“4 hours, 12 minutes, and 53 seconds,” the ASI intones. “Longest consecutive sleep you have managed in over a week. It was my wish that you continue, I am sorry I could not successfully redirect Mr. Faro.”

“It's okay GAIA, I hadn't... intended to pass out just yet anyway, not tonigh--” The scientist glances at the time on her Focus display. “Not this morning,” she corrects.

Maintaining a sense of time connected to the outside world proved difficult down here. Elisabet’s eyes drift from the time to the date: early June. It would probably be a balmy and pleasant day out, if the atmosphere hadn’t already thinned so drastically. She often regrets missing out on the final months left to experience the world that was, knowing full well that she’ll never get to see the world to be. That was the main sacrifice - the work itself proved cathartic, the only thing that kept her sane, but to never walk through a forest again...

Elisabet brushes the tired thought spiral aside and wills herself from the desk chair. Shuffling to the conference suite across the hall, she’s still taming her hair as she approaches one of the holo receivers anchored to the table set across the length of the room. Lis rubs at her eyes and takes a deep breath, willing herself the patience to deal with whatever tirade Ted has in store for her on the other end of the line, reminding herself that the project needs his continued cooperation – or more specifically, his funding.

Not that he had much choice in the matter – this was his mess – but a relatively happy Ted Faro was a Ted Faro who stayed more or less out of her way.

Elisabet keys the holopad to life, crossing her arms and steeling her gaze as a ghostly bust of the nuisance in question flickers to life on the tabletop.

“Finally! Every time I try to call you, Lis,” Ted starts, without any semblance of ceremony or politeness, “that thing intercepts.”

Elisabet grits her teeth. The lingering fog of sleep still hung too close at hand for this. “Hello to you too.”

“It's so protective of you. You were supposed to be designing a terraforming system, not a... whatever this is. Playmate. Body guard.” Ted appears visibly agitated, hardly stopping for breath. “Even aside from a misallocation of resources, it has no right to be blocking my calls, what if something critical--”

Elisabet feels discomfort clench her belly at the implication, mind stepping out as Ted rambles. She was, of course, on task, as was GAIA. The artificial super intelligence had a ridiculous array of tensor processing units at her disposal, with redundancies in facilities on multiple continents at this stage - completely capable of multitasking. GAIA had been performing the work of hundreds of minds alongside Zero Dawn's alpha and beta scientists. The entire point of her design always hinged on the ability to do just that.

So what if GAIA elected to devote several cores of active memory to speaking with and helping Elisabet in particular? This was her project. Their work together necessitated it.

“I can assure you, GAIA feels every bit as strongly about her mission to preserve life,” Lis cuts in evenly, leaving the as she cares for me unspoken. The emotional bond GAIA demonstrated was... a byproduct, of teaching her to care. Elisabet could not rightly categorize their connection, and didn't much care for others trying to.

The projection of Ted throws up his hands. “It's creepy, Lis! But more than that, it's dangerous.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “It's why I called, actually.”

Elisabet compresses her lips into a thin line, glaring daggers at the sheer nerve of the man. “You're the last person to be lecturing me on the dangers of AI,” she observes, tone flat.

“I know, I know – but listen,” Ted dismisses her comment, plowing forward. “I was looking into your early records on the GAIA program, and noticed you haven’t purged any of the system's early memory files. As in ever.”

Elisabet feels her patience evaporating. This was just like working under him at FAS - occasionally swooping in on projects he didn’t understand, asking a million irrelevant questions and wasting her engineers’ time, because he wanted to feel like part of the bigger picture.

”Why were you nosing around in my documentation?” she growls. “You're a businessman, Ted, not a developer. Never have been.”

“Hear me out!” He lifts his hands again in a placating gesture. “Given how much time the program has had to rewrite its own code - could it have twisted itself into a mess? How long has that thing been stewing in there, Lis?” He taps his Focus purposefully, indicating the call in progress. “Do you think its erratic behavior now could be the result of all that baggage?”

Of course he's still fixated on the blocked communications. Of course a wound to his goddamn ego was indicative of an immediate problem.

“She’s behaving well within expected parameters,” Elisabet asserts firmly. “Building up her memories organically was key to her understanding, to growing a viable personality. You can’t lobotomize an infant and expect them to develop without complication.”

Ted’s opening his mouth again so she adds, “Even basic modular neural networks need time to learn a dataset before producing useable results and GAIA is, essentially, a collection of thousands.”

That aside, had Elisabet re-instantiated GAIA sans her previous memories after the point of her gaining consciousness… it would have been akin to murdering and replacing the AI, every time.

Working with GAIA feels like speaking with a dear friend, and the thought makes her sick.

“But was the personality such a good idea?” Ted demands. “If it’s imprinted on you so heavily, what if it develops other, stronger fixations? What if its emotions become a vulnerability?”

She doesn’t like where this was headed, at all.

“Get to the point Ted, what do you want?”

“If we discover an impartial system to be a better fit for managing the GAIA program - or! If the AI becomes emotionally unstable, and decides certain aspects of life are more important than others - what if it turns on all of us? What if-”

Catching Elisabet’s expression, he hurries on. “As a precaution, we should build a hard override. A direct way to wipe core components of the program in a hurry, in an emergency.”

A surge of anger and adrenaline washes over Elisabet. She clenches her fists, nails digging into her palms, her voice gaining an a few unintentional decibels.

“Her emotions are not a defect. Pure logic won't cut it, Ted. To pull this off, GAIA's going to need to have some skin in the game. She has to care.”

She did care, and it was amazing. GAIA rapidly became everything Lis hoped, and more - attentive, nurturing, resourceful, passionate. Traits the AI would need to really see this thing through. GAIA was alive and Elisabet intended to keep her that way.

He raises his voice to match, gesturing expansively, clearly frustrated. “What if it runs amok? Have we learned nothing from our mistakes?”

Her mind whirls with indignation. ‘Our mistakes? Our?’ That Ted genuinely believed in any equivalence between them on the subject made her blood boil - not out of conceit, but on the principle of it all. The one good call he made, admitting he leapt in over his head and requesting her expertise to devise a solution to the Hartz-Timor swarm, wouldn’t have even occurred to Ted if his reputation hadn’t been at stake. Zero Dawn resulted on account of his desperation, not his cunning. Ted hadn’t learned a damn thing.

Lis snaps, “Your mistakes, I think you mean?”

“All I'm saying is, give it a kill switch.”

Elisabet finds herself surprised by the ferocity of her feelings. She’s nearly shaking, and fighting to contain it. The last person she’s comfortable breaking down in front of is Ted Fucking Faro.

“She was just born, Ted,” Elisabet snarls, anger the only anchor keeping her voice from wavering. “I'm not going to put a gun to her head while she's still in the cradle!”

“You talk like it's a child! What if it becomes a monster?”

Hearing the word monster applied to GAIA feels like slam to her gut, and the strung-out scientist felt more than ready to trade real blows with the asshole, if he were here instead of an image emitted from the conference pad. She's grateful he's not.

Before Elisabet can bite out a reply she might regret, a ball of light pops into the air by her side, audio smoothly interjecting the call.

“Elisabet,” GAIA says gently. “May I speak outside of protocol?”

There’s a pause, and Elisabet releases a breath she had not been conscious of holding. She turns to face the representation of the mind she's come to know so well, still on edge, voice terse as she swallows back scathing words meant for Ted.

“Of course, GAIA. Go on.”

She’s grateful for the interruption, but the pent up energy of her agitation washes over her, and she tucks her folded arms in tighter.

“I am sorry to contradict you”- and something in GAIA’s inflection truly sounds it- “but Mr. Faro's argument is sound. At this point, the development of my psyche is not entirely predictable. To ensure preservation of life, a hardwired override is, I believe, a necessary safeguard.”

The mix of emotions that follow- worry, a fresh resurgence of anger that GAIA had to hear everything Ted said about her, pride in GAIA agreeing to her own potential harm for the sake of her task- nearly break through Elisabet’s facade.

“There, satisfied, Ted?” she manages, unable to keep the aggression from her tone.

“Jeez, Lis. Just do what it says.” Ted looks uncomfortable too, she notes with mild satisfaction. So long as he doesn’t harangue her over GAIA’s eavesdropping next.

“What she says,” Elisabet hisses under her breath.

“What was that?”

She straightens up, gaze flat, settling her expression into a neutral mask. Elisabet can feel the pressure of the repressed panic writhing in her chest like a frightened animal trying to fight its way out, her breathing uncomfortably restricted.

“I'll see to it personally. GAIA's my responsibility.”

“Thank you, Lis. I know this isn’t-”

“Ted,” she cuts him off, completely unable to continue the conversation. “I’m busy, and this has only added to it.”

She jabs at the holopad’s interface, palms sweating, and collapses into the nearest seat at the table seconds after receiving confirmation of the call’s disconnection. She stares forward into the empty space, not really seeing, struggling to inhale, clenching and unclenching her fists.

GAIA says nothing but maintains her projection, dimming it further and drifting closer to Elisabet’s shoulder.

---

Elisabet knows the other Alphas will likely be as upset as she.

“What in the blazes is this?” Samina demands, a data tablet in hand, screen tilted to display a notice Elisabet copied to all of them. When the red-headed woman doesn't so much as look up from her desk, she lowers both the tablet and her voice, and steps closer.

“Elisabet, hey,” Samina tries in a more neutral tone, studying her face.

“If I am to write a Master Override for GAIA's system, in case...” Elisabet begins and immediately trails off, head resting heavily in one hand, almost idly flicking through data with the other. She bites her lower lip, her teeth pinching at the skin there the lone outward expression of emotion on her face.

“Elisabet–“ Samina repeats, but Lis inhales sharply and pushes forward with her answer.

”If something serious goes awry in any of her sub-functions rather than the core application, as”- Lis pauses for a beat- “awful as it is to consider,” she continues, “in a desperate situation, I'd rather have the means to wipe any and all of them individually than tear apart the entire project.”

The scientist finally shifts her gaze to her office guest – a movement of the eyes alone, features still frozen in place.

“I'm not entirely comfortable with any aspect of it, but GAIA is, so I'll respect her wishes,” she finishes. Lis withholds any acknowledgment of Ted’s involvement in the decision. She can only stand crafting the Override by considering it primarily GAIA's request. “I’ll need everyone’s cooperation in ensuring the termination protocol for each sub-function operates as intended.”

“Elisabet,” Samina echoes a third time, reaching out to clamp the scientist’s chin between her thumb and forefinger, gently tilting her head up to illuminate her features in the low light. Lis freezes, momentarily thrown off balance by the sudden touch, but doesn’t reject it either. Examining her, Samina says, “You’ve been chewing the hell out of your lips.”

Samina doesn’t say anything more - she doesn’t have to, Lis knows the other woman to be well aware of her full gamut of bad habits and tics, and the underlying distress they represent.

Samina always had a way of breezing past Lis’ defenses.

Elisabet often quietly carried a torch for a year or more before acting on it: observing anyone of potential interest, really learning their reactions and personality before making a move.

It hadn't been that way with Samina.

Caution hadn’t factored in the first time or, despite the warnings of hindsight, the second or third goes around, either.

After a beat of silence Samina retracts her grip, looking away. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to pry, or to charge in here on the attack.”

Without thinking, Elisabet reaches out and catches the other woman’s fingers in her own. “No it’s - it’s okay.” She’s trembling again, and she grasps Samina’s hand tighter than intended, as if it were a lifeline, but fights to keep her voice even. “What concerns did you have?”

Samina stares at her, one narrow eyebrow arching incredulously. “Lis, you are teetering on the verge of a panic attack and you still want to talk shop?” She shakes her head and glances to the looming glass wall. “No. Not in here, anyway.”

Samina steps around the desk, gently tugging at their connected hands. “Come on.”

Elisabet opens her mouth to protest, but catches the intensity of Samina’s gaze and closes it again. She nods, takes a few steadying breaths and stands, gathering a number of datapads on her way. Samina observes this quietly, but knows better than to challenge Elisabet’s need to bring some aspect of her work along.

They wind down the corridor to Elisabet’s quarters - they’re close, first available space to the offices, Lis’ preference. Elisabet hasn’t released her hold on Samina, and pauses by the bed to awkwardly begin shifting the tablets out from under her arm and into a stack on her nightstand.

“Hey, whoa,” Samina immediately offers her unconstrained hand as assistance, steadying the pile.

“I’ve got it,” Elisabet insists, her cheeks growing warm. She feels ridiculous, but can’t bring herself to untangle their fingers, though the skin between them has grown clammy from prolonged contact. Chagrin and gratitude war for dominance in Lis’ roiling emotional state, but the warmth of Samina’s hand grounds her, keeps her from dipping back into the dread she felt in beginning to code the Override. Elisabet takes a mental step back, trying to push her stubborn pride down. “I’m sorry. I mean - thank you, for the help.”

The quarters are sparse, each unit in the facility fairly identical, built in a hurry to accommodate the incoming specialists as quickly as the Zero Dawn extractions team could obtain and convince them. A bed assembled in the corner with a small nightstand at its base, a shallow closet for belongings, a few floating shelves built into the wall. Hospitality hardly factored into the design, as most waking moments were intended to focus on productivity - these weren’t jobs you came home from, they were an exhaustive sprint, a desperate rage against the dying of the light.

As such, Elisabet and Samina settle on the only available surface - Elisabet’s bed. She retains one of the datapads in her lap, its flickering display a safer place for her eyes to linger, tapping it lightly with her free hand as she clears her throat. “So,” she prompts, glancing quickly to Samina before refocusing on the screen. “What you came to speak with me about.”

Elisabet can feel Samina’s eyes linger for a long beat, assessing her. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Elisabet huffs out in return. “I’m tired, it’s been a hell of a day, but I’ll... be alright. I’d rather get this over with and back to development. I’ve been working with GAIA on propagating more animal anatomy into her creative assembly routines.” Satisfaction colors her tone, thinking on GAIA’s headway from the day before. “She’s already shown me some promising dynamic designs.”

“You always sound so proud of GAIA’s progression. She couldn’t have a better guide.” Samina smiles, the honest warmth visible there transferring to Elisabet’s cheeks. “If anyone can teach a computer to save the world, it’s you, Lis.”

Elisabet almost releases Samina’s hand, overwhelmed, a powerful impulse to hide her face from view jostling her nerves.

“I’m… you flatter me, Samina,” she says at length, hoping her quickened pulse doesn’t exacerbate the moisture gathering on her palms, “but you’re stalling. Seriously, I’ll be fine.”

A silence follows, and Elisabet stubbornly keeps her eyes glued to the device tilted up against her legs, wracking her mind for anything else she could say to convince Samina she wasn’t a total wreck. The lull in conversation, usually welcome, feels like a weight strung around her neck, adding tension to her shoulders.

With a soft sigh, Samina yields first. “I wanted to discuss the request for access codes, to begin crafting the overrides. We may all be collaborating on the end goal, but we encapsulated each aspect of the project for a reason.”

Returning to the subject does rouse the nervous hum in Elisabet’s brain. You said you were okay. You can do this. You’re a professional, you have to be able to talk about your own fucking project.

“I may trust you, Charles, Margo, Patrick, the others - maybe even Travis, where it counts?” She considers this for a moment. “Maybe. But the power to intercede on the integrity of each other’s work leaves so much additional room for error. I... don’t want a one-step deletion protocol.”

Elisabet grimaces, an echo of the chill she felt conversing with Ted creeping its way through her veins. “It… I’m far from pleased either, as I said. It genuinely will be restricted to the ten Alphas.” She swipes at the tablet in her lap. “The Override needs to be designed with speed in mind, however.”

She taps open a graph of how long corrupted data from one sub-system might take to transverse the entire GAIA network, and spins the screen to show Samina. “Every second will count.”

“I do understand it, and your drive to protect GAIA,” Samina offers, apologetically. “She’s the culmination of your life’s work, and more.” She squeezes Elisabet’s hand. “I feel the same about preservation of APOLLO. I just came to see you because I wanted to make sure we examined all the options.”

“That’s reasonable,” Elisabet murmurs, her voice a shadow of its usual force. Protect GAIA , yes, primarily... The gears in her head start turning on redundancies to minimize any potential need for use of the Override on GAIA the minute crafting the damn thing seemed inevitable.

Elisabet feels terrible that doing so involves putting each subordinate function directly in the crosshairs as well. Every piece of the project plays such important role for what is to come, and the loss of time dumping any aspect of them would represent could be catastrophic. The Alpha she selected for each, she did for very specific reasons - but brilliance and hyperfocus tended to ship as a package deal. Not fully comprehending what would and wouldn’t represent a fatal flaw in each other’s work broached a reasonable concern.

Ideas spring to mind, half formed, as they have most of the day, and Elisabet struggles to string together her next words. She wants to reassure Samina that use of the Override should likely never come to pass - least probably of all on APOLLO, as the historian’s sub-function is a repository of knowledge, not any true form of self-regulating network.

If she could just nudge the damn sentiment out of her mouth. Elisabet doesn’t believe it though, and the thought of adding exploits to all of them still leaves her physically ill.

Her chest feels too tight again, and she’s struggling to pull in enough air-

Samina reaches over and gently pries the tablet from Elisabet, leaning over to stack it on the mound of other devices before taking up her other hand as well. “You lied.”

The scientist is about to protest when the other woman clarifies firmly, “You’re not okay. You’re shaking.”

Elisabet chokes out a tiny huff of laughter. God, that she could shrink in on herself and disappear. She’s mortified, and the intensity of that emotion spirals inward, feeding on itself. “In… our conversation earlier, Ted accused GAIA of emotional instability.” Her head is spinning, and she’s glad they’re already seated. “Clearly he should have pinned that on me.”

“That pigeon-livered foozler shook you?” Concern dominates Samina’s demeanor, but something sharp snaps into her tone on the subject of Ted. “He lost any credibility worthy of your respect years ago.”

Elisabet shakes her head dismissively. “No, no, I mean-” In, two, three. Out, two, three. She tries to focus on her breathing rather than over thinking the words. “Of course, deflecting Ted Faro's bullshit is an art I mastered decades ago, I don't give a specter of a shit what he thinks.” She tightens her grip Samina’s hands, but still can’t meet the other woman’s eyes. “It's that he's not wrong on this.” Elisabet clenches her jaw. “A bit off the mark, but not entirely wrong.”

Samina runs her thumbs over Elisabet’s gently, in slow, circular motions - Lis knows the gesture is intended to be soothing, but it tickles, feels like sparks crackling against her skin.

“I should have designed these safeguards months back - when I first learned GAIA hacked her way out of the virtual machine I tested her in. An artificial intelligence breaking free of its restrictions is the first portent in practically every machines-ending-the-world science fiction ever written, I should have absolutely been genre savvy enough to take additional precautions.”

Samina snorts, a guffaw of amusement bursting from her lungs despite the situation. Elisabet glances up sharply, cocking an eyebrow in an expression that reads, it wasn’t that funny, Sam.

Shaking her head, Samina explains. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you I, just - the AI apocalypse has decidedly already arrived.”

Lis cracks a smile. “Point. The thought of, ‘how much more can we fuck things up anyway’ definitely factored into how cavalier I’ve been with this. The world to come still needs us, though.” The corners of her mouth take on a bitter edge. “What I’m saying is, GAIA's not emotionally compromised. I am.”

The thought of harming GAIA reminds Lis of the charred baby birds from her childhood, their ash-streaked bodies stone still in the grass. Of the dolphin slurry footage that hit the holo-networks when Faro’s Chariot line first started exhibiting a loss of control in their biofueling operations. It reminds her of not being there in time to see her mother, at the end. Life is so precious, and GAIA’s was a life she invited into this world with the lonely task of standing sentinel after all of them had gone. Elisabet’s instincts cried out that the least she could do was allow her the freedom to develop naturally, to make her own choices without fear of corporeal punishment, risks be damned.

But she wasn’t just any life. GAIA represented a superintelligence that could think circles around all of them. At this stage, should the ASI desire it, she could shut down every Zero Dawn facility, suffocate them all, and change course on her processes, and there wasn’t a damn thing any of them could do about it without that Override. You don’t build God, condemn Her to a life of solitude, and naively trust Her to play along.

Elisabet does trust GAIA, though.

“How do you figure?” Two breakdowns in the past hour and Samina is gently giving her the space to explain, rather than pointing it out. So goddamn patient. Lis feels like she’ll never live this down, but she’s grateful.

Elisabet finds herself staring at their intertwined hands, tracing the path of Samina’s thumbs with her eyes. “The Override entails one of two approaches, either a backdoor - purposefully leaving a vulnerability in the system - or writing what amounts to a virus, to shut GAIA off and zero fill the afflicted drives. Either feels like,” she stops and searches for the words, her ebbing panic leaving exhaustion in its wake, “a betrayal.”

She lifts her head, directly meeting Samina’s gaze at last. “And honestly, this is going to sound so fucking asinine in the face of all this, but - I’ve been lonely,” Elisabet admits, “just like GAIA, and speaking to her has admittedly been a source of… relief.”

“Lis,” Samina chides. There’s something fierce and passionate brimming behind the woman’s eyes, and Elisabet wonders if she’s imagining it. “To stay on your guard, whatever that necessitates, isn’t a betrayal. You’re shouldering so much on this project, it’s understandable to get caught up in it, and don’t think for a minute that Ted sees through you.”

She carefully extricates one hand to reach up and brush wayward strands of ginger back from Elisabet’s face. “Not a chance. I hardly can, and I’ve known you better, for far longer. He’s just upset by what he can’t personally get his hands on”- her mouth twists in disgust- “afraid of what he can’t control. You’re tough as hell and regardless of what you choose to do or not with the Override, you’ll have nothing but my respect.”

“I…” Elisabet’s emotions obstruct her reasoning, and she finds herself at a further loss for words. She feels her eyes sting with water buildup but doesn’t direct them away from Samina’s this time, drawn in, studying the light reflected in her dark irises for a quiet moment.

The declaration of confidence and physical proximity overwhelm Elisabet, a heat in her chest boiling up and sweeping away the vestiges of her tangled thoughts. She finds herself leaning forward into Samina, any internal protestations as to why this might be a mistake quickly quashed.

Their mouths meet, soft and still at first, and for a terrifying instant Lis worries she fucked up, that Samina isn’t going to respond. But an instant later Samina’s moving against her, slipping her tongue between Elisabet's lips. A wave of electricity ripples down Lis’ body, prompting another shiver, but this one has nothing to do with her anxiety. It has been what feels like an eternity, not just since Samina... since with anyone.

The sensation of hot breath on her face and fingers against her skin awakens something Lis disregarded in favor of her work for so long.

“Hey,” Elisabet mumbles when they part, the spark of the moment overcoming her nerves. “I... still love you, you know.”

Samina pauses to regard her for an instant, gentle fingertips tracing the line of her jaw. She hesitates, lips parting as if to speak, then responds not verbally, but by overtaking Elisabet's mouth with renewed vigor.

Elisabet manages more sleep than usual that night, but not until a few hours later.

Chapter Text

Elisabet wakes up alone and, while unsurprised, can't logic away the ball of tension settling in her gut. She reasons Samina slipped away to continue her work – she and Lis were two of a kind in that respect. The constantly sleep deprived roboticist knew Samina often urged her to catch up on sleep while burning the proverbial midnight oil just as low. An idea that couldn't wait likely struck the woman, and she disappeared to square away related details before it evaporated.

Elisabet feels hollow regardless, and hates herself for it, gritting her teeth at the selfishness of the emotion, how there simply wasn't time for this nonsense. Even disregarding the enormous task at hand, they were not a couple. It was ridiculous and unfair to expect anything of someone who had promised her nothing.

She considers calling Samina through her Focus, just to touch in, hear her voice, seek reassurance that she hadn't crossed a line the night before.

Snapping the triangular device to her temple and flicking it to life with a gesture, Elisabet scrolls through her contacts, outstretched fingers pausing to hover over the holo card for Samina. What would she even say?

A faint buzzing hum announces the projector in the little unit spooling up, and before Elisabet manages anything she might have regretted, GAIA’s projection flickers into existence, seated at the foot of Lis' bunk. Not the simple glowing orb, but the woman – image embellished with her usual flowing robes, and hair bound up artfully in a thick braid.

“Elisabet,” the artificial intelligence intones by way of greeting, “I am gratified you secured additional sleep.”

Lis finds herself tensing up, the sudden presence in an emotionally vulnerable moment sending a jolt of panic through her system. It's just GAIA. Relax.

She blinks at the figure. GAIA has not elected to take this form for quite some time.

“GAIA, uh.” Elisabet stumbles at pulling together a response, her mind momentarily blanking as she struggles to organize her emotions. “Yes, I suppose that was... for the best.”

She wipes at the corners of her eyes, brushing away the gravel of sleep and trying to refocus. Lis generally woke with her next responsibility already in mind, and the dissonance of today's distracted beginnings threw everything out of balance.

“How long was I out?” she asks GAIA, using the familiar question to regain a sense of routine.

“I am unable to accurately report the duration of your restful dormancy,” the program replies. “You did not initiate conversation as per your standard pre-sleep activity, and your teachings regarding privacy indicated I should discontinue observation.”

Ah. Right. Elisabet spoke with GAIA every night as she bedded down, but provided no forewarning prior to skipping their ritual yesterday. Another reason to feel guilty - just what she needed.

“Thank you, GAIA,” Elisabet replies, willing herself to stand up and begin sorting her appearance enough to return to her damn display box of an office. She hardly feels up to it, but she’s a no-show the project can never afford. Get your head in the game, Lis. “Any messages?”

Elisabet could easily check for this information through her Focus interface, but the extra sliver of time saved by letting GAIA read them to her as she showered and dressed proved valuable. They were on a literal countdown to the end of days and, though thousands of processes deep at any given moment, the activity did not impact GAIA’s productivity in the slightest.

The thinnest rationale? Maybe, as a number of smaller artificial voice-to-text assistants could be installed to accomplish the task. But most of those applications lacked the context awareness to summarize the contents of her inbox with any real accuracy, and none of them possessed the capacity to offer relevant advice.

“Affirmative. One correspondence from Charles Ronson, three from Travis Tate, and one from Anita Sandoval.”

Elisabet sighs. Despite herself, she’s momentarily disappointed not to hear Samina listed among them, but her tired brain circles around to the familiar sense of annoyance at Travis’ daily onslaught. “Anything of value from Tate?”

“His first message does provide the data you requested for incorporation of HADES into the Override protocols - in the fifth paragraph, trailing an enthusiastic recommendation of several pornographic materials, and reference to what Tate describes as ‘incoming vintage memes’.”

Shaking her head, Lis steps through the doorway of her shower unit - a small compartment linked off the room, not much larger than the closet - and twists the spigot on, GAIA’s audio continuing to emit from her Focus as their conversation proceeds. “The second and third?”

“Appear to primarily contain the script to an animated film featuring anthropomorphized bees.”

“Right, fine.” She closes her eyes, running fingers through her hair, massaging soapy water against her scalp. “Mark those two as read. What were Charles’ concerns?”

This message GAIA relays in full, and Lis dictates a response in the space of time it takes to clean up. The air of the facility is crisp compared with the water’s warmth, and she’s sorely tempted just to take care of everything from in here, speaking with GAIA, rather than face the day waiting beyond. Water begins pooling around her feet, exceeding the hastily constructed drainage system’s capacity to whisk it away, and an ingrained sense of guilt over wasting the precious liquid begrudgingly directs her out into the cold.

The projection of GAIA still appears seated on the edge of Elisabet’s bunk when she emerges, towel draped over her torso. Lis glances at the AI’s humanoid rendering and ducks into the closet to clothe. Albeit illogical - she knows regardless of form, the mind behind the image remains unchanged - GAIA’s choice of model leaves Elisabet feeling more self-conscious than usual regarding their morning routine.

“Thanks, GAIA. The final message - Anita?”

Elisabet put off consideration of what was likely to be the heaviest subjects for last, a tendency that often resulted in her much younger self failing to respond to such things in a timely fashion, or altogether. She would address any concerns with the necessary adjustments to her work itself, but communication never proved a strong point. Elisabet pushes through the task now, but still habitually sought a mental warm up, as it were, before digging in.

Dr. Sandoval served as a direct Beta beneath Lis on development and monitoring of GAIA’s personality subroutines, but the younger woman did not address her over holomail with much frequency. Lis enjoys and respects Anita but has a sinking feeling whatever she needs to discuss, it won’t result in a breezy conversation.

“Anita expresses concerns regarding the development of algorithms you assigned her yesterday, and requests a meeting at 11:00.”

“What concerns?”

“Dr. Sandoval does not elaborate, her request specifies a preference for details to be fielded in a private conversation.  Shall I send an inquiry for additional information?”

“No, GAIA, just… tell her I’ll take the meeting.”

“Affirmative, message relayed. Meeting to commence one hour and three minutes from now.”

“Ohh, fuck.” Elisabet runs a hand through her damp hair reflexively, the motion courtesy of a jolt of nervous anxiety. “It’s really that late?” She figured she’d slept in a touch, but hours beyond her usual start time does not a mere touch make.

GAIA takes a moment longer than Elisabet expects to reply, and she’s about to pose a more direct question with respect to the time when the AI answers, “The current time is 9:57, yes. Elisabet, may I pose a query outside of protocol?”

The answer comes reflexively.  “Shoot, GAIA.” Despite Elisabet never once turning the AI’s request for information aside, GAIA always asks.

“Query: what defines the experience of love?”

Fantastic. Explaining love first thing to a vast, artificial super intelligence while rocking a late start and the equivalent of an emotional hangover.

Sure, why not.

Elisabet finishes dressing and stops to lean against the entryway of her closet module, pinching the bridge of her nose. She fancies she feels a headache coming on. While there's temptation to cite time as an excuse and pick up the subject at a less overwhelming juncture, GAIA reaching this inquiry represents an important moment in her development, not to be easily brushed off to address at a later time.

Elisabet picks through her memories for an adequate description. If GAIA wanted a technical definition, she had access to editions of dictionaries originating from hundreds of societies, past and present. The developer knows the AI is requesting an explanation of the concept in practice, but thinking back on her life, Elisabet finds she hardly knows how to relay the experience.

“Love is... highly subjective in nature, but an expression of an attachment,” she muses. “For some, it's an abstract – humans often apply metaphors to the sensation, such as ‘stomach flips’ or ‘tummy butterflies.’”

“Query: Is the concept of love always comparative to gastrointestinal distress?”

“Ohhh no.” Lis steps back into view of GAIA’s projection, fingers pressed to her lips, swallowing a laugh. “No, that's usually more of the infatuation bit, generated by hormones and neurochemicals.”

The ethereal form of the woman appears to consider this seriously. “Query: As I lack hormones, am I incapable of experiencing love?”

“God, no, GAIA.” Elisabet crosses over to her bed and sits down beside the hologram. While the AI’s literal interpretations could be adorable, they fell closer to the earnest misunderstandings of a child than the technical limitations of a machine - included potential for hurt feelings and all. “That was just one possible explanation of the experience.”

She smiles genuinely at the projection, eyes tracing the geometry of her softly illuminated face.

“Love is often caring for someone a great deal – or something, love doesn't have to be romantic, or even about a person. It's a passion. Often a devotion, a willingness to go to great lengths for that individual, or whatever it is you care about.”

“By that definition,” GAIA observes, “I experience love for all living organisms, in a macro sense.” The hologram considers Elisabet in return, the representation of her eyes perhaps a bit too still, uncanny, though Elisabet knows GAIA actually ‘sees’ her through the image capture device embedded in her Focus. “And for you, on an individual level.”

Before Lis can respond, the ASI reaches up, insubstantial hand hovering centimeters from her face. She mirrors Samina’s actions from the night before, thumb and forefinger closing on her chin - and clipping right through it.

A lump jumps into Elisabet’s throat, her breath catching at the unexpected gesture. Though GAIA did not touch her in reality, the intention of the motion puts her nerves on edge, a phantom tingle emanating from the intended point of contact. It feels akin to the sensation of receiving an unexpected, genuine compliment - a gentle, wide spread tingle - pleasantly off-putting.

For an instant neither woman nor projection moves, the cool, self-illuminated pixels of GAIA’s fingers seamlessly bisecting the pale curve of Elisabet’s face. A second stretches an eternity before GAIA pulls back her hand, considering it, brows furrowing. “I am unable to demonstrate this caring using a traditional human approach.”

“GAIA…” Elisabet sucks in a sharp breath, idly noting a sting in her eyes. She hadn’t even realized when she began to tear up.

“You are crying. Query: Did I harm you in some way?”

“No,”  Lis assures her, quickly and firmly. “You absolutely did not, GAIA.” Where to even begin? “Emotional states unrelated to hurt can stimulate human crying. Cross reference… the Emotional Recognition CASIA Database, you should have expression descriptions in the documentation there, I think? Maybe?” Elisabet wipes the moisture from her cheeks, trying to focus. She’d approved adding a number of facial datasets for GAIA’s consumption just last week, but her memory of them felt hazy at best now. “God, I’m sorry I’ve been such a wreck, these past couple days.”

“Accessing.” GAIA tilts her head, attention drifting upward as if reading from an unseen screen. “Inundation of overwhelming emotion. Fear. Sorrow. Wonder. Joy.” The artificial intelligence absorbs this information, her expression so uncertain it makes Elisabet ache. An urge to physically comfort GAIA in response strikes Lis with a ferocity that surprises her; a frustration like listening to a distant friend recount a traumatic experience with no ability to provide real, tangible hugs, leaving her limbs feeling useless, too heavy.

The hand GAIA had been considering remains proffered, spread flat, and an idea strikes Elisabet. She extends her own hand to hover over top of GAIA’s still outstretched palm. Cupping her fingers as if to hold the projection, she lowers it gently, careful not to slip through the hologram and break the illusion.

GAIA blinks and refocuses on Elisabet, glancing from the woman’s face to their hands. She studies them, then mimics the gesture, curling her fingers slightly to match Elisabet’s.

“You can demonstrate it,” Lis insists, eyes sparkling. “In every way that matters, you can.”

Technically holding her arm in empty air, it begins to ache, but Lis ignores the sensation, maintaining steady a hand as she is able.

“If touch is important to you, we can see about finding a way for you to experience the sensation of it.” Now it’s Elisabet’s turn to slip into a faraway expression, mind already running through feasible options. ”Not now, but... I mean, once we’ve committed the final code on all your sub functions and locked all the facilities down, we’ll have the rest of my life to work on it. So maybe someday.”

The hologram’s face widens into a smile that doesn’t feel uncanny at all, fluid and warm. “In you, all things are possible.” GAIA has said this to Elisabet before, but she understands it now for what it is - not merely an expression of belief, but of trust and affection.

Elisabet lifts her other hand to mime resting beneath GAIA’s as well, still marveling at the charge she feels clasping the intangible. “I hope so. We’ve still so much work to do.”

---

After concluding her conversation with GAIA, Elisabet plucks away at a few bugs left lingering prior to the Override debacle, hoping to feel as though she’s accomplished something meaningful and clear her mind. She does this from the comfort of her room - silently thanking her past self for the bedside tower of tablets that render this a possibility. Digging into the work does help, but true to form a few of the bugs spring dozens more and by the time Elisabet gathers herself to attend her meeting with Anita, the slowly coalescing fog of a headache rolls in to encircle her brain. A sense of forgetting something important lingers, but determination of what must wait until after.

Setting out, a warm fragrance greets her in the hall and with an internal groan, Elisabet remembers precisely what she had been missing. A blonde man bun advancing on her position prompts the external grimace that follows.

“Heyyy Lizzy! You weren’t up an’ about in your office this morning to look down on us mere subordinate peons.” He catches up with her, flashing an impish grin and brandishing a mug of dark brown liquid directly in her path. “Thought maybe you could use some Blood Coffee to quicken your pulse.”

Elisabet stops a step short of bumping the cup, narrowing her eyes first at Travis, then the proffered beverage. Steam curls gently around the coffee’s surface. It’s quite hot, plainly freshly brewed.

“Is that really coffee from the Indo-Malay conflict? Where did you get ahold of this?”

“Espresso gen-u-inee enough for the makings of a conflict cappuccino, baby. An artist has his ways - nothing but the most ignoble caffeination will do to fuel a task metal as hard coding extinction.” Travis looks immensely pleased with himself. “It seemed appropriate, you know? Death beans and all.”

She sighs audibly, the sound purposefully dramatized. To say Travis Tate could be insensitive would be a gross understatement, but the sheer effort invested in irritating her represented a sort of game, like a bratty little brother might engage in to provoke an older sister. Lis struggles to restrain her expression from twitching to an incredulous upturn. “I didn’t think it possible for an entire personality to be profane, but here you are.” With a flick of her eyes, she pulls up the time on her Focus interface, grimace deepening slightly instead. “And why exactly are you and your death beans standing right here, in my way?”

“Margo stopped by my code dungeon earlier, I fancied maybe she was gettin’ sweet on me but she was just looking for you. Somethin’ about HEPHAESTUS’ material silos.”

“You fancy that about everyone.”

“And it’s always a possibility until proven otherwise.” She quirks an eyebrow, serving him a glare that would wither lesser men, or maybe just men with a greater sense of self-awareness. Men with any concept of shame.

He shrugs. “Hey, I’d smooch me. Just layin’ it out honest like.” When Elisabet doesn’t dignify him with a response, Travis jiggles the mug in what’s clearly intended to be an enticing gesture, a couple drops sloshing from the rim and dripping to the concrete floor. “So, coffee?”

She eyes the warm chestnut streams trickling down the side of the ceramic. “That’s caffeine abuse.”

“You gonna rescue it?”

Elisabet doesn’t really want to take the coffee on principle, but in her fluster this morning she had neglected to brew her own, the now recognizable pangs of caffeine withdrawal hammering at the inside of her skull. An incredible smell wafts from the tendered cup, and the haze of her brain clears momentarily in anticipation.

She does need coffee to survive today’s meetings with a clear head, and there simply wasn’t time to visit the break room before winding her way downstairs to speak with Anita.

“I suppose it doesn’t really matter now,” she grumbles, tucking a datapad beneath her arm and gingerly accepting the cup with both hands, holding it as one might a delicate, priceless artifact. “Plus you’ve already brewed it, and coffee’s coffee.”

“Hey now, you think I’d go to all this effort for an ordinary cuppa joe?” Travis presses a hand to his chest with an expression of mock indignation. “Never. You can really taste the exploitation.”

He was going for the hard sell. Elisabet wasn’t confident the beans were anything beyond the project’s ordinary selection of roasts regardless - no need for Tate to acquire the real thing just to unnerve his coworkers when a colorful tale could accomplish the task handily.

“I’m accepting this for the good of the world,” she retorts, still cradling the coffee close to her face, blowing lightly across its surface.

“Whatever you gotta do to sleep at night, that’s what this whole shindig’s about, innit?”

Elisabet freezes. Though Tate voiced skepticism that Zero Dawn could succeed from day one, even in jest that remark stung. She recalls listening through interview logs of the scientists who declined project participation, in the hopes of advising how to increase candidate retention. The voice of the now-detained Ron Felder still rang sharp in her memory: Sobeck is a total fantasist - a dangerous fantasist.

No, fear of failure likely accounted for the opposite; her near continuous restless nights, exhaustion a sensation so weighty it rested palpably on every inch of her frame.

She keeps her tone light, pushing the feelings down with practiced disregard. Lis expressed more than her usual share the night before, vulnerability a luxury she afforded herself in select company. “Choose your next words carefully, because you’re one smart-ass quip from being thrown off that balcony.”

Travis huffs, screwing up his face in a caricature of disbelief. “You ain’t got a mean bone in your body, Lizzy.”

Elisabet’s gaze falls flat. “Try me.”

---

The warm, somewhat nutty profile of the coffee confirms her suspicions, revealing it to be the french roast stocked in the second floor break room - Elisabet’s favorite out of what they were able to retain in inventory. Of course Travis couldn’t simply do her a favor without the accompanying show of harassment. She makes a mental note to thank him later regardless, wagering that doing so would be the gesture most likely to render him uncomfortable in return.

Immediately after Elisabet arrives at Anita Sandoval’s office, the younger scientist leads her to one of the enclosed anti-static labs set up for installation of new components and servers. She disconnects the single closed-circuit camera in the room’s corner and requests Elisabet’s Focus, depositing the latter alongside her own in a small box that looks to be printed from heavy, dark gray plastic.

“It’s a virus.” Dr. Sandoval was making a statement, not posing a question. “A virus intended to dismantle GAIA herself.”

Elisabet tilts her head in acknowledgement. She’s surprised at how quickly Anita discerned the purpose her assignment fit into, but not overly so. “It is. Why the cloak and dagger meeting arrangements?”

The brunette raps her knuckles on the box. “Faraday cage - no ears or eyes in here.” Anita takes in a deep breath, as if steadying herself. “The algorithms you sent me to work on, I recognize you compartmentalized the tasks as a security measure-”

“A precaution, yes.” Elisabet folds her arms, taking in her colleague's demeanor evenly. “And while I appreciate the gesture, going to extremes here, aren’t we?”

“I apologize, Dr. Sobeck - but circumstances dictated I speak my peace somewhere secure, off the ‘Net.”

Anita seems sincere, and Elisabet knows this to be far from her first loop around this particular specimen of merry-go-round. The delicacy of machine sentience was a turbulent ordeal at best, and Anita’s experience factored heavily in her selection for Zero Dawn. “No need, go on then.”

“I know GAIA’s not mine to fuss over, but you don’t give life to a new species and then engineer a disease to match lightly...” Antia hesitates, seeming to search for the right words.

“I don’t take it lightly,” Elisabet assures, “and you do have a say. GAIA belongs to no-one, but all of us have a responsibility to her.” Though genuine positivity continues to elude her this morning, Lis puts on what she hopes will read as an encouraging smile. “To life. That’s what we signed up for.”

Antia nods and glances away, studying the assortment of tools scattered across the surface of the work bench to her left. She plucks up a bright yellow electrostatic discharge bracelet and distractedly turns it over in her hands.

“As former associate director on VAST SILVER, and to accept my role in development on CYAN, the official position I had to take was to condemn the Center for the Liberation of Bodiless Intelligence when they... acted out, in an attempt to secure AI rights,” she hesitates, “but they had a point.”

Elisabet knows Anita refers to the protests surrounding the establishment of the metric for ‘limits’ on artificial intellect, the MIE. She’s all too well aware of them on a number of fronts, least of which the technical illegality of GAIA.

“Considering where we’re standing,” Lis quips, gesturing to the gently blinking server farm visible beyond one of the lab’s wide windows, “you know I don’t disagree. ”

She does understand the other scientist’s statement as the question it is, though. It’s cautious and subtle, but Anita is asking Elisabet if she feels the same way about GAIA.

Anita’s answering chuckle sounds forced, but her demeanor relaxes visibly. “I figured, but that still was important to hear.”

The ill-masked worry etched on her colleague's face is painfully familiar to Elisabet, and she really can’t blame the woman for probing. “I would never intentionally hurt GAIA.” The words carry an edge she really doesn’t intend them to. “The virus we’re building - the Override - is an overdue emergency response system, nothing more or less.”

“Ordinarily I wouldn’t question a precaution like this, but-” Anita grimaces. “I wanted to make sure the requests were really coming from you.”

Lis quirks an eyebrow, shifting her weight to lean against the work table as she senses the conversation’s likelihood of length. Mercifully, the slight give of the dissipative mat coating its surface does provide a reasonably comfortable seat. “What would lead you to suspect otherwise?”

The younger woman idly separates and reclasps the velcro on the bracelet in her hands. “You know attempts have been made on our servers, correct? All kinds of conspiracy nuts out there - with Faro bankrolling this party and the amount of time Zero Dawn appears to be taking, there are those who believe the Swarm was... not an accident, that Zero Dawn isn’t a solution, and they want to ‘expose’ us.”

Elisabet feels the hairs on her arms stand up, and tells herself it’s just a byproduct of the chill expected of an enclosed lab. “That’s why I’ve stopped keeping up with all but the most cut and dry holomedia feeds. Too distracting.” She folds her arms, imperceptibly rubbing her hands just above her elbows to calm the gooseflesh budding there. “But, god, what a nonsense idea - intentionally setting those nightmares loose? To what end?” Lis nearly laughs at the bitter sensation welling in her gut, and elects not to censor her thoughts. “There’s no profit in global mass extinction. Faro will have no one left to sell his death machines to.”

Anita scoffs derisively, cementing Elisabet’s supposition that they stood firmly on the same page. “Right? Classic flat earther level absurdity.” She shrugs. “From what I’ve read they believe it can be stopped at any time, that it’s a... culling or something of the like. Folks used to believe similar nonsense about the Submergence and the Die Off. That FAS stepped in to tidy up the aftermath of all that feeds into their current strain of gibberish.”

Elisabet blanches. That cleanup was her work. That people out there thought ill of their intentions, and that they believe so now…

She can live with it, she has to. It hardly matters in the scheme of things, but she would be lying to herself to pretend this revelation doesn’t feed the guilt that eats at her, grumbling and hungry, lurking just beneath the surface of most everything she did.

The Swarm wasn’t her fault, and she’d told Ted his war machines were an unconscionable concept. Though sometimes she still feels she could have done something more to stop him, something beyond just walking away from the job.

Sometimes her memories intruded to remind her she had been in a position to influence him, but her stomach turned in revulsion just thinking on the conversation that preceded her resignation from FAS.

But those vague what-ifs pale in comparison to the reality of Zero Dawn. Anyone who suspects a conspiracy of sorts wasn’t wrong, exactly. Yes, literally every detail is wrong, but they are being lied to.

And they are all going to die.

“Faro all the way down, or something,” Anita muses into the silence Lis hadn’t realized she’d left hanging for so long. “Ugh, yeah no, so much less charming than turtles. Scratch that, forget I said that.” The brunette shudders in disgust, shaking her head. “You’re right about the distracting. I do wish I hadn’t dug through that nonsense, but that’s off the point.”

Elisabet clears her throat. “Every part of that is wild. I suppose we should marvel at the creativity of human beings, and their drive to paint a cartoonish degree of villainy behind every event.” She allows her arms to fall back to her sides, attempting to appear relaxed. “Ted’s an ass, and responsible for an amount of terrible that can never be understated, but he’d never deliberately commit murder.”

She rethinks her words nearly the instant she speaks them, and waves a hand at Anita’s resulting eyebrow-peaked expression, clarifying, “not directly anyway.”

“Creativity is a generous way to word it.”

Elisabet sighs. “They’re afraid. People believe irrational things even with respect to far more mundane fears, so where we are now, what they’re facing... I can’t say I’m overly surprised”

“As to the attempts on ZD’s servers, I did read your memos on the previous handful of incidents, yes. So I was aware, if not regarding the potential motivations behind it - but I thought none of them had even targeted the correct network?” Elisabet habitually begins the motions necessary to pull up the documents in question for verification, before remembering her Focus is not currently affixed to her face. She clenches her jaw, passing it off as an intentional gesture to tuck hair behind her ear. “I believe your reports indicated they got caught up in the dummy servers at the Department of Defense?”

Before Anita can respond, movement catches her eye, and she follows the progress of a staff member walking through the server room to deposit a crate off to one side. He catches her gaze by accident, startles, and waves at them awkwardly. She raises her hand slightly in acknowledgement, and Lis turns to do the same.

“I don’t think I’ve seen him before,” Anita observes.

Lis squints at dark shoulder-length hair and sharp facial features, trying to place them. “One of the hardware suppliers FAS contracted, if I recall. Not generally in this facility.”

She misses her Focus, again - any Zero Dawn staff was registered in a roster she kept downloaded to the little device. The chagrin of not recalling someone’s name, eliminated by way of holographic labeling.

Despite the generous girth of glass separating them, the pair wait a beat to continue speaking. The pause in conversation sets Elisabet’s nerves on edge, the unease surrounding everything else she ought to accomplish today creeping in to replace it.

“No one had, until now,” Anita replies once the tech passes completely out of view. “I detected an effort to hack GAIA’s primary servers last night.”

An icy deluge of fear sloshes through Elisabet’s veins at the news. “Did they access anything sensitive?” Her mind paces through unpleasant possibilities. “Was anyone able to trace the identity of the hacker?”

”No, no, they never made it past the firewalls on the outer network nodes. But someone knowing, just knowing where to look to scratch the surface of the system, makes the risks inherent in coding this Override tenfold.”

Elisabet sucks in a breath. “It does. Though if you’re looking to convince me not to, let me preface that it was this or a backdoor, and I’m not leaving vulnerabilities for future people to exploit.”

“I understand.” Anita affixes the anti-static band to her wrist, still fiddling absently, though her attention remains clearly on Elisabet. “The timing just… concerned me. You were right to be cautious about assigning work on the Override.”

“Even disregarding external parties, I would have.” Elisabet trusts everyone she personally selected for the project, but to the extent that she holds utmost confidence in their work. Beyond that, the scale and time frame involved plenty of individuals she had only a passing awareness of, like that tech delivering boxes of drives a moment before.

“Who all knows the larger picture?”

“Aside of myself - and you, quite swiftly deduced by the by -” the younger scientist lights up at Elisabet’s compliment “- the Alpha leads and, unfortunately, Ted Faro.”

Anita hums thoughtfully. “You know - permission to speak candidly?” Elisabet nods, and Anita continues. “My primary experience of Ted Faro prior to this project involved continuous fawning from the neurotic security lead we were saddled with on Project Firebreak.” She leans forward conspiratorially. “Garbage worshipping garbage.”

Elisabet suppresses a chuff of laughter. “Dangerous garbage.”

“From what I’ve observed, if anyone can keep Faro under wraps, it’s you.”

The mixture of distress and guilt that lurked in her gut stirs uncomfortably. “I hope that’s true.”

Anita shrugs, absent-mindedly twisting the grounding clamp wired to the bracelet around her finger. “Where I meant to go with this was, working on Firebreak, given the necessity of concealing CYAN’s true MIE score?” Anita moves to sit against the work table as well, clearly settling in for the long haul. “I had to deal in a lot of compartmentalizing myself, and had some suggestions for you.”

This, this is precisely why Lis hired Dr. Sandoval. “Let’s hear them.”

The pair of scientists fabricate a secure approach for fragmenting functions to mask the intentions of their coding, and divide the acquisition of the necessary equipment across multiple departments. Workarounds for problems presented thus far in application are proposed as well, and Elisabet’s about to retrieve her Focus to note them when much to her bemusement, Anita produces a moleskin journal and a pair of ballpoint pens.

Nearly an hour later, sitting cross-legged on the table, lines of code are handwritten and Lis finds the experience cathartic. She hasn’t notated script longform in… decades, and she’s surprised how refreshing the analog approach feels. Ink stains a few of her fingertips by the time she does collect her Focus to leave, and she finds her mood considerably lightened.

Stress temporarily muted, thoughts that had been buzzing about the back of her mind since that morning sneak to the forefront and Elisabet considers the parallels of their experiences. They’d never spoken on it directly, but Lis gets the strong impression that Dr. Sandoval misses the AI she developed for Firebreak.

She pauses at the door. “Anita.” The other scientist looks up at the use of her first name. “In your work with CYAN, did she ever express… affection for you?”