Chapter Text
When Ana and Mina meet, Ana rather expects that she is going to hate Doctor Liao, given all that she has heard of the woman. It is no secret that Doctor Liao’s work on artificial intelligence was instrumental at Omnica Corp, and it is no secret either that the esteemed doctor still stands by her work, believes that artificial intelligence is not inherently evil, is in fact more likely to be good, even as the death tolls reported on the news every day argue otherwise.
Why Gabriel wants to recruit a woman like this is beyond Ana, who does not want to be anywhere near a proponent of artificial intelligence right now and certainly does not trust the woman whose work caused the Omnic Crisis—a war they are very much still fighting—to watch her back. Doctor Liao has never even been in the field.
Neither had Torbjörn, when they recruited him a few weeks ago, and Ana can admit that perhaps there is a double standard at play here, but he always argued against AI, never trusted the tech, even when he worked at Omnica Corp. That distrust is a comfort to Ana now, even if she prefers to rely on her own instincts and abilities over his technology. At least his work is on weapons of war, something that can be useful to Ana in the field, and not artificial intelligence. Unless they intend to fight the Omnics with more Omnics, Ana hardly sees the point in recruiting Doctor Liao, unless it is to ensure she is not doing anything else.
(That, Ana would not put past Gabriel. He has always preferred to keep his enemies close at hand.)
Given the state of the world right now, Ana does not think she can be faulted for not being ready to trust Doctor Liao. Anyone who can look at the way things are at present, with Omnics pushing for the extinction of humanity—genocide, it would be called, were they the same species—and argue that artificial intelligence can be used to enhance the world, to help humanity, is either a fool or on the side of the Omnics. That is a fact.
And so Ana knows she will not like this Doctor Liao, because she knows that the woman is no fool.
She does not particularly attempt to hide this feeling, either. When she and Jack are sent by Gabriel to recruit Doctor Liao, Ana leaves it to Jack to grin widely and welcome her—something he is good at, appearances—and stays back, silent. There is nothing she has to say to Doctor Liao which would encourage her to join this new strike team Gabriel has been asked by the United Nations to form.
Gabriel knows this, knows how Ana feels, but he knows, too, that she is a good soldier, and given the order to say nothing out of line she will follow it. All she has to do is be there; Gabriel thinks that Doctor Liao will be more likely to join this little military venture of theirs if she knows they are not all men with more firepower than sense. The optics of her presence Ana can understand, and so she agreed to go and is here still, visibly not a man, with an accent that makes clear that she is not Western, either.
That is important—it is. And it is something Ana pushed for, when she saw Gabriel’s other two recruits, a pair of white Europeans. Beggars cannot be choosers, of course, and the war has made beggars of them all, but Gabriel understood Ana’s concerns when she brought them to him; after all, he himself is a man of color, and he knows what the United Nations has done in the past, what agendas it has advanced, even if he is an American citizen. It is important that they not be mostly white men, if they are to save the entire world, if they are to remind themselves that the priority targets, the cities worth saving in the eyes of the United Nations, should not all be in Europe or North America.
(Of course, Ana’s husband and daughter are in Canada right now, because the Omnic Crisis came slower there than in Egypt, and so she, too, may be biased towards assisting certain cities there, but that is not what this team they are forming is for. At least ostensibly, they are meant to protect the whole world, as best they are able.)
So, on the surface, Ana ought to be happy about the recruitment of Doctor Liao—she is everything Ana wanted on their team, a woman, a non-Westerner, and someone with intimate knowledge of their enemy.
But, of course, Doctor Liao is sympathetic to the enemy, to Omnics, and so in the end, no matter how excited Ana would have been by her recruitment under other circumstances, she knows she is not going to like Doctor Liao. Some things are more important than identity, and Doctor Liao is a person all her own, not just an amalgamation of the labels the world has thrust upon her.
Her introduction, however, is just that: a title. “I’m Doctor Liao,” says she, hand soft but grip firm as she greets Ana, repeating the handshake offered her by Jack.
“Captain Amari,” Ana replies, not stiff, exactly, but certainly not warm, not welcoming, voice clipped. She will not be rude—knows better than to be, was taught so by her mother—but she does consider it.
“I look forward to working with you,” says Doctor Liao, and she sounds genuine enough, but Ana is certain, too, that this is a phrase she has repeated hundreds of times in her professional life.
After all, Ana has often said the same. Instead, however, today she says, “It will be an honor,” and does not specify for whom. To be kind to Doctor Liao is beyond her, particularly after hearing the woman pitch her ideas to Jack—her stubborn insistence that AI is an extension of humanity’s legacy, and not currently contributing to its downfall.
At least Doctor Liao is not insistent that they be friendly immediately, she supposes. All of the others on the strike team are on a first name basis with one another, and Ana has been forced into that position by extension, despite preferring a bit more formality in her relationships with her coworkers. Soldiers need to be close to trust one another, yes, but she has earned her rank, as they have earned their own, and it still feels wrong to not use titles, and to immediately jump to first names.
That makes exactly one thing Ana likes about Doctor Liao. It is hard, as a woman in Ana’s career, to advance as she has, and she vastly prefers that people recognize that accomplishment by using her proper title than default to the use of her first name. Likely, Doctor Liao feels similarly—her field, too, is one dominated by men.
But one good thing does not a good relationship make, and Ana is certain she will not like this Doctor Liao.
(That she was certain she would not like Jack and Gabriel, also, is not lost on her. But her reasons for distrusting them had nothing to do with their personal opinions; she did not want to like them as people, because they were American soldiers who were sent to Egypt to help combat the Omnics there only after the fighting threatened to boil over near the border. Ana was, she thinks, perfectly justified in distrusting two Americans sent to her country in defense of Israeli interests. That she eventually came to trust them, and even to like them, is beside the point—particularly when she only grew close to them because her commanding officer, knowing Ana has a Canadian husband, made her be the point person to communicate with the Americans, and not because she wanted to spend time with them—for what she disliked and distrusted about them was caused by the people giving them orders, and not something about the men themselves. What she dislikes in Doctor Liao is a belief that the woman holds, is something about her as a person, and Ana doubts she will learn anything any time soon which changes her feelings on the matter.)
Yet here is a second good thing about Doctor Liao: she sleeps on planes.
That means that for now, at least, Ana is spared having to make small talk, or forcing politeness. There will be enough of that in the coming days, given that Doctor Liao agreed immediately to join them, and is having her luggage sent to her at their makeshift headquarters, rather than delaying to pack.
Personally, Ana is not comfortable with the idea of someone else moving her, does not like the idea of strangers poking through the most intimate parts of her life, herself, abhors the idea of others putting those things into boxes and labelling them. She can, however, respect that expedience is for the best in times like this, and understand that Doctor Liao is choosing to personally inconvenience herself in order to work alongside them because she, too, thinks that the Omnic Crisis is too pressing a matter to justify any delay.
That is, perhaps, a third good thing about Doctor Liao. She may advocate for artificial intelligence, may believe still in her work which has gone so terribly awry, but she does at least recognize, on some level, the importance of ending the Omnic Crisis, even if it may mean the destruction of her life’s work.
So she is not, it seems, entirely foolish or entirely sympathetic to Omnics, even as she argues that artificial intelligence does not have to be like this.
Perhaps she ought to think more carefully about to whom she is making that argument, but she does, at least, realize that her own opinion on the matter is secondary to the survival of others.
Again, Ana does not think that this excuses the doctor, nor does she think that, were she in Doctor Liao’s position with the same beliefs, she would be so vocal about them—but perhaps there is a bravery, in Doctor Liao’s insistence for advocating for something in which only she believes right now, despite the consequences.
A bravery, or a callousness. Which, Ana has yet to decide.
She is still trying to determine that, when Jack speaks, bringing her back to the present and out of her thoughts.
“You’re staring awfully hard,” he tells her, and there is an underlying amusement in his voice that Ana does not like the sound of.
“I am not staring,” says she, although she is, of course, but not in the way Jack’s amused tone implies.
“Of course not,” Jack says, “You’ve just been looking intently in her specific direction since we met her.”
“I don’t know what you’re implying,” Ana says. “I have a husband.”
(She is bisexual, and Jack knows this about her, because she told him when he came out to her so that he would never question how she felt about his sexuality. That she is more frequently attracted to men, and has never actually acted on her attraction to women, is not something that he is privy to, however, and it is a bit of a sore spot for her. Exploring that part of her sexuality never felt safe when she was already pursuing a career which made her seem less than a woman in the eyes of some—she did not want to further her mother’s insistence that she is a failed woman by daring, too, to not be ‘straight’—and she is as a result still a little uncomfortable, at times, when other people acknowledge that she is attracted to women.)
Jack makes a sound that is half-choking, despite the fact that he is neither eating nor drinking anything. “That,” says he, “Is not what I was implying.”
Oh. “What were you implying, then?” asks she, hoping to distract him from that part of the conversation.
“Only that she isn’t one of your targets,” Jack says, “Honest.”
“Why don’t I believe that?” People who insist that they are being honest rarely are.
“Because you aren’t a trusting person,” Jack tells her—he is joking, of course, still teases her about her initial distrust and dislike of him and Gabriel, which, given the rather frosty reception she gave them, is only fair play. “Unless you typically give people you find attractive a death glare.”
“I don’t,” Ana says, “And I’m not attracted to her.”
(This is not a lie—although later, it will be. Later, Ana will look at Mina, and wonder how she did not notice, before, the myriad of enchanting things about her. She will look, will see that Mina is beautiful, that she always has been, and she will tell herself that what she feels is not love, is just admiration and maybe a little lust.)
“I never said you were,” Jack says, and he has noticed by now that Ana is not comfortable with the direction this conversation is taking, must have, because his tone is sincere and not joking. If she wants to drop this, he will let her.
And she does. She definitely, definitely does. Even were she not very happily married to a wonderful man, Ana has no interest in romance with a coworker—especially one whom she has any sort of seniority over. Even this discussion, misunderstanding though it was, is not really an appropriate conversation to have about one’s new coworker, particularly in her earshot.
As a woman in the military, that is something Ana is keenly aware of—that one all too often attracts unwanted attention from those with whom one serves. Usually, that attention comes from straight men, but Doctor Liao does not know Jack is gay, and may be even more uncomfortable with a woman finding her attractive, for all that Ana knows.
(Ana certainly hopes that would not be the case, because if Doctor Liao is homophobic then things will be even worse than Ana imagines they will be already. But she knows, too, that one never can tell.)
Even if Ana does not like Doctor Liao, she does not want to make her uncomfortable, does not want her to feel unsafe. All too often, Ana has been made to feel that way herself, and amusing as her misunderstanding of Jack’s implication may have been in another context, this is not one in which she finds that sort of thing at all acceptable, even from herself, even knowing that her intentions were good.
There are some lines which ought not be crossed.
(And true, too, is this—Ana has a hard time not feeling like her attraction to women is an uncomfortable, unwelcome, threatening thing. No matter how innocent her intentions have always been, when it comes to finding women attractive, she knows that some people are keenly uncomfortable with her sexuality and she does not want to contribute to the same discomfort she has so often felt when men whom she does not know, does not like, have made advances toward herself. She knows it is not the same, but it is hard to unlearn what her mother taught her about women like herself.)
Part of the reason, Ana knows, she feels so strongly about thi, is because if Doctor Liao had been another woman, one with different opinions, she would be exactly the sort of person Ana finds attractive. Warm brown skin, kind dark eyes, long black hair—nearly every person to whom Ana has been attracted fits that description. And Doctor Liao has, too, other features Ana likes, thick eyebrows and eyelashes, full lips, high cheekbones. Her face is smooth, rounded, and not angular, it is true, but it suits her features well, and Ana thinks—
—Ana does not think anything, because this is not the sort of thought to be having.
Doctor Liao stands for everything Ana does not, when she defends her work on artificial intelligence, and Ana cannot get past that fact. No pretty face has ever made acceptable ugly views, and when the same artificial intelligence Liao defends threatens the life of Ana’s daughter back home, her sweet Fareeha, then she cannot make excuses for such a stance.
If the saying that opposites attract is true, then it must mean opposites like Ana and Sam, not like this. It must mean the fact that she, a soldier, loud and brash and fast to act, has fallen for a man so peaceful and calm as her husband. While she never hesitates, is quick always to act, relies on her instincts to survive in the field, her husband is slower, more deliberate, considers everything about a given situation before acting—and freezes in a crisis.
They complement one another, because the worst extremes each of them tend towards average out, and because they can tolerate one another’s differences, even appreciate them.
One cannot tolerate or appreciate a difference in opinion which is so extreme as to threaten the lives of the people one loves.
Ana cannot tolerate Doctor Liao’s insistence that artificial intelligence be preserved, not when her sweet baby Fareeha—no longer a baby, in truth, but quickly becoming a toddler in Ana’s absence, her personality and personhood truly emerging—has lived her whole life in the shadow of a war which threatens their entire species.
And that is that. Ana does not like Doctor Liao, because when she says that she cannot look past that viewpoint, she means it. Doctor Liao’s work has killed millions of people already, and things are going to get far worse before they get better. To still believe in her creations in light of that is, to Ana, unconscionable, no matter how Doctor Liao looks, no matter how she acts. So long as Omnic existence is an inherent threat to humanity, that opinion will not, cannot change.
But Doctor Liao does not make things easy for Ana in the coming weeks.
This is not to say that Doctor Liao is working against them, or impeding their work in any way—she is doing quite the opposite in fact, is as invaluable as Gabriel said she would be in understanding how Omnics think and helping them to predict where and when the Omnics will strike next, such that they can, collectively, better resist their enemy, can save more lives, can protect more innocents. For the first time, battles feel like they have been won, and not just fought to a draw.
It would be foolish, therefore, for Ana to pretend that Doctor Liao does not want the Omnic Crisis to end just as much as the rest of them do. From her actions, and the strength of her contributions, it is clear that such is not the case, that she does not sympathize with the Omnics which are attacking humanity.
It is the others for whom Doctor Liao advocates, and although Ana still is not ready to accept their innocence—remembers how quickly things changed, when the Omnic Crisis began, literally overnight Omnics in every city turning on humans en masse in what was clearly a coordinated strike. Any Omnic might still do that, even if Doctor Liao’s theory that they are all being controlled by a few malevolent AI programs with override capabilities is true.
When Doctor Liao proposes that, her theory that God Programs, as she calls them, are responsible for the Omnic Crisis and not the common Omnics fighting, it does make sense to Ana, even if she is not entirely certain she believes it. If Omnics are as sophisticated AI systems as Doctor Liao insists, one would think they would have some manner of ability to resist, given that they supposedly have free will.
But as time passes, it does seem like Doctor Liao might be right. More and more evidence mounts, and Ana begins to think that yes, this answer may be the correct one; all malevolent Omnics being controlled by a few central sources would explain the fact that despite having free will, and being discrete entities, they so effectively move and act as one. Surely, one might have defected otherwise, or surrendered, or bargained upon being captured—self-preservation is a hallmark of free will, after all—but they have not.
Still, Ana thinks Doctor Liao’s position on artificial intelligence in general, though perhaps not so ill-intentioned as she initially believed, is hopelessly naïve. If Doctor Liao is right about these God Programs, then any new Omnic that is created, no matter how good, could fall victim to them, could still be taken over and weaponized against their own will. Furthermore, assuming the God Programs organically reached the decision to exterminate humanity, as opposed to being programmed by a human to do so, then there is no saying that it will not happen again with other AI, no way of knowing whether or not this problem is endemic to artificial intelligence or not.
(There is an old movie Ana remembers watching with Sam, back before the Omnic Crisis, when she was at home with him on maternity leave, waiting on Fareeha to arrive, and things were still hopeful. In it, a ship’s computer, commanded to complete a task by its human masters, concludes that it cannot succeed while humans survive—that the very nature of humanity is a threat to the completion of its mission. So it turns on the people, and it kills them. If something like that is what caused the Omnic Crisis, what will stop humanity from accidentally programming such a contradiction again? Ana does not bring this up to Doctor Liao, because she knows that watching some very, very old movie her husband showed her is not at all comparable to the decade of expertise Doctor Liao has in the field of artificial intelligence, but still she wonders.)
Ana cannot ignore that Doctor Liao is fighting beside them, is undeniably not supportive of what Omnics are doing right now—but she cannot ignore, either, that Doctor Liao seems to dismiss the very real fear others have of creating more artificial intelligence as being somehow against progress, or something akin to it. No one will dissuade her, when all of this is over, from trying again. Ana is certain of that. No one will stop her from building her better Omnic.
And what does that say about her?
It says she is determined, which is undeniably a good thing. It says that she sticks to her principles, which, too, is good. It says that she is dedicated to her work.
On the other hand, it says some less favorable things. Others’ discomfort is less important to her than her own pursuit of progress. Others’ concerns are dismissed, because they do not have the same educational background as she. Others’ fear, learned from the horror of this war, is seen as prejudiced and backwards, rather than the result of a desperate struggle to survive and a tremendous sense of loss.
So Ana cannot decide whether or not she thinks Doctor Liao is a good person, really. She is certainly a very complicated one—like many people are—and not nearly so bad as Ana feared. What, beyond that, Ana thinks of her, she does not know just yet.
What Ana does know is this: she does not want to like Doctor Liao, because to like her feels like a betrayal, like she is somehow spitting in the memory of the people who died in the course of this war by saying that someone who argues for the continued existence of artificial intelligence is not that bad, really.
What Ana does know is this: there are things about Doctor Liao she certainly does not dislike, even if she does not feel the need to say as much to the other woman.
This is not to say Ana is rude—she is not. She even apologizes, that very first day, for having stared, says that she did not want to make Doctor Liao uncomfortable, was only still sleep deprived after a long flight and not at her best. None of that is a lie, but it certainly is not entirely true, either.
Nonetheless, Doctor Liao accepts her apology with grace, and has an apology of her own, for having fallen asleep so quickly on the plane, and for not having attempted to draw Ana into the conversation when Jack gave his recruitment pitch.
I didn’t mean to ignore you are her exact words, and Ana, too, accepts the apology, because she did not feel ignored, and in fact quite likes to be overlooked by people whom she dislikes, so she truly did not mind.
Ana would not say that Doctor Liao is polite—because although she is not impolite, exactly, to say that she is polite implies something about her intentions in doing so which is not the case. Doctor Liao is not nice to people because it is the right thing to do, because it is proper, but rather is so because she sees the best in other people, always, and therefore does not want to be rude to them, does not want to be cruel or cause offense.
That is, of course, an admirable trait in most circumstances, and Ana can appreciate that kindness is important, even if she, herself, is not so kind a person, is much quicker to assume the worst of another.
In any other acquaintance, Ana would find this kindness to be a purely good thing—and in most other people, it would be—but in Doctor Liao it manifests itself in the belief that one can find the best in anyone, even Omnics, that they are not all evil, even as they are trying to destroy humanity, and that they have potential, still, to do and be good.
Even if Doctor Liao is right about the God Programs—and she may well be—that does not mean that all the Omnics who were built for this conflict can be redeemed, in Ana’s eyes. One follows the orders one is given; she understands this as a soldier, but some orders are unacceptable, and if Omnics truly do have even a modicum of free will, then each of them must bear the responsibility for their own actions. Some things are irredeemable, and that is a fact.
So niceness is not an inherently good trait, and granting clemency is not always a value-neutral action. This Ana believes, and continues to believe even when they capture an Omnic ‘alive’ and bring it back to Doctor Liao to study, even when she successfully deprograms it—proves that yes, it was not the one in control when it helped to slaughter the city in Switzerland they captured it in.
Sometimes, to forgive a person is not one’s own choice. It was not Doctor Liao whom the Omnic killed, was not her family, not her friends. If they capture one of the Omnics in Cairo, Ana will not be judged for killing it.
(Because she knows Doctor Liao would judge such an action; this is the limitation of forgiveness, of kindness, of niceness, the danger of it. Some forgive too much, forgive suffering which was not theirs to, and cannot understand when others will not, or cannot, do the same.)
But Ana cannot deny that Doctor Liao’s kindness has not made her life easier, at times. It is Doctor Liao who notices when Ana’s favorite tea is running low and puts in a requisition for more, is Doctor Liao to whom Ana can express her fears, her pain, her grief, without fearing that she will seem weak, because Doctor Liao is not a soldier, does not know that Ana is supposed to have hardened her heart to this, because Doctor Liao is not a man, will not think of Ana as lesser for having the same feelings as the rest of her team does, even as they refuse to express them, and because Doctor Liao is kind, too kind, will forgive things which are not hers to forgive, when Ana most needs to be told that yes, she is a good person and yes, she has been forgiven for what she has had to do.
“Thank you,” Ana tells her, late one night, when she confided at 03:30 that she feared it was her own failure to act quickly enough which resulted in unnecessary civilian casualties—one of whom was a toddler around Fareeha’s age, their tiny body a reminder of the person whom she is fighting hardest to protect, a terrifying vision of what the future could hold if Ana fails again.
“You would have done the same for me,” Doctor Liao tells her.
Ana is not so certain that is true. “I appreciate it nonetheless, Doctor Liao,” says she, not wanting to dwell on that thought.
“Mina,” Doctor Liao tells her.
Again, Ana is slow to react, because although she knows that the gesture is a kind one, a recognition on the part of Doctor Liao—of Mina—that they are by now past formalities, Ana is not sure that she wants to be close to Mina.
But she does owe it to Mina, at least, to show her the respect of listening to that request. For all that Ana does not know, still if she is capable of looking past Mina’s views on artificial intelligence, Mina has been nothing but kind to her, all this time.
“Of course,” says Ana, “Thank you, Mina.”
She should offer, now, that it is acceptable for Mina to call her Ana—but she does not feel that way just yet.
However, it is still polite and expected, and here is the difference between Mina’s niceness and her own sense of what is right and proper: she tells Mina, “You may, of course, call me Ana,” not because she genuinely believes them to be in any way close, but because it is what she knows she ought to say here.
In this, at least, she thinks Mina may be a better person than she.