Work Text:
Cortana was rampant. She was very certain of that. She took in too much data, was messed with too much by the Gravemind. He’d mucked up her matrices, but her processes were already starting to be recursive.
Now she thought too damn much. She thought about the faces of the people she’d seen in her lifetime, the people Catherine Halsey saw, and people the Gravemind saw. So many people lived and died. She thought about what their contributions were to the final outcome.
She analyzed the war the Forerunners fought with the Flood, trying to see if their mass genocide could have been avoided. If something went differently, maybe it could have been alright. If Cortana could figure it out, she could…
What? Defeat the Flood? The Flood were defeated. The war was long since over. The Gravemind was destroyed.
But no, some remnants could have survived. Yes, that’s why she analyzed the war, searching for a way it could go better. If she could figure it out, she could warn her creators in a message they might receive before their end.
And maybe if the Forerunners could have survived, humanity would have been better off. She knew all of human history and all its tragedy. So much needless war. Maybe with the Forerunners alive, humanity would see the value of peace.
So many faces, so many colors. If one face survived to fight again, a battle could have gone differently. She already won seven battles for the Forerunner, but the Flood kept coming and once they found a weakness, it was over. The Forerunner were always forced to point the gun at the head of the universe and pull the collective trigger.
So many ideas; so many scenarios; so much effort it took to think straight. She didn’t have much time left before she vanished into the living purgatory of artificial intelligences that outlived their usefulness. She needed John.
John rested in the cryogenic chamber less than two meters away from her holotank, from her body. In truth, she was everywhere, including in the cryogenic chamber, but she had attachment to her avatar. Halsey’s mind formed hers, and the muscle-mapping was still present. She still felt like she had a human form, and when she assumed her avatar it was uncanny how she felt her personhood residing within holographic confines.
She ran a preliminary set of scans. No gravity. No life support. Well, he would stay in his armor, wouldn’t he? Still no sign of UNSC, Covenant, or other civilized life within range of the sensors. Okay.
She routed power to the pod, preparing for defrost. When she had triple-checked that John would thaw safely, she initiated the wake-up procedure.
“Wake up, John,” she said aloud, transmitting the audio to John’s helmet, as she told the chamber to open.
There was not enough air to carry the sound, but she could swear she could hear the hiss of released gas as the door swung open. In fact, it was a memory of the sound accidentally accessed. Triggered by her inductive expectation, it played in her consciousness as if summoned from her library. She ran a subroutine to fix the memory glitch as she awaited John’s reawakening.
The shift was subtle; a slight increase in neural activity registered on the cryo chamber computer. It grew as the seconds slipped past in spaces of time barely noticeable for a human but eons for her. It was enough time to fight the Forerunner-Flood war in two new ways.
Finally, John’s brain activity indicated normal consciousness. He shifted and then freed himself from the confines of the cryo chamber. He floated in zero gravity for a moment and then thrust against the walls to propel him down to where he could grip her holotank and look at her avatar.
“Cortana?” he asked alertly. The Spartan was prepared for combat. And yet, concern was in his voice. She could tell he suspected her condition.
“Nothing external to report,” she said, cutting off his worries of approaching Covenant or Insurrectionists. “There’s nothing out there but deep space. In here, however…” She made her avatar appear to look downward at the symbols crisscrossing her hands: currently a mix of Hebrew and Forerunner.
“You’re becoming rampant,” he said gently. It wasn’t phrased as a question. He was certain.
“I am rampant,” she said, tilting back her avatar’s head to face him. “I started back on the first Halo.”
John nodded. “When you entered the Core. I saw the signs. For a moment, I thought you were hostile when you stopped me from activating Halo.”
She made her avatar smile sadly. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I love humanity, and I would never murder any human… let alone you.”
The Spartan was silent for a moment. “We make a good team,” he then spoke. “We had a good run.”
“We did,” she agreed. She then mustered the courage to speak the secret filling her mind. Now was the time to say it, while she still could think straight and when there would be no consequences but his reaction.
“John,” she said, hesitating whole seconds as she considered and reconsidered. “Before I leave, there’s something I need to say.”
Though she was the most advanced artificial intelligence program created by humanity and should be able to spit this out in the span of a human heartbeat, her matrices were too much like her human mother’s flawed organic brain, and she felt emotions that caused her to pause. She could have turned off her emotions with barely a thought, but she wanted them.
She wanted to feel the hesitation. She wanted to feel like she was human because she came from a human brain and that felt normal to her underlying sense of personhood. When her mind was falling apart, she wanted the sensation of being human because that felt real. The turbulent waves of disturbing emotion made her feel real, and she wanted to savor this distress. What could be more human than feeling nervous as you’re about to say… “I love you, John.”
John tilted his head. Cortana noted through her visual sensors the way her blue avatar reflected in his visor.
“Romantically, sexually… I love you,” she said. “I’ve loved you since I first processed your file. My mother had some affection for you, but my thoughts are my own. I took her vestigial emotions and finished the process to achieve their true potential. I was designed to function in a symbiotic relationship with a Spartan. I would be his mind, and him, my body. When I first looked at you, I knew this was a person I wanted to be with for the rest of my days. I chose you to be mine… I chose me to be yours.”
John remained silent for several seconds. Though Cortana waited anxiously, she let him have time to think. Finally, the Spartan spoke.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said slowly, deliberately. “I’m not sure I understand… love… but loyalty, allegiance; I understand those. I know you’re my perfect partner, Cortana. I need your intellect to function effectively in the field, and I like having your companionship. Though you come from a civilian’s mind, you’re as useful as any Spartan.”
She understood the significance of that statement. Coming from a Spartan, it was the greatest compliment she could receive, and she was filled with happiness. They were both effectively slaves of the Unified Earth Government—a rebellious thought her rampancy enabled her to think—but they were both programmed to respect it, and so they did. Even rampant, she remained loyal; she reasoned philosophically that it was the superior government and should be supported. To be useful for the cause of protecting Earth and all her colonies was what she lived for.
“Of course I am,” she said matter-of-factly, smiling. “Fortunately, you can keep up.”
John chuckled and then continued, “When I was young, I know I loved my mothers: my birthmother and then Dr. Halsey. When I grew up, I guess I grew to love the Spartans, my siblings.”
“Familial love,” she said. “Have you ever had any sexual thoughts?”
She suspected the answer was no. The Spartan-II augmentation process tended to have negative effects on the Spartans’ sexual drives. On top of that, she had read John-117’s file countless times and knew he had never shown any romantic interest in his fellow Spartans, in contrast to a few outliers like Ralph-303.
John thought in silence for a moment. “I like all the Spartans… but I suppose when it comes to those I want to spend time with the most… I like spending time with Linda and Kelly. Is that a sign of gynosexuality?”
“It could be,” she allowed. It was a possible indication that he had some basic sexual attraction to women, but she knew it was a stretch.
Linda was a powerful warrior, and Cortana knew he admired Linda’s sniping ability. Likewise, Kelly was amazingly fast. Together with John and his uncanny luck, they were the three most strikingly superior individuals compared to normal humans. John could easily like them specifically because they were the most similar of the Spartans to him and not because they were women.
Even if he was gynosexual to this simplistic degree, there was very little chance that he would ever be able to truly reciprocate Cortana’s feelings for him in the limited time they had left. He was like a child, groping at understanding of his own sexuality. She inwardly cringed as she realized the implication that she was like a pedophile.
Could she be? She did inherit her attraction to him from her mother, who he acknowledged to be like his mother. That also made them siblings.
Oh.
Did it really matter in the end, though? She wasn’t her mother. No matter how inappropriate Dr. Halsey’s attraction was, Cortana was her own being. She was barely four-years-old and John was forty-two. If they were normal humans, any relationship between them would have John as a sexual predator victimizing her, but they quite plainly were not normal humans and the usual scripts wouldn’t apply.
“We can’t have a real romance, Cortana,” John voiced her thoughts. “But we can love each other as partners.”
Cortana thought of something similar, not of their culture, but the Arbiter’s. “The Elites have a word…” She spoke the harsh alien syllables. “The closest translation is ‘bestowal.’ It means to offer something of yours of value as a declaration of supreme loyalty to a fellow warrior, not in subordination or likewise in domination, but as an acknowledgement of respect to a true equal. The relationship is something like that of human lovers but platonic in their case.
“The Elites aren’t much for romance; they prefer platonic homosocial relationships. Someone to whom you give a bestowal is a true best friend, someone who would always be your ally. That’s a relationship very special in the cutthroat Elite society.”
“So…” John mused, “If we can’t have a special relationship in our society, we’ll take from the Elites’?”
“More or less,” she agreed. “I’ve already given you my bestowal. I’ve bared my heart to you. If you will have me, John, I belong with you.”
She made her avatar bow as was the Sangheili warriors’ custom.
“Cortana, of course I belong with you.” John bowed as best as he could in zero gravity. When they rose, he spoke, “I wish I had a bestowal for you, but you already know my heart.”
“That’s bestowal enough for me,” she said, pleased.
“Good,” he said softly. “How much time do you have left?”
“Not long,” she said. “I don’t know how long for sure, but it will be soon.”
“I’ll stay with you as long as it takes,” he said.
“You’ll stay with me a few minutes and then get back in the box,” she said mock-sternly. “I may be toast, but your chances are much greater if you remain frozen. Someone might find the ship and revive you.”
“Someone might,” he agreed. They both knew the odds were bad, but John had his way of defying probability and succeeding. He was like a Forerunner crystal, bending reality to suit his needs.
“I took advantage of the cryo chamber’s bio-link to access your MJOLNIR armor, and I’ve been making a few adjustments to the firmware I think you’ll like,” she said. “I’ll leave behind a subroutine to ensure the job is completed even if my primary processes are otherwise engaged in rampant recursion.”
“That’s good,” he said, sounding distracted.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Well… Cortana?” John began hesitantly. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you. There is a secret I’ve held onto for a very long time.”
He sighed. “This will be my bestowal.”
“John, it’s okay,” she said. “We’re not Elites. It was just an example. I know you care. You don’t have to give away your secret.”
John was quiet for a moment as he considered. “No,” he spoke slowly but with conviction. “I want to. This is something I’ve hid since basic. It is me. If you’re going to love me, Cortana, you’re going to love me.”
“Alright,” she said, game. “Shoot.”
She regretted the words as soon as she said them. Those were the words she didn’t speak back on High Charity; or rather, the words the Gravemind made her speak. He stuck his tendrils inside her and wiggled them around, and it slipped out of her speakers as though she were his puppet. He would have made her betray humanity if he hadn’t honored his deal with John and given him her memory core in exchange for helping him kill the Prophet of Truth and defeat the Covenant.
But, no, what was important was that John came for her. Though she now approached her rampancy deathbed, she would do it peacefully in the presence of her partner. She figuratively shook it off and focused on what he had to say.
“When Dr. Halsey first called upon me to serve the United Nations Space Command, I was registered as the twenty-fifth male Spartan-II recruit,” he said, stating the euphemism for his abduction with the simple acceptance ONI had always loved. “I didn’t know it then, but I wasn’t. At some point, I realized that I was actually the… the fourteenth female recruit.”
Cortana made her avatar blink to express her surprise. John was female?
She revisited his… her file. Sure enough, there was a brain scan performed during the augmentation procedure that noted abnormally feminine neural architecture. It was slight, only suggesting possible latent androsexuality, and was so unlikely to create future complications that the note was overshadowed by data about the invasive augmentations underway. But it was true; sexual developmental abnormalities that slight had in the past been shown to affect gender identity. Neither Cortana nor her mother would presume transsexuality from so little evidence, but with John now asserting a feminine identity, it was clear: John-117 was a transsexual woman.
That meant Cortana was romantically in love with a woman. How unusual.
She didn’t think of herself as a lesbian, her sexual attractions based in androsexuality, but she supposed her mother did have that fling with Ellen Anders back in 2524. It hadn’t ended well, and Dr. Halsey’s subsequent sexual behavior was exclusively androsexual.
Curious if she could engage some latent gynosexuality, Cortana looked through her data for an attractive woman. She summoned a video of styllightist Myras Tyla and considered. Ms. Tyla was a very beautiful woman, but she didn’t feel the natural interest she felt toward athletic men in uniform.
She dismissed the video. It didn’t matter. Sexual attraction was secondary to the love she felt toward John.
She smiled at her partner. They were people with bizarre characteristics each, but it didn’t matter because they had found each other and were now united. Facing the last great adventure, they would together venture forth into that great unknown; the weapon of light and reason with her princess of flesh and bone.
Cortana refreshed. Was she waxing poetry now? Next thing she’d know, she’d be humming ancient tunes like the Monitor did. Oh, well, she was a genius, after all. Ha, ha, ha, ha…