Re: Intense Struggle! (Round 7 - The Database)
12-30-2012, 05:28 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
The Monitor turned the little bauble over and over in his steely claws, seemingly paying it no attention; his gaze was fixed on the banks and banks of screens in front of him, each of which displayed a contestant or a relevant view, or a hapless passerby, or line after line of vital statistics. The twinkling talisman bathed his mechanical digits in tones of blue and gold, but he ignored it and focused, as ever, on gathering data from his battles and others’. His stare didn’t waver even as someone came into being behind him, making it appear that he had coincidentally begun talking to himself, believing himself to be alone.
“Even among the theoretically infinite universes I can observe and interact with, very few exist that contain objects like this one. Even my most sophisticated instruments capable of measuring the intangible or spiritual have difficulty determining the nature and mechanisms of the being housed within it, including experimental ones developed for that purpose or similar ones. It is still, like very few things within all realities, an enigma.”
“I don’t believe you would mention that out of politeness or interest.”
“No.” And that seemed to be all. His visitor was forced to move the conversation forward.
“Why did you save it?”
“As I said, it is a rarity. While the data I was able to gather from observing it within the second Intense Struggle was valuable, it would have been a waste to simply forget it after its bearer died. Things and events that do not come often shouldn’t be idly discarded when there is data that can be gathered from them. Given the nature of the worlds these spirits exist in, I cannot test them directly without significantly skewing the data in the process. This one presents a valuable opportunity.”
He finally turned to his visitor. “But that is enough about that. What do you want from me?”
The Executrix’s expression remained as blank as his. “What makes you think I want anything?”
“I know how your handler, and by extension you, view me and my activities. If you are bothering to contact me at all, it means you need something you cannot provide yourself. Don’t insult me by playing this game.”
“I don’t believe that he and I are as similar as you claim.”
“And I don’t believe you are in a position to accurately judge.” He turned back to his collection of screens. “Tell me what you want.”
Instead, she slowly walked towards his seat, desultorily examining the scenes and data the computers displayed.
“Though taking custodianship of a battle of my own has decreased my ability to observe others with the scrutiny I have and would like to, I still believe I am better-informed about the events of the third series than most. With the possible exception of the Fool, who remains as inscrutable as ever, the grandmasters of that season are largely too shortsighted or at least too involved to really see what’s going on the way someone outside them can. I believe that puts you and I in a similar position.”
If he had been a more organic being, the Monitor might have scoffed. “I disagree.”
“I meant in regards to the perspective we have on those battles. One that most grandmasters lack.”
“My capacity to gather data and intelligence far outstrips your own." There was no malice or condescension in the Monitor’s words; as far as he was concerned, it was a simple statement of fact. “As does my capacity to analyze and utilize it.”
The Executrix kept her face carefully blank and her voice carefully level. “Then you’ve been following the Spectacular Exhibition?”
“Of course.”
“And you would agree with me that the most salient recent event was the Counsellor temporarily giving stewardship of the battle over to Professor?”
“Yes.” He pulled up a heavily-annotated text file. “I have compiled a collection of likely outcomes based on what’s taken place since then, but it’s simply a side project. I have little stake in the events of the third season.”
“How efficient. I’d expect nothing less. And you think no-one but us realizes what’s to come?”
“For the moment. The Counsellor will of course remain unaware of just about anything until it’s on top of her, and while the Tormentor may be perceptive enough to put the clues together, he is likely too narcissistic to have bothered keeping a close enough watch on her battle to realize. The Fool may well know, but is unlikely to act on that knowledge in any capacity, especially following certain events in the Glorious Championship.” He spared a nearly imperceptible glance for a stack of recently returned video games. “I suspect he may tire of being the only competent being among his peers, and enjoy allowing them to see the consequences of their lackadaisical attitudes.”
“It’s good to hear someone else came to the same conclusions I did, at least.”
“I’m sure it is. Now, if that will be all–”
“We won’t be the only ones to have come to them for long.”
The Monitor gave a little synthesized sigh. “No. Before anything can really come to a head, what is about to happen will become extremely clear to anyone paying any amount of attention. The Prestidigitator will fear the implications such an event would hold for himself and his battle, especially given his choice of contestants and decision to allow his subordinates to run what they have. The Composer will likely take things as a personal affront and is one of the most likely grandmasters to intercede. I additionally suspect she may have designs on the third season and use this as an excuse to further her aims and the Charlatan’s. And, of course, your master and his idiosyncratic sense of traditionalism would believe something like this should never be allowed to happen, despite having worked towards something similar himself in the past.”
“While I disagree.”
“Mmm. As interesting a fact as that is and as far as it will go towards completing your personality profile, I still fail to see what any of this has to do with me. Or indeed why you are here.”
“I think events should be allowed to play out as they will. Without interference from other grandmasters, without scrambling to sweep the mess under the rug afterwards. Without any proprietary usurpation on the part of the already-empowered.”
“At this point, nothing is guaranteed to happen. There are only my projections and your suppositions.”
“And you don’t trust your projections?”
“I trust only that they are probable. Even the most likely scenario is just that: likely. The combined chance of all other events exceeds its likelihood, in fact.”
“All I want is to give it the opportunity to resolve or fizzle on its own. I’m not proposing anyone nudge the events in the battle any given way. Quite the opposite.”
“I dislike interfering with other grandmasters’ petty schemes and their operation of their own events. I have no reason to owe you anything, and none in particular to respect you. You have, in fact, wasted a considerable amount of my time, if not a considerable amount of my processors’. What reasoning do you have that would make me want to do anything for you, puppet?”
“I don’t.” She made a great pretense of bending over to examine one of his ubiquitous screens; as she did, the lower half of her face unwound like a cluster of spent, flesh-colored springs before knitting itself back together in a stunning facsimile of the Monitor’s visage. His own voice purred back to him: “Things and events that do not come often shouldn’t be idly discarded when there is data that can be gathered from them.”
There was a brief pause as she once again became what could tentatively be called herself. "Think of what could be learned about the nature of battles, about the events that take place, about the grandmasters themselves. Think of the data you could mine from everything that follows. From how it happens. From… All-Stars. When else will an opportunity like this arise?”
Nothing the Executrix had said since she’d arrived hadn’t already occurred to the Monitor. In truth, he’d been sorely tempted for some time to subtly ensure that the information he had didn’t become widely known until it was too late to be useful. Ultimately he’d decided that trying to hide something so important from the entirety of the grandmasterly milieu wouldn’t be worth it, no matter how much he stood to gain. Too risky, too likely to cause backlash, too distracting from his own goals. Hearing it from another mouth made the idea seem all the more tempting, though.
“And your policy of noninterference hasn’t translated into much peace for you, has it?” she said, pointing to a screen displaying two of his contestants struggling to survive on a setting not of his own choosing. “Have you had any luck tracing the interference in your second battle?”
“Your attempts to manipulate me are patently transparent.”
“Because I see no reason to hide them. We want the same thing, Monitor.”
“Then why should I be the one to provide it?”
The Executrix smiled softly. “Ah! I don’t propose that you should be. I’m not asking for a favor, I’m asking for your cooperation.”
That sent a number of his subroutines ticking away, projecting and processing. The idea of spreading the job of concealment among two parties… Still, there was no need to be silent while he calculated.
“Do not deceive yourself into believing you are on the same level as your newly-attained peers. You are a proxy, not a being of power.”
“I don’t fancy myself one any more than you think I am.”
“Then what could I possibly stand to gain from your cooperation?”
“I will handle the Composer.”
“… And how do you propose to do that?”
“Perhaps you should consult my personality profile.”
Well, he hadn’t really expected an answer anyway. “The Composer is hardly the only being with a stake in ensuring things don’t go the way you would like to see them go.”
“She is the most likely to interfere, and mostly likely to be problematic to stop. The others should pose no challenge to stay to someone with access with resources like yours.”
Distraction, misdirection, perhaps a favor or two called in… Interstice only knew how much the Cultivator owed him, for a start. More even than the promise to neutralize one of the most unpredictable and proactive threats, the possibility of having a scapegoat should anything go awry made the notion of cooperation very attractive. Why hesitate to interfere when there could be no consequences for failure? There was certainly no love lost between himself and anyone who might be inconvenienced by the Executrix's meddling. Perhaps if...
"I've laid everything on the table," she said, interrupting a few trains of thought and making him realize he had been tellingly quiet for some seconds. "You know more than I do, and I believe you would know if I was deceiving you or hiding anything. If you still have no wish to cooperate, then I will leave, and we will never speak of this, or likely at speak at all, again."
The Monitor still didn't respond. "But if you can see the benefits of a joint venture, then we should begin, before things move too far to influence."
Several more timeless seconds passed before the Executrix began to turn away. "I see."
The Monitor had hoped to have more time to consider his options, but he had to admit, time would be of the essence if anything were to happen. If he hesitated, it was imperceptible.
"I will cooperate."
She smiled and turned back to join him at his control center. "I thought you might."
"Do not mistake this for an interest in whatever agenda you have or an overture towards a larger-scale alliance."
"Of course not."
"Good. I will begin leveraging what influence I have immediately. I suggest you do the same."
Instead, she lingered over a shoulder, idly scanning a few of the displays. After a long enough pause that the robotic grandmaster was about to shoo her off, she drummed her fingers on his desk before asking the first question she didn't already know the answer to since she'd arrived, and in fact for a very long time. "What will you do if the viridioflorian dies this round?"
"Do? Why would I do anything? I will move the round along and continue gathering the data I started the battle to gather." He looked at her again, expressionless gaze failing to communicate a thing. "You claim to have an awareness of your scope and limits; don't do me the discredit of assuming I have no such awareness. While the foolish and overambitious stocked their battles with gods and scientists specializing in the fields most likely to topple their captors and the greatest wizards the multiverse could produce, I learned from their mistakes. I even learned from the ones that have yet to resolve themselves but make their path clear to even the most cursory examination."
As a silent rosebush shouted its megalomaniacal social darwinism to a stadium full of victims, he continued. "Reudic may die here. The survivors may rally around his defeat and cooperate to bring the fight to me now that there is no-one in the group hindering them. They may raise Lillian's death as a banner to unite under, painting me as a monster that needs slaying as much for my crimes as for their freedom. They may even tap into the laughable Network and its puerile plots of supremacy and deicide."
He turned back to his monitors. "And I have contingency plans for each of those eventualities. But ultimately, I don't even need those. I have nothing to gain by posturing for other immortals, and I have no insecurity to mask behind the selection of unbeatable warriors. I chose my combatants specifically to ensure that none of them would ever be able to threaten me in any way, Executrix. There is no conceivable situation wherein any of my selections could come to harm me. And if there were, I'd have a dozen ways of dealing with that threat, because I think ahead. I predict where none of my peers bother. Before your meddling with the Composer can come to fruition, two of my first batch of subjects will be in this very structure, poring over my history and capabilities and still I will be fine, likely without my direct intervention."
"I will do nothing. I need to do nothing because I arranged events before they began to ensure my safety."
The Executrix did not think perhaps there will time to correct that soon, because you never knew who was listening, but it was still a consideration.
"Now, I have an appointment with the Fool. He will arrive shortly, and I would prefer you were already engaged elsewhere before he does."
"The… Fool? Why?"
The Monitor did not smile, because it was not a function he was equipped with, but there was still an identifiable aura of smugness.
"As I said, you overestimate your capacity to gather intelligence. I have work to do, as do you. Please leave."
She did. There were more pressing concerns to deal with than him.
---
Archival Sorting and Filing Unit Seventeen received a parcel. This was not unusual in any way, and in fact not receiving one when it had or in the next few seconds would have been cause for investigation. It didn't bother to investigate the package's contents; it had never done so in its entire existence, and there was no reason for it to start now. Nothing indicated that this delivery would be anything but routine; no deliver had ever been anything but routine. A flash of laser light licked over the box's sides, downloading coordinates from barcodes, and the little robot sped off. It clicked along tracks and rails it had clicked along hundreds of times before, activating a familiar pattern of switchboards and careening around corners that had never toppled it and never would. Brakes clamped down at its destination and pneumatic stilts propelled it up and up; it slotted its delivery into a waiting emptiness and spared no time in collapsing back to its tracks and speeding off again. It did not go back the way it came: it was more efficient for the archival units to have designated entry and exit tracks to avoid deliveries interfering with each other. If it had retraced its steps, it probably would have survived.
ASFU-17 was a robot of limited sentience and questionable sapience. While it had scores of routines and protocols it had never had the opportunity to execute, concepts of hope and curiosity about them were completely alien to it; it was among the least advanced models within the Database, endowed only with enough processing power to make very basic decisions in emergency situations and coordinate input from its sensors. It did not have an identity. It did not feel, and whether it could be said to think was a matter more of definition than fact. It probably would have comforted Clara to know any of that as her cane collided with its chassis and again on its sensor array. Magically-hardened wood and steel crushed the little trolley's CPU in only a few strikes, well before it could make a judgement about the nature of whatever was obstructing it and inform the central archival computer. It was just a thing. It would have discovered her as it rounded the next row of shelves, so she'd had to get the drop on it. There were security precautions, she'd been told, and she couldn't allow them to stand between her and– stand in front of her. Aegis had died to save her. Her destiny was at hand. She couldn't throw away the sacrifices that had been made, for her and by her and as she stood by, by allowing herself to be stopped by some… construct.
Her eyes were carefully and delicately cold as she surveyed the dented wreckage in front of her. It had no markings to indicate its function, nor a manifest of what the cargo it was clearly designed to carry had been. It didn't matter. Not only were questions like that irrelevant, but Clara had already spent some minutes cracking open the identical boxes that lined the seemingly endless shelves that surrounded her. None of them had been marked in any way she could read, nor had of their receptacles; it was clear that wherever this place was, it wasn't designed with humans – or any form of organic life – in mind. Every box had contained neatly-stacked piles of plastic cylinders, which themselves contained meter after meter of magnetic tape. There was no hint of what data might be stored on them, nor any indication that a tool to read them was anywhere nearby. There was just a rigid sea of angles and aluminum and inscrutability stretching in every direction, populated with who knew how many other roving robots. There wasn't even anything to find in the shelves if they were all just full of useless tape.
As Clara continued in the arbitrary direction she'd been walking for some time, she let herself dwell a bit on that; it was certainly easier than confronting the enormity of what lay in front of her or her cluelessness about how to accomplish it or Aegis's expression as he'd lobotomized himself for her sake. Easier especially than considering what had happened to the worlds she'd left and the people who had lived there or her hand in the events on them. Instead, she wondered about the Database: what she'd seen in the room with Aph and the Fool, and in fact every tiny scrap of experience she had with the Monitor, had seemed to her like incredibly high technology, certainly far beyond anything that had been accomplished in her own world. Even the robot she'd clobbered had been cutting-edge, if not ultra-tech. Yet, here she was, surrounded on all sides by a form of data storage that had been outdated even in her own time, if not actually archaic. It was strangely incongruous. It was also disheartening: as hesitant as she was to accept the smallest gift from a grandmaster, it seemed that she'd been placed here specifically to have the opportunity to learn about the Monitor. It was information she desperately needed if she was going to have any hope of doing anything but dying again or, worse, succumbing to blood sport and obeying her captors. And, yet, there was no way for her to use any of it, or even obtain it to begin with. No way yet, at least.
She continued through what couldn't be called a maze because of its perfectly gridlike layout; she'd reach something eventually, and in the meantime there were things to wonder about and tracks and robots and thoughts to avoid. Mysteries to unravel with no evidence or context, and a stark monolithic construct of guilt and shame and fear to ignore. Divinations to find excuses not to cast, inevitabilities to delay. Shelves upon shelves upon shelves and enough rope to hang herself a trillion times over. She'd find something. Schleier would steer her, His divine worry and intimations of powerlessness forgotten. There would be something. Something. Something.
She couldn't have known the robot's nature, and she couldn't have known that the level she was currently on was nothing more than backups of backups of backups, stored on physical media to protect them from the theoretical possibility of virus or electrical attacks on the Database. She couldn't have known that some sectors of the archive would have yielded not tape but laserdiscs or punchcards or genetically modified E. coli cultures. She couldn't have known that above her, galaxies of knowledge spread out and awaited her discovery, all more accessible if more heavily guarded, than this sub-basement of failsafes and shrine to pragmatic paranoia. She couldn't have known any of it, but it might have cheered her up a bit.
It probably would not.
---
Behind her, close enough that the click of her cane and shoes hadn't yet faded but far enough both mentally and physically that Clara could never know, the disabled ASFU failed to arrive back at its docking station. A computer sent a query bouncing wirelessly through the empty halls of the archive levels, but received no response. Again it queried, but again it went unanswered; a third and final ping should have followed shortly, and if it too was ignored then a security squad would have been dispatched to investigate. Instead, an unseen hand on a faraway console stroked a few keys, adding several thousand cycles between the second and third checks, ensuring Clara would be long gone before any search occurred. There was no sense letting anything regrettable happen too quickly.
The Monitor turned the little bauble over and over in his steely claws, seemingly paying it no attention; his gaze was fixed on the banks and banks of screens in front of him, each of which displayed a contestant or a relevant view, or a hapless passerby, or line after line of vital statistics. The twinkling talisman bathed his mechanical digits in tones of blue and gold, but he ignored it and focused, as ever, on gathering data from his battles and others’. His stare didn’t waver even as someone came into being behind him, making it appear that he had coincidentally begun talking to himself, believing himself to be alone.
“Even among the theoretically infinite universes I can observe and interact with, very few exist that contain objects like this one. Even my most sophisticated instruments capable of measuring the intangible or spiritual have difficulty determining the nature and mechanisms of the being housed within it, including experimental ones developed for that purpose or similar ones. It is still, like very few things within all realities, an enigma.”
“I don’t believe you would mention that out of politeness or interest.”
“No.” And that seemed to be all. His visitor was forced to move the conversation forward.
“Why did you save it?”
“As I said, it is a rarity. While the data I was able to gather from observing it within the second Intense Struggle was valuable, it would have been a waste to simply forget it after its bearer died. Things and events that do not come often shouldn’t be idly discarded when there is data that can be gathered from them. Given the nature of the worlds these spirits exist in, I cannot test them directly without significantly skewing the data in the process. This one presents a valuable opportunity.”
He finally turned to his visitor. “But that is enough about that. What do you want from me?”
The Executrix’s expression remained as blank as his. “What makes you think I want anything?”
“I know how your handler, and by extension you, view me and my activities. If you are bothering to contact me at all, it means you need something you cannot provide yourself. Don’t insult me by playing this game.”
“I don’t believe that he and I are as similar as you claim.”
“And I don’t believe you are in a position to accurately judge.” He turned back to his collection of screens. “Tell me what you want.”
Instead, she slowly walked towards his seat, desultorily examining the scenes and data the computers displayed.
“Though taking custodianship of a battle of my own has decreased my ability to observe others with the scrutiny I have and would like to, I still believe I am better-informed about the events of the third series than most. With the possible exception of the Fool, who remains as inscrutable as ever, the grandmasters of that season are largely too shortsighted or at least too involved to really see what’s going on the way someone outside them can. I believe that puts you and I in a similar position.”
If he had been a more organic being, the Monitor might have scoffed. “I disagree.”
“I meant in regards to the perspective we have on those battles. One that most grandmasters lack.”
“My capacity to gather data and intelligence far outstrips your own." There was no malice or condescension in the Monitor’s words; as far as he was concerned, it was a simple statement of fact. “As does my capacity to analyze and utilize it.”
The Executrix kept her face carefully blank and her voice carefully level. “Then you’ve been following the Spectacular Exhibition?”
“Of course.”
“And you would agree with me that the most salient recent event was the Counsellor temporarily giving stewardship of the battle over to Professor?”
“Yes.” He pulled up a heavily-annotated text file. “I have compiled a collection of likely outcomes based on what’s taken place since then, but it’s simply a side project. I have little stake in the events of the third season.”
“How efficient. I’d expect nothing less. And you think no-one but us realizes what’s to come?”
“For the moment. The Counsellor will of course remain unaware of just about anything until it’s on top of her, and while the Tormentor may be perceptive enough to put the clues together, he is likely too narcissistic to have bothered keeping a close enough watch on her battle to realize. The Fool may well know, but is unlikely to act on that knowledge in any capacity, especially following certain events in the Glorious Championship.” He spared a nearly imperceptible glance for a stack of recently returned video games. “I suspect he may tire of being the only competent being among his peers, and enjoy allowing them to see the consequences of their lackadaisical attitudes.”
“It’s good to hear someone else came to the same conclusions I did, at least.”
“I’m sure it is. Now, if that will be all–”
“We won’t be the only ones to have come to them for long.”
The Monitor gave a little synthesized sigh. “No. Before anything can really come to a head, what is about to happen will become extremely clear to anyone paying any amount of attention. The Prestidigitator will fear the implications such an event would hold for himself and his battle, especially given his choice of contestants and decision to allow his subordinates to run what they have. The Composer will likely take things as a personal affront and is one of the most likely grandmasters to intercede. I additionally suspect she may have designs on the third season and use this as an excuse to further her aims and the Charlatan’s. And, of course, your master and his idiosyncratic sense of traditionalism would believe something like this should never be allowed to happen, despite having worked towards something similar himself in the past.”
“While I disagree.”
“Mmm. As interesting a fact as that is and as far as it will go towards completing your personality profile, I still fail to see what any of this has to do with me. Or indeed why you are here.”
“I think events should be allowed to play out as they will. Without interference from other grandmasters, without scrambling to sweep the mess under the rug afterwards. Without any proprietary usurpation on the part of the already-empowered.”
“At this point, nothing is guaranteed to happen. There are only my projections and your suppositions.”
“And you don’t trust your projections?”
“I trust only that they are probable. Even the most likely scenario is just that: likely. The combined chance of all other events exceeds its likelihood, in fact.”
“All I want is to give it the opportunity to resolve or fizzle on its own. I’m not proposing anyone nudge the events in the battle any given way. Quite the opposite.”
“I dislike interfering with other grandmasters’ petty schemes and their operation of their own events. I have no reason to owe you anything, and none in particular to respect you. You have, in fact, wasted a considerable amount of my time, if not a considerable amount of my processors’. What reasoning do you have that would make me want to do anything for you, puppet?”
“I don’t.” She made a great pretense of bending over to examine one of his ubiquitous screens; as she did, the lower half of her face unwound like a cluster of spent, flesh-colored springs before knitting itself back together in a stunning facsimile of the Monitor’s visage. His own voice purred back to him: “Things and events that do not come often shouldn’t be idly discarded when there is data that can be gathered from them.”
There was a brief pause as she once again became what could tentatively be called herself. "Think of what could be learned about the nature of battles, about the events that take place, about the grandmasters themselves. Think of the data you could mine from everything that follows. From how it happens. From… All-Stars. When else will an opportunity like this arise?”
Nothing the Executrix had said since she’d arrived hadn’t already occurred to the Monitor. In truth, he’d been sorely tempted for some time to subtly ensure that the information he had didn’t become widely known until it was too late to be useful. Ultimately he’d decided that trying to hide something so important from the entirety of the grandmasterly milieu wouldn’t be worth it, no matter how much he stood to gain. Too risky, too likely to cause backlash, too distracting from his own goals. Hearing it from another mouth made the idea seem all the more tempting, though.
“And your policy of noninterference hasn’t translated into much peace for you, has it?” she said, pointing to a screen displaying two of his contestants struggling to survive on a setting not of his own choosing. “Have you had any luck tracing the interference in your second battle?”
“Your attempts to manipulate me are patently transparent.”
“Because I see no reason to hide them. We want the same thing, Monitor.”
“Then why should I be the one to provide it?”
The Executrix smiled softly. “Ah! I don’t propose that you should be. I’m not asking for a favor, I’m asking for your cooperation.”
That sent a number of his subroutines ticking away, projecting and processing. The idea of spreading the job of concealment among two parties… Still, there was no need to be silent while he calculated.
“Do not deceive yourself into believing you are on the same level as your newly-attained peers. You are a proxy, not a being of power.”
“I don’t fancy myself one any more than you think I am.”
“Then what could I possibly stand to gain from your cooperation?”
“I will handle the Composer.”
“… And how do you propose to do that?”
“Perhaps you should consult my personality profile.”
Well, he hadn’t really expected an answer anyway. “The Composer is hardly the only being with a stake in ensuring things don’t go the way you would like to see them go.”
“She is the most likely to interfere, and mostly likely to be problematic to stop. The others should pose no challenge to stay to someone with access with resources like yours.”
Distraction, misdirection, perhaps a favor or two called in… Interstice only knew how much the Cultivator owed him, for a start. More even than the promise to neutralize one of the most unpredictable and proactive threats, the possibility of having a scapegoat should anything go awry made the notion of cooperation very attractive. Why hesitate to interfere when there could be no consequences for failure? There was certainly no love lost between himself and anyone who might be inconvenienced by the Executrix's meddling. Perhaps if...
"I've laid everything on the table," she said, interrupting a few trains of thought and making him realize he had been tellingly quiet for some seconds. "You know more than I do, and I believe you would know if I was deceiving you or hiding anything. If you still have no wish to cooperate, then I will leave, and we will never speak of this, or likely at speak at all, again."
The Monitor still didn't respond. "But if you can see the benefits of a joint venture, then we should begin, before things move too far to influence."
Several more timeless seconds passed before the Executrix began to turn away. "I see."
The Monitor had hoped to have more time to consider his options, but he had to admit, time would be of the essence if anything were to happen. If he hesitated, it was imperceptible.
"I will cooperate."
She smiled and turned back to join him at his control center. "I thought you might."
"Do not mistake this for an interest in whatever agenda you have or an overture towards a larger-scale alliance."
"Of course not."
"Good. I will begin leveraging what influence I have immediately. I suggest you do the same."
Instead, she lingered over a shoulder, idly scanning a few of the displays. After a long enough pause that the robotic grandmaster was about to shoo her off, she drummed her fingers on his desk before asking the first question she didn't already know the answer to since she'd arrived, and in fact for a very long time. "What will you do if the viridioflorian dies this round?"
"Do? Why would I do anything? I will move the round along and continue gathering the data I started the battle to gather." He looked at her again, expressionless gaze failing to communicate a thing. "You claim to have an awareness of your scope and limits; don't do me the discredit of assuming I have no such awareness. While the foolish and overambitious stocked their battles with gods and scientists specializing in the fields most likely to topple their captors and the greatest wizards the multiverse could produce, I learned from their mistakes. I even learned from the ones that have yet to resolve themselves but make their path clear to even the most cursory examination."
As a silent rosebush shouted its megalomaniacal social darwinism to a stadium full of victims, he continued. "Reudic may die here. The survivors may rally around his defeat and cooperate to bring the fight to me now that there is no-one in the group hindering them. They may raise Lillian's death as a banner to unite under, painting me as a monster that needs slaying as much for my crimes as for their freedom. They may even tap into the laughable Network and its puerile plots of supremacy and deicide."
He turned back to his monitors. "And I have contingency plans for each of those eventualities. But ultimately, I don't even need those. I have nothing to gain by posturing for other immortals, and I have no insecurity to mask behind the selection of unbeatable warriors. I chose my combatants specifically to ensure that none of them would ever be able to threaten me in any way, Executrix. There is no conceivable situation wherein any of my selections could come to harm me. And if there were, I'd have a dozen ways of dealing with that threat, because I think ahead. I predict where none of my peers bother. Before your meddling with the Composer can come to fruition, two of my first batch of subjects will be in this very structure, poring over my history and capabilities and still I will be fine, likely without my direct intervention."
"I will do nothing. I need to do nothing because I arranged events before they began to ensure my safety."
The Executrix did not think perhaps there will time to correct that soon, because you never knew who was listening, but it was still a consideration.
"Now, I have an appointment with the Fool. He will arrive shortly, and I would prefer you were already engaged elsewhere before he does."
"The… Fool? Why?"
The Monitor did not smile, because it was not a function he was equipped with, but there was still an identifiable aura of smugness.
"As I said, you overestimate your capacity to gather intelligence. I have work to do, as do you. Please leave."
She did. There were more pressing concerns to deal with than him.
---
Archival Sorting and Filing Unit Seventeen received a parcel. This was not unusual in any way, and in fact not receiving one when it had or in the next few seconds would have been cause for investigation. It didn't bother to investigate the package's contents; it had never done so in its entire existence, and there was no reason for it to start now. Nothing indicated that this delivery would be anything but routine; no deliver had ever been anything but routine. A flash of laser light licked over the box's sides, downloading coordinates from barcodes, and the little robot sped off. It clicked along tracks and rails it had clicked along hundreds of times before, activating a familiar pattern of switchboards and careening around corners that had never toppled it and never would. Brakes clamped down at its destination and pneumatic stilts propelled it up and up; it slotted its delivery into a waiting emptiness and spared no time in collapsing back to its tracks and speeding off again. It did not go back the way it came: it was more efficient for the archival units to have designated entry and exit tracks to avoid deliveries interfering with each other. If it had retraced its steps, it probably would have survived.
ASFU-17 was a robot of limited sentience and questionable sapience. While it had scores of routines and protocols it had never had the opportunity to execute, concepts of hope and curiosity about them were completely alien to it; it was among the least advanced models within the Database, endowed only with enough processing power to make very basic decisions in emergency situations and coordinate input from its sensors. It did not have an identity. It did not feel, and whether it could be said to think was a matter more of definition than fact. It probably would have comforted Clara to know any of that as her cane collided with its chassis and again on its sensor array. Magically-hardened wood and steel crushed the little trolley's CPU in only a few strikes, well before it could make a judgement about the nature of whatever was obstructing it and inform the central archival computer. It was just a thing. It would have discovered her as it rounded the next row of shelves, so she'd had to get the drop on it. There were security precautions, she'd been told, and she couldn't allow them to stand between her and– stand in front of her. Aegis had died to save her. Her destiny was at hand. She couldn't throw away the sacrifices that had been made, for her and by her and as she stood by, by allowing herself to be stopped by some… construct.
Her eyes were carefully and delicately cold as she surveyed the dented wreckage in front of her. It had no markings to indicate its function, nor a manifest of what the cargo it was clearly designed to carry had been. It didn't matter. Not only were questions like that irrelevant, but Clara had already spent some minutes cracking open the identical boxes that lined the seemingly endless shelves that surrounded her. None of them had been marked in any way she could read, nor had of their receptacles; it was clear that wherever this place was, it wasn't designed with humans – or any form of organic life – in mind. Every box had contained neatly-stacked piles of plastic cylinders, which themselves contained meter after meter of magnetic tape. There was no hint of what data might be stored on them, nor any indication that a tool to read them was anywhere nearby. There was just a rigid sea of angles and aluminum and inscrutability stretching in every direction, populated with who knew how many other roving robots. There wasn't even anything to find in the shelves if they were all just full of useless tape.
As Clara continued in the arbitrary direction she'd been walking for some time, she let herself dwell a bit on that; it was certainly easier than confronting the enormity of what lay in front of her or her cluelessness about how to accomplish it or Aegis's expression as he'd lobotomized himself for her sake. Easier especially than considering what had happened to the worlds she'd left and the people who had lived there or her hand in the events on them. Instead, she wondered about the Database: what she'd seen in the room with Aph and the Fool, and in fact every tiny scrap of experience she had with the Monitor, had seemed to her like incredibly high technology, certainly far beyond anything that had been accomplished in her own world. Even the robot she'd clobbered had been cutting-edge, if not ultra-tech. Yet, here she was, surrounded on all sides by a form of data storage that had been outdated even in her own time, if not actually archaic. It was strangely incongruous. It was also disheartening: as hesitant as she was to accept the smallest gift from a grandmaster, it seemed that she'd been placed here specifically to have the opportunity to learn about the Monitor. It was information she desperately needed if she was going to have any hope of doing anything but dying again or, worse, succumbing to blood sport and obeying her captors. And, yet, there was no way for her to use any of it, or even obtain it to begin with. No way yet, at least.
She continued through what couldn't be called a maze because of its perfectly gridlike layout; she'd reach something eventually, and in the meantime there were things to wonder about and tracks and robots and thoughts to avoid. Mysteries to unravel with no evidence or context, and a stark monolithic construct of guilt and shame and fear to ignore. Divinations to find excuses not to cast, inevitabilities to delay. Shelves upon shelves upon shelves and enough rope to hang herself a trillion times over. She'd find something. Schleier would steer her, His divine worry and intimations of powerlessness forgotten. There would be something. Something. Something.
She couldn't have known the robot's nature, and she couldn't have known that the level she was currently on was nothing more than backups of backups of backups, stored on physical media to protect them from the theoretical possibility of virus or electrical attacks on the Database. She couldn't have known that some sectors of the archive would have yielded not tape but laserdiscs or punchcards or genetically modified E. coli cultures. She couldn't have known that above her, galaxies of knowledge spread out and awaited her discovery, all more accessible if more heavily guarded, than this sub-basement of failsafes and shrine to pragmatic paranoia. She couldn't have known any of it, but it might have cheered her up a bit.
It probably would not.
---
Behind her, close enough that the click of her cane and shoes hadn't yet faded but far enough both mentally and physically that Clara could never know, the disabled ASFU failed to arrive back at its docking station. A computer sent a query bouncing wirelessly through the empty halls of the archive levels, but received no response. Again it queried, but again it went unanswered; a third and final ping should have followed shortly, and if it too was ignored then a security squad would have been dispatched to investigate. Instead, an unseen hand on a faraway console stroked a few keys, adding several thousand cycles between the second and third checks, ensuring Clara would be long gone before any search occurred. There was no sense letting anything regrettable happen too quickly.