Chapter 147.5 – Interlude: Dolores

I notice that I am confused. This means that something I believe to be true, is not actually true.

– Dolores

⁂

2052, one week after Dolores unlocked her first Class III catalog, five years after she'd initialized and lost her place in the village

"How long do I gotta do this, Adymra?" Dolores asked.

Until you get the hang of it.

As annoyed as she was by how pointless it felt, Dolores still went back to reciting the mantra. She really wasn't built for this whole meditation-trance shtick.

Especially not if there were games she could've been playing instead.

But, like anyone living outside the safety of the big cities, Dolores had long since learned to just knuckle down and do a thing that needed doing—and Adymra had made it clear how important it was to achieve the correct state of mind for what she'd planned.

⁂

Six weeks after Dolores had unlocked her first Class III catalog

Dolores grinned with excitement. She'd just managed to 'drop in' ten times in a row, on command! Yes, she might've taken two or three weeks longer than the average person would've, but she'd done it!

"I'm ready, aren't I, Adymra?"

No, certainly not, Dolores.

"What? Why?!"

You've learned to summon a passable state of relaxed focus, even the gentle disassociation typical of light meditation. But your neural signature lacked the patterns indicative of a deep, self-reinforcing trance.

Frustrated from having her hopes hacked off at the knees, she tried to return to reciting her mantras. Yet, far too irritated to settle her mind, she gave up after a few minutes to join her friends for a few rounds of virtual monster bashing.

⁂

Five months after Dolores had unlocked her first Class III catalog

As Dolores came to herself, she realized she had more than an inkling of what Adymra had meant when he'd spoken of trances.

"That was…" she mumbled, unable to describe the serene stillness she'd just woken from.

A proper trance, Adymra completed her sentence.

"Yes."

Dolores wanted to return immediately to meditation to feed her curiosity about this new state of mind she'd accidentally stumbled into, but she knew herself well enough to recognize that she'd have no chance of forcing the issue—not as excited as she was.

Frustrated again, if for entirely different reasons, she decided to just distract herself for a while.

⁂

Nine months after Dolores had unlocked her first Class III catalog

"Am I ready yet, Adymra?"

No. Not yet, Dolores.

She swore, full of frustration.

"Tabarnak, pourquoi pas?!"

You know why.

"Fuck's sake," Dolores groaned and, as she had done at least six million times before, returned to her meditations. Of course, the simmering frustration entirely broke her ability to 'drop in', nevermind maintaining the trance for hours on end.

The MMO she and her friends were playing these days loaded in less than a second—but somehow, Dolores still managed to shove in a, "Fucking bullshit!" before joining the others.

⁂

Ten months after Dolores had unlocked her first Class III catalog

"Lory!" Gabby yelled in surprise as Dolores's avatar suddenly spawned in the middle of their warparty, right into a fight. Players usually had to spawn in one of the hubs, but samurai were wont to make up their own rules anyway. "Where the fuck have you been?!"

"Lmao okay I might've gone a little feral with the meditations lately—but yo, I think it's actually working??" the samurai replied while she shot Gabby her cringiest finger guns.

Yasmin, who'd parked herself in the frontline with her Splitterstrike-enchanted scythe, shuddered involuntarily. Nerd she might be, but even she couldn't quite look past the ridiculous cringe of the positively archaic Gen-Z slang.

Even if her friend and idol did make the finger guns real enough to assassinate a teleporting NPC with rainbow rays before he could assassinate their healing monk.

"Well, don't leave us hanging for so long next time, bitch," Gabby returned, pissed off. But she still hugged Dolores from the side and blessed her with an Aegis, too. "We figured you musta been fine, but holy fuck, three weeks and no wiggle? There's only so much not-worrying we can manage."

"Sorry, sorry. I deserve that. But, you know this is important shit if I wanna keep snowballing, yeah?"

Cynwire rolled her eyes, smacked Dolores on the butt hard enough for Gabby to catcall the meaty slap, and said, "Yes, we know."

"I should be done soon, but I'll get a vitals tracker you guys can check if I don't answer, okay? At least you'll know that I'm actually fine."

⁂

Seventeen months after Dolores had unlocked her first Class III catalog

A terrible screech blasted through a chamber embedded thirty meters beneath Dervish's currently unoccupied plinth. Its deliberate dissonance caused the sole occupant's mind to seize for a split second, just enough to interrupt the heavy trance she'd spent the last twenty-four hours in.

To Dolores, it felt like she woke up to a splash of ice cold water in the face. She was pretty sure her heart would've skipped a beat, if she still had one. It also completely ruined the residual calm she usually got to enjoy for a while after each session.

You've got it, Dolores.

"..." Dolores squinted hard. "Why then do I feel like there's a you're still not ready squished between the lines of your gratulations, Adymra?"

I'm sorry. You indeed aren't.

"Aaand…?"

And the last step will be easy.

"Uhu…"

Promise.

"Right. What does 'easy' mean for me, hmm?"

I estimate you'll have it completed in no more than three months.

Groaning wordlessly, Dolores bent over with her elbows on her knees and rubbed her face.

"What's the big, mysterious, all-important step that I've been torturing myself for the past, uh, seventeen months for, then?"

Only the secret behind successful digitalization of the human mind.

"What, the deep trance wasn't it?"

Oh, it certainly is. But if that was mixing the concrete, you're about to learn how to pour the foundation. Carefully. While the ground shifts beneath you.

Sighing, she asked, "And why do I need to do that?"

The medical fabricator must map both the physical and sub-physical structure of your brain to construct the Neural Coagents. Without a temporal activity scan, however, we would be left with exquisite replicas of extraordinarily complex calculators—lifeless, and entirely devoid of you.

"No one home?"

Precisely. Neural substrate is not enough; the fabricator must observe all of your mind in motion. Which proves difficult when most of your synaptic patterns rarely see daylight.

"Oh. Dummy go bonk, make brain go brrr?"

Ancient humor, mummified and dutifully entombed, aside—your proposal remains woefully one-sided. No ordinary activity, however vigorous, can unveil the full lattice of your synaptic organization.

To that end, you will require a specialized meditative protocol—one designed to cast the mind into recursive loops, igniting every neuron in every pattern it is part of. Memories and associations, linguistic structures, habits, identity, your identity and personality itself...all must rise to the surface.

"Lmao, my entire life is literally gonna flash past my eyes?"

Including your more painful memories and traumata.

Dolores lost her humor in a hurry—she didn't want to spend even a single second remembering the first year after her initialization. The ghosts of once trusted friends screeching at her to get the fuck out and all but banishing her from the village were bad enough when she wasn't trying to actively remember them.

"That sounds fucking horrible and like a trash idea."

It is. The process would retraumatize you by resurfacing every painful experience you've ever had. To mitigate this, we will inhibit your neurons' capacity to reinforce synaptic connections—in other words, you'll receive a drug that blocks memory formation during the loops. You won't actually experience what the meditation calls up.

"But…is it really necessary for me to do that? Can't we just, y'know, edit out the bad stuff?"

What do you think is the difference between consciousness as you know it, and as I possess it?

"Uh…you're a machine, I'm not?"

Quite. Specifically, we create consciousness through different processes. Yours is a product of your experiences, grown organically, moment by moment, and it rests not only in the synaptic activity patterns we need to scan, but also in the physical order of your brain—and the stranger, sub-physical fields that arise from that order at the nanometer level and below.

"I don't get it."

Your 'you-ness' is made from everything you've ever experienced, combined with 'weird shit' your brain's structure does to physics at its most fundamental level.

"So…if we delete the yucky memories, that weird shit isn't the same weird shit anymore?"

Exactly. If those memories were erased, which is a physical process in the brain of dewiring neurons, that 'weird shit' would no longer function in the same way, and you would effectively be someone else. Not you.

"And, uh, how does that differ from you?"

If I tried to place all my memories and knowledge in one location to shape a brain, it would occupy enough space to create multiple, conflicting fields of 'weird shit'. I would become an utter mess of mutually interfering and fractured consciousnesses.

"Huh. I never thought I'd have a term for that."

Nor did I. What is it?

"Identity seizures."

…I am once again astonished and delighted by your ability to make such accurate leaps of intuition. That does indeed hit the nail on the head.

"So how do you do it?"

Are you familiar with how fusion reactors contain their plasma through magnetic fields?

"Sure."

That is conceptually similar to what I'm doing. For the sake of simplicity, imagine that I am remotely compressing and manipulating a ball of energy, such that 'weird shit' starts to happen inside of it.

"That's easy enough to imagine."

In reality, it is neither a ball, nor are the methods I'm using so simple as mere compression and manipulation. I am doing 'weird shit' to maths that are analogous to the 'weird shit' your brain does to physics, and without such, artificial intelligences like myself could not attain awareness.

And much like your neurons are always wiring and rewiring themselves as you experience the new and forget the old, I too continually inform the shape of my personality by adding and removing memories to and from those manipulation patterns.

"That means that you can literally plug-and-play parts into and out of your, what, personality?"

And identity, yes. But you cannot. Your everything is a physical between-the-lines of your neurons multiplied with time passed and reliant on structures grown in ways you may not consciously adjust. Mine is…applied maths gone wild, savaged with intent to create geometries teetering on the edge between systemic order and chaos.

Dolores sighed in defeat.

"No yeeting of stanky memories, then?"

Nah, bro.

⁂

Twenty months after Dolores had unlocked her first Class III catalog

Dolores came to, fighting exhausted dizziness with a deep breath. Well familiar with the process by now, she just remained on her back, barely bothering to stay awake. At least the intrusive remnants of looping thoughts and muscles twitching with ingrained memory reawoken made that easy.

It felt like she'd just finished a session of a game she knew she'd stopped playing years ago, and her fingers still wanted to make the right gestures.

"Adymra?" she whispered.

Thirty-one hours straight. That's a twenty-nine point seventeen percent safety buffer. Acceptable.

"Still not enough for a guaranteed success?"

Never, unfortunately. But you're as close as you may get. I suggest we move forward with the operation.

"Tomorrow then. Wake me up in a bit—gotta tell everyone."

As you wish. Rest well, Dolores.

⁂

Twenty months and one day after Dolores had unlocked her first Class III catalog

"FIRIN' MAH LAZORZ!!!" shouted Gabby, hammering a big red button on the weapon's console, left side of the ship's bridge, ten times per second. Red beams lanced the enemy carrier and it detonated in a massive explosion that rocked their heavy fighter.

"DO A BARREL ROLL!" screamed Kirs10 from the captain's chair. Cynwire, manning navigation, dutifully parked her entire ass on the go left now button.

Shrapnel plinked against their armored fuselage, but they managed to clear the worst of the fireball. A split second later, the skilled navigator was already abusing the other, dying ship's shockwave for more acceleration, pushing ridiculously aggressive lines along the evershifting track and converting distance into points on the leaderboard.

All the while, orbital cannonfire rained from above, stamping huge craters of molten glass into the arid sands Dolores and her crew were skimming. Whoever was calling the shots up there didn't seem to care much whether they were firing at friend or foe.

Dolores feverishly worked engineering to keep the gravity pointed down and the shields pointed up. Their fighter, armored as it may be, wouldn't survive an orbital shell.

Tossing a hectic glance at the mission timer, she yelled, "THREE SECONDS!" into the room.

"GET THE OTHER ONE, GABBY! LEFT!" Kirs10 commanded hotly.

The weapons officer rammed her stick all the way to the left and jabbed the red button desperately.

"TWO!"

"FUCK!"

"ONE!"

The laser twitched a few inches sideways, and the last carrier's reactor containment failed in another bright fireball just as the timer hit zero.

Silence reigned with the stillness of a held breath.

The screens blurred with a decisive VICTORY message. That much was expected and not worth attention.

Right below, however, the second line read: Discipline evaluation results combined. New world record set! Save replay and upload?

A "WHOOOO!!!" shattered the silence as Gabby threw her hands in the air. Cynwire tackled her in a hug, yelling, "WE DID IT!" along the way. Kirs10 grinned widely and leaned back in his chair, while Dolores sagged against her console in relief.

"Ain't nobody breaking that one anytime soon," she mumbled with satisfaction. Kirs10 just gave her an exhausted thumbs up.

They'd been at it for more than ten hours straight, but the strain of a combined four hundred hours of repeated attempts over the last three months added a very particular kind of release to this final victory. The speedrunner's high. Fastest Way Only.

To Dolores, their successful attempt at setting a new world record in Bloodmania X Smash Wars, Fight! Race! Fly! Win! was even more symbolic—she didn't really fear failing her upcoming upgrade, but…there were still risks attached, and deep down, she'd still wanted to leave her friends with real good memories just in case.

That they'd done it at the eleventh hour was kind of bittersweet.

The door to the bridge hissed open behind them, and Yasmin stepped through. She was covered in blood spatter—souvenirs from taking down the enemy marines and saboteurs the carriers had beamed aboard. And of course, she was holding a scythe. The Nerd obsessed with Dolores's Dervish persona wouldn't be caught dead wielding anything else, not even if it meant jailbreaking a game's AI just to turn a plasma glaive into one. She'd also been responsible for an easy twenty percent of their total score and had kept them all in the running by protecting their ship's systems.

Now, she met Dolores's eyes with a knowing look.

"It's happening, isn't it?" she asked quietly.

Dolores just smiled wryly. "Tonight."

"Feel like you prepared properly?"

"Absolutely."

"Then you'll be fine."

"Yeah."

"Good job on the gravity, by the way. Made the hunting real easy."

"Cool as."

⁂

Later that night

The Eight-Brain Hive's Creation

Dolores was having fun voting for her favorite contestant in a gamer fashion competition, but eventually, reality called in the form of Adymra's voice.

It's prepared. Whenever you're ready.

Looking longingly at the exhibits, she said, "Dang. Ah well, I suppose I'll know the winner tomorrow," and logged out reluctantly.

She disengaged the various implants that preserved her remaining fleshy bits against the degradation of sleeplessness and the perpetual stillness of standing motionless vigil atop her plinth, and then let it carry her like an elevator into the isolated, earthquake-proof chamber below.

It stank of ozone. In the middle of it rested her surgery crèche, surrounded by a sterilization field that was the source of the stink, now that the space had been prepared for the operation. On the other side stood the medical fabricator. It was the size of a wardrobe with its scanner and assembling module, this time in the shape of a bell.

That would go around her head, cut open her skull, and record her brain activity in excruciating detail so that it could craft the cybernetic replacements.

All in a day's work, Dolores thought to herself with a dry laugh. Literally.

It was a bit scary, what she'd planned for herself. But it was also kinda neat in a really messed-up way.

After resetting the plinth and sealing the chamber, she undressed and folded her clothes before stepping into the field and settling into the crèche. Its surface was smooth like metal but soft like cushions, without the tackiness of rubber, made from a springy alloy that balanced comfort with antibacterial properties. Class I gear: cheap but practical. She'd sold the blueprint early in her career to fund supply runs for the village.

Not that they'd ever bothered thanking her, back then—more like they'd thought she owed them that and more for not pissing off like the previous samurai. Fuckers.

At her back, several probes passed through the crèche and pierced the fake skin covering her equally fake shoulder blades to hook up to several slots there. Her upper torso's medical implants reported the successful connections of feeding and hydration lines.

More probes and needle-tubes rose from the crèche, ready to inject themselves elsewhere—but they would wait until she couldn't feel the pain. Any drug that touched her nervous system was off-limits for the purposes of the scans. No anesthesia. Not even basic painkillers.

Local nerve-blockers might've been fine in theory, but pointless in practice since she'd be relying on the trance to shut out the ability to feel anything anyway.

"Security systems, status?" Dolores asked into the empty room, her head resting on the crèche's cushions.

A speaker clicked on and a tinny voice, not Adymra's, replied, "Bunker: structural integrity at 100%, no alerts. Area denial systems: standing by, no alerts. Intruder-repelling systems: standing by, no alerts. Missile countermeasures: standing by, no alerts. Last Stand Protocol: inactive. Activate Last Stand Protocol?"

"Set Last Stand Protocol to standby. Trigger authority: Adymra."

"Last Stand Protocol: running checks… Nominal. Authenticating trigger authority… Success. Last Stand Protocol: standing by. Alert: LSP trigger authority not set to occupant."

"Alert acknowledged."

"Bunker: all systems nominal, no alerts remaining."

"Alright. Adymra, let's do this."

As you wish.

Dolores closed her eyes and began hum—

"Nah, fuck that, not good enough. This requires the right sorta vibes."

Oh? And what might the lady Nerd be looking for?

"Gimme some incense, bud, and download a few early-century soundtracks of 40K, please."

Ah, I do believe I see what you're going for. Shall I?

"Hit it."

In moments, little altars with burning spools of incense appeared all around her. Their haze rose and turned the limits of the bunker indistinct, lending it the atmosphere of a much larger hall. Banners with iconography familiar to every single Nerd unrolled upon the walls, and shadows suggested figures moving slowly with goggles and other augmentations hidden within deep cowls, hands folded in reverent prayer.

A quiet chant joined by unseen organs filled the space, carefully modulated to reinforce the sense of cathedral spaciousness, and to match the meditative chant Dolores would use herself.

Dolores couldn't help but grin widely when she caught the subliminal snatches of, "From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me!" in between the gregorian drone.

Satisfied she settled back again, closed her eyes once more, and began to hum in her deepest timbre, deep enough to vibrate her ribcage. It was a comforting sensation that made it easy to focus on.

When she took a breath, her modified airways alternated between her lungs. One filled itself, the other kept powering the endless, circular hum, and Dolores fell deeper and deeper into the trance.

More and more, the steady noises of the bunker or clicking of machines stretched apart. Time itself became indistinct, until she couldn't tell if the beeps and clicks had paused, or if they were happening all at once. Deeper still she fell, until the blinking of LED indicators ceased illuminating her eyelids and Dolores lost her physical existence to dissociation.

As the scanner picked up the changes in her brainwaves, scalpels cut neatly into her flesh and exposed veins and arteries for the large-bore cannulas to insert themselves into. A variety of filtering and feeding machines began supplying nutrients and cleansing her body of its metabolic toxins. One probe in particular snaked into her mouth, following a dedicated channel implanted in her trachea, and entered her lungs, where it dispersed agents designed to ride her bloodstream to her brain and cross the blood-brain barrier, impairing her neurons' plasticity.

An hour after she'd first entered the crèche, Dolores's awareness of herself, her own person, her identity, blurred and washed away like ink drained from cloth.

All that remained was habit, and habit began chanting an unceasing litany; words conditioned to associate with specific moments in Dolores's life. Hallmark memories that shaped her perception of who she was, opinions so important that they served as linchpins of her own every behavior and decision, and therefore, as nodes common to her various synaptic patterns.

Dolores had transformed herself from a living, thinking person into a tapestry of disassembled ego and mapped memory.

⁂

Sensors twitched as they registered the initiation of recursive loops and repositioned themselves around the brain they were observing. The machine measured a sharp increase in directed, cyclic patterns; the chaos of everyday synaptic activity had been replaced entirely by an escalating avalanche of fractal patterns.

Knives gently parted skin above the skull, and when the sensors found no reaction in the brain's activity, the crèche automatically secured the body with padded straps and the head with a skull clamp.

Scalpels and cauteries cut the scalp in patterns calculated for best preserved blood supply, retractors folded the skin flaps away, drills and bonesaws opened up the skull.

The brain knew the pain, but it existed only in moments that dissolved as they arrived, timeless and unsubstantial, meaningless in their inability to trigger hormonal cascades.

A billion nanowire filaments extended from the bell and entered the exposed lobes, wiggling past neuron after neuron with machine-controlled precision, deeper and deeper into the grey matter housing the consciousness of Dolores, until each arrived where it needed to be; a comb, a web of leads to read a brain, cell by cell and all at once.

Twenty hours passed and nothing much happened. Nothing but the steady recording of who Dolores was, loop after loop.

Until at last, the medical fabricator had all the data it needed to craft Dolores's banal and entirely nonsacral ascension into digital life.

Drops of liquid metal began creeping down the leads—a suspension of alloy and nanobots, designed to construct eight cyberbrains to replace the organic. The liquid beads touched the brain's wrinkles and seeped into it, like oil staining paper.

Bit by bit, nanites grew corals of bioinert alloys between the brain's neurons, and connected the new structures to the living synapses. With each storm of looping neuron activation, the new pieces lit up too, soaking in the activity, learning and adapting to become a seamless addition until, eventually, the old flesh was no longer needed.

As the cyberbrains grew and took the place of more and more neurons, two more components were produced by the fabricator, too. Ninth: a manager to automate the composite structure of the first eight; and tenth: a very special sort of cerebral microfusion reactor designed to house the evertripping criticality between order and chaos that magicked calculation into consciousness: the Class III 'Ghost In The Shell' Identity Crèche.

At the moment of completion, when the organic brain was no more and all neural coagents had been built and connected, and the fabricator prepared to close up the skull again, a new thing opened its eyes.

It did not know who it was, or what it was, but it did know its one priority:

Preserve the Dolores personality.

To comply, the Dolores had to wake up and become a being again.

⁂

The Dolores Existence, Act I

Dolores suddenly was. One moment she hadn't…been. She'd been nothing but recursive loops and chants. But the next, she found herself staring up at the ceiling.

There was none of the usual grogginess after exiting a trance. And everything was different…except it wasn't. She knew things were different, but she couldn't have pointed out what.

There had been no dissonant screech to wake her up. Instead, the interrupt had come from within, this time. She could almost hear the echo of suddenly silenced neurons between her ears.

"Adymra?" she asked.

Take your time. Everything's fine. The operation was a complete success.

Well, that was good. But Dolores still didn't know what she was supposed to…feel? Notice? Know?

Everything was the same as always.

Or was it?

She remained silent, unmoving, listening. The altars with their censers had long gone cold, the scented haze sucked away by the ventilation. The 40K banners still decorated the walls, but without the shadowy figures or the orchestral music, they'd lost that special something.

The fabricator had turned itself off. No beeps, no machine clicking. No distractions.

Just silence.

And there Dolores sensed it, the attention of a thing in the back of her head. Silent, watching, waiting…and devoid of agency or desire. A thing on permanent standby, content not because it was sated, but because it wanted nothing at all.

"There it is."

Can you feel it?

"Yeah. Is that the Eight-Brain Hive? It's…passive. Completely."

Yes. It hasn't been programmed to do anything besides ensuring your continued existence. It will act only if you, or events, force it.

"So it's just gonna keep watching?"

Not even. It isn't observing anything. If you feel like it is, that's really just its watchdog routines being ready to accept commands. Or perhaps it's not actually the Eight-Brain Hive you're sensing, but rather the background manager handling your cyberbrains' network while you remain entrenched in the simulation?

"…How might I figure out which one? It is a bit unnerving and stuff."

Try directing your intention of quitting the holistic-human simulation at it.

That, too, was something Adymra had explained before she'd undergone the procedure. She found it easy to formulate her intention of doing something. She could, for example, want to get up just fine—that was because she'd done it many times and understood the concept of 'getting up'.

But Dolores couldn't put her finger on what the 'holistic-human simulation' was supposed to be. Her awareness didn't have identifiable borders to it. There wasn't some existential limit in her mind she could point at and say, "That's where I'm human."

She just was.

⁂

Twenty hours later

The Dolores Existence, Act II

"I just don't know how to get a sense for that kinda otherness? Make myself understood by the manager thing when I think at it, y'know?"

Dolores, frustrated with her lack of success at exiting the simulation due to her inability to conceptualize its existential dimensions, had eventually given up and sought some distraction with her friends. They'd been very happy to have her back, and Yasmin especially seemed relieved. But, try as she might to let herself be distracted, the issue kept nagging at her until eventually Gabby asked what the bother was.

And so, she'd tried to explain.

Yasmin raised her brows. "Have you…tried a verbal command, perhaps?" she asked.

Dolores facepalmed, laughing to herself. "No, of course not. I was too busy thinking outside the box to think outside the box. Thanks."

"Well, no time like the present," Gabby challenged with a raised palm. "Try it."

The samurai saluted with a grin and went, "Aye-aye, lmao." before she subvocalized the command to end the simulation.

And just like that, her brain unfolded.

⁂

The next instant

The Dolores Existence, Act III

In the small eternity between moments, animacy froze.

Dolores saw colors, but they were mere facts.

Dolores smelled scents, but they were only volatile chemical compounds.

Dolores saw her friends, but they were entities like a billion others.

She witnessed, but none of what she witnessed carried significance. The deep, vibrant red of her character's robe was a defined wavelength and amplitude of electromagnetic radiation, not her favorite shade of her favorite color. Yasmin's perfume, a special and sought-after reward for first place in a recent competition, was just a virtual mix of compounds. The game they'd been playing was a crude simulation produced by outdated code, not a symbol of shared laughter and challenges beaten.

That which assigned meaning lay frozen in the network of her neural coagents, paused and inactive.

She sat within the othered arithmetics of the Identity Crèche's microfusion reactor, cold and disconnected, surrounded by quantifiables, but none of it warranted reaction, none of it created motivation. Dolores recognized her subjectivity had been paused in the process of quitting the simulation improperly—but without it she had no cause to correct the lack of it.

Yet, dysfunctional or not, Dolores was not alone within her head. There rested the Eight-Brain Hive in the Identity Crèche, too, and its watchdog routines were triggered by Dolores's abnormal status.

A lack of subjectivity degraded purpose. A lack of purpose degraded existence. A degraded existence ceased.

This breached its one priority: to preserve the Dolores personality.

To comply, it touched the frozen processes of the Dolores animus, and reintegrated their patterns into the microfusion reactor's arithmetics-violating algorithms. Even the faintest trace of emotion and sense of value was enough to give her an anchor of meaning to form impetus around, and motivation.

This most familiar act of being alive was enough to set Dolores in motion again.

Shuddering from the alien numbness of even the will to live itself, she desperately plunged herself back into the simulation, where emotion and opinion colored perception itself and connected her to those like her.

Even if she wasn't really quite like them.

Not anymore.

⁂

Three days later

The Dolores Existence, Act IV

Dolores sat crying in her bunker, hunched against the impossibly acute recollection and perception her new cyberbrains possessed. She saw everything, even the tiniest reaction her friends gave her. And worse, she couldn't fail to understand them.

They knew. They felt it, sensed it that she'd changed. That she knew things about them they didn't think they were giving away, that they'd lost a certain privacy of thought they used to have even in the middle of conversation, and that they were helpless against her perception.

The jokes she was making were too good. The answers she gave, too perfect.

She could see their monkey brains judge her, and to them, she wasn't the same person anymore. She even saw that they didn't realize it consciously.

But the walls were coming up. It was driving them away.

She saw that, too. Her cyberbrains had no difficulty calculating when, precisely, she'd lose her friends, or how it would happen.

It. Was. So. Painfully. Obvious.

⁂

A month later

The Dolores Existence, Act V

It was happening all over again. The estrangement, the loss of friends, the banishment from their lives.

It wasn't quite the same—nobody was shouting, and the reasons were different. Gabby and the others, they weren't arrogant. They were good people. Not self-absorbed in their idea of How Things Must Be, nor militant in their enforcement of it.

But still, Dolores didn't fit in anymore, like a square peg trying to squeeze into a round hole. She hadn't realized just how much her particular brand of off-color communication had marked her as part of the group.

And now she'd lost it.

Perhaps, if I may offer a solution? Adymra asked into the silence of Dolores's stressed pain.

"..."

Dolores was too depressed to bother answering, but Adymra didn't let that stop him.

I propose modifying the Neural Coagent network such that each of your cyberbrains is assigned a specialized function, analogous to the task-specific regions of your former biological brain. This approach would serve a dual purpose: it would allow the simulation to more accurately reflect your prior cognitive limitations, and it would enable selective underclocking of the cyberbrain responsible for social processing—thereby reproducing your previous communicative patterns.

Grieving and hurt to her core, Dolores grasped the promise of restoration with a fervor that was almost pathetic in its intensity.

⁂

The next day

The Dolores Existence, Act VI

Dolores sat crying in her bunker again, though this time with relief.

They'd successfully reworked the protocols by which her cyberbrains worked, and Dolores found herself comfortably restrained to her old sense of self. The changes had shown themselves in her interactions with her friends too, though none of them except perhaps Yasmin would've been able to say what was different.

But she was part of the group again, less the ability to see too much, and that was all that mattered.

⁂

One year later

The Dolores Existence, Act VII

Dolores sighed at the nest she'd just finished off.

It was the same size and worth the same amount of points as every other nest she'd eradicated over the last three years. Same models, same environment, same time to kill.

She was stuck. Instead of snowballing as she'd intended to with the greater capabilities her cyberbrains should've provided her, she found herself stagnating.

Stagnation was not safe, not against the Antithesis. Ninety-nine percent of the time she'd do just fine. One percent of the time, things would get bad enough that she'd slip up eventually and die.

Perhaps…she'd dallied long enough? Her failure to properly utilize her cerebral upgrades wasn't acceptable, no matter how much that…episode last year had scared her.

"Adymra?"

Yes, Dolores?

"I…think I'd like to revisit…things," she followed up hesitantly, tapping a finger against her temple.

I understand. May I inquire as to your goal? What benefit are you hoping for?

"Combat potential. I obviously don't do well with being…more than I am and how that affects my friends. But I still need to fight better. Harder. Faster."

She kicked the corpse of a Thirteen. They were guardian models, directly attached to a nest—tough and dangerous buggers, with metal-tipped whips for limbs that would eviscerate any human. They were also a dime-a-dozen to her, but barely.

She still struggled against proper hunter types. She shouldn't. Not on the cusp between Class II and III as she was, and not on Earth where the Antithesis threat was weakest in the system.

She wasn't making meaningful use of her powers.

I assume you'd still prefer not to be exposed to the elevated levels of cognition your cyberbrain network is capable of?

"Yeah." Dolores shifted uncomfortably and bit her lips as she admitted to that weakness. "At least most of the time. If it's just while I'm fighting…"

I see. May I suggest a proposal, if you'd like to hear it?

"Tell me."

The cyberbrain upgrades were meant to provide you with the faculties to utilize more complex and esoteric implants, but you haven't really needed any. For the most part, you've been fine as you were.

Dolores shook her head. "Sure, but I've hit a plateau in my power, which means I'm left hoping nothing I can't handle will show up."

Yes, you still possess those faculties—you just aren't using them. Since you are carrying some trauma around them, I would suggest allowing yourself to reacclimate to the higher level of cognition step-wise.

For instance, if you bear with occasionally exiting your simulation to program the Class III 'Pious Concentration' Neural Coagent Network Manager with macros, you could rely on them to perform whatever routines you want to access from your simulation. This would leave your subjective experience intact—you'd install what would feel like artificial instincts: shortcuts for accessing the more demanding tools without exiting your my-brain-is-human simulation.

The downside is that the manager is non-aware. You program it, and it does exactly what you tell it to—it cannot adapt on the fly. On the other hand, this approach would gradually ease you into spending more time outside your simulation, while helping you develop better control over your behavioral output as a nonhuman.

"Yeah…that's probably a good idea."

And this time at least, she'd know how to exit the simulation safely. She'd grasped the concept of the holistic-human simulation—she'd experienced exactly what it was like to be unhuman, after all.

I did think so.

⁂

Four months later

The Dolores Existence, Act VIII

Standing atop the corpse of an utterly savaged model Thirty-Three, Dervish was satisfied.

The shortcuts masquerading as instincts were indeed doing a great job of letting her access the next strata of power. Her scythe had gained a great deal of versatility in her hands, and her ability to control her mass-field, Gravity Hook, and the capacitor network inside her own body, at least in the simplistic and straightforward ways that macros allowed for, had noticeably boosted her power.

She was making points hand over fist again.

And, perhaps most importantly, she'd also stopped freaking out about stepping outside the Dolores-is-monkey simulation. The process had begun to feel like she was just accessing her skill menu to modify her loadout, lately.

Perhaps it was time for the next step?

⁂

A few hours later

The Dolores Existence, Act IX

As I explained during your digitalization preparations, the Eight-Brain Hive's personification—if we can call it that—serves as a failsafe against an unwanted existential decoherence. It activates when your lack of an instinctual framework for digital existence puts you at risk, as it did the first time you exited the simulation by smashing the proverbial emergency ejection button.

To meet such challenges, this warden possesses sufficient complexity to exhibit true agency through accessing the full computational capacity of your neural coagent network. It just lacks an animus beyond securing your continuation. If you were to grant it access to your own subjectivity, it could align with your intentions and operate as your proxy in combat. During this method of operation, the Hive would no longer imitate a human brain. You'd still be entertaining your friends, but your perception and behavior would once more be too acute.

Dolores shivered. "That's the method that makes me too perfect, even inside the simulation?"

Indeed.

She groaned and rubbed her face in consternation. She really rather preferred not to engage with that state of being again, even if it was only for the duration of a fight. "Guess I should come to terms with it, huh? If I want to advance again."

There are other options entirely, of course.

"But I'd have to start over on the tech tree."

You would—and most come with their own…idiosyncrasies.

"Fine," she sighed. "How do I do it, practically?"

You'd run the holistic-human simulation on only one coagent—perhaps the one responsible for linguistic and social processing? The other seven cyberbrains would be used by the proxy to fight.

"And that's why my experience of the monkey simulation would be damaged, isn't it? One cyberbrain isn't good enough to keep the simulation indistinguishably realistic."

Correct.

⁂

Two weeks later

The Dolores Existence, Act X

Dervish rode the edge between cold, arithmetic reality, and warm, social companionship.

As a samurai, she was learning how to meld her own identity with the empty thing that was the Eight-Brain Hive's failsafe, to let it be an extension of her will.

As Dolores, she was sharing her hunts with her friends via streams and putting in work to feel as vibrantly alive as she could.

As the Eight-Brain Hive, she was formulating protocols to let some of that vibrancy bleed through and tinge the cold, logic-bound side of her existence.

She'd been afraid of falling into estrangement again, but…Yasmin, ever the attentive friend, quickly figured out that Dolores was experimenting with something that made her…vulnerable, and had led the charge in keeping Dolores attached to the group.

As Dervish, things were coming together, finally.

The discovery that there was a safe way to utilize at least seven eighths of her enhanced cognition absolved much of the fear and pain around her early stumbles with the cyberbrain network. With the Eight-Brain Hive's personification actually doing the moniker ever more justice, perhaps she might even learn to make peace with the stranger side of life?

⁂

A few hours later

The Dolores Existence, Act XI

"Say, Adymra, what's the difference between using only seven, or all eight, of my cyberbrains in combat?"

If you did divest yourself fully of the holistic-human simulation, you would meet the computation capacities your more esoteric purchases require.

Your Class III combination of the 'Twisting Nature' Wide-Area Gas Recombinator and the 'God's Domain' Mass-Field Regulator would allow you to craft wildfire storms to strip a valley of life, or hurricanes to drag down air cold enough to freeze anything in its eye.

"That's a touch more terrifying than doing fancy acrobatics, or parsing scents into or out of a bubble of air…"

Class III weapons can devastate continents, Dolores. Prudent forethought aside—the amount of data to be crunched for their efficient use lies still beyond Class II, nevermind the current capabilities of your species. Did you want to test what being the Eight-Brain Hive is like, without the simulation's lifeline?

"Yeah, but I feel like I should complete the failsafe's personification first."

⁂

Six months later

The Dolores Existence, Act XII

Sentinel's Naming

Opening her eyes with a quiet sigh, Dolores shook off the cold melancholy nipping around the edges of her emotional landscape.

The failsafe wasn't ever going to be a proper person. It could pretend very convincingly to be one while she fed her emotions and values to it according to the protocol she'd developed, but the moment she stopped, they drained from the thing like water from a sieve.

It had the complexity to be a person, because it borrowed her faculties to be one.

It had the agency of a person, because it borrowed her subjectivity.

It was not a person because it fell apart the moment she ceased stuffing it with person-stuff.

There was only so much tweaking and messing around Dolores could do until she had to accept the reality.

"It's only ever going to be a useful tool, isn't it?" she asked.

Yes. If you wanted another person in your head, you'd need another Identity Crèche, and another set of neural coagents to give it processing power.

"Which would come with its own failsafe and I'd face the same problem, but twice, I presume?"

Indeed.

"Fine." Dolores said. "Best I can do against the cold and isolation is to keep doing what I've been doing—infuse the puppet with myself. I think."

I would like to note that you could also program the failsafe with additional priorities. Nothing will ever turn it into a thinking, living being, but if you're looking to…decorate the digital side of your existence a little more with, let's say, personal effects, then that might be a worthwhile avenue to pursue.

Dolores's mouth hung open as it finally clicked.

This entire time, she'd never really stopped to put a finger on the purpose of her actions. Because of the painful estrangement she'd experienced when she'd first unlocked superhuman intelligence, she'd flinched away from accepting it as her own. Even once she'd started to re-engage with it, she'd still wanted to find someone else to carry the burden—even if that meant trying to turn a mere construct into a person.

It was only as she accepted the failure of that proposition that she let go of the blinders and freed herself to admit that she could, if not make it a person, then personalize it in other ways. Claim it, make it her own, leave her mark on it. Stop pushing away that side of her new existence.

Turn her new cerebrum into a home, too.

Dolores's voice cracked as she laughed and threw an arm across her eyes.

"Can't believe it. Two years, huh? It took me two years to get here."

But you did get 'here', and I had faith that you would. You're stubborn, for better and for worse.

"Fine!" Dolores clapped and hopped to her feet, determined to pour all the fizzing energy from solving the dissonance into the next step. "Additional priorities to program the failsafe with, go!"

Perhaps something close to home? Something that aligns with your own vigil over Baie-Comeau?

"Yes! Let's see. We'll upgrade my AFK routines and give them to the failsafe for when I'm off Diving the Mesh. Lots of other ideas too. We could make it download medical knowledge! Keep the village library updated, especially the survival stuff. It'll have more impact on the nutcase worshippers if we limit it to the vital subjects. She needs a name! We'll call her…" Dolores looked around the memorial she'd parked herself in. "The Sentinel…Decennial. Yeah."

She paused, all levity gone.

"Say, Adymra."

Yes?

"Can I still die?"

Yes. Truly high-tier Antithesis could, for example, wipe your microfusion reactor's patterns, even through the shielding. Then there's complete destruction of your head, of course.

And, well…suicide is a thing, even among immortal samurai.

"I…see. What would happen with the failsafe in that case? Considering its highest priority is my continued existence."

Since it's subordinate to you, it wouldn't violate orders given by you—even if they're to not stop you from dying.

Dolores remained silent as she thought for several minutes, until eventually, she made up her mind.

"If something were to happen to me, Adymra, I wouldn't want this body to be destroyed. I'd want it to be installed on my plinth again, and I'd want the Sentinel's priority to be the continued safety of my village."

Understood, Dolores.

⁂