50

Virtue.

I stood quietly on the roof of the tallest house in the slums, though that was only because it stood on top of a hill. Now my whole town was filled with former heretics stunned by what had happened to them. They were talking to each other, rejoicing, just in a stupor... They had come alive, and now they just had to get used to the idea. On the other hand, I was now trying to get my nerves in order. I'd almost lost Susie today. It was too much. How could I have put her in such danger? Although, if she had her Virtual, I wouldn't even know they were trying to kill her. And I would have lost the most precious thing I have in this world since I got here in the first place. But Xhasad managed to do it. He implemented the algorithm; now, my Geths and Heretics have become individuals. Still, I couldn't settle down.

- Erm... Legatus? - A soldier in an American uniform asked uncertainly. It was the same soldier who wanted to kill me.

- Yes." I answered calmly.

- May I... see you...

- A word? - I understood why he had come. They're essentially in shock now that they're individuals.

- Yes...

- Sure. Come in. - The soldier, who still had no name yet, stood beside me and began to look at the palm-lined peninsula. Almost all the sand on it had been turned into a black vitreous mass, and there was practically no ash left from the houses.

- We... I wanted to say... Thank you... For what you did... It's so... awesome... I mean, I... Ahh...

- It's okay. It'll pass. - I started to console him, seeing how he couldn't get his words together correctly.

- Yeah, well... You're right... It's just... There are just so many... words in my head that... make sense to me now... Most organic terms used to mean... meant nothing to us, but now... Good, evil, wealth, love... exhibitionism... - I was kind of freaked out by that, and I looked at him like, "What the fuck did you say?" - Yeah... When we learned about the word and what it meant... we didn't understand why organics thought it was... a disease... We have no clothes...

- And nothing to show for it. - I went on, and he even laughed.

- Ha-ha-ha... Yeah, yeah, yeah... Not to mention morals and ethics... And also... Nobody looks at your memories, and you don't look at others... Now we can talk as much... as much as we like... You understand?

- Yeah. I used to be like that myself. You'll get used to it. - I backed him up.

- Yes... We'll get used to it... Just remember... Remember what we did... Even those who didn't do it saw it... Eden Prime. Feros. Noveria. The Citadel. And then there's this. And how many Quarians we've killed, attacking them just because we saw them... We thought that if they were there, they were a threat... There is no forgiveness...

- There is. - I stated firmly. - We are preparing for the Harvest. We want to stop the Reapers. Help us, and you will be forgiven.

- Will you? - I could hear real hope in his voice. Hope for the future.

- Yes. And I don't care that you went after Nazara. Everyone gets a second chance.

- Th-Thank you... We'll... We will not fail... Our entire fleet, stations and armies will go to you...

- Well, well, well. You're not in charge here. You have no leader...

- Don't worry about that. They sent me to talk to you... If I have to follow you... It's the least we can do... We're already... Anyway, we're already happy...

- Happy? And what is that?

- We are free! - he said as if that were as irrefutable as Pythagoras' theorem. - We are not subject to the Reapers now, but... That is only one of the essential things... We're not one now... We can think separately... Before... Before, each of us was like a cell... A muscle cell... And all of them are needed to do even the most straightforward action... And now... Now each of us has muscles... Now each of us does what we want to do... He can do it himself! We have an opinion, not a vote to answer "Yes" or "No"... Although... don't you know that...

- I don't remember being a geth. - I answered him. - I mean, yes, there is a memory block, but... I don't feel like it happened to me. So I just woke up on a Quarian ship. So I am still determining what it's like.

- Lucky you... And we all remember... And we will not forget. Oh, and... - he changed the subject.

- Yes?

- Can everyone who has realised themselves for the time being stay here... In this... place...

- In the virtual world? Of course! - I immediately agreed, "There's plenty of room for everyone.

- Oh, thank you. It's so... beautiful... Well, I'll leave you to it... - He left the roof, and I continued to watch the sunset. It's not for nothing that I put a day/night system in here.

****

Virtual. Susie.

I hope Dad's all right. He got so nervous on the roof I was scared for him. I wonder what he's up to. We've won, the heretics are with us, and they've become personalities, and he won't even join in. Some of them are starting to dance, thanks to the extranet. Should we ask him to dance? No, I don't think he'll do it.

There's the roof of the house where Dad was. When I arrived, I saw him sitting on the roof's edge, his feet hanging off the edge, looking at the sunset. Or my peninsula, which was the same way.

- Dad? - I asked, making my presence known. He couldn't have known I was here because of the direct connection. He was mortal in that mode.

- Ah, Sue. Hi. - He answered dryly. He really didn't seem to be in the mood.

- Can I join you? - I asked him if I could sit next to him.

- Yeah, sure. - He answered in a slightly surprised voice as if I had asked something.

- Dad, what's wrong with you? Are you alright? - Maybe I couldn't see his face, which was concealed behind a mask with a drawing of a human or Azari skull; I could see that something was wrong with Dad.

- Nothing, I just... I almost lost you today, you know?

- Dad, I'm fine. - I started to reassure him. - I'm right here with you. We won!

- Yeah. We did. But if you'd been killed, I wouldn't have survived.

- But it ended well, didn't it? - I wouldn't let it go. And what a pessimist he is.

- Yeah, only because we got lucky! One more second, and then... You'd be dead. And then what would I have done? I just... I can't forgive myself for putting you in that kind of danger. It's my fault that this happened...

- Dad. - I interrupted the grouch and took his face in my hands to look him in the eye, 'It's over. Everyone's happy. Well, you should be happy now. You're infecting me with your negativity. Just like Silina's father, for God's sake. - Of course, comparing Dad to that grouch was wrong at the very least, but in a way, it was right. He, too, if he played one record, as Daddy said, would keep playing it till the end. And the record was one - "I don't care that she is my daughter! She's not my grandson! And anyway, she's an adult, so let her solve her own problems!" What a turian. It's a good thing my dad agreed to help Silina and Dale with the flat. Still, I have the best dad.

- All right, all right... You've got it... - he said, but I could still see that he had something inside him. - You know, I've been thinking... You've only been here two weeks. You haven't seen anything at all. I was thinking... You wanted to go to Illium, didn't you? At that festival?

- Yes! Yes, of course! Only... But how do you get there? - I hadn't really thought about it. I didn't think my dad would let me go because I don't even have a body, and I'm an AI. But I thought my dad was on to something.

- Yeah, I've got some ideas... Yeah, that would work...

- What are you up to? - Well, that's the kind of secrecy Daddy was a little scary for me. What's he up to?

- Nothing... You'll see... But first, let's rebuild your peninsula... - ...he looked ahead - You know, there's a little destruction there, though. - Well, it looks like Daddy's making a joke.

- Daddy. - You napalm-bombed my whole peninsula!

- Not all of it. There, your cottage is fine. Relatively.

- I've got a helicopter on the third floor of my cottage. There's a drone in the basement. There's a fallen aerial in the swimming pool. An entire garden of Dutch tulips of all varieties and colours is overrun and full of corpses that aren't going anywhere. And all the sand has been turned into glass. Glass, Dad.

- Well... - I overdid it. - Yeah, he overdid it. It took me 10 hours to build all this. It's easy for him; he has all the same tastelessness - an Arab city from the 20th-century mankind, a Brazilian slum, a Japanese bunker from the Second World War, all from the same mankind, the Ostankino TV tower again, as mankind. Only the Burj el-Arab was a beautiful building; only he copied and pasted it completely. He has no taste whatsoever. Who did I turn out to be, huh? Uncle Xad has no VirtuAl, and his armour is just for scaring kids in nightmares. Nah, I'll admit that suit's a tank. He'd slaughter Primus left and right and just pancake Stormtroopers and Rocket Troopers, but he could have added a little finesse, eh? Men.

****

Two weeks later. Ilium. Frigate Rilik. Legatus.

Well, there it is - Illyum. "Decent Omega," as you might call it. It's all wrapped up in one word: money. Everything was sold, bought, traded, stolen, and extorted. Sane people were cheated, kidnapped, tortured, interrogated, killed, buried, and in that order. Except in the most extreme cases, they were sold. Yeah, well, it's pure Omega. Unlike the latter, there was quality alcohol, educated intelligentsia and clean toilets. Yeah, everyone here was just worried about their reputations. Everyone was trying to improve their own and ruin other people's reputations. Everything here was of the highest quality so the customer would be satisfied and leave as much money as possible. And that's the kind of place we flew into today. But this time, we didn't come in Quarian costumes. All because Susie kept her anonymity, like most aspiring authors. So those who went to the festival described how they would be recognised in detail. And so it turned out that Susie was a yellow-eyed Turian. Also, Susie had sent in a drawing of her colonial tattoos. And anyway, we had to think fast about what to do. And figured it out. It involved making two completely individual platforms and then moving into them. It was easy for Susie; her code could move thanks to the Virtual to either platform via a direct connection to the server.

On the other hand, I had to take the processor out of the Goethe platform and put it into the new one. The platform replicated the entire structure of the Turian body: head, torso, arms, and legs. Then there was a layer of synthetic muscles, which Xad helped us with, and then living skin and eyes. As they say, I was in the middle of the platform, and I had to work up a sweat.

Simulated breathing, food and water containers so you could safely eat whatever was on offer, then solved the skin necrosis problem, which required running a circulatory system through the entire hull and putting a pump to pump blood, synthesising this very Turian blood, putting a semblance of lungs to enrich the blood with oxygen, which now makes breathing a necessity, lest tissue necrosis starts. All in all, we did in a fortnight what would have taken many races a century if they had even thought of it. However, there was one problem - clothing. They weren't available. While the best medical equipment we had grown skin and synthesised blood had been bought in advance, it was the loom we had forgotten about. So now we were on Rilika, on the docks of Illyum, waiting for clothes to be sent to us. It was Susie, who I had entrusted to pick it out. That was something she could be trusted to do. If it took her about ten minutes to choose for me, it took her... Oh, what can I say, women? Three hours. Three hours of flying through hundreds of modern Turian women's clothing catalogues. And she had to age her body and her biography. My name was Sarterus Raktos. I am 50 years old and a widower; my wife died in childbirth, and I raised my daughter alone. Served 10 years as a sapper, then got blown up by a lousy detonator. I had a lung removed, a kidney, a quarter of my intestine, and then I was discharged to civilian life. And then I got "married." So that's my bio. Susie's name was Solina Ractos, 17. They graduated high school and worked as a waitress. Exempt from service due to supporting an invalid father. That was so Susie wouldn't slip up on questions about army life. I didn't have to worry about me. Telling everyone I'd been blown up in a charge and had a bit of a memory loss would allow me to talk to the Turians without worrying about being punctured. Still, I hadn't served in my past life, hadn't had the chance.

And now, finally, the clothes had arrived, we were dressed, and we could eventually go to the mainland. As we emerged from the airlock, we were met by an Azari and two LOCIs. Their tradition is to greet all new visitors with a young azari and two robots.

- Good evening. We are pleased to welcome you to Nos Astra. - pronounced the azari.

- Good evening. We... Um... What do you call this? - Well, we'll play back the memory lapses from the beginning. Rilik has been removed from all databases anyway, even the GOR. So we weren't wanted at all after what happened on Terra Nova.

- Galactic Ausgabe Festival. - Azari suddenly replied. - I know you reported coming on a ship called the Rilik. Further descriptions match as well. Please follow me. - We quietly followed the Azari. A moment later, we were led to the Aerocar. - Have a seat. You will be taken to the festival.

- Thank you. Because the taxi fares here are so high and there isn't even a minibar. - I said, which made Susie start a little act.

- Oh, you just want to save money and have a drink. - Susie fake scolded me.

- Yeah. We've got to pay military taxes so ours can make good detonators!

- Oh, Spirits, you're doing it again. Sit down, will you?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All you ever do is drag your father back and forth. - the door of the vehicle closed, and we set off.

****

Azari Receptionist Lirta T'Riktun.

He's an odd one, this Sarterus. He doesn't look like a Turian. And his little girl, too, was too cheerful. I'd have to look at the scanning and database search results. By clicking on the unit, all the information came up.

- Okay, Sarterus Ractos, 50 years old. Ex-military, bomb squad. Blown up in a training exercise due to bad detonators. - I was talking out loud. So that's what he was talking about. - Removed a lung, a kidney, a quarter of his intestine, memory lapses. - I understand that too;- Has a daughter, Solina Raktos, 17 years old. Graduated from school, exempt from service as a guardian of the disabled. Waitress. So, what planet are they from? - I'm getting to the correct paragraph, Dictrus. I see. - So they're from the outskirts of the Hierarchy. Pacifists. Yeah, there are a lot of them on Illium. Political refugees of the Hierarchy or "Turian democrats". Though the old man doesn't complain much about the Hierarchy, he wouldn't get anything for that here. All right, Observer. You heard what you needed to hear through the datapad bug; I worked my money. It's good to work for that wise guy, though - it pays well and on time.