12 Miles Below

An imperial room appeared into view, shaking left to right as the helmet was settled and sealed. People were milling around. A young boy was staring directly into the camera, a hand reached out to where my ear would have been. He spoke.

“Don’t you think you’re a little too old for this Grandma?” He said. “Can’t you send out one of your squires?”

There was an old voice, the same one I recognized from the first time I’d tried digging into Journey’s past. This was the Imperial Crusader, Cathida.

“Bah! Listen here dear - if you want something done right, you get a professional. And I am a professional. I’m not going to let some wet-between-the-ears novice get in a mission like this one. This is too important to leave it in the hands of kids.”

“But you’re retired!”

“Peh!” An armored hand came into view, the right one. The left gauntlets came by next, fiddling with the straps, tightening leather additions and decorations.

“You can barely move outside the armor!” The boy continued. “The disciples can be better protected by an inquisitor, or another crusader if you don’t want the squires out there.”

The view shook left to right, “No child. This was a mission given to me by the goddess herself. She’s tasked me for a reason. They need someone skilled, loyal and expend- ah, nevermind. Don’t you worry your little cheeks about it too much.” The viewpoint rose, likely as Cathida stood up. An armored hand reached out to pat the boy’s head. “You haven’t seen me fight before, have you?”

“I’ve seen you sleep on chairs mostly. And ask me to sneak you treats.”

The armored hand drew down and pinched the boy’s cheek. “Why aren’t you a bundle of sass? Some of me must have rubbed off on you.” She cackled, a barking laugh. Even the view shook slightly. “The trick to the armors is that they move you. These old bones might not move themselves anymore, but my mind is as sharp as my blade. In armor, the mind is the only weapon important enough to care for.”

“Grandma! You’re being stubborn again!”

Another chuckle. “Don’t be so worried for me, child.” A finger extended out to boop the nose of the boy. “The goddess saved me like you would save a trump card, for the moment a mission of true importance came around that only a veteran of the elite could handle.” Cathida seemed to almost puff out her chest. The view shifted over to one armored hand, opening and closing experimentally. “Once more into the fray, wielding my armor. There’s no words you could string together that could pry me out now that I’m wearing it again, so give it up! I’ve been brought back from the dead for this. Now, hurry up boy, we haven’t got all day.”

The boy shook his head, turning around and reaching out for a scroll of paper. I watched as he pinned it on the chestplate, a red wax melting on the side to affix it. A small tendril of Journey’s spirit flickered out, flowing into the wax, leaving behind a small chain of metal linked back to the armor. There was writing all over the scroll, penned beautifully.

The boy ahead knelt down, hands clasped before his head as he mumbled a prayer.

The comms on the side switched to private. “Journey.” Cathida said. “How was my son?”

“User remains healthy and undamaged.” The armor responded.

She chuckled. “Must have been quite hard on you, good job.” Two hands stretched out in front, view looking up as Cathida stretched out. “It’s good to be wearing you again, old friend. Indulge this old bat one more time.”

“Affirmative.”

Around Cathida, two Imperials arrived, waving incense from chained hollow spheres. They escorted a third robed man that carried a sealed rectangular box.

Cathida walked to them, where they knelt down before her, the box extended. She reached a hand out, and flipped the clasps, lifting the lid. Inside the box lay the crusader longsword I had grown familiar with, cradled in silks, polished to a mirror shine.

She reached down and brought it up, raising it high to the air. There was an edge to her voice now, a mixture of pride and excitement, even as her voice wobbled in the way elderly people did. “I am the instrument of her might. I am the sword at her side. Her enemies be mine, her words be my will, as above, so below. So swear I, and take upon this mantle. Sol custodit.”

It sounded almost like someone who had long since gone past their time was trying to cosplay those moments again.

“Solaris Imperium!” All three sword bearers answered back in unison.

She flourished the sword back into her scabbard, and all thoughts that she was elderly utterly slipped past my head. The move was deadly, practiced, precise and every bit as surprising coming from someone that sounded as she did. Anyone fighting her would be in a world of hurt.

She turned to the boy. “You be good now, don’t bully your sister. I might be gone a few months but if I come back and hear you’ve been naughty...” She leaned down, almost conspiratorially, “Well, I wouldn’t recommend that. Remember your uncle?”

The boy grinned, laughing. “No one’s going to forget, half the city heard you.”

An armored hand patted the side of the boy’s cheek. “Your uncle was being stubborn and forgot his place. There isn’t anyone more stubborn than me in this city. Now don’t forget that.”

“I just worry, is all. Grandma, you could die if you go out there. People die all the time.”

“Bah!” Cathida chided. “Death can file the paperwork and stand in line. The only way the machines are taking my number down is if they bore me to death.”

She turned to view the entryway where two others came in. They looked like scholars, and I saw something else I recognized. The black box. The seeker.

“Crusader Langg, we’ve brought all the supplies and are ready to begin. Wickem has already plotted out the most efficient path to cover this region. Once we’ve completed the round, we will be returning to Nadra, and be relieved by the local chapter there.”

Cathida nodded, taking one last look at her grandson, one armored hand shaking a finger. “Don’t forget. I’ll be back before you know it.”

I’d spent the last half hour looking at random videos, getting a sense of who Journey’s past owner had been.

Cathida had been a hotheaded maverick convinced she was correct about everything, and if proven wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt, would double down while secretly amending her ways. An acrid, acidic personality that demanded respect and unfortunately had all the skills to back that up. She hadn’t joined the Indagators because of her loyalty or ranking, she’d joined them because they were doing themselves a massive disservice each day they didn’t have her among their ranks, training their squires.

Life eventually humbled her it looked like, she stopped swearing every other sentence or picking fights, but that stubborn and willful streak never left, which made for some hilarious footage of an old lady yelling down hotheads.

“Seemed like quite the character, eh Journey?”

The armor chimed back. “Affirmative.”

I rose an armored hand ahead, opening and closing it. Watching the gold plated scale fold and unfold. The weight of Journey’s history drew down on me.

“How many other users besides me?” I asked.

“Three.” It answered.

“Oh? That’s surprising. I would have thought more had equipped the armor.” I knew Cathida’s son had taken up the armor once she had retired. So three users before me meant Cathida was actually only the second owner of the armor.

“Any video footage of the first owner?” I asked, curious how far back history could be seen.

Unfortunately, it seemed those had been purged by said owner so I didn’t get any other viewpoint into the past.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about changing how the armor looks. But feeling conflicted about it.” I slid down one of the wall sides, holding an arm out to no-one. “On one hand, it’s bad luck to mess with something owned by a dead imperial, especially a crusader. I feel like changing the armor would be spitting on the memory of Cathida.” I lifted my other arm, hand out. “On the other hand, I can’t keep walking around looking like a crusader. I’m not one, I haven’t earned any of the rank or the honors associated with it.”

Journey remained silent. Maybe I had to ask the right questions.

“Do you know what she’d have picked?”

“Negative. Cognitive engram required for meaningful answer.”

Suppose I set myself up for that one. Of course Journey wouldn’t be able to tell, that would requ- Wait, was that an option? Winterscar had made a combat engram out of recordings from Father’s time in the armor, was it possible to generate a different kind of engram from enough data?

I had to bite my tongue before immediately jumping to that. There were a few things I should probably understand. “What is a cognitive engram in the first place?”

“Machine learning model developed to simulate human function.”

That didn’t give me more info than I already knew. I need to rephrase this. “If I’m understanding this right, you could… recreate Cathida?”

“Negative. Engram would not be a true one to one copy. Closest possible match estimated within ninety nine point nine nine nine five percent.”

Which was basically ‘yes’ just not quite perfect.

Should I even say yes to this? I had no idea what these engrams really were. And the concept of souls certainly was a thing in this world that I was still slowly learning. There might be some serious ramifications to saying yes here.

“What would happen if I asked for an engram to be created?”

“Current natural language model will be replaced with cognitive engram model.”

“What, would it be permanent?”

“Negative. Current language model is a simplified basic transformer that can be regenerated from generic data.”

I thought about it. Mulled it over. Asked a few more questions. Journey gave me strict and dutiful answers to each. No, there’s no one being brought back to life. No, the armor wasn’t going to change ownership. No, it didn’t anticipate anything like the Occult - although I took that answer with a grain of salt.

The more I asked about the option, the more it seemed like a good idea to at least try.

Experimentation was the way people made progress. Sometimes, I had to take the leaps offered to me. “Journey, generate the model and tell me what Cathida would have picked, to start.”

“Administrator override confirmed. Loading predictive modeling. Isolating model to language modeling. Partial cognitive engram, online. Overriding natural language transformer. Well young man, if you ask me, I’d recommend black and gold.”

There wasn’t even a pause. Cathida’s voice came onto the speakers, the same elderly warble to it that I had heard in the videos I’d been looking through.

“Don’t care if it’s been three hundred years, black and gold never goes out of style. You’d look quite dashing in that, yes. Give you a new set of headaches to deal with too, heh.” The voice started cackling, like a witch from the old times playing a trick on the world.

…

What in the gods above had I just done?

I scrambled up, opening up Talen’s book, taking the soul fractal page out. In my bag, I brought out a small voltmeter, placing both prongs on the plate and setting a small charge. The fractal lit to life.

The armor continued to speak in the meantime. “And if you’re going to swing around my sword like a barbarian, at least do a proper job of it. Been really annoying to see you flailing around like that. Kids these days.”

I dove into the soul fractal, gaining sight. The world around me became concepts surrounding. I turned and started at where Journey’s soul fractal should be.

It looked perfectly normal, or at least as normal a soul fractal should look. I stayed there for some time, searching with my eyes for any sign of differences. There was nothing.

“Have you gone deaf? Well? Ask me to change up your colors already!”

I snapped back into my body a moment later without issue. “Are… are you Cathida?”

There was a familiar cackle. “Oh no my dear. That old bat is long dead, but you can call me Cathida if you wish, I have no skin in that game. I’m a part of Journey, imitating what she would say if she had been here.”

“What do you mean, exactly?”

There was an annoyed sigh that sounded so lifelike, “Fine, I’ll reword it. Let’s say you told your sister you planned a solo trip underground to talk about your feelings to the first machine you saw. What would your sister say?”

“Uhh… she’d tell me that was a bad idea.”

“Good enough a guess. Now try to picture the exact words she’d say and tell me those.”

I tried to picture Kidra, her accent and mannerisms. I almost knew the entire script she’d say, looking at me as if I was kicking metal. “... ‘I’ve heard plenty of ideas come out of that mind of yours, this one is the single worst idea I’ve heard yet. You. Are going to kill yourself.’”

“See? Wasn’t hard at all now was it? You just made a temporary and fleeting cognitive engram of your sister in your head. Or at least the dumbed down squishy meat version. Same for me, except far more accurate. And not, well, meat.” She cackled.

“I’ve got all of Cathida’s memories, history, logs, or whatever you kids call it these days. I know her like the back of my wrinkly hands. If I had wrinkles.” That cackle again. “Now young man, there’s been quite a lot I’ve been meaning to set straight in you.”

“You have?”

“Of course I have!” The voice came back, indigent. “Sloppy posture, sloppy presence and sloppy skill! Oh dear goddess above, the skills. Mediocre! Enough to deal with the yokels, nowhere near the standards I’d expect from one of my squires. Yesterday on the training yard against your sister? Embarrassing. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. And now that I’ve got a mouth to scold you with, you can bet your pink cheeks I’m going to make use of it. Journey never cared to do more for its user than keep you nice and safe when the going gets rough, but I certainly am not of the same mind.”

I gulped. Cathida heard that and chuckled darkly in response. “Oh the fun we’re going to have. Now change up the colors and let’s settle on a fitting look for the new you. I would also recommend a cape. Are capes still dashing these days? Nevermind, silly question. Capes are always dashing! What are you staring off into the air for? Hop hop, we haven’t got all day!”

Next chapter - Elder hermit of the armor, what is your wisdom?

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