72 - Matters of Import
72 - Matters of Import
"Moooooo!"
"Yeah, Dude, check it out. Grass and everything. It's not, like, an Andalite thing or anything like that but I still think that it's pretty good."
"Mooomphrhgh."
"…I guess the conversation is over. Have fun with your grass."
It hadn't really taken me that long before I decided that I couldn't keep stealing grass from various places around the world just to feed my cow and so instead decided to steal a junk of field from somewhere in Iowa. Normally I'd feel bad but I'd made sure to grab it from a very distant part of some overly expansive corporation's territory. The rabid capitalism of my original America had nothing on this place so they'll probably replace it easily. In any case it was a good few feet deep of dirt and then some thick and heavy grass atop it. Even some minor shrubbery and a small copse of trees. Even so with all of that given regular cow grazing and the fact that it's their usual food I couldn't rely on just one deck's worth of grass. So I did something more than I usually did.
I'd dipped into biological tinkering. Everything from the past two universes I'd been to and even some stuff from this universe. Genetic engineering, rapid cloning for testing, and plenty of random experimentation with nutrition.
"You know Dude," I slowly rubbed her along the neck as she chowed down, "I don't know if you can really appreciate the fact that in the few hours since me and Yuriko got back to the ship that I'm going to be trying to make supergrass just for you."
She did not, and I know this by the way that she just butted her head into me slightly to get me to move over so she could munch at a new patch. Now technically I could go dive into a lab that I fabricated and just do that until I succeeded. The replicators managed to vastly accelerate time on their trap world and that worked for them pretty well at advancing. I might not be a very good scientist, I might be a terrible scientist especially given that my physics and robotics knowledge is astronomically better but a thousand years? Yeah I think I could figure it out. Even if I had to basically recreate science from the ground up though there's no way I'd go that far.
Around then I heard Yuriko slapping some weak telekinetic force against the panel on the wall I told her too whenever she wanted my attention. I didn't have a com panel for her to use or something, and she hadn't really requested one either when she realized that I was pretty much aware of everything on the ship all the time. What with it being directly within my control and the cameras and sensors everywhere. I mean she'd made a strong argument for a private bathroom but considering I didn't sleep whenever she needed to go we'd made a new deal where she could go to the bathroom wherever she wanted.
I can't say I was precisely surprised when she decided – for the novelty – to go inside the White House without anyone noticing. It wasn't even that hard for me. Find an empty bathroom, send her in, pull her back out when she was done.
…besides, I'd done the same thing once or twice and I didn't even need to go to the bathroom anymore. The novelty was pretty compelling you know.
"Guy, I know you can hear me!"
"Yeah, Yuriko?"
"Can you come down here?"
"What's up?"
"Just come down here."
"Hmm. What do you think, Dude?"
Dude stopped eating for a minute, looked deep into my eyes…and snorted. Then as I coughed and wiped my face off she began to eat more of that stupid grass that I got for my stupid cow.
"Damn it Dude!"
===============================================
"Here, Yuriko, chill out, no need to smash up the walls anymore."
She huffed and turned slightly on her custom designed Empress-size bed to glare at me. A bed that I made, by the way. Reinforced with ship grade metal alloys from the ground up, with a well-crafted wooden shell made by Turkish woodcrafters in a Bazaar in Turkey. The silks were Chinese. The bedding made from goose down. I'd had the money and we'd had the time. After the Empire lost two of the most prominent members of the Shogunate in one battle and one of their four Floating Fortresses they'd had to pull back hard on most operations.
Satellites showed them retreating and bunkering down on a lot of fronts.
"Is the Empire losing?"
Uh.
"Why do you ask?"
Uh.
"Stop drinking that hot chocolate and answer my question, Guy."
"I... don't know if they're losing per say. The whole war is kind of stalemating at the moment I guess."
"You guess," her eyebrow arches when she says it, her arms somehow folding just a bit more aggressively than before. "I have seen your powers. They outstrip my own in potency and in scope."
"I don't know about that, I can't actually do an expanding field of explosive invisible force."
"You think I don't know you do more than teleport and shift time around?"
Uh. I wasn't actually sure whether or not she knew that much.
"Sounds…like time for a pizza."
All the various furniture and knick knacks that we've picked up in our travels begin to tremble throughout the whole room. The giant stuffed animal we got in California at a fair, the desk from London, the decorations and artwork we got at market in Japan, all of it starts to not quite float. But there is a definite vibration in the air and the gravity sensors are showing definite fluctuations coming directly from her. She at least stands now instead of sitting all crossed legged on her bed.
"I don't want pizza right now!"
"Uh how about-,"
"No food!"
Now things are starting to slowly float in a circle around her.
"We've been just running around for months now. You've…I've…I don't know how the Empire is doing. How the Emperor is doing! I'm with an alien going on dates and-,"
Woah!
"Hold on," I raise my hand to try and stopper her oncoming rant, "First, not an alien – kinda – and second, dates?"
The finger she stabs in my direction is a little too pointy looking all of a sudden.
"We've been to five star restaurants, fairs where you've won me stuffed animals and toys, bought furniture together, and live in the same place. How are those not dates. You think every second I spent in the sanitarium was spent training and blowing up small animals with my mind?"
I do not fear her. She literally can't hurt me. So I only take one step back.
"We aren't dating, Yuriko. I'm more than five centuries older than you. Secondly, what does that have to do with anything?"
"It has everything to do with everything," her voice rises in pitch alongside her arms which are thrown into the air.
…objects in room are now approaching five miles an hour in velocity. Hmm.
"You can't just take someone on a whirlwind tour of the world, grant them practically everything they could want from riches to food to clothes and vistas undreamed-,"
'Vistas undreamed?' Wait a minute…that's a line from Flying Girl Azami's anime! I bought her that series set a month ago!
"- with what you've done! It's toying with a young maiden's heart!"
She sounds heartfelt. But…ah man.
"Yuriko?"
"What!?"
The winds are around fifteen miles an hour but they slow down as I come close enough to grab her hands lightly and bring them down. The kinetic energy fluctuations start going down too.
"Yuriko…I think that it's time for you to stop watching so much anime."
Everything around us drops to the ground.
"What?"
"I know those lines. Those are from Flying Girl. Now listen, I know you got literally zero education on, like, emotions and childhood stuff because they don't matter in combat. But you really shouldn't be basing yourself off of anime."
"But-,"
"Look, you want to talk about 'us'? There…isn't one, and there are a lot of reasons for that. I'll pick up some books about relationships and psychology if you want. Honestly we could probably do a whole…re-education program for you if you really want to. Furthermore didn't you ask me down here to talk about the Empire first?"
The gear change gets her, confusing her enough to slow the fluctuations almost entirely.
"I…"
"You're nineteen years old…biologically, but you are time-wise a child. It'll take a bit for you to really…grow up, ok?"
"But…Flying Girl Azami said-,"
"Flying Girl Azami is anime," I sigh and let of her hands, "Anime isn't real."
She seems to struggle with that which, frankly, makes sense I guess. I could only nearly drown her in luxury for too long before she wanted to expand her horizons. And in another vein I probably should have focused on educating her beyond what the sanitarium shoved into her brain box. Also what was that about killing small animals? I might need to take a trip down there earlier than I initially expected. But yeah, all she's learning from is from me and I'm certainly not the typical sort of person to try and take ques from. Bleh. Yeah, I can fix this though.
"Also, listen, the Empire isn't…losing. But it's not like they even existed originally in the first place. I'm pretty sure that the Allies or Soviets might win here."
That stops her cold.
"What?"
…yeah, might as well get this over with.
"You're going to want to sit down."
========================================
"So now she's pretty morose, Dude. It's one thing to be told that the Emperor is definitely not a God and then have me demonstrate to her with a clone."
Braindead on arrival. I didn't really wanna freak her out. Dude probably wouldn't care either way, and the fact that she was laying down when I arrived probably shows that. Her lack of reaction when I laid down with my head on her too. Or maybe she's just a big dumb well fed cow.
"Moo."
"The time machine part really got her goat. To use her words, 'I knew you could control time, but the Soviets?!', but yeah. That she would probably have never even been in a non-existent sanitarium also really freaked her out."
"Moooo."
"Yes I'm keeping tabs. She's just lying in her bed staring at the ceiling now. Didn't even react when I dropped off all that other anime and manga. I copied that stuff out of my own head you know. Naruto, Bleach, the first parts of Boku no Hero…and a bunch of other stuff, honestly."
Dude lolled her head slightly so that she could look me in the eye.
"Moo?"
"Just in case! It's not every day you get told that you weren't supposed to exist in the first place! It's the sort of thing that requires healthy amounts of distracting material. So I also put Lord of the Rings down there, and all the Star Wars."
"Mmrphgm."
"It's hard for me to understand you when you speak with your mouth full of grass Dude. But yeah, those are the only copies. It's not going to be exactly like watching them on the big screen since the memories are from my watching them on the big screen. But they don't exist in this universe and I finally decided to rectify that."
Dude snorted again though thankfully not in my face this time.
"I dunno Dude, I don't have a plan for what I'm going to do. I could exterminate the Soviets and the Empire if I wanted to. But I'm…I dunno. I don't want to be that guy anymore."
"Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooo."
"What, with cryo tech? I guess. Freeze ever enemy soldier, shrink every tank and boat temporarily? Get their crews out that way and then let them de-shrink back up? Wouldn't that be kind of weird? Also I'd have to somehow explain that happening to the world. Seems like a lot of complications."
"Moo."
"Wait…take over Futuretech and use them to do it? Nah, it'd be easier to set up my own corporation and introduce improvements that way. Wouldn't it?"
Dude's response was this time nonverbal and instead she began to stand up, shaking me off in the process.
"That's not cool Dude, you have to warn me when you do that."
The Flying Girl Azami tapes that I bought Yuriko as a group fly up and slam into the designated slapping wall.
"GUY!"
Dude snorts again and begins trotting off to do cow things. Thank you so much, Dude.
"Yuriko," I greet as I teleport down.
She isn't crying again, but she does seem a little upset based on the posture and…everything.
"I don't…you showed me proof. So…"
Ah yes. My memories of the cutscenes themselves for the campaigns.
"I don't…I don't think I want to fight for the Empire anymore," she whispers the revelation.
"Wait, you mean you still did before?"
At her glare I raise my hands in surrender. I seem to be doing that a lot, honestly.
"I was created for it, of course I…but I couldn't, they'd take me back to the institute and put me in one of the Decimators," she speaks quietly enough to be inaudible to organic ears but not me. "They wouldn't take me. The Soviets would kill me. The Allies would too…"
"Not necessarily," I replied as I got close enough to very carefully hug her. The wetness in her eyes…yeah, now she's crying. "They might. They're basically…the 'good' guys when you come down to it I guess."
"The…the Empire isn't?"
"The constant insulting, disregard, disrespect, calling everyone else savages and barbarians…it's certainly not nice."
There we go, she tentatively hugs back before her arms tighten further.
"But if the Empire isn't supposed to exist. If He…if he is not truly a God, simply a charismatic old man, if all of it was made out of the Soviet's arrogance…then I don't think I can fight for them. It was…it was divine purpose, you understand, Guy?"
That…stings me. Somewhere that I'd like to think I'd left behind in a universe over.
"I know more than I'd like to about people of an Empire taking the words of their supreme leader as literal gospel sometimes."
She lets go then, and slowly stumbles backwards before falling onto her bed.
"It doesn't matter, then," she goes back to whispering, "None of it matters if someone can just jump around through time like that. What is fate, what is destiny, if that's all true?"
Hmm.
"This…sounds like a question for some chocolate."
The huff I get from her as I wiggle a fresh mug of hot chocolate I brought out of thin air is better than the ones before. Not hidden sadness or barely contained anger. Just…tired. I can understand tired. I know tired.
"I think," I say as she takes a small sip, her knees drawn up by her chest, "That we make our own fate. I…well it wasn't the best of conversations, but a question I had with a…," my voice seizes in my throat despite me being in a robot body and…I hurt. "A descendant…of mine. It kind of gave a voice to the whole 'What does anything matter' question."
She drinks a little more before speaking, and I'm gratified to see at least a little tension leave her frame.
"What was the answer?"
"It…"
Seventeen star systems, gone. A series of bombs that I hadn't been able to stop, on a direct course for my own fleets. Omnidirectional footing for the ships now, whoever is doing this, however the fucking Ori did this…I'll have to deal with this. I can't believe this is happening.
Where are my children? The Ori are dead, I made sure of that, but I can't get any of them on the com!
I blinked.
"It matters because we make it matter. And if that sounds pithy and stupid, it's because the entire conversation was weird and pithy and stupid."
And it was.
But it happened anyway.
Fuck me, Zee.
"Plenty of people have said this before, Yuriko," I patted her lightly on the foot, "But we make our own fate. For me, it's just that little bit easier what with the power at my disposal. For you…a bit different I guess but not too much."
"If you have all that power, and you think that the Allies are the 'good guys'…why haven't you made them win yet?"
It's a question that's been nagging at me ever since New York, honestly. But…I think I have an answer this time.
"When I first started out," I drink from my own mug. "I tried to do everything. It ended…well, not great. More than a couple of times. I made a lot of mistakes. People died – a lot – of people died. I had impossible power and used it like a kid learning how to walk which…I suppose I kind of was on some level. But I swept through and just made decisions that affected billions, maybe trillions without really thinking about them as such. It was always a case of doing it, or not doing it."
"…did it work?"
"Not at all how I wanted. I thought I knew what I was doing, that I could just follow the examples that others of my kind had shown, but I really didn't."
Yuriko pauses at that, and slowly lowers her mug.
"There are others like you?"
"…maybe. I don't know. I've never met them."
"Then how can you know what they've done and then try to copy it?" Her face scrunches up with the question.
"It's…hard to explain. It doesn't matter right now. But before, when I started, I did just sweep through. I did 'make' a faction win who were the 'good guys'. But I wiped out a lot of people on the 'bad side' that were probably just doing it for the paycheck. Or for moral reasons, for justice and order. For some sure they joined up to hurt people but not all of them."
I stood up from the bed and let the armored paneling slide open a bit to display the floating blue dot beneath.
"I am," my breath shuddered as it came out of my body for some reason, "A monster, Yuriko. I have done things that would bring anyone on that planet to their knees with a fraction of what I've done in their minds. I've ruined lives, broken planets, civilizations, even an entire galaxy."
"I am a monster too," she says from behind me from where she still sat on the bed. "They made me that way."
"I made myself," I glance at her before looking back at the planet. "I…made…myself. Literally," I wiggle my robotic fingers, "And metaphorically. My decisions. My plans. If I wanted to I could wipe out every life on this planet like," I snapped my fingers, "that."
"But you don't want to."
"No," I rubbed the back of my head and drained the last of my hot chocolate. It burbled on the way down to be vaporized in my stomach. "I don't want to do that. I don't want to go down there like an avenging God, waving my hand once and bringing armies to a halt. I can but I don't want to. I could slaughter ever soldier, create my own armies and fleets and march through every street in every city and countryside and not a one would fall to any of the weapons possessed by the forces arrayed against me. I could teleport the few that would end up in any kind of danger as well."
Even so, I let the ship drop slightly, the view changing from seeing part of the earth to it swelling up to fill the window frame entirely without anything else distracting it. From here some of the Athena satellites and Soviet stations were visible. Invisible were my own satellites that outnumbered both of the previous groups by the thousands. All invisible, some bigger and some smaller. All able to drop down beams of localized or warped time in accordance to my wishes.
If I truly wanted to I could put this whole world in a bottle. Would that make me Lex Luthor or Superman?
"So why don't you?"
Yuriko-13 is a soldier. A weapon, really. So I suppose it makes sense that despite everything she would be focusing on that.
"I could say something about not infringing on free will or some junk like that. But fighting like that…I don't think it's normal for you to seek the total annihilation of the enemy like I did…do in every battle. Without even a chance for surrender. And later on, when I tried other ways…I guess I got to see what happens if there's too much control and too little at the same time."
"I don't understand what you mean."
The Mulani had controlled everything, and I had controlled nothing.
"It's in the past now."
"You say that about your past a lot," she noted with a tiny bit of detectable amusement.
Well, it's better than the way she was before.
"Well. I suppose I do. But as for the fighting…I think that I don't want to kill another person for the rest of this conflict even if I do directly get involved."
"I…do not think that will be possible," but even as she says it I think she is trying to figure out how I could. "Unless…"
"Unless indeed."
=======================================
Yuriko-13 didn't even know what she was supposed to be feeling. The whirlwind of excitement, of freedom, of the sheer flurry of activity she'd taken part of since Vorkuta, all of it had dampened as time went on. As she realized that she truly was no longer a part of the Empire, that she didn't have to fight ever again if she didn't want to. But that was one of the most confusing parts.
Choice.
She wasn't used to having choice.
She wasn't supposed to.
But she watched, she listened, she learned. She was one of the most intelligent people in the Empire by dint of both Yuriko-Prime's genetics and the further manipulations she'd received from the sanitarium. So she'd felt the blossoming of emotions that she had no word for, nothing except what she'd scanned from the people around her when they were travelling. A full cavalcade of it, from every kind imaginable she'd felt and recognized in people at varying times. Happiness, grief, anger, hatred, confusion, affection, amusement. Love. She knew them and yet couldn't quite figure out how to handle her own.
She wasn't ever supposed to deal with them either.
But here she was, sitting in a pair of 'sweatpants' and a t-shirt bought at Coney Island, a mug of hot chocolate in her hands and staring at the man who had brought all of this about.
He looked more tired than she'd ever seen him.
'The Guy' as he insisted on being called, had never looked tired before. Not really. Usually it was a sort of lazy half-awake awareness. Or boisterous laughter, purposefully haughty wording, or things like that. She'd never seen him this serious. Or ever really seen him mad either. But despite the fact that he was still wearing the same ragged pink robe ensemble as before – only on the ship he wore slippers instead of the sandals with socks – he looked different. But as he slowly lowered his forehead to lean against the glass, the mug in his hand disappearing, Yuriko remembered something.
She had never felt his mind. Never. No matter what. So in truth she had no real idea about what her erstwhile savior and now several month-long companion was feeling…ever! She could not rely on body language because she had not yet really learned that. Nor anything else but his words. But here, now, she was quite certain that he looked…tired.
So how could this tired man, powers or not, fight a war without killing anyone?
Then his shoulders straightened, and he cracked his neck from side to side. She started he walked a distance away so that his back was still facing the deck but none of her decorations or any evidence of her existence at all was around him. A hand reached up, and plucked from thin air a series of screens of people already in the middle of a conversation. She recognized them immediately from her own training.
"Bingham, you listen to me," said Tanya of California, one of the deadliest personnel in the Allied arsenal. "We have a chance here. The Soviets are weak, the Empire is running scared after New York. If we push the Reds out of Europe entirely then we can use that momentum to-,"
"Tanya," spoke the elderly Supreme Allied Commander, "We don't have the resources. Our forces are exhausted after these last few months of fighting and if we push them that hard then they will break. New York was barely a victory, the morale loss of all those images of the burning Empire State Building is incalculable!"
Then, Guy spoke up and somehow interjected himself into their communications.
"How about a morale boost then?"
Bingham's eyes boggled, but Yuriko cocked her head at the way that Tanya gave a stuttered physical response. She wasn't surprised at the sight of Guy. Why was that?
"What in the devil's name – who are you. How did you-,"
"I can capture the Soviet Premier, their chief scientist, and their top military commanders for you within the day. I can also do the same for the Shogunate."
"How in the hell are –! I don't even know who you are!"
"I do," the American woman spoke, "He saved my life during New York."
"He did what now?" Bingham blanched and turned his head towards her.
"He did. And honestly, if he says he can do it, I'm almost inclined to believe he can."
Guy coughed into his elbow then.
"Excuse me, yeah. I did. Anyway, I can do it, and we can do it quick. Best part is, you won't ever have to tell anyone that I had anything to do with it. I already made sure that this channel is secure."
More technological wizardry then. Yuriko wanted to sigh, while another part of her – a part that seemed to be getting smaller every day – wanting to say something about his supposed capturing of the Shogunate. She gave voice to neither.
"And how, pray tell, will we do that?"
Bingham seemed thoroughly unamused, and so Yuriko elected to try and cheer herself up with that.
"Easy," Guy pointed at the blonde, "We'll say that Tanya did it. Have little footage set up and everything. I'll help, but the credit…and I guess blame too, would go to her. I don't get mentioned once."
"You can't expect me to believe you about this," the Englishman scoffed, "You, you're wearing a bathrobe for God's sake!"
"I'll do it," Tanya said, apparently startling the elderly white man. Yuriko drank the rest of the hot chocolate as she watched the man nearly suffer apoplexy.
"Tanya-,"
"You said the troops are tired? Well then I'll give them a good old shot in the arm of the best medicine in the world."
"The best-,"
"Victory, Bingham. Where do you wanna meet…uh…you?"
"Just call me The Guy," he sighed. "I'll come to you."
Then he wiped the screens away into nonexistence and turned back towards her.
"I'm going to be out for a bit. There's a few dozen pizzas in the fridges, also hot pockets, microwavable dinners, and so on and so forth. Also plenty of fruit and veggies."
Yuriko thought furiously about everything. For a brief instant she imagined shattering his body against the walls – even though she'd done that before to him without Guy suffering ill effects – and somehow piloting the ship she knew nothing about back down to the Empire. Being rewarded by Prince Tatsu and Emperor Yoshiro. Recognized across the world for bringing such power to the Empire, and never going to the sanitarium again. Perhaps even greeting Yuriko-Prime and knowing that she stood above her.
Then the moment passed, and she waved at him as he disappeared into the ether.
A few minutes later saw her floating over one of the hundred square foot TVs and 'Deeveedee' players. Something apparently not invented on her world. Something else lost in time? One of the discs he'd told her to watch first out of the pile slid inside with her mind's will and she then pressed play. One of the best parts she'd found about her powers was the total lack of need to use a remote control when she could just use her mind…most of the time at least. At least she could bring the remote control to her.
As the music began to play and the text began to move across the screen and she tried to force everything else out of her mind and paid attention to nothing else. Just like she had seen Guy do a thousand times before.
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