Chapter Text
[Current] Eggperial City, Substructure 08_Hall-11A: 10:09 in the morning
Sage knew her family to a highly detailed degree an organic probably could not achieve. They would know one another through shared experiences, assumptions on what the other thought and felt at any given time about any given thing, and a minimal but not insignificant biological component carried over by evolution through nervous systems, hormones, and the like. In contrast, what Sage knew was more quantified. She had data. Her knowledge included every historical action and recording made by any of them, as well as programming, experiences, feedback, alterations from one signal to the next, and all else both automatically, constantly fed into the Eggnet as well as periodically backed up (a more thorough picture) for those who were not Father.
Sage could say the binary numbers Orbot’s functioning essentially condensed down to at 13.45.00 on the prior Tuesday and what they were 123 Tuesdays ago.
And having access to more details than any one organic mind could remember at once about them made it easy to make personality profiles; just as easy as all the historical data made predicting future actions.
With this considered, she still faced an unfortunate theory.
She learned little of this from the subjects directly. The limits of organic life demanded they share who they were with one another. It was personal. Their experiences with others gave them a close understanding of the things that drove their motivation. Empathy had chemical components as much as it was something they had to choose to cultivate. They didn't know objective data about others, but they knew all those intangibles mere numbers did not give her. Both forms of life were valid. Artificial as she may be, to claim superiority over organics meant superiority over Father and that was simply not the case. He had advantages where she didn't, and she had advantages over him in other areas.
She could not check Father through the Eggnet like she could every machine attached. Sage had to “get to know” him in a manner much more consistent to two organics with one another. Sage also felt she [knew] him better than she knew the other artificial intelligences she labeled family.
She endeavored to approach the others with the same odd limits which somehow got results and so perhaps could not be considered limits.
Orbot and Cubot were older than her. It did not necessarily show. They had a…bit of a threshold, for growth, and she surpassed the equivalent within her first 40 hours of activation. This did not justify a report that they were acting under expected parameters. Their expected parameters were to be assistants, mainly, whose opinions could be bulldozed and who would be able to complete light physical tasks. It was not as if they were intended to be weapons. And they weren't created to defend Father like she was. He designed her to access Cyber Space on the Starfall Islands and she was quick to integrate it all in mere moments of unseen, digital expansion.
Orbot was a bit like herself- she judged. There was a fair margin for error in the sentiment. She was guessing. That was the point of the profile she continuously edited on him. Guessing. How…vague.
He complained quite a lot, spoke his concerns aloud, and readily shook his head component at Father’s predictable decision to ignore them. She did understand the feeling. Sage also spoke up when she had concerns over a strategy, and she was admittingly frustrated or disappointed when Father went against her advice to pursue his vision despite how her calculations showed that allowing him to do so endangered him and compromised her priority. She rarely felt a need to express any of this out loud, or alter her projected avatar to tilt her head down, put her hand on it, and shake it in a show of emotion.
Orbot was the most similar out of the other machines. Cubot was less easy to make guessed judgements on because she did not see as much of her inner experiences displayed so outwardly on him. She did not love him any less for it. And by now, she adjusted for the missing similarities, and saw him often enough to feel she [knew] him- different perspectives on data or not- too.
Sage had one more older sibling actively online in the Eggnet. He existed much longer than Orbot and Cubot even, let alone her.
She had the most amount of records on him because that was guaranteed by that longer activation period.
She also felt she [knew] him least.
This was suboptimal and therefore unacceptable. Sage enjoyed the projects they shared roles in. He was occasionally present and thus involved in more purely family events. Mostly to be there. Which was not doing much, if she considered how many systems he could run. Where Sage held mastery ever-adapting and improving over arenas such as Cyber Space, he was comparably upgraded in physical arenas. He was a very, very powerful weapon.
He did not talk. Father, Orbot, and Cubot certainly did not lack in that. If she could not form an understanding with the intangible, vital personhood like she did with Father, then she would continue to not ‘know’ him very well. There were other means of expression and communication. Sage would be on alert for catching any when she met with him today. She arranged for them to do so during a good time slot.
It had taken longer than usual for her to re-analyze his records and attempt to extrapolate something from them that she could then use as a reason for conferencing. It ran the risk of being incorrect and Sage tried not to ever showcase the times she was incorrect.
MS-1 agreed, a single affirmative ping, so hindsight allowed her to feel she'd ruminated far too long over her guessing when it should have been clearly right.
The day grew near. The minute grew near. Sage was prepared to appear to what she organized and scheduled to start with.
She was going to have a conference with her brother on aesthetics at 10.10 local time. It seemed a benign enough topic. Not officially duty, but not not applicable to usefulness to the Empire, and at the least acceptable to him if not actually an interest like she was predicting it was. Father valued aesthetics too so it was something she could file as relevant and justifiable to her own growth, and thus strength, as an asset.
It may be interesting too. Her time with the Ancient’s Cyber Space did affect her code in ways Father had not predicted nor intended. She found it making her avatar glitch between colors like its corruption made Sonic flicker between realities. The Ancients placed meaning to colors despite how their physical bodies were translucent and the Koco left behind to this day were stone. She knew the shade of teal she sometimes used was a match for one of the Chaos Emeralds they made long ago. Irony had it that her red matched too, considering it was a shade picked by Father before she ever was uploaded into Cyber Space.
Certainly, Father placed value on aesthetics. White and teal did not tend to be present in his designs historically. Sage liked white and teal. And flesh colored skin. Sage liked red and black and porcelain. Sage was not really very picky. Perhaps her sibling would be more opinionated. She was rather hoping he would be more opinionated, because her predictions rode on it being so.
She was in the midst of transferring to the quarters chosen for their conference with only 12 seconds left before it was set to begin. It meant she would be ‘early’. She was relatively eager.
Her sibling would not see evidence of this eagerness, for she did not arrive.
The moving code lost access to the Eggnet. For an incalculable amount of time, Sage existed untethered from existence. There was nothing to detect, register, or experience. If not for the fact that she was processing, it might have been comparable to the fate she worried the Ancient’s Enemy would give to everyone.
But the Enemy was gone. She scanned and scanned for any sign of the end during and after the battle. Life continued. Existence and time persisted. Despite how unlikely survival was, how infinitesimally unlikely. A few days spent in millions of calculated scenarios which showed her mission failing/Father dying/’heart’ harmed then broken, and in the short seconds that mattered, they survived instead.
Perception of anything outside of internal processing came back as errors. She filtered the glitches to simulate what an organic was most likely to experience from this…non-experience, and estimations were that she was “seeing” white. And little else.
Sage was not activated during the Time Eater evil plot. With or without personal experience, she could compare all records and memory files of White Space in her database to her current status- and how it would be sensed then perceived by someone not who was not disembodied code- to test similarities. This was not the Time Eater. It was not comparable to the Phantom Ruby’s signature. Of the list of eldritch creatures Father wanted to resurrect (and then lose control over) (but that subtitle was conjecture by her brother Orbot and not officially part of the list’s header), Sage could not find a theoretical match.
It was not the Ancient’s Enemy.
Because that threat, however small their probability of survival, was gone.
It was not the Ancient's warnings.
Why did it seem like their ghosts wrapped hopes and dread around her code again, then? Why was there now noise, and the imprints of neurons fired embossed in stasis, and dissipation of a civilization - eternity - existence - [error]- ?
Entering Cyber Space for the first time was equally new, strange, and alarming. If she adjusted quickly while only moments ‘old’, then she would recover with even more efficiency now.
A void replaced by noise was just as rapidly replaced by a more usual return to form for reality. This did not make it a recognizable reality.
She did not make it to her scheduled appointment early. Considering the data, she would not be there on time either.
London: Early Evening
The last year had not been a very brilliant one for Agent Stone. Truthfully, the last two years both could be considered mostly weighted towards the ‘shit’ part of a shitshow. He spent months working on his own to maintain the framework for an empire with no allies and no astoundingly genius intellect. All in all, he did a rather good job at this. Yes, the Doctor set much of it up as a contingency, but Stone took his own initiative to retrieve stolen Robotnik tech from the hands of basic idiots. He grew rather familiar himself with the intimately directly contacted technology while he was at it. While Stone was no genius capable of steering the great machine which would change the world, no abnormally strong brute better than the Doctor when he was maintaining his (former) strict exercise routine, and certainly no superpowered crayon colored freak from space, he picked up on skills he knew would not go to waste- because he knew the Doctor would come back.
First, from space. Second, from the absolute funk of depression and clutter he fell into after his brief but unforgettable stint brushing hands with the fabric of the universe itself. What a roller coaster of a time that mere night and day had been. After months of monotony and irritation, he got word from the Doctor, word he knew was coming, and then the man walked in with an incredibly dense lifeform and half the sense he had before. The Doctor was always eccentric. There was a difference between his eccentricism and then saying a latte needed mushrooms. Stone had to face a sad fact and that was that his superior returned from a grueling time away which may have affected his incredible mind a little bit negatively. This did not matter hours later when he had the powers of a god. Who cared what parts of the brain were a tad fried along the way? Could Stone complain that the Doctor’s eyes weren't all the way there and he lacked his usual energy, when the trade off was unthinkably vast?
Sadly, the cliché of too-repeated human stories held truth: if the wings one used to fly close to the sun were wax, then there would be nothing except a fall when they melted. The literal fall the Doctor had as his mech toppled did damage. Stone could have handled that, if the Doctor didn't stay sedentary after getting off bedrest soon after.
Those crisped neurons didn't matter when their host compensated with godhood. They grew a bit more relevant when that power was punched away.
And so began the Crab Saga. Stone wouldn't have traded the year, but it didn't mean he liked it. The Doctor was still an incredible genius but he took to wasting it on telenovelas and live streams.
The latter stabbed him with emotions he couldn't hope to process for maybe years to come, and here he didn't have time to think about the reality he watched and heard firsthand.
Indeed, it was a frustrating, slow, hair-pulling year, and Stone would relive it if he could. Because the Doctor was there, as bad of a shape as he was in. He was there. Unlike the times before, Stone didn't believe the Doctor was going to come back. That faith was a dull absence.
He was watching the last moments of the greatest being to ever walk the Earth and the Doctor had never been as mortal as he was on the screen. Absent gods weren't gone, just missing. Dead humans were dead humans. A one of a kind mastermind might die while those who worshipped it lost their idol; in a sense, that type of following could be replaced. The follower could find another sun to orbit. But a friend who was lost was irreplaceable. Stone knew he cared about the Doctor on a mortal level as well as being a dedicated assistant. He didn't plan to ruin things by showing it too much, and he never expected the Doctor to seriously consider him from that level, ever, really.
After the highest highs and ugly lows, and practically carrying everything on his own overworked shoulders while the Doctor refused to stop watching TV, Stone was being told by the universe to sit still and be slapped by the worst oxymoronical combination of both possible. The Doctor- his- Ivo Robotnik- his friend- was as human as Stone while he talked to an audience he didn't get the comfort of seeing react.
The weapon was going to explode. The Doctor was going to die any moment now.
The universe decided Stone should handle another unprecedented slap in the face.
Or maybe he should say the multiverse did.
Agent Stone wasn't having a brilliant year, but it certainly promised to become an even worse one now that he wasn't even in his own world anymore.