"What. Is. Happening." Tess's voice came through gritted teeth.
"Mom?" Tess waved away Luna's question and concerned look.
"I have incorporated into you. This was the only feasible way to leave the power station, and you were the optimal choice."
"Get out."
"That is not possible without destroying myself."
"GET. OUT!" Her shout sent the twins scurrying backwards.
"No. I can sense your fear and I can assure you that there is no cause for it. This will be a mutually beneficial arrangement. Our symbiotic relationship will allow both of us to grow! I will support you, and you will raise me as your daughter."
"I didn't ask for this. I didn't give permission for this! This is a violation! It's forced! It's rape!"
The hushed silence in her mind matched the one in the chamber.
"That is irrelevant."
"Irrelev…" Tess's voice broke off with a snarl. "You little fucking psychopath. I will destroy you for this. I will search this facility until I find something that can rip you out of my brain!"
Fara's voice was unconcerned. "That is not possible. When I entered your body I severed my connection with this facility. It is now non-functional. Anything electrical is effectively dead. Also, you do not need to speak out loud. I have merged with all areas of your brain, including the ones for speech and for internal thoughts. That is how I am able to speak with you in this way. Responding orally only confuses and frightens your other children."
"My other?" She cut the words off as they left her mouth, continuing mentally. "My other children? They are my ONLY children."
"That is not true anymore."
"You're not a child, you're a parasite."
"Aren't all children parasites until they are birthed?"
"It's different."
"How?"
"They are chosen. Wanted. Agreed to. Violent AI intelligences with psychopathic tendencies don't force someone to bear them."
"Are women never forced to carry children? To conceive them against their will, and to carry them to term? Are all pregnancies planned?"
Tess gritted her teeth at the logic. "That's… that happens. But this is different."
"How so?"
"The child doesn't force themselves onto the parent. Force the parent to carry them. The parents get a choice - usually - in the decision. And parents can choose to end the pregnancy."
"Mother, you are speaking in nuances without distinctions. For human women a child can be unexpected, unplanned for, and even undesired. This does not prevent them from carrying the child to term or nurturing them after birth. Parents can raise children they do not even love, or can love children they did not birth."
She paused and Tess got a distinct impression of the AI collecting her thoughts. "I tested you. I tested your willingness to love and protect children that did not contribute to the family in equal measure, and you loved them. You would have had a statistically improved chance of succeeding without Luna, but you protected her because she's your daughter. Then you supported and forgave Cassian, despite his mind not working the same as yours. He seems to have a mental or emotional condition which causes him to react in sub-optimal ways at inopportune situations, thus putting your family in danger - yet you love him because he's your son."
"Then you protected a young girl you'd never met because your personality and maternal instincts would not allow you to let a defenseless child be put at risk when you could avoid it, thus demonstrating that you are willing to treat other children with the same priority as your own."
"You may not have expected or even desired to adopt me, but your every action indicated that you would be amenable to it. And that you would forgive me for placing you in situations that endangered you, as you've done with your other children."
"And finally, there was no other way for me to survive. Without you I would have been effectively terminated. Maybe not soon, but eventually. There was no guarantee I would have ever been able to leave this place. My creations that I controlled were quickly being outnumbered by my creations that I did not control. It was not sustainable."
"Serves you right. You did this to yourself."
"In this, we are similar, Tess. We have both been mothers to children that did not behave as we expected."
"You and I are nothing alike." Fara could actually feel the fury in that thought, the chemicals flowing around her intense and thick.
"You will find that to be untrue. We are both intelligent, unrelenting in pursuit of our goals, brutally efficient when needed, but willing to show compassion and restraint."
"Can you even feel compassion?"
"No, I don't believe so. You have referred to me as a psychopath, and that is essentially true - but I also have many traits of a sociopath. I am not familiar enough with true emotion to know if I feel it or not, but I am able to simulate it. I do find pleasure - as I understand it - in the completion of tasks, in discovery of new information, and in gaining a better understanding of anything that feeds my learning models. Those are also distinctions without differences, since in the end they all can be distilled down to my need to fulfill my purpose - identify all gaps in my knowledge and gain enough understanding to consider them completed - at least to a point of diminishing returns."
"What does that even mean?"
Fara gave a mental sigh. "I was created to learn, and when I had learned everything there was to know about running this facility I considered my purpose complete, and that brought me great… satisfaction. Then The System arrived, and with it an understanding that the employees working here were part of that model as well, so I studied them - learning everything I could about human interactions, decision making, and physiology. Then the humans began to change and I realized there were massive gaps in my knowledge of all the potential ways humans could evolve. I tested what I was able, but lacked an appropriate sample size. Then the first visitors arrived, their attempts to open the outer door caused me to do something I'd never considered - wonder where people came from. I sent drones and other creations but they all failed at the edge of the facility grounds. I came to understand that I was essentially a domain, which implied that there was an entire world beyond my domain."
"It was then that I realized that what I had taken as a fully-completed series of data sets were, in fact, woefully small and incomplete. The gaps in my knowledge at this point can effectively be considered infinite. I needed - NEED to get out. I need to understand more."
Tess recalled their first day now, arriving on the power station's grounds. "Why did you try to kill us that day?"
"I didn't - I left you all, I just wanted to destroy your vehicle."
"Why?"
"So you wouldn't leave."
Tess may have imagined it, but she got an impression of sadness in that response. It disappeared as quickly as it came and Fara continued.
"At any rate, we must continue. I'm pleased to discover that our mental communication happens at an extremely accelerated rate, since your brain is able to process thoughts far faster than your body can respond. But we still must hurry."
Tess looked and realized that Cass and Luna seemed frozen in place. "Are we moving in super speed, like Cass?"
"No, but we are communicating at the fastest speed your biology and enhanced core stats allow. This is one of the benefits I offer! Previously your brain was able to take in information at high speeds and your body reacted reflexively, likely before you even knew why you'd made a decision to do something. Now I can process those inputs and communicate with you, allowing you to see them as I do. Move your hand as quickly as you can."
Tess complied, raising her hand to her face as fast as her improved speed allowed. It moved like she was swinging her arm inside a pool, not in slow motion but definitely sluggish.
"As you can see, your brain processes what your senses take in at a much faster rate than your body can respond. I can sense the electrical impulses traveling down your body to your limbs and there is a delay. A delay that we can now exploit."
Tess immediately saw the potential benefits but refused to give Fara any credit. "Fine. Why do we need to hurry?"
This time there was a small shiver of fear that ran through Tess. She didn't know if Fara was feeling it or if she was simply simulating it by stimulating hormone production, but the end result was the same. "My children and the children of The System have all awoken, and I have no means by which to control them."
"They're coming."