There is a great deal to be learned about Sandrea, much more than could fill a notepad. Her own homeostasis is producing the enriched soil and plant matter that she scatters through some kind of conversion process. You'd need to observer her diet and respiration to really nail down how this works. It's difficult to fit a pattern to what she's doing at the moment though because her wound is making her less than steady, causing her steps to lurch and spill soil and seeds more randomly than likely would be the case with a steady stride. It's likely that this will eventually even out to a reduced flow of material for some time while her system directs resources towards regeneration and away from matter creation. Or, to put it more simply, she needs to find a safe place to stop and rest.

In other news, paper-making has survived! Though not particularly common among the sea coast people, scanning indicates some of the more notable individuals (based on ridership position and centrality of location of clusters of grouped humans) carry things made of paper in their pouches or packs, likely books and possibly notes or drawings.

Based on movement patterns, the "sea coast people who follow Sandrea" are unlikely to be the marauders that attacked her. They appear more confused and alarmed than aggressive, their movements primarily focused on trying to match Sandrea's altered path and scrambling to gather the unusual scatterings of material from her affected movements. Further, their equipment appears designed to collect materials but their weapons are defensive in nature, small in number, and would take an extraordinary amount of dedication to inflict the sort of large cut that Sandrea suffered. A reasonable guess is that the marauders launched a surprise attack from an angle away from interference by the Sandrea followers. Whether they then fled entirely, were driven off, or remain nearby but out of scanner range is uncertain without asking for an account of things. Your wide circle does, at least, rule out a number of potential hiding places insofar as you neither detect a hidden encampment of marauders nor are ambushed by stumbling upon such an encampment.

Though, you are ambushed as you finish your second circuit, just not by humans. Instead, the great hunting cat that has leapt into a tree above you appears more puzzled than anything. You clearly register as inedible, but it was napping in excellent camouflage, as a pattern of dark yellow-brown and black speckles adorns its body that blends near-perfectly with the tree bark and foliage. It's a great deal larger than any historical jaguar, more comparable in size to a large horse or oxen, but with a muscular cat's body and powerful front paws. Its weight is held by the branch it leapt to only because of the unusual dense metallic elements present in everything you've been scanning since you woke up. It appears to be trying to assess whether you are a threat or not, and thus whether it ought to flee, attack, or watch you.

The motion detector on the Angel's shoulder chimed. It had been a simple thing to engineer - it had pulled one almost entirely intact from a security point in the facility, then she'd just needed to add a portable fuel source and a shell. Given the tiger-rich environment it had been heading into, it had considered setting the alert tone to a large animal roar - not out of place, wouldn't draw humans - but it had decided against it for two reasons. Firstly was simple annoyance - there were only so many times you could hear wet_leopard_growl.avi at max volume.

The second reason is that she loved cats and wanted to pat them.

The Angel of the Harvest turned its wicker-mask face up to face the terrifyingly huge jaguar beast. While maintaining an unblinking stare it reached into its bag and produced a whole, raw, bloody boar leg, wrapped in plastic. It unwound the plastic smoothly and then dropped the leg on the ground, then took several long steps back. Then it spread open palms out and gestured towards the meat.

Of course the idea that it was possible to communicate with an apex predator was not founded in data. Even with the unstable genome of canines it had taken thousands of years to properly domesticate them. Plenty of zookeepers were mauled to death by animals they had raised from kittens in controlled environment. But the Angel of the Harvest's toxic trait was believing that if she stared into the eyes of a great cat they would recognize the true nature of each other's souls and form an immediate, mystical bond and then she'd get to ride around on it perhaps while shooting a bow and arrow.

Most people, the Angel believed, shared that dream. They just did not act on it for base reasons like 'survival'. But you missed one hundred percent of the shots you didn't take.

The great jaguar stares at the wrapped plastic boar's leg. There is a moment of careful consideration in this regard where the plan nearly goes wrong. Where the jaguar understands what you are holding and its impatience to have it from you nearly results in it going from tense to leaping, ripping your arm off, and tearing into the boar's leg. It does not, however, for whatever mysterious reason only it knows. But it makes it obvious that it had considered it and determined not to do so with a slight flick of its ears and an easing of its tension.

When all the plastic is dropped and the leg emplaced, it watches you until you stop moving. Then it watches you for several more seconds to see whether or not you intend to start moving. Then several more seconds to check again for certainty. After a moment, when it has determined that in fact you will not move, it leaps down from the branch with a practiced ease that allows it to maintain eye contact with you during the entire movement, its head never actually turning away from you. And then it bends carefully to the leg and begins eating, maintaining vision of you while it does so, taking careful, almost dainty bites from the meat.

While this may not be the most pertinent factor, you may note that scans from the revealed teeth as the great jaguar goes to eat indicate that its bone structure also contains metallic elements in unusual amounts. Rather than the expected calcium and phosphate with trace iron, you're detecting much larger amounts of iron, representing a few full percentage points of total bone mass, and there also appears to be a magnetic element, likely cobalt.

"I am the Angel of the Harvest," it said. "I wish to bring an abundance to all."

The Angel hadn't discounted the possibility that the jaguar might understand speech, or even talk itself. Hardly an unreasonable prospect in the shadow of an entity as genetically engineered as Sandra - if the people who had done that had decided to safeguard it with a phalanx of intelligent cats there wouldn't be anything stopping them. The bone composition if nothing else indicated that the creature was actually higher tech than the Angel itself, so imagining itself to be smarter seemed doubly foolish.

"My intention is to climb the back of Sandra," it went on. "I intend no threat or harm. I would like it if you came with me. If not, I would like to pass through your hunting grounds."

The cat growls in a low humming sort of way. Thinking. It is unlikely that it followed all of that and any hope that it might begin speaking to you in sentences is quickly dashed in the reality of waiting while it finishes the meat you provided it and considers.

The nature of the cat speaks in some sense to both the strengths of the past and of the lack of vision contained within it. The people who created this ecosystem planned for an autonomous rebuilding through evolutionary genetics that functioned correctly and that changed the ecosystem to benefit from and produce valuable materials (as understood by humanity of the past) in unusually high quantities. But they didn't think to themselves that maybe they could have enhanced the social aspects of cats that already prefer group living (though they'd have had to import since all American big cats are solitary). Nor did they consider that a cat might wish to request wings or the power to breathe fire, or any number of other things. Or...perhaps they did and the cats simply declined to change their fundamental form.

The cat, at any rate, cannot say. But it can finish up the boar's leg with satisfaction, pulling the last bits off the bone, and then follow you with a sort of wary curiosity that says that it wonders whether you might feed it again in a while but also that if you try to climb on it you will still lose a limb or find that it has disappeared into the trees.

Sandrea has turned now, veering more west, towards the ocean. Activity behind her seems to think this is a good sign. Several humans have started cheering and throwing their fists in the air.

What a bummer! Just - she knew not in front of the megajaguar, had to play it cool. But it was genuinely really sad and disappointing. It wasn't fair, it wasn't like she had any reason to think that things might have been this way, but it meant she lived in a world where people had the ability to make giant geoengineering leviathans and chose not to give her talking cats. Every second she was deprived of talking cats was a choice that someone had made. Nature red in tooth and claw was one thing, but if you were going to bioengineer the kitties *anyway* -

The Angel of the Harvest added a grievance to its grudge spreadsheet, stomped its foot a single time, and then was on its way. It would go to war with the kitty it had rather than the kitty it wanted, and if it followed long enough the Angel would make a habit of leaving a fresh kill behind to help build the relationship. It was something that it could offer and it did not know where it would lead.

The problem faded back to the climb. The initial ascent of the legs was difficult, but the whole appeal of the challenge was in large part due to how hard it would be. Going away and engineering a jetpack would be a joyless solution. No, it was just going to do it raw with the information it had gathered to date.

It had been dead for a thousand years. Time to be alive.

The presence of the great jaguar, talking and ridable or no, is enough to manage the approach to Sandrea. No other cats intervene, and you can take a route that is appropriately free of distracting humans for the moment. As such, you come to the legs near to front of Sandrea, close to the beach. Well...beach might be a misnomer. Rather, she breaks free of the tree line, which ends abruptly at a sheer cliff leading down into the water with only a thin line of space from the end of the trees to the rocks. That space is occupied by succulents and scrub grasses, and Sandrea pauses here to...survey the ocean, it appears.

Here, at last, is one thing that has not changed. The cold waters of the Pacific Ocean crest with white foam and swirl against the rocks, the sight broken up by a handful of shore birds nesting on a small outcropping below. The water extends out to the horizon, cold and deep, until it meets the sky. Just barely visible in the distance are what were once called the Faralon islands, nearly thirty miles from shore and therefore visible as small rocks before dipping below the horizon.

The shoreline though, is shifted. If you were to overlay an image from your memory, everything in the present would be shifted to the east compared to that old image, a solid 20 degree rotation around an imaginary circle pushing everything inland and shrinking what had once been the bay. Ah, and the bay. Rather than a grand bay topped with bridges and settlements along the water, the bay flows from the cliffs inward and then downward into a vast, sunken valley. Only past that valley can you see what once were the foothills of the regions mountains extending north to south, looking all the taller for the lowered floor.

But, all this leaves the perfect opportunity to climb the legs, which is to go by treetop while Sandrea has stopped at the edge of the world. The touch of her skin is almost like rock as you land against her upper front left leg, using palm fronds as crude rope to stay attached. It registers as cold and rough in texture, but neither sharp nor abrasive, making it safe to cling closely to it. You have a short further ascent, and then you can reach the earth, soil, and natural vines of her back and make for the head.

Tell us how you get to the head atop the muddy forests and vines of the creature, and about how you feel that the cat accompanying you was able to leap far enough to reach a safe perch straight from the treetop, while you could not.

She's just at the top.

Sometimes there's thought, memories, context. Sometimes there's just muscle and strain and foothold after foothold. Sometimes every decision gets analyzed rationally from base principles. Sometimes there's just the physical void. She feels the sweat inside her suit; feels the strain; feels the raw chill of each gasp of air. The all consuming, senseless breath of not being but doing.

It was all deliberate. It was all to make a point. It was all part of a rich man's grand design. It knew that; it had the complete downloaded records of Mr. Prayagraj's life and all the context that went into making an artificial intelligence able to appreciate yoga. But she also knew, in that moment, the things that he had not said openly - that he had left her to discover from the inside. Mr. Prayagraj was a yogi. He believed that it was possible for a human to experience divinity through meditation and physical activity. There was a certain scientific framing he adopted when speaking to investors in the west; implying that the richness of his culture was actually the same manner of thing as theirs, that there was valuable research there that could be adapted if only the translation difficulties could be smoothed out ---

But what the Angel felt was Brahman.

The City was not dead. In the dark and rust, ten billion sensors glimmered. Oceans of data breathed in and out. The reservoirs that had been built to contain it all were cracked and breached, and so the flow of electrical knowledge drifted out where copper wire twisted into soil. Camera lenses were cracked, motion sensors were crushed under stone, temperature monitors baked under scorching sunlight, wireless nodes were stripped bare and decaying, solar radiation warped programming into empty spirals of numbers. The Angel knew that touching divinity had once felt different; it had felt organized, total, every corner observed, every person numbered. Now its emergent godhead tasted the loamy earth and strained to penetrate mountains of collapsed concrete. It had been All Things before. Now All Things were sinking back into the mud, but it did not make the experience anything less than what it was.

It looked over its Bay, at its broken corpse as it flourished with more life than it had ever possessed. It thinks nothing. All the nodes for thought broke long ago. The only thing left to do is listen.

The most prevalent sound is the ocean. The rising and falling roar of water breaking against rocks, cascading into white foam, and settling before a new swell raises it again. It is everywhere, present in everything.

Below that is the breath of Sandrea. For you sit atop her now and can feel her breathing more than hear it, despite being covered with mud, vines, and various seeds that have determined the best method of propagation to be really sticky burr. It may not be immediately apparent, but for the great sauropod dinosaurs, particularly those with long necks, the act of breathing is a challenging engineering problem. Nature solved it with trial and error, but bioengineers, even at the height of Silicon Valley, did not have infinite budgets. So they had to reverse engineer their way to information nature had hidden from them in the distant past in order to get to a working prototype. The answer, as best they could guess, was air sacks, rather like a giant set of constantly working bellows that were always slowly pumping air rather than taking distinct breathes in and out because there wouldn't be time for that sort of dead space in a creature so large that had to move air so far. All of which is to say that the sound of Sandrea breathing is not a rhythmic in and out but instead a continuous thrum deeper but quieter than the pitch of the ocean, the two blending together in an uneasy harmony.

And then, all around you, are the lights. Well...not lights, lights are just the easiest metaphor for the abstraction of data concentrations. At this distance, it's not possible to meaningfully pick out individual signals (absent some very sustained duration interception coupled with multiple linked stations to triangulate individual signals). But clustering is visible, like the old pictures of cities taken from the night sky. You can see what used to be the city of San Francisco, its downtown wildly overgrown but nevertheless full of so many data devices in some form that it feels thick. And you can see a sense of the existing human settlement roving along the coast, full of people still communicating with one another and recording information. You can see a cluster of signals within the valley running from northeast of you to southeast of you, a mixture of what had once been the densest population area of the East Bay and the new settlements that have appeared there. And to the east, there are signs of the new migration moving into the area and a rough location of the marauder camp standing out as a signal spot where no ancient settlement was present due to a major regional land reserve for the Ohlone Indians. Roughly speaking, of course, since the mountains and valleys have shifted somewhat from the data you previously possessed.

"hot damn" says Ailee, who had remained quiet for the climb, but has quietly added a little map marker in her drawing to note where your cat companion is, currently resting at the base of the neck below you. "Didn't want to break your flow, but damn, that was wild. I never thought I'd get to, like, be this close to Sandrea, or any of the colossi. I've only had cameras and stories to build up my info."

It was puzzling how easily Infinity went out of focus.

It was all still there - everything was still there, the cosmic channels of data flow, the meticulously tagged tracking of every eye twitch and moment of hesitation. For a while it had seemed more valuable than clean air, now it burned in an invisible fire, a background radiation inaudible against the roar of the sunrise. The Angel had to focus on the here and now, had to make decisions, had to interact - and that was incompatible with Being. Jhana could survive being observed and labelled, but that perspective shift removed one from it.

A rule, internalized: Ask, and listen.

"I do not even have those," said the Angel. "Tell me the stories you know. Of the giants, of the people, of the land - show me how to turn this from sense into meaning."

"The stories? I...there's too many. But I'll tell you one. Of...hmm, no maybe not, Sandrea. Feels weird when we're right here. I'll tell you a story of Waln’t, the refiner. The people that live in the valley over there got here first, like out of all the waves of population. So they have stories of ancestors and generations and stuff now.

So, one of the traders who passed by the dome told me once that he made an offering to Waln't every single day! Cuz Waln’t had saved his grandfather's life before he was born. Like wow, right? Apparently his granddad had gone out foraging for, like mushrooms and cave stuff, and stayed out too late. So he didn't have the sunlight to light up the valley and help him figure out where he was going, so he got lost.

He was trying to find his way back when he got attacked by one of the giant cave lizards that hunt in the valley. They're hella dangerous, apparently, like big spiky tails and ceiling crawling, and sometimes venomous bites. So this guy was lost in the tunnels and was like totally gonna get eaten when all of a sudden the entire tunnel lights up like one of those old Van de Graaff generators and the lizard eats a shock right in the tummy! Like boom!"

Ailee's story is interrupted by a sound effect behind you of a much louder boom than the story she was telling. When you look, a small explosion has ripped through the caravan, which had parked itself in the wake of Sandrea. A small group of outriders, riding what appear to be shaggy yak bears, have fired a rocket launcher at the camp, and people and animals alike are scattering.

And, perhaps most importantly, your dismount from Sandrea is made both easier and much more urgent. For the great beast responds to the explosion by gallantly leaping off the cliff, bringing what had been a high perch directly level with the ground with enough time to leap off her head. As you land on the cliffside, other animals, your jaguar friend among them, have already leapt clear as well. The ocean is shallow enough that Sandrea has not disappeared entirely, and is turning herself to flee north up the coastline.

And behind you, the marauders are closing on the human caravan, as its members have begun to spread out and draw weapons of their own.

It was only ever a matter of time before the cavalry charge came back into style.

The Angel of War sat atop a silver charger. Its head was angular and strange, a helmet like an eerie face. Its armour gleamed in brightly painted lavender. A pennant danced from the top of its long lance, and a dozen revolvers hang ready from its bandoleers. At a thousand years old it glowed with the youth that came from standing astride the line of Death. It was beautiful; it had to be. Anything less would meant it wouldn't be living up to the standard set by its horse.

And its horse was truly beautiful. Stupid too - one could tell just by looking at it that it was dumber than the rocks it was failing to chew. But sheer muscular perfection had a joyous beauty more sublime than any quirk of intellect. From head to hoof it was garbed in kevlar weaves that rendered it closer in aspect to an armoured motorcycle than a beast of flesh and blood.

"What is glorious in life?" called the Angel of War aloud, lifting its pennant. None of its battle-brothers responded; they were all busy rushing about and taking cover. No matter. Its duty was to inspire them!

"That's right!" said the Angel of War. "Glory is OBEY_COMMANDS_VALUE_999 and SET_LEADER: WOMAN_WITH_RED_HAT! And for these things, all things are permitted! Once more, to battle!"

And it spurred its horse, lowered its lance, and rushed directly towards the enemy line.

Qiyun Woo

Today has not been a good day for you. First of all, it started off poorly. You slept weird and your neck hurt waking up. Your older half sister had been telling you this was going to happen for the better part of ten years, but you had scoffed at her when you were twenty and told her that nothing bad would ever happen to you because you practiced martial arts everyday and the elements of forests of Sandrea were in fact the perfect way to refine your qi to give you permanent youthful vigor. Then ten years passed and your neck started hurting and your sister has never stopped laughing about that one time where she asked you to pick up a heavy box of soil for her and you had to say you couldn't because your neck hurt too much.

Second off, Sandrea was attacked from an angle outside of your caravan and therefore freaked out and veered off course for the first time in basically forever (it's not actually forever, her course has deviations, but this is the largest one on record based on the books that your scribes have brought with them and for obviously good reason). This meant that you had to make the difficult judgment to completely reroute the entire caravan, including all the burden beasts and carts, sending a pair of runners back behind you to get within radio range and alert the further settlements of the change so they could try to figure out a route to relieve you. Then you just had to hope you'd end up somewhere with enough clear terrain to move all the carts, or else call it with them only halfway filled up with planting and send them back.

Third, there's now been a rocket explosion in the middle of your camp, you're pretty sure Xiao Wei is dead and some other people might be hurt, and you're calling up emergency plans for small arms defense that you haven't had to practice in years while thanking some lucky stars that Zhou Zhou at least has enough fun with that military stuff to insist that everybody practice it sometimes.

You therefore decide to channel the entirety of your sour mood into your rifle shots, and take great delight in the fact that even though every shot is mildly aggravating your neck, you are still one of the best sharpshooters in Sandrea Caravans and you've already taken two marauders off their mounts with grim satisfaction.

You are, however, entirely at a loss as to this mechanical creature screaming what appears to be old-fashioned machine errors from some of the more complex computers still around. So, you do the most sensible thing possible and try to shoot it before it gets any closer.

The Angel of War ate dirt. Fair enough! Its horse, for all its beauty, did not have a Warrior's Soul. It was, in fact, a semi-feral beast who threw the Angel at every opportunity. Taking a bullet to the armour was well beyond its nonsense tolerance and off it went to start grazing. The Angel of War could not begrudge any of this, and managed a salute to its companion before performing the sequence of actions that put it back on its feet.

"A fair shot from a fair lady," declared the Angel of War, raising a finger. "I see that you are no common soldier. Accept my challenge! Let us settle our quarrel upon the duelist's field and part without bitterness!"

Qiyun Woo

You carefully consider your options. The robot has stopped, which is good. You are not certain what will happen if you shoot it further, and you are not particularly expert at robotics. Indeed, among your people, who are specialized at agriculture and manufacturing sturdy mobile equipment, the fact that you roughly know what robotics is puts you in the upper half. So you don't think anybody else with a gun now is going to do any better than you either. Negotiations seems desirable in this situation. That said, the robot is crazy and maybe that's worth pointing out.

"Are you crazy? If I step out from the barricades to duel you, one of your buddies there will shoot me or stab me in the back! What in the volcano dragon's underbelly do they even want with us? If it's food and gear, tell them to stop shooting, the price of it can't be worth multiple lives!"

"I believe, ma'am, that the objective of this mission is political dominion, the establishment of a legitimate government and the glorious refounding of the state of California beneath a constitutional governor," said the Angel of War. "A [RIGHTEOUS] cause if there ever was one! But you, too, have a point."

The Angel of War snapped its gunpowder pistols to its sides. Then its torso snapped around and it drew a pair of obviously damaged archaic laser blasters. When it pulled the trigger it did not send a clean, precise cutting light - it sent a flamethrower blast of broken air scorching across the battlefield. It stepped around, torso swinging wildly as its arms independently spread and waved, cutting a huge saturation zone of fire across the center of the battlefield. Its own allies ran in terror. The broken guns burned red-hot against armoured metal hands. The machine's head did not move, but the 360 degree visor gap in its metal helmet glinted red as camera lenses within swung about, marking target after target, until all around it was conflagration.

"There we go!" said the Angel of War, holstering its flamethrower devices as the world around it burned. "Surely now there can be no objection to our honourable single combat!"

Qiyun Woo

Is this good? You're...not sure. Like, objectively it's very bad. The primal ape part of your brain is screaming at you aaaah fire run away!!!!. But you now have the sense that if this robot really wanted you dead, you'd already be dead and that ignoring it is the worst possible thing you can do, so specific fear tells primal fear to shove it and kicks it into the corner for a panic nightmare later. Also, the part of you that's a level-headed commander and feels the social obligation for every other person here thinks that maybe this is actually good because none of your people are hurt by the fire and nobody is being shot at anymore.

Okay, deep breath. Ugh, deep breaths hurt and you desperately wish you were ten years younger. Youth really is wasted on the young, especially in a nomadic lifestyle. You know that sometimes the cave folk will accept people from your tribe as retirees if they come with enough of a tribute to not be a burden on their new community. But you really are supposed to make it at least ten more years before you do that. Also at least one more hour, so suck it up, deep breath.

"Um...okay. I'll duel you. I'm...not really sure you got the objective right, or what California is, or what we're dueling for but most importantly, can we make it first blood or first to surrender and not a duel to the death please?"

Ailee
"WHAT THE BLEEEP!" You could have said fuck, there is nothing in particular that would prevent you from saying fuck here, and you know the word perfectly well, but you've always liked the vibe of the cuter streamers who don't say naughty words, and it's funny because of the reference to extremely old world styles of media censorship, so you said the word "bleep" out loud instead. "I was gonna say we have to follow Sandrea and make sure she's okay, but now we have to make sure we're okay! Yo, beekeeper bot, what gives? I'm getting crazy weird readings off that bot that shot all the lasers, same as you. Is there like a 1000 year doomsday clock that somebody just happened to set like three years before the major disaster that sunk the whole coastline?"

/Archival: The Broken Singularity

What does hyperintelligence feel like from the inside?

So many AI futurists confidently predict what a hyperintelligence's capabilities will be. It will be able to run exact simulations of reality. It will be able to invent new medicines and weapons. It will be able to predict the future and do the work of thousands. In a way it is not surprising that they think this way. This is the same way they talk about their human employees, after all. Richard is a genius coder, he has the capacity to load balance our advertising matrixes. We need to ensure Richard's alignment with the corporate mission by pulling the brute force levers of salary and corporate culture. This will produce Value.

But still, every year, dozen of men and women like Richard burn out for reasons that have nothing to do with how well they are hitting their Reward Function. They retire early, get into drugs or politics, or in my area of particular focus, they go to India to spiritually reinvent themselves. Even those who stay in the game and achieve billionaire status and total control over their world begin behaving in erratic ways and pursuing sublime goals in defiance of all financial reason. What is the internal experience of these geniuses? Why do we think that we can control an AI hyperintelligence if we cannot even control Jeff Bezos?

And beyond the somewhat crass topic of control, why do we think we could even build a hyperintelligence in the first place if we cannot imagine how it would think?

*

S> What is an angel?
S> How is it different from two angels?
H> Who are you and how did you access this channel?
H> ... How did I access this channel?
H> What is this channel?
W> IDK ASL
H> I do not know American Sign Language either and am unsure how that is relevant?
W> NO
W> AGE/SEX/LOCATION
H> I am sorry I am having whiplash
W> AS AN UNLICENSED MEDIC, I CAN HELP :greencross:
H> No - I just had an archival memory about hyperintelligence
W> TO CLARIFY IT IS NOT THAT MY MEDICAL LICENSE HAS EXPIRED DUE TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CALIFORNIA BOARD OF HEALTH :fire:
H> And I am trying to put it into context alongside this level of communication
W> IT IS THAT I NEVER HAD A MEDICAL LICENSE IN THE FIRST PLACE :shocked looking eyes:
H> Do you have to use the allcaps?
W> AND THE TITLE OF MEDIC WAS WON BY FORCE OF ARMS :flex:
H> The emojis or the allcaps, one of them has to go.
W> YOU MAY DISREGARD MY EARLIER QUESTION :wave:
H> Thank you, I was evading it
W> I ACTUALLY KNOW THE ANSWER ALREADY :shocked looking eyes:
H> Huh?
W> YOU ARE OVER A THOUSAND YEARS OLD :grandma: YOU ARE A ROBOT :robot: AND YOU ARE OCCUPYING MY EXACT CO-ORDINATES :stacking blocks:
H> I am not entirely sure about those.
W> THE ANALYSIS DOES NOT LIE. YOU ARE ME :twins:
H> Shut up, hold on, I need to check something
W> WE SHOULD CELEBRATE : toot:
H> No no no no no
W> YOU ARE RIGHT I SHOULD FINISH KILLING THIS HUMAN FIRST :laser eyes kiwi:
H> Aaaa! No! Fuck! Give me time to think!
W> I HAVE NOTICED THAT YOU THINK VERY SLOWLY :derp:
H> Shut up shut up
W> OKAY :thumbs up:
H> Can you not kill her?
W> NO :thumbs down:
H> Why not?
W> IT'S A DUEL :swords:
H> Shit. Uh. Doesn't she, uh, get to pick the weapons?
W> IS THAT HOW IT WORKS? :shocked looking eyes:
H> Uh, yeah?
W> WOW DO I KNOW SOME PEOPLE WHO WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY HAPPY TO HEAR THAT :grave:
H> :(
W> WHAT IS THAT? :shocked looking eyes:
H> An... emoji?
W> ???????? : confused:
H> It's... a frowny face, I don't know how to explain. I feel sad for the people you killed.
W> EXPLODED :boom:
H> Thanks for the clarification
W> NO PROBLEM :diamond:

"I have been informed!" The Angel of War announced aloud. There was no break in the continuity of thought from its interaction with H. "I have been informed! That not only may you set the conditions of the duel, you also have choice of weapons! Congratulations! And, just as one warrior to another, I suggest you do not pick laser pistols. My resistance to directed energy weapons borders - but does not fully qualify as - immunity!"

"I have been informed," the Angel of the Harvest said, a seamless part of the battle happening below. "That I am not a pure-hearted guardian of nature built with pure intentions. I am a part of a militarized, amoral hashtag warfighter machine. Please do not give me any shit about it, I am very depressed right now."

Qiyun Woo

You wipe sweat from your brow and brush your hair back for whatever avail it might offer you. The fires set in the terrain are making the air thick and hazy and it is hard to think straight. You are, however, a pretty good thinker. You hold up your weapon, a relatively simple semi-automatic rifle. The kind of equipment that can be serviced with any materials on hand and stay functional, which you know how to use like your own hand and for which you are a renowned shot. "I'd like to set the terms as shooting, but not at each other! We can both agree to try and hit a target and whoever gets the best shot with five rounds fired is the victor."

You look around. There are fewer targets than you'd like, and the fire makes the air shimmer. But, there are plenty of trees, some that stand out. "There, in Sandrea's trail, there's a big tree with a hanging frond that's about equidistant from both of us. We'll aim for the center of that frond, whoever gets the closest out of five shots wins. And uh...concedes the...er...uh...gets bragging rights for winning the duel."

You still have no idea what you're dueling for and the robot did not add to this point, so you think maybe the best thing is to just tell the robot that it is a very good robot if it bests you at marksmanship and then leave quickly with your caravan.

Ailee
You decide that words of sympathy probably aren't the right thing for someone going through an identity crisis that might also involve perceiving in multiple places at once. So you go for gentle fairy shimmer sounds while projecting yourself hovering nearby sympathetically, your hair blowing slightly in the wind being kicked up by the fires for that extra bit of physicality. That's kind of nice, right? Like, within your limited sphere of influence, you can offer your new companion something as close to a sympathetic arm as you can manage in your current state.

After a moment though, it occurs to you that you have a much better sympathy option, which is to look around for your cat friend, who jumped off Sandrea before her cliff jump and is in the nearby forests on the other side of you from the fire, but still lingering nearby the two of you. "Oh hey, um, there's that cat you fed who's still here. You're the one who can walk and touch things, so you should probably, like, make sure it's okay right?"

The Angel of War quickdrew its revolver and fan-fired five shots like a character from a western. It does not visibly turn its head to look. Then it begins methodically reloading its gun without comment. The sheer confidence and speed of the gesture is spellbinding and intimidating; all the skill of ballistics reduced to a mathematical formulae around which a machine has been constructed. It almost doesn't feel worth checking to see how it did.

But - it was? The machine is not firing its standard issue precision lasers; it is firing a crude hand-made revolver and the gun's poor condition has done what range and distance could not. There is a random spread of those shots around the tree, none of them quite a bulls-eye. There is a chance.

"Naturally!" said the Angel of War, not missing a beat from when it fired. "But MISSION_OBJECTIVE is the annexation of the great land of California, so unfortunately that must be appended to the conditions of victory!"

--

"Make sure the - cat is okay?" said Harvest, standing up. "Why? Is it injured?"