9.22 – Life Calculator

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Life Calculator

Pi and ten Tau copies reached the Ministry of Education at a pace that didn't accommodate the chaos already surrounding it. The human police force had sealed the perimeter with the E-UNIT's red energy barriers, holding position while they waited for someone else to deal with whatever was happening inside.

News channels had lined up across the street with cameras pointed at the building's facade, the officers assigned to press management losing that argument. Drones and aerial cameras covered what the ground crews couldn't.

The nearby buildings, old structures from the 1900s, their stone faces incongruous against the rain-soaked combat suits and neon press vests below, had already had their balconies rented out. The red energy barriers turned the whole scene crimson.

Every camera turned when Pi and the Tau copies arrived.

"Tau. You're my eyes for this." Pi's eyes were already running their sweep of the scene, pulling in every available detail. "You've multiplied to thirty, most of those copies are hollow and can't fight properly. Connect to me and feed maximum POV coverage for the area and the building interior."

"W-Will you be alright going in alone?" Nine of Tau's copies spread out and opened the visual feed to Pi's HUD simultaneously. "Hex didn't take long to fall when 02 faced him. But he recovered fast, and... it was 02."

"I know." Pi's eyes had already moved to the approaching human officer. "Is your original body hidden? We can't let them reach the orange crystal."

"I'm currently with 05 in the underground level. She's already started the revival sequence, working from 01 through 08 as the first batch." The final copy turned toward the building's entrance. "B-Be careful, Captain."

‘I wonder where she got the stutter.’ Pi walked to the officer and offered a salute. The top of her head barely reached his chest. "Good afternoon, sir. Situation report."

"Nothing good about this afternoon." He held his sonic rifle in both hands, making a visible effort not to hunch down to her level. "The minister is being held on an upper floor. Threat classification from the E-UNIT system came in as Double S. Some lower-tier robots have taken the ground floor and first level, but the rest of the building reads as empty."

"So their intent is to draw focus to the highest floor." Pi nodded. "What about the other staff—the workers?"

"None being held, it seems—"

"That's illogical." Pi cut through the sentence without raising her voice. "Why would they release the entire workforce and still take the building? What was the purpose of securing the premises in the first place?" She raised her head. "What are the reported conditions at the other two attack sites?"

The officer hesitated. "Similar, apparently, they—"

"Understood. They're testing us." Pi was already walking. "Thank you, officer. I'll take it from here."

He watched her go and turned back toward the press. "I've told all of you to clear the area. We don't know if there's an explosive device in there."

Pi reached the ministry's main glass doors. The building itself was yellow brick, not tall, but wide, occupying the footprint of six residential properties, with a dark blue roof and no balconies, tall windows set beneath high ceilings, and the building's name written in hand-drawn letters worked into ceramic tile above the entrance: Ministry of Education. Books First.

‘Government facilities don't need mottos.’ The automatic doors parted for her and she stepped into the empty reception room.

Her small steps rang against the floor with more presence than their size suggested, the space had the quiet of a large public room suddenly vacated, white walls yellowed slightly with age, decorative figures holding books pressed into the plaster at intervals.

She passed the rows of dark wood waiting chairs. Personal items had been scattered and abandoned but there was no blood, no physical damage beyond the disorder. ‘They're testing the E-Police at reduced strength and compromised numbers. That's new decision-making at their end, someone with better strategic judgment has taken over.’

She reached the circular white marble staircase with its heavily detailed black iron railing and climbed. Her HUD ran all of Tau's POV feeds alongside her own in a grid that most systems would have struggled to parse. She didn't need the elevator. The building wasn't tall enough to justify it.

She reached the first floor landing and dropped low against the stairs, pressed into the shadow below the top step. Metallic footsteps moved in the hallway ahead, a corridor lined with closed doors on both sides.

One of Tau's copies was already behind a desk at the far end, feeding her a forward angle.

‘Trajectory: calculated.’

She stood and moved directly toward the three armed robots in the hallway. Different head configurations on each one, all carrying old-model energy rifles. They registered her and looked at each other, confusion filled the units. Someone had briefed them. Nobody had briefed them for this.

‘Response: predicted.’

Pi walked toward them at an unhurried pace. They raised their weapons to intimidate her. She didn't register it.

‘Timing: generated.’

She stopped several meters from them. Her right hand came out to the side. Grey energy particles gathered and resolved, blurring quickly from suggestion to substance until a full scythe stood in her grip, the blade edge glowing grey. Her automatic mask came up and covered the lower half of her face.

She said it with complete detachment.

"Fate: determined."

They opened fire. Old-model energy rifles, drawing from their own battery reserves. The bolts came in fast and poorly coordinated.

Pi moved toward them. Not running, walking, but in a pattern they couldn't predict, the path through the fire neither straight nor random, low at some moments, close to the floor at others.

They started retreating backwards through the hallway, trying to maintain range, their feet finding the red carpet beneath them and taking it for granted.

Pi dropped, took the carpet in both hands, and pulled.

Clang.

All three went down as the surface they'd been standing on disappeared, heavy metal frames hitting the floor in a simultaneous crash. The one in the middle was fastest to react, already reaching for his weapon.

Seek.

The scythe crossed the distance and arrived at his head. The cut was nearly complete, plasma doing the rest of the work where the blade left off. He convulsed once and went still. The scythe dematerialized, broke into small hexagonal fragments, traveled back to Pi's hand, and reformed.

The other two looked at each other. Then at where the scythe had been. Then at Pi's hand. They started shaking, reaching for their weapons.

Pi ran. The small feet found the carpet and made almost nothing of it. She went up, both hands on the handle.

Seek.

The first one came apart at the line of the cut, glowing grey at the point of separation for a moment before the body remembered to fall. She swung sideways in the same motion.

The second one's head separated from its body before the sound of the hit had completed traveling. The body followed.

Her HUD flagged movement, multiple units emerging from the offices ahead simultaneously. She read the timing from Tau's feeds and ran for the nearest door.

It opened on its way toward her. A robot in the same configuration as the others.

Seek.

His head stopped the scythe. She put her foot against his body and pulled the scythe free in one motion, already turning to the door on her left.

Seek.

The blade planted directly into the energy core. The robot switched off immediately. She pulled it free and threw the scythe down the open hallway without looking.

A robot stepped out of an office and found two meters of scythe coming at his face.

Seek.

He went to his knees and then the floor, the weapon dropping first. The scythe dematerialized and returned to Pi's hand.

"Tau, is that all? The feeds show nothing else."

"Y-Yes!" A Tau copy materialized from an office doorway and came up alongside her. "But I checked through the window on the office they were staging from. The minister isn't there anymore, they released him the moment we entered. You were right. This is a test."

"Still an overcomplicated setup for a test." Pi was already moving back to the stairs, Tau with her. "Something doesn't add up, and I can't calculate what it is regardless of how many variables I run."

A Tau copy dissolved, the energy condensed and ran ahead of them, reaching the top floor and resolving there into a complete copy. "I-I feel it too. But we finish the mission first. Test or not."

The minister's office door was a statement in itself—a wide wooden panel painted white over multiple coats, embossed flower framing the border, letters pressed into the surface in an old serif typeface: The one without a book forces his way on life. The one with a book forces life on his way.

Pi and Tau exchanged a nod. They pushed through it. The door made the loudest possible squeal of hinges on its way open, then settled itself shut behind them as if the building had opinions about the interruption.

He was there. Hex, seated in the minister's chair with his hands folded together, the red drone floating above him and casting its own light onto the desk.

"I apologize for bringing you all the way up here. But seeing the acting captain in person required some arrangement." He looked at them in his careful, unhurried way.

The drone swept down and ran its red scan over both of them. Its voice came out cold and separate from Hex's. "The frames are not original fabrication from the father's workshop. Probable designer: Dr. Wilson." It returned to Hex's waiting arms.

Hex began to rise. "I'm wondering—"

Seek.

The scythe arrived before he'd finished the sentence and planted itself in the center of his face. The blue light across his features stuttered and skipped. He reached up for the blade, it dematerialized and reformed in Pi's hand before he found it.

"That was somewhat abrupt." He released the drone. "I hadn't finished—"

Pi didn't waste the gap. "Tau. Take a corner. I'm activating Code Red, his actual processing isn't located in his head. Don't be in the middle of the room."

Tau moved without asking why.

Pi let her eyes settle on the white figure. "Empty thread." Her voice stayed level. "Fate: determined. Code Red, initiated."

She came off the floor. Her eyes shifted to a flat, uniform grey, her frame producing a faint white ambient glow. Her arm extended toward him.

A voice, not quite hers, something that lived underneath it, came out cold and systematic. "Activating Extreme Calculus."

The room went grey.

Not the grey of stone or shadow, a computational grey, as if every surface had been replaced by the default texture of something unrendered. The walls, the shelving, the windows, the desk and everything on it. The floor. Hex himself.

White edge-lines drew across everything in a fine square grid, the whole room converted into something that looked like the world had briefly forgotten it was supposed to be real.

Hex moved, took one step, and white silhouettes bloomed in the air ahead of him, each one an outlined path, each path a computed outcome.

He saw himself going for the wall to flank her. The result at that path's end: he dies with Pi dismantling his head.

He saw himself coming forward directly. Same result at the end of the line.

He stayed still and watched Pi's silhouette move to fill the space where he stood. Same end.

"What is this, sister?" Hex said it gently.

The system voice answered without inflection. "Choose your fate."

He tried to step outside any projected path, to find an angle the system hadn't mapped. A new silhouette traced itself instantly, and Pi's outline appeared directly in front of him before the step was done.

She was already filling it.

"How—"

Seek.

Pi dropped behind him. A fine grey line drew itself across his frame as the scythe passed through. The top half of him listed forward and disconnected from the lower, the blue light in his face fading as the two sections fell to the floor in separate impacts.

The room remembered its colors all at once.

Pi went to her knees. Her vents came up at full output, working to bring her CPU temperature down from wherever it had been. Tau crossed the room and caught her.

"I've never seen you do that before," Tau said, several copies converging from the corners.

"I'm... full of... surprises." The words came out with gaps between them, the vents competing with her audio output for available airflow. "Keep… an eye… on him—"

The red drone appeared before Tau finished the sentence. It hovered over the separated frame and began producing its red output, the reconstruction light, and the repair started fast. Wires drew back to each other across the cut line. The frame surface closed and smoothed. The cape stitched together in the air above the floor. The drone moved systematically from the points of damage outward, printing him back into continuity.

Hex rose and held the drone in both arms.

"I apologize for the wasted effort. I know that even in your current state you'd defeat me again if I gave you reason to." He paused, tilting his head at something she couldn't see from her position. "I see, she finished. Then I'll take my leave."

The drone began erasing his frame from the top down. Matter reduced and gathered, each section disappearing in a fine dissolve until nothing remained of him. The drone took the collected material through the window and was gone.

Pi was on her feet before she'd decided to be.

A Tau copy straightened near the door, catching a feed through the network. "C-Captain, updates from the other two sites. Navy Unit secured the library, six minutes in, no civilian injuries reported. Delta cleared the sewage plant faster than that, she says it wasn't much of a fight." A pause, copies exchanging something like a look across the room. "Whatever this was testing, it wasn't testing them."

Pi didn't turn from the window.

"No!" She yelled, holding the frame. "No… no, no, no, no, no—" She turned back to Tau with both hands against the sides of her head. "How did I not see this coming? What blocked the prediction, what was blocking it the whole time? Why—"

Tau's copies converged and took her by the shoulders. "C-Calm down—"

"They're all dead." Pi pressed her hands against her face. "I can't… they're all—" Her voice came apart somewhere in the middle of it. "All of them. Dead."

A faint grey energy left her eyes. It fell and gathered on the floor in a small pool that hadn't been there before.