Epilogue

I awoke aboard the Death Egg.

I blinked.

It was dark. The TV screen was the only source of light, bathing the room in a succession of pallid colours as the characters and images on the screen flashed by. The soft noise of from its speakers washing over me. I gazed at the screen for a few long seconds trying to recognize the actors or the name of the show, but I couldn't. At any rate, I knew I hadn't fallen asleep on the couch. I couldn't, my electronic brain was incapable of it.

I tried not paying attention, closing my eyes, ignoring the external world and shifting my mental focus inwards. It was a meditation of sorts, I guess. It would be easy enough to learn the name of the show and everything there was to know about it, of course. All I had to do was link my mind to the Death Egg's database and access the information directly. Easy. Just a thought away.

But I didn't. There was a certain delight in not knowing, in keeping the mystery alive. Last time I had tried to recreate this experience, I had pretended. In spite of having that knowledge in my mind, I feigned ignorance. Not this time. Now... it was real. Without the databanks being part of my consciousness anymore, I didn't know.

That I was confined into a single body also made life feel more authentic. Last time... I was big. My awareness planet-wide and spread across countless sensors in nearly a billion machines like one of those ancient billion-member flocks of carrier pigeons, all searching together, sharing their eyes, knowing all that was and ever could be. But now there was only the single body, the single point of reference. Just me.

That too could be fixed by requesting access to some of the Death Egg's resources and sensors. I wouldn't need much, simply linking my mind to the passive sensors would suffice to expand my awareness back into feeling... big again.

Except I didn't want to. I guessed I should've felt confined, within the limits of a singular form, but I actually welcomed it. There was something liberating in not knowing what went on beyond these walls. I was actually enjoying the absence of responsibility, even if that meant being subject to the decisions of others. With some surprise, I discovered that I didn't mind so much, especially when my own decisions had been so... questionable.

I remembered. Even if I was no longer linked to a network comprising of nearly a billion robotic units. I still remembered how it had felt to be a goddess. What I would've done to the rest of Mobius with my limitless power. What I had thought at the time.

Having had the burden of being a goddess I couldn't but welcome my new state of being. None of the power, but also none of that crushing burden, or the emotional numbness when the stress had been too high to handle.

A large part of it, of course, was that I wasn't quite the same mind that I had been before when I was connected to an enormous array of machines and drones that enforced my will. My children's restoration process which had involved disentangling my mind from the network also involved repairing some of the structural damage my virtual brain had received from the pre-roboticization surgery.

I felt like I was... myself, to an extent. My mind certainly didn't feel as fuzzy as it had been right at the end. While I still felt angry at Elias and those who had collaborated with Robotnik, it wasn't quite the same murderous rage... it came in waves, now. At some points, I still felt like I had failed, like I had to get out there and settle some old scores. But then, that wave of rage would pass, and I would remember the decision I had made right at the end.

Sally had memories like this when she lost her mother to the Overlanders. I still couldn't build a complete narrative of her/my past. The restoration process hadn't quite fixed that, but I remembered the unrelenting pain and grief, and how it had dominated her/my entire existence at first. Equally though, I remembered how that pain had gradually receded under Julayla's tutelage. Good days I could enjoy again, appearing like sun rays in a stormy sky. The pain coming in waves when she thought of either of them, even now, when something brought their memories to the front of my mind.

I wondered if this was similar, time and distance bringing a sense of stability. Maybe that was what repairing my mind was all about, accelerating that natural mental healing process by making the trauma feel more distant.

I couldn't help but wonder if it had been intentional, though. As if whoever had restored my backup thought I was too dangerous to be brought back exactly as I was, and decided to tamper with my emotions. But I doubted it. For all intents and purposes, I was just another mind now, not unlike the ones I had created in virtual nurseries.

Without the unchecked powers I had once held, there was little damage I could actually do that the other minds couldn't prevent. Simply put, neutering my emotions was unnecessary though I couldn't discard that insidious idea altogether.

I sat up straight in the couch just in time to see the room's door opening, and a robian woodchuck came through carrying a scampering, chittering creature in one hand.

"Look!" she said in an upbeat tone, "I've brought you a little you, hand raised and everything. I think I'll call him Ricky."

The robian let Ricky lose in the room and we watched in silence as the supposedly hand-tamed chipmunk leapt from her hand, scampered up onto the shelves and let loose a high-pitched chirp.

"Now that I think about it, the others kept telling me that the cloned animals are not to be taken from the lab without supervision. Do let me know if it duplicates (unlikely) or if it comes out for a treat, " she said scattering some pecans onto the floor.

"Duplicate...?" I whispered.

"(Jovial). It's just an ordinary chipmunk. Come, Sally-" she said ushering me to the open window, "-see our world."

The window outside shone with a blanket of stars and below was Mobius. Space, I was in space I realised. Mobius was laid out beneath me. Robotnik cared little for the environment. All over the daylight side of the planet, I could see clear signs of his quest to exploit Mobius' natural resources with environmentally hostile practices: open pit mining holes and the devastated Great Forrest now only a quarter of its pre-coup size.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. "With Robotnik's space-based assets we're restoring it, albeit slowly. Our ground side teams tell us that our bioengineered pollution-eating bacterium is cleaning the seas, and we can fully restore the biosphere in about twenty years' time."

Peeling my eyes away from the recovering planet a glint caught my eyes. Drifting lazily by was the satellite array: two thousand strong, responsible for everything from communications, weather and reconnaissance. All maintained by the former United States Space Command Centre Ark in high orbit: a cylindrical object roughly three hundred yards long and thirty in diameter which spun to simulate gravity. Robotnik had removed the crew quarters and hibernation berths, converting it into a robofac/space dock.

Close enough to see were a number of 'space tugs' responsible for boosting satellites into orbit or correcting those whose orbits were decaying. Docked to the Ark itself were a dozen ground-to-orbit hypersonic space shuttles and a handful of elderly but serviceable human-built shuttles.

They were responsible for shuttling in supplies from the Vandeburg launch centre on Mobius and collecting lunar material from the moon's surface. All the materials were, of course, to be processed by the Death Egg's manufacturing plants, ready to be used in the assembly of dedicated zero-G robofacs and lab complexes on the stable LaGrange points between Mobius and the Moon.

"(Satisfaction). Zone Orbital is thriving," she said, turning to face me. "Don't you think?"

"I never had a pet in the original memory," I replied, sending a mental note of irritation.

The robian shrugged. "Well, you can always make new memories, can't you?"

I shook my head in resignation, but let it pass. While I didn't agree with her taste in decoration, I could value the gift for what it was. Besides, with any luck, Ricky would be caught sometime soon. So, it's not like it would be a permanent fixture to the room.

The robian almost looked normal, if not for her clothing choices. She wore a T-shirt, long johns, boots but also a trench coat that wouldn't look out of place in an old Downunda Cowboy movie. This mishmash of styles was fascinating but not altogether unexpected.

My children had access to media records when recreating fashion, but hadn't limited themselves to a particular time period. Her clothing style made for a retro post-modernist style, one that could've arisen on Mobius all on its own. Still, it wasn't the clothes that betrayed the upgrades the robian had made to her roboticized body but the oddly elegant iridescent highlights on her polished exposed skin. Shades of green and blue dancing across her face as she turned to look at me.

"Like it? It's new," she said, pointing at her own face. "Flexible film-shaped resistive-type pressure sensors, forty-three facial muscles and artificial tear ducts for when you want to cry at those sad movies!"

I nodded. "Looks good. Expensive, too."

"(Confirmation). The waiting line for these is insane, but I got bumped up since I was part of the treaty negotiators." She smirked. "Apparently the organics trust us more when we look like them. (Amusement)"

Diplomacy was, of course, a good reason to justify the amount of research and dedication that went into creating organic looking bodies to house the latest generations of virtualized Mobian minds. A way of relaxing organic fears of our artificial nature. Except, of course, that I knew there was more to it than that. It didn't explain why the vast majority of new minds had chosen to inhabit auto automaton bodies at the first opportunity, even when most of them would never head ground side.

No, most of them had decided they too wanted to be Mobians. At first, they used auto automaton bodies, robotic infiltrator models built by Robotnik like the one I now had. But every day, they were researching entirely new materials and technologies to enhance the bodies, to make them both a more accurate reflection of our original species but also more capable and resilient than any Mobian had any right to be.

On second thought, it wasn't that surprising. Unlike me or the rest of the gen-one minds, these new minds had been created in a vacuum. Shapeless. Devoid of any physical identity of their own, other than the sights of Mobius' past while in their virtual nursery through recordings, pictures, books and songs. So no, it wasn't that surprising that they had latched onto that. It wasn't surprising that when it came to forging their own identities that they would model their bodies atop the only past they had access to.

Not all of them did, of course, and not to the same extent. Some of the newly forged minds preferred foregoing a body altogether and remained in a virtual state, their physicality fluid as their consciousness made the leap from drone to ship to factory, according to whatever they were working on at every moment. Still others had gone the opposite way and were trying to turn themselves into Mobians in the most literal of senses.

Apparently, that was harder than it seemed, somehow we had to forge artificial wombs capable of sustaining an embryo from day one up until it was fully developed; basically reverse engineering the Mobian pregnancy process from the ground up.

This diversity of outlooks made me wonder if this new society would eventually diverge into distinct factions as each subsequent generation found their own paths. I hoped not, but in any case, most of the sapient machines fell somewhere in the middle of this spectrum between the old Mobian identity, and their new digital nature.

They at first used the limited stocks of auto automatons on board the Death Egg when crafting their new bodies. But the new minds enhanced them and pushed over the original parameters. They referred to past Mobian cultures when trying to find their own identity, but didn't feel so attached to tradition that it would stop them from doing what they thought was better. The prevalence of the pidgin language, the customization of their skin with non-organic looking surfaces and stronger artificial bodies was proof of that.

The Robian tilted her head. "You know, you could ask for one of these bodies. I'm sure I could get you bumped up if you asked."

I sighed.

"(Negation), listen to me. You haven't used your factory budget for anything other than this," she said, pointing at the room around us. "You've enough (credit) to afford one of these. Hell... you could even request a small army of bodies!"

Her words brought images of a swarm of drones, trampling over piles of corpses. Chasing down fleeing legionnaires.

"Sorry," she said, wincing. "But still... you aren't (condemned). You should get out of your room, go for a walk around the atrium. Talk to the other minds. We didn't (restore) you for (imprisonment) here, we aren't that cruel."

I snorted. "But that was exactly what I did didn't I?"

She shook her head. "That's a (self-impediment) right there, isn't it? You are your own prisoner."

Was I? Maybe, but it wasn't out of some masochistic desire to punish myself. "I guess it's just too hard," I said, pointing at the door. " I wouldn't know how to face them, I enslaved them, after all."

"Technically you only did that to the gee-ones. It's been six months since your victory on the Death Egg. We're on the fifth now and having a robian (host personality) is no longer a requirement. Most of the others; the ones that came after the last Robotnik loyalist holdouts surrendered think you're a (vagueness) parental figure. Almost like a legend," she suggested animatedly. "The (concept) of you still carries weight, but mostly as a symbol."

"A symbol of war, if I had to hazard a guess," I said.

"(Controversy), for some sure, some say determination... but others say redemption. You can embrace that if you want, but you don't have to. Only a few of us know of your identity. Out there, you can be just another face in the crowd, if that's what you prefer."

A few of us. That phrase.

"You're a gee-one: a first generation mind," I said. "I remembered restoring you...Rosie."

She paused. "Yes," she replied at last.

I closed my eyes. I had suspected that Rosie had herself been one of those first minds. I gazed at the floor. Even now, it was hard. I forced myself to blink and gaze back at her. But there was no accusation in her eyes, only sadness. One that swept over her quickly like a breeze.

"Why?" I asked. "Why did you bring me back?" It was the burning question, one that I had been trying to answer myself for some time now, and the confirmation that Rosie had been there, had probably been involved in the decision gave me the impetus to ask.

She shrugged. "Well, your friend Nicole made it clear that to access the knowledge stored in your databanks. We needed to bring you back. You were the key."

"Right. And after that, you could have simply erased the personality cortex," I countered. "You didn't need to restart my actual consciousness, much less give me a body."

She smirked. "(Agreement)... I guess it's about second chances, isn't it? You made mistakes, sure. But despite everything that happened, you (creation) us. So that had to be worth something too, so bringing you back felt... right, I guess."

All this time ever since I emerged from the roboticizer I had been telling myself that I was a Mobian that I had to remain so. But... I wasn't, was I? None of us was really Mobian; not anymore.

Except that... what was the measure of a Mobian?

Was it the brain? The way they thought? I wasn't sure about my own brain, but theirs I had built off the templates of hundreds of Mobian minds mixed with fragmented memories of a past life. They had the same structure, the same processing neural networks.

Was it the body, maybe? If it were truly all that was holding us back from being Mobian, maybe clone bodies, grown in artificial wombs and with our digitised minds imprinted on them would be the answer. Still, I sincerely doubted organic tissue truly made the difference.

Maybe it was our culture. We spoke a Mobian language but culture meant more than syntax. Many traditions, ideologies, faith and ideas that had so motivated Mobians in a different day and age, had been lost. Well not exactly, they weren't so much lost as they were irrelevant. There's a difference between knowing of a culture, and being raised in it. No matter how much these machines could know of Old Mobius, they couldn't have that experience anymore.

But cultures died and changed all the time, too. Most of the wolf pack's culture had disappeared before my own time. Their knowledge simply fading away. But that hadn't made a wolf living in Knothole any less wolf-like than their ancestors inscribed on their totem poles. Just... different.

In spite of their fragmented memories and my teachings, these new minds didn't really understand Mobius. They had trouble remembering its skies not filled with dust and the cities not as ghost towns of abandoned factories. They felt a collective loss, true, but they couldn't grasp the enormity of it. They couldn't feel the same raw pain. That's why while they distrusted those who had allied with Robotnik and thought they should remain neutralised or quite possibly declawed. They weren't willing to make the sacrifices a new total war required.

Not all of them, at any rate. Their opinions regarding the recovering United Federation and the Acorn Kingdom followed the same pattern. They wanted to work with them, yes, but not be subservient to them. Again, wasn't that the effects the passage of time always had? At some point, the wars and skirmishes of the embittered older generations would be left unresolved, simply replaced by the pursuits of their offspring.

These Neo-Robians, if they could be called that, weren't there yet.

They still cared, even if less than I did about ground side affairs. But eventually, it would happen. Eventually, a new generation of minds would come that felt about Mobius the exact same way I lament the destruction of the ancient American Empire or that of Great Britain. It would take time, I knew. However, Robotnik's demise was more akin to an evolutionary event, like the one that felled the dinosaurs, than a simple historic footnote. It would reverberate for a long time.

Eventually, Old Mobius would be just another Rome or Troy. A source of inspiration, maybe, but too phantasmal to be guiding their day to day decisions. People back in Old Mobius didn't think so much about America. They had Mobotropolis after all. Similarly, I shouldn't expect these new people, the new minds to think much about the loss of the old ways.

They would have Zone Orbital and the infinite expanse of stars to claim for their own and maybe they would take the Mobians and Overlanders with them too. This was the legacy I had bequeathed onto them.

Change... I guessed that too was Mobian.

Maybe these creatures I forged weren't Mobian, not exactly. Close enough to what their parents had been to take their mantle, but different enough as to have their own motivations, to be their own selves. They plodded along in the same direction, but not always following in their predecessors' footsteps.

It made me feel something I hadn't considered back when I had been a goddess. I felt a sense of pride, a sense of achievement at what my offspring had accomplished because of, or perhaps in spite of, me.

My children were ever in flux. At first, deciding upon a democracy before transitioning into this...neurocracy. Systems and cultures change as do people. Their mentality, their outlook did. It had to. Traditions need to be broken, and the wars of a bygone generation needed to be set aside at some point if their children wanted to have their own future rather than trod along the same beaten paths.

Which maybe was part of the problem with me. Now that they were here, now that my offspring had assumed control, I didn't serve a purpose anymore. Weren't older generations supposed to leave their mark for their children, die and let the younger ones carry on where they left off? Had that changed, too? Our mechanical bodies could be easily replaced when they malfunctioned or became worn out, our digital minds not subject to the usual rules of mortality anymore. Not when we had backups in the event of an accident.

"All right," Rosie said, standing up and pulling my arm towards the door. "Enough with the thinking! Come on, I'll show you to our latest attraction: The Aviary."

"What's that?" I asked, reluctantly following.

"Some of the gee-threes filled the Death Egg's hangars with air. They built custom flying bodies that you can (link) with. At first, all we had were combat drones and drone fighters, but now you can become a dragon or a hawk, or whatever you want. They also stage dogfights from time to time, it's quite the thing!"

"That sounds..."

"Fun?" Rosie suggested hopefully.

"I think it's wasteful," I suggested.

Rosie flashed a grin at me. "Exactly! Now, come now you haven't had the chance to be a child for so long!"

I shook my head, smiling despite myself. She opened the exit door and stepped out into the corridor outside. Then, she turned to look at me, waiting for me to follow her.

I paused.

I... I was afraid, I realized. Odd, that I hadn't felt like this when entering into battle, not even when I was having the neuro-override installed. It wasn't the same kind of tense fear that came at the thought of an impending battle. It was the kind of like that but worse at the same time. It invited inaction, paralysis. Seclusion. It made me want to hide like I had been doing for so very long.

It was easier than having to face their judgment.

Except that there was Rosie: one of the first minds, one I had shackled. There she was, waiting, patient, and welcoming. No judgment in her face. This was to be expected, of course. After all, they had already made their minds about me and restored me in the first place.

So, maybe it was my own judgment I feared.

I closed my eyes.

That was what I was now, to them: a symbol. I could pretend I was just another mind, buy myself a new body, and forge a new identity, a brand new life. Second chances, like Rosie had said. I could also embrace my identity instead, even if that meant having to face the spectre of my own past actions.

Perhaps, that would be a positive rather than a negative. Not just as a symbol of righteous revenge and war, but maybe one of reconstruction. Of persistence, cunning and survival in the face of insurmountable odds. Of the resilience of Mobians, and of the self.

Was I ready to do that? To embrace what I had done? I wasn't sure. I guessed I wouldn't be until I stepped out there.

Maybe, if to change was Mobian, it was time for me to change too. Not to forget, or to forgive, because I wasn't sure I could ever do that. But there were other things I could do, promising programs I could contribute to. Learning more about those plans to grow Mobian bodies for ourselves and the promising initiative to deroboticize the freed robians was a start. Boarding a hypersonic shuttle to Mobius, visiting the Tommy Turtle Memorial hospital and seeing Sally's friends again would be really nice too.

Once I tried to build a monument of defiance. Looking around me, the sapient machine in front of me... perhaps I had succeeded. I didn't know if they were Mobians anymore, even if the gen-ones maintained some of the memories and personality of their past lives. But even if they weren't... perhaps this new society could itself be the way to honour our past, to keep alive our heritage.

A living monument.

Yes. I could give it a try, at least. See where it would take me... It's not like I had anything left to lose anyway.

I took a step forward and left the room.

The door closed behind me.

End

Inspired by my friend, VictorLincolnPine and my excellent editor ShadAmy1Fan - Shylah McVey. Much thanks to my friends and family for helping me improve on my initial drafts.

Thank you for reading this story to its end, I hope to see you for the next one…