Ballistic Coefficient

It had started to gently rain by the time the two of them left the ruined city. Kayla bundled her cloak tightly around herself as she walked, while Pale was completely uncaring of the raindrops that fell down on her.

According to Kayla, the next town was a few hours away by foot, so they were going to have a lot of ground to cover. Thankfully, past the initial patch of forest outside Kayla's home town, the rest of the way appeared to be open fields, so they had little to worry about in terms of an ambush.

"Hey," Kayla said softly. "Can we talk?"

"About what?" Pale replied without looking back.

"I don't know, just… anything. I-I mean… I don't want to walk on in silence… makes me remember what happened to my town…" She sniffled. "All my friends are gone… Gods, I didn't even think of that…"

"Don't let it get to you," Pale told her. "Consider your life from this point on as a blessing. You are still alive, therefore you can carry on their memory. Find a way to honor it, and spend the rest of your life working towards that."

Kayla shuddered. "You make it sound so… impersonal."

Pale shrugged. "I am an AI. I was designed to think, not feel."

"AI? What's that?"

"Artificial intelligence."

"Okay, but… what does that mean?"

"It means I am not a person," Pale said evenly. "I am a machine, of sorts. This body is flesh and blood, but it is little more than an avatar created in a laboratory for my mind to inhabit."

Kayla stared at her, confused. "What do you mean, you're not a person? Of course you are."

Pale shook her head. "I am not."

"Well, what makes you different from an actual person?"

"I was created, not born. And this is not even my true form."

"What do you mean, you weren't born? And how is this not your true form?"

Pale exhaled softly. Already, this conversation was becoming exhausting. "I was not a product of a natural birth. I am a computer, not a person – you can think of a computer as an artificial brain, more than anything. In fact, that is how I was created – as first true artificial intelligence, I was created by mapping an actual human brain, then converting that data into a machine."

"How did they map a brain?" Kayla wondered.

"They took the brain of a recently deceased person, and using extremely advanced technology, discovered exactly what it was that let humans think the way they do," Pale answered. "The exact explanation behind how it works would be far too complicated even for the vast majority of people from my world, so I will spare you the details. All you need to know is that they cracked the code behind what lets the human function, and in doing so, were able to create a machine that was able to truly think for itself. I am that machine."

"But… you're not made of metal," Kayla said, sounding even more confused. "How can you be a machine?"

"I am, in fact, made of metal." Pale pointed up at the sky. "My true form is currently floating far above this planet. This body you see is a living, breathing avatar specifically created in a laboratory for me to inhabit, in case it was ever necessary for me to do so. I have used it before only in testing; I suspect this will end up being the longest I have ever used this body for, as my true form is currently severely damaged."

Kayla groaned, clutching at her temples. "I'm getting a headache… that weapon from earlier didn't help things, either…"

"Apologies; firearms are quite loud, particularly in enclosed spaces, and your ears must be even more sensitive than mine."

"No, it's… it's fine…" Kayla took a breath. "So… you're telling me this body was created, too, rather than being born?"

"It was," Pale confirmed with a nod. "It is, for all intents and purposes, a regular human, though one that was also created in a lab, and without an actual brain of its own. The exact mechanism for how this body works is, perhaps, too complicated for you to grasp, but all you need to know is that it functions the same as a human body when I transport my own mind to it, but aside from that, it is more like a corpse than anything."

"Eugh…" Kayla shuddered. "Then… how do you keep it from rotting if it's not alive when you're not using it?"

"When this avatar is not in use, it is kept in cryostasis," Pale reported. "Essentially, it is flash-frozen and kept in storage. When it is needed once more, it is thawed out."

"No offense, but why would someone need to create a person like you?" Kayla questioned. "I mean, not that I don't appreciate you being here, but-"

"No, that is a fair question." Pale looked up to the sky as she walked. "First of all, I am not a person; do not refer to me as such. I understand this may be uncomfortable for you, but there is a reason for it – I am, first and foremost, a military asset, and I am to be referred to as such, lest I risk losing track of my primary directive."

"Which is?"

"Preventing humanity's extinction."

Kayla fell silent at that, her eyes going wide. After a moment, she recovered enough to clear her throat and speak again.

"Extinction…?"

Pale nodded. "I mentioned before that I am the most powerful weapon ever created by humans. That was not an exaggeration – they poured everything they had into creating me, all because they knew they needed to do something drastic to turn the tide. My creators are fighting a war against a hostile alien race called the Caatex – essentially, a race of nine-foot-tall reptile people who are bent on our complete annihilation. We do not know why they have targeted us for extermination, only that they have, and that they are winning… or rather, were winning, until I was created."

Kayla stared at her with some mixture of apprehension, fear, and awe. "And… what makes you so powerful?"

"The fact that I am a computer that can think for itself," Pale explained. "Computers are extremely powerful machines, capable of parsing information at a rate far faster than humans can even comprehend. For example, the computers we use now can take an extremely complex mathematical equation and solve it in less than a second, and that is just the tip of the iceberg of what they are capable of. However, for as long as they have existed, they have had one fatal flaw – they have always relied on human input in order to function. Computers are amazing machines, but without a human there to input data in the first place, they will always be hamstrung in some way. But that changed with my creation. Suddenly, there was a computer that could think and make decisions for itself without any kind of human input, save for the orders given to me by my superior officers in the military."

"I… think I understand," Kayla replied. "You can basically think faster than anything else in existence, right?"

"Correct," Pale confirmed. "And more accurately, too. There are very few things that I cannot answer, and most of them are philosophical or spiritual in nature rather than something tangible. Essentially, I can accurately answer any question so long as the solution does not rely on being taken on some kind of faith. I am, in essence, mankind's pure, cold rationality, distilled into one machine."

"And they use you for war. That's what you meant earlier, when you said you were a monolith to their inhumanity."

"Correct again."

Kayla fell silent for a few seconds. She opened her mouth to ask something, only to hesitate and hold herself back. Pale was unperturbed.

"You want to know how many I have killed," she surmised.

Kayla's expression tightened, but she didn't deny it. Instead, she stayed silent. Pale shrugged.

"Ultimately, I am just another soldier in this war," she said, again without looking back. "I do as my creators demand, without remorse or fear or guilt. I do what they need me to do in order to prevent their extinction, because that is my prime directive – my reason for being made. Perhaps the day may come when I will no longer be needed in such a role, but until that day comes, I am content to serve the role as humanity's own personal Grim Reaper."

"How… how many?" Kayla ventured. "I-I mean… if you're comfortable with-"

"A standard Caatex battle group consists of twenty-two thousand individual members of their species, divided among several different kinds of ships," Pale explained. "I will spare you the details of how they are arranged, because they are not important. What is important is how many battle groups I have personally destroyed. And because you are so curious… that number is fourteen."

Kayla's eyes widened yet again, and she stopped, sputtering in disbelief.

"F-fourteen… you've destroyed fourteen entire battle groups?! That's… that's…"

"Just over three hundred thousand individual members of the Caatex species."

Kayla suddenly doubled over, clutching at her stomach as she gasped for breath.

"I… you… how could you?" she muttered. "That's… it's…"

"It's war," Pale said, with no trace of emotion in her tone. "I am a soldier. An extremely technologically advanced soldier, but a soldier nonetheless. Ultimately, there is nothing different between what I do and what the standard infantryman does. I simply do it on a much larger scale. And before you attempt to preach to me about morals – first off, I do not care; morality means nothing in the face of extinction. Second off, the Caatex have killed that many humans multiple times over. You think the destruction of a single battle group is a tragedy? They obliterate entire planets. Hundreds of millions of humans, if not billions, gone in the blink of an eye. That is the kind of enemy we are fighting. It is why I was created, and it is why I care nothing for the lives of the Caatex I have snuffed out. I think of them the same way you would think of an insect you step on."

As they walked, the two of them passed by a ransacked caravan. Dead bodies littered the road, all in various states of mutilation; Pale's brow furrowed as the stench of decay hit her, while Kayla's face turned green and she hurriedly averted her gaze from the carnage.

"I-I'm gonna be sick…" Kayla muttered. "That's… that scale, it's… it's unthinkable…"

"Again, it's war," Pale replied. "That is what it means to fight a war of extinction, Kayla. Pray you never have to experience it."

"And… these Caatex… there's no chance of them finding us?"

"None," Pale said without a moment's hesitation. "I cannot even recognize which solar system we are currently in. It does not match up with any galactic maps or star charts in my system, and suffice to say, I have a great many maps and charts in my system. Wherever this planet is located, it must be in a very remote part of the galaxy, perhaps even a different galaxy altogether."

"And you think you can find a way back, even with your true form being broken?"

"I have to," Pale said, again without hesitating. "I still have a war to fight."

Kayla's expression tensed, but she didn't argue, even though Pale could tell she wasn't exactly happy with the answer she'd just been given.

The two of them continued in silence until night fell, and when it did, they laid down out in the open, underneath the stars. Pale stared up at the night sky for a moment, frowning at the knowledge that it truly was all completely unrecognizable to her. Eventually, however, she fell asleep, and when she did, she did something she thought was impossible.

She dreamed.