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"Ow!" A pain blooms from my ear. I let my head roll against the window. When did he get on my shoulder? When did the sun go down? Is that the moon? It's so cold.

"Clover?" Blue speaks my name.

I don't want to move. I don't want to have to do this. With a momentous effort, I pull my head away from the glass.

"Did you hear any of that?" She asks.

I just give a small shake of my head and let it rest against the window again. It's far easier than forming an entire word.

"We're close to the edge of the continental shelf. We have to take small paths through the mountains to get to the seabed. Corax went ahead and scouted it, and the Rangers still have a checkpoint set up, making it impossible for us to sneak through. We might have to fight if we can't talk our way through, do you think you can handle that?" She explains.

"Oh." Another sharp pain dominates my mind, setting in motion my thoughts. They try to bounce off non-existent others, waiting for us to think for me. Of course, I'm no longer we. My thoughts are mine and mine alone. "I can fix that."

"You can what?" Cassie asks.

I don't respond. Instead I reach out, pulling on the tiny tendril still connecting me and us. I receive back the same message as always, reminding me what we decided. I pull again, forcing myself closer to us.

A tendril rips through reality, connecting with me. It's careful to not accept me back into me, but allows us to speak.

"What do you need?" We ask. No, not we. As much as I wish, those are not my words. Kismet. I should be calling us Kismet. Kismet asks.

I send the memory of Blue's explanation, feeding it to the tendril. It rips the memory apart, sending fragments through the hive mind, letting individual parts process the whole, and propagate their thoughts through… Not me. I don't get to be a part of that.

Another tendril reaches out into the infinite void, ripping open a tear, bringing me and another quantum close together. We both reach a single tendril towards each other, and I pass the memory of what I need through.

The other quantum reaches for Kismet, and Kismet rips reality to shreds in response. A hundred quantums surround us. The memory gets passed between everyone, an explanation in itself of what must be done. Few argue, passing back another thought and propagating it through our smaller whole.

Kismet passes the future to all of us, many potential outcomes of many potential decisions. Few are negative from the future I want. Those arguments falter and fade in the face of such overwhelming proof. The quantums begin to fade as Kismet stitches reality back together, the small taste of what it feels like to be whole again going with them.

"Word has been sent out. You will be safe." Kismet declares, and disappears, leaving me once again alone in the void. My mind wails, tendrils thrashing against the unmoving wall that is reality. I can open no tears of my own, no connections with others.

A pain explodes through my mind, the waves refocusing me. Focus on the reality I have, not the one I want.

"We're safe to pass through, just take the easiest route." I mumble into the window.

"You're going to have to explain." Cassie demands.

"Many quantums work with the Rangers. We tell them our future, and they tell the Rangers. The future we are telling them is to let us through. They trust us, and our future says they'll listen." The thoughts begin to disintegrate, the explanation pushing my mind far beyond what it can handle. I begin to break apart, barely able to hold myself together.

"What the fuck does that even mean?" Cassie asks.

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The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

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Pain once again blooms. The sky is gone, an omnipresent, soft blue light mixed with harsh headlights illuminates the world around me.

"Clover?" Blue asks, my hand in hers.

I let my head lull to the side, forcing my eyes to focus on her.

"This is where we're staying until the next storm ends." She says. "Do you want to come see it? Or do you want to stay here?"

Why does she always make things so hard? I don't know what I want. I need someone to make that decision for me, like we used to do.

"Sure." It's easier to just agree. She would never ask me to do something bad for me, and this way I don't have to think, don't have to decide.

I force myself to open the door, at risk of another bite if I don't. I step out of the car, only using this physical body the minimum possible amount to not fall over, and not a bit more. Contorting me to make this body move is hard enough, any more will only shred my mind further. We say I need to get better, and that won't happen if I break myself trying to move.

The least I can do is look around. We're parked next to a large, softly glowing blue lake. I take a step away from it. I have tripped before, and I don't even want to think about how hard swimming would be.

Cassie is disappearing into the burnt out remains of a house, carrying an armful of supplies. Nimda, Lance, and Robin are just sitting around, talking. How can they do that? Even She couldn't talk for long, even if it was more than I can handle.

Well, no, there was one person who She could talk to forever. I wonder if I could? Do I hope I could? Would that be proof I'm Her? Do I want that? I don't know. Blue's words confused me, and I don't know anything.

"Welcome to the town." Blue says, saving me from me. "We stumbled across this place right after it got attacked. If you need recharging, I made a steam engine last time I was here. Or you can just use the cars, either works. Cassie, Corax and I are claiming one of the buildings. Where do you want to stay?"

She asks the question so gently, but that doesn't make it hurt any less. Why does she always make things so hard? What need is there to gain from it? I wait for the questions to bounce off the rest of me, for us to think alongside me. Corax bites my ear once again to rip me from that waiting.

Car or house? That's the question.

"Car." It's easier.

"Alright, that's fine." Blue reassures me. "Do you want to come help Cassie and I get set up?"

Pain, again.

"Think." A small voice whispers in my ear.

It's so much easier to follow a command than to make my own. Even if helping is hard, it's easier this way.

"I guess."

"Alright, thank you! I really appreciate it." Blue begins to slowly walk away, and I shuffle after her.

She leads me into the same burnt out husk of a building that Cassie was carrying stuff into. The inside is a disaster. Whatever once existed in this room has been reduced to the same black coating that covers the rest of the town. A few sections are cleared, paths that something was dragged through at some point.

I understand how you feel, house.

Cassie is doing her best to find a place to put their supplies without just dropping them on the dirty ground. I should help if I want her to like me, and I think I should want that.

"I can hold everything." I offer.

"I can just-" She's suddenly cut off by something. "Yeah, alright. Here."

She steps towards me, and I just extend my arms. The supplies aren't heavy, but it's just another weight on this body my mind has to compensate for.

"Be right back." She dashes out of the room quickly. So much for friends.

"Thank you so much for helping." Blue says. "We really appreciate it."

Think.

Corax doesn't even need to bite my ear, or even say anything for my mind to repeat his words.

"I have a question." I let myself slide down the wall, stopping roughly on the ground. This body can get dirty, I don't care.

"About what?" Blue asks, taking a seat next to me.

"You're not the first AI on your chip." I say.

"Yeah?" She asks.

"Who are they?"

"I have no idea." Blue says. "The only thing I know about each of them is a single sentence."

"Are they you?" That's the important question.

"Again, I have no idea. Maybe?" She says. "Like I said, they're undoubtedly part of me, but they were also their own people as far as I know. I don't know, it feels like I'm disregarding their existence if I just say they were all me."

"Huh." Does that apply to me? Is trying to be Her ignoring Her existence? Or is trying to be someone else disrespecting Her memory? My mind reaches for another to answer again, only for pain in my ear to be my only response.

"Can I ask a question?" Blue asks, her eyes peering straight into my soul. Her eyes are sharp, already knowing my every thought.

"Sure."

"Does it matter?" She asks. "Whether B-1 through B-10 are me or not doesn't affect who I am. I'm Blue, and that's the end of things. If you're Her or not, does that affect who you are now?"

"I need you to tell me the answer." I can't keep answering these things. My mind is supposed to be multiples, not the singular I am now. I'm not meant to make these decisions alone.

"I'm sorry, but I can't just decide who you are." Blue says gently. "But I do think you're worrying about it more than you need to be."

All that's easy for her to say. Of course she's Blue, she's never been anyone else. I've been everyone, shaped by everyone, part of everyone. I'm an 'I' I can no longer be. Biological AI are born knowing themselves. I'm not. She was an oddity. A person who took a knife to ourself, to order, to entropy itself, and carved a self out of it.

I drop the supplies in Blue's lap, and Corax jumps over to her shoulder. Blue takes everything, and I force myself to my feet, stumbling out the front door. I walk aimlessly down the burnt out streets.

If I don't worry about who I am, then I stay how I am. And right now I'm no one. I'm not a person, just a piece of Kismet we tossed out with a miniscule portion of our memories.

I find myself walking up a ramp and sand appears beneath my feet. A sliver of the moon hangs low in the sky, that and the endless stars above are the only light.

I drop into the sand and lean against the mountain. I need to be careful out here, if my mind begins to stall and the storm hits… Then I return to me. We agreed. I'm not allowed to return, until I physically return to the city, or I'm about to die.

Who am I? If I'm us, then I walk into the desert, never to be seen again. If I'm Clover, She would have never had these thoughts. We want me to stay. Clover wants me to stay.

Fuck what other people want. What do I want?

Who am I?

My finger begins to trace through the sand. I watch it go, guided on by a whisper through time. An image slowly forms, a face.

Silver.

They deserve to speak to… Whoever I am. I shouldn't run away from that.

I can live with that. Glad the flow of time is still looking out for me when I need it, especially after it let Her die the first time.

I force this body to stand, stumbling back into the town. I reach the car, throw open the door, and collapse into the seat. I can finally let myself rest, to return to oblivion once again.

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