Mass Effect: Reaper Dreams

Dead Hot Robot

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."

Harriet Beecher Stowe

May 5th, 2187

Ashley Williams

"He's still in there?" asked Ashley.

She motioned towards the metal door.

Dr. Chakwas nodded.

She paused for a moment, considering Ashley, then said "Lt. Commander, be yourself, don't try to say what she would have said; he'll see through it."

"Right," said Ashley.

Opening the door to the AI core, she slipped inside.

The door hissed shut behind her. Joker was seated on the floor of the room in front of the burned out core. He was wrung out, his eyes were red, his beard and hair disheveled, and he reeked of sweat and desperation. His hat rested in the corner where he had apparently thrown it in frustration. The bald patch on his head was visible.

He sighed as Ashley approached him.

Before she could open her mouth Jeff spoke first. "EDI used to talk about various theories of existence, you know? There was some bullshit called the Holographic Theory of Existence she'd bring up from time to time, and then something similar she was discussing with Liara. It all went completely over my pinhead, but they made it sound like this is all a simulation, like we're all in some virtual reality, in the Matrix, you know, that old Sci-Fi vid from the 20th century?"

"Never saw it," replied Ashley.

"Yea, I didn't figure you had," he said.

He let out a sigh of grief and ran his fingers through his sweaty, lanky hair.

"Anyway, if this is just some simulation and we are holograms—projections of some kind, or even characters in a vid-game or something, whoever or whatever designed this ending is a fucking asshole," he said.

Ashley thought about it for a moment before answering. "It could have been worse, Joker."

"How?" he asked. "I lost my girlfriend, yea, she was my robot girlfriend, but I don't give a damn what anyone thinks. I loved her. It was real to me. Oh, and yea, I also just happened to lose my best friend in the galaxy, and I'm trying to find some way to believe that my father and sister are still alive.

If all that isn't enough of a pile of crap? We're stuck in some uncharted system between who-knows-what relays, and without EDI managing the fields we'll have to limp home at low throttle and pray we don't hit a radiation storm. It will take us weeks, months, and maybe even years to get back to the Sol system instead of a few hours or days. I don't even want to think about how we are going to process or salvage fuel."

Ashley didn't understand Jeff's relationship with EDI. It really made no sense to her, but she knew to keep quiet on the subject. No more sticking her foot in her mouth if she could help it.

No doubt she was biased against EDI because of her experience with the chassis she appropriated. The damn thing had nearly killed her on mars. Despite EDI's usefulness, Ashley had never agreed with Shepard on the freedom it was given, and here they were in a bind because the computer had panicked, seized control of the ship, and dashed through the relay instead of heading to the fleet rendezvous coordinates just outside of Jump Zero.

It was unprecedented for a ship to be stuck in transit when a Mass Relay corridor collapsed, she'd never heard of such a thing. The big brains theorized it happened from time to time, and that's why some ships simply vanished, but to actually experience it was disconcerting. The surge of energy that collapsed the space-time bubble would have torn the Normandy apart if Joker hadn't manually engaged the FTL out of desperation. He was either crazy or genius, but it saved them—no one had ever done it before, or at least hadn't done it and lived to tell about it.