Clearly this is the start of an action/adventure story, in which Aujae and her latest target work together to figure out the story behind the Keeper and what, exactly, it's trying to prevent from happening in universe after universe. But I am not going to write that.
Aujae crossed universes with her eyes open once. After she nearly ripped herself apart by trying to turn around mid-step, and vomited the entire contents of her stomach, down to pure bile, from the nauseating visual wrongness of the process, she returned to closing her eyes like the Keeper had advised.
She generally ended up following the Keeper's advice in the end, no matter how much she wanted to find some point on which to stand and rebel. On technical matters, that wasn't too bad. Of course the Keeper knew the details of the process and the job better than Aujae; the Keeper had been doing this for millennia, trading out one operative for another when their bodies inevitably rejected the heavy metal of the sigils and not even the nanobots in their blood could hold back the cancer and the rot anymore.
But on matters of ethics, Aujae wished she knew the right words and the right way to put ideas in order so the Keeper couldn't keep twisting her arguments back on her until she couldn't see any path but the assigned one as justifiable. She never found any holes until after, and the Keeper wouldn't talk about anything but the present and the future. Talking about the past would require it to acknowledge her as a person rather than a tool.
Maybe this time, Aujae thought, as she always did when she stepped through the shrieking, twisting stickiness of the void and opened her eyes to a new world. Maybe this time, she'd find her own way.
She clenched her left hand into a fist, making the sigils glow with a minor effort of will; everything worked as it should. Then she flicked open the connection to the Keeper.
"Operative Two Seven Seven Eight Alpha, requesting download of universe parameters and mission goals. Who is my target and what is my time limit?"
Aujae closed her eyes again and waited for the face of a stranger to bloom in her mind. This would be her fifty-second kill. It never got any easier.
[Fic] "Utilitarian Virtue" -- original
Aujae crossed universes with her eyes open once. After she nearly ripped herself apart by trying to turn around mid-step, and vomited the entire contents of her stomach, down to pure bile, from the nauseating visual wrongness of the process, she returned to closing her eyes like the Keeper had advised.
She generally ended up following the Keeper's advice in the end, no matter how much she wanted to find some point on which to stand and rebel. On technical matters, that wasn't too bad. Of course the Keeper knew the details of the process and the job better than Aujae; the Keeper had been doing this for millennia, trading out one operative for another when their bodies inevitably rejected the heavy metal of the sigils and not even the nanobots in their blood could hold back the cancer and the rot anymore.
But on matters of ethics, Aujae wished she knew the right words and the right way to put ideas in order so the Keeper couldn't keep twisting her arguments back on her until she couldn't see any path but the assigned one as justifiable. She never found any holes until after, and the Keeper wouldn't talk about anything but the present and the future. Talking about the past would require it to acknowledge her as a person rather than a tool.
Maybe this time, Aujae thought, as she always did when she stepped through the shrieking, twisting stickiness of the void and opened her eyes to a new world. Maybe this time, she'd find her own way.
She clenched her left hand into a fist, making the sigils glow with a minor effort of will; everything worked as it should. Then she flicked open the connection to the Keeper.
"Operative Two Seven Seven Eight Alpha, requesting download of universe parameters and mission goals. Who is my target and what is my time limit?"
Aujae closed her eyes again and waited for the face of a stranger to bloom in her mind. This would be her fifty-second kill. It never got any easier.