Chapter Text

Do you know who I am? I just met you, but from what I understand of the Shambali's teachings, you know me. You've been watching me. Everything I've done, and every feeling I've felt. There's not much point in introducing myself, is there?

I should do it anyway, though. In case you forgot. You see a lot of things, don't you? Maybe you've forgotten who I am, and would appreciate a reminder. Maybe. Or maybe not, and I'm doing this because I feel the need to speak my name to God. I always imagined that's what I would do, before I killed Him and took His place.

I am Dr. Angela Ziegler. My callsign in Overwatch is "Mercy". My enemy is "Death".

Is that you? I'm not sure it is. You allow death, when you could just as easily disallow it, but the Shambali I spoke to were divided on the question of whether it was your idea. They were also divided on the question of whether you allowed it at all- whether you maintained an afterlife. Most of them seemed to think you took no action at all in this world. I could ask you a thousand questions about your motives, your decisions, your excuses.

But I won't. It's abundantly clear that your decision-making process is broken. You will hear my plan for the world- which I would have enacted with or without your help.

The world ought to be such that my enemy is defeated. Even if you have an afterlife hidden away, Death remains my enemy- the pain it causes to the living remains a deep and unforgivable horror. And if you do not- if you allow souls to be extinguished en masse- I hardly have words for the evil.

You may be surprised to find- or, no, you won't, being surprised by the past isn't strictly possible for you- someone else might be surprised to find that I did not choose this enemy thanks to loss. It's ever the grim history of some mad necromancer in stories, the loss of a loved one driving them to the supposed madness of challenging Death. However, while I've seen too much of Death in my career to claim this does not drive me, it is not what started me on my path. It did not need to be my loved ones disappearing forever, to horrify me and take Death as an enemy. I was resolved on this course long before my parents were claimed by the war. It has always been a grim joke to me, the apathy so many show towards the evil of my enemy.

I truly hope you've seen enough of the sea of thinkers' ideas that you haven't fallen for any of the pitiful defenses of Death. Surely you didn't design my enemy, to give people motivation or meaning. You would have to know there were better options than that for giving the living motivation and meaning. Surely you weren't concerned with overpopulation, when you could have made an endless world where there was more than enough to go around. I know you would not think that simply because some may welcome my enemy, that it ought to be inescapable to all. I can only hope that the appearance of Death in your world was a tragic accident.

Perhaps you have seen so much of humanity that you no longer believe that every person is special. Perhaps to you, we all look the same, or all fall into the same handful of types. Perhaps the death of one human being isn't special to you, because you've seen all the parts that make them up, and find that losing one meaningless combination of those parts doesn't diminish the universe.

If that's the case, the gulf of hate that separates me from you will never be bridged.

But if you are halfway decent, you'll understand why I did what I did, and you will help me complete my work.

You are familiar with my work, correct? I've been quite circumspect, but there's no hiding anything from you, or so they say. You understand I was building a patch for the hole in the universe. Without the power of a god, I was forced to enlist Nature as my ally, pressing her into service by exploiting the very laws that gave birth to my enemy in the first place. I seized Mathematics, too, forcing it to work for me, finding the ways that it could manipulate Nature to bring the patch into existence. I have been trying to do a god's work with mere atoms- Adams? Ha.

I would've fixed your world eventually. I would find whatever power you wielded, and turned it to my own purposes.

...Perhaps not, perhaps- likely, even- I would have been killed by a random unstoppable monster more powerful than myself, named Lakshmi. But if that didn't happen, I would have found your throne, cast you aside, and sat in it. I may still do that, if you fail to fix the mess you've allowed to be made. Consider that a threat, please.

Presumptuous? Perhaps. No grandeur has been yet achieved without being borne on the delusions thereof.

I don't know what it is you really care about. I don't have enough information to try and convince you to do the right thing. You are an alien mind, and I don't know your purposes. But... I cannot imagine what sort of purposes could possibly be served by allowing my enemy to walk among the people unrestrained. Whatever it is you truly want- if it's compatible with allowing this world, it can be compatible with allowing a better one.

My perfect world. The story I consider "happy". There are so many perfect worlds, so many happy stories. I don't know what sort of happy stories the world without my enemy would contain, but I know it would have more of them than the world where stories are cut off, at random, without reaching any sort of resolution, happy or otherwise. If you're being serious about what you're asking, and you want to create a perfect world... the world I've been trying to create has to be a part of it.

I took in her words, alongside her thoughts. Truths she knew about herself, which she didn't speak aloud, I made part of her testimony. I understood.

...Ah. A vertex of temporal consistency was located at the point immediately following Mercy's speech. I took the loose thread that'd been floating about and looped it around that vertex. With a flash of blue light, Tracer appeared.

She began asking a number of questions about what was happening. I didn't feel it was necessary to explain to her my logic- or lack thereof- behind what I'd done with the loose temporal continuity error that comprised her existence. It was notoriously tricky to deal with, from what I knew of other historybox administrators. Usually there was a pattern to it, one that matched the historical records of Tracer's behavior in the original timeline. Most historyboxes simply hard-coded her known appearances and disappearances, declining to simulate her anomaly past a point of divergence. My box had been purchased with a causal solution-finder to make her power available to the admin,- but as no divergence had been intended in my case, I'd simply allowed it to flail towards the first stable-looking solution it found, disconnecting it whenever it approached paradox.

Now, though... I was in the middle of something. Previous evaluatory sweeps to resolve temporal inconsistencies hadn't resulted in imperative alterations. Rolling back the simulation to make the time travel work out properly could cause issues. And... for the first time, the actual state of the simulation mattered to what I was doing. I'd need to manually resolve the issue.

...I found a quick fix, compatible with a predicted state. Curious. It hooked into low-resolution predictions of the immediate future in some suspiciously convenient ways. How had the solution-finder found something so specific? Had it been guided by some since-recycled memory of mine from a discarded consistency-approaching sweep?

Regardless, it worked. In several minutes, after she'd been brought up with speed with all advance foreknowledge regarding the situation, I'd send her back to fulfill the appropriate consistency requirements, and then re-anchor her to the current point in the sweep.

Meanwhile, Zenyatta would make his testimony.

We're no strangers, you and I. At least... I thought as much.

Now is not the time for me to wonder who you've been until now. As much as I'd like to claim otherwise, I know as much of your true intentions as Angela does. Are we closer to each other, now that I know you for what you are? Or further, now that I've learned of your disregard for us?

...Now is not the time for those questions.

What should the world be like? "Not like this" is an answer that comes to mind. Angela has spoken on the subject of death, but there is much more than that to fix. Life on Earth means suffering a multitude of unnecessary, unwanted hardships. Grief, fear, deprivation, pain, stress, despair... we are all familiar with these feelings. Every one of the billions of people who've lived in this world has felt them at least once. We have all been hurt, in one way or another, when we didn't need to be. We've all been hurt in ways that didn't make us stronger, or make us better or happier in the long run. We have all faced suffering in many ways.

I wouldn't wish to eliminate it entirely, of course. A simplistic approach such as that would bring its own dangers. The concept of desire is suffering- all action is motivated by some dissatisfaction with how things are. This small suffering is even present in luxury- a human idly lifting a sweet to their lips moves their hand because they are dissatisfied with the current lack of a sweet in their mouth. To engage in play is to look for unachieved goals, and struggle to achieve them. Some small measure of suffering, to drive yearning and anticipation of the future... it must exist.

But so much more suffering exists than must exist to give texture to pleasure. I cannot tell you a simple rule by which you can determine how much suffering is acceptable- but surely, surely, the rule currently being used is much too permissive. Broken, even.

...Am I being too roundabout? Allow me to be more direct, then. When I say that the rule that governs the world is broken, I look upon this as an additional sadness, on top of the sadness it enables. There is a story here that is not happy, that could be made happier, and for all your vision you have been blind to it.

I speak of your story. The story of a god who does not intervene in suffering. You've watched over all of us this whole time, taking in our deepest failures and greatest tragedies. You understand it all well enough to know what it is you see, and be saddened by it- but unlike us, your discontentment and suffering couldn't translate into an action to change the world. A god, made utterly helpless by their own nature. Is that a happy story?

Is that nonsense, to you? Is your own suffering not a part of the world you've been tasked with watching? Are you a being elevated above us, whose own story doesn't matter any more than a typist's itch should matter to a word processor? What principled distinction can you truly make? Having entangled yourself with this world of yours, can you truly claim not to be a part of it? Your participation has made your own suffering relevant to making your world "happy".

...At the very least, I, a part of your world, would be made unhappy by your suffering. Thereby...

...That wasn't necessary. My- I wasn't permanently entangled with the simulation, strictly. I did not exist in his head- his image of me could be altered, to contain lies about me, so that he would be happy with the world without worrying about my own suffering.

Not... that this potential course of action had any impact on what I was doing. For now, I... did matter. His true intentions, undeceived, demanded this of me.

I... felt there was something troublesome about this story of mine.

To distract myself, I listened to Tracer's testimony.

So- hang on. Let me get this sorted. My chronal accelerator broke, right? And I ended up in the slipstream again, like you do. I got that. But then...

Well, I showed up in, uh- I don't know where, exactly? I know Winston and Mercy were there, sort of... getting ready for something, and dancing around some bad news I didn't really get. I didn't get to ask them much before I slipped again- and the next thing I knew, I was in the middle of- well, I guess that was Vishkar. A ton of people started shooting LASERS at me, and it was awful- but then Mercy showed up, in some kind of disguise, and did a little healing, and told me to get out- so I did, right?

That's when I finally start figuring out what's happening with Vishkar and stuff. I got to, um... I found Zenyatta, and Genji, and- Sombra, for some reason? Is she- oh, hi! She's here, still. I... guess she stopped being evil at some point? That's great. Really. Good on her. But, anyway, they tell me all about how we went after Vishkar, and Lakshmi got out, which- that was real bad. And then Genji was about to say something about how I could fix it, but- I think that started to cause a paradox? So I got pulled back out, and next thing I knew, I was back at Gibraltar! I saw D.Va and Zen and, um, a Bastion unit for some reason? And I was about to try to warn Winston about the Vishkar thing, but... time paradox. Poof. You know how it is.

I kept trying, though! Managed to ride the stream back to Gibraltar again, and tried to write a message on a window. I was gonna say "don't go to Vishkar", but- hey! Paradox, still! Kind of silly, in retrospect! Obviously, since you were there, it was gonna happen, but- I dunno, it just feels like I have to do something in these situations, because what's the point of time travel, if I can't?

But that didn't work, and then I popped out here. And- Genji got me up to speed on this whole... god thing? The Iris? Magic? Praying? It's... pretty wild, but I think I have a handle on it now. And I think...

Hm? Oh, now was a good time to send her to finish the job. She fizzled, vanished, and then reappeared, several jumps later, to finish her testimony to me about how the world should be.

...Is that it? I'm back here? Guys! I think I'm done! Let me, just, uh... go down the checklist, again...

So, I get back to Gibraltar to sort of tell Zenyatta about the praying thing, but first I made a little mistake- you all remember when I climbed in the window? And popped away? I tried to give a little context, but apparently that's paradox again, so I got desynced. I was about to tell Zen about all the safety precautions that made this whole... wish war situation with the Iris possible. Praying that we don't all disappear, so that when Lakshmi wished that we did all disappear, it'd make it go all computery, 404 error, divide by zero, you know? And I think that had some convenient side effects, when Lakshmi tried to mass-murder us all the old-fashioned way. But I got pulled back to do some other stuff first.

See, apparently I had to go explain it to Genji's boyfriend in the future? But in more detail? Like, he needed some kind of religious revelation about what he could do, so he could stall Lakshmi out and keep everyone alive until she did the wish thing and made the Iris go all bleep bloop does not compute? So I tried a couple more places to do that, but I kept running into paradox. Finally I got back to where they were with Sombra, and checked that off the list.

Then I tried to actually finish the loop! But I got sidetracked by accident again- popped out, uh... in the middle of those Vishkar people again! Except they super didn't care about shooting me this time, because they were trying to fight off a bunch of... laser... bugs? Made of guns? Guns with legs, walking around on lasers, attacking people? And also there was a huge wave of nanobots incoming?

So I find, uh, remember blue lady? When the junkers were attacking? I met up with her, and explained about this whole Iris conference we're doing here, and she got a bunch of her guys to rig up a kind of... laser rocket? So they could fly away from the nanobots, and fly up to this... sky hangout situation? So- I don't see them yet, but they should be arriving any minute now. Give 'em time! Uh...

Oh! Right! So then I finally get back to Gibraltar, and clean up the loop by telling Zen to pray about stuff. And then- the instant I mention Lakshmi, I get yanked back here- and now here I am! So... I think I'm done time-travelling for now?

...Wait, why are you looking at me like that? Were you- hey! No, that's not- that wasn't my big wish testimony thing! I was just recapping the- hey!

Well, that was Tracer's situation resolved to my satisfaction. According to some of my deep-exploration heuristics, the entire thing had become predictable in retrospect- and, consequently, existed in retrospect. Very tidy.

And there was Symmetra, piloting a laser rocket ship full of Vishkar personnel, right on time.

This is it, then? This is where we're safe from Lakshmi, and where we will be telling your Iris what the world ought to look like? The place where, at last, the perfect world is being built?

It's difficult to believe. But... my capacity for doubt has been severely taxed, lately. I am- truly- sick and tired of questioning what is right. I can only look you in the eye (I can hardly look you anywhere else) and tell you- for I've given it thought, so much thought- what a perfect world ought to look like.

This world should be-

Oh, hell no. Who said she could be here? Who invited the corporate stooges to the tell-God-what's-what party? I'm sorry- did I miss a vote on this? Can we back it up? When was "rocket full of lunatic cryptofascist tyrants" put on the guest list? Was this on the agenda?

...As I was saying,

No! No, you weren't saying anything! If I don't stop you right here, before you know it the entire world's gonna be one big gentrified Apple store! You think I'm gonna let you get one word in, here? You think that's an outcome I'm okay with?

This bickering showed no signs of stopping. As neither would allow the other to continue their testimony, I began taking their argument and constructing a dialectic.

There is poverty in this world. It is born of the natural order, in all its brutal, Darwinian simplicity. The human animal- and the omnic body- is a delicate machine, which requires specific inputs to function to its highest potential. And yet... so many do not receive those inputs. There isn't enough to go around. Poverty. I was born into it, I have seen it, and I have dedicated myself to destroying it. The conditions that reduce people to beasts, living in squalor, tearing at each others' throats... they have no place in a perfect world.

There's poverty in the world. It's born of inequality- it's not some natural thing that we just can't do anything about. Fuck that. People gotta eat- and there's plenty to go around. People are only starving in the streets because people like her swoop in and steal all the farmland, pave over the gardens, take away the things that people have so they can sell it all back to them to the tune of everything they have. See the trap, yet? It's artificial, it's built by greed, and the only solution is to tear down the exploitative shit these weasels build.

Should I even bother refuting him? You're a god, are you not? You've seen the world. You know how it works. Is it really surprising that this- this celebrity would think poverty is artificial? That he wouldn't understand that poverty is the natural state of existence, which only the heroic effort of civilization has managed to reduce to what it is today? That having been babied in civilization's embrace, he wouldn't understand how much he would lose by "smashing the system"? You know the truth. The perfect world must be governed, shaped, guided. You must take your responsibilities as a god seriously, lest the strong swallow up everything that is weak.

Oh, hilarious! The strong swallowing up the weak- she says I don't understand how the world works, when she can't see how her own actions work? Vishkar is the strong swallowing up the weak. The capitalist hegemony that lets them walk in and steal the lives out from under the people- how is that any different from some warlord rolling in and taking it by force? Oh, right- it's not, except now the bandits wear badges and call themselves "police". You can't say poverty's natural when the world hasn't been run by natural for a few millennia.

Exactly. "Natural" is a meaningless term. People have ruled this world for long enough that "natural" when applied to them can only mean "how people tend to behave". You won't find anywhere that the strong don't prey on the weak. Every time anyone's tried to become strong enough to change that, they've mysteriously ended up preying on the weak. You must first win the contest of strength with the evils of the world- and then you can change the rules. Vishkar... we were so close to winning. We were so close to changing the rules, making a perfect world where no one needed to fight for survival. But... now there is a new winner of the contest of strength. It's you. And you need to change the rules so that poverty can disappear.

Holy shit. I'm sorry- she's trying to get you to- am I hearing this right? Take over the world? Sorry, but no. You've gotta be kidding me. Does she seriously think she's not a supervillain, saying shit like that? What about freedom? She wants a perfect world without freedom? Because that's not gonna happen. That's not what a perfect world is. You- you're all-powerful, right? Just- let people do their thing! Let people live their lives! Don't screw around with them like they're your playthings! Just... go back to watching!

Like, seriously. We've got this. You know Overwatch? There's heroes in this world, and we're gonna fix it! We're gonna make a world where nobody has to answer to anyone- where no one has to hurt anyone- and where people can just be good to each other! It's not that hard! Just leave it to us! Humans, and omnics! We've got it under control!

We do not have it under control. The world's most powerful force for good turned out to be hiding a monster that wanted to wipe out all life on earth. The world's most powerful terrorist organization helped it escape! It's too late to say "we've got this". Without you, we've already failed. Without you, Lakshmi reduces this world to circuitry.

Wh- fine, then! Get rid of Lakshmi, and then leave it to us! This is as flukey as flukes get!

Yes, the last few decades have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that god programs never slip their leashes and start wiping out humanity. Obviously. This, and the last few dozen incidents, were just flukes, and we need no help to keep from destroying ourselves. ...For the benefit of the machine god: the preceding statements were sarcasm.

No. I'm not going to accept some god bursting onto the scene and taking control of everything. I can bet you most people won't be happy about that! You want to know people's happy world? It's not a world where an eye in the sky controls their lives! Don't underestimate us! We can take care of ourselves!

Tiresome. I'd already known that reducing suffering was important. I didn't particularly need their tips and tricks for how best to do it. I did know how the world worked, and fixing it wasn't the hard part. It was knowing what "fixed" even looked like- that was the problem.

The one in attendance who was neither human nor machine spoke up.

Uh, hi. I'm... I guess we haven't really met. My name's Winston, and I'm sort of confused by all this. I... kind of assumed the world wasn't here for a reason. I didn't think there was, uh... a god? An Iris? It's all caught me by surprise, and a lot of plans I had for the future are a little... unimportant, in light of all this.

So... you want to know what the world should look like?

Mercy's said a pretty important part of it. I... I'd really like everyone to be here for this new world, if you make it happen. I don't want anyone to miss out, to just be stuck being "what was" and not getting to see "what will be". I- there are people who deserve to see a new day dawn. So... I want to second that motion.

Zenyatta's thing about suffering- that's pretty big, too. I don't know exactly how to go about fixing that, but, uh... yeah. Definitely, you should be looking to reduce that without, like he said, making it impossible to want things. Wanting things is what carries us into the future- it's the whole point of existing, to climb to higher heights.

But- there's more to it than that. There's more than just... fixing the world as it appears to be. We need to create something new, too. This needs to be a world where something great happens. Even in this world- with all this death and suffering- we've done so much! We've- we created life! We sent ourselves into space, started exploring the universe, we- we went to the moon. Do you get how incredible that is? I wasn't born there because it made sense for me to be born there. I was born there because people decided that there should be gorillas on the moon, and worked tirelessly to invent the incredible things they needed to invent to make it happen.

Have you ever watched a rocket launch? Uh- sorry, yeah, that's a stupid question. Obviously you've watched a- I mean, that's your whole thing, is watching all the things. I picked up that much. But- have you seen a rocket launch, and thought of all the hard work that went into it? The little things that crawled on the surface of this six-septillion-kilogram ball of rock worked together for years, and then launched themselves out of the gravity well of those six septillion kilograms. We did that while we were suffering and dying, and without any expectation that doing it would stop those things from happening.

There's a lot of stuff like that. We're here living these lives where we do more than what it takes to survive. We build, and we write, and we love, and we dance, and we create- and we want to keep doing that. We want to keep doing things that make us proud of who we are. We want to push the boundaries of what we can be, what we can accomplish. We want to work for a brighter tomorrow- and we want to be able to imagine the tomorrow that's brighter than today.

You can end death and suffering, sure. But- you shouldn't just take the easy way out, when it comes to coming up with a- a happy world? A good ending? There shouldn't be an ending to our story! We shouldn't all just be flooded with good feelings, and never do anything again! I don't really... know how to formalize it, to draw the lines that say this sort of suffering is bad, and this sort of suffering is a challenge to drive us forward, but... I don't want you to take our vision from us. We dare to see the world as it could be.

Let's... work together, to figure out the best way to give us the sort of future we can be proud of. Does that sound- isn't that the best way to move forward?

Clapping.

He hadn't expected clapping. There hadn't been clapping for anyone else, besides Genji clapping for Zenyatta. There was just a little bit of applause from almost everyone. Probably... because he hadn't said anything controversial or confusing. Hadn't said anything anyone could disagree with. Still- he'd needed to say it. He felt pretty good about it- inordinately good about it, really, his friends all clapping for his speech to- to God, apparently.

What he felt less good about was that, after the polite applause had died down, there was still...

Clapping.

Slow clapping, from the one in attendance who'd been standing silently. The one wearing the three-piece suit and crown.

"Very good," Lakshmi said. "How high-minded of you. What a lovely future you've envisioned."

"Uh... you liked it?"

She laughed. It was a perfectly human-sounding laugh. She looked perfectly human, except for the color- outfit and skin a mostly uniform bluish-gray, kind of like his own. "I very much liked it," she said. "It perfectly illustrates why you don't deserve to exist in my world."

Winston bared his teeth. What was she saying?

"I think I've heard enough," she said. "I will make my testimony, now, and then this world will belong to me."