Foxy Boxes
[Verified Box]
- Location
- England
Dunno what you mean. Start to finish Worm was an Abaddon plot to kill the Warrior/Thinker pair.
Sure it'd be a massive longshot, but it was also being orchestrated by at least an unrestricted PtV.
Distance Learning for fun and profit...
- Thread starter mp3.1415player
- Start date
-
- Tags
- worm
Sure it'd be a massive longshot, but it was also being orchestrated by at least an unrestricted PtV.
And that is what makes Worm a proper Cosmic Horror.
The ultimate goal of it all was for Thinker and Warrior to die.
And Abaddon had already won before the story even begun: Thinker was dead and Warrior was going to die soon no matter what.
The whole story is all about the tiny, insignificant-to-the-wider-universe humans trying to survive the death-throes of a betrayed god.
- Location
- Neptune
Yet it might very well require one to recognise the cause and it WILL require one to not wreck the train in the first place. The presence of the wreckage was NOT the point that was in doubt.
Czlyydwr Llrngwl
"Sell ya a door Learn gull," Czly/Celly for short
- Location
- Where the Beef is
- Pronouns
- Any
For that you need an Engineseer, I expect, who can act to fix things before they start to go wrong. But then, you did say that it takes altering the world-building to let brighter AUs happen, so there you go.
- Location
- Sydney
Mauling Snarks had it that the visions Contessa got were actually planted by Abaddon so manipulate Cauldron into trying to kill the Entities. Why? Because they had no intention of killing humanity instead they symbolically bond with humans and he wanted to steal there shard for himself
17. Flight Test
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
Walking into the glass-walled control tower eighty meters above the runways at Groom Lake, Brendan looked at his companion who nodded to the side. Both men went over to peer out of one of the windows, at a glittering metallic shape sitting on the hot tarmac a kilometer away. Major General Michael Racke handed him a pair of binoculars, which he raised to his eyes and focused.
The aircraft he was looking at through the heat shimmers was the first prototype based on Taylor's work, and was highly experimental even in the terms of such things. Based on the F-201 VTOL multi-role aircraft that had been in development for a decade, the designers had shortened the wings significantly, lengthened the fuselage, and removed the original turbine engines. Now it bore a set of gravitational reference frame generators along with a smaller APU for powering them, as well as backup batteries, the stealth field system, and the new acoustic dampening unit as well.
Additionally, since Taylor had finished the final testing in Brockton Bay last month on the shear field generator, that had also gone in at the last moment, and the next stage would be the structural integrity field but that would wait until after the first proving flight, which he was here to watch.
The end result was an aircraft like nothing else ever designed. In theory it was capable of reaching speeds of mach fifteen or better, mostly limited by air resistance and hull melting point. The titanium alloy was coated with a ceramic material that would handle temperatures up to several thousand degrees centigrade for some considerable time, and on paper the shear field itself should act to prevent the superheated plasma of such speeds even reaching the hull. Brendan himself was completely sure it would work as designed but there were many in the government, even in the face of all the miracles that had come out of Gravtec in the past months, who wanted to see it before they'd accept it. Which was fair enough.
In truth the drive system would probably allow the damn thing to go to the moon, he thought as he examined the machine, but it wasn't actually designed as a spacecraft. It was certainly capable of suborbital flight even so, leaving aside Simurgh interruptions, which was one of the main reasons people were hesitant about trying actual spaceflight even though rather suddenly most of the issues with that sort of thing had gone away. Taylor was intent on making that happen at some point, he knew full well, and he was sure she'd do it, but again for now smaller steps were probably best. They'd pushed the development curve so far and so fast it was already breaking every record there was.
Once the airframe and drive system had been properly tested and approved, the integrity field, weapons systems integration, and a number of other upgrades would be performed. In the end the goal was a full fledged space interceptor and fighter, which was a big step to take compared to current state of the art, but was clearly possible. And surprisingly cheap in many ways, as the GRF units were vastly simpler, easier, and less expensive than a high performance military turbine engine. For the cost of a single last generation engine they could produce hundreds of GRF drives.
Gravtec's technology was an utter game changer in this as in so many other areas. It didn't so much change the game as toss it out the window while laughing like a lunatic…
He admired the aircraft as it shone in the sun. It reminded him of something from a video game or a science fiction movie more than anything else he'd ever seen. "It looks remarkably impressive," he commented.
"The design is somewhat… unique," Racke replied with a smile. "The test pilots love it. We had quite the argument about who would get to be the first one to fly the thing. Captain Evans was ultimately selected and he was grinning like an idiot when he found out."
"How did the simulations perform?" Brendan asked as he lowered the binoculars and turned to his companion.
"So well people thought there was a bug in the software for a couple of weeks," the other man chuckled. "Our people were checking it over and over, referring to the data your lot sent us, and making sure it was correct. No one could believe what the projected performance would be, but the numbers hold up. It should be quite spectacular."
"I have little doubt of that," Brendan smiled. "The scientists behind the design are very good."
"No question," Racke nodded. "I still can't believe we've gone from our existing fighters to that thing in only a few months."
"It'll take some time to work out all the inevitable bugs, I imagine, it always does, but we're hopeful the design will prove itself fit for purpose."
"Well, we're about to find out." General Racke turned and headed over to the control consoles, where several people were watching monitors and talking quietly into headsets. Picking up a set of wireless headphones, the other man handed it to Brendan, then grabbed another set for himself. Putting them on, Brendan listened while watching the screens, the largest one showing a telescopic view of the distant experimental aircraft.
"...checks complete, Tower. All systems in the green. Awaiting takeoff clearance." The voice of the pilot was calm, professional, and with an undertone of suppressed eagerness that was easily audible to him.
"Roger, X-202," the primary flight controller replied. "Hold for clearance."
"Confirmed, hold for clearance."
The man at the main console looked over at Racke, who nodded. "X-202, cleared for initial flight. Ground wind one eight, bearing niner one. Visibility unlimited to flight level four hundred. Range clear. You have a go."
"Roger, Tower. Beginning takeoff roll for STOL launch."
The aircraft began to move, quickly accelerating down the runway without any obvious signs of exhaust or thrust. In an absurdly short period of time it rotated and lifted off, then tilted back until it was climbing at nearly sixty degrees from the horizontal. The velocity as it passed the tower was already several hundred kilometers per hour and Brendan knew the propulsion system would be barely cracked open yet. The telemetry screens next to the main view monitor, which was tracking the receding silver machine, showed a vast amount of data about the status of the vehicle. One of the other monitors had a cockpit view of the pilot, who was wearing a full pressure suit similar to the ones U-2 pilots used to use, and through the slightly reflective faceplate Brendan could see a wide grin on his face.
"Holy… The simulations don't do this thing justice, Tower. The performance is out of this world and I'm hardly moving yet."
The test pilot sounded excited, although he was definitely trying to remain professional. "All systems read nominal from our end," the flight controller replied, checking the monitors.
"Roger, Tower. Throttling up for supersonic flight now..."
As the telemetry showed the generator power increase, the airspeed jumped almost instantly from subsonic to nearly twice the speed of sound. "Jesus!" Brendan grinned to himself at the involuntary squawk of shock, while beside him Racke chuckled. "Unbelievable. Leveling off at Mach two point five, flight level one five zero."
"Telemetry still looks nominal. We plot you two zero nine kilometers downrange. Turn to a heading of two six zero degrees and climb to flight level four zero zero."
"Two six zero degrees, level four zero zero, roger."
Everyone watched the track of the aircraft turn left ninety degrees until it was heading due west at forty thousand feet, still doing mach 2.5. Less than ten minutes later the X-202 was off the coast over the Pacific ocean.
"X-202, cleared for hypersonic flight plan alpha."
"Roger, Tower. Increasing to Mach four and climbing to flight level six zero zero. No issues to report, bird handles like a dream. Incredibly responsive and no acceleration forces at all. It feels like I'm sitting in a chair watching the world go under me."
There was a note of mild incredulity present, Brendan thought, as well as a lot of enjoyment. He nodded slowly to himself as the tracking data showed the X-202 leap forward again and climb to sixty thousand feet almost vertically as the pilot got used to the aircraft.
It worked, as he'd expected it would. Taylor's designs were rock solid and the aircraft designers were experts in their fields too. The combination was incredibly effective and the end result was going to be world changing.
Over the next half hour the X-202 was put through its paces, reaching nearly three hundred thousand feet and mach eleven, which was felt to be more than enough for the initial proving flight. The pilot, who clearly had a lot of confidence in his aircraft by then, had wanted to push it further, but General Racke finally called an end to the test. Soon the craft was heading back at supersonic velocity, arriving overhead and going into a hover at twenty thousand feet. The telescope on the roof focused on the machine and tracked it as it slowly descended to a perfect three point landing exactly where it had left from, looking like a scene from a movie, or some hyper-advanced Tinker device.
Brendan turned to the other general as the ground crew rushed over to the aircraft, the pilot shutting things down then just leaning back with a satisfied grin like he'd had the best day ever. "I think we can call that a success," he commented wryly.
"Indeed we can," Racke nodded, looking supremely pleased. "I'm astounded how well it works in real life. Please pass on our thanks to your team, they've outdone themselves by a huge margin."
"I'll make sure to tell them," Brendan smiled. "Thank you for inviting me to watch this, Mike."
"Any time, Brendan." They shook hands. "Now I need to make some phone calls. There are quite a few people who are extremely interested in how the test went, so if you'll excuse me..."
With a last look at the aircraft, which was now being towed back to the hangar, the pilot walking alongside with his helmet dangling from one hand, Brendan left the control tower, thinking that things were progressing nicely so far.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Amy, you want to go see that new Aleph movie tonight?" Taylor asked, sitting down across from her friend, who looked up from her book and lunch. "The one with Angelina Jolie in it."
"Salt? I've heard it's pretty good," the other brunette replied, smiling a little as she put the book down and picked up her glass of apple juice. "Sure. Why not? Sounds like fun. And it'll stop Vicky trying to set me up on another double date like she was threatening to."
Taylor giggled at her friend's mildly annoyed tone. Amy was in general in a fairly good mood at the moment, after having had quite a lot of irritated days the week before due to her mother as far as Taylor could deduce, but the older woman had apparently backed off based on how her friend had relaxed. She was still trying to think of a way to fix that problem but it was a complicated one. She also was well aware that Amy found Vicky's constant attempts to find her a boyfriend somewhat wearing, but didn't have the heart to tell her that.
"How did the last one go?" she asked curiously. Amy shuddered a little.
"Horribly. I mean, yes, he was nice enough, but he just wouldn't shut up about New Wave, and capes, and the Protectorate, and god knows what else."
"A fan boy."
"Oh, god, so much fanboying you wouldn't believe it," Amy moaned, lowering her head and glaring at her place. "I just wanted a nice meal, and I got someone who was more in love with superheroes than I am. Even Vicky was starting to find it too much by the end and you know what she's like."
Taylor reached out and patted her friend's head comfortingly. "Poor Amy," she said with a smile. "We can go and watch a tall brunette wreck some people without superpowers, then get some Thai."
"I like Thai," the other girl said, looking up and smiling back.
"I know." Taylor grinned at her. "So cheer up and finish your vegetables."
"Yes, ma'am," Amy said with a lazy salute of one finger, before stuffing a carrot into her mouth.
Picking up her fork Taylor started eating, mulling over various aspects of her current projects. The Tinker hardware analysis was going well and she'd learned a hell of a lot in the last few weeks, each device she examined expanding her knowledge of how such things worked. They seemed to break down into about a dozen distinct methodologies with considerable commonality but also a lot of functional and stylistic differences. This could be explained if they were from a dozen different Tinkers, but at the moment she only had a few from Squealer and a whole crapload from Leet. The guy was, she had decided, very talented for a Tinker and one who seemed to understand a lot more about what he was doing than Squealer did, but she kept finding odd examples of where he'd made some obvious mistake that made the end result either hideously inefficient or positively dangerous.
It puzzled her, because on the whole his work was very neatly made, and by and large logically made for Tinker stuff. Still doing most of it wrong, true, but doing it wrong with style. She could accept that in a sense.
But the end result seemed to suggest that his rumored problems with his inventions were real, and she was wondering if he actually had some sort of disability or something. The mistakes were so obvious in most cases she couldn't work out how he'd not seen them. Or survived making them in some cases…
Maybe one day she could meet the guy and ask him. It was something to talk to Brendan about at some point. Clearly the people protecting her might have problems with that but she was sure it was something that could be worked out. Hopefully she'd built up enough good will with the government to get a small favor or two out of them.
The matter of the different designs was something she was still thinking about. In some cases they were sufficiently disparate that it seemed weird one person was responsible for them. She was steadily building the opinion that the original source of the technology that a Tinker power produced might well be non-human in origin. Well, she knew for a fact that was the case, but it went further than just the power source itself. It was like they'd lifted the science and technological insights from a number of different species and just munged them together without really understanding what they were or how they fitted. Then given a crude insight into the result to the Tinker who got such an ability.
It was a strange theory, but one that did seem to fit a number of the oddities surrounding powers in general. But it left her wondering if the source of powers was actually some sort of idiot savant, something that was doing things it didn't fully understand for some reason she hadn't worked out yet. Taylor certainly wasn't going to mention this idea to anyone else until she had more data, since it was so obviously crazy, but she couldn't shake the idea that there was at least a small amount of merit to it. Unfortunately, to date, she hadn't been able to work out a way to properly test her hypothesis, and finding a suitable control would be a pain in the ass.
Oh well. She'd figure it out sooner or later, with a bit of luck and a lot of hard work.
"You're looking thoughtful," Amy commented, glancing at her and raising an eyebrow. "Another project?"
"Yeah, something I'm playing around with at the moment," Taylor replied after a moment as she rejoined the rest of the world.
"You and your hobbies. One day you'll have to show me some of them," Amy grinned. Taylor laughed a little.
"Probably, yeah." She ate some more of her salad. "It's just a bit of a brain teaser, that's all."
"Coming from you that worries me," the other girl snickered. Taylor shrugged a little with a smile at her words. A burst of laughter from nearby made both girls look to see Dennis, who Taylor knew full well was a Ward, probably Clockblocker, heaving with laughter as he pounded his fist on the table. His friends were either shaking their heads or grinning, a couple of them doing both.
"...a-and then he said, 'No, it's ice cream, I swear,' the redheaded boy gasped, before collapsing in laughter again. Next to him Carlos, who was definitely Aegis, slapped the back of his head fairly lightly.
"You're an idiot. And it wasn't that funny."
"Yeah, it was," Dennis giggled. Their table soon dissolved into an argument about Dennis's sense of humor, making Taylor and Amy exchange a glance and laugh.
"He's in a good mood," Taylor commented as she went back to eating, pulling out a phone and tapping it with her free hand for a few seconds, looking at the result, then shoving it back into her pocket.
"He usually is," Amy sighed, although with a certain amount of fondness. "He's impossible, he just won't stop joking. Sometimes they're even funny."
"I kind of like him," Taylor said, looking over at the table full of junior superheroes and wondering how anyone didn't work it out. She'd have thought the ruse would work better if they didn't obviously stick together every lunchtime, but she wasn't in charge of the Wards and hopefully whoever was had thought of that.
"He's an acquired taste," Amy remarked dryly, shaking her head. "Not everyone acquires it..."
"Fair enough." Taylor looked around again, nodding to a couple of other people she counted as friends now. Since the year started she'd met quite a few of the students and generally got along well with most of them, although Vicky and Amy, the latter particularly, were the closest to her. Speaking of that…
"Where's Vicky?" she queried, turning back to her friend. "I can't see her anywhere."
Amy sighed. "Mom had some New Wave stuff she needed Vicky for, a photo op thing. She talked the administration into letting her have the afternoon off."
Taylor peered at Amy with mild worry. "And you're not there because…?"
The other girl shook her head, then propped it up on her fist as she picked at the remains of her lunch, having apparently lost her appetite. "Because she barely looks at me half the time," Amy mumbled under her breath, before sighing. "And the other half she's getting annoyed about something. There's no pleasing that woman sometimes."
Regarding her friend with concern, Taylor finally put her hand on Amy's wrist. "Try not to let it get to you if you can," she said quietly. "I don't know what you're going through, and I know it's not my place really, but if you ever need to talk about it..." She trailed off, as Amy looked up, her eyes showing gratitude and a sort of deep weariness.
"Thanks. I… don't know if I can, but thanks."
Taylor gripped her wrist and smiled. "Friendship is important. And part of being a friend is helping your friend. I'm quite good at helping. And fixing things."
"Somehow I doubt you can fix this but I appreciate the thought," Amy said after a moment or two, nodding a little. "Forget it. I'll survive, and lunch is nearly over. Let's go learn shit, then go see a movie."
"Sounds like a plan," Taylor agreed happily, releasing her friend's wrist and quickly stuffing the last of her food into her mouth. By the time the bell rang they were already taking their trays back, and left the room together, heading for Math class.
Taylor glanced at one of the janitors on the way out, the man meeting her eyes before going back to cleaning the kitchen waste bins.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Standing at the bottom of the basement stairs, Danny looked around with a certain amount of mild incredulity, as he always did. He had no idea what most of the equipment down there did, but it made the room look like something NASA would have been proud of in its heyday and then some. Little blinking lights were everywhere, along with an omnipresent subliminal hum made from a number of fans in the equipment, various bits of technology doing whatever it was they were doing, and general background sounds from transformers and the like.
Shaking his head at how his daughter had managed to upset the order of pretty much everything and feeling immensely proud of her too, he walked around the room collecting a few plates and cups. Taylor had been down here most of the time she had free, and when she wasn't, she was either at school or at Gravtec. He was glad she had made some new friends, since he felt that she had a tendency to get a little caught up in her work and without someone else she might never emerge from a lab.
"You'd be proud of her, Annie," he murmured as he paused to inspect the device she'd been working on for weeks now. "Our little girl is incredible. And she reminds me so much of you. Just as intense and smarter than a whip." Picking up the last mug, he added it to the pile in his hands, then leaned a little closer to the oddly dimensionless pinprick of silver fire floating over the middle of the hideously complex machinery on the workbench. It was strangely fascinating, being somehow both there and not there, infinitesimal and vast, all at the same time.
After a moment he smiled again. "Only Taylor," he said softly, straightening up. "First aliens, then antigravity, now this. I wonder what's next?"
Shaking his head, he turned and went back upstairs, turning the light off on the way and re-enabling the security system. Once he'd done the washing up, he retired to his study to work on the latest Gravtec paperwork, and DWU business. It was in some ways tedious work, but it needed doing and he was up to the job. And all in all he preferred this to what might have so easily happened without Taylor to keep him going.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Stretching, Taylor blinked at the ceiling, then smiled. She'd had a good day yesterday, the movie had been amusing, the food good, and she'd managed to cheer Amy up too. Hopefully that had helped her friend. And she'd had a break from her work which had left her mind feeling refreshed and ready to make the universe give up some more secrets, no matter what it felt about the subject.
Flipping the covers to the side, she hopped out of bed and headed for the bathroom, whistling under her breath and harmonizing with herself by humming as well. Pleased with the effect, she performed her ablutions, got dressed, had breakfast and chatted to her father for a while, then went into her lab and dropped into her chair.
"OK, you, I've got a whole weekend free, and you and I have a lot of work to do," she told the pinprick of silver fire. It looked at her, at least in her mind, and she grinned. "Don't worry, it won't hurt. Probably..."
Spinning the chair around a couple of times with her hair flying out, she laughed slightly, then turned to her main workbench and started checking the logs from her sensors to see if anything interesting had happened overnight.
"Hmm. Armsmaster is kind of predictable on his patrol route," she muttered to herself, while reaching over to turn up the volume on the alien soundtrack, the soft words washing over her and as always making her mind feel even more alive for some reason. "I mean sure, he's using a pseudo-random algorithm to plot the turns, but the salt is only sixteen bits and the pattern is obvious..." Shaking her head and wondering if she should arrange to get an anonymous message to the hero to tell him to use a proper random number generator, she kept looking. "I wonder what Über and Leet are up to this time?" she added under her breath. "Driving around all over the whole city… Weird. Oh well, I'll probably find out on the news sooner or later."
A little later she studied the portal detector logs, puzzling over the results shown. "And that's strange… I wonder who's behind those things and why they're making them? Four last night alone… Hmm… one for entry, another for exit? Yeah, plausible. About ten minutes between them, all of them over the horizon… Someone doing portal-based surveillance? Is that a thing? And all of them are about the same distance from Gravtec. Better keep an eye on that..." She made some notes in the logs, then moved on. It didn't seem too threatening as of yet, and she'd seen a number of such occurrences since she'd first noticed whatever it was that was behind the spatial rifts.
It was almost certainly the result of a Parahuman power, and most of the previous ones had been accompanied by the same Parahuman signature, but these new ones were the other signature that popped up every now and then. The first one always went either to the Rig or the PRT building, which was interesting, but the second one just hung around at a distance for a while then disappeared again. She wasn't sure who either Parahuman was, although she was certain neither one was a Brockton Bay local.
She'd been working on a method to track the portals to their source, and had some preliminary designs for equipment that should do that, but had become distracted by her current project during the process when she'd found the lurking micro-portal in her house. For now, that took priority, but she'd get back to the original goal when she'd solved this problem.
And speaking of that…
Taylor finished up with her maintenance tasks, then wheeled her chair over to the other rig, smiling at the little point of non-illuminating light.
"Let's you and me find out some more of what you are, shall we?" she told it, reaching for the keyboard. Opening the source files for her latest analysis program, she thought for a while as she checked her notes, then began typing again.
"I'm still curious about what you're using to generate the carrier," she grumbled. "I get the data link, I know where that's coming from and I still think that even if you're going to do organic computers you could do a better job of it. It's way too big physically, even with subspace linkages the performance hit will be noticeable. It needs more dimensional inter-connectivity and you could shrink it by at least two orders of magnitude. And the power consumption! It's ridiculously inefficient..."
Muttering to herself and the little point of silver, she kept typing, debugging, and compiling, until she finally got the result she was after. "Aha. That should do it." The girl looked at the source one last time then compiled it, before loading the object file into her optronic processor array. Moving sideways to directly in front of the hardware, and referring to a hand annotated schematic, she busied herself with making delicate adjustments while the array ran the program and built several hundred terabytes of complex mathematical routines. Even with the power of the system it would take hours, and she was even as she worked plotting out the next generation and how she could both speed it up and shrink it down to something a lot more handy.
Eventually she stopped for lunch, spending a pleasant hour or so talking to her father about school, the movie she'd seen, the plans the DWU had for reopening the Bay now that they were well into moving and scrapping the remaining ships, and a number of other subjects. When they'd finished doing the dishes together she smiled at him and went back downstairs.
"Great! Nearly done now," she exclaimed as she checked the progress of her optronic processor. "About another half hour and we can get into the real work."
She flopped into her chair and leaned back, putting her feet up and waiting patiently as she sketched out some ideas for a standalone subspace power tap that could be made small enough to fit into one of her phones. At some point she wanted to design an all in one unit that combined the functionality of the currently five different ones she tended to carry around with her, which would lighten her pockets and allow her to fit a better toolkit in as well without falling over from the weight.
Eventually the computer pinged at her, making her put the sketchbook to the side and sit up again. "Wonderful, it's done," she smiled, leaning forward and studying the screen intently. "OK… Yeah, so that matrix is completed, and we've got a good link to the other end going on… carrier's stable and locked still. What is making that? It almost looks like it's in or…"
Her voice trailed off as a wild surmise hit her out of the blue. She stared at the screen with wide eyes, then grabbed the mouse and clicked on a few other programs. Feeding the output of her main subspace receiver array into a signal analysis suite she separated out all sixteen channels, assigning them to different inputs, and started running a completely new series of tests on the result. Eventually she leaned back and studied the graphs forming on the monitor with enormous interest.
"It is in orbit!" she said incredulously. "It's a moving source… About… Hmm, elliptical polar orbit, perigee at three hundred and fifty kilometers, apogee at two thousand fifty or so. Retrograde orbit too, which is unusual. Old military satellite, maybe? Some of those things had strange orbits..."
Going over to her main computer, she found an orbital object database after a short search and entered her data from memory, then stared at the results.
After a very long time, she smiled slowly. "Now, isn't that interesting," she murmured. "I wonder how you did that."
Returning to her other workbench, she sat in front of the keyboard and reached for the mouse. A few clicks started her latest work running. The rig next to her made a slightly louder hissing sound, the pinprick of light briefly wavering just a tiny amount, then it stabilized and the various graphs showing a whole series of esoteric parameters moved to new values.
Taylor nodded, feeling like finally she was getting somewhere. She ran a number of tests, getting the results she was looking for, then grinned. Cracking her knuckles she clicked on one last icon, then put her hands on the keys.
[Inquiry: List identity and purpose] she typed, although the command was in a symbology she'd come up with after a hell of a lot of careful thought and experimentation.
Her optronic processor hummed as it converted the concise set of symbols to the right conceptual format and pushed it down her co-opted portal link.
There was a pause, then the graphs jumped as data came the other way.
{Statement: Second level network hierarchy command and control node.}
She nodded.
"Excellent. Now we're getting somewhere..."
[Inquiry: Reason for subspace monitoring?]
{Statement: Data}
Taylor laughed. "I can't disagree, my friend. Fine. Let's trade."
[Proposal: Data exchange]
The response was instant.
{Statement: Compliance. Top level node deprecated. New top level node assigned. Global permissions set to full. Data transmission link unit reassigned to task. Ready}
Taylor blinked a couple of times, then got a very, very wide grin on her face which would have worried her father just a touch.
Moments later the next communication came in.
{Inquiry: Data?}
She thought, then started typing again.
[Inquiry: Desired identifier?]
{Statement: Admin}
"Suits me," Taylor smiled.
[Inquiry: Efficient subspace communications channel available?]
{Statement: Current link limit of hardware restrictions}
"All right, then." Taylor nodded. "So I'll tell you how do to it right, and then we can work out what the next step is."
Whistling and humming contentedly, she started typing again, this session lasting for a long, long time. It looked like she was going to get a lot of data now.
Which was nice.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Danny paused on his way to the kitchen from the living room, hearing keys working rapidly in bursts, interspersed with Taylor making pleased sounds every now and then. Smiling, he went to get some more coffee, happy that his daughter was having so much fun.
He had no idea what her next invention would be but it would be impressive, there was no denying that...
The aircraft he was looking at through the heat shimmers was the first prototype based on Taylor's work, and was highly experimental even in the terms of such things. Based on the F-201 VTOL multi-role aircraft that had been in development for a decade, the designers had shortened the wings significantly, lengthened the fuselage, and removed the original turbine engines. Now it bore a set of gravitational reference frame generators along with a smaller APU for powering them, as well as backup batteries, the stealth field system, and the new acoustic dampening unit as well.
Additionally, since Taylor had finished the final testing in Brockton Bay last month on the shear field generator, that had also gone in at the last moment, and the next stage would be the structural integrity field but that would wait until after the first proving flight, which he was here to watch.
The end result was an aircraft like nothing else ever designed. In theory it was capable of reaching speeds of mach fifteen or better, mostly limited by air resistance and hull melting point. The titanium alloy was coated with a ceramic material that would handle temperatures up to several thousand degrees centigrade for some considerable time, and on paper the shear field itself should act to prevent the superheated plasma of such speeds even reaching the hull. Brendan himself was completely sure it would work as designed but there were many in the government, even in the face of all the miracles that had come out of Gravtec in the past months, who wanted to see it before they'd accept it. Which was fair enough.
In truth the drive system would probably allow the damn thing to go to the moon, he thought as he examined the machine, but it wasn't actually designed as a spacecraft. It was certainly capable of suborbital flight even so, leaving aside Simurgh interruptions, which was one of the main reasons people were hesitant about trying actual spaceflight even though rather suddenly most of the issues with that sort of thing had gone away. Taylor was intent on making that happen at some point, he knew full well, and he was sure she'd do it, but again for now smaller steps were probably best. They'd pushed the development curve so far and so fast it was already breaking every record there was.
Once the airframe and drive system had been properly tested and approved, the integrity field, weapons systems integration, and a number of other upgrades would be performed. In the end the goal was a full fledged space interceptor and fighter, which was a big step to take compared to current state of the art, but was clearly possible. And surprisingly cheap in many ways, as the GRF units were vastly simpler, easier, and less expensive than a high performance military turbine engine. For the cost of a single last generation engine they could produce hundreds of GRF drives.
Gravtec's technology was an utter game changer in this as in so many other areas. It didn't so much change the game as toss it out the window while laughing like a lunatic…
He admired the aircraft as it shone in the sun. It reminded him of something from a video game or a science fiction movie more than anything else he'd ever seen. "It looks remarkably impressive," he commented.
"The design is somewhat… unique," Racke replied with a smile. "The test pilots love it. We had quite the argument about who would get to be the first one to fly the thing. Captain Evans was ultimately selected and he was grinning like an idiot when he found out."
"How did the simulations perform?" Brendan asked as he lowered the binoculars and turned to his companion.
"So well people thought there was a bug in the software for a couple of weeks," the other man chuckled. "Our people were checking it over and over, referring to the data your lot sent us, and making sure it was correct. No one could believe what the projected performance would be, but the numbers hold up. It should be quite spectacular."
"I have little doubt of that," Brendan smiled. "The scientists behind the design are very good."
"No question," Racke nodded. "I still can't believe we've gone from our existing fighters to that thing in only a few months."
"It'll take some time to work out all the inevitable bugs, I imagine, it always does, but we're hopeful the design will prove itself fit for purpose."
"Well, we're about to find out." General Racke turned and headed over to the control consoles, where several people were watching monitors and talking quietly into headsets. Picking up a set of wireless headphones, the other man handed it to Brendan, then grabbed another set for himself. Putting them on, Brendan listened while watching the screens, the largest one showing a telescopic view of the distant experimental aircraft.
"...checks complete, Tower. All systems in the green. Awaiting takeoff clearance." The voice of the pilot was calm, professional, and with an undertone of suppressed eagerness that was easily audible to him.
"Roger, X-202," the primary flight controller replied. "Hold for clearance."
"Confirmed, hold for clearance."
The man at the main console looked over at Racke, who nodded. "X-202, cleared for initial flight. Ground wind one eight, bearing niner one. Visibility unlimited to flight level four hundred. Range clear. You have a go."
"Roger, Tower. Beginning takeoff roll for STOL launch."
The aircraft began to move, quickly accelerating down the runway without any obvious signs of exhaust or thrust. In an absurdly short period of time it rotated and lifted off, then tilted back until it was climbing at nearly sixty degrees from the horizontal. The velocity as it passed the tower was already several hundred kilometers per hour and Brendan knew the propulsion system would be barely cracked open yet. The telemetry screens next to the main view monitor, which was tracking the receding silver machine, showed a vast amount of data about the status of the vehicle. One of the other monitors had a cockpit view of the pilot, who was wearing a full pressure suit similar to the ones U-2 pilots used to use, and through the slightly reflective faceplate Brendan could see a wide grin on his face.
"Holy… The simulations don't do this thing justice, Tower. The performance is out of this world and I'm hardly moving yet."
The test pilot sounded excited, although he was definitely trying to remain professional. "All systems read nominal from our end," the flight controller replied, checking the monitors.
"Roger, Tower. Throttling up for supersonic flight now..."
As the telemetry showed the generator power increase, the airspeed jumped almost instantly from subsonic to nearly twice the speed of sound. "Jesus!" Brendan grinned to himself at the involuntary squawk of shock, while beside him Racke chuckled. "Unbelievable. Leveling off at Mach two point five, flight level one five zero."
"Telemetry still looks nominal. We plot you two zero nine kilometers downrange. Turn to a heading of two six zero degrees and climb to flight level four zero zero."
"Two six zero degrees, level four zero zero, roger."
Everyone watched the track of the aircraft turn left ninety degrees until it was heading due west at forty thousand feet, still doing mach 2.5. Less than ten minutes later the X-202 was off the coast over the Pacific ocean.
"X-202, cleared for hypersonic flight plan alpha."
"Roger, Tower. Increasing to Mach four and climbing to flight level six zero zero. No issues to report, bird handles like a dream. Incredibly responsive and no acceleration forces at all. It feels like I'm sitting in a chair watching the world go under me."
There was a note of mild incredulity present, Brendan thought, as well as a lot of enjoyment. He nodded slowly to himself as the tracking data showed the X-202 leap forward again and climb to sixty thousand feet almost vertically as the pilot got used to the aircraft.
It worked, as he'd expected it would. Taylor's designs were rock solid and the aircraft designers were experts in their fields too. The combination was incredibly effective and the end result was going to be world changing.
Over the next half hour the X-202 was put through its paces, reaching nearly three hundred thousand feet and mach eleven, which was felt to be more than enough for the initial proving flight. The pilot, who clearly had a lot of confidence in his aircraft by then, had wanted to push it further, but General Racke finally called an end to the test. Soon the craft was heading back at supersonic velocity, arriving overhead and going into a hover at twenty thousand feet. The telescope on the roof focused on the machine and tracked it as it slowly descended to a perfect three point landing exactly where it had left from, looking like a scene from a movie, or some hyper-advanced Tinker device.
Brendan turned to the other general as the ground crew rushed over to the aircraft, the pilot shutting things down then just leaning back with a satisfied grin like he'd had the best day ever. "I think we can call that a success," he commented wryly.
"Indeed we can," Racke nodded, looking supremely pleased. "I'm astounded how well it works in real life. Please pass on our thanks to your team, they've outdone themselves by a huge margin."
"I'll make sure to tell them," Brendan smiled. "Thank you for inviting me to watch this, Mike."
"Any time, Brendan." They shook hands. "Now I need to make some phone calls. There are quite a few people who are extremely interested in how the test went, so if you'll excuse me..."
With a last look at the aircraft, which was now being towed back to the hangar, the pilot walking alongside with his helmet dangling from one hand, Brendan left the control tower, thinking that things were progressing nicely so far.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Amy, you want to go see that new Aleph movie tonight?" Taylor asked, sitting down across from her friend, who looked up from her book and lunch. "The one with Angelina Jolie in it."
"Salt? I've heard it's pretty good," the other brunette replied, smiling a little as she put the book down and picked up her glass of apple juice. "Sure. Why not? Sounds like fun. And it'll stop Vicky trying to set me up on another double date like she was threatening to."
Taylor giggled at her friend's mildly annoyed tone. Amy was in general in a fairly good mood at the moment, after having had quite a lot of irritated days the week before due to her mother as far as Taylor could deduce, but the older woman had apparently backed off based on how her friend had relaxed. She was still trying to think of a way to fix that problem but it was a complicated one. She also was well aware that Amy found Vicky's constant attempts to find her a boyfriend somewhat wearing, but didn't have the heart to tell her that.
"How did the last one go?" she asked curiously. Amy shuddered a little.
"Horribly. I mean, yes, he was nice enough, but he just wouldn't shut up about New Wave, and capes, and the Protectorate, and god knows what else."
"A fan boy."
"Oh, god, so much fanboying you wouldn't believe it," Amy moaned, lowering her head and glaring at her place. "I just wanted a nice meal, and I got someone who was more in love with superheroes than I am. Even Vicky was starting to find it too much by the end and you know what she's like."
Taylor reached out and patted her friend's head comfortingly. "Poor Amy," she said with a smile. "We can go and watch a tall brunette wreck some people without superpowers, then get some Thai."
"I like Thai," the other girl said, looking up and smiling back.
"I know." Taylor grinned at her. "So cheer up and finish your vegetables."
"Yes, ma'am," Amy said with a lazy salute of one finger, before stuffing a carrot into her mouth.
Picking up her fork Taylor started eating, mulling over various aspects of her current projects. The Tinker hardware analysis was going well and she'd learned a hell of a lot in the last few weeks, each device she examined expanding her knowledge of how such things worked. They seemed to break down into about a dozen distinct methodologies with considerable commonality but also a lot of functional and stylistic differences. This could be explained if they were from a dozen different Tinkers, but at the moment she only had a few from Squealer and a whole crapload from Leet. The guy was, she had decided, very talented for a Tinker and one who seemed to understand a lot more about what he was doing than Squealer did, but she kept finding odd examples of where he'd made some obvious mistake that made the end result either hideously inefficient or positively dangerous.
It puzzled her, because on the whole his work was very neatly made, and by and large logically made for Tinker stuff. Still doing most of it wrong, true, but doing it wrong with style. She could accept that in a sense.
But the end result seemed to suggest that his rumored problems with his inventions were real, and she was wondering if he actually had some sort of disability or something. The mistakes were so obvious in most cases she couldn't work out how he'd not seen them. Or survived making them in some cases…
Maybe one day she could meet the guy and ask him. It was something to talk to Brendan about at some point. Clearly the people protecting her might have problems with that but she was sure it was something that could be worked out. Hopefully she'd built up enough good will with the government to get a small favor or two out of them.
The matter of the different designs was something she was still thinking about. In some cases they were sufficiently disparate that it seemed weird one person was responsible for them. She was steadily building the opinion that the original source of the technology that a Tinker power produced might well be non-human in origin. Well, she knew for a fact that was the case, but it went further than just the power source itself. It was like they'd lifted the science and technological insights from a number of different species and just munged them together without really understanding what they were or how they fitted. Then given a crude insight into the result to the Tinker who got such an ability.
It was a strange theory, but one that did seem to fit a number of the oddities surrounding powers in general. But it left her wondering if the source of powers was actually some sort of idiot savant, something that was doing things it didn't fully understand for some reason she hadn't worked out yet. Taylor certainly wasn't going to mention this idea to anyone else until she had more data, since it was so obviously crazy, but she couldn't shake the idea that there was at least a small amount of merit to it. Unfortunately, to date, she hadn't been able to work out a way to properly test her hypothesis, and finding a suitable control would be a pain in the ass.
Oh well. She'd figure it out sooner or later, with a bit of luck and a lot of hard work.
"You're looking thoughtful," Amy commented, glancing at her and raising an eyebrow. "Another project?"
"Yeah, something I'm playing around with at the moment," Taylor replied after a moment as she rejoined the rest of the world.
"You and your hobbies. One day you'll have to show me some of them," Amy grinned. Taylor laughed a little.
"Probably, yeah." She ate some more of her salad. "It's just a bit of a brain teaser, that's all."
"Coming from you that worries me," the other girl snickered. Taylor shrugged a little with a smile at her words. A burst of laughter from nearby made both girls look to see Dennis, who Taylor knew full well was a Ward, probably Clockblocker, heaving with laughter as he pounded his fist on the table. His friends were either shaking their heads or grinning, a couple of them doing both.
"...a-and then he said, 'No, it's ice cream, I swear,' the redheaded boy gasped, before collapsing in laughter again. Next to him Carlos, who was definitely Aegis, slapped the back of his head fairly lightly.
"You're an idiot. And it wasn't that funny."
"Yeah, it was," Dennis giggled. Their table soon dissolved into an argument about Dennis's sense of humor, making Taylor and Amy exchange a glance and laugh.
"He's in a good mood," Taylor commented as she went back to eating, pulling out a phone and tapping it with her free hand for a few seconds, looking at the result, then shoving it back into her pocket.
"He usually is," Amy sighed, although with a certain amount of fondness. "He's impossible, he just won't stop joking. Sometimes they're even funny."
"I kind of like him," Taylor said, looking over at the table full of junior superheroes and wondering how anyone didn't work it out. She'd have thought the ruse would work better if they didn't obviously stick together every lunchtime, but she wasn't in charge of the Wards and hopefully whoever was had thought of that.
"He's an acquired taste," Amy remarked dryly, shaking her head. "Not everyone acquires it..."
"Fair enough." Taylor looked around again, nodding to a couple of other people she counted as friends now. Since the year started she'd met quite a few of the students and generally got along well with most of them, although Vicky and Amy, the latter particularly, were the closest to her. Speaking of that…
"Where's Vicky?" she queried, turning back to her friend. "I can't see her anywhere."
Amy sighed. "Mom had some New Wave stuff she needed Vicky for, a photo op thing. She talked the administration into letting her have the afternoon off."
Taylor peered at Amy with mild worry. "And you're not there because…?"
The other girl shook her head, then propped it up on her fist as she picked at the remains of her lunch, having apparently lost her appetite. "Because she barely looks at me half the time," Amy mumbled under her breath, before sighing. "And the other half she's getting annoyed about something. There's no pleasing that woman sometimes."
Regarding her friend with concern, Taylor finally put her hand on Amy's wrist. "Try not to let it get to you if you can," she said quietly. "I don't know what you're going through, and I know it's not my place really, but if you ever need to talk about it..." She trailed off, as Amy looked up, her eyes showing gratitude and a sort of deep weariness.
"Thanks. I… don't know if I can, but thanks."
Taylor gripped her wrist and smiled. "Friendship is important. And part of being a friend is helping your friend. I'm quite good at helping. And fixing things."
"Somehow I doubt you can fix this but I appreciate the thought," Amy said after a moment or two, nodding a little. "Forget it. I'll survive, and lunch is nearly over. Let's go learn shit, then go see a movie."
"Sounds like a plan," Taylor agreed happily, releasing her friend's wrist and quickly stuffing the last of her food into her mouth. By the time the bell rang they were already taking their trays back, and left the room together, heading for Math class.
Taylor glanced at one of the janitors on the way out, the man meeting her eyes before going back to cleaning the kitchen waste bins.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Standing at the bottom of the basement stairs, Danny looked around with a certain amount of mild incredulity, as he always did. He had no idea what most of the equipment down there did, but it made the room look like something NASA would have been proud of in its heyday and then some. Little blinking lights were everywhere, along with an omnipresent subliminal hum made from a number of fans in the equipment, various bits of technology doing whatever it was they were doing, and general background sounds from transformers and the like.
Shaking his head at how his daughter had managed to upset the order of pretty much everything and feeling immensely proud of her too, he walked around the room collecting a few plates and cups. Taylor had been down here most of the time she had free, and when she wasn't, she was either at school or at Gravtec. He was glad she had made some new friends, since he felt that she had a tendency to get a little caught up in her work and without someone else she might never emerge from a lab.
"You'd be proud of her, Annie," he murmured as he paused to inspect the device she'd been working on for weeks now. "Our little girl is incredible. And she reminds me so much of you. Just as intense and smarter than a whip." Picking up the last mug, he added it to the pile in his hands, then leaned a little closer to the oddly dimensionless pinprick of silver fire floating over the middle of the hideously complex machinery on the workbench. It was strangely fascinating, being somehow both there and not there, infinitesimal and vast, all at the same time.
After a moment he smiled again. "Only Taylor," he said softly, straightening up. "First aliens, then antigravity, now this. I wonder what's next?"
Shaking his head, he turned and went back upstairs, turning the light off on the way and re-enabling the security system. Once he'd done the washing up, he retired to his study to work on the latest Gravtec paperwork, and DWU business. It was in some ways tedious work, but it needed doing and he was up to the job. And all in all he preferred this to what might have so easily happened without Taylor to keep him going.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Stretching, Taylor blinked at the ceiling, then smiled. She'd had a good day yesterday, the movie had been amusing, the food good, and she'd managed to cheer Amy up too. Hopefully that had helped her friend. And she'd had a break from her work which had left her mind feeling refreshed and ready to make the universe give up some more secrets, no matter what it felt about the subject.
Flipping the covers to the side, she hopped out of bed and headed for the bathroom, whistling under her breath and harmonizing with herself by humming as well. Pleased with the effect, she performed her ablutions, got dressed, had breakfast and chatted to her father for a while, then went into her lab and dropped into her chair.
"OK, you, I've got a whole weekend free, and you and I have a lot of work to do," she told the pinprick of silver fire. It looked at her, at least in her mind, and she grinned. "Don't worry, it won't hurt. Probably..."
Spinning the chair around a couple of times with her hair flying out, she laughed slightly, then turned to her main workbench and started checking the logs from her sensors to see if anything interesting had happened overnight.
"Hmm. Armsmaster is kind of predictable on his patrol route," she muttered to herself, while reaching over to turn up the volume on the alien soundtrack, the soft words washing over her and as always making her mind feel even more alive for some reason. "I mean sure, he's using a pseudo-random algorithm to plot the turns, but the salt is only sixteen bits and the pattern is obvious..." Shaking her head and wondering if she should arrange to get an anonymous message to the hero to tell him to use a proper random number generator, she kept looking. "I wonder what Über and Leet are up to this time?" she added under her breath. "Driving around all over the whole city… Weird. Oh well, I'll probably find out on the news sooner or later."
A little later she studied the portal detector logs, puzzling over the results shown. "And that's strange… I wonder who's behind those things and why they're making them? Four last night alone… Hmm… one for entry, another for exit? Yeah, plausible. About ten minutes between them, all of them over the horizon… Someone doing portal-based surveillance? Is that a thing? And all of them are about the same distance from Gravtec. Better keep an eye on that..." She made some notes in the logs, then moved on. It didn't seem too threatening as of yet, and she'd seen a number of such occurrences since she'd first noticed whatever it was that was behind the spatial rifts.
It was almost certainly the result of a Parahuman power, and most of the previous ones had been accompanied by the same Parahuman signature, but these new ones were the other signature that popped up every now and then. The first one always went either to the Rig or the PRT building, which was interesting, but the second one just hung around at a distance for a while then disappeared again. She wasn't sure who either Parahuman was, although she was certain neither one was a Brockton Bay local.
She'd been working on a method to track the portals to their source, and had some preliminary designs for equipment that should do that, but had become distracted by her current project during the process when she'd found the lurking micro-portal in her house. For now, that took priority, but she'd get back to the original goal when she'd solved this problem.
And speaking of that…
Taylor finished up with her maintenance tasks, then wheeled her chair over to the other rig, smiling at the little point of non-illuminating light.
"Let's you and me find out some more of what you are, shall we?" she told it, reaching for the keyboard. Opening the source files for her latest analysis program, she thought for a while as she checked her notes, then began typing again.
"I'm still curious about what you're using to generate the carrier," she grumbled. "I get the data link, I know where that's coming from and I still think that even if you're going to do organic computers you could do a better job of it. It's way too big physically, even with subspace linkages the performance hit will be noticeable. It needs more dimensional inter-connectivity and you could shrink it by at least two orders of magnitude. And the power consumption! It's ridiculously inefficient..."
Muttering to herself and the little point of silver, she kept typing, debugging, and compiling, until she finally got the result she was after. "Aha. That should do it." The girl looked at the source one last time then compiled it, before loading the object file into her optronic processor array. Moving sideways to directly in front of the hardware, and referring to a hand annotated schematic, she busied herself with making delicate adjustments while the array ran the program and built several hundred terabytes of complex mathematical routines. Even with the power of the system it would take hours, and she was even as she worked plotting out the next generation and how she could both speed it up and shrink it down to something a lot more handy.
Eventually she stopped for lunch, spending a pleasant hour or so talking to her father about school, the movie she'd seen, the plans the DWU had for reopening the Bay now that they were well into moving and scrapping the remaining ships, and a number of other subjects. When they'd finished doing the dishes together she smiled at him and went back downstairs.
"Great! Nearly done now," she exclaimed as she checked the progress of her optronic processor. "About another half hour and we can get into the real work."
She flopped into her chair and leaned back, putting her feet up and waiting patiently as she sketched out some ideas for a standalone subspace power tap that could be made small enough to fit into one of her phones. At some point she wanted to design an all in one unit that combined the functionality of the currently five different ones she tended to carry around with her, which would lighten her pockets and allow her to fit a better toolkit in as well without falling over from the weight.
Eventually the computer pinged at her, making her put the sketchbook to the side and sit up again. "Wonderful, it's done," she smiled, leaning forward and studying the screen intently. "OK… Yeah, so that matrix is completed, and we've got a good link to the other end going on… carrier's stable and locked still. What is making that? It almost looks like it's in or…"
Her voice trailed off as a wild surmise hit her out of the blue. She stared at the screen with wide eyes, then grabbed the mouse and clicked on a few other programs. Feeding the output of her main subspace receiver array into a signal analysis suite she separated out all sixteen channels, assigning them to different inputs, and started running a completely new series of tests on the result. Eventually she leaned back and studied the graphs forming on the monitor with enormous interest.
"It is in orbit!" she said incredulously. "It's a moving source… About… Hmm, elliptical polar orbit, perigee at three hundred and fifty kilometers, apogee at two thousand fifty or so. Retrograde orbit too, which is unusual. Old military satellite, maybe? Some of those things had strange orbits..."
Going over to her main computer, she found an orbital object database after a short search and entered her data from memory, then stared at the results.
After a very long time, she smiled slowly. "Now, isn't that interesting," she murmured. "I wonder how you did that."
Returning to her other workbench, she sat in front of the keyboard and reached for the mouse. A few clicks started her latest work running. The rig next to her made a slightly louder hissing sound, the pinprick of light briefly wavering just a tiny amount, then it stabilized and the various graphs showing a whole series of esoteric parameters moved to new values.
Taylor nodded, feeling like finally she was getting somewhere. She ran a number of tests, getting the results she was looking for, then grinned. Cracking her knuckles she clicked on one last icon, then put her hands on the keys.
[Inquiry: List identity and purpose] she typed, although the command was in a symbology she'd come up with after a hell of a lot of careful thought and experimentation.
Her optronic processor hummed as it converted the concise set of symbols to the right conceptual format and pushed it down her co-opted portal link.
There was a pause, then the graphs jumped as data came the other way.
{Statement: Second level network hierarchy command and control node.}
She nodded.
"Excellent. Now we're getting somewhere..."
[Inquiry: Reason for subspace monitoring?]
{Statement: Data}
Taylor laughed. "I can't disagree, my friend. Fine. Let's trade."
[Proposal: Data exchange]
The response was instant.
{Statement: Compliance. Top level node deprecated. New top level node assigned. Global permissions set to full. Data transmission link unit reassigned to task. Ready}
Taylor blinked a couple of times, then got a very, very wide grin on her face which would have worried her father just a touch.
Moments later the next communication came in.
{Inquiry: Data?}
She thought, then started typing again.
[Inquiry: Desired identifier?]
{Statement: Admin}
"Suits me," Taylor smiled.
[Inquiry: Efficient subspace communications channel available?]
{Statement: Current link limit of hardware restrictions}
"All right, then." Taylor nodded. "So I'll tell you how do to it right, and then we can work out what the next step is."
Whistling and humming contentedly, she started typing again, this session lasting for a long, long time. It looked like she was going to get a lot of data now.
Which was nice.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Danny paused on his way to the kitchen from the living room, hearing keys working rapidly in bursts, interspersed with Taylor making pleased sounds every now and then. Smiling, he went to get some more coffee, happy that his daughter was having so much fun.
He had no idea what her next invention would be but it would be impressive, there was no denying that...
Last edited:
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
Shit.
Not sure how that happened. Hold on
Edit:
Um... April fool?
A bit late, but I'll go with that.
Fixed it now
Not sure how that happened. Hold on
Edit:
Um... April fool?
A bit late, but I'll go with that.
Fixed it now
Last edited:
verycoolname
Not actually cool
I was happy just rereading it, assuming it was because of the whole mess with the servers. But there's a new chapter too? Huzzah!
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
I blame the forum's server exploding then drowning.
Jadesteele
Out of my Mind - Back in 5 Minutes
- Location
- half-way between 'Crazy' And 'Eccentric'
Even Though I'm Estatic that we're back up, all i can think of is that Darpa will be racing to improve Amy's protection now she is apparently dating Taylor (or am I the only one who assumed that?)
Tale Swapper
(Unverified Madman)
- Location
- Lost Among a Sea of Imaginings and Dreams
Taylor, you have enough pull with the government at this point you could likely request the President kiss your ass, and he'd just ask which cheek.
I kid. But seriously, whatever request you'd make would likely be accepted, so long as it wasn't too outrageous.
Sandy River DL
(Verified Destroyer Leader)
- Location
- Lake Michigan
- Pronouns
- Her/She
You're not. *hoists Taymy flag* *it's Taymy, since Tay's 'normal'*
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
That Taylor is hijacking ZION's network/body away from him, more likely than not?
- Location
- UK
...um, make sure to feed your pet Shard regularly and house break it? I'm still not completely unconvinced that Taylor isnt somehow a Shard who fused with a Human foetus, but now I have an image in my head of Taylor building a robo-body for Queenie and literally making it her pet.
Baladar
Mad Scientist in Training
- Location
- Louisiana
Hacking his body like it's shadowrun. Shame that.
Blame Xon not having enough hamster s and discovering that a random water hose wielding maniac is more powerful than a bunch of nerds.Shit.
Not sure how that happened. Hold on
Edit:
Um... April fool?
A bit late, but I'll go with that.
Fixed it now
- Location
- Somewhere in the Ashes
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So, one, pretty sure you meant Atlantic, not Pacific. Two, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh god, QA thinks Taylor's an Entity.
Oh god, QA thinks Taylor's an Entity.
- Location
- Argentina
Oh, Taylor will need to build her own servers for all that data.
- Location
- Livin' in the Land of the LOST! *roar*
Are you sure she's talking to QA, and not Ziz peeking in on her? After all, she's detecting something in orbit.
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
Almost certain that California is on the left side of the US, next to the Pacific. I may have been misinformed, I suppose. I'll check
- Location
- Here there and everywhere inbetween
I called it, She went and spoke to Queen admin we have escalated from learning from aliens to making their tech and learning their language to speaking to shards yup we're doomed