- Location
- SoCal
Now you've got me thinking of another use for his power.
Coil: The best part of my power is I never have to wonder: "Do I trust this fart or not?"
Distance Learning for fun and profit...
- Thread starter mp3.1415player
- Start date
-
- Tags
- worm
Coil: The best part of my power is I never have to wonder: "Do I trust this fart or not?"
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The last update from our pi cloning project reports difficulties (again) - for some reason the clone developed a fully functional tail and scales, but there was no brain, only something that might resemble a radio receiver ... or something. It's weird.
I really don't think he did, at least not solely. I think you might describe Taylor Varga that way, even then I'd take issue, but none of the others.
Taylor Varga certainly is fairly whimsical, in fact its pretty much Grand Central Troll at times. But its got its serious moments too. First meeting with Squealer is gonna be something I remember vividly for a while.
The Bolo fic feels like its just getting started up, and while Dr Curly Hair is good for giggles, its also a little girl, of course she's silly. On the other hand, the pint sized Terminator impression she pulls off in the police station is creepy enough to make cops who live in Brockton fucking Bay go "Don't Ask." And that comes through to the reader as well. Also, its a BOLO story, so the application of hilarious amounts of firepower is going to happen sooner or later.
DOOOOMED has Taylor happily(?) engaging in mass murder, that's pretty damn dark.
WIMPS is pretty much straight sci fi with no real flavor to it, the driving force is the technology.
Kernel of Truth is taking some old school mythology cues, and while certain truisms of life in Brockton (Like the Dallon's home life being shit) seem to still be there, It's definitely leaning more Fantasy than anything else so far.
And of course, I already posted my thoughts on Distance Learning further up the thread with my WHOLESOME stamp.
@mp3.1415player is got a pretty good spread here, which if I had to guess was probably the point, a different flavor for whatever mood strikes when its writing time.
- Location
- Pale Blue Dot
I mean, if you have mental constructs that pay rent by being genuinely helpful, that could indeed be better than using said headspace for commercial jingles or useless trivia, right? Actually useful trivia should be kept, of course.It's the voices in my head, man! You don't understand if you don't hear them!
Last edited:
David DeLaney
Verified & Credited Rules Wizard
- Location
- North of Knoxville, indoors, seated comfortably
"Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me"
Dave, over/under on Death following at least one of his stories?
KamenRaidaOOO3
(Verified Toku Nut)
- Location
- Wouldn't you like to know?
I'd put pretty good odds on Death being a fan of MPPi's work.
Foxy Boxes
[Verified Box]
- Location
- England
They're the raw words you craft with, no?So... Many... Requests...
They're the raw words you craft with, no?
That'd be a hilarious challenge. Messages/posts addressed to you give you a word bank, you have to build your story out of those words, and each one you use is subtracted. Out of articles? Sucks to be you, hope you get fan mail soon! Too many adverbs, not enough nouns.
We'd probably need some rules, just to make it actually possible, maybe a free wildcard every so often, an exchange rate based on a point system so you can trade away spares for words you need?
Somebody else tracking your word bank, just because that's seems like a full time job.
- Location
- Present Time
What rescued it from scrappy plotline IMHO was in universe reaction that something was rotten and Carol needed help to get out of her tunnel vision.
I really wish the fic had continued though. Even if it meant US intelligence operatives have finally discovered Hell while still alive
- Location
- Somewhere, Maybe
First off: I read the last part of your first paragraph in Palpatine's voice:
"Fully armed and operational Fletcher-Class DESTROYER!"
Stabbypupper got hit by -every- gun aboard her, from the 5" mounts to the AA guns, down to the 50-cal's the Fairies were using as anti-boarding weapons.
They found a piece of him under a car after the fight, I think, but not much else. The rest of him got hosed down into the sewers where he belonged.
when Leviathan showed up, she grabbed up a shotgun (a 4-shot pump shotgun from the back of a police cruiser), and TURNED IT INTO ONE OF HER TURRETS.
By Magical Sparkly Shipgirl Bullshit, this made the bore diameter something like 68 inches. It fired an entire Iowa-class broadside as a single volley and was doing actual damage to her keel from the recoil alone.
Still not enough to put down the Endbringer, but she kept going until she was battered near-to death, at which point, fog rolled in.
And ALL FOUR Iowa Sisters showed up to help their little sister.
Did you know they made nuclear shells for the Iowa-class battleships? I didn't, but apparently they did.
They managed to crack open Levi's shell and expose his core, then tossed Taylor a marine K-BAR and vanished back into the fog.
Taylor finished the job, and was blown up by the explosive release of energy. when the fic went on hiatus, she was still unconscious, locked in her own mind, while the entire US government scrambled everything they could muster to save the Endslayer.
By Magical Sparkly Shipgirl Bullshit, this made the bore diameter something like 68 inches. It fired an entire Iowa-class broadside as a single volley and was doing actual damage to her keel from the recoil alone.
Still not enough to put down the Endbringer, but she kept going until she was battered near-to death, at which point, fog rolled in.
And ALL FOUR Iowa Sisters showed up to help their little sister.
Did you know they made nuclear shells for the Iowa-class battleships? I didn't, but apparently they did.
They managed to crack open Levi's shell and expose his core, then tossed Taylor a marine K-BAR and vanished back into the fog.
Taylor finished the job, and was blown up by the explosive release of energy. when the fic went on hiatus, she was still unconscious, locked in her own mind, while the entire US government scrambled everything they could muster to save the Endslayer.
Last edited:
- Location
- Somewhere.
Do we have a link to this fic?
- Location
- England
Go back a page.
Distance Learning for fun and profit...
It's over on SB, not here - link follows. it's been on Hiatus for quite a bit, though... The Little Ship that Could.
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
Here is the link for The Little Ship That Could.
Wait, you guys get to make *requests*?
Ugh, did you switch up the genetic and memetic inputs again? Now that clone is only going to write out extremely detailed descriptions of mppis biochemistry if you give it a keyboard.
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
Oh, no, not again...
- Location
- Deep in the Badlands of Equestria
Funny, you don't look like a potted petunia.
22. Changing Circumstances
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
Watching her friends head home, Amy still nibbling a piece of cake, as promised, Taylor smiled to herself. Amy was hopefully going to find a number of things had changed in her favor when she arrived, and with any luck the Dallon family and indeed New Wave would sort out the internal issues that led to the problems she'd had to arrange to deal with.
If not… well, she had other options and plans arranged just in case. She hoped that they wouldn't become necessary, but if they did, other steps could be taken.
Until then, though, she'd just wait and see what happened.
She'd had fun telling them more of the truth than she'd been able to up until now. Both had looked very surprised by her revelations, and demonstrating some of the tech had left them both speechless for some time. Vicky had been convinced that it was Tinker tech for quite a while until she'd pulled out the various research papers other DARPA scientists had written on her work, as they'd replicated her results and tested her theories. She'd finally been persuaded after about four hours of explanations and discussion, then had gone very quiet and thoughtful for some time.
Amy, on the other hand, had almost immediately accepted that it was nothing to do with Tinkers, as her own abilities told her flat out that Taylor wasn't a Parahuman and never had been. Apparently that was more than enough to allow her to draw the conclusion that logically none of her work was Parahuman-related either, without questioning the idea. She'd been fascinated by the idea of someone so far out at the extreme high end of the intelligence bell curve and had spent a while examining Taylor with great interest, trying to use her power to work out how her friend could have the mental abilities she did. Something Taylor herself was curious about, of course.
In the end, though, Amy had said she wasn't sure about the reasons for it and would have to think about if. Taylor was interested to see if her friend could figure it out. She knew full well that Amy's powers were far more than she publicly admitted to, or quite possibly admitted to herself for fear of what she might be capable of doing.
Taylor thought that her friend was unlikely to actually do anything unpleasant, she was much too well disciplined and ethical to really go too far without severe provocation, but on the other hand her home situation might have eventually caused something to break, which was another reason to help out. She didn't want to see Amy end up regretting something that could easily be avoided. Getting rid of the 'conflict drive' coded into the power sets provided by the Network would also help with that, and calm down Parahumans in general. She'd had to be careful not to change too much too quickly in case the deprecated original prime node noticed before it could be properly dealt with, but cautiously winding down some of the more annoying and dangerous defaults to something less destructive did seem to be paying dividends as far as both she and Admin could determine.
The predicted outcome was very positive, and assuming they proceeded slowly and carefully, things were almost certain to work out in the desired manner.
Admin had given her a full rundown on the abilities of a lot of Parahumans, of course, most definitely including all the local ones, and Amy's abilities were amazingly flexible. Taylor could see some interesting possibilities there, although it would require Amy herself to be less scared of her own power. Hopefully that would come with time and a little careful talking when suitable. Taylor didn't want her friends, any of them, to suffer if she could help out but was well aware that sometimes that wasn't possible.
Still, it went on the list of things to consider when appropriate. It was quite a big list these days…
With a small part of her attention on the two girls as they wandered slowly home, talking quietly to each other and carefully not mentioning anything they shouldn't, a couple of entirely unmemorable people shadowing them at a distance sufficient to intervene if required but far enough away not to cause alarm, Taylor put the main part of her thinking into the project in front of her. She gently lifted the lid of the box she'd taken from a drawer under her workbench and gazed at the contents, smiling with satisfaction.
After a moment she said, "This is going to be pretty cool." Looking to the side she held out a finger and the green dragonfly that had accompanied Amy into her lab landed on it, rotating to aim enormous glittering eyes at her face. She lifted it close to her eyes and peered closely at the thing, pleased that the almost invisible mechanics of the wing system were working so well.
Outside dozens more insectoid robots, indistinguishable from real dragonflies, flew hither and yon, interacting with the world without comment or notice. A few of them made sure that the Dallons got home safely before flying away again.
Down in her lab, Taylor hummed faintly, harmonizing with herself, the green insect sitting on her hair watching curiously as she made tiny and extremely careful adjustments to the device on her bench, inside of which minute pinpoints of color came and went while giving the impression of being both a long way away and very close.
Yeah, all in all things were coming along nicely, both she and Admin decided. And even though someone had used one of her inventions to dig a great big hole in Nevada, they'd done it for a good cause, so she was fine with that. Something to keep an eye on in case they got carried away, but for now everything was proceeding well.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
As they approached the house, somewhat nervously wondering what awaited them, Vicky pointed. "Aunt Sarah's here," she commented. Both of them could see the figure of their aunt through the living room window, apparently pacing back and forth and by the looks of it probably pretty much shouting. They exchanged a glance.
"Maybe we should wait a little longer," Amy said after a few seconds, both girls slowing their pace.
They watched as Sarah threw her arms in the air, even at this distance hearing a faint cry that sounded like "Fuck me, Carol!"
"Yeah," Vicky agreed, sighing slightly. "I don't want to walk into the middle of whatever the hell that is."
They stopped, then after a moment of mutual decision, turned and headed back to the park they'd come through. When they reached it, only a few minutes later, both girls sat on one of the less battered benches. Amy glanced at Vicky, who shrugged. "Guess we wait until they get it out of their systems."
"How long is that going to take?" Amy asked, a wry little smile on her face. "You know what Carol's like when she gets going..."
"Just a little, yeah." Vicky sighed. She put her arm around her sister's shoulders and pulled her closer. "You know I love you, no matter what happens, right?"
Amy didn't say anything for a few seconds, then nodded just a bit. "I do. And it's mutual."
"So whatever happens, we stick together, and we get through it. Somehow. Taylor's… Taylor… and has our back, she's got friends in weird places, and I think even Dad is probably on our side." The blonde smiled at her sister. "And there's another dragonfly sitting on your head."
Amy peered upwards, then carefully lifted a hand to the insect, which simply sat there watching. "Why do they like me so much?" she queried, gently prodding the creature, which was perched right at the front of her hairline apparently looking down at her with interest.
"Taylor told them to watch out for you, obviously," Vicky giggled. Amy made an amused sound as she carefully persuaded the insect to move to her finger, then held it in front of her eyes.
"I doubt even Taylor has any pull with the local wildlife," she replied, grinning. "It's probably come from the pond over there." She nodded at the pond a hundred feet away which had rushes growing around it, and a couple of small boys investigating the water's edge with sticks. "Maybe the other one left a scent or something behind that's attracting them."
"No idea. It's very pretty, for an insect, though." Vicky leaned closer and examined the thing, which was about five centimeters long and bright metallic red with green iridescent patches down the abdomen. The dragonfly tilted its head and gave the distinct impression of studying her right back, which caused her to laugh a little.
"I can see why Taylor likes them," she added, her sister nodding agreement. Amy very gently touched the back of the insect between the wings and got a far off expression for a moment.
"Cool," she muttered. "I've never really spent any time looking at insects, but their biology is really neat. Their eyes are way better than I'd have expected..." After a few seconds, she raised her hand again and said, "Go on, go eat some mosquitoes or whatever it is you do." She flicked her hand and the insect rattled off, circling them once before heading back to the pond. Both girls watched it, relaxing in the warm late spring afternoon.
The sound of footsteps to one side made them look up, to see someone approaching them. Parked at the side of the road some distance away was an expensive car, another man in a suit standing next to it and looking around without any real urgency but apparent care. The one approaching them was actually someone they recognized immediately, causing them to exchange glances.
Agent Charlie stopped in front of them, nodding to each in turn. "Miss Dallon. Miss Dallon."
"Agent Charlie," Vicky replied politely, feeling both a little silly and like she was in a spy drama. "We didn't expect to see you again."
"You most likely won't in future unless something changes, but I have something for you both," the man replied calmly. He put his hand into his jacket, something the girls watched very carefully, before relaxing as he pulled out a pair of buff-colored envelopes. Handing one to each of them, he continued, "Contact details should an incident occur are included. If you have any queries, Miss Hebert will be able to answer them." Tilting the hat he was wearing in a small gesture that made Vicky almost smile, it was so old-fashioned, he finished, "A pleasure, ladies." Then he turned and walked off, heading back to the vehicle. Both watched until he got back into the passenger side, the driver also getting in, then the car drove off and vanished around the corner.
The sisters exchanged bemused glances.
"That was… weird," Amy said slowly. "Like something out of a movie."
"Yeah, it was kind of strange," Vicky agreed. "But pretty cool. Secret agents and beautiful women and code books..." She giggled as Amy sighed faintly. "I could get used to this."
"You live in a fantasy world at times, Vicky," Amy grumbled as she looked at the envelope in her hands.
"We all live in a fantasy world, Ames," Vicky replied cheerfully, popping the flap on her own envelope and peering inside. "Ooh. An ID card!" She pulled it out and inspected it. The thing appeared to be a standard issue non-driver ID card with her photo on it, along with the usual information. When she turned it over it had a small, discreet hologram in one corner that seemed to just be a little 2d barcode of some sort, barely visible and completely unassuming.
She flipped it back again, curiously studying it, then shrugged and pulled out the wallet she kept a few cards in, slipping the new one inside and putting it away again. "Probably some sort of security clearance, I guess," she commented quietly to Amy, who was looking at her own version. The other girl nodded slowly and tucked the card away as well.
The rest of the contents of Vicky's envelope were a few business cards with the logo of some sort of import/export company on, and a phone number under the name. That was it. She studied them closely then chuckled. "Definitely spy stuff. I bet if we call that number we can make weird things happen."
"Don't for god's sake call it unless you really have to," Amy hissed, looking around. "We don't want the government getting upset. But keep them handy just in case, you know? This is serious stuff and we need to be careful."
"Don't worry, I know," her sister assured her. "I'm not an idiot, and Taylor told us all this stuff. It's just weird holding it." The business cards went into her pocket. Turning the envelope upside down she shook it, feeling disappointed when nothing else fell out. "Damn. I was hoping for a pen that turned into a gun or something," she quipped, making Amy snicker.
"We'll have to talk to Taylor about this some time, but it seems pretty obvious," Amy commented as she pulled out the final thing in her own envelope, which Vicky had noticed was a little thicker. The sheaf of folded paperwork made both of them raise eyebrows. Amy glanced at her, then unfolded the document. Scanning it quickly, she froze, then stared in shock.
"What's the problem?" Vicky queried. Her sister didn't respond for a moment, then very slowly handed her the paperwork and sat there staring at the pond without saying anything while the blonde read it. Then read it again.
After nearly a minute, Vicky said, "That's a lot of money."
"Yes."
"Like, a lot of money."
"Yes."
"And they even set up a bank account for you."
"Yes."
"There's a debit card attached to this for the account."
"Yes."
Amy and Vicky blankly exchanged a look of disbelief.
"Next time we go shopping it's on you," Vicky finally added with a rather shaky smile.
"Yes."
Neither said anything for some time while they sat there and stared at the kids near the pond, even when one fell in and the other laughed, before slipping and joining him. Even the dragonfly coming back and landing on the end of Amy's nose did nothing more than make her sneeze.
"Taylor has a strange effect on the world, did you notice?" Amy finally remarked in a dreamy voice.
"Yeah, I kind of did," Vicky agreed, leaning her head back and staring at the clouds. "I really, really did."
Eventually they got up and went to haul the screaming kids out of the pond before they drowned, then went home to see what the hell their crazy friend had engineered there as well.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"The Slaughterhouse Nine are dead," Legend said in a somewhat stunned voice.
"Very dead indeed," Doctor Mother agreed, looking at a photo printout. It showed an enormous hole where a valley had once been, now roughly half full of muddy steaming water. The slopes of the hills surrounding it looked like the aftermath of the Tunguska Event, all the trees totally flattened and mostly arranged radially outwards from what had clearly been a phenomenally large explosion. While there was evidence of extreme heat, and indeed fires were still burning when the image had been taken, whatever had done the job certainly wasn't either a small nuclear warhead nor a very, very large conventional one.
"We're certain that they were definitely there?" Eidolon looked at another copy of the photo, his eyebrows far up his forehead. "Hell, that's a big hole," he added in a somewhat impressed voice.
"They were tracked to the only road that led through this area, all the Thinkers we have checked with have indicated they were present at the time, and no signs of any of them have been seen or detected since," the woman replied as she dropped the photo in her hand onto the table, then tapped it idly with the fingers of her right hand. "Absent some form of Stranger effect we're unaware of, all the signs are that they were indeed present and indeed eliminated extremely thoroughly."
"Has this hit the news yet?" Rebecca demanded as she looked around the table. "It's obviously a Tinker weapon. We're going to need to work quickly to prevent..."
Doctor Mother raised a hand to interrupt her. "We have no indication of Tinker involvement, Rebecca."
Pointing at the photo in front of the other woman, Alexandria raised her voice, "What else could possibly have done that? We know it wasn't Scion, it certainly wasn't us, and none of the groups I can think of could have done it either. So it has to be either a new Tinker, or a group who came up with something no one has seen before and used it on the S9. The public reaction is going to be..."
She was interrupted again as David, who was still inspecting the image in his hand, interjected, "Very happy? Ecstatic? Confused?"
Paul snickered as the third member of the Triumvirate gave Eidolon a dirty look. She didn't like being interrupted when she was on a rant. "Scared," she snapped. "Because someone just blew a hole you could put a small town into in the middle of nowhere, without any warning. We need to keep control of the story before someone..."
Unable to prevent himself, Paul said, "Throws a party? Looks for whoever it is to give them a reward? The bounty on the various members of the S9 is close to fifty million dollars if you take them all together."
Rebecca glared at him. "That's not the point!" she snapped. "We had..." Stopping herself saying whatever it was she was about to, she took a breath as he looked curiously at her. Once again he thought that she was getting more worked up recently than seemed sensible, about things that really weren't something which required quite so much worry. He found it somewhat strange since on the whole things were going well right now and he personally was finding life quite a lot less stressful than it had been for years, even though he assumed things would sooner or later hit the fan again as they always did. Hell, the sudden tragic demise of a gang of roving horror movie villains should have made her as happy as it would anyone else, but she seemed to almost take it as a personal insult.
Possibly the fact that the next Endbringer attack was now well overdue for reasons unknown was preying on her mind more than usual. It was certainly something he was thinking about, sure that sooner or later all the relaxation of recent weeks would abruptly stop, and why he was taking the opportunity for a little downtime while it presented itself like this. When the hammer did fall they were going to need to be ready and rested. That she was doing the exact opposite was worrying.
Maybe the stress of their knowledge and the task they'd set themselves was finally starting to take a toll that couldn't be masked? It was something that should probably be considered…
"The point is," she went on having visibly and deliberately calmed herself, "that what can only be described as a weapon of mass destruction has been used, regardless of the target. That will make a lot of people, not only in the US, get upset. We need to find out which group did it, how they did it, and how to make sure they are kept under control. What if it's a villainous group? Perhaps this was a test shot, and the next one will be New York, or London, or something we actually care about!"
"You may be jumping just a little ahead of the evidence, Rebecca," he replied after studying her and thinking that stress was definitely starting to become a problem. "We've got no evidence at all yet that this even was a weapon."
"What else could dig a hole that fucking large in the scenery if it wasn't a weapon?" she yelled, waving frantically at the photo on the table. "You think Crawler sneezed or something? Someone did that and I want to know who and how."
Doctor Mother turned to the tablet at her elbow and prodded it for a few seconds while Rebecca glared at Paul, and David and Contessa, who had remained silent so far, exchanged glances and minor shrugs. "The official press release from government sources has just been published," the older woman said into the silence. "About five minutes ago. They're claiming that the US Geological Survey detected a previously unknown fault line that was showing signs of imminent rupture directly under the small town of Gudge, and evacuated the town the previous day. Unfortunately the fault line catastrophically slipped without warning, causing a deep fracture that allowed a large pocket of natural gas to escape under pressure to the surface, where it was ignited by some source in the town, probably an electrical spark. The ensuing blast was sufficient to destroy the entire town."
She flicked the screen, then added, "The inhabitants are being compensated for the loss of their homes and belongings. No injuries or fatalities have been reported."
"No mention of the S9?" David asked, while Rebecca's mouth opened and closed in wordless indignation.
"None," she replied, shaking her head. Putting the tablet down she added, "An excellent and plausible cover story."
"It's bullshit!"
Everyone looked at Rebecca again. She looked back at each of them in turn. "That's total garbage and you all know it! A gas pocket released by an earthquake that destroys a town? It sounds like the plot of a bad movie! It was a weapon, it was deliberate, and it was..."
She trailed off, her expression darkening.
Paul looked at David, who rolled his eyes a little.
"…It was them," she hissed after a few seconds, sounding outraged.
"Them?" Paul asked mildly. "Who is them? I thought we were them."
"No, we're us," David commented, smirking visibly. "They're them."
"Are you sure?" Contessa asked, her eyes glinting with humor.
"If we're us and they're them..." Paul mused, thoughtfully. "I don't know. Maybe some of us are some of them?"
"If even one of us is one of them, it raised the possibility that all of us might be..."
"All of them?" Contessa tilted her head and looked interested.
"SHUT UP YOU IDIOTS!" Rebecca screamed, slamming her hand on the table as she utterly lost her cool. Everyone inspected the new hand-sized hole in the surface.
"Please don't keep breaking the furniture, Rebecca," Doctor Mother chided without raising her voice. "That's the third one in five weeks."
Alexandria ignored her, focusing her attention on Paul and David. "It's DARPA," she said darkly, scowling. "It's got to be. They're doing… something… they won't tell m... I mean us, and it's got to be related. Some super weapon they invented using the Tinker they have, something they militarized and are keeping quiet. I knew they had a Tinker!"
With a faint sigh, Paul pointed out, yet again, "They say it's not Parahuman work, they don't have a Tinker, and all the evidence we have shows this is completely true. As you have been told by all of us, DARPA representatives, the Department of Defense, and everyone else you've been annoying for months. Let it go, Rebecca! We have way too much to do already, don't go looking for other problems we don't need and don't have any reason to get involved in."
"And you believe that the S9 got accidentally and coincidentally exploded by a natural gas pocket no one knew was there because of a fault line no one knew was there in a town that coincidentally got evacuated just in time?" she demanded with heavy sarcasm.
"Well… I admit it's probably not actually the truth, but I can't prove otherwise right now, and is it really worth pushing?" he replied, shaking his head. "I mean, if it was a weapon, they're clearly not wanting to tell anyone, which could well be for any number of perfectly ordinary security reasons. Maybe they only had one. I don't know. The thing is that it doesn't affect us. And if someone is somehow able to build weapons like that, if anything we should be applauding them because they might work on Endbringers!"
Obviously about to say something in return, that last point made her stop and think, he could see it. Even so he could also see from her expression she wasn't convinced. He sighed internally. Why the woman was so insistent on finding out whatever was behind the new technology the US government seemed to be pouring enormous resources into amid more secrecy than he'd ever heard of he had no idea, other than not liking to be told 'go away and stop bothering us.' That seemed a rather petty reason, even for Rebecca, who was a control freak of the highest order admittedly but was usually more subtle about it.
Right now she was acting like a stroppy teenager denied something she wanted, and it was beginning to irritate him.
"We need to find out what's going on," she finally said almost plaintively.
"Why?" he asked mildly.
"I don't like the unexplained," the woman eventually replied. "Because it's usually trouble. And the stakes are too high. Things are going on that have changed the Path, which is unprecedented, and it all ultimately points at Brockton Bay, Gravtec, DARPA, and any number of other things which are clearly related in ways we don't understand."
Paul looked at her for a while, then around at the rest of the people present. Kurt had obviously had the right idea when he'd declined to attend the meeting. Paul was rather wishing he had as well.
"Rebecca, I understand what you mean, but we've checked. Over and over. Nothing we can find from any source or through any method shows any form of Parahuman involvement in anything you mention. Yes, the Path has changed, but we don't know if that's good or not. And we don't actually understand how it works sufficiently well enough to even know what can change it in the first place. We can't force the US government to tell us everything just to satisfy your curiosity or paranoia. The information we have been given is all we're going to get unless they decide to add more to it and keeping on pushing is only going to cause problems for us." He spread his hands in a gesture of conciliation. "We should just keep an eye on it while going on with our existing work. As I've said, over and over to the point I'm frankly getting tired of repeating myself."
She kept her eyes on him for some time, then turned to Contessa, who was watching with the air of detached amusement she'd been wearing for weeks now. "Path to finding out what weapon destroyed the S9," she demanded.
The other woman reached up and lowered her hat slightly, shading her eyes. Paul could almost swear he heard a faint rattle. He most assuredly heard David muffle a very slight snicker. "Cannot predict now," Contessa said calmly.
Rebecca clenched her fists.
"Path to finding out who designed the weapon." She sounded annoyed.
"Outlook not so good."
"You're not taking this seriously!"
"Very doubtful," Contessa replied cheerfully as she got up, slipping something round into her pocket. Tilting her hat at them, she left the room.
Rebecca stared at the closing door, before slumping in her chair. "Why is no one but myself paying any attention to this?" she grumbled.
"Maybe you should take a few days off, have a break," David suggested a little hesitantly. She looked hard at him, making him lean away, then got up, grabbed the photo out of his hands, and also left. Not in nearly as good a mood as Contessa had been in either.
Paul sighed and looked at the two people left. "She's going to cause problems for us if she keeps on like this," he said as he stood. "Can you try to get her to drop it for now?" he requested, turning to Doctor Mother. The older woman shrugged.
"I've tried. She's unusually focused on the whole situation. Rebecca has always been somewhat driven even by our standards."
"Yeah." He shook his head. "Damn it." Leaning over the table he pulled the other photo across and looked down at it. "Gas explosion?" he queried with a small smile.
"Obviously untrue but it's acceptable enough for the public," she replied, also smiling slightly.
"I wonder what really did do it?"
None of them had an answer, so they went about their other business while waiting to see if more information would come to light. Paul at least very pleased with the removal of a group who should have been dealt with years ago, and somewhat puzzled with himself as much as anyone else why this had never happened.
He was going to have to think about that some more.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
When Amy and her sister entered the Dallon household, Aunt Sarah was still there and appeared somewhat peeved although much less likely to wave her arms around than the first time they'd tried. Both she and Carol looked up as the two girls came into the living room, Carol frowning a little and Sarah staring at Amy with an odd look in her eyes.
"You're home," Carol stated flatly. "Finally. Where have you two been?"
"Out," Amy replied equally flatly, in no mood to pretend she wasn't still annoyed about earlier, never mind what had built up until she'd finally had enough.
"Where?"
"Walking around, visiting friends, talking with Vicky," Amy responded as she walked past her adoptive mother and went into the kitchen. Pouring herself a glass of water, she glanced at Vicky who'd followed without a word, then gave her one as well. Both returned to the living room and sat next to each other on the sofa. Sipping her drink, Amy waited to see what happened next.
"Which friends?" Carol queried, still with that little frown.
Amy shrugged. "I don't really feel like telling you," she said, almost enjoying herself. Carol's face darkened and Sarah jumped in, holding up a hand warningly.
"Carol..." she said in a tone that brooked no rejection. Her sister turned to her, then emitted a humph sound and folded her arms, looking out the window at the street. Sarah seemed to hide a sigh before looking at the two girls. "We had a visit earlier," she began.
Amy and Vicky exchanged glances, then both kept listening, neither replying.
"From the FBI," Sarah went on.
Neither girl responded this time either. Vicky sipped her water, her face neutral, while Amy just kept her eyes on her aunt's. She could see a mix of sympathy, irritation, and confusion in them.
"They told us a few things that concern me," the Pelham woman added, when she apparently decided that she wasn't going to get any reply. "Such as you working at the hospital for more than sixty hours a week recently."
Amy shrugged. "I wasn't keeping count but that's probably about right," she finally said.
"Why?" Sarah looked bewildered now. "Why would you put in that much time there, especially when you're also putting in your school hours, and the New Wave things we do sometimes as well? It's far too much for anyone, never mind someone your age."
Both girls looked at each other, Amy feeling very tired suddenly. "Partly because it got me out of here, partly because if I don't she lectures me about responsibility and duty and heroic crap, partly because people expect me to fix them." Sarah's face fell, looking horrified at her dead tone, while Vicky put a comforting hand on her sister's arm and Carol scowled. "All sorts of reasons. And when I finally pretty much get ordered by the hospital administration to go home and have a break, she gets even more upset about it. I can't win no matter what I do, and it finally boiled over today."
Sarah stared at her as she fell silent, then slowly looked around to fix her own sister with one of the darkest looks Amy had ever witnessed from her. Normally her aunt was fairly upbeat, but right now she looked like she wanted to throttle the other woman. Instead, she turned back to Amy and Vicky as Carol kind of leaned away with a somewhat nervous expression, then smiled sadly.
"Why didn't you say anything?" she asked gently.
"What difference would it have made?" Amy replied quietly. "All that would have happened is that Carol would have got even angrier. She even yelled at Vicky when she tried to get her to calm down the last time." She shrugged a bit. "Like I said, I can't really win, and after a certain point you kind of give up and just get on with life."
"I am going to fucking hurt you, Carol," Sarah muttered through her teeth as she looked at her sister again.
Returning to Amy, the older woman rubbed her forehead in a somewhat exhausted manner, then leaned forward. "That stops. It stops here and now. From now on you are only to work at the hospital for a maximum of twenty hours a week, if you even want to. No one is going to make you, you don't have to, it's entirely up to you. And you're going to get paid for it."
With a glance at her sister, Amy wondered if she should mention that she knew this part, and in fact had apparently been paid a fairly frightening amount for previous work. Vicky's head moved a tiny amount as if she knew exactly what Amy was thinking, which she probably did. Her sister wasn't even remotely stupid and was much more perceptive than many people gave her credit for. "That's… good," she replied after a pause. "I think I'd like that."
"And if you want to stop, you can just stop. Take a holiday, find a hobby, just relax and visit friends, whatever you want, Amy," Sarah went on. "It's been brought all to clearly to my attention that we've been taking you for granted and just assuming you would use your abilities like this. We've never really even asked you, or for that matter Vicky, if you want to be part of New Wave. We just assumed that too." She looked upset, as Amy met Vicky's eyes again. Both were rather shocked. Apparently Taylor's little plan had been more effective than either had thought. Amy wondered what on earth the FBI had actually said to the two women.
"Of course they're part of New W..." Carol got that far before she had her sister's hand over her mouth, her eyes widening.
"Not another word, Carol," Sarah hissed. "We are not done talking about this." She released Carol a moment later while the two girls watched in amazement. "All right. This is what we're going to do. Amy, if you want to, you can come and stay with us for a few days, until Carol and I finish… discussing… certain major changes to our approach to a number of things."
Amy looked at her, thinking, then glanced at Vicky. Her sister sighed almost inaudibly and said, "If she's staying with you, so am I, Aunt Sarah," the blonde said. She put her hand on Amy's again. "I'm not leaving Amy alone right now, not after all the shit Mom's put her through."
"Fuck me, Carol, what the hell have you done?" Sarah almost whispered under her breath, but nodded. More loudly she said, "I have no problem with that. The spare room has two beds in it, you can stay there. I'm sure Crystal and Eric will enjoy having you over." Both girls nodded. Amy was both slightly relieved and also worried about what might happen, as well as thinking that finally something might actually change for the better.
Carol was now looking ashamed and defiant at the same time, although the shame seemed to be winning. Sarah turned to her and just inspected her for nearly thirty seconds without a word. Eventually she shook her head. "They were right," she muttered. "I'm going to talk to few people I know, and we're going to look into getting you some professional help before this all goes completely to hell."
The other woman opened her mouth, but Sarah pointed directly at her face from centimeters away. "No. I've let this get way out of hand for far too long. It's at least as much my fault as it is yours, but that's no excuse. We're fixing it, one way or another. So don't start again or I'll..." She seemed to run out of words and just sighed. "Just don't."
Although she clearly wanted to say something, Carol seemed sufficiently cowed by whatever had happened since the two girls left that she finally deflated and seemed to shrink in on herself. Amy was highly confused but grateful that apparently this wasn't going to devolve into the same crap that had pushed her out hours ago. "All right. You two go pack whatever you need for a few days, and head over to my house. I'll join you there later after I've finished here."
Both girls silently got up and left the living room. On the way up the stairs they met their father, who was standing at the top leaning on the banister peering down with a look of resignation on his face. "Hi, Dad," Vicky greeted him.
"Hello, girls," he replied in a low voice. He paused, then looked directly at Amy, saying, "I'm sorry. I should have done something. It's not your fault, believe me. Carol has… issues."
He seemed to think, then added, "Enough to fill a news stand, to be honest," with a little smile that made Amy and Vicky both chuckle, it was so unusual.
"And I know I'm not as helpful as I could be," he went on sadly. "Maybe this will help that too. Worth a shot..."
Amy stepped forward, putting her arms around him. He rather tentatively responded in the same way. "Thanks, Dad," she said into his shoulder. "I hope we can fix this."
"So do I, Amy, so do I," he replied almost silently.
When he released her, Vicky grabbed him and hugged him as well, tears in her eyes. He smiled and stroked her hair. "Look after your sister, Vicky," he said.
"Count on it, Dad," the blonde said. "We'll be back soon."
He looked at both of them, smiled again, then headed down the stairs and disappeared into the living room. They watched, exchanged gazes, and moved to pack a bag each. Half an hour later they were heading for the Pelham house, wondering how the next few days would go.
Taylor had certainly had a rather large effect on her family, Amy thought, but she was grateful. It was about time something did and while unexpected was so much better than it might have gone.
Her friend was definitely capable of some somewhat startling things, she mused as she sat on the edge of her temporary bed and looked out at the setting sun. What would be her next trick?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Hi, Dad," Taylor said as Danny came in the front door, then turned to close it and take his coat off.
"Hello, Taylor," he replied, hanging it up then accepting the mug she handed him gratefully. "Thank you."
"No problem," she smiled, heading into the living room. He followed and sat down across from her, leaning back and looking at the TV, which was on with the sound down showing a news report about some sort of earthquake in Nevada. She glanced at it, shook her head a little, then picked up the remote and turned it off. "How was your day?"
"Things are proceeding very well indeed," he replied, after taking a sip of his coffee. "The big test chamber plans are finished, and we've finalized the location. Construction should start in about a week. By the time we need it, it'll be online."
"Great," she smiled, looking pleased. "That'll come in handy, for sure. Did Brendan like the latest reports?"
"He only shouted a little," Danny grinned. "Either he's getting used to you or you're losing your touch."
"Better bump it up a notch then," she giggled.
"Oh, god, why do I feel incipient doom?" he quipped, shaking his head in mock sadness. She winked at him.
"I'll be good," she promised.
"Will you? Really?"
"Well..."
"As I thought." He drank some more coffee as she laughed again. "How did your talk with your friends go?" he asked when she stopped giggling.
Taylor spun around in the chair and draped her legs over the arm, her head going the other way. He watched and winced slightly, she was much more flexible than he was and that position would make his back ache for days. "Better than I was worried it would," she replied after a few seconds of thought. "They were kind of surprised, which is fair enough, but both of them seemed to accept it. They both signed, Amy first, but Vicky was fine with the whole thing too."
"Think there'll be any problems with their family?"
"I… don't think so," his daughter said, frowning a little. "I mean, I'm sure Amy, and to be honest, Vicky, won't say anything. They listened very carefully to what I told them, they read the NDA and security clearance stuff, and they understood what it meant. And still signed. They're both smart and capable of keeping their mouths shut. But… I'm not sure their mom is going to be sensible if she ever figures out something's going on."
"She does have a certain outlook on life that's a little unhelpful at times," he agreed soberly. "Hopefully the discussion they had with our friends in the FBI will give them enough of a clue to stop things going too far before stronger measures need to be taken."
"I sure hope so," she agreed, closing her eyes and dropping her head so far back he was feeling the twinge in his own neck. "They're my friends and I don't want me to be a reason they have problems. But I don't want their mom to cause either of them any more trouble either."
"Sometimes life is more complicated to handle than anyone can really deal with, Taylor," he said knowingly. "And sometimes it's impossible to win even when you do everything right."
"Yeah, I know, but I don't have to like it," she sighed. Opening her eyes she rolled her head to the side and looked at him. "Hopefully this isn't one of those times."
"Hopefully," he agreed, finishing his coffee. "You did what you could, the next move is theirs. Now, I was thinking that a nice steak would be a good idea tonight. Sound good?"
"I could go for steak," she replied thoughtfully, sitting up again.
"I'll get some out of the freezer and start it thawing, then," he smiled as he stood. "And you can tell me more about how you've ruined computers for everyone."
"Only some computers, Dad," she grinned, hopping to her feet. "And I made better ones."
"So I gather," he chuckled as they went into the kitchen. "Apparently we've got yet another subsidiary company now..."
Soon both of them were discussing future plans, which tended to quickly become much more involved than he'd have expected only a year or two ago.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Putting the small optical signal injector probe down next to her latest and by far the most complex invention yet, Taylor leaned back and stretched, holding the pose for a few seconds before relaxing. It was nearly one AM and she'd finally finished.
Listening to the low background track of very familiar alien voices for a while, she smiled at one comment which was actually really funny in a very deadpan manner. Those guys had a strange sense of humor but it was one that resonated with her. Soon enough she was going to have to get back to thinking about how to talk to them, but she had a more urgent project right now. The one she was looking at.
"Well, it's done and it checks out," she commented, glancing at the little point of silver light that was almost eagerly staring at her. A sensation at the back of her mind of happiness made her smile again. "Yeah, I know. Don't worry, it's more than big enough. You trust me, right?"
She laughed at the response. "That's about it, yeah. OK, let's get this set up and we'll see how things go."
"No, it'll work, I promise!"
"Of course I did. And that too."
"Yeah, we can add more later if you need it, but you won't for a while, believe me."
Taylor grinned, carefully picking up the weirdly shaped, twice head-sized block of very special optronic substrate in both hands. It was the result of a lot of work, a collaboration between her and Admin, and she was looking forward at least as much as her friend was to seeing how well it worked. That it would work neither of them doubted, despite Admin's slight nervousness.
Carrying the chunk of almost violet pseudocrystal over to the special rig she'd put so much effort into, she very gently lowered it into a cradle designed to accept it that had been added to the system next to the main subspace actualizer array. An hour's careful work had it fully interfaced into the system. She ran the final self-tests, both of them monitoring the results with total concentration, until she finally nodded. "It's ready. Subspace extrusion factor is as calculated, self-healing is working, power tap is fully functional. Everything's working perfectly."
Looking at the block, she admired the way parts of it seemed to vanish around a corner that wasn't strictly speaking actually there, no matter which angle you looked at it from. The multidimensional aspects of this unique variant of her optronic processing hardware was heavily inspired by some of Admin's own semi-organic computing system, but implemented properly and efficiently. In other words, engineered rather than haphazardly left to nature to slap together almost randomly.
The end result was going to be fun in lots of different ways…
"OK." She hit a couple of keys, then smiled as the block started glowing a very odd color, a near-infinite number of dimensionless points of light coming and going throughout the entire thing even though technically most of them shouldn't have been visible at all. "Ready when you are."
Taylor put a hand on the block and caressed it, before leaning close to watch.
The pinprick of silver light flickered, as the optronic nodule seemed to somehow unfold in several directions at once, while not actually getting any larger from the point of view of normal three dimensional space. The flickering sped up, while the entire room very gently hummed with energy, the corners darkening strangely. She could feel odd things happening to local space-time.
"Cool," the girl whispered, smiling widely as everything proceeded to plan.
"Taylor? Are you down there invoking forces beyond comprehension again?" her father's voice called from upstairs.
"Nearly done, Dad," she called back.
"Remember it's a school day tomorrow," he replied, sounding tired. "And eldritch energies tend to make me have strange dreams."
"Sorry," she apologized. "Another five minutes, then I'm going to bed."
"See that you do, you need your sleep. And stop upsetting the universe, it's never done anything to deserve it. Good night."
"Night, Dad," she called, smiling happily. "Sleep well."
Hearing him climb the stairs, she kept watching the process until it completed a couple of minutes later. After checking the results, she smiled again, very pleased.
"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" she asked. "And you've got so much more room now."
The reply made her laugh. "Oh, sure, that's the next project. Anyway, I'm going to bed now, OK? You set things up the way you want them and I'll talk again tomorrow. See you, Admin."
The girl got up, patted the not entirely there chunk of optronics fondly, wiggled her fingers through the corona of energy that licked gently at them, then waved as she headed up the stairs. A moment later the lights went out leaving only the glow of lots of status LEDs around the room as well as the illumination that shone from inside her inventions, casting odd shadows around the lab.
If not… well, she had other options and plans arranged just in case. She hoped that they wouldn't become necessary, but if they did, other steps could be taken.
Until then, though, she'd just wait and see what happened.
She'd had fun telling them more of the truth than she'd been able to up until now. Both had looked very surprised by her revelations, and demonstrating some of the tech had left them both speechless for some time. Vicky had been convinced that it was Tinker tech for quite a while until she'd pulled out the various research papers other DARPA scientists had written on her work, as they'd replicated her results and tested her theories. She'd finally been persuaded after about four hours of explanations and discussion, then had gone very quiet and thoughtful for some time.
Amy, on the other hand, had almost immediately accepted that it was nothing to do with Tinkers, as her own abilities told her flat out that Taylor wasn't a Parahuman and never had been. Apparently that was more than enough to allow her to draw the conclusion that logically none of her work was Parahuman-related either, without questioning the idea. She'd been fascinated by the idea of someone so far out at the extreme high end of the intelligence bell curve and had spent a while examining Taylor with great interest, trying to use her power to work out how her friend could have the mental abilities she did. Something Taylor herself was curious about, of course.
In the end, though, Amy had said she wasn't sure about the reasons for it and would have to think about if. Taylor was interested to see if her friend could figure it out. She knew full well that Amy's powers were far more than she publicly admitted to, or quite possibly admitted to herself for fear of what she might be capable of doing.
Taylor thought that her friend was unlikely to actually do anything unpleasant, she was much too well disciplined and ethical to really go too far without severe provocation, but on the other hand her home situation might have eventually caused something to break, which was another reason to help out. She didn't want to see Amy end up regretting something that could easily be avoided. Getting rid of the 'conflict drive' coded into the power sets provided by the Network would also help with that, and calm down Parahumans in general. She'd had to be careful not to change too much too quickly in case the deprecated original prime node noticed before it could be properly dealt with, but cautiously winding down some of the more annoying and dangerous defaults to something less destructive did seem to be paying dividends as far as both she and Admin could determine.
The predicted outcome was very positive, and assuming they proceeded slowly and carefully, things were almost certain to work out in the desired manner.
Admin had given her a full rundown on the abilities of a lot of Parahumans, of course, most definitely including all the local ones, and Amy's abilities were amazingly flexible. Taylor could see some interesting possibilities there, although it would require Amy herself to be less scared of her own power. Hopefully that would come with time and a little careful talking when suitable. Taylor didn't want her friends, any of them, to suffer if she could help out but was well aware that sometimes that wasn't possible.
Still, it went on the list of things to consider when appropriate. It was quite a big list these days…
With a small part of her attention on the two girls as they wandered slowly home, talking quietly to each other and carefully not mentioning anything they shouldn't, a couple of entirely unmemorable people shadowing them at a distance sufficient to intervene if required but far enough away not to cause alarm, Taylor put the main part of her thinking into the project in front of her. She gently lifted the lid of the box she'd taken from a drawer under her workbench and gazed at the contents, smiling with satisfaction.
After a moment she said, "This is going to be pretty cool." Looking to the side she held out a finger and the green dragonfly that had accompanied Amy into her lab landed on it, rotating to aim enormous glittering eyes at her face. She lifted it close to her eyes and peered closely at the thing, pleased that the almost invisible mechanics of the wing system were working so well.
Outside dozens more insectoid robots, indistinguishable from real dragonflies, flew hither and yon, interacting with the world without comment or notice. A few of them made sure that the Dallons got home safely before flying away again.
Down in her lab, Taylor hummed faintly, harmonizing with herself, the green insect sitting on her hair watching curiously as she made tiny and extremely careful adjustments to the device on her bench, inside of which minute pinpoints of color came and went while giving the impression of being both a long way away and very close.
Yeah, all in all things were coming along nicely, both she and Admin decided. And even though someone had used one of her inventions to dig a great big hole in Nevada, they'd done it for a good cause, so she was fine with that. Something to keep an eye on in case they got carried away, but for now everything was proceeding well.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
As they approached the house, somewhat nervously wondering what awaited them, Vicky pointed. "Aunt Sarah's here," she commented. Both of them could see the figure of their aunt through the living room window, apparently pacing back and forth and by the looks of it probably pretty much shouting. They exchanged a glance.
"Maybe we should wait a little longer," Amy said after a few seconds, both girls slowing their pace.
They watched as Sarah threw her arms in the air, even at this distance hearing a faint cry that sounded like "Fuck me, Carol!"
"Yeah," Vicky agreed, sighing slightly. "I don't want to walk into the middle of whatever the hell that is."
They stopped, then after a moment of mutual decision, turned and headed back to the park they'd come through. When they reached it, only a few minutes later, both girls sat on one of the less battered benches. Amy glanced at Vicky, who shrugged. "Guess we wait until they get it out of their systems."
"How long is that going to take?" Amy asked, a wry little smile on her face. "You know what Carol's like when she gets going..."
"Just a little, yeah." Vicky sighed. She put her arm around her sister's shoulders and pulled her closer. "You know I love you, no matter what happens, right?"
Amy didn't say anything for a few seconds, then nodded just a bit. "I do. And it's mutual."
"So whatever happens, we stick together, and we get through it. Somehow. Taylor's… Taylor… and has our back, she's got friends in weird places, and I think even Dad is probably on our side." The blonde smiled at her sister. "And there's another dragonfly sitting on your head."
Amy peered upwards, then carefully lifted a hand to the insect, which simply sat there watching. "Why do they like me so much?" she queried, gently prodding the creature, which was perched right at the front of her hairline apparently looking down at her with interest.
"Taylor told them to watch out for you, obviously," Vicky giggled. Amy made an amused sound as she carefully persuaded the insect to move to her finger, then held it in front of her eyes.
"I doubt even Taylor has any pull with the local wildlife," she replied, grinning. "It's probably come from the pond over there." She nodded at the pond a hundred feet away which had rushes growing around it, and a couple of small boys investigating the water's edge with sticks. "Maybe the other one left a scent or something behind that's attracting them."
"No idea. It's very pretty, for an insect, though." Vicky leaned closer and examined the thing, which was about five centimeters long and bright metallic red with green iridescent patches down the abdomen. The dragonfly tilted its head and gave the distinct impression of studying her right back, which caused her to laugh a little.
"I can see why Taylor likes them," she added, her sister nodding agreement. Amy very gently touched the back of the insect between the wings and got a far off expression for a moment.
"Cool," she muttered. "I've never really spent any time looking at insects, but their biology is really neat. Their eyes are way better than I'd have expected..." After a few seconds, she raised her hand again and said, "Go on, go eat some mosquitoes or whatever it is you do." She flicked her hand and the insect rattled off, circling them once before heading back to the pond. Both girls watched it, relaxing in the warm late spring afternoon.
The sound of footsteps to one side made them look up, to see someone approaching them. Parked at the side of the road some distance away was an expensive car, another man in a suit standing next to it and looking around without any real urgency but apparent care. The one approaching them was actually someone they recognized immediately, causing them to exchange glances.
Agent Charlie stopped in front of them, nodding to each in turn. "Miss Dallon. Miss Dallon."
"Agent Charlie," Vicky replied politely, feeling both a little silly and like she was in a spy drama. "We didn't expect to see you again."
"You most likely won't in future unless something changes, but I have something for you both," the man replied calmly. He put his hand into his jacket, something the girls watched very carefully, before relaxing as he pulled out a pair of buff-colored envelopes. Handing one to each of them, he continued, "Contact details should an incident occur are included. If you have any queries, Miss Hebert will be able to answer them." Tilting the hat he was wearing in a small gesture that made Vicky almost smile, it was so old-fashioned, he finished, "A pleasure, ladies." Then he turned and walked off, heading back to the vehicle. Both watched until he got back into the passenger side, the driver also getting in, then the car drove off and vanished around the corner.
The sisters exchanged bemused glances.
"That was… weird," Amy said slowly. "Like something out of a movie."
"Yeah, it was kind of strange," Vicky agreed. "But pretty cool. Secret agents and beautiful women and code books..." She giggled as Amy sighed faintly. "I could get used to this."
"You live in a fantasy world at times, Vicky," Amy grumbled as she looked at the envelope in her hands.
"We all live in a fantasy world, Ames," Vicky replied cheerfully, popping the flap on her own envelope and peering inside. "Ooh. An ID card!" She pulled it out and inspected it. The thing appeared to be a standard issue non-driver ID card with her photo on it, along with the usual information. When she turned it over it had a small, discreet hologram in one corner that seemed to just be a little 2d barcode of some sort, barely visible and completely unassuming.
She flipped it back again, curiously studying it, then shrugged and pulled out the wallet she kept a few cards in, slipping the new one inside and putting it away again. "Probably some sort of security clearance, I guess," she commented quietly to Amy, who was looking at her own version. The other girl nodded slowly and tucked the card away as well.
The rest of the contents of Vicky's envelope were a few business cards with the logo of some sort of import/export company on, and a phone number under the name. That was it. She studied them closely then chuckled. "Definitely spy stuff. I bet if we call that number we can make weird things happen."
"Don't for god's sake call it unless you really have to," Amy hissed, looking around. "We don't want the government getting upset. But keep them handy just in case, you know? This is serious stuff and we need to be careful."
"Don't worry, I know," her sister assured her. "I'm not an idiot, and Taylor told us all this stuff. It's just weird holding it." The business cards went into her pocket. Turning the envelope upside down she shook it, feeling disappointed when nothing else fell out. "Damn. I was hoping for a pen that turned into a gun or something," she quipped, making Amy snicker.
"We'll have to talk to Taylor about this some time, but it seems pretty obvious," Amy commented as she pulled out the final thing in her own envelope, which Vicky had noticed was a little thicker. The sheaf of folded paperwork made both of them raise eyebrows. Amy glanced at her, then unfolded the document. Scanning it quickly, she froze, then stared in shock.
"What's the problem?" Vicky queried. Her sister didn't respond for a moment, then very slowly handed her the paperwork and sat there staring at the pond without saying anything while the blonde read it. Then read it again.
After nearly a minute, Vicky said, "That's a lot of money."
"Yes."
"Like, a lot of money."
"Yes."
"And they even set up a bank account for you."
"Yes."
"There's a debit card attached to this for the account."
"Yes."
Amy and Vicky blankly exchanged a look of disbelief.
"Next time we go shopping it's on you," Vicky finally added with a rather shaky smile.
"Yes."
Neither said anything for some time while they sat there and stared at the kids near the pond, even when one fell in and the other laughed, before slipping and joining him. Even the dragonfly coming back and landing on the end of Amy's nose did nothing more than make her sneeze.
"Taylor has a strange effect on the world, did you notice?" Amy finally remarked in a dreamy voice.
"Yeah, I kind of did," Vicky agreed, leaning her head back and staring at the clouds. "I really, really did."
Eventually they got up and went to haul the screaming kids out of the pond before they drowned, then went home to see what the hell their crazy friend had engineered there as well.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"The Slaughterhouse Nine are dead," Legend said in a somewhat stunned voice.
"Very dead indeed," Doctor Mother agreed, looking at a photo printout. It showed an enormous hole where a valley had once been, now roughly half full of muddy steaming water. The slopes of the hills surrounding it looked like the aftermath of the Tunguska Event, all the trees totally flattened and mostly arranged radially outwards from what had clearly been a phenomenally large explosion. While there was evidence of extreme heat, and indeed fires were still burning when the image had been taken, whatever had done the job certainly wasn't either a small nuclear warhead nor a very, very large conventional one.
"We're certain that they were definitely there?" Eidolon looked at another copy of the photo, his eyebrows far up his forehead. "Hell, that's a big hole," he added in a somewhat impressed voice.
"They were tracked to the only road that led through this area, all the Thinkers we have checked with have indicated they were present at the time, and no signs of any of them have been seen or detected since," the woman replied as she dropped the photo in her hand onto the table, then tapped it idly with the fingers of her right hand. "Absent some form of Stranger effect we're unaware of, all the signs are that they were indeed present and indeed eliminated extremely thoroughly."
"Has this hit the news yet?" Rebecca demanded as she looked around the table. "It's obviously a Tinker weapon. We're going to need to work quickly to prevent..."
Doctor Mother raised a hand to interrupt her. "We have no indication of Tinker involvement, Rebecca."
Pointing at the photo in front of the other woman, Alexandria raised her voice, "What else could possibly have done that? We know it wasn't Scion, it certainly wasn't us, and none of the groups I can think of could have done it either. So it has to be either a new Tinker, or a group who came up with something no one has seen before and used it on the S9. The public reaction is going to be..."
She was interrupted again as David, who was still inspecting the image in his hand, interjected, "Very happy? Ecstatic? Confused?"
Paul snickered as the third member of the Triumvirate gave Eidolon a dirty look. She didn't like being interrupted when she was on a rant. "Scared," she snapped. "Because someone just blew a hole you could put a small town into in the middle of nowhere, without any warning. We need to keep control of the story before someone..."
Unable to prevent himself, Paul said, "Throws a party? Looks for whoever it is to give them a reward? The bounty on the various members of the S9 is close to fifty million dollars if you take them all together."
Rebecca glared at him. "That's not the point!" she snapped. "We had..." Stopping herself saying whatever it was she was about to, she took a breath as he looked curiously at her. Once again he thought that she was getting more worked up recently than seemed sensible, about things that really weren't something which required quite so much worry. He found it somewhat strange since on the whole things were going well right now and he personally was finding life quite a lot less stressful than it had been for years, even though he assumed things would sooner or later hit the fan again as they always did. Hell, the sudden tragic demise of a gang of roving horror movie villains should have made her as happy as it would anyone else, but she seemed to almost take it as a personal insult.
Possibly the fact that the next Endbringer attack was now well overdue for reasons unknown was preying on her mind more than usual. It was certainly something he was thinking about, sure that sooner or later all the relaxation of recent weeks would abruptly stop, and why he was taking the opportunity for a little downtime while it presented itself like this. When the hammer did fall they were going to need to be ready and rested. That she was doing the exact opposite was worrying.
Maybe the stress of their knowledge and the task they'd set themselves was finally starting to take a toll that couldn't be masked? It was something that should probably be considered…
"The point is," she went on having visibly and deliberately calmed herself, "that what can only be described as a weapon of mass destruction has been used, regardless of the target. That will make a lot of people, not only in the US, get upset. We need to find out which group did it, how they did it, and how to make sure they are kept under control. What if it's a villainous group? Perhaps this was a test shot, and the next one will be New York, or London, or something we actually care about!"
"You may be jumping just a little ahead of the evidence, Rebecca," he replied after studying her and thinking that stress was definitely starting to become a problem. "We've got no evidence at all yet that this even was a weapon."
"What else could dig a hole that fucking large in the scenery if it wasn't a weapon?" she yelled, waving frantically at the photo on the table. "You think Crawler sneezed or something? Someone did that and I want to know who and how."
Doctor Mother turned to the tablet at her elbow and prodded it for a few seconds while Rebecca glared at Paul, and David and Contessa, who had remained silent so far, exchanged glances and minor shrugs. "The official press release from government sources has just been published," the older woman said into the silence. "About five minutes ago. They're claiming that the US Geological Survey detected a previously unknown fault line that was showing signs of imminent rupture directly under the small town of Gudge, and evacuated the town the previous day. Unfortunately the fault line catastrophically slipped without warning, causing a deep fracture that allowed a large pocket of natural gas to escape under pressure to the surface, where it was ignited by some source in the town, probably an electrical spark. The ensuing blast was sufficient to destroy the entire town."
She flicked the screen, then added, "The inhabitants are being compensated for the loss of their homes and belongings. No injuries or fatalities have been reported."
"No mention of the S9?" David asked, while Rebecca's mouth opened and closed in wordless indignation.
"None," she replied, shaking her head. Putting the tablet down she added, "An excellent and plausible cover story."
"It's bullshit!"
Everyone looked at Rebecca again. She looked back at each of them in turn. "That's total garbage and you all know it! A gas pocket released by an earthquake that destroys a town? It sounds like the plot of a bad movie! It was a weapon, it was deliberate, and it was..."
She trailed off, her expression darkening.
Paul looked at David, who rolled his eyes a little.
"…It was them," she hissed after a few seconds, sounding outraged.
"Them?" Paul asked mildly. "Who is them? I thought we were them."
"No, we're us," David commented, smirking visibly. "They're them."
"Are you sure?" Contessa asked, her eyes glinting with humor.
"If we're us and they're them..." Paul mused, thoughtfully. "I don't know. Maybe some of us are some of them?"
"If even one of us is one of them, it raised the possibility that all of us might be..."
"All of them?" Contessa tilted her head and looked interested.
"SHUT UP YOU IDIOTS!" Rebecca screamed, slamming her hand on the table as she utterly lost her cool. Everyone inspected the new hand-sized hole in the surface.
"Please don't keep breaking the furniture, Rebecca," Doctor Mother chided without raising her voice. "That's the third one in five weeks."
Alexandria ignored her, focusing her attention on Paul and David. "It's DARPA," she said darkly, scowling. "It's got to be. They're doing… something… they won't tell m... I mean us, and it's got to be related. Some super weapon they invented using the Tinker they have, something they militarized and are keeping quiet. I knew they had a Tinker!"
With a faint sigh, Paul pointed out, yet again, "They say it's not Parahuman work, they don't have a Tinker, and all the evidence we have shows this is completely true. As you have been told by all of us, DARPA representatives, the Department of Defense, and everyone else you've been annoying for months. Let it go, Rebecca! We have way too much to do already, don't go looking for other problems we don't need and don't have any reason to get involved in."
"And you believe that the S9 got accidentally and coincidentally exploded by a natural gas pocket no one knew was there because of a fault line no one knew was there in a town that coincidentally got evacuated just in time?" she demanded with heavy sarcasm.
"Well… I admit it's probably not actually the truth, but I can't prove otherwise right now, and is it really worth pushing?" he replied, shaking his head. "I mean, if it was a weapon, they're clearly not wanting to tell anyone, which could well be for any number of perfectly ordinary security reasons. Maybe they only had one. I don't know. The thing is that it doesn't affect us. And if someone is somehow able to build weapons like that, if anything we should be applauding them because they might work on Endbringers!"
Obviously about to say something in return, that last point made her stop and think, he could see it. Even so he could also see from her expression she wasn't convinced. He sighed internally. Why the woman was so insistent on finding out whatever was behind the new technology the US government seemed to be pouring enormous resources into amid more secrecy than he'd ever heard of he had no idea, other than not liking to be told 'go away and stop bothering us.' That seemed a rather petty reason, even for Rebecca, who was a control freak of the highest order admittedly but was usually more subtle about it.
Right now she was acting like a stroppy teenager denied something she wanted, and it was beginning to irritate him.
"We need to find out what's going on," she finally said almost plaintively.
"Why?" he asked mildly.
"I don't like the unexplained," the woman eventually replied. "Because it's usually trouble. And the stakes are too high. Things are going on that have changed the Path, which is unprecedented, and it all ultimately points at Brockton Bay, Gravtec, DARPA, and any number of other things which are clearly related in ways we don't understand."
Paul looked at her for a while, then around at the rest of the people present. Kurt had obviously had the right idea when he'd declined to attend the meeting. Paul was rather wishing he had as well.
"Rebecca, I understand what you mean, but we've checked. Over and over. Nothing we can find from any source or through any method shows any form of Parahuman involvement in anything you mention. Yes, the Path has changed, but we don't know if that's good or not. And we don't actually understand how it works sufficiently well enough to even know what can change it in the first place. We can't force the US government to tell us everything just to satisfy your curiosity or paranoia. The information we have been given is all we're going to get unless they decide to add more to it and keeping on pushing is only going to cause problems for us." He spread his hands in a gesture of conciliation. "We should just keep an eye on it while going on with our existing work. As I've said, over and over to the point I'm frankly getting tired of repeating myself."
She kept her eyes on him for some time, then turned to Contessa, who was watching with the air of detached amusement she'd been wearing for weeks now. "Path to finding out what weapon destroyed the S9," she demanded.
The other woman reached up and lowered her hat slightly, shading her eyes. Paul could almost swear he heard a faint rattle. He most assuredly heard David muffle a very slight snicker. "Cannot predict now," Contessa said calmly.
Rebecca clenched her fists.
"Path to finding out who designed the weapon." She sounded annoyed.
"Outlook not so good."
"You're not taking this seriously!"
"Very doubtful," Contessa replied cheerfully as she got up, slipping something round into her pocket. Tilting her hat at them, she left the room.
Rebecca stared at the closing door, before slumping in her chair. "Why is no one but myself paying any attention to this?" she grumbled.
"Maybe you should take a few days off, have a break," David suggested a little hesitantly. She looked hard at him, making him lean away, then got up, grabbed the photo out of his hands, and also left. Not in nearly as good a mood as Contessa had been in either.
Paul sighed and looked at the two people left. "She's going to cause problems for us if she keeps on like this," he said as he stood. "Can you try to get her to drop it for now?" he requested, turning to Doctor Mother. The older woman shrugged.
"I've tried. She's unusually focused on the whole situation. Rebecca has always been somewhat driven even by our standards."
"Yeah." He shook his head. "Damn it." Leaning over the table he pulled the other photo across and looked down at it. "Gas explosion?" he queried with a small smile.
"Obviously untrue but it's acceptable enough for the public," she replied, also smiling slightly.
"I wonder what really did do it?"
None of them had an answer, so they went about their other business while waiting to see if more information would come to light. Paul at least very pleased with the removal of a group who should have been dealt with years ago, and somewhat puzzled with himself as much as anyone else why this had never happened.
He was going to have to think about that some more.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
When Amy and her sister entered the Dallon household, Aunt Sarah was still there and appeared somewhat peeved although much less likely to wave her arms around than the first time they'd tried. Both she and Carol looked up as the two girls came into the living room, Carol frowning a little and Sarah staring at Amy with an odd look in her eyes.
"You're home," Carol stated flatly. "Finally. Where have you two been?"
"Out," Amy replied equally flatly, in no mood to pretend she wasn't still annoyed about earlier, never mind what had built up until she'd finally had enough.
"Where?"
"Walking around, visiting friends, talking with Vicky," Amy responded as she walked past her adoptive mother and went into the kitchen. Pouring herself a glass of water, she glanced at Vicky who'd followed without a word, then gave her one as well. Both returned to the living room and sat next to each other on the sofa. Sipping her drink, Amy waited to see what happened next.
"Which friends?" Carol queried, still with that little frown.
Amy shrugged. "I don't really feel like telling you," she said, almost enjoying herself. Carol's face darkened and Sarah jumped in, holding up a hand warningly.
"Carol..." she said in a tone that brooked no rejection. Her sister turned to her, then emitted a humph sound and folded her arms, looking out the window at the street. Sarah seemed to hide a sigh before looking at the two girls. "We had a visit earlier," she began.
Amy and Vicky exchanged glances, then both kept listening, neither replying.
"From the FBI," Sarah went on.
Neither girl responded this time either. Vicky sipped her water, her face neutral, while Amy just kept her eyes on her aunt's. She could see a mix of sympathy, irritation, and confusion in them.
"They told us a few things that concern me," the Pelham woman added, when she apparently decided that she wasn't going to get any reply. "Such as you working at the hospital for more than sixty hours a week recently."
Amy shrugged. "I wasn't keeping count but that's probably about right," she finally said.
"Why?" Sarah looked bewildered now. "Why would you put in that much time there, especially when you're also putting in your school hours, and the New Wave things we do sometimes as well? It's far too much for anyone, never mind someone your age."
Both girls looked at each other, Amy feeling very tired suddenly. "Partly because it got me out of here, partly because if I don't she lectures me about responsibility and duty and heroic crap, partly because people expect me to fix them." Sarah's face fell, looking horrified at her dead tone, while Vicky put a comforting hand on her sister's arm and Carol scowled. "All sorts of reasons. And when I finally pretty much get ordered by the hospital administration to go home and have a break, she gets even more upset about it. I can't win no matter what I do, and it finally boiled over today."
Sarah stared at her as she fell silent, then slowly looked around to fix her own sister with one of the darkest looks Amy had ever witnessed from her. Normally her aunt was fairly upbeat, but right now she looked like she wanted to throttle the other woman. Instead, she turned back to Amy and Vicky as Carol kind of leaned away with a somewhat nervous expression, then smiled sadly.
"Why didn't you say anything?" she asked gently.
"What difference would it have made?" Amy replied quietly. "All that would have happened is that Carol would have got even angrier. She even yelled at Vicky when she tried to get her to calm down the last time." She shrugged a bit. "Like I said, I can't really win, and after a certain point you kind of give up and just get on with life."
"I am going to fucking hurt you, Carol," Sarah muttered through her teeth as she looked at her sister again.
Returning to Amy, the older woman rubbed her forehead in a somewhat exhausted manner, then leaned forward. "That stops. It stops here and now. From now on you are only to work at the hospital for a maximum of twenty hours a week, if you even want to. No one is going to make you, you don't have to, it's entirely up to you. And you're going to get paid for it."
With a glance at her sister, Amy wondered if she should mention that she knew this part, and in fact had apparently been paid a fairly frightening amount for previous work. Vicky's head moved a tiny amount as if she knew exactly what Amy was thinking, which she probably did. Her sister wasn't even remotely stupid and was much more perceptive than many people gave her credit for. "That's… good," she replied after a pause. "I think I'd like that."
"And if you want to stop, you can just stop. Take a holiday, find a hobby, just relax and visit friends, whatever you want, Amy," Sarah went on. "It's been brought all to clearly to my attention that we've been taking you for granted and just assuming you would use your abilities like this. We've never really even asked you, or for that matter Vicky, if you want to be part of New Wave. We just assumed that too." She looked upset, as Amy met Vicky's eyes again. Both were rather shocked. Apparently Taylor's little plan had been more effective than either had thought. Amy wondered what on earth the FBI had actually said to the two women.
"Of course they're part of New W..." Carol got that far before she had her sister's hand over her mouth, her eyes widening.
"Not another word, Carol," Sarah hissed. "We are not done talking about this." She released Carol a moment later while the two girls watched in amazement. "All right. This is what we're going to do. Amy, if you want to, you can come and stay with us for a few days, until Carol and I finish… discussing… certain major changes to our approach to a number of things."
Amy looked at her, thinking, then glanced at Vicky. Her sister sighed almost inaudibly and said, "If she's staying with you, so am I, Aunt Sarah," the blonde said. She put her hand on Amy's again. "I'm not leaving Amy alone right now, not after all the shit Mom's put her through."
"Fuck me, Carol, what the hell have you done?" Sarah almost whispered under her breath, but nodded. More loudly she said, "I have no problem with that. The spare room has two beds in it, you can stay there. I'm sure Crystal and Eric will enjoy having you over." Both girls nodded. Amy was both slightly relieved and also worried about what might happen, as well as thinking that finally something might actually change for the better.
Carol was now looking ashamed and defiant at the same time, although the shame seemed to be winning. Sarah turned to her and just inspected her for nearly thirty seconds without a word. Eventually she shook her head. "They were right," she muttered. "I'm going to talk to few people I know, and we're going to look into getting you some professional help before this all goes completely to hell."
The other woman opened her mouth, but Sarah pointed directly at her face from centimeters away. "No. I've let this get way out of hand for far too long. It's at least as much my fault as it is yours, but that's no excuse. We're fixing it, one way or another. So don't start again or I'll..." She seemed to run out of words and just sighed. "Just don't."
Although she clearly wanted to say something, Carol seemed sufficiently cowed by whatever had happened since the two girls left that she finally deflated and seemed to shrink in on herself. Amy was highly confused but grateful that apparently this wasn't going to devolve into the same crap that had pushed her out hours ago. "All right. You two go pack whatever you need for a few days, and head over to my house. I'll join you there later after I've finished here."
Both girls silently got up and left the living room. On the way up the stairs they met their father, who was standing at the top leaning on the banister peering down with a look of resignation on his face. "Hi, Dad," Vicky greeted him.
"Hello, girls," he replied in a low voice. He paused, then looked directly at Amy, saying, "I'm sorry. I should have done something. It's not your fault, believe me. Carol has… issues."
He seemed to think, then added, "Enough to fill a news stand, to be honest," with a little smile that made Amy and Vicky both chuckle, it was so unusual.
"And I know I'm not as helpful as I could be," he went on sadly. "Maybe this will help that too. Worth a shot..."
Amy stepped forward, putting her arms around him. He rather tentatively responded in the same way. "Thanks, Dad," she said into his shoulder. "I hope we can fix this."
"So do I, Amy, so do I," he replied almost silently.
When he released her, Vicky grabbed him and hugged him as well, tears in her eyes. He smiled and stroked her hair. "Look after your sister, Vicky," he said.
"Count on it, Dad," the blonde said. "We'll be back soon."
He looked at both of them, smiled again, then headed down the stairs and disappeared into the living room. They watched, exchanged gazes, and moved to pack a bag each. Half an hour later they were heading for the Pelham house, wondering how the next few days would go.
Taylor had certainly had a rather large effect on her family, Amy thought, but she was grateful. It was about time something did and while unexpected was so much better than it might have gone.
Her friend was definitely capable of some somewhat startling things, she mused as she sat on the edge of her temporary bed and looked out at the setting sun. What would be her next trick?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Hi, Dad," Taylor said as Danny came in the front door, then turned to close it and take his coat off.
"Hello, Taylor," he replied, hanging it up then accepting the mug she handed him gratefully. "Thank you."
"No problem," she smiled, heading into the living room. He followed and sat down across from her, leaning back and looking at the TV, which was on with the sound down showing a news report about some sort of earthquake in Nevada. She glanced at it, shook her head a little, then picked up the remote and turned it off. "How was your day?"
"Things are proceeding very well indeed," he replied, after taking a sip of his coffee. "The big test chamber plans are finished, and we've finalized the location. Construction should start in about a week. By the time we need it, it'll be online."
"Great," she smiled, looking pleased. "That'll come in handy, for sure. Did Brendan like the latest reports?"
"He only shouted a little," Danny grinned. "Either he's getting used to you or you're losing your touch."
"Better bump it up a notch then," she giggled.
"Oh, god, why do I feel incipient doom?" he quipped, shaking his head in mock sadness. She winked at him.
"I'll be good," she promised.
"Will you? Really?"
"Well..."
"As I thought." He drank some more coffee as she laughed again. "How did your talk with your friends go?" he asked when she stopped giggling.
Taylor spun around in the chair and draped her legs over the arm, her head going the other way. He watched and winced slightly, she was much more flexible than he was and that position would make his back ache for days. "Better than I was worried it would," she replied after a few seconds of thought. "They were kind of surprised, which is fair enough, but both of them seemed to accept it. They both signed, Amy first, but Vicky was fine with the whole thing too."
"Think there'll be any problems with their family?"
"I… don't think so," his daughter said, frowning a little. "I mean, I'm sure Amy, and to be honest, Vicky, won't say anything. They listened very carefully to what I told them, they read the NDA and security clearance stuff, and they understood what it meant. And still signed. They're both smart and capable of keeping their mouths shut. But… I'm not sure their mom is going to be sensible if she ever figures out something's going on."
"She does have a certain outlook on life that's a little unhelpful at times," he agreed soberly. "Hopefully the discussion they had with our friends in the FBI will give them enough of a clue to stop things going too far before stronger measures need to be taken."
"I sure hope so," she agreed, closing her eyes and dropping her head so far back he was feeling the twinge in his own neck. "They're my friends and I don't want me to be a reason they have problems. But I don't want their mom to cause either of them any more trouble either."
"Sometimes life is more complicated to handle than anyone can really deal with, Taylor," he said knowingly. "And sometimes it's impossible to win even when you do everything right."
"Yeah, I know, but I don't have to like it," she sighed. Opening her eyes she rolled her head to the side and looked at him. "Hopefully this isn't one of those times."
"Hopefully," he agreed, finishing his coffee. "You did what you could, the next move is theirs. Now, I was thinking that a nice steak would be a good idea tonight. Sound good?"
"I could go for steak," she replied thoughtfully, sitting up again.
"I'll get some out of the freezer and start it thawing, then," he smiled as he stood. "And you can tell me more about how you've ruined computers for everyone."
"Only some computers, Dad," she grinned, hopping to her feet. "And I made better ones."
"So I gather," he chuckled as they went into the kitchen. "Apparently we've got yet another subsidiary company now..."
Soon both of them were discussing future plans, which tended to quickly become much more involved than he'd have expected only a year or two ago.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Putting the small optical signal injector probe down next to her latest and by far the most complex invention yet, Taylor leaned back and stretched, holding the pose for a few seconds before relaxing. It was nearly one AM and she'd finally finished.
Listening to the low background track of very familiar alien voices for a while, she smiled at one comment which was actually really funny in a very deadpan manner. Those guys had a strange sense of humor but it was one that resonated with her. Soon enough she was going to have to get back to thinking about how to talk to them, but she had a more urgent project right now. The one she was looking at.
"Well, it's done and it checks out," she commented, glancing at the little point of silver light that was almost eagerly staring at her. A sensation at the back of her mind of happiness made her smile again. "Yeah, I know. Don't worry, it's more than big enough. You trust me, right?"
She laughed at the response. "That's about it, yeah. OK, let's get this set up and we'll see how things go."
"No, it'll work, I promise!"
"Of course I did. And that too."
"Yeah, we can add more later if you need it, but you won't for a while, believe me."
Taylor grinned, carefully picking up the weirdly shaped, twice head-sized block of very special optronic substrate in both hands. It was the result of a lot of work, a collaboration between her and Admin, and she was looking forward at least as much as her friend was to seeing how well it worked. That it would work neither of them doubted, despite Admin's slight nervousness.
Carrying the chunk of almost violet pseudocrystal over to the special rig she'd put so much effort into, she very gently lowered it into a cradle designed to accept it that had been added to the system next to the main subspace actualizer array. An hour's careful work had it fully interfaced into the system. She ran the final self-tests, both of them monitoring the results with total concentration, until she finally nodded. "It's ready. Subspace extrusion factor is as calculated, self-healing is working, power tap is fully functional. Everything's working perfectly."
Looking at the block, she admired the way parts of it seemed to vanish around a corner that wasn't strictly speaking actually there, no matter which angle you looked at it from. The multidimensional aspects of this unique variant of her optronic processing hardware was heavily inspired by some of Admin's own semi-organic computing system, but implemented properly and efficiently. In other words, engineered rather than haphazardly left to nature to slap together almost randomly.
The end result was going to be fun in lots of different ways…
"OK." She hit a couple of keys, then smiled as the block started glowing a very odd color, a near-infinite number of dimensionless points of light coming and going throughout the entire thing even though technically most of them shouldn't have been visible at all. "Ready when you are."
Taylor put a hand on the block and caressed it, before leaning close to watch.
The pinprick of silver light flickered, as the optronic nodule seemed to somehow unfold in several directions at once, while not actually getting any larger from the point of view of normal three dimensional space. The flickering sped up, while the entire room very gently hummed with energy, the corners darkening strangely. She could feel odd things happening to local space-time.
"Cool," the girl whispered, smiling widely as everything proceeded to plan.
"Taylor? Are you down there invoking forces beyond comprehension again?" her father's voice called from upstairs.
"Nearly done, Dad," she called back.
"Remember it's a school day tomorrow," he replied, sounding tired. "And eldritch energies tend to make me have strange dreams."
"Sorry," she apologized. "Another five minutes, then I'm going to bed."
"See that you do, you need your sleep. And stop upsetting the universe, it's never done anything to deserve it. Good night."
"Night, Dad," she called, smiling happily. "Sleep well."
Hearing him climb the stairs, she kept watching the process until it completed a couple of minutes later. After checking the results, she smiled again, very pleased.
"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" she asked. "And you've got so much more room now."
The reply made her laugh. "Oh, sure, that's the next project. Anyway, I'm going to bed now, OK? You set things up the way you want them and I'll talk again tomorrow. See you, Admin."
The girl got up, patted the not entirely there chunk of optronics fondly, wiggled her fingers through the corona of energy that licked gently at them, then waved as she headed up the stairs. A moment later the lights went out leaving only the glow of lots of status LEDs around the room as well as the illumination that shone from inside her inventions, casting odd shadows around the lab.
Last edited:
YuffieK
(Verified Ninja Princess)
WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN YOU'D TROLL US LIKE THIS!
verycoolname
Not actually cool
I'm not complaining. That was the fun kind of twist.
FictionPack
Monochromatic Ursine
- Location
- Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Contessa is a magic 8 ball.
Rebecca is lucky her power means she can't have a stroke.
Rebecca is lucky her power means she can't have a stroke.
What would someone think if they found that
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This bit keeps getting better. Poor Rebecca, at this rate she's going to blow a gasket in a very public way and it's not going to end well.
