Distance Learning for fun and profit...
- Thread starter mp3.1415player
- Start date
-
- Tags
- worm
10. Top Secret
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
The silence in the dark-paneled room was broken by the sound of pages turning. After a number of such noises half a minute apart, the turner of the pages closed the file and looked around at the others gathered around the oval table, stopping on the one at the far end who was sitting watching her as were the rest of them. His face was set in a practiced and professionally blank non-expression. Behind him on the wall were a number of official decorations while off to the side a US flag dangled from a ceremonial stand.
"The PRT would very much like to meet the Tinker behind these breakthroughs," the woman said in a calm firm voice. "As there is clearly no way that this is not the work of either a very high level Tinker, or a Tinker/Thinker combination, based on our own experts. As such it falls within our jurisdiction and frankly we're… somewhat curious… as to why DARPA has been given oversight."
The man smiled a little, without any humor, while several of the others present stirred slightly. He shook his head. "No, Chief Director, I'm afraid that you do not have the clearance required to learn any more than what's in that folder."
"I have top secret clearance, sir."
"You have top secret clearance, yes. You do not have the correct top secret clearance needed for this project. It is restricted to a very small number of need to know personnel, which does not include anyone associated with the PRT, I'm afraid."
"Secretary Robinson, our remit as you know covers all Parahuman activities in the United States, and the last I checked, Brockton Bay was indeed still in this country." Rebecca Costa-Brown looked hard at the man. He held up a hand as she was about to add to that.
"Correct, but irrelevant. As you can clearly see from the documents, tests were very thoroughly carried out on the relevant people and there is no doubt whatsoever that they are not in any way a Parahuman. Not by your own definition, nor any other accepted one. What they are is gifted with a level of intelligence that comes once in a millennium combined with an imagination and ability to innovate that is quite possibly unique. The combination has already led to some remarkable inventions, a complete upheaval in several fields including physics, and will certainly produce multiple Nobel prizes in due course. And, of course, it has opened a pathway towards a technological revolution that makes the invention of the printing press and steam engine look rather half-hearted."
He smiled a little once more. "The long term ramifications are… beyond easy calculation at this point. But the short term ones are already paying dividends in a big way. At least fifty projects from the last six decades that were shelved due to lack of specific requirements have suddenly become viable, and we expect many more such things to happen. Gravtec and associated groups are vital to the scientific, technological, and military ability of this country, and I don't think I'm being too excessive to say vital to the world as a whole. And the one thing we do not require is interference from outside sources."
The Secretary of Defense leaned forward a little. "Not even one as… reputable… as the Parahuman Response Team. As admirable as your people are, we don't need your specific expertise in this matter as it simply doesn't include Parahuman abilities."
Settling back, he added with a somewhat larger smile, "Should that change in future, of course, we would then read you in on the situation as required. But for now, there's no Parahuman activity for you to involve yourself with, or to distract you and your agency from their own important tasks."
Costa-Brown slapped her hand on the closed folder. "Our people as you put it are certain, even from the limited information you've seen fit to share with us, that these breakthroughs are literally decades, possibly centuries, past any state of the art known. It seems highly implausible that one person, or small group, could advance that far that quickly without any form of Parahuman input," she replied, somewhat annoyed.
"We do know that there are a number of Tinkers who have successfully, and repeatably in most cases, built functional anti gravity systems. We also know that there are at least two Tinkers who can duplicate certain other Tinker technology, and in some cases derive aspects of the underlying principles. Admittedly not to the point that something this complex could be understood, but we feel that with the right combination of Parahuman abilities such a thing is possible."
Shaking her head, she went on, "Much more possible than normal scientists, however talented and intelligent, leapfrogging current understanding in… almost everything… to arrive at theories a century in advance of anyone else. Therefore, the balance of opinion is that it has to involve Parahumans, despite what you're claiming, and as such we need to be involved. For a number of reasons which I won't bother going over yet again."
He indicated the folder with one hand. "You've read that. Everything you are cleared to know is in it, and as I've explained, it clearly shows that Parahuman abilities are not involved. DARPA is very good, you realize, and they were extremely thorough in their tests."
She almost snorted. "This tells me nothing about the actual person, all data has been anonymized, and I've got no idea even how old your alleged genius is. Or even if it's one person or a group."
"I know. That's rather the point." He looked mildly amused.
Both of them stared at each other for a while, no one else interrupting although the small audience seemed interested in what would happen next.
"I find this entire situation both highly irregular and more than a little irritating," Costa-Brown finally commented with something of a glare. "And I'm certain that you're hiding things that we should be involved in."
"I can't help that, Chief Director," the man replied evenly. "You are free to feel that way. The fact remains that by direct order of the President, advised by the Chiefs of Staff, this matter is not something that concerns the PRT and isn't likely to become such, at least in the short term. I've told you all I am allowed to, that'll have to do."
She opened her mouth, but he spoke again before she could get a word in. "Don't push too hard on this, Chief Director. You won't win. And we both know that you have far more work that you can handle even now without involving your agency in things that do not fall under your remit."
Letting out an annoyed albeit faint sigh, she closed her mouth, glared at him, looked around to see everyone else watching her, then shook her head. "This has been singularly unhelpful," she remarked acidly. Standing, she adjusted her clothing, then picked up the folder and looked at it, before dropping it back onto the table. "And I have to say I feel that you're making a mistake."
He shrugged very slightly. "We disagree, and even if that were to be the case, it still wouldn't be relevant to the PRT. Thanks for your time."
Costa-Brown examined him closely, then turned away. Heading towards the door, she commented, "This isn't over, Secretary Robinson." Once the guard had let her out and it had closed behind her, the Secretary rubbed his brow in a tired manner.
"I really hope it is, Chief Director," he muttered. "It's getting ridiculous."
"You realize that the PRT is going to look for other ways to get more information," one of the high ranking military men at the table said seriously. Robinson glanced at him and nodded with an expression of weariness.
"Probably. They've had their own way for far too long and think they can do pretty much anything they want," he sighed. "We should have done something about that years ago, but..."
"They're really not going to like some of the things that come out of The Project," someone else, this one an elderly but very fit looking gray-haired woman, said with a small smirk.
"No, I suspect they won't," Robinson agreed, now looking mildly amused for a moment. "Time will tell how that works out." He looked back at the first man. "Anything to worry about from Gravtec, or relating to the Prime Asset?"
"No, at the moment things are going fairly smoothly," the four star general replied. "Kaiser has been warned off, and appears to have taken the warning in the way it was intended. We've got most of the required assets in place to deal with any of the other local threats and suitable interventions are being designed for the more serious ones. The PRT ENE is more than happy to stay well out of things, despite what the Chief Director might wish. Director Piggot is not a fan of hers, and is well aware that she's got more than enough on her plate as it is without actively looking for new problems. The Prime Asset has settled well into new schooling and appears to be making friends. Interestingly two of the New Wave people are among those."
Robinson raised an eyebrow. "Really? Hmm. Is that likely to be a problem?"
"Not at the moment. So far they mostly seem to be in contact at school. It's possible that at some point it may be necessary to take steps if the Prime Asset desires further outside contact, but we've run background checks on all her associates and related personnel and nothing has been flagged as particularly worrisome at this point. We can contain most scenarios with the assets in place even now, and within a month or so we'll have everything in place to deal with virtually any problem one way or the other."
"I see. Excellent, please continue the good work. If all this continues to produce results like we've already seen, it could well solve a vast number of our current problems in ways we never even considered possible."
"The international fallout of even the gravity technology is going to be… significant," someone else pointed out. "And it's inevitable that it'll get out sooner or later. There are already a lot of rumors and chatter concerning the events in Brockton Bay as it is. No matter what we do we can't contain knowledge of the technology indefinitely."
"Agreed, but that was never the plan to begin with," Robinson replied. "We need to make sure we have a significant lead and keep it, though. And to ensure that our allies are kept happy. But that's not your job, we've got other people handling that side of it. You keep the Prime Asset safe along with everyone else involved with The Project, no matter what it takes." He picked up his pen and the small notebook he'd jotted a few things in during the last meeting, putting them into his inside jacket pocket, then stood. "Budget is literally irrelevant. If you can avoid going to war with China that would be ideal, and if you can't at least try to give me enough notice to let the President know before the shooting starts." He smiled grimly as they chuckled, then left the room, the others following in ones and twos.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"All generators online at nominal output."
"Field geometry configuration set?"
"Yes, the program is running. No errors shown."
Taylor nodded, pleased, checked the graphs on her console, then looked to the side at the monitor showing the view from a number of cameras in the test area. "Blast shields in place," she said into the microphone in front of her, "Area clear of all personnel. Load test article one."
There was a burst of activity from around the room, several other people working on their own stations. Off to one side her father, Angus, and Brendan watched the larger screen that was mounted on the wall.
"Test article loaded."
"Set acceleration field to ten percent."
"Acceleration set."
"Confirm field geometry stable?"
"Confirmed."
"Interlocks disabled. Recorders…" She double checked her instruments, as did a couple of the others. "...active. Firing in three… two… one!"
She pressed the pair of buttons on the console in front of her, both of them with protective covers flipped up out of the way, one forefinger on each. The immediate result was a resounding bang that made the entire control room vibrate gently.
"Shot complete. Download and correlate all data, reset for test two." Even as she let go of the mic button she was watching the graphs change on half a dozen screens, nodding to herself. A hand on her shoulder made her look up and to the side to see her father smiling at her.
"That was quite loud," he commented. She grinned.
"Yeah, cool sound, wasn't it?"
Pointing at one graph, as Brendan and Angus came over and stood behind her, watching with interest, she said, "The projectile left the accelerator at nine hundred and forty meters per second, then impacted on the shear field two milliseconds later. The power shunt worked as designed, there was almost no residual kinetic energy left. Most of the noise was the sonic boom."
"Very impressive indeed, Taylor," Doctor Calhoun said with a smile of his own. "Another of your ideas appears to be valid."
"The full scale rail gun would be interesting to try but I'm pretty sure the result will be the same," she replied as she leaned forward, pushing her glasses up her nose and examining the results. "And like I said, it's an inefficient way to make something go really quickly anyway."
"It's still something we would like to finish, which your superconductor should allow," he pointed out. "The first batch of the new material does match your predicted properties but the yield is still very low. The chemical engineering team is convinced they can optimize that with another couple of months of work though."
"Rail erosion is going to be the big problem," she said absently, working out some multidimensional equations in her head then typing the results into a number of fields in the control software as she did. "I've got a few ideas on how to fix that but I'll have to think about it some more..."
The three men exchanged glances, then Danny patted her shoulder with a fond look.
"You are a terrifying young lady," Angus commented quietly with a look of amusement. She glanced up at him, grinned quickly, then went back to her work. A minute later she pulled the microphone closer and prodded the talk switch. "I've tweaked the field geometry which should reduce post-impact instability by eleven point one four three percent, approximately. We'll finish processing the data from the first shot, ETA..." Taylor checked the progress of the computer for a moment. "…five minutes, before the second test. Area remains hazardous until further notice."
Releasing the button she leaned back, pulled a can of soda out of the under-desk build in fridge, and popped it open, then picked up a pen as she took a sip. "Until then I'll work on my Spanish homework," she said more casually, flipping a textbook open with the end of the pen. Her father chuckled, shaking his head, then he and the others went off to Angus's office to discuss business.
Behind them, Taylor put the can down and started writing, humming a tune she'd heard on the radio under her breath. All around her a dozen or so technicians and scientists did their jobs competently and well.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Stomping into her office, Rebecca slammed the door hard enough to make one of the pictures on the wall slip to a strange angle, then stood in the middle of the room clenching her fists. "I really do not like that man," she growled. "Politics..."
Shaking her head she got her momentary lapse of calm under control, then moved to adjust the picture until it was straight. Satisfied, she sat behind her desk and stared at the scene, one of a rather beautiful sunset over a world that was almost uninhabited by humans, until she felt able to think sensibly about everything.
It was immensely frustrating dealing with people like Secretary Robinson for a number of reasons. Not least was that she didn't like feeling that people knew things she didn't, which was clearly true in this case. Especially people like him.
And there were a lot of things about this whole situation which were puzzling, worrying, and annoying. Not to mention had implications that went far beyond anything the Secretary was aware of. He only had to deal with one country on one world, she had to deal with everyone everywhere. Which was made more difficult by people who kept vital information from her.
Something very strange was going on in Brockton Bay, she was certain of that. And it was having effects, somehow, that stretched far beyond that benighted city. Those effects were… problematic.
She didn't like problematic effects. There were far too many other things going on to have someone throw a monkey wrench into the mix, accidentally or more worryingly on purpose. Especially on purpose.
Sitting there, she thought hard for a while. Even her own abilities hadn't really shown her anything useful during this most recent meeting, or any of the others she'd attended in the last few months while trying to pry information from the hands of a Pentagon that seemed to have become virtually impossible to penetrate. All she got for the most part was that they were taking security more seriously than in war time, and being very effective at it too. There was evidence that the small number of people who knew the details of what was going on were very excited, but at the same time they were going to extreme effort to avoid anyone else finding out anything. Much more successfully than seemed plausible. It was likely that more than one Thinker was helping them with that but she wasn't sure who was involved, aside from it almost certainly not being anyone connected to the PRT or Protectorate.
Which was also annoying.
The out of nowhere breakthroughs in physics and a few related fields that had resulted in apparently entirely repeatable and predictable gravity control were so far past anything current theories allowed for that she couldn't see any way they could not be the result of Parahuman work. It seemed very likely that someone, somehow, had managed to reverse engineer a Tinker design, or less likely had triggered as a Tinker who could actually explain their invention. Either case created a whole series of possible benefits for Cauldron's work, but only if she could find out what they were.
There was also the not so minor problem that somehow this whole situation was causing Contessa of all people trouble with her Path. The woman was completely confused by this, and had found no way so far to compensate for it. That again suggested a powerful Tinker/Thinker was at work, as virtually nothing other than Zion himself, the Endbringers, or Eidolon was capable of blocking her ability.
It was worrying, and created an ever growing number of questions to which she had no answers.
Had someone figured out a method to block precognition efficiently enough to interfere with the most powerful such ability known?
Was it, possibly, somehow related to the Endbringers? That was a terrifying thought…
How did all these things tie together? What was behind it?
Shaking her head Rebecca sighed. She couldn't think of any way to find out the answers without more information, and acquiring that information would either need a lot of careful work, or some rather direct actions that would be hard to conceal well enough to avoid repercussions she didn't really want to have to deal with.
Emily Piggot had given her nothing useful, and was less and less pleasant each time she tried. Not to mention as uncooperative as she could possibly arrange without quite crossing the line into insubordination. None of her usual sources could tell her anything either, no matter what angle she tried. And none of the others seemed any more successful in finding out the truth.
Brockton Bay had become a complete information black hole, which implied someone was putting a vast amount of effort into arranging this. And most likely had some Parahuman talent she herself would very much like to acquire.
"Damn it," she muttered, tapping one finger on the desk irritably. Going there herself probably wouldn't achieve anything if dozens of video calls hadn't done so. Sending someone else to see if they could lever some useful information out of anyone in the city was a possibility, although a low probability one, admittedly. It would need to be someone who could deal with people in a manner that gained their trust and didn't raise flags. Someone persuasive and calm.
So not David.
Eventually she sighed, then got up and called for a portal to Paul's office, walking through it as soon as it appeared.
Hopefully Legend could dig up something helpful without making waves.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Carefully soldering the last fine wire onto the PCB, Taylor peered through the microscope and checked that everything was in order and there were no shorts or dry joints. Finally satisfied, she put the tiny soldering iron back in the stand and stretched, leaning back from her workbench.
Drinking some water, she pushed the microscope head to the side to get it out of the way, then studied the small multilayer PCB sitting on the clamps on the bench. It was only a couple of centimeters on a side, and was the result of several evenings of careful work. Putting the glass down and picking up her notebook, the one entitled 'Tinker Hardware Investigations Volume 1: Squealer' she flipped it open and perused her own neat writing for a little while, making completely sure that she hadn't missed anything.
Of course if she had it would be extremely annoying as she'd have to scrap hours of work, but after she'd reached the end of the section covering this particular design, she was happy it was all in order. Closing the book she dropped it on the bench to one side, then leaned over and retrieved the large printout of the schematic for the device in front of her. Unrolling it she shuffled the chair sideways to a clear spot on the bench, put it down and weighted the corners with random tools, then bent over it once more.
"OK," she mumbled, her voice barely audible over the background audio track from the alien tutors which she paid no conscious attention to, although if she did she could make out a few words here and there. "Dimensional recirculator is good. Quantum selection circuit should be fine, and a hell of a lot more efficient than that garbage she came up with. And my version of a phase space interactor will actually interact with phase space without bursting into flames. How difficult is that? Piece of junk Tinker crap..."
Shaking her head, she circled a couple of minor nomenclature errors on the circuit diagram and noted beside them the corrections needed, not finding anything that would actually cause any issues. Quickly scribbling down an idea she had of making the whole design a little more efficient for version two as it came to her, she nodded in satisfaction.
"Great. Everything checks out. Lets see if it works properly."
Moving back to directly in front of the circuit, she connected the short control and power pigtail to the relevant port on her computer, and the three different bench power supplies she was using for this first test. Carefully setting all the voltages and current limits to the right levels, she turned them on, then hit the control to apply power to the circuit.
Several displays changed quickly, settling down to the predicted and correct values. She glanced at the display at her elbow which was showing an image from the thermal camera mounted above the board, watching as it displayed the heat from various tiny components coming to life. A faint whine came and went as the main phase space converter ran through resonance into stable operation.
"Huh. Not bad at all," she said to herself with a nod. "Running a little warm but I can fix that..." She made a delicate adjustment with a very small tool to the innards of the board, watching the thermal display, which showed one of the primary drive circuits cool slightly. "Better. Good, that's working to spec. So all I need to do now is flash the firmware and we're ready to see what happens." Smiling a little, she prodded the keyboard a few times, moved the mouse, and clicked on an icon. Typing a filename into the correct field she waited for the program to compile the source code, then clicked the next icon. A progress bar zipped across the screen for a couple of seconds then the computer chimed success.
"Done. So all I do is reset it, and..."
She prodded a pair of contacts that were on one edge of the board with a small pair of tweezers, then blinked.
"Huh."
Cautiously feeling the bench, she moved her hands around until she could feel the main power switch, and poked it. The odd visual distortion effect that had just happened, happened again, and she could suddenly see her bench once more.
"Shit, that worked better than I thought it would," she grinned, feeling very pleased. A large part of the middle of the bench had abruptly vanished from sight, leaving only an image of the back wall of the basement and the floor. "Got the field size a little wrong though..."
It took a few more tests and some careful fiddling but in the end she got it doing what she wanted it to. Highly satisfied she disconnected the board having recorded all the power draw values, then dug around for another surplus industrial cellphone in her drawer. Pulling out a suitable candidate she spent half an hour gutting the battery compartment, installing her new board, and adding a somewhat smaller battery. When it was all closed up and the control software loaded, she picked it up and moved to the center of the room. Standing in front of the camera she'd aimed at that point, Taylor made sure she could see the image from it on one of the monitors, then raised the phone and ran the app. Adjusting the parameters to the right values, she prodded the start icon and watched with amusement as her image promptly disappeared from the screen.
All that was left was an apparently empty room.
"Cool as shit," she giggled to herself. She tapped the icon once more. "Now you see me..." Another tap. "Now you don't. Brilliant, it works even better than I thought it would."
Having played with it for a while, she turned the cloaking device off and went back to her chair. Putting it down she swung the chair from side to side thinking while looking at the thing.
Eventually she put it to one side to charge and turned to her computer. That was a successful project, but she still had the other widgets to redesign properly.
It was turning out to be a lot of fun, figuring out how a Tinker had screwed up a perfectly sensible design and fixing it. She was learning some interesting things in the process, and was wondering whether she could lay hands on more Tinker Tech...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The portal closed behind him as Legend flew towards Brockton Bay from well past the low level radar detection range. Moving fairly slowly so he had time to think how he was going to approach this problem, he aimed towards the PRT building. Director Piggot was probably going to be difficult, she pretty much always was, but with luck he'd be able to find out a few things that he agreed with Rebecca appeared to be somewhat strange. He wasn't as convinced as she appeared to be it was something urgent, but it was odd, definitely. That much had been apparent ever since that ship had gently floated up the bay like it weighed nothing, a feat that had made the news immediately and caused him to gape in shock.
He'd been wondering ever since how it had been done and who did it. On the other hand, it was Brockton Bay, and weird shit was pretty much par for the course in this place. He was well aware of that, as was anyone who paid more than cursory attention to the most Parahuman-infested city on a per capita basis possibly anywhere.
It was his job to keep an eye on such places, after all, even if only casually. And it wasn't all that far from New York.
Probably, thinking about it, not far enough…
Smiling a little to himself at the thought, he flew onwards while rehearsing in his head what he'd tell Director Piggot about this unexpected visit from one of the Triumvirate. She was going to be sarcastic, he was pretty sure of that, but hopefully would also be reasonably cooperative. Or at worst not actively hostile.
He'd soon find out anyway.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
An alert beeped causing Taylor to look up from watching the latest Alien Teaching TV episode, then hit the pause key. Getting up she walked over to her latest subspace interference detection system, which she'd extended and rebuilt several times, now having more range and lot more discrimination. She studied the display with interest. A map of the city, extending out to nearly forty miles past the boundary and well into both the sea and the rest of the state, was centered on her house, and showed lots of little icons, many of which were moving around. Various colors denoted a number of things she'd worked out.
And there was a new one heading directly towards the center of the city from a location some distance off the shore. She watched as it moved closer, then eventually stopped near the bay in a location that matched the PRT building. Clicking on it with the mouse she typed a few words into the field that opened up and saved the result, then ran another program to look at the log.
"That's… really interesting," she mumbled, examining the odd subspace interference surrounding the location the new icon had suddenly appeared at. "Really interesting indeed."
After a moment, she switched back to the main display then went back to her main computer and brought up a couple of programs she'd written to analyze the logs from the detector in different ways. Shortly she was deeply involved in thinking with portals.
"There's science to be done..." she almost sang under her breath, thoroughly enjoying herself.
"The PRT would very much like to meet the Tinker behind these breakthroughs," the woman said in a calm firm voice. "As there is clearly no way that this is not the work of either a very high level Tinker, or a Tinker/Thinker combination, based on our own experts. As such it falls within our jurisdiction and frankly we're… somewhat curious… as to why DARPA has been given oversight."
The man smiled a little, without any humor, while several of the others present stirred slightly. He shook his head. "No, Chief Director, I'm afraid that you do not have the clearance required to learn any more than what's in that folder."
"I have top secret clearance, sir."
"You have top secret clearance, yes. You do not have the correct top secret clearance needed for this project. It is restricted to a very small number of need to know personnel, which does not include anyone associated with the PRT, I'm afraid."
"Secretary Robinson, our remit as you know covers all Parahuman activities in the United States, and the last I checked, Brockton Bay was indeed still in this country." Rebecca Costa-Brown looked hard at the man. He held up a hand as she was about to add to that.
"Correct, but irrelevant. As you can clearly see from the documents, tests were very thoroughly carried out on the relevant people and there is no doubt whatsoever that they are not in any way a Parahuman. Not by your own definition, nor any other accepted one. What they are is gifted with a level of intelligence that comes once in a millennium combined with an imagination and ability to innovate that is quite possibly unique. The combination has already led to some remarkable inventions, a complete upheaval in several fields including physics, and will certainly produce multiple Nobel prizes in due course. And, of course, it has opened a pathway towards a technological revolution that makes the invention of the printing press and steam engine look rather half-hearted."
He smiled a little once more. "The long term ramifications are… beyond easy calculation at this point. But the short term ones are already paying dividends in a big way. At least fifty projects from the last six decades that were shelved due to lack of specific requirements have suddenly become viable, and we expect many more such things to happen. Gravtec and associated groups are vital to the scientific, technological, and military ability of this country, and I don't think I'm being too excessive to say vital to the world as a whole. And the one thing we do not require is interference from outside sources."
The Secretary of Defense leaned forward a little. "Not even one as… reputable… as the Parahuman Response Team. As admirable as your people are, we don't need your specific expertise in this matter as it simply doesn't include Parahuman abilities."
Settling back, he added with a somewhat larger smile, "Should that change in future, of course, we would then read you in on the situation as required. But for now, there's no Parahuman activity for you to involve yourself with, or to distract you and your agency from their own important tasks."
Costa-Brown slapped her hand on the closed folder. "Our people as you put it are certain, even from the limited information you've seen fit to share with us, that these breakthroughs are literally decades, possibly centuries, past any state of the art known. It seems highly implausible that one person, or small group, could advance that far that quickly without any form of Parahuman input," she replied, somewhat annoyed.
"We do know that there are a number of Tinkers who have successfully, and repeatably in most cases, built functional anti gravity systems. We also know that there are at least two Tinkers who can duplicate certain other Tinker technology, and in some cases derive aspects of the underlying principles. Admittedly not to the point that something this complex could be understood, but we feel that with the right combination of Parahuman abilities such a thing is possible."
Shaking her head, she went on, "Much more possible than normal scientists, however talented and intelligent, leapfrogging current understanding in… almost everything… to arrive at theories a century in advance of anyone else. Therefore, the balance of opinion is that it has to involve Parahumans, despite what you're claiming, and as such we need to be involved. For a number of reasons which I won't bother going over yet again."
He indicated the folder with one hand. "You've read that. Everything you are cleared to know is in it, and as I've explained, it clearly shows that Parahuman abilities are not involved. DARPA is very good, you realize, and they were extremely thorough in their tests."
She almost snorted. "This tells me nothing about the actual person, all data has been anonymized, and I've got no idea even how old your alleged genius is. Or even if it's one person or a group."
"I know. That's rather the point." He looked mildly amused.
Both of them stared at each other for a while, no one else interrupting although the small audience seemed interested in what would happen next.
"I find this entire situation both highly irregular and more than a little irritating," Costa-Brown finally commented with something of a glare. "And I'm certain that you're hiding things that we should be involved in."
"I can't help that, Chief Director," the man replied evenly. "You are free to feel that way. The fact remains that by direct order of the President, advised by the Chiefs of Staff, this matter is not something that concerns the PRT and isn't likely to become such, at least in the short term. I've told you all I am allowed to, that'll have to do."
She opened her mouth, but he spoke again before she could get a word in. "Don't push too hard on this, Chief Director. You won't win. And we both know that you have far more work that you can handle even now without involving your agency in things that do not fall under your remit."
Letting out an annoyed albeit faint sigh, she closed her mouth, glared at him, looked around to see everyone else watching her, then shook her head. "This has been singularly unhelpful," she remarked acidly. Standing, she adjusted her clothing, then picked up the folder and looked at it, before dropping it back onto the table. "And I have to say I feel that you're making a mistake."
He shrugged very slightly. "We disagree, and even if that were to be the case, it still wouldn't be relevant to the PRT. Thanks for your time."
Costa-Brown examined him closely, then turned away. Heading towards the door, she commented, "This isn't over, Secretary Robinson." Once the guard had let her out and it had closed behind her, the Secretary rubbed his brow in a tired manner.
"I really hope it is, Chief Director," he muttered. "It's getting ridiculous."
"You realize that the PRT is going to look for other ways to get more information," one of the high ranking military men at the table said seriously. Robinson glanced at him and nodded with an expression of weariness.
"Probably. They've had their own way for far too long and think they can do pretty much anything they want," he sighed. "We should have done something about that years ago, but..."
"They're really not going to like some of the things that come out of The Project," someone else, this one an elderly but very fit looking gray-haired woman, said with a small smirk.
"No, I suspect they won't," Robinson agreed, now looking mildly amused for a moment. "Time will tell how that works out." He looked back at the first man. "Anything to worry about from Gravtec, or relating to the Prime Asset?"
"No, at the moment things are going fairly smoothly," the four star general replied. "Kaiser has been warned off, and appears to have taken the warning in the way it was intended. We've got most of the required assets in place to deal with any of the other local threats and suitable interventions are being designed for the more serious ones. The PRT ENE is more than happy to stay well out of things, despite what the Chief Director might wish. Director Piggot is not a fan of hers, and is well aware that she's got more than enough on her plate as it is without actively looking for new problems. The Prime Asset has settled well into new schooling and appears to be making friends. Interestingly two of the New Wave people are among those."
Robinson raised an eyebrow. "Really? Hmm. Is that likely to be a problem?"
"Not at the moment. So far they mostly seem to be in contact at school. It's possible that at some point it may be necessary to take steps if the Prime Asset desires further outside contact, but we've run background checks on all her associates and related personnel and nothing has been flagged as particularly worrisome at this point. We can contain most scenarios with the assets in place even now, and within a month or so we'll have everything in place to deal with virtually any problem one way or the other."
"I see. Excellent, please continue the good work. If all this continues to produce results like we've already seen, it could well solve a vast number of our current problems in ways we never even considered possible."
"The international fallout of even the gravity technology is going to be… significant," someone else pointed out. "And it's inevitable that it'll get out sooner or later. There are already a lot of rumors and chatter concerning the events in Brockton Bay as it is. No matter what we do we can't contain knowledge of the technology indefinitely."
"Agreed, but that was never the plan to begin with," Robinson replied. "We need to make sure we have a significant lead and keep it, though. And to ensure that our allies are kept happy. But that's not your job, we've got other people handling that side of it. You keep the Prime Asset safe along with everyone else involved with The Project, no matter what it takes." He picked up his pen and the small notebook he'd jotted a few things in during the last meeting, putting them into his inside jacket pocket, then stood. "Budget is literally irrelevant. If you can avoid going to war with China that would be ideal, and if you can't at least try to give me enough notice to let the President know before the shooting starts." He smiled grimly as they chuckled, then left the room, the others following in ones and twos.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"All generators online at nominal output."
"Field geometry configuration set?"
"Yes, the program is running. No errors shown."
Taylor nodded, pleased, checked the graphs on her console, then looked to the side at the monitor showing the view from a number of cameras in the test area. "Blast shields in place," she said into the microphone in front of her, "Area clear of all personnel. Load test article one."
There was a burst of activity from around the room, several other people working on their own stations. Off to one side her father, Angus, and Brendan watched the larger screen that was mounted on the wall.
"Test article loaded."
"Set acceleration field to ten percent."
"Acceleration set."
"Confirm field geometry stable?"
"Confirmed."
"Interlocks disabled. Recorders…" She double checked her instruments, as did a couple of the others. "...active. Firing in three… two… one!"
She pressed the pair of buttons on the console in front of her, both of them with protective covers flipped up out of the way, one forefinger on each. The immediate result was a resounding bang that made the entire control room vibrate gently.
"Shot complete. Download and correlate all data, reset for test two." Even as she let go of the mic button she was watching the graphs change on half a dozen screens, nodding to herself. A hand on her shoulder made her look up and to the side to see her father smiling at her.
"That was quite loud," he commented. She grinned.
"Yeah, cool sound, wasn't it?"
Pointing at one graph, as Brendan and Angus came over and stood behind her, watching with interest, she said, "The projectile left the accelerator at nine hundred and forty meters per second, then impacted on the shear field two milliseconds later. The power shunt worked as designed, there was almost no residual kinetic energy left. Most of the noise was the sonic boom."
"Very impressive indeed, Taylor," Doctor Calhoun said with a smile of his own. "Another of your ideas appears to be valid."
"The full scale rail gun would be interesting to try but I'm pretty sure the result will be the same," she replied as she leaned forward, pushing her glasses up her nose and examining the results. "And like I said, it's an inefficient way to make something go really quickly anyway."
"It's still something we would like to finish, which your superconductor should allow," he pointed out. "The first batch of the new material does match your predicted properties but the yield is still very low. The chemical engineering team is convinced they can optimize that with another couple of months of work though."
"Rail erosion is going to be the big problem," she said absently, working out some multidimensional equations in her head then typing the results into a number of fields in the control software as she did. "I've got a few ideas on how to fix that but I'll have to think about it some more..."
The three men exchanged glances, then Danny patted her shoulder with a fond look.
"You are a terrifying young lady," Angus commented quietly with a look of amusement. She glanced up at him, grinned quickly, then went back to her work. A minute later she pulled the microphone closer and prodded the talk switch. "I've tweaked the field geometry which should reduce post-impact instability by eleven point one four three percent, approximately. We'll finish processing the data from the first shot, ETA..." Taylor checked the progress of the computer for a moment. "…five minutes, before the second test. Area remains hazardous until further notice."
Releasing the button she leaned back, pulled a can of soda out of the under-desk build in fridge, and popped it open, then picked up a pen as she took a sip. "Until then I'll work on my Spanish homework," she said more casually, flipping a textbook open with the end of the pen. Her father chuckled, shaking his head, then he and the others went off to Angus's office to discuss business.
Behind them, Taylor put the can down and started writing, humming a tune she'd heard on the radio under her breath. All around her a dozen or so technicians and scientists did their jobs competently and well.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Stomping into her office, Rebecca slammed the door hard enough to make one of the pictures on the wall slip to a strange angle, then stood in the middle of the room clenching her fists. "I really do not like that man," she growled. "Politics..."
Shaking her head she got her momentary lapse of calm under control, then moved to adjust the picture until it was straight. Satisfied, she sat behind her desk and stared at the scene, one of a rather beautiful sunset over a world that was almost uninhabited by humans, until she felt able to think sensibly about everything.
It was immensely frustrating dealing with people like Secretary Robinson for a number of reasons. Not least was that she didn't like feeling that people knew things she didn't, which was clearly true in this case. Especially people like him.
And there were a lot of things about this whole situation which were puzzling, worrying, and annoying. Not to mention had implications that went far beyond anything the Secretary was aware of. He only had to deal with one country on one world, she had to deal with everyone everywhere. Which was made more difficult by people who kept vital information from her.
Something very strange was going on in Brockton Bay, she was certain of that. And it was having effects, somehow, that stretched far beyond that benighted city. Those effects were… problematic.
She didn't like problematic effects. There were far too many other things going on to have someone throw a monkey wrench into the mix, accidentally or more worryingly on purpose. Especially on purpose.
Sitting there, she thought hard for a while. Even her own abilities hadn't really shown her anything useful during this most recent meeting, or any of the others she'd attended in the last few months while trying to pry information from the hands of a Pentagon that seemed to have become virtually impossible to penetrate. All she got for the most part was that they were taking security more seriously than in war time, and being very effective at it too. There was evidence that the small number of people who knew the details of what was going on were very excited, but at the same time they were going to extreme effort to avoid anyone else finding out anything. Much more successfully than seemed plausible. It was likely that more than one Thinker was helping them with that but she wasn't sure who was involved, aside from it almost certainly not being anyone connected to the PRT or Protectorate.
Which was also annoying.
The out of nowhere breakthroughs in physics and a few related fields that had resulted in apparently entirely repeatable and predictable gravity control were so far past anything current theories allowed for that she couldn't see any way they could not be the result of Parahuman work. It seemed very likely that someone, somehow, had managed to reverse engineer a Tinker design, or less likely had triggered as a Tinker who could actually explain their invention. Either case created a whole series of possible benefits for Cauldron's work, but only if she could find out what they were.
There was also the not so minor problem that somehow this whole situation was causing Contessa of all people trouble with her Path. The woman was completely confused by this, and had found no way so far to compensate for it. That again suggested a powerful Tinker/Thinker was at work, as virtually nothing other than Zion himself, the Endbringers, or Eidolon was capable of blocking her ability.
It was worrying, and created an ever growing number of questions to which she had no answers.
Had someone figured out a method to block precognition efficiently enough to interfere with the most powerful such ability known?
Was it, possibly, somehow related to the Endbringers? That was a terrifying thought…
How did all these things tie together? What was behind it?
Shaking her head Rebecca sighed. She couldn't think of any way to find out the answers without more information, and acquiring that information would either need a lot of careful work, or some rather direct actions that would be hard to conceal well enough to avoid repercussions she didn't really want to have to deal with.
Emily Piggot had given her nothing useful, and was less and less pleasant each time she tried. Not to mention as uncooperative as she could possibly arrange without quite crossing the line into insubordination. None of her usual sources could tell her anything either, no matter what angle she tried. And none of the others seemed any more successful in finding out the truth.
Brockton Bay had become a complete information black hole, which implied someone was putting a vast amount of effort into arranging this. And most likely had some Parahuman talent she herself would very much like to acquire.
"Damn it," she muttered, tapping one finger on the desk irritably. Going there herself probably wouldn't achieve anything if dozens of video calls hadn't done so. Sending someone else to see if they could lever some useful information out of anyone in the city was a possibility, although a low probability one, admittedly. It would need to be someone who could deal with people in a manner that gained their trust and didn't raise flags. Someone persuasive and calm.
So not David.
Eventually she sighed, then got up and called for a portal to Paul's office, walking through it as soon as it appeared.
Hopefully Legend could dig up something helpful without making waves.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Carefully soldering the last fine wire onto the PCB, Taylor peered through the microscope and checked that everything was in order and there were no shorts or dry joints. Finally satisfied, she put the tiny soldering iron back in the stand and stretched, leaning back from her workbench.
Drinking some water, she pushed the microscope head to the side to get it out of the way, then studied the small multilayer PCB sitting on the clamps on the bench. It was only a couple of centimeters on a side, and was the result of several evenings of careful work. Putting the glass down and picking up her notebook, the one entitled 'Tinker Hardware Investigations Volume 1: Squealer' she flipped it open and perused her own neat writing for a little while, making completely sure that she hadn't missed anything.
Of course if she had it would be extremely annoying as she'd have to scrap hours of work, but after she'd reached the end of the section covering this particular design, she was happy it was all in order. Closing the book she dropped it on the bench to one side, then leaned over and retrieved the large printout of the schematic for the device in front of her. Unrolling it she shuffled the chair sideways to a clear spot on the bench, put it down and weighted the corners with random tools, then bent over it once more.
"OK," she mumbled, her voice barely audible over the background audio track from the alien tutors which she paid no conscious attention to, although if she did she could make out a few words here and there. "Dimensional recirculator is good. Quantum selection circuit should be fine, and a hell of a lot more efficient than that garbage she came up with. And my version of a phase space interactor will actually interact with phase space without bursting into flames. How difficult is that? Piece of junk Tinker crap..."
Shaking her head, she circled a couple of minor nomenclature errors on the circuit diagram and noted beside them the corrections needed, not finding anything that would actually cause any issues. Quickly scribbling down an idea she had of making the whole design a little more efficient for version two as it came to her, she nodded in satisfaction.
"Great. Everything checks out. Lets see if it works properly."
Moving back to directly in front of the circuit, she connected the short control and power pigtail to the relevant port on her computer, and the three different bench power supplies she was using for this first test. Carefully setting all the voltages and current limits to the right levels, she turned them on, then hit the control to apply power to the circuit.
Several displays changed quickly, settling down to the predicted and correct values. She glanced at the display at her elbow which was showing an image from the thermal camera mounted above the board, watching as it displayed the heat from various tiny components coming to life. A faint whine came and went as the main phase space converter ran through resonance into stable operation.
"Huh. Not bad at all," she said to herself with a nod. "Running a little warm but I can fix that..." She made a delicate adjustment with a very small tool to the innards of the board, watching the thermal display, which showed one of the primary drive circuits cool slightly. "Better. Good, that's working to spec. So all I need to do now is flash the firmware and we're ready to see what happens." Smiling a little, she prodded the keyboard a few times, moved the mouse, and clicked on an icon. Typing a filename into the correct field she waited for the program to compile the source code, then clicked the next icon. A progress bar zipped across the screen for a couple of seconds then the computer chimed success.
"Done. So all I do is reset it, and..."
She prodded a pair of contacts that were on one edge of the board with a small pair of tweezers, then blinked.
"Huh."
Cautiously feeling the bench, she moved her hands around until she could feel the main power switch, and poked it. The odd visual distortion effect that had just happened, happened again, and she could suddenly see her bench once more.
"Shit, that worked better than I thought it would," she grinned, feeling very pleased. A large part of the middle of the bench had abruptly vanished from sight, leaving only an image of the back wall of the basement and the floor. "Got the field size a little wrong though..."
It took a few more tests and some careful fiddling but in the end she got it doing what she wanted it to. Highly satisfied she disconnected the board having recorded all the power draw values, then dug around for another surplus industrial cellphone in her drawer. Pulling out a suitable candidate she spent half an hour gutting the battery compartment, installing her new board, and adding a somewhat smaller battery. When it was all closed up and the control software loaded, she picked it up and moved to the center of the room. Standing in front of the camera she'd aimed at that point, Taylor made sure she could see the image from it on one of the monitors, then raised the phone and ran the app. Adjusting the parameters to the right values, she prodded the start icon and watched with amusement as her image promptly disappeared from the screen.
All that was left was an apparently empty room.
"Cool as shit," she giggled to herself. She tapped the icon once more. "Now you see me..." Another tap. "Now you don't. Brilliant, it works even better than I thought it would."
Having played with it for a while, she turned the cloaking device off and went back to her chair. Putting it down she swung the chair from side to side thinking while looking at the thing.
Eventually she put it to one side to charge and turned to her computer. That was a successful project, but she still had the other widgets to redesign properly.
It was turning out to be a lot of fun, figuring out how a Tinker had screwed up a perfectly sensible design and fixing it. She was learning some interesting things in the process, and was wondering whether she could lay hands on more Tinker Tech...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The portal closed behind him as Legend flew towards Brockton Bay from well past the low level radar detection range. Moving fairly slowly so he had time to think how he was going to approach this problem, he aimed towards the PRT building. Director Piggot was probably going to be difficult, she pretty much always was, but with luck he'd be able to find out a few things that he agreed with Rebecca appeared to be somewhat strange. He wasn't as convinced as she appeared to be it was something urgent, but it was odd, definitely. That much had been apparent ever since that ship had gently floated up the bay like it weighed nothing, a feat that had made the news immediately and caused him to gape in shock.
He'd been wondering ever since how it had been done and who did it. On the other hand, it was Brockton Bay, and weird shit was pretty much par for the course in this place. He was well aware of that, as was anyone who paid more than cursory attention to the most Parahuman-infested city on a per capita basis possibly anywhere.
It was his job to keep an eye on such places, after all, even if only casually. And it wasn't all that far from New York.
Probably, thinking about it, not far enough…
Smiling a little to himself at the thought, he flew onwards while rehearsing in his head what he'd tell Director Piggot about this unexpected visit from one of the Triumvirate. She was going to be sarcastic, he was pretty sure of that, but hopefully would also be reasonably cooperative. Or at worst not actively hostile.
He'd soon find out anyway.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
An alert beeped causing Taylor to look up from watching the latest Alien Teaching TV episode, then hit the pause key. Getting up she walked over to her latest subspace interference detection system, which she'd extended and rebuilt several times, now having more range and lot more discrimination. She studied the display with interest. A map of the city, extending out to nearly forty miles past the boundary and well into both the sea and the rest of the state, was centered on her house, and showed lots of little icons, many of which were moving around. Various colors denoted a number of things she'd worked out.
And there was a new one heading directly towards the center of the city from a location some distance off the shore. She watched as it moved closer, then eventually stopped near the bay in a location that matched the PRT building. Clicking on it with the mouse she typed a few words into the field that opened up and saved the result, then ran another program to look at the log.
"That's… really interesting," she mumbled, examining the odd subspace interference surrounding the location the new icon had suddenly appeared at. "Really interesting indeed."
After a moment, she switched back to the main display then went back to her main computer and brought up a couple of programs she'd written to analyze the logs from the detector in different ways. Shortly she was deeply involved in thinking with portals.
"There's science to be done..." she almost sang under her breath, thoroughly enjoying herself.
Last edited:
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
Have a chapter that may answer some questions while raising many more 
And I'm sure creating more opportunities to argue about things that haven't actually appeared in the story yet...
And I'm sure creating more opportunities to argue about things that haven't actually appeared in the story yet...
cryptoam
building an 1980s encrypted protocol
- Location
- in lockdown waiting and bored...
That's the point ma'am.
Had a feeling that would be a problem still...
Although I would like to know how Taylor would like to fix that. Erosion due to extremely hot plasma acting like a a fetmosecond laser in intensity is not easy to stop or mitigate.
SCIENCE!
Cue lightning show please.
Looks like there may be an interesting interaction with Legend and the Guild. Perhaps Legend may start to be more suspicious of Cauldron?
Sandy River DL
(Verified Destroyer Leader)
- Location
- Lake Michigan
- Pronouns
- Her/She
More Wordz of Great Science! *happy destroyer leader noises* Plus! Lexy being frustrated is fun~
Probably doormaker. While Legend is a Cauldron cape, that itself isn't going to be unique since there are other Cauldron capes throughout the bay. Though Tylor being able ot divide the subspace interference from shards into two distinct groups might be a thing.
How here's a question for people (not mppi; where's the fun in that?):
In this chapter (and a previous one, I think) it mentions Contessa having issues. But there was also mention of a mysterious, unnamed woman with a hat at Taylor's examination and threatening Kaiser. Is Contessa playing games with Lexie, or do we just automatically assume any nameless woman with a hat is her and there's someone else involved?
In this chapter (and a previous one, I think) it mentions Contessa having issues. But there was also mention of a mysterious, unnamed woman with a hat at Taylor's examination and threatening Kaiser. Is Contessa playing games with Lexie, or do we just automatically assume any nameless woman with a hat is her and there's someone else involved?
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
I believe Mr Krabs can sum up my reaction to Miss Cauldron's complaints.
So, she's duplicating the trick where she hides her gadgetry in an old cell phone.
"Taylor? Yeah, she's that weird girl that collects cell phones. She's got, like a dozen or so strapped onto her."
She can only do that so many times before it becomes suspicious in its own right, though, and she starts looking like a Rob Liefeld character with pouches everywhere...
"Taylor? Yeah, she's that weird girl that collects cell phones. She's got, like a dozen or so strapped onto her."
Last edited:
- Location
- Christchurch, New Zealand
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I find it a little odd that DARPA don't appear even slightly suspicious of the same things Rebecca is, namely that even if Taylor isn't a parahuman, there's something missing from the picture.
Especially since as I understand it she didn't actually figure out how the power supplied for gravity tech worked until some way into things.
Then again, once they find out she can reverse engineer tinkertech to a level that would make Dragon jealous, that becomes the simplest explanation. It's also quite possible they're aware she's working on tinkertech as a side hobby of sorts.
Especially since as I understand it she didn't actually figure out how the power supplied for gravity tech worked until some way into things.
Then again, once they find out she can reverse engineer tinkertech to a level that would make Dragon jealous, that becomes the simplest explanation. It's also quite possible they're aware she's working on tinkertech as a side hobby of sorts.
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
This is quite literally the sentence that defines my life. It's how I feel about every story. Ugh so many interesting things happened here in this chapter, and I just want more. I'm well aware that it's unreasonable, but it's just how I'm wired.
BerserkerZeroOne
(Unexploded Supernova)
- Location
- On your left!
Link for this story please?
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
Thanks for the recs but full names would be appreciated as well as basic summaries and a link. Fair warning if it's a dystopian story I'm never going to read it. I hate that genre with a passion.
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Pronouns
- She/Her
thats the glory of democracy, its hard to have 30 straight years of meat puppet leaders for the same group
- Location
- ?????????
It reads more like DARPA protecting their asset from the PRT through any means necessary than "Cauldron bad"
cryptoam
building an 1980s encrypted protocol
- Location
- in lockdown waiting and bored...
Go to the subreddit (LINK) and search for First Contact. Be warned that there is at least 400 chapters and a lot of plotlines. Also, things get silly(Bolos anyone? also precursor races messing with humanity and getting mulched due to SPOILER:the fact that humanity is the universe's countermeasure to all sorts of fuckery including time travel).
TLDR: This fic goes everywhere(WAFF, (MANY) moments of AWESOME! and a venture (once) into some cosmic horror(that actually sets up for some major redemption). And HFY of the best kind.
Or you can read the most current one here.
EDIT: Please ask me in a DM on an my profile if you have further questions. Please don't clog this thread up.
EDIT 2: current chapter is about plot progression.
EDIT 3: If you want to read a bunch about some AWESOME! you can try this (machines fail to kill an entire plant via biowarfare of the worst kind(ecosystem conversion)) or this for some bolo action
TLDR: This fic goes everywhere(WAFF, (MANY) moments of AWESOME! and a venture (once) into some cosmic horror(that actually sets up for some major redemption). And HFY of the best kind.
Or you can read the most current one here.
EDIT: Please ask me in a DM on an my profile if you have further questions. Please don't clog this thread up.
EDIT 2: current chapter is about plot progression.
EDIT 3: If you want to read a bunch about some AWESOME! you can try this (machines fail to kill an entire plant via biowarfare of the worst kind(ecosystem conversion)) or this for some bolo action
Last edited: