It's kind of like sleeping with your best friend's twin sister. Nothing wrong with that if everyone present's okay with it.
Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
It's kind of like sleeping with your best friend's twin sister. Nothing wrong with that if everyone present's okay with it.
No, no, no.
It was JiB (Jazmin in Black). We can't confuse JiBs with J Bots (which are HitMarks), or else we'd get cats and dogs living together in sin.
And Jazmin needed someone to protect the JiB, because while it could do the childcare, a newish MiB is still equipment, not a person. Especially a MiB who's been used on Vigilance operations, and thus may be liquidated rather than re-used.
MiB 2.0s are accepting of plastic surgery and can easily be recalibrated to a new appearance within certain parameters with the aid of fairly simple surgery. Part of the design spec - they heal well and don't scar.
And fortunately the Technocracy has a Mind + Matter rote for when it wants to gaslamp you by making your family think they were married to someone else (a FACADE clone, usually) all along and have this replacement take your place in all the family photos and in all the family memories so you look like a crazy man trying to insist you're their spouse and parent. It's a standard procedure. So they just had to adjust Elissa so Harlan took the "Daddy" place and she was okay with the new appearance of the JiB (and, you know, remove the trauma bits of being kidnapped by your crazy mother and Awakening because you saw her botch her Seeking).
Donald: "Soooooooo..."
Jamelia: *flat stare*
Jamelia Bot: "Go home, Donald, you're drunk."
Jazmin Clock: "Report to Facility 324 for corrective reconditioning."
Jamelia: "No undermining my amalgam in comedy skits."
Jazmin Bot: "It is an acceptable tactic."
Jamelia: "... I think this is getting confusing."
Jamelia Bot: "I think Donald is having a nosebleed."
Jazmin in Black: *died six years ago*
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Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Well, Eviler Space Blanc presumably has his own opinion on what regular Blanc did, but I'm pretty sure MJ12 isn't going to tell us what it is. Though we can probably guess his opinion on the morality of it if he had done it.
*nod* Very important to get all this stuff straight when talking about it. Just ask Jamelia at present.
Oh, so Jazmin arranged it, then. I suppose it's either something Jamelia agreed to or none of Jamelia's damn business, then.
Oh, pre-90s Technocracy. Sometimes the power seems worth the moral ickiness.
Hee.
Also, calling it now: Jazmin Bots were totally a thing she used.
Okay, so, I'm in the same boat as you, but my guess is that it's the way Enlightenment <6 Traditionalists regard Genius as just reskinned magic rather than them both being the same, equally valid thing (the difference is subtle, but important). Also related is the way they'd regard all the stuff that's represented mechanically as Avatars to be spirit guides even though not everyone's expression of the Avatar "actually" has anything to do with that stuff. It's a sort of meta-paradigm, and just as fundamentally incomplete as any of those that fit into it. I think that meta-paradigm is what ES has lately started calling the "purple paradigm."
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One of the snippets mentioned that Jazmin dropped by to talk with Owl (Harlan) and beg him to do something before returning to the Technocracy. Probably arranged it then.
Well there was her own trauma acting up as she saw her friend getting mind surgery and behavioural control drugs while at Damien..
Also, finally remembered to post this, after first reading that Seeking:
Heh. Reminds me of FOXHOUND again.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
My current headcanon is that
she had a fight with her mother (JazIB) where she said cruel hurtful things (eg "You're not my REAL mother), just before sudden onset of Reinholt syndrome. Because WoD is a jerk like that.
Who's now your boss. Can't forget that part.
It is such a shame that her best friend was not better to the constructs that she created and she was unable to ask her for help with this..-
JiB died in 2009. Serafina made her Blando clone in the late 90s, which would have been when Elissa ran away.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Curse the inconvenient timing. Oh well. I'm sure we'll be able to tie JiB's death to something else eventually.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
I don't see why it can't just be that she died of accumulated Paradox because nobody with the Prime required to save her gave a shit.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
That has DRAAAAAAAMA of it's own, so I'll take it.
*imagines long soap-opera scenes of Harlan tearfully sitting by the side of a bedridden WiB who tries haltingly to give him reassurance but doesn't quite manage to sound right*
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Seeking, fuck yeah!
Hah!
This weirdness amuses me as well.
It really was - cool gadgets, outer space being full of dangerous assholes, that "people are dumb panicky animals" theme they had going, it was all very 'craty.
I wonder if they were around before the movie.
She has been doing a lot of diplomacy lately, hasn't she? I can see why it'd be the first idea that comes to mind.
But the WOO! is the most important part of Hollywood?
What, do they make other kinds of motherships?
Sounds legit.
Oh, admit it Catherine, you're having a blast trolling Jamelia. That it's important enough to the mission that she won't complain is a pretty good bonus, though.
I don't like root beer gum.
Hm... is she just not very nostalgic, or are the things she could be nostalgic about simply too obscured?
...yeah, I'm thinking Catherine knew she'd understand and just put it into VE jargon because of paradigmic reasons and the vast gulf between Enlightenment 5 and 6.
Well, yes.
Sherlock Holmes, this lady isn't.
Pssh, she's having fun anyway.
Wait, what? Does she psychically sense those Transhuman nodes subconsciously, or does the Realm of Nostalgia demand that non-nostalgic people shut up and let others enjoy themselves?
Is Catherine trying to get Jamelia up to Enlightenment 6, or is mentoring people with potential just a compulsion higher Enlightenment scientists/higher Arete mages suffer from?
Hm. Yeah, different paradigms do things in ways with different advantages.
Hee. They'd probably be more open to that sort of thing if it weren't costing them money.
Hm? Did she do something to see Nostalgia the same way as Jamelia by getting to know her a bit?
There are presumably other components to the rain as well, since nostalgia also has some fondness. Or maybe the rain is just unaccountably tasty compared to its ingredients.
Being lost in Nostalgia wastes time, maybe?
Ah, so she is trying to get Jamelia up to 6.
She doesn't know about that? Interesting. I guess she had shit to do during The Belltower Identity.
Of course they are. Threat Null is in general, I expect.
I don't see a contradiction.
She even got an equivalent to the necessary addition of getting Serafina to not create monsters that feed on Jamelia's face specifically, with that Lethe trick.
That's... concerning.
pquote]She lets out a pained breath, and rises, wiping her eyes. "What on earth is it firing?" she asks.
"Nothing on earth. Wouldn't work there.[/quote]
Naturally.
A good illustration of why the fricking Archmaster needs Jamelia's help.
lolEnlightenment6
Or maybe it's 7? The decision to actually use her Alter Avatar Storm ability probably involved enough character development to gain a point.
Before this, did Jamelia have confirmation that Threat Null was in fact Evil Space Control and not some other memetic hazard in space? This might be a bluff to get said confirmation.
I'm afraid I don't quite remember which strange dream she's referring to. Maybe the thing with Cemal?
Naturally. Maturity comes with age, usually.
Those things making such attempts but failing means silence, then?
It's the first Seeking we had for Jamelia, the Enlightenment 4->5 one. IIRC this particular seeking was actually spread across 2 posts.
Ah, so... you're saying that the mistake the Traditionalists make is that their attitude toward the Technocrat Paradigm is "They're doing it wrong!" rather than "This is a different idea on magick that I disagree with. (And that also oppresses me, help help.)"
It's kind of like saying "The truth/reality is subjective and depends on points of view and Consensus" and then going "Wait, no, your idea is objectively wrong". Saying to keep an open mind, that there are many viable paths, and then going "except that one, that's not a 'real' path"?
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
There also may be something to the bit about even traditions mages not really getting the whole consensus thing.
Read Revlid's essay on how everything in Mage is magic. Walking to another location is a correspondence rote. Talking to someone to persuade them is a mind rote. Everything is magic. Mages just can warp the pattern more that those without arete. But even Mages all still have blinders on, which is why they need foci and paradigms.
They're all myopic one eyed men in the kingdom of the blind, claiming to see clearly.
The Ascension war can be seen as an extended metaphor for how we all have different worldviews and thus can never quite have 100% fidelity communication.
(If you ever could reach past the veil of Maya, and grasp truth - why then you'd have ascended to full enlightenment. You'd also arguably have transcended humanity as well. It's probably a good thing mages have never managed this. Actually, isn't nMtA the aftermath of mages having done that, with Gnostic flavoring?)
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Where can I find that?
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Consensus Reality, Lies to Children
Putting it simply, pre-Arete 6 mages do not actually believe it. At most, they believe it as dogma - "If it wasn't for the Consensus, I could use my alchemy/do sweet kung-fu/invoke the spirits freely". If a Traditionalist truly accepted and believed in the Consensus and knew it to be true in the same way that they might believe in their own paradigm, they could freely mix and match from paradigms. They can't. Not without high Arete.
Put aside the fact that out-of-universe, a Hermetic casts forces by "doing a Hermetic ritual". They don't. They have a specific, correct ritual they must do. They can't even use the wrong Hermetic ritual to do it, because if you try to call on thunder to strike your foe with a spell made to cast out demons... it doesn't work. Because the spell is made to cast out demons, and... you can't call thunder with a demon-banishing ritual. That's just not how it works. Hell, it's easier for a Hermetic to pick up a plasma rifle dropped by a HITMark and use that than it is for them to use the wrong Hermetic ritual, because the young Hermetics will tend to implicitly accept the Technoparadigm to some level and thus they will believe that a plasma rifle which was just firing plasma can be used to fire plasma if they know how to bypass the Technocratic security and so on, but using the wrong ritual... doesn't have that effect.
And a lot of Traditions have radically opposed axioms. They disagree about basic things. Yes, you can finagle things around, but usually that's only by reinterpreting things which are shared. And there's only so far you can do that without breaking the cohesion of your paradigm. And there are non-cohesive paradigms, like the self-taught kind common to the Hollow Ones which mix and match things which they think should work, but then it's not a coherent model of the world - it's something which sits on top of the existing Consensus, working for that mage alone, and at most it might be able to inspire some linear sorcery.
A Hermetic can only use Chorister prayers and invocations of faith if they truly believe (and a lot do, because Western hermeticism has a long association with Christianity). Most Verbenae can't do anything with Iterator or Etherite cybernetics, because the vitalism common in Verbena beliefs means they do not truly think that inanimate things are equal to living things. Most Virtual Adepts are more at home with Iterator practices than they are with Seer of Chronos-style Ecstatic "Time is an illusion and a limitation which we can discard when we discard the limits of rationality".
Just take the way that most Traditionalists can't use the bog-standard-to-Technocrats "I'm just that good" focus. They don't accept that everything is magic - not really - or else they'd understand that when the Syndic pays someone a bribe to look the other way, it's just as magical as the Chorister praying to Allah to avert the eyes of the unbeliever (and more effective, but admittedly harder on the wallet). Or the way that Primal Utility is actually a scarily accurate insight - more so than usual Prime - because it says that everything is magic and that human effort can achieve anything.
Put bluntly, the Traditionalist view of "Consensus Reality" is mostly a lies-to-children version which is a compromised, unifying position designed by archmasters who actually understand it, as a training wheel version to a) try to guide younger Traditionalists to accepting it [which is some of the reason why it's less traumatic for Traditionalists than Technocrats, although Arete 6 is still traumatic and shakes you up], and b) give the Traditions something to rally around to stop them killing each other and oppose the OOR/Technocracy's incredibly strong central rallying position which can keep five-plus Conventions on talking terms despite the fact that the Technocracy is broad enough to have Iterator hardcore materialists, NWO psychics, and Syndicate quants all viewing themselves as Technocrats.
This is an interpretation rooted in PQ's Revised-style play, where an individual Traditionalist mage is barely less constrained by their own paradigm than a Technocrat (earlier editions, I believe, were more generous about focus-discarding for the Traditions). Look at what Hannah had to do to try to cast without her focuses when imprisoned - she was spending 1wp per casting roll at +3 difficulty. She was literally trying to force something to happen that she believed and knew was impossible, forcing herself to try to use the Traditionalist "meta-paradigm". They might have arete, but it takes Arete 6 to have the gnosis to really understand and accept consensual reality.
Update CIX: The Start of a Journey, the End of a Legend
JB CIX: The Start of a Journey, The End of a Legend
The room has become bleached white by radiation. His comrades in arms have long since fallen back. Dr. Grey's hands are on his neck, squeezing with force sufficient to crumple steel girders. He can feel the strain on his neck and the powered armor he wears, notes that due to airflow interruption his skull-mounted backup brain oxygenation system has activated. He can feel the heat emanating from her palms, the rads and rads of hard radiation sleeting through the CBRN-hardened combat suit. If he doesn't do something he's dead. She's stronger than him. Faster. At least as tough.
But she's not an experienced soldier. Her attacks are straightforward. Smart, in how they try to make it a contest of brute strength. Stupid, in that she thinks it's a contest of brute strength. And he wouldn't have panicked anyways-but the suit is there, suggesting options, discarding unworkable ideas, giving him predictions about how he can win this fight disadvantaged as he is. He thinks, and the suit responds.
[NOBLE NOVEMBER EPIDERMAL OPTIONS-KINETIC BLEED TO ELECTROMAGNETIC BURST]
There is an electrical crackle and the pressure on his neck eases.
[CHARGING-25%]
[50%]
[75%]
[100%]
[DISCHARGING KINETIC CAPACITORS]
Energy is energy. It can be converted. Transformed. And enough electromagnetic energy at high enough power creates-an explosion. The shockwave throws her bodily. It's powerful, but not powerful enough to stop her if his guess is right. It simply exists to buy him time. She runs on an exotic microfission reactor, enormously powerful compared to Technocracy microfusion cells-but enormously dirty and hot. Her temperature control systems are probably working at full capacity just to keep it from melting down. He can hear the whines of cooling fans and more exotic temperature management devices from underneath the synthflesh. A delicate system for all its durability, waiting for a sharp enough jolt to knock it out of alignment. Combine that with sea salt and some shrapnel aboveboard-and it's a recipe for disaster.
He just needs to survive long enough. The suit's artificial muscles tense and tighten, charged beyond standard operating strengths. He moves. The battery meter ticks down. Dr. Grey stands up, snarls at him as she fires another gamma burst, an overcharged blast that even as a near-miss causes Kessler's skin to prickle and the N2's radiation alarm to scream [LETHAL RADIATION THREAT]. But he dodged it, as his UDEI said he could. And she wasn't a soldier-which meant she doesn't know the first rule of high-penetration weapons. Make sure you know what your backstop is.
The loudspeakers burn out from Dr. Freiger crying out in pain. Grey stares in shock for a moment before she redoubles on Kessler in rage. In response, Kessler runs. She's fast, but he doesn't need to outrun her forever. Just long enough to get out of the ship. And he does. The tanker's hull and structure is much more fragile. Her shots punch holes through the thin metal, neat circles rimmed with orange. Some of them are low and let in torrents of crashing water. Others are high and show glimpses of a light blue sky. The ship groans.
She's almost onto him, but he has comms to Parker and his heavily armed death robot. He orders a danger close missile barrage, Frangible Shrapnel HE. The missiles cascade all over him, and he can smell the acrid scent of high-energy explosives and the smoke (why does a combat armor let you retain your sense of smell? Kessler wonders), feel the heat wash over him. Harmless, of course. Grey laughs it off.
"Did you really think that'd work? Fool!" She cackles. All pretense to humanity has been stripped away save for surprisingly and ironically empathetic eyes set in a porcelain-doll plastic face in a gray metal body that looks like something out of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Kessler doesn't answer her, merely jumping to escape. She follows on atomic ramjets, causing Kessler's radiation alarms to tick up yet again. The two ARCs orbiting instantly nail her with a pair of plasma missiles, and he can see the alloy she's made of glow red-hot and her shielding collapse before she can get into danger close range with him again.
He can smell the electrical burning as exposed wiring starts to short and spark. He can see her core temperature spike as the reactor in her chest starts to go critical. He can see the cracks in armor plate which he can now exploit. He can see the damage to the operating components to one of her gamma ray hands. Just the way Kessler likes them. And he's not done turning the battle in his favor. He opens a link to both of the ARC pilots.
"I need some low-temperature incendiary gel on this location right now. Hit both of us and the surrounding area." He feeds them the rest of his plan with the kludges that allow his 20-year-old system to sort of communicate with their state of the art ADEIs and AI assists.
They don't respond with words, but a veritable hail of incendiary rockets rains down on the freighter. Bluish gel splashes all over the decks and ignites. It's a literal hellscape, almost like Moscow. The deck creaks under his feet as metal warps from the high temperature. The N2 notes that it's draining energy to keep him in a combat capable state. If he wasn't an augmented killing machine, he'd have baked in the shell. He doesn't expect this to stop Dr. Grey. No, he expects it to stop her from seeing him and weaken whatever magic metal she's made out of further.
And his plan works. The fire blinds her optics and thermals. The moving flames disrupt motion and hearing. The N2's slick black construction stops him from showing up on radar. And when he grabs her she is surprised for a moment-long enough for him to throw her into the water. "I think it's time you were told to... sink or swim." he yells, as she falls. She rights herself for a moment on nuclear ramjets-and a railgun fusillade shatters one of her kneecaps and sends her spiralling into the depths.
Kessler turns his back on the splash and starts walking calmly, still engulfed in flame. Water fountains behind him, and a heartbeat later he hears an eardrum-rupturing explosion.
"You've still got it, old man." He mentions. "Team, check in."
"Have you finished destroying the entire vessel with your antics?" Harlan asks. "We have secured the vessel's reactor. Two White Towers down, several damaged but salvageable."
"I've met up with your team in the armory and we've managed to seize control of the ship's weapons. It looks like the controller has been damaged but is waking up. One unit down, several lightly damaged. What's your status?" Elsa reports.
"Freiger has been stunned. Get to the bridge and neutralize him." Kessler mentions crisply, ignoring the fires surrounding him.
"And Grey?" Harlan asks.
"Grey had... her half-life run out." He grins at his statement.
Harlan groans. "I take it she's dead."
"Probably. You never know. She did get hit by two smart missiles and a dozen railgun rounds and have her reactor explode."
"Reactor?" Elsa asks.
"She was this stupid tough atomic death robot. Stronger than me. Shot gamma-ray lasers out of her hands and ignored guns." Kessler explains. "Business as usual."
Elsa doesn't know how to respond to that, or to the fact that from his telemetry he's saying this while on fire. She doesn't say anything until the Wyvern shows up and the Ragnarok personnel deploy.
**********************************************************************************************************************
When Jamelia gets back from her labor, she sees that the pyramid has opened. Inside is machinery of some sort, simultaneously familiar yet alien. Something that might have been derived from Technocracy technology, yet something that is not Technocracy technology. An alternative future? Or an alternative present? Something from the past?
Outside, there is a sledlike machine sitting in the gray sand. It looks old-no, positively ancient, as if it had been a fixture of this realm for an eternity. Which it might have been. She recognizes it, of course. How could she not recognize it? How could she not recognize HG Wells's time machine?
"When you said Director Wells-"
"-you didn't think I meant H.G. Wells." Nichols finished. "And you didn't think that the time machine was an actual thing. I suppose that was a bit more heavily classified than even you ever had access to."
"Does it work?" Jamelia asks. "Is this how you want to send me back? Why this instead of something else?"
"The only other time machine that I could get to via Hollywood is under Autopolitan control." Catherine says. "It's a bit more dangerous to use, even ignoring that. Also," Nichols says, "sending you back naked into the middle of a Technocracy station isn't going to do anyone any favors."
"Really. So Terminator's a documentary now?" Jamelia asks.
"Yes. No. Like Reality Deviance and Enlightened Science, the difference is irrelevant. Both answers are true-it's true that nobody's ever sent back a killer robot to assassinate a waitress who turns out to have a resistance leader as an unborn son. But it's been used several times before. Not just assassins-but other forms of support. They sent a few HITMarks back to the 1940s, which was helpful. Broke down fast but they got the job done."
"You are a terrible spirit guide." Jamelia says. "Literally the worst I've ever had. And I have your water."
"You've only ever had one." Nichols says. "Thanks for the water." She pours it into a compartment in the time machine.
"And you seriously think it'll work?" She repeats, still doubtful. "It looks like it's over a century old."
"Would you prefer riding a hippogriff back into time?" Nichols suggests sarcastically. "His Time Machine survived a lot of temporal abuse and was kept in stasis in the You-Sees, I think it can deal with another 16 years of it." Nichols says dismissively. She pulls a couple of levers from her pack. "Although I should warn you, he never came back from the last time he used it."
"So why's it still here?"
"He built two machines." Nichols says. "He took the second, more advanced one in 1946 and didn't come back. I wonder what he found in the future or the past that led him to that. Maybe it was the future he wanted." Nichols says wistfully. "Yes, let's go with that."
"That's the first time I've seen you wish someone well." Jamelia observes.
"Yes, you're trained in cold reading people. He taught me a lot, and he gave me a chance to do something very few people will. Ever traveled back in time?" Nichols asks.
Jamelia shakes her head.
"Ever read a manual on time travel?"
"No, just that it was incredibly dangerous."
"Okay, time travel, the quick version. Everything you do that affects the past changes things. 'Time Paradox' is very much literal. Time really doesn't like being tampered with. Make a small change, like be there where you shouldn't, and the timestream smooths it out. Make a big change, and you end up being chased by Time Cops or with Wells Syndrome or some other time-related sickness. Make a really big change and you disappear forever like you were never born." Nichols says. "So know what you're there for and stay focused on the mission."
"Is it too late to consider an alternate course of action?" Jamelia asks. "Something less dangerous, like invading Autocthonia?"
"You made me spend all this time dragging this old relic out for one last ride. Besides, if you're careful and subtle you'll get out of it without too much of a problem."
"And are you coming with me?" Jamelia asks. "I notice two people can sit in the machine."
Catherine laughs. "No. I've done too much of it. The Traditions would call me marked. The Chrononauts would say that I've hit a 'critical chronon suffusion level' and simply by going back again I might cause unstable resonance events. I can send back messages, keep track of what you're doing, and that's about it. You're going to have to wing it. Oh, and make sure you remember the Rule of Two."
"Rule of Two?"
"One person to change the past, another to stop it. I don't know why, but if someone is sent back in time, it's easier to follow them. And as I said, the Autopolitans have a functioning machine."
"So the moment I go back they tell the Computer what's going on and mission failed. This isn't sounding like a good idea."
"Not quite. It only gives them protection against the inherent rigors of time travel. If they tell anyone, that'll create huge butterflies. What happens if Jamelia Belltower stops existing because the Computer executes her?" Nichols asked. "Have you ever thought about that? Yes, with hyperstat or hyperpsych."
Jamelia thinks for a moment. "There's agents just as gifted as me-but they're all on vital missions. They'd have to assign someone with lesser skills. Missions get failed where they wouldn't be. The past changes. This is ignoring any political ramifications. They can't reveal that I was time traveling, because then they'd want to look at what I know. So-"
"So it basically turns the world upside down, and you can't predict what the future looks like 15 years down the line."
Jamelia nods.
"That's the kind of stuff that gets you retroactively erased from history. So you don't need to worry about that."
"I just need to worry about a killer robot from the future hunting me in the normal killer robot way."
"That, and finding a host body. You've been disembodied. It means you're becoming like them." Nichols says. She doesn't sound angry, bitter, or resigned. She sounds almost-approving.
"So you're going to kill me before I turn?" Jamelia asks warily.
"No, even if you became like them, your goal has become so critical to your narrative that you'd be opposed. No, we can use that. You can use their tricks." Nichols says. "You can learn from them. You can't do it at their level yet-you can't just take over a random schmuck and use all your abilities-but you can at least become something. An inner voice, possibly. Maybe even wrest control, if the mind is powerful enough. Just make sure to choose well, because I don't suspect you can cheat death with the same ease as others might."
Jamelia nods. "I don't believe it but-"
"-you'll keep an open mind?"
"The Void Engineers did kick you out for being too annoying." Jamelia says confidently. "Yes, I'll deal with the problems when I get there."
"All right. Just pull the levers. Note the numbers on the machine that tell you which tell you what date it is. I'm going to have someone on the other side get you to where you need to be. A one-shot. Don't fail." Nichols says. "Are you ready?"
"No."
"Well that's too bad, because you're not going to be ready. Just pull the levers when you feel like it." Nichols says. "In the meantime, I have your friends to talk to."
Jamelia pulls.
Time whirls-and so does space. The surroundings she's in transform into empty void. Somehow she's still... well, not alive, but still in this state, despite not having a vacuum suit or implants to protect from decompression. She keeps track of the dial and she stops the time machine when it hits June 28, 1999. Jamelia laughs. She's traveling in space, with no vacuum suit, as a disembodied mind, in HG Wells's time machine. She never imagined, in her entire career in the Technocracy, that something like this would ever happen. For that matter, she suspects even the members of the Traditions she's met, the ones who believed that they'd end up doing something truly amazing and mind-blowing, have ever imagined that they'd end up doing something like this.
They're on an asteroid. It looks like an automated sentry base is in the distance. Nichols is there. But she looks... different. Maybe a little younger? She's wearing something different, less bulky than the 1970s combat armor she saw. Something black and dull and probably stealthed.
"So you're the package I sent myself to keep this clusterfuck from expanding." Nichols muses, as she looks Jamelia over. "All right. I don't know who you are or what you are and I don't want to know. Minimizes timestream corruption. Right now, you're on Outpost M8723. A Void Engineer cruiser is going to rendezvous with this, then go to The Pyramid to pick up some new crew for a special mission into a noetic realm. That's your ticket inside. You'll have to hitch a ride outside but if you make sure to stay quiet they won't notice you. Erzurumis don't have that sensor resolution unless they've deployed their scientific scanners. You'll have plenty of time to think of things on the trip."
Jamelia nods and sets off towards the automated base. "Thank you."
Nichols says nothing.
Her statements about the trip giving plenty of thinking time are quite prescient, Jamelia concedes. Time enough to realize that if she was a Traditionalist, this would be considered suicide. But a Traditions mage didn't know what she does. She has plenty of clearances, and the Pyramid has a lot of locks which don't have a biometric element. She can spoof them. If the records exist-it won't matter, because they'll be lost to the Dimensional Anomaly in a week. It's hostile territory, but in a way, it's also coming home.
Home to where many of her later adjustments were done. Where her mind was scanned for several projects. She suspected several of them involved next-generation operative enhancements, because there were some things that young girl-Yinzheng-did that reminded her of her own tics, and even though she had been a fan, Jamelia doubts that she was that creepily obsessed.
Nevertheless, right now Yinzheng Li is a child of about 7 years old. Right now she's irrelevant. Jamelia glides through the halls of the Pyramid, halls lined with subliminal propaganda and colored in cheery pastel colors deliberately optimized to maximize productivity and cooperation, searching for a body. It's so much like being in enemy territory, yet it's so much like being at home. It's almost... comforting. Except that if she's caught they'll destroy her and possibly doom the world, but that's a familiar situation. And in that way, it's also comforting.
**********************************************************************************************************************
Yinzheng Li walks through the halls of the construct with slight trepidation. Jamelia Belltower wanted to see her, and she doesn't know why. This isn't the LA Construct either, but there were some shakeups after Moscow. And after the whole tribunal, she suspects Jamelia might have gotten a lot more influence. She's more experienced now, she knows more about the Technocracy and about Enlightened Science and about how it's the best hope for the future of mankind. She can sell herself and why she's useful.
She opens the door to a meeting room. Jamelia is sitting at the head of the desk, along with a lot of Enlightened Scientists. Some she recognizes. One is William Roth, a powerful financier who's been thinking the Technocracy has gone soft. He'd have thought he'd disagree with Jamelia but he's there looking like he approves of his position here. Yinzheng scans the rest of the people in the room.
There's a man with a heroic build, like someone out of American comic books. Even though he's wearing a business suit like everyone else there, it's obvious to Yinzheng that he's enhanced. It looks like biotech. There's another bulky man, and his enhancements look like synthetics. There's another male, normal looking, but his surgical gaze implies augmented intelligence, in a way that goes beyond standard Progenitor enhancements. Two identical men and one woman of identical height and mixed race sit next to him. A young woman with blue hair looks Yinzheng over, then goes back to staring at something that only she can see. Standing in the room is an ATLAS unit, a heavy combat chassis, a skeletal primium-armored hunter/killer with a human brain in it.
"Agent Li." Jamelia begins professionally. "I've looked over your record again and now that you're more experienced, I think I'd like to offer you a position on this team. You could be useful. I have plenty of agents, but I need more who can function in the way you can." Jamelia tells her. "I've seen your recent operations and you've been doing incredibly well. I think you're ready for greatness."
Yinzheng smiles, trying to hide how enthusiastic she is. "Thank you for saying this. What would I be doing?"
"You'd be participating in standard Operative missions, but you'd be working for a mixed Amalgam instead of a single-Convention unit, under my command. You'd have an opportunity to prove yourself in a way which your current construct does not allow for." Jamelia says. "I understand this is unorthodox but you have plenty of potential, and I've had an unorthodox recruitment myself." Jamelia says.
"I didn't know about that-" Yinzheng starts.
"It's not in the files." Jamelia says kindly. "Just let me say I'm sympathetic to prodigies and would love to give you an opportunity to develop, for the good of the Union. If you'll accept."
"I will." Yinzheng says, trying as hard as she can to sound confident and enthusiastic without sounding desperate. This is her dream! To work with someone she truly admires!
"Agent Li. Welcome to Panopticon." Ms. Clock says. "I'll give you the rest of today to familiarize yourself and we'll start work tomorrow at 0500."
Yinzheng grins. "Thank you very much for this. I won't let you down."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Be Kessler, Part 1 of 3:
Ragnarok is here. What do you do?
[ ] (1.25x) Make an argument that you should keep the ship. It's the sort of Etherite technology which is mostly okay. And it'd be the best you can get.
[ ] Keep only the FTL drives and critical components, trade the rest of the ship away for guns and armor and engines you can fit on another ship, like the Aurora.
[ ] Give it to the Void Engineers for dissection and salvage and see if you can't borrow a VE corvette or a smaller, more kosher but less powerful vessel.
[ ] Write-in.
Be Kessler, Part 2 of 3:
You also got refunded a tiny bit of Henriette's requisitions due to not needing them because you're getting some way to carry your people without compromising the QUEST. You're using this for:
[ ] Additional armor.
[ ] Better weapons.
[ ] Utility gadgets.
Be Kessler, Part 3 of 3:
You launch your two ships:
[ ] As soon as possible.
[ ] (1.2x) As soon as they're both fully working.
[ ] (0.8x) After you've made sure that everything on them is repaired, tuned, and upgraded as heavily as you can afford.
Be Jamelia:
Jamelia's possession target is:
[ ] An-Jin Choi, a bookish junior member of the Ivory Tower. His Spheres are Mind 2, Entropy 2, and Time 2, and he has Enlightenment 2.
[ ] Mister Carpenter, a NWO Man in Black who acts as the security subcommander for the habitation area of the station. He has no Enlightenment but has several basic inbuilt tricks due to his enhancements including Time/Entropy combat precognition, Life 2 self-healing, and Forces/Correspondence enhanced martial arts.
[ ] Dr. Alexander Garza, a Syndicate liaison to a mass cognitive engineering working group who originated as a Progenitor infiltration construct. He has Life 2, Mind 2, and Prime 2, and has notably superhuman social attributes and some very good looking tailored suits.
[ ] Consultant Travis Chen, a Syndicate Enforcer who is protecting Executive Zheng-a Syndicate bigwig interested in the applications of large-scale targeted memetic weaponry in expanding Syndicate operations against Reality Deviants. He is a KILO-rated combat agent with a moderate security clearance, Forces/Life 2, and Mind 1. Like most KILO-rated agents, he has EC6 augmentation-heavy genetic modification combined with low profile cybernetics.
Jamelia doesn't actually know any of these people in depth. Why would she? They all died in the Dimensional Anomaly, unimportant. That's why she's targeting them.
The room has become bleached white by radiation. His comrades in arms have long since fallen back. Dr. Grey's hands are on his neck, squeezing with force sufficient to crumple steel girders. He can feel the strain on his neck and the powered armor he wears, notes that due to airflow interruption his skull-mounted backup brain oxygenation system has activated. He can feel the heat emanating from her palms, the rads and rads of hard radiation sleeting through the CBRN-hardened combat suit. If he doesn't do something he's dead. She's stronger than him. Faster. At least as tough.
But she's not an experienced soldier. Her attacks are straightforward. Smart, in how they try to make it a contest of brute strength. Stupid, in that she thinks it's a contest of brute strength. And he wouldn't have panicked anyways-but the suit is there, suggesting options, discarding unworkable ideas, giving him predictions about how he can win this fight disadvantaged as he is. He thinks, and the suit responds.
[NOBLE NOVEMBER EPIDERMAL OPTIONS-KINETIC BLEED TO ELECTROMAGNETIC BURST]
There is an electrical crackle and the pressure on his neck eases.
[CHARGING-25%]
[50%]
[75%]
[100%]
[DISCHARGING KINETIC CAPACITORS]
Energy is energy. It can be converted. Transformed. And enough electromagnetic energy at high enough power creates-an explosion. The shockwave throws her bodily. It's powerful, but not powerful enough to stop her if his guess is right. It simply exists to buy him time. She runs on an exotic microfission reactor, enormously powerful compared to Technocracy microfusion cells-but enormously dirty and hot. Her temperature control systems are probably working at full capacity just to keep it from melting down. He can hear the whines of cooling fans and more exotic temperature management devices from underneath the synthflesh. A delicate system for all its durability, waiting for a sharp enough jolt to knock it out of alignment. Combine that with sea salt and some shrapnel aboveboard-and it's a recipe for disaster.
He just needs to survive long enough. The suit's artificial muscles tense and tighten, charged beyond standard operating strengths. He moves. The battery meter ticks down. Dr. Grey stands up, snarls at him as she fires another gamma burst, an overcharged blast that even as a near-miss causes Kessler's skin to prickle and the N2's radiation alarm to scream [LETHAL RADIATION THREAT]. But he dodged it, as his UDEI said he could. And she wasn't a soldier-which meant she doesn't know the first rule of high-penetration weapons. Make sure you know what your backstop is.
The loudspeakers burn out from Dr. Freiger crying out in pain. Grey stares in shock for a moment before she redoubles on Kessler in rage. In response, Kessler runs. She's fast, but he doesn't need to outrun her forever. Just long enough to get out of the ship. And he does. The tanker's hull and structure is much more fragile. Her shots punch holes through the thin metal, neat circles rimmed with orange. Some of them are low and let in torrents of crashing water. Others are high and show glimpses of a light blue sky. The ship groans.
She's almost onto him, but he has comms to Parker and his heavily armed death robot. He orders a danger close missile barrage, Frangible Shrapnel HE. The missiles cascade all over him, and he can smell the acrid scent of high-energy explosives and the smoke (why does a combat armor let you retain your sense of smell? Kessler wonders), feel the heat wash over him. Harmless, of course. Grey laughs it off.
"Did you really think that'd work? Fool!" She cackles. All pretense to humanity has been stripped away save for surprisingly and ironically empathetic eyes set in a porcelain-doll plastic face in a gray metal body that looks like something out of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Kessler doesn't answer her, merely jumping to escape. She follows on atomic ramjets, causing Kessler's radiation alarms to tick up yet again. The two ARCs orbiting instantly nail her with a pair of plasma missiles, and he can see the alloy she's made of glow red-hot and her shielding collapse before she can get into danger close range with him again.
He can smell the electrical burning as exposed wiring starts to short and spark. He can see her core temperature spike as the reactor in her chest starts to go critical. He can see the cracks in armor plate which he can now exploit. He can see the damage to the operating components to one of her gamma ray hands. Just the way Kessler likes them. And he's not done turning the battle in his favor. He opens a link to both of the ARC pilots.
"I need some low-temperature incendiary gel on this location right now. Hit both of us and the surrounding area." He feeds them the rest of his plan with the kludges that allow his 20-year-old system to sort of communicate with their state of the art ADEIs and AI assists.
They don't respond with words, but a veritable hail of incendiary rockets rains down on the freighter. Bluish gel splashes all over the decks and ignites. It's a literal hellscape, almost like Moscow. The deck creaks under his feet as metal warps from the high temperature. The N2 notes that it's draining energy to keep him in a combat capable state. If he wasn't an augmented killing machine, he'd have baked in the shell. He doesn't expect this to stop Dr. Grey. No, he expects it to stop her from seeing him and weaken whatever magic metal she's made out of further.
And his plan works. The fire blinds her optics and thermals. The moving flames disrupt motion and hearing. The N2's slick black construction stops him from showing up on radar. And when he grabs her she is surprised for a moment-long enough for him to throw her into the water. "I think it's time you were told to... sink or swim." he yells, as she falls. She rights herself for a moment on nuclear ramjets-and a railgun fusillade shatters one of her kneecaps and sends her spiralling into the depths.
Kessler turns his back on the splash and starts walking calmly, still engulfed in flame. Water fountains behind him, and a heartbeat later he hears an eardrum-rupturing explosion.
"You've still got it, old man." He mentions. "Team, check in."
"Have you finished destroying the entire vessel with your antics?" Harlan asks. "We have secured the vessel's reactor. Two White Towers down, several damaged but salvageable."
"I've met up with your team in the armory and we've managed to seize control of the ship's weapons. It looks like the controller has been damaged but is waking up. One unit down, several lightly damaged. What's your status?" Elsa reports.
"Freiger has been stunned. Get to the bridge and neutralize him." Kessler mentions crisply, ignoring the fires surrounding him.
"And Grey?" Harlan asks.
"Grey had... her half-life run out." He grins at his statement.
Harlan groans. "I take it she's dead."
"Probably. You never know. She did get hit by two smart missiles and a dozen railgun rounds and have her reactor explode."
"Reactor?" Elsa asks.
"She was this stupid tough atomic death robot. Stronger than me. Shot gamma-ray lasers out of her hands and ignored guns." Kessler explains. "Business as usual."
Elsa doesn't know how to respond to that, or to the fact that from his telemetry he's saying this while on fire. She doesn't say anything until the Wyvern shows up and the Ragnarok personnel deploy.
**********************************************************************************************************************
When Jamelia gets back from her labor, she sees that the pyramid has opened. Inside is machinery of some sort, simultaneously familiar yet alien. Something that might have been derived from Technocracy technology, yet something that is not Technocracy technology. An alternative future? Or an alternative present? Something from the past?
Outside, there is a sledlike machine sitting in the gray sand. It looks old-no, positively ancient, as if it had been a fixture of this realm for an eternity. Which it might have been. She recognizes it, of course. How could she not recognize it? How could she not recognize HG Wells's time machine?
"When you said Director Wells-"
"-you didn't think I meant H.G. Wells." Nichols finished. "And you didn't think that the time machine was an actual thing. I suppose that was a bit more heavily classified than even you ever had access to."
"Does it work?" Jamelia asks. "Is this how you want to send me back? Why this instead of something else?"
"The only other time machine that I could get to via Hollywood is under Autopolitan control." Catherine says. "It's a bit more dangerous to use, even ignoring that. Also," Nichols says, "sending you back naked into the middle of a Technocracy station isn't going to do anyone any favors."
"Really. So Terminator's a documentary now?" Jamelia asks.
"Yes. No. Like Reality Deviance and Enlightened Science, the difference is irrelevant. Both answers are true-it's true that nobody's ever sent back a killer robot to assassinate a waitress who turns out to have a resistance leader as an unborn son. But it's been used several times before. Not just assassins-but other forms of support. They sent a few HITMarks back to the 1940s, which was helpful. Broke down fast but they got the job done."
"You are a terrible spirit guide." Jamelia says. "Literally the worst I've ever had. And I have your water."
"You've only ever had one." Nichols says. "Thanks for the water." She pours it into a compartment in the time machine.
"And you seriously think it'll work?" She repeats, still doubtful. "It looks like it's over a century old."
"Would you prefer riding a hippogriff back into time?" Nichols suggests sarcastically. "His Time Machine survived a lot of temporal abuse and was kept in stasis in the You-Sees, I think it can deal with another 16 years of it." Nichols says dismissively. She pulls a couple of levers from her pack. "Although I should warn you, he never came back from the last time he used it."
"So why's it still here?"
"He built two machines." Nichols says. "He took the second, more advanced one in 1946 and didn't come back. I wonder what he found in the future or the past that led him to that. Maybe it was the future he wanted." Nichols says wistfully. "Yes, let's go with that."
"That's the first time I've seen you wish someone well." Jamelia observes.
"Yes, you're trained in cold reading people. He taught me a lot, and he gave me a chance to do something very few people will. Ever traveled back in time?" Nichols asks.
Jamelia shakes her head.
"Ever read a manual on time travel?"
"No, just that it was incredibly dangerous."
"Okay, time travel, the quick version. Everything you do that affects the past changes things. 'Time Paradox' is very much literal. Time really doesn't like being tampered with. Make a small change, like be there where you shouldn't, and the timestream smooths it out. Make a big change, and you end up being chased by Time Cops or with Wells Syndrome or some other time-related sickness. Make a really big change and you disappear forever like you were never born." Nichols says. "So know what you're there for and stay focused on the mission."
"Is it too late to consider an alternate course of action?" Jamelia asks. "Something less dangerous, like invading Autocthonia?"
"You made me spend all this time dragging this old relic out for one last ride. Besides, if you're careful and subtle you'll get out of it without too much of a problem."
"And are you coming with me?" Jamelia asks. "I notice two people can sit in the machine."
Catherine laughs. "No. I've done too much of it. The Traditions would call me marked. The Chrononauts would say that I've hit a 'critical chronon suffusion level' and simply by going back again I might cause unstable resonance events. I can send back messages, keep track of what you're doing, and that's about it. You're going to have to wing it. Oh, and make sure you remember the Rule of Two."
"Rule of Two?"
"One person to change the past, another to stop it. I don't know why, but if someone is sent back in time, it's easier to follow them. And as I said, the Autopolitans have a functioning machine."
"So the moment I go back they tell the Computer what's going on and mission failed. This isn't sounding like a good idea."
"Not quite. It only gives them protection against the inherent rigors of time travel. If they tell anyone, that'll create huge butterflies. What happens if Jamelia Belltower stops existing because the Computer executes her?" Nichols asked. "Have you ever thought about that? Yes, with hyperstat or hyperpsych."
Jamelia thinks for a moment. "There's agents just as gifted as me-but they're all on vital missions. They'd have to assign someone with lesser skills. Missions get failed where they wouldn't be. The past changes. This is ignoring any political ramifications. They can't reveal that I was time traveling, because then they'd want to look at what I know. So-"
"So it basically turns the world upside down, and you can't predict what the future looks like 15 years down the line."
Jamelia nods.
"That's the kind of stuff that gets you retroactively erased from history. So you don't need to worry about that."
"I just need to worry about a killer robot from the future hunting me in the normal killer robot way."
"That, and finding a host body. You've been disembodied. It means you're becoming like them." Nichols says. She doesn't sound angry, bitter, or resigned. She sounds almost-approving.
"So you're going to kill me before I turn?" Jamelia asks warily.
"No, even if you became like them, your goal has become so critical to your narrative that you'd be opposed. No, we can use that. You can use their tricks." Nichols says. "You can learn from them. You can't do it at their level yet-you can't just take over a random schmuck and use all your abilities-but you can at least become something. An inner voice, possibly. Maybe even wrest control, if the mind is powerful enough. Just make sure to choose well, because I don't suspect you can cheat death with the same ease as others might."
Jamelia nods. "I don't believe it but-"
"-you'll keep an open mind?"
"The Void Engineers did kick you out for being too annoying." Jamelia says confidently. "Yes, I'll deal with the problems when I get there."
"All right. Just pull the levers. Note the numbers on the machine that tell you which tell you what date it is. I'm going to have someone on the other side get you to where you need to be. A one-shot. Don't fail." Nichols says. "Are you ready?"
"No."
"Well that's too bad, because you're not going to be ready. Just pull the levers when you feel like it." Nichols says. "In the meantime, I have your friends to talk to."
Jamelia pulls.
Time whirls-and so does space. The surroundings she's in transform into empty void. Somehow she's still... well, not alive, but still in this state, despite not having a vacuum suit or implants to protect from decompression. She keeps track of the dial and she stops the time machine when it hits June 28, 1999. Jamelia laughs. She's traveling in space, with no vacuum suit, as a disembodied mind, in HG Wells's time machine. She never imagined, in her entire career in the Technocracy, that something like this would ever happen. For that matter, she suspects even the members of the Traditions she's met, the ones who believed that they'd end up doing something truly amazing and mind-blowing, have ever imagined that they'd end up doing something like this.
They're on an asteroid. It looks like an automated sentry base is in the distance. Nichols is there. But she looks... different. Maybe a little younger? She's wearing something different, less bulky than the 1970s combat armor she saw. Something black and dull and probably stealthed.
"So you're the package I sent myself to keep this clusterfuck from expanding." Nichols muses, as she looks Jamelia over. "All right. I don't know who you are or what you are and I don't want to know. Minimizes timestream corruption. Right now, you're on Outpost M8723. A Void Engineer cruiser is going to rendezvous with this, then go to The Pyramid to pick up some new crew for a special mission into a noetic realm. That's your ticket inside. You'll have to hitch a ride outside but if you make sure to stay quiet they won't notice you. Erzurumis don't have that sensor resolution unless they've deployed their scientific scanners. You'll have plenty of time to think of things on the trip."
Jamelia nods and sets off towards the automated base. "Thank you."
Nichols says nothing.
Her statements about the trip giving plenty of thinking time are quite prescient, Jamelia concedes. Time enough to realize that if she was a Traditionalist, this would be considered suicide. But a Traditions mage didn't know what she does. She has plenty of clearances, and the Pyramid has a lot of locks which don't have a biometric element. She can spoof them. If the records exist-it won't matter, because they'll be lost to the Dimensional Anomaly in a week. It's hostile territory, but in a way, it's also coming home.
Home to where many of her later adjustments were done. Where her mind was scanned for several projects. She suspected several of them involved next-generation operative enhancements, because there were some things that young girl-Yinzheng-did that reminded her of her own tics, and even though she had been a fan, Jamelia doubts that she was that creepily obsessed.
Nevertheless, right now Yinzheng Li is a child of about 7 years old. Right now she's irrelevant. Jamelia glides through the halls of the Pyramid, halls lined with subliminal propaganda and colored in cheery pastel colors deliberately optimized to maximize productivity and cooperation, searching for a body. It's so much like being in enemy territory, yet it's so much like being at home. It's almost... comforting. Except that if she's caught they'll destroy her and possibly doom the world, but that's a familiar situation. And in that way, it's also comforting.
**********************************************************************************************************************
Yinzheng Li walks through the halls of the construct with slight trepidation. Jamelia Belltower wanted to see her, and she doesn't know why. This isn't the LA Construct either, but there were some shakeups after Moscow. And after the whole tribunal, she suspects Jamelia might have gotten a lot more influence. She's more experienced now, she knows more about the Technocracy and about Enlightened Science and about how it's the best hope for the future of mankind. She can sell herself and why she's useful.
She opens the door to a meeting room. Jamelia is sitting at the head of the desk, along with a lot of Enlightened Scientists. Some she recognizes. One is William Roth, a powerful financier who's been thinking the Technocracy has gone soft. He'd have thought he'd disagree with Jamelia but he's there looking like he approves of his position here. Yinzheng scans the rest of the people in the room.
There's a man with a heroic build, like someone out of American comic books. Even though he's wearing a business suit like everyone else there, it's obvious to Yinzheng that he's enhanced. It looks like biotech. There's another bulky man, and his enhancements look like synthetics. There's another male, normal looking, but his surgical gaze implies augmented intelligence, in a way that goes beyond standard Progenitor enhancements. Two identical men and one woman of identical height and mixed race sit next to him. A young woman with blue hair looks Yinzheng over, then goes back to staring at something that only she can see. Standing in the room is an ATLAS unit, a heavy combat chassis, a skeletal primium-armored hunter/killer with a human brain in it.
"Agent Li." Jamelia begins professionally. "I've looked over your record again and now that you're more experienced, I think I'd like to offer you a position on this team. You could be useful. I have plenty of agents, but I need more who can function in the way you can." Jamelia tells her. "I've seen your recent operations and you've been doing incredibly well. I think you're ready for greatness."
Yinzheng smiles, trying to hide how enthusiastic she is. "Thank you for saying this. What would I be doing?"
"You'd be participating in standard Operative missions, but you'd be working for a mixed Amalgam instead of a single-Convention unit, under my command. You'd have an opportunity to prove yourself in a way which your current construct does not allow for." Jamelia says. "I understand this is unorthodox but you have plenty of potential, and I've had an unorthodox recruitment myself." Jamelia says.
"I didn't know about that-" Yinzheng starts.
"It's not in the files." Jamelia says kindly. "Just let me say I'm sympathetic to prodigies and would love to give you an opportunity to develop, for the good of the Union. If you'll accept."
"I will." Yinzheng says, trying as hard as she can to sound confident and enthusiastic without sounding desperate. This is her dream! To work with someone she truly admires!
"Agent Li. Welcome to Panopticon." Ms. Clock says. "I'll give you the rest of today to familiarize yourself and we'll start work tomorrow at 0500."
Yinzheng grins. "Thank you very much for this. I won't let you down."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Be Kessler, Part 1 of 3:
Ragnarok is here. What do you do?
[ ] (1.25x) Make an argument that you should keep the ship. It's the sort of Etherite technology which is mostly okay. And it'd be the best you can get.
[ ] Keep only the FTL drives and critical components, trade the rest of the ship away for guns and armor and engines you can fit on another ship, like the Aurora.
[ ] Give it to the Void Engineers for dissection and salvage and see if you can't borrow a VE corvette or a smaller, more kosher but less powerful vessel.
[ ] Write-in.
Be Kessler, Part 2 of 3:
You also got refunded a tiny bit of Henriette's requisitions due to not needing them because you're getting some way to carry your people without compromising the QUEST. You're using this for:
[ ] Additional armor.
[ ] Better weapons.
[ ] Utility gadgets.
Be Kessler, Part 3 of 3:
You launch your two ships:
[ ] As soon as possible.
[ ] (1.2x) As soon as they're both fully working.
[ ] (0.8x) After you've made sure that everything on them is repaired, tuned, and upgraded as heavily as you can afford.
Be Jamelia:
Jamelia's possession target is:
[ ] An-Jin Choi, a bookish junior member of the Ivory Tower. His Spheres are Mind 2, Entropy 2, and Time 2, and he has Enlightenment 2.
[ ] Mister Carpenter, a NWO Man in Black who acts as the security subcommander for the habitation area of the station. He has no Enlightenment but has several basic inbuilt tricks due to his enhancements including Time/Entropy combat precognition, Life 2 self-healing, and Forces/Correspondence enhanced martial arts.
[ ] Dr. Alexander Garza, a Syndicate liaison to a mass cognitive engineering working group who originated as a Progenitor infiltration construct. He has Life 2, Mind 2, and Prime 2, and has notably superhuman social attributes and some very good looking tailored suits.
[ ] Consultant Travis Chen, a Syndicate Enforcer who is protecting Executive Zheng-a Syndicate bigwig interested in the applications of large-scale targeted memetic weaponry in expanding Syndicate operations against Reality Deviants. He is a KILO-rated combat agent with a moderate security clearance, Forces/Life 2, and Mind 1. Like most KILO-rated agents, he has EC6 augmentation-heavy genetic modification combined with low profile cybernetics.
Jamelia doesn't actually know any of these people in depth. Why would she? They all died in the Dimensional Anomaly, unimportant. That's why she's targeting them.
Last edited:
- Location
- in the trash
OH MY GOD
Clock got the alternate universe hires!
This means we're going to have to fight CYBERZOMBIE KING ARTHUR right?
EDIT:
And MJ 12 seems to have gotten the name wrong.
Do martial artist dude
Fucking Cyborg Zombie King Arthur with Fucking Excalibur
Progenitor super genius who was probably the one who did up the dream diving machine.
Three out of five there are two more somewhere.
Ghostbuster VE
Horrible Reality Deviant turned into Mindwiped Walking Tank
And of course, Ms Yinzheng Li, who has been duped into joining Panopticon by Evil CloneJamelia Jazmin
Clock got the alternate universe hires!
This means we're going to have to fight CYBERZOMBIE KING ARTHUR right?
EDIT:
And MJ 12 seems to have gotten the name wrong.
Do martial artist dude
Fucking Cyborg Zombie King Arthur with Fucking Excalibur
Progenitor super genius who was probably the one who did up the dream diving machine.
Three out of five there are two more somewhere.
Ghostbuster VE
Horrible Reality Deviant turned into Mindwiped Walking Tank
And of course, Ms Yinzheng Li, who has been duped into joining Panopticon by Evil Clone
Last edited:
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
I knew it.
And the walk-away is not complete without the 80's Action Movie bad pun one-liner! Kessler knows how it's done old-school, n00b.
[X] (1.25x) Make an argument that you should keep the ship. It's the sort of Etherite technology which is mostly okay. And it'd be the best you can get.
[X] Better weapons.
The QUEST is well armored enough in all that Primium, but we had to cut some of the weapons for the life-support pod. Here's a chance to correct that lack.
[X] (1.2x) As soon as they're both fully working.
Patch it up and off we go.
[X] Mister Carpenter, a NWO Man in Black who acts as the security subcommander for the habitation area of the station. He has no Enlightenment but has several basic inbuilt tricks due to his enhancements including Time/Entropy combat precognition, Life 2 self-healing, and Forces/Correspondence enhanced martial arts.
Dr. Chang's sweet suits almost swayed me, but Mr. Carpenter is a lot like Jamelia in terms of Spheres and general paradigm, which should make him more amenable to being our host, and in action if needed.
- Location
- in the trash
Also voting:
[X] Turn the Ethercruiser over to Void Engineers, in return request a low profile VE corvette good for infiltration into hostile space, and any equipment they can spare.
As noted, the QUEST has stealth, which is really quite useful for avoiding fights. If we want another vessel, we preferably want another vessel that can do stealth. The Void Engineers almost certainly have stealth corvettes for infiltrating into hostile space and inserting Delta Team units.
[X] Utility gadgets.
Neat tricks and such.
[X] As soon as they're both fully working.
As for the Jamelia vote, I'm not sure yet.
EDIT:
[X] An Jin-Choi
[X] Turn the Ethercruiser over to Void Engineers, in return request a low profile VE corvette good for infiltration into hostile space, and any equipment they can spare.
As noted, the QUEST has stealth, which is really quite useful for avoiding fights. If we want another vessel, we preferably want another vessel that can do stealth. The Void Engineers almost certainly have stealth corvettes for infiltrating into hostile space and inserting Delta Team units.
[X] Utility gadgets.
Neat tricks and such.
[X] As soon as they're both fully working.
As for the Jamelia vote, I'm not sure yet.
EDIT:
[X] An Jin-Choi
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Sarpedon
Knight Errant
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Give it to the Void Engineers for dissection and salvage and see if you can't borrow a VE corvette or a smaller, more kosher but less powerful vessel.
[X] Additional armor.
[X] (1.2x) As soon as they're both fully working.
[x] An-Jin Choi, a bookish junior member of the Ivory Tower. His Spheres are Mind 2, Entropy 2, and Time 2, and he has Enlightenment 2.
[X] Additional armor.
[X] (1.2x) As soon as they're both fully working.
[x] An-Jin Choi, a bookish junior member of the Ivory Tower. His Spheres are Mind 2, Entropy 2, and Time 2, and he has Enlightenment 2.
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- Location
- in the trash
So, since Jamelia has Entropy 4 now, could we cast blessings on whoever we possess through the focus of giving really good advice?
Actually, because we got the Etherite ship we aren't doing the refit so we still have the missiles I think.
Carpenter has no Enlightenment though. Which might be an issue as we'd have to rely on his fixed bag of in-built tricks, or have Jamelia do all the casting, and she's already going to accrue Paradox from just existing in the wrong time. I suppose that shouldn't be a problem though since Jamelia generally doesn't do vulgar.
Also, I think I'm going to vote
[X] An Jin-Choi
He can be Jamelia's apprentice, like Jamelia was Blanc's! Except unlike Blanc, Jamelia would be a benevolent mentor.
Actually, because we got the Etherite ship we aren't doing the refit so we still have the missiles I think.
Carpenter has no Enlightenment though. Which might be an issue as we'd have to rely on his fixed bag of in-built tricks, or have Jamelia do all the casting, and she's already going to accrue Paradox from just existing in the wrong time. I suppose that shouldn't be a problem though since Jamelia generally doesn't do vulgar.
Also, I think I'm going to vote
[X] An Jin-Choi
He can be Jamelia's apprentice, like Jamelia was Blanc's! Except unlike Blanc, Jamelia would be a benevolent mentor.