- Location
- in the trash
They're about average except for the 11d10 one, I think.
Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
13th Bee
Worker
- Location
- Tennessee, USA.
I have absolutely no clue how these dice rolls work.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
Any die rolling 7 or higher is a success. The more successes you get, the better you do. Easy-but-not-trivial tasks need one success; harder tasks require more.
The "10d10e7" syntax tells the rolz.org dice roller to roll ten ten-sided dice and count the number of dice which come up 7 or higher.
[x] Try to distract it, then unweave the Matter 4/Forces 3 Procedure twisting the F-35 into a robot.
Seems our best bet, given that escaping a robot-god with a giant F-35 robot is probably nearly impossible so taking away the robot is probably necessary for continued survival.
As for afterwards I am thinking...
[x] (1.5x) Get out of California and lay low... somewhere.
Because as people have been saying getting in touch with the interns would mean going near the war zone near the construct with the Anathema in tow, which seems like a Bad idea. As for a stunt on where to lay low, I am thinking someplace far away from major cities as the relative ubiquitous technology available in developed areas seems like it would play into the Anathema's favor more than it would ours, additionally this would help keep civilian casualties to a minimum.
The downside to this of course is that if we are in the middle of nowhere Ms. Clock can take the gloves off and just nuke us, so we would need to be very stealthy so she does not no where to drop the nukes. We could also try to piss off the Anathema enough that it wont let her get involved as it wants to kill us by itself which should be easy enough if we trash the F-35 while being suitably insulting.
Seems our best bet, given that escaping a robot-god with a giant F-35 robot is probably nearly impossible so taking away the robot is probably necessary for continued survival.
As for afterwards I am thinking...
[x] (1.5x) Get out of California and lay low... somewhere.
Because as people have been saying getting in touch with the interns would mean going near the war zone near the construct with the Anathema in tow, which seems like a Bad idea. As for a stunt on where to lay low, I am thinking someplace far away from major cities as the relative ubiquitous technology available in developed areas seems like it would play into the Anathema's favor more than it would ours, additionally this would help keep civilian casualties to a minimum.
The downside to this of course is that if we are in the middle of nowhere Ms. Clock can take the gloves off and just nuke us, so we would need to be very stealthy so she does not no where to drop the nukes. We could also try to piss off the Anathema enough that it wont let her get involved as it wants to kill us by itself which should be easy enough if we trash the F-35 while being suitably insulting.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
... it's a flawless god-machine that hosts an avatar-mind of the Computer itself, and is probably more intelligent than the collective brainpower of humanity put together. It has long since discarded pathetic meat-machine failings like "emotion" that lead to irrational or illogical behaviour. If we "piss it off" by proving ourselves a valid threat, it is more likely to get Ms Clock involved so as to more efficiently exterminate us in the name of the Computer, not less.
- Location
- Southern Virginia
Running away and relying on secrecy seems like a possible trap option. It might be tempting to run and seek security in secrecy, but Donald and Rose have no particular specializations in going to ground while Panopticon has a lot of resources to track them down with. It might be far better to get somewhere even the Anathema can't act freely, such as a secure Technocratic base.
Really? Because IMO it appears to take it's status as a god and the problems the construct have caused it rather personally, which leads me to believe that pissing it off might work out.
Furthermore my idea of pissing it off is mostly via social-fu supplementing what we already have to do to survive, so if it is indeed as rational as you say it would simply ignore the attempts to piss it off and we are not in any worse condition than we were earlier. Furthermore even if it is both irrational enough to get angry and yet rational enough to bring in help our primary defense once we get out of the immediate danger is still to lay low and not attract attention.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's a fucking supergenius. We are not going to trick it into doing something stupid or irrational or inefficient. If we do make it angry, it will be a controlled anger, and for fuck's sake, have people completely forgotten what happened when we tried literally exactly what you are suggesting with Henrietta? Do not taunt the horrifically powerful avatar of Threat Null! Not only is this thing nowhere near as easily manipulated and emotional as she was, it wouldn't end well even if it succeeded.
Could we do the opposite by creating the impression that Donald and Reina are being more affected by the emotions brought up by the current situation than is the actual case? Maybe try to create the impression that Reina is planning on immediately directly confronting the Anathema due to her strong religious belief and past history with the Computer when in fact she is trying something more nuanced?
I'd just like to re-emphasise this pretty fucking critical point. Henriette-A was a mentally unstable teenage girl with a boatload of trauma and a crippling Vitae addiction which was leaving her really, really hurting from the consequences of chowing down on all those vampires. She had a known habit of getting angry from words and Henriette literally knew all her buttons to press and did so when Henriette-A had no idea whatsoever that she was actually there. A few months ago she had literally been told by the ghosts of her parents that her entire life was a lie, and though they loved her they were still siding with her hated sister who literally murdered them.
Is the Anathema a severely traumatised and unstable teenage girl going through withdrawal symptoms? No, it is not.
Do not treat it like it's a mentally unstable teenage girl.
I'm going to note that Donald ran Mind/Time/Entropy wards on his date with Rose and the Anathema straight up brute forced them with an Int + Tactics roll and even THEN instead of lashing out immediately made sure to be in personal attack distance just in case it wasn't enough to have an override code and a HITMark.
And the only reason Donald survived was because Reina exists. This was timed so that it would perfectly mesh with Ms. Clock's plans so Technocracy SOP would lead Donald into an even worse killzone if he survived.
Does this sound like a thing you want to taunt?
And the only reason Donald survived was because Reina exists. This was timed so that it would perfectly mesh with Ms. Clock's plans so Technocracy SOP would lead Donald into an even worse killzone if he survived.
Does this sound like a thing you want to taunt?
... are people forgetting that Ms Clock and Jamelia are similar divergences of the original Jazmin Blade who went through most of the same formative experiences?
Because... uh, remember, Jamelia has a bias against Iterators, considers them prone to brute force and also prone to whining like little girls [1] if they get any mud on them or have to go anywhere where operational conditions aren't perfect. She frequently underestimates Kessler, and of all the party he's managed to keep his secrets best from her and her casual prying. And Ms Clock went through the same HELMETSHRIKE experiences which will probably leave her with a similar bias and tendency to consider Iterators to be less cunning (and more whining) than they actually are.
Ms Clock is not a neutral observer when commenting on the Anathema's flaws. And she may not even have known about its Marauder field, because the Anathema is an ally, not a subordinate. [2]
[1] The wimpy kind of little girl, not the overcurious and parent-driving-mad-ly independent kind of little girl she was
[2] Well, maybe not even an ally. It's a superior. Just a superior in a different branch of the organisation, and she has a direct line to Blanc who'll probably override anything it wants her to do that he doesn't want her to do.
Because... uh, remember, Jamelia has a bias against Iterators, considers them prone to brute force and also prone to whining like little girls [1] if they get any mud on them or have to go anywhere where operational conditions aren't perfect. She frequently underestimates Kessler, and of all the party he's managed to keep his secrets best from her and her casual prying. And Ms Clock went through the same HELMETSHRIKE experiences which will probably leave her with a similar bias and tendency to consider Iterators to be less cunning (and more whining) than they actually are.
Ms Clock is not a neutral observer when commenting on the Anathema's flaws. And she may not even have known about its Marauder field, because the Anathema is an ally, not a subordinate. [2]
[1] The wimpy kind of little girl, not the overcurious and parent-driving-mad-ly independent kind of little girl she was
[2] Well, maybe not even an ally. It's a superior. Just a superior in a different branch of the organisation, and she has a direct line to Blanc who'll probably override anything it wants her to do that he doesn't want her to do.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Avatar!Ravana: Hell yes. Do it you loser.
Avatar!Surpanakha: The druggie's right. Do it. Do it now.
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
Donald: "Hm... Ravana's advice has always been good in the past..."
Reina: "Art thou an idiot? Do not answer that."
In light of the points being I retract my suggestion about pissing off the Anathema as it was based on it being more emotional than it actually is as a result of my misreading it's interactions with Mrs. Clock and Reina, which made it appear rather full of itself (though not without reason), a tad insecure, and emotionally invested with dealing with Reina.
This combined with our prior successes with social-fu and my educated guess based on Reina's prior position in the union and accomplishments that she is no slouch at social-fu herself made me think that it was an option that could potentially help us with little opportunity to make things significantly worse.
Now all of that being said, does anyone see any flaws in the rest of my vote, or suggestions on how to hide to avoid getting nuked by Mrs. Clock the moment she can get away with it?
This combined with our prior successes with social-fu and my educated guess based on Reina's prior position in the union and accomplishments that she is no slouch at social-fu herself made me think that it was an option that could potentially help us with little opportunity to make things significantly worse.
Now all of that being said, does anyone see any flaws in the rest of my vote, or suggestions on how to hide to avoid getting nuked by Mrs. Clock the moment she can get away with it?
I figure the Anathema being pissed off is like an Alchemical moving up the Clarity track. It gets worse at social with meatbags, but becomes Hyper Efficient, Mega Optimal.
This probably is useful for making it make lots of enemies but not when you're the target and it's done playing cat and mouse.
This probably is useful for making it make lots of enemies but not when you're the target and it's done playing cat and mouse.
SR VIII: Uber Leet Hacksaw
SR VIII: Uber Leet Hacksaw
Once again, she finds herself in Dr Fujiyama's bed the next night, obediently waiting for him as he prepares himself and has a glass of wine. Not because she enjoys it (she doesn't), and not because it's much more comfortable than the hot-bunking the lab assistants have (okay, that bit is true), but because she needs access to his brain.
She's trained in two ways to change a man's mind using enlightened science, and only one of them is helped by having a laser scalpel close to hand. The other one might not be quite so clinical, but it involves a lot less surgery.
Even if she wouldn't mind using the laser scalpel on him.
And she's already used her body once already to get access. If she'd had some overwhelming moral qualm against it, she wouldn't have done it the first time. To pretend sudden squeamishness would be dishonest and wouldn't mean a thing. She's done much worse things in her life, and this isn't hurting anyone. It even means one of the lab bioroids is spared this chore.
It's vaguely annoying her. Naively you would expect someone who has a thing for low-functioning vatclones who can't say no to be ugly and useless in bed. It would make sense if he couldn't get a real woman to share his bed. But that's nonsense. Quite apart from the fact that it's a sad fact that plenty of Progenitor interns would be willing to do something like that to get in the good books of someone who's second-in-command of a major amalgam, he's not ugly. He's a senior Progenitor, for goodness sake. If someone don't look like a supermodel when they're in that kind of position, they're either very old and haven't swapped yet into a new cloned body or they're deliberately defying social expectations. And he knows what he's doing. She's had worse. He's in the top half, and might be higher if she didn't have to act like an unresponsive doll.
So for whatever reason, he has a thing for women who do exactly what he tells them to, don't feel emotions normally so find the deactivation of their emotional inhibition to be overwhelming, and act shyly and demurely when in social situations as part of their inadequate socialisation suites. Or maybe he just gets turned on by the model design where most L-series bioroids tend to have slightly oversized heads, large eyes and small mouths.
Thinking of mouths, the dull ache in her own jaw reminds her that she's going to have to get her hands on a retroviral booster to reinforce her own disguise. The modifications are a short-term thing that has to be renewed to prevent genetic degradation. She should be able to acquire one from the pharmacy - she's disguised as a standard geneline, so they'll have a line-appropriate Genetic Repair Kit she can tweak to prevent expression of undesired features. Or, maybe worse, the retrovirus affecting her brain, incorporating L12 features into her neurotype. She tenses up at the thought of that, and it's just as well that Fujiyama hasn't come back through, or he might have noticed her slip.
You know, Serafina thinks to distract herself while she waits, it's a very good thing that she's so incredibly intelligent. Most people wouldn't be able to maintain this kind of chain of thought in her current position, butterflies churning in her stomach. She can use the time constructively to refine the memeplex and analyse his psychology. Better that than spending the time wishing it was Alexander in the next room.
And then she has to remember that considering his age, Fujiyama was a progressive in his youth if he only amused himself with the lab bioroids rather than spend his time chasing the skirts of any female intern or junior researcher. It makes her feel sick that she's read historical arguments from when the L1s were introduced that having female bioroids around would 'channel the passions of wayward men away from decent women' and 'further the cause of female education'.
That's one of the great problems of the benefits of being a Progenitor. They live a long time, if something didn't get them. Even after the Anomaly, the Progenitors have the eldest surviving members because of politics meaning people would get exiled to Earth rather than staying in the cutting edge void labs. And people who might well have been perfectly progressive in their youth are left to calcify. Neuroscience can fix brains and help update attitudes, but you can't fix a senior academic who doesn't want to change their mind.
Urgh. This is why her damn overactive sense of empathy is a pain. Here she is, doing all this just so she can whisper a memeplex into his ear when he's asleep, and she's trying to understand him - and even making excuses for his age. Sometimes she wants to be less empathetic. It'd make it easier to hate people she really quite wants to hate.
So when the time comes, she lies back and thinks of host-tailored Li-Foxian memetic theory and its applications to subliminal non-REM sleep assisted cognitive programming. It's a lot more constructive than thoughts of England.
And later in the night, as she lies beside the sleeping man she whispers into his ear with words constructed to seep into his sleeping mind, feeding his ambition and his desire to impress Panopticon. All he has to do is send Iterator Mendoza to help them. It won't take any extra effort from him. He can get the credit from it, with no risk to himself. Showing the secret police that he'll go beyond doing the minimum to help them is the sort of thing he'll be able to call on later. And if he orders her to report to him, he can keep an eye on what they're using her for and see if they're causing trouble in Mexico City that'll backlash against him and make issues for him later. If things go well, he'll benefit, and if things go badly he'll be forewarned. It's only prudent, right?
Secretary Wolf is not a happy bioroid the next work cycle. At some point, she's learned to be irritated despite the emotional inhibition. She appears to treat the use of her new assistant for 'research' for two nights in a row with all the disgust that Lauras usually reserve for things like laboratory spills.
Serafina doesn't hide her tiredness from her - because she is tired from her nocturnal activities and those hours spent whispering to Dr Fujiyama - and so gets sent to shower and then to the medical bay to be administered a stimulant. That's an unexpected bonus. Freshly cleaned, she promptly takes control of the nurse and gets not only the stimulant, but also the genetic repair kit she needs to fix up her disguise. Without the ache in her bones, she's already feeling better.
Then she's back to Human Resources, and the news that Iterator Mendoza will be away and therefore Human Resources needs to allocate additional assets to the amalgam's IT Department to cover for the temporary absence of a senior staff member.
It's almost too easy. It barely takes a nudge for her to remind Secretary Wolf that she's currently technically a floating asset. The harder bit is the fact that the older bioroid is being kind once again, and says some things which imply that it'll probably be a good thing for 'Maria' to provide assistance in that sector, because that way she won't come into contact with Dr Fujiyama again.
Which is how three hours later Serafina is wearing a full cleanroom suit and has just filed through the extensive security checkpoints and into what might metaphorically and literally be called the 'brain' of Amalgam-391. She stares up at the green tanks containing the engineered neural tissue of the URTURN-class meatware AIs. Lit by floodlights which feed their engineered chlorophyll-rich surfaces, the sprawling grey-green tissue sprouting off from black-plastic shrouded super-axonic cabling resembles plantlife more than it does the human brain tissue they're made from.
Quite unlike the Void Engineer Sword-class Meitma meatware 'AIs', the URTURN biological synthetic intelligences do not come in the form of teenage girls. They're proper Progenitor meatware AIs, not high-functioning constructs designed to be plugged into hardware and labelled as artificial intelligences for logistic reasons. They don't need bodies. They aren't even limited to the shape of the human brain. They're built to specifications, not repurposed from cloned human embryos.
It's Moravec's Paradox. Humans find things they find easy very hard to programme computers to do, while things humans struggle with are easy to implement in code. But the URTURN systems get to borrow all those millions of years of human evolution for things like facial recognition and snap judgement. And then they're refined, for an environment no human is native to. They might be made from human brain tissue, but they're not at all human - not even in the way a low-functioning bioroid is. The tree of life branches and forks, and these are very much posthuman intelligences.
These machines aren't as fast as high-end Iterator AIs. What they are is considerably cheaper than a quantum black-box system, maintainable with native Progenitor assets, and better at pattern recognition. The Progenitors don't use URTURN systems for brute-force number crunching - they just get more conventional hardware for that purpose. What an URTURN does is put an intelligence in the system, a lifeform perfectly adapted for being a digital native.
Serafina's read the speculative plans to take the genelines and develop them so they're viable outside the lab. You'd grow them like the plants they resemble. A wetware ecosystem, covering cultivated fields with computing power. There's blue-skies papers talking about seeding the oceans with analogue intelligences which could manage the planet's biosphere and control the environment as a magic bullet to deal with anthropogenic climate change. She doesn't think the idea is plausible any time soon - but it's an interesting concept, isn't it?
Well, it was an interesting concept. At least until she found out that… such things have already been done and exceeded by the posthuman mockeries of her Convention who are busy spreading like an infectious tumour across the stars.
A few words to the construct running the shift in Iterator Mendoza's absence, and she's been assigned to maintenance, to check the nutrient flows for the URTURNs. She takes her issued maintenance toolkit, and heads down below the tanks, into the quiet warm damp spaces under the floor.
Kneeling down, she rummages through her toolbox and finds what she's looking for. She pulls out a syringe filled with a sedative-nanite suspension designed to help with maintenance and stop the systems from panicking. Another advantage of URTURNs, in theory, is that their biological architecture is incompatible with most forms of hacking. Professor Allende - like many Progenitors his age - holds quite a grudge against the Etherite and Virtual Adept defectors. He has plenty of reason to want to make the supervisory AIs proof against the methods which would compromise the main systems.
Of course, the cost of their immunity to most hackers is their vulnerability to people who can deal with their biological substrate.
Like her.
At 2015-DEC-23 12:42 CST, Amalgam-391 was effectively subverted by an unknown hostile who assumed control of the central amalgam data processing and authorisation controls. With most of the senior command staff and a considerable number of junior members absent for the Christmas holidays and with the requisition of the network sysadmin by the Panopticon Convention, no staff members remained on site with both the authority and technical knowledge to easily regain control of the facilities.
Serafina let herself giggle, and then clasped her gloved hand over her paper mask. Dammit. Lauras didn't giggle. That was just the stress and the relief getting to her.
But that's probably how they'd write up the incident report if her presence was discovered. She's sweating heavily from her work down in the warmth of the pipework under the AIs' tanks, but she's done it. Once she subverted half the units, she had an effective majority and therefore could dominate consensus relays by the wetware. That made it easy for her to get the rest of them. The poor stupid brain-tissue-in-a-tank didn't even fight her. As far as it was concerned, she was a maintenance technician with all the right authorisation to carry out her work.
More seriously, she's just found how lax elements of Technocratic security can be against someone who knows exactly how to subvert them and how to act like she belongs. That's a real worry. When she and her friends are up against Panopticon, they can pull all the same tricks as she can. Only she's a lone rogue cell, working on her own, while they legitimately have authorisation codes - and wouldn't just be limited to Progenitor access.
God. No wonder the Void Engineers are terrified of… of the exhuman EDEs. She's not even an infiltration expert. She's just socially adept and knows Progenitor weaknesses, running on sheer nervous willpower and a stolen gene-hack kit. She wouldn't have done half as well if Dr Fujiyama didn't have a thing for molesting the lab equipment. What could someone who genuinely focussed on doing this sort of thing do?
Although she is selling herself a bit short. After all, she is a super-genius and one of the leaders in the field of hyperpsych. There aren't many people out there who can subvert Progenitor constructs in the way she can. All that effort she put into working out ways that people could control Rose and how she might be able to strengthen her daughter's will against them paid off.
The klaxon sounds. It's the end of her current shift. She dutifully files out to strip off the cleanroom gear and head with the other bioroids to the cafeteria to take her mandated nutrition. And plan what to do next. She'll need to find a way to get word to Alicia, because she has a feeling she wants to act sooner rather than later.
Iterator Mendoza is an ethnically-indigenous woman. She's short - shorter than Yinzheng - and there's something slightly… limp about her. Her artificial hair is set up to relay heat away from her brain augmentations, but lies inactive in its current configuration. She only looks at people when they talk to her, and holds their gaze unblinking until they stop, whereupon she looks away. She doesn't say much. Just little short phrases in accented English, like 'Yes, Operative' and 'May I see your hardware set-up?" and "This will be adequate".
It makes her hard to talk to, and it limits her use as a tactical asset. She'll have to be treated more like a HITMark than a human being. She's damaged, Yinzheng considers sadly. She's even worse-off than poor Ling. Iteration X is so foolish sometimes. Not only did they used to do horrible things to people, not only did they make them less human and less able to help make the world a better place, but they also handed the Reality Terrorists a propaganda coup. She doesn't think she can easily defend cutting out bits of people's brains and leaving them an emotionally neutered mess, even if they thought they were doing it for the best.
She's very glad she's in the New World Order, which is above all that. There are much better ways to change minds than the crude explorative surgery that Iteration X used to like so much. And at least Ling is improving, now that Director Belltower pulled some strings and had Dr Gregor help her.
Mendoza seems to realise that Li is watching her. She turns to face her - turning her whole body, not just her head. "I can use the hardware," she says. "What are my duties?"
Yinzheng nods. "I require total communications surveillance," she says bluntly. "If DIDO says a word into a mobile telephone, a landline, a pirate radio station… you name it, I want to know if she's talking to anyone. If she slips up, I want her found. Be ready to add any identified aliases or allies to the search."
"Yes, Operative."
"In addition, I want you to liaise and reinforce our internet trawls. Do you have any experience at electronic warfare against Reality Terrorist electronic communications and monitoring of their webpages?"
"Yes, Operative." Mendoza blinked, slowly, lazily, like a reptile. "I monitor them as part of my duties in Amalgam-391. There has been recent disruption to many of their networks. Reality Terrorist site designated 'TradWiki' has suffered extensive server-side damage and upwards of 30% of pages are currently corrupted. Reality Terrorist site designated 'RCpedia" has suffered extensive server-side damage and approximated 15% of pages are currently corrupted. Reality Terrorist site designated 'The Spy's Demise' does not respond to pings and may have been destroyed. Reality Terrorist-"
"I see," Yinzheng says, idly smoothing down the front of her jacket. Another one of the routine assaults on RT network infrastructure, presumably. If the networks were damaged, DIDO might be wary of them. Curses. It would be easier if she'd give herself away that way. But on the other hand good, because she wouldn't be able to contact hostiles as easily. "Well, monitor them regardless."
"Yes, Operative."
"Do you require anything else?"
"No, Operative."
Yinzheng watched as Iterator Mendoza turned her back on her, and began to connect herself up to the systems hardware in the improved Panopticon Construct. They were borrowing one of the reserve New World Order facilities in Mexico City, based out of a hidden basement under a police station, and while it was perfectly functional she would have preferred somewhere a bit more prepared. And also a bit less cramped. With the requisitions she'd borrowed from the various Amalgams here and her own construct forces, space was at a premium. She'd almost bought an old Panopticon facility online, but that would have been a distraction from hunting for DIDO.
Retreating back to her own tiny cramped office, Yinzheng got back to working through the reports and handling the various touchy Amalgam leads. It was so annoying. They didn't understand how critical matters were, even when she'd shown them the aspects of the classified reports on DIDO - Alice Aristide - that they were cleared to see. She was a clear and present danger to the Union and the cause of Control. Why wouldn't they listen?
In her more rational moments, she knew exactly why they didn't listen. Mexico City was a warzone in the shadows. The Camarilla was directly assaulting the city, clawing their way into the federal province and taking it back block by block. There were the forces of drug lords everywhere, and many of them were linked to various RD forces - while others were Union pawns. And of course, Mexico was fiercely prickly about being pushed around by 'Americans' - which was very unfair because she was Chinese, but they seemed to assume all Chinese were Chinese-Americans - and considered her to be trespassing on their territory.
They just didn't see how one rogue RT construct could really be a threat, when they had haemophage drug gangs selling h-blood on the streets.
Although honestly, she was just complaining to herself. When Director Belltower called for her daily check-in, she had good news to report after all.
Director Belltower, as usual, looks immaculate. With her training, Yinzheng can see a few tells that her superior hasn't slept in days and will probably have to take a few hours rest fairly soon for medical reasons, but she doesn't seem to be letting that bother her. Yinzheng herself took six hours last night because she's really been hitting the KeepAwake trying to run this op. She finds being awake for more than a few days to be psychologically stressful, even if she doesn't get physically tired, but she's been pushing her limits. Back in training she used to find even two days on KeepAwake left her mentally shattered, but with her augs her tolerance has improved significantly.
"Operative Li reporting in, Director Belltower."
"Li. Progress report on the hunt for DIDO?"
Yinzheng nods. "Progressing ahead of schedule. We believe she has taken the bait. One fireteam was ambushed, and post-mortems have revealed the characteristic mental trauma of psionic mental data extraction. We are ready for her to move, and in the meantime are keeping up the pressure. We're leaving it clear that the only way she can stop us going after us is to take us down, and that if she tries to run, we'll just follow her."
"Good. You've done well with the assets I could spare from other major operations. How are the local Technocrats being?"
"Thank you, Director," Yinzheng says, trying not to beam from the praise. "They're… ah, somewhat prickly, but I've coaxed them into cooperating. By spreading my requisitions across them equally, I'm giving them all the chance to curry favour, while not feeling that they're leaving themselves in a weakened position."
Director Belltower was very proud of her for this plan. There's no way they can chase DIDO, Alice Aristide, down in Mexico City. It's too big. The Union doesn't have solid enough control. And the kind of operation they'd need to do it properly would bring them into conflict with everything in the Mexican criminal underworld.
So you don't chase after her. You shape her options so you have a nice vulnerable point which she can take out to get you off her back. And then you have a second, much less obvious vulnerable point which is the real vulnerable point because someone with Operative training isn't going to fall for such an obvious trap of the first one.
Director Belltower has her cramming Professor Blanc's work. It's really incredible. To think that he was Jamelia Belltower's first mentor! She'd only encountered his name a few times but that the Director was trained by someone in the Inner Circle - she's a bit jealous. No wonder she's amazing. There are training methods which only the very best candidates used to get used on them.
Like, unfortunately, Alice Aristide. Which is why she's such a problem.
Since she took up the chase, Director Belltower has given her more access to DIDO's background. Yinzheng realises now how much she underestimated her with her first assumption that a fourteen year old who ran away from school would be half-trained. DIDO is half-trained… by the standards of Inner Circle-trained Operatives. And managed to break out of Damien despite the fact that she hadn't reached her full potential yet. She wishes she'd known some of these things before Miami - but of course, Director Belltower had to apply to have her clearance temporarily raised so she could know such things about the inner workings of Damien. Que sera, sera.
She wants to ask how the operations in Los Angeles are going, she wants to ask if she can do anything to help - but she doesn't. She has her mission.
Wow, Just Look At Her Assets
Serafina arguably is now the most influential Progenitor in Amalgam-391, having subverted theMAGI the URTURN meatware and with the senior staff who could thwart her on holiday or with Panopticon. What's her next goal to work towards?
[ ] Rescue Alice - They might be getting close to Alice. She needs to get her out of there. Now.
[ ] Thwart Panopticon - Now she has a lot more tools, she can really be the spoiler in their plans. Cloned body doubles to spring their trap early, using her influence to obstruct them, getting a warning out to the Traditions via certain backdoor channels - whatever works.
[ ] Eliminate Panopticon - Hell hath no fury like a woman who was mind controlled into nearly killing herself.
[ ] Write in
Once again, she finds herself in Dr Fujiyama's bed the next night, obediently waiting for him as he prepares himself and has a glass of wine. Not because she enjoys it (she doesn't), and not because it's much more comfortable than the hot-bunking the lab assistants have (okay, that bit is true), but because she needs access to his brain.
She's trained in two ways to change a man's mind using enlightened science, and only one of them is helped by having a laser scalpel close to hand. The other one might not be quite so clinical, but it involves a lot less surgery.
Even if she wouldn't mind using the laser scalpel on him.
And she's already used her body once already to get access. If she'd had some overwhelming moral qualm against it, she wouldn't have done it the first time. To pretend sudden squeamishness would be dishonest and wouldn't mean a thing. She's done much worse things in her life, and this isn't hurting anyone. It even means one of the lab bioroids is spared this chore.
It's vaguely annoying her. Naively you would expect someone who has a thing for low-functioning vatclones who can't say no to be ugly and useless in bed. It would make sense if he couldn't get a real woman to share his bed. But that's nonsense. Quite apart from the fact that it's a sad fact that plenty of Progenitor interns would be willing to do something like that to get in the good books of someone who's second-in-command of a major amalgam, he's not ugly. He's a senior Progenitor, for goodness sake. If someone don't look like a supermodel when they're in that kind of position, they're either very old and haven't swapped yet into a new cloned body or they're deliberately defying social expectations. And he knows what he's doing. She's had worse. He's in the top half, and might be higher if she didn't have to act like an unresponsive doll.
So for whatever reason, he has a thing for women who do exactly what he tells them to, don't feel emotions normally so find the deactivation of their emotional inhibition to be overwhelming, and act shyly and demurely when in social situations as part of their inadequate socialisation suites. Or maybe he just gets turned on by the model design where most L-series bioroids tend to have slightly oversized heads, large eyes and small mouths.
Thinking of mouths, the dull ache in her own jaw reminds her that she's going to have to get her hands on a retroviral booster to reinforce her own disguise. The modifications are a short-term thing that has to be renewed to prevent genetic degradation. She should be able to acquire one from the pharmacy - she's disguised as a standard geneline, so they'll have a line-appropriate Genetic Repair Kit she can tweak to prevent expression of undesired features. Or, maybe worse, the retrovirus affecting her brain, incorporating L12 features into her neurotype. She tenses up at the thought of that, and it's just as well that Fujiyama hasn't come back through, or he might have noticed her slip.
You know, Serafina thinks to distract herself while she waits, it's a very good thing that she's so incredibly intelligent. Most people wouldn't be able to maintain this kind of chain of thought in her current position, butterflies churning in her stomach. She can use the time constructively to refine the memeplex and analyse his psychology. Better that than spending the time wishing it was Alexander in the next room.
And then she has to remember that considering his age, Fujiyama was a progressive in his youth if he only amused himself with the lab bioroids rather than spend his time chasing the skirts of any female intern or junior researcher. It makes her feel sick that she's read historical arguments from when the L1s were introduced that having female bioroids around would 'channel the passions of wayward men away from decent women' and 'further the cause of female education'.
That's one of the great problems of the benefits of being a Progenitor. They live a long time, if something didn't get them. Even after the Anomaly, the Progenitors have the eldest surviving members because of politics meaning people would get exiled to Earth rather than staying in the cutting edge void labs. And people who might well have been perfectly progressive in their youth are left to calcify. Neuroscience can fix brains and help update attitudes, but you can't fix a senior academic who doesn't want to change their mind.
Urgh. This is why her damn overactive sense of empathy is a pain. Here she is, doing all this just so she can whisper a memeplex into his ear when he's asleep, and she's trying to understand him - and even making excuses for his age. Sometimes she wants to be less empathetic. It'd make it easier to hate people she really quite wants to hate.
So when the time comes, she lies back and thinks of host-tailored Li-Foxian memetic theory and its applications to subliminal non-REM sleep assisted cognitive programming. It's a lot more constructive than thoughts of England.
And later in the night, as she lies beside the sleeping man she whispers into his ear with words constructed to seep into his sleeping mind, feeding his ambition and his desire to impress Panopticon. All he has to do is send Iterator Mendoza to help them. It won't take any extra effort from him. He can get the credit from it, with no risk to himself. Showing the secret police that he'll go beyond doing the minimum to help them is the sort of thing he'll be able to call on later. And if he orders her to report to him, he can keep an eye on what they're using her for and see if they're causing trouble in Mexico City that'll backlash against him and make issues for him later. If things go well, he'll benefit, and if things go badly he'll be forewarned. It's only prudent, right?
***
Secretary Wolf is not a happy bioroid the next work cycle. At some point, she's learned to be irritated despite the emotional inhibition. She appears to treat the use of her new assistant for 'research' for two nights in a row with all the disgust that Lauras usually reserve for things like laboratory spills.
Serafina doesn't hide her tiredness from her - because she is tired from her nocturnal activities and those hours spent whispering to Dr Fujiyama - and so gets sent to shower and then to the medical bay to be administered a stimulant. That's an unexpected bonus. Freshly cleaned, she promptly takes control of the nurse and gets not only the stimulant, but also the genetic repair kit she needs to fix up her disguise. Without the ache in her bones, she's already feeling better.
Then she's back to Human Resources, and the news that Iterator Mendoza will be away and therefore Human Resources needs to allocate additional assets to the amalgam's IT Department to cover for the temporary absence of a senior staff member.
It's almost too easy. It barely takes a nudge for her to remind Secretary Wolf that she's currently technically a floating asset. The harder bit is the fact that the older bioroid is being kind once again, and says some things which imply that it'll probably be a good thing for 'Maria' to provide assistance in that sector, because that way she won't come into contact with Dr Fujiyama again.
Which is how three hours later Serafina is wearing a full cleanroom suit and has just filed through the extensive security checkpoints and into what might metaphorically and literally be called the 'brain' of Amalgam-391. She stares up at the green tanks containing the engineered neural tissue of the URTURN-class meatware AIs. Lit by floodlights which feed their engineered chlorophyll-rich surfaces, the sprawling grey-green tissue sprouting off from black-plastic shrouded super-axonic cabling resembles plantlife more than it does the human brain tissue they're made from.
Quite unlike the Void Engineer Sword-class Meitma meatware 'AIs', the URTURN biological synthetic intelligences do not come in the form of teenage girls. They're proper Progenitor meatware AIs, not high-functioning constructs designed to be plugged into hardware and labelled as artificial intelligences for logistic reasons. They don't need bodies. They aren't even limited to the shape of the human brain. They're built to specifications, not repurposed from cloned human embryos.
It's Moravec's Paradox. Humans find things they find easy very hard to programme computers to do, while things humans struggle with are easy to implement in code. But the URTURN systems get to borrow all those millions of years of human evolution for things like facial recognition and snap judgement. And then they're refined, for an environment no human is native to. They might be made from human brain tissue, but they're not at all human - not even in the way a low-functioning bioroid is. The tree of life branches and forks, and these are very much posthuman intelligences.
These machines aren't as fast as high-end Iterator AIs. What they are is considerably cheaper than a quantum black-box system, maintainable with native Progenitor assets, and better at pattern recognition. The Progenitors don't use URTURN systems for brute-force number crunching - they just get more conventional hardware for that purpose. What an URTURN does is put an intelligence in the system, a lifeform perfectly adapted for being a digital native.
Serafina's read the speculative plans to take the genelines and develop them so they're viable outside the lab. You'd grow them like the plants they resemble. A wetware ecosystem, covering cultivated fields with computing power. There's blue-skies papers talking about seeding the oceans with analogue intelligences which could manage the planet's biosphere and control the environment as a magic bullet to deal with anthropogenic climate change. She doesn't think the idea is plausible any time soon - but it's an interesting concept, isn't it?
Well, it was an interesting concept. At least until she found out that… such things have already been done and exceeded by the posthuman mockeries of her Convention who are busy spreading like an infectious tumour across the stars.
A few words to the construct running the shift in Iterator Mendoza's absence, and she's been assigned to maintenance, to check the nutrient flows for the URTURNs. She takes her issued maintenance toolkit, and heads down below the tanks, into the quiet warm damp spaces under the floor.
Kneeling down, she rummages through her toolbox and finds what she's looking for. She pulls out a syringe filled with a sedative-nanite suspension designed to help with maintenance and stop the systems from panicking. Another advantage of URTURNs, in theory, is that their biological architecture is incompatible with most forms of hacking. Professor Allende - like many Progenitors his age - holds quite a grudge against the Etherite and Virtual Adept defectors. He has plenty of reason to want to make the supervisory AIs proof against the methods which would compromise the main systems.
Of course, the cost of their immunity to most hackers is their vulnerability to people who can deal with their biological substrate.
Like her.
***
At 2015-DEC-23 12:42 CST, Amalgam-391 was effectively subverted by an unknown hostile who assumed control of the central amalgam data processing and authorisation controls. With most of the senior command staff and a considerable number of junior members absent for the Christmas holidays and with the requisition of the network sysadmin by the Panopticon Convention, no staff members remained on site with both the authority and technical knowledge to easily regain control of the facilities.
Serafina let herself giggle, and then clasped her gloved hand over her paper mask. Dammit. Lauras didn't giggle. That was just the stress and the relief getting to her.
But that's probably how they'd write up the incident report if her presence was discovered. She's sweating heavily from her work down in the warmth of the pipework under the AIs' tanks, but she's done it. Once she subverted half the units, she had an effective majority and therefore could dominate consensus relays by the wetware. That made it easy for her to get the rest of them. The poor stupid brain-tissue-in-a-tank didn't even fight her. As far as it was concerned, she was a maintenance technician with all the right authorisation to carry out her work.
More seriously, she's just found how lax elements of Technocratic security can be against someone who knows exactly how to subvert them and how to act like she belongs. That's a real worry. When she and her friends are up against Panopticon, they can pull all the same tricks as she can. Only she's a lone rogue cell, working on her own, while they legitimately have authorisation codes - and wouldn't just be limited to Progenitor access.
God. No wonder the Void Engineers are terrified of… of the exhuman EDEs. She's not even an infiltration expert. She's just socially adept and knows Progenitor weaknesses, running on sheer nervous willpower and a stolen gene-hack kit. She wouldn't have done half as well if Dr Fujiyama didn't have a thing for molesting the lab equipment. What could someone who genuinely focussed on doing this sort of thing do?
Although she is selling herself a bit short. After all, she is a super-genius and one of the leaders in the field of hyperpsych. There aren't many people out there who can subvert Progenitor constructs in the way she can. All that effort she put into working out ways that people could control Rose and how she might be able to strengthen her daughter's will against them paid off.
The klaxon sounds. It's the end of her current shift. She dutifully files out to strip off the cleanroom gear and head with the other bioroids to the cafeteria to take her mandated nutrition. And plan what to do next. She'll need to find a way to get word to Alicia, because she has a feeling she wants to act sooner rather than later.
***
Iterator Mendoza is an ethnically-indigenous woman. She's short - shorter than Yinzheng - and there's something slightly… limp about her. Her artificial hair is set up to relay heat away from her brain augmentations, but lies inactive in its current configuration. She only looks at people when they talk to her, and holds their gaze unblinking until they stop, whereupon she looks away. She doesn't say much. Just little short phrases in accented English, like 'Yes, Operative' and 'May I see your hardware set-up?" and "This will be adequate".
It makes her hard to talk to, and it limits her use as a tactical asset. She'll have to be treated more like a HITMark than a human being. She's damaged, Yinzheng considers sadly. She's even worse-off than poor Ling. Iteration X is so foolish sometimes. Not only did they used to do horrible things to people, not only did they make them less human and less able to help make the world a better place, but they also handed the Reality Terrorists a propaganda coup. She doesn't think she can easily defend cutting out bits of people's brains and leaving them an emotionally neutered mess, even if they thought they were doing it for the best.
She's very glad she's in the New World Order, which is above all that. There are much better ways to change minds than the crude explorative surgery that Iteration X used to like so much. And at least Ling is improving, now that Director Belltower pulled some strings and had Dr Gregor help her.
Mendoza seems to realise that Li is watching her. She turns to face her - turning her whole body, not just her head. "I can use the hardware," she says. "What are my duties?"
Yinzheng nods. "I require total communications surveillance," she says bluntly. "If DIDO says a word into a mobile telephone, a landline, a pirate radio station… you name it, I want to know if she's talking to anyone. If she slips up, I want her found. Be ready to add any identified aliases or allies to the search."
"Yes, Operative."
"In addition, I want you to liaise and reinforce our internet trawls. Do you have any experience at electronic warfare against Reality Terrorist electronic communications and monitoring of their webpages?"
"Yes, Operative." Mendoza blinked, slowly, lazily, like a reptile. "I monitor them as part of my duties in Amalgam-391. There has been recent disruption to many of their networks. Reality Terrorist site designated 'TradWiki' has suffered extensive server-side damage and upwards of 30% of pages are currently corrupted. Reality Terrorist site designated 'RCpedia" has suffered extensive server-side damage and approximated 15% of pages are currently corrupted. Reality Terrorist site designated 'The Spy's Demise' does not respond to pings and may have been destroyed. Reality Terrorist-"
"I see," Yinzheng says, idly smoothing down the front of her jacket. Another one of the routine assaults on RT network infrastructure, presumably. If the networks were damaged, DIDO might be wary of them. Curses. It would be easier if she'd give herself away that way. But on the other hand good, because she wouldn't be able to contact hostiles as easily. "Well, monitor them regardless."
"Yes, Operative."
"Do you require anything else?"
"No, Operative."
Yinzheng watched as Iterator Mendoza turned her back on her, and began to connect herself up to the systems hardware in the improved Panopticon Construct. They were borrowing one of the reserve New World Order facilities in Mexico City, based out of a hidden basement under a police station, and while it was perfectly functional she would have preferred somewhere a bit more prepared. And also a bit less cramped. With the requisitions she'd borrowed from the various Amalgams here and her own construct forces, space was at a premium. She'd almost bought an old Panopticon facility online, but that would have been a distraction from hunting for DIDO.
Retreating back to her own tiny cramped office, Yinzheng got back to working through the reports and handling the various touchy Amalgam leads. It was so annoying. They didn't understand how critical matters were, even when she'd shown them the aspects of the classified reports on DIDO - Alice Aristide - that they were cleared to see. She was a clear and present danger to the Union and the cause of Control. Why wouldn't they listen?
In her more rational moments, she knew exactly why they didn't listen. Mexico City was a warzone in the shadows. The Camarilla was directly assaulting the city, clawing their way into the federal province and taking it back block by block. There were the forces of drug lords everywhere, and many of them were linked to various RD forces - while others were Union pawns. And of course, Mexico was fiercely prickly about being pushed around by 'Americans' - which was very unfair because she was Chinese, but they seemed to assume all Chinese were Chinese-Americans - and considered her to be trespassing on their territory.
They just didn't see how one rogue RT construct could really be a threat, when they had haemophage drug gangs selling h-blood on the streets.
Although honestly, she was just complaining to herself. When Director Belltower called for her daily check-in, she had good news to report after all.
Director Belltower, as usual, looks immaculate. With her training, Yinzheng can see a few tells that her superior hasn't slept in days and will probably have to take a few hours rest fairly soon for medical reasons, but she doesn't seem to be letting that bother her. Yinzheng herself took six hours last night because she's really been hitting the KeepAwake trying to run this op. She finds being awake for more than a few days to be psychologically stressful, even if she doesn't get physically tired, but she's been pushing her limits. Back in training she used to find even two days on KeepAwake left her mentally shattered, but with her augs her tolerance has improved significantly.
"Operative Li reporting in, Director Belltower."
"Li. Progress report on the hunt for DIDO?"
Yinzheng nods. "Progressing ahead of schedule. We believe she has taken the bait. One fireteam was ambushed, and post-mortems have revealed the characteristic mental trauma of psionic mental data extraction. We are ready for her to move, and in the meantime are keeping up the pressure. We're leaving it clear that the only way she can stop us going after us is to take us down, and that if she tries to run, we'll just follow her."
"Good. You've done well with the assets I could spare from other major operations. How are the local Technocrats being?"
"Thank you, Director," Yinzheng says, trying not to beam from the praise. "They're… ah, somewhat prickly, but I've coaxed them into cooperating. By spreading my requisitions across them equally, I'm giving them all the chance to curry favour, while not feeling that they're leaving themselves in a weakened position."
Director Belltower was very proud of her for this plan. There's no way they can chase DIDO, Alice Aristide, down in Mexico City. It's too big. The Union doesn't have solid enough control. And the kind of operation they'd need to do it properly would bring them into conflict with everything in the Mexican criminal underworld.
So you don't chase after her. You shape her options so you have a nice vulnerable point which she can take out to get you off her back. And then you have a second, much less obvious vulnerable point which is the real vulnerable point because someone with Operative training isn't going to fall for such an obvious trap of the first one.
Director Belltower has her cramming Professor Blanc's work. It's really incredible. To think that he was Jamelia Belltower's first mentor! She'd only encountered his name a few times but that the Director was trained by someone in the Inner Circle - she's a bit jealous. No wonder she's amazing. There are training methods which only the very best candidates used to get used on them.
Like, unfortunately, Alice Aristide. Which is why she's such a problem.
Since she took up the chase, Director Belltower has given her more access to DIDO's background. Yinzheng realises now how much she underestimated her with her first assumption that a fourteen year old who ran away from school would be half-trained. DIDO is half-trained… by the standards of Inner Circle-trained Operatives. And managed to break out of Damien despite the fact that she hadn't reached her full potential yet. She wishes she'd known some of these things before Miami - but of course, Director Belltower had to apply to have her clearance temporarily raised so she could know such things about the inner workings of Damien. Que sera, sera.
She wants to ask how the operations in Los Angeles are going, she wants to ask if she can do anything to help - but she doesn't. She has her mission.
Wow, Just Look At Her Assets
Serafina arguably is now the most influential Progenitor in Amalgam-391, having subverted the
[ ] Rescue Alice - They might be getting close to Alice. She needs to get her out of there. Now.
[ ] Thwart Panopticon - Now she has a lot more tools, she can really be the spoiler in their plans. Cloned body doubles to spring their trap early, using her influence to obstruct them, getting a warning out to the Traditions via certain backdoor channels - whatever works.
[ ] Eliminate Panopticon - Hell hath no fury like a woman who was mind controlled into nearly killing herself.
[ ] Write in
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
This is actually a really tough choice for me. I want to get Alice out, but flooding Panopticon with dinosaurs is damn tempting.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
"Eliminate" seems excessive - especially given that they're probably running on borrowed resources. You might get a small numebr of actual Panopticon assets, but after that, what have you cost them? "Thwart", if done properly, seems like the sort of thing that's a lot more likely to actually lose them resources in this shadow war, and also helps to make it harder for them to go after Alice. As for "Rescue"... she doesn't even know where Alice *is* right now... and "Oh, look, you're friend's in danger because we found them. Maybe you'd better go find them to warn them while we tail you." is such an old trick it's hackneyed.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
...HOLY SHIT WHAT?
What happened? The Spy's Demise is like, the neutral ground on the Web, is Autochthonia staging a full assault against it or something?
Some kind of trap for Donald?
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This is happening days after the clusterfuck in LA. The Anathema likely tracked Donald to the Spy's Demise and went nuclear on the place (hopefully after Donald got out,) then hit a bunch of other traditionalist sites for good measure.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
...I'm gonna admit, Time is like my worst Sphere.
So yeah. That makes complete sense.
I think... fortunately... we have precedence that trashing a whole bunch of Digital Web sectors doesn't actually destroy the entire Internet though, so the damage to realspace should be limited in scope.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Trying to thwart Panopticon is probably less likely to succeed now that they have the Iterator, so we should probably hit them with dinosaurs. All the dinosaurs. Every last one. This is not my five year old self speaking, this is just good tactics.
Update CXXXVIII: Triumph
JB CXXXVIII: Triumph
Reina tilts her head, trying to ignore the pleading of Rose from her reflection who's asking her to please, please do what she should as a good member of the Union and kill the traitor Donald Sykes. She takes in the aerodynamic performance of the converted Masses jet - far in excess of the jets she remembers, honed in the fires of the Interplanetary Wars and the Desertification of Mars. She takes in their armaments and she studies the weaving which the false idol is using to anchor itself into its pattern.
And then she smiles a cold, predatory, feline smile. "You!" she snaps at the driver. "Take us through the buildings! Underground parking spaces, shop fronts, whatever! I don't care! Keep as much terrain between us and it as possible!"
"Do you think that'll work?" Donald says quietly.
"No," Reina says, spreading out her senses and feeling the hard-working vehicle around her. "But it'll force it to concentrate on keeping up. Which should give me a chance to target that exposed superstructure that it has flash-converted for this purpose. Make yourself useful, Sykes. Find me information on whatever vehicle it used to be. Tell me things on it and its armaments, and likely examples of high technology it may be using. When we catch sight of it, I will aim to damage and destroy components and force it out of this cradled shell." She pauses. "Snap to it, man!"
Donald does what he can to explain it, subject only to Reina's commentary. He doesn't know that much about modern military equipment, but he knows enough. She huffs at his insinuation that Americans might be able to even approach British engineering, looks impressed when he says that it can fly faster than the speed of sound or take off and land vertically, almost as impressed when he mentions its gatling gun and missiles, its stealth features, and its radar. But most impressive is the thought that it might have a laser weapon. It takes a few minutes for Donald to explain what it is, but Reina eventually understands.
"So nowadays even the Masses may produce planes that fly faster than sound itself and are armed with Ralconi heat-rays. In my day, not even the most deadly prototype fighters would have been like that." Reina concedes. "But nevertheless. You say it has no armor or shielding? No Primium? And this engine of its-it is large and delicate?"
"As far as I understand, yes." Donald manages.
"Excellent." Reina declares. "You said that this limousine has a miniature factory to construct weapons and armaments?" Without waiting for Donald's answer, she is already in motion, searching for it. She might not understand the specifics of the technology here, but she only needs the generalities. She taps a few buttons, and brings up the LX-4 nanofab's Warchive-military arms and armor. Scrolling through it with the slightly wide-eyed expression of a child in a candy store, she selects an anti-aircraft missile launcher. "This will do nicely."
"That wouldn't work even if it wasn't some sort of alien death robot piloting it." Donald says reasonably.
"This is true." Reina concedes. "But it will distract it for long enough so I can make some precision shots." Reina says, hand unconsciously coming to rest on her pistol.
She clambers out of the limousine via the sunroof, and sees the Anathema already. It has twisted the American fighter plane into a barely-humanoid shell, a mechanized suit of armor equivalent to those Nephilim Suits they used to engage Ralconi walkers. The gatling gun replaces its left hand, while its right is a clawed implement. Jet exhaust vents from its back and a multitude of ports in its legs, and its skin has been split into panels which cover it in some sort of twisted parody of animal epidermis. Its 'head' has molded into something that resembles the false idol's own, combined with a flight helmet. And in its chest, the Anathema itself rests, its body fused to the vehicle itself, forcing it into this state. It notices her instantly as they exit the garage. Its gatling gun starts to spool up.
Reina staggers as the 20mm shells start to hit the vehicle and her, as the Anathema twists the clawed implement of the fighter into a laser emitter. Her armor complains, and so does her body, as the slight curve of its Primium breastplate deflects a shell intended to destroy vehicles. Her older armors would have instantly failed against it, and her latest one is barely capable of surviving the onslaught. It's going for a kill-shot. She can feel it charge. She shoulders the missile launcher and fires just before the Anathema does. Its shot goes wide by millimeters as it evades, and it launches its own missiles in response.
As she thought it might. It's what she'd have done. It no doubt expects her to try to deflect the missiles, or misguide them, or... something. Which is why she doesn't. She draws her pistol again, loaded with a full brace of accurized Primium rounds, and starts firing. The first shot detonates the missile she fired in midair, creating a screen that temporarily blinds the machine-god's spawn.
And lets the remaining 11 shots from the cylinder smash into vital components, ricocheting into the former F-35's engine, shattering the electrical motors of the gatling gun, destroying vital hydraulics for its control surfaces. She drops to a knee, and a reciprocating cannon deploys from the armor and targets the advanced wounded giant, fires once, twice, three times. The F-35 bucks wildly as explosive shells kill it, veering away to slam into a building in an orange fireball. She's bought them a few minutes. A few precious minutes.
Flipping on the radio, Donald checks the frequencies for what the Masses are being told. It won't be the truth, of course, but it might clue him in to who's briefing them. It's not much help. They're just talking about confused reports of terrorist bombings in the downtown area - because no one is going to admit that there's an evil transformer out there - and... oh. Oh, shit. Anti-terrorism raids 'believed to be linked to the bombings' and... yes, that's in the same area as their Construct. It's not a coincidence. It can't be. They must have moved when the senior Amalgam staff were absent, so there wasn't authorization for the highest level base defenses. He's got a gut feeling his earlier speculation about it being so they can replace or brainwash the staff might have been well grounded.
Fuck. Fuck. Personal isn't the same as important. He knows this. He can't trust that the Construct and his subordinates aren't compromised and feeding information straight to the Computer, so he can't help them. Even if his heart cries out. His eyes drift over to the minibar and he tries to resist the siren lure of the spirits. The alcoholic spirits, not the EDE spirits, that is. He settles for taking a shot of a destresser, even though he really wants a drink, because the danger isn't over yet and that means he can't numb the pain yet.
Why? Why now? Does that mean that they found Jamelia out there? He'd like to think so. At least it would mean that this attack was being done because the enemy was scared, rather than for their amusement. And... Donald pales.
"We have a problem," he tells Reina, who's washing off her face with very expensive bottled mineral water.
She drops the water and goes for her blade. "It's back?" she demands.
Yes, that had perhaps been a bit imprecise. "Not yet," Donald says, glancing at the scanners just to make sure that it isn't. He clenches his fists together. "How... how much of what Rose knew... knows do you know?" he asks.
"Some. General information, and then patches starting with Hong Kong - when I was confused and my memories were scrambled - and getting more and more frequent," Reina says, tilting her head. "It becomes somewhat consistent from the point when Rose saw this armour," she runs her hand along the dented metal, "in the Geofront near London."
He has to ask. "How... how is she?"
Reina sighs. "At the moment, she is under the impression that if she sulks and acts repentant and pretends that she has thrown off the command, I will believe her and my memory-self will fade, bringing her to the fore again. She is entirely mistaken. Her tells are nearly exactly the same as ones many of my daughters showed when they were lying to me." She purses her lips. "I wonder if that means those tells of deceit are the ones I showed when I was a young girl," she says to herself. "A curiosity that she should act like they did when they threw tantrums, when she is under such stress. She is upset and distressed that you're a 'traitor', and thus she wants to slay you quickly so you won't suffer. She still feels considerable affection for you, and this is inflicting considerable mental anguish on her. She has said several rather impolite things about me."
Blanching, Donald tries not to think about how the only reason he isn't a pile of dead meat in the restaurant is because Rose happens to be a glitch and whatever they did to her somehow... somehow reset her, allowing the personality she should have had to come through. "Well, the problem isn't that," he says. "What do you know about what happened in Moscow?"
Reina frowns. "An alien force codenamed the MUSCOVITEs attacked, causing widespread devastation. The Union was forced to destroy much of the city to combat them. Dr Rosario commanded the defense, and it was Iterator Langley who defeated the major strike force piloting some form of one-man superweapon."
"Broadly accurate," Donald says. "But. Um. The reason Serafina had to drop the nuclear bombs was to stop the hostile getting to a major communications hub, and... that thing is free. And I think it's allied with the MUSCOVITEs and that means that the Void Engineers might do something similar as soon as they realize something like that is here and..."
Reina locks eyes with him, and Donald suddenly can't look away from that gaze. He can feel her dreadful, inexorable, inhuman will, and in the pit of his stomach he gets the feeling that this... this isn't just Rose with the memories of a long dead woman, that in some way he's not exactly comfortable with this actually is Reina Lior. And that she is a scary, scary woman, in a way that scary women like Director Belltower take notes on and one day wish to be like. "Tell me the truth," she says in a dreadfully calm voice, her words sinking into his brain without really engaging his ears.
"I.. I am," he stammers, trying to break away and failing. He has enough left to him that he can press the privacy buttons, so the driver shouldn't be able to listen in. He hasn't met someone with this sheer... presence since he was on the other side.
"No. No, you are not. You are lying by omission, you are lying by implication, and you are lying outright," Reina says in the same cold tone. "Stop. Lying. I require the full context so I can make the correct decisions. The good of the Union demands it."
"I'll cut things short," Donald says, nervously wringing his hands together. "This is all s-second hand because I didn't even get started until 2004, but in 1999 something called the Dimensional Anomaly happened after the Union managed to kill some really ancient vampire in India."
"Rose has told me that," Reina says tersely. "To think that one of the antediluvian grandchilder of Cain has been slain... it is a sign of hope, if nothing else."
Donald swallows. Okay, she knows such words. Possibly in more details than him. "Yes, but... look, basically everything offworld was lost behind the Anomaly. All the space stations. All the facilities. Most of the Void Engineer ships. All gone. And... and w-we think that the Computer went mad out there. Along with everyone else trapped. The... the MUSCOVITEs are the space-based remnants of Iteration X. In L-L-London we were attacked... attacked by some kind of hyper-advanced bioroid much more advanced than Rose, inhabited by an EDE which claimed to be part of the remnants of the Progenitors who've twisted themselves into a hivemind. And Director Belltower has fought a once-human member of the New World Order in Moscow."
Reina tilts her head. "Hmm. False memories. Yes, that would match the vagueness of the attacker in London," she says slowly, clearly taking it all in. "I presume you were keeping her in the dark about such things because you didn't trust her."
Wincing, Donald nods. "Didn't trust what people could make her do," he says in Rose's defense.
"Didn't trust her," Reina repeats. "Wise. She's a vulnerable point. I would have done the same. Given it must have been Dr Rosario who removed those memories," she sniffs, "well, she at least can make some correct decisions, for all that she is a trifle silly."
Something deep inside Donald protests at the dismissive description of Serafina as 'a trifle silly'. She's been falling to pieces from the guilt from what she did in Moscow, because - and Donald is somewhat loathe to admit it - she's a better person than he is. She finds it harder to live with the consequences of hard decisions. He has a nasty, cold streak in him which allows him to force down sentimentality - and the rest of the time, the drugs and alcohol help.
"Well." Reina clicks her tongue. "The Computer may well be mad. Therefore it must be destroyed." The certainty with which she says this is terrifying to Donald, not least because he feels inspired by her and almost believes that it's possible. "And you mentioned the Void Engineers?"
"... we think they've been fighting the remnants of the other Conventions for a decade now, keeping it secret from the rest of the Union," Donald admits. Deja vu twinges. "They might be desperate," he hazards, his head aching for some strange reason. "I... I have an idea. I might have a few contacts on the other side. Moderates with the Traditionalists. They might know more of what's going on here, because we've been blindsided and that means someone's probably been spoofing the data I've been getting for days. I might have missed something which they might know. I have some favors I can burn. This car has a holosuite so we can access a place called the Spy's Demise - it's a neutral place for back-alley dealing."
"Bringing the Traditions in will be a risk," Reina observes.
"More of a risk than that thing?" he demands. "If I'm fast, we might be able to decide with better information. Just hope things don't go wrong."
Donald starts to boot up the VR suite-and is greeted with a mass of sickly green alien code as it starts up. "Fuck!" he yells. Reina looks at him disapprovingly.
"It's coming in through the links!" Donald says. "It's infiltrated our systems while we thought it was out of range and we didn't even notice!" He can hear the nanofabricator hiss as it makes something deadly to human lungs, can see [MAT-TRANS ENABLED] as the faint silhouette of the anathema starts to solidify in the cabin. Donald looks at Reina, and then at the shadow. He does something very desperate. He dials a number on his phone that he hasn't dialed for a decade, and calls for the Operator. "Operator. Two for the Spy's Demise." he says.
The Anathema swipes at Donald and Reina, and its primium-edged, monomolecular claws slice a Syndicate-built smartphone into neat chunks. But the person holding it-and the woman with him-are no longer there in the limousine. In fact, they are nowhere in the vicinity. The Autochthonian aspect considers where they may have been, and detects a faint presence of theirs in the Digital Web. It knows this sector that they're running into, one that it has sought to eliminate repeatedly, but has never had the resources to. It's too well-anchored, its presence too necessary. Yet it cannot allow the targets to escape, lest they warn the primary target. A dilemma. It spends a fraction of a second pondering.
The aspect realizes that it's never been capable of eliminating the Spy's Demise. The area is too fortified and there are too many interests with hands in it. Yet the Digital Web is made of connections, and it might not be able to eliminate it, but the machine-god plays by different rules. And on the Web it is not nearly as constrained as it is on Earth. It can attempt a quarantine. It may not be perfect-even it has limits-but it will hold for long enough.
And so it does.
***
A Jaunt In The Web:
What's Donald doing while he's stuck in the middle of nowhere, quarantined by an Anathema? Choose 3. One is already chosen for you, so it's more like choose 2.
[X] Find a Mind mage capable of un-brainwashing Rose.
[ ] Looking for allies who might be willing to help him strike back.
[ ] Looking for an escape route out of this quarantined sector.
[ ] Trying to contact someone, like...
Reina tilts her head, trying to ignore the pleading of Rose from her reflection who's asking her to please, please do what she should as a good member of the Union and kill the traitor Donald Sykes. She takes in the aerodynamic performance of the converted Masses jet - far in excess of the jets she remembers, honed in the fires of the Interplanetary Wars and the Desertification of Mars. She takes in their armaments and she studies the weaving which the false idol is using to anchor itself into its pattern.
And then she smiles a cold, predatory, feline smile. "You!" she snaps at the driver. "Take us through the buildings! Underground parking spaces, shop fronts, whatever! I don't care! Keep as much terrain between us and it as possible!"
"Do you think that'll work?" Donald says quietly.
"No," Reina says, spreading out her senses and feeling the hard-working vehicle around her. "But it'll force it to concentrate on keeping up. Which should give me a chance to target that exposed superstructure that it has flash-converted for this purpose. Make yourself useful, Sykes. Find me information on whatever vehicle it used to be. Tell me things on it and its armaments, and likely examples of high technology it may be using. When we catch sight of it, I will aim to damage and destroy components and force it out of this cradled shell." She pauses. "Snap to it, man!"
Donald does what he can to explain it, subject only to Reina's commentary. He doesn't know that much about modern military equipment, but he knows enough. She huffs at his insinuation that Americans might be able to even approach British engineering, looks impressed when he says that it can fly faster than the speed of sound or take off and land vertically, almost as impressed when he mentions its gatling gun and missiles, its stealth features, and its radar. But most impressive is the thought that it might have a laser weapon. It takes a few minutes for Donald to explain what it is, but Reina eventually understands.
"So nowadays even the Masses may produce planes that fly faster than sound itself and are armed with Ralconi heat-rays. In my day, not even the most deadly prototype fighters would have been like that." Reina concedes. "But nevertheless. You say it has no armor or shielding? No Primium? And this engine of its-it is large and delicate?"
"As far as I understand, yes." Donald manages.
"Excellent." Reina declares. "You said that this limousine has a miniature factory to construct weapons and armaments?" Without waiting for Donald's answer, she is already in motion, searching for it. She might not understand the specifics of the technology here, but she only needs the generalities. She taps a few buttons, and brings up the LX-4 nanofab's Warchive-military arms and armor. Scrolling through it with the slightly wide-eyed expression of a child in a candy store, she selects an anti-aircraft missile launcher. "This will do nicely."
"That wouldn't work even if it wasn't some sort of alien death robot piloting it." Donald says reasonably.
"This is true." Reina concedes. "But it will distract it for long enough so I can make some precision shots." Reina says, hand unconsciously coming to rest on her pistol.
She clambers out of the limousine via the sunroof, and sees the Anathema already. It has twisted the American fighter plane into a barely-humanoid shell, a mechanized suit of armor equivalent to those Nephilim Suits they used to engage Ralconi walkers. The gatling gun replaces its left hand, while its right is a clawed implement. Jet exhaust vents from its back and a multitude of ports in its legs, and its skin has been split into panels which cover it in some sort of twisted parody of animal epidermis. Its 'head' has molded into something that resembles the false idol's own, combined with a flight helmet. And in its chest, the Anathema itself rests, its body fused to the vehicle itself, forcing it into this state. It notices her instantly as they exit the garage. Its gatling gun starts to spool up.
Reina staggers as the 20mm shells start to hit the vehicle and her, as the Anathema twists the clawed implement of the fighter into a laser emitter. Her armor complains, and so does her body, as the slight curve of its Primium breastplate deflects a shell intended to destroy vehicles. Her older armors would have instantly failed against it, and her latest one is barely capable of surviving the onslaught. It's going for a kill-shot. She can feel it charge. She shoulders the missile launcher and fires just before the Anathema does. Its shot goes wide by millimeters as it evades, and it launches its own missiles in response.
As she thought it might. It's what she'd have done. It no doubt expects her to try to deflect the missiles, or misguide them, or... something. Which is why she doesn't. She draws her pistol again, loaded with a full brace of accurized Primium rounds, and starts firing. The first shot detonates the missile she fired in midair, creating a screen that temporarily blinds the machine-god's spawn.
And lets the remaining 11 shots from the cylinder smash into vital components, ricocheting into the former F-35's engine, shattering the electrical motors of the gatling gun, destroying vital hydraulics for its control surfaces. She drops to a knee, and a reciprocating cannon deploys from the armor and targets the advanced wounded giant, fires once, twice, three times. The F-35 bucks wildly as explosive shells kill it, veering away to slam into a building in an orange fireball. She's bought them a few minutes. A few precious minutes.
***
Frazzled, scorched, and with his patience running incredibly thin, Donald is starting to wonder if there's any basis to Director Belltower's Holiday Hypothesis. First Brighton then this, when he just wanted a nice casual evening with Rose. Clearly something has decided that when he tries to have expensive dinners with his sort of quasi-pseudo girlfriend, bad things happen. Next time he might try to take her to Pizza Hut instead, to see if something more downmarket might avoid things trying to kill him. Or even O'Tooleys - no, Donald shudders. He has his limits. He's willing to face a few small assassination attempts to avoid having to eat at O'Tooleys.
Flipping on the radio, Donald checks the frequencies for what the Masses are being told. It won't be the truth, of course, but it might clue him in to who's briefing them. It's not much help. They're just talking about confused reports of terrorist bombings in the downtown area - because no one is going to admit that there's an evil transformer out there - and... oh. Oh, shit. Anti-terrorism raids 'believed to be linked to the bombings' and... yes, that's in the same area as their Construct. It's not a coincidence. It can't be. They must have moved when the senior Amalgam staff were absent, so there wasn't authorization for the highest level base defenses. He's got a gut feeling his earlier speculation about it being so they can replace or brainwash the staff might have been well grounded.
Fuck. Fuck. Personal isn't the same as important. He knows this. He can't trust that the Construct and his subordinates aren't compromised and feeding information straight to the Computer, so he can't help them. Even if his heart cries out. His eyes drift over to the minibar and he tries to resist the siren lure of the spirits. The alcoholic spirits, not the EDE spirits, that is. He settles for taking a shot of a destresser, even though he really wants a drink, because the danger isn't over yet and that means he can't numb the pain yet.
Why? Why now? Does that mean that they found Jamelia out there? He'd like to think so. At least it would mean that this attack was being done because the enemy was scared, rather than for their amusement. And... Donald pales.
"We have a problem," he tells Reina, who's washing off her face with very expensive bottled mineral water.
She drops the water and goes for her blade. "It's back?" she demands.
Yes, that had perhaps been a bit imprecise. "Not yet," Donald says, glancing at the scanners just to make sure that it isn't. He clenches his fists together. "How... how much of what Rose knew... knows do you know?" he asks.
"Some. General information, and then patches starting with Hong Kong - when I was confused and my memories were scrambled - and getting more and more frequent," Reina says, tilting her head. "It becomes somewhat consistent from the point when Rose saw this armour," she runs her hand along the dented metal, "in the Geofront near London."
He has to ask. "How... how is she?"
Reina sighs. "At the moment, she is under the impression that if she sulks and acts repentant and pretends that she has thrown off the command, I will believe her and my memory-self will fade, bringing her to the fore again. She is entirely mistaken. Her tells are nearly exactly the same as ones many of my daughters showed when they were lying to me." She purses her lips. "I wonder if that means those tells of deceit are the ones I showed when I was a young girl," she says to herself. "A curiosity that she should act like they did when they threw tantrums, when she is under such stress. She is upset and distressed that you're a 'traitor', and thus she wants to slay you quickly so you won't suffer. She still feels considerable affection for you, and this is inflicting considerable mental anguish on her. She has said several rather impolite things about me."
Blanching, Donald tries not to think about how the only reason he isn't a pile of dead meat in the restaurant is because Rose happens to be a glitch and whatever they did to her somehow... somehow reset her, allowing the personality she should have had to come through. "Well, the problem isn't that," he says. "What do you know about what happened in Moscow?"
Reina frowns. "An alien force codenamed the MUSCOVITEs attacked, causing widespread devastation. The Union was forced to destroy much of the city to combat them. Dr Rosario commanded the defense, and it was Iterator Langley who defeated the major strike force piloting some form of one-man superweapon."
"Broadly accurate," Donald says. "But. Um. The reason Serafina had to drop the nuclear bombs was to stop the hostile getting to a major communications hub, and... that thing is free. And I think it's allied with the MUSCOVITEs and that means that the Void Engineers might do something similar as soon as they realize something like that is here and..."
Reina locks eyes with him, and Donald suddenly can't look away from that gaze. He can feel her dreadful, inexorable, inhuman will, and in the pit of his stomach he gets the feeling that this... this isn't just Rose with the memories of a long dead woman, that in some way he's not exactly comfortable with this actually is Reina Lior. And that she is a scary, scary woman, in a way that scary women like Director Belltower take notes on and one day wish to be like. "Tell me the truth," she says in a dreadfully calm voice, her words sinking into his brain without really engaging his ears.
"I.. I am," he stammers, trying to break away and failing. He has enough left to him that he can press the privacy buttons, so the driver shouldn't be able to listen in. He hasn't met someone with this sheer... presence since he was on the other side.
"No. No, you are not. You are lying by omission, you are lying by implication, and you are lying outright," Reina says in the same cold tone. "Stop. Lying. I require the full context so I can make the correct decisions. The good of the Union demands it."
"I'll cut things short," Donald says, nervously wringing his hands together. "This is all s-second hand because I didn't even get started until 2004, but in 1999 something called the Dimensional Anomaly happened after the Union managed to kill some really ancient vampire in India."
"Rose has told me that," Reina says tersely. "To think that one of the antediluvian grandchilder of Cain has been slain... it is a sign of hope, if nothing else."
Donald swallows. Okay, she knows such words. Possibly in more details than him. "Yes, but... look, basically everything offworld was lost behind the Anomaly. All the space stations. All the facilities. Most of the Void Engineer ships. All gone. And... and w-we think that the Computer went mad out there. Along with everyone else trapped. The... the MUSCOVITEs are the space-based remnants of Iteration X. In L-L-London we were attacked... attacked by some kind of hyper-advanced bioroid much more advanced than Rose, inhabited by an EDE which claimed to be part of the remnants of the Progenitors who've twisted themselves into a hivemind. And Director Belltower has fought a once-human member of the New World Order in Moscow."
Reina tilts her head. "Hmm. False memories. Yes, that would match the vagueness of the attacker in London," she says slowly, clearly taking it all in. "I presume you were keeping her in the dark about such things because you didn't trust her."
Wincing, Donald nods. "Didn't trust what people could make her do," he says in Rose's defense.
"Didn't trust her," Reina repeats. "Wise. She's a vulnerable point. I would have done the same. Given it must have been Dr Rosario who removed those memories," she sniffs, "well, she at least can make some correct decisions, for all that she is a trifle silly."
Something deep inside Donald protests at the dismissive description of Serafina as 'a trifle silly'. She's been falling to pieces from the guilt from what she did in Moscow, because - and Donald is somewhat loathe to admit it - she's a better person than he is. She finds it harder to live with the consequences of hard decisions. He has a nasty, cold streak in him which allows him to force down sentimentality - and the rest of the time, the drugs and alcohol help.
"Well." Reina clicks her tongue. "The Computer may well be mad. Therefore it must be destroyed." The certainty with which she says this is terrifying to Donald, not least because he feels inspired by her and almost believes that it's possible. "And you mentioned the Void Engineers?"
"... we think they've been fighting the remnants of the other Conventions for a decade now, keeping it secret from the rest of the Union," Donald admits. Deja vu twinges. "They might be desperate," he hazards, his head aching for some strange reason. "I... I have an idea. I might have a few contacts on the other side. Moderates with the Traditionalists. They might know more of what's going on here, because we've been blindsided and that means someone's probably been spoofing the data I've been getting for days. I might have missed something which they might know. I have some favors I can burn. This car has a holosuite so we can access a place called the Spy's Demise - it's a neutral place for back-alley dealing."
"Bringing the Traditions in will be a risk," Reina observes.
"More of a risk than that thing?" he demands. "If I'm fast, we might be able to decide with better information. Just hope things don't go wrong."
Donald starts to boot up the VR suite-and is greeted with a mass of sickly green alien code as it starts up. "Fuck!" he yells. Reina looks at him disapprovingly.
"It's coming in through the links!" Donald says. "It's infiltrated our systems while we thought it was out of range and we didn't even notice!" He can hear the nanofabricator hiss as it makes something deadly to human lungs, can see [MAT-TRANS ENABLED] as the faint silhouette of the anathema starts to solidify in the cabin. Donald looks at Reina, and then at the shadow. He does something very desperate. He dials a number on his phone that he hasn't dialed for a decade, and calls for the Operator. "Operator. Two for the Spy's Demise." he says.
The Anathema swipes at Donald and Reina, and its primium-edged, monomolecular claws slice a Syndicate-built smartphone into neat chunks. But the person holding it-and the woman with him-are no longer there in the limousine. In fact, they are nowhere in the vicinity. The Autochthonian aspect considers where they may have been, and detects a faint presence of theirs in the Digital Web. It knows this sector that they're running into, one that it has sought to eliminate repeatedly, but has never had the resources to. It's too well-anchored, its presence too necessary. Yet it cannot allow the targets to escape, lest they warn the primary target. A dilemma. It spends a fraction of a second pondering.
The aspect realizes that it's never been capable of eliminating the Spy's Demise. The area is too fortified and there are too many interests with hands in it. Yet the Digital Web is made of connections, and it might not be able to eliminate it, but the machine-god plays by different rules. And on the Web it is not nearly as constrained as it is on Earth. It can attempt a quarantine. It may not be perfect-even it has limits-but it will hold for long enough.
And so it does.
***
Donald walks through the hidden door in the TradWiki Digital Webspace, scans his palm on the scanner, and is deposited in the front office of the Spy's Demise. Reina follows him, looking very cross. She clearly doesn't approve of what he did. She doesn't seem to like running from fights. At least she's been out of touch enough that she didn't realize the Virtual Adept trick was, well, Reality Deviance.
"Password?" The receptionist, Maxine asks, in a husky femme fatale voice.
Donald's been here several times. He knows the ritual. "Die another day." He says. He certainly hopes that what he's saying is true.
Maxine nods. "Welcome back. New girlfriend?" She asks, putting a cigarette to her shockingly-red lips. Reina looks furious at her.
"It's... complicated." Donald says.
"Story of your life. Go on in." Maxine presses a hidden button, and a wall opens up to... a scene. It's noisy, full of clouds of obscuring smoke and various digital avatars. There's people with avatars that resemble popular video-game characters, people dressed up in somber black suits-Euthanatos or NWO, Donald can't tell-ladies in provocative dress, men in equally provocative dress, and nonhuman avatars of various sorts. Reina doesn't approve of this either.
"What debauched spirit realm have you brought us to and why?" She demands, grabbing Donald's arm. He tries to move forward, but it doesn't work. She's only dozens of times stronger. He'll have to explain what's going on to her.
"This is the Digital Web. It's not really a spirit realm but some sort of... virtual reality." She scowls at that, and Donald has to explain the concept of virtual reality to her again. He never thought he'd miss people who referenced the Matrix every 10 seconds when talking about the Web, but he apparently does. "This is the Spy's Demise."
Reina grudgingly nods. "You aren't lying. Although it doesn't look like what I expected in some ways... it does look like a neutral meeting ground. And how do you suppose we defeat the monster in this place?"
Donald looks around. Reina's already getting attention-she stands out, tall and leggy and wearing high-end Primium plate. She'll have to find herself a disguise eventually. "That's a good question. First, I'd like to get a drink. Or ten. Then I'd like to work on Rose's issues, and maybe find out who's logged in here so we can actually get somewhere."
Reina scowls for several moments, before the realization of what she's fought and survived hits her. "If you must." she concedes. "Perhaps I should join you. And maybe I should get a drink as well. Something strong. It is not every day that you survive what we just did."
"Password?" The receptionist, Maxine asks, in a husky femme fatale voice.
Donald's been here several times. He knows the ritual. "Die another day." He says. He certainly hopes that what he's saying is true.
Maxine nods. "Welcome back. New girlfriend?" She asks, putting a cigarette to her shockingly-red lips. Reina looks furious at her.
"It's... complicated." Donald says.
"Story of your life. Go on in." Maxine presses a hidden button, and a wall opens up to... a scene. It's noisy, full of clouds of obscuring smoke and various digital avatars. There's people with avatars that resemble popular video-game characters, people dressed up in somber black suits-Euthanatos or NWO, Donald can't tell-ladies in provocative dress, men in equally provocative dress, and nonhuman avatars of various sorts. Reina doesn't approve of this either.
"What debauched spirit realm have you brought us to and why?" She demands, grabbing Donald's arm. He tries to move forward, but it doesn't work. She's only dozens of times stronger. He'll have to explain what's going on to her.
"This is the Digital Web. It's not really a spirit realm but some sort of... virtual reality." She scowls at that, and Donald has to explain the concept of virtual reality to her again. He never thought he'd miss people who referenced the Matrix every 10 seconds when talking about the Web, but he apparently does. "This is the Spy's Demise."
Reina grudgingly nods. "You aren't lying. Although it doesn't look like what I expected in some ways... it does look like a neutral meeting ground. And how do you suppose we defeat the monster in this place?"
Donald looks around. Reina's already getting attention-she stands out, tall and leggy and wearing high-end Primium plate. She'll have to find herself a disguise eventually. "That's a good question. First, I'd like to get a drink. Or ten. Then I'd like to work on Rose's issues, and maybe find out who's logged in here so we can actually get somewhere."
Reina scowls for several moments, before the realization of what she's fought and survived hits her. "If you must." she concedes. "Perhaps I should join you. And maybe I should get a drink as well. Something strong. It is not every day that you survive what we just did."
***
Armstrong Flight Research Center
December 24, 2015
Stepping out of the cramped Void Engineer shuttle with the rest of her crew, Jamelia finds Donald's cocky smile and the ostentatious luxury of the LX-4 a welcome relief. Or it would be, if the smile wasn't slightly forced. He looks like he's trying to hide worry and nervousness and almost succeeding. Which only makes sense, Jamelia thinks. She's heard the reports of the Camarilla attack on the Construct, causing heavy damage before it was finally repulsed. About how her support staff has shown up KIA. And she's immensely, immensely suspicious. Jamelia knows that this has to relate to Panopticon somehow. It has to relate to her assassination attempt. She just doesn't know what it means. When the Technocracy can replace your friends and loved ones with loyal clones or actors in perfect disguises-it could mean almost anything.
For all she knows she might be walking into a trap. Alternatively, it might be the truth. It might have been a Camarilla attack that's been barely repulsed. Certainly the Union is acting like it is. There's questions of what sorts of sanctions might be required. Many are arguing for a full-scale counterattack to drive the hemophages out of LA in response. She hopes not. That would be... problematic, because it'd let Panopticon move in whatever level of heavy assets they required. Hopefully more reasoned voices win out.
"Hey boss. We missed you." Donald manages. "We've been holding the fort. Barely." He looks haggard, like he's barely been sleeping. Which makes sense, given what he had to have been through. Or if he wants to make it seem like that's what he's been through, Jamelia thinks.
Kessler nods. "You look like hammered shit."
"Oh hey. Missed you, John. Nice haircut. Very military. And you too Henriette. Is it Iteration X haircut month?" Donald responds warmly. "Anyways I'm ready to take you guys back to the construct-or what's left of it, anyhow. We've been doing a lot of our work mobile now, in the hopes that there won't be any repeat attacks. But if there's anything you think you might be able to salvage..."
"Thanks." Henriette says. "I can't wait to get my hands on whoever did this..." she growls.
Yes, Jamelia thinks. Entirely sensible. Whether or not you're Donald or Panopticon. And that makes her feel... uncomfortable. She steps inside the LX-4, and Serafina is there, looking tired, withdrawn, and more than a little broken by the ordeal. Rose is missing-which would explain how Sera looks. If Rose isn't here to welcome them back-she's probably gone. Jamelia politely doesn't say anything. But that makes her, paradoxically, less suspicious. Panopticon could have been able to turn Rose into their agent with a few well-chosen words. If she's gone, it lowers the likelihood that Panopticon is behind this. Not by much, but by a little.
Serafina nods silently at Jamelia when she enters and again at Henriette. She doesn't look terribly happy. Like a mother who's just lost her only child. That's not good, Jamelia thinks. She'll probably be even less stable-and she's been falling to pieces already. Jamelia doesn't want to know how much effort she's going to need to put into Serafina at this point.
"So this is the construct's personnel." Wufan says quietly, as if reminding people he exists. "I can see this is going to be a very cheery job."
"So who's the new guy?" Donald asks first. "Looks a little too unconventional to be a black suit, but a little too professional to be a space cadet."
"Wufan Guo." the Void Engineer introduces himself. "Neutralization Specialist Corps. I'm here to help you with your Dimensional Science problems because you keep running into them. You can call me William. I apologize for meeting in such... dire circumstances. The rest of my men are somewhat delayed, but I think you'll appreciate having us around."
"It should be us apologizing to you about everything that's happened." Donald says. "But really it's not your fault, it's not my fault, so we should blame the hemophages. Fuckers." the businessman swears.
Jamelia's phone buzzes, and she takes a look at it. She puts it to her ear, and a hissing, slightly inhuman voice resounds in it. A voice that reminds her of film and burning and a crazy orange-haired girl. "Misssssss Belltower. If you value the life of your friends, you will act on your sssusspicionsss. Not doing so could be... regrettable." Her suspicions. Jamelia immediately knows that what the voice means is that it's a trap. Except for some reason she doesn't trust the voice. Yet it does confirm her suspicions, in a way. Something strange is going on. And she doesn't like it.
December 24, 2015
Stepping out of the cramped Void Engineer shuttle with the rest of her crew, Jamelia finds Donald's cocky smile and the ostentatious luxury of the LX-4 a welcome relief. Or it would be, if the smile wasn't slightly forced. He looks like he's trying to hide worry and nervousness and almost succeeding. Which only makes sense, Jamelia thinks. She's heard the reports of the Camarilla attack on the Construct, causing heavy damage before it was finally repulsed. About how her support staff has shown up KIA. And she's immensely, immensely suspicious. Jamelia knows that this has to relate to Panopticon somehow. It has to relate to her assassination attempt. She just doesn't know what it means. When the Technocracy can replace your friends and loved ones with loyal clones or actors in perfect disguises-it could mean almost anything.
For all she knows she might be walking into a trap. Alternatively, it might be the truth. It might have been a Camarilla attack that's been barely repulsed. Certainly the Union is acting like it is. There's questions of what sorts of sanctions might be required. Many are arguing for a full-scale counterattack to drive the hemophages out of LA in response. She hopes not. That would be... problematic, because it'd let Panopticon move in whatever level of heavy assets they required. Hopefully more reasoned voices win out.
"Hey boss. We missed you." Donald manages. "We've been holding the fort. Barely." He looks haggard, like he's barely been sleeping. Which makes sense, given what he had to have been through. Or if he wants to make it seem like that's what he's been through, Jamelia thinks.
Kessler nods. "You look like hammered shit."
"Oh hey. Missed you, John. Nice haircut. Very military. And you too Henriette. Is it Iteration X haircut month?" Donald responds warmly. "Anyways I'm ready to take you guys back to the construct-or what's left of it, anyhow. We've been doing a lot of our work mobile now, in the hopes that there won't be any repeat attacks. But if there's anything you think you might be able to salvage..."
"Thanks." Henriette says. "I can't wait to get my hands on whoever did this..." she growls.
Yes, Jamelia thinks. Entirely sensible. Whether or not you're Donald or Panopticon. And that makes her feel... uncomfortable. She steps inside the LX-4, and Serafina is there, looking tired, withdrawn, and more than a little broken by the ordeal. Rose is missing-which would explain how Sera looks. If Rose isn't here to welcome them back-she's probably gone. Jamelia politely doesn't say anything. But that makes her, paradoxically, less suspicious. Panopticon could have been able to turn Rose into their agent with a few well-chosen words. If she's gone, it lowers the likelihood that Panopticon is behind this. Not by much, but by a little.
Serafina nods silently at Jamelia when she enters and again at Henriette. She doesn't look terribly happy. Like a mother who's just lost her only child. That's not good, Jamelia thinks. She'll probably be even less stable-and she's been falling to pieces already. Jamelia doesn't want to know how much effort she's going to need to put into Serafina at this point.
"So this is the construct's personnel." Wufan says quietly, as if reminding people he exists. "I can see this is going to be a very cheery job."
"So who's the new guy?" Donald asks first. "Looks a little too unconventional to be a black suit, but a little too professional to be a space cadet."
"Wufan Guo." the Void Engineer introduces himself. "Neutralization Specialist Corps. I'm here to help you with your Dimensional Science problems because you keep running into them. You can call me William. I apologize for meeting in such... dire circumstances. The rest of my men are somewhat delayed, but I think you'll appreciate having us around."
"It should be us apologizing to you about everything that's happened." Donald says. "But really it's not your fault, it's not my fault, so we should blame the hemophages. Fuckers." the businessman swears.
Jamelia's phone buzzes, and she takes a look at it. She puts it to her ear, and a hissing, slightly inhuman voice resounds in it. A voice that reminds her of film and burning and a crazy orange-haired girl. "Misssssss Belltower. If you value the life of your friends, you will act on your sssusspicionsss. Not doing so could be... regrettable." Her suspicions. Jamelia immediately knows that what the voice means is that it's a trap. Except for some reason she doesn't trust the voice. Yet it does confirm her suspicions, in a way. Something strange is going on. And she doesn't like it.
A Jaunt In The Web:
What's Donald doing while he's stuck in the middle of nowhere, quarantined by an Anathema? Choose 3. One is already chosen for you, so it's more like choose 2.
[X] Find a Mind mage capable of un-brainwashing Rose.
[ ] Looking for allies who might be willing to help him strike back.
[ ] Looking for an escape route out of this quarantined sector.
[ ] Trying to contact someone, like...
[ ] Serafina
[ ] Jamelia
[ ] One of the people who didn't take it that personally when he left
[ ] The interns
[ ] Jamelia
[ ] One of the people who didn't take it that personally when he left
[ ] The interns
[ ] Searching for information on (each choice is a single choice)
[ ] Panopticon
[ ] Threat Null
[ ] Current Affairs
[ ] Los Angeles
[ ] Threat Null
[ ] Current Affairs
[ ] Los Angeles
[ ] Write-In
Reunited:
So Jamelia, Kessler, Harlan, Elsa, and Wufan are on Earth. Talking to Serafina and Donald. In the LX-4. How mysterious, right? Do they...
[ ] (0.6x) Trust the mysterious and sinister voice and bail out now?
[ ] Take the trip but be wary of any odd turns or detours that might happen?
[ ] Try to see what's up in their Construct?
[ ] Try to make an excuse as to why they need to go somewhere else right now?
[ ] Write-In
Reunited:
So Jamelia, Kessler, Harlan, Elsa, and Wufan are on Earth. Talking to Serafina and Donald. In the LX-4. How mysterious, right? Do they...
[ ] (0.6x) Trust the mysterious and sinister voice and bail out now?
[ ] Take the trip but be wary of any odd turns or detours that might happen?
[ ] Try to see what's up in their Construct?
[ ] Try to make an excuse as to why they need to go somewhere else right now?
[ ] Write-In
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So, on this note, I think I'm going to say that [X] Rescue Alice is the best choice.
Like, seriously here. Disrupting a second-rate Panopticon facility isn't going to cause them much of an inconvenience. Their entire objective here is to hunt down Alice and maybe anyone who sticks his or her head up to be hammered, because they're an ally of Alice.
Remember that old saw? "give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed,: The courage to change what can be changed,: and the wisdom to know the one from the other."
You're going to have to accept that no matter how many dinosaurs Serafina has she's not going to do much more than inconvenience Panopticon. The trick is that by doing so, she can accomplish lesser, more personal goals. These goals are important to the characters. Rescuing Alice is one of these goals. I mean, didn't we spend a lot of time and sacrifice trying to do exactly that? Moreover, Alice is an intelligence coup. Jamelia does not know about An-Jin. Alice does. Moreover, Alice is less likely to give Jamelia the mistaken impression that he is literally invincible.