PROGENITOR: WORM (A Wormquest AU)

[DragonCobolt]

"Well...looks like you got yourself into a pickle here..."

A feeling that could only be understood if you've ever had the idea of love.

"Don't worry. I got you."

***
​

Mr. Henry DuBois could trace his power linage. It was the advantage of the twin abilities of being both extremely intelligent...and the fact he had been infected by an incredibly obvious vector. One day, he'd just been a bank manager in Santa Monica - then an ill kempt, bearded man had walked into the building, smiled at him, and said: "Hey, give me all your fuckin' money, pal."

Only when Mr. DuBois body had begun to move did he realize that he recognized the man, under the beard, as Jarvis West. Then there was the agony, and after the agony, the humiliating interview with the police and that superheroine that had claimed that she was protecting California - whatever her name had been. He had honestly not been thinking about anything but the way his body had reacted to West's command - and the realization had come at the same time as the superhuman intelligence.

He wanted that.

Mr. DuBois didn't know what he would have done if he had been one of the hundreds of people that West had mind controlled, raped, or tortured to death who hadn't gotten infected. According to the newspapers, West was a 'weak vector', had a one percent chance of sporing every time he used his powers. Well, Mr. DuBois didn't take the time to count his luck. He instead got a few million dollars by playing a few lotteries under fake names, picked an easily molded person to spore into, then fled to Atlantis, where he had been able to get a home and some privacy with the supplies and commercial contacts he had brought. Far from everyone, safely out of the limelight, he had begun to work on his first project.

Inoculous had made it clear, exactly, what it was he needed to do.

Mr. DuBois was thumbing his way through the book for what felt like the hundredth time while Clanker worked on setting up their infusion device for another trial run...when the ground shuddered faintly.

"Is Carls doing construction again?" Mr. DuBois asked.

"Uh," Clanker started, looking up. They were both in the home Cynthia Carls, the first Atlantian, had made for them. It wasn't exactly the most normal of buildings to live in, being an obsidian rectangle with curved stone windows that had only recently been filled in with imported glass. But Mr. DuBois didn't really care much about decoration, so long as it was private. "I think so," Clanker finished.

Mr. DuBois grunted and turned back to Inoculous...and then the light coming from the window cut off. He lifted his head, then frowned, then glared - as the window behind him was no longer a window. He sprang to his feet, and saw that another window slammed shut afterwards, another, and another, each of the windows of his home were closing up, covered with thick obsidian.

"No!"

The word was a negation, a raw, furious sound. He ran to the doorway, the wooden door, and flung it open, only to find the door out of his home was now black stone.

"Carls!" he shouted into the stone. "Take this wall down right now, you simpering bitch! I'm Henry DuBois, goddamn it!"

The ceiling burst inwards.

Smoke, stone, and light rained down - and then a thick, muscular arm wrapped around Mr. DuBois' throat, dragging him backwards and holding him taut. A voice, growling, male, and very pissed, snarled in his ear.

"Attempted murder of your own constructs is still murder."

A branch dug into Mr. DuBois' cheek, while more figures rappelled into through the roof - yarn with riot gear in bright, almost cartoony colors, voices shouting. "Hands up! Hands up! Hands on your head!"

The cuffs clicked around Mr. DuBois' wrists as the door lowered and he saw that Cynthia was looking deeply nervous, standing next to several men that seemed to be made of dirt and bark and bits of metal, in United States uniforms. One of them was fully made of steel and he had INTERPOL stenciled across his chest. He stepped over to Mr. DuBois, giving him a humorless smile. "Henry DuBois, you're under arrest for telepathic kidnapping-"

"I want to speak to my attorney!"

"-endangerment of the noosphere-"

Mr. DuBois continued to struggle as the mixed task force of puppets and turf warriors dragged him to the waiting helicopter.

Cynthia Carls shook her head as she watched them go.

"Man," she muttered. "I just wanted to grow weed..."

***

​

Yggdrasil
Earth Orbit
September 9th
1970


You opened the book that Andy held out to you with trepidation, read the first few lines.

Lily Sato woke up to find that everything was all right.

"Suspiciously so," Lily mumbled into her pillow, opening her eyes a crack as she saw she lay next to Rachel, who was snoring on her back.

"Buzzy pulled them both out of the, uh, containment unit that the fucker had them in," Andy says, his voice quiet - but you can tell how pissed he is. "They were almost dead by then - but imagine if we hadn't..."

You close the book, frowning slightly. "Okay. Let...let me just make sure I get this right," you say. "This guy thinks he can create a sentient syntergene, infiltrate it into our comics, then use it to start..."

"Mind control? Social control? Fiscal control?" Andy shrugged. "It'd be kind of like if we build Buzzy, but...evil."

You frown harder. This whole thing makes your head hurt. Your intuitive understanding of physics covers the four dimensions of the observable universe - not this quasi-real, possibly sustained entirely by dark energy concept of the fucking noosphere. The fact that when you point blank asked Andy if it was really real or if it had only become real when exo-cortexes and dark energy manipulators got involved and he had just shrugged and said 'it didn't really matter' just made your head ache even more.

It was like the Yiggy, but...for books.

You opened the book again - but after reading a bit of dialog between...yourself and Rachel, it felt like intruding. You closed it, hastily. "W-What do we do with her?"

"Right now, she's contained in a five thousand page, mostly blank book, with the seed idea of it being light fluff...like...a long, easy vacation," Andy says. If she hits the end, it'll reset, and the long vacation continues - I'll check every day to see if she's noticing the looping quality, and...if that happens, I'll see about transferring her into a hard drive. You can hold a lot of books in there, and her syntergenic construction will create a reality around her."

"Seems kinda creepy," you say, frowning. "It's not real."

"Do you want us to build her a body?" Andy asks. "I...don't even know if that's possible, or, what it will be like."

"What about giving her Buzzy's ability to, like, exist in the noosphere?" you asked, biting your lip.

Andy frowned. "That's...possible..." He sags into his seat, looking lost. "It's a bunch of ethical concepts that didn't exist until September 1st, 1970 , though."

You look down at the book. "Can we ask her?"

"Try writing in the book," Andy says, nodding. "We'll see what happens."

You flip to a blank page. The text doesn't grow as you watch, but every time you close and open the book, new words have appeared. So, in the blank page, you manifest a pen out of thin air, then scribble.

HEY, LILY, IT'S ME...UH...PHYSICAL LILY.

You close the book, open it.

Hey.

You scribble.

YOUR IN A BOOK. HOW IS IT?

You close the book and open it, the surreality of it really sinking in.

Kinda nice, actually. But...it feels a bit...floaty.

You scribble.

WE'RE TALKING ABOUT PUTTING YOU IN VARIOUS PLACES. DO YOU WANT A BODY? OR TO LIVE IN A BETTER WRITTEN BOOK OR WHAT?

You close the book.

Open it.

---
What do you read there?

[ ] I want to live my life. I didn't ask for this? So...put me in the best book with a billion hot chicks to bang and just leave me in the library.
[ ] I want to live my life - a real life. Make me a robot body or something.
[ ] ...can I hitch a ride in your brain? See how life's like as the real Lily before I make my decision? Not...permanently, obviously.
[ ] Fuck, I don't know. Give me time to think, okay?

​

 

[DragonCobolt]

CW: Implied body horror, gore


Alpha Centauri C-2
Alpha Centauri
February 9th
1971


Toiler Bui Bich Phuong hummed to herself as she held the sampler in her hands, angled it, then fired off the scan-pitons through the narrow tube and into the regolith of the largest moon of the most habitable planet in the nearest solar system to her home. It was a song written by an obscure member of the IEG's propaganda burau and it was just the most infectious earworm. She tapped her foot on the ground as she knelt down and checked that the scan piton was buried in deep, then tapped her radio.

"Thinker Nyugen, are you getting a full readout here?" she asked.

Thinker Nyugen, who was still in orbit around Alpha Centauri C-2 hundreds of kilometers above her head, sounded pleased as he responded: "Yes, we are. Excellent work, Toiler. Thank you so much."

"You call this toil?" Phuong muttered to herself as she lifted her eyes and out at the moon she stood on. It was so different from the moon where she had been trained - the surface was almost uniformly dark for reasons that no one had been able to figure out yet. Different material compositions of the planetary ejecta that had formed it? It was an ancient capture of a planetary core that had been vomited out of a world destroyed by some ancient impact? The things that they did know about the Alpha Centauri system was eclipsed by how much they didn't know - and it was merely one of several solar systems that had been checked out by the various joint exploration teams of the United Nations Extrasolar Exploration Council - which held the three largest superpowers on the planet together and forced them to...

Well.

Not work together.

Yes, the exploration rocket that Thinker Nyugen and the rest of the science staff had used to fly to this moon, and the probes they had sprinkled throughout the system had all been brought on the American starship Yggdrasil...but that didn't mean that they were doing anything but sharing data. For Phoung, the Americans were still just another gang of imperialists that she and her fellow warriors had kicked out of Vietnam, metahumans or no metahumans. The only reason why she didn't say that to more imperialist's faces was that...well...

Phoung was well suited to the Toiler class. She might not have been so well suited if she knew that the earworm she had been humming had been designed specifically for people exactly like her - those who preferred doing rather than thinking, working with their hands, and doing jobs well rather than doing them fast or easily. The earworm, and her education in the state run schools, and the musical anthem that played every morning when she woke and every evening when she slept, all of it combined together to reinforce inside her mind a deep, abiding satisfaction with her place in society. It was a satisfaction that already existed...but no human was ever one hundred percent happy with anything in their life. There were always tiny cracks, tiny holes, that doubt and uncertainty or...just existential ennui could slip into.

Toiler Bui Bich Phuong didn't even know those holes had been there to be spackled over. She didn't know to miss them now.

And unless she was removed from the warm embrace of Progressive Harmony, she'd never know.

If Toiler Bui Bich Phuong had been asked, she would be honestly not sure how to feel about the fact her life was now being sculpted, subtly and overtly, by a million tiny syntergenic modeling.

If she had been a Risker, she might have responded to the insinuation with a punch to the jaw.

If she had been a Artist, she'd have maybe been shaken. Artists had lots of holes in their minds - places that they could interrogate and explore, to create the art that made Progressive Harmony function. After all, no matter how smart Nugent Cam was...she wasn't able to do all that work by herself, not for millions of people across three solar systems now.

If she had been a Thinker, she could have immediately pointed out that the only difference between the subtle and overt indoctrination of Progressive Harmony and the subtle and overt indoctrination of capitalism or American imperialism or white supremacy was that at least her web of comforting fictions and quiet lies were all built to make her happier, healthier, and better.

But Bui Bich Phuong was a Toiler, not a Thinker, and had she been asked, she wouldn't have been able to mount a great defense for her civilization beyond the basic meat and potatoes of 'I love my job' and 'I sleep contentedly' and 'no one is dropping bombs on me anymore.'

However, it wasn't the philosophical stuff that saved Bui Bich Phuong.

It was simple practicalities.

"I'm heading back up to the ship, prep the shuttle bay," Phuong said into her radio.

The only noise she got back was screaming. Not the scream of static, nor the scream of human beings in anger or even pain or fear - all things that Phuong had heard far, far, far too often.

No.

It was the screaming of hysteria. The screaming of the deranged. There were words mixed in among the vocalizations, and they were unmistakably Vietnamese - and she recognized the voices as Thinker Nyugen and the rest of the science staff. She adjusted her dial, her mind skittering away from the truth and towards the comforting fiction of hoping that her radio was just messed up. She switched the dial. "Thinker Nyugen, please, come in! Duc? Duc!"

She heard something...

Like...

Ripping. Tearing.

Wet noises. Choking noises. The pattering sound of liquid. A choked laugh. A slurred nonsense - like someone...

Someone who...

The only possibility that came to Phuong's mind was one that made her recoil from concious thought.

That had been the sound of Thinker Nyuget ripping out his own tongue.

The screaming was getting more distorted - and as the sounds began to fade, one by one, Phuong's terror transformed from something confused and fuzzy to cold...and solid, like a chunk of ice in her stomach. She looked down at the sensor piton she had fired into the black lunar soil - and saw her shadow, resting along it. The problem, though, was that her shadow ...had a double. Something faintly humanoid, standing, where none had been standing before.

Right behind her.

Phuong started to hum. She couldn't help herself. The notes sounded frail and warbling in her ears. Her heart hammered and her blood felt as if it was the same temperature as the void beyond her vac-suit.

Phuong began to turn. Her heel rasped on the dust.

She didn't want to see.

Her humming grew higher pitched. Out of tune.

She turned.

She saw.

Toiler Bui Bich Phuong screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed.

***
​

New York City
New York
February 11th
1971


You drummed your fingers on the counter and watched the microwave as it microwaved the popcorn.

Can I front for this?

You pursed your lips, then closed your eyes. The popping inside of the microwave was getting louder by the second.

"You have that look again," Rachel says from where she's lounging among her dogs, her eyes closed.

"I do not have a look," you say, turning to face your girlfriend.

"Yeah you do," she says.

If you have a look, it's on you, not me, don't look at me.

"Shut up Filly," you say.

"It's the shut up Filly look," Rachel said.

Hey, it's not like I wanna be here, Filly said.

It was the second month of you housing the fictional duplicate of your brain that a mad scientist had built to try and influence the minds of the free world through syntergenic hijacking of popular comic books and JESUS CHRSIT, that was a fucking sentence you had just thought. And you were pretty close to killing her. She was just...the most...annoying person you had ever met in your entire life - and the fact she was based on you was just salt in the fucking wound.

You know I can hear that, right? Filly said, her voice snide.

"That's just it, you're always so SNIDE!"

Oh, and you're a bountiful overflowing fountain of peaches and light and honest emotions.
"At least I don't boss you around!" You say, thrusting your finger up at your forehead.

I don't boss, i give SUGGESTIONS.

"They're not suggestions! They're orders with deniability!"

Rachel giggled.

"What?!" you say, looking at her.

"Nothing," she says, scrolling through her newspapers on her com. "Just, uh..." She paused. "Filly's a lot like you, you know. It's...it's just kinda funny."

You feel Filly's annoyance as she and you both glare, through your eyes, at Rachel. She taps her com off.

"We can have Buzzy take her back to the Noosphere," she says. "Give you a break for a bit."

...I guess... Filly says. Last time i went to the Noosphere, it wasn't that bad.

"Oh, yeah, you got to visit the collective unconsciousness of four billion people!" you say. "Not that bad, wow. Cool."

It's not as fun as it sounds!

Rachel stood up, pushing herself to her feet. "And then we can take a vacation and celebrate."

You blink at her.

Celebrate what? Filly asks.

[Hey, you rang?] the not-quite-voice of Buzzy came into your mind like a faint buzzing throughout the entire apartment. "Uh, yeah. Filly...needs...we need a break, can you take her to a nice part of the Noosphere?"

[Sure thing! We're off to Barsoom, baby!]

Fuckin' Sweet!

The faint sensation of another in your mind faded away and you saw that Rachel was giving you a smile, her eyes not meeting yours. She was looking down at her hands, and her smile was getting wider and wider and wider.

"What?" you ask.

"...it's the 11th," she says.

"Of..."

"February," she adds.

CLICK. The thought slamming home is an almost physical blow.

"OH!" you exclaim.

You had just remembered what day it was. It was February 11th, 1971. The moment your relationship had officially started...had been on February 11th, 1969. Normally, this would be where you'd think 'where had all the time gone?' but in 1969, humanity had barely landed on the moon, living puppets couldn't vote, one of the senators from Texas hadn't been a living dark-energy sustained replicating ghost of Lyndon B. Johnson, and the war had still been raging in Vietnam. Now, the Vietnamese were one of America's allies in the exploration of three solar systems. The news footage on your TV had color camera footage captured from the surface of Tau Ceti's habitable planet, for god's sake...

Rachel, though, was lifting her gaze to you. You had to say something!

---
It's your FUCKING ANNIVSARY!
[ ] "Lets go to Atlantis! They have restaurants now!"
[ ] "Paris! Paris is romantic!"
[ ] "Fuck the Earth. Lets go to...Mars! There's a castle on Mars, it's romantic!"
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

"Paris!" you say, immediately. "Paris is romantic!"

Rachel nods. "We don't speak French."

"That sounds like a problem for the French," you say, grinning as you take her hand and then kiss her knuckles. Rachel smiles, then looks aside.

"...costumes?"

Rachel bites her lip.

***
​

Paris is beautiful. The buildings have all been rebuilt since the War - which is more than twenty years over now, and yet, it's still the first thing that comes into your brain when you walk around Europe. Well...that and how pretty the girls were. You managed to not be too obvious about watching three girls in short skirts and bicycles skidding along the road. Most of the cars that are purring along are electric, using the new lithium ion batteries that can be mass produced when you have easy access to infinite lithium.

"Do you know how rare lithium is, on a galactic level?" you ask, adjusting your witchy hat as you and Rachel walk, hand in hand, along the sidewalk. The Parisians are doing their best to pretend like two gay superheroes arriving out of thin air with a crack of displaced air is just normal.

"Hm?" Rachel looks at you.

"Lithium," you jerk your thumb at one of the cars that putters by - its a curious combination of old and new. It looks like it had been built in the 1950s and repaired several times, with the hood popped up and the engine replaced by a mechanic with more enthusiasm than sense. Other cars are more modern looking and less hacked together, and they purr as well. You also notice that it's not fire hydrants you're walking past: They're recharging stations. You stop by one and eye it with a frown as you try and figure out how it had been built. But the station looks as if it is smoothly merged with the ground. You rub a black gloved finger along the lack of a seam, then look up at Rachel.

"I don't fucking believe it," you say.

"Is this still about the Lithium, Morgan?" Rachel asks.

Your cheek heats. Uh. Okay, this might become a problem in the future, but...when it was Rachel calling you Morgana Le Fay and you were in a skintight outfit, and...she was...being so pretty and...

It...

Brain.

Brain dumb horny! Lily make scissor now!

Rachel laughed, quietly, then leaned down, whispering in your ear. "You okay, la Fey?"

"S-Shut up, Huntress," you say, standing up. "A-As I was saying, uh. Lithium. It only forms at obscene temperatures, in supernova. It's rare. Like gold." You smile. "But unlike gold, we can make batteries out of it. But, uh, like gold, Carlos Moses..." you say the name with as much eyerolling and hand-jerking-off gestures as you can, even as your cape sweeps out behind you in the gusty day - it was a bit chilly, but you didn't mind. You had Rachel. "Can pull lithium out of thin air. And those charging stations. I bet someone designed them for him, then he just made them throughout Pairs. Fuck, he made them throughout France, I bet. They have nuclear reactors, they have an entirely independent power grid, why not cut off as much oil from their economy as possible. I'm rambling? Am I rambling?"

Rachel smiles, looking away. "It's cute."

You flush. How is it you can be dating a girl for years and she still completely annihilates your braincells?

You and she find a café with a waiter who immediately recognizes both of you as you walk by and calls out in accented English. "Morgana Le Fay and the Huntress? In Paris? ...should I be worried?"

"No, we're just looking for a place to have a nice lunch," you say, smiling.

The waiter gestures to the tables - and before you know it, you're seated and already have bread laid out.

"Free of charge," the owner of the café, a middle-to-old aged man who is missing his left arm, says as he comes out with the waiter to fawn over you two. You blush.

"We have money, you know," you say.

"You metahumans have done so much for the world, it would balk!" he says, holding up his arm to his chest, then spreading it wide, in a gesture so dramatic it nearly knocks off your hat. "You have saved us, brought us the stars, ended the wars, clean air!" He is bubbling over with excitement and you flush and smile at him, shyly.

"H-Hey, I...thanks," you say. Then...you're not sure how to say this without sounding like a bitch. So you just point at your elbow. "You, uh, want...uh, some help with that?"

"Huh?"

"Your arm?" you ask, blushing, while Rachel covers her mouth with her hand. "I know a lot of healers - you could get your arm back."

The man blinks at you. His mouth opens. His brow furrows. He blinks again, and stammers. "Je ne sais pas comment penser à ça..." he says, sounding as if he's wondering - which is better than him sounding furious and pissed off. You blush.

"N-Nevermind, forget about it, just...think, if...you want, you can...okay..." you grab the menu, then cover your face with it as the waiter and the manager step away, both of them moving like men who had been struck in the head by basballs. Or baseball bats. As you hid behind your menu, Rachel chuckles. "Was that ableist?" you whisper, then peek around the corner.

"As in...bigoted against people without arms?" Rachel asks.

"Yeah, disabled activists are big on it," you say. "Remember that protest, back in...69 that we were at, pushing for an American disability act, where we met all those queers in wheelchairs?"

Rachel nods.

"Like, is it ableist to use dark energy powers to fix a missing arm?" you ask.

Rachel shrugs. "I dunno. Ask a disabled person."

You put your hands over your face. "Auuuugh!"

"I figure, though, at worst? You were just being rude. Like...it's not like you were offering to fix him being gay by fiddling with his brain," Rachel says, looking down at her menu, frowning. "Um..." She pauses. "I, uh..."

You frown. Rachel's normally pretty blunt. To hear her hesitate about stuff like this makes your stomach do a slow flip. Thus far, the biggest thing she ever hesitated about in your life...well, you don't even want to think about it. And not just because of the existences of a number of high powered telepaths in the world. You lower the menu, and see that Rachel's fumbling with something in her hands. Is that a com?

"Um..." She blushes, then slams the something down and shoves it at you so hard that the frilly tablecloth crumple up and you look at it.

It's a box.

That's not a box, the thought tries to form but it shorts out.

It's a box with a hinge on it. About an inch by an inch by an inch. Black felt.

That's a- the thought shorts out again, sparking away between your ears like an engine trying to turn over and failing.

"I...um...I had a speech and...like...should have waited, but, I...I can't sit through the whole brunch without, so, just open it!"

The box is not heavy.

You open it and for some reason, your hands are shaking.

The ring is a glittering, gold ring with a tiny diamond on it.

"...I...um...Sykes made it...I asked, so, it's not a conflict diamond or...will you, okay!?"

Oh.

---
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuh

[ ] Uhhhhhhhh
[ ] UHHHHHHHH
[ ] Buhhh?
[ ] Yes, yes, yes, YES!?

 

[DragonCobolt]

Time seemed to stop as you blinked down at the ring. Your mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. "I...y...yes! Yes! YES!" You squealed, then sprang to your feet, grabbing onto Rachel with both hands, swinging yourself onto her lap. Kissing her was the best way you could think to respond after yes - and the moment is long and warm and breathless - you break your lips contact for just long enough to breathe out an excited little sigh, to draw just enough air to keep going, to hear Rachel laughing softly, her eyes closed. People are staring, but you don't particularly care.

"Uh..."

You ignored the waiter.

You had a...fiancée...

Fiancée.

The word didn't even feel real in your head.

Fiancée to kiss...

To hold.

You and Rachel left the scandalized café dwellers to walk, hand in hand, through one of Paris' many parks. You found the solid gold statue of 'Carlos Moses' and took turns posing before it and snapping pictures on your coms. You petted a dog that someone had let off the leash, and visited the Eifel Tower, and learned the amusing detail that the little tables set out around it were the favorite place for famous author Guy de Maupassant to eat - because, apparently, he hated the ugly things guts and found the Tower was the only place in Paris where he could eat his lunch without having to see it.

The sun hung overhead as you and Rachel both laid on your back in the park, the faint jingling sounds of bike bells and the chatter of other people filling your ears. You sighed, quietly, and said: "I..."

"Hmm?"

Rachel was currently half buried in stray dogs. Her hand was stroking their heads, one by one, and she looked as if she could stare at you forever without ever getting bored. The weight of her regard feels almost like a blanket. You flush and realize that you don't have the words it could take to possibly express what it is you wanted to express.

So, instead, you say.

"...who else knows?"

Rachel blinks. "Huh?"

"Uh...w-who do we have to tell, I mean."

Rachel's cheeks start to heat slightly.

"What?" you ask, then sit up, looking at her. Rachel purses her lips. Then you slowly pull out your com. You flip it open. You dial Andy, purely because he's at the top of your contacts. The phone rings as Rachel mumbles into the fur of a huge Dalmatian that she's petting.

"Hey," Andy says, his voice studiously neutral. "Hows...it...going?"

He knew.

"You ratfink," you whisper.

It sounded like the entire Stonewall Nine burst out cheering at once, making the com's speakers go crackling. The congratulations start coming in faster than you can possibly keep up with, the babble overlapping. You heard Marsha in there, and Lisa, and definitely Tessa, but everyone else is drowned out. While Andy...or...maybe Beta try and get things under control, you slowly look over at Rachel, who shrugs, sitting up and sliding the Dalmatian down to her lap.

"I...um...was trying to be circumspect about it. I asked Amanda to make the ring and she asked me why, and...well, she was visiting the Yiggy, then Lisa heard-"

"Of course."

"-so, Lisa ran off and told everyone else-"

"Mmhmm."

"-and we all agreed to keep it sec-"

You flipped the com shut, then leaned in, and kissed her.

***
​

The party at the Yiggy is great.

Beta and Tessa are both showing off their newly programmed/grown taste receptors - they both were claiming that they could taste subtleties in various foods beyond the capacity of even moderately perceptive metahumans like Brian when he was using his power to emulate Lisa's hypersenses. This led to Beta chugging down an entire ghost pepper that Amanda, looking faintly concerned, manifested out of thin air, while Marsha grew several more complex, even spicer fruits from her garden and offered them out to Tessa.

"Water! WATER!" Tessa choked out, clutching at her throat, her gleaming, synthetic tongue lolling out of her mouth, while laughter exploded throughout the garden space - and you? You were noticing that Sabah was sitting off in a corner, looking wistfully out the window.

"Hey," you say, stepping over to her.

Sabah glanced over.

"Oh, uh, hey," she says, trying to smile but the light in it doesn't reach your eyes.

"Uh..." you bite your lip, remembering the wild, crazy, intense crush you'd had on her. You felt the faint...flickers of it. But not as intensely anymore. BUt suddenly, you got hit with an intense sense of all the choices you'd made and how they'd brought you here - and here was...magical and amazing. It was a here with friends who could fly, and a home that floated above New York City like a glittering, living star of green life, and a future that was looking more and more promising by the second.

But it was also a here where...

Where you'd kinda let Sabah become...a friend.

That felt...

You weren't sure how to explain how it felt. You looked away, blushing. "You okay?" you ask.

"Yeah," Sabah says, then looks out the window. "It's my parents. They're...still...not talking to me."

"Oh," you say.

Wow.

Aren't you the biggest, most self centered queen bitch of the universe? You pushed that stabby feeling into the box and sat next to Sabah, still holding a red cup full of some spiked punch, and trying to act like a good friend for once. "Yeah, I, uh, I heard about that. Want...me to talk to them or something?" You ask, blushing. Sabah chuckles, quietly, then leans back against you, unselfconscious as she looks out of the window, at the glittering lights of New York City.

"It's not what you think," she says. "Coming out to them? They...were shocked, yeah, but they rolled with it better than I expected."

"Oh," you say, nonplussed. Her parents were pretty conservative, if you remembered right. They were Zoroastrians, which...you...honestly, had no idea what they believed or even worshiped and Sabah had never really talked about it. "What are they not talking to you about then?"

"The Puppets," she says, her voice growing harsh, her hands clenching slightly. "They...I...they say that I'm playing at being Ahura Mazda, creating false life to serve my whims, and that it's vile and evil a-and..." She looks out. "And then there are those Shavians and the Turf Warriors and...and it hit me, I...they're people. We got them the vote. And I'm making them without...asking for permission, sometimes, with specific functions in mind. Like they're cogs in a big machine, and, and, and...and!" She turns to face you, grabbing onto your thigh with her hands. "And we've been doing that for years! There are tens of thousands of them now!"

"You're...scared your parents are right," you say, quietly.

Sabah looks away, blushing, her lovely, dark features growing shadowed as she ducks her head forward. Letting her hair - which she's let grow long and straight - hang before her face.

"...I...sorry, this...this is your party, I...I shouldn't dump it on you," she says, sounding miserable - her body floating into the air as she takes hold of herself with her TK. You grab her hand.

"Hey, Sabah, wait," you say, seriously.

---
Philisophy...
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

With the distant sound of the party echoing in your ears, you blew out a slow sigh, still holding Sabah's hand. She looks away from you - and the two of you watch the window flash for a moment as the Yiggy maneuvers through space. Someone has decided to take this party to a more scenic location - and you find yourself grabbing onto that.

It's an idea, after all.

"...Ya know, I know the number."

Sabah blinks at you. But she's not running away yet. You lift your head, looking at her, seriously.

"The exact size of the universe, the width and depth of the bubble that is...Everything. We're so very small, and the universe is so fucking huge. Nobody asks to be born, Sabah. Nobody consents to existence. Not a single one of us." She's nodding. But she looks sad.

In the window beyond, new stars are glittering as the YIggy comes to a stop. You're not sure if you're even in the solar system anymore - though considering how fast the Yiggy goes against the scale of the universe, it's likely you're still somewhere in the heliopause. You soldier on.

"We're born anyway, kicking and screaming into a vast universe– because someone else made that choice for us. That's the thing everyone has in common. What's uncommon Sabah, is that you care about them. I know you do. If they were just cogs to you, would you try to remember their names? Would you ask them how they are– wondering at their feelings? Would you even be feeling what you're feeling right now, if you didn't care so deeply for them? They aren't cogs– They're your family and you love them, and they love you in return. That's better than a lotta people get. You're good to them. A good person, who wants to make the world better for the people around you. I think that's the most anyone can ask for..."

Sabah is crying. She looks down at her feet, sniffling quietly.

"When'd you get so grown up?" she asks, softly.

You blush. "Hey!"

"Sorry, just..." She wipes at her nose, and then sniffles. You jerk entropy around enough to make a napkin collapse out of oxygen and hold it out to her. A greater miracle than half of the Gospels, all to provide a minor comfort. Sabah doesn't even seem to register it as weird, which might actually be the weirdest part of this whole thing. She blows her nose, hard, honking, and you both giggle as she sniffs again. "Just...I think you're a good person. You started off okay. But you're better now. D-Does that make sense."

"Dang," you say, shaking your head. "I was aiming for absolute power corrupting absolutely."

Sabah giggles again.

"And, like, if you're really truly worried?" you ask. "You can talk to them. They're adults. You can have a mature conversation about this."

"Yeah..." Sabah says. "...what if they beg for death?"

"Then we make their lives better!" you say, and she laughs. "Listen, I'm...gonna go and get some cake."

"Enjoy!" you say.

Sabah walks off through the greenery and you feel the warm glow you get when you've helped someone. Really, genuinely helped someone. That glow fades almost to nothing the instant you notice the bright red fox ears. You groan as Lisa slooooowly perks her head up and over a brush, grinning at you with foxish delight.

"Whaaaat?" you ask.

"Should I telllllllll your fiancée about thiiiiiiis?"

"About what?!" You ask, your flush already growing.

Lisa wiggles her eyebrows expressively, her ears perking up. She leaps from the brushes, and lands on the rock beside you - part of the artful garden decorations. Her tail is wagging like a dog's. You're not even sure fox tails do wag. If they did, hers was showing she was a happy, eager fox. And you knew what Lisa did when she was having fun and didn't like the gleam in her eyes.

"Ohh just about the big old torch you're carrying for Sabah," she says, grinning and rolling onto her back, so she can look at you upside down.

"I don't have a torch!"

"Hmm, pretty quick to deny that," Lisa murmurs. "Curious."

"You can see my microexpressions and read my personality from my fucking farts, you can tell I'm not into Sabah that way!" you say, angry. "I'm...I have!" You held up your hand, pointing at the ring over your costume's dark gloves. "See?"

"And yet, we are the generation of free love and open relationships...curious..."

"Stop saying that!"

Lisa giggled even harder, then stretched languidly, before rolling around and coming to her feet in a motion so smooth and fast that she looked like a living slinky animated by some malign intellect, all focused on ruining your mood. Her shoulder bumps against yours as she grinned, then slunk around you, twining about you like a cat. Which, again, she was a fox. You wanted to grab her tail and yank her away from you, but Lisa was as slippery as a...

She giggled more.

"I didn't even finish the sentence," you grumble.

"And yet-"

"Curious, I know!" you say, flushing. "You're not even telepathic!"

"At this level of perceptiveness, the difference is academic," she said, giggling. "But, no. It was very sweet what you said to Sabah. You just have a big huge crush on her."

You scowl. "I do not."

"I'd know better than you'd know, because even if you don't know you'd know I'd know you know even if you didn't," Lisa said, smugly. "Hypersense!" She tapped her nose. "The nose knows!"

You scowl at her. "I can turn your corpus callosum into antimatter, you know?"

Lisa pouted, her ears drooping. "But I'm so cute!"

You roll your eyes at her as hard as you can manage with a domino mask on - but Lisa doesn't even seem to notice. She's instead looking past you, over your shoulder. You turned, following her gaze. You scowl. "What the hell..." you focused, killing some of the annoying laws of physics that made human eyes unable to see as far as telescopes could normally. The thing that Lisa had spotted had been visible only because a single star, for a fraction of a second, had been invisible...but with your perceptions enhanced by your focus, you could see it too.

A figure, faintly humanoid.

They were definitely a metahuman of some kind.

"Well, someone's drunk," you say, shaking your head.

"Lost out here in the Oort cloud," Lisa sighed. "So sad. You wanna go out and give them a lift? I bet it's a very lucky long ranged teleporter who can survive in space and decided to stretch themselves."

You frown.

The figure is distant enough that even your augmented senses can't get much of an impression.

Save that they're heading your way.

---
What do!?

"Hey, Dragon, why did you spend a month not update?"

I was sleepy!

[ ] It's the least you can do. Bubble up and fly out to meet them and get them to the Yiggy
[ ] Something about this feels...off. This is like two hydrogen atoms in a vacuum tank the size of New Jersey meeting by accident. Get everyone together and talk this over.
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

"...this...feels off," you say.

"Huh?" Lisa asks.

"This is kinda like if we were two hydrogen atoms in a big tank the size of New Jersey...and we just bumped into each other by accident," you say, quietly.

Lisa opened her mouth, then closed it.

"Okay, when you put it that way, it is a bit suspicious."

***
​

The bridge of the Yiggy is dead silent for a solid twenty seconds.

It's funny. In stories, you sometimes hear things like 'a minute of silence' or 'the silence stretched on for minutes' and it sounds like a short pause - but even twenty seconds of absolute stillness feels like forever when you're actually there. This is a thought that only occurs once the silence is broken, though.

Because those twenty seconds are spent in complete, utter, silent shock.

"Well. Fuck me," Andy says.

"Is that what I think it is?" Sabah whispers.

"I..." Andy gulps. "Okay. Wait. Lets all...lets all just...lets all just take a second here. Dark energy manipulation produces extremely odd results. We've seen people turn into clouds of sentient energy, we've seen...sentient comic book characters, this isn't actually that weird."

The thing that Andy was declaring was not that weird...was the alien floating in the telescopic view.

It had looked humanoid. At first. Then, as the telescope dialed in and got more and more focused, that humanoid shape had turned out to be a lie, created by the triangular trunk of the central body. Three sided, each roughly equally sized, each one faintly bowed outwards, as if the inside was pressurized, each one lined with three sets of eyes, creating nine eyes in total. The upper vertexes (at least, upper from your orientation) both sprouted a pair of tentacles that wound around one another to create the 'arms' you had seen from a distance. The lower vertex has has a single thick tentacle that bifurcates halfway down, creating the leg-shapes you had seen from the distance.

The whole thing 'stood', for lack of a better word, upon a slab of stone that looked for all the world as if it had been etched with a kind of angular, edged writing.

"That slab?" Beta says, pointing at it. "Is it some kind of dark energy foci? Is it a dark energy creature?"

You frown, then step over to the console. One part of the bridge - the part of the bridge no one fucking trusted - had been given to you as a present by Cam. It was one of her very own dark energy detectors, and it was tied to various sensors and antennas along one of the limbs of the Yiggy's branches. You brushed those antennas across the creature and read the results, scowling a bit. "Yes and no," you say. "They're both dark energy sources, but...Beta, Andy, look at this."

The two hyperbrains walk over and lean over.

"Oh, well, that's a relief," Andy says, grinning. "They're dark energy constructs. See the emission patterns, it's just like a turf warrior, this thing is just a chunk of dark energy that someone spat out with a very weird idea of aesthetics."

Beta nods.

"You two are missing something, though," you say, quietly. "Dark energy physics are still...expressed with human mathematic structures. We're base ten critters, most of us." You tap the readout. "This thing's matrix is base twelve."

"That...isn't conclusive..."

"Every single dark energy construct I've ever seen in my life, from Turf Warriors to Puppets to Amanda's weird demon things," you say. "Has had the same basic structure underlying their outward manifestation. We're all working with the same rough brain pattern. This one is different."

Andy frowns.

Beta frowns harder.

"Maybe they had...brain damage?" Andy says, nervously. "Before they got infused."

"Maybe it's a fucking alien!" you say.

Rachel, who has been watching the telescope, frowns. "What do we do if it is an alien?"

"Heck, what do we do if it's not?" Theo asks. "A creepy weird construct made by a metahuman so fucking weird that they make critters in a completely alien mode from the rest of us also seems like a big pile of nope."

You're all quiet for a bit.

"We could, uh, try talking to them," Sabah says. "Just. An idea here."

"I like that idea," Marsha says, chuckling. "Is their body suspended in one of those, uh...what did you call it?" She smiles at you.

"Implausibility bubbles, yeah," you say, then check the scans. Some metahumans could survive in space. A lot of them also just gave the finger to physics and let their voices transmit through vacuum as if it was air. How? Fuck you, that was why. You nodded. "It seems to be suspended in one from the tablet. I think the tablet's also their FTL system and travel system. The actual construct...not sure...it's definitely stronger than your average Turf Warrior."

"So, closer to a Shavian?" Andy asks.

"Yeah," you say.

"Okay," Andy rubs his palm along his face. "We can aim a loudspeaker at it and their implausibility bubble will pick it up without us needing to worry about technological interfaces..."

"Thank you dark energy," you say, quietly.

"What do we say?" Andy asks. "Try something with English? Flash them some math?"

"Math?" Lisa asks.

"Yeah, to start setting up a mode of communication that's shared across the universe - math's math, it's always math," Andy says.

"Andy, we live on a flying tree that makes physics cry," you say.

"Still!" Andy sounds defensive.

---
AN ALIEN!?
[ ] Say something - write in what!
[ ] Go out and say hi, where you can use your powers to try and translate
[ ] Leave and go home and check with, like, I dunno, a government or something to get an actual ambassador?
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

"We need to contact Cam and Amanda and the President and the United Nations and we need to figure out how we can communicate safely and...and we need to do so much stuff!" Andy said, looking down at his console, then up at the rest of us.

"Teeny tiny little itty bitty problem with that plan," Lisa said, her ears flattening back against your head. You had time enough to look at the scope to see that the strange creature is gone - before it is before you.

Up close, the alienness of is impossible to deny.

Not because it looked any fucking weirder than it had out there - it had already looked weird enough, being a...goddamn triangle made of rocks and shimmering tubes, floating on a slab of stone that radiates dark energy like it was manifested out of thin air by Jack fucking Grimes. No, it was because the instant that it had manifested itself in the room - bypassing your gravity shields by the simple expedient of teleportation (or, for all you knew, even stranger and harder to understand methods of travel) - and it had immediately begun...to...

Speak.

Your hands clapped over your ears - but the sound itself isn't really a sound. It's more like the idea of a sound, originating inside of your head and echoing outwards. You feel alien sensations crawling up your nervous system, buzzing against your thoughts and pushing moist fingers into your optic nerves. Colors you had never seen swam before your eyes, and sounds you had never been meant to hear buzzed through you. But what was worse was the thoughts.

Then, all at once, it was over.

You stumbled backwards, dark energy flaring around your palms as you instinctively got ready to obliterate this fucker - an immediate, gut deep response that shocks you. But then you hear the sing-song buzzing in your head, humming softly: Well, that was rude!

For a dizzying second, you think that it was the alien talking.

But the alien is gone.

"Where the fuck did he go?" Brian asks, his hands over his head too.

"He's traveling away from us at a pretty decent clip, we can match his speed easily enough if we try, thanks Buzzy," Andy says, his voice clipped. Beta is sagging back into one of the carved wooden seats, her head in her hands, her fingers rubbing her temples. She doesn't even have a body like we do.

"What was that?" Sabah asked. "I...I felt...things."

"He was beaming information straight into our heads," Andy said, his voice tight. "Direct transmission, nerve to nerve, without any amelioration. That'd have caused a headache between two humans doing it, and we're evolved in the same freaking biosphere." You're looking at everyone - and everyone is looking shaken. You probe the mental wreckage that was the memory of that moment and wince away from it. The thoughts aren't just...alien.

Something about them makes you feel faintly queasy.

The only person who is looking chipper is Lisa.

"How the fuck are you okay?" you ask.

"I dodged," Lisa said.

"...you...dodged. The telepathic attack?"

Lisa shrugged. "What can I say?" She spread her hands.

"It wasn't an attack," Beta says. "It was a message. And starcharts." She shakes her head, lowering her hands from her face, her eyes looking haunted. "And a warning."

Everyone looks at her. Tori crosses her arms over her chest. Marsha steps over, putting her hand on her shoulder, gently. On the telescopes, the figure is very distant now - shooting out towards interstellar space on a bizarre angle. Of course, he doesn't have to follow the plane of the ecliptic, now that you think about it.

"What warning?" you ask, quietly.

"There is...a...sphere about...five light years wide around Bernard's Star. We got close to it...well, the IEG got close to it with their expedition to Alpha Centauri. So, this herald came to tell us to...back off, basically," Beta said, her lips pursing. "Guys. There's a Progenitor there."

The silence in the room is ringing.

You put your hand on your head, dragging your hat off, slowly. You brush your fingers through your hair.

A Progenitor.

An alien Progenitor.

The possibilities are as exciting as they are terrifying. You've seen what human metahumans can do. You're trying to imagine what alien ones might accomplish. And worse, the idea of someone just deciding to send a message like that just to neighbors - not a greeting, but a dictate. It wasn't exactly promising.

"...shit," you say. "Wait, the IEG? Did they get this message too?"

"I don't know any details beyond that," Beta says.

"Understanding these thoughts is pretty hard," Andy explains. "Even with an exo-cortex."

"Too alien for you?" Lisa asks.

"No," Andy's voice is soft. "Too...evil."

"Evil?" Marsha asks, her brow knitting. Flowers bloom along her hair - the colors of agitation flaring against her luxurious strands. "Andy, you know as well as-"

"I know what I normally say about the other being just not understood!" Andy says, holding up his hand. "But something about this transmission screams evil. Just...there are flashes of imagery, I'm still untangling it in my mind - but they're of a planet...with...with not nice things happening on it. Like..." His voice drops. "Like looking into hell."

"Why!?" Sabah exclaimed.

We all look at her.

"They're alien?" Theo suggests.

"That's a STUPID reason, Theo!" Sabah sounds exasperated. "People don't just do things because they're evil!"

"Maybe they have an alien psychology, so, what looks like pure evil to us is just normal, every day stuff for them," Rachel says, quietly.

"I hope you're wrong, Rachel," Andy says. "Because if that's their normal..."

You all mull on that.

The blip is almost out of scope range.

---
what do?
[ ] Chase the Herald down and use Marsha's powers to filter the telepathic communication to human norms. Maybe you're misunderstanding something.
[ ] ...lets go talk to the UN. And Amanda.
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

You watch as the blip vanishes.

"...I think we're going to need to talk to people," you say, turning to face the others.

The rest of the Stonewall Nine are all looking grave. Well, except for Lisa.

Andy shakes his head, then stands up. "No. Screw this," he says.

"No, Andy, I think she's right," Brian says. "Like, I'm not the biggest fan of the United States government, but...like, maybe we can talk to the United Nations or something?"

"Oh, yeah, obviously!" Andy said, his fingers already flying along the controls. The stars shift outside the window. "I'm just saying that I'm not going to let the fact that we've made first contact with an alien species be anything less than a cause for celebration!" He beams, brightly. "Even if they're scary, they're FREAKING ALIENS!"

You chuckle.

You and Rachel exchange a glance. She bites her lip.

Your thumb brushes the ring around your finger, feeling its smoothness.

Yeah.

Freaking aliens.

***
​

New York City
New York
February 16th
1971


You groan as you and Rachel sit out in Grand Central Park and both try to ignore the people taking pictures of you from a distance. One of the new exogenic dogs that some hyperbrain has been whipping up for a hefty sum is running around in the sunlight, its brightly colored neon fur flashing.

"This is bullshit," you say.

"I know," Rachel says.

"Meeting aliens shouldn't involve this many fucking boring meetings," you grump. Rachel kisses your cheek, gently.

The neon dog scampers up to her, and she pets his head, smiling down at him, gently. His owner stands a few yards off, clearly terrified of coming closer. You're not even in your uniform - you've been in it all day over the past few sessions of the United Nations Security Council. You had had no idea that they'd be able to form so many committees so quickly - and that so many of them would need so much of your fucking time. You had given testimonies on the dark energy scan, testimonies on the nature of dark energy and its propagation through biological systems - even though you weren't even an expert on that. You were pretty sure that people just wanted to hear you talk because you were the most famous member of the Stonewall Nine.

But the most surreal part of all?

The Security Council normally had fifteen seats. Which, like, that was the first thing that had surprised you. You'd always thought it just had, like, the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China. But no, those were the permanent ones and they had new elections every few years to cycle in the ten NON-permanent members. So, you had gotten to meet the Ambassador of the Republic of Guinea , who had been
voted in this year.

Someone else who had been voted in?

Bao Verong, the president of the Indochinese Economic Gestalt. He was a metahuman, and he was serving as the ambassador and the Highest Representative of Progressive Harmony - something he played off as just being something he could do because Progressive Harmony, being the most rational, well designed economic system humanity had ever seen, could run just fine while he engaged in his diplomatic duties abroad.

You had gotten to shake his hand, look him in the eye, and say: "So, how's it like, working with Cam?"

"Cam?" he asked, cocking his head. "Oh! The songwriter?" He chuckled. "She's a useful little tool in my back pocket, I suppose. But don't go telling her that, it might make the shy little thing fall over dead from a faint." He chuckled again - and he was so effortlessly, precisely charming that it took nearly two minutes before you shook your head and muttered to yourself a quiet 'what the absolute fuck?'

Fortunately, by then, you had been sitting at your assigned point in the Security Council.

Cause while the table only had fifteen chairs, for this meeting, it was gonna have seventeen.

You tried to not think of the symbolism of the fact that you, by yourself, and Amanda Sykes, by herself, were both being given roughly equal parity to countries with atomic weapons.

The actual meeting had required very little of your input - at least, for the first day. Everyone dickered a lot about the role of space exploration, some shade was thrown at the Vietnamese for their space program 'drawing this attention', theories were floated around on how to use our nuclear weapons to defend ourselves...it was all a lot of people just trying to put a rational face on the absurdity of it all.

Aliens.

You were here to talk about aliens.

Amanda took studious notes, her face furrowed, her brow focused.

During one of the many breaks that you had to take while dickering over inter...galactic, shit, intergalactic politics, it was intergalactic politics now, you and Amanda had touched base while she manifested water out of thin air for you two - much to the irritation of the page that was there to pour water for everyone.

"Soooo, when's the wedding?" Amanda had asked, casually.

"I still can't believe you knew about that before I knew about that," I had said.

"Rachel did ask me to keep it secret." Amanda shrugged.

"I..." you paused. You were about to say that you were kind of shocked Amanda had been okay with it at all.

"I...was actually the one who said she should go for it," Amanda said, quietly.

You had looked at her, eyes wide.

"I...know I might seem old fashioned. But...Lily...my hometown had two confirmed bachelors for my entire life, that never went anywhere without each other. And...we didn't...talk about it. But people knew." She shook her head. "I figured, if god minded, he'd have to talk to me personally before I got all up in a tizzy about it."

You hadn't really been sure how to take that. All of that. Actually.

Fortunately, the United Kingdom Ambassador had come back from the bathroom and the grinding meeting was going forward again.

In the present, Rachel decided to make everything better by leaning against you. "Don't worry. It'll be scary again soon," she says, smiling.

"Heh," you say, grinning.

A shadow fell across your bench. You lifted your head as a shy, male voice said: "Uh, excuse me, I...didn't want to interrupt a, ah, private moment."

"No, it's okay," you say, shifting your head so the sun is behind the guy. He's tall and skinny, with a mop of black hair and long eyebrows. He's wearing a comfy looking brown jacket, with a white buttoned up shirt underneath, and khaki pants. He doesn't look like an ambassador or anyone official - but then again, he could just be some random guy. It wasn't like you had bodyguards.

Mostly because you had pointed out to the bodyguards that the United Nations had offered you, that you could stop an atomic bomb with your mind.

"You're Miss Sato, yes?" the guy asks.

"That's me," you say. "And...you are?"

"Oh, yes, my apologies," he says, giving you a big, goofy smile. "Sorry, I'm...just a little star struck. It's not every day i meet a woman who redefines physical laws at will." He holds out his hand. "I'm Dr. Sagan, I was called up as part of the newly created United Nations Interplanetary Diplomatic Organization."

"...I've...never heard of that," you say.

"That's because it was formed last night, I think," Dr. Sagan said, scratching at his jaw. "There's two dozen scientists of various fields - I'm handling the astronomy and astrophysics angle - we're trying to piece together information based off the stars in question about possible...biologies, and, well, I was taking my morning walk and!" He spread his hands. "Here you are."

"So, the United Nations is actually going to f...to do something?" you ask. For some reason...you can almost hear Amanda scowling at you. She's not even in the same state right now, you're pretty sure.

Dr. Sagan chuckles.

"I think four days to establish this is breakneck pace for the United Nations."

Rachel elbows you gently. "What?" you whisper.

"You know that's Carl Sagan, right?" she whispers.

"...should...I know who that is?" you whisper back.

"Cosmos," she whispers.

You shake your head.

"Andy has been trying to get you to watch Cosmos for a year now," Rachel whispers, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, and I've been ignoring him," you whisper back.

"Well, I'll leave you two to your morning," Dr. Sagan says.

"Wait," you say, thinking...

---
This guy is going to be a part of the UNIDO or whatever. Might be good to bend his ear?
[ ] Tell him about the skeevy creepy feeling the Stonewall Nine got. The UN hasn't really been taking it very seriously, but if he can disseminate it with the scientists, maybe the UNDIO will be prepared for anything hinky.
[ ] Ask him for more deets about the UNIDO - you hadn't been informed about it being formed, and you want to know everything you can.
[ ] Ask him if he wants to meet Andy. Andy will like that.
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

"Uh, wait, Doctor," you say.

He turns, looking curious. He has eyebrows for looking curious.

"Do you want to meet Andy?" you ask. "Er, that is, uh-"

"Oh, I know Dr. Richter," Sagan says, smiling slightly. "I've read their papers, I'd be happy to meet them, if they're in town." You noticed he was doing something that not a lot of people who talked about Andy did, which was use gender unspecific pronouns. Andy didn't actually like they and them pronouns when used on him or her. Andy liked being called whatever pronouns he or she was using at the time. Which did make things a bit tricky when, like, she was a girl dressed in a baggy outfit and with bedraggled sleep deprived features but Andy was a gentle soul and only bit your head off if he already didn't like you.

"Andy is going to die," Rachel whispers in your ear.

***
​

"Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!" Andi whispered, her body quivering as she bounces on her feet. She's currently in a very cute little pink and blue dress, which does make pronouns a lot easier to deal with. Her skirts flare a bit with every bounce as she puts her hands on her face. You wonder what other park goers might have made of the scene - if they had missed her teleporting down from the Yiggy, then they might just assume she was a girl who was seeing the Beatles or something. "Carl Sagan! Oh my god! It's Carl Sagan!"

You blink slowly.

"...maybe you should have watched Cosmos?" Rachel whispers in your ear.

"I mean, yeah, it sounded like something I'd have liked but...also...it was really funny how much it annoyed Andy," you whispered back.

Rachel laughs, softly, then kisses your cheek.

"I wasn't aware that my work with the Mariner program would be nearly as interesting to you, considering you reached Venus, you've brought back actual samples," Sagan said - and, remarkably, didn't sound piqued. You guess science guys were more interested in science than in pissing contests on who got to which planet first.

"Yeah, but you called it!" Andi says, her voice giddy. "You worked out the surface temperature from radio wave emissions."

"I mean, I could have done that. Eventually," you say, grinning.

"Really?" Sagan glances at you, his brow furrowing. "I wasn't aware that you had the...ah..." he waved his hand. "The exocortex?"

"I do, actually, it's just more specialized and not very exciting-"

"Not very exciting, don't sell yourself short, Dr. Sagan, Lily here, she has an intuitive understanding of pretty much all physics, ask her about anything!" Andi says.

"Uh, do you know if we're in a solid state or cyclical universe?" Sagan asks, curiously.

"Perpetually expanding," you say, shrugging. "Dark energy is continually accelerating our universe outwards from a central point - at a large scale, it can only be seen in the way it acts against gravity, but in the small scale, it can interact with quantum systems like human consciousness. That's how you get things like Amanda. Er. The Progenitor." You blush, slightly. Don't want to be too familiar with the godlike superbeing. "And me and Andi and the rest of the Stonewall Nine."

"And my wife," Dr. Sagan says, nodding casually.

Andi puts her hands on her face. "What!?"

"We're still working on tracing the power linage-"

"Do you have...are you a metahuman too?" Andi asks, still...clearly vibrating with excitement.

You lean over to Rachel, whispering to her. "We're not going to be late to the next round of meetings, are we?"

"No," she whispers back. "I set a timer."

Andi was looking faintly distraught at the news as you came back to the conversation: "-she's been finding it more useful than expected at her job, considering it can't impact humans."

"Well, yeah, obviously," Andi says.

"So, are you two going to be working together on that...alien meeting thing?" you ask, sliding your hands into your jean pockets and hooking the thumbs.

"Yes, definitely, what's the current plan?" Andi asks.

"Well, based off the testimonies we've read and the discussions I've had over the, ah, internet," Sagan says, bringing out the word with a bit of extra care. Andi and Beta had been working hard on bringing the informational infrastructure of the world up to par with what they had seen of the future. Though hopefully with less fucking crazy people. "The alien entity you've met is a dark energy construct, not an actual member of their species. But looking at our own species, it's clear that being a dark energy construct has little bearing on legal rights - are they similar to a Turf Warrior or a Muppet or one of the Hounds..." He nods to Rachel, who frowns a bit.

"Technically, they're not dark energy constructs, they're just sentient dogs," Andi says, rubbing her chin. "But right, what if that Herald was just like, uh...what was her name, the lady, with the eyes."

You frown. "Miss Eyes?"

Andi shakes her head. "No, she had a better name."

"No, it was really was Miss Eyes," you say. "She's up for parole in two years, I was interviewed about her a month ago, her nickname was Miss Eyes."

"Really?" Andi asks.

"You have super intelligence, dude!" You say as Rachel puts her hand over her mouth to hide her smile.

"Yeah, but I don't use it to remember supervillain names," Andi says. "She made big floating eyeballs-"

"How did the eyeballs float?" Sagan asks.

"Knots of dark energy creating contragravitic fields," Andi says.

"And how did they do that?" Sagan asks.

Andi opens her mouth, then closes it thinking.

"Just wait till you hear about the Eyeball Zone," Rachel says, dryly.

"What is this...Eyeball Zone?" Sagan's brow knits together.

"Not important," you say. "What is the plan?"

"Right, sorry," Sagan chuckles. "It's just all these...superpowers are so fascinating - I wish we had more time and chances to study the specific actions of each dark energy power - but the little research I've read has shown that it's all quite idiosyncratic." He shakes his head. "Still. We are hoping that it is possible to send a dark energy construct into the area earmarked on our star charts as being their territory without it being seen as overly hostile, carrying with it our intentions, as well as a...mathematic basis for translation. Math and physics are shared by every species in the galaxy, they have to be." He nods. "So, we simply need to associate our chosen language - English or Vietnamese or Russian, whichever we pick, with mathematic concepts so that by learning how we express one, they can learn how we can express the other."

"Like a Rosetta stone!" Andi says.

"Precisely," Sagan says. "Then we keep a diplomatic vehicle - possibly your Yggdrasil - in a place that can be found based on extrapolating from the herald that we send. We could even choose a star system, and provide a map, using the location of pulsars or other similar phenomenon."

"EEEE YEAHHH! Just like Voyager!" Andi squeals, clapping her hands.

You frown. "And what if they're hostile?"

Sagan frowns. "I'm...not sure what we'd do about it. My previous assumptions about this kind of first contact were that interstellar wars would be...unlikely. Time dilation may give us the ability to travel to the stars without dying of old age, but the costs...the expense, the vast infrastructural requirements, all make conflict implausible. But..." He clicks his teeth. "Dark Energy changes things."

You frown.

It feels a lot chillier in the park.

---
​

Amanda is standing outside of the UN building as you walk towards it, dressed in your uniform. She's frowning at the protestors who are gathered out front - it looks like a pretty big collection of anti-war, anti-big government types. Lots of hippies. "They're kinda jumping the gun aren't they?" you mutter.

"They should all go home," Amanda says, not even trying to keep her voice down.

"It's a free country, Amanda," you say, frowning slightly. "Besides, aren't you used to seeing protestors."

"I didn't like it during the war either," she say, while a sign waves back and forth in your line of sight: Star Trek, not Star Wars.

"Star Wars isn't even fucking out yet," you grumble under your breath.

"Language," Amanda says.

"Language? You're the one quashing free speech!" you say.

Amanda actually genuinely looks hurt. "I'm not, it's just...these people go from protesting to smashing stuff at the drop of a hat, of stuff they don't even understand. They're protesting a war that hasn't started, for a government that still hasn't decided anything, for...for people we don't even know a gosh darn thing about." She crosses her arms over her chest, then steps away from the wall, shaking her head.

You pause. Two warring thoughts are in your brain - before you head in to hear about the UNs decision.

---
What does Lily say?
[ ] ...you know the protests against the Vietnam war were right, right?
[ ] You can't force everyone to think like yourself - and you'd not be the Amanda we all know and love if you try. Just...you know. You're doing enough. It's all right.

The United Nations' decisions has been shaped in subtle and gross way by Lily and Amanda's testimonies - and Amanda, being relatively guileless, has mostly followed Lily's lead. Ergo, you have indirectly influenced how the committee meetings turn out.
[ ] The hopeful approach has won out - the plan's mostly going to follow Sagan's ideas, using the Yiggy as a diplomatic ship, with a dark energy construct to serve as your herald
[ ] The security approach has won out - the plan is to construct a defense system around earth first, an outward facing orbital defense controlled directly by the UN security council then we can try contacting aliens.
[ ] The balanced approach has won out - the Yiggy will only be dispatched when it can be escorted by some measure of defensive systems. ...wait, that means humanity will be building their first interstellar navy?!

 

[DragonCobolt]

You give Amanda you're best side eye. "You know the protests against the Vietnam War were right, right?"

Amanda frowns at you, crossing her arms over her chest. "There's a right and wrong way to do things - if you want things to change, you run for office, the way you're supposed to do things."

"Uh, the Boston Tea Party-"

"That was before we had a country," Amanda shot back, then pointed her finger at you. "And more, it...kind of...I..." She looked aside. "It's hard to not get a bit heated when you put your life on the line to protect kids, American kids and Vietnamese kids, from the world, and...and people call you a murderer."

Silence hangs between you.

There's the words Mai Lai, hanging there.

"...come on," Amanda says, her shoulders hunching. She starts into the United Nations building - where the Secretary General lays out the plan that proved...maybe the people out there protesting had a point.

***​

Earth/Moon L1 Point
Earth-Orbit
March 3rd
1971


You really wished you had coffee. It was hour three of your last shift and you had been running at least double the normal amount - because there weren't many people who understood orbital physics with the intuitive speed that you did, and they all needed to work just as hard as you did on your parts of the project.

Project Earthguard - a name designed by committee, with five distinct titles for Russian, French, German, Vietnamese and Chinese variations of the English name - was pretty simple in execution. The basic idea came from two technologies: Those super-engines that Cam had designed, which could accelerate just about anything to preposterous speed? They were perfect stealth technology and perfect first strike capacity weapons, and that was why all those treaties got dreamed up. The Earthguard Convention just meant that everyone involved was in control, equally, over the second technology: Orbital platforms, placed right in the stable Lagrange points. With a bit of exotic matter (provided by you) to stabilize them gravitationally, they could be loaded down with tons of armor and redundant systems without making stationkeeping a bitch.

End result, there were going to be three platforms - ensuring that there was total coverage over the planet - each one loaded with a massive stockpile of various warheads, ranging from big city cracker nuclear weapons to kinetic projectiles that could shotgun a small part of a ship to just disable it, to weapons that were being designed to take out human sized figures by releasing a massive swarm of smaller, guided munitions that would fill a very specific, very tiny part of space with shrapnel.

Backed up by orbital observatories and lunar observatories and the abilities of Jason Weeks, even if he was...still...you know, Weeks, you had a-

"Hey, Lily," Jason Week's voice came over your communicator, startling you so badly you almost yanked the controls on the Yiggy to the side - which would have been bad as you were currently emplacing one of the last parts of Orbital Platform L1 into their nested grooves. "Uh...I've spotted something about six hundred AU from the sun, approaching inwards along the plane of the ecliptic."

You rub your cheek.

You wish Rachel was here.

She was down on Earth, going from place to place, increasing the population of sentient dogs by active measures - the idea being that she might need to be deployed anywhere on Earth at any time and would need a ready hand. We had no idea if or when aliens might show up and cause any number of possible problems. And...well...you had been so busy setting up the platforms, and...

God.

You hadn't even really found a time to pick the date for the marriage.

Then what Jason said penetrates your slightly sleepy brain.

"Okay, I need something more than a something."

He pauses.

"Well, uh...a fleet, I guess."

***
​

Three phone calls and two minutes later, the project manager for Earthguard, two US Air Force generals, three IEG Risker-Generals, the entire Stonewall Nine, Jason Weeks and Amanda Sykes were all in one big room on the Yiggy, looking at a holographic projection of Jason Week's visual abilities. It was one of the devices he and Andi had whipped up during their long hangout sessions.

And...

Well.

Jason had put it right, that was a fleet.

It was a collection of spaceships, that much anyone could tell - but you could tell a hell of a lot more than most. For one thing, they didn't have the ability to constantly accelerate - they were built like skyscrapers, with clear engines at their backs. But they also had long spinning protrusions that thrust from their spines, creating a series of ring sections around the larger ships - enough for a lot of space that has a kind of pseudo gravity. Based on the scale and your instant mathing out, they had to have about 0.9G and roughly enough room for...

You whistle. "Those aren't spaceships, those are cities," you say, pointing. "The three big ones are five kilometers long."

"God in heaven," one of US generals says.

"The smaller ships is what I am concerned about," one of the IEG Riskers asks. She's a tough looking woman and you're not sure if she's a metahuman or not - that's the thing about the IEG, they have lots of metahumans, but they don't always put them in charge of things...except for, you know, the fact that you were pretty sure Cam ran the entire place. Subtly or not. "A larger ship doesn't necessarily make it more dangerous."

"It seems kind of weird for them to send a herald telling us to stay away, then send a fleet here," Amanda says, frowning.

Silence.

"...well fuck me," you say.

"Language," Amanda says, softly, while Andi springs to her feet.

"Different aliens! Two-" She puts her hands over her face. "AUUH! I'm stupid! I'm stupid! Jason! Look inside the ships!"

Jason blanches. "Whoa, wait, wait, we don't know what kind of culture these aliens have. How they feel about privacy, their...their defenses against clairsentience, there are methods on Earth, things, that people can do that could burn my brain out if I just poke around randomly."

"Damn the risk, kid," one of the US Generals says, frowning as he puts his palms on the table and stands up. "We're facing an unknown alien threat that might be on its way to conquer the planet."

"Or they could be peaceful travelers," Sabah said.

"Those are five kilometer long ships! Five goddamn kilometers!" the general shoots back.

Bickering looks like its going to take everything over. One nice thing about it, though? At least you have time, considering they're still five hundred AU away.

"Uh, well, that's weird," Jason says.

The ships are beginning to pulse at their noses. Tiny blue-white waves rippling from their noses to the afts of their ships. You really shouldn't have fucking thought anything, should you? Yeah, this is really on you, the soft, singsong not-quite voice of Buzzy crackles in the back of your head. You open your mouth to respond.

The ships vanish. The white pulses sweep along them one last time and as they pass, the waves are gone.

"Well, shit," you say.

Amanda gives you a serious look as Jason closes his eyes, his hands pressed to the curved dome of his projector device. The aliens are now in orbit...around Saturn. Their ships are beautiful, sweeping above the vast, glittering ring of the disks, and you can see that they've already started to bifucate and split apart. The noses of the ships are opening and smaller vehicles have begun to launch free. Bright pinpricks of firefly light shows thrusters - and you watch as they start to sweep down towards the many thousands upon thousands of chunks of ice that made up Saturn's rings.

"...they're stealing our ice!" Theo exclaims.

"It's not our ice, dude," Brian mutters.

---
What do?
[ ] Fuck it, Jason, you useless asshole give us a picture of what the aliens look like.
[ ] They put an entire gas giant between us and them. They may be trying to remain hidden. Lets watch and see what they do.
[ ] Hey, getting some ice isn't a hostile action. Yeah, there...is a lot of ships, but they're not being aggressive. They might not even know we're here. Lets say hi.
[ ] Write In