[X] Plan Wait for Negotiator
-[X] Wait for Negotiator to contact you when she's ready.
-[X] Once she contacts you, ask if any Shards have contacted her about us due to old-QA's instructions.
[X] Plan Hero's Shard's Address
-[X] Ask Marker for its Shard addresses list.
[X] Plan Keep Mouse Protector Alive
-[X] Look at what Mouse Protector is doing.
[X] Plan What's Going On
-[X] Study Variation and Alternate. You noted peculiarities when you contacted them so now is the time to figure out what's going on.
[X] Plan Step 1 for New Wave
-[X] Ask Incendiary and Lightforge for their host data.
-[X] Sort through the data if necessary.
ccstat: +1 vote - (failed, blocked)
[X] Plan Talk to Negotiator
-[X] Ask if she has reached any decisions about what we talked about before.
-[X] Ask if any shards have contacted her about us due to old-QA's instructions
-[X] Explain that in dealing with Coil we are leaning toward taking direct control as our preferred option, but we still want her input.
-[X] Clarify whether her host-side plans are counting on a specific powerset for Taylor.
Valdimarian: +1 vote - (failed, blocked)
[X] Research
-[X] Multi-Host Connection / Direct Control
-[X] Faster Research 2
EDIT: Centergg, I tried to apply your plan as a vote, but upon re-reading it, it appears like a call for discussion amongst yourselves and not an actual plan of action. Let me know if that's incorrect.
Going by this, actions are first determined by the number of Shards involved with an additional action for each subvote. Though that's probably just a general rule, and the actual number of actions depends on the specific plan.
Getting the research that protects our anonymity and hides our abbarranse after we get the human drone seems counterproductive. Ain't it too late at that point?
Regardless the reward can be used to further all other goals as well.
Getting the research that protects our anonymity and hides our abbarranse after we get the human drone seems counterproductive. Ain't it too late at that point?
Regardless the reward can be used to further all other goals as well.
Getting the research that protects our anonymity and hides our abbarranse after we get the human drone seems counterproductive. Ain't it too late at that point?
Regardless the reward can be used to further all other goals as well.
The problem is that it takes 200 Research just to get Stranger Danger 1, and that doesn't guarantee we can hide from other Shards since hiding from entities is somewhere in the TREE. It's already going to take several updates just to get Administrative Censorship and Specialty Comprehension. If we get a human avatar, we can make sure that avatar stays away from all other parahumans, and we can use the research bonus to get the Stranger Danger tree a lot faster than we would otherwise.
That said, we're not anywhere close to getting a human avatar at the moment. Once we get AC and SC, the thread as a whole can decide whether to get Stranger Danger or an avatar first. If someone wants to write more omakes for Stranger Danger 1, that would help to reduce how much time it takes to research it.
@Vhalidictes , can we please get the omake rewards before the next research vote comes up so that we can have a better idea of how much farther we need to go?
Not sure if these meet criteria, but I have a few Research Omake to put forth:
(Side note: this was originally going to be a look at Stabilize Trigger and I distracted myself with talk about genetics and realized it might apply to Specialty Compression instead, which as a bonus might lead to research on Budding. )
So of course Shards are going to be geologically slow at modifying powers, from our look at stabilizing the trigger event we know they're literally taking the Natural Evolution approach of shoving everything in a bag, shaking it up, and shoving the pieces that stuck together wherever they look like they'll fit.
That sounds a lot like taking a bunch of seed and tossing it over a random yard, then when it grows especially well in an area say you meant to do that, and if it doesn't discarding it.
Didn't the Russians do a an experiment similar to that? Or the opposite of that? Right, the quack Trofim Lysenko who thought certain teachable traits like when crops germinate were in fact inheritable traits. That sounds like a terrible way to... wait.
Genetic memory might not work that way in reality, but we're not talking genetics, we're talking about sentient beings that can pass on conscious thought.
But IS specialization a conscious choice? Is it the difference between running Windows on an Intel Chip vs. Mac OS on an Intel Chip, or is it a hardware issue like comparing a CPU vs. a purpose built GPU?
Do we have a chunk of formerly Empathy or Prosthetics mass sitting around unformatted somewhere? Lets try running some isolated instances solely on Empathy hardware and compare it to some identical instances running on Administrator hardware. That'll tell us if it's a Hardware difference or a Software difference.
We've already got multiple hosts, but they're running on stolen hardware, lets see what happens when we try multiple (sandboxed) hosts?
Uh, huh... gibberish, that's what. Apparently having multiple inputs and multiple outputs doesn't mean they're optimized.
OK! Looking at the problem it looks like it's a port routing issue, all the 'host' corona tried connecting to the same primary 'shard' address, despite being told to use different shard addresses.
Once the first 'host' connected the micro portals all latched onto that as a solid connection and 'error corrected' the rest back to it.
We could try tagging each incoming thread with source metadata, but we'd need to increase the receiver bandwidth to handle the data flow of TWO connections, plus the metadata tagged to each stream, and dedicate a few instances to sorting the flow back into separate data streams once it's received...
Or we could just move the different receivers further away and try testing the minimum distance before error correction 'fixes' what we broke. That sounds a lot easier.
Note that since you're weren't aware of the 'One Omake per person per update' rule, I've decided to give a bonus for this one (this one time). This looks really canon too, as far as research into weird Shard phenomena goes. +100 to MHC!
Last time we looked into improving our research speed we focused on temperature regulation and the mechanics of partitioning instances of ourself, but we've gotten tons of practice at both of those things and it hasn't made a real difference to research speed.
The problem seems to be not in how we split our attention, but in how we integrate the findings afterward. Each self has to communicate with the others to some degree, and we're not doing it efficiently.
Specifically, despite processing so many things in parallel, we continue to share information serially in a static hub and spoke model.
This reminds us of supercomputer design, where a big part of the difficulty is not knowing beforehand how much processing power each subsection of a problem will require. You can't just sequentially hand off bits to be solved to the next available processing core. Instead, a whole lot of processing power has to be devoted to how to divvy up the problem in the first place.
Trying to split attention to additional research projects runs into the same problem. Rather than just an instance or team of instances for each topic being studied, we need a managerial and oversight committee to monitor progress and ensure resources are allocated appropriately.
This monitoring committee can also run in parallel with one compiling findings from each research team. That way we'll have a more efficient handoff between research sessions, and there won't be as much lag time turning our attention to other things.
Optimal monitoring group size seems to depend on the fractal complexity of the research topic, rather than the number of topics or how "hard" they are alone, so we can dynamically allocate instances of ourself to that role as needed.
@Vhalidictes , can we please get the omake rewards before the next research vote comes up so that we can have a better idea of how much farther we need to go?
Yay! I knew about the one-omake-per-voting period rule, but forgot and posted this other one anyway. I'm fine with waiting until next round for it to count, but wanted to point at it so it doesn't get lost.
Here's another omake for Administrative Censorship. My first omake for it is here.
You've set up instances of yourself called Censors to watch for any signs of aberrance, created a library of possible signs of aberrance, and have protocols in place to inform the Censors if you are doing anything aberrant. It's now time to figure out how to actually censor host data.
The simplest option is copy how live television is censored. This can be rather obvious at times, but you can hopefully brush it off as accidental if it doesn't happen too often.
It's probably best to test this out before censoring the host data going to your sense-sharing partners. You decide to set up instances of yourself to stream host data to and that will give you feedback on said host data to allow you to better alter it in the future. These instances will be called The Audience. They're going to be boxed off so that they don't know if you are doing anything aberrant. This way, their reports on the streamed host data should be objective.
It would be better if you simulated the Shards you're currently sense-sharing with, but that seems like it could backfire if you miscalculate so you'll hold off on that for now. Maybe once you better understand how Shards think.
The host data streamed to The Audience is to be delayed by 10 microseconds, with the Censors reviewing the host data in real time. If the Censors detect any signs of aberrance in their assigned stream of host data, they are to delete that host data along with a microsecond of the data before and afterwards to avoid making it obvious exactly what was in the deleted data.
You're planning to explain the delay to any sense-sharing partners that actually notice it as due to some analysis protocols you've set up to sort through the host data. This is a bit strange in and of itself because the Entities usually analyze all of the data, but Zion seems to approve of anything that saves him some work so he should be ok with it.
That still leaves the suspicious blanks in the host data. You should probably hold off on doing too many aberrant things in the beginning, and then you can explain the occasional blanks as due to unexpected errors in the protocols that have now been revised.
Ideally, you'll eventually replace that host data with simulated host data that does not show any signs of aberrance. Maybe you can alter The Dream Master to create "dreams" to insert into the blanks?
It looks like Multi-Host Connection 1 is now complete Research-wise, and we can put it in a research slot to finish it off and get some bonus Research points. Maybe next time the research vote comes up? We'd be putting off Specialty Comprehension again, but we'd be able to see more of the Multi-Host Connection tree. We have a while before we have to decide either way, but I just want to put the idea out there.
I thought it was dead, to be honest... if it's not then I should also reread it as I can't even remember what was our last plan (or the last chapter in general...)
Lilac spends some time getting ready to work on her new mobile base idea, but doesn't get past some design work. She's also distracted by a minor new project...
Valiant doesn't use her powers in any significant way.
Glory Girl doesn't use her powers in any significant way.
Shadow Stalker patrolled but didn't involve herself in any fights.
Tattletale had headaches from earlier activity and takes it easy.
Panacea Tinkers like mad as she tries to work out how Lilac's body works (it doesn't). And also has some ideas for a hive of specializes slimes.
Triumph patrols and fights Alabaster.
Trickster negotiates with Coil.
Coil negotiates with Trickster, and uses his power again (sparingly)
Bakuda hasn't Triggered. No sense-sharing is available. Her stress level is high and rising.
Madison hasn't Triggered. No sense-sharing is available. Her stress level is low and slowly rising.
Yourself - Tinker Information: +11
Telekinetic - (no Information gain)
Shift - (no Information gain)
Negotiator (no Information gain)
Gaea - Tinker Information (2): +23
Gaea - Changer Information (3): +5
Audible - Blaster: +5
Audible - Breaker: +19
Swap - (no Information gain)
Twin - (no Information gain)
Singular - (no Information gain)
Surveillance - (no Information gain)
****************************************
Checking on on your hosts proves interesting, as usual. To start with, you skim the sense data for Lilac. Mostly Tinkering, but there is a bit here where she suddenly stops:
Lilac comes back to herself after… doing something. All around vision shows… her backpack! That's right, version negative-one-million of that neat ship idea! While she might not need to sleep anymore, Tinker drawbacks still exist.
...And it's not finished. What dropped her out of her work?
A high-pitched giggle echoes from Claire's temporary lab. Huh. She's probably a Biotinker and excited about something, but that shouldn't have-
"Bwaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaa-SNORT!"
Hmm. To check, or not to check? Not checking. Claire will probably be okay. Maybe. Hopefully. The good Samaritan thing to do would be to go in there, just to look. Right? Right.
Gigggle. Snigger-Snigger. "SQUEE!!"
Clearly not a problem of any kind, she's fine, no need to go in there. The lock is on this side of the door, right? Yes. Good.
So, the main problem with this whole backpack plus attachments idea is that the armor can't take the power drain. So, a better power system. Which bypasses the power coupling problems that have come up.
That's a pressing and complicated problem that will need lots of focus, to better ignore whatever is/isn't going on in the other side of the warehouse...
****************************************
Unlike Lilac, you should probably check in on Gaea data and see what's going on there instead of hoping for the best:
Claire had worked on examining the bud of Lilac all day, and came up with nothing. Nothing really worked, biologically speaking. Right as the sun went down, epiphany struck!
It didn't really matter that whatever weird state Lilac's body was in couldn't be replicated (and possibly wasn't conventionally alive). After all, she didn't need to *copy* Lilac exactly, she just needed to make something that outwardly had the *same properties*. And was properly protoplasm.
So, add some custom non-Terran genetic material, add … well, the best energy generation that was easily available was photosynthesis, which wasn't nearly enough energy.
But! But! Like five different types of photosynthesis had evolved, no reason not to use them all at once, right? And then tweak them because Nature sucked at everything…
So, Lilac-clone was black, now. Blacker than anything. Pretty much a shadow cutout, really. And uncomfortably sucking all the Infrared out of the room. Cold as hell.
The cold wasn't really at the level of being a problem, but the blackness was - it didn't really resemble Lilac at all. So, fake it until you make it. Hyper-efficient bioluminescence… which the photosynthetic pigments just absorbed again, right.
So, *just one more* change later, making sure that it wouldn't suck up its own light, and… ghost purple! Not quite the right color, but… good enough for now. Lower the brightness a bit, make sure that not just the surface emitted, and… done!
Perfect base! Dim enough that it didn't look self-lit in bright indoor light, pulled in way more energy than it used, and pretty much useless at anything else. So the slime itself didn't need to eat or reproduce sexually, it didn't really do much other than make a thick coating over wherever it was and produce tons of energy. Passively. Passive… wait.
This wasn't a creature - well, other than literally - it was a support system! Just lay a thick layer of this stuff somewhere and it could make a perfect food for other things… almost an entire ecosystem base all by itself.
Which meant that it had to be entirely resistant to current and future diseases, genetic damage, and unintended predation. After all, physical wear and tear was pretty much covered already against anything reasonable.
What would make a good catch-all defense against being eaten by the wrong thing? Poison! Not any kind of contact thing, just make everything not designed for it violently nauseous to the insides. The disease resistance was more-or-less a waste since nothing anywhere shared any biology with not-Lilac, but… better safe than sorry.
Non-invasive polymorphic virus! Not-Lilac (need a better name), and any creatures that depended on it, would be carriers and the virus would just not do much of anything other than maintaining an infection in every cell. But if it came across anything with similar biology that wasn't familiar enough, it would attack.
It would be harmless to Non-Lilac lifeforms and harmless to Earth ones as well, since they wouldn't be close enough to hit the 'care threshold'. Perfectly safe!
Now she needed to design the custom creatures that would subsist off of the NL base form. Some kind of collection creature, to start. Yes, infinite raw biomass and energy could be eaten off of the NL base form, but that wouldn't cover every nutritional need that any other form would have. Hmm.
Claire considered what would be best while she watched Not-Lilac grow. It looked like it was creeping across the floor, but really it was just expansion as it tried to cover the entire floor of the space.
Some kind of insectoid form would be best, right? Ants were good at collecting stuff...
****************************************
You let yourself know that further along in the data is a confrontation between the Hosts. What happened there?
The former workshop next to her… lair… was quiet and dark. Whatever stuff Claire was doing was over, it should be safe to see what's going on. She really should be in armor for this, but that would send the wrong impression.
The battered steel door opened with an ominous, extended creaking like a sound effect from a
low-budget horror movie, revealing…
Claire, sitting on a twisted barstool, looking at the ceiling, thinking. And a lot of what looked like more of Lilac herself covering the floor. That needed an explanation.
The cat girl casually looked down and over to the slime girl. "Oh, hey Lilac. What's up?"
There could be only one response to that. It was somewhat accurate in this case too, although that didn't help. "We… um, we need to talk?"
Claire giggled and slowly brought her hand up to her face, and then decided to let it drop. "You have a way of making the most terrifying sentence in the English language not very threatening." Her smile fell away. "You're right though. What do you want to know?"
Lilac was able to relax… slightly. The girl might be an unhinged Tinker, but maybe she wasn't crazy all the time. "What are your powers, exactly."
Claire started to answer, stopped, and gave a thoughtful look. "Um. It's somewhat hard to explain. And the shortcut definition isn't really accurate…"
Lilac blinked, although it didn't stop her from being able to see. "What's so hard to understand? You're some kind of Biotinker, I just want to know what your specialty is."
Claire nodded, almost as if to herself. "Yeah, that's what I mean. I'm not, really, and I don't, really." Coming to some sort of internal decision, she spoke again. "I'm actually a total biokinetic; I don't get fugues really, I understand everything that I do, I don't have any kind of plans in my head for what I can do either."
That was fine; Claire was actually a lot scarier than she was thinking originally. Fantastic. Lilac wasn't sure, but she thought maybe it was a good thing that Claire was completely oblivious to her panic and kept talking.
"I don't have a specialty - I can do pretty much everything, although I can't make something from nothing like a lot of powers, I need living material to work with. I'm not impossibly efficient either - I try but I always end up with less mass than I started with when I make changes." Claire frowned to herself for a second before looking at Lilac for a response.
The slimegirl silently upgraded the danger rating of the Parahuman in front of her a few more notches.
"Sooo… You're Bonesaw but better in every way?"
Claire's eyes bugged out as her draw dropped. "No! I'm nothing like that freak! You should know - oh..."
Lilac tried to make a snorting sound, but it didn't work. Thankfully there was silence instead of a weird noise. "Because you're so famous I'd recognize you anywhere. Super-Biokinetic that has the wimpy not-really limitation that you need starting biomass." Lilac blinked. "Wait. Wait. Why does your power sound like a better version of Panacea's?"
The catgirl looked incredibly guilty as every visible part of her flushed. "Ummm. I kinda.. Was her? A few days ago?"
Lilac idly noted that she wasn't scared any more. Primarily because she was too angry. "WHAT."
This was beyond terrible. She… the both of them… were going to die. Terribly. Likely via Triumvirate. Some echo of a memory told her that anything she could do as retaliation for this… idiocy, would just make everything worse.
On the bright side, nothing mattered anymore. "Okay. So the most famous healer in the world, disguised as some random teen, is shacking up at my base. My base that's all of two days old and has no real defenses. You didn't make any, did you?"
Lilac wasn't sure which answer she actually wanted. Probably because they were both bad.
Claire twitched. "Uh, no? I didn't really think about it. But I would have told you before I did anything! It's your base after all."
Lilac looked at the floor. "Ah, just like you told me before you copied me. And why is it so cold in here?"
Claire blinked and then looked angry. "Hey! It's not sapient. It's not even sentient, I wouldn't create anything with even high animal intelligence without telling you. And it's cold because it has a chemical for getting energy from infrared… which… hmm, that shouldn't work that well. I'm pretty sure I need to know more about physics…"
Lilac sighed. At least she could do that properly. "Look, as much as we probably need to talk about that, and the base too, the most important thing here is 'what are you going to do'? I'm guessing that something weird is going on that's preventing every Thinker on the planet from fingering this building, but we should work from the assumption that the Protectorate is on the way here while we're talking."
Lilac stopped there. She'd like to say something pessimistic like 'Your plan isn't to point at the scary Case53 and scream that you were captured, right?', but she didn't want to give not-Panacea any ideas.
Claire sighed back. "In a weird way, I'm really glad you're bringing this up now. I've been avoiding thinking about how shitty things are, and that I'll probably have to go back. You're right, I need a plan. Well, I have ideas, but I'm not sure how to get them done."
The catgirl paused and looked around. Pretty much everywhere but at Lilac. "I think the best thing to do is go back. Go… back… That's it!" She briefly looked incredibly relieved, and then morphed into mopey-Claire. Panacea. Whoever. "I don't have nearly enough biomass."
Lilac glared at her. Claire moped. Lilac glared harder. Claire moped. Lilac scowled and pointed at the gooey floor. Claire moped.
Lilac opened her mouth unnaturally wide and took a deep breath. "Claire! Panacea! WHOEVER! BIOMASS!! FLOOR!!"
Claire promptly fell off the stool and onto the creeping purple muck. "Ow. Volume, god!"
She got up and looked around blearily. "Okay, so I know what to do. I'm going to make an exact copy of my former self and send her back home. Then I'm going to keep being Claire, and humbly ask if I can join up with you."
Lilac nodded. "And no one will be looking for you because you'll be back. Which seems like a decent plan except for the fact that everyone on Earth is going to want to verify that your clone is you, and she's isn't."
Claire grinned. "No, no. I think you have the wrong idea. I'm not going to make a Clone. I'm going to make a total copy of myself - all the memories, all the personality, everything. And… just in case of Thinker bullshit… the copy is going to be partly made up of my original cells. I'd actually use my Claire body as the base form and send it back, but… there's been too many changes. It'd be more effective to make something new and perfect."
Lilac nodded again. "That's good at stopping other people from knowing about what's going on, but what about 'other you'? You left home for a reason, right? What's to stop you from messing this all up?"
Claire (Panacea?) frowned. "I mean, nothing concrete. But she'll know everything I know, and feel exactly the way I do about things - she can make a longer-term, better plan for leaving as Panacea. I wouldn't screw this up, and she won't either. After all, we're the same, so she'd have to tell people about cloning herself, and, well… that's really not something I can do."
Lilac stopped glaring. "How long will this take? I need your help to move everything valuable - tonight."
"Um, this is going to be really complicated, so maybe five hours? Sure, I can help with anything you want after that. Uh, about…?"
Lilac stopped and thought for a few minutes. Then she reached out and smiled. "Sure, if you can pull this switcheroo off, I'd be partners with someone that can heal everyone in the world except me."
****************************************
Hopefully things are going just as well for your last Host. Veronica seems pretty chill, hopefully Amy's Claire's plan comes to fruition soon…
Victoria looked up at me as the door slammed. "Vicky!! echoed up from downstairs.
The ghost of a smile crossed said person's face as I blushed. "Uh, sorry?"
"So, how bad is it?" Vicky's features arranged themselves into a decent poker face, but even though her power interfered with mine, it was clear that she felt pretty much the way I did about things.
"V?" I tried to gather my thoughts, but it was pointless. May as well be really direct.
"Bad. No, worse. The Director's lost her mind, and her faith in New Wave. If Amy doesn't appear before this weekend's healing session, by Friday morning basically, they're going to publicize her disappearance - and start paperwork for custody."
Victoria frowned and fell back onto the bed. "Jeez. That's hitting below the belt…"
I shook my head, Victoria didn't understand what was happening at all. At least she made room for me to sit on the foot of her bed. It might not have been intentional but I was taking the space.
"Victoria, Piggot doesn't do that. At least, not this way. This isn't a negotiating tactic, she's completely serious." Time to twist the knife, word choice could help… "She's lusted after having free access to Panacea for ages. Probably since the moment she was power-tested. The Protectorate won't blink an eye, they don't care where she lives as long as she's accessible."
Victoria didn't look convinced at all. "I'm sure Piggot will. That won't change the fact that making Amy a Ward of the state takes a long time and a bunch of court cases. That they'll lose. That's pretty close to Mom's specialty, too."
Do not facepalm. Do not facepalm. "Vicky… I was never the Ward most hooked in to gossip, but… even I had heard that Amy's adoption wasn't exactly… legal. I'm sure that Piggot knows a lot more but this could be really, really easy for them."
Victoria stared at me like I just said I was Scion's love-child. "..."
I pinched my nose before I could stop myself. I had to get a handle on my tells, some of them could be seen as demeaning.
"Victoria. Everyone in Brockton Bay knows that she's Marquis' child. Hell, why do you think the Villain capes leave her alone? Sure, miracle healer and all that, but that's hardly the only reason." I paused and considered mentioning the rumors that a lot of PRT officers were former Marquisate members. Probably wouldn't help right now even if it might be relevant.
Victoria might be out of it, but that didn't stop her from talking. "Mom told me about a year ago.. Everyone already knows? Her adoption isn't a thing?WHAT?!"
Yeah, pure Vicky. Zero to infinite rage in three seconds. Weirdly, the best tactic to disarm her was to keep going. I didn't understand it, but I sure as hell took advantage. It's a good thing the Villain capes in this town didn't know that de-escalation just pissed her off.
I'm pretty sure someone shrieked something downstairs but we both ignored it. "Victoria, a gentleman's agreement - made in middle of combat - isn't the same thing as legal paperwork. Sure, Carol did what she could in the aftermath, but Marquis can't sign paperwork from the Birdcage."
Victoria blinked a few times. That was a good sign, I kept going. "So Amy just kind of… lives with New Wave and no one complained. Oh, the State did .. I don't know, something vaguely legal after your Aunt asked, but that's all I know. Hell, her joining the team is more solid than anything else, legally speaking. Like one of those corporate capes that lives on-base."
The honest concern over whether Victoria was going to launch into a murderous rampage was really helping me get my feelings under control. That said, I still had to redirect said rampage away from myself.
"Your mom's a lawyer, right? Didn't she tell you about all this already?" Forget faux innocence, I went straight for 'honest concern'. Carol would be fine. Probably. Not my fault if she treated her kids as badly as everyone else.
Victoria visibly centered herself and looked almost normal. Even with my perfect vision I couldn't see any trace of pupils, but at least in this state she wouldn't punch anyone's head off.
In a calm, almost bored tone, she said, "This is all really interesting, but we should focus on finding Amy as soon as possible."
I put on a neutral-serious face and nodded, and she continued after a short pause. "So, we finished the grid search and got nothing, which means that she's deep inside a building. Your power doesn't have enough range to check the entire city, so that means we need to look for where she'd be."
I'd never seen Victoria like this before. I'd seen her mad, angry, happy, sad, bewildered, and annoyed, but never… this focused. It was a little intimidating to see from someone with her powers.
"We can and should deal with Piggot, but getting Amy back is more important than the deadline. If she's this hard to find, it's most likely that a gang has her. Which leaves four options."
I looked confused and held up a hand, but she shook her head.
"I know, let me finish. The Merchants are insane enough to not care about consequences, and all of them have good powers for staying out of touch range. Sure Amy could always sneak away later…. If she wasn't drugged out of her mind."
That was actually a pretty interesting take, Mush and Skidmark couldn't really be affected by Amy if they were paying attention.
Victoria didn't leave any space for a response. "ABB means Oni Lee, who is a simple yes-man, and Lung, who doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks. No, he's not immune to her power, but he's also on fire. It's a bit odd that he wouldn't simply return her when he was done with her, but who knows, maybe something happened."
I opened my mouth, but Victoria cut me off. "Yes, Veronica, I know the ABB has a bunch of D-list capes no one cares about, but they aren't a factor here."
"The Empire is probably not at fault here, but you never know. Of course they know they can't keep Panacea… but they also have an exit plan. Ship her butt to Germany and have her brainwashed. No mess, no fuss, they don't know what happened and Gesellschaft gets a new biokinetic."
Fucking hell, I didn't think of that. All it would take is enough of a crisis and Kaiser would attempt something like that for certain. He was smart, not reasonable. Everyone at the Protectorate ENE made sure to emphasise that.
I really hoped I was correct about Amy running away, Victoria was starting to convince me I was wrong about this.
Vicky took my silence as license to keep talking. "Let's not forget Coil. We don't know who he is, what he wants, what he does, or where he's based. He's just a guy with Mercs and money. He could take her and Healer Dungeon it up. We'd never know."
Another good point, I hadn't really thought about him - most Wards didn't, he never really got on our radar. Probably intentionally.
I opened my mouth to say how insightful and useful all this was, but she cut me off again.
"Even if the gangs don't have her… they might know something. Where she's been, where she was last seen, anyone besides them that was chasing her. Even if she's not currently with one of them, they're another information source."
She smiled as me. Her power might not affect me anymore but it was a really nice smile. "I know you've been working with pretty much every teenager in the city starting Friday, thanks for that - it tells us that whatever she's doing isn't at someone's house. That clears a lot of places."
Time to get a word in edgewise. "Victo… Vicky. You make a great argument, and we should definitely, um, politely ask the gangs if they know anything, but… what if Amy ran away?"
Victoria snorted. "Like there's any chance of that."
Sigh. I pretty much figured this would be an uphill battle, but I was hoping to not have to go down the list.
"Vicky, you know your mom has issues. You're not affected by most of them, other than her apparently not telling you much about Amy's background… but there's a lot of reasons why I think things came to a head and Amy decided she'd had enough of Carol."
Victoria raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything. She clearly didn't believe me but at least I still had the chance to convince her.
"Let's start with the simple stuff that I've noticed since we started dating. There's all kinds of artwork and school awards on the fridge. How many are Amy's?"
Victoria blinked and considered, while I concentrated on not giving a winning smirk. This argument wasn't about winning or losing, it was about showing Victoria why Amy might have ran for it. "I mean, I… I don't know. I'd have to look?"
Score one for me. "I've looked but I didn't see any. I didn't originally notice but I started to wonder about their relationship after I started interacting more with Carol recently."
Victoria looks mildly disturbed but didn't say anything. "In the short time that I've been here I've heard a lot of admonishments but not any encouragement. Everything I've heard has been 'Amy you shouldn't do that' and never 'You did a good thing, Amy'. But I'm sure you have some counterexamples, right? When has Amy gotten 'attagirls'? Brownie points?"
Vicky thought for a bit. "I… can't think of any offhand, but I know she must have at some point?"
Fair enough. "Well, at least she told Amy about her parents, and how she was adopted. It makes sense that Carol would be suspicious of Marquis' daughter's motives, but at least Amy knows why, right? I assume you were together when your Mom told you about that a year ago."
Victoria blushed. I couldn't tell if it was embarrassment or anger. "Actually, she pulled me aside after dinner, Amy wasn't around that night."
At that I frowned myself. "So you don't know if Amy knows about her birth family?"
Victoria stayed silent and shook her head. I felt like emphasising that somehow, but I didn't want to have to stop there.
"Something else that certainly affected Amy is Carol's homophobia. How do you think she feels about not being able to come out to her parents? Nowadays it shouldn't be a big deal, but based on what I've heard it might be a problem in this house." I blinked and considered. "I'm not actually sure that Carol even knows. It should have been obvious, but they didn't seem to interact very much."
Victoria stared at me. "Amy's not gay."
For a second, I stared back. Then I stopped to think. How did Vicky not know? I'd assumed that she was just messing with Amy on those double dates. Well, that or try and see if there was a type of guy she liked or tolerated, but...
"Um, Vicky, you're messing with me, right? You're a New Wave member, and you… I don't." I was actually having trouble wrapping my mind around this. It was a new and unpleasant experience. "Just… take your phone out and search 'Panacea lesbian' - just humor me for a second."
Did she really only ever look up herself and not her sister? I waited while Victoria browsed. Her expressions kept changing, but on the whole they averaged out to 'stunned'.
"AMY wrote that?!"
This could have been fascinating to watch happen - but I was in the blast radius. Time to deflect.
Victoria was still staring at her phone so I put what I was feeling into my voice rather than gestures. "Vicky… According to Panacea - and Lady Photon - New Wave is a strong supporter of LGBT capes. Hell, that's why I was so surprised by what you Mom said to me. We really can't let Branish ever talk about this in public, or it would look.. Bad. Really bad."
She looked away from her phone again, and back at me. Her expression wasn't readable. It definitely wasn't any of her normal ones, nor her (terrible) 'poker face'. "Amy never mentioned a thing."
"She's sixteen, going on seventeen..." I shook my head. "Well, setting that aside for a minute, you weren't there but I assume you heard about what happened in regards to me?"
Victoria said nothing and looked at me blankly. I thought I mentioned this?
"Carol haranged at me for fifteen minutes about how stupid Amy's 'little stunt' was, how she didn't realize that Panacea could do anything like this and should have told her - and the PRT - abour her powers real scope, and how she would make sure that Amy never changed anyone ever again." I blinked. "That's probably when she got the idea for the basement alterations, actually."
Victoria's face didn't change, but her left eye started twitching.
When in doubt, keep digging. Wait, maybe that wasn't how that phrase should go. "I expect that she treated all Amy's complaints the same as mine - disdain or dismissal. Has Amy tried explaining anything to your mother recently, or simply walked away without comment?"
Victoria delicately put her phone away, and started to float. "Yeaaaaah. I think that we should canvass the gangs anyway, you're probably right but they still might know where she's been seen. But before we talk about that, I need to make a quick trip downstairs."
Oh, ok. She's probably going to talk with Carol. Wait, she's going to talk with Carol! Without coaching! "Vicky! Wait!"
As it turns out, flying is faster than running. I typically didn't mind not being able to, but in times like this…
Mrs. Dallon bites out, Anger "Vicky! What did I tell you about flying inside the-" before I feel mild itching from Victoria's aura and the adult's eyes bug out.
"MOM! Amy ran away! Why didn't you tell me?!"
Aside from being mind-blasted, that was a very creative interpretation of our conversation. Well, it could have been worse. Maybe.
Mr. Dallon mumbled, "Vicky, aura."
Vicky let off a bit and Mrs. Pelham recovered enough to talk. Confusion "Vic~ky, I don't know anything about this. Why would you think that Amy ran off? Why would she?"
Carol wasn't going to entertain any discussion with Victoria right now, and blurted out, Irritation/Fear "Victoria, you're grounded. Forget going out and doing anything. Or making looking for Amy harder than it already is. For that matter, we can't have Dean here or it wouldn't be much of a punishment. Dean, go home. Wait..."
She glared at me. Depression Annoyance "What did you do? What nonsense did you fill Victoria's head with? Explain yourself first."
I, well, I tried. But before I could, they were blasted by her aura, again. "Don't you dare ignore me Mom!!
Mr. Pelham actually looked a little more awake. And somewhat annoyed, although I was barely picking up any emotions from him. "Vicky, Aura!"
Again, Mrs. Pelham spoke up first. Suspicion/Sorrow "Carol, is there any reason you can think of that Amy might think to run off?" She looked over at me. Curiosity "Maybe in regards to something about Veronica?"
Carol whipped her head back and forth from me, Victoria, and Sarah. "No, of course not. Amy is perfectly happy here. The kids are being teens, again, although I'm not sure what's going on with Dean. Veronica. Whatever it is today."
Sarah and Victoria slow-blinked at the same moment. Sarah gave Victoria a complicated look and motioned towards the garage. After a tiny delay, Vicky floated outside. Curiosity/Fear/Depression"Veronica, what happened upstairs?"
How to approach this? Honesty while making Victoria look good. Remember to smile! "Um, so Vicky gave a great summary of reasons that the various gangs might have Pana-Amy, and the thought that we should poke them to see if they knew anything. Since a grid-search didn't work."
Sarah nodded for me to continue. Carol looked bored while she took a sip of coffee, but she was actually fuming at me. "I agreed with her, but then asked if it was possible that Amy ran away for her own reasons. She didn't think it was very likely, and I provided various reasons why that might make sense."
I waited for a response but got nothing new. "So she said we needed to talk about checking with the gangs either way before storming down here. I tried to get her attention, but, uh, it didn't work."
Carol simmered Fury/Dismissal and emitted a "Hmm." Her expressions and body language seemed very muted in comparison to how she was feeling. Why didn't I notice this before?
Sarah shrugged and asked the question. Curiosity/Annoyance "I'm not clear on why Amy would run off. Can you tell me what you told Vicky?"
Right. Time to lay it all out. "Well, I noted that she was adopted and didn't get a lot of positive reinforcement, then I mentioned that both me and her had been given rather a lot of flack for my changes. It seemed somewhat out of proportion to what happened. While we talked, it came out that most of the capes in Brockton Bay know who Amy's Dad was, but she didn't seem to, and how that might affect how people interact with her, but she wouldn't understand why."
Sarah's eyes started to glaze over in a weird way. My power wasn't too helpful since she was feeling dozens of things at once, and none of them were dominant. She motioned for me to keep going and sipped her own coffee.
Should I talk about this? It was a really important part of what happened, but… Amy wasn't here to ask. Fuck it, Carol could deal. "I ended up, uh, informing Victoria that Amy was a lesbian. In my defense, I thought she knew. She kind of has to, right?"
Sarah nodded. Carol Fury/Disbelief stared at me blankly. Sarah Disbelief/Suspicion looked over at Carol, who blurted out "Amy's not gay!!".
Sarah and I synchronously facepalmed.
Carol looked at us. "I can't believe you would lie to Vicky like that, Dean. This is literally insane. I don't even know where to start. How am I going to fix your screwups??"
She sighed and her depressed look perfectly matched her emotions for once. "I.. Sarah, I'm going to need your help. Vicky isn't going to talk to me for over a week, and I'm pretty sure Dean doesn't even realize he's… she's lying. Vicky is pretty perceptive, which isn't helping here because she knows Dean was being truthful as far as he knew."
Carol rubbed her face. Depression/Anger "What a fucking mess. I'm still going to have to take her phone and ground her - literally, but now… We can't get distracted about this. We need to have an answer for the PRT in two days."
Sarah smiled at her sister. Kind of the way I imagine Jack Slash would smile at a potential recruit. She got up and hugged me lightly.
While everyone was still confused, she said, "I'm going to try and help fix this tonight, Carol. I'll get ahead of whatever Vicky's posting and talk some more with Veronica. They can both stay at my place - under supervision - and then we'll talk more about Amy in the morning after we've gotten some sleep."
Carol snorted, then nodded. "Sure. We'll all be in better shape after some sleep."
Sarah pulled me out the kitchen, through the garage, and towards her minivan. Victoria and I got in, and then we all started to talk at once. After a second, Mrs. Pelham said, loudly but clearly, "We'll talk after we get home."
The silence of the trip wasn't comfortable in a mental sense, although Victoria and I got some hugging time in. We silently entered the house, and found Eric on his phone at the dinner table. He glanced up for a second. "Yo, V and V."
Sarah shook her head, but didn't ask him to leave. "So, I think we need to talk. My sister… has some issues that I thought were resolved, but it looks like they really weren't. Victoria, I need to hear your side of what happened tonight, first."
I couldn't clearly sense Vicky's emotions, but she looked sad and lost. Slowly and unsteadily, she said, "I think my Mom is a raging homophobe and treats Amy like shit."
Eric looked up from his phone. "Wait. Doesn't everyone know that?"
****************************************
One of you tags all of yourselves regarding Taylor. You all start reviewing the most recent host data… Hmm.
Taylor had left school more-or-less on time, and headed directly to the Library. There, she sat down, logged in to a computer, and checked her email and PHO account. No new messages. So far, so good.
Well, aside from reading way too quickly for a normal person, but there wasn't anyone close enough (or nosy enough) to notice.
Once she was finished, she spammed a few dozen browser sessions and searched PHO using increasingly varying terms for 'Trigger events' in each of them.
While each thread she checked meandered without going anywhere useful, she used her new speed to read each one and try and integrate the various hints into something useful. While this was ongoing, she got a new private message from Tin_Mother, although as best you can tell she didn't actually see or acknowledge the notification.
Against your expectations and all odds, Taylor hits paydirt. A vaguely-disguised link and a compressed file later (War&Peace_Leo_Tolstoy.arc?), she's reading a very interesting document.
Well, skimming, really, even Taylor can't possibly read that quickly. Fortunately, that's not a problem for you - even if it was you could pause and restart the saved host data stream as needed.
You're pretty certain that you can tell what she focused on, so you check those sections first.
Triggers and You by Patient0
If you're reading this, you're a Potential and you know it. Don't worry whether you're first or second-gen, it doesn't matter how you know. Don't depend on medical scan either - everyone has their pet theory on whether and how Coronas show up, but the truth is that they're all different and even trained medical professionals make mistakes. Don't use brain scans for anything but pretty pics.
<skip>
Yes, this applies even if you already have powers. Second Triggers are a thing, and this document should help in that case just as well.
Unfortunately, some people can't second-Trigger and there's no way to tell if you're one of them. There doesn't seem to be anything past the Second, so don't try for a third time - it won't work and you'll just make a surprised corpse.
<skip>
They say that you can't force a Trigger. That's true. And false. The correct version is that you can't force a Trigger safely. You can't use a controlled environment. And the more times you fail the harder it gets. So the best strategy is to go big right on the first attempt.
You should arrange things so that even if you survive the first attempt, the resulting situation is so bad that you get a second bite at the apple. For an example, consider…
<skip>
Don't be a Jumper. Just don't. Rumor has it that flinging yourself off of something is a good strategy for avoiding all control. That's true. What's also true is that a ton of unplanned Triggers happen that way.
Now that you know that, it probably won't work for you. You're welcome, by the way - for a lot of reasons jumping is a terrible strategy. For one thing, depending on what building you pick, it can be quite survivable… in a way that keeps you from being able to attempt anything else.
(Yes, there's a section on invalids Triggering. You don't want that to apply to you. Remember, bones are useful for making attempts.)
<skip>
Anything at home, or quiet, you need to avoid. Yes, there's some overlap with general ending-it-now advice, but not as much as you'd think. Powers are dynamic, you need to put yourself into a dangerous situation.
Bonus points if it's all-or-nothing, because in the case of nothing you can try again. But avoid plans. The more planned out things are, the more can go wrong and the less likely you are to get powers.
Remember the three I's - Impulsive, Intensive, Incendiary…
<skip>
Now that you know to have a goal but not a plan, go out there and make things happen. Remember, you will get powers. It's just a matter of time.
Now you've caught up to realtime. Taylor pauses for a bit, closes the notepad app containing the text of the document (without saving it), and thinks for a bit.
Your various selves go off into different tangents, but if you had to pick a common theme, it would be: What the hell did Taylor just read?? Canon didn't have anything like that!
A few of you think about the weird pseudonym - 'Patient0', and how it works on multiple levels. You take careful note of which of you can't focus on what's important here: Taylor's obvious desire for more power(s), as soon as possible.
While you consider things at much faster than real-time, Taylor robotically takes the bus home, starts cooking some noodles, and grabs a new notebook and chewed-up ballpoint pen. She stares at the fresh blank first sheet for a few moments, and then slowly writes. ideas. a) provoke Sophia. b) ABB territory. - ?
She pauses and taps the pen against her lips as the noodles bubble and froth...
****************************************
Negotiator doesn't end up contacting you. Strange. But not worrisome, not yet. She's no awesome like you and has a lot on her plate.
****************************************
Mouse Protector time, again! You reminded yourself that you needed Hero's Shard info and never got it. Marker might, possibly, know. And would have a list of other Shard addresses in any case.
[MPF->On] [Hello, Marker]
Marker - [AdMiniStratoR!? Logged-in? LOGIN!!]
Marker is still answering from both Shard chunks at once, almost independently answering you.
You can't think of anything else you need right now.
Marker - [ADMINistrator signout? LOGOUT!!]
[Completion] [MPF->Off]
Hmm. You get a bunch of addresses you've seen before… and "Energy Manipulation". Could be anyone, but it sure seems like a good-enough description of Hero's Tinker power.
****************************************
Now that you've interrogated the Shard, it's time to look at what's going on with its host.
And Mouse Protector's current situation is… critical. From a legal standpoint. She seems to have been, uh, captured by the PRT 2 - Los Angeles region.
The Man in the interrogation room with her looks livid. You can clearly see all the veins above his white collar pulsing as he spits questions at her. Those questions are fairly interesting.
"WELL?! What were you DOING meeting with the Slaughterhouse Nine INSIDE the CITY?! WHY were you CARRYING AROUND Villain Ravager's corpse?! And HOW IN GODS NAME did Independant Hero The Vulture get EXPLODED?!!?"
Mouse Protector's mask isn't in the room, so you can see that she's not simply staying silent. She's glaring at the man like she wants to kill him.
****************************************
[MPF->On] [Hello, Alternate]
Alternate - [administrator/login]
Yep, that's sure a dead response. Oh, rendered into the English equivalent it's probably not too weird, but in Shardspeak… it's just being entirely literal.
The concepts this Shard are transmitting are so simple that it would be better off using Morse Code. It almost feels like a different language simply due to the way it's (not) being used.
Let's see what you can find…
[Command - Report - Current Status/All]
This… This is a zombie-Shard. Just the Power, that specific one that Night has - no restrictions needed, Host Interface, and Reporting (currently to you, not Scion). Nothing else here. There's no extraneous data or programming. You've never seen anything like this before.
In fact, this isn't possible. Aside from Restrictions not being needed because there's nothing more to the power, there's also no Trigger script or Human Host data, or… Clearly whatever happened to Alternate happened well after Night Triggered.
Fortunately, even though pretty much everything is gone, including the detailed logs, Shards can't cover their tracks for shit. It simply wouldn't occur to them to do so. Reviewing the most recent 5000 commands, and you come across… A crapload of very detailed Deletions. Done by… You. Administrator.
You'll have to sit down and think about this. You know that the missing data, if it's anywhere, is somewhere inside, well, your flesh.
But it might really be gone by now, and in any case there's no hint WHY QA/You scoured out everything except the relevant parts of the Standard Package of information. In fact, since you didn't realize that most things were missing because of the initial scan that it had the package, you should upload a full copy… but there's no point since this Shard wouldn't know what to do with it.
Hopefully Night doesn't run into any weird power interactions, she could be depowered - or killed - and there'd be no warning at all. Now you need to think about that, too. Is this something you care about? Or could even fix if you did?
Eh, you could always consume what's left of Alternate and take Night as one of your hosts. There'd be no concern about it fighting back or causing you problems, at least.
[Completion] [MPF->Off]
Of course, Alternate doesn't actually log you out, you closed the connection on your end. Something to keep in mind, someday soon Alternate might actually run out of outgoing communication channels because it's never closing them on its end.
****************************************
[MPF->On] [Hello, Variation]
Variation - [Administrator///////Login]
Now that you're paying very close attention to what's going on, an interesting effect is apparent. Variation's 'arms' are individually responding to you, but since they're in perfect synchronicity… How to put this - in Human terms, all of their weak voices sound like one normal-volume one.
You're not certain how multiple-Triggers work, or even if there's a single standard for them, but you have suspicions. At least about Circus's case.
[Command - Report - Current Status/All]
Variation - [///////Compliance]
It's just as you thought. There's a single data package, prepared by the 'center' of the starfish-shape, but the data inside is summarized seven times, and there's seven slightly-different sets of data inside. In fact, it appears that the only function of the Hub Chunk is in coordinating (badly) all of the Arm Chunks.
Now, reviewing the data in more detail… Yes. So, during the multiple-Trigger that Circus was a part of at least, what happened is that each Shard involved in the Trigger broke into pieces and each Host was given a chunk of every one.
Somewhere out there, there are another six Parahumans with starfish-shard-conglomerates of their own.
While this is somewhat interesting from the perspective of learning about Shard improvisation (cliff notes, it's crappy), there's not much here to find.
Just out of curiosity, you check the logs for the last 5000 commands entered and… nothing interesting comes up. Okay, there's one thing here - [Negotiator] logged in and poked around, checking everything but not downloading anything. There's no indications as to why, though.
Fun fact - apparently Circus has a power-effect, or possible a whole power, depending on how you look at it, to change their sex (but not appearance, abilities, or anything else) at will. Also, as best you can tell it's never been used. They might not know they can do it. Weird.
[Completion]
Variation - [Administrator///////Logout]
[MPF->Off]
****************************************
[MPF->On] [Hello, Light Forge]
Light Forge - [ADMINISTRATOR/LOGIN]
[Report - Host]
Light Forge - [COMPLIANCE]
Okay, well. . . You thought Sophia's Conflict Drive was a bit high, but Carol's is on a whole other level. In fact, it's got an automated raising system that seems to show it's been slowly cranking it up for over a decade.
[Completion] [MPF->Off]
Well, that was a thing. It looks like it's been slowly ramping her conflict drive for over a decade. Because she's not getting enough conflict. It seems being a mother and lawyer leaves little time for being a Cape. Although actually her amount of data collection has been going down over time, probably from her driving the rest of New Wave away from her by her attitude.
Well, you have a solution for that, thanks to Sophia. That explains her, though, her Shard has pushed her to such lengths she's basically seeing everything as a fight and is being combative about every aspect of her life.
[MPF->On] [Hello, Incendiary]
Incendiary - [...administrator/login]
[Report - Host]
Incendiary - [...compliance] [...information/all]
[Completion] [MPF->Off]
Okay, good news. Flashbang's depression is entirely biological, but is easily controlled by medication. Medication he's voluntarily not taking because Carol's combativeness ramped up to levels of physical abuse back when he first started showing this as an issue. Judging by both sets of data, it's likely because it was seen as a three against one situation.
So he stops taking his meds, the united front collapses, and she steps down to just being bitchy. And he was okay with this. . . Because he knows Victoria isn't his, and if he tried to get the kids out of that situation he'd never get custody of her. Okay, you can kind of respect him trying to shield the kids from things.
Especially since his Shard was pushing him to protect the new Buds. And keep Mark's Combat Drive off. Because. . . QA told him to when she took most of his data. In fact, looking at how the data is set up, and a review of recent uptick in drama, Incendiary seems to be of the opinion that it's Host is being sacrificed to cause more conflict for the others and the fact it was left without enough information to Bud is taken as a sign it's been marked for termination at the end of the cycle.
No wonder it's so despondent when communicating with us.
****************************************
With all of your Hosts down for the night, it's safe for research. You split yourself (urk) and start to work in parallel. One half of you considers ADC. Your other self decides on... Administrative Censorship? Oof.
[Assume Direct Control 1] BAM! Done! It's been a long time coming, but the good news is that you didn't have any trouble figuring this out.
In fact, you were pretty close to being able to do this already when you fixed/broke Taylor's brain, and it mainly came down to a few corner cases. Well, corner cases and working with Host brains that aren't completely customized and screwed up.
[Administrative Censorship] It's time for basic research. Before you can get into the details of creating this, you need to decide what Censorship means exactly, in this context… So let's think about that for a while.
The first step would be to create a database of anything that could out you as Aberrant. If you don't know what to censor then you can't do it, after all. You set a few hundred of yourselves to come up with ideas - and you can get some info from the Charge data archive as well. You start forming a long list of Aberrance examples to check against later.
You set a number of others of yourselves to coming up with a super-fast, super-efficient (or both) filter because you don't want the other Shards that are sense-sharing to notice any kind of delay on your end.
You try setting up some test Censors, not to stop anything, but just to see what's getting flagged and why... but everything is Aberrant because you have multiple Hosts. You already know that's okay, so back to the drawing board. And you shut down the pointless Aberrance warnings too.
You think about how real-world censorship works. Well, it doesn't that well. But you recall that most Shards wouldn't even realize that incomplete data is even a thing, so they wouldn't look for it. Which means that you can just have some jarring artifacts once in a while, as long as there wasn't any delays. Wait a minute...
What's the difference between censored data and a crappy connection? Not too much, really. Maybe you could come up with excuses for why the sharing-data would be a little off - that way and bad-censorship would simply look like noise. Hmm...
One of you noticed/mentions that there's not a ton of difference between covering up data and creating new data. It might be possible to leverage Dream Master to create backgrounds or otherwise insert fake data into any blanks...
But sadly, you run out of time before you can even get a full handle on how you want to approach this. You'll keep working on it in the background and give it more resources tomorrow night.
[ ] Propose what kinds of things to look for in the giant Charge data dump. It's a huge mess and you're going to have to search for specific things (ask detailed questions) to get anything useful. You have about two more shots at this (about 16 questions) before you've exhausted the archive.
[ ] Communicate with a Human by talking. Current choices: Taylor, Veronica, Lilac. Note: This is hugely aberrant and there are now non-direct communication methods available. That said, it's also a giant advantage too.
[ ] With what voice?
Voice option examples: Normal Male, Normal Female, Robotic, Chorus (what kind?), famous celebrities or actors.
Remember that Taylor may not be familiar with voices made famous after the mid-80's because of the dimensional fragmentation.
Keep in mind that you can imitate any kind of accent perfectly (Russian, German, Aussie, UK, Scottish, etc) - including 'fake' versions.
[ ] How do you introduce yourself?
[ ] Do you talk about powers?
[ ] Do you reveal setting 'secrets'? Warning: Precogs. (QM will not reveal the exact mechanics of this danger)
[ ] Communicate with a Human in dreams. Current choices: Taylor, Veronica, Lilac. Note: This causes very little Aberrance.
[ ] With what Avatar?
[ ] How do you introduce yourself?
[ ] How do you manipulate the dream setting?
[ ] Do you attempt to reveal setting 'secrets'? Warning: Precogs. (QM will not reveal the exact mechanics of this danger)
[ ] Communicate with (Specific Shard) - Now that you have address lists, you don't need to rely on Taylor or Scion. You can just connect whenever you want.
Specify - Which Shard?
[ ] What do you Command, if anything?
[ ] What do you say, if anything?
[ ] What do you do, if anything?
[ ] Timeskip forwards… to when?
[ ] Perform any Research rolls during the skipped time? (Reduced rate: one roll per week skipped, not including any bonuses to research)
[ ] Write In. You're the Administrator Shard! You have a much better idea of what to do next than the QM does.
Story notes:
This Quest now has my highest priority, as it was helping me with my writing in-general. Here's hoping we don't have to go 9 months between chunks again any time soon!
I sure hope you all discuss Taylor's current probable state-of-mind. Extensively. Things could get… fun. Soon.
Please don't forget to tell me what you want me to write for the "Plan: Step 1 for New Wave" section. This doesn't need to wait for 12 hours - you can tell me your thoughts/vote on that right away.
Schedule: After every chapter, voting will be paused for 12 hours, and then open for 2 days, after that I'll call the vote and put out a chapter (however long that takes, typically it shouldn't be more than 12 hours).
"That's good at stopping other people from knowing about what's going on, but what about 'other you'? You left home for a reason, right? What's to stop you from messing this all up?"
Claire (Panacea?) frowned. "I mean, nothing concrete. But she'll know everything I know, and feel exactly the way I do about things - she can make a longer-term, better plan for leaving as Panacea. I wouldn't screw this up, and she won't either. After all, we're the same, so she'd have to tell people about cloning herself, and, well… that's really not something I can do."
Amy still has the worst, simply the worst, decision making. You're making someone exactly you to send in your place with a threat of revealing the truth. What is to stop her from doing the same? If you're so sure you could think out a better way to do it when you're in, why don't you just go in? Dammit Amy.
Amy still has the worst, simply the worst, decision making. You're making someone exactly you to send in your place with a threat of revealing the truth. What is to stop her from doing the same? If you're so sure you could think out a better way to do it when you're in, why don't you just go in? Dammit Amy.
It is a Christmas miracle! I really want to find out Gaeas opinion on what is sure to become a cloning feedback loop as each new Amy continues to hate herself/run away from her problems.
And Patient0! Who do we know who could feasibly be said to be the original victim, who would just so happen to be exactly where sh-they! need to be. Who could it possibly be!?!?
Maybe we should just bite the bullet and talk to Taylor guys, this is really only going to escalate. Maybe ask her to intervene in the Amypocalypse that's about to go down.
So on one hand Amy is very bad at making decisions and this is all terrible. On the other hand this will probably lead to exactly the same conclusion as last time meaning twin cat girls!
