Maximally Effective [Worm/Schlock Mercenary, Tinker!Taylor]

Mundovore · May 31, 2016

Maximally Effective
Maxim 17: The longer everything goes according to plan, the greater the impending disaster.

Begin Transmission: Teraport 1.1

"I'll see you tomorrow."

I shut the door. My heart was pounding, throbbing in my chest. How could it be? My heart was pounding, throbbing in my chest, and I had come back from school in the exact same way I always had. The exact same things had happened as yesterday. The bullying was the same. The walk was the same. The bullying during the walk was the same. And every time, Emma said it to me as I closed the door.

The first couple of times, she had brought Sophia with her, but she'd been doing it on her own ever since. An omnipresent watcher on my walk home, never relenting, never giving up. If I ran ahead, she ran with me. She was faster. If I slowed, she caught up with me, and it was just like I was in the hallways of my school. Quieter, like she was more afraid of being overheard, but also because the words leaked out into the bleak urban hellscape. She talked about how ugly I was, how disgusting, how sad.

It was standard fare.

I committed myself to running. I would be faster than her. I would leave her in the dirt. Tomorrow was a weekend.

I ran out, down towards the Boardwalk. Emma was waiting for me around a corner, and started jogging with me. I ran back to the house, slammed the door. I heard her outside:

"I'll see you tomorrow."

I left, three hours after I got home from school, to try to jog then. Surely, Emma had responsibilities. She was a young model.

I was mostly right. I jogged down to the Boardwalk, unmolested. I wandered between the stores, and reveled in the freedom. As I began my jog back, a car pulled up alongside of me. I stepped forward a bit, and looked into the windows, concerned. I recognized the car a second too late.

"Thanks, dad!" Emma hopped out of the car, and waved her father ahead. He waved at me, smiling, before driving off.

"Sorry I couldn't keep up with you earlier, Taylor. Unlike some people, I have places to be. I do try to make time for you, though."

When I shut the door, I ran quickly, so I didn't hear what I knew she said.

Sometimes, Emma didn't follow me home, and had to drive off with her father on some errand immediately after school. When she did that, Sophia usually leered after me instead. It was almost creepier when she did it: she never attempted to engage me, only followed at a constant distance behind me. She was unshakable, and if I ran, she followed without the slightest hint of tiring. Emma was the stalker. Sophia was just waiting for me to drop dead of exhaustion so that she could tear into my corpse.

Still, she had one thing figured out.

"Tomorrow, Taylor."

When a pattern like this emerges, the most terrifying possible thing is when the pattern is broken. Safety is the house: in all other places, Emma is waiting, or following. Or, her flunky. When neither happened, it shook me. Then, I grew comfortable. I reached the bus, and I felt somewhere between giddy and sick. The nervousness hadn't left me, but the anticipation of a safe walk home was beyond comfort.

When I sat in my seat, I crinkled a piece of paper that I hadn't noticed before I sat on it. I fished it out, and read:

At 2:46, Taylor will sit in this seat. —Emma

It was two forty-six. My hands trembled as I crumpled the note, and stuffed it in my pocket. When I reached my stop, the stop I'd normally stop at, I skipped it. I went one stop further, and got off, throwing away the note as I did so. A paper fluttered in the wind, taped to the bus stop sign. It was lined paper, notebook paper, with garish and attention-getting purple marker drawn over it.

3:01

Nice try, but I expected better. —Emma

Around every corner, a paper marked out the time, exactly, and mocked me. I ran the other direction, and found the paper. I went more slowly on some stretches, faster on others. Anything to trip her up. Anything. She couldn't know me that well. She was stalking me. I knew she was stalking me. How could she stalk me and still be ahead of me? Sophia? Did Sophia run ahead, do the dirty work? Sophia couldn't run faster than a bus, could she?

Eventually, I had to run home. It's not like I had anywhere else. Anywhere else safe. Maybe there was a cape. A cape was stalking me. Posing as Emma? Maybe Emma was a cape.

Emma was resting against the side of my house, next to the front door. She didn't bar me from entering.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

I ran to my room. I grasped my pillows, I pounded them, I screamed into them, I screamed, I clutched at my head, something hurt, something hurt! I screamed into my pillow, I screamed, and I passed out.

And when I woke up, something had changed.

End Transmission

Mundovore · May 31, 2016

Begin Transmission: Teraport 1.2

Atoms do not make up everything. Not only are they incapable of lying, but they are also the underdogs of the universe in terms of the important things, like 'mass.' Most observable matter in the universe is hydrogen, which can be more accurately restated as "most observable mass in the universe is protons." Since much of that mass, maybe most of it, is in stars of hot plasma, that hydrogen generally does not have the good grace of having electrons. Most observable mass in the universe is therefor not closely related to the dense, consistent atoms we know and love. Just protons, bound in gravity. By that standard, atoms do not make up everything: most of the universe is protons, half-baked atoms without the decency to put on clothes.

Of course, all of the above depends on what you call 'observable.' Dark matter is observable, in a sense. There's more of it than there is conventionally observable matter, and dark matter isn't made of atoms. Not atoms made of baryons and leptons, in any case. So by that standard, atoms most definitely do not make up everything.

But there is also empty space, in between all of that. Matter does not make up everything: it does not make up anything. There is more empty space, more vagueness and emptiness than there ever will be of anything else. And in a flash, in the moment I woke up to the smell of my father's cooking downstairs, a dinner in progress, I knew that without a doubt.

And I knew to exploit it. Somewhere in my head, I derived new facts about the nature of the universe from esoteric knowledge I retained from overhearing a physics class. Words and equations I hardly recognized, muttered on the street, formed new derivations with little work. I observed several new empirical constants, and knew ways I could test their accuracy. I extrapolated the data. I could build a device that could compute with emptiness, use the emptiness as a base three bit of information, but also maintain any and all of its states in any number of combinations at once, superpositioned in each other. I could build a machine to stretch and bend the nothing, projecting gravity. I could build things that could build things. I could build anything. I could—

"Taylor!"

I started. My dad was hovering over me.

"Doing some math homework, or just goofing around? That stuff looks pretty advanced."

I closed my notebook. When did I take it out? What did I write in it?

"Oh, it's nothing."

"Alright, kiddo." A chuckle. "You sure you don't want to talk about it? It took ages to shake you."

"No, don't worry about it."

"Well, at least I know what you've been doing all those times you've shut yourself in your room."

Hiding from Emma? "It's mostly gibberish..."

I went downstairs, had my buttered noodles, made small talk. All the time, somewhere in me, there was a spark racing through me. It was in my head, but it was also in my eyes. I felt it everywhere, the presence of the nothing, but also the presence of how the something could be used to manipulate the nothing, and how the nothing could be used to manipulate the something. Sometimes, even, how the something could be used to manipulate the something, but usually that was actually how the something could manipulate the nothing which manipulated the something in turn. I saw different things in different ways.

I could take apart the wall clock with just a look, and in some ways it was disgusting. The hands of the clock, the interface. So garish. It wasn't intuitive at all, to look at the time that way: it wouldn't work in the dark, and it was a waste of energy to move those hands. A light, a digital display, something that turned on when you looked at it. Semi-sentient, so it would be properly useful: it wouldn't turn on for a house invader, or turn on for you while your house was being invaded. The clock could easily be extended to a fully sentient mainframe, for controlling the routine processes of the house. Cooking, energy production, cleaning, and the like. The microwave was good, it could stay. The oven relied too much on the movement of air, but I preferred the taste of that to the microwave. The doors had to go: so weak, and flimsy.

I barely noticed as I finished eating. I went right back upstairs. What kind of a door would be best? Steel was always a good bet, but I'd need the walls to be of something similar. I could make things tougher than steel: picoengineered substances, denser than uranium, compressible, programmable, radiation-resistant. Post-trans-uranic alloy. That would be expensive to make a door out of. It would be very, very expensive to make a door out of it. And the walls would still have to be tougher for that. Maybe I was going about things the wrong way?

The alloy. I could use it to build an energy plant, compressing matter down into miniscule amounts of neutronium suspended in a null-gravity field. The same gravitic field could be used to annihilate the neutronium into energy, in a cost-efficient process that became more efficient the larger the plant was. That could potentially be a lot of power. Lots, and lots of power. The gravitics could be used in other ways, too. I could make a shield out of gravity. There. That was the door. I could cover the whole house, and nothing could get in.

Nothing could always get in, though. More importantly, some things couldn't get in. Emma couldn't get in. I knew the door wouldn't stop her. Windows wouldn't, either—once she stuck a note to the outside of my window. But Emma was bound to gravity. Emma had to respect it. Maybe it was the one thing she did respect. I could control gravity. I could control Emma. I could be safe.

Could I? I still had to go to school. Every day. Emma. Every day. I couldn't bring a gravity-shield with me. Could I? I ran the numbers in my head. I could, actually. It would be stupidly expensive, though. I would need to carry, to wear a massive annihilation plant to make it work. I could make some low-profile armor, perhaps, do something with inertia to keep me safe. Keep her from stabbing me in the dark.

But how would armor stop her from doing what she already did? Constantly with me in the hallways, constantly behind me on the street, watching the door of my house while I was hiding? Could I stop her from saying 'I'll see you tomorrow?'

I could stop her. A thousand ways to destroy Emma, to block out sound, to evacuate an area's air, to turn her into disparate particles of evaporated flesh, to seal her in a tank and tear her mindfromherbrainsoIcouldKNOW—

No. I could avoid that. Emma followed me, everywhere. So I would be unfollowable.

I could build a device that could take me anywhere. Anywhere in the galaxy, easy. If I built it a little better, I could get to Andromeda. I didn't need to do that, though. I just needed to get from one place on the planet to another.

I turned to a new page of my notebook (when did I get it out?). The plans, rough blueprints, they were easy. Like I had already designed it, once before. Or many times, before. I could build a device that would create trillions of nanoscopic wormholes, and instantly feed me through it. Creating a large wormhole is expensive, a massive power demand. I could theoretically do it, but never practically. Small wormholes are easy, though, and get exponentially easier as they get smaller.

Most of everything is empty space. This includes the human body. So I could shunt my atoms, individually, through trillions of tiny wormholes, and it would be cheap. Energy-cheap. I could do it without a major power source, even, and use an infinitesimal fraction of my mass to power the warp. I could be anywhere, anytime, and it was nothing.

...But I couldn't build the device. I needed tools. A device to pinpoint the location of particles to the highest degree, at a range, but without understanding their momentum. A computer, to calculate where the wormholes would have to lead in order to get me to where I wanted to go. I would need a welding laser. I'd need to build circuitry. Normal circuits wouldn't do: I'd need a block of quantum circuitry. No other way to calculate it all. I'd need a quantum-circuitry press, then? And carbon. Lots of carbon and silicon. A hammer. Might already have one of those in the house.There was... so much that I needed. Maybe it was impossible.

I stopped, and I looked at what I had written. I read it, for the first time. I was astonished. When I wrote it, I knew what it was, in the back of my mind. It just never hit home. It wasn't just designs, it was theoretical work. Some derivative, some novel. I could clean it up, I could publish it. Would I be the new Einstein?

But who would use it? Take it seriously? Or what if someone misused it? I imagined warships that spanned kilometers, total-conversion bombs that could devastate a planet's surface.

I tore out the pages of the notebook I had scribbled on, and stuffed them into my desk. It was important that they looked like trash. I put my notebook back into my bag. It was late. I brushed my teeth (I could build little robots that would live in my bloodstream and I'd never have to brush my teeth again), showered (they'd clean me, too), and went to bed. (They might also take care of that, for me.)

I couldn't sleep, but I pretended to try. Plans ran through my mind until two in the morning, when I got up and jotted more notes down. More, and more. Not just things I could build, but also ways I could get what I needed to build things. I could do this. I would beat Emma. A way to avoid her, forever, was finally within my grasp.

End Transmission

Mundovore · Jun 2, 2016

Begin Transmission: Teraport 1.3

When I woke up, my first concern was getting the slobber off of my papers. My second concern was what was on them. I had to read the paper to take a second, to thrill at what I really just had made. Or rather, designed. If I could make it, though, it would work.

In a way, it was my simplest design of the five I had drafted over the night. A sphere, with a fractal pattern throughout the inside and across the surface. My power plant. I needed power, power for everything, and this was the way my designs did it. Plasma gun? Slap an annihilation plant in there. Half-kilometer battleship? You'll need a couple of big ones. Flight suit? There's a few small ones in the belt. It was efficient. It was productive. It was the most productive: nothing beats matter-to-energy.

Not only that, but performing technological miracles took work. It took energy. If you have an annihilation plant, energy is everywhere. It's in the interstellar medium, it's in the most useless rock, it's in all matter. If you didn't, energy was... scarce. The most you could get was from fusion. That's how stars did it, and it seemed to work pretty well for them. It would work pretty well for my purposes, too. The problem was, you can't just build a fusion generator. It doesn't work that way. They're big, clunky. The smallest one I could build was room-size, and was about as effective as a half-fist-sized annihilation plant. It was also a far sight more complicated, despite being less expensive to build.

If I had access to a fission plant, that would help. If I had all the power a fission plant could provide, machines capable of immense precision, and a heap of lead, spent uranium, and other dense elements, I could make a good two or three meter annihilation plant in seven years. Maybe four, if I spent some of the time before the production of the plant optimizing the fissioning. That was optimistic, actually. Call it five. Five years with resources that a teenager could never have, and probably the backing of a major government and/or tech firm, and I could build something that I could really tool up with. Build an annihilation plant that outproduces the fission plant, then use the first annie plant to build one that outproduces itself, use the second one to build a bigger annie plant... and so on. The bigger I built my first annie plant, the better. They only got more efficient as they got bigger. Yet at the same time, an annihilation plant any bigger than a pinhead would be more efficient at producing energy than anything I could get my hands on, even though I could still probably strip more from the electric grid than a plant so small.

That was the real puzzler, the real question. How do I tool up in the fastest way? The more PTU I could conglomerate before building a plant with it meant that each unit of PTU spent was more efficient, but also that I was missing out of the opportunity cost of not building those earlier reactors. Assuming I immediately dedicate all new energy from annihilation plants to the construction of more PTU, at what point does waiting to build a bigger plant stop paying off?

It all depended on the power that I had allocated to me, and every time I ran the numbers, that amount was "not enough."

I put it aside. My other designs. I designed a printer for quantum circuitry. It was a crummy design, but it was built for 'being something I could build with the resources available.' Even then, I was pushing my limits. I'd need to build a proper multitool (my third design, which in itself required materials I didn't have, but that I probably could get), and I'd need to put it together very, very carefully. One mistake would make all that q-circ dead carbon. The fourth design was a distraction, a power-fantasy: a rig that could hook to a powerline, and fire a line of plasma in a gravity-braid. Normally, with any real power source, it would be a terrifying weapon, but it was almost a joke hooked to the primitive electric grid.

The fifth was the one that would work as intended. I had to make a mess of the design so that it could run from electric power, and so that it could use the outdated q-circ that I'd be able to print. It had two components: a stationary component that contained all the q-circ, which would be the size of a loaf of bread with the size of the q-circ I could print, and the actual teleportation mechanism. The 'computer' was the easy part, all I had to do was plug it into a wall. The mechanism, though, despite being free from the need of any sort of ongoing current, required a hefty charge to activate. After it activated, I had the system set up so that the teleport would effectively power itself, annihilating a tiny fraction of the mass of whatever was being teleported to generate the wormholes. The problem I had was that carrying enough of a charge would entail either me making my own battery or capacitor (which, of course, I didn't have the materials to do), or carrying a a sack of D-cells everywhere.

I pressed my head to the desk and groaned. That wouldn't do. Not subtle at all.

It frustrated me beyond all belief. Designing things wasn't enough. I needed to actually build something. I needed to get off my feet. How did other people did it, the other people with lots of tech. How did Dragon get to where she was? How did Armsmaster?

Wait. How could I be comparing myself to them? If I was a genius of their class, smart enough to be a cape, why hadn't I been doing anything before? My grades didn't reflect incredible genius. Come to think of it, prior to last night, nothing about me reflected incredible genius. What had changed?

...Did I get a power?

I put it down as a 'maybe' as the idea of parahumans fluttered across my mind. Emma. How did she do that? How could she do that, last afternoon? I could conceive of a few ways she could have, being ferried around by car or biking ahead of me, staying ahead of me instead of staying behind me. For the bus, she could have checked the schedule, and put a paper at multiple stops. For corners, she could have been watching me around the corners... how? Maybe a mirror? I would have noticed that. Perhaps she had friends? Well, she had friends. But perhaps her friends had helped her. Still, there were things I couldn't explain. I swore that there hadn't been a note on that pole before the bus pulled up to it. Even if there was more than one person involved, I feel like I should have been able to spot them. Or at least hear someone running away, when I turned a sharp corner.

It was... surreal. I knew there was a hotline for parahuman crimes, but I couldn't say that she was a parahuman. I had no proof. No real proof, anyway. Where would I learn more about Parahumans? There was Parahumans Online, but I didn't have a computer. In order to get access to one, I'd need to go to the library... which was its own can of worms. I didn't trust myself to be able to avoid Emma. Experience told me it would be fifteen minutes at best before she was on my tail. Could I avoid the fact that I'd run into her today? Probably not. Still, I could control the circumstances in which I met her. Maybe, just to spite her, I could avoid meeting her at all, by staying in the house all day. I'd done that, a few times, although it made the bullying the next day worse.

There wasn't a next day at school, though. It was Friday, the last Friday of school until January. Made sense that she'd want to end the semester with a real bang. Maybe she wanted to really frighten me, because she had to leave somewhere for the winter break? Did that mean it was safe to go outside? I didn't want to risk it, but if Emma had left for the winter, then every day I waited was another day for her to get back. Or perhaps, it was best to wait two, or three days, then try to go to the library. Or maybe she didn't leave for the winter at all, and was just capitalizing on the last chance she had when she knew I'd have to leave the house.

If Emma followed me to the library, and read what I was looking up, then she might very well catch on. Sudden investigation of the parahuman isn't exactly subtle. At the same time, though, I needed to know. And what were the chances that Emma would decide to read over my shoulder?

...No, that's not a thought I should have. She'd do anything it took to get to me, and following a sudden change in behavior—it's not like I usually went to the library—Emma would be curious about what I was up to.

I checked the time. Three-thirty, in the afternoon. A bit more than twenty-four full hours since... whatever the hell that all was. At the very least, I was pretty sure I got in at least six hours of sleep, eventually. Maybe. I went downstairs, to get some breakfast.

My dad left a note on the fridge, teasing me about sleeping in. I almost felt a flash of anger at him, but I supressed it. It wasn't like he understood what my life was like, these days. That was the true evil of it. I'd never be able to tell him about how Emma treated me in school, because she walked me home, nearly every day. 'Why would a bully do that?' The cleverness and simplicity of walking your foe home from school and saying a few 'friendly' words still stung at me.

I eyed the guts of the clock that I had spilled over the table. Nothing that could really be useful. What I really wanted to get into was the microwave, but that would be harder to put away properly, harder to explain away. That was a project to start when I knew when my dad wouldn't be home. I was also curious about the oven, for similar reasons. We hardly used our oven or its heating element: if I could pull something useful out of it, then its breaking could be attributed to wear and tear... but I was leery about doing that to my father. We weren't exactly rolling in money. Like some people.

Still, the various components of both ovens were tempting, and the magnetron in the microwave might actually be something I could incorporate into something useful without much modification. Assuming it wasn't too primitive, of course.

I hated my 'power.' I knew how to build things, but wasn't able to. I don't think I ever would be: I'd need money and resources that you just don't have as a teenager in a lower-middle class family. How many other people were in my same boat? The knowledge to build, a dearth of resources, and an itch. I hadn't realized it until now, but I had an itch. An itch that I couldn't scratch, a desire beyond desires to build, deconstruct, reconstruct, to turn all the world around me into component pieces so that I could recombine them. That was the thing that hurt. I had an itch to build machines that I'd never be able to. So here I was. Eating a bowl of cereal over a dissected clock. Maybe I'd just use the clock. Live the rest of my life with no other reason to carry forward aside from taking a clock apart, and putting it back together. Day in, day out.

I put the clock back together, and all the pieces fit like they were meant to fit. I envied that. The machining, that is. I needed to be able to put pieces together like they were meant to fit, and those can't be shaped by hand. I could get close—my hands felt like weaving spiders compared to their prior clumsiness—but it wouldn't do. Without machines to help me build, all my creations would be rough imitations.

How did the heroes get their industrial bases? They approached the Protectorate, probably. Well, I didn't know about Dragon, but I knew Armsmaster got his materials from the Protectorate. Dragon definitely got some funding from the Protectorate, for her containment foam. Hero was a Protectorate member, when he was still alive.

What were my options, aside from joining the Protectorate? I could try to make money off of my machines, my inventions, and my discoveries. I could try to pass it off like I wasn't a parahuman. I don't think I could keep it a secret for long enough to do anything useful, though, and even if I could, people would still treat me as if I were. The things I could build were straight-up magical, compared to the junk we'd been raised with. I'd become the target of so many government and illicit coercers that I'd quickly lose any of my real agency.

Maybe I could make my own money, without using my power? That had its merits, one of them being that money was something that would be helpful regardless of whatever I had plans to build. That was difficult to sustain with school, though.

School. There was a thought. I could dazzle my teachers with my newfound intelligence, and promptly... receive suspension or expulsion for cheating. Even if they didn't suspect it outright, Emma would make the rumor popular.

I hung the clock back on the wall. The books in the house had all been read. Ah. Books. Another reason to go to the library. A computer would be an amazing help. Eventually, I settled. I'd go to the library anyways. If Emma followed me, I could just get a couple of books instead of checking the computers.

I was less than a block away from my house when she started behind me, but at that point, I had committed to getting to the library. I kept walking, and tried not to notice her. The nagging feeling of someone behind me felt stronger and stronger as I walked, and eventually I started checking behind me. I almost expected Sophia to be practically on top of me, but instead, she had maintained the exact same distance. I wondered if I could use her stalking technique against her, to throw her off. I took a right turn at my first opportunity, and started running as soon as I was out of sight. I checked behind me as I made it to the next intersection, seeing her foot barely stepping out from around the building I had hidden behind. I kept running, and turned right again before stumbling into the next alleyway I could find, hiding behind a dumpster, out of sight from the street.

I held my breath as I waited. I hadn't ever managed to throw Sophia before. She was going to turn the corner at any second. At any second.

...Nothing.

I let go of the breath I was holding. She could be waiting in that intersection. It was best to wait here, for at least ten minutes. Let her get bored and wait for me somewhere else. I resettled myself, so that I could rest on my rear instead of balancing on my legs, only to see a dark shape moving at me quickly from deeper in the alley. I hit the dumpster hard as a hand grabbed at my hair and another pushed at my shoulder. My head spun as Sophia lifted me to my feet.

I steadied myself against the wall, and braced myself as she stepped back. Her foot flew into my gut, and I doubled over. She watched as I crumpled on the ground. The pain was awful. How did she find me? More curiously, how did she get past me without my noticing?

I groaned a little, to keep myself from breaking down. I was on the edge of tears, but that was just because I hurt. Pain was temporary. I could work past it. Sophia would attack harder if I showed weakness, though. I waited on the ground, to see if she'd be throwing any more abuse my way.

A kick to my arm. Not as vicious as the one to my gut, but it still hurt.

"Get up."

I thought for a second. Was it really such a good id—

The second kick was much harder. I got up. Sophia looked me dead in the eyes. I held the gaze. Everything in my body screamed that I shouldn't, but I couldn't not. She sniffed a bit, unimpressed.

"Get going, Hebert. Wouldn't want to keep you."

I left the alley, and started back towards the library. Sophia waited, and then followed.

End Transmission

Mundovore · Jun 13, 2016

Begin Transmission: Teraport 1.4

Sophia lurked out the front exit of the library as I went in. Already, a challenge was presented to me: did I go out the front, or try to sneak out the back? I supposed it didn't matter too much either way, but it was nice to pretend to have a little bit of agency.

So what first? The computer, obviously. I just needed a little bit of information from them, and from there on computer access was only a bonus. I chose a computer in the back of the lab, facing the door, so that I could see if Emma or Sophia came in. I hit the power button: nothing. A flash of irrational anger flashed through me. This was the perfect seat. I didn't care if it was near identical to the one next to it, this was the computer I wanted to use! The casing was held together with knobs meant to be easily turned by hand. I could take it apart, I could build it better, I could—

No. The itch was strong, but I was stronger. Was it part of my power, or was it just part of being human, to want to do things better? It didn't really make a difference, I supposed. I had the knowledge, but not the tools. I needed to be able to get the tools. Computer. There was another, perfectly serviceable computer, right to the side.

I started with some basic research. First, for my plans. It would cost me a good six thousand dollars to get all the parts I needed for my multitool, not counting things that I thought that I could scrounge up on my own. The most expensive part of the q-circ printer would be the vacuum chamber I'd need for it to operate in: the cheapest ones in the size I needed sold for a bit over nine thousand dollars on eBay, but I figured I could build the chamber from component parts using the multitool and whatever it took to get someone to give me a dead vacuum chamber, and perhaps the cost of a replacement pump. I estimated that if I took the cheapskate route, I'd be paying at the very least five thousand dollars for the chamber, and then another four thousand for the printer itself. I'd limit my plans there, for now: I could do a lot with q-circ, and the raw graphite I'd be feeding the printer was relatively cheap at twenty to forty dollars a pound.

I also did some basic checking on the Parahumans wiki that did seem to suggest that I indeed a cape of some kind: there was an entire classification of capes, called 'Tinkers' who spontaneously acquired superhuman technical skills and knowledge. Fun fact about Tinkers: Tinker heroes were over three times more likely to have been ex-criminals than any other class of cape, and over four times more likely to be in the Protectorate. The twenty-thousand dollar price tag on my basic operation seemed to be a hint at why. The extensive regulations on and limitations of Tinkertech that made it very difficult for Tinkers to profit off of their work was probably the other half of the equation.

Which meant I still had a very binary choice on my hands. I could join the Protectorate, or I could not. Joining the Protectorate meant funding, a lab, a transfer to Arcadia (if the rumors were true), protection from the billion and one gangs and minor capes who might want to extort my work, and access to the work of other Tinkers. It was beyond enticing. I had to weigh it against the other costs, though: I'd have to join the Wards (which wouldn't be that bad, honestly), I'd have to submit myself to the disgusting bureaucracy, I'd be obligated to join the Protectorate in full when I came of age, I might be transferred to other locations on short notice (which was especially painful, given the timescale of some of the projects I wanted to work on), and I'd have to tell my dad. That was the real kicker: talking with my dad about being a cape and joining the Wards wouldn't be pleasant. I had the distinct impression that if he were to know that I was a cape, he'd want me to stay far, far away from cape business. I thought it was a realistic take on things to assume that he'd let me join the Wards, but also to assume that he wouldn't be pleased about it.

On the other half of the binary, there was freedom. There was the struggle, and freedom. Unsurprisingly, it was difficult to find information on leaving the Protectorate once you had joined, but it was possible. It was almost tempting to join the Protectorate to get off my feet and get Emma off my back, then leave afterwards, but that was much too dangerous. That seemed like an excellent idea to draw myself into the public eye, and then broadcast that I no longer had allies. Fun fact number two about Tinkers: they are over three times more likely to be abducted for criminal gains than any sort of cape save Thinkers, who they are only one and a half times as likely to be abducted over. Joy.

That basic research took a bit over half an hour, and I was already sick to my stomach. Beyond that, my basic research into parahumans of Brockton Bay made me more convinced than ever that Emma wasn't parahuman. None of the capes in town that had applicable powers really seemed to make sense. Vista was too young, and a hero with a good reputation. Battery was too old, with a similar reputation. Rune fit, but Emma couldn't be Rune or associated with Rune: if she was, she'd have been torn apart for hanging around with Sophia. There was a vigilante named Shadow Stalker who briefly aroused my suspicion, until further digging revealed that she hadn't been seen for months and E88 goons on the forum were bragging about Hookwolf being responsible. To quote a certain PHO user, "He murderized that bitch." A good reminder of the lengths to which the gangs of Brockton Bay were willing to go. A good reason to go to the Protectorate: protection from those gangs. A good reason not to join the Protectorate: having to fight those gangs.

...A good reason to join the Protectorate: getting to fight those gangs. They needed to be stopped, somehow, someday, by someone. I could contribute to that. It was riskier to do that without a team.

I scribbled down all of the applicable phone numbers I could find for the Protectorate, and shoved the note in my back pocket. I still had a lot to think over. I logged out of the computer, found a couple of books to check out—a mystery novel and a self-help book on how to fund a business—and peeked out the front window. Sophia had left, but surprise, surprise: Emma was waiting for me. If Emma was at the front, Sophia might be at the back. I'd take Emma over Sophia, today. I stepped out the front door.

Emma started walking towards me, smug smile on her face. One foot in front of the other, and as she got closer she opened her mouth.

"Tay—"

"Taylor!" A different girl shouted, interrupting her. She was tall with a face-splitting grin, and seemed to be around my age. She had dark blonde hair, and I had never seen her before in my life.

"Taylor!" She said again, catching her breath a little as she got close to me. "Remember that arrangement we made? Weren't you going to come to my place after you finished in the library?"

I opened my mouth to tell her that I had never met her before, but she held up a finger and gasped. "Oh! Remember that thing? Guess how it turned out!" She cupped a hand around her mouth, and beckoned my ear closer. Warily, I leaned in.

Emma gave a bark of indignation for being ignored, but I didn't catch what she said as I listened to the girl's whisper.

"I think I've worked out how to lose them. Want to give it a try?"

"What?"

The girl looked back at me, her almost predatory grin split across her face. "I know, right? C'mon, you gotta see!" She held out her hand, and took a pair of light steps towards the parking lot, looking at me over her shoulder.

"Who's this, Taylor?" Emma yapped at me. "Your internet girlfriend? Are you going on a date?"

I took the hand of the stranger who knew my name, and she dragged me across the parking lot, half-running to a car.

I landed in the passenger side seat heavily, and my driver chuckled throatily.

"Buckle up, 'cause I'm not a great driver. Name's Lisa, by the way. What's yours?"

"Taylor," I said, "but didn't you already know that?"

"I didn't know-know it," she said, putting the transmission in reverse. She had taken on a more serious expression. "I kind of guessed. Based off of what she was going to say. I mean, I did know it, after she said your name. But I didn't just, like, know it out of nowhere. You know?"

She backed out quickly, and took off down the road. There was a brief quiet.
"So, why did you help me?"

"Oh... no reason. Good Samaritan. Wanted to give you more options."

"More options?"

"Yeah. People deserve more than being harassed, day in and day out. I wanted to help."

I nodded. "Yeah, I—thanks."

That grin split across her face again. "Don't mention it. It's what you'd have done for me."

"I'm not sure sure, really," I said, "I don't think I'd have noticed."

"Well, you'd help if you did notice. It's not so much my fault that I noticed, it's just a thing that I do."

"Mmm." I nodded. She was probably right. There was another minute or two of quiet.

"Hey, so here's what we're going to do, alright?" Lisa stretched her back a little as we neared a turn that she indicated. "We're going to turn into that parking garage up ahead, and we'll be getting into a different car. I think they'll be staying outside and watching for the same car to leave, so we'll be leaving by a different car."

I nodded at first, but then stopped.

"Wait—you got two cars for this?"

Lisa grinned at me. "They're rentals. I don't actually own a car."

We turned into the garage, and started heading to one of the lower floors. I was beginning to have second thoughts about the situation.

"Don't worry," Lisa reassured me. "I noticed this whole deal with them following you a few days ago. After I saw what happened yesterday, I set this up, so I could get you to some friends of mine. Maybe work out a more permanent solution."

"That sounds ominous," I said. "What do you mean?"

"Just get one of my friends to start walking you places. He's a big guy, so you won't run into problems. I just don't want those two psychos figuring out where we hang, or anything."

We parked next to a red SUV. I grew a little more suspicious. "That sounds like a huge imposition on his time."

"Oough." She grimaced. "I swear there's a good reason for all this, but it'll have to wait until we get in the other car. We've got to move quickly, in case the psychobitches decide to stick their head down here."

Lisa got out. I cautiously followed suit. She fumbled with the keys momentarily, and unlocked the car with the fob. The windows of the SUV were tinted darker than was usual. She jumped in the driver's seat, and put the keys in the ignition.

"Well?" She jerked her head to the passenger's seat, smiling. "Jump in!"

"...Not until you tell me a bit more of what's going on."

"Listen, I'm not trying to kidnap you, or anything." Lisa groaned, and checked around to make sure that nobody was listening. "You honestly need to know now?"

I hesitated, but nodded.

"Fine," Lisa sighed, "I suppose you deserve to know at least a little now. How about a bit now, and then some while we're on the road?"

"That sounds fair enough."

Lisa checked for listeners again. "It's... cape business."

"Cape business?" My heart thudded in my chest. Were people already on to me?

"Yeah. I do cape business." She grinned. "It's how I was able to notice what was going on."

I calmed—slightly. Lisa had implied pretty heavily that she worked for a cape, or was one. The upside is that it meant she didn't necessarily know I was a Tinker. The downside was that cape business was still dangerous business.

"Come on!" Lisa was insistent, nodding at the passenger side. "Get in, I'll tell you more once we're clear of the garage."

Lisa was still probably a better choice than Emma. I wasn't sure Emma could have even followed us to here, but the two of them seemed to have an almost superhuman ability to be places that I was fairly sure they couldn't be.

I steeled myself, and jogged around to the other side of the car, hopping in. The engine started as I opened the door, and the SUV was set rolling as soon as the door shut. We were quiet as we drove out of the garage. For the first street or so afterwards, Lisa checked her rear view mirror windows religiously. Eventually, she gave a satisfied sigh.

"Okay, I think I've well and truly given them the slip. They're gonna be pissed, later."

"Yeah."

Lisa grimaced. "Sorry about that."

"It's probably worth it, if I've really given them the slip."

"Yeah." Lisa's grin slowly came back. "So... you want to hear what it's like? Being a cape?"

"Sure... I guess."

"So... it's like this. The Merchants are disgusting, and the ABB and E88 are vaguely monstrous. There's solo villains always looking for a cut of the pie. The solo heroes and vigilantes are disorganized and sometimes only have a loose grip on sanity, usually cause a lot more chaos than they fix. The Protectorate is inept and probably corrupt, and New Wave is constantly mired in things that aren't 'keeping the city safe.' All in all, if you want to be a cape in Brockton Bay, the first step is to notice what you need, and what you don't. You need to have the resources of the Protectorate, but make it work. You need the PR of New Wave, but you need to actually do shit with it. You need the freedom of the independent capes, but a better understanding of what you're doing. You need the reach and scope of the gangs, but you need to avoid becoming a tyrant while you're at it. Basically, you need to do the impossible."

"...It sounds hard."

"Yeah." Lisa's smile shone through me. "Bet you already knew that, though. You seem like the type of person who'd have thought about that, at some point or another. I'm here to give you another choice—to deal with your bullies—because I was given another choice, when I needed it. A way to be a cape in Brockton Bay without the bullshit. I got a sponsor. A way to get resources, without bureaucracy, without restrictions, and without bending your moral lines. There's a guy who'll do that. Give tens of thousands of dollars of funding, just so that you can do your cape thing in Brockton Bay. I don't regret my choice. Lets me and my friends do our thing, and all we have to do is be willing to take jobs."

I mustered up my best steely glance. "So what you're saying is, if I become a cape, then I should find a shadowy backer to fund me."

"Oh, no. Definitely not." Lisa's grin somehow became wider. "They usually find you, actually."

Oh.

Shit.

"You've been worried about joining the Protectorate, haven't you? You don't really want to deal with it, but you also don't really have any other viable option. Yeah?" She pulled the car into a parking lot. We were somewhere near the Boardwalk, overlooking the coast. It was a pretty place. "Well, I'm giving you another option on that, too. Or rather, my boss is. He's the one who found out your situation. He likes it when he has the support of new Tinkers. A little bit of Tinkertech goes a long way, after all."

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Lisa glanced over at me, and frowned.

"Ah, shit. Look, Taylor, don't worry. Here, come on, let's hop out of the car, get you a breath of fresh air. Alright?"

I nodded dumbly, and pulled at the car's latch. As the door swung wide, I sucked in the scummy ocean air, resting against the back door. Lisa got out a second or two later, and came around the front of the car, giving me a fairly wide berth. I took a couple of seconds.

"You alright?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

"Don't worry about it. Just a miscalculation on my part, is all. I sure as hell freaked out a bit when I was contacted by a seemingly omniscient backer, so it sure as hell must be freaky to be contacted by the near-omniscient agent of a seemingly omniscient backer."

I chuckled a little. That helped, somehow.

She seemed open to talking about her cape life. Maybe I could figure out a bit more about her?

"So... uh... what exactly do you do?"

"Mostly what the boss tells us to do. We're his eyes into the villain world. I'm one of the Undersiders. Probably haven't heard of this yet, we don't try to make big splashes."

I paused for a second. "So... you're a super villain?"

Lisa's grin threatened to split her face in two. "I'm a super villain."

End Transmission

Mundovore · Jul 26, 2016

Begin Transmission: Teraport 1.5

I sipped my tea, then took a deep breath.

I reached for the prepaid flip phone Lisa had left me, but I couldn't bring myself to pick it up. Nope. Not ready to make any calls yet.

I needed to take today as a lesson. Scary stuff happened in the foreground of the cape world. If the stuff that could be seen was scary, the hidden aspects of the cape world could only be terrifying beyond comprehension. I had to assume that there were enemies everywhere. That any and every action I take could and would be used against me. I needed to completely restructure my thought processes. Emma was a scheming, manipulative bitch, but Emma didn't have super powers.

Well. Maybe. I wasn't entirely convinced that she didn't.

I had other reasons to call the PRT, though. Lisa.

She knew everything about me. She was friendly. I liked her, in some ways. She scared the hell out of me, and she knew where I lived. Her 'backer' knew where I lived. She had made me an offer. Given me a phone number. Three phone numbers, actually. The first was so that I could call her backer. The second was so that I could call her. 'Never hesitate to call if you need anything.' The third was the number of the boy we met in that same parking lot. Lisa claimed he wasn't in on the whole cape business. That didn't mean that she couldn't use him to get information out of me. Still, he was friendly, and seemed sympathetic to my situation. I could call him if I needed to get to the library again. I doubted Sophia would try to push me around if I had someone walking with me, at the very least.

I felt the Itch suddenly creeping through my mind. I found myself wanting to destroy the phone before me for reasons other than trepidation and general anxiety. It was primitive. I could make it better. It felt almost as if no time at all passed between the moment when the phone was lying on the table as one piece and the moment it was many pieces, all across the table. There was so little I could improve, but so much that I should. It was primitive, and yet, it was the best that could be done.

Disgusting. I put the phone back together, though I made a few 'mistakes' when dealing with the microphone, so my voice would be at least partially disguised.

Taking the phone apart told me a lot about it, though. That someone couldn't effectively track me when I called from it. Sure, my call would be recorded, but I'd be calling the PRT. I had to expect that. The government was the only organization I could think of with their roots deep enough in the infrastructure that they'd be able to listen to my calls. I couldn't discount the possibility that some kind of power would let other entities listen in, too, though. I needed to maintain absolute paranoia. The information of a phone call covered massive distance. If there was any sort of Thinker-type power that could extrapolate it...

I wanted to discount it. I really, really did. I needed to remember today, though. If there are relatively benign powers who could seek me out for 'business offers' like that, then there were malign powers that would make more dangerous offers, if given the opportunity. That, perhaps, were already on their way to meet me. Or perhaps Lisa's 'backer' wouldn't be appeased by my silence.

I needed to prioritize. How could I keep my home the safest it can be?

The first priority was protecting my home as it is now. I wouldn't be able to convince my dad to move without revealing that I'm parahuman, and even then I doubt he'd spring for it. Plus, moving isn't stealthy. It's the antithesis of stealthy. So in order to protect my home, I needed to not be there. I needed to shift the target. Run away from home.

...Except that I couldn't do that. That would hurt my father, too much. And I didn't have anywhere to run to except places provided by Lisa's shadowy backer. Anywhere else, I would likely be found just as easily. So moving was out of the option. I needed some way to enforce my safety in my home, then. To ensure reprisal if anyone did anything untoward. I needed muscle.

Patterns of enforcement robots jumped about in my mind, but I knew I couldn't build them. I needed something else. What kind of muscle was available? I was confident that the backer would be willing to provide muscle. That he would be gleeful to do so, in fact. I wasn't keen on inviting any muscle a puppetmaster was willing to provide. Letting people near me would be a mistake. People with the power to defend me were also people with the power to defeat me, which would make that a doubly foolish move.

There: the critical point. To defend myself, I needed allies who were capable of defending me, but not of attacking me. I needed to have power over them that would persist despite, during, and after any attack made against me. I needed an information weapon. In a way, I did have leverage over the 'backer.' He was trying to be secret. Covert. If I could expose his presence, it would be very detrimental to him, in theory. It was too tenuous of a connection, though. I saw the strings being drawn up around me: if Lisa had done a better job pitching her 'backer' to me, I very likely would have been convinced that my blackmail there would be enough to keep me safe.

I had another organization I could trust to protect me without harming me, though. In the moment of their attack against me, the Protectorate would be harming their own position, their reputation as a champion of the people. Phones were easy to tweak, and as disposable as my burner phone was, I could still take video with it. I would rig a system in my burner phone to record any interactions with the Protectorate, and set it to send the recordings to important PRT directors, media personalities, and the like if I didn't cancel it in time. The threat of that would probably be enough to keep me safe. Probably. Maybe.

Which meant that my real first priority was contacting the Protectorate safely. For the time being, I'd also want to be untraceable. If I wanted to infiltrate a cape organization for information gathering purposes, my first and last stop would be the PRT, and by extension, the Protectorate. I needed to be sufficiently certain that the PRT applied enough Thinker support to their communication to keep their data secure, or make certain that they were going to apply sufficient caution and data exclusion to keep my location secret. The general reputation of Protectorate heroes not being murdered in their beds was promising, but I wouldn't be trying to get in the Wards, which meant I'd be given less preference.

Calling the Protectorate offices wouldn't give away my position on its own, but it was still plenty possible that the signal from my phone could be triangulated back to my home. If someone knew what they were looking for, it would be easy to pinpoint my location to within a few houses' radius. This phone was given to me by Lisa: I couldn't trust it at all. I had to act with the assumption that whenever I used it, my location would be known, and that all things I said would be forwarded to Lisa and the whoever was funding her. If someone even was backing her: it could easily just be a ploy on her part to seem more menacing than she was. Or, perhaps, that it was someone else who was menacing, as opposed to her.

So I'd have to be vague on my call. If Lisa had a power that let her 'notice' things, I couldn't hide much, but I could try to make my conversations as general as possible, and reveal as little as possible. I'd also have to consider calling from somewhere else. I could just walk down the street, but then I'd have to worry about Emma. Was it correct to just take the risk of my position being noticed? It might be—the chances anyone else would know what they were looking for was negligible, and Lisa already knew where I lived. Calling from the library, or with a payphone, those would be the more comfortable options, but leaving home wasn't something I was interested in. That would make me more vulnerable than was really necessary. I could call the boy Lisa walked me home with to get a ride or an escort to various places, but there was no chance that she wasn't getting information from him. I'd not be hiding my location from Lisa, so there wasn't too much point in that yet. I'd keep it in mind, though. That could be useful if I was heading to a public location, but didn't want Emma to be as much of a pain. Possibly. I didn't want to write him down as an asset, yet. He would remain categorized as a near-emergency measure.

I decided to put his number in the contacts of the burner I got. Being able to reach an emergency measure quickly was important. I didn't put Lisa's backer in the phone, as I didn't want to make any impulsive decisions, but Lisa's number went in the phone as another emergency number. Several different PRT hotlines went in the phone, too. The cape-emergency hotline, but also the general cape activity hoteline, their Master/Stranger activity hotline, and a general call number. I debated putting my house phone in the contacts, but that was something I had memorized, and the possible convenience of more quickly calling my father in an emergency was outweighed by the danger of someone getting a hold of the phone and getting to him.

Delaying. I was delaying the call. I checked the clock: my dad could come home soon. If my dad walked in on the call... No. I couldn't use that as an excuse. If my dad walked in, I could hang up or call back later. Plus, I could make the call from my room. He wouldn't notice I had a phone that way. I forced myself out of my chair and up to my room.

"Thank you for calling PRT East-Northeast, how can I help you today?" A woman pleasantly answered the call.

"I... have a lot of things I need help with. How should I start?" My voice grated out of my mangled microphone. "Actually, wait. No. I know where to start. To what degree is information I share with the PRT secure?"

There was a pause before the response came through. "I assure you that anything you share with the PRT will be secured to our utmost abilities."

I grit my teeth. That wasn't useful at all! "I have good reason to believe that I am being tracked everywhere I go, and that this call may even be in the process of being monitored by a third party. To what degree can I trust the security of this call?"

"I apologize, this is not an emergency number. If you have an emergency, I can transfer you. Can you hold?"

"No!" I take a deep breath. "No, this is not an emergency. Yet. But I'm worried about being attacked in my own home."

"I'm sorry, but you might have more success contacting the police. If this has nothing to do with parahuman activity, the PRT can't help you."

"No, no. It's... Last night." I paused. If anyone was monitoring the call, chances are they already knew I was a parahuman. The PRT would know eventually, if I associated with them. This was the most vulnerable time to be revealing my parahuman nature, but at the same time I didn't think I could make much progress if I didn't say what happened.

I decided that if I was going to make progress, I'd have to trust that the PRT was effective because of competency, and not luck. I had to trust that I was safe with them. I hated it. But I was desperate. I still might end up joining the Protectorate at some point, and I had no plans to commit any crime. It made sense to go forward with it.

"Yesterday afternoon, something happened, and I passed out. When I woke up, something was different. I know how to build things, now. I went to the library today, to figure out what to do next. To see if I could figure out more about what happened to me last night. There was a girl who found me, and helped me get away from some bullies. She offered me money and protection. She knew that I could Tinker. I'm worried that other people might find me, or that the girl I met will decide not to leave me alone. I want to feel safe, but I don't. I decided that the PRT are the best people to talk to for that."

"I... see. I'm sorry, but can you hold? I may need to transfer you to someone higher up."

"Tha—" A flourish of hold music cut me off.

I stewed in my anger for a few minutes, and eventually put the phone on speaker so that I could listen for my dad coming home. At this rate, though, it seemed like he was having a late night. Eventually, a man with a fairly deep voice picked up the line.

"I'm sorry, I have a few questions for you. First, how would you like us to refer to you?"

"I... think I'd like to remain anonymous."

"I see. Can you tell me more about what happened last night?"

"I have a couple of bullies. They follow me home... most nights. Almost every night. Yesterday, they didn't follow me home, but there were these notes absolutely everywhere, taunting me. Each one had the time that I reached the note on it. The notes were there even when I tried to avoid them, and take random paths back. They follow me everywhere."

"Have you ever tried going to the police?" The man's voice was simultaneously calming and infuriating in its neutrality.

"Of course I have. It's pointless, though. Em— one of them has friends that she says will back her up if I try to accuse her. And they follow me everywhere. Even when I tried going to the police station. One of them is very strong. I've never made it to the police station."

There was a moment of silence. Some clicking on his end of the phone. "Can you tell me more about what you said happened today?"

One of my hands was shaking. Stupid. I needed to be more careful. I was telling him things he could use against me. The words kept coming, though.

"I went to the library in the afternoon. Research some cape stuff. Figure out if they might've used some kind of powers to get to me. Figure out what it would cost for me to get off the ground. There was a girl there, she called herself Lisa. She pulled me away from one of my bullies and drove me away in a car. We changed cars once. She took me near the ocean, an empty lot. Fairly empty. She said she had a backer, who wanted to fund me. She was a supervillain. Said her backer was funding the less bad villains, independent heroes. Wanted me in on the thing. She was kind of scary, though. I don't know how she found me out so quickly. She knew lots of things."

Another moment or two of silence from the other side of the line. "I think you're doing a very good job. It was a good idea to come to the Protectorate and the PRT on this matter. I'd like to meet you in person to help work out a solution. Both for your bullies, and for what happened today."

My heart spiked. "In person? Why in person?"

"Due to various safety protocols, we can't necessarily condone a stakeout on a location on an anonymous phone call. Plus, you may find that a stakeout might not be the solution you were looking for, and meeting in person will do a great amount of good in assuring each other we are who we say we are. If you'd like, I can send an unmarked PRT car to your home, and pick you up early tomorrow morning. Would that work for you?"

"No." My voice was dry. "No, that won't work. My... my family doesn't know I'm parahuman. I can't leave until I'm alone in the house. I also can't leave in a car headed to Protectorate headquarters when my bullies are watching."

"...Do you really think that they could follow you like that?"

"I'm not sure. I couldn't dodge them on the bus. I don't want to take the chance."

"I can understand your concern. If you'd prefer, I can arrange for a private meeting at a different public location. The library comes to mind, if you aren't opposed."

I was opposed. I trusted the PRT more than anyone else I could think of, though. I gave him my address, asked to be picked up at one, and hung up before dozing around in my bed for a little while. I didn't like the PRT. I didn't like the bureaucracy that came with it. I trusted it not to murder me, though, and I didn't think that joining them would be a requirement for me to receive 'protection from maybe murder.'

It was sometime when I was having dinner with my dad that I realized the man on the phone had a voice I recognized. It was when I heard a snippet of him talking on the television that I knew who it was.

Armsmaster had taken my call. Tomorrow, I was meeting Armsmaster.

I threw up before showering that night. Giddiness and utter terror didn't mix well.

End Transmission

Mundovore · Oct 18, 2016

Begin Transmission: Teraport 1.6

The person in the front porch was a mass of a man, who waited stiffly outside the front door about half a minute before politely knocking at one o'clock. I opened the door to speak with him, keeping the glass door in front of it closed. A thick wave of cologne was dragged through the window-screen along with the chill winter air.

"You're with the PRT?" I asked. The PRT agent wouldn't introduce themselves as such, in case they were talking to the wrong person.

He nodded, and gestured out to the van parked in front of the yard. "If you'd like, we can get going.

"I'd like to," I said. "But I'd like to see your badge first."

He held it out for me. I squinted to read the metal-embossed card by the silver badge.

"Peter Bridges?" The man gave an affirmative nod. "Right, I'll be right back. I need to check something before I'm ready to go."

The door clapped shut as I pulled out my phone and dialed the PRT office from last night.

"Protectorate East-Northeast, how can I help you?" A man with a tired voice was on the line this time.

"I called last night to arrange a meeting with a PRT representative." My voice grated through the 'broken' microphone. "I was told I'd be picked up by an unmarked PRT car. Can I know the name of the person driving that car?"

There was a brief sputter of mumbling and shuffling from the other line. "Uhm... one second. I need to make sure I'm allowed to tell you that."

"Is the driver named Peter Bridges?"

Quiet, then a response. "...That's correct."

Satisfied for the time being, I dropped the call and went to get my things.

I was dropped off in the upper basement floor of the parking lot, and was told that I was to meet Armsmaster in one of the basement level meeting rooms. The Brockton Bay public library had been built when the city had been much smaller, so most of the lot it was built on had ended up being used for the library, without much need for a parking lot. To fulfill parking needs, a two-floor underground parking structure had been built underneath the library, and the basement had been expanded along with it. The upper floors had a very open plan, with ceiling-high windows, and the second and third floors having balconies over the first. Glass, tile, and smooth plaster. The basement, though, was built by an architect who seemed to have been taught as a child that all people were actually hobbits. The ceiling was much lower, and the shelves were close enough together that you could quite nearly touch either bookshelf with your elbow when you stood between the shelves. Everything save for the white-carpeted floor was built of solid, pleasant-smelling wood, but I had the distinct impression that I was about to encounter a bookish minotaur every time I turned a corner.

As I turned into the alcove the meeting room was nestled in, the impression grew especially strong. The ceiling in front of the room seemed to open up, an illusion created by the lack of shelves. There were two windows on either side of the door: one had been covered up by generic black construction paper, the other by a laminated poster. 'READ' it commanded, over an image of Legend posing over a cityscape. The door had a 'reserved' sign on it, but the had closed at noon, since it was a Sunday.

Opening and closing the door melted away like it had never happened: one of those moments of lost time where you know exactly what happened, but not what you were thinking or why you chose to do it. The room smelt of polish, grease, and wood. A large rectangular table was in the middle of the room, cheap new plastic contrasting painfully with the worn wooden walls. There was a horizontal slit of a window at the top left of the room that filtered natural light down into the room, which was cast down upon one half of the man standing near the other half of the table. He wore power armor, a shade of blue so deep that it almost seemed black, with the details in a silvery metal. A matching polearm was slung over his back. His visor revealed a short and well-trimmed beard, but the different colors of light on either side of him made the scene surreal..

"I'm Armsmaster, Protectorate ENE. I'm glad that you came to us to deal with your problem instead of doing anything drastic. Could I get a name?" Armsmaster—a childhood hero—smiled gently and gestured to a chair.

There was a lower chance of someone listening in while I was in person rather than over the phone. I still decided to lead with only my first name, though.

"Taylor."

It wasn't the only chair in the room. There were five chairs. One near Armsmaster, the one he directed me to, and three others randomly distributed across the table from him. There were more chairs in the room, stacked in a corner, next to which a large duffel bag and toolbox sat. The chairs were supposed to be stacked in the corner there when the meeting room was done being in use. So said the sign above the chairs, in any case.

Why were there so many chairs, then?

"Please, have a seat, Taylor." It was difficult to read his expression through the visor, but he was still smiling.

I pulled a breath into my body as it kicked and screamed to escape, and sat down as calmly as I could. Armsmaster had talked with other people in this very room. He had a plan. I had no idea what the plan was. I couldn't trust anybody. Had I been wrong to trust the PRT?

All good logic said that I had probably made the right choice. The existence of a plan did not necessarily mean the plan was directed against me. Yet not all logic was good in the world of capes. Things didn't add up, all of the time. Nothing was normal.

It was a reminder that not all was as it seemed. Armsmaster was not my friend. He was the good cop to Lisa's bad cop. They weren't in it for free. They wanted something out of their time, something out of their effort, and something out of their help.

"Where would you like to start?"

"Where should I start?"

Armsmaster paused before responding. "Personally, I'd prefer if you started with whatever you thought was most dangerous. You did want us to watch your house."

"Lisa. She was the girl, at the library yesterday." I inspected the speckled plastic table. It was smooth and cold to touch. "She knows who I am. Where I live. She knows I can Tinker. She says she has a boss. A sponsor, who wants to hire me. She says she's a supervillain, but not really, because she's hired to interfere with other villains. She said that in order to succeed, I need a backer. I get the feeling that in her plan, I was supposed to accept her offer. I'm not sure what will happen when I don't. I wanted the PRT to give me protection. Just in case."

"While the name is new, I got most of that from your call." Armsmaster sat down across from me. The chair looked like it could barely support him. "Could I know about what time you left, as well as color and type of car you drove away in? We'd like to search through some camera footage, and see if we can track this 'Lisa' back to where she came from. We'll get back in touch with you later to confirm she's the one who approached you."

"I got home sometime around four. I think it took about twenty-five minutes to get home, with the route we took, so probably around three-thirty. The front entrance. The first car was a Subaru of some kind. Grey. Second was a red SUV."

"Did she say anything about about being in a team, with other villains?"

"Yeah. Undersiders."

"Okay. I—" Armsmaster took a short pause. It seemed scripted. "I want you to know that I know this must be very hard for you. Very few capes come to the PRT when they run into trouble, and you're already part of a brave minority. Please, let me know if you have any questions."

"Why are you trusting me?"

Armsmaster's mouth opened, but paused. I pressed further, before he could speak.

"All you have is my word. You don't know that anything I've said is true. You don't know that I'm a Tinker. You haven't asked my name yet. You have nothing to operate on but my words. By all rights, you shouldn't be trusting me."

"...It's a fair question. Do you know who Wire Jack is?"

The name rung a bell, barely. "Didn't he kill some villain? A long time ago?"

Armsmaster nodded. "Wire Jack took down King, the leader of the Slaughterhouse. Back when they were still called the Nine. He's mostly known for that, but he's a very powerful and very expensive rogue cape that the PRT has an exclusive contract with. He notified us that a Tinker had triggered in the Brockton Bay area this Friday at 3:47 PM, which seemed to correspond with when you said you had gotten your powers."

Great. That meant the Protectorate were on the lookout for me starting on day one. It bade poorly for my chances of avoiding Lisa's backer if he was able to get to me before the Protectorate did, even though the Protectorate had to have been looking since the very moment I gained my powers. I ventured for more information.

"How can you be sure that I'm not lying about Lisa, despite telling the truth about being a Tinker?"

"We have a policy of taking new capes at their word when they come to us for help. New capes can be in a lot of danger, and we increase the likelihood that new capes make it past their first year if we can respond with promptness, not suspicion." The reflection of the room's overhead light slid across Armsmaster's visor like a drop of water as he tilted his head. "Besides. Given what I've been learning of you so far, you seem like you're too competent to meet with people who you were trying to trick."

I nodded. The table was quiet for a while.

"If you need something to drink, there's a cooler under the table," said Armsmaster.

"I think I'm fine, thank you." My throat was dry, but I didn't want to get in the habit of accepting drinks from people who had power over me. "Could I ask another question?"

"Please do."

"How do Tinkers usually get off the ground? Build things?"

"They don't, usually." Armsmaster grimaced. "Some are like Squealer: the vehicle Tinker that works for the Merchants. They just spend their entire life scrounging for garbage, building trash out of trash."

"What about the ones that do?"

Armsmaster stood and walked over to the duffel bag in the room, rummaging through it. Then, he tossed a sheaf of paper onto the table. "They build things like this."

I frowned. Misdirection. He was showing me what a Tinker with resources could do, and then was going to offer me those resources. I took the papers anyway, but stopped at the first page.

Was this a joke?

"This thing is useless."

"Is it, now?"

"It's a planned molecule, but it looks like someone just took a bunch of different fire suppressants and stuck them together, then made it look like it would decay into them at heat. But the whole thing is unstable. It'd explode on contact with the air."

"It does. That's my best guess at the chemical makeup of containment foam."

I blinked at him, and reexamined the document. "...I'm fairly sure that containment foam doesn't explode violently on contact to air. Also, containment foam does so many different things. While it's clearly homogenous, it couldn't be a single molecule."

"It does explode. Only the first layer, though. Layers under it expand rapidly after decaying into a different compound. The way it expands and grabs hold of itself forms a solution of the base molecule dissolved into a soup of over two dozen different compounds that I couldn't even begin to describe. I've spent over four years studying containment foam in my free time. It's fascinating. Between everything it can decay into, and everything the various results of it can and will bond into, I've identified over seventy different and completely planned designed molecules in containment foam." Armsmaster leaned over and traced his fingers across a segment of the diagram. "It's beautiful."

What? Planned? No. No, no, no. I refused to accept that anything like this could ever be anything more than random guesswork. It was madness. Chaos. There was no consistency to it, nobody could ever design a molecule with such engineered insanity as to make something like this useful.

I opened my mind to it. I tried to identify patterns, and found none. I found similarities, and possibilities. Like taking apart a clock and then throwing it in a blender, I saw all the pieces that could just almost be used to make something useful. I could see the potential for an antiseptic, but that would involve the molecule changing itself in ways that it shouldn't. At least four different types of fire suppressant. Shock padding. Bungee tether. I saw the possibility for it to do everything I knew containment foam did, and more. Nobody could put this together and simply know that this would do what it was meant to, though. One would have to learn how it changed when it was under the conditions to decay. To explode, to expand, to change in the ways it did. It should have required eighty years of testing to reach this. Eight hundred years, maybe. I still couldn't figure it out. It was cheating.

Cheating. Wasn't that what all Tinkers did? They skipped the necessary steps needed to know something, to understand something, and built something before we should have known that it was possible. Why did this frustrate me like it did? When I envisioned something, I saw all the steps, all the things I needed to know to reach that point. It must be the same way for other Tinkers. And Dragon was the strongest Tinker, so it made sense that she would have the most unreasonable designs, the most impossible to guess. The molecule would work. Probably. Maybe. There was a possibility Armsmaster wasn't describing the molecule correctly, hadn't put it together right. That would make sense.

Was this a test? To see if I'd see that it didn't work? To see if I'd see why it didn't work? I turned the page and examined the new diagram. It was quite obviously supposed to be a circuit of some kind, but something wasn't right. Instead of lines, there were paths of blocks printed on a grid, roughly depicted in three dimensions. A couple of following pages showed various cross sections, layers, and angles of the object.

"What material is this supposed to be made of?"

"It's silicon, mostly."

"...And what's the scale?"

"Each block represents a single atom. The long grey blocks are a nonconductive carbon macromolecule."

"No," I chuckled, "No, no way. That'd never work."

"Oh?"

Did he really think I was that stupid? "At that scale, the electrons would tunnel through rather than follow the circuit. It's why there's a lower limit to the size of electronics, and it's why this would never, ever work."

"And what if I told you that this is the toggle for a device that locally inhibits aspects of tunneling behavior?" Armsmaster's smile grew at the wrong words in the sentence. He was gloating.

"Then it'd be recursive." I rested a hand against my temple, silencing the parts of me that wanted to scream at the man for looking so smug. The idea of a device that could inhibit quantum tunneling was an immensely tempting prospect for miniaturization, if it weren't for the fact that as far as electronics go, tunneling is a necessary phenomenon for building certain ternary gates. How small could the localized inhibitive effect be? "How do you inhibit quantum tunneling? At all? I don't think that's possible."

"Most Tinkers can't explain their tech to each other. It usually becomes clear that someone is a Tinker after a few minutes of watching them being upset about something not work in the way they're used to."

Oh. He'd played me. It wasn't a particularly impressive play, as I'd already volunteered the information that I was a Tinker, but it would be a pretty effective trick if I hadn't actually been one.

"I figured you'd wanted to see something I had designed to verify that I was a Tinker, not to have me judge other people's designs."

"Oh, of course not. Most Tinkers don't have anything designed within the first few days of triggering. Many don't design things before they build them at all. Some of the more powerful Tinkers might have one or two things done on their first night, but that's quite rare."

I suppressed the thrill of joy that threatened to burst from my chest at the idea that I was a 'powerful' Tinker. Papers and designs meant nothing. He knew I had designs, my notebook wasn't subtle at all. He was buttering me up to try to get me on his side, to make me think I had agency in this situation. A bargaining tool. I did have a bargaining tool, but I was pretty sure that it wasn't my designs so much as the fact that I could make a very, very loud ruckus if the PRT or Protectorate didn't make good on their obligations as parahuman law enforcement to keep me safe.

So why was he trying to ply me like that? Making me think that I was powerful didn't benefit him. He presumably wanted me to join in with the Protectorate, but making me feel powerful was counterintuitive to those ends. He would want me to feel like I was weak, that I needed the Protectorate.

There were more pages. I ignored them, and slid the packet back to him. If he had planned on it being mostly nonsense to me, I didn't feel obligated to make a fool of myself by looking through the rest of the papers.

"...If you don't have any other questions, do you want to talk about the people who you've been having problems with? Your bullies? "

Oh. Right. Armsmaster said that he'd try to help with that.

"I need someone that can report them to the police, and witness them being horrible. I'd… if you can, I'd like it if you could try to keep me uninvolved. I don't want them in my life anymore."

Armsmaster nodded. "You still might be called in as a witness."

"I'd prefer not to be."

"It might be difficult to do without that."

"It won't. Not if you can take proper video."

"Proper video won't change the fact that a jury might not unanimously agree on the conviction of a criminal whose victim won't appear in court."

"I really do think you won't need me. If you absolutely do, I'll go." At the point it reaches court, my dad would have probably heard of it already, so I would have probably already had to explain to him what they did to me. It was fine if it turned out that way. It wouldn't though.

"Alright. We'll see what we can do. Can we start with names and physical descriptions?"

"Emma Barnes has red hair, does modeling. You won't have problems finding her. Sophia Hess is her henchwoman. Sophia doesn't do much. She's a recluse, dark skin. Very athletic, but she doesn't do any sports."

"Right. That's probably everything we need to know. We should get to talking about your options for—"

"You didn't even write anything down."

Armsmaster smiled again, and tapped his helmet. "I've been recording the conversation."

That made sense. I was recording the conversation, too, although I was probably out of space on the phone by this point. The burner didn't exactly have a very spacious memory card. I had set it up to record over the older parts of a recording, though, and would stop the recording if anything dangerous or useful was said. It was interesting that he had his recording storage in his helmet rather than his chestpiece or backplate, though. Perhaps he was referring to where the recording happened as opposed to where it was stored?

"...As I was saying. We should talk about options for dealing with your problems."

I nodded him ahead.

"The first option is what you suggested—we can put a PRT watch over your house. The PRT would usually prefer not to do that, as maintaining a constant look out over one house is a significant drain of resources. Especially with the level of scrutiny the PRT usually prefers to employ."

"That's not a problem," I said. "I will only need help with this problem temporarily. I have a solution in mind."

"...I see." Armsmaster crossed his arms. "A lot of Tinkers get in a lot of trouble by trusting their first invention too much. You should be careful."

"I will be." I began to stand up, but Armsmaster held out his hand, coaxing me back into my chair.

"Wait, please. There are other options you might want to consider." Armsmaster leaned against the table, and it creaked in response. "I'm sure you've already thought of this, but I'd like to pitch it to you. You could join the Wards program. You'd get a different level of protection that would be all around more secure. You'd also get access to support and mentoring from Protectorate capes and Tinkers, and materials of a much finer quality than you'd normally be able to access. I made my way through the Wards when I was a kid. It's better, for Tinkers especially, than any alternative I can think of. Please, I want you to seriously consider this."

"I have." My words caught in my mouth for a moment. "I have, and I'm not sure yet. I'm considering it. It's… a big chance. I'm just not sure that I want to stay with the Protectorate forever, and once you've joined, leaving quietly isn't much of an option. I'm very, very tempted. But I'm not decided."

"That's good." Armsmaster looked something other than relieved. His shoulders moved back, and his posture straightened more than it should have. Pride? Triumph? Appraisal? "I hope that we'll see you in our number. There are still a couple of other options, though."

I nodded him forward again, and he continued.

"We could also put you in Witness Protection. It's probably the most that—"

"No." I shook my head. "Not possible at this stage. And I'd probably join the Wards before going that far."

"Alright, then. The only other option I really have to give you is that you could stay in Protectorate Headquarters until we're certain that the people who found you are taken care of. The PRT would prefer to avoid expending resources on a full-time lookout over your home. We'd prefer it if you took this option over any other, honestly. It keeps you furthest from harm and lets us dedicate the most resources to solving your problem."

Liar. I didn't buy that. Obviously, the option they most wanted me to take was the second. A new Ward had direct benefits for them both immediately and in the long term, plus dozens of other more subtle benefits for them all along the way. Plus, option two implicitly had the advantages of option four.

"I can't take that option for similar reasons to the Witness Protection program. I want a PRT watch on my house, and only so much that if I'm taken, you'll know. I don't expect the PRT to be capable of preventing capes from abducting me. I do expect that the capes who might want to abduct me wouldn't do it if they knew the PRT was watching, though."

"...Alright. If you're confident that's what you want."

I wasn't. But I was confident that if I decided I wanted to become a Ward, they'd make it as painless a procedure as possible. For now, though, I just wanted to feel less unsafe at night.

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure. Can I ask a question, though?"

"Of course."

"How do Tinkers really get off the ground? Not what they build when they do, but how do they move up?"

Armsmaster sighed. "I wish there was a good answer. It's different for every Tinker. Most Tinkers never meet their full potential: they're always developing something better. Some can build incredible things from trash, or can't build things more useful even with better equipment. In general, though, most Tinkers that become big news join a team of some kind. The Protectorate, usually, but many of the more influential villain organizations employ Tinkers to significant success. There are a few independent teams of rogue Tinkers, but they tend to be very difficult to join or associate with. Very secretive, and only accepting of Tinkers who have already done something of note. The best answer I can think of is still that 'most don't.' Honestly. Joining the Wards is your best bet."

Like much of what I'd discovered online, Armsmaster had told me a lot while still being utterly unhelpful. No new information was gained.

"You can ask a Ward yourself, if you'd like."

"Oh?"

"Kid Win is the Ward's own novice Tinker. He'll probably be able to tell you more about what it's like than I can. I've been in the game a while, and joining the Wards was an easy choice when I was younger. He might be able to talk to you on a more relatable level."

"I'll… keep that in mind, then."

"No need to. He's in the building, if you want to talk to him."

Did that account for the extra chairs? Even if I assumed both of his parents were here, that was only three. Maybe the fourth chair was for the PRT agent who brought me here. That didn't make sense, though: if you had a hero and a single PRT agent to protect two parents and a Ward, the number of people who the authorities were obligated to protect would outnumber the people charged with protecting them. They wouldn't be able to ride herd and keep watch while I was being escorted. Perhaps if there was only a single parent, and a second PRT agent? I had already seen two PRT agents, though, and Kid Win wasn't with either. I didn't expect that they'd leave a Ward on their own when a new cape was in the area, though, so that seemed to suggest that there was a third PRT agent. So, three PRT agents, Kid Win, and no parents? It gave me a bit of comfort if there really were that many, or more, PRT agents in the area. It also gave me a bit of hope that being a Ward would involve less parental intervention than I thought it would.

Was I meant to notice that? I couldn't discount the possibility, but didn't deem it likely.

"We were considering using Kid Win's civilian identity to contact you," said Armsmaster. "It's much less suspicious when a boy around your age visits, as opposed to a different adult every time."

That more or less excluded his parents from having been present. That was a tremendous and stupid risk to take. "Why aren't you worried about his identity being made public?"

"Kid Win was the one who came up with the idea. He's been excited to meet another Tinker, and is aware of the risk involved."

More flattery. It also didn't answer my question. "Awareness of the risk doesn't explain your willingness to allow him to take it."

"I think it does. The legitimacy of his willingness to take the risk depends on his awareness of the risks."

"He's your subordinate. You can tell him to do it if he doesn't want to, and you can tell him not to do it even if he does."

"Kid Win is allowed to choose his own risks. Being a contact for a new Tinker is likely safer than the work he does patrolling day to day. Being a Ward isn't a safe—" Two sharp retorts from outside interrupted him. The gunshots were loud and painful through the barely-open window, followed quickly by a third and the squealing of a car.

Armsmaster moved. The action was not supernatural in speed, but was unreal in fluidity. He displaced the table, sending it to the side of the room, and stood tall in a way that interposed himself between me and the window.

Armsmaster muttered into his helmet, and I felt ashamed for not quite hearing what he said, so I opened my ears. The momentary confusion lapsed into a terrible and unfathomable calm that sank into my limbs and my pounding heart. I found myself on my feet with my ears strained to listen past the shock of the moment. I heard footsteps pounding into the grass outside, close outside, rapid and rhythmic. They washed into existence, paused, then reappeared before fading in an instant.

"Libretti, get me more info." I could only barely hear Armsmaster. He gestured quickly yet calmly for me to follow him to the exit, bringing his halberd into his hands. I followed, like an idiot with no other options.

Humiliating.

All knowledge is worthless without capital. So I had nothing. While I could have already been gone, disappeared to the wind, I just sat there, stood there in a different meeting room with no windows while a PRT guard watched the door. Armsmaster investigated while I could have already searched the entirety of the world.

A four-tap knock broke the silence. Armsmaster slid into the room quietly. What little of his face I could see was flat, blank, and neutral.

"Tell me more about Emma." His tone was harsher.

I was caught off guard, and couldn't say anything for a second. In a swell of need to say something rather than nothing, I said the first things that came to mind.

"She's duplicitous, and she throws around her influence. She—"

"Do you know her father's name?"

"Uh… Yeah. I think so." I took a second to regain my composure. "He's a lawyer. I think his name is Alan. With one l, I think."

"How did you meet Emma?"

"...She used to be my friend."

"What changed?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean?"

"She was just different after middle school. Just different. She met Sophia, I guess."

"I see." Armsmaster turned to leave. He beckoned for me to follow. "We're taking you home. Let us know if you change your mind about anything."

I was walked up to the first floor, and along the lawn to a car waiting on the street. It became immediately clear that was not why they took me along that route.

Because near the window-slit of our basement room, there was a bloodstain, a PRT officer, and two policemen.

And while I was certain that it could never be, I swore that the body was that of Emma Barnes.

End Transmission

Mundovore · Dec 12, 2016

Begin Transmission: Interlude 1
Coil

Wire Jack's room was black, and flat. A plain black cube with a plain black cot in the corner. On the cot was Jack, a shriveled man with limbs like cobwebs and the twisted smile of a mite nestled into the scalp of humanity. He was a prisoner of Cauldron, but also a lieutenant, self-isolated. Without flinching, Coil walked through the Door to a place sequestered realties away from the nearest heartbeat. There was an electric snap as the Door snapped shut behind him.

"Jack."

"Calvert, my…" Jack mimed counting on his fingers. "…Third least-favorite noisemaker. Congratulations on your success with our latest Tinker! Why didn't you kill her?"

"The Tinker was never in any danger." Coil knew without a doubt that he was telling Jack something he already knew—Jack always took great care to look puzzled when he knew exactly what was going on.

Jack feigned shock, then cackled. "That's true, but I wasn't talking about her. That Thinker of yours, I'd much rather you'd have kept her dead."

"Tattletale is an invaluable asset." Coil measured his speech, but was direct. He knew that Jack appreciated directness. "I did not appreciate your meddling with her."

"Quite the asset!" Jack sniffed, stretching himself across the cot. "She does nothing but make treacherous noise. Much too loud to parse. You shouldn't have to torture someone to death to get useful noises from them. Perhaps you should do it again… but just one more time. No repeats. No do-overs. It would be a tremendous relief for you."

"You're dodging me, Jack."

"Oh, please. I can't avoid anything." Jack's head lolled to the side as he grinned his spider's grin. "If only I could."

"Why did you prevent me from taking the Tinker? Can you help me get her back?" Coil had experience with figures like Jack. Jack was like Accord, but different. It required a different type of manipulation, the manipulation of total honesty. When a Thinker had all the cards on their table, it was best to play them straight.

"Why I would, but there's nothing to get back!" Jack chuckled mirthlessly. "It seems you've done your job quite admirably. Put her right on track to be on excellent terms with Protectorate. She will likely work well with them. Might join them. By extension, she works well with Cauldron. The job is done."

"You know that wasn't my plan. She would have been more easy to control if I had hired her. We would've benefitted much more."

"You would have benefitted," Jack corrected. "Cauldron would have been in more or less the same position. Cauldron wants a favorable say, and wants her to come as close as she can to fulfilling her considerable full potential. I want her dead—she's incredibly loud. We both lost. Honestly, I'm the one making the real sacrifice, here."

"I would have been able to keep her safer if she was under my employ. You—Cauldron, rather, had no reason to spoil my acquisition of the Tinker. At least explain the reasoning."

"Now that's easy. You can keep the little Tinker safe regardless of whether or not you choose to 'hire' her, it's just that you won't directly benefit if you don't control her. You see, though, you'd be a lot more likely to die trying to manipulate the Tinker than you'll be if you just stick to being her guardian angel. Cauldron doesn't want you to die, and I know that, and they know that I know that, so I'm stuck saving your sorry ass by helping your Thinker. You wouldn't have been willing to listen to me if I had simply told you. I doubt you're going to listen to me now. It merely would have been a consolation prize if you had decided to leave her dead in the process."

"And considering I want you dead, I really do lose quite a bit from this deal." Jack's grin widened and tightened. "Unless you'd like to kill that Tattletale for me, anyways? She's really going to wind up being a problem for you if we don't do something about her. I don't want to end up having to interfere for you again. In fact, I'd rather like it if you made this your last interaction with me for some time. You're a very noisy individual who I'd like to spend as little time with as possible."

"I don't want to leave yet." Coil crossed his arms. "You know as well as I do that supplying a Tinker early on could be worth the risk. I've already set up a lab. It's been months of work, and I'm not sure—"

"Those months of work were mine!" A furious snarl broke across Jack's face, but in an instant it subsided to a mere grimace. "Making godlings isn't something I do for fun. It's only my job."

"I'm sorry." Coil wasn't sorry, but he did regret his phrasing. He waited a few moments before speaking again. "Do you have advice for me?"

"It's your turn." Jack sighed, and rubbed at his forehead. "You try playing guardian angel for once, and see how it feels. Cauldron cares for the girl more than it cares about you or your little project, so don't let them have to choose. Don't make her feel trapped or hemmed in, let her choose what to do. If you value your sorry life, that is. Now just… let me sleep."

Coil nodded, then cut the timeline. There was no reason to press past the progress he had made.

In the other timeline, Coil had been going over various transcripts of the instances where he had interrogated Tattletale. Like always, Wire Jack's meddling had been subtle like a brick through a window. He predicted the possibility, but the possibility fell to the wayside. The discrepancies were obvious, but their sources were inexplicable. In particular, Tattletale had known how to frame her interactions within his power so that by the time she had meddled, it was too late for him to do anything. It wasn't outside of the scope of her ability to do so, but to do so several times in quick succession and no reasonable time to prepare was absurd.

It was infuriating. Wire Jack's power was the elegance of the stolen cattle with brooms tied to their tails, such that they erased their own tracks. The effect was obvious, but the execution was perfect. What had Jack stolen from him? From Tattletale? To the same, what had he given? It was, by design, unknowable to all those who would benefit most from knowing it.

Coil had enough pieces to know that Jack's interference had been limited to at most Tattletale and himself, and that the worst-case scenario was simply that Jack had given Tattletale an opening to wedge herself into some opening in his finances, or advanced some other plan of hers. For that, he could simply request a brief period of more thorough attention from the Number Man, compounded by more intense interrogations for the foreseeable future.

The timeline was split. One half moved to return to his home as Thomas Calvert—there was no reason to be in one place when he could be in two—the other continued to revise plans. The plan had been broken, but Plan A was never the plan you ran with in the end.

Taylor, the Tinker, had been put into a state of danger. The danger was twofold: psychological, from her old friend Emma, and physical, from the brute Sophia. These dangers were played against her over a long period of time by the movements of Wire Jack, ensuring that her trigger would be as favorable and as potent as possible. The Tinker would be desperate not only for materials to start her Tinkering, but also for safety.

By providing those things, he would ensure a tense but firm loyalty, that could be enforced through less-than-pleasant means if necessary. Getting a shot at an early-stage Tinker was the amazing business for most villains, with little muss or fuss. Yet Wire Jack had stopped him because that, supposedly, would have gotten him killed. Now, the Tinker was still threatened by the two bullies, and still intimidated by him and his Undersiders, but was also in contact with the Protectorate and wary of further manipulation rather than amenable to his protection.

But if he was willing to revert to the contingencies, nearly everything worked perfectly. All the reports he had extracted from Tattletale seemed to suggest that Grue was seen by the Tinker as a more neutral party. So Grue would break from the Undersiders, and the Undersiders would be made the new enemy. In doing so, he would have to remove the old enemy—they were more difficult to control. The plan fell together as if it had already been assembled. After he eliminated Taylor's old enemy, all he'd have to do was make certain that the PRT wouldn't be able to establish ideal relations with her for a period of time. After that, all he'd have to do was wait. Either he would become a desirable ally, or his appointment to Director of the PRT would create a connection between him and better relations with the PRT, further cementing his position.

So Coil settled back into his chair, and waited. As long as he kept his head on his shoulders, and thought everything through well enough, then everything would go according to plan.

Maxim 17: The longer everything goes according to plan, the bigger the impending disaster.
End Transmission

Mundovore · May 19, 2017

Maximally Effective
Maxim 66: Necessity is the mother of deception.

Begin Transmission: Connections 2.1

"Hey, Taylor. You doing okay?" It was my dad, peeking around the corner of the basement stairwell.

"Yeah." My voice rasped a bit. I glared at my water glass, still empty from last night. I'd have to refill it. That's something that in a fair world, should have been done for me. Irritating. Still, it was important to stay hydrated.

"Okay, that's good. How's the setup treating you?"

The 'setup' was the new computer that had arrived yesterday. Apparently, he'd been planning to get a computer for a matter of months. He'd ordered it the week before—the Monday before everything went mad. The arrival of the computer gave my dad an excuse to take a day off of work. He tried to make it seem like he wasn't doing it for me, but did a very poor job if it. We spent the whole morning setting it up, and afterwards, we watched some movie together. Something he rented, a cape movie. I used to like those, but it felt a little empty, this time. Still, it helped to see again how much my father cared for me.

"It's really nice. Do you need it back, or something?" Even though I was clearly going to get more use out of it, it wasn't my computer.

"I'm just checking in. I'll check my email at work, and I'll check it again after dinner."

He didn't use it for much aside from his email. It's not that he wasn't tech-savvy—he was fairly competent, as far as I knew—it was just that he didn't have much interest.

"…You're still sure that you don't want to go to the funeral?"

I bit down a spark of irritation. He didn't know anything.

"No, I'm sure." It wasn't difficult to fake emotion, because all I had to do was reorient it. I did feel sadness for Emma's death, but not for the Emma who died. I felt sadness for the Emma who died between junior high and Winslow, not whoever it was who took a bullet outside the Brockton Bay Public Library. Though that was probably the wrong way of thinking about it—the old Emma I knew still existed somewhere in there, right? So I gave my dad the half-truth I'd used a couple of times already. "I just want space from all of it."

"Right." A nod. He was worried for me. "Right. Give me a holler if you need anything."

"Okay."

A wan smile, and he went back up the stairs. I gave a sigh with my best stretch—highly necessary, given the stiffness of the chair I had purloined from the dining table—and reviewed my situation. There was a lot that I could stand to do with a computer. Despite the fact that binary was disgustingly ineffective compared to ternary, access to the internet from my own home was, on its own, a significant extension of my reach.

Of course, the internet was not safe. The only way to account for unknown parahuman powers was to assume that there was a means for every motive, and there was certainly a motive to monitor the internet (or, anything, for that matter). So, I was left with a dilemma: there was no way that I could ever have any certainty of my security or privacy, no matter how much effort I put into keeping my computer secure. If I was to assume I was always in danger, I would be totally paralyzed by a fear I could never be sure of. Yet still, action would leave me vulnerable to a reaction I could not prevent.

It was clear that I could not let fear barricade my progress, but I certainly let it guide me. I took significant measures to protect myself, but moderated my efforts. While the speed I put together my security with might have seemed abnormal, the changes I made both to the software and hardware were all common-sense and obvious steps that even someone without the mind of a Tinker could jump to, given sufficient paranoia. If they kept my internet activity secure and anonymous, then all was well, but if they failed, the nature of my changes wouldn't stand out as Tinker-made. Or at least, so I hoped.

Which brought me to now: twelve past nine, Tuesday morning, a device as secure as I could achieve, and three projects to consider and commit to encoded notes.

The first project was research and resource oriented—I needed an income stream. It obviously took the greatest priority, but it was unhealthy to spiral in on a single project. Maintaining multiple goals would allow me to take a break from a project and find fresh perspective.

Project two was to find, make, and/or secure a space to begin my Tinkering in. I couldn't Tinker anything real in the open. Leaving the house was a worrying prospect, so it seemed likely I'd have to settle with somewhere in the house.

Project three was my preliminary work in using the relative chisel-and-stone that was binary processing to self-improve. Machine learning was available to me, and though I wouldn't be able to make anything with a semblance of true intelligence I could at least make… something. What would I do first? I could design a learning program that would teach itself to code better, which was the obvious long-term plan. A machine could do the broad strokes of whatever I needed both faster and better than I could, and I could put in the fine touches later if extra finesse was required. I'd have to completely hack it together, though—ternary was obvious and easy for me to code in. Translating the concept to binary, it might take days to get anything useful set up.

The third project was more to satisfy my itch, the urge to Tinker, than anything else. Much more satisfying than assembling and disassembling that dumb clock, though I'm sure it didn't mind. Probably added several years to the stupid thing's lifespan.

I head the stairs down to the basement creak slightly. I checked the time—nine twenty-two. It was probably my dad coming down to say goodbye before heading away for work. Perhaps I'd go refill my water, and meet him halfway. I reached for my glass, and turned towards the stairs to stand.

Sophia was peering around the corner of the stairwell. She grimaced and vanished silently around the corner.

The footsteps continued down the stairs, reached the basement landing, and turned. They continued at a measured pace until my dad peered out from the stairwell.

"Hey—" He cut himself off. "Are you okay?"

"Huh?" My heart was racing. "Oh, uh, yeah. Yeah, I think I'm okay."

"…You sure? You're pale as a sheet."

"It's nothing." It wasn't nothing, I saw her! Where did she go? Was I seeing things? I'd gone to bed late and gotten up early, but six hours of sleep should have been plenty. Was I crazy? No, no, no. I needed to stay calm. I could work it out. I needed to trust my senses. Sophia had been there, or else something or someone sufficiently similar.

My dad was still standing in front of me. There was no reason to worry him. I cleared my throat.

"Just startled me a bit, that's all. Not your fault, I wasn't paying attention."

"Mm. I know how that is." My dad replied. "Just the other day, I was walking into work and Bill turned the corner right before I did. Scared me half to death."

"That where you're headed now? Off to work?"

"Well, I will be, in just a little." He jerked his head to the side and up. Towards the front door? "Someone's up at the door looking for you, though. Kid about your age, name's Chris. Said he had a winter project to do with you or something, you know him from school? Short guy, brown hair?"

I didn't know anyone named Chris with brown hair. I definitely didn't have any group projects from school for winter break. I itched at my temple to help center my thoughts. If he was someone I didn't know who was pretending to know me, it was involved with cape business. Did I know a cape with brown hair who was short, and about my age? Armsmaster had said the PRT wanted to use Kid Win's civilian identity to contact me—such a stupid idea—but I did know that Kid Win had brown hair.

If I were Kid Win, or someone managing him, what would I tell him to say in order to drop hints? "Did he say anything about the library?"

"Uh, yeah. Something about him wanting to see if you could go to the library yesterday, but finding out it was closed. You want me to tell him you need some space?" He gave a conciliatory smile.

Right. So Kid Win was at the door looking for me, or at least, someone who wanted it to be glaringly obvious that they knew I had met with Armsmaster on Sunday.

"I'll come up to see him. I need to refill my water anyway."

"Gotcha. I have to be headed off to work, so can I trust you to keep everything together if I leave you here?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine."

I followed my dad up the stairs, and as I did, I checked above me. No Sophia hanging from the ceiling like a spy movie. No trace, in fact, that Sophia had ever been on the stairs. A part of my brain wanted more than ever for me to write off the event. It said to me that I had gotten only ninety minutes of sleep Sunday night. It said that my senses weren't in a position to be trusted.

But if I could not trust in my senses, then I might as well resign myself to nihilism. I resolved to get more sleep tonight, so that I wouldn't have cause to doubt my senses in the future, but also to take precautions to carry something to defend myself at all times. The pepper spray my father gave me would do wonders for my ease-of-being, and was something I could have at hand at all times.

I stepped out of the stairwell on the ground floor, and walked the few steps forward to the sink. My father had walked further ahead, turning right, towards the front door. I took the time to take out my flip phone and start my recording program, then put it in my pocket.

"Sorry to keep you waiting in the rain, Taylor's up and will be with you shortly." The words drifted around the corner. "Would you like to come in?"

"It's barely a drizzle. We'd love to come in, though." A husky woman's voice. I didn't remember my dad mentioning any woman at the door. I supposed a kid showing up without an adult would be suspicious, though.

"Thank you, Mr. Hebert!" A chipper boy's voice. It was chipper to the point of sounding fake, but only barely.

"Oh, no, don't thank me for common courtesy. And call me Danny, everybody does."

"I'm Mathilde," said the woman. "It's good to meet you."

I shut off the tap, and took a small sip before walking around to the front room. Each of the guests were vaguely recognizable, but for different reasons.

The boy was about the height of Kid Win, with brown hair about the shade of Kid Win. In every other way, he was perfectly nondescript and unlike Kid Win. His hair was well-maintained, but not especially striking, and he wore a white button-up shirt and jeans. On his back was an absolutely gargantuan bag that loomed up over his shoulders—it was on the upper end of what one could consider a school backpack rather than a hiking backpack.

In other words, he looked exactly like you'd expect a young superhero's secret identity to look. Refuge in audacity, I suppose.

"You're his mother?" My dad directed this at Mathilde.

"Just a friend of the family."

I had seen her outside the library as I left Sunday afternoon. Mathilde was a short and stocky woman dressed all in blue and black, head topped with a short and fiery blaze of red hair and a dark blue cap. There was a friendly swagger to her movement, a military relaxation and confidence to it. Her eyes shone out of her rough face like they'd been polished, and a smile crinkled into existence as I made eye contact.

My dad glanced at the clock nervously. "I really have to be getting off to work. Would it be okay if I left you here to figure out getting to the library? To work on your project, I suppose?" He was asking me more than them.

"That'd probably be fine. We can probably work here, now that we have a computer." I ran with the lie. I wasn't going to turn down free networking: if the Protectorate wanted to get in touch with me, I was going to hear them out.

"Right. Okay, I'm going to be off." He glanced at Mathilde. "Just ask Taylor if you need anything, okay? She's fine on her own, but I'll be back for lunch at around two." He didn't normally come home for lunch.

"Don't worry about it." Mathilde came to stand near Chris, who'd navigated his way into the house and into a chair. I waved him goodbye as my dad pulled on his coat, and he waved back to me as he shut the door.

Several seconds passed. As I my father's engine started outside, I turned to the sound of boots stepping towards me. A badge was presented.

"Mathilde Libretti. I'll be your primary PRT liaison."

Libretti was a name I recognized. "You were at the library."

"I was the commanding officer of the PRT team there, yes." She gestured at Chris. He looked much less chipper, now. Not unhappy, but certainly not beaming like he was. It was a mutual understanding, then: this was, to some degree, business. "This is Chris Bauer, but you'll have heard more about him operating as Kid Win. He'll be your Protectorate liaison."

"I was under the understanding that the Protectorate and the PRT shared the same infrastructure. Why a separate liaison for each?"

"We do. But there are a great deal of differences both in command chain and in day-to-day life. One representative from each means that you can get both the civilian and cape perspectives. Also, we're here for different reasons: Chris is here to talk to you about the Wards, about being a Tinker, and the like." In my peripheral vision, I noted Chris opening up his backpack, and checking through it. "I'm here to be his escort, and to bring you a gift from the PRT." She fished a cell phone out of one of her pockets, and held it out for me. I took it it cautiously—it was a fairly new model.

"You had concerns about being bugged, so we figured we'd get you something more secure. I was supposed to get it to you Sunday, but that didn't quite work out. It's got four days of prepaid minutes on it, so that should be plenty until you have something of your own, but if you ever need more minutes on it you can refill it at any store that does that sort of thing. That about sums it up, I think. I'll take a seat, so just let me know if you have any questions."

I stopped her before she could find somewhere to sit. "Are there any capes in Brockton Bay who can turn invisible, or teleport? Anything like that?"

"Not that I know of." She paused, and looked at me cautiously. "Why?"

I paused for a moment. Should I tell her about my seeing Sophia? It was fairly important that the PRT were willing to trust my judgement. If I was seen as unreliable, they'd be less willing to continue helping me, and less likely to trust my advice if I gained some sort of pertinent information. The real question was, then, if telling them I'd seen someone who to all appearances wasn't actually there would lead them to think I was unhinged or paranoid.

In most circles, I'd lean towards 'yes.' Cape circles were not most circles, though. I had no idea.

The complications didn't stop there, though. For instance, what if Sophia—or who, or whatever I had seen—killed me in my sleep?

What if 'Sophia' was invisible, and she was watching me consider this question?

What if my telling them about Sophia would lead to her killing me in my sleep? What if my telling them about Sophia would directly prevent her from doing so?

I needed to choose my words carefully. I needed to communicate that I may have seen something, so that the PRT would be better informed if I died or disappeared, and that the potential observing threat would be more wary of doing such things to me, but I also needed to maintain enough uncertainty in my statement that it wouldn't force any hands.

"I'm… it's probably nothing, actually. I thought I might have seen someone downstairs, but when I looked again there was nobody there. I haven't been sleeping well, so it might just be my eyes playing tricks on me." It was the least risky answer, and also had the benefit of being potentially true.

"I see." Libretti found the best recliner in the family room, then sat down heavily in it. "Well, I think the most important thing that you don't get too caught up with it. As you said, it could be your eyes playing tricks on you. No reason to let it cloud over your thoughts." She chuckled, then gave me a knowing glance from under the brim of her hat. "You never know, though. Let me know if you see anything else."

I was caught off guard by the effectiveness of her response. If the whole PRT was as savvy as she was, then I'd be a lot less inhibited by joining than I thought. I shouldn't assume that to be the case, though—in their shoes, I'd lead with my best foot forward.

"Shadow Stalker could kind of go invisible."

Chris caught me off guard with the comment. He was done sifting through his backpack, now, and was staring out the window with his hand on his chin. He paused for a bit, and the rain against the window filled the silence while I waited.

"Like, not actually invisible. But basically invisible. Basically impossible to see unless it was real sunny out, and even then you'd have to know what you were looking for. Looked like, you know, shadows. Weird lighting. If you hadn't seen or heard of it before, you could easily miss it. And she didn't operate during the day, usually, so she was generally pretty invisible."

"Wasn't she killed, though?" At least, that's what I'd read.

Chris shrugged. "Probably. We never found a body, but that fits the stories around. Can't think of anyone else who could go invisible, though."

I glanced to Libretti—she had settled down, head tilted as if she was perhaps working towards a nap. She had a hand resting inside her jacket, near a bulk which could have easily been a sidearm. I turned back to Chris.

He gestured at the nearest chair, and smiled.

"You should uh, sit down. We've probably got a lot to talk about."

End Transmission

Maximally Effective [Worm/Schlock Mercenary, Tinker!Taylor]

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