S.I. (original/SI)
- Thread starter DataPacRat
- Start date
- Status
65
DataPacRat
Truthseeker
- Location
- Niagara, Canada
Chapter Three: Mis-diagnose*
"One of the white matter tracts between the fusiform face area and the hippocampus appear to have been interrupted."
I rolled my eyes at Boomer. "I never did finish going through my human-brain colouring book."
"The individual subsections of the brain appear to be intact; it is the connection between them that appears to have been severed. A very small number of cells were affected - Bunny Joe's brain scan still appears to be within normal parameters. It is only in comparison to her previous scans, and those of other affected individuals for a similar variation, that any difference is detectable."
"So we have our fingerprint?"
"If you wish to call it that, yes."
"And does this interruption explain the... weirdness in their behaviour?"
"Unknown. It is plausible that this neural tract leads to an inability to recognize or remember changes in groups of people, but the data is insufficient to confirm or disprove that hypothesis."
"And the confabulation?"
"It is possible that that is the normal result of this form of memory disruption. Again, the data is insufficient-"
"-To confirm or disprove, I getcha. Okay, so if that's what's happening... are there other effects? I mean, would it affect their recognition of groups other than the bimbo harem?"
"Unknown."
"Hm... could there be some connection with why their politics focuses around their unions?"
"Unknown."
"Have you got any idea how that one particular connection happened to get severed in so many people?"
"Studies exist demonstrating that certain neural pathways express unique combinations of proteins and antigens, which can be used to target treatments. I have no information on whether this neural pathway has such an antigen signature."
"Something we can ask Clara to check the library on. Even assuming that's the case... what might have actually latched onto that signature?"
"Extrapolating from a few words in my database, I would posit a virus or organism could attach to the antigens in question, optionally followed by a drug targeting the virus or organism and killing both it and the neurons it was attached to."
"Okay - but Joe's been in Erie for three years, and just started exhibiting symptoms of the glitch, well, sometime between the last day and a week or so ago. Would your virus-or-whatever take that long to do its thing?"
"Possible, though that progression is uncommon."
"So... maybe she avoided getting infected at all, until just recently?"
"Possible."
"So what did she avoid doing for three years, that she just started doing, that includes a disease vector? Did she start drinking the wrong water? Walk too close to the bimbo zone?"
"Unknown."
"And - you're sure there's no sign of the interruption in my neural pathway?"
"Correct."
"Okay, then to add to my previous question - what did she start doing, since I was revived, that Minerva and I haven't done?"
"Unknown."
--
I rolled up front again, leading around the kitchen counter to see Bunny Joe. "You've got some signs of a possible infection," I said, entirely truthfully; though also somewhat deceitfully; though also in Joe's own best interests. "I need to ask a couple of epidemiological questions."
She looked up from her book. "Of course you do," she sighed. "Very well."
"Since my revival, have you begun doing anything that you have not done in the previous years you were in the city, which might have unknowingly exposed you to a disease; possibly started eating a new food, or drinking a beverage from a new source, or meeting a new person, or going to a new place; that /isn't/ a new thing /I/'ve also done?"
"Are you serious?"
"As can be."
"You really need to ask?"
"It's important."
"I mean - you don't already know?"
"I've been busy."
"'Furry orgy'."
"What?"
Joe sighed. "Sarah and I have entered into a sexual relationship. You were right there when she first propositioned me."
"... Oh. Right." I looked away from her, trying not to blush. "... I think that could fit the timeline. Is there anything else?"
"Other than being imprisoned, there is little I have done that I have not already done, or that you were not with me for."
"Alright. ... I'm not an epidemiologist, so I'm probably going to need to bring Denise and Clara in on this, and we might need to do a few tests to figure out how to cure it."
"Do you wish some of my blood now?"
"... I suppose the autodoc can draw it, we've got the fridge to store it, and it seems likely some useful tests could be run on it."
--
"Okay, Boomer; we've got something that seems to be some sort of STD, which has effects on the brain. How many things do you know of that fit that category?"
"I am not aware of any known pathogen which has the described neurological effect."
"I'm not asking about the effect, just for things transmitted by sex that can pass through the blood-brain barrier."
"Query: Does this include the barrier being damaged via meningitis or a brain abscess?"
"Since so many people seem affected, and Sarah doesn't seem to have meningitis, let's say no."
"There are several diseases that pass the barrier. Some are not ordinarily sexually transmitted, such as trypanosomiasis, rabies, Toxoplasmosis gondii, or progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. Some can be, such as HIV, neurosyphilis, and certain prions."
"And since none of those cause the brain effect we've seen, it could be something completely unrelated to any of them."
"That seems possible."
"Is it even possible to test for all the ones you listed?"
"Yes."
"... With the equipment we've got?"
"Several of the tests require reagents that I have not seen any evidence of, within this city."
"Mm. If the nearest place to get those reagents is Brock University, we might have to try to bring some people through the Great Peace to try testing them there... I suppose it would have been too much to ask Clara to test everyone for unknown diseases the last time we were there." I paused, then snapped my fingers. "Then again, maybe she still can."
"That does not seem to make sense."
"Boomer, you used to be Laura - in a sense - and so did Clara. If you were her, would you have thrown away any of the medical samples you took just after they'd been poisoned with the nerve gas residue?"
"I do not believe so."
--
I tipped the delivery boy, and retreated back into Munchkin (parked by the shelter) to open Clara's telegram. I read it aloud to Boomer, "Confirmation of presence of spirochaetes closely related to Treponema pallidum in Sample Group A, and absence of same in Sample Group B. Appears to be treatable with penicillin G." I set the paper down, frowning. "Well, that could be our smoking gun. The question is - what should we do about it? If it's a deliberately engineered, uh, spirochaete, then whoever released it probably wouldn't be happy about an eradication campaign... and would curing the disease clear up the blocked neural pathway? And on a more personal note, I don't know if /I/ might have been exposed when the bimbo zone or goo-Brenda went inside me, plus back in the day, I used to wear a medic-alert bracelet warning of an allergy to penicillin and supha drugs, though I don't know if I was /actually/ allergic or not, plus I've only got my brain and eyes left from back then to worry about allergy-wise anyway..."
"I possess insufficient data to offer advice on these matters."
"Hm... I didn't get pulled into the zone very much after Sarah and Bunny Joe started, um. So if I were infected then, I should have already started glitching myself."
"Your immune system is not quite human. It is possible that a disease may have a longer incubation period in your body than in Sarah's."
"I suppose. And Brenda gooped me not that long ago... Hm... Well, I had the robo-fac make up some penicillin before it crashed, but it's hardly enough to treat the whole city, so, hm..."
--
"Say, Denise? How much penicillin do you have in stock?"
"None."
"Why not?"
"It stopped working. Everything that used to be treated by it, became resistant to it."
"What do you use instead?"
"We've got five different antibiotics. To prevent any new immunity from evolving, me and the other vets coordinate to use the same one in a year, then switch to another the next year, and so on. We lose some livestock that we could save with more aggressive intervention, but we keep the whole system working. It's a sore spot with some farmers, who want their herd or whatever saved /now/ instead of thinking long-term, but we keep the drugs locked up tight enough that cheating is kept down to an acceptable level."
"How about for people?"
"I haven't heard of anything that can be treated with penicillin in a long time. Why do you ask?"
"I have reason to believe I may have been exposed to something which /can/ be treated with it, and I have a supply I acquired before finding out from you just now that it might be useless, and part of me may or may not be allergic to the stuff. Think you might be up to helping me work out an appropriate dosage, and keeping an eye on me in case of anaphylaxis?"
"Ah, so you /have/ gone completely crazy. Wait right here while I go find some nice young men in their clean white coats."
"Crazy would be if I tried injecting myself with penicillin, and didn't find a medical professional to watch for bad reactions."
"Maybe /I'm/ crazy for even listening to this. I haven't heard such craziness in... I don't know how long. I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that this /is/ as crazy as things get."
"Ah. Well."
She just sighed. "What is it?"
"Well, according to the autodoc, apparently, I seem to be turning into an electric eel."
"... Maybe I should join old Mrs. Friesen on the porch, with her rocking chair and laudanum. Then I could talk everyone's ear off instead of listening to idiotic people trying to talk about things they don't understand."
"If you're trying to tell me I'm not just out of my depth, but I'm also stupid, I'm not going to disagree."
"Bunny - allergies are based on your immune system. Your immune system is made of cells, mostly created in bone marrow. Your immune system is made entirely out of Bun-Bun's cells, not your original ones. Whatever you were allergic to when you were human, you aren't anymore."
"Ah. ... I'd offer you a raise, but I don't know if you still want to be employed by me for very long."
"Shut up and tell me what you think you're infected with."
"Er..."
"You know what I mean."
"Er, not just that, but I'm not sure I can tell you."
"Embarrassing or top secret?"
"I'll go with column B. I've been having Clara run some tests on some samples she already has, and there's a, um, reasonably good chance I've been exposed - but the tests to be sure need chemicals she doesn't think you have. So - if allergies aren't a concern, better safe than sorry."
"And you want penicillin instead of a real antibiotic?"
"I've got reason to think that the antibiotics you use regularly won't have a significant effect."
She heaved a sigh. "Let me check my books. I'm sure there's /something/ in there about outdated, obsolete, and useless antibiotic therapy for unnamed diseases which show no symptoms and might not even exist."
"I knew I could count on you."
--
"Ow." I rubbed my shoulder.
"You want to stop, you can stop any time. You want to keep going, then with what your Clara and my books say, you tell your autodoc to administer four MU of aqueous crystalline penicillin G intravenously, every four hours, for fourteen days."
".../Every/ four hours?"
"If you want to get a sufficient concentration of the stuff past your blood-brain barrier to where it'll do any good."
"/Now/ you think it will do good?"
"Your brain's from way back when. Maybe the strain of syphilis you've got is primitive enough that penicillin will work."
"It's /not/ syphilis."
"Don't sass me, boy. Or girl, whatever you prefer these days. There aren't many diseases that this can /be/ a cure to."
"... It may be related to syphilis. But it's not from 'way back when'."
"Then take your shots, and give me some warning if you think it's going to start spreading."
"... I think I can assure you that you don't have to worry about it starting to spread," I said, telling the truth in detail while deceiving by implication.
"In that case - what's this about turning into a fish?"
"Not fish, electric eel. The autodoc says it found 'electroplaques' in my body, cells that electric eels use to make, well, electricity."
"You're going to start giving people shocks?"
"They seem to be in my chest, not my hands."
"Any heart problems?"
"None. All the numbers I get from the recharger are inside the ranges they're supposed to be."
"How smart is your skeleton?"
"Smart enough to have learned her name, and follow commands - well, sometimes, at least."
"Smart enough to think she knows how to power your blood pump better than batteries do?"
"... Maybe. She kind of absorbed my hoof and Wagger into herself, so she could be trying the same with the artificial heart."
"Well, tell her to stop it. That heart needs a dozen watts, without interruption. That's a million joules a day. Do you think an /organic/ system could provide that power, regulated to a precise enough level to keep your blood flowing continuously? I don't even want to /think/ about how many extra calories you'd have to consume to try to power it yourself."
Boomer piped up, "Roughly two hundred forty dietary calories, not counting conversion losses."
Denise glared at the AI. "Shush, you, I'm on a rant." She turned back to me, poking a finger onto my chest, where my surgery scar was ever-so-slowly fading. "The batteries /work/. She tries fiddling with them, and you won't live long enough to finish treating your not-syphilis."
"Alright, already," I held my hands up in surrender. "I can't disagree with you - I don't know enough to even try. Just remember, I come in something like fifth place when it comes to deciding what my body does - you, Bun-Bun, Wagger, and whatever zone I get shoved in all seem to have priority. Maybe Brenda these days, too, depending on what she figures out she can do. You want to fight out which of you is ahead of the others, go ahead, just leave me out of it."
"And you wonder why I want you to have a real doctor instead of a vet."
"And you wonder why I want a multi-species physician instead of a mere human GP."
--
In my room at the shelter, I frowned at the half-finished letter, nibbling on the top of my pencil as I tried to figure out a better way to phrase the message.
Abruptly, a weight landed on my head, my vision obscured.
"Gah!" I gave a whole-body twitch, slipped one of the knives from my sleeves into my hand, and as I heaved around, I pushed it through whoever was trying to black-bag me.
My eyes were unblocked, revealing... Brenda, now in her pre-bimbofication colours, staring at the blade in her chest, her forelimbs changing back from tentacles into talons again. "Okay," she commented, "now I'm /really/ glad I'm not made of flesh any more."
"My door was /locked/." I looked over at it. "/Is/ locked."
"I've been learning more tricks. I can put some of my mass in a freezer, and reabsorb it as soon as it thaws." She plucked the knife out of her, holding it to me. "Yours, right?"
I grumbled, returning it to its hiding spot. "We really need to have a talk about boundaries-"
"Ooh, what's this? A secret diary page?"
"No, it's a private-"
"'Dear Minerva.' A love-letter? 'In regards to our private discussion, I have identified a novel pathogen endemic to this region.' ... Doesn't sound like a love letter. 'While the topic is awkward, the main method of transmission appears to be via body-fluid transfer, such as during sex. While you are probably too young for such activities at the moment, in the years to come, please try to remember this, and to arrange for any prospective partners to undergo the appropriate antibiotic treatment, to avoid becoming infected yourself.'"
I finally managed to pluck the paper from her grasp, and fold it up. "Are you quite done?"
"Not quite. I came to warn you the harem is waiting outside for you. Can I give you another whole-body hug? You can stab me again if you want to."
I rubbed my nose. "I'd really prefer if you didn't. I am currently undergoing an antibiotic treatment. I do not know whether or not you are susceptible to the pathogen, or can carry it, but we should avoid any... personal touching until we're both confirmed to be clear of it."
"So you want me to start taking this treatment too?"
"Not... exactly. One definition for antibiotic is 'a poison that kills some kinds of cells quicker than others'. I have no idea if the cells you're now made of are more or less susceptible to the poison than the pathogen... and even then, figuring out the dosage is an... interesting problem. You don't have a blood-brain barrier to get through - but you also don't seem to have a liver to metabolize the stuff to keep it from staying in your system at dangerous concentrations."
"Maybe I do, and it's just spread all through me, like my thinky bits."
"Maybe," I shrugged, "but even finding that much out is going to require tests."
"So you don't want to start wearing me now?"
"Brenda... if there is a literal life-and-death choice to be made, I'll wear you in an instant. But short of that - if we got that close again, I'd have to start my treatment from scratch. Which involves painful injections. Every four hours. For two whole weeks. So unless we're dealing with a situation where that amount of pain is worth paying, we should stay apart."
"No hugs?"
"We can hug, if you want - but like flesh people, with our arms, not whole-body engulfing."
"Are you sure? I can hide you inside me and get you past the harem..."
"Tempting, but no."
"How about if I make some air bubbles so I don't touch any part of you that can pass this infection?"
"... Do you know what the harem's waiting for me /for/?"
"I think I saw them writing a big questionnaire about what you like."
"... What the heck. We might as well figure out if this trick can work at all - you're not all /that/ much bigger than me."
"I left a lot of me in the freezer. I'm actually mostly hollow right now."
--
The harem saw through the ruse at once. Not literally - Brenda's outer shell was fully opaque, and I didn't have anything glowing - but from what I was able to muffledly hear, some combination of Brenda's gooey nature combined with the fact that the harem /knew/ I'd been in my room was enough for them to figure out my hiding place. In fact, one of them just stuck an arm right into Brenda, fumbled along my neck for a bit, and grabbed my arms, pulling me up and out of Brenda's back.
"/There/ you are, your majesty," she smiled brightly. (I still hadn't figured out how to tell which was which.) "We've been looking /everywhere/ for you."
I sighed, and stepped out of Brenda, resting an arm on the wall in case Wagger twitched my legs. "I'm very busy," I commented. I watched my right foot's toes curl and relax, curl and relax, without my telling them to, and decided a wheelchair would be more dignified than falling on my rear. I turned to head back into my room to grab it.
One of the bimbos slid in front of me. "You're not going to lock yourself away from us again, are you?"
My right knee pulled my calf up, and I started tipping over... only to land in the grip of one or two of the ladies. Neither staying in place and leaning on them, nor pushing against them to straighten back up, were acceptably polite outcomes, so I tried reaching a hand back in the direction I'd just been and muttered, "Brenda, a pull, please?" She waved a wing over, engulfed my hand in it, and with that leverage I managed to straighten myself back out.
The harem were glancing at each other, so I just frowned at them and stated, "Spine injuries are nasty things. Even though I heal better than some, I may have permanent damage. Adding physical rehabilitation to my counselling and all the other things I have to do means I barely have enough time to sleep, let alone stand around and play dress-up or have tea parties or orgies or whatever it is you did for the mayors."
"Ooh, /that/'s why," said the one behind me.
One of the ones I'd landed on said, "We're not here to make you do things-"
"-or us-"
"-you don't want to do."
"We're here to make your life /easier/."
"We won't make you play dress up-"
"-unless you want to-"
"-but we can take care of your clothes, so you can always be dressed up, without spending any time on it."
"Or cook."
"Or clean."
"Or watch your kids."
"I didn't think she had kids?"
"Maybe she just thinks she's too busy to raise them."
The patter of voices from all sides was confusing and annoying, so I cleared my throat and raised a hand to interrupt them. "That's all well and good. My wheelchair, if you please?"
"Sorry." "Sorry." "Sorry." "Sorry."
In short order I was installed on what I wondered if I should start calling my mobile throne.
I looked up at them, still frowning. "I did not request your services. I have no desire for them. Even trying to accommodate your nearby presence would be difficult, and would interfere with various security and intelligence matters. I am not in charge of the city. Mayor Pro Tem Edwards is, and then whoever is elected in his place will be. I recommend you go find him and help him instead of me."
They looked at each other again, then back at me. "Don't think of them as /services/."
"We just want to /thank/ you, for being our /guardian/."
"Our /protector/."
"Our cute little babe-cake."
"... who /watches over us/ and keeps us /safe/."
"Hrm," I grunted. "There's watching over you, and then there's watching over you. ... Which reminds me; Brenda, in the Munchkin, in the lab, in drawer seven C, could you grab the four things inside and bring them back?"
She nodded her head, said "Sure thing, boss," with Alphie, and bounded away, more like a rubbery cartoon or a deer pronking than any sane quadruped's gait.
I sighed and looked at the quartet, then sighed again. "I'm pretty sure," I commented, "there's more to life than finding the most powerful person around, and doing whatever it takes to convince them to protect you."
More shared glances, before one said, "If you don't go into heat, maybe."
"Having one husband is a lot less work than being a street-walker."
"Or a House girl."
"Or a 'gram girl."
I asked, "'Gram girl'?"
"It's new."
"Someone wants a girl, they can just send a telegram now, and one'll come over."
"... Of course," I rolled my eyes to myself. "I forgot the rule about what happens when humans get hold of new media."
"Huh?"
"'The internet is for porn'. Oh, look, here's Brenda."
The hollow, rubbery gryphoness bounced back to our little crowd, stuck a talon down her beak, and pulled out four black bracelets.
I said to the harem, "One for each of you. I want you to wear them at all times. If you get in trouble - and I mean /real/ trouble, something where you'll need medical attention or emergency rescue - press the red button. I'd prefer if you could remember to push the green button once a day, which will let me know you're alright and haven't been kept from pushing the buttons."
"Ooh, shiny!"
"Black /does/ go well with almost anything..."
"It's a lot less annoying than that collar."
"I kinda liked the collars."
What I didn't mention was that these bracelets were new and improved over the ones that had let me find Judith; they would respond to a coded signal to pinpoint their location, if I ever had to find them. Not to mention pinging their location every ten minutes instead of every hour. I wasn't sure if the solar cells could keep a full charge with that rate; it depended on how much light they'd get during regular use.
"She /does/ like us!"
"I knew she was only pretending to be a grumpy-pants."
The four of them took a step closer; and I was abruptly in the middle of a four-fold hug that would have given any anime character a life-threatening nosebleed. One of them nibbled my ear, and whispered into it, "And if you want our /personal/ thanks..."
Another simply licked my other ear. "... Our next cycle is in just over a week."
"Right!" I exclaimed, and grabbed the chair's wheel-bars, pushing myself out of the crowd. "Lots to do, no time to waste, mind your teachers and do your homework, Brenda you're with me."
As I left the giggling behind me, I muttered, "I can't /wait/ for this place to become a republic..."
"One of the white matter tracts between the fusiform face area and the hippocampus appear to have been interrupted."
I rolled my eyes at Boomer. "I never did finish going through my human-brain colouring book."
"The individual subsections of the brain appear to be intact; it is the connection between them that appears to have been severed. A very small number of cells were affected - Bunny Joe's brain scan still appears to be within normal parameters. It is only in comparison to her previous scans, and those of other affected individuals for a similar variation, that any difference is detectable."
"So we have our fingerprint?"
"If you wish to call it that, yes."
"And does this interruption explain the... weirdness in their behaviour?"
"Unknown. It is plausible that this neural tract leads to an inability to recognize or remember changes in groups of people, but the data is insufficient to confirm or disprove that hypothesis."
"And the confabulation?"
"It is possible that that is the normal result of this form of memory disruption. Again, the data is insufficient-"
"-To confirm or disprove, I getcha. Okay, so if that's what's happening... are there other effects? I mean, would it affect their recognition of groups other than the bimbo harem?"
"Unknown."
"Hm... could there be some connection with why their politics focuses around their unions?"
"Unknown."
"Have you got any idea how that one particular connection happened to get severed in so many people?"
"Studies exist demonstrating that certain neural pathways express unique combinations of proteins and antigens, which can be used to target treatments. I have no information on whether this neural pathway has such an antigen signature."
"Something we can ask Clara to check the library on. Even assuming that's the case... what might have actually latched onto that signature?"
"Extrapolating from a few words in my database, I would posit a virus or organism could attach to the antigens in question, optionally followed by a drug targeting the virus or organism and killing both it and the neurons it was attached to."
"Okay - but Joe's been in Erie for three years, and just started exhibiting symptoms of the glitch, well, sometime between the last day and a week or so ago. Would your virus-or-whatever take that long to do its thing?"
"Possible, though that progression is uncommon."
"So... maybe she avoided getting infected at all, until just recently?"
"Possible."
"So what did she avoid doing for three years, that she just started doing, that includes a disease vector? Did she start drinking the wrong water? Walk too close to the bimbo zone?"
"Unknown."
"And - you're sure there's no sign of the interruption in my neural pathway?"
"Correct."
"Okay, then to add to my previous question - what did she start doing, since I was revived, that Minerva and I haven't done?"
"Unknown."
--
I rolled up front again, leading around the kitchen counter to see Bunny Joe. "You've got some signs of a possible infection," I said, entirely truthfully; though also somewhat deceitfully; though also in Joe's own best interests. "I need to ask a couple of epidemiological questions."
She looked up from her book. "Of course you do," she sighed. "Very well."
"Since my revival, have you begun doing anything that you have not done in the previous years you were in the city, which might have unknowingly exposed you to a disease; possibly started eating a new food, or drinking a beverage from a new source, or meeting a new person, or going to a new place; that /isn't/ a new thing /I/'ve also done?"
"Are you serious?"
"As can be."
"You really need to ask?"
"It's important."
"I mean - you don't already know?"
"I've been busy."
"'Furry orgy'."
"What?"
Joe sighed. "Sarah and I have entered into a sexual relationship. You were right there when she first propositioned me."
"... Oh. Right." I looked away from her, trying not to blush. "... I think that could fit the timeline. Is there anything else?"
"Other than being imprisoned, there is little I have done that I have not already done, or that you were not with me for."
"Alright. ... I'm not an epidemiologist, so I'm probably going to need to bring Denise and Clara in on this, and we might need to do a few tests to figure out how to cure it."
"Do you wish some of my blood now?"
"... I suppose the autodoc can draw it, we've got the fridge to store it, and it seems likely some useful tests could be run on it."
--
"Okay, Boomer; we've got something that seems to be some sort of STD, which has effects on the brain. How many things do you know of that fit that category?"
"I am not aware of any known pathogen which has the described neurological effect."
"I'm not asking about the effect, just for things transmitted by sex that can pass through the blood-brain barrier."
"Query: Does this include the barrier being damaged via meningitis or a brain abscess?"
"Since so many people seem affected, and Sarah doesn't seem to have meningitis, let's say no."
"There are several diseases that pass the barrier. Some are not ordinarily sexually transmitted, such as trypanosomiasis, rabies, Toxoplasmosis gondii, or progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. Some can be, such as HIV, neurosyphilis, and certain prions."
"And since none of those cause the brain effect we've seen, it could be something completely unrelated to any of them."
"That seems possible."
"Is it even possible to test for all the ones you listed?"
"Yes."
"... With the equipment we've got?"
"Several of the tests require reagents that I have not seen any evidence of, within this city."
"Mm. If the nearest place to get those reagents is Brock University, we might have to try to bring some people through the Great Peace to try testing them there... I suppose it would have been too much to ask Clara to test everyone for unknown diseases the last time we were there." I paused, then snapped my fingers. "Then again, maybe she still can."
"That does not seem to make sense."
"Boomer, you used to be Laura - in a sense - and so did Clara. If you were her, would you have thrown away any of the medical samples you took just after they'd been poisoned with the nerve gas residue?"
"I do not believe so."
--
I tipped the delivery boy, and retreated back into Munchkin (parked by the shelter) to open Clara's telegram. I read it aloud to Boomer, "Confirmation of presence of spirochaetes closely related to Treponema pallidum in Sample Group A, and absence of same in Sample Group B. Appears to be treatable with penicillin G." I set the paper down, frowning. "Well, that could be our smoking gun. The question is - what should we do about it? If it's a deliberately engineered, uh, spirochaete, then whoever released it probably wouldn't be happy about an eradication campaign... and would curing the disease clear up the blocked neural pathway? And on a more personal note, I don't know if /I/ might have been exposed when the bimbo zone or goo-Brenda went inside me, plus back in the day, I used to wear a medic-alert bracelet warning of an allergy to penicillin and supha drugs, though I don't know if I was /actually/ allergic or not, plus I've only got my brain and eyes left from back then to worry about allergy-wise anyway..."
"I possess insufficient data to offer advice on these matters."
"Hm... I didn't get pulled into the zone very much after Sarah and Bunny Joe started, um. So if I were infected then, I should have already started glitching myself."
"Your immune system is not quite human. It is possible that a disease may have a longer incubation period in your body than in Sarah's."
"I suppose. And Brenda gooped me not that long ago... Hm... Well, I had the robo-fac make up some penicillin before it crashed, but it's hardly enough to treat the whole city, so, hm..."
--
"Say, Denise? How much penicillin do you have in stock?"
"None."
"Why not?"
"It stopped working. Everything that used to be treated by it, became resistant to it."
"What do you use instead?"
"We've got five different antibiotics. To prevent any new immunity from evolving, me and the other vets coordinate to use the same one in a year, then switch to another the next year, and so on. We lose some livestock that we could save with more aggressive intervention, but we keep the whole system working. It's a sore spot with some farmers, who want their herd or whatever saved /now/ instead of thinking long-term, but we keep the drugs locked up tight enough that cheating is kept down to an acceptable level."
"How about for people?"
"I haven't heard of anything that can be treated with penicillin in a long time. Why do you ask?"
"I have reason to believe I may have been exposed to something which /can/ be treated with it, and I have a supply I acquired before finding out from you just now that it might be useless, and part of me may or may not be allergic to the stuff. Think you might be up to helping me work out an appropriate dosage, and keeping an eye on me in case of anaphylaxis?"
"Ah, so you /have/ gone completely crazy. Wait right here while I go find some nice young men in their clean white coats."
"Crazy would be if I tried injecting myself with penicillin, and didn't find a medical professional to watch for bad reactions."
"Maybe /I'm/ crazy for even listening to this. I haven't heard such craziness in... I don't know how long. I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that this /is/ as crazy as things get."
"Ah. Well."
She just sighed. "What is it?"
"Well, according to the autodoc, apparently, I seem to be turning into an electric eel."
"... Maybe I should join old Mrs. Friesen on the porch, with her rocking chair and laudanum. Then I could talk everyone's ear off instead of listening to idiotic people trying to talk about things they don't understand."
"If you're trying to tell me I'm not just out of my depth, but I'm also stupid, I'm not going to disagree."
"Bunny - allergies are based on your immune system. Your immune system is made of cells, mostly created in bone marrow. Your immune system is made entirely out of Bun-Bun's cells, not your original ones. Whatever you were allergic to when you were human, you aren't anymore."
"Ah. ... I'd offer you a raise, but I don't know if you still want to be employed by me for very long."
"Shut up and tell me what you think you're infected with."
"Er..."
"You know what I mean."
"Er, not just that, but I'm not sure I can tell you."
"Embarrassing or top secret?"
"I'll go with column B. I've been having Clara run some tests on some samples she already has, and there's a, um, reasonably good chance I've been exposed - but the tests to be sure need chemicals she doesn't think you have. So - if allergies aren't a concern, better safe than sorry."
"And you want penicillin instead of a real antibiotic?"
"I've got reason to think that the antibiotics you use regularly won't have a significant effect."
She heaved a sigh. "Let me check my books. I'm sure there's /something/ in there about outdated, obsolete, and useless antibiotic therapy for unnamed diseases which show no symptoms and might not even exist."
"I knew I could count on you."
--
"Ow." I rubbed my shoulder.
"You want to stop, you can stop any time. You want to keep going, then with what your Clara and my books say, you tell your autodoc to administer four MU of aqueous crystalline penicillin G intravenously, every four hours, for fourteen days."
".../Every/ four hours?"
"If you want to get a sufficient concentration of the stuff past your blood-brain barrier to where it'll do any good."
"/Now/ you think it will do good?"
"Your brain's from way back when. Maybe the strain of syphilis you've got is primitive enough that penicillin will work."
"It's /not/ syphilis."
"Don't sass me, boy. Or girl, whatever you prefer these days. There aren't many diseases that this can /be/ a cure to."
"... It may be related to syphilis. But it's not from 'way back when'."
"Then take your shots, and give me some warning if you think it's going to start spreading."
"... I think I can assure you that you don't have to worry about it starting to spread," I said, telling the truth in detail while deceiving by implication.
"In that case - what's this about turning into a fish?"
"Not fish, electric eel. The autodoc says it found 'electroplaques' in my body, cells that electric eels use to make, well, electricity."
"You're going to start giving people shocks?"
"They seem to be in my chest, not my hands."
"Any heart problems?"
"None. All the numbers I get from the recharger are inside the ranges they're supposed to be."
"How smart is your skeleton?"
"Smart enough to have learned her name, and follow commands - well, sometimes, at least."
"Smart enough to think she knows how to power your blood pump better than batteries do?"
"... Maybe. She kind of absorbed my hoof and Wagger into herself, so she could be trying the same with the artificial heart."
"Well, tell her to stop it. That heart needs a dozen watts, without interruption. That's a million joules a day. Do you think an /organic/ system could provide that power, regulated to a precise enough level to keep your blood flowing continuously? I don't even want to /think/ about how many extra calories you'd have to consume to try to power it yourself."
Boomer piped up, "Roughly two hundred forty dietary calories, not counting conversion losses."
Denise glared at the AI. "Shush, you, I'm on a rant." She turned back to me, poking a finger onto my chest, where my surgery scar was ever-so-slowly fading. "The batteries /work/. She tries fiddling with them, and you won't live long enough to finish treating your not-syphilis."
"Alright, already," I held my hands up in surrender. "I can't disagree with you - I don't know enough to even try. Just remember, I come in something like fifth place when it comes to deciding what my body does - you, Bun-Bun, Wagger, and whatever zone I get shoved in all seem to have priority. Maybe Brenda these days, too, depending on what she figures out she can do. You want to fight out which of you is ahead of the others, go ahead, just leave me out of it."
"And you wonder why I want you to have a real doctor instead of a vet."
"And you wonder why I want a multi-species physician instead of a mere human GP."
--
In my room at the shelter, I frowned at the half-finished letter, nibbling on the top of my pencil as I tried to figure out a better way to phrase the message.
Abruptly, a weight landed on my head, my vision obscured.
"Gah!" I gave a whole-body twitch, slipped one of the knives from my sleeves into my hand, and as I heaved around, I pushed it through whoever was trying to black-bag me.
My eyes were unblocked, revealing... Brenda, now in her pre-bimbofication colours, staring at the blade in her chest, her forelimbs changing back from tentacles into talons again. "Okay," she commented, "now I'm /really/ glad I'm not made of flesh any more."
"My door was /locked/." I looked over at it. "/Is/ locked."
"I've been learning more tricks. I can put some of my mass in a freezer, and reabsorb it as soon as it thaws." She plucked the knife out of her, holding it to me. "Yours, right?"
I grumbled, returning it to its hiding spot. "We really need to have a talk about boundaries-"
"Ooh, what's this? A secret diary page?"
"No, it's a private-"
"'Dear Minerva.' A love-letter? 'In regards to our private discussion, I have identified a novel pathogen endemic to this region.' ... Doesn't sound like a love letter. 'While the topic is awkward, the main method of transmission appears to be via body-fluid transfer, such as during sex. While you are probably too young for such activities at the moment, in the years to come, please try to remember this, and to arrange for any prospective partners to undergo the appropriate antibiotic treatment, to avoid becoming infected yourself.'"
I finally managed to pluck the paper from her grasp, and fold it up. "Are you quite done?"
"Not quite. I came to warn you the harem is waiting outside for you. Can I give you another whole-body hug? You can stab me again if you want to."
I rubbed my nose. "I'd really prefer if you didn't. I am currently undergoing an antibiotic treatment. I do not know whether or not you are susceptible to the pathogen, or can carry it, but we should avoid any... personal touching until we're both confirmed to be clear of it."
"So you want me to start taking this treatment too?"
"Not... exactly. One definition for antibiotic is 'a poison that kills some kinds of cells quicker than others'. I have no idea if the cells you're now made of are more or less susceptible to the poison than the pathogen... and even then, figuring out the dosage is an... interesting problem. You don't have a blood-brain barrier to get through - but you also don't seem to have a liver to metabolize the stuff to keep it from staying in your system at dangerous concentrations."
"Maybe I do, and it's just spread all through me, like my thinky bits."
"Maybe," I shrugged, "but even finding that much out is going to require tests."
"So you don't want to start wearing me now?"
"Brenda... if there is a literal life-and-death choice to be made, I'll wear you in an instant. But short of that - if we got that close again, I'd have to start my treatment from scratch. Which involves painful injections. Every four hours. For two whole weeks. So unless we're dealing with a situation where that amount of pain is worth paying, we should stay apart."
"No hugs?"
"We can hug, if you want - but like flesh people, with our arms, not whole-body engulfing."
"Are you sure? I can hide you inside me and get you past the harem..."
"Tempting, but no."
"How about if I make some air bubbles so I don't touch any part of you that can pass this infection?"
"... Do you know what the harem's waiting for me /for/?"
"I think I saw them writing a big questionnaire about what you like."
"... What the heck. We might as well figure out if this trick can work at all - you're not all /that/ much bigger than me."
"I left a lot of me in the freezer. I'm actually mostly hollow right now."
--
The harem saw through the ruse at once. Not literally - Brenda's outer shell was fully opaque, and I didn't have anything glowing - but from what I was able to muffledly hear, some combination of Brenda's gooey nature combined with the fact that the harem /knew/ I'd been in my room was enough for them to figure out my hiding place. In fact, one of them just stuck an arm right into Brenda, fumbled along my neck for a bit, and grabbed my arms, pulling me up and out of Brenda's back.
"/There/ you are, your majesty," she smiled brightly. (I still hadn't figured out how to tell which was which.) "We've been looking /everywhere/ for you."
I sighed, and stepped out of Brenda, resting an arm on the wall in case Wagger twitched my legs. "I'm very busy," I commented. I watched my right foot's toes curl and relax, curl and relax, without my telling them to, and decided a wheelchair would be more dignified than falling on my rear. I turned to head back into my room to grab it.
One of the bimbos slid in front of me. "You're not going to lock yourself away from us again, are you?"
My right knee pulled my calf up, and I started tipping over... only to land in the grip of one or two of the ladies. Neither staying in place and leaning on them, nor pushing against them to straighten back up, were acceptably polite outcomes, so I tried reaching a hand back in the direction I'd just been and muttered, "Brenda, a pull, please?" She waved a wing over, engulfed my hand in it, and with that leverage I managed to straighten myself back out.
The harem were glancing at each other, so I just frowned at them and stated, "Spine injuries are nasty things. Even though I heal better than some, I may have permanent damage. Adding physical rehabilitation to my counselling and all the other things I have to do means I barely have enough time to sleep, let alone stand around and play dress-up or have tea parties or orgies or whatever it is you did for the mayors."
"Ooh, /that/'s why," said the one behind me.
One of the ones I'd landed on said, "We're not here to make you do things-"
"-or us-"
"-you don't want to do."
"We're here to make your life /easier/."
"We won't make you play dress up-"
"-unless you want to-"
"-but we can take care of your clothes, so you can always be dressed up, without spending any time on it."
"Or cook."
"Or clean."
"Or watch your kids."
"I didn't think she had kids?"
"Maybe she just thinks she's too busy to raise them."
The patter of voices from all sides was confusing and annoying, so I cleared my throat and raised a hand to interrupt them. "That's all well and good. My wheelchair, if you please?"
"Sorry." "Sorry." "Sorry." "Sorry."
In short order I was installed on what I wondered if I should start calling my mobile throne.
I looked up at them, still frowning. "I did not request your services. I have no desire for them. Even trying to accommodate your nearby presence would be difficult, and would interfere with various security and intelligence matters. I am not in charge of the city. Mayor Pro Tem Edwards is, and then whoever is elected in his place will be. I recommend you go find him and help him instead of me."
They looked at each other again, then back at me. "Don't think of them as /services/."
"We just want to /thank/ you, for being our /guardian/."
"Our /protector/."
"Our cute little babe-cake."
"... who /watches over us/ and keeps us /safe/."
"Hrm," I grunted. "There's watching over you, and then there's watching over you. ... Which reminds me; Brenda, in the Munchkin, in the lab, in drawer seven C, could you grab the four things inside and bring them back?"
She nodded her head, said "Sure thing, boss," with Alphie, and bounded away, more like a rubbery cartoon or a deer pronking than any sane quadruped's gait.
I sighed and looked at the quartet, then sighed again. "I'm pretty sure," I commented, "there's more to life than finding the most powerful person around, and doing whatever it takes to convince them to protect you."
More shared glances, before one said, "If you don't go into heat, maybe."
"Having one husband is a lot less work than being a street-walker."
"Or a House girl."
"Or a 'gram girl."
I asked, "'Gram girl'?"
"It's new."
"Someone wants a girl, they can just send a telegram now, and one'll come over."
"... Of course," I rolled my eyes to myself. "I forgot the rule about what happens when humans get hold of new media."
"Huh?"
"'The internet is for porn'. Oh, look, here's Brenda."
The hollow, rubbery gryphoness bounced back to our little crowd, stuck a talon down her beak, and pulled out four black bracelets.
I said to the harem, "One for each of you. I want you to wear them at all times. If you get in trouble - and I mean /real/ trouble, something where you'll need medical attention or emergency rescue - press the red button. I'd prefer if you could remember to push the green button once a day, which will let me know you're alright and haven't been kept from pushing the buttons."
"Ooh, shiny!"
"Black /does/ go well with almost anything..."
"It's a lot less annoying than that collar."
"I kinda liked the collars."
What I didn't mention was that these bracelets were new and improved over the ones that had let me find Judith; they would respond to a coded signal to pinpoint their location, if I ever had to find them. Not to mention pinging their location every ten minutes instead of every hour. I wasn't sure if the solar cells could keep a full charge with that rate; it depended on how much light they'd get during regular use.
"She /does/ like us!"
"I knew she was only pretending to be a grumpy-pants."
The four of them took a step closer; and I was abruptly in the middle of a four-fold hug that would have given any anime character a life-threatening nosebleed. One of them nibbled my ear, and whispered into it, "And if you want our /personal/ thanks..."
Another simply licked my other ear. "... Our next cycle is in just over a week."
"Right!" I exclaimed, and grabbed the chair's wheel-bars, pushing myself out of the crowd. "Lots to do, no time to waste, mind your teachers and do your homework, Brenda you're with me."
As I left the giggling behind me, I muttered, "I can't /wait/ for this place to become a republic..."
Scify
It always starts with a lighthouse.
/They're coming to take me away, haha/
Scify
It always starts with a lighthouse.
Which is pretty much what real syphilis does. Mostly, at least. There are a few varieties that make you incredibly horny and less inhibited before wrecking your brain.
It's really more interesting that it's so specifically targeted to one part of the brain.
Beyogi
and a fairy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Good to know. That's one of the sicknesses where you have to go to third world countries to get them, right? I hope...
Scify
It always starts with a lighthouse.
Nope. On the other hand, as noted in the chapter, it's easily treated by penicillin, and standard syphilis (IIRC) is usually detected before it hits your brain and spinal column.
66
DataPacRat
Truthseeker
- Location
- Niagara, Canada
*Chapter Four: Mis-guided*
With Brenda's help, I made it to Munchkin without getting taken further off-track, and we drove off to the nearest Royal Mail Canada office. I sent the letter off to Minerva, a very similar one to Captain Shatter, and a more clinical one to the Lake Erie embassy.
That brought me to the end of the high-priority items on my to-do list, and as I looked over the lower-priority ones, I grimaced a little, none of them particularly appealing at the moment. Amy had pointed out, every so often, that, every so often, I needed to do things that weren't /on/ a to-do list, to keep myself sane. I thought about torturing Brenda with the harmonica, or breaking out the watercolours and making a mess, or trying to teach Wagger how to not interfere when I walked.
In my private chamber, my gaze fell on a pile of papers - the ones filled out by the Bayesians who'd tried sheltering aboard. The top one was by 'Blue Wolf', mentioning his family heirloom, some sort of advice-giving, solar-powered ebony skull. That sounded weird enough that it caught my interest, so I chose to spend my off-time seeing if I could find out more.
The 'math club''s meeting place had been bombed out, and the city didn't have any phonebooks. Fortunately, I was already parked right at the Royal Mail, and was able to hire a telegram boy to go to the Professor to ask for Minerva's current address, where he asked for Blue Wolf's address, where he finally delivered my request for an informal meeting to learn about the skull, at a time and place of his choosing. The delivery boy, pedaling hard on his bicycle and panting but smiling, placed the return message into my hand: Now was good, and he suggested the Professor's warehouse.
Wolfy was in full robes and cowl, and with the Professor's good-natured permission, had made room for both of us in the office area, along with a wooden case of just the right size to contain a human head. "Your Majesty," he said, through his face-concealing cowl, "it is an honor and a pleasure to meet you."
"And you. This is it?" I nodded at the case.
"Yes, ma'am. Before I open it, I should warn you, that it behaves... strangely. My family have worked out a script to get it to be more cooperative, and how to keep it that way as long as possible. But it is touchy, so I ask that you and your, ah, griffon try to be quiet, or at least play along. You'll see what I mean."
"You make it sound intriguing. I'll try to be a good audience for the show."
Wolfy nodded, unlatched the box, and with both hands, pulled out, as expected, something black and skull-shaped. What his brief note hadn't mentioned were the crystalline teeth, or the patterns just on the edge of visibility etched into its surface.
He also hadn't mentioned that the eye-sockets could glow with red lights, which is exactly what they started to do.
"IN-sig-NIF-i-GANT WOOO-ooorms! What mortals dare disturb the astral meditations of Sargon the Sorcerer, Sargon the Great, Sargon the Mighty?"
I will admit that without Wolfy's warning, I probably would have snarked my head off at that particular bit of posturing.
Wolfy took a much more submissive tone. "Your eminence, this humble servant apologizes most profusely for disturbing your phylactery and returning your attention to the physical plane, but hopes your magnificent mind may find favour in being presented with new information and new challenges to solve."
"What is it this time, boy? More tinkering with mere mechanical devices in this base and de-magicked realm?"
"No, my lord. A teacher and potentate of these realms has heard of your knowledge, and come to seek an audience with you."
"Are you referring to the broken furry golem, or the slime with delusions of personhood?"
Wolfy made a quick gesture in my direction, which I took as a suggestion to start talking. "There are no... golems here," I told the skull. "I left my constructs in my... walking castle." That wasn't quite true, but I didn't see any need to mention Scorpia's potential for ambulation, or Boomer's conversational skills should I pull her out of my pocket and turn her on.
"If you /are/ alive, have you come to be healed of your infirmity?"
"I believe I can accomplish that myself, with time. I am simply a scholar, here to learn what I can, both from you and about you."
"And why should I waste any of my time dealing with such a pitiful specimen?"
Wolfy answered before I did. "She comes in all humility, leaving behind her wealth and retainers and position. Outside these walls, she is a head-of-state, a queen whose realm warred on this city, and conquered it, but in their generosity merely overthrew the corrupt madmen and are installing new nobility in their place."
"If she is a queen, why does she not seek to gain my favour with gold and jewels?"
Wolfy hesitated, so I jumped in, trying to twist my mind to match the framework this personality seemed to exist in. "True wealth and power lies not in mere physical possessions, but in being able to do as you wish, regardless of what you have. There seems to be little you wish for that gold and jewels could enable you to acquire."
An echoing laugh came from wherever it was inside the skull that its voice emanated from. "You amuse me, little queen, so I offer you a boon: solve three riddles, and I will answer any one question you may ask."
"That is... generous of you," I managed, "but while you would gain amusement from my mental struggles, I /am/ a queen, with queenly problems - not those involving the abstract and arcane aspects of the astral realms you meditate on."
"You DOUBT my COMPETENCE?"
"No - I doubt that I have the wit to ask you about anything I would understand about the astral, or anything about those parts of the physical world that still remain important enough to you for you to still remember."
"I am no nursemaid, to coddle the ignorant and uplift the unworthy. What DO you understand?"
"... That some ways of finding the truth work better than others, and how to find the difference."
"Is that ALL?"
"No, but it is what all the rest is based on."
"Out of all things that can be known, what is the one thing you WISH to know more than all others?"
"My first instinct is to say 'how not to die', but I've already died twice, and thanks to certain mere mechanical devices, I got better - without even having to place my vital essence in a separate container."
"Are you MOCKING me?"
"I am trying to understand you. To answer your last question... I suspect that what I most want to know is: What don't I know that I don't know?"
"You have a certain way with words, little queen, and your riddle is amusing, if simple. If you truly wish an answer to it, then bring my phylactery to the reproduction made of my original castle, lost a hundred fifty thousand-thousand years ago during the age of true magic; from where the sixth road meets the six hundred sixty-sixth, travel south to the sixty-sixth-"
Wolfy spoke up, "You need not spend your valuable time giving these directions, great one, as you have given them to this humble servant, who can give them to her."
"You DARE interrupt ME, insolent whelp?"
"No, my lord, I only sought to spare you-"
My walkie-talkie buzzed, which wasn't supposed to happen for anything short of an emergency. "Yes?" I asked, ignoring Sargon's sputtering outrage.
Sarah's voice came back, "The Free Company's back. They don't look happy. And they say they want to talk to you."
"Sorry, Sargon - matters of state outweighing simple conversation beckon. Unless one of the things I don't know that I don't know that you're willing to share right now involve how to deal with unruly mercenaries, I have to go."
"Such impertinent behaviour is an insult to-!"
Wolfy just about dropped Sargon into his box and latched the lid. "You might as well go," he said. "Once he starts going on about his castle, there's no getting him off the topic."
I started turning around to roll back towards Munchkin, Brenda and Wolfy following. "Does it really exist?"
"Maybe?" Wolfy shrugged. "His directions are to a spot in an old state park, about ninety miles southeast of here. The maps I've found say there used to be a prison there."
"You've never gone to look?"
"Not all of us have an armored land-train, lasers, and bodyguard robots to go exploring with."
--
I made use of my armored land-train, laser, and bodyguard robots to make as many preparations as I could for the parley, almost all of which were ones I tried to keep out of even potential sight of the Free Company's people. Coming up with further fallback plans, and exchanging radio messages with Sarah to set up various details, took up the time until the Company men arrived at the Lake Erie embassy. It might not have been neutral ground, but there were a number of ways to get out of there if one of the Company fellows turned out to have a gun hidden in a marsupial pouch or his biohazard suit lined with an unknown form of explosives or something. (Pinky even said that there was at least one escape route she wanted to not tell me about; so I added that to the plan list. Q, I think that one was.)
In yet another boring conference room, I waited at the head of yet another boring conference table, though I sat on a standard office chair with casters instead of a wheelchair. Brenda had reshaped and recolored herself in imitation of one of the potted plants, I had a couple of bun-bots to act as nurse and secretary, a squad of them in the room behind me, one of the alarm bracelets on my right ankle, filter plugs in my nostrils, anti-laser lenses in my glasses, Scorpia fully charged up, and a full load of hardware hidden inside my clothes (and my own equivalent of a marsupial pouch, Wagger's gullet). (After a few moments of thought, I asked Bun-Bun if she were able to grow a marsupial pouch that couldn't be seen. She didn't answer. I also asked if she could not turn off my adrenaline today, since I might need the boost.)
In short: I was feeling a little nervous.
Three figures wearing the gas masks and black body-suits I'd expected, and carrying some business-type briefcases I hadn't, were ushered in by the squiddies' translator, who stepped out of the room and closed the door. As they took their seats, I asked, "Would I have met any of you before?"
The one in the middle shook his head. "Captain Bravo was unavailable. I am Captain Alpha."
I nodded, to maintain politeness. "And what brings your people back to Erie, Captain?"
"We wish to offer bids for any and all city-killers, or related technologies, that are in your possession."
I blinked. "That is... unexpected. I have to say that I can't think of any offer you might make that I would accept, but I am quite happy to listen and discuss the matter. That is, unless the discussion degenerates into 'give us what we want or we'll invade' sorts of offers."
"That is not our intention today," said the Captain, and I had to repress a sigh at the last word in that sentence. He continued, "But I believe matters will not come anywhere near such an impasse. What we have to offer you is quite generous."
"You don't say," I said, mostly to fill the conversational gap.
"To begin with. While we believe that your stated intentions to prevent a second Singularity by researching the first are ill-advised, at best, we are willing to assist you in what you want in exchange for what we want. Our preliminary analysis is that your primary bottleneck is a lack of skilled manpower. The squiddies are unable to travel inland, the local education system is appalling, and you have been cut off from the Nine Nations and are on questionable terms at best with Technoville. We have university-level scientists in all fields, from traditional archaeology to even the computer sciences, who could be assigned to form the nucleus of your research group."
My eyebrows had risen fairly high during that, and when he finished, I looked away, at one of the walls, for a few moments. "Skilled people are rare," I acknowledged his point, "but skills can be taught. When dealing with such matters, what is even more important is trustworthiness - specifically, that the people can be trusted to handle such dangerous knowledge. I could only assume that such a group of people would remain loyal to your city over me, and that's without even starting to get into whether they would be up to treating a potential basilisk with the amount of respect it deserves, among other such issues."
"I see." He set one of the cases on the table, flipped open the latches with his thumbs. I tried not to tense, or for my breathing to hitch, just to remain in a state of fluid readiness. I probably didn't succeed, but I tried.
Captain Alpha pulled out a simple folder containing papers, which he flipped through. "We have a catalogue of a large number of zones, and a list of how their effects can be synergized. If there are any physical or biological transformations you seek, such as returning to your original form, we can very likely arrange for that to happen."
I tilted my head. "If you can do all that - why do you still have something resembling a human form? Surely there are all sorts of shapes that could provide a tactical advantage, which, if you can do all you can say you do, you can reverse after a tour of duty."
"We have a certain philosophical approach to such matters, which precludes voluntary personal transformations."
I looked away from him again, at the wall, considering, for the first time in a very long time, what it might be like to stop being a humanoid rabbit (plus various accoutrements), and get back to being a simple human. I thought of what I could do as a human... and then of what I could do with Bun-Bun's help. What I had done with her so far - among other details, that with a merely human liver and kidneys and so forth, I'd probably still be frozen while Denise looked for a way to bring me back to life. I thought, and I confronted a simple fact - on balance, I could do more good the way I was, then the way I had been.
I thought of Sarah and Jeff, who'd never asked to be foxtaurs; Brenda, who'd been Changed twice; and all the bimbofications. If all of /those/ could be reversed, that was a definite good. Then I thought of the Berserker being let loose, spreading its whispers, infecting any computers it came near, taking control of a war machine... there was a reason I didn't object to hearing it called a 'city-killer'. Similarly, my other possession that could be classified as that, the fusion reactor in Munchkin, which could be set to self-destruct...
I looked back at the envoys. "While you have, at least, suggested something that I could consider a net positive, I'm afraid, again, that handing over control of a city-killer is too high a price."
He shuffled papers, opening a new folder. "We have a factory-seed. We have been preparing to place it where the industry could be put to greatest use for us, but we could be convinced to site it at a location of your choosing, with further negotiations to decide what portions of its output would be put to internal expansion, to your products, and to our products."
"What sort of 'products'?"
"Shaped metal. Refined chemicals. Machinery. Vehicles. Farming equipment."
"Electronics?"
He hesitated, then said, "While within such a factory's capacity, and in fact, necessary for its own works, further negotiations would be required to be sure appropriate safety precautions surrounded such objects."
"Biologicals?"
"Not directly, but distillery equipment, lab equipment, certainly."
"Weapons of mass destruction?"
"We have no source of radioactive material, or diseases of the appropriate sort, or software of the appropriate sort."
"I notice you didn't mention a lack of chemicals."
"As I said, such a factory can produce arbitrary refining equipment, and most toxins do not require exotic elements."
"Hm." I looked away to think. It sounded a lot like the robo-fac I'd built Munchkin in. Which suggested that if I could dig the right November files out of the computer I'd salvaged from the place, I might be able to get the new factory-thing to make more of the fusion reactors. On the other hand, if that was possible, then the Free Company might also be able to make the exact same things - and self-destruct them near any hostile armies or cities.
I looked back at him. "Why haven't you already started making use of this factory-seed?"
"We already have a solid industrial base in Youngstown. A factory-seed is useful for reducing transport costs, but our areas of operations are compact enough that all our lines-of-transit are still short."
I tried to think of any obvious loopholes in what was being described. One was almost obvious: "How is it powered?"
"Initially, solar. It can continue expanding indefinitely on just sunlight, though its rate of production will be limited. For intensive manufacturing, you'll need hydro-power, windmills, bio-diesel; maybe even petroleum, if you know where to get some."
I drummed my fingers, frowning. "If that's all the case, that your industry is so good that you can trade away one of these seeds... why are you still using horse-drawn carts and don't already control this whole region with aircraft, rail lines, artillery, and so on?"
The two assistants (assuming that was what they were) glanced at each other. (Or, at least, they turned their gas-masks far enough where it looked like they might be able to see each other through their smoked-glass lenses.) Captain Alpha simply said, "Local energy sources can be found easily enough. But overall, they are thin on the ground, and transporting energy from where it is concentrated to wherever else it might be needed is problematic. Or, put another way, we could clear all the growths and monsters for any rail-line right-of-way we wish; we can't clear /all/ the rail-lines we might wish."
"Hm." I knew I wasn't an economist, and that if they started throwing numbers around, I could be bamboozled all too easily. But in general terms, it seemed... reasonable. "Depending on the specific details, I suspect that we could come to an entirely amicable arrangement of that nature... except for one complicating factor. I didn't expect you to make an offer good enough I'd even have to bring it up."
"Which factor is that?"
"I don't know you well enough to trust you with a technology capable of destroying a city. I don't even know what sort of government you have, let alone what social institutions you have to keep it in check; what your track record in interacting with your neighbours is; and, of course, I don't even know what any of you look like."
"Are you saying that you will not trade with us unless we remove our protective gear?"
"No. At least, not exactly. I'm talking about an accumulation of evidence of trustworthiness. Revealing your appearance could be part of that, but doesn't have to be. The more I learn about you, the more accurately I can predict - well, try to - what you'll do with any city-killers in your possession."
"I feel that I should mention that our main interest in acquiring all your city-killers is because of what we /do/ know about you."
"Is this about that state of war thing when you were hired to rescue me? Surely the fact that I /didn't/ use a city-killer is-"
He'd started shaking his head, so I trailed off. "Well before that, you have engaged in behaviour that is reckless beyond belief, endangering all who are near you. You created a long-distance communications network. Granted, using optical frequencies, a low bandwidth, and non-automated routing were a good start for safeguards, they are laughably inadequate for real protection. You use actual radios for short-range communication. Your personal vehicle is heavily computerized. You have made contact with at least one AI. All told, I can only attribute the fact that you have only been killed once, and even that reversibly, either to an unbelievable amount of luck, or to hidden support from one or more AIs that are using you for their own purposes. Neither of which are acceptable scenarios for leaving you with supposed control of city-killer-level technology."
"By any chance, if I suggested that 'not all AIs are bad', would you simply take that as further evidence of my being a pawn, as opposed to considering the statement on its merits?"
"Our data suggests you are culturally most familiar with twentieth-century North America?"
"... Near enough that I'm willing to agree to see where you're going with that."
"A simple analogy. 'Not all German soldiers in nineteen-forty are bad'."
"Ouch," I winced, then considered for a few moments. "Let's say that everything you say is completely true. That doesn't change the fact that humanity barely squeaked through the last Singularity, and we're facing an extinction risk should another happen. As best as I can figure, it's the largest extinction risk that we /do/ face. There are only so many possible ways to reduce that risk. Do you have better plans than I do for dealing with it?"
"Yes."
"Lovely! What are they?"
"Security reasons prohibit me from discussing them at this time."
I sighed. "That's all well and good for /you/, then. But it doesn't help /me/ rearrange my plans. I can work on improving my security measures, but I doubt that anything I can do in that regard would satisfy you."
"If you intend on continuing to closely interact with AIs, that is unlikely."
I snorted. "Sometimes it seems I can barely take a step without tripping over the things. I made first contact with one just this morning, housed in something shaped like a black skull."
"... Did it identify itself as Sargon?"
"You've met?"
"We have... encountered several copies of him before. Almost all of their behaviour is fixed and unchangeable, and they do not appear truly sapient, or to communicate other than audibly. They are toys, dangerous only in that they are stepping-stones to real dangers."
"Ah, so his - their - castle is a booby-trap?"
He didn't answer for a long moment. Then he stuck his hands into his case, where I couldn't see them, and fiddled for several more moments. I tensed again, but all that resulted were a couple of nods from his two fellows.
He folded his hands neatly before himself again, saying, "It occurs to me that your earlier phrase, 'accumulation of evidence', is a good one. We have accumulated next to no evidence that you have the capability of pursuing your stated research goals without self-destructing, messily, and in a way that may cause immense damage to those all around you. This is why we are willing to go to extensive measures to limit the damage you are capable of causing. It occurs to me that an exchange of evidence may be of benefit to both of us."
"I'm listening," I agreed, noncommittally.
"We are aware of the castle you mentioned, and are confident that it presents no special physical dangers. I propose that you provide us with evidence about your research skills by performing whatever examination of the site that you see fit, with one or more of us observing. Should you demonstrate ability beyond our current estimation, we will reciprocate by providing you with evidence we prefer to keep private about ourselves."
"Thus increasing my trust of you, and my willingness to hand over city-killer tech. ... And, I might as well say it, reducing the odds that you will be motivated to use measures more unpleasant than voluntary trade to remove that tech from my control. There's a lot of details that would have to be hammered out, but I have to say, I like your positive-sum approach."
"You accept the principle idea, then?"
"It makes a lot more sense than challenging me to cook up a spaghetti dinner, at least."
With Brenda's help, I made it to Munchkin without getting taken further off-track, and we drove off to the nearest Royal Mail Canada office. I sent the letter off to Minerva, a very similar one to Captain Shatter, and a more clinical one to the Lake Erie embassy.
That brought me to the end of the high-priority items on my to-do list, and as I looked over the lower-priority ones, I grimaced a little, none of them particularly appealing at the moment. Amy had pointed out, every so often, that, every so often, I needed to do things that weren't /on/ a to-do list, to keep myself sane. I thought about torturing Brenda with the harmonica, or breaking out the watercolours and making a mess, or trying to teach Wagger how to not interfere when I walked.
In my private chamber, my gaze fell on a pile of papers - the ones filled out by the Bayesians who'd tried sheltering aboard. The top one was by 'Blue Wolf', mentioning his family heirloom, some sort of advice-giving, solar-powered ebony skull. That sounded weird enough that it caught my interest, so I chose to spend my off-time seeing if I could find out more.
The 'math club''s meeting place had been bombed out, and the city didn't have any phonebooks. Fortunately, I was already parked right at the Royal Mail, and was able to hire a telegram boy to go to the Professor to ask for Minerva's current address, where he asked for Blue Wolf's address, where he finally delivered my request for an informal meeting to learn about the skull, at a time and place of his choosing. The delivery boy, pedaling hard on his bicycle and panting but smiling, placed the return message into my hand: Now was good, and he suggested the Professor's warehouse.
Wolfy was in full robes and cowl, and with the Professor's good-natured permission, had made room for both of us in the office area, along with a wooden case of just the right size to contain a human head. "Your Majesty," he said, through his face-concealing cowl, "it is an honor and a pleasure to meet you."
"And you. This is it?" I nodded at the case.
"Yes, ma'am. Before I open it, I should warn you, that it behaves... strangely. My family have worked out a script to get it to be more cooperative, and how to keep it that way as long as possible. But it is touchy, so I ask that you and your, ah, griffon try to be quiet, or at least play along. You'll see what I mean."
"You make it sound intriguing. I'll try to be a good audience for the show."
Wolfy nodded, unlatched the box, and with both hands, pulled out, as expected, something black and skull-shaped. What his brief note hadn't mentioned were the crystalline teeth, or the patterns just on the edge of visibility etched into its surface.
He also hadn't mentioned that the eye-sockets could glow with red lights, which is exactly what they started to do.
"IN-sig-NIF-i-GANT WOOO-ooorms! What mortals dare disturb the astral meditations of Sargon the Sorcerer, Sargon the Great, Sargon the Mighty?"
I will admit that without Wolfy's warning, I probably would have snarked my head off at that particular bit of posturing.
Wolfy took a much more submissive tone. "Your eminence, this humble servant apologizes most profusely for disturbing your phylactery and returning your attention to the physical plane, but hopes your magnificent mind may find favour in being presented with new information and new challenges to solve."
"What is it this time, boy? More tinkering with mere mechanical devices in this base and de-magicked realm?"
"No, my lord. A teacher and potentate of these realms has heard of your knowledge, and come to seek an audience with you."
"Are you referring to the broken furry golem, or the slime with delusions of personhood?"
Wolfy made a quick gesture in my direction, which I took as a suggestion to start talking. "There are no... golems here," I told the skull. "I left my constructs in my... walking castle." That wasn't quite true, but I didn't see any need to mention Scorpia's potential for ambulation, or Boomer's conversational skills should I pull her out of my pocket and turn her on.
"If you /are/ alive, have you come to be healed of your infirmity?"
"I believe I can accomplish that myself, with time. I am simply a scholar, here to learn what I can, both from you and about you."
"And why should I waste any of my time dealing with such a pitiful specimen?"
Wolfy answered before I did. "She comes in all humility, leaving behind her wealth and retainers and position. Outside these walls, she is a head-of-state, a queen whose realm warred on this city, and conquered it, but in their generosity merely overthrew the corrupt madmen and are installing new nobility in their place."
"If she is a queen, why does she not seek to gain my favour with gold and jewels?"
Wolfy hesitated, so I jumped in, trying to twist my mind to match the framework this personality seemed to exist in. "True wealth and power lies not in mere physical possessions, but in being able to do as you wish, regardless of what you have. There seems to be little you wish for that gold and jewels could enable you to acquire."
An echoing laugh came from wherever it was inside the skull that its voice emanated from. "You amuse me, little queen, so I offer you a boon: solve three riddles, and I will answer any one question you may ask."
"That is... generous of you," I managed, "but while you would gain amusement from my mental struggles, I /am/ a queen, with queenly problems - not those involving the abstract and arcane aspects of the astral realms you meditate on."
"You DOUBT my COMPETENCE?"
"No - I doubt that I have the wit to ask you about anything I would understand about the astral, or anything about those parts of the physical world that still remain important enough to you for you to still remember."
"I am no nursemaid, to coddle the ignorant and uplift the unworthy. What DO you understand?"
"... That some ways of finding the truth work better than others, and how to find the difference."
"Is that ALL?"
"No, but it is what all the rest is based on."
"Out of all things that can be known, what is the one thing you WISH to know more than all others?"
"My first instinct is to say 'how not to die', but I've already died twice, and thanks to certain mere mechanical devices, I got better - without even having to place my vital essence in a separate container."
"Are you MOCKING me?"
"I am trying to understand you. To answer your last question... I suspect that what I most want to know is: What don't I know that I don't know?"
"You have a certain way with words, little queen, and your riddle is amusing, if simple. If you truly wish an answer to it, then bring my phylactery to the reproduction made of my original castle, lost a hundred fifty thousand-thousand years ago during the age of true magic; from where the sixth road meets the six hundred sixty-sixth, travel south to the sixty-sixth-"
Wolfy spoke up, "You need not spend your valuable time giving these directions, great one, as you have given them to this humble servant, who can give them to her."
"You DARE interrupt ME, insolent whelp?"
"No, my lord, I only sought to spare you-"
My walkie-talkie buzzed, which wasn't supposed to happen for anything short of an emergency. "Yes?" I asked, ignoring Sargon's sputtering outrage.
Sarah's voice came back, "The Free Company's back. They don't look happy. And they say they want to talk to you."
"Sorry, Sargon - matters of state outweighing simple conversation beckon. Unless one of the things I don't know that I don't know that you're willing to share right now involve how to deal with unruly mercenaries, I have to go."
"Such impertinent behaviour is an insult to-!"
Wolfy just about dropped Sargon into his box and latched the lid. "You might as well go," he said. "Once he starts going on about his castle, there's no getting him off the topic."
I started turning around to roll back towards Munchkin, Brenda and Wolfy following. "Does it really exist?"
"Maybe?" Wolfy shrugged. "His directions are to a spot in an old state park, about ninety miles southeast of here. The maps I've found say there used to be a prison there."
"You've never gone to look?"
"Not all of us have an armored land-train, lasers, and bodyguard robots to go exploring with."
--
I made use of my armored land-train, laser, and bodyguard robots to make as many preparations as I could for the parley, almost all of which were ones I tried to keep out of even potential sight of the Free Company's people. Coming up with further fallback plans, and exchanging radio messages with Sarah to set up various details, took up the time until the Company men arrived at the Lake Erie embassy. It might not have been neutral ground, but there were a number of ways to get out of there if one of the Company fellows turned out to have a gun hidden in a marsupial pouch or his biohazard suit lined with an unknown form of explosives or something. (Pinky even said that there was at least one escape route she wanted to not tell me about; so I added that to the plan list. Q, I think that one was.)
In yet another boring conference room, I waited at the head of yet another boring conference table, though I sat on a standard office chair with casters instead of a wheelchair. Brenda had reshaped and recolored herself in imitation of one of the potted plants, I had a couple of bun-bots to act as nurse and secretary, a squad of them in the room behind me, one of the alarm bracelets on my right ankle, filter plugs in my nostrils, anti-laser lenses in my glasses, Scorpia fully charged up, and a full load of hardware hidden inside my clothes (and my own equivalent of a marsupial pouch, Wagger's gullet). (After a few moments of thought, I asked Bun-Bun if she were able to grow a marsupial pouch that couldn't be seen. She didn't answer. I also asked if she could not turn off my adrenaline today, since I might need the boost.)
In short: I was feeling a little nervous.
Three figures wearing the gas masks and black body-suits I'd expected, and carrying some business-type briefcases I hadn't, were ushered in by the squiddies' translator, who stepped out of the room and closed the door. As they took their seats, I asked, "Would I have met any of you before?"
The one in the middle shook his head. "Captain Bravo was unavailable. I am Captain Alpha."
I nodded, to maintain politeness. "And what brings your people back to Erie, Captain?"
"We wish to offer bids for any and all city-killers, or related technologies, that are in your possession."
I blinked. "That is... unexpected. I have to say that I can't think of any offer you might make that I would accept, but I am quite happy to listen and discuss the matter. That is, unless the discussion degenerates into 'give us what we want or we'll invade' sorts of offers."
"That is not our intention today," said the Captain, and I had to repress a sigh at the last word in that sentence. He continued, "But I believe matters will not come anywhere near such an impasse. What we have to offer you is quite generous."
"You don't say," I said, mostly to fill the conversational gap.
"To begin with. While we believe that your stated intentions to prevent a second Singularity by researching the first are ill-advised, at best, we are willing to assist you in what you want in exchange for what we want. Our preliminary analysis is that your primary bottleneck is a lack of skilled manpower. The squiddies are unable to travel inland, the local education system is appalling, and you have been cut off from the Nine Nations and are on questionable terms at best with Technoville. We have university-level scientists in all fields, from traditional archaeology to even the computer sciences, who could be assigned to form the nucleus of your research group."
My eyebrows had risen fairly high during that, and when he finished, I looked away, at one of the walls, for a few moments. "Skilled people are rare," I acknowledged his point, "but skills can be taught. When dealing with such matters, what is even more important is trustworthiness - specifically, that the people can be trusted to handle such dangerous knowledge. I could only assume that such a group of people would remain loyal to your city over me, and that's without even starting to get into whether they would be up to treating a potential basilisk with the amount of respect it deserves, among other such issues."
"I see." He set one of the cases on the table, flipped open the latches with his thumbs. I tried not to tense, or for my breathing to hitch, just to remain in a state of fluid readiness. I probably didn't succeed, but I tried.
Captain Alpha pulled out a simple folder containing papers, which he flipped through. "We have a catalogue of a large number of zones, and a list of how their effects can be synergized. If there are any physical or biological transformations you seek, such as returning to your original form, we can very likely arrange for that to happen."
I tilted my head. "If you can do all that - why do you still have something resembling a human form? Surely there are all sorts of shapes that could provide a tactical advantage, which, if you can do all you can say you do, you can reverse after a tour of duty."
"We have a certain philosophical approach to such matters, which precludes voluntary personal transformations."
I looked away from him again, at the wall, considering, for the first time in a very long time, what it might be like to stop being a humanoid rabbit (plus various accoutrements), and get back to being a simple human. I thought of what I could do as a human... and then of what I could do with Bun-Bun's help. What I had done with her so far - among other details, that with a merely human liver and kidneys and so forth, I'd probably still be frozen while Denise looked for a way to bring me back to life. I thought, and I confronted a simple fact - on balance, I could do more good the way I was, then the way I had been.
I thought of Sarah and Jeff, who'd never asked to be foxtaurs; Brenda, who'd been Changed twice; and all the bimbofications. If all of /those/ could be reversed, that was a definite good. Then I thought of the Berserker being let loose, spreading its whispers, infecting any computers it came near, taking control of a war machine... there was a reason I didn't object to hearing it called a 'city-killer'. Similarly, my other possession that could be classified as that, the fusion reactor in Munchkin, which could be set to self-destruct...
I looked back at the envoys. "While you have, at least, suggested something that I could consider a net positive, I'm afraid, again, that handing over control of a city-killer is too high a price."
He shuffled papers, opening a new folder. "We have a factory-seed. We have been preparing to place it where the industry could be put to greatest use for us, but we could be convinced to site it at a location of your choosing, with further negotiations to decide what portions of its output would be put to internal expansion, to your products, and to our products."
"What sort of 'products'?"
"Shaped metal. Refined chemicals. Machinery. Vehicles. Farming equipment."
"Electronics?"
He hesitated, then said, "While within such a factory's capacity, and in fact, necessary for its own works, further negotiations would be required to be sure appropriate safety precautions surrounded such objects."
"Biologicals?"
"Not directly, but distillery equipment, lab equipment, certainly."
"Weapons of mass destruction?"
"We have no source of radioactive material, or diseases of the appropriate sort, or software of the appropriate sort."
"I notice you didn't mention a lack of chemicals."
"As I said, such a factory can produce arbitrary refining equipment, and most toxins do not require exotic elements."
"Hm." I looked away to think. It sounded a lot like the robo-fac I'd built Munchkin in. Which suggested that if I could dig the right November files out of the computer I'd salvaged from the place, I might be able to get the new factory-thing to make more of the fusion reactors. On the other hand, if that was possible, then the Free Company might also be able to make the exact same things - and self-destruct them near any hostile armies or cities.
I looked back at him. "Why haven't you already started making use of this factory-seed?"
"We already have a solid industrial base in Youngstown. A factory-seed is useful for reducing transport costs, but our areas of operations are compact enough that all our lines-of-transit are still short."
I tried to think of any obvious loopholes in what was being described. One was almost obvious: "How is it powered?"
"Initially, solar. It can continue expanding indefinitely on just sunlight, though its rate of production will be limited. For intensive manufacturing, you'll need hydro-power, windmills, bio-diesel; maybe even petroleum, if you know where to get some."
I drummed my fingers, frowning. "If that's all the case, that your industry is so good that you can trade away one of these seeds... why are you still using horse-drawn carts and don't already control this whole region with aircraft, rail lines, artillery, and so on?"
The two assistants (assuming that was what they were) glanced at each other. (Or, at least, they turned their gas-masks far enough where it looked like they might be able to see each other through their smoked-glass lenses.) Captain Alpha simply said, "Local energy sources can be found easily enough. But overall, they are thin on the ground, and transporting energy from where it is concentrated to wherever else it might be needed is problematic. Or, put another way, we could clear all the growths and monsters for any rail-line right-of-way we wish; we can't clear /all/ the rail-lines we might wish."
"Hm." I knew I wasn't an economist, and that if they started throwing numbers around, I could be bamboozled all too easily. But in general terms, it seemed... reasonable. "Depending on the specific details, I suspect that we could come to an entirely amicable arrangement of that nature... except for one complicating factor. I didn't expect you to make an offer good enough I'd even have to bring it up."
"Which factor is that?"
"I don't know you well enough to trust you with a technology capable of destroying a city. I don't even know what sort of government you have, let alone what social institutions you have to keep it in check; what your track record in interacting with your neighbours is; and, of course, I don't even know what any of you look like."
"Are you saying that you will not trade with us unless we remove our protective gear?"
"No. At least, not exactly. I'm talking about an accumulation of evidence of trustworthiness. Revealing your appearance could be part of that, but doesn't have to be. The more I learn about you, the more accurately I can predict - well, try to - what you'll do with any city-killers in your possession."
"I feel that I should mention that our main interest in acquiring all your city-killers is because of what we /do/ know about you."
"Is this about that state of war thing when you were hired to rescue me? Surely the fact that I /didn't/ use a city-killer is-"
He'd started shaking his head, so I trailed off. "Well before that, you have engaged in behaviour that is reckless beyond belief, endangering all who are near you. You created a long-distance communications network. Granted, using optical frequencies, a low bandwidth, and non-automated routing were a good start for safeguards, they are laughably inadequate for real protection. You use actual radios for short-range communication. Your personal vehicle is heavily computerized. You have made contact with at least one AI. All told, I can only attribute the fact that you have only been killed once, and even that reversibly, either to an unbelievable amount of luck, or to hidden support from one or more AIs that are using you for their own purposes. Neither of which are acceptable scenarios for leaving you with supposed control of city-killer-level technology."
"By any chance, if I suggested that 'not all AIs are bad', would you simply take that as further evidence of my being a pawn, as opposed to considering the statement on its merits?"
"Our data suggests you are culturally most familiar with twentieth-century North America?"
"... Near enough that I'm willing to agree to see where you're going with that."
"A simple analogy. 'Not all German soldiers in nineteen-forty are bad'."
"Ouch," I winced, then considered for a few moments. "Let's say that everything you say is completely true. That doesn't change the fact that humanity barely squeaked through the last Singularity, and we're facing an extinction risk should another happen. As best as I can figure, it's the largest extinction risk that we /do/ face. There are only so many possible ways to reduce that risk. Do you have better plans than I do for dealing with it?"
"Yes."
"Lovely! What are they?"
"Security reasons prohibit me from discussing them at this time."
I sighed. "That's all well and good for /you/, then. But it doesn't help /me/ rearrange my plans. I can work on improving my security measures, but I doubt that anything I can do in that regard would satisfy you."
"If you intend on continuing to closely interact with AIs, that is unlikely."
I snorted. "Sometimes it seems I can barely take a step without tripping over the things. I made first contact with one just this morning, housed in something shaped like a black skull."
"... Did it identify itself as Sargon?"
"You've met?"
"We have... encountered several copies of him before. Almost all of their behaviour is fixed and unchangeable, and they do not appear truly sapient, or to communicate other than audibly. They are toys, dangerous only in that they are stepping-stones to real dangers."
"Ah, so his - their - castle is a booby-trap?"
He didn't answer for a long moment. Then he stuck his hands into his case, where I couldn't see them, and fiddled for several more moments. I tensed again, but all that resulted were a couple of nods from his two fellows.
He folded his hands neatly before himself again, saying, "It occurs to me that your earlier phrase, 'accumulation of evidence', is a good one. We have accumulated next to no evidence that you have the capability of pursuing your stated research goals without self-destructing, messily, and in a way that may cause immense damage to those all around you. This is why we are willing to go to extensive measures to limit the damage you are capable of causing. It occurs to me that an exchange of evidence may be of benefit to both of us."
"I'm listening," I agreed, noncommittally.
"We are aware of the castle you mentioned, and are confident that it presents no special physical dangers. I propose that you provide us with evidence about your research skills by performing whatever examination of the site that you see fit, with one or more of us observing. Should you demonstrate ability beyond our current estimation, we will reciprocate by providing you with evidence we prefer to keep private about ourselves."
"Thus increasing my trust of you, and my willingness to hand over city-killer tech. ... And, I might as well say it, reducing the odds that you will be motivated to use measures more unpleasant than voluntary trade to remove that tech from my control. There's a lot of details that would have to be hammered out, but I have to say, I like your positive-sum approach."
"You accept the principle idea, then?"
"It makes a lot more sense than challenging me to cook up a spaghetti dinner, at least."
Beyogi
and a fairy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well yeah, they have good reason to be paranoid.
But it's interesting. We have another major faction who's interested in WMDs. And another faction that's apparently hightech.
So what do we have? AIs, Technoville and the mercenaries.
I wonder what their reason for refusing to remove their suits is. Are they that worried about AI manufactured toxins and plagues, or are they robots?
But it's interesting. We have another major faction who's interested in WMDs. And another faction that's apparently hightech.
So what do we have? AIs, Technoville and the mercenaries.
I wonder what their reason for refusing to remove their suits is. Are they that worried about AI manufactured toxins and plagues, or are they robots?
They've got a point. She doesn't want them to have it because she doesn't trust them with it. But why should /they/ trust /her/ with it? From their perspective the mere fact she hasn't destroyed it is damning evidence.
Beyogi
and a fairy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Does she even have a WMD? I thought she was just bluffing.
DataPacRat
Truthseeker
- Location
- Niagara, Canada
Depending on your definitions, she has at least two: the software of the "Berserker" which killed the population of Buffalo and overwrote Laura with itself; and Munchkin's fusion-based power source, which has a manual that includes the words 'estimated crater radius' in the troubleshooting section. She also has at least the potential capability to manufacture interesting retroviruses, such as the ones that wiped out the snake-oids (though nobody but herself and Clara know that was biological instead of chemical); and possibly enough lethal chemicals to count.
(And she /still/ can't get her vehicle's minifac to make a simple handgun or rifle...
)
Beyogi
and a fairy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, but why would she use an omnicidal AI with a hateboner for her? I'm honestly curious how a Fusion power source is actually going to blow up in a way that leaves major craters. If a runaway fusion reaction destroys it's containment it'll stop pretty quickly as the very conditions in its containment are the only reason it is possible in the first place. Which is basically one of the reasons why we haven't managed to create energy positive fusion reactors yet. Maybe one of the writers of the manual was bullshitting the readers?Depending on your definitions, she has at least two: the software of the "Berserker" which killed the population of Buffalo and overwrote Laura with itself; and Munchkin's fusion-based power source, which has a manual that includes the words 'estimated crater radius' in the troubleshooting section. She also has at least the potential capability to manufacture interesting retroviruses, such as the ones that wiped out the snake-oids (though nobody but herself and Clara know that was biological instead of chemical); and possibly enough lethal chemicals to count.
(And she /still/ can't get her vehicle's minifac to make a simple handgun or rifle...
So basically the vehicle's autofactory is child proof, but not scientist proof.
67
DataPacRat
Truthseeker
- Location
- Niagara, Canada
*Chapter Five: Mis-manage*
The total population of the Royal Canadian Household in Munchkin was currently, if arguably, eight. I counted Bunny Joe as one person; while she'd brought along Bear Joe, I wasn't convinced that enough of Joe's mind had been stuffed inside his skull for him to be a full partner in the social contract's rights and responsibilities. Minerva, while a minor, was a fully human minor, with all the personhood and quirks that implied - such as bringing a pet, Toby Junior, to pet and play with to a formal meeting. Despite being twice the woman I was in many respects, Sarah only counted once. Denise probably didn't /want/ to be counted among our number, but was doomed to disappointment on many things. While Alphie was half-embedded in Brenda's chest, and served as her voicebox, I was counting them separately. And while Boomer had started with her software identical to Alphie's, or near enough, the facial expressions of their equine and mustelid avatars matched up so rarely that I couldn't help but treat them as separate individuals. And, finally, while I, myself, was one of the odder cases, until Wagger or Bun-Bun started expressing their own opinions on the issues of the day, I was willing to treat myself as being unanimous about my singular population count.
"Welcome to the first semi-formal meeting of what I'm calling the Private Council. Would everyone take a seat and settle in, please?
"Thank you. I don't want this to become some formalized ritual, where the order on the agenda is more important than dealing with actual problems; but I did want to get us all together for some announcements and discussion.
"First of all, I'm instituting a preliminary information security system. None of us are experts in the field, so we know going in that it's just going to be a temporary setup until we can work out something better, but I know I've been letting myself slip pieces of data to people who shouldn't have them. I think the downsides are much smaller than the upsides.
"I'm using Munchkin itself as the model, and color-coding it so it's easy to remember. White is outside Munchkin: information that's already public. Blue is the cargo car: stuff that we may not want publicized, but can be figured out by people watching us, such as any random people who we happen to rescue. Green is the living car, for people who we can trust at least enough not to stab us as we sleep. Yellow is the lab car, for materials that can be dangerous to those who don't know how to handle them. And red is my private car, for materials we don't want anyone else to get a hold of."
What I didn't add aloud was that, at least in my own mind, I'd added an extra category, black, for materials I didn't want anyone else to even know existed.
"These aren't hard-and-fast rules. They're meant to be guidelines. I expect I'm going to be spending some time sorting out which items and pieces of info go into which category. The general point is to avoid spreading information unnecessarily.
"The remainder of this meeting is coded Yellow, with possible exceptions.
"Any questions?"
--
"Next up. I have a proposal for a project, which I'm going to call 'Delver'. I've received information that ninety miles south-ish from here is a castle. I intend to go take a look at it, to see whether anything there can be made use of, up to and including claiming the site as a new headquarters; and to see if anything there is dangerous and needs to be disposed of, up to and including destroying the entire site.
"There are a few reasons to look at such a site. If I'm to do any digging into the Singularity, then it's a good idea to start getting some practice into practical archaeology. Getting the practice on a site that doesn't have any intrinsic importance, before a fumbled shovel might destroy an invaluable piece of data, seems worth the effort.
"There are also a few reasons to look at that site, as opposed to any others. The main one is to try to improve relations between us and the Free Company. They think we are, to put it bluntly, idiot children who can't be trusted with matches, let alone something really dangerous. I get the impression that if we don't give them what they want from us in a 'voluntary' trade, they'll take it by force. I'm also pretty sure that if they used force, none of my technical tricks would be enough to stop them. So I'm quite willing to try to play along with their ideas, as long as they continue to pose a looming threat.
"Because of that last goal, I'd like Delver to be done with all due caution and care, to try to impress any observers the Free Company has watching us. This means taking the time before leaving Erie to gather whatever information about the site and its environs that we can, getting as many of the potentially useful tools as we can build or buy, looking for any subject-matter experts we can hire, and so on. To this end, I'd rather not set a date to leave until we can make a good guess about how long it'll take to do all of that.
"At least one other thing to keep in mind is that, given how little we know about the Free Company, they have some sort of hidden agenda. Maybe they want someone else to clean out the castle so they can keep their hands clean. Maybe they're lying about the castle posing no physical danger, and whatever observers they send are expendable. Maybe they're playing with the definition of 'physical danger', and there's a mind-wipe zone inside or something. In short - nobody who's going is to let their guard down just because it's supposed to be a nice, easy training mission."
--
"Let's see... oh, yes. I've determined that there's a disease that's fairly widespread among Erieans, and whose main method of transmission is sexual contact. I'm still working out a way to determine if anyone is infected, but I have figured out a cure. Well, I suppose I should actually give credit to Clara for working out the cure. Anyway, it seems impolite to spread the disease more than it already has, so I'm going to request that you all consider taking the cure, and avoiding infectious contact with anyone who hasn't. It's two weeks of injections, which is annoying, so I'll understand if you don't want to. If it makes you feel any better, I've already started taking the treatment myself."
--
"Moving along; I'd like to make some longer-term arrangements to keep Human Joe frozen, other than inside Munchkin. For one, he's in the way in case anyone else needs to be preserved. For another, it would be better for him to be in a fixed location. I propose we find some industrial space to serve as storage space for his cryostat, while looking for a building that would be suitable for the longer term. I'd like to suggest we pass along this task to the local Bayesians, some of whom were already working on a similar project before their space got blown up. ... I suppose we should make a note to avoid publicizing the location of the cryo-storage space, in case anyone else takes it into their mind to apply explosives."
--
"I don't expect this item to be resolved today, but I do want to bring it up. The odds that I'm going to get killed by something in the near future are non-negligible. And that doesn't even take into account the various ways I could end up hors de combat, such as a zone mind-wipe that makes me want nothing more than to be a tree, or something. I'm positioning this whole monarchy job as being working on long-term problems that a regular political process is ill-equipped to handle... and I want those problems handled, even if I'm not around to handle them.
"I don't expect to be able to reproduce in anything like a natural fashion - and even if I could, waiting fifteen to twenty years for someone new to even start working on the problems isn't a good solution. But I still want something resembling an heir, who can take the resources I've gathered so far and put them to good use. The people who seem most likely to be willing and able to get to work on existential-risk reduction are the ones in this room. I know not all of you have the interest or skills to even try - but I'd like each of you to start thinking about what it would mean to try taking on that sort of responsibility."
I paused for effect, looking around at each face.
"There's a certain mindset involved in thinking that your long-term goal is so important that it's worth doing almost anything, or even just plain anything, to accomplish. I'm hoping to cultivate that mindset in each of you. To start with, I remembered the names of a few pieces of text that might provide relevant advice, and Clara was able to find copies somewhere in her library, or maybe students' personal data storage devices - she just said she found 'em. I'm handing out copies of 'The List of Character Survival Techniques' as an introduction, and when you're done with that, I'd recommend the 'Evil Overlord List' and its sequels, and 'Murphy's Laws of Combat'. I'm paying the heliographers to transmit further items during their usual down-times, starting with selected articles from 'Dragon Magazine', as well as excerpts from the 'Grimtooth's Traps' line for practical puzzles to ponder how to pass."
--
"Bunny Joe, Sarah, could you stay behind for a minute?
"I'm calling this piece of info red level of security. I've written up a simple set of documents to serve as a will, living will, and the like, in case of my death or incapacitation. Among other details, they name my current choice of heir. I've used a bit of encryption mathematical trickery on them, splitting them into three pieces, any two of which can be used to recreate the original documents. I'm storing one piece aboard Munchkin, entrusting one piece to the Lake Erie squiddies, and transmitting the third piece to Clara to hold in trust for the Quebecois, until we get back in touch with them again."
--
"Candy? Crystal? Kelly? Karma? I have a proposition for you. At the moment, you are security level blue. I am willing to consider that to security level green - if you can do something for me.
"There is something called 'decision fatigue'. Making lots of little decisions makes it harder to make the big decisions. I know some politicians have tried to reduce that for themselves by simplifying their lives - reducing their wardrobe to just a blue suit or a grey one. If you can come up with ways to reduce /my/ decision fatigue... I'll probably let you."
"Among other benefits, if you do so, I will grant you access to one of my buns, who has the same measurements and range of motion as me. You will be able to learn a great many things about me from it, so it will be a further extension of my trust to you."
--
"I would like to apologize for neglecting my diplomatic duties to you and your people, Captain Shatter."
"Not at all. We are delighted to... observe the local forms of... inter-state relations, and in particular... your resolution to your conflict with... the locals. We have never witnessed... the writing of a constitution... before."
"Ah, that's why you haven't set sail yet. Hm... in that case, do you think you might be willing to have a few of the people under your command join me in a little expedition inland?"
--
"Mister... Lee, is it?" I double-checked my itinerary.
"Yes, Your Majesty. Former manager of Erie Pharamaceuticals. Current manager of Royal Canadian Pharamaceuticals, Erie Branch, until such time as you choose to replace me."
"I have little to no interest in interfering in the day-to-day operations of your group, outside of ensuring there's an ombudsman who everyone can report any problems to. I have asked you here for two reasons, the first of which is that I wish to ensure that, as a Crown company, your company's actions do not negatively affect the reputation of the crown."
"We use all available testing methods to ensure the purity and potency of our products. I have also brought samples of the new branding materials for your inspection and review."
"Would it be safe to assume that the workers are fully unionized?"
"Of course, ma'am."
"Then from what I see so far, there are no major issues to deal with. Which allows me to proceed to my second reason for bringing you here: arranging to supply the Royal Mobile Household with medicines and other such interesting chemicals, which are infeasible to create in our private lab. Improving the equipment and resources in that lab would also be nice."
--
"No, vodka does /not/ contain enough alcohol by volume for my needs. I don't want to drink it, I want to burn it. Diesel would work about as well, but seems to be hard to come by, while I /know/ that if technology is advanced enough to make pipes, people are going to be using those pipes to distill alcohol. If you can't provide me what I need with a deliverable of two days, then please let me know now, so I can come up with an alternative solution."
--
"Mayor Edwards, it occurs to me that one area of information my current records are woefully lacking in are post-Singularity maps. I would greatly appreciate your advice in recommending libraries, whether public or private, from which I can remedy this deficiency."
--
I looked up from the article on exploring abandoned architecture, and spoke to myself, "Why haven't I set the mini-fabber to make a ladder yet? ... I suppose getting paws, then a hoof, then a spinal injury, then a tail with veto control over my legs, has kind of made climbing things low on my priority list... I suppose I should make sure I've got a good selection of ropes, too, a few grappling hooks, some sort of collapsible ten-foot pole... I wonder how Sarah would feel about an actual saddle? Hm... no need to limit myself to the classics; I've got compressed air, I wonder if Clara knows an easy way to make silly string? ... Wherever did I put that smart-metal lariat?"
--
"Yes, Brenda?"
"I've been trading 'grams with Clara. Told her as much as we know about what I'm made of now. Got instructions back to test me for that disease, and treat me if I've got it. She says as long as I stick to the plan, you don't have to worry about catching anything from me!"
"That's... nice."
"And I've been practicing with your bun-bots! I can make any of them look like they're wearing any of your outfits now! Well, except I have to have enough of me there so I can think. They're very stretchy inside, even more than you!"
"Er..."
"... Or I can pretend to be a backpack, or something like that. Oh, and I've been working on my tentacles! Anybody tries to get into a fight with you, they won't know what hit them!"
"Well..."
"And I've just started trying to make myself look like you. If you need a body-double, that can talk better than the bun-bots, and react to new things, I can fill in for you! Fur's kind of hard for me, though."
"Brenda, I'd prefer it if you didn't try to look like me - there's a lot of potential for dangerous confusion there. I'd also prefer if we finished this conversation when I finished showering."
"Ooh, what's that? Do you have another giant egg in there?"
"... No, it's not my uterus. Apparently growing a flap of skin doesn't take Bun-Bun very long, and I'm seeing how big my new marsupial pouch can get by filling it with water."
"It looks as big as when I was in you!"
"..."
"Is that for /me/? You didn't know I was talking to Clara, so you changed yourself so I could be in you and not worry about that disease and eeee and can I try it now?"
"... Have you checked to see if you dissolve in water? I don't think even you'd survive the recycler..."
--
"Hello, Miz... Unruh?"
"That's right."
"In charge of Royal Mail Canada's heliograph system and telegraph delivery service?"
"That's right."
"I am planning on making a trip to a site about a hundred fifty klicks from here. I'd like your opinion on the feasibility of creating a temporary heliograph line between here and there, and what impact that might have on your normal operations."
--
Present at the latest Munchkin meeting were myself; Joe, Sarah, Brenda, Denise; a couple of Free Company observers; a squad of red-shirted Acadian marines; a heliograph operator team; Blue Wolf and Sargon in his box; and some bun-bots.
I'd at least learned enough about how these things went to have made arrangements for the right numbers and types of seats and refreshments.
"Welcome, everyone, to the first meeting for Project Delver. Some of you will be joining me on the expedition; some of you will be remaining here, but contributing in other ways.
"I will be issuing keycards to each of you shortly, which you will be able to use to access the parts of Munchkin that it is safe for you to do so. When I do, you will need to choose an additional security measure, such as a thumbprint or passcode, so that a stolen keycard will not be of use to a thief.
"Project Delver's first goal is for everyone involved to return in one piece. The second goal is for anyone who ends up in less than one piece, to be given the best treatment possible as quickly as possible. The third goal is to end up with the maximum possible amount of valuable resources, including both information and materiel.
"The basic plan is to travel to Site F aboard Munchkin, dropping off temporary heliograph relays on the way; to investigate the Site for useful and dangerous things, hopefully ending up with at least a preliminary examination of the entire Site; and to return to Erie, picking up the heliographs and their crews on the way. Given the second goal, Plan B is if someone is injured beyond what can be treated on-site, to bring them back to Erie's hospital as fast as possible, and then to return to collect everyone who was left behind. Plan C is if the Site turns out to have significant immobile resources and insignificant dangers, to establish a longer-term base to exploit those resources, and to minimize the odds of them from being exploited or destroyed by hostile groups.
"Part of this meeting is to gather any suggestions any of you may have in improving those plans, or in preparing alternate ones.
"This meeting is also, in part, so everyone involved can start familiarizing themselves with each other, and with the tools we'll be using. For example, this, here, is Pole-Bun, as in 'polish mine detector'. Despite her resemblance to me, she is not, in fact, a person; and thus she can be sent to walk ahead of a real person, to check for stable footing and a lack of things that will fall on heads. While I don't want to lose Pole-Bun, I'd rather lose her than a real person.
"I have also prepared one of my flying machines for a demonstration today, to see which, if any, of you might be interested in learning how to be a backup pilot. I'm sure all of you can imagine the benefits of getting a higher perspective on things."
--
One of the lynx-shaped soldiers padded over and asked, "Will any of the citizens of the Dominion of Lake Erie be contributing to this project?"
"No more than to any other, I'd imagine," I said. "Site F is inland, away from Lake Erie's shores. If it were in the same drainage basin, then I might have asked if they had anyone who might be willing to swim upstream; I don't know how they might be able to help, but I'd ask. But if I have to help them get over the hump to the next stream over, then by the time any of them could make it through all the twists and turns of the local river system to anywhere near Site F, we're probably already going to be done exploring the place."
"Could you not bring even one in Munchkin?"
"I've asked, but they don't seem interested. I suppose if we come across something at Site F in which an aquatic, tentacled sapient being would tremendously help, then I can use the heliograph line to send a message back negotiating for the help of one, and have Munchkin make a quick trip back and forth to bring one."
--
"And here we are at Site Mock-F."
"It's a barn," said Observer Charlie.
"Not a very big one," said Observer Delta.
"On the outside, sure," I agreed. "But better to find out how we step on each other's toes at a barn, next to Erie and its medical establishment, than a few hours away. I've got the heliograph operators practicing their craft elsewhere, so at this point in the simulated expedition, we've gotten near Site F. I've gone up, taken some pictures, and come back down. Well, Joe, Sarah, Wolfy, it appears that our intelligence was faulty, and instead of a castle, we are faced with a simple barn. Whatever shall we do?"
Bunny Joe tilted her head. "Blow it up?"
"Explosives are kind of expensive these days."
Sarah suggested, "Move in?"
"We haven't seen the inside - it may be a monster-barn fake castle thing."
Blue Wolf said, "Then I guess we'd better take a look. Should we send Pole-Bun in first?"
"We should," I agreed. "And now that I think about it - I'd really like to be able to see what she sees, without risking /any/ of our people. Boomer, add to the session notes, I want to look into really, /really/ long video cables. Also, since I haven't actually flown - if I can put together a simple surveillance drone, so I don't have to risk my own neck in case the real thing has some sort of anti-air defenses. Now, while we're standing here gabbing, what should the marines be doing? That barn might be full of robo-centaur knights getting ready to sally out against us; how should we have already arranged ourselves in case of such a situation?"
--
"... 'Presbylutheran'?" I read from the pamphlet.
"There weren't many people left after the Singularity. Almost all of the old churches with enough members left to even be called a church merged," said Edwards.
"You do realize that I'm not a Christian of any shape or sort, right?"
"Powerful people can be religious. And this is an area of influence outside the usual inter-union squabbling."
"And why are /you/ suggesting /I/ engage in this area at all?"
"Maybe because I want to keep my cushy job as secretary once the new constitution is in place, and the church's support would go a long way to keeping things stable. Or maybe I just want to watch you squirm uncomfortably."
"... Or maybe you owe someone a favor. Fine, I'll talk to the priest. Or reverend, or bishop, or pastor, or whatever the title is. But if I burst into flames when I walk in the doors, I'm holding you responsible."
--
The harem were... trying. They'd found pictures of Queen Elizabeth on walkabout, and had imitated the fashion, with knee-length skirt and wide-brimmed hat, in royal blue. Since they hadn't been bothering me at all while they'd put that together, I didn't want to discourage their approach, so I took the ensemble they presented me with back to my private room, scanned it into the clothes fabber, and had it re-make the outfit - with the addition of my usual selection of hidden pockets. I tucked Boomer into my new marsupial pouch, padded her case's corners with a few hankies and a microfiber towel, and picked a cane to try to walk with that day. (Wagger finally seemed to be responding to the operant conditioning of 'twitch leg at bad time, Bunny falls onto tail', but it wasn't a deeply embedded lesson yet.)
In relatively short order, I was welcomed into a small house behind a white-painted church. (Rectory? Parsonage? There was a whole vocabulary I was missing, and had little interest in spending my time to assimilate.)
"May I offer you some tea? Wine?" asked the woman, with the sort of collar I'd seen on TV often enough to recognize as being some sort of indicator of ministership.
"No, thank you," I settled into a seat. I added an explanation, "I've started to have some medical issues with locally-sourced food and water." It wasn't /entirely/ false, and I hoped helped move the conversation along.
"It's a shame you couldn't make it to services, earlier."
I sighed. "Ma'am - with all due respect, you're not going to convert me to any brand of theism, I'm not going to convert you to any variation of atheism, and I'm pretty sure we both have better things to do than waste our time trying. If that's all you asked me over for, I should probably just leave."
"While it grieves me to see any soul as lost in the wilderness as yours, there is another reason you are here. What are your intentions towards the church in your new government?"
"'My' new government? You mean Erie's new government?" At her nod, I said, "You should take that up with the new government, not me. I'm just making sure it meets certain minimal standards. After that, I have no intentions for it, or anything under its bailiwick."
"Do those standards include freedom of religion?"
"They include a bill of rights, which I won't consider complete without some sort of guarantee for freedom of thought and expression. There are certain limits to that guarantee, such as someone who believes that they can cure their child by starving it in the face of all medical evidence to the contrary, but the old American government was perfectly able to include 'reckless endangerment' laws within its constitution and still have lots of churches."
"And what will you do if the new government fails to abide by that guarantee?"
"Me? Almost certainly nothing. That's what elections, emigration, and revolutions are for. I'm not here to solve all the world's problems; I'm not here to solve /your/ problems. If I can solve the one problem I'm focused on with a guarantee of free religion, I'll work on that guarantee. If I can solve the one problem I'm focused on by establishing atheism as the one and only state church, I'll work on establishing that."
"I'm not happy to hear that."
"Then think of it this way. If there's anything you can do to help me on my problem, I'll be quite happy to offer whatever I can in return, commensurate to the size of your help."
"And what 'problem' is that?"
"From your perspective? Ensuring that enough people survive, in the long term, so that there is a reasonable chance of your church continuing to exist. I'm not going to say that if you're really interested in the long-term welfare of your flock that you should throw your total support behind me, because people generally just don't think that way."
--
"How's progress, Skunk?"
"We resolved the populism versus unionism debate along with the separation of law bills and money bills by going back to bicameralism. One house, elected by single transferable vote, initiates law bills, requires a two-thirds majority to pass any, laws require a simple majority of the other house."
"Is 'single transferable vote' a synonym for 'instant runoff'?"
"Not quite. The person doing the voting still just ranks their candidates in order of preference, but since it's to elect a bunch of people into a group instead of an individual, if everybody's first vote is for X, then the excess votes go to their second choice."
"I'll read up on it when I have a chance. Go ahead, then."
"The other house has its members appointed by the union leaders, initiates money bills, the executive gets a line-item veto, bills can be defeated by a supermajority of the first house. Right now, we're working on tweaking the Bill of Rights to take into account the abuses and excesses of the Civil Guard, and the previous government in general. I'm pushing for a separate branch of government for ombudsmen, but I could live with them being part of the executive, if enough other measures are taken. When I get back, the plan is to discuss whether we want to constitutionally enshrine the pre-twenty-twenty-seven exclusionary rule and the principle of throwing out the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' for illegally-gathered evidence, or stay within the American legal tradition, incorporate Doe v. Alabama as precedent, and come up with other ways to punish government agents who exceed their lawful authority."
"I'm not really familiar with that case, or what happened in twenty-twenty-seven."
"I'm not an expert in the details, but the previous rule was ruled unconstitutional. After, if someone felt that a search was illegal, they were supposed to file a writ of habeas corpus to get an immediate hearing. However, in practice, it was nearly impossible to succeed. As police already had qualified immunity from lawsuits, only being liable for clear violations of peoples' rights, they had nearly free reign. Thus the creation of the Civil Guard instead of a police force, to avoid those abuses."
"... I'm going to think that it didn't avoid them very well."
"Perhaps not, but it was a step in the right direction, and the main problems lay elsewhere in the system. Given the terms of the surrender document, I'm implying to the committee that anything less than every civil rights protection we can come up with could be insufficient to satisfy you, but I'm also trying to get them to understand why the protections are valuable in and of themselves."
"Pointing out how the Civil Guard, or whatever, is at least as likely to be pointed at them as at random civilians seems like one approach."
"Perhaps, but given the backgrounds of the committee members, they simply don't have the context to understand what that's like. I'm getting tempted to spend a day forcing all of them to dress up like poor people and get hassled."
"... I'm almost tempted to extend the deadline by a day if you do, but changing that, even for such a noble cause, would likely set a bad precedent..."
--
"I'd like everyone working on Project Delver to wear these. They're not directly related to the project, but are more for long-term data gathering."
Sarah picked up the pen-shaped object, then the card-sized one. "What do they do? More radio gear?"
"No, a couple of types of radiation detectors. Without decent sources of semiconductors or noble gasses, I'm limited in the sensors I can build. But the local newspaper has photos, so I was able to get some film to build a film-badge dosimeter. And the quartz fiber dosimeter doesn't require any special materials, it just needs to be read off and recharged every so often. Recharger's in the lab, along with a logbook and instruction sheet."
"Are you /expecting/ radiation at the castle?"
"I have no reason to. But I'm hoping the castle expedition is a prelude to bigger and better investigations, and I'd feel downright silly if I discovered the secrets of the universe, but died because I found them in the middle of a particle accelerator I didn't know was active."
The total population of the Royal Canadian Household in Munchkin was currently, if arguably, eight. I counted Bunny Joe as one person; while she'd brought along Bear Joe, I wasn't convinced that enough of Joe's mind had been stuffed inside his skull for him to be a full partner in the social contract's rights and responsibilities. Minerva, while a minor, was a fully human minor, with all the personhood and quirks that implied - such as bringing a pet, Toby Junior, to pet and play with to a formal meeting. Despite being twice the woman I was in many respects, Sarah only counted once. Denise probably didn't /want/ to be counted among our number, but was doomed to disappointment on many things. While Alphie was half-embedded in Brenda's chest, and served as her voicebox, I was counting them separately. And while Boomer had started with her software identical to Alphie's, or near enough, the facial expressions of their equine and mustelid avatars matched up so rarely that I couldn't help but treat them as separate individuals. And, finally, while I, myself, was one of the odder cases, until Wagger or Bun-Bun started expressing their own opinions on the issues of the day, I was willing to treat myself as being unanimous about my singular population count.
"Welcome to the first semi-formal meeting of what I'm calling the Private Council. Would everyone take a seat and settle in, please?
"Thank you. I don't want this to become some formalized ritual, where the order on the agenda is more important than dealing with actual problems; but I did want to get us all together for some announcements and discussion.
"First of all, I'm instituting a preliminary information security system. None of us are experts in the field, so we know going in that it's just going to be a temporary setup until we can work out something better, but I know I've been letting myself slip pieces of data to people who shouldn't have them. I think the downsides are much smaller than the upsides.
"I'm using Munchkin itself as the model, and color-coding it so it's easy to remember. White is outside Munchkin: information that's already public. Blue is the cargo car: stuff that we may not want publicized, but can be figured out by people watching us, such as any random people who we happen to rescue. Green is the living car, for people who we can trust at least enough not to stab us as we sleep. Yellow is the lab car, for materials that can be dangerous to those who don't know how to handle them. And red is my private car, for materials we don't want anyone else to get a hold of."
What I didn't add aloud was that, at least in my own mind, I'd added an extra category, black, for materials I didn't want anyone else to even know existed.
"These aren't hard-and-fast rules. They're meant to be guidelines. I expect I'm going to be spending some time sorting out which items and pieces of info go into which category. The general point is to avoid spreading information unnecessarily.
"The remainder of this meeting is coded Yellow, with possible exceptions.
"Any questions?"
--
"Next up. I have a proposal for a project, which I'm going to call 'Delver'. I've received information that ninety miles south-ish from here is a castle. I intend to go take a look at it, to see whether anything there can be made use of, up to and including claiming the site as a new headquarters; and to see if anything there is dangerous and needs to be disposed of, up to and including destroying the entire site.
"There are a few reasons to look at such a site. If I'm to do any digging into the Singularity, then it's a good idea to start getting some practice into practical archaeology. Getting the practice on a site that doesn't have any intrinsic importance, before a fumbled shovel might destroy an invaluable piece of data, seems worth the effort.
"There are also a few reasons to look at that site, as opposed to any others. The main one is to try to improve relations between us and the Free Company. They think we are, to put it bluntly, idiot children who can't be trusted with matches, let alone something really dangerous. I get the impression that if we don't give them what they want from us in a 'voluntary' trade, they'll take it by force. I'm also pretty sure that if they used force, none of my technical tricks would be enough to stop them. So I'm quite willing to try to play along with their ideas, as long as they continue to pose a looming threat.
"Because of that last goal, I'd like Delver to be done with all due caution and care, to try to impress any observers the Free Company has watching us. This means taking the time before leaving Erie to gather whatever information about the site and its environs that we can, getting as many of the potentially useful tools as we can build or buy, looking for any subject-matter experts we can hire, and so on. To this end, I'd rather not set a date to leave until we can make a good guess about how long it'll take to do all of that.
"At least one other thing to keep in mind is that, given how little we know about the Free Company, they have some sort of hidden agenda. Maybe they want someone else to clean out the castle so they can keep their hands clean. Maybe they're lying about the castle posing no physical danger, and whatever observers they send are expendable. Maybe they're playing with the definition of 'physical danger', and there's a mind-wipe zone inside or something. In short - nobody who's going is to let their guard down just because it's supposed to be a nice, easy training mission."
--
"Let's see... oh, yes. I've determined that there's a disease that's fairly widespread among Erieans, and whose main method of transmission is sexual contact. I'm still working out a way to determine if anyone is infected, but I have figured out a cure. Well, I suppose I should actually give credit to Clara for working out the cure. Anyway, it seems impolite to spread the disease more than it already has, so I'm going to request that you all consider taking the cure, and avoiding infectious contact with anyone who hasn't. It's two weeks of injections, which is annoying, so I'll understand if you don't want to. If it makes you feel any better, I've already started taking the treatment myself."
--
"Moving along; I'd like to make some longer-term arrangements to keep Human Joe frozen, other than inside Munchkin. For one, he's in the way in case anyone else needs to be preserved. For another, it would be better for him to be in a fixed location. I propose we find some industrial space to serve as storage space for his cryostat, while looking for a building that would be suitable for the longer term. I'd like to suggest we pass along this task to the local Bayesians, some of whom were already working on a similar project before their space got blown up. ... I suppose we should make a note to avoid publicizing the location of the cryo-storage space, in case anyone else takes it into their mind to apply explosives."
--
"I don't expect this item to be resolved today, but I do want to bring it up. The odds that I'm going to get killed by something in the near future are non-negligible. And that doesn't even take into account the various ways I could end up hors de combat, such as a zone mind-wipe that makes me want nothing more than to be a tree, or something. I'm positioning this whole monarchy job as being working on long-term problems that a regular political process is ill-equipped to handle... and I want those problems handled, even if I'm not around to handle them.
"I don't expect to be able to reproduce in anything like a natural fashion - and even if I could, waiting fifteen to twenty years for someone new to even start working on the problems isn't a good solution. But I still want something resembling an heir, who can take the resources I've gathered so far and put them to good use. The people who seem most likely to be willing and able to get to work on existential-risk reduction are the ones in this room. I know not all of you have the interest or skills to even try - but I'd like each of you to start thinking about what it would mean to try taking on that sort of responsibility."
I paused for effect, looking around at each face.
"There's a certain mindset involved in thinking that your long-term goal is so important that it's worth doing almost anything, or even just plain anything, to accomplish. I'm hoping to cultivate that mindset in each of you. To start with, I remembered the names of a few pieces of text that might provide relevant advice, and Clara was able to find copies somewhere in her library, or maybe students' personal data storage devices - she just said she found 'em. I'm handing out copies of 'The List of Character Survival Techniques' as an introduction, and when you're done with that, I'd recommend the 'Evil Overlord List' and its sequels, and 'Murphy's Laws of Combat'. I'm paying the heliographers to transmit further items during their usual down-times, starting with selected articles from 'Dragon Magazine', as well as excerpts from the 'Grimtooth's Traps' line for practical puzzles to ponder how to pass."
--
"Bunny Joe, Sarah, could you stay behind for a minute?
"I'm calling this piece of info red level of security. I've written up a simple set of documents to serve as a will, living will, and the like, in case of my death or incapacitation. Among other details, they name my current choice of heir. I've used a bit of encryption mathematical trickery on them, splitting them into three pieces, any two of which can be used to recreate the original documents. I'm storing one piece aboard Munchkin, entrusting one piece to the Lake Erie squiddies, and transmitting the third piece to Clara to hold in trust for the Quebecois, until we get back in touch with them again."
--
"Candy? Crystal? Kelly? Karma? I have a proposition for you. At the moment, you are security level blue. I am willing to consider that to security level green - if you can do something for me.
"There is something called 'decision fatigue'. Making lots of little decisions makes it harder to make the big decisions. I know some politicians have tried to reduce that for themselves by simplifying their lives - reducing their wardrobe to just a blue suit or a grey one. If you can come up with ways to reduce /my/ decision fatigue... I'll probably let you."
"Among other benefits, if you do so, I will grant you access to one of my buns, who has the same measurements and range of motion as me. You will be able to learn a great many things about me from it, so it will be a further extension of my trust to you."
--
"I would like to apologize for neglecting my diplomatic duties to you and your people, Captain Shatter."
"Not at all. We are delighted to... observe the local forms of... inter-state relations, and in particular... your resolution to your conflict with... the locals. We have never witnessed... the writing of a constitution... before."
"Ah, that's why you haven't set sail yet. Hm... in that case, do you think you might be willing to have a few of the people under your command join me in a little expedition inland?"
--
"Mister... Lee, is it?" I double-checked my itinerary.
"Yes, Your Majesty. Former manager of Erie Pharamaceuticals. Current manager of Royal Canadian Pharamaceuticals, Erie Branch, until such time as you choose to replace me."
"I have little to no interest in interfering in the day-to-day operations of your group, outside of ensuring there's an ombudsman who everyone can report any problems to. I have asked you here for two reasons, the first of which is that I wish to ensure that, as a Crown company, your company's actions do not negatively affect the reputation of the crown."
"We use all available testing methods to ensure the purity and potency of our products. I have also brought samples of the new branding materials for your inspection and review."
"Would it be safe to assume that the workers are fully unionized?"
"Of course, ma'am."
"Then from what I see so far, there are no major issues to deal with. Which allows me to proceed to my second reason for bringing you here: arranging to supply the Royal Mobile Household with medicines and other such interesting chemicals, which are infeasible to create in our private lab. Improving the equipment and resources in that lab would also be nice."
--
"No, vodka does /not/ contain enough alcohol by volume for my needs. I don't want to drink it, I want to burn it. Diesel would work about as well, but seems to be hard to come by, while I /know/ that if technology is advanced enough to make pipes, people are going to be using those pipes to distill alcohol. If you can't provide me what I need with a deliverable of two days, then please let me know now, so I can come up with an alternative solution."
--
"Mayor Edwards, it occurs to me that one area of information my current records are woefully lacking in are post-Singularity maps. I would greatly appreciate your advice in recommending libraries, whether public or private, from which I can remedy this deficiency."
--
I looked up from the article on exploring abandoned architecture, and spoke to myself, "Why haven't I set the mini-fabber to make a ladder yet? ... I suppose getting paws, then a hoof, then a spinal injury, then a tail with veto control over my legs, has kind of made climbing things low on my priority list... I suppose I should make sure I've got a good selection of ropes, too, a few grappling hooks, some sort of collapsible ten-foot pole... I wonder how Sarah would feel about an actual saddle? Hm... no need to limit myself to the classics; I've got compressed air, I wonder if Clara knows an easy way to make silly string? ... Wherever did I put that smart-metal lariat?"
--
"Yes, Brenda?"
"I've been trading 'grams with Clara. Told her as much as we know about what I'm made of now. Got instructions back to test me for that disease, and treat me if I've got it. She says as long as I stick to the plan, you don't have to worry about catching anything from me!"
"That's... nice."
"And I've been practicing with your bun-bots! I can make any of them look like they're wearing any of your outfits now! Well, except I have to have enough of me there so I can think. They're very stretchy inside, even more than you!"
"Er..."
"... Or I can pretend to be a backpack, or something like that. Oh, and I've been working on my tentacles! Anybody tries to get into a fight with you, they won't know what hit them!"
"Well..."
"And I've just started trying to make myself look like you. If you need a body-double, that can talk better than the bun-bots, and react to new things, I can fill in for you! Fur's kind of hard for me, though."
"Brenda, I'd prefer it if you didn't try to look like me - there's a lot of potential for dangerous confusion there. I'd also prefer if we finished this conversation when I finished showering."
"Ooh, what's that? Do you have another giant egg in there?"
"... No, it's not my uterus. Apparently growing a flap of skin doesn't take Bun-Bun very long, and I'm seeing how big my new marsupial pouch can get by filling it with water."
"It looks as big as when I was in you!"
"..."
"Is that for /me/? You didn't know I was talking to Clara, so you changed yourself so I could be in you and not worry about that disease and eeee and can I try it now?"
"... Have you checked to see if you dissolve in water? I don't think even you'd survive the recycler..."
--
"Hello, Miz... Unruh?"
"That's right."
"In charge of Royal Mail Canada's heliograph system and telegraph delivery service?"
"That's right."
"I am planning on making a trip to a site about a hundred fifty klicks from here. I'd like your opinion on the feasibility of creating a temporary heliograph line between here and there, and what impact that might have on your normal operations."
--
Present at the latest Munchkin meeting were myself; Joe, Sarah, Brenda, Denise; a couple of Free Company observers; a squad of red-shirted Acadian marines; a heliograph operator team; Blue Wolf and Sargon in his box; and some bun-bots.
I'd at least learned enough about how these things went to have made arrangements for the right numbers and types of seats and refreshments.
"Welcome, everyone, to the first meeting for Project Delver. Some of you will be joining me on the expedition; some of you will be remaining here, but contributing in other ways.
"I will be issuing keycards to each of you shortly, which you will be able to use to access the parts of Munchkin that it is safe for you to do so. When I do, you will need to choose an additional security measure, such as a thumbprint or passcode, so that a stolen keycard will not be of use to a thief.
"Project Delver's first goal is for everyone involved to return in one piece. The second goal is for anyone who ends up in less than one piece, to be given the best treatment possible as quickly as possible. The third goal is to end up with the maximum possible amount of valuable resources, including both information and materiel.
"The basic plan is to travel to Site F aboard Munchkin, dropping off temporary heliograph relays on the way; to investigate the Site for useful and dangerous things, hopefully ending up with at least a preliminary examination of the entire Site; and to return to Erie, picking up the heliographs and their crews on the way. Given the second goal, Plan B is if someone is injured beyond what can be treated on-site, to bring them back to Erie's hospital as fast as possible, and then to return to collect everyone who was left behind. Plan C is if the Site turns out to have significant immobile resources and insignificant dangers, to establish a longer-term base to exploit those resources, and to minimize the odds of them from being exploited or destroyed by hostile groups.
"Part of this meeting is to gather any suggestions any of you may have in improving those plans, or in preparing alternate ones.
"This meeting is also, in part, so everyone involved can start familiarizing themselves with each other, and with the tools we'll be using. For example, this, here, is Pole-Bun, as in 'polish mine detector'. Despite her resemblance to me, she is not, in fact, a person; and thus she can be sent to walk ahead of a real person, to check for stable footing and a lack of things that will fall on heads. While I don't want to lose Pole-Bun, I'd rather lose her than a real person.
"I have also prepared one of my flying machines for a demonstration today, to see which, if any, of you might be interested in learning how to be a backup pilot. I'm sure all of you can imagine the benefits of getting a higher perspective on things."
--
One of the lynx-shaped soldiers padded over and asked, "Will any of the citizens of the Dominion of Lake Erie be contributing to this project?"
"No more than to any other, I'd imagine," I said. "Site F is inland, away from Lake Erie's shores. If it were in the same drainage basin, then I might have asked if they had anyone who might be willing to swim upstream; I don't know how they might be able to help, but I'd ask. But if I have to help them get over the hump to the next stream over, then by the time any of them could make it through all the twists and turns of the local river system to anywhere near Site F, we're probably already going to be done exploring the place."
"Could you not bring even one in Munchkin?"
"I've asked, but they don't seem interested. I suppose if we come across something at Site F in which an aquatic, tentacled sapient being would tremendously help, then I can use the heliograph line to send a message back negotiating for the help of one, and have Munchkin make a quick trip back and forth to bring one."
--
"And here we are at Site Mock-F."
"It's a barn," said Observer Charlie.
"Not a very big one," said Observer Delta.
"On the outside, sure," I agreed. "But better to find out how we step on each other's toes at a barn, next to Erie and its medical establishment, than a few hours away. I've got the heliograph operators practicing their craft elsewhere, so at this point in the simulated expedition, we've gotten near Site F. I've gone up, taken some pictures, and come back down. Well, Joe, Sarah, Wolfy, it appears that our intelligence was faulty, and instead of a castle, we are faced with a simple barn. Whatever shall we do?"
Bunny Joe tilted her head. "Blow it up?"
"Explosives are kind of expensive these days."
Sarah suggested, "Move in?"
"We haven't seen the inside - it may be a monster-barn fake castle thing."
Blue Wolf said, "Then I guess we'd better take a look. Should we send Pole-Bun in first?"
"We should," I agreed. "And now that I think about it - I'd really like to be able to see what she sees, without risking /any/ of our people. Boomer, add to the session notes, I want to look into really, /really/ long video cables. Also, since I haven't actually flown - if I can put together a simple surveillance drone, so I don't have to risk my own neck in case the real thing has some sort of anti-air defenses. Now, while we're standing here gabbing, what should the marines be doing? That barn might be full of robo-centaur knights getting ready to sally out against us; how should we have already arranged ourselves in case of such a situation?"
--
"... 'Presbylutheran'?" I read from the pamphlet.
"There weren't many people left after the Singularity. Almost all of the old churches with enough members left to even be called a church merged," said Edwards.
"You do realize that I'm not a Christian of any shape or sort, right?"
"Powerful people can be religious. And this is an area of influence outside the usual inter-union squabbling."
"And why are /you/ suggesting /I/ engage in this area at all?"
"Maybe because I want to keep my cushy job as secretary once the new constitution is in place, and the church's support would go a long way to keeping things stable. Or maybe I just want to watch you squirm uncomfortably."
"... Or maybe you owe someone a favor. Fine, I'll talk to the priest. Or reverend, or bishop, or pastor, or whatever the title is. But if I burst into flames when I walk in the doors, I'm holding you responsible."
--
The harem were... trying. They'd found pictures of Queen Elizabeth on walkabout, and had imitated the fashion, with knee-length skirt and wide-brimmed hat, in royal blue. Since they hadn't been bothering me at all while they'd put that together, I didn't want to discourage their approach, so I took the ensemble they presented me with back to my private room, scanned it into the clothes fabber, and had it re-make the outfit - with the addition of my usual selection of hidden pockets. I tucked Boomer into my new marsupial pouch, padded her case's corners with a few hankies and a microfiber towel, and picked a cane to try to walk with that day. (Wagger finally seemed to be responding to the operant conditioning of 'twitch leg at bad time, Bunny falls onto tail', but it wasn't a deeply embedded lesson yet.)
In relatively short order, I was welcomed into a small house behind a white-painted church. (Rectory? Parsonage? There was a whole vocabulary I was missing, and had little interest in spending my time to assimilate.)
"May I offer you some tea? Wine?" asked the woman, with the sort of collar I'd seen on TV often enough to recognize as being some sort of indicator of ministership.
"No, thank you," I settled into a seat. I added an explanation, "I've started to have some medical issues with locally-sourced food and water." It wasn't /entirely/ false, and I hoped helped move the conversation along.
"It's a shame you couldn't make it to services, earlier."
I sighed. "Ma'am - with all due respect, you're not going to convert me to any brand of theism, I'm not going to convert you to any variation of atheism, and I'm pretty sure we both have better things to do than waste our time trying. If that's all you asked me over for, I should probably just leave."
"While it grieves me to see any soul as lost in the wilderness as yours, there is another reason you are here. What are your intentions towards the church in your new government?"
"'My' new government? You mean Erie's new government?" At her nod, I said, "You should take that up with the new government, not me. I'm just making sure it meets certain minimal standards. After that, I have no intentions for it, or anything under its bailiwick."
"Do those standards include freedom of religion?"
"They include a bill of rights, which I won't consider complete without some sort of guarantee for freedom of thought and expression. There are certain limits to that guarantee, such as someone who believes that they can cure their child by starving it in the face of all medical evidence to the contrary, but the old American government was perfectly able to include 'reckless endangerment' laws within its constitution and still have lots of churches."
"And what will you do if the new government fails to abide by that guarantee?"
"Me? Almost certainly nothing. That's what elections, emigration, and revolutions are for. I'm not here to solve all the world's problems; I'm not here to solve /your/ problems. If I can solve the one problem I'm focused on with a guarantee of free religion, I'll work on that guarantee. If I can solve the one problem I'm focused on by establishing atheism as the one and only state church, I'll work on establishing that."
"I'm not happy to hear that."
"Then think of it this way. If there's anything you can do to help me on my problem, I'll be quite happy to offer whatever I can in return, commensurate to the size of your help."
"And what 'problem' is that?"
"From your perspective? Ensuring that enough people survive, in the long term, so that there is a reasonable chance of your church continuing to exist. I'm not going to say that if you're really interested in the long-term welfare of your flock that you should throw your total support behind me, because people generally just don't think that way."
--
"How's progress, Skunk?"
"We resolved the populism versus unionism debate along with the separation of law bills and money bills by going back to bicameralism. One house, elected by single transferable vote, initiates law bills, requires a two-thirds majority to pass any, laws require a simple majority of the other house."
"Is 'single transferable vote' a synonym for 'instant runoff'?"
"Not quite. The person doing the voting still just ranks their candidates in order of preference, but since it's to elect a bunch of people into a group instead of an individual, if everybody's first vote is for X, then the excess votes go to their second choice."
"I'll read up on it when I have a chance. Go ahead, then."
"The other house has its members appointed by the union leaders, initiates money bills, the executive gets a line-item veto, bills can be defeated by a supermajority of the first house. Right now, we're working on tweaking the Bill of Rights to take into account the abuses and excesses of the Civil Guard, and the previous government in general. I'm pushing for a separate branch of government for ombudsmen, but I could live with them being part of the executive, if enough other measures are taken. When I get back, the plan is to discuss whether we want to constitutionally enshrine the pre-twenty-twenty-seven exclusionary rule and the principle of throwing out the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' for illegally-gathered evidence, or stay within the American legal tradition, incorporate Doe v. Alabama as precedent, and come up with other ways to punish government agents who exceed their lawful authority."
"I'm not really familiar with that case, or what happened in twenty-twenty-seven."
"I'm not an expert in the details, but the previous rule was ruled unconstitutional. After, if someone felt that a search was illegal, they were supposed to file a writ of habeas corpus to get an immediate hearing. However, in practice, it was nearly impossible to succeed. As police already had qualified immunity from lawsuits, only being liable for clear violations of peoples' rights, they had nearly free reign. Thus the creation of the Civil Guard instead of a police force, to avoid those abuses."
"... I'm going to think that it didn't avoid them very well."
"Perhaps not, but it was a step in the right direction, and the main problems lay elsewhere in the system. Given the terms of the surrender document, I'm implying to the committee that anything less than every civil rights protection we can come up with could be insufficient to satisfy you, but I'm also trying to get them to understand why the protections are valuable in and of themselves."
"Pointing out how the Civil Guard, or whatever, is at least as likely to be pointed at them as at random civilians seems like one approach."
"Perhaps, but given the backgrounds of the committee members, they simply don't have the context to understand what that's like. I'm getting tempted to spend a day forcing all of them to dress up like poor people and get hassled."
"... I'm almost tempted to extend the deadline by a day if you do, but changing that, even for such a noble cause, would likely set a bad precedent..."
--
"I'd like everyone working on Project Delver to wear these. They're not directly related to the project, but are more for long-term data gathering."
Sarah picked up the pen-shaped object, then the card-sized one. "What do they do? More radio gear?"
"No, a couple of types of radiation detectors. Without decent sources of semiconductors or noble gasses, I'm limited in the sensors I can build. But the local newspaper has photos, so I was able to get some film to build a film-badge dosimeter. And the quartz fiber dosimeter doesn't require any special materials, it just needs to be read off and recharged every so often. Recharger's in the lab, along with a logbook and instruction sheet."
"Are you /expecting/ radiation at the castle?"
"I have no reason to. But I'm hoping the castle expedition is a prelude to bigger and better investigations, and I'd feel downright silly if I discovered the secrets of the universe, but died because I found them in the middle of a particle accelerator I didn't know was active."
68
DataPacRat
Truthseeker
- Location
- Niagara, Canada
*Chapter Six: Mis-lead*
We made it all of twenty miles out of Erie before we had to turn around and head all the way back.
I'd let Miz Unruh make the arrangements she thought best for the heliograph camps, trusting that she knew her job and what was best for her people so I could focus better on the castle end of the trip. It was only as everyone pitched in to help set up the first relay that I discovered she'd made absolutely no provisions to get her people back if Munchkin broke down. So we drove back to Erie, grabbed just about every loose bicycle that was for sale or rent, and enough backpacks to hold provisions for stranded heliograph operators bicycling back home, and /then/ went on the road again.
I chose to think of the whole thing as being quite fortunate, if it was the worst blunder we made. I spent most of the trip going back and forth in Munchkin looking for any worse blunders.
--
We took an old 'Penny Rail' line, east from Erie through the ruins of the cooling towers that were all that was left of Corry, Youngsville (not the Youngstown the Free Company was from), Warren, and to Cane, where we switched to a B&O Rail line heading southwest to Marienville - paralleling the non-rail Route Sixty-Six, and, according to the relevant maps, passing right through the frontage of the ex-prison we were aiming for.
Naturally, we didn't get anywhere near that close before we got a look at the place. While I didn't want to risk Alphie or Boomer by sending them into the air, it wasn't too hard to send a hastily cobbled-together quadcopter straight up to check for a Toronto-like air defense system, and when it wasn't shot down, to make a quick flight in one of the powered paragliders. Each time we stopped to drop off a heliograph, I went up a few hundred feet, circled around so Boomer, strapped on my chest, could get a good view, and glided back down.
After we passed Kane, we were going through an old national forest, so there wasn't much to see... until we were less than twenty klicks away. When I landed, Sarah, Bunny Joe, and I put our heads together to peer at Boomer's small display, with Brenda and Blue Wolf hanging back until we made room.
I said, "If I said 'Enhance', would it do any good?"
Boomer's voice came over the vague three-dimensional blob she was rotating. "I am already using all the enhancement algorithms I have in my memory, including ones which take advantage of my accelerometers to know my position when each frame of video was taken, the exact details of the camera's construction-"
"Okay, okay," I cut her explanation off, "it's already enhanced. It's just... a lot more /rounded/ than most castles I'm used to seeing. Is that an artifact of the enhancement?"
"No, the structure possesses that shape. The highest portion is roughly twenty meters above the ground level recorded in topographic maps for that site, while the portion I am highlighting is roughly seventeen meters."
Sarah asked, "Maybe it used to be straighter and taller, and is just ruins now?"
Bunny Joe said, "Maybe it was built in the shape of ruins."
I tapped my lips with one finger, as I thought. "Maybe we can get a better look before we get any closer... Give me a couple of minutes, and I should be able to whip up a mount to aim Boomer's best camera through a telescope."
--
We gathered around Boomer again.
"Okay," said Sarah, "so it's a giant stone lion. That's called a sphinx, right?" The figure was roughly forty meters long from nose to the base of its tail (if it had one), facing west, crouched on its belly as if getting ready to pounce onto the road.
"Not quite," I commented, "sphinxes have human heads. Boomer, can you extrapolate more of the shape by assuming it's at least roughly symmetrical?"
"I can," she said, and did. "I should also note that while the trees and limited number of frames are blocking almost all of my view of ground level, the figures appears to be resting on a mound roughly ten feet above local ground level. In addition, as I zoom out, I can confirm at least part of a wall surrounding the structure, roughly ten feet tall, five feet wide, with multiple twenty-foot towers."
"I'm getting some serious deja vu," I frowned. "Maybe it was that giant cat that chased me around, over near Technoville? Can this thing get up and move?"
"I have insufficient data to answer that question."
"I could swear I've seen that before... did someone try recreating the Giza sphinx, with a lion's head?
"The height is similar, but none of the other dimensions appear to be a close match."
"Any records of any similar structures?"
"Not in my database. Would you like to query Clara?"
"... You know, we might as well. Make a good test of the heliograph line."
Soon, beams of light were being reflected over nearly four hundred kilometers, from Munchkin through Kane via Erie to Buffalo and finally to Brock University. With only a light code, to keep the heliograph operators from knowing what I was talking about but without making their jobs too hard, I transmitted, "At site of castle, found a giant stone lion. I think I remember it, but don't remember where." I summarized what we'd found so far. "Any insights?"
Her return message came quickly. "ISBN 978-0880381079. Authour: Merle M. Rasmussen. Title: Ghost of Lion Castle. Publication date: 1984. Source: Product listings in the role-playing magazines you have been requesting excerpts of. As there is no record of the authour's death, the text appears to still be under copyright. A digital copy is available to be checked out of the library."
I sent, "I am currently unable to visit the library. How much information can you send on this communications medium? Is there such a thing as a digital interlibrary loan?"
I got back, "Current university policies do not support digital loans. Information on texts is limited to that necessary for reviews, such as one article per periodical."
"How much are you able to transmit about the building described in that book? Preferably focusing on dangers to people exploring it."
"Many monsters wander the premises. When invaded by more than one individual at a time, intruders are transformed into beasts. Portcullises fall when walked under. Murder holes drop stones when walked under. Molten lead pours from nostrils when walked under. Glowing arrows fire out of arrow slits. Traps exist in the Treasury room, Butcher room and the Mason room."
Instead of immediately responding, I showed the conversation's transcription to the rest of the team. "I had dozens, maybe hundreds, of 'adventure modules' like that in my personal library, before the first time I died," I said. "This book was probably one of them. From what I gathered before we left Erie, the AIs think the place was a prison right up to the Singularity, so... what do you think?"
Sarah said, "If the real thing is like the book, it sounds like there's a transformation zone, maybe lots of them."
Bunny Joe commented, "I do not think any one person, or even one family, could build something that large. And there is no sign of any larger settlements nearby to provide the labour. I do not think it was made by human hands, even if humans came up with the design."
I nodded. "Maybe the Free Company was lying about no dangers, and they're hoping one or more of us get Changed. Or, maybe there are zones here that are more about mental changes than physical. Or, of course, we're still completely missing the gag. Whatever the answer is, I think nobody will object if I rule that nobody goes anywhere unless a bun-bot's been through there first?"
--
We came to a halt a little over a klick from the site at what the old maps showed as a road-salt depot, and which was now just a small clearing that trees didn't seem to want to grow in. I asked, "Any change in the weather forecast?"
Blue Wolf was idly fiddling with the latch on the wooden skull's box, but answered, "Still looks the same - partly cloudy until at least sunset, but could be rain tomorrow."
"That's going to play hob with the heliograph ranges," I mused. "We can always go back to Erie and redeploy on another day - the castle's not going anywhere. Still, no reason not to gather what info we can while the helio's still up."
Sarah tilted her head. "We're not going right in, are we?"
I shook my head in a negative. "I'm thinking of taking the 'glider and circling the site, get a view from all angles. First, though, there's Goal One to consider - what do we do if something goes wrong, or the place really does shoot glowing arrows, and I crash? There aren't many roads in the area."
Bunny Joe suggested, "Have someone on the roof watch you fly. If you fall, they can see where you land, and we can come get you."
After a bit more discussion, mostly ideas being shot down for not being as good as the first one, we started getting ready for that. "Acadians, you're in charge of physical security, in case of monsters or bandits. Free Company Observers, you, er, observe. Bunny Joe, you've got good eyes; you're on rooftop duty. Sarah, I'm designating you Munchkin's pilot for the duration. Brenda, you can nap in my quarters to keep from bothering everyone while they work. I'm going to grab a different outfit, and double-check my medkit and so on."
Brenda, who was back to pretending to be a 'service griffon' in front of the Free Company, and I went back to my private car. She pushed Alphie out of the surface of her chest, and through him, said, "I should go with you, not nap."
"I agree, but if you want to keep up your cover story, you need to be somewhere plausibly out of sight. Here's the freezer for your excess mass, and here's my flight suit for you to imitate, and here's a belly-pack that can explain why I'm carrying extra mass on my front."
"Aren't you getting undressed? I'm going to be your clothes!"
"And if we need to split up? Shorts and a t-shirt shouldn't interfere with you looking like my outer layers, should they?"
She grumbled, but went transparent and started sliding around me, and into the marsupial-like pouch I was still getting used to having. I set Alphie aside for the moment - no need to risk both AIs - and once Brenda had covered me enough, held Boomer to my chest for her to grab onto. Once I had a layer of Brenda-stuff covering my whole body from the neck down, she went to work on the colours and textures, until, for all anyone else could tell, I was wearing a full-body jumpsuit.
Boomer said, in Brenda's voice, "Do you want the tail covered or uncovered?"
"Eh," I shrugged as I took a few steps to get used to the new distribution of weight, "doesn't matter much. Maybe leave her head free, and make a sleeve for the rest."
So I had spoken, so it was done. "Sure you don't want a hood?"
I swapped out my glasses for a pair of goggles, on the theory they were less likely to get lost. "Can you make yourself into a helmet?"
"I'm made of goo. I can fiddle with my surface so it's dry and not sticky, but not that hard."
"Then no hood. If I /do/ fall out of the sky, then feel free to do whatever you can to keep my skull from getting squashed, like turning into a bunch of pillows to slow down the stop when I hit the ground. Oh, and do as much for my torso as you can without increasing the risk to my head. Bun-Bun's pretty good with limbs, so don't worry about them much."
--
I circled clockwise around the castle; /well/ around the castle, to avoid anything short of a sniper or laser. East from Munchkin, curving around to the south, getting a view of the stone lion from all sides, including giving Boomer a view through the telescope every so often. I saw a few things I wanted to turn closer in to get a better look at, but just because I'd made lots of plans in case of a crash didn't mean I /wanted/ to crash.
I landed without incident on the road, packed up my chute, and boarded Munchkin. Before I could head back to my room to let Brenda take up a separate embodiment again, Wagger gave my legs a twitch and I just about fell onto a couch. Sarah handed me a mug of hot something-or-other, and Bunny Joe was clambering down from the roof, and everybody was crowding closer to ask what I'd seen, so I gave a mental sigh, hoped Brenda wouldn't object to being literally objectified for a while longer, and set down Boomer so at least a few of us could get a look at her screen.
I asked her, "Need any processing time to put together a new 3D model?"
Boomer answered, "If I had been built with technology from twenty-fifteen, perhaps. I was not, so no." She started displaying the whole landscape on her screen, slowly rotating it around and around, and highlighting various points. "Access to the main structure from the ground appears difficult. The wall surrounds the whole building, and there is a two-meter-deep ditch just outside it. The ditch is broken in two places: the middle of the east wall, where the gate is sealed with a portcullis, and this tower in the north wall, where the tail of the lion leads to, which appears to be sealed with wooden doors. Comparing the site to previous maps, the entire footprint of the previous prison grounds has been flattened, and that area is surrounded by a vehicular road, surrounded by trees. That road is connected to a driveway reaching to Route Sixty-Six, passing by a parking lot and this building here."
Sarah pointed a claw-tip at the latter. "What is this place? A guardhouse?"
Boomer obligingly zoomed in, and above a set of glass doors, and below some panels of black glass on the rooftop I guessed were solar panels, were the words, 'Tourism Office'.
I grunted, and asked the obvious question, "Are there any /other/ bits of writing in the area?"
Boomer's virtual camera obligingly flew over to a gate where the driveway met the main road, over which was a sign reading, "Welcome to Lion Castle". A second sign was stuck into the ground to the right of the higher one, this one reading, "Pennsylvania's premiere LARP and paintball destination!"
Sarah said, "Well, that just looks... cheap."
I frowned, and asked, "You're sure there's no hint of this place existing before twenty-fifty?"
Boomer responded, "None at all."
I considered. "Well - the whole place looks secure enough against anything short of an army, and there aren't many of those around. If there aren't any zones to worry about, I might not mind setting up shop here... with a few renovations to make the entrance a little less tawdry. On the other paw, the only reason I can think of to build something that looks like a tourist trap is as, well, a trap, to get people who wander by to lower their guard and wander in."
Joe asked, "If something could build all that, what would they need to trap people for?"
I shrugged. "Maybe it's trying to recreate the original adventure, and needs live bodies to turn into monsters? Personally, I'd rather not spend the rest of my days as an orc guarding a chest in a ten-by-ten-foot room. So how about we start finding out if that's a possibility, drive closer, and send a few bun-bots to walk around that tourist office while the light's still good?"
--
We drove up to the driveway, and I sent a trio of the robots shaped like me (not counting my Brenda-bulge) out to walk through the gate. With a bit of help from the gang, I'd worked out a precise set of instructions for them to follow. (Natural language computer programming was a lot easier than having to translate everything into absolutely precise terms; and it was a lot more acceptable to the local technophobes if I avoided calling it 'programming' and just called it 'telling them what to do'.)
I wanted to watch everything going on in real-time, but with all the trees, the office was out of sight of the road. I checked the 'glider's fuel, dithered a bit, and decided to conserve it by waiting.
After five minutes, the first bun-bot came back, indicating nothing had eaten any of them, and drawing a map of where she'd walked so far; so I sent her back to continue the exploration. At ten and fifteen, the other two returned as they were supposed to. And at twenty, the first one came back again - but this time, she also reported that the doors she'd been told to try to open were unlocked.
After a quick huddle of the gang, we sent her to explore inside the building, as well as the second bun-bot when she returned, while leaving the third to continue checking the exterior.
After a while of this, the bun-bots reported they'd walked through the entire building, so I sent one back to retrieve the third, and looked at the people around me. "So far, so good," I said. "If there are any zones in the area, they don't seem to be in that building."
Sarah said, "Or if there is one, it can tell the difference between people and bun-bots."
Bunny Joe added, "Or maybe it ignores rabbit people."
"All of which are very good maybes," I acknowledged. "So, does anyone want to volunteer to look at the place?" After a few seconds, I rolled my eyes. "Or maybe we should just stick to rabbit people to start with?" I looked at Joe, who looked back calmly. I gave a quick sigh, then said, "Lemme go grab something more appropriate than a flight suit."
Back in my private car, I patted my belly. "You can come out, now, get back to griffon shape again. Or, now that I think of it, whatever other shape you want to be - we're in private, so you don't have to pretend to be an animal if you don't want to."
I didn't feel any motion of her sliding out of my pouch, or from my limbs. Through Boomer, she said, "You're walking into a place that might be dangerous. You don't have to worry about falling, but I can help you more like this than waiting for you in Munchkin."
"Maybe," I agreed, "but there's a whole lot we don't know about how you work yet. If there is a zone that wants to turn me into a bugbear... you might just be used as raw biomass, and, well, die."
"And if you trip and fall into a refuse pit, or a support beam breaks, or all sorts of other things happen, you'll die unless I'm there to help."
I drummed my Brenda-gloved fingers on my work-desk as I thought. "By the obvious extension of that logic, I shouldn't ever take you off."
"I could live with that."
"I'm not sure I want to be permanently pseudo-pregnant."
Her mass finally started to shift out of my pouch, my belly flattening again. "I can be a backpack," she said, rearranging herself to match her words. She added, "And I'm good enough at imitating how cloth flows to hide a lot of my mass under a dress. And if you're using your wheelchair, I can hide my extra mass in a bunch of ways. It'll be even easier if you ever become comfortable enough with me to let me keep some of my mass in your gastrointestinal tract, but I should be able to manage without that."
I continued my argument, "There are times when I have to keep both AIs turned off, to keep them safe. If you still haven't worked out how to do vocal cords, you're going to be stuck mute for... indefinite periods of time. Maybe days. Maybe longer."
"When we were jailed, you said that you spent days and weeks without saying a word to anyone. If you can, I can."
"I also said that I have schizoid personality disorder, and I don't think you've got that. If anything, you seem to be developing dependent personality disorder, and I'm not sure I want to encourage that."
"I don't have D.P.D., I'm a bimbo. I don't know what the psychological term is, I just want to support you and what you're trying to do. Nobody else around here is working as hard as you are on X-risks, so if you die, they won't get worked on as well. Doing everything I can to keep you alive is in my own long-term self-interest, even if it does increase short-term risk."
"... How much of that did you crib from things I've said and written?"
"Even if the words are yours, the sentiment is still mine."
I drummed my fingers again. "If we're really going to try doing this long-term... you're still going to have to show up as a service griffon, at least until there's a plausible reason to reduce your number of appearances."
"We can do that when you're safe."
"I'd want you to work on having a voice... and as many other methods of communication as possible. Morse-code squeezes, fine-tuning your colouring changes so you can write on your surface, and so on."
"I'll be happy to."
"And for a few reasons, including both the off chance that there's a super-computer nearby that can infect them across an air-gap, and so you can get a better idea of what would be involved in not being able to speak for a reasonably prolonged period, I'm going to turn off Boomer before we go out. Give my left arm three squeezes and I'll get out of Dodge, and turn Boomer back on as soon as there's no risk to her, so you can speak."
"You've got to come back inside for your injection in three and a half hours anyway. It took me longer than that to figure out how to talk to Alphie. I'll be fine."
I sighed. "In that case - let's lose the flight-suit look, and go for something more appropriate for walking about, shall we?"
--
Brenda was entirely capable of imitating the shape and appearance of a backpack. What her goo-body couldn't manage, though, was to imitate the strength of one. When I tried loading up Brenda-pack with some real tools, from wedges to force doors open or closed to a first aid kit, she struggled to hold it all in... and then just collapsed, the whole set of gear tumbling down my back. A solution was easy enough - I just threw one of the existing backpacks into the fabber for a slight alteration, creating a few openings where it pressed against my back for Brenda to reach through. She assured me that all her 'thinky bits' were safe inside, and if she did get yanked off, the part of her forming my clothes would be just fine for at least an hour, and there was more than enough extra mass in the freezer for her to rebuild herself with.
After checking that nobody else - not even the Observers - felt the need to accompany me, I grabbed my Explorer Special cane (which could telescope out to ten feet, and had screw-tips at both ends for hooks, spikes, and a few other gizmos sharing backpack space with Brenda), and trudged down the drive.
The office's exterior looked like one of those faux log cabins that lounged at the entrance to campgrounds, to give RV owners the feeling that they were being 'rustic'. Hand-stenciled signs lurked under a patio's eaves, offering 'paint', 'chrony', and 'spell scrolls' for reasonable prices. A darkened, red-and-white pop machine offered various concoctions for ten dollars - or one 'silver piece' - per bottle.
When I stepped onto the patio, the pop machine lit up.
I backstepped quickly, looking around for anyone who might have snuck up behind me while I was distracted; but after a few moments of nothing else happening, let myself relax a tad. After a moment of thought, I took a few more steps back to look up at the office's roof, confirming that, as I thought I'd remembered, the solar panels were dusty, but not completely obscured.
I unfolded my cane to its ten-foot length, and poked at the pop machine with it. It didn't do anything, even when I pushed the 'root beer' button. Since I didn't have any dollars or 'silver pieces' that looked like they'd fit in the slot, I shortened my cane to a more supportive length and cautiously passed it.
After that, I was only modestly surprised that, when I opened the front door, the interior lights came on.
Just inside the door, to my left, a rack carried skulls lined up like bowling balls. A sign proclaimed "Win big! Bring back a phylactery for fifty gold pieces!". Beyond them, another rack, this one of goggles, whose sign exclaimed "For the full experience!". To the right was a small counter and stool, perhaps for check-outs; further inside was a rack full of pamphlets for campgrounds and other local attractions, a couple of empty coolers, a stand-up video-game arcade, a door to some restrooms, and another door labelled 'office'. The main room bent in an 'L' around those rooms, and I saw the edges of some further shelves in the back part, and some weirdly-shaped vaguely gun-like things racked on the wall.
All in all, it was extremely... ordinary. A bit faded. Tacky, even.
Before I stepped inside, I gave my mental North a nudge, asking for my paranoid subself's advice, and it occurred to me to wonder about what I /wasn't/ seeing. No broken glass from years of storms; very little dirt or debris tracked about; only a few dust-bunnies. I looked at the glass doors - they might have been washed a year ago, or a decade, if the weather had been good, but the outside was nearly invisible from the inside, and vice versa. I looked around at the parking lot, and considered the lack of tire-tracks in the leaf-litter from previous autumns. I looked over at the castle itself, the giant cat's jaws frozen open in a permanent silent roar.
I decided to try the obvious, and asked thin air, "Is anybody home?"
Silence reigned.
I grabbed my walkie-talkie from my belt, and sent back to Munchkin, "So far, so good. There's power, but no sign anyone's been here in years. I'm heading inside."
I hung it up on my belt, and reached over my shoulder and into my pack. I thought aloud, "Did I pack those wedges on top?" Before I could call up my most recent memory palace, I felt the pack's contents shifting - and a pair of wedges slid into my hand. I cracked a smile to myself, and said "Better than Heward's Handy Haversack."
While I was making sure the front doors wouldn't be able to close on me, the arcade machine bleeped. I froze.
After nothing much happening for a few more moments, I stepped inside to take a closer look at it. Along the top, the marquee didn't list a particular game, just "Video Games!". The screen glowed, showing just a few lines of text, in a highly-pixellated, early nineteen-eighties font. "A new challenger appears! Would you like to play a game? One coin = one play."
I was feeling just a tad creeped out, but shrugged, and said to Brenda, "I never really was one for quarter-sucking arcades. For one, quarters were hard to come by when I was young enough to be entranced by them. For another, I liked the more in-depth games that took longer to finish - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Ultima Four... and I may be the only person alive who's ever heard of the 'Codex of Ultimate Wisdom'. Great, now I'm depressed again."
I looked around for something to distract me, and my eyes fell on the checkout desk, which I was now at an angle from which I could see had drawers. In moments, I'd learned they were unlocked, and full of assorted commercial detritus - push-pins, a stapler, dried-out rubber bands, wrapping paper, and a bit of loose change. I held up the two quarters I'd found, trying to cheer myself up with the numismatic novelty of coins minted after I'd died, but that bit of ironic amusement only lasted a moment.
I looked at the arcade machine, then at the quarters. With a shrug, I went over, set one on the rim of the marquee, and deposited the other into the slot.
We made it all of twenty miles out of Erie before we had to turn around and head all the way back.
I'd let Miz Unruh make the arrangements she thought best for the heliograph camps, trusting that she knew her job and what was best for her people so I could focus better on the castle end of the trip. It was only as everyone pitched in to help set up the first relay that I discovered she'd made absolutely no provisions to get her people back if Munchkin broke down. So we drove back to Erie, grabbed just about every loose bicycle that was for sale or rent, and enough backpacks to hold provisions for stranded heliograph operators bicycling back home, and /then/ went on the road again.
I chose to think of the whole thing as being quite fortunate, if it was the worst blunder we made. I spent most of the trip going back and forth in Munchkin looking for any worse blunders.
--
We took an old 'Penny Rail' line, east from Erie through the ruins of the cooling towers that were all that was left of Corry, Youngsville (not the Youngstown the Free Company was from), Warren, and to Cane, where we switched to a B&O Rail line heading southwest to Marienville - paralleling the non-rail Route Sixty-Six, and, according to the relevant maps, passing right through the frontage of the ex-prison we were aiming for.
Naturally, we didn't get anywhere near that close before we got a look at the place. While I didn't want to risk Alphie or Boomer by sending them into the air, it wasn't too hard to send a hastily cobbled-together quadcopter straight up to check for a Toronto-like air defense system, and when it wasn't shot down, to make a quick flight in one of the powered paragliders. Each time we stopped to drop off a heliograph, I went up a few hundred feet, circled around so Boomer, strapped on my chest, could get a good view, and glided back down.
After we passed Kane, we were going through an old national forest, so there wasn't much to see... until we were less than twenty klicks away. When I landed, Sarah, Bunny Joe, and I put our heads together to peer at Boomer's small display, with Brenda and Blue Wolf hanging back until we made room.
I said, "If I said 'Enhance', would it do any good?"
Boomer's voice came over the vague three-dimensional blob she was rotating. "I am already using all the enhancement algorithms I have in my memory, including ones which take advantage of my accelerometers to know my position when each frame of video was taken, the exact details of the camera's construction-"
"Okay, okay," I cut her explanation off, "it's already enhanced. It's just... a lot more /rounded/ than most castles I'm used to seeing. Is that an artifact of the enhancement?"
"No, the structure possesses that shape. The highest portion is roughly twenty meters above the ground level recorded in topographic maps for that site, while the portion I am highlighting is roughly seventeen meters."
Sarah asked, "Maybe it used to be straighter and taller, and is just ruins now?"
Bunny Joe said, "Maybe it was built in the shape of ruins."
I tapped my lips with one finger, as I thought. "Maybe we can get a better look before we get any closer... Give me a couple of minutes, and I should be able to whip up a mount to aim Boomer's best camera through a telescope."
--
We gathered around Boomer again.
"Okay," said Sarah, "so it's a giant stone lion. That's called a sphinx, right?" The figure was roughly forty meters long from nose to the base of its tail (if it had one), facing west, crouched on its belly as if getting ready to pounce onto the road.
"Not quite," I commented, "sphinxes have human heads. Boomer, can you extrapolate more of the shape by assuming it's at least roughly symmetrical?"
"I can," she said, and did. "I should also note that while the trees and limited number of frames are blocking almost all of my view of ground level, the figures appears to be resting on a mound roughly ten feet above local ground level. In addition, as I zoom out, I can confirm at least part of a wall surrounding the structure, roughly ten feet tall, five feet wide, with multiple twenty-foot towers."
"I'm getting some serious deja vu," I frowned. "Maybe it was that giant cat that chased me around, over near Technoville? Can this thing get up and move?"
"I have insufficient data to answer that question."
"I could swear I've seen that before... did someone try recreating the Giza sphinx, with a lion's head?
"The height is similar, but none of the other dimensions appear to be a close match."
"Any records of any similar structures?"
"Not in my database. Would you like to query Clara?"
"... You know, we might as well. Make a good test of the heliograph line."
Soon, beams of light were being reflected over nearly four hundred kilometers, from Munchkin through Kane via Erie to Buffalo and finally to Brock University. With only a light code, to keep the heliograph operators from knowing what I was talking about but without making their jobs too hard, I transmitted, "At site of castle, found a giant stone lion. I think I remember it, but don't remember where." I summarized what we'd found so far. "Any insights?"
Her return message came quickly. "ISBN 978-0880381079. Authour: Merle M. Rasmussen. Title: Ghost of Lion Castle. Publication date: 1984. Source: Product listings in the role-playing magazines you have been requesting excerpts of. As there is no record of the authour's death, the text appears to still be under copyright. A digital copy is available to be checked out of the library."
I sent, "I am currently unable to visit the library. How much information can you send on this communications medium? Is there such a thing as a digital interlibrary loan?"
I got back, "Current university policies do not support digital loans. Information on texts is limited to that necessary for reviews, such as one article per periodical."
"How much are you able to transmit about the building described in that book? Preferably focusing on dangers to people exploring it."
"Many monsters wander the premises. When invaded by more than one individual at a time, intruders are transformed into beasts. Portcullises fall when walked under. Murder holes drop stones when walked under. Molten lead pours from nostrils when walked under. Glowing arrows fire out of arrow slits. Traps exist in the Treasury room, Butcher room and the Mason room."
Instead of immediately responding, I showed the conversation's transcription to the rest of the team. "I had dozens, maybe hundreds, of 'adventure modules' like that in my personal library, before the first time I died," I said. "This book was probably one of them. From what I gathered before we left Erie, the AIs think the place was a prison right up to the Singularity, so... what do you think?"
Sarah said, "If the real thing is like the book, it sounds like there's a transformation zone, maybe lots of them."
Bunny Joe commented, "I do not think any one person, or even one family, could build something that large. And there is no sign of any larger settlements nearby to provide the labour. I do not think it was made by human hands, even if humans came up with the design."
I nodded. "Maybe the Free Company was lying about no dangers, and they're hoping one or more of us get Changed. Or, maybe there are zones here that are more about mental changes than physical. Or, of course, we're still completely missing the gag. Whatever the answer is, I think nobody will object if I rule that nobody goes anywhere unless a bun-bot's been through there first?"
--
We came to a halt a little over a klick from the site at what the old maps showed as a road-salt depot, and which was now just a small clearing that trees didn't seem to want to grow in. I asked, "Any change in the weather forecast?"
Blue Wolf was idly fiddling with the latch on the wooden skull's box, but answered, "Still looks the same - partly cloudy until at least sunset, but could be rain tomorrow."
"That's going to play hob with the heliograph ranges," I mused. "We can always go back to Erie and redeploy on another day - the castle's not going anywhere. Still, no reason not to gather what info we can while the helio's still up."
Sarah tilted her head. "We're not going right in, are we?"
I shook my head in a negative. "I'm thinking of taking the 'glider and circling the site, get a view from all angles. First, though, there's Goal One to consider - what do we do if something goes wrong, or the place really does shoot glowing arrows, and I crash? There aren't many roads in the area."
Bunny Joe suggested, "Have someone on the roof watch you fly. If you fall, they can see where you land, and we can come get you."
After a bit more discussion, mostly ideas being shot down for not being as good as the first one, we started getting ready for that. "Acadians, you're in charge of physical security, in case of monsters or bandits. Free Company Observers, you, er, observe. Bunny Joe, you've got good eyes; you're on rooftop duty. Sarah, I'm designating you Munchkin's pilot for the duration. Brenda, you can nap in my quarters to keep from bothering everyone while they work. I'm going to grab a different outfit, and double-check my medkit and so on."
Brenda, who was back to pretending to be a 'service griffon' in front of the Free Company, and I went back to my private car. She pushed Alphie out of the surface of her chest, and through him, said, "I should go with you, not nap."
"I agree, but if you want to keep up your cover story, you need to be somewhere plausibly out of sight. Here's the freezer for your excess mass, and here's my flight suit for you to imitate, and here's a belly-pack that can explain why I'm carrying extra mass on my front."
"Aren't you getting undressed? I'm going to be your clothes!"
"And if we need to split up? Shorts and a t-shirt shouldn't interfere with you looking like my outer layers, should they?"
She grumbled, but went transparent and started sliding around me, and into the marsupial-like pouch I was still getting used to having. I set Alphie aside for the moment - no need to risk both AIs - and once Brenda had covered me enough, held Boomer to my chest for her to grab onto. Once I had a layer of Brenda-stuff covering my whole body from the neck down, she went to work on the colours and textures, until, for all anyone else could tell, I was wearing a full-body jumpsuit.
Boomer said, in Brenda's voice, "Do you want the tail covered or uncovered?"
"Eh," I shrugged as I took a few steps to get used to the new distribution of weight, "doesn't matter much. Maybe leave her head free, and make a sleeve for the rest."
So I had spoken, so it was done. "Sure you don't want a hood?"
I swapped out my glasses for a pair of goggles, on the theory they were less likely to get lost. "Can you make yourself into a helmet?"
"I'm made of goo. I can fiddle with my surface so it's dry and not sticky, but not that hard."
"Then no hood. If I /do/ fall out of the sky, then feel free to do whatever you can to keep my skull from getting squashed, like turning into a bunch of pillows to slow down the stop when I hit the ground. Oh, and do as much for my torso as you can without increasing the risk to my head. Bun-Bun's pretty good with limbs, so don't worry about them much."
--
I circled clockwise around the castle; /well/ around the castle, to avoid anything short of a sniper or laser. East from Munchkin, curving around to the south, getting a view of the stone lion from all sides, including giving Boomer a view through the telescope every so often. I saw a few things I wanted to turn closer in to get a better look at, but just because I'd made lots of plans in case of a crash didn't mean I /wanted/ to crash.
I landed without incident on the road, packed up my chute, and boarded Munchkin. Before I could head back to my room to let Brenda take up a separate embodiment again, Wagger gave my legs a twitch and I just about fell onto a couch. Sarah handed me a mug of hot something-or-other, and Bunny Joe was clambering down from the roof, and everybody was crowding closer to ask what I'd seen, so I gave a mental sigh, hoped Brenda wouldn't object to being literally objectified for a while longer, and set down Boomer so at least a few of us could get a look at her screen.
I asked her, "Need any processing time to put together a new 3D model?"
Boomer answered, "If I had been built with technology from twenty-fifteen, perhaps. I was not, so no." She started displaying the whole landscape on her screen, slowly rotating it around and around, and highlighting various points. "Access to the main structure from the ground appears difficult. The wall surrounds the whole building, and there is a two-meter-deep ditch just outside it. The ditch is broken in two places: the middle of the east wall, where the gate is sealed with a portcullis, and this tower in the north wall, where the tail of the lion leads to, which appears to be sealed with wooden doors. Comparing the site to previous maps, the entire footprint of the previous prison grounds has been flattened, and that area is surrounded by a vehicular road, surrounded by trees. That road is connected to a driveway reaching to Route Sixty-Six, passing by a parking lot and this building here."
Sarah pointed a claw-tip at the latter. "What is this place? A guardhouse?"
Boomer obligingly zoomed in, and above a set of glass doors, and below some panels of black glass on the rooftop I guessed were solar panels, were the words, 'Tourism Office'.
I grunted, and asked the obvious question, "Are there any /other/ bits of writing in the area?"
Boomer's virtual camera obligingly flew over to a gate where the driveway met the main road, over which was a sign reading, "Welcome to Lion Castle". A second sign was stuck into the ground to the right of the higher one, this one reading, "Pennsylvania's premiere LARP and paintball destination!"
Sarah said, "Well, that just looks... cheap."
I frowned, and asked, "You're sure there's no hint of this place existing before twenty-fifty?"
Boomer responded, "None at all."
I considered. "Well - the whole place looks secure enough against anything short of an army, and there aren't many of those around. If there aren't any zones to worry about, I might not mind setting up shop here... with a few renovations to make the entrance a little less tawdry. On the other paw, the only reason I can think of to build something that looks like a tourist trap is as, well, a trap, to get people who wander by to lower their guard and wander in."
Joe asked, "If something could build all that, what would they need to trap people for?"
I shrugged. "Maybe it's trying to recreate the original adventure, and needs live bodies to turn into monsters? Personally, I'd rather not spend the rest of my days as an orc guarding a chest in a ten-by-ten-foot room. So how about we start finding out if that's a possibility, drive closer, and send a few bun-bots to walk around that tourist office while the light's still good?"
--
We drove up to the driveway, and I sent a trio of the robots shaped like me (not counting my Brenda-bulge) out to walk through the gate. With a bit of help from the gang, I'd worked out a precise set of instructions for them to follow. (Natural language computer programming was a lot easier than having to translate everything into absolutely precise terms; and it was a lot more acceptable to the local technophobes if I avoided calling it 'programming' and just called it 'telling them what to do'.)
I wanted to watch everything going on in real-time, but with all the trees, the office was out of sight of the road. I checked the 'glider's fuel, dithered a bit, and decided to conserve it by waiting.
After five minutes, the first bun-bot came back, indicating nothing had eaten any of them, and drawing a map of where she'd walked so far; so I sent her back to continue the exploration. At ten and fifteen, the other two returned as they were supposed to. And at twenty, the first one came back again - but this time, she also reported that the doors she'd been told to try to open were unlocked.
After a quick huddle of the gang, we sent her to explore inside the building, as well as the second bun-bot when she returned, while leaving the third to continue checking the exterior.
After a while of this, the bun-bots reported they'd walked through the entire building, so I sent one back to retrieve the third, and looked at the people around me. "So far, so good," I said. "If there are any zones in the area, they don't seem to be in that building."
Sarah said, "Or if there is one, it can tell the difference between people and bun-bots."
Bunny Joe added, "Or maybe it ignores rabbit people."
"All of which are very good maybes," I acknowledged. "So, does anyone want to volunteer to look at the place?" After a few seconds, I rolled my eyes. "Or maybe we should just stick to rabbit people to start with?" I looked at Joe, who looked back calmly. I gave a quick sigh, then said, "Lemme go grab something more appropriate than a flight suit."
Back in my private car, I patted my belly. "You can come out, now, get back to griffon shape again. Or, now that I think of it, whatever other shape you want to be - we're in private, so you don't have to pretend to be an animal if you don't want to."
I didn't feel any motion of her sliding out of my pouch, or from my limbs. Through Boomer, she said, "You're walking into a place that might be dangerous. You don't have to worry about falling, but I can help you more like this than waiting for you in Munchkin."
"Maybe," I agreed, "but there's a whole lot we don't know about how you work yet. If there is a zone that wants to turn me into a bugbear... you might just be used as raw biomass, and, well, die."
"And if you trip and fall into a refuse pit, or a support beam breaks, or all sorts of other things happen, you'll die unless I'm there to help."
I drummed my Brenda-gloved fingers on my work-desk as I thought. "By the obvious extension of that logic, I shouldn't ever take you off."
"I could live with that."
"I'm not sure I want to be permanently pseudo-pregnant."
Her mass finally started to shift out of my pouch, my belly flattening again. "I can be a backpack," she said, rearranging herself to match her words. She added, "And I'm good enough at imitating how cloth flows to hide a lot of my mass under a dress. And if you're using your wheelchair, I can hide my extra mass in a bunch of ways. It'll be even easier if you ever become comfortable enough with me to let me keep some of my mass in your gastrointestinal tract, but I should be able to manage without that."
I continued my argument, "There are times when I have to keep both AIs turned off, to keep them safe. If you still haven't worked out how to do vocal cords, you're going to be stuck mute for... indefinite periods of time. Maybe days. Maybe longer."
"When we were jailed, you said that you spent days and weeks without saying a word to anyone. If you can, I can."
"I also said that I have schizoid personality disorder, and I don't think you've got that. If anything, you seem to be developing dependent personality disorder, and I'm not sure I want to encourage that."
"I don't have D.P.D., I'm a bimbo. I don't know what the psychological term is, I just want to support you and what you're trying to do. Nobody else around here is working as hard as you are on X-risks, so if you die, they won't get worked on as well. Doing everything I can to keep you alive is in my own long-term self-interest, even if it does increase short-term risk."
"... How much of that did you crib from things I've said and written?"
"Even if the words are yours, the sentiment is still mine."
I drummed my fingers again. "If we're really going to try doing this long-term... you're still going to have to show up as a service griffon, at least until there's a plausible reason to reduce your number of appearances."
"We can do that when you're safe."
"I'd want you to work on having a voice... and as many other methods of communication as possible. Morse-code squeezes, fine-tuning your colouring changes so you can write on your surface, and so on."
"I'll be happy to."
"And for a few reasons, including both the off chance that there's a super-computer nearby that can infect them across an air-gap, and so you can get a better idea of what would be involved in not being able to speak for a reasonably prolonged period, I'm going to turn off Boomer before we go out. Give my left arm three squeezes and I'll get out of Dodge, and turn Boomer back on as soon as there's no risk to her, so you can speak."
"You've got to come back inside for your injection in three and a half hours anyway. It took me longer than that to figure out how to talk to Alphie. I'll be fine."
I sighed. "In that case - let's lose the flight-suit look, and go for something more appropriate for walking about, shall we?"
--
Brenda was entirely capable of imitating the shape and appearance of a backpack. What her goo-body couldn't manage, though, was to imitate the strength of one. When I tried loading up Brenda-pack with some real tools, from wedges to force doors open or closed to a first aid kit, she struggled to hold it all in... and then just collapsed, the whole set of gear tumbling down my back. A solution was easy enough - I just threw one of the existing backpacks into the fabber for a slight alteration, creating a few openings where it pressed against my back for Brenda to reach through. She assured me that all her 'thinky bits' were safe inside, and if she did get yanked off, the part of her forming my clothes would be just fine for at least an hour, and there was more than enough extra mass in the freezer for her to rebuild herself with.
After checking that nobody else - not even the Observers - felt the need to accompany me, I grabbed my Explorer Special cane (which could telescope out to ten feet, and had screw-tips at both ends for hooks, spikes, and a few other gizmos sharing backpack space with Brenda), and trudged down the drive.
The office's exterior looked like one of those faux log cabins that lounged at the entrance to campgrounds, to give RV owners the feeling that they were being 'rustic'. Hand-stenciled signs lurked under a patio's eaves, offering 'paint', 'chrony', and 'spell scrolls' for reasonable prices. A darkened, red-and-white pop machine offered various concoctions for ten dollars - or one 'silver piece' - per bottle.
When I stepped onto the patio, the pop machine lit up.
I backstepped quickly, looking around for anyone who might have snuck up behind me while I was distracted; but after a few moments of nothing else happening, let myself relax a tad. After a moment of thought, I took a few more steps back to look up at the office's roof, confirming that, as I thought I'd remembered, the solar panels were dusty, but not completely obscured.
I unfolded my cane to its ten-foot length, and poked at the pop machine with it. It didn't do anything, even when I pushed the 'root beer' button. Since I didn't have any dollars or 'silver pieces' that looked like they'd fit in the slot, I shortened my cane to a more supportive length and cautiously passed it.
After that, I was only modestly surprised that, when I opened the front door, the interior lights came on.
Just inside the door, to my left, a rack carried skulls lined up like bowling balls. A sign proclaimed "Win big! Bring back a phylactery for fifty gold pieces!". Beyond them, another rack, this one of goggles, whose sign exclaimed "For the full experience!". To the right was a small counter and stool, perhaps for check-outs; further inside was a rack full of pamphlets for campgrounds and other local attractions, a couple of empty coolers, a stand-up video-game arcade, a door to some restrooms, and another door labelled 'office'. The main room bent in an 'L' around those rooms, and I saw the edges of some further shelves in the back part, and some weirdly-shaped vaguely gun-like things racked on the wall.
All in all, it was extremely... ordinary. A bit faded. Tacky, even.
Before I stepped inside, I gave my mental North a nudge, asking for my paranoid subself's advice, and it occurred to me to wonder about what I /wasn't/ seeing. No broken glass from years of storms; very little dirt or debris tracked about; only a few dust-bunnies. I looked at the glass doors - they might have been washed a year ago, or a decade, if the weather had been good, but the outside was nearly invisible from the inside, and vice versa. I looked around at the parking lot, and considered the lack of tire-tracks in the leaf-litter from previous autumns. I looked over at the castle itself, the giant cat's jaws frozen open in a permanent silent roar.
I decided to try the obvious, and asked thin air, "Is anybody home?"
Silence reigned.
I grabbed my walkie-talkie from my belt, and sent back to Munchkin, "So far, so good. There's power, but no sign anyone's been here in years. I'm heading inside."
I hung it up on my belt, and reached over my shoulder and into my pack. I thought aloud, "Did I pack those wedges on top?" Before I could call up my most recent memory palace, I felt the pack's contents shifting - and a pair of wedges slid into my hand. I cracked a smile to myself, and said "Better than Heward's Handy Haversack."
While I was making sure the front doors wouldn't be able to close on me, the arcade machine bleeped. I froze.
After nothing much happening for a few more moments, I stepped inside to take a closer look at it. Along the top, the marquee didn't list a particular game, just "Video Games!". The screen glowed, showing just a few lines of text, in a highly-pixellated, early nineteen-eighties font. "A new challenger appears! Would you like to play a game? One coin = one play."
I was feeling just a tad creeped out, but shrugged, and said to Brenda, "I never really was one for quarter-sucking arcades. For one, quarters were hard to come by when I was young enough to be entranced by them. For another, I liked the more in-depth games that took longer to finish - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Ultima Four... and I may be the only person alive who's ever heard of the 'Codex of Ultimate Wisdom'. Great, now I'm depressed again."
I looked around for something to distract me, and my eyes fell on the checkout desk, which I was now at an angle from which I could see had drawers. In moments, I'd learned they were unlocked, and full of assorted commercial detritus - push-pins, a stapler, dried-out rubber bands, wrapping paper, and a bit of loose change. I held up the two quarters I'd found, trying to cheer myself up with the numismatic novelty of coins minted after I'd died, but that bit of ironic amusement only lasted a moment.
I looked at the arcade machine, then at the quarters. With a shrug, I went over, set one on the rim of the marquee, and deposited the other into the slot.
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DataPacRat
Truthseeker
- Location
- Niagara, Canada
In my current draft, I've recently written a scene which seems to come closer to the NSFW-ban-line than anything I've written so far. It's not prurient or explicit, and I'm reasonably confident I'm still on the right side of that line; but I'd be happier if I could ask a Mod to check the scene for me and make sure I'm right about that. But after looking for any stickied posts in the relevant fora, I can't seem to find a list of who I should try getting in touch with. Would anyone care to suggest a course of action?
(In case I'm out on errands when a reply arrives: I keep my draft text on Google Docs so beta readers can comment, starting with Book One at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AU8o3wSAiufh-Eg1FtL-6656dNvbCFILCi2GbeESsb4/edit . (Side note: I'm still welcoming new betas who can offer constructive criticism.) The scene in question is in the Book Eight GDoc, to which there's a link in Book One; and the scene in question is at the very end of the current text, starting with 'My favorite see-through-blue gryphoness'.)
(In case I'm out on errands when a reply arrives: I keep my draft text on Google Docs so beta readers can comment, starting with Book One at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AU8o3wSAiufh-Eg1FtL-6656dNvbCFILCi2GbeESsb4/edit . (Side note: I'm still welcoming new betas who can offer constructive criticism.) The scene in question is in the Book Eight GDoc, to which there's a link in Book One; and the scene in question is at the very end of the current text, starting with 'My favorite see-through-blue gryphoness'.)
- Location
- Australia
We don't have a dedicated list of moderators you can send stuff to, as you can send scenes to be reviewed to essentially any moderator and expect to receive an official response.
69
DataPacRat
Truthseeker
- Location
- Niagara, Canada
*Chapter Seven: Mis-sion*
My eyes were drifting closed, no matter how hard I fought to keep them open.
Once they completely shut, and I heard the digital bloops meaning I'd lost a virtual life, I realized that it wasn't because I was tired, it was because Brenda had extended a few fingers of her substance through my fur to push them closed. /Then/ I realized she was squeezing my left arm, three times and a pause, another three times and another pause.
Aloud, I murmured, "I'll just take a sec and get to a save point, and reached for the joystick.
Brenda didn't let go of my eyelids.
I sighed, and dropped my hands. "Or maybe I'll just head out."
I felt her start to withdraw.
I checked Scorpia, noting, with mild surprise, that I'd been playing for over three hours. I grabbed my walkie-talkie - I remembered getting check-in calls and just responding with "I'm fine," and the like - and announced, "I'm coming back in."
Ignoring the sounds of three hours of mission goals and accomplishments being tossed into the bit bucket, I left the office.
In Munchkin, while Bunny Joe fiddled in the kitchenette and the two Observers watched through their gas-masks, Sarah raised a furry eyebrow at me. "What did you find?"
I rubbed the back of my neck. "Funny story. I found an old video game, and was feeling nostalgic, and, well, lost track of time."
Sarah crossed her arms, and her tail thrashed. "If your mind is still that distractible, you need to talk with Amy or Abigail."
I nodded, contritely. "That makes sense. Lemme go change, hit the autodoc for my meds, and then I'll see if the heliograph can reach them."
As soon as the door to my private car closed, I felt Brenda sliding out of the backpack; she even unbuckled the straps and set it down on the floor for me. Before I'd made it two steps further, she'd shifted her entire appearance, going from 'practical outdoors explorer outfit' to 'long, flowing, ice-blue dress'.
"If the harem ever finds out you can do that," I said to her, only half-joking, "I don't think they'd ever let you do anything else." She squeezed my arms, and I added, "Right - voice. Lemme turn on Boomer..."
"Well," said Brenda through the AI, "that was kind of boring, really."
"I know, I know," I admitted. "I should have been spending my time on more important things, not a silly game." I brushed my fingers over the handheld Simon game on my workbench. "I haven't even got the excuse that it was a psychologically healthy release of tension, or the like."
"So you're not perfect," my dress told me. (Yet another of those experiences I'd never expected to have...) "If it only cost you a few hours to figure that out, you're ahead of the curve, and you can spend tomorrow doing real work instead of playing that game, right?" I didn't answer right away. "Right?" she repeated.
"I was just starting to figure out some of the patterns," I said. "If I can't find out if they're right or not - it'll be kind of frustrating."
"So?"
I shrugged. "They say pattern recognition is an important cognitive skill. And gamification can be a good way to increase motivation to learn skills - even something as simple and old-fashioned as crossword puzzles can help teach trivia."
"You have a castle in the shape of a giant lion out there, waiting to be explored, and you're seriously telling me you'd rather play astro globs?"
"That's 'astro blobs', and that was just one of the minigames."
"Bunny."
I sighed. "This is part of why I turned off Boomer for the trip. A lot of what I do, you're going to think is boring. If you're not happy hanging around with me playing games for a few hours, you're going to be less happy when I spend the whole day doing nothing but reading complicated technical papers."
"That's an interesting point that's worth talking about, but you're avoiding the question."
"Which question?"
"You've got the Free Company people watching your every move, you've got this whole place which your AIs don't know about, you've said that a new Singularity could happen any day... and you want to play a stupid /game/?"
I rubbed the back of my neck. "Well, when you put it like /that/..."
"Good. That's settled. Now - do you want me to shrink down off the shoulders, or leave some straps? How about adding some mass to increase your, I'll be frank, non-existent cleavage? I can't go higher than knee length for the hemline, unless you let me hide some mass inside you, but how about slits on the sides to show off your thighs?"
"... Yep, the harem would just love you. Default answer: 'as conservative as possible'."
"Spoilsport."
--
After my current morning routine (which, now that Wagger was mostly leaving my legs to me, once again included basic 'how to fall' training from a trainer-bun), and after cautiously agreeing to let Brenda demonstrate that she could comb every strand of my pelt into place and clean every square millimeter of my skin in just a few seconds, it was time to work out the day's plan, so I gathered everyone outside Munchkin next to a campfire, to drink hot beverages and gab.
"First up," I said, "I'm going to try looking through the tourism office's, er, office, for any useful paperwork, like maps or control instructions."
One of the Observers - who I'd yet to see eat or drink - asked, "You are not planning on resuming playing the game?"
I shrugged, feeling embarrassed again. "Not only am I not planning on it, I'm using some of the tricks from my therapy to actively avoid it. For example, a lot of my motivation to play the thing seems to be tied up with my nostalgia for pre-Singularity entertainment, so I'm making plans to fulfill that desire with things that don't require such full focus on one thing, like merging today's task with my pleasant memories of an old game about exploring ruins. It's not perfect, but I think it'll get the job done. And even if I do succumb to the desire to play with the arcade cabinet, I think I can still pull off a nudge to play with it by disassembling it to look for shiny pieces inside."
The Observers turned their masks to each other, and then the other one said, "We look forward to seeing if your therapy is successful."
"Er - thanks. That said, I want to spend a few minutes brainstorming about portcullises with you. I could just use an extension ladder to get over the outer wall, but I want to be able to lift the things if I can't get to what's supposed to raise them. Maybe a medieval windlass - that's pretty much just a giant spool for heavy chains, with a long handle to turn it - maybe an electric motor, but the whole point of a castle is to block access to such things by interloping outsiders like us. And also remember, if feasible, I'd like to keep the place in good shape to protect us once we're on the inside, so 'blow it up', while simple and effective, shouldn't be Plan A..."
Bunny Joe started off with, "I want to remember that what can keep people out can keep people in. Part of this castle's mystery is that it used to be a prison. We do not want to break open all the entrances until we are sure there is nothing on the inside waiting to be let out."
--
"Say, Brenda, I've been meaning to ask; can you see out of any part of you?"
"Not exactly, but close enough."
"... Right. Well, if I print up a card with Morse code on it, and put it in one of your pockets, could you read it?"
"Pockets are dark."
"Hm... how sensitive is your sense of touch? How about I fab up a card with letters, dots, and dashes embossed on it, for you to refer to?"
"That could work."
--
As I fumbled with the office desk's locks, I muttered aloud, "This is what I get for having read up on /how/ to pick locks without ever having /practiced/ picking locks..."
From the shop's main room, I heard Joe ask, "Have you tried any of these glasses yet?"
I called back, "I already have one pair, and I doubt any of them have my prescription."
"These glasses don't show you what there is to see - they show what is not there to see at all."
"Hunh," I tried tapping the third tumbler into place, "So someone cracked the problem of decent augmented reality? I can see how that could turn a tourist trap into a decent playing site. As long as you can throw up some floors and walls, you can move most of your decorating costs to software. Not sure I'll want to live in an undecorated castle, though."
"If the decorations are in these glasses, why not put some on?"
"I risked my brain on the video game - I'll let you be the one to risk yours on those things. So, what do you see?"
"Angry spirits hovering over the skulls. Those cupboards are full. There is a sign hovering over your head that says 'Name: Unknown. Swipe for more details.'"
"So swipe."
"I do not know..." She waved her hands in front of her face. "Oh, there it goes. Now a really big sign is in the way of everything, with lots of words and numbers. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom-"
"Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma?" I guessed.
"Indeed."
"Anything about Comeliness?"
"Not that I can see. Class, Unknown, Alignment, Unknown-"
"How about Race?"
"Again, not that I can see."
"Hm... that sounds like it's based on either Basic D and D, or maybe even the original version, rather than A D and D or the later editions."
"Are you gaining amusement from spouting words that I do not understand?"
"A little, yeah. What sort of numbers are there?"
"Strength, eight, intelligence, eighteen, wisdom, twelve, dexterity, eight, constitution, six, charisma, three..."
"I'm not sure if I should be flattered or insulted. I never seriously thought my Int was higher than fifteen, and even that was pushing it... and a three for charisma? Really? Where's it getting these numbers from, anyway?"
"It does not say."
"And here I thought at least half the fun of LARPing was in pretending to be someone /else/, not just being yourself. ... Crap, I just lost the tumblers again. Okay, time to break out the crowbar. Guess that means I don't qualify as a thief. ... Okay, fold-out maps, rolled-up posters, pamphlets, patches - it's all just advertising stuff."
"Your sign just changed. It now reads 'Alignment: Chaotic'."
"... Hunh. Hm... Well, if we do come across records of who actually owns the place, I'll be happy enough to offer reparations for the damage I'm doing."
"It just changed to 'Alignment: Lawful'."
"And now I'm creeped out that something's watching us - and judging. You might not believe how many hours of discussion have gone into what the whole law-versus-chaos thing really means, especially when the good-versus-evil axis hasn't been split out of it."
"Oh, look, even the skull spirits are looking bored from your pointless monologue."
"Need I point out that my pointless monologue is the result of the therapy that you were part of the intervention to get me to take? I /could/ fill my nostalgia sub-self's needs by going back to that video game and wasting a few-"
I was interrupted by my walkie-talkie, which emitted Sarah's voice. "Bunny, a high-priority message is coming in on the heliograph. I think it's from the squiddies - it's in code, all I can read is 'urgent' and 'time-sensitive'."
"I'll be right in," I sent back, and started heading out. I glanced at Joe. "We might need to cut this short. Coming?"
She was still poking at nothing in particular in mid-air. "Leave the radio."
I raised an eyebrow, but was in a hurry, so just shoved it into her hand as I passed by.
In Munchkin, I grabbed the coded message that had been received so far from a bun-bot's hands, and kept walking back to my room. "Sorry, Brenda," I said, "you're going to have to head out front while I translate this."
"I can keep myself from looking."
"Part of gaining a security clearance is accepting that there are things you're not cleared for. Shoo, go be a griffon for a while - it'll do you some good to be more than a bodysuit."
She started sliding down my body, pooling at my feet before taking her more usual form. "I suppose I can go catch some squirrels or something to eat and practice on."
"Like I told Joe, we may have to leave, so don't go too far."
Once she was out of the room, and I locked the door, I set down the paper and started working through the code. It was a fairly simple one, in case I didn't have either of the AIs handy to decrypt it, so it only took a few minutes for me to read, "Metropolis being attacked by two flying machines. Descriptions match Warthog drones from pre-Singularity American military. Significant damage and casualties. Origin unobserved, speculated to be Technoville. All above-water assets considered at risk. Recommend your withdrawal from urban areas to underwater habitat prepared in anticipation of-"
That was as far as it got; the rest was still flashing over the landscape.
"Okay," I thought to myself, "worst case scenario, roughly, is Technoville has me up next on its target list, and has a good enough intelligence network to know roughly where we are. As far as I know, the only urban areas within a few dozen klicks have been converted into cooling towers, so there's nowhere to hide Munchkin... unless it fits into the castle. From what I saw on the maps, it /might/ be able to squeeze into the stables..."
I grabbed a walkie-talkie and gave Joe a quick order, "Joe? Time's a factor - grab the maps of the castle from the office and bring them here, quick."
I jotted down some quick figures. Each of the five cars was a standard cargo container, eight feet wide, twenty long, and eight and a half high; on top of a sled which matched the length and width, but raised the base of the containers twenty-two inches from the ground. I remembered the top of the castle was sixty-six feet above the mound, and I'd seen five stories in the maps, so... /maybe/.
I left my private room to meet up with Joe, who was still wearing her new glasses, and spread the maps. "Okay - side-view. Those arrow-slits are listed as being ten feet above each other, so that's probably how tall each story is... how thick are the floors? Doesn't say. Okay, floorplans. First floor. Between the forelegs, into the chest... at that scale, those inner doors are, I can't tell, just under ten feet apart? How accurate is this map, anyway? Okay, straight down the middle, from the outer doors to the hall out of the stables, that's... sixty feet. And if those aren't load-bearing pillars, and are just separators for the stables, then where the lion's lungs would be, each of those two stables are... about ten feet wide, and just over twenty feet long. So, maybe, if the ceiling's not too short, if that hall's not too narrow, we /might/ be able to fit two of Munchkin's cars in the stables, and the other three in the middle."
Joe and Sarah glanced at each other, then at me. Sarah was the one who asked, "Why would we want to?"
"Metropolis is being bombed. There's a chance we're next, and as fast as Munchkin is on the straightaway, we can't outrun real aircraft. There's nowhere anywhere near here to hide, except, maybe, inside the castle that the Free Company thought had enough special about it to be a worthy test of something-or-other about us. Since I wasted so much time yesterday, we're going to do as fast a survey as we can, and if Munchkin /can/ fit, get those portcullises up and put her inside and pretend nobody's around here. ... When we do, I should give the heliograph relayers instructions to hide out themselves for a while, so they're not obvious targets, either."
Sarah offered, "What if Munchkin does not fit?"
"Not sure yet. We could try parking it right against the inside of the outer wall, and hope we're not seen... maybe I could fab up some camouflage netting to throw on top. We could start travelling full-tilt, either away from Technoville and hope we can make it out of the planes' operational range; or back towards Erie, grab everyone we know, take shelter underwater with the squiddies."
Joe frowned. "You do not intend to fight back?"
"Against aircraft whose owners are confident enough in them to attack Cleveland? I've barely managed to create crossbows and airguns, and I've got one hand-held finicky laser that needs to be tuned for every shot. I can't even make decent fireworks, let alone something that could take out an airplane before it dropped all sorts of unpleasantness on our heads."
Sarah glanced at the Observers, then the Acadians, then back at me. "So you're just going to run and hide?"
I shook my head. "No, /first/ I'm going to see if we can hide Munchkin, and if we can, do that. /Then/, if that works out, we'll have enough breathing room to work out what to do next. Best case, it's only Cleveland that's being attacked, and this is all just a drill. In fact, that's the most likely case. But the /consequences/ of the case if we /are/ a target are big enough that I'd like to get a few thousand tons of rock between me and any airplanes in the area, as fast as possible. Sarah, grab a ladder and go to the main gate, find out what it takes to open it. Senior Acadian, please go outside and call in my service griffon. Joe, you're going to use another ladder to hop the outer wall, and get to that entrance in the lion's chest, and see if the AIs can get a good enough view to see if this whole exercise is futile. I'm going to see if I can finish up those jacks I started fabbing overnight, or if we need to find some keys or controls for the whole place..."
--
As soon as I turned Boomer on, I discovered that all of that initial plotting was moot; her three-dimensional renderings proved that Munchkin was too tall to make it through the outer gatehouse. I called everyone back in for a confab.
"Plan A is a bust," I sighed. "So - for the moment, /starting/ with the assumption that Technoville planes are on their way /right now/, what are our best options for Plan B?"
Sarah asked, "Can Munchkin go over the wall?"
I grimaced. "Almost. The specs say she can manage obstacles of up to twelve feet, the wall's ten above ground level - but there's that ditch around the wall, five feet deep. And the two spots where there's no ditch, there's a tower in the way."
"How wide is the ditch?"
Boomer answered, "For the majority of its length, roughly eight feet, narrower where the towers bulge out of the wall."
"And how long are Munchkin's leg-feet things?"
Boomer supplied, "Just under ten feet."
Sarah suggested, "So, can't we just have Munchkin go straight up, and have the back cars help support the front one as it does whatever it does to move its front end over the ditch and up the wall?"
"Maybe," I said, arms crossed, "but the cars aren't designed to support each other's weight like that; each one is pretty well independent of the others, just hooked up to share power, water, and with those accordion airlocks. There's pretty much no room for anything to go wrong, like the edge of the ditch collapsing... and all of the car's weight would be on the edge of the ditch. I'm fairly sure that if we tried that, whatever car went first would roll into the ditch."
Joe said, "Then maybe we should sacrifice one car on purpose, send it into the ditch to be a step for the others to climb over."
"... Hunh," I said. "That... just might work. These cars are based on cargo containers that are supposed to stack on each other, so they should be able to support the weight."
Sarah asked, "How would we get the car out of the ditch?"
I answered, "It's only five feet deep - and like I said, the Munchkin cars are supposed to be able to climb a dozen feet. We could get it out of the ditch, just not into the castle's courtyard."
Sarah suggested, "Leave it in place? Cover it with some tarps?"
I grimaced. "If we could do that for one car, we could do it for them all. If we're dealing with pre-Singularity military hardware, I'm expecting it to have infrared, maybe radar, as well as visible light. A few feet of stone could be enough to hide Munchkin's cars, which is why I'm suggesting the castle. We'd have to find somewhere else for the one car... maybe push it up against the office, maybe send it down the road or railway as a distraction? Anyway, it sounds like we have a Plan A-one - Joe, you're back on chest-gate survey duty, while the rest of us work on Plan B."
--
"I hope you have a good plan B," Joe sent over the walkie-talkie, "because Munchkin isn't going to fit."
"Crap. Walls too narrow?"
"No, Alphie says there's just enough room. It's the ceilings - the horse pegs them at just about nine feet, not ten."
"Hrm. Okay, come on back in."
"Well, Sarah - Plan A one is bust. Plan A two is based on the fact that Munchkin's cars were built based on a modular design - the cargo containers are mostly separate from the 'sleds'. Shouldn't take much work to separate them... and the containers are a standard eight and a half feet tall. So with some finagling, it just may be possible to get the sleds to push and pull the cars into the castle, instead of just walking in. Mind you, given that, then we might be able to leave the cargo container parked as, well, just an ordinary cargo container, and get the last sled over the wall and in with the rest of Munchkin."
"That seems a little excessive. Is it really worth the time and effort?"
"Boomer, why don't you read aloud those weapon stats you showed me?"
Boomer complied. "The standard armament of the unmanned warthog is a seven-barrel Gatling gun, firing four thousand rounds per minute of depleted uranium and high explosive in a five-to-one mix, each round weighing roughly fourteen ounces, at three thousand five hundred feet per second."
Sarah's ears flattened. "And what does that mean?"
I suppressed a snort. "A single round could punch through all of Munchkin's carriages in a row and barely slow down. That gun can fire sixty rounds per /second/. If any of those drones take a disliking to us, we're all dead. Period. There won't be enough left of our bodies to make a jar of chunky salsa, let alone be cryopreserved. Hey, Joe, that was fast."
Joe considered, "How much would the castle walls protect against that?"
Boomer answered, "Each round can penetrate roughly three to four feet of mortared stone. Given the rounded shape of the structure, some portions of the walls are that thick. Most are not."
I expanded, "I'm not expecting it to protect us - well, maybe if we hid out in the basement. I'm trying to come up with a way for us to not get shot at in the first place. Plan B is just run, but there's no way to know how far we'd have to go, plus we'd lose the helio link. Plan C is find somewhere else to hide, but there's nothing on the maps anywhere near here. Plan D is head back to Erie, which is an even bigger target than this place."
Sarah asked, "Have Jeff and the others been warned?"
"... Good question. Best not to assume. I'll send some 'grams. Anyway - Plan E, go underwater, which means the squiddies. Plan F, the university, risking whatever's going on in Indian Country. Plan G, just plain Indian Country. The H plans are trying to talk to whoever's controlling the drones, via one means or another. Plan I is to ask Technoville for help - we don't /know/ they're running the drones. Plan J is to hire the Free Company. The plans after that get rather less plausible. Which one was building a catapult to launch Brenda at one, to infiltrate their airbase?"
Sarah ran her finger down the list. "W."
"Right. Given all of those, then until such time as we can get more intelligence on what's going on, I'm judging that our best option is to deny these things as much intelligence about us as possible - to wit, our obvious visual, radar, and infrared profiles. Even if that does mean half-disassembling our vehicle and taking refuge in a haunted castle. ... And Joe, take those glasses off - they look silly, and they're a security threat."
My eyes were drifting closed, no matter how hard I fought to keep them open.
Once they completely shut, and I heard the digital bloops meaning I'd lost a virtual life, I realized that it wasn't because I was tired, it was because Brenda had extended a few fingers of her substance through my fur to push them closed. /Then/ I realized she was squeezing my left arm, three times and a pause, another three times and another pause.
Aloud, I murmured, "I'll just take a sec and get to a save point, and reached for the joystick.
Brenda didn't let go of my eyelids.
I sighed, and dropped my hands. "Or maybe I'll just head out."
I felt her start to withdraw.
I checked Scorpia, noting, with mild surprise, that I'd been playing for over three hours. I grabbed my walkie-talkie - I remembered getting check-in calls and just responding with "I'm fine," and the like - and announced, "I'm coming back in."
Ignoring the sounds of three hours of mission goals and accomplishments being tossed into the bit bucket, I left the office.
In Munchkin, while Bunny Joe fiddled in the kitchenette and the two Observers watched through their gas-masks, Sarah raised a furry eyebrow at me. "What did you find?"
I rubbed the back of my neck. "Funny story. I found an old video game, and was feeling nostalgic, and, well, lost track of time."
Sarah crossed her arms, and her tail thrashed. "If your mind is still that distractible, you need to talk with Amy or Abigail."
I nodded, contritely. "That makes sense. Lemme go change, hit the autodoc for my meds, and then I'll see if the heliograph can reach them."
As soon as the door to my private car closed, I felt Brenda sliding out of the backpack; she even unbuckled the straps and set it down on the floor for me. Before I'd made it two steps further, she'd shifted her entire appearance, going from 'practical outdoors explorer outfit' to 'long, flowing, ice-blue dress'.
"If the harem ever finds out you can do that," I said to her, only half-joking, "I don't think they'd ever let you do anything else." She squeezed my arms, and I added, "Right - voice. Lemme turn on Boomer..."
"Well," said Brenda through the AI, "that was kind of boring, really."
"I know, I know," I admitted. "I should have been spending my time on more important things, not a silly game." I brushed my fingers over the handheld Simon game on my workbench. "I haven't even got the excuse that it was a psychologically healthy release of tension, or the like."
"So you're not perfect," my dress told me. (Yet another of those experiences I'd never expected to have...) "If it only cost you a few hours to figure that out, you're ahead of the curve, and you can spend tomorrow doing real work instead of playing that game, right?" I didn't answer right away. "Right?" she repeated.
"I was just starting to figure out some of the patterns," I said. "If I can't find out if they're right or not - it'll be kind of frustrating."
"So?"
I shrugged. "They say pattern recognition is an important cognitive skill. And gamification can be a good way to increase motivation to learn skills - even something as simple and old-fashioned as crossword puzzles can help teach trivia."
"You have a castle in the shape of a giant lion out there, waiting to be explored, and you're seriously telling me you'd rather play astro globs?"
"That's 'astro blobs', and that was just one of the minigames."
"Bunny."
I sighed. "This is part of why I turned off Boomer for the trip. A lot of what I do, you're going to think is boring. If you're not happy hanging around with me playing games for a few hours, you're going to be less happy when I spend the whole day doing nothing but reading complicated technical papers."
"That's an interesting point that's worth talking about, but you're avoiding the question."
"Which question?"
"You've got the Free Company people watching your every move, you've got this whole place which your AIs don't know about, you've said that a new Singularity could happen any day... and you want to play a stupid /game/?"
I rubbed the back of my neck. "Well, when you put it like /that/..."
"Good. That's settled. Now - do you want me to shrink down off the shoulders, or leave some straps? How about adding some mass to increase your, I'll be frank, non-existent cleavage? I can't go higher than knee length for the hemline, unless you let me hide some mass inside you, but how about slits on the sides to show off your thighs?"
"... Yep, the harem would just love you. Default answer: 'as conservative as possible'."
"Spoilsport."
--
After my current morning routine (which, now that Wagger was mostly leaving my legs to me, once again included basic 'how to fall' training from a trainer-bun), and after cautiously agreeing to let Brenda demonstrate that she could comb every strand of my pelt into place and clean every square millimeter of my skin in just a few seconds, it was time to work out the day's plan, so I gathered everyone outside Munchkin next to a campfire, to drink hot beverages and gab.
"First up," I said, "I'm going to try looking through the tourism office's, er, office, for any useful paperwork, like maps or control instructions."
One of the Observers - who I'd yet to see eat or drink - asked, "You are not planning on resuming playing the game?"
I shrugged, feeling embarrassed again. "Not only am I not planning on it, I'm using some of the tricks from my therapy to actively avoid it. For example, a lot of my motivation to play the thing seems to be tied up with my nostalgia for pre-Singularity entertainment, so I'm making plans to fulfill that desire with things that don't require such full focus on one thing, like merging today's task with my pleasant memories of an old game about exploring ruins. It's not perfect, but I think it'll get the job done. And even if I do succumb to the desire to play with the arcade cabinet, I think I can still pull off a nudge to play with it by disassembling it to look for shiny pieces inside."
The Observers turned their masks to each other, and then the other one said, "We look forward to seeing if your therapy is successful."
"Er - thanks. That said, I want to spend a few minutes brainstorming about portcullises with you. I could just use an extension ladder to get over the outer wall, but I want to be able to lift the things if I can't get to what's supposed to raise them. Maybe a medieval windlass - that's pretty much just a giant spool for heavy chains, with a long handle to turn it - maybe an electric motor, but the whole point of a castle is to block access to such things by interloping outsiders like us. And also remember, if feasible, I'd like to keep the place in good shape to protect us once we're on the inside, so 'blow it up', while simple and effective, shouldn't be Plan A..."
Bunny Joe started off with, "I want to remember that what can keep people out can keep people in. Part of this castle's mystery is that it used to be a prison. We do not want to break open all the entrances until we are sure there is nothing on the inside waiting to be let out."
--
"Say, Brenda, I've been meaning to ask; can you see out of any part of you?"
"Not exactly, but close enough."
"... Right. Well, if I print up a card with Morse code on it, and put it in one of your pockets, could you read it?"
"Pockets are dark."
"Hm... how sensitive is your sense of touch? How about I fab up a card with letters, dots, and dashes embossed on it, for you to refer to?"
"That could work."
--
As I fumbled with the office desk's locks, I muttered aloud, "This is what I get for having read up on /how/ to pick locks without ever having /practiced/ picking locks..."
From the shop's main room, I heard Joe ask, "Have you tried any of these glasses yet?"
I called back, "I already have one pair, and I doubt any of them have my prescription."
"These glasses don't show you what there is to see - they show what is not there to see at all."
"Hunh," I tried tapping the third tumbler into place, "So someone cracked the problem of decent augmented reality? I can see how that could turn a tourist trap into a decent playing site. As long as you can throw up some floors and walls, you can move most of your decorating costs to software. Not sure I'll want to live in an undecorated castle, though."
"If the decorations are in these glasses, why not put some on?"
"I risked my brain on the video game - I'll let you be the one to risk yours on those things. So, what do you see?"
"Angry spirits hovering over the skulls. Those cupboards are full. There is a sign hovering over your head that says 'Name: Unknown. Swipe for more details.'"
"So swipe."
"I do not know..." She waved her hands in front of her face. "Oh, there it goes. Now a really big sign is in the way of everything, with lots of words and numbers. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom-"
"Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma?" I guessed.
"Indeed."
"Anything about Comeliness?"
"Not that I can see. Class, Unknown, Alignment, Unknown-"
"How about Race?"
"Again, not that I can see."
"Hm... that sounds like it's based on either Basic D and D, or maybe even the original version, rather than A D and D or the later editions."
"Are you gaining amusement from spouting words that I do not understand?"
"A little, yeah. What sort of numbers are there?"
"Strength, eight, intelligence, eighteen, wisdom, twelve, dexterity, eight, constitution, six, charisma, three..."
"I'm not sure if I should be flattered or insulted. I never seriously thought my Int was higher than fifteen, and even that was pushing it... and a three for charisma? Really? Where's it getting these numbers from, anyway?"
"It does not say."
"And here I thought at least half the fun of LARPing was in pretending to be someone /else/, not just being yourself. ... Crap, I just lost the tumblers again. Okay, time to break out the crowbar. Guess that means I don't qualify as a thief. ... Okay, fold-out maps, rolled-up posters, pamphlets, patches - it's all just advertising stuff."
"Your sign just changed. It now reads 'Alignment: Chaotic'."
"... Hunh. Hm... Well, if we do come across records of who actually owns the place, I'll be happy enough to offer reparations for the damage I'm doing."
"It just changed to 'Alignment: Lawful'."
"And now I'm creeped out that something's watching us - and judging. You might not believe how many hours of discussion have gone into what the whole law-versus-chaos thing really means, especially when the good-versus-evil axis hasn't been split out of it."
"Oh, look, even the skull spirits are looking bored from your pointless monologue."
"Need I point out that my pointless monologue is the result of the therapy that you were part of the intervention to get me to take? I /could/ fill my nostalgia sub-self's needs by going back to that video game and wasting a few-"
I was interrupted by my walkie-talkie, which emitted Sarah's voice. "Bunny, a high-priority message is coming in on the heliograph. I think it's from the squiddies - it's in code, all I can read is 'urgent' and 'time-sensitive'."
"I'll be right in," I sent back, and started heading out. I glanced at Joe. "We might need to cut this short. Coming?"
She was still poking at nothing in particular in mid-air. "Leave the radio."
I raised an eyebrow, but was in a hurry, so just shoved it into her hand as I passed by.
In Munchkin, I grabbed the coded message that had been received so far from a bun-bot's hands, and kept walking back to my room. "Sorry, Brenda," I said, "you're going to have to head out front while I translate this."
"I can keep myself from looking."
"Part of gaining a security clearance is accepting that there are things you're not cleared for. Shoo, go be a griffon for a while - it'll do you some good to be more than a bodysuit."
She started sliding down my body, pooling at my feet before taking her more usual form. "I suppose I can go catch some squirrels or something to eat and practice on."
"Like I told Joe, we may have to leave, so don't go too far."
Once she was out of the room, and I locked the door, I set down the paper and started working through the code. It was a fairly simple one, in case I didn't have either of the AIs handy to decrypt it, so it only took a few minutes for me to read, "Metropolis being attacked by two flying machines. Descriptions match Warthog drones from pre-Singularity American military. Significant damage and casualties. Origin unobserved, speculated to be Technoville. All above-water assets considered at risk. Recommend your withdrawal from urban areas to underwater habitat prepared in anticipation of-"
That was as far as it got; the rest was still flashing over the landscape.
"Okay," I thought to myself, "worst case scenario, roughly, is Technoville has me up next on its target list, and has a good enough intelligence network to know roughly where we are. As far as I know, the only urban areas within a few dozen klicks have been converted into cooling towers, so there's nowhere to hide Munchkin... unless it fits into the castle. From what I saw on the maps, it /might/ be able to squeeze into the stables..."
I grabbed a walkie-talkie and gave Joe a quick order, "Joe? Time's a factor - grab the maps of the castle from the office and bring them here, quick."
I jotted down some quick figures. Each of the five cars was a standard cargo container, eight feet wide, twenty long, and eight and a half high; on top of a sled which matched the length and width, but raised the base of the containers twenty-two inches from the ground. I remembered the top of the castle was sixty-six feet above the mound, and I'd seen five stories in the maps, so... /maybe/.
I left my private room to meet up with Joe, who was still wearing her new glasses, and spread the maps. "Okay - side-view. Those arrow-slits are listed as being ten feet above each other, so that's probably how tall each story is... how thick are the floors? Doesn't say. Okay, floorplans. First floor. Between the forelegs, into the chest... at that scale, those inner doors are, I can't tell, just under ten feet apart? How accurate is this map, anyway? Okay, straight down the middle, from the outer doors to the hall out of the stables, that's... sixty feet. And if those aren't load-bearing pillars, and are just separators for the stables, then where the lion's lungs would be, each of those two stables are... about ten feet wide, and just over twenty feet long. So, maybe, if the ceiling's not too short, if that hall's not too narrow, we /might/ be able to fit two of Munchkin's cars in the stables, and the other three in the middle."
Joe and Sarah glanced at each other, then at me. Sarah was the one who asked, "Why would we want to?"
"Metropolis is being bombed. There's a chance we're next, and as fast as Munchkin is on the straightaway, we can't outrun real aircraft. There's nowhere anywhere near here to hide, except, maybe, inside the castle that the Free Company thought had enough special about it to be a worthy test of something-or-other about us. Since I wasted so much time yesterday, we're going to do as fast a survey as we can, and if Munchkin /can/ fit, get those portcullises up and put her inside and pretend nobody's around here. ... When we do, I should give the heliograph relayers instructions to hide out themselves for a while, so they're not obvious targets, either."
Sarah offered, "What if Munchkin does not fit?"
"Not sure yet. We could try parking it right against the inside of the outer wall, and hope we're not seen... maybe I could fab up some camouflage netting to throw on top. We could start travelling full-tilt, either away from Technoville and hope we can make it out of the planes' operational range; or back towards Erie, grab everyone we know, take shelter underwater with the squiddies."
Joe frowned. "You do not intend to fight back?"
"Against aircraft whose owners are confident enough in them to attack Cleveland? I've barely managed to create crossbows and airguns, and I've got one hand-held finicky laser that needs to be tuned for every shot. I can't even make decent fireworks, let alone something that could take out an airplane before it dropped all sorts of unpleasantness on our heads."
Sarah glanced at the Observers, then the Acadians, then back at me. "So you're just going to run and hide?"
I shook my head. "No, /first/ I'm going to see if we can hide Munchkin, and if we can, do that. /Then/, if that works out, we'll have enough breathing room to work out what to do next. Best case, it's only Cleveland that's being attacked, and this is all just a drill. In fact, that's the most likely case. But the /consequences/ of the case if we /are/ a target are big enough that I'd like to get a few thousand tons of rock between me and any airplanes in the area, as fast as possible. Sarah, grab a ladder and go to the main gate, find out what it takes to open it. Senior Acadian, please go outside and call in my service griffon. Joe, you're going to use another ladder to hop the outer wall, and get to that entrance in the lion's chest, and see if the AIs can get a good enough view to see if this whole exercise is futile. I'm going to see if I can finish up those jacks I started fabbing overnight, or if we need to find some keys or controls for the whole place..."
--
As soon as I turned Boomer on, I discovered that all of that initial plotting was moot; her three-dimensional renderings proved that Munchkin was too tall to make it through the outer gatehouse. I called everyone back in for a confab.
"Plan A is a bust," I sighed. "So - for the moment, /starting/ with the assumption that Technoville planes are on their way /right now/, what are our best options for Plan B?"
Sarah asked, "Can Munchkin go over the wall?"
I grimaced. "Almost. The specs say she can manage obstacles of up to twelve feet, the wall's ten above ground level - but there's that ditch around the wall, five feet deep. And the two spots where there's no ditch, there's a tower in the way."
"How wide is the ditch?"
Boomer answered, "For the majority of its length, roughly eight feet, narrower where the towers bulge out of the wall."
"And how long are Munchkin's leg-feet things?"
Boomer supplied, "Just under ten feet."
Sarah suggested, "So, can't we just have Munchkin go straight up, and have the back cars help support the front one as it does whatever it does to move its front end over the ditch and up the wall?"
"Maybe," I said, arms crossed, "but the cars aren't designed to support each other's weight like that; each one is pretty well independent of the others, just hooked up to share power, water, and with those accordion airlocks. There's pretty much no room for anything to go wrong, like the edge of the ditch collapsing... and all of the car's weight would be on the edge of the ditch. I'm fairly sure that if we tried that, whatever car went first would roll into the ditch."
Joe said, "Then maybe we should sacrifice one car on purpose, send it into the ditch to be a step for the others to climb over."
"... Hunh," I said. "That... just might work. These cars are based on cargo containers that are supposed to stack on each other, so they should be able to support the weight."
Sarah asked, "How would we get the car out of the ditch?"
I answered, "It's only five feet deep - and like I said, the Munchkin cars are supposed to be able to climb a dozen feet. We could get it out of the ditch, just not into the castle's courtyard."
Sarah suggested, "Leave it in place? Cover it with some tarps?"
I grimaced. "If we could do that for one car, we could do it for them all. If we're dealing with pre-Singularity military hardware, I'm expecting it to have infrared, maybe radar, as well as visible light. A few feet of stone could be enough to hide Munchkin's cars, which is why I'm suggesting the castle. We'd have to find somewhere else for the one car... maybe push it up against the office, maybe send it down the road or railway as a distraction? Anyway, it sounds like we have a Plan A-one - Joe, you're back on chest-gate survey duty, while the rest of us work on Plan B."
--
"I hope you have a good plan B," Joe sent over the walkie-talkie, "because Munchkin isn't going to fit."
"Crap. Walls too narrow?"
"No, Alphie says there's just enough room. It's the ceilings - the horse pegs them at just about nine feet, not ten."
"Hrm. Okay, come on back in."
"Well, Sarah - Plan A one is bust. Plan A two is based on the fact that Munchkin's cars were built based on a modular design - the cargo containers are mostly separate from the 'sleds'. Shouldn't take much work to separate them... and the containers are a standard eight and a half feet tall. So with some finagling, it just may be possible to get the sleds to push and pull the cars into the castle, instead of just walking in. Mind you, given that, then we might be able to leave the cargo container parked as, well, just an ordinary cargo container, and get the last sled over the wall and in with the rest of Munchkin."
"That seems a little excessive. Is it really worth the time and effort?"
"Boomer, why don't you read aloud those weapon stats you showed me?"
Boomer complied. "The standard armament of the unmanned warthog is a seven-barrel Gatling gun, firing four thousand rounds per minute of depleted uranium and high explosive in a five-to-one mix, each round weighing roughly fourteen ounces, at three thousand five hundred feet per second."
Sarah's ears flattened. "And what does that mean?"
I suppressed a snort. "A single round could punch through all of Munchkin's carriages in a row and barely slow down. That gun can fire sixty rounds per /second/. If any of those drones take a disliking to us, we're all dead. Period. There won't be enough left of our bodies to make a jar of chunky salsa, let alone be cryopreserved. Hey, Joe, that was fast."
Joe considered, "How much would the castle walls protect against that?"
Boomer answered, "Each round can penetrate roughly three to four feet of mortared stone. Given the rounded shape of the structure, some portions of the walls are that thick. Most are not."
I expanded, "I'm not expecting it to protect us - well, maybe if we hid out in the basement. I'm trying to come up with a way for us to not get shot at in the first place. Plan B is just run, but there's no way to know how far we'd have to go, plus we'd lose the helio link. Plan C is find somewhere else to hide, but there's nothing on the maps anywhere near here. Plan D is head back to Erie, which is an even bigger target than this place."
Sarah asked, "Have Jeff and the others been warned?"
"... Good question. Best not to assume. I'll send some 'grams. Anyway - Plan E, go underwater, which means the squiddies. Plan F, the university, risking whatever's going on in Indian Country. Plan G, just plain Indian Country. The H plans are trying to talk to whoever's controlling the drones, via one means or another. Plan I is to ask Technoville for help - we don't /know/ they're running the drones. Plan J is to hire the Free Company. The plans after that get rather less plausible. Which one was building a catapult to launch Brenda at one, to infiltrate their airbase?"
Sarah ran her finger down the list. "W."
"Right. Given all of those, then until such time as we can get more intelligence on what's going on, I'm judging that our best option is to deny these things as much intelligence about us as possible - to wit, our obvious visual, radar, and infrared profiles. Even if that does mean half-disassembling our vehicle and taking refuge in a haunted castle. ... And Joe, take those glasses off - they look silly, and they're a security threat."
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Scify
It always starts with a lighthouse.
Bunny Joe? Or accidental third person?
DataPacRat
Truthseeker
- Location
- Niagara, Canada
Bunny Joe, yes. Fixed.
- Location
- Laniakea
Jeeze, that was sudden and unexpected.
DataPacRat
Truthseeker
- Location
- Niagara, Canada
As an aside, not only am I still open to new beta-readers who can offer constructive criticism (at Google Docs, at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AU8o3wSAiufh-Eg1FtL-6656dNvbCFILCi2GbeESsb4/edit ), but I would also appreciate feedback on my quick mockup of this story's eventual permanent home at http://www.datapacrat.com/SI/ . There, I plan on a page for each chapter, a gallery page to collect all the images for the story, and possibly an RSS feed. For example, I could use advice on whether the typographic conventions I've adopted in the sample chapter I've posted there can be improved.
- Status