Stealing Fire (Worm SI)
- Thread starter Jack Stargazer
- Start date
al103
Grumpy Russian Bear (SV edition)
- Location
- Russia, Krasnoyarsk
Thing is - for too many people "any access" is better alternative to "no access". So risk of losing it is unacceptable. Which means that too many will count their stakes and find that most viable bet is "keep them independent and don't allow anybody else to get it in their pocket" as it's safest way to get access without no strings attached.
Yes, certainly, all of them would've wanted to pocket it for themselves... but keeping it out of other's pockets while still having access is much much more important.
Well, it's not like there wouldn't be some morons, but they would live on borrowed time and would be dogpiled.
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Arimai
Curmudgeon
Immortality and a real Panacea of the Gods will see the US turn to their Cold War roots. Every inch of Brockton will be covered by overt military and infiltrated by covert agents similar to @mp3.1415player's depiction in Distance Learning. Every alphabet soup agency will have infiltrated Brockton's entire population strata on both sides of tha law within two weeks. Everything within a thousand miles will be covered by sensors and observers human and not.
This will be the new Manhattan Project. @Jack Stargazer may write it differently, but Cauldron's bullshit won't win against a greedy, motivated Uncle Sam. Especially when backed by billions of humans who can now see the Golden Age of Man promised by countless Science Fiction writers and research into these two very subjects. Research that Humanity as a whole have strived towards since time immemorial. 3 million years man has walked this world in all his forms and every one sought to leave behind a lasting memorial of themselves. This SI just made that possible.
They have become the Ultimate Neutral Party. Hell with Butcher's intense fear of death, she'll be motivated to keep the SI and Panacea alive at all cost. Most Importantly, Neutral and selling to everyone.
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LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
Well now. That was just beautiful. Although Piggot probably won't be the only one to have that reaction.
At least once enough people have tested that it doesn't wear out early or cause mind control, anyway.
At least once enough people have tested that it doesn't wear out early or cause mind control, anyway.
- Location
- edinbrugh
It's such bullshit that any person trying to good in Worm has a thousand reasons not to. How would the Nine find out about this?? And how would they not be snuffed out immediately?
i honestly doubt that, the worm US are a shadow of their old self and only held together by intertia and a lot of bandaids and spit from cauldron and even the sight of a panacea wouldnt be enough to reverse that, if anything it might accelate the destruction when everyone scrambles to get their hands it
the same way anyone else would probably find out about it, something called news/the internet
also the nine are extremly well suited to sabotage with jacks power enabling him to evade anything that risks them and a parahuman had a hand in setting up and riley, crawler and the siberian can utterly wreck anything normies can throw at them so i dont see why the nine wouldnt be able to sabotage the production of a factory dedicated to making the new youth tonic
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING.
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
Oh, hell. If it wasn't for the fact that humanity was already fucked seven ways from sunday this would be our doom all by itself. Immortality would cement an unchanging ruling class in place, one increasingly alien to the proletariat, while ensuring that there is next to no social mobility. Without turnover due to age you would be trapped between glass ceilings even within the lower and middle classes. All glory to the Pharaoh.
And this is compounded by the fact that you just put the entirety of humanity into prime breeding age permanently. People don't die off from an increasing swath of natural causes and, even with the drastically reduced population growth rates typical in the first world... hoo boy. Suddenly a death by Endbringer-related social collapse or Scion drowning his tears in the blood of billions seems kind.
He might have secondary plans to deal with that once he holds the ruling class by the balls but, yeah, I might have just shot him there just out of panic in regard to that pandora's box. I'd be vilified for the rest of human history but I still might have done it.
And this is compounded by the fact that you just put the entirety of humanity into prime breeding age permanently. People don't die off from an increasing swath of natural causes and, even with the drastically reduced population growth rates typical in the first world... hoo boy. Suddenly a death by Endbringer-related social collapse or Scion drowning his tears in the blood of billions seems kind.
He might have secondary plans to deal with that once he holds the ruling class by the balls but, yeah, I might have just shot him there just out of panic in regard to that pandora's box. I'd be vilified for the rest of human history but I still might have done it.
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- Location
- Earth
Boy, it sure is a good thing then that although the word immortality is being used, it's really more or less longevity. Though to be fair, 400+ years of living might as well be immortality.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING.
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
Its certainly immortality enough to cause a dystopian gilded prison to form. We are already, just in regular life, feeling the weight of the entrenched privileged... the game a little more rigged by the day. Four hundred years of those who made it to the top of the ladder never falling is more than enough to create a nightmare.
And its four hundred years right now, day one minute one. I fully expect the hypothetical maximum lifespan to go up from here faster than anyone can actually age along with other possible sources of early death being excised. People will still periodically die... if your brain gets mulched there isn't much to be done barring backups... but not at a sufficient rate. I'd guess that in ten years brain mulching will be the only way somebody who has taken every alteration as fast as it hits the market will actually go.
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- Location
- Massachusetts
I'm glad you are alright. My pessimistic brain has declared any author who hasn't updated in the past two years to be legally dead of covid.
Holy mother of God. An awesome chapter. Hoping for a Panacea interlude next, or soon in any case.
- Location
- Planet Earth
Not trying to demotivate you author, as I would not bother to comment on a story I did not like, or see a lot of potential in. Definitely want to see more of this...
But I feel I NEED to explain several issues I have with your story. Over the years I have started, stopped, and dropped this story maybe 5 times. So I like the premise/idea of it. But the execution makes it difficult to read. I usually dropped it after pushing through to the 3rd or 4th chapter. This time, with the new chapter release, I got all caught up and felt like sharing WHAT exactly was keeping me away from it. I am not trying to be confrontational, just offer criticism, so I have placed it in a spoiler to be more easily avoided should you, or other readers, want to.
But I feel I NEED to explain several issues I have with your story. Over the years I have started, stopped, and dropped this story maybe 5 times. So I like the premise/idea of it. But the execution makes it difficult to read. I usually dropped it after pushing through to the 3rd or 4th chapter. This time, with the new chapter release, I got all caught up and felt like sharing WHAT exactly was keeping me away from it. I am not trying to be confrontational, just offer criticism, so I have placed it in a spoiler to be more easily avoided should you, or other readers, want to.
I'd suggest a bit of a rewrite. The premise and power(of the MC) is good. But this is difficult to read. The MC seems intent to just out himself to possibly the WORST people possible(Impulsive children employed by Coil), or in the WORST ways possible. He seemingly folds instantly whenever push comes to shove regarding information about himself. Which is difficult to read. No one likes MC's/SI's who are instantly found out, or who do not have an ace up their sleeve. Since at that point they've lost most of what makes them interesting to read.
You make Tattletale seemingly omniscient, when she really is not. Her power is super-intuition, and works off of input. This is why she is intentionally aggravating, smug, and talkative. To evoke responses that her power can work with. But here, in the first time she looks at him, you have her pulling info out of nowhere that she literally has no input for. That she could NOT have known. She would have more likely gained maybe a fraction of that info, then selected the wrong choice/possibility, then confronted the MC and initially been proven wrong, then been lost as to what his powers are exactly and unable to continue to guess once he took control of his body.
I mean, 4 chapters in and Tattletale and a bunch of kids(the Undersiders) know the MC is not from Earth-Bet, he is from the future, they know he is a Tinker, know he has Thinker powers and can control his biology, and likely know/guess the directions his Tinker power can go in, since she apparently could tell at first sight that not only is he a Tinker, but that he was looking at space and planning things to build.
Don't get me started on the MC placing himself right into the hands of Coil, before he has had the time to buid-up ANYTHING. Which is pretty much a death sentence or a quick one-way trip to mister Pitter and his "Candy", even if this was kinda corrected by him getting lost(by Tattletale), and winding up going to the Protectorate to point them at Coil.
The MC's Brain-interface thing makes ZERO sense(as far as him hiding his own knowledge). If he is afraid of knowing something becuz the Simurgh might read his brain matter, WHAT is stopping her from reading his computer brain? It just feels like nonsense.
You make Tattletale seemingly omniscient, when she really is not. Her power is super-intuition, and works off of input. This is why she is intentionally aggravating, smug, and talkative. To evoke responses that her power can work with. But here, in the first time she looks at him, you have her pulling info out of nowhere that she literally has no input for. That she could NOT have known. She would have more likely gained maybe a fraction of that info, then selected the wrong choice/possibility, then confronted the MC and initially been proven wrong, then been lost as to what his powers are exactly and unable to continue to guess once he took control of his body.
I mean, 4 chapters in and Tattletale and a bunch of kids(the Undersiders) know the MC is not from Earth-Bet, he is from the future, they know he is a Tinker, know he has Thinker powers and can control his biology, and likely know/guess the directions his Tinker power can go in, since she apparently could tell at first sight that not only is he a Tinker, but that he was looking at space and planning things to build.
Don't get me started on the MC placing himself right into the hands of Coil, before he has had the time to buid-up ANYTHING. Which is pretty much a death sentence or a quick one-way trip to mister Pitter and his "Candy", even if this was kinda corrected by him getting lost(by Tattletale), and winding up going to the Protectorate to point them at Coil.
The MC's Brain-interface thing makes ZERO sense(as far as him hiding his own knowledge). If he is afraid of knowing something becuz the Simurgh might read his brain matter, WHAT is stopping her from reading his computer brain? It just feels like nonsense.
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- Location
- Philippines
Hmmmm
Does she prefer it to be a panic attack, poison or a heart attack rather than a possible trigger event near 2 tinkers and a bio kinetic striker and any other parahumans nearby
Does she prefer it to be a panic attack, poison or a heart attack rather than a possible trigger event near 2 tinkers and a bio kinetic striker and any other parahumans nearby
RavenWolffe77
The Marauder series is the best BattleMech.
- Location
- Deep Periphery, A Long Way From The Inner Sphere
SO glad this is back! I legitimately forgot this story existed, but a re-read brought me back up to speed.
Also, the good Director suddenly needing immediate life-saving measures, in the same room as the healer she has stubbornly refused to let heal her? I smell a Ziz-plot...
Also, the good Director suddenly needing immediate life-saving measures, in the same room as the healer she has stubbornly refused to let heal her? I smell a Ziz-plot...
missing space
extra space
I
extra space
extra space
functioning
you've not relented?
I
exactly what I
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CnidarianMessiah
Totally not a flying polyp <whistles innocently>
- Location
- Cooling Water Intake
Isn't Flamel lying about getting it from Tattletale, when in reality he knows about it since he read Worm before he was inserted? (Polearmman should be able to tell that he is truthful about the actual revelation, but lying about the source, unless Flamel has done something like "Lisa, say after me: 'Coil is Thomas Calvert'")
- Location
- Canada
Technically correct is the best kind of correct. Remember, the SI is a trained lawyer. Also remember that Armsmaster's lie detector relies on body cues, vocal analysis and biometrics to tell truth from falsehoods.
I want to first thank you for this post. It's great to get constructive criticism and it can be hard to actually give someone negative feedback as you are always unsure of how people will react (especially online). I would like to respond to some of your points below, and I'm going to put them in spoiler tags as well as I will be explaining some things which have not explicitly shown up in text.
- RE Tattletale & the Undersiders: One thing you need to remember here is that the SI knows more about the Undersiders, their own history and psychology than even Tattletale does. He knows how they will respond in particular situations and what all their break points are. He can explicitly prevent or spoof Tattletale's cold reading as part of his body control power, and in fact does this in their first encounter. This is also shown in how he knows immediately how to respond to Bitch's dominance display. I also based Tattletale's power on a direct reread of her POV canon chapter, with the descriptions of her having to hold back a wave of information that would otherwise crash her brain and give her a huge migraine taken almost directly from canon. Tattletale is actually a very good cold reader, but the problem is that if you know that her processing is garbage in garbage out it can be manipulated. In the first Tattletale interlude, you can see the only inferences she makes before Flamel is aware of her are that he is a tinker [tinkers having explicit physical and psychological tells is canon] and ruminating on Coil's likely response, which is perfectly in keeping with her shown abilities in canon and based on what she already knows about Coil. Everything after she first speaks to Flamel, he is in control of the conversation. It's Thinker talk, he's giving her specific signals to provide the queues her power can pick up on and run with. His bioscan power allows him to read her as she's reading him and respond accordingly. He's giving away a bit more than he expects, because it's all still new to him and he's getting a bit cocky about it, but you don't see his own counter manipulations because it's from TT's pov. The point of the joke-romance antics is to keep her off balance and maintain control of the conversation.
- RE: Telling the Undersiders Origins: Again, you're getting him ostensibly manipulating the group. At this point, he hasn't had a chance to plan anything, he's running off the seat of his pants - which you also see in his monologue in the next chapter 1.3, and claiming to basically be from an alternate world. They know alternate worlds exist, Earth Aleph has been a public thing for a decade or more at this point. Gaining knowledge about the world is Thinker bullshit, they live with one, that's still nothing too far out of the ordinary. He gave them the most basic explanation that was still technically true and let their own biases and worldviews fill in the rest, which is the most effective way to deceive someone. He then again distracts them with joke-romance bullshit, because they are teenagers and easily distracted by making fun of a friend, and Tattletale plays along because she's a hooked fish at this point, he let her know he needs to speak with her in private, and her biggest character point is she literally cannot avoid seeking out the answer to something she wants to know. Again, he knows this about her.
- RE: Time travel: You'll note he only tells this to Tattletale, and she doesn't even buy it at first. At this point he has the only thing Tattletale really wants - an escape from Coil - and he's going to use that as much as he can. He knows that Tattletale is the only one who can really prevent Coil from finding out anything he tells her (WOG on this forum actually is that TT knows when she is in a Coil simulation if he's trying to get information from her and can act accordingly), the note on torture in the chapter is to again reinforce that she cannot go to Coil with any information on him, and he's the better option to trust in this scenario. I may need to redraft parts of this chapter to make that explicit. He doesn't trust TT to be on his side, but he trusts her to know which side not to be on, and to cooperate for huge cash prizes. The fact that he put himself in a position of trust where she basically had his life in her hands later on, unknowing that he was actually hitting her trigger point when he apparently died as a result of her 'failure' has not yet occurred to him but will have ramifications later.
- RE: Interface It does more than has been revealed so far, and anything more would be a spoiler, suffice to say by the Leviathan fight you will have an explanation.
- RE: Ace up his sleeve: The SI just got effectively a license to print money, and he's a Tinker. Panacea is on his side. Give it time.
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Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
Que?: Spanish for "Whaaaaa?" Sounds like 'kay!
Queue: Either a line of people or things, or a ponytail.
Cue: A signal to start something, usually prearranged.
Queue: Either a line of people or things, or a ponytail.
Cue: A signal to start something, usually prearranged.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yay I love Tinker SI stories so glad this updated
- Location
- St. Petersburg
Immortal corrupt politicians. Flamel just got more dangerous to the Earth Bet and even Earth Aleph than any Entity.
WoW I honestly would have Shattered and spat on that longevity vial im so sorry. Living in a country with blatant corruption and this Idea is so goddamn Icky. The only blessing from enduring dictators is that theyre Mortal. This is Horrifically scary.
Id assume the Author has some reasons/ methods to Definitely fix that mess in a bottle but goddamn the idea that grubby politicians having access to Fountain of youth Lite 1.0 is UGH!
I wonder if thats why Piggot nearly keeled over hahahaa, Also nice to see youre back and your update lead me to discover this ~ Watched
Id assume the Author has some reasons/ methods to Definitely fix that mess in a bottle but goddamn the idea that grubby politicians having access to Fountain of youth Lite 1.0 is UGH!
I wonder if thats why Piggot nearly keeled over hahahaa, Also nice to see youre back and your update lead me to discover this ~ Watched