That description isn't a constant, she's mixing in expressions intentionally as she continues. I feel this quote is a better capture for the overall effect of the suites to the external viewers:
I laughed, not without help. Light and bubbly, just per guidelines. It was a little weird using a suite to partially control my throat movements, but they were all really like that in the end - not just guides or wiki-hows, but actual instincts, evaluations, and muscle memory I could load into myself, set priority lists and integration levels for, and tools that I was constantly aware of. Speaking with a suite was like singing or adopting an accent, a feeling that I was acting intentionally, but not as if the action was alien or imposed upon me.
She is intentionally throwing Armsmaster's lie detector and Gallant's emotion reading a blank slate at first, just as a way to say "I know what you can see, I could mask it if I wanted to" - provocative, and definitely something the PRT will sit on as "evidence" for when they need it, but not clear inhumanity or loss of self.
She is intentionally throwing Armsmaster's lie detector and Gallant's emotion reading a blank slate at first, just as a way to say "I know what you can see, I could mask it if I wanted to" - provocative, and definitely something the PRT will sit on as "evidence" for when they need it, but not clear inhumanity or loss of self.
Oh, I'm not. But I'm also pretty sure they're going to get the conclusion, and the paper trail, the Mind wants them to have. So, if they decide to pull the asshole cop routine, they're in for a painful time.
Oh, I'm not. But I'm also pretty sure they're going to get the conclusion, and the paper trail, the Mind wants them to have. So, if they decide to pull the asshole cop routine, they're in for a painful time.
True, but remember; Minds aren't perfect, they can make mistakes just like any other person. And people with alien supercomputers attached to their brains, even very stupid alien supercomputers... well actually they're probably easier to predict than normal people now that I think about it.
True, but remember; Minds aren't perfect, they can make mistakes just like any other person. And people with alien supercomputers attached to their brains, even very stupid alien supercomputers... well actually they're probably easier to predict than normal people now that I think about it.
There's a saying. The world's best fencer doesn't fear the second-best; he fears the worst, for there's no telling what the fool will do.
Which is to say that, yeah, you're right. The Minds can reasonably assume that (sandbagging aside) these people are predictable, in a way that humans normally aren't, because they'll take the optimal action along some restricted axis whenever their shards come into play. Given that no Thinker is anywhere near capable enough to outwit a Mind, all this actually does is make them easier to deal with.
The only possible exception was Path to Victory, because that's an outcome pump, and even that can't find a path that simply doesn't exist. We've already seen how easily they can deal with her.
(For comparison, chess engines always assume you'll make the optimal (in their view) move. Every time you don't you've outwitted them, in a sense, but that's optimal according to the minmax algorithm -- minimizing the maximum loss. So while they'd be "surprised", and need to recalculate their predictions (not that those are stored), taking a suboptimal move by definition means you'll do worse.)
M16 SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES CLASSIFICATION. NO LOCAL DISSEMINATION.
Jacob Murphy spun, registering the instant vanishing of 'the Siberian,' and raised a knife at us in the same motion. The back of the bus burst, grinding and rending as Ned Colton stood up.
He might have seen the flicker of light at his waist before it expanded to a large silvery ovoid, snapped around him, and vanished, taking Ned and everything else inside it.
"That takes care of the duller ones," the avatar commented, flicking their jacket and letting an entire coating of windblown dust simply fall off. "Ahem. Jacob, I know how terribly fond you are of your own words. I must assume you have final ones prepared."
Jacob put his finger on the blade, and a cutting force lashed at the avatar's throat slightly faster than even my current senses could catch. The impact rang, like dropped silverware. They clicked their tongue in annoyance. There wasn't even a scratch visible on them.
The rest of the 'Slaughterhouse Nine' spilled out from their vehicle in immediate readiness. The bus windows shattered and became a storm around Ramlah Awad as she swept through the now-empty windshield. Alan Gramme slipped through the hole Ned had left, skittered into the high grass on all fours. The man called 'Hatchet Face' (actual name unknown, identity one of thirteen possible men; whoever he was, he had never had a DNA sample collected) followed him at a short distance, considerably less concealed. Mimi Baldwin shuffled off the bus, kicking the asphalt with her sneakers and barely seeming to notice us. Riley Davis remained on the bus, ducking down out of sight, hastily mixing organic compounds. Jacob spoke. "Well, Orbital - or do you prefer Taylor? You didn't even call ahead. We were going to let you know when we were in town. You might want to tell your rude friend-"
Taylor said:
Removing the terminals. Do you want me to manage the edge cases as well?
"You'll be speaking to me today, Jacob. Sit down, please." The avatar spoke and acted, lounging back in its chair.
Jacob's casual smirk twisted. "What precisely makes you think I'll do that?"
The avatar smiled, calm and neutral.
I moved. I shot off the ground at several times past the speed of sound, using my borrowed fields to wrap the air around me and avoid the sonic boom - or any disruption besides a slight ripple across the ground - then hovered, five hundred meters up.
I wasn't generating effector fields inside my body. I was controlling relayed field projectors built by the ship, a crown around Mars that focused through a satellite no larger than my fingernail. The Simurgh was on the other side of Earth right now, but I wouldn't have minded if she took an interest.
Right then, I could have swat that overgrown bird from the sky as easily as I was about to remove these rabid dogs.
I killed Ramlah first, as she recovered and moved to pursue me. There was a brief moment when she recognized that her glass swarm was abruptly rebelling against her command, moving inward to target her. There was a briefer moment while her control was able to resist mine. She died instantly when seventy six shards penetrated her skull, then her brain.
Her body was still falling when I found the proper neural channels in my next target, crushed and distorted in some areas by the corona gemma, and pulsed EM fields across the neurons. Mimi collapsed, unconscious.
I shot down with the same speed as I'd risen, negating my own displacement, banking precisely at the rear of the bus and entering through the hole. I stopped just behind Riley. My hand touched the back of her neck. She slumped against her chair, and did not move. The admixture she was assembling fell from her hands, rolled down the aisle. I leaned forward, crossed the intervening meters, and held it against the floor while it detonated. The resultant bio-toxin was trapped, and I ignited it. I lifted my hand's seal on the ground to allow the charred bloom of harmless smoke and ash out. I turned to stare at Jacob, and made my eyes glow bright red.
'Hatchet Face' broke through the bus's far wall with his lunge, shattering the window and bending the frame. He rolled through, ignoring the various injuries he'd earned, and put his hatchet through the back of my neck.
I turned my head backwards while I flowed around the wound. He expected me to be dead. I moved in the interim of his realizing I wasn't. He expected me to be powerless. I struck in the interim of his realizing I wasn't, punching his face, and in his recoil, reconfiguring the Everything Dust in my fist into a spike, obliterating his skull and brain instantly.
I pushed through a completely alien motion, and rather than turning, just dissolved and re-formed my body facing the remaining visible member of the group.
"The same courtesy that you have employed on numerous victims, Jacob. Submitting before overwhelming force." The avatar continued, dismissing the fight with a return to rhetoric.
Alan's attack with a chain-launched bladed hand (the one I was ready to snag and leverage) never materialized, and I exchanged a glance with the avatar.
Sufficiently Advanced Technology said:
It was only an 82% chance. That's not a guarantee. Do you want to hunt him?
I shook my head, and just displaced the former hero and a few clipped corn stalks, gone before I'd even finished the motion.
I rippled my body, polarizing it to slide off the blood and splatter from Hatchet Face, and grabbed the paralyzed Riley with a hand on the back of her pinafore, dragging her behind me without much care as I exited the bus. I lifted Mimi from the dirt and stacked them both in my grip, my arm growing into a tentacle to hold them. I left the surface of that arm displaying the eDust, unattenuated and uncovered, although I could make it as mechanical or organic as I liked. I preferred to be honest about what this body was - what I was.
"Jack," I growl. My voice could be as ordinary as the original Taylor body's voice. If I wanted it to. I sculpted it otherwise, grinding and sussurrating. "Sit the fuck down."
He did, glaring at both of us, before breaking into a sudden grin. "And where have you been hiding all this? I don't think your lovely presentation with the nice shiny shields and clean white clothes mentioned this part. How would the nice people feel about knowing you're a murderer?"
"Unable to stop trying to play games, even to the point of forgoing last words. Unsurprising. You're going to die never knowing what's happening here, Jacob," the avatar told him.
Jacob Murphy's knife leapt from his hand. Faster than the eye could track, it embedded itself in the back of his skull, buried to the hilt.
The avatar of the Sufficiently Advanced Technology smiled. Herbivorous teeth shouldn't be able to look so predatory, but they did it anyway. "There we are." They were staring intently forward, but I didn't think they were looking at anything I could see. Although I might be able to, if I was willing to change myself enough to follow them. "I wonder whether the terminal status transmission was automatic and unstoppable, or whether his former colony-shard simply isn't afraid that we can reach it. In any case, shall we go?"
I dropped my burdens, one unconscious, one paralyzed. They disappeared in the flickering of displacement shells.
Then we did as well.
Shortly after we left, a dust cloud descended on the bus. It swept over the vehicle and the three remaining corpses, leaving only ash. It did not touch the table and chairs, which had already been returned to the ship. They, after all, were still of use.
Contact Log, Wednesday, January 26th: Day 03
"Okay, calling the meeting to order." I gave everyone in the conference room a quick glance, focusing on looking confident, controlled, and older than I actually was. I had just crammed back down an intense spike of complete certainty that I didn't belong here, and I was doing my absolute best not to rely on my social suites too much with the Contact-Earth Leadership Council. I wanted to be honest with them. I also wanted to not come off as a child sitting in a seat too large for her. That was a tightrope to walk. "I thought we'd start with numbers, take a look at division status reports and current issues. As of today, we're at 11,450 accepted members, 7,624 pending. Seven people have had membership revoked, fifteen more under review. Headquarters construction is expected to finish in three weeks." I looked around the table again. "I'll chime in with answers or figures if anyone else's material needs them. Who wants to start?"
Tony Walker threw up a hand, which was a lot more deferential than I felt comfortable with from a man five times my age, but he also started talking immediately, so I didn't have the time to really feel ashamed. He was good at putting people at ease - probably less from being Brockton Bay's first black police sergeant, and more from the thirty years afterward as a social worker with a cane and a spinal injury. He still wore a collared shirt and slacks, like his wife said he had every day of those thirty years. "Nearly two thousand of those members heard we have jobs and are interested. Very interested. A hundred and, hm, twelve had enough training to do construction work. You have things under control here, so I've got them on the factory and the dock." He leaned back from his papers and put down his reading glasses. I thought his tightly-shorn white curls had a little more black in the roots, his face a few fewer wrinkles since meeting him last week, but I wasn't the one responsible for monitoring everyone's health on the new medications we were introducing. I just trusted that the 72-year-old man really would get a lot more decades. "I've seen a lot of surprising things so far, but the speed your boys think they can build, safely, is the real game changer in BB. And we're coming in well under budget. Seems like your friends - our friends - picked up the land without driving prices up too much, and the materials… what the hell is that stuff?"
The question was aimed across the table at Anna Brookings, a thin, pale woman in her thirties with her blonde hair in a sloppy bun and an actual white lab coat on. She didn't do anything remotely needing a white lab coat, but I understood the girl wearing a semi-intelligent suit of body armor to a board meeting shouldn't throw stones. Costumes were fun. "The isomer adaptor spray is a lot like an instant antique restoration. Fills in the gaps of age at the molecular level, strengthens without having to replace. It's based off some touch-teleporter in Virginia's power, I think." Anna was very skilled at explaining complex (apparently) parahuman-derived technology to a layperson - she'd been doing it to get venture capital for years. Less skilled with remembering non-scientific names and faces. And the right mix of intellectual and practical to take the insights submitted to her - the spray was based on Stopgap's power, sure. If you weren't familiar with it's actual development history, a couple thousand years and light-years away. "Current stock is good for, say, a million cubic meters? Production is good, though. Pretty easy once we have the factory up."
"It's on the priority list at #4 for production," I agreed. "Restoring damaged buildings has major benefits to membership expansion and community stability." I glanced around and kept talking. "Sometimes I'm not sure how you can stand it when you remember things were different before powers. Everything's falling apart."
"Buildings got condemned plenty before we had parahumans," Tony answered, probably speaking as the eldest council member - actually, the only one who was an adult before Scion came. "Especially in the part of town where we never got the money to keep them up. Regardless," he continued in a lighter tone, "the January budget for housing and labor looks to have a surplus. About 1.2 million."
"Distribute it?" I immediately suggested, searching for agreement or dispute. "We have a lot of steps until Contact is really self-sufficient, so let's start making things better for people by paying them now. As long as that's legal?"
Carmen Juarez didn't look much like an attorney; she also didn't look much like the deadliest person in the room, including me and the guy with the death stare sitting next to her, but she probably was (excepting Isk-Berniav). She looked like a fitness coach, a mid thirties tanned woman in a t-shirt, whose short black sleeves hugged her biceps, her straight black hair barely reaching her chin. She didn't look like an ex-henchwoman either, but that was an area of expertise we were relying on as much as her legal experience. "Fits in the grey area that most of our current operations are in. If the state or fed wants to make trouble out of it, they can. We can also argue a decent case for it."
"I can find some light work to shine up the places that construction has already been through," Tony contributed. "How hard would it be to get some light market permits?"
I glanced at Carmen and got her nod. She wasn't someone whose shoes I wanted to step on. Not because she intimidated me. Not any more than anyone else on the council. I had a surplus of really stunning baseline human role models here and I was supposed to be guiding them. "We have a couple on standby. The city wants commerce, the PRT thinks our non-parahuman actions are minor, so scrutiny for that isn't cranked up to 11."
"That's good, should help folks feel more involved. That's everything I have for now. Unemployment's at least 15% in the city, though. If we can get the numbers you expect, we're looking at a lot more workers. And with ten thousand by day three, I believe your estimates." Tony smiled, and I managed to undo at least one part of the Gordian Knot in my stomach.
Next to him, Dr. Yamada clicked her pen and set it down on her notepad. "I'm afraid I don't have much yet, for obvious reasons. I have been contacted by two local unaffiliated parahumans, adults. We're still in discussions, but I think there's some potential. The biggest issue I found standing in the way is a need for stability. Nobody wants to commit to a new organization if it's going to collapse and possibly take them down with it. I don't really think there's any way to prove we are planning for stability other than more time."
"No studies of myself or our spokesperson, Doctor?" Tim Warren was the closest to an antagonistic councilor that we had. The former med student kept shifting on his ability to handle the psychiatrist's medical qualifications without bitterness. At least he wasn't wearing his mask or any of the rest of the Apoptosis costume today. And I didn't have to intervene to prevent inappropriate power use.
"I'm not acting in any medical capacity for either of you," Jessica answered, avoiding rising to the bait. "We can pull a few people from the McCarren Group if you'd like to see someone, but it wouldn't be ethical or fair for me to assess you."
"Drop it, please," I said to Tim, giving him a level stare. I was pulling 'rank,' because despite the council, the democracy, and the new goals, being a parahuman still had weight, being the link to our mysterious backers still had weight, and our personal connection still had weight.
The second-youngest councilor (after myself, obviously) drew himself up, took a deep breath, held it, released it. "Understood. Please continue, Doctor." He managed to avoid the disdain on the second use of her title.
"Jessica is fine if it's easier," she commented first. "I think the other side of the divide is going to be just as much work. A lot of the applications for members stressed their need for protection, their fear of parahumans, and their lack of trust in the heroic institutions. I do think your active participation on the Contact Network is helping, Taylor. You've been very blunt about the pressures of parahumanity and very skilled at relating them to your pre-power struggles."
I suppressed my blush, but let my guilt flicker through my brain without banishing it. I was absolutely relying on my social suites, on the Mind, on Isk-Berniav, on Fihah Tchojey, very occasionally on Greg, to sound normal and sane, to cut off my bitterness and to find new angles to my life, to see and process the experiences of others. "I am seeing someone for my issues," I said. "It helps with messaging besides, well, everything else." Admittedly, seeing a Mind wasn't an option for everyone. And I had an unkillable thought that perhaps I was being less helped than guided. It wasn't a very rational thought, I didn't have a lot to tie that paranoia to, but I couldn't quite get rid of it.
"I'm glad to hear it," Jessica said, but left my arrangements alone. "If we can help other parahumans feel as balanced and comfortable as you, I think we'll start seeing some significant shifts in expectations."
"Which is where we get to my field," Carmen cut in. She raised an eyebrow at Jessica, and waited until she nodded an okay. Our dynamics were still very much in the starting stages. "Starting with the most clean and legitimate: the PRT is unofficially telling their parahumans and troopers not to join Contact, but no public opinion. When we crank up production, show the shields off a bit more, add the other stuff, it'll get more pressing. We don't have many hooks to push them." She gave me a slight side-eye. Everyone on the council knew we had some concealed resources, but Carmen was both most ready to use them and least ready to trust them, until she got the big reveal. Not surprising from a former Elite hench. "Slightly slimier, the legal system." That earned the casual chuckles that lawyer jokes always got from adults. "The NEPEA-5 repeal is out of committee and will be before the House this week. Current commitments suggest it'll pass. I'm not going to ask too much about how." That was wise, because I couldn't say much about it. It would have required a lot more explanations about why that bill had passed to begin with, and how Cauldron's 'optimal' solutions tended to leave a lot of levers lying around. Blackmail and bribery were quick, efficient, and easily reversible. "It'll take at least a month to get through the Senate, though. In the mean time, try not to piss off the state AG too much. We're juggling everything we do right now between human and parahuman classifications for legality, and it's working. Gotta divert a large chunk of the budget if it gets seriously attacked, though. Big expansion, big defense."
I nodded. "I'll put out feelers with our people. If the state comes after us, we'll know in advance, unless they file something immediate and sloppy. Anything else there?"
Carmen consulted her tablet. "Canary verdict came in eleven minutes ago. Guilty only on reckless endangerment. Sentencing is February 18th. Protectorate will probably be pushing for the usual blackmail and forcible enlistment. We've submitted our program to the court. It'll be useful if we have an example of depowering before then."
I sighed in relief. The Mind had assured me our legal team had it under control, but that was such a giant lever on parahuman alienation - and one where Cauldron had been making minor nudges to have her 'Caged. It seemed like we had enough levers to divert the path of criminal justice, and enough informational chaff to make it slip by Big C. "We'll see what we can get," I offered, turning to Anna and Tim.
"The prototype implant meets specifications," Tim shrugged. "You need to get us a test subject."
"Someone will provoke us before the end of the week," I answered confidently. "That'll probably stir up trouble for PR, though."
"Extrajudicial removal of powers? Can't imagine why," Carmen was intensely sarcastic, but the smirk said it wasn't for me. Probably.
"They'd probably be more comfortable if I just killed someone," I growled. I wasn't pouting or anything. I had my arms crossed, and I was slouching, yes. But still. I wasn't the kind of person to just go around executing people!
"Put on a black mask," Carmen suggested, bitter with experience.
"Or a white hood," Tony rumbled, with the same verve. My awkwardness spiked. "I can't say much for the law, but I'm glad we're not killing anyone on the street in the name of justice. I don't give a damn if anyone's upset that we want to take away a murderer's powers."
The table appeared to agree. I turned back to Carmen. "Anything else?"
"Less legal. Sixty new members with Empire ties. Evaluation tools say about twenty five of them can be deradicalized. Rest are infiltrators or opportunists." The evaluation tools were sentient enough to appreciate hearing their work taken seriously, and patient enough not to comment until they were revealed. "Thirty seven with ABB ties, twenty two of those can be split with the right economic-ideology push."
"Can we prioritize them for jobs without upsetting people trying to stay straight-and-narrow?" I pushed to Tony.
"Maybe. I don't want to give them a hand up just now. That'd be too public, too obvious, and would piss off folks trying to do things legitimately, but I agree it's important. By next week I think I can start filtering them in." He made a few notes. Probably the most fantastic thing to be said for the Culture-derived anti-aging drugs was that a man in his seventies taking them was willing and able to try and use a tablet computer, even if he still duplicated everything on paper.
"Tech and production?" I moved on to Anna Brookings.
"One seventy six Mark I shields, fifteen Mark IIs made this week. Once the new facility is up? Ten times that, and again once we have the second generation fabricators. We can use anybody with a bachelor's or who's just good with numbers. I always need more people, that'll be the big choker on the improved production. Uh, you've all got the manufacturing priority list, just tell us if we should shift anything around." She shrugged. "We're running a bit over budget, from relocation and materials. Reclamation and salvage should help make up for it next month."
I nodded. Money was 'my' job. It was actually the Mind's job, and that was just another of the infinite thanks I owed it.
I glanced over at Tim, who sighed. "Not much to say. The biotech is growing, but we need the aquaculture set-up before I can see real effects. If it holds up, we'll see. Maybe you get your miracle food." Legitimate miracle food, the biochemical way, not a powers product. I preferred my alien intervention from the aliens that valued a minimal waste aesthetic, over the ones that just ate up alternate Earths to do everything.
I grinned at the biotech plans, at the concept art of massive floating greenhouses filling the harbor, processing solar, wind, and tidal energy into biochemical growth. Brockton Bay, agricultural center of New England. Until we gave the tech out to everyone else, anyway. "Thank you, everyone. Anything needing immediate attention left on the agenda?" There wasn't. Thankfully, we didn't have to do actual meetings too much; the Contact semi-smart networking software handled a lot of the information sharing that made such a small leadership even halfway functional. "Then we'll meet up next week, and I hope I'll have good news for everyone's departments." Feeling buoyed by the success of my work, I just barely managed to stay on the ground while I emerged from the conference room, slid through the immediate noise of the new wall panels being shaped and fitted into place, walked out of the half-constructed headquarters, then shot into the sky with the pure joy of flight.
The displacement bubble faded, and I went from looking at my reflection to looking at my mirror. "Well, you're not dead?" I offered, with forced lightness.
"Not yet," the other Taylor agreed. She shifted, leaning forward ever so slightly, and - it wasn't easy to isolate why, to determine if I knew what to do from social suites, from our shared self, or just from basic human decency - I embraced my duplicate mind-state, and her eDust body stayed solid while I hugged her.
"It was rough?"
"Really rough." She choked it out, leaning into the hug. "I almost couldn't do it. But we had the video. Of the last town."
"No more," I reminded her/me. "Never again. That's what we decided, that's what you did."
"Are you ready to reintegrate?" the Mind asked from thin air, its avatar not present. This hallway was empty, actually, except for myselves. It had a faint resemblance to a space-themed hotel, all white carpeting and chrome wall highlights.
"Yes," I said.
"No," she said.
I released the other Taylor and gave her some room. "You don't want to?" I asked her.
"I don't… think you should live with this. I don't think I should keep living with this. I killed someone. I drove glass into her head. I could feel the physical resistance of her skin, her skull, her brain. I could see the neural activity fading."
I tried to meet my own eyes, but that still wasn't a natural skill for either of us. I took her hand instead. "It hurts so bad, you don't want me to have to feel it? You don't… want to live?"
She nodded. I could see she knew what I was going to say. I said it anyway. "I think that means I have remember it. Otherwise…"
"Otherwise we're just cheating the bad way," she agreed. "Killing without responsibility or guilt, without consequences. I know, but I don't know if I care." She held her arms around her chest and shuddered, sending a ripple through her body. I was pretty sure that didn't just casually happen with Everything Dust. That she was showing her discontent and loss of cohesion very visually.
"I/we've faced down Sophia, Armsmaster, and dad. Done things I/we would never have dreamt were possible. It was inevitable that this would happen. There are people we can't leave intact in our world. People we can't just neutralize, but have to completely remove. I'm not scared of feeling that. Not with both our memories to process it," I promised myself, and I let go of her hand, which she kept in midair where I'd released it.
She reassembled herself, becoming dust, then the new Taylor once again, facing me. "I've had enough of hurting myself, but… I guess… I think… running from it would be a deeper wound." She stiffened her shoulders in a way I knew I'd got from dad, and nodded just once. "God, can you imagine, watching I/our self die?" She shook her head. "Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. I couldn't do that to you/I. Not-." Well, she didn't have to say it, I knew. "Okay. Reintegrate us."
I was Taylor Hebert: twice, then once, in two bodies. I almost discarded the eDust, let it spill away and resumed function. But. It had a use.
"I don't feel better. But I do feel more capable of handling it." I spoke from one body to the other in the same sentence, without any particular difficulty or trick of the mind.
It was strange, but it helped that Marain had entire tenses and pronouns for referring to a mind-state duplicate of yourself and relating their actions to yours; and another set for your group-mind's other bodies; and one that mixed and matched. It also helped that I hadn't been in my original body anyway. Adding another was unique. But not impossible.
"The benefit of an additional perspective?" the Mind asked.
I eyed myself, trying to determine if it was making a pun. It wasn't beneath the Mind; just look at their names. But it was probably beneath the moment. "I guess, yeah. Just separating myself from it, having memories of not doing it at the same time I was. I don't have to dwell on it. Does it get easier? Killing?"
"Oh, yes." There was sadness in its voice, but no hesitation. "Easier, but never easy. I am not a warship. I am something far more unpleasant. Special Circumstances. It's interesting, isn't it, that for all we name our warships crudely and honestly - Torturer-class, Thug-class, Killer-class - our branch for espionage, blackmail, assassination, and all forms of necessary unpleasantry is so masked? Yet we are considerably more comfortable with SC than with our warships. In the Culture we have abandoned the glorification of violence. We determine ourselves to be superior and enlightened for our motives and our methods. But I know the great deal of ugliness that can be justified with our love of precision. What is the motive to the victim? I am not a world-breaker or a fleet-eater, no more than any other GCV. But I am a killer of individuals. By agent and proxy, by avatar and drone, by effector and displacement. 451,912 people. I remember the names of those I know, the faces of those I could not learn of. I have never allowed myself to become comfortable with those deaths, Taylor. But there are very few of them I would not kill again in the same circumstances."
Both of me let out breaths I didn't need, didn't remember taking; a purely autonomic response. It wasn't often I heard the Mind make a speech. It seemed to prefer Socratic dialogues, amused commentary, or precise lists. And nothing else had held that same emotional weight, that fleeting sense of getting a glimpse of its true thinking, the shadow of that giant and hidden being. "Thank you. For telling me that."
"I'm pleased I can be here for you," it said, recovered almost to its full level of droll, but still exposing some thin element of sincerity.
Ramlah Awad. 'Shatterbird.'
Name unknown. 'Hatchet Face.' Those were mine. My first. My only kills (so far).
And the Mind was right. I would do it again, in the same place.
If that kind of thing became easier for me?
I thought I could live with it.
And the acceleration begins. Only one chapter this week, because everything starts to have more consequences and require more thought.
Huh, I wonder if that's a reference to how, when he's involved, everything that can go wrong all too often does go wrong. Or perhaps the apparent reference to Murphy's Law was a coincidence (though I think not).
Okay gang, time to place some bets: Who's going to be the lucky recipient of a Contact Mk. 1 Power-Nullifier?
The odds board looks like this:
3:1 - The Brockton Bay Nazis (I hate those guys!)
The Empire has the strongest reason to go after Contact, given that they made their first impression on Hookwolf's face.
5:1 - Lung & Co.
Lung doesn't take well to people trying to muscle in on what he thinks of as his turf, but hasn't yet committed to any sort of significant move against Contact.
10:1 - The Merchants
Right now, no real motive except pugnaciousness & stupidity, though expect the odds to shift once Contact starts messing with their income flow in creative ways.
25:1 - The Undersiders, Travelers or Other Coil-Directed Agents
In one sense this is almost 1:1 odds because Coil, but if it does happen it's almost certainly going to happen in a dropped timeline. Posted odds are for this happening in the kept timeline.
45:1 - Miscellaneous Independents
Not impossible but not hugely likely. Most plausible indy movement would be folded in with Coil, and no immediate motives have been foreshadowed to suggest anything else.
75:1 - Special Circumstances Ringer
I'm putting this on the board because it feels like the sort of Byzantine nonsense a Mind might do to prove a point. I'm not sure I buy it, but it's plausible enough.
100:1 - New Wave
The New Wave heroes are volatile, to say the least, but the group isn't so dysfunctional as to strike at Contact on nothing but paranoia.
200:1 - Protectorate
Barring direct catastrophic intervention by Cauldron Armsmaster's crew is not likely to move without much more foreshadowing. It seems likely that they will, but not in the next week.
1,000:1 - Cauldron Direct
As amusing at it would be, Cauldron doesn't act openly without 100% overwhelming advantage and they don't got that at the moment. So no, you're not going to see Contessa get chipped today; deal with it.
...okay then, pick your poison and let's see who wins!
EDIT: (although I'm curious if they're worried about a Shard ReactionTM to said power nullification, since IIRC it was established that the Minds didn't really know how the shards would react to being poked and didn't want to find out the hard way?)
Also, did we see Carmen get recruited in this version? I honestly can't remember off the top of my head.
I like the dialogue between the two Taylors though. Moral ambiguity~
Burnscar seems like the best candidate. A relatively nice person with a cruel power that makes her into a monster the more she uses it, with no real ability to stop herself since any exposure to fire triggers it.
Carmen consulted her tablet. "Canary verdict came in eleven minutes ago. Guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Sentencing is February 18th. We've submitted our program to the court. It'll be useful if we have an example of depowering before then."
I sighed in relief. The Mind had assured me our legal team had it under control, but that was such a giant lever on parahuman alienation - and one where Cauldron had been making minor nudges to have her 'Caged. It seemed like we had enough levers to divert the path of criminal justice, and enough informational chaff to make it slip by Big C. "We'll see what we can get," I offered, turning to Anna and Tim.
"The prototype implant meets specifications," Tim shrugged. "You need to get us a test subject."
"Someone will provoke us before the end of the week," I answered confidently. "That'll probably stir up trouble for PR, though."
"Extrajudicial removal of powers? Can't imagine why," Carmen was intensely sarcastic, but the smirk said it wasn't for me. Probably.
The point of the whole operation is a public demonstration of power nullification. Burnscar's capture was not public, will likely never be made public as the whole Slaughterhouse operation was designed to let them all be swallowed by the trackless earth and as such she's not on the odds board. Now, she may get one for obvious reasons but she's not going to be the person on TV with no powers thanks to Contact.
(Me, I'm putting my internet wooden nickels on a longshot and calling Panacea. Just because.)
On the whole Canary thing - isn't involuntary manslaughter still too heavy a verdict? I would have thought a fair trial would convict her of negligent homicide at the worst. Involuntary manslaughter requires a degree of recklessness that doesn't really fit Canary's situation. Maybe this was just as good as Contact could swing it at this point.
On the whole Canary thing - isn't involuntary manslaughter still too heavy a verdict? I would have thought a fair trial would convict her of negligent homicide at the worst. Involuntary manslaughter requires a degree of recklessness that doesn't really fit Canary's situation. Maybe this was just as good as Contact could swing it at this point.
Depends on the state; they don't all separate negligent homicide and involuntary manslaughter. I didn't feel like figuring out if BB is supposed to be Rhode Island or Connecticut or what, so I didn't go checking state penal codes.
Taylor, yer a magical girl. Also, I love that you brought out the E-Dust, the Culture's calling card when being deliberately and viciously vengeful. E-Dust Taylor Hebert is a fairly scary idea, we should be so thankful this one is being domesticated by a Mind.
There's obviously a point being made there with it not being the Ship's own effectors (because those could do everything shown from a lightyear's distance). I'm sure this, too, is manipulation.
Nothing else had held that same emotional weight, that fleeting sense of getting a glimpse of its true thinking, the shadow of that giant and hidden being.
Taylor, yer a magical girl. Also, I love that you brought out the E-Dust, the Culture's calling card when being deliberately and viciously vengeful. E-Dust Taylor Hebert is a fairly scary idea, we should be so thankful this one is being domesticated by a Mind.
I can't believe I haven't seen this done before, it makes too much sense.
I'm going to take this chance to praise your grasp on the tone and message of Banks's novels, because you weave magic with it.
Depends on the state; they don't all separate negligent homicide and involuntary manslaughter. I didn't feel like figuring out if BB is supposed to be Rhode Island or Connecticut or what, so I didn't go checking state penal codes.
This is persistent fanon; only thing we canonically know about Brockton Bay is that it's in New England. Some people think that the S9's path shows that it's in CT or southern MA, but nobody really knows, possibly not even Wildbow.
I think the best thing to use for state-laws-of-an-unknown-state would be the model penal code, with some modifications for parahuman powers (maybe a single increase in grading?). Regardless, it could totally be that Contact wasn't able/willing to get her legitimate justice and just did the best they could with Cauldron's preexisting manipulations.
I think there's a mention of Boston being to the south, which would put BB in northern Mass., New Hampshire or Maine, but A) that may just be the ubiquitous fan fiction I'm mixing up with canon, and B) if it was canon, it may have been New York that was said to be to the south. I do think that something in canon had me convinced that BB had to be north of Boston, as that impression predates my reading Worm fanfic, but that could have even just been Wildbow's Canadian background affecting the story.
That question really depends on a few things. First off, does the nullifier remove changes done by C53's? If so, that would undoubtedly be a much larger PR win than depowering some villain(leave their amnesia to stop Cauldron from trying to step in too early). If it has to be a villain, I say we broaden the horizons beyond the Bay. Let's yank the power from the walking destruction in Africa or the 3 assassins in Europe(Blasphemies if not obvious enough).
Doing this on a worldwide scale would help create more pressure from the people to investigate the new group of people. Also, if these new people can make Ash beast stop being a threat, then surely they can stop the parahumans that are in my area and are violent.
If we're broadening beyond the Bay, the best option may be the Butcher - who is technically an innocent victim being controlled by a shard full of the memories, powers, and personalities of it's past hosts. Removing that from it's host would not only be a huge win, it would also be very in tune with the whole saving people thing.
