E: and I should say that Contact as a plot element also relies upon the pretty well documented tendency of humans to cooperate and protect each other when we're hit by a disaster; less dramatic than going full Mad Max, but contributing the appeal of a new organization saying "we're here to help" in a world getting hit by kaijus every couple of months.
I think one of the most recent and well-known examples would the American culture in the immediate days/weeks after the 9/11 event. Records show that there was a united sense of community, and that there was this pervasive sense of "help your neighbor" that made people hopeful for humanity's future. Other, less famous examples can be seen on things like Gofundme, where you'll see people asking for donations to help pay for a child's healthcare. The government has failed to provide, so you see the human community gathering around to try and pick up the slack.
The obsession with giving heroes better PR while ignoring socio-economic conditions and law enforcement tactics that create Villains is one of the story contrivances that actually feels very very realistic to me (just, you know, realistically stupid, in the way government bureaucracy can easily get).
I agree that it's one of the very few things in Worm that is genuinely realistic to the world. But I find that answer to be... dissatisfying. If an omnicidal alien hive-organism that's seeking to prevent the entropic decay of the universe can grant amazing, multidimensional powers to humanity via their version of skin-cells --all without breaking the reader's suspension of disbelief --then why can't the government be a bit more rational?
Well, the narrative answer is that politics is very rarely so rational and that human nature is a mishmash of inspiringly benevolent and frustratingly shortsighted. And the objective answer is because that wouldn't make for an interesting setting to tell the story in. Eh, but that's canon-Worm and not YNOWG-Worm.
Also, the shards were being deliberately handed out in such a way as to create more conflict and destroy civilization. So on top of everything else, the people most likely to have the worst moment of their lives give them superpowers are the people who are most likely to use them in such a way as to make everything worse (and incidentally make more people have their own worst days that end in superpowers).
In that regard, the Entities really aren't that far off any other parasitic organism that deliberately induces changes in their host organism that benefit the parasite at the host's expense, they just do it on a much larger scale.
In that regard, the Entities really aren't that far off any other parasitic organism that deliberately induces changes in their host organism that benefit the parasite at the host's expense, they just do it on a much larger scale.
Interestingly enough, it's not uncommon for such parasitic organisms to become less-fatal to their hosts as they evolve. The parasites who are less fatal/harmful to their hosts have more time to live, and thus, more time to breed. So on a scale of several generations, the overall species becomes less "parasitic" and more "mutualistic." And if we say that Entities are to humans the way that humans are to ants... well, about 30 humans die every year to ants.
So I think that, given enough time, Entities will become less harmful to their host species. I know that there's a fan theory that Abaddon was actually the one to plan out Scion and Eden's respective deaths. It could be that the evolution of the Entities is already heading in that direction, and that Earth just had the misfortune to be visited by Entities that are a few rungs below on the evolutionary ladder.
Do you mean entomologist? Not sure how bug control translates to the study of human societies otherwise… unless she's doing practical observation of how different social structures react to BEEEES!
Do you mean entomologist? Not sure how bug control translates to the study of human societies otherwise… unless she's doing practical observation of how different social structures react to BEEEES!
Interestingly enough, it's not uncommon for such parasitic organisms to become less-fatal to their hosts as they evolve. The parasites who are less fatal/harmful to their hosts have more time to live, and thus, more time to breed.
One of my never used but kind of neat ideas for Worm would be to introduce different flavours of Entities via this logic. So you've got the big bad, slash and burn worms, but there's also smaller, slower burn types. They could range from parasites that still perform destructive testing on individual worlds but have little interest in the wider expanse of the multiplicity of realities, to ones that have set down such deep roots they're practically functioning in a mutualistic relationship with the host species.
Works as a good explanation as to why another Earth might have magic while still making sense in universe. There's a benign Entity level creature using the society as a long term testbed.
Lung, the ABB, and the trafficking and sex workers in particular are one of the big scenes coming up in 2.7! Not least of which because the Worm claim… let's be generous to Wildbow and call it a Brockton Bay urban rumor that the ABB just snatches our white women off the streets is… some racist propagandistic bullshit right out of 1800s California.
Do you mean entomologist? Not sure how bug control translates to the study of human societies otherwise… unless she's doing practical observation of how different social structures react to BEEEES!
Well, the narrative answer is that politics is very rarely so rational and that human nature is a mishmash of inspiringly benevolent and frustratingly shortsighted. And the objective answer is because that wouldn't make for an interesting setting to tell the story in. Eh, but that's canon-Worm and not YNOWG-Worm
Well, you can play it with the same reason Entities still do this silly cycle stuff, despite the distinct lack of results; because we are all the product of history, tradition, bias, and other memes passed down by our parents and society. That real change is super hard, and often requires a large amount of people to a timely work for a long time to fix things in a way that will not benefit them for a long time later.
I dont really think its fair to look at how WB portrayed minority gangs like the ABB and Merchants and ignore how he portrayed an all-white gang.
The e88 is guilty of everything the ABB is, if not more, and are nazis on top of that which makes them worse scum than the ABB could ever aspire to. The E88 also seem to enjoy the benefits of money and corruption which is something that tends to piss people off more than openly criminal behaviour. So its abit strange to say his portrayal of the ABB is indicitive of white panic when he was potraying white people as just as bad.
Well, no, it's the specific trafficking allegations re: the ABB that are in tune with a lot of old, old racially motivated myths.
The issue of not-quite-parodic-enough over the top criminality is spread around all the gangs and shows more of a simple disconnect from the socio-economics of organized crime. It's also a stereotype, but one more associated with class than race at this point: the poors and their violence are the issue. (You even see this in the Empire, where it's divided into three cliques of "bloodthirsty ruffians," "true believers," and "scheming opportunist boss." It's slightly fucked that Purity and her "we're just racist because we want to be" crew are, more or leas by default, painted as the best of the Empire though!)
The post-Leviathan rise of the Merchants, for instance, is… just confusing, from an economic perspective. And the fighting over the relief shipments feels like a game of telephone, inspired by stories of aid interception by warlords in Sudan during the 1998 famine, but weirdly out of place in a mostly intact America.
The general idea of crime in Worm is a bit too focused on the capes and what they get out of it (go figure), but it's not so completely off that I have to AU in order to make it plausible.
E: the main flaw of the E88, as I would point to contemporary politics for an easy counterpoint, is that they're actually too criminal. Violent white supremacists have never received equal law enforcement pursuit in this country. That is a useful explanation for "why is Hookwolf alive when he's murdered ____ people," of course, but the level of non-MedHall connections the EEE has to BB society isn't really explored. And they absolutely would have them. IMO, fanfics tend to overplay their Gesellschaft connections when… the Klan's right there, it was big across the entire country, New England included, for nearly 70 years, not to mention Birchers and other homegrown ideologies.
The general idea of crime in Worm is a bit too focused on the capes and what they get out of it (go figure), but it's not so completely off that I have to AU in order to make it plausible.
The near total focus on capes in crime has also annoyed me a bit. Now, considering these are actual superpowers we're talking about I don't doubt they would get the vast majority of media coverage and attention in-universe but un-powered crime (and just un-powered people in general) get way too small a focus in Worm and Worm fics in my opinion. To be honest, I've always wanted to see a fic that just focuses on regular law enforcement and only occasionally involves the PRT/Capes. Something I've liked about this fic is the greater than normal focus on non-capes.
Did he, though? I mean, let's look at the big picture here.
In Brockton Bay there are four major criminal operations: the Empire, ABB, Merchants and Coil. Of these, two are explicitly in the text as either majority POC or run by a person of color. In post-facto word of god statements Wildbow also claimed that Thomas Calvert was black. (YMMV on this, but let's take him at his word.) So that's four major gangs, three of 'em either run by or majority POC.
Now, out of those gangs, three engage in activity in the text that has them actively preying on "normal citizens" which tend to be coded as white and middle class: the ABB are shown to be grabbing photogenic white girls off the street to feed their trafficking operation, the Merchants go from zero to Mad Max within hours of Leviathan and Coil's abduction of a photogenic white girl drives much of the plot almost all the way to the timeskip. The Empire isn't really shown doing that; their worst impulses happen when the Empire capes get unmasked on TV, which is more a "this is why secret identities are important" moment than a "this is what white supremacists are like" moment.
And, let's never forget that of the gang leaders which one got a "well, he wasn't that bad" word of god from the author. Not the black guy, not the Asian guy, not the Bond villain -- the neo-Nazi is the only one of these guys to get any sort of mitigation from Wildbow. People keep trotting that out and they really shouldn't, because I cant help but put two and two together and get yikes.
Lung, the ABB, and the trafficking and sex workers in particular are one of the big scenes coming up in 2.7! Not least of which because the Worm claim… let's be generous to Wildbow and call it a Brockton Bay urban rumor that the ABB just snatches our white women off the streets is… some racist propagandistic bullshit right out of 1800s California.
Also, sex trafficking typically has nothing to do with snatching white women off the streets and selling them elsewhere. Typically it involves bringing people from poorer countries who wont be missed into developed nations where people have the income to pay for that kind of thing.
Also, sex trafficking typically has nothing to do with snatching white women off the streets and selling them elsewhere. Typically it involves bringing people from poorer countries who wont be missed into developed nations where people have the income to pay for that kind of thing.
Doesn't have to be poor country, just an area struck by unemployment and the like - you have "recruiters" dangle supposed job offers somewhere far enough away to (usually) women, usually some kind of easy or easily trained job that comes with training (thus alleviating the "but I don't have the training necessary"), then once you arrive in new place, often with no means to support yourself, the rest of it ensues.
Also, if you kidnap someone for this, or use the method described above, you want to move the kidnapee far enough away or use people already "forgotten". Whatever else, I do not think ABB is stupid enough to not do so. Now, sex trafficking of refugees/migrants, on the other hand...
Interestingly enough, I think there are some groups organizing among sex workers and the milder kind of entertainment in Amsterdam, fighting against exactly the schemes described above.
logindex localcalendar 2011.02.22 localrefraction Earth-Bet localmunicipality Brockton Bay
"Alrighty, that's enough on internal affairs, I'll have final recommendations by Thursday. Let's talk about the chaos outside our walls," Emily Piggot announced. "Start with the smallest issues, please, I'd like to save the migraine for last."
"Our investigation of the High Street explosion is concluded," Armsmaster began. "It appears Coil's mercenaries triggered a self-destruction function while looting and evacuating the underground base. Some of the deaths were caused by their own weapons, suggesting they had turned on each other beforehand. While we found no body matching his description, it's highly likely that Coil is either dead or has abandoned that persona entirely."
"And the… unusual body in the containment cell?" Piggot's ambiguous phrasing was coated with a tone of unsubtle loathing.
"DNA sampling from the fatal injury concluded it was human, although heavily mutated. No match to a person in any of our databases. The remaining mass was more severely damaged. Probably an unknown parahuman with a damaged power. We assume the more human portions of the remains were removed for burial or testing. In any case, we have no matches with any missing persons, and nothing to go on. I recommend recovering and destroying the body as per standard procedure for biocontamination."
To my satisfaction. A return ticket to their world, with power removal, was enticing enough for the former Travelers. Ms. Meinhardt elected for a completely new cloned body, understandably.
I'm not sure who is most responsible for that whole mess, but I will certainly be heaping blame onto all responsible parties. Possibly with antimatter.
"Fine. Keep Coil's description circulating for at least three months, just in case, and have any signs of potential biotinkering reported at elevated priority."
Miss Milita took up the next report. "Full witness reports from two indigents and a night watchman at the Trainyard confirm Hellhound leaving Brockton Bay around 0130 on a northwest-by-west heading with at least three animals. The camera footage is brief but doesn't appear to indicate any other riders." She straightened the papers and pulled another stack from her folder. "In my opinion, this confirms Mr. Laborn's claims. I think we should take him, as a Ward if we can't arrange for provisional Protectorate status, and I think we need to make the offer now."
Piggot cut off a groan and held up a hand to stop the train of thought. "Table that for the headache matters. You believe Grue's claim that the Undersiders really have dissolved?"
"I believe it enough to act on it, yes. We have confirmation that Rachel Lindt has left the city and that Jean-Paul Vasil has contacted the Guild in Toronto regarding the Heartbroken amnesty. I haven't tried to locate Laborn, but his claims about his civilian background checks out. I'm inclined to believe that Tattletale disappeared without notice. She may still be active in the city, but I expect a lone Thinker will either join up with another gang- or organization," she corrected, with emphasis, "or be a matter for Watchdog rather than us."
"Alright. Tabling the rest of that."
"Villain activity is down from last month. 31% reduction in sightings gleaned from social media, 44% reduction in reports to police and PRT lines. In addition, gang-related activity has seen a 64% reduction in parahuman participation, villains and independents alike. No sightings of Lung or Kaiser in public at all. But I suspect this ties into the 'headache matters'," Armsmaster concluded, sounding a little uncomfortable with the new terminology.
"Fine. Last normal item of operation. Hookwolf's Birdcage transport. I want this to go off flawlessly. I hardly have to tell you that the Protectorate needs a big, public win for obvious reasons. If that means deploying everyone to beat the Empire into the ground when they try something, I'm willing to authorize that."
"The Empire has a lot of parahumans capable of collateral damage," Lieutenant Herrera, Strike Team Commanter, interjected, her voice quieter than Piggot, noting a fact, not starting a confrontation. "We might lose as much in public support as we gain."
"That is a risk," the Director acknowledged. "I'm open to all proposals for mitigating it. Assume that we are hitting back hard. This is not a matter of balancing a precarious situation, this is our duty to establish a new and improved balance out of a city that is already in a state of chaos."
"I may be able to offer assistance there." Dragon's avatar moved up from a small screen placed on the table to the projector. "Auditing PRT ENE communication has confirmed that Troopers Jeffrey Jacobs and Alan Foster have sent unauthorized messages to known Empire members over the past year."
"You found that without a warrant?" Piggot asked, a mix of surprise and skepticism.
"Authorized metadata analysis," Dragon answered immediately, calm in the assurance that Piggot wouldn't push further. "An aspect of informational analysis that I've wanted to push for some time. It's only recently that I've been able to expand my automated manufacturing. As long as you're interested in all options, Director?" The avatar disappeared from the screen, replaced by the models of three mechanical battlesuits. Sleek and sinuous, with long tails ending in a large cannon, their heads were long-snouted serpentine masks. "This is the Kukulkan, a new prototype using networked functionality to increase their capabilities with each additional unit. Their primary armament is a targeted neural disruption beam, using adapted Tinkertech and taking from some of Contact's publicized blueprints. It is intended to incapacitate powerful parahumans who are otherwise difficult to neutralize. I have three available to deploy."
"Artificial intelligence?" Piggot immediately questioned, but there wasn't much tooth to it.
"A limited networked intelligence under my direct control. The individual units are capable only of tactical action on their own, and lack a self-preservation drive. Public and PRT concerns about rogue machines have been foremost in the design procedure. One Eagleton containment is enough trouble for me." Only a fully cued observer would have noted that the slight stress of irritation in her voice wasn't quite applied evenly, that Dragon's opinion of the Machine Army was quite personal.
A Restoria battle drone with effectors against a self-replicating mechanical swarm? Mostly a matter of altering their priorities, and it can have the entire army fighting itself. The whole affair could be done in a matter of minutes. Dragon would notice, but not obtain actionable evidence.
"I'll authorize deployment, Dragon. Herrera, keep Jacobs and Foster busy until tomorrow. Release the false routes to their squads at 0830 and keep an eye on them. As soon as we have confirmation that they've transmitted them, they're under arrest. TacCom, begin planning how we're going to deploy every Protectorate cape for the transport."
"What about trouble in the rest of the city?" Armsmaster wasn't necessarily concerned, just curious.
"That's my headache's problem." Piggot set aside her files, and pulled forward another larger than their sum. "Contact."
Nine dots flashed up on the projector.
"I will be blunt. Surprising, I know. This is not the kind of fight we're prepared for, or one we have the right people for. In a better world, this wouldn't be our job." She barked a single grim laugh. "In an ideal world, we could let Contact do what they claim is their job. However, in this reality, we are responsible for the actions of these civilians. Very responsible, at the moment." She thumped the table with a heavy fist, glaring at the paperwork. "BBPD is for once not fighting tooth and nail for jurisdiction - suspiciously so. They're kicking every Contact-related call over to us and dragging their heels on taking any of them back. With a little under a tenth of the city signed up, mostly in the high-crime neighborhoods, that's swamping our dispatch. Armsmaster and Dragon have built a quick redirection system that's helping us lob the balls back to the police side of the court, but I've still had to pull consultants, analysts, and troopers just to field phone calls."
"I'm sure this has nothing to do with BBPD receiving enough Contact shields to cover most of their patrol officers," Dauntless grumbled.
"Isn't that bribery? We can't get them for that, or at least pressure the cops?" Assault asked.
"Legal tried. Contact's Legal got there first. BBPD is using a very loosely-worded federal equipment grant to justify it, and Contact doesn't soil their hands to actually take the money themselves - their agreement redirects the funds to EMTs and fire." The director massaged her temple for a brief second. "And of course asking the Mayor's office to remove Commissioner Barton would be a flagrant abuse of power that would torpedo the ENE's reputation. I'm still going to look into it if that little shit keeps redirecting emergency calls to us for another week. We are not the right agency to be trying to control a funded, competent, semi-legal private organization."
"Semi-legal is a point we can act on, surely?" Miss Militia asked. "It's not secret on the street, or PHO, what they've done to the Merchants."
"Given that BBPD and current federal laws are treating all new Contact devices as Category III Tinkertech-derived, yes, we could crack down on 'Pharma,' the rebranded ex-Merchant normals taking up Contact's iconography. A risky proposition for little benefit. Without BBPD guaranteed to cooperate, we're not likely to get any convictions to stick. Contact claims to be expelling members found dealing harmful substances, as part of their own rules." Her grunt was considering rather than outright dismissive. "Of course, if whoever we pick up really does only have these… harmless relaxation pharmaceuticals on them, the actual charges are liable to be closer to unlicensed vending than clear-cut possession and distribution of narcotics. And based on the percentage of defense attorneys making up Contact Legal, they are champing at the bit for us to try that. I'm not going to tell the Chief Director that my department has sparked God knows what case precedent on Tinkertech."
"So what's the actual concern?" Assault shrugged.
Piggot's slightly recessed eyes had cultivated a glare that stood out even more to compensate, and it wheeled on the irreverent hero. "Assault, not even you can be dense enough to think the Empire and ABB are going to quietly step back and let Ms. Hebert's crusade take over their city."
"Aren't we always trying to stop those guys anyway?"
"Trying is the key word there. Have you been deaf every time the words 'collateral damage' came up? Managing this city is a constant balance of trying to prevent the day to day abuses of these psychopaths while we peel them off and get some of them into the Protectorate or prison, without setting the rest of them off and potentially causing mass death."
"Hey, I'm not trying to dive in front of that train," he reassured, hands in the air in surrender. "But I listen, and the city doesn't get it. They're upset, and outside of Downtown, the main feeling from anyone willing to tell us is that things are getting worse. Of course they're ready to jump on something new."
"What about turning it on its head - can we do a better version of what the police are doing, turn Contact from a danger to an asset?" Battery added. Nobody at the table was particularly surprised that the ex-Villain would play devil's advocate, or that his nemesis and involved would pitch a conversion play.
"Only at a cost." It was a bit surprising for Armsmaster to be cutting in on a mostly philosophical discussion - but it did concern his future. "Orbital has been very consistent in defining Contact's ideological goals, and their particular vision of a better world is not compatible with our law enforcement. I've looked at it and consulted a number of Dragon's models. If I could get access to not just the Tinkertech derivatives, but the underlying theories that Contact is clearly using to enact their rapid development of a multitude of widely variant technologies-" Armsmaster paused, settled his voice, and stared around the table. "I would be willing to push very heavily for that. I don't believe it's possible. Contact's ethical boundaries are constructed such that no amount of cooperation with them will guarantee they will not break the law should a circumstance they find unfavorable arise. Their ideology is supposedly subject to democratic alteration. However, the current Contact membership has drawn most heavily from the people in desperate socio-economic straights, those whose grievances have been projected onto the government and PRT; the typical gang recruitment population, although skewing towards the demographics that neither the ABB or Empire recruit from. Without a concerted effort to overwhelm their existing membership with new members more sympathetic to the Protectorate mission - an effort fully beyond our mandate and resources - our models show converting Contact to an asset to be unlikely."
"Too many angry poor people," Assault summarized with a good degree of sarcasm.
"Enough. This isn't an economics lecture hall, gentlemen. The Protectorate and Parahuman Response Teams are not guided by popularity contest. We are government agencies with strict legal mandates." Piggot smacked her hand on the table for emphasis.
"I think we're going in circles," Michaela Donovan, PR representative, spoke with a light, airy tone, but had a serious glint to her eyes. "If we're in an image war for the sake of normals - sorry, non-parahumans - then it sounds like it's the troopers that are our front line. Is there anything we can do to show that the PRT's full of average people too?"
"Yeah. There might be something," Sergeant Kassabian, Requisitions, chimed in. "Director Armstrong in Boston - you all know Weld? - well, Armstrong's big on research, and Weld's power lets him rearrange and separate the metals he absorbs. They did a test, and he was able to crank out some of the rare metals Contact uses for their shields about thirty times faster than the labs at Haverhill, and without the big machines or whatever tricks Contact's manufacturing uses. Boston's sitting on the news while the bigwigs - uh, sorry, Director - work it out, but word through Requisitions is that they have two hundred and fifty suits of trooper armor with shield generators. If we could borrow those, it'd make a hell of a force multiplier. Enough to shift the balance?"
The Director's feelings on parahumans - some might say biases - were a fairly open, if unmentionable, secret in the Protectorate ENE. Those in the know watched her face carefully, but saw no indication of where her judgment was aimed.
"Do it. Kassabian, open unofficial channels with Boston's quartermaster. See what they'd want in return, unwritten, before I talk to Armstrong. Herrera, work up an immediate training plan and pick your best assault squads for Brute-rated neutralization weapons. Armsmaster, coordinate with Herrera on an expanded patrol schedule, solo heroes with trooper teams." Piggot caught everyone's gaze. "In daily operations, we will not play favorites or abuse our authority with Contact. You will treat them like you treat anyone else."
"And as a legal entity? They're representing Grue in his application to the Wards, and Jessica - Doctor Yamada - acting as his advocate, suggested there were a few other minor Parahumans that might seek Contact representation to approach us as well," Militia referred to her forms only briefly, having them thoroughly memorized.
"We take them as legitimate until they aren't. Orbital clearly wants to play an ideological game, indulge youthful utopianism. We've all seen that attitude before. Only the scope of what she's doing is different. We don't have an angle to shut her down or get her under control yet. All our effort has to be on damage control until this tide breaks and once more, the PRT has to pick up the pieces." There was more melancholy than bitterness to Piggot's tone. The promise of a better world, of better parahumans had some appeal to her; it was simply separated from her world by glass walls of impossibility.
"Do we have anything more about those resources?" Armsmaster asked. "I'm not happy going ahead with Contact without knowing who Taylor Hebert might be or who's backing her."
Aegis coughed before speaking up for the first time in the briefing. "Shadow Stalker is, uh, conflicted about Orbital. Her official report notes Ms. Hebert is more confident, outgoing, intellectually skilled, demonstrates incredibly faster responses both mentally and physically, but believes she is consistent with the pre-trigger personality of Taylor Hebert. Um… she's a little different in the Wards rooms. Stalker's been off, distracted, second guessing herself. Gallant says her emotions are all over the place. I think, Director, she may not have been entirely forthcoming about her relationship with Taylor. She keeps flipping between dismissive and… well, almost terrified of her. She hasn't said why and, uh, Shadow Stalker doesn't respond well to questions, but she treats Orbital like she treats Eidolon."
"Great." The increase in stress was evident to everyone in the room as the Director massaged her temples again. "Get HR to review all of Shadow Stalker's progress reports and probation interviews. See what we're missing with her and Hebert. Rivals, exes, childhood friends? I want to know how much I need to shout at our secretive Ward that she does not have the privacy to conceal things from us."
Taylor said:
Ugh, now you decide to pay attention.
Do I - do I seriously have to step in to save her from the consequences of what she did to me if I want to use her?
"I believe I can provide additional information regarding Contact's resources," Dragon noted into the brief silence. "Although I'm afraid you won't find it very comforting. Contact's founding money and technology aligns with the narrative Orbital created. There are few irregularities, and no connections to any of the expected entities - scrupulously so, even. The closest proximity to the Elite is Contact leadership member Carmen Juarez, who has a singular, overturned on appeal, misdemeanor conviction of money laundering, during the foundation of the Elite from the remnants of Uppermost. She appears to have had a personal association with Julia Crane, a.k.a. 'Agnes Court,' but has spent over a decade completely unassociated with the Elite, and apparently a dedicated opponent."
"Sending a spy into the enemy ranks with your bullet in them is an old trick," Piggot remarked.
"Probability of her animosity being feigned is quite low, Director. While Ms. Juarez has been a defense attorney for a number of parahuman-involved individuals, they are all non-powered, and her reputation in the legal community is largely as a reformer and advocate for people trying to sever from parahuman gangs."
"My opposite number, you're suggesting," the Director quipped.
"I wouldn't presume," Dragon returned, both women showing just a hint of a smile. "The other irregularities in the foundational firms that funded and equipped Contact… suggest less parahuman manipulation, and something closer to bribery. Legal bribery, of course." Cynicism dripped in a Canadian accent. "The transactions and contracts separating Contact's resources include clauses referring to the maintenance of provided treatments. I believe Contact bought their seed by selling prototypes of their scientific developments to wealthy or powerful non-powered individuals."
"Well, that says a lot about why I have multiple Senators on the Parahuman Committee calling to demand I give the key to the city to Contact or burn them to the ground. Not a single parahuman involved in this secretive research and bargaining, no violations of Tinkertech laws?"
"It's largely hidden behind sealed private contracts. You might be able to pressure them to get the details under Tinkertech investigation but… if I could make a suggestion, I believe that would, at best, result in additional calls from upset Senators." Dragon's unexpected proactivity went largely unremarked.
Piggot sighed and stood. "That ulcer can wait. Thank you, everyone, we're dismissed. I have a joint call with the PRT Directors in fifteen minutes. You have at least given me something to say in our defense. Thank you, and we'll reconvene on Monday if we still have jobs."
Taylor said:
Activated one week and you're already trying to help the PRT steal our thunder? I see where your maverick reputation comes from.
You said act natural, I'm acting natural. Assault's a big goofy dork but he cares about the people on the street. And don't try to tell me SC isn't happy nudging the PRT to adopt more democratic, populist tactics. I caught on to that one easily enough.
Oof. You really have been learning from itself, huh? Right for the guilt.
Yeah. I guess I am. But I'm Special Circumstances. I'm here to do what I need to do to keep things safe for the Culture and to fix up your world. I hope I don't have to lose too much personally to do that, but if I do…
I have a lot of experience saying sorry and begging for forgiveness.
logindex localcalendar 2011.02.23 localrefraction Earth-Bet localmunicipality Brockton Bay
Contact-Media Priority-Flagged Local Post: "Are You Afraid?" said:
Author: Karen Thi Sullivan (Public)
Is Contact different from the Protectorate?
Then where the hell is my daughter?
Terry Dinh Sullivan. She's seventeen. And because she's Asian, the cops won't dare go after that child-raping druggie that took her, or the man that has her now.
Why is Lung still here? Why does one monster get to hurt anyone that looks the wrong way?
There are so many people who joined for shields and protection. Someone must have answers. Are any of you brave enough to tell me where she is?
You can run and hide from "the Dragon." I'll face him alone if I have to.
I have heard where they are. I do not go to that place, but I play hanafuda at a casino with tattooed men. They moved the girls recently to the old blue hotel on Rockford.
"You didn't plan this, right? I really need you to be honest with me, Sufficient. Throwing a version of me back into the locker… deserves a talk, but if you nudged a distraught mother into getting herself killed to make a point…" I shoved my gauntlet on with a little too much force, but it was engineered to be harder to tear than that. It was still slightly faster to actually put on my costume than just displace it on, mostly thanks to the bodysuit, almost always worn invisibly underneath my clothes.
"I promise I did not provoke or particularly expect this course of action, Taylor. The full range of human experience makes you all capable of the improbable and unexpected, no matter how some Minds may think you can be completely modeled."
"What's the damage going to be before I can get there?" I asked, readying to launch from my back yard.
"Hmm. Stand by. You may not need to go." The Mind sounded slightly more intrigued than usual - an attitude I was learning to differentiate, since baseline fascination was everpresent in Sufficient's tone.
"What do you mean by that?" I did pause, but tried to emphasize my skepticism and haste.
"I believe the situation is going to resolve in our favor, even without your intervention. See probability matrices." Data filled my mind, and I flickered through the synopsis.
"P=0.97. So, a 3% chance it goes bad?"
"Alarmingly high, I know, but I believe the beneficial aftereffects to be substantial."
I smiled a little, amused and reassured that even Sufficient could be as risk-averse (or controlling) as Culture media claimed all Minds were. Then I went to double-check it.
My mind overrode my eyes, dumping my vision and proprioception into a vast delta, a visualization of the probabilities and projections that made up the tangled working model of Earth-Bet currently in use by Special Circumstances and the Sufficiently Advanced Technology - although even the hundreds of thousands of rivers and creeks I could see barely represented a slice of the immediate predicted future in New England alone.
I was completely lost. That was still a huge improvement over the first few times I'd tried to directly interface with the model, when I hadn't been able to fully separate myself from the countless partially-modeled Taylors - to use Yaxkanrel's philosophy, the reflections of my soul embedded in the model - and I'd experienced the sensation of my mind struggling to swim and drowning. It wasn't the same as the physical sensation of drowning (which was available in the Terminal Lounge on Sufficient's anterior dorsal pod), but it was more than unpleasant enough.
I'd still come back, again and again, until I could separate myself enough to navigate. It wasn't just about functionality… it was about me. If I didn't know enough about who I was to differentiate Taylor from the fragmentary models of Taylor, I might as well just surrender my effort to maintain any sense of self.
But knowing yourself was a skill. I was very good at learning skills.
I looked into the rivers of probability. They were fewer than they had appeared at first glance - many things weren't inevitable, just… inevitably probable, given broader social trends. If I found Space Hitler in here, killing him alone wouldn't prevent much future suffering.
I narrowed my scope, peeled down to the gangs, Contact-Earth, Lung, popular opposition. I was inside the river of probability, a broad band that held the entire likely spectrum of chances, constrained and influenced by each other as probabilities crested and receded. So much fed into it, tributaries of refugee identity, economic deprivation, misogyny, criminal income, parahuman dominance, casual dehumanization- far more than three dimensions of input and output, and the visual metaphor threatened to break down.
But I was so close. I could almost slot it all in, process it all, running it through the mind-constructs of three Taylor bodies, applying the filters and contexts I snatched from the greater data ocean of Sufficient that it had left open to me.
And it clicked. I perceived the possibilities, the whole view of what we were doing, still just barely contained within my self-image.
I exited the datasphere, fast. Review had taken less time than becoming able to review, and both less than a second.
"They don't need me," I said. An unguarded utterance, the kind of thing I only found myself doing with the Mind… and rarely with Dad.
"Not today." The Mind hummed. "Do you feel proud, or disturbed?"
"Neither, I think. Just… surprised." I pulled up a few screens - Contact members in range of Karen Thi Sullivan coming to her, ABB text messages, Lung's location. Convergence. Then visual footage, from the femtoscale surveillance clouds.
We really did look like an angry mob. Which was probably fair, because right now Contact was an angry mob, albeit a unified one - everyone with some headband, armband, shirt, pants, jacket, backpack, bracelet, gloves, hat in white with black circles, that simple Marain icon - and a righteously angry mob at that.
"I think you've been carrying a bit too much metaphorical weight, Taylor." The Mind sounded ponderous, and a tinge openly concerned. "You are the vanguard of Contact, but you don't need to claim responsibility for everyone in it. That's the point of mutual assistance."
"And the fact that they're mostly adults," I groused.
"Not particularly a concern at this point."
I tilted my head, then flickered through my collected knowledge and understanding. Oh. Yeah. "My brain isn't exactly teenage standard equipment any more, huh?"
"Yes and no. I have not accelerated the development of your neural pathways." There was a pause. Every pause was intentional. "I have also not prevented you from altering and modifying your own development. You'll recall I mentioned when we first created this body that there is a biofeedback component to human intelligence. As you have expanded your self into a manifold being, you have altered your thoughts."
"No wonder Weaver didn't want anything to do with me," I grumbled.
"Before you begin flagellating yourself, you should know the differences aren't that significant," Sufficient chided me, mild aside from the disdain for my emotional masochism. "Your personality is still that of Taylor Hebert by the vast majority. The largest distinction between the two of you is that your additional templates and sublimation of personality suites have accelerated the growth of your ability to perceive and account for consequences. A known weakness of adolescent development, and not one I would consider too valuable to skip. Your much more important emotional responses certainly haven't been diminished."
"Gee, thanks."
I could hear the smile in its disembodied voice. "See? Scintillating sarcasm, unharmed." It dropped to its familiar nurturing-concerned tones. "I have not let you hurt yourself, Taylor. I have not let you damage or destroy any part of your personality that you value - or that I believe you would value in the future, with the benefit of perfect hindsight. The biomechanical and sociopsychological technology I have given you has been selected to allow you to overcome sources of self-harm."
I… couldn't really dispute that. Not when I'd been using the same justification myself - the depression, the anxiety, the self-hate, the paranoia, the awkwardness, the fear of socializing - what good would there have been in holding onto those, in allowing them to wallow in my soul as if they belonged there?
But I still had doubts.
"What about Weaver? She… it's hard to look at her life and see anything but blindness to consequences and self-hurting teen decisions." She hadn't even been able to talk to her version of Dad.
"I have told you I am something worse than a warship." Sufficient's voice was as sophisticated and calm as ever, but there was something to its words… like an iceberg. The scary part was what I couldn't see. The hint of what lay below. "I am Special Circumstances. Not only do I kill people, I hurt them. I am a precise inflictor of death and instructional suffering. The Culture accepts this. We justify it. And we make it useful. I have done terrible things over hundreds of years, Taylor. Worse things than allowing a version of a friend to harm herself. And I have made them all very useful. I told you once that I was your friend, but I am not on your side." I didn't have to be subject to autonomic physiological responses like horripilation. But I did, I let myself feel that shiver, my hairs standing on end as the Mind continued in that same calm, patient voice that belied its arctic words. "I am here to solve the Earth crisis. I care for you, but I do not shelter my agents, Taylor. Not you, and not the you that is Weaver. I gave her the choice to exist, and she chose it." A pause, shorter. "Special Circumstances is the ugliest place in the Culture. We choose who to hurt in order to minimize all pain, all suffering. And for the insight it would give me towards my mission, I allowed Weaver to struggle alone. I do not regret it. You have learned so much from me, you have adopted so much of the Culture in such a short time. But in some ways, Weaver is far closer to my methods."
We hadn't been speaking, just relaying data containing those sonic assumptions, our discussion accelerated far past human speeds, but now I stopped. For several seconds, real-time, I was silent on all spectrums. My eyes flickered to the visual feed. Karen Sullivan, a short divorced ex-hairdresser, one of the thousands of unemployed to leap on Contact's offer, stood in jeans and a sweater with a white sewn-on patch at the head of a street-filling crowd, nearing a thousand. Yamamoto Kenta had made it to the building first.
She stood ten paces ahead of everyone else, and Lung's parasite had barely even begun inflating him to face her. That was one of the probabilities I'd seen, a reason to let them do this without me. The crowd was watching. The only threat to him and his power was one woman.
"Get out of my way and get out of our city," she told him with no preamble or deference, and a Brockton accent thicker than the autumn fog.
"This is who you bring to challenge me?" Lung didn't speak to her, he boomed past her to the crowd. "Your hero is not here. She is too afraid to face me. She will let you die here."
"Coward. Come and hit me. Throw a woman around. Show them what you do to make your money, child rapist. Show everyone what you do for Asians!"
I was stunned for a moment that he even tried. There had been a few firebombs on shields in the last month, and they'd seen the effects - flames eaten, harmlessly. Did Lung not believe it, or think himself stronger?
Or did Kenta just not have a choice, not if he wanted to remain Lung?
He spit flame, channeling it into a white-hot lance that split into a dozen arrows to arc around and hit Karen.
None of them did. Her shield flared, and so did the thousands of others filling the street. We hadn't been precisely secretive about this, but I hadn't stressed it at any press junkets either. The networking in a Contact-Earth shield and communicator hooked into other shields nearby, using shared processing and field generation to multiply both force and precision. The hexagonal shields intercepted the flames, then traced them back. Lung was swarmed by blue shimmering lights, devouring the heat he threw out. He started growing in earnest, his biology shifting and roiling, and he lashed out.
There were cheers and more than a few laughs from the crowd as the counter-reaction launched him into the air. He skidded off the building fronts, cracking brick and mortar, rebounding into the street.
And Contact poured into the building. By the time Kenta had pulled himself up and shoved his arm back into its socket, they were throwing his men out the windows. They rebounded off the shields, the kinetic return considerably more yielding than the asphalt, but that just landed them in the crowd.
An angry and righteous mob, yes, but not murderers. There were enough cameras and medics and Contact Defense people to drag the ABB soldiers up and cuff them, instead of letting them get trampled or curb-stomped.
Terry Dinh Sullivan was being helped out of the building by her mother, under a rescue blanket, when the jeep wheeled around the corner. The passenger stood, her gas mask covering her face completely, and hefted a shotgun-sized gun with a huge barrel.
"Bakuda." At almost four meters tall, Lung's voice was getting garbled. He threw his claws forward and explosions erupted in the crowd - tiny things, swallowed by swarms of hexagons before they could become harmful.
Sufficiently Advanced Technology said:
It irks me that we had to use hexagons. I would have preferred something that made a platonic solid. Oh well.
"KILL THEM!" Lung exploded metaphorically, after the duds of his literal explosions. A wave of fire swept over the heads of the crowd, but the linked shields sprung up, eating it, and the air below them remained cool.
Stress spiked through the crowd. Contact-Media's moderation didn't clamp down on speculation or 'fear-mongering.' The ABB's bomb Tinker was known, although very speculatively. The shields had so far held up to bullets, bombs, fire, knives, and fists all over the city. Tinkers, however, were bullshit.
There were a few cries of fear when she fired. The grenade air burst on proximity.
The sphere of shimmering diamond carved from everything that had been there encompassed half the street, most of a lamppost, which bent lopsided where the internal support had been lost, part of an empty bodega front, and the entire Dragon.
Preserved, crystallized, the hardest natural material on earth. Unliving.
In the hushed silence, the cape dropped her grenade launcher, then pulled off her mask. The white-and-black circles tattooed on her cheek shone in the refracted light. "Contact!" she shouted, and the crowd returned the call.
"None of my intervention," I murmured, still slowed to human speed.
"No explicit intervention today," the Mind demurred.
"I had one conversation with her! A week ago! It was twenty minutes long, and mostly threats, with a little enticement!" I chewed on that improbability, what I knew about Alice Hyeon Park's personality and the subsentient construct the Mind used to model her, one of thousands of parahumans we were modeling. The surprisingly complete construct. "Which means I was building on your work, wasn't I?"
Sufficient's tone and emotives were directly chosen by the Mind (or automatic aspects of its avatar, but now I was speaking directly to it). It wasn't hard to read the mix of patience, frustration, and satisfaction it put forward. It was a blend I was beginning to understand well, probably best understood as delayed gratification. "I have been in orbit of Earth-Bet for over nine local years, as a Special Circumstances GCU. I have done a little more than insert a handful of undercover operatives."
"How much more?" Maybe I should have been more worried, more betrayed, or more relieved, to have my benefactor revealing work I wasn't aware of. But when it came to the Mind, being 'brought to a new level' had an intensely personal touch, one that made me feel incredibly special and trusted, even knowing it had been pulling the same routine on its favored people for centuries.
"I have had many restrictions. Avoiding any disruption of the paths of Cauldron's favored agent. The cognitive powers of various colony hosts that can rival my own processing. And the usual human intransigence, selfishness, and suspicion." I knew the shift from hard-suffering to smug was coming, but I still smiled as the Mind changed tones. I was beginning to think it liked giving an appearance of predictability to its friends/experiments/proteges. "Within those restrictions, I have readied your world and dozens of subdimensional reflections for massive societal restructuring with a minimum of suffering. I have corrupted corrupt forms of governance to my own direction and manipulated self-interest towards selfless goals. I have placed cultural, structural, and personal elements in hundreds of thousands of lives that were calculated to allow, suggest, and promote self-improvement. Alice Hyeon Park has one of those lives."
"Do I?" It slipped out, along with a tendril of my self that went plunging back into the Earth-Bet working model, scouring for everything related to my life before meeting the Mind, to the culture and people I knew.
"No," the Mind admitted, with absolute cheer. "Aside from the Skitter simulation, you have been a delightful surprise."
I didn't bother to hold back my laugh. "Of course. Thanks, Mind." I stopped, considered flickering back to the feed, stopped. It knew, it had planned for this, and… Bakuda had bought in on Contact. Did I have to act on that? "I still have to figure out if making things better for everyone involves letting the PRT give Sophia exactly what she's earned. I'll… let Alice figure herself out. Please keep an eye on her, though?"
"I believe I can inform you of all upcoming armaments," Sufficient said, humming reassurance. "The vivisection of detached colony parasites has clarified the most common method of subdimensional energy transfer they employ, filling most of the remaining speculation regarding 'Tinkertech' functionality and capabilities."
I did twist my face a little. "Vivisection?"
"I am Special Circumstances," the Mind said. Its tone had only traces of its earlier grimness, but the reminder was more than enough. "I gave each subject a choice to cooperate, and left most of their minuscule sense of self intact. I consider that mercy in regards to such a grotesquely excessive hegemonizing swarm."
I thought about that - threw it into what I was starting to visualize as the moral matrix of my mind, the judgment and humanity of Taylor Hebert. As usual, my evaluation wasn't conclusive. "That's… your decision, I guess. And I have my own, don't I?" There was another inconclusive situation brewing in that matrix. "Should I bail Sophia out?" I counted my points on my fingers. "Their punishments won't rehabilitate her. It's what she agreed to. She might still be useful. She did everything to deserve it. Her parasite affects her mind. She still made her own choices."
The Sufficiently Advanced Technology didn't answer, which I pretty much expected. I was still allowed to think out loud, right?
"Fine," I decided at last. "It can wait. Let's go ahead with disentangling the slightly simpler ethical morass."
Taylor Hebert said:
Are you sure you're ready for this? It's a big step.
All good science involves a big step sooner or later, Taylor. This is simply the first experiment you've proposed. Be proud of it. Are you ready? It is also a big change.
"Hey. I'm sorry." It wasn't the most profound way to try talking to myself again. But at least it was heartfelt. "I don't know a way to keep this from looking like an attack to you. And I think it kind of is an attack, so I feel like that would be a lie. And I'm really, really tired of lying to myself - ourself. So, sorry."
I grabbed Weaver's hand; even with my accelerated speed, she was already moving to dodge, but it wasn't enough.
And I pulled.
It was tricky psycho-digital sleight of hand, throwing this consciousness into my original bio-human body, pulling Weaver into the perfect Taylor-clone of her self-perception, including every scar and wound she'd earned. But I managed it without disorienting either of us significantly.
"Okay. Welcome to my world. Hi. I'm you, like I said. A different you, obviously. I don't know what you're going to do from here, but I knew I had to give you the choice." Getting that all out before she jumped me, bolted, or I started doubting myself was the hard part.
Explaining how her lived experiences differed from mine was easy, in retrospect. Although it involved more arguing with myself than I'd done in weeks.
Woof. As you can see, this one took a while to rotate into fitting. I might just accept I'm going to only hit a once per two weeks update schedule from now on. But arc 2 is nearly over*, and I expect this to be about a 4 arc story.
*I think. I had more action planned for this chapter, but the philosophical and identity-heavy parts materialized as I was writing and I pushed them back.
The aftereffects and chaos pinball matters, I feel. It's about the kind of world they create.
Personally I feel like this is a more sympathetic Piggot than the classic fanon version; although I think a large part of that comes from her completely lacking (and writing off) any ability to pressure Taylor into doing what she wants.
And yeah, next chapter has Weaver's actual reactions to her whole… deal.
Recreational waterboarding. Sometimes the Culture is just...
Edit: Two other things I considered after reading this:
1. It's interesting (and good!) that Dragon isn't disclosing the ET reveal. I wonder why.
2. I feel the need to draw fanart of Lisa, holding a contact business card, looking distressed and pointing at the sky, shouting "Aliens!". If only I could draw.
*Thinking about this more, I realized that it might be taken as an implied criticism. To clarify: it is not.
Personally I feel like this is a more sympathetic Piggot than the classic fanon version; although I think a large part of that comes from her completely lacking (and writing off) any ability to pressure Taylor into doing what she wants.
I think that's a large part of it, yeah. Protagonist centered morality. Though I'm honestly not sure what the 'classic fanon' version is at this point. Ack's Piggot, maybe? But that one's pretty sympathetic from what I remember of her. I know there are asshole Piggots in fanfic, but I can't name any off the top of my head
I cut it for relevance, but the mom is an adopted Vietnamese war orphan (I read a lot of Doonesbury as a kid) and so is particularly Americanized, making Lung's 'jurisdiction' even more a case of the Brockton Bay law and government just abandoning large demographics to criminals for racist-ass reasons. Which fits with how much they seem to tolerate the local white supremacists!
a) Yay, Jeryn! I really liked the potential of Assault-the-SC-agent in the first iteration and I'm glad to see he's back, advocating for a less-shitty PRT undercover. Also, I would like to submit a ticket to the request queue for a "Ethan comes clean" interlude at some point down the line, please.
2) A good Mind monologue is worth its weight in platinum. Sufficient always pulls through. Nicely done.
iii) Speaking of Contact double agents, it's Scholie! And Lung goes byebye too, a little less flamboyantly this time though no less dramatically. So at this point the only ones left out of the original gangs of Brockton are the Nazis, huh? [Hell March intensifies]
x) To be entirely fair, Taylor really does her best work when thrown into the deep end. I am a touch disappointed that we didn't close on at least the beginning of a Weaver/Orbital fistfight, but that's just me loving a good bit of slapstick character development.
x) To be entirely fair, Taylor really does her best work when thrown into the deep end. I am a touch disappointed that we didn't close on at least the beginning of a Weaver/Orbital fistfight, but that's just me loving a good bit of slapstick character development.
Part of me is imagining this as an anime battle, with Weaver and Orbital screaming character development at each other while charging their Spirit Balls for three episodes.
It's an amusing image.
Which reminds me, what about Weaver's power? Is she missing it and getting thrown off by that? Is Sufficient replicating it so she doesn't freak out? Is this part of Sufficient's plan to draw QA out of hiding? I have several questions and I don't mind that as long as they get answered in the text!!!
