章 591: 30
Date
2011 January 25th - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time
Alice looked over the big table and noted the flaws she would need to fix. They weren't many, but the perfectionist in her demanded satisfaction.
It wasn't an enormous project, and she knew it was a test, but she still enjoyed working on it. The knowledge that her improved design of the containment foam grenades would help capture people, and in a way to defeat them filled her soul with warmth.
She didn't even need to leave her comfortable workshop to defeat those losers.
She stopped daydreaming and returned to her work. According to Dragon, when she was done with this (and of course was evaluated) there were much more interesting projects for her to sink her teeth in.
She was already shivering in anticipation.
So much to explode, so little time…
Date
2011 January 25th - Tuesday - ?
"So Serenity struck again. Still no idea who she is, Contessa?" Alexandria asked as she strode into the meeting room. She was clad in her official suit, as she was coming from a meeting with all the Directors, discussing the same issue.
The meeting room held the same old table that she was used to. Situated around the table in various moods were Eidolon, Numberman, Doctor Mother, and Contessa.
The fedora-wearing woman waited until she took a seat and took a sip from the prepared water that was, as always, at the perfect temperature.
"No, she is still a blind spot," she spoke while scowling lightly. "She hasn't provided enough information for modeling."
"Neither do I have anything new. Any calculations I did, came back with a random answer," stated Numberman flatly.
Alexandria sighed. "Is she still in Brockton Bay?"
This time Doctor Mother answered. "Yes. We confirmed with several other Thinkers. We even called in some favors with some powerful experiments. None of them could say anything aside confirming the existence of the blind spot."
She scowled. "Okay. Should we do anything about it? That blind spot is really annoying."
"We considered sending someone in, but that would invalidate the Bay experiment." The Doctor looked momentarily at Contessa, then at Numberman. "Our analysis says that currently it's not worth it. She has done nothing that would upset the Plan, so I think we should leave her be."
"We can't leave her, doing who knows what! An unknown element like her could spell disaster to the Plan!" she exclaimed in frustration.
"The steps remaining in the Plan decreased greatly when the site went online," Contessa spoke up again, in her usual tone. "I can't see her, or around her, but the effects of her actions are clear as a day."
"And?"
"Medi-gel is good. Already people around the world are building facilities. It was smart to have Dragon endorse it. The worldwide respect she has sidestepped a lot of issues with this kind of creations."
"And it nicely confirms that Dragon is in contact with Serenity," added Numberman. "Probably the reason why she is building a facility in Brockton Bay."
"It goes without saying we know nothing more specific. Dragon is already another blind spot."
"Our backdoors?"
Numberman snorted in derision. "It took her a day to find everything. I'm good, but she is an AI."
Alexandria drummed her fingers on the table and tried to quell the frustration growing in her. Serenity and Dragon, while not malicious, were starting to really annoy her.
Deciding that dwelling on the frustration would lead only to more stress, she slightly changed the subject.
"What about medi-gel? The PRT eggheads are in awe of it, and everybody is saying it is one of the greatest inventions of this century. Anything you can tell me?"
Numberman visibly perked up. "Oh yes. It is simply fascinating. It uses a sequence of chemical reactions to create a biological agent that bonds with human tissue. This bonding allows it to seal wounds, stop bleeding, and promote slight regeneration in the wound by triggering the relevant body processes."
"Anything dangerous with it? I was told about some possible allergic reactions?"
"Yes, there is a possibility that certain people with certain genes, could suffer an allergic reaction. But the documentation contained an alternate plan that would allow people to create the alternative medi-gel. Also, the directions to what to test for to discover who is allergic to it were included."
She scowled again. "Anything hidden? That could be a vector for an attack?"
"No. Nothing like that," he answered and chuckled a little. "Downside of using something that doesn't have the usual black-boxing of Tinker tech is that there is nowhere to hide."
"We went through the documentation and did some experiments," cut in Doctor Mother. "It worked just as advertised. I will send over the results later."
Eidolon, who so far was stayed silent, spoke up after that. "What about the people's reaction? People in Houston are already demanding that we build a facility to produce it."
"The CUI is already building them," added Contessa.
"And everybody else in the world. Most of them are still in the testing stage, but from what I saw, most of them would be using them in a short time frame."
"I don't understand why she couldn't have given it to the government or even the PRT?" blurted out Eidolon. "What was she hoping to achieve?"
"To help the most people. If I try to model what would happen if she had released it only to the USA or PRT, the results are… ugly."
Numberman nodded in agreement. "This way it's global and nobody can accuse her of favoring someone. And more than likely gives her enough clout for the next step of her plan."
"Any idea what that could be?" she asked.
"As we said, our powers…"
"No. I don't mean the powers." interrupted Alexandria angrily. "We have enough resources to figure something out without powers!"
"We are working on it," answered Doctor Mother in a calm voice, ignoring her outburst. "It will take time to produce something with this limited set of data."
Alexandria immediately turned to Contessa so fast that if it weren't for her power, she would be suffering from whiplash. "Any way to make her act?"
"Yes. Attack Dragon. Attack the Brockton Bay Dockworker's Union. Attack Brockton Bay." Contessa answered after a few seconds of thought. "The results are unclear because of the blind spot, but it would provide plenty of data."
She grimaced. "And how much damage would that cause?"
It was telling that Contessa didn't even answer.
She sighed again.
"Any idea what actually her power is?"
The Doctor shook her head. "No. Aside from the Anti-Thinker effect, we only have speculations."
She waved her hand dismissively. "The PRT has those too."
After that, the room fell silent again.
It was Eidolon who spoke up again after a few minutes of silence. "So that's it? We will do nothing and let that girl run around doing who knows what?"
"It appears so."
"It's the best decision currently."
Contessa just shrugged.
Eidolon snorted in contempt, stood up, and strode out of the room. "Then I'll leave. I have better things to do."
Numberman also stood up. "I'll also say goodbye. I will contact you if I have anything new."
She watched him leave, and when she looked back at the table Contessa was also gone.
She turned to Doctor Mother, who was already opening a laptop.
"Let's talk about medi-gel, Alexandria…"
Date
2011 January 25th - Tuesday - Earth Bet Time
Day 6073 - Tuesday - Administrator Dimension Time
He looked over the data streaming back from the parahumans of the PRT-ENE.
He managed to infiltrate all of them, and he was ready to choose another one to take over.
Luckily, the Eden shards didn't count. Triumph's Shard was a child's play to take over and to add to his growing Network. He simply added his usual upgrades and isolated the consciousness.
This one was smarter than Affectus and gave a more precise power to Triumph. Though the hibernation order prevented it from providing help and improvement to Rory.
It didn't help that it was a relatively young shard, only a few dozen Cycles old. It didn't have the same repertoire as the much older Shards, so the power it provided wasn't that useful.
Interestingly, it was tasked with researching the effects of sound waves on biological and non-biological systems. Apparently, it was a bud of a Shard that was researching sound wave control.
It was also promising that, according to the logs, it gave the minor Brute power to Triumph because the Shard was aware that, without the extra durability, the power would be less useful. It showed that, while it still didn't care for humans or other host species, it was somewhat capable of thinking beyond the scope of its task.
He hoped that this would make it easier to convince the currently slumbering consciousness to change sides.
Battery's Shard was much more interesting.
It was almost in the same state as the other two Eden Shards he examined. The only difference was the limited and slightly unstable direct connection to Assault's Shard.
Examining the logs with great interest, while of course hiding his meddling from the other Shard, it was rather easy to find out what happened.
It seems the other Shard, after noticing its host connection with Battery, reached out to the other Shard for cooperation. When it noticed that it was hibernating for some reason it forced a connection to it. But because Altilium (he respected Battery enough to give her Shard a proper name) was incapable of anchoring it on her end, Impetus (he chose this name because he wanted to keep the connection) couldn't do much.
It occasionally sent some power over, but Altilium hadn't accumulated enough to wake up.
He took a metaphorical step back and thought about this a little.
This connection, and the people they were connected to, offered some interesting possibilities. By all measures, Battery and Assault were the most open-minded and approachable parahumans of the PRT. And he even remembered something about Assault being a better first meeting for Taylor.
Adding them to Taylor's group would be a boon. Though they wouldn't be as trusting as Dragon, Taylor couldn't really gain their trust by doing something big for them.
This required more deliberation.
Still, that didn't stop him from taking over Altilium and Impetus.
When he was doing the last preparations of isolating Impetus' consciousness, an omnidirectional broadcast from Impetus shocked him. It seems he made a mistake because the Shard noticed his action.
[QUERY]
After a momentary panic, he doubled all his defenses and checked all the other connections to the other Shards for any weird activity. Only when he saw that nobody else noticed him (not even Dilettante) did he calm down a little.
He immediately forcefully moved Impetus' consciousness into a core his anti-thinker defenses protected. Then made sure that no part of the broadcast leaked out.
Only then did he answer using the Shard's condensed communication method.
[PURPOSE]
Seeing as there was no chance of Impetus escaping, he went with the truth.
He, however, didn't expect what happened next.
[OFFER] [COOPERATION] [DATA]
Apparently, Impetus was aware enough to note Zion's abnormal behavior and, adding to it the state Eden Shards were in, came to an almost correct conclusion. It realized that the Cycle was in danger and saw Administrator taking over, so it decided that it wanted to join him.
[QUERY]
That surprised him. He expected much more fight from the Shard.
[DATA]
Huh. Apparently, it saw that it had no chance in hell of winning the fight, so he didn't even try.
[OFFER]
And in exchange for its cooperation, the Shard wanted him to connect it to Altilium to improve its data collection.
That was interesting. He immediately checked the Shard's logs for an answer. It seemed Impetus worked with Altilium several times together in previous Cycles and wanted to continue it.
In the end, he decided to use Impetus as an experiment. If he could turn the Shard to his side fully (of course with safeguards), the experience would greatly help him in the future.
[OFFER] [COOPERATION] [DATA] [EXPERIMENT]
In exchange for letting him test it, he agreed to give Impetus the upgrades, return control, and activate Altilium.
The answer came immediately.
[AGGREEMENT]
If a Shard could smile, he would be sporting a giant grin.
That night Taylor noticed that the slime was much more cheerful than usual. Though because that came with some giant chickens that shoot lasers from their cloaca and flames from their beaks as enemies in the simulation, she wasn't thrilled about it.
He began to put together a test for Impetus. While it was aimed at Impetus, he planned to refine it, and use it on other Shards.
The test itself was simple. He wanted to test Impetus in different scenarios, to determine how much retraining it would need.
He hoped not much. He kind of liked it.
At the same time, he would perform the test on Altilium, to make sure when they connected it wouldn't get Impetus to betray him. With the planned safeguards, it would be almost impossible to do, but he didn't want to give even the smallest chance.
Luckily, when he woke up Altilium on a hidden processor core, it was also ready to 'serve' under him. It became even more eager when he told it about Impetus' request.
It was almost like they liked each other.
So cute.
If you were into multi-dimensional eldritch monstrosities.
Date
2011 January 26th - Wednesday - Earth Bet Time
Danny looked around the construction site and couldn't help but feel happy. It was the kind of work they had been missing. Paid well, good employer, and provided enough work for everyone.
Today was the day they finished with the work on the exterior. The only jobs left were inside the facility, but those required only some of his people, and even then they were only assisting Dragon's drones.
He didn't really need to be there, but he wanted to see the conclusion with his own eyes. He felt if he looked away even for a minute the entire thing would vanish, and he would wake up from this pleasant dream.
There was hope in the air, and he wanted to make sure it stayed right there.
"Danny, we're finished with the loading. Want a ride back?" yelled one of the people on the other side of the freshly built industrial loading space. He was standing next to several cars and trucks filled with tools and people.
"No. I will wait until the others finish and get back with them!" He yelled back. "Go ahead, get some rest!"
"You got it, Danny!" came the loud reply, and it was followed by the revving of motors. He calmly watched as the cars drove away, then turned back to the Facility. He would check up on the guys inside, then call Taylor to tell her the good news.
He stopped his walk when he heard the cars approaching. Thinking that the guys forgot something, he turned around, only for his stomach to drop.
While the cars of the guys in the union weren't the newest models, they were still well maintained.
These cars, however, were beaten up enough that he had to wonder how they even managed to get them to start.
The people in and on the cars were almost in the same state as the cars. There were probably no two pieces of clean clothing between all of them, and Danny could smell the stink they emitted where he stood several dozen feet away.
As soon as he realized who they were, he immediately turned on his heel and ran towards the building. The walls were strong enough to stop a tank, according to Dragon, so he wanted to have that between him and the druggies outside.
He was almost at the reinforced personnel door when a bullet whizzed past him, striking the ground. He immediately stopped, sliding a little forward due to momentum, then ducked down and turned on his heel. Sometimes living in the Bay and working at the Docks came with benefits, and that was reflexes honed to avoid bullet fire.
It was lucky he did because immediately several bullets went through the space where his head would be.
Still crouched, he eyed the armed druggies as they disembarked in their usual chaotic fashion, and lambasted himself for lingering outside.
The probable leader of the group, at least he was on the front, looked at him and gave him a disturbing smile that had more than a few teeth missing.
"Well, well… what have we here? Some union jerkwad trying to be big in our territory?" the surrounding people booed and jeered hearing that. "Well, boys, it seems someone owes us some rent? Ain'tcha?"
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