บท 47: Wake-up Call – Chapter 46
Colin's guest room is about as drab as his living room because, for some reason, the man whose power is obsessed with efficiency just decided that dark olive green is an [excellent] color for walls.
[Dark tone apt to remain apparently clean for longer periods—]
Oh. My. God.
No. No, I refuse to allow him to [min-max] interior decorating! This shall not stand! I'll have him use pastel tones and a variety of colors according to each room's intended purpose by the end of my stay, or my name isn't Lisa Wilbourn—
[Lisa Wilbourn's legal name—]
Low blow. Glad to see you're doing better.
[Ascribing personality traits to parahuman abilities interfaces—]
Yeah. Love you too.
Speaking of love, though, maybe I should pay attention to the girl impatiently tapping her foot in front of me.
"You know, if you expect me to have a conversation with you in which I infer what you mean to say merely through body language, maybe you should postpone it until Power's a bit recovered? I mean, Thinker headaches and…"
She's giving me a very unimpressed eyebrow.
Shit.
"So, you aren't buying this, are you?" I ask her with more chagrin than somebody in search of a McRib.
She shakes her head, slowly yet hard enough that her hair sways behind her in mesmerizing—damn it. I'm gonna give her a human Master sub-rating just because of that.
"Look, Tay, as much as I understand why you would want to talk about this right now… it's not something you can tackle, much less on your own. Can it… wait? For a bit? While I hug my fiancée and soothe the small, terrified part of my brain that's convinced you're about to vanish as soon as I take my eyes off you?"
It's… It's not emotional blackmail if I'm being sincere, is it? I'm not even using Power; I just… Damn it, why is it so hard to not second-guess every little thing? All of this would be so easy if I didn't care about…
About the girl I love lying on the floor, bleeding to death, minutes away from fading away, from never again smiling down at me, dark hair a curtain around the two of us that never lets the rest of the world in if she doesn't mean to…
She's hugging me. A single arm, tightly gripping my back, her face buried in my chest.
And I'm shaking so badly I'm afraid I'll jostle her sling.
I look down at her and, on top of her head, even as her face remains hidden, I see a tiny, cute jumping spider pointing toward the sofa bed with its foreleg.
Yet again, her herald makes me laugh.
***
I'm lying on my right side over the cushions of the red corduroy sofa, my arms carefully wrapped around Taylor, and I keep drifting off into exhausted, dreamless sleep only to wake up in minutes to kiss the crown of her head, to feel her against me, to make sure she's still there.
After the fifth time, there's a chorus of insects.
"[If you're going to keep waking me up, at least explain to me how the world's ending and Victor knew before me."]
Damn it.
"That's about the last thing I want to think of while cuddling with my fiancée—"
She wiggles out of my arms and into a sitting position before shooting me a smug look back.
"[Problem solved."]
"You and I have very different definitions of what a problem is…"
And now she's smirking.
Which is a good thing. A great thing. Because I'm rattled, and scared, and terrified, but she's the one who got shot, and… And I'm kinda thankful about Power still being quite tapped out because I don't want to impulsively dig into Taylor's façade and find out just how shaken she is.
She… She almost killed Victor. Not because he shot her, but because he was about to shoot [me].
Taylor almost killed him. Not to subdue him, but to eradicate him.
And, if I put myself in her position… I could've. I could've done far worse than I did, pull at the unraveling thread that is his domestic bliss and play with the doubt, the fear of losing Othala, maybe not like he lost his first fiancée, but in another way, a more personal one… And I know I would've enjoyed it, so why not? Why didn't I when Taylor was willing to? Why did I work so hard to bring him in rather than taking him out when she's the hero I know I can't even aspire to be, yet she didn't think it was worth it?
Have I... Have I brought her down even as she lifted me? Is this it? Am I that bad for—
She just booped my nose.
"[I don't know what you're thinking, but I know it's stupid and convoluted in that stupid way only smart people can manage. Now, explain to me what you and Victor thought was so obvious."]
Damn it. I shouldn't already be used to a swarm having [inflections].
"Fine!" I tell her as I get up from the couch, or, at least, from the quasi-restful position and into a sitting one that this thing isn't ready to support. Damn sofa beds: they're never good at any of the two things. "It's…" Wait a second… "It's just something I don't want to talk about on my own, because…" Come on, Lisa! Just find out an excuse! "Because I'm not proud of it."
Oh, right. The truth. It always makes for a great excuse.
"[I find that hard to believe,"] her swarm says as she keeps looking at me over the shoulder of her injured arm.
"Ha. Ha. No, but… look, can I call Dragon? We will be able to explain better between the two of us," I tell her, not quite crossing my fingers behind my back.
Her eyebrows rise, and she blinks quickly a couple of times.
Well, that's not a no.
So I take out my laptop, which I had already connected to Colin's wi-fi, because [priorities], and open a quick chat window on PHO.
['Hey, if you drop in for a quick talk I promise not to mention any details about what went on last night.']
Dragon makes a videocall about half a second after I press the 'send' button. And I'm sure that's been the longest half-second she's experienced in recent memory.
Wait, does she also have a subjective perception of time? Maybe it does depend on how much processing power she allocates, so she can literally slow down time in a critical moment…
Huh. Neat.
Also, yet another Thinker power to add to the pile.
"Hello, Lisa. Colin has already brought me up to speed; I was letting you two rest," Dragon very politely states without referencing anything about yesterday.
"Thanks, you're as considerate as always. By the way, congratulations!"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"No need to be bashful," I tell her with an eyebrow waggle that would get me thrown out of church.
"I thought you weren't going to mention—and you haven't. So I won't, and then you won't have the excuse to do it because you're just politely keeping the conversation going," she says, virtual brow furrowed and filling a substantial part of my laptop's screen.
I smirk, and she rolls her eyes. Then Taylor elbows me, and I almost drop the computer on Colin's immaculate yet pristinely boring, mottled, grey-tiled floor.
Fiiine…
"Well, now that the greetings are done with—oh, wait," I turn the laptop aside, and Taylor waves to Dragon, who smiles back with more cheer than I think Tay has seen from an adult in quite a while. "Right, now that the politeness is out of the way… Taylor just learned that the world's ending, and I'm kinda… not up to explaining on my own."
"Ah… It's… I think I'm supposed to say it's nothing to concern yourselves with, but… I don't think you two are the type who appreciates being coddled." I roll my eyes toward Taylor, and she shoots me [a look]. Dragon sighs. "Right… Look, the thing is, while there's a certain consensus that we're in a downward spiral, nothing's certain yet. The introduction of parahumans made the world a chaotic mess, and… Sorry, this is usually a subject I only talk about with those who already know what's going on. Lisa? A little help?" she says.
Just as I hoped she would.
Because she's Dragon. And she's terrifyingly intelligent, inhuman in the scope of her knowledge and the ease with which she can use it.
But in other things… she's [too] human.
At first I thought it was a façade she donned, a way to help her interact with us, but through the day of enforced rest Taylor forced me to go through (never again—vacations are [evil]), I had quite a bit of time to idly ponder my interactions with the best Tinker in the world.
And she's just… a good person.
It's no artifice. She could've manipulated plenty of things that she hasn't, no matter how stringent her restrictions. I know she needs to follow the law, but there's absolutely nothing unlawful in claiming a small rock in the middle of the Atlantic and declaring herself Queen Sovereign of Robotopia and legislating that AIs are legally required to engage in frequent phone sex with bearded DILFs.
Or, less innocently, there's nothing stopping her from making quite a few backroom deals with any candidates in whichever country she deigns live in. Candidates who may find themselves backed by plenty of things that may not be illegal, but only because legislators have yet to understand how utterly screwed they are in front of an AI who knows the law better than they ever would.
She hasn't done any of this. No, she has been a hero, fought with everything she has, participated in the most gruesome, traumatizing battles she's found, and done her very best to save as many as possible.
And Saint should know all this. Or, at least, he knows about her acts, even if he doesn't understand the reasons behind them. But maybe I can find a way to sow some seeds.
After all, it's much easier to trust what someone says when you think they don't know you're listening.
"I… I guess I can try… Look, Tay, let's say we want to use your power to save the world. What do we do?" I ask her.
Her eyes shoot wide open, and her face goes rigid as she recoils. Great.
My girlfriend, ladies and gentlemen: the plague who panics.
"It's something I've been thinking about, all right? No pressure, I don't expect you to do anything about this. But, for most parahumans, the phrase 'saving the world' would involve punching out… Well, [them]. Everybody thinks about their powers as a weapon. Villains as well. So, if we turn the question around and you decided to destroy the world? You could hide yourself as you carefully set biological time bombs: plagues of a magnitude the world has never seen, striking with precision at any food storages, soiling any medical supplies, transmitting diseases and parasites, targeting animals and plants essential for any ecosystem you deign destroy. [You], somebody who keeps, for reasons I'll never understand, thinking she has a weak power, is a credible world-ender. And that's without even having to fight any other parahuman."
She's now pale. Great.
"Heartbreaker? You don't know how relieved I am that, for all the horror he brings about, he's so incredibly [petty]. He has his harem, and that's it, but if he really wanted to inflict as much damage as possible? How many wars could he start? How many lines of defense keeping at bay S Class threats would crumble? And Leet? He can build [everything] once. Why not an antimatter bomb? Why not an actual zombie plague? Why not grey goo? People talk about the Sleeper, Nilbog, and the Ash Beast as if they are exceptional. And they are: they are exceptionally crazy even among parahumans, and so they do what plenty of us can but [won't]."
I take a deep breath. Idle thoughts about Galadriel Lisa are [not] welcome right now.
"And there are plenty of these crazy parahumans. Plenty of cities that no one dares enter anymore, countries that have been wiped off the map, sometimes literally, and… And there aren't that many countries, Tay. The world is interconnected, and every time a link in the chain breaks, somebody has to hurry and do the impossible so people don't notice, and we can all pretend life goes on.
"It doesn't.
"We rely on impossible, irreplaceable, unique technology to keep shipping lines going after the ocean was taken from us. Dragon personally maintains what's left of our satellite network after every space program in the world was abruptly brought to a halt, and I don't even know how a city like Brockton Bay is still [a city] rather than a mess of huts and tribal warriors fighting for fertile land. Every exceptional, unique threat is barely held at bay by exceptional, unique protectors."
I take a moment to distance myself from the mental image, to look at Dragon on the screen, and Taylor by my side, who's no doubt pondering why the Hell have I bothered dragging Dragon into this.
…
Damn it, how do I tie this up? I should have waited until Power was up to this before trying to start working on Saint.
"So, let's go back to the start. Let's say you wanted to save the world? That's much more work than destroying it. You could do good, [a lot] of it, but we will need to be organized. You couldn't strike at a weak point and cause a cascade of catastrophes like you would if you tried to do the opposite; no: you would need to study the problem, understand it, and [move]. A lot. You could bring bees back from the brink of extinction, you could destroy invasive species in a matter of weeks, could make sure vital crops were protected from plagues, eradicate parasites… But we'd have to fly you all over, and you'd have to work at it, knowing you're just doing the good you can, that you need other people to do their own part. You, Taylor Hebert, cannot save the world on your own, even if you [can] destroy it."
Another pause. To breathe. To remember this also goes for me, even if I always feel guilty and awful about it when I think how much time I wasted on petty concerns, running away from my parents rather than face what the world was about to go through.
It's not even a matter of leaving the mess for the next generation: there won't be one.
"So most people look at this and think, 'the world's fucked, why even bother?' And you know what? They're right. The world is fucked. We have insane threats surrounding us, each of them motivated by a trigger event that may as well be the only excuse anyone needs to decide that life's not worth living, and they should also take the rest of us along for the ride. We have monsters, literal monsters, destroying civilization one major city at a time—except for when they decide to take out a few at once. But what these people forget is that powers have made possible utter atrocities, things we'd never dreamed of before. Because that's what they do: they make the impossible possible."
And then I point at Dragon.
I think Saint may have just shat his pants, because I'm doing it like I'm about to reveal Dragon's the product of a power, but that's just to catch his attention and, hopefully, subvert his expectations. His brain definitely needs some subverting.
"Taylor could help heal the environment, protect crops, protect refugee camps… I could identify threats before they happen, help organize the economy, even assist with research… Tell us, Dragon, how would [you] save the world?"
For a moment, she looks at me with her mouth open, as if stunned somebody has asked her the only question she's ever thought worth asking.
And then a manic gleam goes over her avatar's eyes, and she smiles.
And she speaks.
And damn, if she ever dares complain about my long-winded speeches? I'm bringing this up.
Because she talks about energy sources, manufacturing methods, replication of parahuman abilities, transhumanism, a Tinker's open source project, replicating Earth Aleph's portal to settle new worlds, to build a new space program on them, to reach the stars yet again even if as refugees… She talks about a future, [any] future, any that we can grasp, that we can reclaim from the monsters who would deprive us of one.
She's hopeful, and grim, and enthusiastic, and she almost chokes when I tell her that of course I'll help, that of course I want to fight for the world she wants to build.
I clench Taylor's hand when I say it. Of course I do.
And Dragon keeps talking and talking, both about broad ideas and abstruse technicalities, because this is her passion, and people who are passionate about something do this, getting carried away and forgetting about who's listening and how little we know, how capable we really are of following her wild, brilliant, mad ideas.
And that makes me smile.
Not only because it's always interesting to see someone like this, but because I know Saint is recording this.
And whatever it is he fears Dragon may do, whatever potential threat he thinks she represents…
Now he knows there are other threats. That the world's about to end.
And that Dragon is here to stop it.
==================
This work is a repost of my most popular fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/wake-up-call-worm.15638/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 86 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).
Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Power's intrusions into Lisa's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance
Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Xalgeon, and aj0413. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!
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