บท 61: Wake-up Call – Chapter 60
In front of me, Noelle, frozen in time, stares with curiosity at the broken chassis of Bakuda's time-stop grenade, the scattered pieces of the red metal perpetually glinting in a floating cloud of shattered light.
Sometimes I wonder how that works. How the light can keep on shining when it shouldn't exit the area of effect, much less enter and go back to us. How is it that I can see anything other than a blob of vantablack darkness, yet the same doesn't happen with a perpetually echoing last note.
Mostly? Because sometimes, I'd rather think about physics breaking down and crying in a corner than about what I decided I was going to do.
And, you know, [doing it].
[Lisa Wilbourn's procrastination—]
God, you're worse than a life coach!
[Time-critical nature of plan—]
Yes, I know! It was me who set it up that way! I know I'm pressuring myself intentionally!
[Perpetuation of stressors in long-term health—]
Oh, fuck off with that soft tone of voice… You're gonna make me feel both guilty and mushy…
[… Emotional intensity linked to anxiety—]
Yeah. Yeah, I know.
With a sigh, I get out of Noelle's room that I hope will one day stop being her grave in all but name and go to the other room. The one still equipped with computers and a camera rig that Dragon used to broadcast a face and voice superposed over mine so that the young, unstable girl would heed my words and allow us to cage her with something we still don't have the key to.
Talk about procrastination.
With [another] sigh that is superior by virtue of my greater experience and practice since the last time I tried it, I drop on the office chair in front of the laptop sitting on the white desk in the middle of the concrete room. Coil's sense of aesthetics tended toward the functional and brutalist, but, in this particular case, I'm far from being offended by the lack of pleasing distractions in my field of view.
Because I want to be focused.
Concentrated.
Not because I fear the next conversation will be that adversarial or even hard to manage, no. Quite the opposite.
It's just that I don't have the guts to shy away from the bile rising up at the thought of manipulating another girl prisoner of circumstances outside her control.
I click on a lone icon on the screen and wait precisely three and a half seconds for Dragon to show up.
"Good afternoon, Lisa," she says, her voice exactly as pleasant and polite as it is whenever she greets me, the desperate message that nobody else can pick up on plain for me to see.
"Good afternoon, Dragon. I hope this isn't a bad time?" I say, equally pleasant yet with a note of bashful regret.
"Oh, no, don't worry at all. I was waiting for the results of a few tests, so this is a perfect chance to catch up. Tell me, what's on your mind?" her unnaturally average face posits with a slight tilt of her head and steepled fingers in front of her chest, the very tip of her pressed thumbs peeking up above them.
No hidden message in there. That's just Dragon being human. Adding as much detail as she can to her… not performance, not really.
To her portrayal? Her façade? Her message to the world?
All of the above, I guess.
"Great! Well, first of all, I'd like to apologize that this isn't about getting some scandalous gossip on Hannah and her latest attempts to drop a stapler in Colin's office—"
"I very much doubt Colin would use a stapler—"
"I very much doubt Hannah wouldn't carry one herself if she had to."
She laughs.
It's… You know how unnatural canned laughs are, yet how they still have been used in most sitcoms for ages? How the mere sound of laughter can bring something out of any human, some impulse to share in the mirth despite us rationally knowing there's nothing to share, that the recorded phantoms are only there to trick us?
Well, it's nothing like that.
Dragon's laugh is gentle, warm, and heartfelt.
It's real.
And this is why I'm doing all of this.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, but she doesn't have the luxury of perpetual access to his comms to whisper sweet nothings in his ear. The girl needs to take any edge she can."
"I am sure I don't know what you're talking about."
I shoot her a flat stare.
And she blushes.
… Wow. [That] is impressive.
"Anyway, your sordid, shared love life aside—"
"There's nothing sordid about it!"
"Dragon, Colin went from having a literal Canadian girlfriend whom he wasn't even dating to being embroiled in a menage-a-trois in which even I'm not sure which of you is supposed to be the wife, husband, and mistress. If I ever lacked for money, I could get rich off this alone before even speculating on which role your Tinker toys play in the whole thing," I say.
Then I repress a violent shudder that, going by her mirthful smirk, isn't quite as furtive as I'd have liked.
"Well, I can honestly say I never thought Hannah would be so responsive to getting—"
"Ew, ew, [ew!] That's the Westermarck Effect you're triggering, woman!"
"… Aren't you a bit old for that?"
"Aren't you supposed to be a [hero?"]
"And here I was, selflessly offering to share some of my Miss MILFlitia experiences with the poor deprived masses…"
"I think you forgot how to spell depraved."
"I think [you] forgot how to be one."
I narrow my eyes at the insufferably smug woman on the other side of the screen who's, arguably, right here in front of me.
Seriously, what is it with people and forgetting how to abide by trademark laws?
[Lisa Wilbourn does not, in fact, have a trademark on smugness—]
I'll sue you, Power. I swear I'll find a way to sue you.
"OK," I tell her, leaning forward to rest my chin on my own steepled fingers. "First of all, there's a difference between being a deviant and being into [everything], as I'm sure your extensive experience with the Internet and its multiple horrors can attest to. Second, and just in case you ever dare to question that first point, I should remind you that [I know where the scalies lurk."]
Dragon, the most powerful Tinker in the world and possibly the multiverse, shudders.
I [smirk].
[Trademark on smug—]
Fuck you.
"No need to get nasty," she says, raising two appeasing palms.
"Well, I felt I needed to remind you that if things ever go sideways, I've got leverage."
"… That was terrible."
"Wha—that wasn't a pun! I would've mentioned Archimedes or something clever if it was!"
"I am… Not sure that's as good an alternative as you seem to think."
"Shut up. My erudite jokes and puns are [fantastic], and you love them."
She shoots me a skeptical eyebrow.
I challenge it with a very logical one of my own. Borderline Vulcan, I'd say.
And, yet again, she bursts into laughter.
This time, I join her.
It takes us a while to stop, and we both need to wipe a tear off the corner of our eyes. I don't know what Saint will think about the coincidence, whether he will deem it mere imitation or realize that that's precisely what humans do. That we mimic and reflect those we are bonded to.
I don't know.
But I will [learn].
"OK, OK, banter over, we both need to work, and I've got something kinda urgent to propose to you," I say, leaning on the chair, my shoulders screaming at me when I force them to drop into something that looks vaguely relaxed.
"Oh? So this wasn't just a courtesy call?"
"My courtesy calls tend to involve less traumatizing details about the love life of… you know."
She pauses for a brief moment that I have to wonder how long stretches in her perception.
Then she offers me a small, tender smile and a minute nod.
"I do," she says.
And my cheeks tingle.
Damn it, she's good.
"Moving right along! I want you to destroy the evil artificial intelligence threatening all life on Earth," I say in the worst possible way.
Really, I went over quite a few of them. There are others that get close enough, but this at least doesn't infringe on Cameron's intellectual property.
"… The Machine Army?" she asks, her face as pale as the pixels can convey without falling into the uncanny valley. "Do you… Do you even realize what could happen if things went wrong? How utterly disastrous it would be—"
"To have a hostile AI get its hive mind all over replicable tinkertech? Oh my, I hadn't thought about that," I answer, dripping about as much sarcasm as the question deserves.
"OK, so you're not [cluelessly] genocidal," she ripostes in kind.
"I assure you that when I decide to bring about the end of civilization as we know it, it will be entirely on purpose."
"… I'm very tempted to send a recording of this to Colin and ask for a lie detector verification."
"Please, don't. I want him to be as surprised as everybody else."
With a grunt that sounds suspiciously like a gruff 'goddamn teenagers,' Dragon takes a moment to rub above her eyebrows with circling, soothing, virtual thumb and forefinger and then proceeds to glare at me.
"[Explain]," she says.
"Well, without getting into spoilers territory, I'd really like to abolish frontiers and allow for the seamless melding of cultures in a way that—"
"I'd rather you started with the grey goo scenario."
"Oh, that. Well, that's trivial enough to solve, seeing as the Machine Army can't copy [actual] tinkertech and that grey goo is just impossible due to thermodynamics hating fun, but I guess you're asking about my plan to destroy the self-replication itself?"
"Yes. That."
Oh! A genuinely clipped tone! That's a new one out of her.
"OK, well, what do you know about Grue's power?" I ask.
And then I get the rare pleasure of spectating a super-intelligent AI get dumbfounded.
Yes, the laptop is recording this call; why do you ask?
***
"I still don't get what my role in this would be," she says.
"OK, as a first step, I'd like you to verify that Grue's mist is as impenetrable to sensors as we believe it to be. I have tried just about everything I can on my own, and it seems impervious to everything on the electromagnetic spectrum, microwaves included, as a really weird experiment with waffles can attest to. But Taylor's power somehow still works inside of it, so maybe quantum entanglement or some other technobabble may do the job. That's a vulnerability we would need to be aware of before the Army can adapt to it."
"And you just casually mentioning Taylor's power works inside of it is your segue into the second part of your request," she grumbles from inside the charcoal grey frame.
I [beam] at her.
"It's always a pleasure not to have to overexpose things. Just the right amount is a pleasure; more than that is a hassle."
"Get to it, Lisa…"
"OK, [Mom]," I say with mayhaps too much sarcasm to be casual, seeing the furtive smile that flits over her lips and sends a pang through my chest. "OK, the thing is… You could make two devices with screens that insects can interact with. Taylor's only limitation is how many arthropods she can fit somewhere, so you could train her to follow a pattern to, basically, send information in and out of Grue's cloud to you, with her acting as a Chinese Room."
Dragon blinks twice at me, yet again kind of confused.
"You mean…"
"That you could get readings from a drone unconnected from the Army more or less in real-time and interact with it without any danger to your code or equipment, unless a single drone is [vastly] more powerful than your computing devices, yes," I say.
And then I watch her abstracted expression running through the scenarios, the applicability of my idea, how to improve upon it, what parts would or not work…
And then I see her smile.
It's not like mine.
It's not the victorious smile of someone conquering a problem that has stumbled her for too long. It's not about shoving in the world's face that no, it isn't better than you, and it can't push you down anymore. It's not about showing them all that you [matter], and fuck them for ever daring say otherwise.
It's the smile of someone relieved, free of a burden. Someone that just wants to help and is now free to in a way that she wasn't a moment ago.
I envy it.
"That… that could work. We would need to practice, but… If it did? Lisa, do you realize what this could mean—"
"Of course I do. That's why I called you," I tell her with my smile.
Though, maybe, hopefully, a bit of hers.
***
I'm yet again pondering how this charm assault against Saint and his preconceptions about Dragon may be working as I pace my apartment, waiting for my microwaved, non-Grue meddled with waffles, to be done.
It's… OK, it's still a bit unnerving when I look at my recently painted walls that were full of gunshots not that long ago, but it is [mine], and I'll be damned if I'll ever let go of something of mine just because of some overprotective Nazi whose wife I got extensive footage of.
…
That didn't come across quite right.
[Lisa Wilbourn's emotional imbalance—]
Right. You know, sometimes I'd just like to be a regular girl who's still capable of self-deception without a nagging voice in her head reminding her how full of shit she is.
[Lisa Wilbourn's lack of self-awareness detrimental to long-term well-being—]
I know. I said, 'sometimes,' Power. I love you too.
[Lisa Wilbourn's anthropomorphizing of parahuman ability's interface—]
Yeah, yeah. That stopped working ages ago, you little shit.
Also, there's the blissful ding that shall end my hunger for—oh, wait, that's not the microwave; that's the door.
…
Right, people [can] call on doors. It may even be Taylor if she forgot her keys and decided to cut things short with her father. I should check.
[After] grabbing my gun.
I rush to my bedroom and take my trusty, heavily-modded yet actually not because I couldn't be bothered, SIG Sauer out of my bedside table's first drawer and walk at a more sedate pace toward the front door.
Then I look through the peephole without making a single sound to alert the caller. Because I'm not suicidal.
And it's…
It's a pretty woman.
Beautiful, actually, even if carefully so. She [has] natural beauty, but she chooses to craft it, to wear makeup that accents just the right amount of the sharp angles of an aristocratic face that would be far more genial without it. The jewelry is on point, nothing at all pointing to the gauche tastes of a nouveau riche, even if that's what she is.
She's wearing… a white sundress with a maroon, thick coat over it, because she wasn't sure about the weather before coming here. It still matches the garnets in her ear studs and the silver links of her short necklace. Her blonde hair is styled into an artful updo with falling ringlets framing her face that manage to draw attention to her jewelry without being blatant about it, her long, slender neck doing most of the heavy lifting in that regard.
She's anxious. Fidgeting. Guilty.
And—
[Angle of—]
No. No, Power. Please.
…
I take a moment to compose myself. To breathe. To fantasize about all the possibilities.
Then I open the door.
"Hi, Mom—" I start to say.
And then a woman who's not even forty clutches me to her chest and starts loudly sobbing.
"Sarah. Oh, God, Sarah, I thought I… You…" she tries to say before devolving into something unintelligible, her chin painfully digging into the side of my head as her tears mat my hair.
I stand there.
I don't move, don't hug her back. Don't do anything as her voice echoes in my head.
Sarah.
She calls me Sarah.
[Lisa Wilbourn's… Lisa Wilbourn.]
Thank you, Power.
==================
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 88 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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