#FallofDocFuture
Text
Back and Forth
It has been a while, but I thought I'd give you all an update. I am no longer active on twitter, and have moved most of my social media presence to Bluesky as https://bsky.app/profile/riderius.bsky.social
I am planning to move the primary place I post my stories, new and edited, to Dreamwidth, at https://riderius.dreamwidth.org/
Edit: (There appears to be an account on tumblr with my dreamwidth, bluesky, and old twitter account handle. That is not me.)
I intend to leave all the original versions up, and post links here whenever I post something new.
Today, I kicked things off with a lightly revised Chapter 1 of Princess. DW does not require an account to read, and has no ads. Comments can be posted anonymously, but leave your handle or name if you want me to recognize you from here. You can also start an account there, if you like, their FAQ is here.
Thank you all for your patience and kind comments over the years, and I hope you enjoy what I have planned, as I transfer, revise, and hopefully finally finish several stories I left hanging 8-)
Princess, Chapter 1
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Fall of Doc Future
Well. I have now read the Fall of Doc Future. That was... really awesome. If you follow me, there is a pretty good chance I think that either you have read it, or you should read it. It is on tumblr, which admittedly isn’t the best way to read, but it is really awesome. @docfuture. Go read it. Unless you already have and don’t feel like rereading it. The world will probably be a slightly better place if you do.
If you want a more proper and detailed recommendation: https://mhd-hbd.tumblr.com/post/146123140636/heres-why-you-yes-you-should-read-the-fall-of
1 note
·
View note
Text
Partners
[A new vignette from not long before Princess, as I try to get back into writing. My Stories page is still up but needs to be updated. Since there is no table of contents it is no longer easy to find the most recent chapters of Maker's Ark (currently here) or either the start or latest chapter of Princess (here and here), for which I apologize.
There are also severe issues with the new post editor (it is not fit for purpose for posting fiction chapters formatted elsewhere), so I am using the ‘legacy’ editor, after accidentally discovering it wasn’t already on, as it appeared to be. If and when that stops working I will likely no longer be able to post stories here, so if you like my stuff and communicate with anyone at tumblr, let them know that.]
Journeyman remembers.
A sunny day on an arid plain, smiling at the small group looking past him to the distant building, and the fire.
"...no brighter than the sun," he says, "but--"
Light blooms bright behind him, throwing new shadows as the watchers flinch and squint against the new blaze.
"There we go. You don't want to look directly at the Sun, either."
"Whoa," says one of the onlookers. "This is supposed to help?"
"Already has. That's my partner. Any biological and chemical problems at the former installation are now gone."
He waves a hand theatrically.
"As is the building, so they won't return. Nor will the sloppy safety practices and ignored regulations that allowed it to fester. And no radioactivity has been added, before you ask. I'm sure there will be arguments about what just happened for years--but they won't be here anymore."
"We've been complaining about that place for years," says a woman. "No one listened."
"Doc's Database did. Those complaints are on record. This will be handy when the owners of a former reasonably foreseeable public hazard try to make a fuss. You helped."
Another smile. "And you can help again, any of you on social media. You can post the no doubt quite spectacular photos from your handcomps and camera phones, and inform everyone that what you witnessed was not, in fact, a nuclear explosion, but a problem departing for good."
A chuckle, and several of them lift phones to join the ones already recording.
There is no warning. One moment there is nothing. The next...
Flicker is beside him.
A don't-call-her-goddess in indigo blue with silver tracery and a green visor, floating inches above the ground from treading lightly at speed before she lowers her feet to stand as humans do. Sparks fly from the tracery as the ghosts of plasma wreathing her hands dissipate, leaving the scent of lightning and hot lava, mixed with the tang of vaporized metal.
Her face is calm but not quite impassive.
Journeyman faces her and opens his hand, and they touch fingertips.
"Done," she says. "Shock soon. Nothing much."
The warning keeps the group from excessive startlement as the rumbling boom from the shockwave arrives, sound catching up after far faster things have paused. The glow has already faded, and he doesn't need to look to know the shape of the cloud.
He turns back to the group with another smile. "Well, I'm afraid the show is over except for some 'after' pictures, so our work here is done. Take care, folks."
He sweeps off his hat and bows. Flicker nods slightly, and there is a chorus of thanks.
"Home?" he asks. The tension was clear when she first appeared.
His magic has been almost superfluous today, his help little enough. Designated human--smiling, talking, making reassuring noises, spreading much needed calm, crafting a comprehensible mental framework for witnesses of the aftermath of marvels performed too fast to see.
"Home," she replies.
A twitch of his hand and he is between places, space twisting as he visualizes a pattern, then untwisting elsewhere.
His ears pop. Doc's HQ. The duty room.
He stretches his arm back and opens his hand again. He feels the partner touch repeated, then she moves, and rests her hands lightly on his shoulders, as she leans her cheek against the back of his head. He feels an unsteady breath.
Her hands could brush aside steel like tissue, compress coal to diamond, hurl stones to tear the sky asunder, and extend to nearby objects the beyond-normal physics that enabled her body to survive her speed. It was a profound gesture of trust, and slow-developed comfort, that let her touch with anything but fingertips, for reasons both physical and psychological.
"Bastards," she whispers, not meaning the crowd. A longer breath. It is not just onlookers that needed calm, once she slowed down and emotions made themselves known at human speeds.
"Management?" he asks.
"Board of directors. They knew. But not provably, unless they try to sue, so they won't."
"Ah. Want me to adjust the patrol parameters?"
"Already did. Thanks."
"I hear New Zealand is pretty this time of year, but the way things are going, we'd get mobbed by keas. And they're protected."
A breath of a laugh. "Heh. Yeah."
"Anything else I can do?"
"You're doing it already. Partner..." A pause. "Database says we should be done for the day, and I should eat. Food sounds very abstract to me right now, though. Any suggestions?"
She was both very human and very far from human, and the parts co-existed not always smoothly. He thought for a moment.
"Chifa? Peru? That stir fry over rice you liked last--"
"Yes! Where?"
He sent a set of GPS coordinates from his phone.
Ten minutes, and they were looking down a Peruvian mountainside from under a portable canopy, the sun low in the western sky. Eating lomo saltado, as he told her about the takeout server who joked that the 'hungry magician' brought good luck (as well as a generous tip.)
Flicker laughed, her good humor restored.
There were so many things they needed to talk about, eventually. Boundaries, plans, the dangerously overloaded and ambiguous word 'partner'.
He smiled as Flicker shifted suddenly to talking about something she had 'meant to tell him', technical details of physics behind a new wrinkle in her constant quest to reduce the impact of shockwaves when she needed to move something in a hurry. He could follow along, barely--she knew which areas he understood already and elaborated as needed, her eyes alight.
Partners.
The rest could be dealt with... later.
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
Princess, Chapter 3, Revised
Flicker's day fails to improve. Edited and slightly expanded from the original serial version.
https://riderius.dreamwidth.org/2023/11/16/princess03.html
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Princess, Chapter 2, revised
Lightly revised from the original. I cleaned up the physics background a bit, and smoothed out some minor inconsistencies.
Enjoy!
5 notes
·
View notes
Note
I would like to know Everything and Anything that you would be willing to share about Learning is About To Occur, please
Is he patterned after one or more of his crew? He's a biogestalt, AIUI, which means he ostensibly *should* be a modified uploaded lizard with a flesh-instance he can periodically re-synch with(unless I am misunderstanding)
(Some spoilers for The Maker's Ark)
A fair question, and one I will probably go into more detail about in a longer post 8-). But a few things. The Learning is About to Occur is not a biogestalt--he is an AI, but one who was created and raised in a specific way, as a person, among other AIs and biogestalts (his mentor was an old battleship AI everyone calls the 'Old Lady'), specifically to avoid a set of potential problems that the Grs'thnk were concerned about.
They wanted AIs that understood people and could be understood (to some extent) by them, had emotion-equivalent responses that matched to people-understandable ones, and generally *liked* people.
The Grs'thnk did not want remorseless robot death machines. They have those kind of movies too, and know what kinds of failure modes those have 8-)
So, strictly speaking, his ship could probably function with a much smaller crew, and more robots and automation, but does not, because that is not what the Grs'thnk people, government and navy wanted.
Now, Learning has gotten a bit ahead of the curve of where the Grs'thnk expect AIs to be, and I've hinted in the stories that it is taking them some time to catch up. (The Grs'thnk have a lot of small-c conservatives because many more of them live to be quite old.) The Grs'thnk Ambassador and fleet commander are well aware of this, and it is one of the reasons they specifically wanted Learning.
He is smart, well-socialized, and charming. He gets along well with his biogestalt team (each ship AI has one), his captain, crew, and most other people he encounters.
And he flirts with the ship AI of the Primly Certain because they both enjoy it. But he does it openly and with evident good humor, because if a ship AI is going a bit beyond what was expected, flirting with another ship is a lot less scary way to reveal that than to just start making ominous prophetic warnings 8-).
I am glad you like the character--he is a lot of fun to write. 8-)
18 notes
·
View notes
Note
Does Black Swan share any code or continuity with Vizier, Flicker's stock trading AI?
Why, yes. Yes, she does. 8-)
One of Doc's purposes in allowing Flicker to use that aggressive an AI persona was to field test certain details that really needed someone very fast who could say "Hey, wait a minute, that's not quite what I wanted."
Flicker helps Doc a lot with safety tests where speed is handy.
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
Preparations
Since it is possible this may end up as my only significant social media account, I thought I'd put up a bit of an update.
I have never really used Tumblr in a conventional interactive way (though I do appreciate the likes and reblogs), but more as a place to put my writing. Mostly that has been serialized superhero speculative fiction--the Doc Future universe--set originally in an alternate near future, now an alternate past. Fall and Call take place in 2013/2014 and Princess in 2012. I also post background bits, commentary, and a few short stories and novelettes (and Princess, currently a novella trying to become a novel.)
In addition to the table of contents pages for Fall and Call, I normally include a 'Next' link at the bottom of every chapter page and a 'Previous' link at the top to make navigation easier, and I have yet to add TOCs for Maker's Ark and Princess because neither is finished.
My Stories page is still up but needs to be updated. I have not tested how much Tumblr's editor has changed since I stopped posting regularly, and I was already using a workaround for tab-delineated paragraphs, so editing older stuff can be an issue 8-)
Many readers believe Fall is a stronger story when starting with the first chapter rather than the prologue, I have come to agree, and the revised version will be restructured to reflect that, so starting with 'Phone Tag' is recommended for new readers. The issues with Fall caused by learning structure and pacing as I went along and not originally intending to turn it into a novel will remain until I do put out a revised version, either online or as an ebook, but I hope readers can still find the current version enjoyable.
Since there is no table of contents it is no longer easy to find the most recent chapters of Maker's Ark (currently here) or either the start or latest chapter of Princess (here and here), for which I apologize. I have always been better at creative work than maintenance of something that grew to be quite a bit bigger than I expected 8-)
Some bits of continuity are going to change, so if there is a conflict, go with what is written later if this matters to you. I have been working on revising some of the earlier chapters of Princess which were causing problems later, and those will probably be the first writing I post when I resume.
In the meantime, enjoy what is to your taste, and you can always check back in timeline here for what you missed. Also a note on format: I starting writing Fall with the intent that the online version be easily read on a full size computer or laptop screen. I understand that many now prefer to read on a phone, tablet, or e-reader, but this is the format I create for. I don't personally use a phone for reading because of eyesight issues, but I hope my writing is still enjoyable for those who do.
I don't yet have a schedule for when I will resume posting, and I don't want to disappoint anyone so I plan to just put things up when they are ready 8-)
Edit: Link to latest Maker’s Ark chapter fixed - thanks to the reader that pointed that out 8-)
Take care, all.
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
Doc Future Visual
I’ve been quiet, but have not forgotten about the series and intend to continue Princess and Maker’s Ark. In the meantime, I got an unexpected Christmas present.
When I first wrote Fall, the was something I very much wished I still had access to, which was the City of Heroes character and costume designer. Unfortunately, they had shut down for good a number of years prior. But... secrets were saved, arcane rituals were performed, and there now access to it is possible again.
For those unfamilar, you can read the first novel “The Fall of Doc Future” here, and a link to most of my other related work, incuding the sequel, Skybreaker’s Call, and most of the still incomplete 3rd novel, “The Maker’s Ark” here.
Doc Future:
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
Slowly Surfacing
Back at writing but it is going slowly. Computer situation is still a bit rickety, and I’ve been having issues with rabid perfectionism and proper sequencing, but I wanted to thank all the people who have contacted me with support or just wondered if I was ever going to continue.
Thank you!
Have an excerpt from the next chapter of Princess, out Soon (hopefully within the next 2 weeks.) Other stories page link here.
*****
Take the memories as they come, don't try to force them, even if they aren't in order. Then build on what's easy. Your models of human memory were skewed by the Database--and Doc is not a good example to try to emulate.
Stella's advice. Flicker was trying to follow it. But it would be so much easier if human memories came with timestamps.
*****
A few weeks ago, not long after Stella had given that advice.
Flicker was On Call. A section of her time when others could call for assistance, knowing she was ready. That didn't happen often; most interventions she did were her own, reacting to Database alerts.
But a few were different.
A request for assistance came in, from the western Pacific--inside the typhoon that was pounding the Philippines.
From the Volunteer.
Speed up.
The Volunteer rarely called her--or anyone else--for help. It wasn't that he was unwilling; it was just that there wasn't usually much she could contribute if he was already there. She checked that her land path was clear, cued a context dump to her visor, and went out the doorway at 50 kilometers per second, leaving the force fields to refill the gap that never held a physical door when she was on call.
Thunder and lightning behind her as she cut diagonally southwest across the plains, heading for desert and as much emptiness as possible for her trailing shockwaves at 10% of c.
New Mexico, Arizona, California, then ocean, and it was safe to speed up to 0.2 c. She considered the summary the Database had provided.
The Volunteer wanted help moving a ship to a safer place from the typhoon. But he was way better than she was at moving big things without breaking them, so it wasn't clear what he needed. His call had been very terse. His com was limited; Doc had prioritized robustness over everything else when building it. She'd find out soon...
430 milliseconds later, she slowed down off Mindanao amid violent waves and wind gusts. The Volunteer was stabilizing a container ship that clearly in trouble. Flicker glided closer in order to be heard over the wind.
"What do you need?" she yelled.
A slight smile from the Volunteer. "Shrink wrap!" he yelled back.
Flicker's quick and dirty solution to many a problem. But...
"Shrink wrap what?"
"The ship. Crew's off, and I can move it so it won't ground and break up, but I can't stop the wind from taking anything unsecured. A hazard. Wrap will also slow leaks."
The hazard was obvious enough--several container stacks had collapsed and stuff was everywhere on deck.
"Okay, but I didn't bring enough for a whole ship!"
A broad smile. Rare from him these days. "Check the blue container with the crumpled corner." He added a container code.
Flicker ran up the side of the ship and glided through the mess. She found a blue container with the right code near the stern. She ripped open the end panel to find... rolls of shrink wrap. A whole forty foot container full of them. That was enough.
Back to the Volunteer with the first roll.
"You'll have to lift the ship before I can wrap around the keel!"
"I know. Ready?"
"Ready!"
The Volunteer dived into the water next to the ship. Flicker thought a little bit about his power while she waited.
The Volunteer was strong, but he wasn't just strong. He could send his strength out through extended objects and lift them non-destructively in ways that filled riggers with awe and engineers with grudging respect even as they had to qualify impossibilities with 'except for the Volunteer.'
He lifted cars, buses, trucks, locomotives, military vehicles, planes, and even some sturdy buildings. And ships--everything from the converted Liberty ship he'd used to fly refugees across oceans during World War II to the half of the Edmund Fitzgerald with the survivors on it.
Someone had written a song about that one.
The wind howled, the waves seethed and frothed, and the ship slowly lifted until it was free of the water, with the bottom center of the keel balanced on the Volunteer's shoulders, his arms extended along it fore and aft. Flicker got to work.
Round and round she went, trailing wrap already shrinking from the heat of rapid unrolling. The rain and seawater were sufficent for cooling and fumes were nothing in this wind. Flicker allowed generous overlap whenever she started a new roll, and heat from rapid motion meant a wave of her hand was far faster than a heat gun. Soon the ship was fully cocooned except for the single spot on the bottom held by the Volunteer.
A final check--she still had a number of spare rolls, and she'd braced some containers and rounded off a few sharp corners. Nothing significant had shifted. Back down to the Volunteer.
"Done!" she said, and watched him relax slightly. He'd been braced against the torque from the wrapping, but now he could concentrate on moving the ship.
"Thank you!" he said, and squinted into the distance, already judging the best path for flying the ship to its safer haven.
"Need anything else?" she asked.
"Not now," he said. "Just keep an eye on the rest of the world. I'm going to be busy here"--a look towards the shore--"for a while."
"Okay, I will. Good luck!"
A smile and "Thanks again!" and he was off, slowly gathering speed with something that would probably spawn legends of a flying ghost ship if anyone else saw it aloft. Flicker watched for a little while, making sure nothing came loose, then headed home.
That "keep an eye on the rest of the world" stirred a complex mix of emotions. She thought about it for the rest of her shift. The Volunteer had been inspiring other heroes for over three-quarters of a century, and he was good at it. When her shift ended, she discussed priorities and degrees of off-duty with the Database for a while before setting a different set of interrupt thresholds for the rest of her day and night.
She slept better that night, knowing the Database was keeping an eye--her personalized eye--on the world, and would wake her as needed.
*****
9 notes
·
View notes
Note
In "Speed" from Fall, Doc tells Stella that Flicker's 'estimated' max speed in Speedtest was 0.9999946C and that she was still accelerating at loop 50. In Princess ch.9, Flicker KNOWS that she got up to 0.99999994C and that she didn't finish. He also doesn't mention that an outside attack was what caused her to lose control of her entropy-dumping which caused the disaster. Is this a retcon and/or Doc shading the truth for someone he only just met and/or did Flicker conceal facts from Speedtest?
*****
Mostly retcon - "Speed" is the single oldest thing I wrote that ended up in Fall, and I had barely started writing. I wasn't thinking about continuity at all (it was just a disconnected vignette at that point). I tried to stick close to the spirit of it, but there are a few things that will need to be revised because I was needlessly detailed before I had worked out the physics.
The temperature Doc quotes (4 billion K) would be too low as well, because the Hagedorn temperature (where nucleonic matter breaks down into a quark/gluon plasma, and that Flicker mentions in Princess) is above 1 trillon K, though that can be finessed as a surface temperature; Flicker was concentrating her massive excess entropy in a small region inside her body in order to up her radiation rate of neutrinos, which were the only thing that could get out of ther body with sufficent efficiency while she held herself together 8-)
Now Doc has just met Stella, but he knows Flicker has talked to her at least a little about the aftereffects of Speedtest, as is shown in Princess. She knows a lot more than she is saying and acting surprised at things she has already guessed at, because having Doc talk to her about technical details is something that is psychologically useful at that point.
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
Princess, part 14
[This story is a prequel, set in an alternate 2012, several years before The Fall of Doc Future, when Flicker is 16. Links to some of my other work are here. Updates are theoretically biweekly, but it’s 2020 8-) Next chapter is partly done so I’m going to try for before the end of the year.]
Previous: Part 13
Memories.
Flicker was sensitive to anything that might disrupt them. With her speed, subjective versus objective time was hopeless from the start. Even 'When was that again?' and getting things in the right order was difficult. She needed to forget the vast majority of things that happened when she sped up. There just wasn't space in her squishy biological brain for what she could accumulate at a million times the speed of normal human subjective consciousness. She had always felt close to the edge of what was possible to remember.
At least for as long as she could remember--and she didn't remember anything episodic before she was nine.
How did normal humans remember, really? It was frustrating to ask them. They didn't know, they just did. And the scientific literature was frustratingly poor at providing the answers she most wanted, because they were hard to quantify and measure. Doc said recalling social interactions from episodic memory was partially a learned skill--itself stored in implicit memory. Which Flicker was a lot better at, but didn't really understand either.
Today she remembered bits and pieces while she prepared for work.
She remembered talking to Sealord about trying to act human when you weren't.
Sealord was a... Well, you couldn't really call him superhuman anything, because he wasn't human. He wasn't alien, either; he'd lived on Earth longer than most humans. He was a supercephalopod giant squid, who'd had the kind of origin event that might turn a human into a superhuman if they were very lucky--and kill them if they weren't.
He was good at shapeshifting, but going from a deep sea invertebrate to a land biped was a big ask before you even got to the human part. He looked like a handsome, Polynesian-appearing man in his social landform. But when he started to talk, he seemed to move into the uncanny valley for many people.
Not Flicker. She didn't expect human. She expected 'communicate well enough to be understood', and he did. He wasn't trying to 'pass' as human--he was a powerful being assuming a form compatible with air-based speech and human infrastructure.
She actually thought his old utility surface form suited him better. He was more comfortable with it, and that showed. At least to her. It looked like a human body with a squid for a head. It let him use tentacle waving and pigmentation changes for non-verbal communication--which he was very good at--and tentacle type at a keyboard, which was easier for him than using hands, even when he had them. But its appearance triggered fear even worse than his social form. Which made it counterproductive for diplomacy.
"No," he had said. "I am not better. At acting human. Than you."
His speech was slow when he wasn't in a hurry, and his verbal cadence was unusual. Using lungs and vocal cords and a human-style mouth together in the right way had taken him a long time to master. Flicker didn't get impatient. Getting the timing of speech right was tricky. She did remember learning that, and the frustration.
"I am better at shapeshifting," he said. "Squid are better at body mimicry. Than humans. I started with an advantage. I am worse at other things. You are better at human things. As a human."
"But I'm not better," said Flicker. "Not at the hard things."
A shake of the head. "Yes. Difficult things. Humans learn as children. And don't think them hard. They start with an advantage."
"What hard human things do you think I'm good at?"
"Running." Sealord smiled. "Throwing rocks."
Flicker thought about that for a long time.
She remembered Jetgirl's laugh. They'd been having another round in their half-joking, half serious argument about whether Flicker could fly.
"He's right," said Jetgirl. She grinned. "You are way better at moving fast than I am at flying."
"But flying is hard."
"Lots of things are. And humans have no natural ability at it. But birds and insects do, so people can see what good flying looks like. You've watched a hummingbird hover. Impressive, right?"
"Yeah. But scale matters--a Canada goose taking off is pretty cool, too. I've watched that more times, because it looks so clunky. But it works."
The laugh. "Take-offs and landings are usually the hardest. Anyway, most humans can run--or at least they could when they were kids--so they don't think running is as impressive. And if you're moving slow enough to see, you're usually doing your glide thing, which doesn't look hard. No one sees you move your legs much, just an occasional flash and boom."
"That glide is a convenience and safety habit. It's quiet, and I don't have to worry about damage if I speed up suddenly."
Another grin. "Yeah, you've already taken off, so the hard part is over."
"It's only a few centimeters up--I don't fly," said Flicker. "I just run on air so the ground doesn't get wrecked."
"That's flying like a maglev. You go higher as you speed up. Lots of pilots who fly nap-of-the-earth study your patterns of flashes and booms, for educational purposes."
"That's because I have to be real careful to not run into things. Or even get too close when I'm trailing shockwaves and plasma."
"Not running into things is pretty important for them, too."
"I'm still not flying. Sealord's point was that humans are already adapted for bipedal locomotion, and I started with that advantage. You don't fly with your legs and feet."
"I don't. And that being careful is part of 'way better'."
"A point. But my speed means I can make time to be careful."
"That's what I meant. You build on your speed with skill and practice."
Flicker remembered. It was time to use what she was good at to help people again.
Yesterday had been a test run, logging bio-telemetry and mind coordination to the Database. Today was Flicker's first try at going 'on duty' since recovering from Speedtest.
She followed Stella's guidelines. It was easiest to forestall self-deception at a beginning. Flicker had fallen into a form of metric myopia in the months before Hermes' attack. A variation of what Doc called 'the tyranny of the easy to measure.' She had sought to maximize a number, a measure of lives saved. Because it was clear, when her judgement was hazy and her connection to humanity felt distant. But it wasn't 'lives saved'. It was, at best, clearly attributable potential lives saved in the immediate aftermath of action, as estimated by the Database. And it undervalued anything hard to quantify.
She'd abdicated her judgement. The numbers had become the purpose.
There probably wouldn't be any 'lives saved' today. But that wasn't the point. She'd had the Database sift through lower priority, less well-characterized problems, to see what she'd been missing.
The mudslide on the slope in Borneo might have come today, or tomorrow, or next week. It was coming, there was too much rain for it not to. It might have reached the village, or not. The villagers might have evacuated in time, or not. But now they wouldn't have to. Flicker moved it sideways instead of down, to an area without people. Some heard thunder, or saw a spray of earth and vegetation arcing high--but not towards them.
Twenty minutes of earth moving, a shower back home, and back to reassessment. It was a start. And it didn't require her to talk to anyone or contribute to burnout, so she could keep going for a while longer.
Flicker cleared rockslide blockages in the Andes mountains, present and threatened, for another ten minutes. Then dealt with a few other hazards in remote areas in South America. Which wasn't well covered by superhero response. The initial data quality was usually very low. But so what? She could always run and look.
And then the first hints of something odd had shown up on satellite scans, the Database had noticed, and Flicker ran and looked--and found giant ants emerging from a fringe of Amazon rainforest.
Giant bugs kept recurring. Interdimensional 'outsider' intrusions were far more common than most people realized, but the vast majority of them were unable to overcome the more than three-billion-year adaptive advantage of Earth life and promptly got eaten. If this happened on land, the growth impetus that made many invaders a potential threat was usually absorbed by microorganisms, fungi, and plants. And bugs, who were typically the first link of the food chain that was really good at moving.
So they could eat, and grow, and move, and eat more, until--if the initial intrusion was large enough--someone finally noticed. Or they succumbed on their own. The effects of the square-cube law could be ameliorated with alien energy, but past a certain size, that was hard to sustain.
Ants were good at foraging, calling friends, sharing food, and spreading out with new size and vigor. A lot at once was only to be expected.
A few locals had spotted them, noped out, and concentrated on getting themselves and their animals to safety. The ants were about the size of cars, and no longer very fast--they were too big for their body proportions to be efficient at moving anymore. A few had paused to chew on crops, but most of them were looking for something tastier. Or at least meatier. They needed to be stopped.
The familiarity was almost a relief--but it did come with a warning. Best find the start, to be sure the threat was just ants.
Into the jungle, down a narrowing swath of disruption that eventually ended in a pool of churned mud. It was still being picked over by scavengers, but no longer seething with extradimensional anything. Perhaps a day or two old? But there were no other large outbreaks of gigantism. The local fauna were already taking care of stragglers who had grown too large for their niches. Flicker passed a jaguar eating the remains of an oversized but still clearly manageable frog. And she could see the signs of progressive dilution; the jaguar might get a slight boost, but not enough to be a problem before it faded.
Back to the ants. And a local soil and drainage map from the Database.
The remains of the ants would be soon be good fertilizer. And safe, as long as the concentration in any one spot didn't get too high. But they were too big to move by hand without breaking. So it was time for entrainment--pulling ants with the wind of her passage. Up and down, back and forth--running slowly for her, but not trying to limit drag. Air moved in response, and oversized insects tumbled in her wake. She scattered them widely.
And then... "Don't punch anything living" was the rule, but there was an exception. Antenna quivered above her as she stopped between the open mandibles of the first ant.
Sorry, foragers. You were never going to make it back to a colony anyways.
Her palm strike sent a shockwave through the ant, and a spray of ex-ant outward. A widely distributed mess over the surrounding landscape was actually desirable here. Still, she pulled her punches; she didn't want fireballs. Hand chops and more blasts of scooped air, together with the liquefying effect of Flicker's inertial damping field, helped her manage the spread.
A few distant figures watched giant ants being turned into goo over their fields and pastures. Which should be bad tasting enough to avoid problems with livestock until it decayed, but a concentration map would go into the Database notice sent out to the locals--they would know their own fields and animals best. The Database would keep monitoring for problems until any danger was past.
Ants finished, she slowed down a little away from the nearest group. She knew hardly any Portuguese, so she used her visor to check her translation. Her accent was awful, so she settled for saying "They're gone," and a wave of a still-goopy hand. She acknowledged the Database advisory that she was now over her duty time limit for the first day and headed home.
Her shower matched the one at Doc's HQ, with a customized array of converted waterjet cutters and a selection of decontamination options. It quickly stripped away the remaining layer of plasma-deposited bug juice. She then switched it to regular shower mode to help her mind return the rest of the way from 'on duty'. That took a while. Habits were stubborn things.
Dried and dressed, she logged her impressions, and looked at her bio-telemetry and reaction analysis with the Database for a bit before formally ending her abbreviated 'workday'. Not everything had gone smoothly, but it had become a better day--and it was still morning. It was something. It was enough, for now.
*****
Stella had a wry smile, a faint twist of the mouth that found humor in a less-than-ideal world. "I'm not well-qualified to advise you about memory," she said, "because no one is. I'm doing it because your Database integrity AI doesn't think there's anyone better. And neither does Doc."
"You have been helping me with my emotional reactions," said Flicker.
"I've avoided triggering any obvious disasters, and you've felt subjectively better. Whether that is actually helping... well, we may suddenly find out the answer is 'not enough'."
They were at Stella's office for another session. It was, if not a comforting place, at least familiar. It did not add to the inherent stress of a session, which was probably the best Flicker could expect. Protocols had been set and were being followed, and snacks and beverages were at hand. Elements of a basic social ritual, which did help, regardless of Stella's current pessimism.
"Well, I think we've been making progress," said Flicker. "Is there some new reason for you to doubt that?"
"The restrictions on a considerable amount of Database material were lifted for me at the end of last week, in response to your request. I've been thinking about the implications. Your AI assistant, Vizier, can speak directly to me in ways the main Database AIs can't, because it doesn't have full access. That allows it more latitude for speculation and personal advocacy."
Stella looked out through the force screen over the sliding doors to the patio. "I cultivate an image of implacability because it is useful for my work. But I'm not infallible." Another wry smile. "I have the scars to prove it."
"You're who I've got."
"Yes. And I will recommend precautions, some of which you will likely find unpleasant, to attempt to limit the damage from mistakes and unforeseen events. You don't have to follow them. Many will probably turn out not to have been needed. But it's part of my best work, and this is a useful time to remind you again. Do you understand?"
"...yeah."
"An important distinction before we start. You have an assortment of memory-connected issues. I don't think precise mechanisms are as urgent as dealing with effects. We don't want to ease one problem only to aggravate several others. Your new concern--that your memories may not precisely correspond to past events in this world--does not matter for how I intend to begin today."
"Um. I think what's actually true does matter a bit."
"Yes, it does." Another smile. "But we aren't sitting here together for exterior facts--you have the Database for those. I'm here to hear and see you talk about what you remember, what has shaped you, what matters to you, how you feel and react, and how it affects you. And listening to and watching me, my voice and body language and pacing, as I shape my advice for you--talking to another live, flesh and blood person--should help you. Both in putting your old memories in context, and eventually with some of your other issues."
Stella glanced at her computer display before continuing. "You intend to use memory compartmentalization before 'correcting' memories using the Database. That's understandable, and also hazardous. I believe some of your existing issues are already complicated by memory compartmentalization. That doesn't mean it's bad. Some is unavoidable, given your two-part mind, and it's necessary for managing PTSD. But it has side effects. I want a better baseline of where you are now before you start anything new. Memories aren't static--they shift as you recall and relate them. Do you understand the importance of treating Database records of personally relevant events as potentially fallible as well as incomplete?"
"Yes," said Flicker. "I've been using the Database for memory backups, but there's no guarantee that anything before my return after Speedtest is still compatible with my speed mind."
"It's more general than that. You have some reductive assumptions about memory that may be a problem. May be. My research has taught me to beware of most generalizations. Now. I want you to review certain of your memories for me, starting from the beginning. That doesn't mean we're starting from scratch. You've used the resources you had, and are by no means unskilled. Just the fact that you are currently functional is a remarkable accomplishment. But that means many of your current problems are subtle, tricky, or tough."
"Because I've already fixed the easy stuff," said Flicker.
A smile. "At least what you thought was easy."
"...and thought was fixed. I get it. So what do you mean by the beginning? My first memories?"
"Earlier than that. Start with your arrival on Earth."
"All right, but I got a lot of this third or fourth hand. I cannot currently access any coherent memories before I was nine."
"I know," said Stella, "But your childhood is important enough to you that even indirect information about it shaped who you are today."
"Okay."
Flicker took a deep breath before starting. "I was dropped off at that first orphanage in early May of 1997 by some guy. He was probably an extradimensional entity, and possibly the same guy who arranged payment, checked back on me a few times, and set up my later transfer, but there's no proof or direct evidence of that. He said that I was born on the first day of spring in the previous year, which would have made me just over a year old. That matched how I looked and was plausibly consistent with the fact that I could feed myself. He didn't say where I was born, who the parents were, or provide any surviving documentation, and there are no remaining findable witnesses.
"My birth date was recorded as March 20, 1996--which would make me 16 now--but no paperwork was filed with the state. The surviving workers at that orphanage remember me by the nickname "Chirpy," after the only vocalization anyone heard me make. I wasn't yet consciously controlling my speed changes, which cut sounds short. But they do remember me--as creepily silent most of the time. I was believed to be haunted or psychic. No one considered that I might have superspeed and very little awareness of my environment. Database thinks one of the people who died might have thought I just had hearing trouble and tried to teach me to read. I apparently picked up more later, because I knew how to read--and even write a little--when my memories start."
Flicker looked down. "In 2002, that orphanage burned down, and all local records about me were lost. The details of that fire are still the subject of legal disputes and there's been a long running battle between the surviving relatives of three workers who died in the fire and an insurance company. The place was a firetrap, records were definitely altered, at least two people died suspiciously after the fire, and the relatives deserve to and probably eventually will win. The cause of the fire might have been arson. It also might have been me, based on some models I ran a couple of years ago. It would be very easy for me to start fires by oblivious fast movement in a wooden structure filled with flammables. But I have no memory of it.
"Anyway, I was transferred to another orphanage in a different state. Where there was systematic fraud. And they now had a live girl with no records--me--who was still being paid for off the books by someone, and a dead girl who they hadn't reported dead and didn't want to because they'd stop getting money. So they altered records to make it look like I was her. She was at least a year younger, but as long as no one challenged it or compared things, they were fine."
Flicker smiled briefly. "Then someone tipped off Gumshoe about the fraud, and he started investigating. He found the orphanage I was at, and ended up in a confrontation with the director. I apparently came to find out what the commotion was about, and the director did something really stupid. It's not clear whether he tried to use me as a hostage or just a shield, but I didn't like it. I killed him."
Flicker shook her head. "I don't like talking about it because people ask how I felt. I don't remember. My emotions didn't reliably connect to memories for a while, and my very first clear memory is watching his head explode. I don't know whether I entropy dumped to his head or just waved my hand or both, but I wanted him gone, so bam, dead. I do remember Gumshoe just looking at me for a little bit, then doing something at his wrist, and a little while later I met the Volunteer. And my life started getting better. I began remembering things regularly, though it took a while to start putting them in order. This was 2005."
Stella studied her for a moment. "How much of your anger over the age issue originated with the identity fraud?"
"A lot. There was so much I wanted to know, and the altered records kept obstructing everything. And Gumshoe died before I could talk coherently, so I never got to ask him about a lot of things. I obviously wasn't the girl I was listed as, but the state didn't have any other birth date for their records so they kept using hers. That made me mad because here were official people--people who were supposed to help--insisting on using information they knew was wrong."
"That took forever to fix, partly because everyone who could testify that I couldn't possibly be as young as that was already involved in the lawsuits over the fire. Or wasn't talking to anyone because of them. And no one else cared." Flicker paused, then corrected herself. "Okay, no, that's not fair. Doc did care, but he didn't want to make a fuss at the time because it could have complicated my adoption or my citizenship--not having a birth certificate or any human witnesses to your birth is a pain, legally."
"Indeed. And not that uncommon a problem," said Stella.
"Anyway, finally I filed a lawsuit," said Flicker. "And got it almost settled, I thought--and then that stupid insurance company intervened, because some arcane legal thing meant my settlement would make them more likely to lose the lawsuit against them over the fire. I didn't handle it well. But Francine--she was my lawyer too by then, not just Doc's--told me that if I gave her time, she would make the insurance company executives, their board of directors, and the stockholders of their parent company regret that intervention thoroughly. And late last year, she finally won the last appeal of the primary suit. I'm 16. But some places don't accept that yet, so Francine's team is still busy."
"I see," said Stella. "It's clear you're still very emotionally invested in the details. Is that something you're willing to elaborate on?"
Flicker took a long breath. "I try to compartmentalize it so I don't keep getting angry again. But yeah. I hope you're ready for some ranting."
Stella smiled. "That's fine."
"Okay. The fraud at the second orphanage was already a mess, intertwined with several other messes, but sorting it out in one place wasn't enough. Oh, no..."
Time passed. At some point Flicker got up and started pacing.
"...and so I was like 'Okay, bonehead, maybe they won't charge you with accessory after the fact to fraud, but I'm also sole director of a corporation to which I've leased the rights to my personal image, and the value of that in interstate commerce is affected by my legal age in your state. I have money, good lawyers, standing, and a grudge over something you could have avoided for free just by not being a jerk about it'. But I have to do that in every state that decides to make an issue out of refusing to change my age in their records without a conventional birth certificate. And a lot of them are fighting it. So it's still not over. But at least now I'm legally sixteen for federal and international purposes, in my home state, and in Pennsylvania, where Journeyman lives. But I've been trying to get this crap fixed since I was twelve, and I'm so sick of it."
"Understandable," said Stella. "And it's time we take a break, I think."
*****
Stella was getting better at timing the session breaks so Flicker was able to keep a comfortable safety margin. There was probably something about not having speed that made the psychology of pacing easier to judge. There were so many indirect effects.
"How did your morning patrol go?" asked Stella, after they started lunch. "The Database informed me that your stress levels stayed encouragingly low. But giant ants were mentioned."
"Yeah, they're fertilizer in rural Brazil now. No one was hurt. And the rest was just clearance work--the kind of thing the Volunteer is better at, but I can manage. Didn't feel like much, but it was better than nothing." Flicker had another spoonful of the soup. "This is really good soup. What is it?"
"It's egg drop soup from a local place," said Stella. "Comfort food. I like it when I'm recovering from something stressful or debilitating."
"Heh." Flicker shook her head. "You keep helping in different ways than I expect you to help."
"Expectations have always been a bit of a mixed bag for me. On that note, you had a question about my background that you've been very patient about."
"Well, yeah. It seems kind of silly now, but the Database verified you received your doctorate when you were 17," said Flicker, "but said the university was prevented by a non-disclosure agreement from revealing anything but the title of your thesis. Which I thought was weird."
"They tried to revoke my doctorate. After some discussion, they settled," said Stella. "But the administration never actually had a copy. The NDA was part of the settlement. Not coincidentally, they also settled a suit from a group of students and former students at the same time. People used to wonder why I chose that university and thesis committee. But what happened to them was part of the point."
"What was 'Alternate Means of Addressing Harmful Behavior Patterns in Entrenched Power Structures' about, anyway?"
"The title gets the point across. The specific methods were of limited generality and don't scale well. It was a proof of concept, but there would be issues with it becoming widely accessible."
"I'm still curious."
"I know. But the NDA was useful to me and still helps protect the former students. The Database and I both respect it. If there were a particular threat to one of them that you needed to deal with, then the Database would reveal appropriate information. There currently isn't."
"I guess... that's good. Was that your goal?"
"One of them. The other two were to get a doctorate quickly, and establish a reputation. Anyone investigating my qualifications in more detail would have no trouble establishing that whatever my methods actually were, they worked: Nothing else bad happened to the students. And nothing good to the thesis committee or the administration."
"Oh."
*****
Another hour of indirect memory tests, mostly boring. But Stella said boring was good; anything exciting here would mean an unexpected problem, and they had plenty of expected ones already. The one interesting part was a reframing of something Flicker had known for a long time.
"No," said Stella, studying her display. "I don't think you react any more emotionally to speaking or listening than you do to reading. Not more than a typical human."
"What do you mean?" said Flicker. "I've thoroughly documented it."
A smile from Stella. "You weren't measuring what you thought you were measuring. You have to restrict your subjective speed to talk and listen, which requires effort by your speed mind. And you use the ability to freely speed up and consult the Database for several quite effective calming strategies that are less disruptive to reading than listening. So your coping works better. After you account for that, the base emotional effect is the same."
Flicker studied the graphs and supporting information the Database provided. The conclusions were consistent.
"Huh. I remember interactive things way more emotionally, though."
"You appear to anchor social memories to emotional impact, consolidating out your calming measures, while your reading memories get subsumed in your reaction to what you learned. So, among other things, your estimates of emotional leakage from compartmentalized memories will be poorly calibrated."
"Oof. Yeah, I guess I'm going to have to watch out for that."
*****
"We're stopping already?" said Flicker. "I could keep going--we're making progress, Database says I'm Green, and I still feel fine."
That wry smile. "Yes, and I'd prefer you stay that way. You'll have homework. I want you to summarize your emotional impressions from your pre-sleep memory assimilation, so we can compare with your memories later."
"Huh. Do you think there will be discrepancies?"
"I don't know. But if there are, we want to know about them; that's why I'm asking. We cannot take for granted that anything about your sleep, learning, or memory processing is the same as a typical human."
"Yeah, okay. Do you want me to record anything else?"
"Not tonight. I don't want to overload you by trying too many things at once."
Flicker looked down. "Well, here's an emotional impression already. That's the opposite of my preferred approach. I don't like leaving known problems. I'd much rather solve everything, then recover. I already know that makes it easier for me to sleep."
"Yes, and you've done a very good job of solving a wide variety of problems where that attitude is helpful. It's very effective. Speed is your hammer."
"But not all my problems are nails."
"Exactly."
Flicker sighed. "Well, okay, then. I guess this is why I needed you. You're good at helping."
A raised eyebrow. "I'm not, particularly. What I am good at is convincing people to listen who otherwise wouldn't."
"...and that's a problem I have that definitely isn't a nail."
Another smile.
"Okay. Talk to you later. And Stella? Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Next:
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
Princess, part 12
[This story is a prequel, set in an alternate 2012, several years before The Fall of Doc Future, when Flicker is 16. Links to some of my other work are here. Updates are theoretically biweekly. Next chapter is partly done so I’m going to try to get it out early in September.]
Previous: Part 11
Recovery--and a start at change and learning.
Flicker thought about the wrap up of her first session, and Stella's comments on paying a bit more attention to the ways other people were already helping.
"... and I just suppressed thinking about it at all because the frustration got real bad when I didn't," Flicker had said.
"Understandable," said Stella. "Did you consider talking to Armadillo?"
"I talked to her about some general stuff, but she's... old."
Stella nodded slowly. "I can see how the Database might have given you the impression that sex was invented sometime in the 60s. And Armadillo was already middle-aged by then."
"That's not fair. It just that the primary sources were so indirect and coded about it. And left so much out. The Database doesn't..." Flicker frowned, then sped up to check a few things. After a while she slowed back down.
"Well, crap," she said. "I learned most of my 20th century history when I was randomly bouncing around the Database reading whatever caught my interest when I was 11 or 12. So I missed stuff. And I didn't go back, and made some implicit assumptions."
"You might find a discussion with Armadillo illuminating," said Stella. "Have you considered that Doc might not be the person contributing the most to the collective judgement of your social maturity level that the Database uses to set your default access levels? He seems willing to delegate to people he trusts, and of those, Armadillo clearly has had experience with children."
"Oof. No, I hadn't thought of that." Flicker sighed. "Sometimes I wonder about the amount of time I spend mentally running circles around things without looking at what's at the center."
"Don't be too harsh on yourself. You blame most of your social difficulties on mental differences, poor references, and lack of practice. But the form of your education mattered, too. You never went to school before your graduate work, and you did most of that remotely. You learned from Doc, the Database, and direct observation--primarily of static scenes because of your speed. And the bulk of educational material in the Database was written by and for typical humans, with all the embedded assumptions that entails."
"I really like the Database. And the summaries help."
Stella shook her head. "Not always. Not if you don't know what's missing. The Database AI made judgements when you were younger about what was appropriate at the time. This shaped your knowledge map, which was already going to be very different from most humans. So do your Database access restrictions. Information revealed selectively or out of order can harm. And if the Database can't reveal A to you--for, say, privacy reasons--and revealing B without A would cause harm, it will restrict B as well. I'm sure Doc must have warned you about that."
"Yeah, but a lot of his restrictions seem arbitrary."
"Many will, if done right. Database restrictions can and do cause bias problems, but overriding them is inherently risky. The Database AI has to balance that, and there are no optimal choices, because the whole idea of the Database as an 'objective' knowledge map is a illusion. The Database is biased by what gets recorded. Your access to it is further biased, and what you actually do access is even more biased. But the idea that you are necessarily getting closer to impartial truth when you override a warning is dangerous."
"So I can mess myself up with overrides."
"You already have. Repeatedly. Information shaping is one of my more powerful tools. Cruder forms of it are in widespread use and getting more effective every day. But perceptions come pre-shaped." Stella had sipped from her cup of coffee before continuing. "For example, you are highly proficient in many math-heavy technical subjects not usually mastered until graduate school, and awkward in areas typically covered by early childhood education or peer group socialization. So when you made your implicit assumptions? Of course you missed things. However."
Stella was good at an 'I have a secret to share--eventually' style of speaking that was both mildly annoying and very effective at focusing attention.
"Yes?" said Flicker.
"Anyone would. You just missed different things. Others might have helped with some of them. But no one could predict them all. Not Doc, not the Database, not me. So do what you can, but don't be too hard on yourself when mistakes happen."
"Ah. I'll try to remember that."
*****
Flicker tried to follow Stella's initial guidelines, which focused on short term recovery, stabilization, and 'stop making this worse'. Avoiding patrols was the most important and hardest to follow advice. Physical therapy and exercise were tedious, but not difficult. The dietary changes... were trickier. Flicker had lost weight from the accident and the isotope exchanger sessions which she really couldn't afford. And her kind of pseudo-shapeshifter healing depended on adequate body mass. Stella forwarded some funny essays on cuisine and recovery for shapeshifters supposedly written by a French werewolf, and had the Database reset her food and drink related warnings, with an eye to both mental and physical health.
She'd also pointed out to Flicker that it only took a few early incidents of plasma in the GI tract while pushing the limits of her entropy dumping to cause lasting aversion to eating much while on call. So when she later started to feel like she was on duty almost all the time, she stopped eating proper meals except with friends. Staying off patrol for now made it possible to change that, but not easy. Theoretically, she could eat like an Olympic athlete in training while exercising appropriately, and recover quite quickly, but that wasn't realistic. She was stubborn, but so were her habits.
She couldn't patrol, but she could keep busy by surveying--updating Database geographical and obstacle data--and doing interior construction and finishing work on her house. Back-ordered materials had piled up. Flicker used power tools mainly for precision and delicacy; she had custom hand tools for speed and power, and boxes of regular hammers and screwdrivers to replace the ones she wore out or broke. Superspeed and robotic help let her make rapid progress in the half days she was putting in to it. Common areas and guest rooms were finished, and recreation areas, a wider variety of workshops, and Database node expansion rooms were all taking shape.
Making time to talk and eat with friends wasn't sophisticated advice, but it was obviously helpful. She'd had dinner with Jetgirl and her husband yesterday. Good food, carefully non-specific sympathy, then after dinner, 'girl talk' with Jetgirl. Which meant tech geekery--they spent a few hours discussing the instrumentation and results from Speedtest, and Jetgirl's suggestions for some issues Flicker had encountered expanding her robotics workshop. Reliable comfort.
The aftereffects from the cybernetic interface withdrawal were finally mostly gone, and Flicker's metabolism and appetite seemed to be responding to her exercises. She was definitely putting on muscle faster than a human could. And she'd mentioned her problem to Stavros, the owner of her favorite Greek restaurant, he'd gotten a look on his face like he'd been personally called upon to save the world, and now she had enough takeout in her fridge to feed a starving pseudo-mythological extradimensional being for a week.
Today, a visit with Armadillo. She had promised something interesting.
Flicker had once asked Armadillo why she hadn't picked the name Glyptodon instead, because that seemed closer in size and fearsomeness to her appearance. Armadillo had laughed and said she'd never heard of them at the time--the late 40s. The two of them were at Armadillo's house, sitting at a table with an impressive feast. It was not unusual for Armadillo; with super strength, near invulnerability, and half a ton of mass, she ate a lot, and saw no reason not to enjoy it. Armadillo was cheerful and a good friend, as well as effectively family. And at an age of 98, she knew a lot of history, especially the kinds that didn't usually get recorded very well.
The main reason Flicker didn't visit more often was an embarrassing one: When she'd been younger she'd had episodes of severe insomnia. But Armadilo knew how to spin a story to help. So when the biological part of Flicker's brain was working, it associated Armadillo's stories strongly with drowsiness.
Which didn't mean they were boring.
Armadillo was sharing some anecdotes from the late Pre-Net era--the 50s through the 70s--when Luce Cannon, Belle Tinker, and One-eyed Jack had been prominent superheroes. They had set precedents that ended up shaping the way the Database had been assembled. The norms Luce had established as a practical way of preserving relationship privacy and security without centralized infrastructure required narrative indirection and implication in order to discuss certain subjects at all. Armadillo was very good at the style needed. Unfortunately, that and the lack of unrestricted Database references hindered the usual ways Flicker updated her memories, so she was having trouble with details. But there were definitely differences from the way she'd thought about the origins of the Database.
"Huh," she said. "I always assumed that Doc decided everything important when he first built the Database, and the rest was just legacy format and historical records."
"Not entirely," said Armadillo. "Luce knew all about records and careful access--she built her own intelligence operation, after all--and Belle was already starting to convert some of them to electronic form and building early bots in the fifties. But reliability for anyone but Belle was always a problem, and she didn't have the level of conscientiousness about documentation that Doc did."
"Um. Doc isn't always that great about documentation. He gets--"
"The Database AI or someone else to do a lot of it. I know. But someone does. Heck, I've done my share. Belle was way ahead of her time, but we never found anything but cryptic notebook scribbles for some of her weirder stuff. Left a bit of a mess after she was gone. Doc brought in organization, documentation, robustness, and speed, and then extended it to everything. But the first Database grew out of what he built for Luce not long before she died. And Luce set some access conditions, which Doc won't change without a good reason. So don't blame Doc for all of them."
"So the age restrictions are from Luce?"
"Some of them, yeah--but they aren't hardcoded, they're more flexible; we knew they'd have to accommodate aliens and extradimensional beings and whatnot. It's really a maturity threshold." Armadillo smiled. "But I have a treat for you."
"Oh?"
"There are a few things I have personal discretion about. And you've hit a block involving one of them twice now. It's a good example of how we handled a few things back in the day, and might help you understand some of the ambiguity. I can show it to you, but you'll have to put your visor on locked standby or take it off--no unrestricted electronic images of this are allowed."
Flicker frowned, but arranged a protocol with the Database and pulled back her hood. Armadillo pushed back a plate, picked up a small case, opened it, and pulled out a large photographic print.
"This is a copy of the last known good photograph of Belle Tinker. The original is in my family photo album in one of Doc's vaults."
Flicker moved her chair closer to get a better look. It was a group photo, centered on a younger Armadillo. "What's that blacked out area?"
"Non-superheroes with living relatives. The photo is from my 60th birthday party in 1974."
Given the date, Flicker wasn't surprised that Armadillo was a bit narrower--she'd still been slowly adding mass. But... "Head spikes?"
Armadillo laughed. "Yeah, that was my last try at regrowing them. I'd been on a trip to Tokyo the previous year, and there was a translator around during a Kaiju attack. I ended up stopping it by talking to the big fellow about the relative effectiveness of head spikes for challenge bellowing. We had a nice talk, and everyone went home happy. No property damage, even. So I decided to give them another try. But mine were only a little stronger than steel, so they kept breaking off--same kind of problem you have with your hair. I finally gave up in 75? Or maybe 76? But really, I'm the least interesting person in that photo. I'm curious what you think about the others."
"Okay," said Flicker. "But that goblet you're drinking out of... Is that a demon skull?"
"Yep. The goblet was a birthday present. It would have been rude not to try it out." Armadillo nodded towards a nearby cabinet. "I still have it, but I hardly ever use it anymore. Little call for it, and it's tricky to clean."
"Um, okay." Flicker studied the image of the woman with red hair, a lab coat, safety glasses, and an expression of indulgent patience. "Belle has the same kind of 'I could be in my lab working on something cool' face I've seen Doc make. Most of the contemporary sources I found in the Database were really bad at describing her. She'd have been, what, in her late forties? She looks younger than that, fit, and tough, I don't understand what was going on."
Armadillo smiled. "There were a few that treated her reasonably--but they tended not to emphasize appearance. Belle did not fit any 'feminine' stereotype back then, there were a number of media bigwigs who really didn't like her, and she didn't humor patronizing reporters. So it was common for them to distort or belittle her intelligence and accomplishments, insult her appearance, attack her character, or just use bad pictures. If they had to write about her at all. That's one reason why the quality of much of what you found about her is poor."
Another woman with short dark hair was leaning against the table with a relaxed smile, but a very clear presence.
"Did Luce Cannon always look like she was in charge?" asked Flicker. "I mean, it was your party, but..."
"She could hide it, but she was keeping an eye on someone who could get overenthusiastic."
A girl wearing a black outfit was smiling intently at the camera with a predatory look. She appeared to be around eleven; it was hard for Flicker to judge ages.
"Is that a toy sword?" asked Flicker. "It looks awfully realistic."
"Nope. That was Katya's first magic sword. She outgrew it; it's in the vaults now."
"Magic sword? Wait... Katya? That's Jumping Spider?"
"Oh, goodness no; she wouldn't use that name for years. That's Katya the... Hunter, I think? She switched from the Devastator sometime around then. This was only a year after Luce started teaching her."
"Did... What... Why is she waving a sword around at your birthday party?"
"It was a compromise; she wanted to make a little pyramid out of the other skulls for the picture, but Luce vetoed that as unsanitary. Just as well; Belle said they smelled pretty manky."
"Other skulls?" Every time Flicker got a question answered, she immediately had several more--and she couldn't speed up and check the Database because her visor was off.
"Besides the one Jack and Belle turned into the goblet for my birthday present. It was Katya's idea, so she got to hunt the demons, and she went a little overboard getting spare skulls. Jack took her to the dimension where they lived--nasty place, but they were immune to poison, which was handy."
"...it's a magic goblet."
"Oh, yeah, it detoxifies anything in it," said Armadillo. "If I ever want to be absolutely sure I can't be poisoned or I'm worried about contamination, I use it. But it's usually overkill, it makes most non-alcoholic beverages taste kind of funny, and properly cleaning the precipitate chamber is a pain."
"Doc never let me hunt demons when I was ten," muttered Flicker as she studied the figure standing next to Belle in the photo.
"Mores change, and your adoption process wasn't complete yet. It would have been awkward to explain."
"Did One-eyed Jack ever show any sign of aging? It doesn't look like his appearance changed at all in pictures."
"Nope," said Armadillo. "At least not from when I first met him in '50 or so until he disappeared in the nineties. White hair, neatly trimmed beard, and the eyepatch. He almost always wore that hooded robe and carried that staff with the magical doodad on the end. Occasionally he'd switch to a really old style suit and a dress cane--he could do an impressive Offended Aristocrat act. But his apparent age never changed. I suspect he was some kind of shapeshifter, and I know he could create illusions, though, so I'm not sure anyone really knows for sure."
"Wait. Disappeared? The Database lists him as 'presumed dead' with supporting evidence; someone found his eyepatch and a scrap of robe near a small crater in the Topaz Realm and Doc verified they were genuine."
"Yep. Doesn't mean he died. He might have just decided it was time to stop being Jack. Hard to believe someone as careful as him would botch a portal like that, and it seemed awfully pat that it happened somewhere with enough ravenous scavengers to ensure the lack of remains wasn't suspicious. If he was a shapeshifter, there could be someone with his memories who looks quite different running around somewhere. And he had a saying: 'Sometimes you see something coming and all you can do is get out of the way.' I think that's what he did." Armadillo grinned. "But then, I've been accused of being sentimental from time to time."
"Okay," said Flicker. "If you're suspicious about Jack, what about Belle? She was declared dead, but all the Database says is that something catastrophic happened to her portal generator late at night and she was gone afterwards. Jack is recorded as testifying that as far as he could tell, she hadn't been murdered or kidnapped, definitely wasn't alive on Earth, and he wasn't able to tell quite what happened with the portal. But Doc said that if she really wanted to burn her bridges, she could have set the portal generator to self destruct, then gone through to somewhere before it blew. He still has the remains of it in the vaults."
Armadillo looked out the window. "All true. She seemed kind of withdrawn for a while before that. Well, withdrawn for her--she was always full of more ideas than she had time to try. She'd had a disagreement with Luce and the Volunteer for a couple of years over... I guess you could call it public policy. She made some predictions that turned out to be pretty accurate, and the first part of one of them had just happened--that was '80. It's conceivable she might have just been tired of Earth. But then she was kind of close to Jack, and he was pretty down afterwards--and if she went somewhere else, I don't know why he wouldn't be able to visit. I tried talking to him about it once, and he just shook his head. So I really can't say."
"Were they a couple?" asked Flicker. "Database is ambiguous--they at least pretended a few times, but it wasn't clear what was going on. I assume it's okay to ask about that now that they're both gone?"
"Heh. It's not forbidden to ask, and they worked well together in the lab when Belle wasn't out causing trouble with Luce. I'll say this; Belle never showed interest in most men--she'd roll her eyes at most of my jokes--and Jack never showed any interest in anyone but Belle. But it could just have been cover; a convenience for both of them."
"Oh."
Flicker frowned at the last figure--a middle-aged man in nondescript clothing, leaning back in the chair beside Armadillo. His glasses were perched precariously on the end of his nose, his fingers were laced over his chest, and his eyes were closed.
"Who is the guy beside you, and why is he asleep?"
Armadillo smiled. "Oh, he'd had a long day, then a nice meal, so he just was catching a little nap. He sometimes answered to the name of Chandler Devon."
Okay, now I know I'm being tested. Flicker sped up. The name was vaguely familiar--why? She glanced at Luce again, then remembered. Chandler Devon was connected to Luce Cannon in some way, perhaps one of her agents, or possibly romantically linked--but that had been a shaky source. Documentation about him had been really spotty, with large gaps. He'd been a skilled enough amateur geologist to get a few articles published, later in life. But his fondness for volcanoes had apparently done him in--he'd disappeared during the Mount Pinatubo eruption a few years after Luce's death.
That made the third nominally dead person in the picture with a missing body. The only person who was definitely dead and buried was Luce--she'd died of cancer in the late 80s.
There were several odd things that required explanation about 'Chandler Devon'. Why was he even at Armadillo's party? Had Luce brought him?
Why hadn't anyone woken him up for the picture? It was a memorable occasion. Was it a prank?
Wait. Armadillo had said she was the least interesting person in the photo. What could possible make him more interesting than her? If he--
Oh.
So that's what he looks like when he's asleep. But how did he manage... Luce. Of course. She was the original super spy. Jumping Spider's teacher. If anyone could cover everything he'd need, it would have been her. That explained so much. He'd gone more than fifty years without anyone--
Idiot. Everyone in that picture probably knew. He'd always had a family. A family of choice. They just never, ever gave it away. Even when they disagreed with each other.
But still, a few years after Luce died, he decided it was time to stop being Chandler Devon. Could he still maintain cover? Probably; Jumping Spider was 27 by then, and Doc was 17, with the Database up and running. But the Lost Years were about to start, and Doc had seen that coming. No longer worth the trouble, maybe? How much had Luce meant to Chandler Devon?
A lot to think about, most of it not even about Belle. But there was etiquette to be observed. And as far as Flicker could tell, it was to indicate obliquely that she'd guessed, but not say anything unambiguous. She could come up with something.
She slowed back down--and found herself blinking back tears.
"He looks like... someone who works very hard," she managed. "And doesn't get a chance to relax very often. I'm glad no one woke him up."
Armadillo nodded slowly. "So was I." She started to put the picture back in the box.
"Wait," said Flicker. "Who took the picture? I thought I knew, but now I think I was wrong."
Armadillo paused. "Another time, maybe. You probably have enough to cogitate about today already."
"Yeah. Yeah, I do."
Next: Part 13
9 notes
·
View notes
Text
Princess, part 11
[This story is a prequel, set several years before The Fall of Doc Future, when Flicker is 16. Links to some of my other work are here. Updates are theoretically biweekly. Next chapter is mostly done so I’m going to try to get it out later in August.]
Previous: Part 10
Five days after Speedtest. Three days after the isotope exchanger had worked enough for Flicker to restart her body chemistry. Then a scramble of pain, healing, and memory triage before, finally, sleep. She'd awakened, mentally fogged, to start a messy program of biological recovery and physical therapy, complicated by the need to spend more time in the isotope exchanger to reduce her not-immediately-lethal-but-still-a-problem radioactivity. For her minds, a fuzzy time of finding and patching connections, habits, and memories that were temporarily broken, misplaced, distorted, or newly intrusive. For respite, ghosting to Antarctica, gliding in the low sun over ice and cold air, never near anything living. Sleep remained fitful.
Evening. The last really needed isotope exchanger session done. Body and mind were now holding together, even if neither were yet anywhere Flicker was particularly happy with.
Talking to Doc in his lab. He frowned at a brain scan, some graphs, and a schematic of a cybernetic inductor.
"I checked in on your medibots, because you mentioned your start routine this morning was still rough. Looks like your mind work was okay despite that, though?"
"Caffeine helped," said Flicker.
"And you can drink it again, and eat. Progress. I'm concerned at this scan though. It still shows signs of cybernetic interface withdrawal. I don't know how long that will last, given everything else. How bad is the ennui and poor appetite?"
"Caffeine helped. A little."
"Hm. Not much we can do other than wait. I had the Database forward the medibot scans and other information to Dr. Reinhart's partition."
"Thanks. But I have a question."
"Yes?"
"You agreed to all of Dr. Reinhart's terms, including Database access, even though she's got a really questionable background, and doesn't want to meet or talk to you. Her last message mentioned it wasn't an encouraging sign, because it meant I needed help pretty bad."
"Well, you do. Frankly, I'd be more worried if she was cheerily optimistic. And the Database picked her as the best choice. Fortunately Jumping Spider knew a bit about her, and was willing to do that interview. So I'm satisfied for now."
"I guess I don't get how you're okay with the uncertainty about a mind control expert."
"I did verify that she wasn't gaming the Database threat index. The correlations are suggestive of a mission-oriented vigilante targeting actively harmful individuals with power that have little or no likelihood of being stopped or removed by other means. Plus a few covert operations agents trying to kill her. The threat index understates her effect, because she operates in realms where data is sparse and of poor quality. As for the alleged mind control, it may just be a combination of psychological manipulation and some kind of hidden influence. But there is no question she uses her reputation as an effective tool."
Doc waved a hand. "And I have a reputation for being paranoid about mind control, which isn't going to make her more eager to meet me, is it? Our security protocols may not be compatible, and I can think of several other potential good reasons for her to stay away. But ultimately it doesn't matter. She doesn't want to talk, so that's that. She owes me nothing. I wouldn't mind discussing mind control defense with her, and I don't like uncertainty any more than you do. But I've had a couple more decades to get used to it. I know I can't solve all the world's problems myself. Priorities."
A crooked smile. "Now, none of this means that you should accept everything she says uncritically, or that you should strive to emulate her, morally or otherwise. And I'm sure she'll drop some unpleasant surprises on you. But she agreed to help, and she certainly understands the stakes. Are you having trouble with social boundaries again?"
"When did this become about me?"
Doc just looked at her.
"Okay, yeah."
"Boundaries are a difficult problem for you. So I hope your work with Dr. Reinhart is productive, and that you eventually have an opportunity to discuss them with her."
*****
The next morning had certainly started off productive. And difficult. Flicker had been very much looking forward to finally recovering enough to talk--physically talk, with real air, vocal cords, sound, and hearing--to Dr. Stella Reinhart.
Flicker faced Dr. Reinhart in her office. Stella. She said to call her Stella. She was in her late twenties, about 170 centimeters tall, with dark hair and green eyes, and wore jeans, boots, a leather jacket, and a work shirt. She looked dangerous because she was dangerous, and had the sort of intent, purposeful expression Flicker had learned to watch for when evaluating an emergency site at high speed--if someone like that was running, it was a very good idea to find out why.
The office was bland, more often used by the assistant who handled paperwork for Stella's consulting business. But there were comfortable chairs. Stella sat in one, not behind the desk, after saying a few words about subconscious framing and symbolic barriers. A cable ran from her laptop to the now thoroughly guarded office net connection and from there to the Database. DASI was on duty, capital S for Security duty, with subtle and wide-ranging countermeasures. Excessive? DASI didn't think so, nor did Stella. One less thing for Flicker to worry about, which helped.
The office was in a half empty building in a not particularly prosperous location, but it did have sliding doors opening onto a patio. Dr. Reinhart had left them open to accommodate Flicker's claustrophobia. Flicker had set up a portable force screen to keep out weather and complete the veil of security.
Flicker's speed mind idled, handling just alerts and safety. She was talking with her physical body and brain only, entirely at human speed, about something stressful, with no help from speed mind. Holding back was hard. More so in the aftermath of Speedtest--her old problems with self-interrupting and awkward blurting had returned. She chased thoughts and sentences faster than her mouth could complete them, as clumsily as when she was thirteen.
Embarrassment intruded as she veered and rambled, but Stella had suggested this starting test, after initial introductions. Every verbal issue, every bit of awkwardness that she normally compensated for, everything she smoothed over, eliminated, or hid with speed, visor and Database--all that was data, that told Stella how the human half of Flicker's mind worked. And Stella could use that as a baseline to probe how the high speed half of Flicker's mind worked, and how she coordinated. So she endured.
Flicker stumbled to a stopping point. She'd managed a partial, excessively wordy, and not entirely coherent description of her problems and goals. She had digressed from and mangled her text summary, but talking out loud, in her own words, from her own mind, without notes, had been the point.
She took a calming breath and tried to untense. This was the only part where talking was essential. I can switch to text now if I really have to.
Stella smiled and thanked her, then turned to type at her computer. Her exact words escaped as Flicker's speed mind started a flurry of mental replays and second-guessing, but the Database flashed 'Break time' on her visor. Relief. Out through the doors, speeding past land and human complication to the Pacific.
Slow coasting, well under 0.01c, while the two parts of her mind reintegrated. A wordless reckoning that normally went one way--slow mind to fast on waking up, and back before sleep. Tides flowing predictably over the sands of short term memory. Now the flow went both ways, boats loading and unloading as both minds took turns at 'Let me put that in a better place...'
Still less stressful than the talking had been. Even deciding when to breathe had been awkward--speed mind had smoothed that for so long she'd almost forgotten.
Fifteen minutes of waves and sunlight and motion. Coasting along crests and troughs. Manta rays breaching, sudden unexpected joy, a reminder that the world held marvels still happening. It helped. When she got the message to return, she was much calmer.
Back at the office, a quick smile from Stella. "I have good data, and some preliminary assessments. I'm afraid we're unlikely to complete your priority list any time soon. One thing is clear; mind isolation during treatment is not a viable option. Your 'speed mind' is essential to your functioning and current identity, even at normal speed. So we'll work towards better coordination. But I have some serious concerns."
A glance at her screen. "I should emphasize my disclaimer: This is a compassionate personal intervention in the absence of a qualified specialist. I am not a clinician, my research methods would give an IRB heart attacks, et cetera. And I have some reservations about the process by which I was selected. I sent the full text to your Database earlier. Did you read it?"
"Yes," said Flicker. "I understand why you might need it for legal protection. Also if you're, like, a serial killer who eats souls, I have Officially Been Warned."
"That works. I still go to conferences, and I create enough controversy on my own. It would be inconvenient to be widely banned from international travel. But I imagine you still have some questions."
Flicker shrugged. "I'm curious about a few things. But if you weren't already doing weird superhero-adjacent and spyworld stuff, I don't think you'd have the experience to help without researching me for a year first. Anyway, go ahead."
Speed mind shifted and reversed, back in her normal mental dance, speeding up and slowing down to aid stability and coherence. The desire to clarify and add to her awkward presentation to reduce social embarrassment was strong. But it was time to listen.
"For your difficulty speaking," said Stella, "I agree with your Database AI that most of your returned problems should fade with social practice. You appear to have optimized your verbal coordination in order to present as a neurotypical human, so any change would cause temporary issues."
"Because squishy brain is autistic. And yeah I did. It's a real pain to get strangers to listen if you don't talk 'normal human'."
"Your distress is understandable. You do have traits in common with individuals with Asperger's and ADHD, but given your unique mind, it's probably best to view them as suggestive analogies--you have similar problems with similar coping mechanisms. 'Non-neurotypical' is as far as I'd go, and much of the cause may be consequences of the connection to your speed mind. Other issues are clearer."
Stella leaned back in her chair. "Such as PTSD. You have layered coping mechanisms, but your Database stress history indicates that you tend to overwork or otherwise push yourself back to a ragged edge whenever you manage to achieve progress in reducing its effects."
Stella clasped her hands in front of her face. "I doubt that dealing with the underlying issues will be an easy or quick task, but this is something you need to mitigate. I'll try to help you set realistic expectations when I understand more. One particular note. I can't speak to Doc's own mental health. But the elements of his work and life habits available for study indicate someone rather unhealthy for a PTSD sufferer to emulate. And whatever he might say, you took early cues from what he did."
Stella frowned. "Your memory problems... I'm going to defer judgement on some of them until you've had more time to recover from your recent incident. And there are a number of other potentially serious long-term conditions that I now consider less likely, but can't yet rule out. But I am concerned that your Database AI already warned you about everything I've brought up so far, and some other issues that are more recent. I'd recommend revisiting your heuristics."
Flicker spread her hands. "I didn't ignore the Database. I just couldn't do anything useful. I patched what I could and kept going."
"That invites trouble when a new problem disturbs your patches."
"Well, yeah. I get angry at things I can't fix. So I put them out of my mind to stay sane." Flicker looked away. "At least out of my conscious, human mind. Part of me remembers. And stays angry."
She looked back and tried to smile. "I sometimes joke that I haven't lost my mind; I keep backups. Doc always retorted with how arduous it could be to try to restore from one. And that a mental backup doesn't bring things back the same, because the world has moved on. He was right. I had to try to restore a few things I misplaced during Speedtest and it was a pain. It stirs everything up, and I kept running across crap I'd stashed away because I couldn't deal, and I still couldn't deal because it was hitting all at once during a restore."
The smile probably looked more like a fixed grimace. "So don't tell me about trouble and patches right now. I know."
"Good," said Stella. "I will be going over things that seem obvious. People make tradeoffs, and mistakes, and I'd rather annoy you than miss any. But I also understand that this session has been stressful for you, and you aren't fully recovered. I can give you some initial recommendations and we can be done for the day, if you would like."
Flicker took a deep breath, then let it out. "I'd like to keep going, now that I have my minds working together again. It's just... I should have reworked my priority list after you told me how you wanted to start, and put my anger issues higher on it. And there's this book I read, called Practical Power Dynamics..."
An alert flashed on Flicker's visor and she sped up. The Database needed her override approval to resolve a convoluted permissions problem, which she granted. Stella's base permission level was only equivalent to a trusted outside academic researcher, so approval requests were going to be common for a while. Flicker slowed back down again to listen.
"Where did you get the edition you read?" asked Stella. "It doesn't look like it was from the Database."
"No. There was a version, but the Database didn't let me read that one. There were a bunch of hazards and warnings. The version I read is there now, I scanned it then locked it down. Doc doesn't know about it. I got it from Journeyman. He said he traded a bibliomancer to reconstruct an original text copy. Then let me read it, because he was worried and thought it might help me."
Stella put a hand to her forehead and studied her computer display. "I see. What that alleged bibliomancer did should not be possible. But never mind that now. Was your visor recording when you discussed it, and if so, would you be willing to share a transcript?"
"Sure." Another bit of access granted.
Stella spoke slowly while scanning her screen. "I'd like to ask a favor of you. Please do not reread Practical Power Dynamics, or try to use any of the techniques, before I've had a chance to make some annotations for you. And assume it's more dangerous to you than the author intended. You read what appears to be an early draft that was never distributed."
Flicker frowned. "How do you know that?"
"I wrote it."
"Oh, that's great! I had a lot of questions, but I couldn't--I mean it was still dangerous. But you can tell me what to watch out for. I loved the humor, the way you made pieces fit that everyone just seems to assume or ignore. And the parts about anger were..." Flicker trailed off. "You don't look happy. What's wrong?"
"Well, at least you weren't completely blind to the danger," said Stella. "I started writing what became Practical Power Dynamics when I was about your age, at a time when I was not managing anger well. I would not write that way today. I need to see what I can do to defuse some hazards to you. I wrote it as a vector for social engineering, and I didn't devote enough attention to second-order side effects in atypical individuals. Even after I toned it down."
Flicker thought about that at speed for a while. It made sense that Stella was worried. Doc spent a lot of time worrying about extending methods to new domains, and the false sense of security you could feel because you were doing familiar things you'd done many times before. The methods might only be safe because most of the unexpected failure modes had already been found--but a new domain could bring new ways to make horrible mistakes. You just couldn't be sure. That had been one of the main points of Speedtest. There were a lot of things going on in Practical Power Dynamics, and Flicker's mind was a new domain for many of them.
"It didn't feel like it caused damage," she said. "I didn't try any of the active techniques because I was warned about traps, but the insights helped."
"I can certainly understand why you liked it. I wrote it to resonate, but that doesn't mean it helped." Stella smiled wryly. "The text you read has the potential to magnify a number of problems. And even the distributed version was never intended for someone like you--I did not consider the psychological impact of absorbing the whole thing in under a minute. Not to pry into restricted details, but have you by any chance experienced an episode of unjustified arrogance or megalomania recently?"
A sudden chill.
"...I know that feeling, it's Now I Am Invincible, it's incredibly dangerous for a superhero..."
"...maybe." No, be clear. This is safety information. "Yes."
"The book definitely didn't help with that."
"My partner thought it would help with something. He wouldn't just..."
Stella frowned. "It might have seemed appropriate as a form of disaster aversion. A 'break glass in case of emergency' psychological reset to forestall something worse. But not as a long term solution, and he'd know that."
Flicker closed her eyes. "It wasn't and he did. He's gone. We aren't patrolling together anymore."
Flicker had been managing to compartmentalize up to that point. Journeyman hadn't returned to Doc's HQ while she'd been recovering, or sent any message other than a brief note wishing her well. She'd set aside awareness of that, and their last conversation, pretending he was just temporarily away again.
But their load-bearing social fiction had collapsed, leaving nothing but rubble.
Speed up. Shift focus in speed mind. Ignore her human emulation, it was working all too well. Try a different perspective.
Consider the positive. She'd learned too much during her time with him for reflexive avoidance of memory to be appropriate. She had her own strength, her own self, her own plans, where he was but memory and data. That could be a placeholder, a way to consider him as Flicker adjusted. It was definitely less disruptive than an emotional shutdown.
Now slow down and return. Emotion and context flooded back, but she had a reference point.
Her visor was beeping at her. She opened her eyes, and saw the alerts--the reason for the beeping.
Warning: Situational awareness lost, Alert: Emotional crisis reaction signs, Alert: Potential dissociation trigger, Alert: Database permission upgrade request for Dr. Stella Reinhart--crisis context information.
She virtual typed to grant the permission. Then straightened, her face under control. This was her problem, not his.
The book dedication had been perfectly clear. For Doc Future. It's a trap. She'd read it anyway.
So had Journeyman, but at least he hadn't ignored three blocks, eleven warnings, and 47 advisories, like she had.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Stella was glaring intently at her laptop display and speedreading--a page for each tap.
Flicker took the opportunity to do breathing exercises and calm herself.
"What a mess," muttered Stella, as she continued to read. "Flicker?"
"Yes?"
Tap. Tap. "I'm sorry, clinical detachment and academic objectivity aren't going to be sufficient for everything. How do you feel about 'Angry woman on your side'?"
"That sounds nice, actually."
Tap. Tap. Tap. "Good to know. Also, do not ever underestimate your Database security AI. She was on the phone with me for all but five seconds of the time between when you started to read Practical Power Dynamics and when she interrupted your fight with Journeyman to announce my tentative willingness to help. And she called Jumping Spider to secure an emergency override in there, too. I have a theory about that, but it's probably not something she's allowed to admit. I'll see if I can sort through it. Along with everything else. This is going to take a while. But..."
She paused in her paging. "I'm curious about the last few months before you became partners with Journeyman. The Database records are somewhat opaque. You were patrolling sporadically, and it's clear you weren't very happy, but I'm wondering to what extent that was due to PTSD."
"I don't think about those months very much anymore," said Flicker. "Doc tried a couple of things to try to get me to cheer up, like asking if I wanted to partner with Jetgirl. I said no. I mean, she's a good friend, and we have an arrangement where she can call me for support when she needs it, but she usually doesn't, so it would have been more like being a sidekick. And I didn't want that. Journeyman actually needed my help, so I could accept his as an equal."
She looked down. "I wasn't feeling very connected during that time--not continuously, anyway. I remember specific events, but I'd have to check the Database for a lot of the dates and chronology. Everything after the Japan quake. That was just before I turned fifteen, and... I didn't do too well."
Stella raised an eyebrow. "The Database evaluates your actions as saving more lives than anyone else. And it's not close."
"Well, but you should really account for speed. I mean, if you scored a flower-picking contest just by numbers, I could win with speed, but that doesn't mean I'm good at it. And... I don't like to talk about the quake. There were some media bits trying to turn me into a hero of the response and... No. Just no. Not respectful. They're still rebuilding and recovering and it's not my story to tell. I usually keep it compartmentalized. Mostly what I remember is to be wary of arrogance."
"Mm. Would you be willing to tell me your viewpoint? Your personal experience is most definitely yours to share."
"I suppose." Flicker took a deep breath and looked back up. "It wasn't bad for me personally. I didn't get hurt. It was just... There'd been some warnings, but it was confusing because of foreshocks, so no one could really tell how bad it was going to be. I got the alert from Breakpoint before the main quake hit--his Danger Sense went off and he wasn't even in Japan, so I knew it was going to be bad. I didn't know where the epicenter was going to be exactly, so I just went off the Database's best estimate, and went up and down the coast writing giant kanji for 'Earthquake' in the air so people would know. My plasma flash and shockwave boom actually helped there, because it got people to look out windows and see.
"Then the quake hit, and went on and on, and the estimates kept going up: it's 8.4; no, it's 8.6; no, it's 8.7; no, it's 8.8; no, it's fucking 9; it eventually turned out to be 9.1. And then my Database com started dropping signal because my visor couldn't synchronize my position for tight beams any more. I was used to really accurate position data, and everything had moved. Everything was still moving. Ground level wasn't ground level, and everything had literally gone sideways. GPS was messed up, and the Database kept trying to correct for shit and it wasn't enough. There was one error that caused trouble for a while that was from the Earth not rotating on the same axis any more.
"So, I'm running around with intermittent comms, stopping external debris and ripping the roofs off of buildings that were collapsing on people, then making the choices for intermediate floors for the big ones--do I rip it out? Will that hurt the people who might ride it down more than having it fall will hurt the people below? And can I get the debris out of the way fast enough without blinding and deafening everyone? What kind of building is it? I knew very little Japanese, and my visor translator was shit without Database support. The hospitals were solid enough that I let them take their chances, because there just wasn't much I could usefully do, but a few of the nursing homes and big apartments with lots of old people were pretty bad. I'd pulled collapsing buildings apart before, and it was like that, except... two thousand buildings at once. And seeing all those scared people.
"And finally Doc got a message through, telling me I needed to punch a hole through to the ionosphere with rocks, because the Volunteer was on suborbital coming in as fast as he ever had and needed me to get the air out of way so he didn't kill anyone with his shockwave on arrival. So I went up to a place called Fukushima and made a pathway for him, so he could keep a bunch of nuclear reactors from melting down, then went back to ripping apart buildings. Until I got another message from Doc telling me I needed to let them go and start taking the edge off the tsunami."
Flicker looked out the doors.
"I thought, fuck that, I'll stop the tsunami. It's just a wave, right? Moving water, way offshore, no humans near, I could use all my speed and power. Energy and momentum. None greater than mine."
She shook her head. "It wasn't just a wave. A whole huge section of seabed had been stuck bent over like a big flat sheet of wood, then released. One end went up like seven meters. All the water above it went up too, and the surface was now above sea level. And all that water had to go somewhere.
"It wasn't just a wave. Water flows downhill. Doc knew.
"I started with the lateral plasma sweeps and the shockwave hammer loops and the entrainment runs while I had the Database figure out just how much damage I'd do if I vaporized enough of the excess water to stop the tsunami. Database took a long time."
She looked back at Stella. "I could vaporize enough to stop it. But--best case--it would kill five million people with a shockwave of plasma and superheated steam. More likely fifty. And fuck up the weather over the whole Northern hemisphere for months. The floods from the rain alone would... anyway. Stopping it was way worse. So I just had to take the edge off as best I could.
"It was enough to let the Volunteer stabilize the reactors. And I thought it would be enough for almost all the people, I really did. And then the Database had enough data finally to tell me it wasn't."
"Why not?" asked Stella.
"The other end of the board. A big stretch of the coast of Honshu dropped when the seabed rose. What had been sea level--was now a meter below sea level. And the ground above it, and the people on that ground, were now a meter lower. So what looked safe--wasn't."
"I went back one last time to write more Kanji. 'Run.' But not everyone could run. And not everybody who could would leave behind the ones who couldn't."
"I did as much as I could," she said. "Maybe too much, some places--reflections and a change in the shape of the seabed meant I likely made things worse in one spot. But 'only' about two thousand people died in the tsunami. Plus maybe fifty or so I killed trying to stop it. Most of them in boats in really bad places, but they might have lived, except my shockwaves meant they didn't. I couldn't... it was just 'Sorry, it's not your day, ever again'.
"Even after it started hitting I kept running around, clearing debris, trying to give people a little more time. And then, finally, it was over, ebbing back, and Hideki and the Japanese superheroes were arriving, and Golden Valkyrie's Choosers, and all the emergency responders. And all the ordinary people who helped. If anyone was heroes it was them.
"I went on autopilot for a while, just followed Database instructions after my com was back, not trying to process, because I couldn't. There was a weird voice yelling on my com whenever I saw bodies for a bit until I figured out it was me and stopped. And... Well, I don't really remember much after that. You can read about it in the Database if you want."
She waved a hand. "You know what? You want a hero? K'Krowl the Younger. Kaiju from the Deep Kingdoms. Big lizard. Lived up near the Aleutians. He was headed south along the coast, on his way to attack Tokyo, when the quake hit. He was underwater, I didn't know he was there. And there was this boat. Just... in the wrong place. K'Krowl felt the quake and knew what it meant. He headed inshore and surfaced, and just before the biggest wave hit he picked up the boat. And held it in his arms. Except I was coming down on a lateral plasma run, chopping away at the wave. I'd seen the boat, and they were just... I mean, they weren't gonna live. I had a massive entrained stream of plasma, steam, and seawater behind me.
"K'Krowl crouched over, and tucked that boat under his chin, and took the wave on his chest and my plasma on his back--I burned him bad, his upper back was just cooked. But he kept his footing, and protected the people on the boat. From the tsunami, and from me. And when it was all over, he put the boat down at the shore, and waved to them, and went back into the water. He decided he didn't want to attack Tokyo that day after all, and went home to heal. Hardly anyone saw him except me and the people on the boat. And with everything going on, no one else knew until the people he saved contacted the Deep Kingdoms embassy, and they ended up with a ceremony, and gave him a medal, and if anyone ever finally resolves the Tokyo Compromise, and turns the attacks into, like, ceremonial visits or something, it'll probably be him."
Flicker shook her head. "K'Krowl the Younger. That's a hero. Not me. I didn't get hurt, and mostly ran around a lot. Nothing bad happened to me. Not bad bad. Just memories."
*****
Eventually, Flicker realized she'd been staring at the 'Low Situational Awareness' advisory on her visor for a long time, and came back to the present. There was a text from Stella: Let me know if and when you're ready to speak aloud.
Flicker focused on the room again. Stella was frowning thoughtfully, tapping at her computer.
"I'm ready," said Flicker. "Did you have questions?"
Stella looked up. "I was a little curious where you got those death numbers. They don't match the Database, and that's very unusual for you. The death toll from the tsunami appears to be closer to 1,500, and you can only get close to 2,000 if you also include everyone in the area who was killed by the quake, went missing, or died for any other reason for the next week. Or use one early, inaccurate media estimate."
She tapped her chin with a finger, still frowning. "And I don't see any clear evidence to indicate that you were responsible for any excess deaths while mitigating the tsunami. There were people you didn't save, but that's not remotely the same. The only way I can get to your estimate of 50 is to take everyone dead or missing who started on a boat in the tsunami region, and everyone missing in the region who started on shore, but who had a boat that also went missing, and assume they were all alive before your intervention, all dead afterwards, and all would have survived if you'd done nothing."
She locked eyes with Flicker. "There was exactly one boat that definitely had live people on it, was in your path, and could have been destroyed by you while they still had a possibility of surviving. That was the boat K'Krowl picked up."
"Does it really matter?" said Flicker.
"Yes. You're guilt-maximizing, and you need to stop. It's not healthy. Don't want to be a hero for this? Fine. But you helped."
Stella waved a hand. "I'm not a hero. I've done far worse things than you. But I still try to help. You really didn't want to talk about this and you want to stop, so we'll stop. Perhaps sometime we can come back and get you a little better perspective. But not now. You're in worse shape than I thought."
"Well, I was technically dead for two days last week, so I suppose--"
"Not short term. Long term. You're better at compartmentalization, coping, and masking than I expected. That means you've been better at hiding worse problems. But it just means more work, for a longer time. One thing I strongly recommend--no patrols for a while. No going 'on duty'. You can intervene in events classified by the Database as 'major disaster' or higher, or a serious threat to someone you know personally. Otherwise find something else to do. You need to recover, and not just from being dead."
"But--"
Softly: "No. Patrols."
Stella sighed. "Are you familiar with boiling liquid expanding vapor explosions?"
Flicker blinked at the change of subject, then got the analogy. "Yeah. Can't always stop them so sometimes I just rip the tank to control the direction and shape of the explosion. But I'm not close to blowing up. I know how to reduce the pressure."
"I understand. But we need to do some work the slow way--reduce the temperature first. There are other things that might increase the pressure."
"You want more of a safety margin?"
"Yes. I am reasonably good at giving advice, but bad at providing comfort," said Stella dryly. "I'm not neurotypical either, and certain choices and events in my personal development shape my approach. I have no desire for it to increase your difficulties."
"You seem pretty functional to me. And--"
Stella shook her head. "If I weren't able to convincingly project normalcy, I'd already be dead. But I do have a talent for constructive distractions. So, why don't we leave off diagnostics and recommendations for a little while and have something to eat instead--I took the precaution of preordering takeout. Perhaps we can discuss a few things you might find interesting and less stressful."
"I'm not..." Think, don't just react. "Okay, that does sound good."
They ate, and talked, and it helped a little. It was a start.
Next: Part 12
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
Princess, part 9
[This story is a prequel, set several years before The Fall of Doc Future, when Flicker is 16. Links to some of my other work are here. Updates were theoretically biweekly–more realistically, I’m going to try to get the next one out by early June.]
Previous: Part 8
Senses were funny things. You could use them without having any idea how they worked, or even that you had them. Ask most people how many senses there were and they would tell you 'five.' Then ask about balance and you might get a frown, a thoughtful look, or a rationalization, depending on the person.
Even after Flicker had acquired Database access, it had taken her quite a while to realize that there were senses she had that humans didn't have, or didn't use quite the same way. When she did, she'd talked to Sealord, who most people thought of as the 'ruler' of the Deep Kingdoms--the truth was way messier, but Sealord was resigned to the human preference for simple fictions over complicated facts. He was a giant squid who could shapeshift into human form for communication and diplomatic purposes, and he'd been willing to indulge Flicker's curiosity with several long conversations about sensory differences. That had helped her appreciate how profoundly senses affected thinking, and how some things she found strange about normal humans were natural consequences of having different senses.
Flicker had a mass sense. Most humans didn't. They had to estimate it by sight, touch, or experience. That felt weird to her. Doc had confirmed that the only reason humans didn't injure themselves as a result even more often than they did was a significant amount of effort put into engineering their environment around the problem.
She didn't actively use it much while stationary. The resolution wasn't great except near her fingertips, and even then, sight was better if the light was adequate. Mass sense didn't connect to her mind the same way vision did, so it was laborious to use it to read carved letters or braille. Intervening mass made it a little fuzzier, but it still let her tell if someone was right on the other side of a door that might need to suddenly disappear, or find a breaker panel even if some idiot had covered it. It really came into its own when she was moving--the faster the better. It was at the core of her reflexes for maneuvering and collision avoidance. It worked in the dark, couldn't be blocked, and always let her know which way was down.
It also let her sense things that were quite far away, if they were massive enough. Like the Sun.
And the Moon.
That made it better than sight right now. On flat ground or water when she was running around on Earth, her velocity vector was necessarily tangent to Earth's surface. If she wanted it to be pointing at the Moon when she jumped, that meant the Moon had to be on the horizon. Except it looked like it was above it to eyes, because air bent light. Her visor could compensate, but she didn't need it. She could see the Moon's mass.
She was at the right place, at the right velocity. It was the right time. She jumped.
Down.
Jumping up wasn't safe. That was a bone-deep reflex for Flicker, ingrained for longer than she could remember. The only safe direction to jump was towards a large mass. If she got out of momentum transfer range of the ground--about 50 meters--it was scary enough. She had practiced that by jumping back and forth between canyon walls, and the vastly decreased ability to change her vector had been frightening and disturbing, but endurable. Up, at high velocity, was not.
But down... Down worked.
Flicker jumped down toward the surface of the Moon at five percent of the speed of light, trailing plasma as she left Earth's atmosphere behind.
*****
Yesterday.
Doc leaned back in the chair at his workstation and took a sip of coffee.
"Still a lot of failure modes," he said. "Some because of the number of variables we have to extrapolate rather than interpolate. And more from mechanics we don't even know about yet. But if that wasn't true, you wouldn't need Speedtest. All your support will be ready for tomorrow."
"Do you think I should wait longer?" asked Flicker.
"That's a decision no one but you can make. You've done all your preparation and backups. The Database says your judgement is within appropriate limits. If you think you should wait, then wait. I won't argue. But no, I don't think it would necessarily help. Your disinclination to delay further is reasonable. The world doesn't stand still--waiting for a perfect time can be a trap. Speedtest was always going to be risky."
"You don't think Journeyman's Diviner data was relevant?"
"I wouldn't go that far. I have been taking precautions in case someone's been waiting until you're gone to try triggering a nuclear war or something similarly idiotic."
"Oh. Any further news from him?"
"Last word was that he had been unable to contact anyone else helpful," said Doc. "Which is understandable. Trying to use divination to control a global level timing decision might be causally unstable--and a positive feedback loop in either back-propagation or future causal reinforcement could get quite nasty for them."
"What's your estimate for success chances?" she asked. "DASI won't give me anything quantitative. Says it's an overinterpretation hazard."
"Then I'm afraid you won't find mine very useful," said Doc. "It's too dependent on judgements you'll be making on the spot, after you have more data. So I'm not willing to commit to numbers either."
A deep breath. "How about something qualitative?"
"Very well. I think you're almost certain to arrive at the Moon physically able to collect data, quite likely to make it back to Earth still mobile, reasonably favored to return technically alive, and have a decent chance at avoiding serious injury. All return possibilities drop to near zero if you get an abort call from Breakpoint and don't listen."
"Technically alive means I don't have to try a mass template restore to survive?"
"Or need isotope exchange to avoid the death of your physical body from extreme radioactivity or an unlivable isotope balance. Your powers do not appear to confer complete immunity to nucleosynthesis. That's why I beefed up the force fields on the rad-hardened regen tank and moved it next to the exchanger and the cooling channels for the isotope burner. I don't think it's the most likely scenario--but it is one that can be ameliorated by proper preparation. Possibly. It still wouldn't be pleasant."
Flicker snorted. "Well, duh. We planned it out to find the unpleasant surprises while we're ready. How about data?"
"The Volunteer already dropped off the sensors and repeaters, and you have a robust set of communication backups for interim reports and emergencies. Get back reasonably intact and you can update details in person."
She looked at him. He wouldn't say 'Be careful'. But he knew how she felt about the data. That was pure Doc. That was... okay.
Flicker smiled. "All right," she said.
*****
Now.
Fear was normally an emotion Flicker could remove to a distance by speeding up her mind--it was a thing of chemistry or memory.
Not her problem with heights, though. That was her speed mind subconscious letting her know, in no uncertain terms, that Something was Wrong. She was ready for it.
She was less ready for the cascade of alarms and less identifiable information from speed mind and body that started piling up as soon as she left most of the atmosphere behind. They roughly mapped to itchiness, tingling, and discomfort in places she hadn't even known she had, and whose topology and even dimensionality was not immediately obvious. But she was in an environment she'd never experienced before--a vacuum, far from mass, with significant velocity toward her destination--so she'd expected something new.
She sped her mind up more to catalog everything and record her impressions for the Database. That beat anxious waiting during what would otherwise be a subjectively interminable coast phase of her journey to the Moon. She also tried to interpret what she could.
One existing alert that was usually omnipresent whenever she moved had gone silent--okay, that was hazardous mass flow, since she was now moving through vacuum. Never mind that several other alarms were complaining about said vacuum--not that it was a vacuum, but that it was the wrong kind. The constant01 was too low, constant02 was too high, several somewhat less important constants were nevertheless far outside tolerances, and many things wanted recalibration.
And there was a nagging feeling: Her untranslated01 was locked down by override, so constant03 was too high--a potential hazard; did she want to start the override reset process so she could restore constant03 to default? A least within--okay, same range as her momentum transfer, so--50 meters?
Puzzle her way through the correspondences. Constant03 matched the scale factor for the electromagnetic quantum.
She wasn't sure what her untranslated01 was, but it wanted to turn itself on and change Planck's constant to some unknown default, everywhere within 50 meters.
Nooooo, I don't think so.
A bit of fear was back. Flicker noted a few things that might become relevant to her tests, then started carefully putting up mental hazard tape around new internal regions of Don't Want to Mess With That.
*****
Closing in on the Moon, finally. Flicker's visor told her she was approaching at about 15,000 kilometers per second, or 0.05c. But she didn't really need it as long as she was going reasonably fast. As part of her mass sense, she could tell her velocity relative to any massive frame of reference. And the sense was much sharper when she wasn't damping and compensating for a constant bombardment of passing air.
Her velocity was fine--direction was nearly straight down towards a spot close to the center of the visible disc of the Moon. And her inertial damping and momentum transfer also felt crisper. Could she get a frame lock before she landed? Time to find out.
Feet first, arms extended above her head, feeling for that welcome mass. 100 meters.
3 more microseconds. 55 meters.
Approaching 50... Frame lock! Hello Moon!
Decelerate. Ten billion g's straight, with a frame locked momentum dump on top. It hit the moon like a tiny pulse of gravitational waves.
Slower, slower, nanoseconds rushing by. Under 100 km/s. Toes touched, still decelerating.
Flex the knees, swing her arms down, and... stationary! Distance 0, velocity 0.
She stood. Damn, solid ground felt good. And she'd managed it without any plasma or explosions--just a spray of dust as the lunar surface rebounded from the momentum transfer. She sent a landing summary com dump to the nearest repeater, and received prerecorded congratulations from DASI in return. She tilted her head back and looked up at the Earth.
"Hey Doc," she sent. "No crash. No crater. No fireball. No problem. The Flicker has landed."
She didn't wait for a reply before she started accelerating. That would take more than 2 seconds, and she had work to do. Data to gather.
*****
Setup. Move. Test. Send data and analyze. Flicker fell into a pleasant rhythm. The lack of atmosphere made everything crisper--it was easier to distinguish more distant details with her mass sense when there wasn't air in the way. The solid frame lock was a joy; the absence of things like buried cables, basements, sewers, and other man-made voids meant a more assured connection to the ground, and the lack of life and air meant she didn't have to juggle side effects. This let her change direction far more easily if she didn't also change speed--sharing momentum with an intangible 'Moon hug' allowed her to dissipate less energy staying on the surface, even though it was smaller than the Earth and she was moving faster.
A lot faster.
And she confirmed something interesting about her mass sense. The velocity part was not a side effect. She wasn't sensing mass so much as spacetime curvature, including all the changes caused by her velocity. She could use relativity to see. It showed her an odd universe--but it didn't get any more odd when she sped up, and all her regular senses did. It let her aim--without using her visor--at something she was approaching obliquely at a significant fraction of the speed of light, and still hit it with a tossed object. (A tiny one--she didn't want to cause too big a fireball.)
And the speed measure she sensed wasn't a thing of distance over time, or even a direct comparison to light. It was a scale factor--a number--and a very practical one. Gamma.
What was gamma? Gamma was the most useful thing to know about your speed when you were going real fast. When relativity wasn't just noticeable, but dominant.
Most popular explanations of special relativity described strange effects that became apparent when you were traveling close to the speed of light. Distances got shorter, time slowed down, masses increased. But how much shorter? Gamma. How much slower? Gamma. Increased by what factor? Gamma.
How did you find it? Well, if you knew the velocity of an object you could calculate it: It was 1 over the square root of 1 minus v squared over c squared. But Flicker didn't need to calculate it. She could feel it.
A whole bunch of physics equations had a simple form that was really a low speed approximation, and more complicated accurate form for fast things that used gamma. Or the Lorentz factor, if you were being formal or talking to radiation people who were twitchy about high energy photons of the same name. Standing still was gamma 1, and it went up from there. All the way up, because it made something very clear about the speed of light. No matter how close you got to it, you were still infinitely far away, because the speed of light was infinite gamma.
Another thing it made clear was how relatively slow she had to go on Earth.
Her jump to the Moon had been at 0.05c, which corresponded to a gamma of 1.00125 or so.
Her normal Earth speed limit was 0.2c--gamma 1.021.
She moved between tests at 0.8c--gamma 1.667, and the effects were quite noticeable. The whole Moon was flattened--but only in the direction she was traveling. Every object was flattened or stretched, and the light coming from them made them look twisted. For the trial run for the final speed test she'd gone up to 0.96c--gamma 3.571. That turned the Moon into a modestly thick disc, with her constantly cresting the edge. And pushing down hard to stay on the surface. How hard scaled with both velocity squared and gamma squared. The frame lock let her do it, but 60 billion g's down was still a lot. Sensors and her visor had started picking up some unusual effects, so Doc and the Database were analyzing them back on Earth while she finished up everything else.
One thing that had turned out to be a bigger problem than expected was dust. Not regular surface dust, which Flicker was careful not to disturb unnecessarily, but the tiniest particles from the interplanetary dust cloud, sifting down to the surface of the Moon unhindered by air. They weren't collectively anywhere near as dense as air, but they were too small to avoid, too common to ignore, just fast enough to replenish cleared paths, and too isolated and erratic to deflect with her usual flow and plasma tricks. Her inertial damping kept them from causing much direct damage, but her space modified costume was rapidly becoming radioactive, and they had the potential to cause other problems.
She finished the last of the extended tests, then slowed down to breathe. She was running low on oxygen, so she topped off her small, hardened supply from the tank in the preplaced stash. She could go without breathing for quite a while if she had to, but it wasn't fun. The tank and its backup were in somewhat less radiation and shock tolerant containers, and that looked like it might become a problem. She sent off her preliminary test assessment to Earth, then browsed Database inferences while she waited for Doc's reply.
"I concur with the plasma-cleared torus for the final run," said Doc. "It will stay dust-free for long enough. Go as fast as you feel safe. I won't be able to talk to you, but I'll be monitoring. Don't worry about anything else. Good luck, and see you soon."
Flicker smiled. At last. The Speedtest grand finale.
How fast dare I go, with nothing in the way? I shall run and find out.
She felt as free as she'd ever been.
*****
First great circle circuit, deliberately kicking up Moon dust at gamma 3.5. Done in 38 milliseconds for the Moon, 11 for her.
Second circuit, turning the dust into a continuous plasma tunnel blasting outward to repel or vaporize anything new that might wander into her way.
Back around to begin the third circuit.
And deep inside her mind, she decided something else. There were no intelligent beings closer to her than Earth, over a light second away. There was no one else who could think inside her light cone, and wouldn't be, for over a second, unless something very strange--and very damning--happened. She had projectiles ready, just in case. But she didn't think anything would.
Because she wasn't just testing, she was hunting.
"That's a decision no one but you can make," Doc had said. With more implications than were obvious. She could go for a safer final test--or push to the limit. And no one, no one, could know in advance. She took counsel of the plasma noise, random fluctuations. Unique to this worldline and unpredictable.
And made her choice.
She did not forget the thin threads that connected her to humanity, even while she was out here, far enough away that no one else would get hurt. She remembered silly bits and pieces of life, collected haphazardly like precious mementos, that made her as human as she could be.
Vacuum calls to me
Many universes sing
I dance in this one
She started accelerating.
*****
Gamma 20, circling the Moon. A circuit would take just 2 milliseconds for her--if she stopped accelerating, which she didn't. Just under 37 milliseconds for the Moon. That wasn't going to change change much anymore, she was already over 0.99c. She had fully clamped down on her body with her power, preserving every nucleus in every atom of her body in its relative local position, regardless of now-forbidden chemistry. The electrons were still free to move, and did, streaming outwards, carrying entropy that now had few other ways to escape. New electrons kept arriving, pulled by her increasing positive charge, but they were expelled in turn.
She moved in a very strange realm, twisted and Doppler shifted, full of increasingly furious radiation from solar wind and residual plasma particles encountered at massive speed. But they were essentially standing still. The speed was all hers. They were just in the way.
*****
She was hunting a probability manipulator, possibly an Oracle, certainly one that had access to visions of the future--and one who wished her ill. Whoever had sent Hermes, so carefully timed to hit her at a weak point. And possibly given her an extra push to sabotage her relationship with Journeyman. But they had done nothing traceable. Yet. She was giving them an opportunity to change that. A very tempting one.
*****
Gamma 70. Almost 0.9999c. Tiny second order effects were becoming large, and previously unnoticed third order ones were becoming noticeable. The frame-locked centripetal acceleration downward, keeping her near the surface as she speed skated over the Moon, had become massive, and those tiny effects were generating heat. She was entropy dumping it into the lunar surface at a significant rate now.
*****
How much could an Oracle see? They weren't perfect; they couldn't be. And how fast could they see a new future, if it changed? Doc's time loop theories set limits on that. So many theories, which ones were right? Who could know? But there were predictions in common. And there was something special about the fifty ciruit limit for the final run of Speedtest. It would extend over an interval long enough for light--and causality--to get from Earth to the Moon. Barely. But not long enough for a round trip.
So an Oracle might see a beginning of Speedtest from Earth, and the right time and place and worldline to send a probability manipulation pulse to affect the end. Or they could see an end, and the time and place to join that Earth. But not both.
*****
Gamma 707. 0.999999c. Near full ionization--the electrons couldn't keep up as she pulled them from the ground and the surrounding plasma. Her body sent a banshee wail of synchrotron radiation outward as she pulled down at trillions of g's to stay on the Moon. Her visor had died; nothing electronic could hope to survive the flux she was sending out now. But it wouldn't be much longer.
*****
She hadn't told Journeyman. She hadn't told Doc. She hadn't told DASI. She'd made her choice in a small part of her high speed mind intended for diagnostics. It was the right size for a human-like mind, if not remotely human shaped. It was enough. She'd set her trap. She was the trap. Her would-be nemesis could take what looked like their best shot, localizing themselves to a particular Earth worldline--but not if they wanted to see how it all turned out.
Flicker bared her teeth.
*****
Gamma 2886. 0.99999994c. A complete circuit would take less than 13 microseconds subjective because of time dilation. An outside observer would measure her mass at 144 metric tons. Over 10^22 Joules of kinetic energy, more than 3,000 gigatons of TNT. She was still moving stably, but the side effects were just becoming too much. Flicker stopped accelerating, holding her speed steady as she approached the far side of the Moon before her planned deceleration. She hadn't quite managed the full fifty circuits, but she didn't want to tear the Moon apart, and the strip of ground under her had already absorbed a massive amount of energy from her entropy dumping. She had her data--it was time to slow down. Too bad. Her trap didn't seem to have--
Her entropy dumping weakened, then stopped completely. Internal alarms blared and she started heating up. Quickly.
There it was. Got you, you bastard.
Now to stay alive. First, get around to the far side before her temperature rose too--
Her frame lock started to waver, releasing a blast of energy when she compensated.
Shit. Hang on. Earth should not have line of sight to what was about to happen.
Let go of non-essentials. Dump them--she could still connect to everything inside her 10 centimeter inertial damping range. Costume, hood, remaining projectiles, now-useless visor, hair. Blast them away at 50 million K. Up and forward. Push out energy and momentum. That got her over the horizon.
The frame lock broke. Facing almost directly away from Earth. Yeah, that was how the bastard had planned to get rid of her--off into interstellar space at relativistic speed with no hope of survival, let alone return.
Her regular acceleration limit was 10 billion g's. She needed way more to stay near the Moon at this speed, and had no time to slow down. But there was a way.
Curve around, heating up. Torrents of particles inside her, pair production from pushing too hard. Heat. Pain. Alarms. She altered her path slightly. Dust was the least of her worries. But one last push, and she could slow down enough to stay near the surface. The oldest way.
Lithobraking.
This is going to hurt.
Flicker, still moving at a gamma of over 2700, ran head on into a mountain at the edge of the South Pole--Aitken basin.
Discontinuity.
*****
Shattering fragments of intruding nucleons. Neutrinos. Angry photons, disintegrating every nucleus that wasn't hers. More neutrinos. Sprays of high-mass, short-lived hadrons. Even more neutrinos. Energy and entropy with nowhere to go pulling quarks from the vacuum.
Heat and pain. Alarms screaming, distantly. Was she below the Hagedorn temperature yet?
Enough. Radiate ALL the neutrinos. They could get out without running into anything, unlike everything else.
Keep curving around, the Moon was still there. At least ahead of her. What was behind her was less important. Push entropy into a smaller and smaller region inside. Concentrate the heat. Keep pumping out neutrinos.
Until Flicker finally cooled, and slowed to a crawl. Still intact.
Well, relatively cool. Under a billion kelvins. And a relative crawl, gamma 3 or so.
And relatively... wait. Why was she more massive? Her nuclei were still there--at least the same elements, she had that locked in.
Was it foreign matter in her lungs and gastrointestinal tract? No... Some nucleons had started fusing again after photodisintegration, run through the CNO cycle, and the resulting helium was now merrily alpha-processing its way up the curve of binding energy. Reassuringly normal physics, if not the sort she generally wanted inside her body. But it was very low density. Not enough to explain--
Oh. "Your powers do not appear to confer complete immunity to nucleosynthesis." That weird feeling and extra mass was a vast excess of r-process heavy isotopes left from neutron bombardment by the fragments of the mountain she'd run through.
She was... Gods and monsters she was a mess. Excessively radioactive, and going to stay that way until the millisecond isotopes decayed. Technically alive didn't look like it was happening soon, even after electrons came back. Time to try for 'back to Earth still mobile'.
No way to dump heat but radiation, so she radiated as she pushed down to stay on the last arc of her great circle curve. She sensed the Earth clearly, the welcome mass of home. Finally, it rose above the horizon and she could let go. Jump back down to Earth.
Goodbye, Moon. It was nice meeting you. Sorry about the mess.
*****
Flicker spared a microsecond for a hunt assessment as she plummeted back towards Earth, radiating copiously. Things didn't look good for fast pursuit of whoever had hit her with the attack. Most of her normal senses were down--her flesh body had turned into a strangely rigid plasma, a bare framework for what might eventually be something humanlike again. Her com options were down to glorified handwaving and signal cannons, and even if she could get triangulation data quickly after getting back to Earth, the list of things wrong catalogued by her speed mind was more than a human mind could comprehend. It was hard to set up alarm flood handling for body parts you didn't know you had, and those early itchy complaints about lack of calibration had had a point. At least some of the alerts seemed to be consequences of self-repair. They kept her mind off damage, and pain. Silver linings...
Her untranslated01 was being passive-aggressive about altering Plank's constant again, with damage mitigation suggestions implying that if she was insistent on using neutrino cooling in such an (untranslated) (untranslated) environment, it would help. Or maybe she was just projecting; she would be snarky in the kind of alarms you generally only saw after ignoring many 'No! Stop! Unsafe!' ones.
Sorry, still no messing with Plank's constant.
Flicker was going to have enough trouble drag braking by momentum transfer in the upper atmosphere. Even if she just used it to buffer her inherent deceleration, it would be unstable for induced torque, and she would have to add energy to keep from spinning violently. How much? She didn't know; she hadn't planned on coming home quite this fast. And she really wanted to limit her energy dissipation to kilotons instead of megatons. She was going to reenter over the Pacific, but pulling a super-Tunguska on the way down would be obnoxious.
...and the atmosphere was coming up quick, she could feel the flux increasing and oh, what a great time for her vertigo to come back. Because her eyes weren't working, she was using mass sense to see and flux rates to maneuver and that didn't help with dizzyness.
Drag, trying to stabilize on the thin upper atmospehere, working as well as she'd expected: Badly.
Torque. Starting to spin. Shit. Counter it. Shitshit too much. Tumbling on a different axis. Slow it. Okay.
Plasma everywhere, had she dumped enough? Gamma 1.12, not yet. But the air was thick enough now she could start using her old inertial damping flow tricks, as long as she didn't care how much she heated up, so she stopped trying to fight it, just smoothed it out, let her momentum drop the old fashioned way.
Okay, it looked like it was going to be megatons after all, but spread out, and hopefully not too many...
Lower atmosphere, and surface of the ocean coming up. Whoops, mass flow went up, what? Ah, water, she was coming in through a thunderstorm, not ideal, but--wait, scratch that, she was insanely radioactive in Earth terms and she was about to hit salt water, fresh water was better to slow down...
Down to about 0.07c, and she didn't manage to frame lock until she was within 40 meters, bad timing with waves, but she could entropy dump again! Relief! She could finally--okay that was a lot of heat, she'd caused some fusion coming in, but it was just thermal X-rays, mostly, and...
This landing did cause a fireball. But she'd made it back. Now she needed to readjust her perspective to Earth-appropriate energy levels and start moving, because she was still radiating, a lot of it was neutrons, and the shock wave from her landing might--
Oh crap, what's that? Density voids beneath the surface within a few kilometers, going to get hit by her impact shockwave. What was... Whales. She was seeing the air inside the lungs of whales with her density sense. Were they far enough away to survive? Maybe. Anything else?
What was that, up in the sky?
Something human-sized, coming in at just over orbital speed--wait, she'd know that shockwave anywhere, no one else flew like that, it had to be the Volunteer.
Flicker sped over to just in front of him and slowed down enough for him to see--millisecond timescales, but how to talk? She couldn't see, and her com was ancient history.
He could see. And she could write. Plasma letters in the air over the ocean. She didn't need his help, but others did.
Shockwave. Can't stay. Save the whales.
He could get details from Doc, and it was time for her to go. She dared not remain stationary for more than a few milliseconds yet--she was entropy dumping just to get down to solar surface temperatures, neutron activation was a thing, she needed some radiation time before it would be safe to head for Doc's, and salt water was not the best place for it.
South. 0.05c. Her flow compensation in air was still shaky, not up to her usual standards, and she'd scattered plenty of high energy plasma around already.
*****
Antarctica. Ross ice shelf. Nothing but fresh water and dry air. A good place to cool down, and as good as she was going to get to radiate neutrons. Slow loops, down at a thousand kilometers per second, slow enough to be ghosting--if she hadn't been glowing hot.
Her path was predictable, and she finally heard a signal--an orbital pulse maser from Doc, sending coded bits she could feel directly. Low bandwidth, noisy, but 'Threat gone'? Had her attacker escaped already?
Anger kindled. But she wasn't thinking clearly beyond immediate needs, too many things were still wrong--store the anger, there were places for it, places that wouldn't get completely cleared when she could finally sleep again. She would remember, regardless.
Seconds stretched out. But fresh water could absorb neutrons with very little persistent radiation, and her nuclei were settling down a bit--excited isomers and excess neutrons were making their way out, electrons were returning long enough to start accumulating, and her radiation profile was slowly dropping to the point where she might be able to actually stop somewhere with appropriate cooling.
More pulses. 'Pumps on. Shields up. Isotope exchanger ready.'
Doc was prepared. And she needed that exchanger. She was still clamped down hard, and had to stay that way, because she had too many nuclei that were too neutron heavy to be stable--and letting them decay would change them to different elements, and, say, carbon changing to nitrogen inside her DNA would be A Problem when she let the chemistry in her body restart. To say nothing of all the tritium. She needed time in the shop before she could even consider restarting biology and life.
A long time. Hours, possibly days. Not pleasant, not optional.
And she'd cooled and radiated enough. Equilibrium decay temperature was manageable. Time to head home.
*****
Back at Doc's, inside the force fields that protected everything else from her. The pumps did their work bringing fresh water in range for entropy dumping, so she could cool without moving. Isotope exchange started, hands and eyes first, so she could see and type for the rest.
She still had many questions. But she'd survived Speedtest, discovered so much, run up to gamma 2886, 0.99999994c, weathered the attack, and made it home. Soon she would be able to start recording data again, and ask some of those questions. Her attacker appeared to have escaped. But they had been triangulated, from the timing of the attack on the Moon along with signals extracted from the Omniresonators at the Database nodes. There was a distinctive signature--and the attacker had fled, immediately, to another dimension, without waiting to see if their attack succeeded. They feared her survival.
Flicker lived. And she would not forget.
Next: Part 10
7 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
nikkklaus-blog
excelsior;
heehooligan
position and pose
this-place-called-nowhere
I slowly drift away into the void
mxgood
مجرد رأي
magnesiumbubble
Aggies Interior Design Blog