Population Dynamics
-or-
The Sudden Rise and Tragic Death of Felicity Harbor
A fan fiction in three parts, set in the universe of Madoka Magica
Part I: Maximum Sustainable Yield
Felicity stopped Kara at the door, putting her arm out across the frame as to bar all entrance to the little shack. Kara raised an eyebrow at her, trying to brush her arm aside.
"Do you mind letting me in?" Kara asked. There was a brief pause. "Actually, why are you here anyway?"
"I came here after school." Felicity said. "I'm allowed here, you know. You keep telling me not to come, but mom says you can't stop me."
"It's nearly midnight." Kara said. "What do you think mom would say if I told her you were up at midnight playing in a clubhouse on a school night?"
"You wouldn't say, 'cuz then I'd tell her about your secret." Felicity said.
"You wouldn't dare." Kara said, pushing through the much younger Felicity's blockade with very little effort and stepping into the room beyond. "No one would believe you if you did, anyway."
"Hey!" a mirthful voice called from the couch in the living room, which made up a good sixty percent of the building. "Kara! Come here, grab a beer!" Felicity rolled her eyes. She hated Janet, but Kara and Janet had been friends since forever, and Kara wouldn't let a little something like spending time with her little sister get in the way of that.
"Janet, I'm eighteen." Kara said. "So are you, for that matter."
"Eh, whatever." Janet said. "They're cold and cheep and I know where to get 'em." when Kara let out a deep sigh, Janet laughed again. "It's not like I'm offering them to Felicity. Chill out, girl."
"You really shouldn't." Kara said. Janet stood up and handed Kara her beer.
"Then be the responsible adult and take it from me." Janet said. "Come on. Just one? Hell, Kara, you just got back from saving god knows how many people. Have a little fun, at least for your fifth."
Kara paused. "It is the fifth, isn't it?" she sighed, looking at the beer. "Five years today."
"Tomorrow, technically." Janet said. "So if you want to use the celebratory excuse, you should wait another two minutes, but yeah. Five years now."
Felicity sighed. "You two are going to start talking about old times again like little old ladies, aren't you." she said flatly, sitting down on the couch, making a point not to look at Janet.
"No, we'll spare you from the terribly boring stories of magical adventure." Janet said teasingly, and Felicity blushed. "I know how much you hate it."
"I didn't mean that." Felicity said. "I just didn't want you to get sappy."
"It's not sappy, it's nostalgia." Janet corrected, and Kara settled down next to Felicity, putting her arm around her. Felicity squirmed for a moment, but then sighed, giving up.
"I can still remember the look on that Incubator's face when you popped your wish." Janet said. "It was priceless."
"I think you're misremembering." Kara said. "I don't think I've ever so much as seen a single one of them change expressions. I don't even know if they can. Sarah, though, she flipped out."
"Oh, yeah." Janet laughed. "She couldn't believe it worked. She accused you of cheating, if I remember correctly."
"I couldn't believe it worked, either. It felt like I had asked the genie for a thousand more wishes and he said 'damn, I hadn't thought of that.'" Kara said. "Michaela was so happy with us, I remember."
"It's just us left, though, isn't it?" Janet said. "Sarah, Josephine, Michaela, Lu..."
"Yeah. Just us." Kara said. "It's been that way for a while now, Janet. Almost two years since Sarah died, and she was the last."
"I know, but still..." Janet said, sighing heavily.
"You're getting sappy again." Felicity accused, and Kara's sad smile broke into a more happy one. She tussled Felicity's hair.
"Sorry, Fill." she said, and Felicity crinkled her nose up, getting laughs from the two older girls. Kara knew she hated that nickname. "You're right, we should be celebrating. Five years as a magical girl, and I haven't died yet." Kara said. "Pretty rare, from what I know. Turnover is usually about six months. And this is me, sitting on my 1,134th successful kill." she paused, patting her pockets for a moment before drawing out a three inch long black object, which Felicity recognized as a grief seed. "Speaking of which..." she tossed it to her, and Felicity caught it, putting it up to the light and examining it. There was a brief pause as Felicity probed it, then she looked up at Kara.
"Class B, some kind of party based apparition. Spawned two familiars before it died, both within the last week. From what I can tell, this one hadn't claimed any kills before you got to it. Should be good for... three recharges for most, if they were lucky, so twenty-seven recharges for you." Felicity said. Janet looked at her with shock, shaking her head.
"Kara, your little sister scares me sometimes." she said teasingly. "Give it another few years and she'll be a regular Sherlock Holmes."
"It's really not that hard once you get the patterns down." Felicity said, feeling a little pride enter her voice. "And I've had plenty of practice."
"You can keep it for your collection." Kara said. "I know you like them, for whatever reason."
"Yes!" Felicity said, putting it in her pocket. "That will make eight hundred and forty-seven." she grinned.
"You know, you should really take Felicity on one of your witch hunts." Janet said. "It'll be good for her."
"I have." Kara said defensively. "Twice."
"They were both familiars." Felicity said. "And one of those was on accident because I happened to find an attack on my own."
"She's a year older than we were when we started." Janet said. "And you know full well the best way to convince someone not to become a magical girl is to show them how deadly it is." she grinned. "Just look at how I turned out. If I hadn't watched you nearly die half a dozen times, I would have signed up too."
"I'm glad you didn't." Kara said. "Now, even after I've gone, someone will be able to remember them for me, even when the rest of the world has forgotten them."
"Oh, come on." Janet said. "You're going to be a magical grandma someday, and never think otherwise."
"Back in my day, we didn't do witch hunting with any of those fancy newfangled devices you got." Kara said in a scratchy voice, and she and Janet laughed again. Felicity managed to slip out from under Kara's arm. Those two would keep on talking for hours, using references that she didn't get and that they wouldn't explain. Sometimes, Felicity wished she was a magical girl too. Then Kara would have to take her seriously.
She went over to her book bag and pulled out her new laptop. It was an Abyssal RX2002, with 512 MB of ATC19 SDRAM and Megaloader Platinum 1500 graphics, powered by two 1ghz MZAlpha Imperion processors. It had cost $1,400, but she had managed to get a hold of one only two weeks after launch. It helped that she asked for literally nothing else from anyone. Computers weren't toys, and she always treated her machines with respect.
She quickly booted up one of her programming projects, looking for various flaws in the code. She lost herself in the lines, so deep in thought that she almost didn't notice the sudden drop off in sound.
Felicity lifted her head slowly. The two older girls were looking out at a strange, cat like creature who had entered the building. Its red eyes turned to Felicity, and she felt her cheeks warm.
"It's one of those Incubator things, isn't it." Felicity said slowly. This was the first time she'd actually seen one, but she remembered the descriptions well. It was hard to mistake it. The blood red eyes, white and pink coat, golden ringlets around the ears.
"Hello, Kara, Janet, Felicity." it said, giving Felicity a cute look.
"What do you want?" Kara growled. "Are you here to ask Janet to contract again?"
"Oh, no." the Incubator cocked its head at them. "After the events which occurred three years two hundred ninety-seven days ago, we recognized the chances of forming a contract with Janet successfully were less than one in eighty-four trillion, so we ceased attempts. Besides, she has now exited the second growth stage, and is no longer of any use." the Incubator turned back to Felicity. "I have a message for Felicity."
"You stay away from my sister." Kara said, transforming in a flourish of white petals. "Or I'll kill you a million times over. I have more than enough power in reserve, you know."
"We are well aware, Kara, of your power." The Incubator said. "It is still a surprise that a wish like yours managed to pass. It had been theorized as possible, but to simply wish for higher efficiency like you did was unprecedented. We have tried to reproduce the event in ninety-two other cases since, but with no success. It appears that your karmatic potential was significantly higher than average. Very few magical girls would be able to successfully achieve such a wish."
"What do you want with Felicity?" Janet asked. "Or do I even have to ask?"
"It is simply a message." the Incubator said. "Witch hunter; forty-four; three thousand seven hundred twenty-nine; eighteen; twelve; two million, three hundred ninety thousand, five hundred sixty-four." the Incubator turned to leave. "I will return in three days." it said, then walked out.
"What... was that?" Janet said, but Felicity had already turned back to her laptop, loading up her 'witch hunter' program. The UI prompted her to supply certain variables, and she inputted the Incubator's numbers into the missing slots. She set the computer to run fifty thousand trials, then turned to the others.
"Witch hunter is the name of a program I wrote." Felicity explained. "A population modeler which was supposed to be able to graph the future population of witches in the area based on some known factors like how fast they spawn familiars and how many were being killed every night. I haven't been able to get many numbers, though." she gave Kara a look. "You wouldn't answer when I asked you. But, if I plug the numbers the Incubator gave us, I'll be able to statistically predict the future population trends in the area."
"There's no way they'd just do something like that." Janet said. "Those things are manipulative bastards. If it gave you the numbers, it has a reason for it. It's probably just lying."
"Incubators don't lie." Kara said. "They just only give you the information most likely to get you to do what they want."
Felicity's computer began to whir, and the screen flashed black. A graph appeared, titled 'trial 00001'. The populations of humans, magical girls, and witches were shown up on the screen with blue, green, and red lines, respectively. Felicity watched the graph with apprehension as the red line climbed upwards exponentially, until the blue and green lines both plummeted suddenly to zero and the screen cleared. A different chart, titled 'trial 00002', flashed up. It progressed faster, but with the same result. Cart after chart flashed up on screen, each one progressing faster than the previous.
"No..." Felicity said. "That can't be."
"What's wrong?" Kara said. "What do those charts mean?"
Felicity didn't say anything as chart after chart rapidly flashed up on the screen. The program buzzed through nearly one thousand a second at the end, then went completely dark. There was a ten second pause, and then the computer displayed the following text.
Population Models finished. Listing Results:
The results have been categorized based on total expected destruction to human populations, with an A type event predicting little to no change in total human populations, and an E type event predicting complete destruction of the city and all its inhabitants.
In fifty thousand trials, there were 1 A type event, 7 B type events, 24 C type events, 73 D type events, and 49895 E type events. The models suggest a 10% chance of total destruction of the city by June 08 of 2002, a 50% chance of total destruction of the city by August 29 of 2002, and a 90% chance of total destruction of the city by February 13 of 2003. There is an estimated 0.1% +/- 0.02% chance of human survival in this area for the next five years.
"What the hell?" Janet said. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Felicity said slowly, "my program has predicted a greater then even chance that the city will be destroyed before I enter ninth grade."
"Wait, how can you possibly know that?" Kara said. "Tomorrow I could get hit by a bus and knock the magic girl population down by one. Or an Incubator could get lucky and make fifteen new ones next week. There's no way you could predict something like that."
"It's statistics." Felicity said. "That's why I ran fifty thousand trials. Each trial takes my data inputs, like human, witch, and magical girl populations, and throws in some random factors to simulate those random occurrences that happen in real life. It only works because we're running so many different trials on a group of people which numbers in the millions. Or, apparently, two point three nine million, if the Incubator gave us the right number. In large groups, people tend to act in predictable ways. If the group is large enough, we can do math to figure out things about it. It can't give us exact answers, only probabilities, but a fifty percent chance of destruction by August 29 doesn't sound good to me."
"It must have lied, then." Janet said. "I never trusted those things. The Incubator is just trying to do what it always does, get people to contract. It wants to freak you out so that you'll sign up."
"Give me your numbers, then." Felicity said. "How long does a magical girl usually live? How many are contracted per day? What's the population of witches right now? How many are being killed every night?"
"I don't know." Kara said. "I think there are a few other magical girls in the city with me, but not very many."
"Just think about it logically." Felicity said. "Witches make familiars, which make more witches, which make more familiars at an ever increasing rate. They're a K-type reproductive species, and they grow exponentially. But magical girl populations are determined by both human populations and the number of Incubators around. They can only grow linearly. If the magical girl population is sufficiently high, and the witch population is sufficiently low, it isn't a problem. But once a particular threshold is crossed, the linear model won't be able to suppress the growth of the exponential model fast enough. It'll jump upwards essentially unhindered until it uses all of the resources in its area. In this case, that resource is the human population."
"What do we do, then?" Janet said. "Are you going to contract and join the fight? Because that's just what those insidious things want, you know."
"It wouldn't matter." Felicity said. "One additional magical girl isn't going to be enough." she tapped a few keys on the computer, running another simulation. She coded furiously for a few moments, then let to computer run. After about fifteen seconds, it spat out some text. Felicity looked up. "From just a quick model, so not a very accurate one, it looks like we need about three hundred and ten of them. By the end of next week."
"Three hundred ten?" Janet said, aghast. "That's... ridiculous."
"If we could get two hundred and fifteen by tomorrow night, that would work too." Felicity said. "Next Friday, eleven days from now, and it's three-ten. I picked that date because it's the last day for which the total number per day we need to get is going down. We'll need almost eighteen hundred to stop it in thirty days, and we'd need the total population of the city to do it in two months."
"This can't be right." Kara said. "Just think about it. If it takes 310 magical girls to keep a city of 2.39 million safe, people would notice."
"330. The incubator told me there were already 18." Felicity said.
"Even worse. In a city of 2.39 million... let's say 2.4 million, to make it easier. Half male, half female means that there are 1.2 million girls. The second life stage in which we can contract seems to be ages eleven to eighteen, so a little less than a tenth of the human lifespan. That means the total number of eligible people for contracts is, what, about 100,000? And we need 330. A third of a percent of all girls worldwide can't be magical girls at any given time. That's just way too high, especially when you consider turnover rates. If half of magical girls die every six months, to keep the population at a constant 0.33%, you'd need to end up contracting 7 times that number total as they passed through that age group. That would mean that almost 2.5% of all girls would have been, at some point, magical girls. That's just impossible. The world would notice. They might not know why, but over 1% of the world population can't disappear during childhood without someone noticing."
"Most cities don't need nearly this many." Felicity said. "We're not at the base of the curve, Kara. We're already on the quickly raising part. That threshold I mentioned was passed a while back. Running the numbers backwards, if we'd know about this one year ago, we would have only needed about sixty total, only another forty. Three years ago, and we'd have only needed to have about thirty-five active magical girls. From what I can tell, under normal conditions, if about 0.0015% of the total population in an area are magical girls, or 0.035% of your 'eligible population', they should be able to maintain stability. But we've been below that for years now, and it's catching up with us."
"There have been more witches recently." Kara said slowly. "A lot more. I thought something might be happening, but I never imagined it would be on this scale."
"You would be starting to notice it about now." Felicity said. "Their numbers just hit the point where they're basically in free climb about two months ago, during which time their total numbers should have increased roughly seven fold."
"You two have both been taken in!" Janet said. "The damn cat is a lying bastard. It's manipulating you to do what it wants. It's even manged to go a step farther than most, getting you to do the fucking recruitment for it!"
"It's true, we are definitely working into its hands." Felicity said. "And the fact that it knew what my program was called is troubling. But, whether or not it has outside motives, if the information is correct, we are all going to die if we don't act quickly. The city is about to be destroyed, and we are the only ones who can stop it."
"We can't afford to double guess this." Kara said. "Not something like this. Janet, you've always trusted my judgment before. These numbers explain what I've noticed and tried not to think about recently."
"So, what, you're going to reverse the years of work that we've put in trying to get girls aware of Incubators and manage to convert them in unheard of numbers over the course of the next two weeks?" Janet said, shaking her head.
"Eleven days. I said the end of next week." Felicity said.
"Kara, this is stupid." Janet said. "We can't trust an Incubator."
"I don't trust Incubators." Kara said. "But I do trust Felicity's math. There's nothing more certain in this world than Felicity's answer to a mathematics problem. If she says we need three hundred and ten more magical girls by the end of next week or the city will be destroyed, then that's exactly what we need."
"Won't this just make things worse in the long run?" Janet asked. "I mean, you know what happens to magical girls who run out of magic. If we do make another three hundred of them, and then we kill all the witches in the area, won't we just end up with another three hundred witches after a couple of weeks?"
"Yes, which will be less than one tenth of our current number." Felicity said. "I don't think you get the magnitude of this problem. There are almost four thousand witches in this city already. There are projected to be ten thousand by June 1. We'll break 100,000 in late august, and hit about 350,000 in mid September. At which point their numbers will stop going up, because they will have killed everyone." Felicity looked at Janet coolly. "Tonight, Kara has killed one witch. If all of the seventeen other magical girls have also killed one witch tonight, a total of eighteen will have been killed. At this point, an average of 237 familiars are being produced every day. They take about two weeks to mature fully, so we'll only see the familiars of a fortnight ago appearing now; at that time, it would have been about 149 per day. Tonight alone, under optimal conditions, the population of witches has increased by roughly one hundred and thirty. We are in the middle of a rapidly increasing population explosion that has just now started to go off. If we do not stop it immediately, we will be wholly unable to stem the tide."
"This can't possibly be!" Janet said. "If the populations were really that hard to balance, then cities would be wiped off the map every few years!"
"Or, every few years, an Incubator could careful place the information in the hands of people able to act upon it." Felicity said. "They warn them just in time, cash in on the huge number of grief seeds produced in the short time of intense panic, and let the populations stabilize again temporarily." she shook her head. "It's horrible, but it makes mathematical sense."
"There's no good answer, is there?" Janet said.
"No. There isn't." Kara said. "But we swore to protect this city no matter what, Janet. And if that means we have to play the Incubator's game, then that's what we'll do."
"If only we had all the information." Felicity said. "There is always the chance that I set up my model wrong. Just because something looks right in the short term doesn't mean anything for the long term. And, well, if I'm wrong, and we're not about to hit an apocalypse... we'll have convinced three hundred and ten innocent girls to die for nothing."
Felicity paused. Something was beginning to tickle at the back of her mind, a solution to at least some of their problems beginning to form. It flitted in and out of her mind, and she tried to grasp it with little success. Wishes, Incubators, and information...
"Why don't we ask for help from other cities?" Janet asked suddenly. "It shouldn't matter where the three hundred and ten come from, right?"
"No, that wouldn't work." Felicity said. "We need a total of three hundred and thirty magical girls for at least a month. It will take that long at minimum to beat their populations back far enough. Beyond the problem of hosting over three hundred people for a month, it would leave their cities without protection for that time. Moving that many magical girls around would drop at least a few of those cities below their threshold, and pretty soon every population center in the country would be at risk of collapse. There's also the issue of contacting them, convincing them to join us, and the potential that they'll just leave part way through or fight the other girls. When it's not your home at risk, you're much less likely to work in concert."
"This operation is just getting more and more impossible." Janet said. "What happens if some of the girls die before the month is up?"
"We'll have to replace them." Felicity said. Janet gasped, looking disgusted.
"These are people we're talking about." Janet said. "You're starting to sound like an Incubator yourself, Felicity."
"I know they're people!" Felicity said, her veneer of calmness cracking slightly. "But if we don't do this, even more will die. Can't you see that?" she shook a little bit. "Do you think I'm happy that I have to try to convince over three hundred people my age to go and fight and die? Do you think this makes me feel all good, like I'm finally achieving something? How twisted do you think I am?!" she yelled, and Janet took a step back from her. Felicity took a deep breath, calming herself slowly. After a moment of silence, she spoke again "If we don't do this, they're still going to die, and so will hundreds of thousands of others." she said quietly.
No one said anything for a moment. The three girls looked around at each other. Felicity had at some point gotten up onto the little side table, rising to the height of the other girls.
"So, are we doing this?" Janet said finally after a moment.
"What choice do we have?" Kara said.
Janet sighed. "I'll go and visit some of my friends. We should be able to start generating a list of names tomorrow." she shook her head. "I never thought we would be using our targeting tactics to help the Incubators."
"I'll see if any of the other girls are willing to talk." Kara said. "They usually don't like me, but if I phrase it right, and provide the right incentive..." she looked at Felicity. "I'm going to need some of those grief seeds back."
"There are over one hundred in a little box under my bed. You can start with those." Felicity said. "While you two do that, I'm going to track down Incubators. If anyone needed a wish more than me, I can't think of them. I'll figure out some way to trap them if I can. We're going to need a bunch to do this."
"We could wait three days." Janet said. "That one who came today said he'd be back."
"I'm not sure one Incubator is going to be enough for three hundred and ten girls." Felicity said. "It can't hurt to get more." she yawned suddenly.
"You sound tired." Janet said. "Perhaps you should go to bed. It's definitely past your bedtime."
"By this time tomorrow, I'll be a magical girl." Felicity said. "Then I won't have a bed time."
Kara sighed. "I tried so hard to keep you out of this, I really did. I thought if I could stop the Incubators from being able to easily contract people here, they'd eventually leave. I couldn't ever get in soon enough for everyone, but I was making progress. Janet was a huge help. We identified likely targets and showed them just how stupid of a choice it was." she looked down. "That's what did this, though. I was too successful. I pushed the magical girl number below the critical value. If I hadn't tried to stop magical girls from being created, we would have needed less magical girls in the long run." she laughed quietly. "Ironic, isn't it? The best move would have been to do nothing but what the damn Incubators wanted from the beginning. Funny how that works out."
"You didn't know." Felicity said. She yawned again. "It's not your fault for trying to make the world a better place in the wrong way." she grabbed a pillow from the couch and laid it down in the corner of the room. "I'm taking a sick day tomorrow." Felicity announced. "I can afford to fake one or two." she frowned. "Actually, I'll skip as many days of school as I damn well need to. This has to take top priority. It's the most important... most important... thing." she murmured, her eyes starting to close. It was strange, how quickly this sleep had set on her.
"Sleep well." Kara said.
Felicity tried to respond, but all that came out was a light murmur, then soft breathing as she fell into what was very likely to be her last good night of sleep.
**&^%^&**
"Now, if I was a alien cat-thing from a type III civilization who was looking for little girls to prey on, where would I go?" Felicity murmured to herself, sipping a milkshake and looking out the large glass windows of the ice-cream shop she was currently in and into the city beyond. The middle-school seemed like the obvious choice, but she couldn't show up there without being recognized instantly. It was a Tuesday, so there weren't any events going on that she knew of. Girls playing hookie like her would be scattered randomly around the city, so there was no way to predict that. Her eyes passed over the street beyond, until she landed on a comic store. Felicity smiled. Perfect. Anyone looking to become a superhero would inevitably end up in one of these places. Any Incubator worth their salt would show up here at least once in a while. It wasn't a guarantee, but it was a start.
She left the ice-cream shop and walked purposefully into the comic store. She walked around, pretending to be interested in certain objects as to not arouse suspicion. No one payed her any mind. After a few minutes had passed, Felicity lost patience and left the store. Not even a hint of an Incubator anywhere. She looked around the streets, trying to figure out where to go next, when she spotted one in the corner of her eye. She turned and watched it disappear into an ally nearby. Felicity grinned. Luck was on her side.
She quickly ran after it, turning down the ally just in time to see it dart into another small passage. She sighed, continuing her chase. It managed to avoid her for nearly five minutes before she final caught up to it, scooping it up like a cat and turning it to face her.
"I've got..." Felicity started, then sighed. "You." her shoulders sagged, and she put down the white tabby, who ran away from her as soon as it was safely on the ground. Felicity sat down on the steps of a nearby building, sighing to herself. She was getting nowhere. What had she really expected, anyway? It wasn't like she had much of a chance catching a networked organism that was far smarter, faster, and smaller then she was. She would only find an Incubator if they wanted her to find them. If they wanted her...
"Hello, Felicity." a voice said from behind her, and she turned to face an Incubator, licking its paw cutely and deliberately. "You were looking for one of me?"
"Yes." Felicity said. "I want you to make me a magical girl. Do it now."
The Incubator blinked suddenly. "This is highly anomalous. From your relationship to Kara, we assumed it would be much more difficult then this to convince you." the Incubator paused. "Not that I'm complaining. Tell me, what is your wish?"
Felicity breathed in and out slowly, then gave the Incubator a steady look. "I want your powers. All of them. I wish for all the powers of the Incubators."
"Your wish has been granted." the Incubator said, but he looked very unhappy about it. No, he was very unhappy about it. Felicity felt her chest convulse, and a searing pain ripped itself out of her body and coalesced in front of her. She had been prepared for that. But then her head throbbed, and her skin began to burn on the back of her right hand. Suddenly, it was like the floodgates of her mind had been opened, whereas before she could see only a trickle. Data rushed in at her as she became connected to the Incubator network, became a part of it. She felt herself changing, loosing a part of her identity to the mass that was the whole of the Incubator species. She shed her memories and feelings in layers, tearing her to the core and threatening to overwrite her existence. Furiously, she pulled as much of Felicity that remained back together, and slammed the floodgates closed with a force of will great enough to move mountains. Her mind reeled, her body shook, and then, finally, it was over. She collapsed to the ground, her soul gem in her left hand, and her grief seed acceptance hatch in her right.
She panted heavily for a moment, then stopped. Panting was a horribly inefficient way of getting oxygen back into her blood stream. Given her body mass and lung capacity, modulating her breathing to one full draw every 1.937 seconds would allow for maximum uptake and quickest recovery time. She let her breath slide into this higher efficiency track and stood up, brushing the dirt off of her shirt and pants.
"You should be brain dead." the Incubator said. Felicity checked his data and provided the necessary corrections to the equations. The Incubator cocked his head. "Your intelligence being 2.49% above expected and the introduction of 18.968 ml of adrenaline to your system at key points fails to provide sufficient explanation for your survival." Felicity spent 6.38 seconds contemplating how to explain 'pure force of will' to the Incubator, then decided it was simply not worth her effort. She walked away from the Incubator slowly, its attempts at determining her nature failing rapidly as confusion and uncertainty spread throughout the Incubator network. As she did, her brain underwent its final, late stage changes, separating her fully and totally from the realm of humanity.
The human-incubator interface formerly known as Felicity let herself expend the unnecessary energy to smile.
Authors Note:
Kara's wish was that every grief seed she got would give her ten times the normal number of recharges. It won't ever be mentioned directly in the story because all of the characters know it already, but I thought you aught to know.