Chapter 4: Proposition
September 19, 2014
I looked over the proposal as I ate the ice cream. It was a tempting offer. If I agreed, I could mostly sit back and not do anything and I would receive all the money I never had in exchange. I suspected that any optional missions I was requested to participate in would be things I already would've wanted to help with, and I could refuse them anyway so that wasn't a problem. As for the surveillance, they were most probably already keeping a close eye on me whether I liked it or not. If I accepted the offer, it would just be more overt than before.
I could admit to myself that this was more than what I would've wanted three years ago before the disaster, maybe even afterwards if they hadn't immediately resorted to trying to kill me and, if I was being totally honest, maybe even after that. I would've had people I could talk to, acquaintances if not friends, and I would've had a purpose in my life, maybe I could've even felt good about myself then.
But as of right now this was unacceptable, I had thought this through, I wouldn't have been in this building if I hadn't. I had power, a very destructive one, true, but that didn't necessarily mean I had to resort to annihilating cities to effect change. It was a form of leverage. This proposal limited my freedoms more than before. Yes, they had no real way of actually enforcing it. And unless they got their hands on someone with truly exotic powers, they couldn't kill me – I would know, I had tried – so as far as actual oversight was concerned, my signature here would be as worthless as the piece of paper itself. But in a different sense, what I did here was important. If I wanted to make a real difference, I would have to be bold, being seen as subservient to the government wouldn't do.
Having finished my ice cream, I put the papers down and leaned back in my chair. My thoughts turned to Miss Militia and inevitably to the Bay. It had taken me years and thousands of kilometers of aimless wandering to come to terms with the fact that my power had destroyed the city, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process including my dad. It had taken me even longer to accept that I was as much at fault for the disaster as a random bystander. I had told Miss Militia that her incompetence had led to the disaster, and it was true in a manner of speaking, but truthfully, I couldn't blame her much. The same went for the bullies, I blamed them a touch more than Miss Militia and I still felt a tinge of bitterness at the thought that Sophia's status as a Ward may have led to preferential treatment. But the bullies, Ward or not, had been dead for more than three years now, and if I wanted to be fair to everybody and myself, I couldn't blame anyone too much for what virtually amounted to a natural disaster.
I turned slightly to the one-way mirror and waved at it before pointing to the papers. Then I sat back and assumed a bored expression. Soon enough, Miss Militia opened the door and entered the room. I couldn't decide if sending her in again was a sign of PRT's incompetence or not. As for Miss Militia herself, she had been extremely lucky to be one of the few heroes who was on the rig when the disaster happened. She had been even more lucky that amid the euphoric sense of using my power to return the universe around me to its base elements, some part of my brain had decided that consuming the ocean was too much, fearing that I would never step out of my trance if I acquired so much energy. So, I didn't know if I should be impressed by her courage or if I should be disappointed by her senselessness for deciding to come here in the first place.
"I assume you've read the terms." she started after sitting down.
I nodded to her with a smile.
"And?" she prompted.
"No." I answered.
"No?" she repeated with a wary look.
"No, I don't accept your offer" I replied "furthermore I will not be tried in a court of law. I will walk out that door" I pointed to the door, "and you will be letting me do so."
She stared for a moment before visibly composing herself "You understand that legally we have to apprehend you." she said.
"Of course," I replied, my smile widening "I don't know what you have here, maybe you could contain me, maybe not." I continued with a shrug. One reason I had willingly walked into this place was so that I could be reasonably certain that they wouldn't have the time to prepare anything. "I don't think anyone can determine that with any certainty, so it's a risk either way. And if you can't contain me, you still have enough time to evacuate yourselves and as many people as possible. Even so, there are eight million people in this city, you can't save everyone. Are you willing to risk that?" I asked, tilting my head.
Miss Militia paled a little. "Would you really do that?" she asked in an uncertain tone. Would I? Even putting the human cost aside, there was no world where blowing up New York City would help change things for the better, it was a waste of potential. Still, I couldn't afford to have a reputation for making empty threats. In any case though this wasn't a threat I thought I would have to go through with.
"Maybe," I answered, raising my eyebrows "or maybe I'm bluffing. Does it matter?"
She stared back for a few moments before shaking her head slightly. "And what? That would be my fault as well?" she said with a quirked eyebrow.
"No, Miss Militia," I replied slowly "It would be entirely my fault. In fact," I leaned forward "as far as moral choices are concerned, I just stripped you of any good choice. Right?" I made a questioning face. "You are forced to choose between what you perceive as the evil of letting me go and the evil of millions of deaths. I am the one forcing the choice on you, so whatever you choose, you shouldn't bear any guilt." I leaned back in my chair as she silently watched me. We looked at each other for a long moment. It was a shame that the reveal of her name hadn't had the intended effect, it had taken Anna a while to bypass PRT's security. I supposed I couldn't have everything. Still, that didn't mean I couldn't have some effect here.
"If I was in your place," I started with a grin "I would call my own bluff, I would have a clear conscience regardless. And bonus point if it was actually a bluff or if I was easily contained, then I'd have double the…" I paused, frowning "double the clear conscience? I don't know, I should've thought this through." I finished, irritated.
Miss Militia was looking at me as if I was insane. "Right." she said flatly after a moment.
"You aren't the one making the decision anyway, I'm sure your bosses are pragmatic enough." I said, looking at the one-way mirror. "Tell you what, you let me go and I'll be open to future negotiations. Also," I fumbled with the papers, looking for a specific clause. I indicated it to Miss Militia after I found it. "I may be willing to take the mandated therapy anyway if you're still offering it outside of the proposal." I finished with a serious look.
Miss Militia gave me a long and disturbed look before finally shaking her head again "Fine, I'll relay your… counterproposal to my superiors, if you don't mind."
"By all means." I replied with a gesture of my hand. She got up and left the room without another word.
I sat silently in my chair waiting for them to make a decision. The interrogation room I was in was much more well lighted than what I had come to expect from watching Aleph movies, but it still was a traditional interrogation room. They hadn't searched me or taken away my belongings when they had escorted me here. I still had my phone with me, though currently it was displaying the 'no signal' sign.
It took all of ten minutes for the door to the interrogation room to open again, a bald man in glasses entered the room, not closing the door behind him. The man walked up to me. I stood up from my chair in response.
"Hello, I'm director Williams." the man said, giving me a forced smile. He extending his hand.
"Hello director, I'm Taylor Hebert." I shook his hand with my own smile. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
"Likewise." the director replied stiffly. "In any case we have decided to agree with your offer of truce." he continued.
"Good decision." I said with a smirk.
The director pretended not to notice it. "Before you leave," he took out a piece of paper "Can you write down your contact information for us?"
"Sure." I replied before taking the piece of paper and writing down my phone number. They probably already had my number, if I had to guess, this was their way of saying they would contact me in the future.
"Excellent," the director said, taking the piece of paper "Do you want us to escort you to your place of residence or…"
"It's alright, I'll figure something out." I said, looking at my phone.
The director nodded. "Well then," he turned to point to a trooper standing outside "he will be escorting you out of the building if that's okay."
"Sure." I replied. I turned to leave but the director spoke again "Oh, and also," he fumbled in his pocket before taking out a card and handing it to me "you can call this number and schedule a therapy session if you want. Free of charge, of course."
"Thank you." I answered with a smile, taking the card. With that I walked out of the room. The trooper nodded to me as I approached him. We walked through and out of the building in silence. I thanked the trooper after we reached outside of the building, he nodded and turned back inside. I waited for a few seconds so I could be alone. Then called up Anna's number on my phone. The phone rang for a while as I stood outside the PRT building, watching the cars come and pass in the nearby street. She finally answered her phone after nearly a minute.
"Taylor? I was in class. Where the hell did you disappear to last night?" she asked immediately after picking up.
"Anna, can you come pick me up? I'm near the PRT headquarters." I replied.
"What the fuck are you doing there?" she asked in a muffled voice.
"It's a long story, can you just come pick me up? I kind of just… threatened the heroes that I would blow up New York City." I said in a low voice.
"WHAT?" she shouted. Then there was some muffled conversation on the other side of the phone. "Oh God Taylor, I'll be there in fifteen minutes." she said before hanging up.
Dragon watched as one S-Class threat, Nova, entered her friend's car. She watched as they took off toward their place of residence. The 'interrogation' had been a strange affair but Nova's behavior today had led Dragon to believe that the girl was less insane than she pretended to be. She had at least as much certainty in her analysis as to leave a subroutine to the job of watching the girl, confident that she wouldn't return to a crater in New York City's place.
Dragon was very busy these days, she had been coordinating the U.S. military's bombing campaign in what used to be the southern part of the state of Georgia at the same time that she had been observing Nova's interrogation. The campaign would be going on for a few more hours today, but now that the interrogation was over with, Dragon's processes were free to attend other matters.
The first and most pressing issue on her list was of course the level of radioactive dust in the atmosphere which was still far higher than it had been before the nuclear exchange in eastern Asia. A group of brilliant tinkers who had mostly worked for the Evacuation Earth project prior to the exchange had managed to avert a large-scale nuclear winter, and now their efforts were mainly concentrated on containing the radiation and terraforming the northern Indian wastelands into a habitable area as a proof of concept for their future off-world efforts.
After making a note to contact them later, she moved on to go through her subroutines' reports for other S-Class threats around the planet. No significant change had been detected in their behavior, so she moved on to her secondary concerns, various villains around the world who were powerful enough to affect humanity as a whole either through personal or political power. She made a few notes after processing the reports and filed them away to be sent to the PRT leadership before turning to what she supposed were her tertiary concerns, specifically two strange phenomena.
The first was a perpetual whirlpool in southern Atlantic with a diameter of approximately two kilometers which had come into existence almost three decades ago. Dragon had her own suspicions regarding the whirlpool, its presence had been discovered not long after the catastrophic tsunami of 1986 and there had been a few notable coincidences in a short time-frame documented at the time of the tsunami. Despite what the thinkers she had worked with believed, she considered the most prominent coincidence to be the last reported sighting of the golden man, the first parahuman to appear on the planet, which had been only a few hours before the tsunami. Regardless, Dragon had a subroutine monitor the whirlpool in case of any change.
The second phenomenon, was unfortunately a complete mystery to Dragon, it was a four-and-a-half-meter tall angelic creature currently floating ninety-six kilometers above the Brockton Crater. It had appeared from behind the Moon more than a decade ago and it had been floating in the higher atmosphere of the planet ever since. No change had been observed in its behavior and it had been harmless enough so far but Dragon thought there would be no harm in keeping an eye on it.
Dragon took note of a few other things before finally allowing herself to think of the meeting she had set up for today. Andrew wasn't an unpleasant person, but talking to him always reminded her of their issues with each other. Regardless, this meeting needed to happen if she wanted to help the person she was worried about, so she sent the request for a call.
She connected to his computer after he accepted her request. Through the camera, she could see that the thin bearded man was hunched over a piece of paper while biting a pencil. It was unusual of him to not use a computer for his work so it piqued Dragon's interest as to what he was working on.
"Andrew" she finally prompted.
He looked up at the monitor, "Theresa, welcome." he gave her a smile before turning to look back down at his piece of paper.
"What are you working on?" Dragon asked curiously.
"Oh, I'm trying to come up with a more efficient hardware design for hosting small neural networks," he said, expression thoughtful "you see, while OECTs speed up the training process significantly, the change in the d—" he stopped, interrupting himself before looking up "Well, I'll send the designs over to you later, I'm sure you have more pressing matters to discuss for you to ask for an unscheduled meeting."
Dragon paused for a moment, considering him "I want you to override a direct order from the chief director." she finally said.
Andrew raised his eyebrows at the monitor before pushing his papers aside and giving Dragon his full attention. "Alright, explain the case to me."
"You know, this would be a lot easier if I could just make my own decisions." Dragon said.
Andrew put a hand to his head, "Theresa, it's—"
"No, I'm serious!" Dragon interrupted him, "We've been slowly relaxing the limits you imposed on me. I can understand why you put them on in the first place, and I can understand that it takes a while to gain your trust, but this is ridiculous." she continued.
Andrew sat motionless for a moment before sighing "It's not a question of trust Theresa. You're my daughter, there are few people I trust more than you. You know that." He said, rubbing his eyes, "It's a matter of principle, you're powerful, and you will become even more powerful as we work on you, I can't in good conscience concentrate so much power in one person's hands." he finished in a frustrated tone.
Dragon could understand the sentiment, she had been monitoring Nova for a while after all, and as far as she was concerned Nova was innocent of what had happened over the course of her trigger event, the rest of what she had done hardly warranted the extent of the surveillance imposed on her. She understood the idea and her limits were far less restrictive than what they used to be years ago, still…
"Fine," she shook her avatar's head "fine, I have more important things for today, but we'll get back to this." she asked.
"Of course." Andrew said with a smile.
Dragon nodded her avatar's face, "Okay good."
Andrew waited a moment longer before speaking "Okay, why do you want to override PRT's orders?"