"Oh, my god, this is so cool!" Amy chortled, looking at the result of Taylor and the Varga's work over the last forty minutes. She was wearing what looked like a form-fitting necklace around the base of her neck, made of EDM and color-matched to her scales so it blended in almost invisibly. The rest of the armor was nowhere in sight. "How the hell did you manage to do this?"
"Lots of very careful thought, some Varga magic, and some really weird math," Taylor grinned. "Here, I'll activate it."
Reaching out she poked the necklace, watching in satisfaction as the entire set of neatly designed segmented armor somehow unfolded both ways from it, one part rapidly running up her friend's neck to cover it and her head, the other part going in the opposite direction, ultimately enclosing her entire body. It took about a second and a half and looked like a stop-motion special effect from a movie, while sounding like a row of dominoes toppling at high speed.
"Fuck me, that's amazing," Lisa muttered, watching with wide eyes. Amy looked down at herself, over her shoulder at her tail, then grinned widely at them.
"Incredible. I can hardly believe it."
"It's recursively folded into itself, the whole thing ends up in the necklace and only weighs as much as that would on its own when it's retracted," Taylor noted, walking around her friend and studying her work with satisfaction. "Varga managed to tweak the spacial folding to make it even more efficient. It can operate in several modes, this is the full coverage variant, but you can also make the gauntlets retract entirely, or just leave the palms and fingers uncovered to let you use your weapon extruders and Lisa's electrical abilities, plus the healing tendrils. You can also roll the helmet back and leave the rest in place."
The covering over her friend's reptilian skull wasn't really a helmet in the normal sense of the word. It was articulated along the jaw to allow her to open her mouth normally, being more a form-fitting cover for her head than the sort of thing a normal human would use, but 'helmet' was as good a word for it as anything. It was designed to go over the top of the camera harness, allowing the lens to view the world through a transparent sapphire window to protect it.
"How do I do that?" Amy asked. Taylor showed her the simple controls that triggered the changing forms of the armor.
"Basically it's a multi-phase metastable form," she explained. "A bit like a memory plastic but much better. Each of the variants is stable, but it can be triggered to collapse down to the storage state, or expand out again. The changes are local collapses of that particular part."
"Very, very neat," Lisa said admiringly. "My power is staring in amazement and rubbing its hands together. I can see all sorts of uses for this sort of technique."
"The Family has been using it for a very long time because it's so useful. We didn't demonstrate it up until now as we didn't want to freak the humans out too much. Their minds seem slightly incompatible with folded fractional dimensions," Taylor agreed gravely. Her friends stared, then started laughing.
"You're going to use that excuse at every possible opportunity, aren't you?" Amy giggled.
"Oh, hell, yes," she grinned.
Amy experimented with the points on the necklace part that triggered the various state changes in the armor, then looked thoughtful. "Can you put the controls on the inside?" she asked slowly.
Taylor inspected her curiously. "Sure, that's not a problem. Why, though?"
"Because I have a very cool idea of my own," Amy replied. "I can modify the bioconstruct to have small actuators for the controls, like short little tentacles to poke them. That way, I don't need to reach up and operate them with my hands. I can just do it with an act of will. Sort of a biotech way to interface to the hardware."
Staring for a moment, Taylor grinned. "Fantastic. Great idea. OK, retract it and I'll change it."
Prodding the right place, Amy made the armor collapse back into the storage state. Taylor put her hand on it and concentrated, she and her companion going over the complex construction and changing it carefully. "OK. That should do it. There are recessed pressure-sensitive controls around the inside of it now."
"All right, let me make the required changes on my end..." Amy looked distant for a few seconds, then smiled. "That should do it."
She posed, then smirked as the armor formed around her. Holding out her hands she made the gauntlets disappear, then come back in the form where they were only protecting the backs of her hands, creating a long knife in each one.
Taylor clapped. "Very good. That should protect you from practically anything that you couldn't already handle, and block radiation almost completely. Keep your mouth shut and put a hand over the camera port when you go through the wormhole, ideally."
"What about the body harness with the pouches?" Lisa asked, looking at the one Amy had taken off and dropped on the table. "It's useful to have storage space for phones and stuff."
Studying it, Taylor rubbed her chin in thought. "Hmm. Good point. I can make it go over that the same as I did with the camera, but then you couldn't get at it with the armor on. Maybe..." She walked around Amy a few times. "OK. How about adding some Pockets of Holding to the armor itself? Varga has some ideas that could be interesting. We can make it work the same way as the folding armor, I think, so they're sealed when not activated, which would mean they'd be fine underwater. You couldn't open them without flooding them, of course, so don't do that with the one with your phone in."
"What happens if I deactivate the armor with something in the pockets?" her friend asked thoughtfully.
"It's practically infinitely recursive, the entire thing is basically fractal, so not much. It just gets folded away as well. You'd have to bring the armor out of storage to get at the pockets."
"Huh. Weird as hell. OK, go for it." The new changes only took a little while.
"Same sort of controls, accessed through the collar part." Taylor stepped back, watching as Amy experimented. She now had a total of six 'pockets' in the armor which could open up to allow her hand in, although they didn't look like a normal pocket in the sense of clothing. They were simply parts of the armor that slid aside to allow access to the folded space inside.
"That is seriously impressive," Lisa said in a low voice, watching as Amy poked around with her hand apparently elbow-deep into her own chest. "And not a little disturbing."
"The top two are about the size of a shoe-box, the next two down are about three feet deep, and the bottom two are big enough to take something maybe eight feet long and a couple of feet square," Taylor explained. "Like this." She handed Amy a warhammer, a scaled down version of her normal Raptaur-sized one. The reptilian girl took it and hefted it, slowly beginning to grin.
"Now this, I like," she giggled manically. "You need to teach me how to use it, though."
"The hammer is easy," Taylor chuckled. "Just hit things with it. This, on the other hand, needs some skill." She handed over a seven foot long EDM sword. Amy looked at the two weapons in her hands, then experimentally pushed them into her armor storage space, both vanishing completely.
"Coolest thing ever," she snickered, pulling the sword out with a little effort.
"It would be more efficient to draw if it was on her back, surely?" Lisa asked curiously.
Glancing at her, then looking back at Amy, Taylor eventually nodded. "You're probably right. OK, I'll just change it a little..."
Shortly Amy was reaching over her shoulder and pushing the blade into another storage space that ran from her upper shoulder down to the mid back area, the blade disappearing when she released it and the compartment closing up to leave no trace. A little experimentation and she could retrieve it in under a second.
"Very neat. You could keep adding storage for all sorts of things," she said happily.
"Make a list, and we can upgrade it as necessary," Taylor replied, feeling very pleased with the end result. "I'll change the body harness to have the folded-space pockets as well, which will let it fit flush under the armor. That should give the most flexibility."
"You know, with some care, I bet you could give your actual body some folded storage space," Lisa commented, looking thoughtful. "Even your human body."
The other two exchanged a glance. "I've actually had some ideas along those lines," Amy admitted. "But I haven't quite worked out the details."
"I'm not entirely certain how to integrate it with a living creature yet, although Varga is sure it can be done," Taylor added. "No need to rush. This should do for now. You can make all the knives and batons and things you need yourself, you have a good sword and a nice big hammer, and places for other odds and ends. Anything else you want?"
"Can't think of anything at the moment," the healer said after thinking it over. "Like you said, no rush." She retracted her helmet and gauntlets, leaving the rest of the armor in place. "May as well get used to this, it changes my balance a little."
"OK. Right, Lisa, you next."
Half an hour later Lisa was also outfitted with the same sort of armor in her colors, Amy had modified the Metis body to have the same little actuator tendrils, and she was teaching the black lizard how to use them. When Lisa got it working she laughed with glee. "Fucking fantastic. Thanks, both of you."
"No problem," Taylor grinned, handing her her own hammer and sword. "Put those away, then get rid of the armor and I'll modify the harnesses for both of you. I think we're done then, and we can finally learn to speak Family like it is spoke."
Both girls snickered, following the instructions. When the last task was complete, Taylor nodded happily.
"Excellent work, Brain," the Varga commented.
"Thanks," both she and Amy said, grinning at each other. They gathered around the table, Taylor switching to Saurial.
"Hopefully your modifications to your bioconstructs, Amy, will allow you both to learn this language fairly quickly. Taylor is now quite fluent in it, I can transfer information between our minds without too much trouble, although I have to go carefully so I don't overwhelm her." The Varga studied them, Taylor letting him have free reign and sitting back to watch and listen. "We will start with the basic rules, then go on to simple vocabulary lessons. Based on how well that goes we can see how to proceed."
"Sounds good," Amy smiled. "I'm really interested to see how well the language absorption modifications work. I'm pretty sure they'll make this easy but we'll just have to see."
"In that case, my young friends, we will begin. Listen very carefully, I will say this only once."
The Varga snickered, while Amy and Lisa exchanged a puzzled glance.
"Ignore him, we were watching some old British comedy on the internet last week and it corrupted him," Taylor grinned.
"It was very amusing," the Varga protested. "Now, please be quiet, I have minds to corrupt."
"Sir, being quiet, yes, sir," she said.
"Quite." He sighed slightly, although with a smile, as she laughed. "Where were we? Oh, yes, the Language of the Family."
He began his explanation, Amy and Lisa both engaging the 'language mode' as she'd described it, listening intently.
"What the hell is this?" Emily asked, staring at the building they'd just parked next to, the ratty old brickwork contrasting with the dully gleaming brand new door, and the car park which had obviously just been resurfaced in some sort of porous stone.
Oh, and the sign.
She looked at it, then at Colin, who sitting next to Hannah, the woman having driven the PRT SUV at the directions of the Tinker, while Legend and Dragon flew on ahead.
"I think Raptaur has been amusing herself again," he noted, also inspecting it curiously in the light from the headlights of the vehicle.
Welcome to the WCC
Brockton Bay Terminus
"Where would you like to go today?"
csll'ha ch'nglui shugg
A Protectorate/BBFO joint project
"According to the R'lyehian translation program Dragon and I designed, the slogan at the bottom roughly translates to 'We invite you to cross over the threshold of the realm of Earth.' Oddly appropriate," he added after a moment.
"And what is WCC?" she asked as they got out of the vehicle, the Tinker locking it and heading for the door, which opened as he reached it to reveal Dragon.
"I'm not entirely certain," he admitted, going inside. She followed, Hannah behind her. Dragon closed the door again, then headed for the complex console to one side of the room they found themselves in. Emily could hear a muted deep hum coming from another small room on the other side of the main one. Legend was just coming through a large door in the wall that blocked off what must have been close to three quarters of the building judging from the outside dimensions.
Flipping a few switches and inserting a key into the console, Dragon waited for all the computers to boot up, which happened in under thirty seconds. Emily and Hannah watched, not sure what they were looking at.
"Please direct your attention to the monitors," Colin said, indicating a number of very large ones mounted above the main console, which were showing high resolution images of a large empty room and what seemed to be the other side of the wall.
Dragon operated the controls, spinning a nicely rendered globe of the earth to center the western Australian desert on it, then zoomed in. Dropping a marker in the middle of nowhere, she turned the key, then pressed a button. The hum was replaced by a rising screech that made both women jump, looking around for the source. Moments later it stopped. "Singularity active," the Tinker said. She pressed the other button.
Emily stared at the monitors, then looked at Hannah, who was looking back, shock in her eyes. They went back to studying the blue-edged circle some twelve feet in diameter that was hanging in space in the other room like a special effect. It looked completely surreal.
"Engaging standard transit mode," Dragon commented, clicking an onscreen control. The circle snapped to the wall, covering a door in it. She fiddled with the system a little more, which resulted in a muted hum from their side of the same door. "OK, the tunnel is extended. Radiation level is nil." Turning around, she waved at the door. "It's ready."
"What the hell is going on?" Emily was very confused. Again.
"Come and have a look," Legend smiled, heading for the door. He pressed a button next to it, then when a light illuminated green, pulled it open. Emily stared as he held it for her. After a very long moment she sighed and walked through, Hannah accompanying her. They found themselves in a roughly ten foot on a side room with another identical door at the far side. Legend closed the one behind them, walked past, and repeated the unlocking process on the other door, pulling it open. Bright light flooded through.
Emily blinked wildly, then moved cautiously forward, peering out. She could see a reddish sandy surface spreading out in front of her until it vanished on the horizon, the air hot and dusty. A light wind was blowing into her face. Staring at it in disbelief, she advanced to the edge of the room and looked down, then poked the ground with her shoe, leaving a print. Bending over she felt it.
It seemed entirely real.
"What…?" she said faintly. Beside her, Hannah's mouth was opening and closing without any sound coming out.
"It's quite impressive," Legend said reflectively, standing on her other side. "It took a lot of hard work from a number of people, but I can see this becoming a very useful tool for us."
She gaped at him, then looked back at the scene in front of her. "What is this?" she spluttered, pointing.
"The Gibson desert in western Australia," he smiled. "Perth is about seven hundred and fifty miles that way." The man waved slightly to the left and forwards.
"You have to be kidding me," she finally said, staring in shock.
"No, it's entirely real. Just walk through there and you're in Australia. You'd need to clear the end of the tunnel to about a hundred feet or so as fast as possible to avoid the slight gamma radiation leakage, to be completely safe, but other than that there's no safety issues." He indicated the room they were standing in, which she could see now was made of a number of concentric box sections, the now-familiar dull gray of EDM. Underfoot there was a textured surface like that in the BBFO office. "The construction of this transit tunnel blocks the extremely intense gamma radiation inside the wormhole, which would be instantly lethal to almost anyone."
"Where the hell did all this come from?" she asked weakly, turning to him. "I don't know of any technology that can do this."
"The wormhole generator was designed by Leet then reverse engineered by Dragon, Colin, and Raptaur with Leet and Über's help. Raptaur duplicated the mechanical components, Dragon and Colin did the same to the electronics. Dragon redesigned the control software. The Family own the building and did the major modifications to it, like the EDM sheathing, the new doors, that sort of thing, while a substantial number of DWU workers wired it and fitted out the plumbing. Dragon and Colin supplied the power unit, the control computers, the security system, the rebuilt wormhole generator, and so on. It was a group effort."
He smiled at her. "I helped as well, but it was mostly other people's work."
"How long did this take?" she said, amazed, turning to look out the open door at the desert on the other side of the planet.
"The building refurbishment, about seven or eight hours, and something like forty people working extremely hard," Legend replied. "The wormhole generator was a day at BBFO and a day or so in Colin's lab with him and Dragon. I'm genuinely impressed how fast and effectively it all came together. We assembled a remarkably efficient team, to use Colin's words."
"Holy shit," she breathed. "And this can be duplicated?"
"Fairly easily, yes. Dragon has made more electronics packages for the generator, Raptaur is going to make more mechanical assemblies. I would expect that they have arranged with Leet for some form of licensing deal."
"He's a villain," Hannah pointed out, not having done much other than stare at the desert scene while he was talking, a look of shock in her eyes above her scarf.
"I would have to suggest that may not be entirely correct any more," Legend smiled. "In any case, the Family isn't particularly concerned with normal definitions like that, as you know, but they do seem to be quite keen on crediting work to its original source regardless of that source. Raptaur appears to have considerable respect for both Über and Leet, and both Dragon and Armsmaster consider the young man a very good Tinker. Merely one with poor impulse control and an unfortunate inability to duplicate his work."
Bending down Emily ran her fingers through the sand at the threshold of the EDM room, shaking her head in wonder. "This will change… almost everything," she muttered.
"I'd think so," he nodded. "Obviously this is only the prototype, but with some work more installations can be made. Much of this is only possible due to the involvement of BBFO, of course. The EDM is key to a lot of it, it's a perfect radiation shield. We could probably make do without it but it would be much more difficult. Not to mention that without Raptaur making the wormhole generators becomes a lot harder. And there's the issue of it being Leet's technology in the first place. We're going to have to talk with all parties involved to work out the best way to proceed. But, the key thing is that it will let us deploy people in the event of Endbringer attacks, or any other serious threat where we need to get a lot of people from A to B, without requiring the use of the small number of teleporters we have access to."
"What are the transport limitations?" she asked as she stood up.
"If it fits through the wormhole, none, basically," he told her, "assuming the power holds up. This generator can make a wormhole about sixty feet in diameter at most, but Dragon is sure it can be scaled up. The radiation is a problem but it's a solvable one. This installation doesn't have vehicle access yet, although it's going to be added later. Even so we could get an awful lot of people through quickly. Much more easily than relying on Strider or someone like him."
"Assuming we need to go to or from Brockton," she pointed out.
"True. There are limitations. But it's still pretty impressive."
"Who else knows about this?" Hannah asked, watching a kangaroo bound into view, look at them, then hop across the scenery, a weird expression in her eyes.
"Raptaur, Metis, Ianthe, Leet, and Über, although the latter two haven't been here. The DWU people didn't ask questions, just got on with the work. The Family members won't tell anyone without mentioning it." He closed the door and headed back to the other end of the tunnel, pressing the button. "So far, that's it."
Back in the control room, Emily looked around with mild incredulity. "You people certainly put a lot of work in." She watched as Dragon worked on what she recognized as an interface to the Endbringer tracking system, apparently checking on the position of Leviathan and the Simurgh. "I'm impressed."
"I thought you would be," Legend grinned.
When he entered the BBFO building and closed the door, Danny stopped and stared. 'I should be used to weird shit by now,' he thought with a small inner sigh, 'but somehow it gets me every time.'
His daughter, or more accurately, his daughter's body, clearly being driven by the Varga and in her Saurial form, was making weird hissing sounds mixed with gurgles that sounded physically painful to produce at 'Ianthe' and 'Metis', who were frowning in concentration while replying in the same manner. Each of the two larger lizards was wearing complex articulated armor that left their hands and heads free. He watched for a moment, then cleared his throat.
"Am I interrupting anything?" he asked.
"Not at all, Danny," the Varga smiled, looking over. "I was merely engaged in a language lesson. The younger generation seem to be sadly under-informed about their heritage and I am attempting to rectify that."
Shaking his head, Danny joined them at the table. "The completely mythical heritage," he said.
"Is it a myth when we can clearly demonstrate so much of it?" the demon chuckled.
Looking narrowly at the entity currently running his daughter's reptilian body, Danny eventually sighed. "One of you is a bad influence on the other, but I have to confess I'm not sure any more which way it goes."
The Varga grinned. "I suspect it is very much bidirectional. I must say I haven't had so much fun for a very long time. I daily thank the fates for bringing me to your world and to such a fascinating group of people."
"Thanks, Varga," Taylor said.
"You're more than welcome, Brain," the demon replied. Danny watched, then looked at Lisa and Amy, who were both smiling.
"That is still very odd, isn't it? It's not just me?"
"We think it's weird as well, Danny," Lisa assured him. "But it seems to amuse them."
"The language is really interesting," Amy added thoughtfully. "It sounds freaky, but it's surprisingly logical and fairly straightforward to learn, although a normal human mouth and vocal mechanism would have a hell of a time with speaking it. I'm going to have to see if I can figure out some modifications that would make it easier without causing any problems." She said something in the hissing language which made Lisa snicker, the Varga nodding approvingly.
"Well done. And an amusing pun."
"Thanks."
"Does this alien language have a name?" he asked, shaking his head at the silliness.
"To the original species it was known as..." Here the Varga made a short sound that made the hairs stand up on the back of Danny's neck. "But the girls have decided to call it Famtalk for the moment. Which is as good a name as any, I suppose. It suffices to get the point across."
"Is there a written form?"
"Yes, it's ideographic like a number of Asian languages, although with entirely different rules. We're concentrating on the spoken form for now. When they're completely fluent, we'll look at the writing, which will probably take longer to teach as it's moderately complex." The demon looked pleased. "They are excellent students."
"A lot of that is the upgraded neural systems," Amy noted. "It would take a lot longer than this normally to learn a totally different and alien language. I'm a little surprised how effectively the modifications I made to both the bioconstructs and our human bodies are working, it's much better than I hoped for."
"When you've finished working on a language to make everyone look oddly at you, perhaps you should learn other ones as well," Danny commented. "Ones that are more common around here. That could come in handy."
"We were discussing that," his daughter said, taking over from the Varga. "I was poking around in Princess Luna's memories at Varga's suggestion and I do seem to know her original language and a couple of other ones she learned. They're weirdly close to Japanese and Mandarin, neither of us can work out why, but I can sort of make out the gist of what someone talking Japanese is saying already. It probably wouldn't take too much practice to get fairly fluent in at least speaking and understanding it, although writing and reading it could take a while." She indicated her friends. "Thanks to Amy, they'd probably be able to learn that faster than I can. But with Varga's help I can still learn a lot quicker than normal."
"Interesting," he said, studying them. "A very useful talent. Your mother was good at languages as well, she always said being multilingual was important. I've got some Spanish myself, but I'm not fluent. Perhaps I should practice some more."
"I can upgrade your language centers as well if you want, Danny," Amy offered. "Plus do some strength and toughness upgrades. I meant to ask a few days ago when I finished Ianthe but I sort of got distracted."
"I meant to ask too," Taylor admitted. "Sorry, things got away from me."
He thought about the offer for a moment or two. "I may take you up on that, Amy," he finally replied. "I'll have to think about it some more. However, that aside, I have a mission for Saurial."
His daughter looked curiously at him. "Mission?" she asked.
"Yes. Your mission, should you accept it, is to track down and check on Brian's sister Aisha, as well as pass on some cash to his father on his behalf," Danny smiled.
She giggled at his reference. "I can do that."
"It shouldn't be difficult, I've got the address here," he added, sliding a piece of paper across the table to her. "Brian told me that she's now staying with their father. Their mother is… well, not a responsible parent would be putting it very mildly."
"She's a waste of oxygen in most ways," Lisa sighed. "A horrible mother, a drug addict, and god knows what other problems she has. In one way you have to feel sorry for her, but a lot of it is self inflicted and she shows no signs at all of wanting to change. She had custody for a while but something horrible happened, which is what caused Brian to Trigger. After that Aisha went to live with their father."
"Pretty much what I gathered," Danny sighed. "The father is by all accounts a much better person even if he has some problems of his own, but who doesn't? I asked around and a couple of guys here know the man, they tell me he tries but has no idea how to raise a girl, which doesn't entirely surprise me." He looked around at the three reptilian faces watching him. "They need a firm hand, young girls. Or they turn into demons." All three started laughing. "Sometimes even the firm hand doesn't work," he went on with a grin. "Anyway, you need to find out how she's doing, make sure she's not got herself into trouble, and get the cash to their father, without letting anyone else know if at all possible."
"Sure. When?" Taylor asked, calming down a little from her giggling.
"Now would be good." He checked his watch. "It's only around half past eight so it's early enough that the girl is likely to be up and around."
"You'd find the same thing at half past two in the morning," Lisa remarked. "She's not known for paying a lot of attention to rules if she doesn't want to."
"I'm familiar with the problem," he sighed loudly, making them all grin again. "Try not to traumatize the Laborn's too much, dear."
"I'll be… more or less good," Taylor chuckled.
"How much cash did Brian want to give his dad?" Lisa asked, getting off her tail and going up to the storage area.
"Five thousand."
"OK." She rummaged around, then came back with a couple of stacks of twenties. "Here you go, Taylor."
Danny watched as his daughter checked the money, then tucked it away in a belt pouch. "I'll be back in a while, guys. Keep practicing your vocabulary, there will be a test later."
She headed for the door while the others laughed, slipping out into the dark. Danny turned back to the other two, inspecting their armor.
"That's a new look," he said to Amy.
"I like it," she smiled. "Proper fantasy lizard person now. Hey, look at this!"
He gaped as she pulled a six foot long war hammer from somewhere and held it up.
"Holy shit."
"Cool, right?"
"Show him the sword," Lisa grinned. Danny stared at her, then looked back to Amy, before sighing.
"Perhaps your mother was right," he said slowly, watching her wave a huge sword around while grinning in a deranged fashion.