Emily sighed heavily with a shake of her head. Getting up, she walked over to the window and beckoned to her unwanted visitor, who looked quizzical but also stood and joined her there. She pointed.
"You see those lights there about four miles away?"
Legend nodded. "I do."
"If you want more answers, that's the only place you're going to get them," she said. "But I doubt you will get them. Renick spent nearly a month trying to pry more data out of Gravtec, and didn't find anything except what they want us to find. DARPA have the entire place locked down tighter than anything I've ever seen before, and are clearly working with various intelligence agencies to keep it that way. General Calhoun paid a visit a few days ago and made it perfectly clear that they were here to stay, it wasn't anything the PRT needed to be involved in, and further poking was only going to end up causing problems for everyone."
She looked at him. "I've got way more than enough problems already. I don't need more, and I especially don't need more coming from our own government. I'm not going to put myself between DARPA, the DIA, the NSA, and whoever the hell else it is that's doing fuck knows what over there, and the Protectorate and the Chief Director. I'm satisfied, based on Renick and Armsmaster's investigations and testimony, along with other information from various sources, that there is no Parahuman behind the Gravtec inventions. So the PRT has no reason to get involved. I've already told Costa-Brown that several times. She's got a lot more high level contacts in the Defense Department than I do so I don't know why she keeps pushing. I'm certainly not going to be able to tell her anything new."
"What makes you think that my visit is because of the Chief Director?" he asked mildly. "I'm looking into this on behalf of the Protectorate."
Folding her arms, she glared at him. "Sure you are. We both know that the only reason you're here is that Costa-Brown got told no by someone who could make it stick and she hates that. The woman is a control freak and that's me being polite because she's my superior. She loathes not knowing things and once she gets an idea that the PRT should be doing something, she won't drop it."
He looked a little amused. "That's… possibly not the ideal thing to say, in your position?"
"Am I wrong?" she demanded. After a moment he sighed faintly and shook his head. "And do I really look like I actually care what she thinks of me?" He shook his head again, smiling a little. "This job is going to kill me and that's if things go well," she grumbled, turning back to peering at the distant DWU facility, bright lights far away shining out across the dark water of the bay and outlining a considerably larger area of activity than had been the case in recent history. More and more of the formerly moribund docks seemed to be coming to life, old facilities being reactivated and pressed back into service.
The old cargo ship was already half-scrapped, even from here the light of cutting torches sparkling across the hull as cranes moved around above it, their own aircraft warning lights easily visible. The union seemed to be working around the clock at the moment, and just in the last week she'd seen two large barges, that had been fixtures of the scene for as long as she'd been posted here, move slowly past to the ship graveyard then return carrying smaller vessels that had been lifted onto them. The dock workers seemed to be quietly and efficiently clearing out the wreckage that had blighted the bay for so long and she knew from various sources that the city government was absolutely ecstatic about the whole thing.
Whatever else was going on, the DWU was gaining political capital by the bucketful, which promised to produce some strange alterations to the administrative landscape in the future.
"Of course, this is Brockton Bay," she went on after a moment of reflection, in a somewhat sour voice. "Things never go well here. If they do it's only because the universe is setting you up for something horrible..."
"A somewhat pessimistic viewpoint," he commented, glancing at her, then following her gaze again.
She shrugged. "I'd call it realistic rather than pessimistic," she replied. "I've been here for too long to be optimistic about pretty much anything. We have literal Nazi supervillains wandering around the place slaughtering innocent people just because of their skin color, a rage dragon who can take on the entire local Protectorate team at the same time, beat them like a drum, and make it look easy, the largest Parahuman-backed gang of drug dealers on the east coast, the most effective Parahuman-backed mercenary team for a thousand miles, and nothing even remotely close to the resources or manpower to do more than hold the status quo as long as none of those guys decides to really cause trouble."
He grunted a little, still looking out the window, in a somewhat reflective manner.
"That's not including all the random smaller groups of troublemakers, of course," Emily growled. "Über and his idiotic friend are the least of those. There are more than half a dozen minor but extremely irritating villains who pop up and cause trouble, diverting far more attention to stopping that sort of crap than I like, we've got New Wave lurking around in the background always ready to turn a minor drama into a crisis… Hell, Glory Girl all on her own can do that without even trying."
Legend made a sound that was nearly, but not quite, a laugh.
"They are heroes," he pointed out in good humor. She scowled.
"Allegedly. You don't have to clean up after them," she muttered, making him chuckle once more. "And on top of all that we also have entirely pedestrian crime mixed in, which keeps everyone on edge, makes the BBPD have to work for a living, and confuses the issue because you never know when a random burglary will actually turn out to be Parahuman related after all. Which it is more often than I like. If I had twice the number of troops and Parahumans of my own and three times the budget I'd still be outnumbered and outgunned." She looked up at him again. "So to be brutally honest I'm perfectly happy to have someone else dealing with the Dock Worker's Union and all the insanity that can and has come from that direction in the past. It's not my problem and as long as they can keep it that way I don't care what they're doing."
"Rebecca is of a different opinion," he remarked thoughtfully, pondering the sight in the distance.
Emily shrugged again. "She can have any opinion she wants. Me, I'm going to stay well back from whatever DARPA are up to, wish them well, and get on with the things I'm meant to be doing." He looked a little worried, causing her to point again.
"Look, I can tell you from here that someone is putting a hell of a lot of money into that place," she said after a few seconds. "It's nearly twice the size it was six months ago, the roads are being fixed all through the docks, all the vagrants in the area aren't there any more, crime in that whole part of the city, Parahuman or otherwise, has fallen off a cliff… I don't precisely know who is doing what, but whatever it is that they're doing it works. And the more they do it the easier our own job becomes. I'm not going to look too deeply into things that I'm not cleared to know, I've got enough on my plate without going asking for more. The city is fine with the whole thing, the university is practically giggling with joy because of whatever Gravtec really is, and the public is slowly realizing that things are starting to improve and likes it that way."
She inspected the far-off sparks coming from the crew steadily rendering the old ship into scrap, then went back to her desk and sat down with relief. "So all in all I'm just going to pretend that part of the city doesn't exist and get on with my life," she finished.
Legend kept looking out at the night scene. "Surely you're curious about what's going on over there? Why DARPA picked Brockton Bay of all places to apparently set up a top secret research center? It's a very strange place to do that, considering we're not all that far from at least one other site of theirs." He turned his back to the window to look at her, as she watched. "And while Brockton Bay University is highly regarded in a number of fields, it's not been considered a groundbreaking institute in physics as far as I can find out. Yet now it has an entire department dedicated to gravitational physics research? That's… somewhat odd."
Emily nodded. "Of course I'm curious. Anyone would be. But I'm not curious enough to want to risk getting Calhoun and his people pissed with my command. He says it's not Parahuman tech, Armsmaster agrees, Renick's own inquiries also agree, so as far as I'm concerned and until such time as something changes in that respect, I have no reason to officially question that. I know a losing battle when I see it, trust me."
She sighed as she reached for a bottle of water and unscrewed the lid, then poured some into a mug. Taking a swig from it, she put the mug back on her desk. "I can only assume they know what they're doing and there's a good reason for setting up here. I'd guess that the person, or persons, behind their breakthrough, is probably local and quite likely based in BBU. But I'm not going to go looking for them. DARPA says it's their business and I'm minded to leave it to them." She scowled a little. "I spent way too much time trying to figure it out until we were sure it wasn't under our jurisdiction, and to be frank it's a relief to have something weird happening around here that we don't have to deal with."
"I'd think it would be more of a relief not to have anything weird happening at all," he said in an amused tone as he came back and sat down. She gave him a hard look as he smiled.
"Yeah. You do realize where you are, right? No chance of there not being something weird going on. Weird is what this damn city does."
He started laughing as she took another drink, then opened the desk drawer and retrieved her medication pack, removing two tablets which she swallowed with the aid of the last of the water. When he stopped chortling he asked, "And what happens if one of the many troublemakers you have here decides it would be a really clever idea to poke around at Gravtec? Surely that's a possible risk? As you said, you do have rather a lot of potentially awkward groups in that respect."
She smiled a little grimly. "I have a strong feeling that if they do try it'll be the last thing they do, one way or the other. Which would at least prevent repeat offenses. I can't say I'm happy about that, but on the other hand, if you're stupid enough to poke the military in the face you shouldn't be too surprised that you pull back a bloody stump if you're lucky. They're serious about whatever it is they're doing. Hopefully Kaiser, Lung, and anyone else of that ilk are smart enough to work that out." She sighed a little. "Although I wouldn't want to put money on it."
"And if that happens?" he asked curiously.
"We wait for the shooting to stop and pick up what's left," she replied, shaking her head. "I think even Lung might have trouble if someone decides to use an anti tank rocket on him before he's ramped up enough. Our own rules of engagement prevent that, but I'm damn certain theirs don't."
"Worrying."
"Evolution in action if they're idiots," she retorted.
Legend studied her for a moment. "That's one way to put it, I suppose." He didn't look entirely comfortable with the idea, she noticed.
Leaning back Emily waved a hand at the window. "Again, it's not something I can do anything about, there are a lot of reasons saying I shouldn't do anything about it even if I could, and to be brutally honest if you or the Chief Director wants more information on it, you need to go directly to DARPA and ask. And I assume she's already tried that approach, without any luck, hence your presence here. I can't tell you, or her, anything more than I already have. Sorry."
She wasn't, and she knew he could tell, which slightly amused her. He studied her for a while, then nodded.
"Fair enough. Thank you for what you've said, Emily, and I won't mention to Rebecca your opinion of her." He smiled.
Emily shrugged. "She knows. But thanks anyway." After a moment, as she watched him stand and walk over to the window again, where he looked out at the distant docks, then off to the side at the Rig, she asked, "Are you planning on staying any longer?" She was merely curious, more than anything else.
The man turned to her. "I have a few other people to talk to, but I'll be heading back tonight." He walked over as she stood herself and held out his hand, which she shook. "Until next time, Director."
"Legend." She waited until he left her office, the door closing quietly behind him, then sat with relief as her back was killing her. "Damn it, that woman is going to cause trouble, I can feel it," she muttered, annoyed. Wondering if she should discreetly let General Calhoun know about this, she eventually decided that yet again it was something best kept well away from.
And considering who it was that was at the heart of the whole bizarre situation she wouldn't want to assume his people didn't already know, anyway.
Shaking her head, she turned to her computer and got back to work, wanting to finish the current stack of reports before she finally went home for the night.
The work never stopped, after all.
"I'm sorry I can't divulge any of this information, Dragon," Colin said to his friend as he quickly scanned the latest documentation he'd acquired from Gravtec. "I've asked that you be allowed clearance, but the security requirements are at the moment very strict. I'm told that it's likely that Canada and other US allies will be read in on aspects of the Gravtec patents within the next year, in all likelihood, though."
"That's all right, Colin," she said with a smile. "I'm well aware of security protocols and NDAs, believe me. There are things I'm not allowed to tell anyone else as well. Life's like that."
"Indeed. Annoying as it can be sometimes." He shook his head slowly in awe yet again of the sheer elegance of the mathematics involved in the new theory, which tied together so many things that had puzzled physicists for literally centuries. "I would dearly like to meet and talk to the person behind this work," he added. "The clarity of thought and efficiency of work is… startling."
"You think it's one person?" she asked curiously. "Couldn't it be a group effort?"
He pondered her question. "It could be, yes," he finally replied. "And in some ways it's more believable that such a remarkable breakthrough would come from a collaborative effort over years of work. But on the other hand. Professor Drekin remarked that it was down to one exceptionally gifted individual and I have no reason to doubt his word. And the sheer… cleanliness… of the entire theory and prototype designs suggest to me a single source who has done the entire work from first principles. It shows a deep understanding of concepts that are far beyond currently accepted theoretical limits."
"Fascinating. Truly fascinating," Dragon mused.
"Agreed." He tabbed to the next page, then read a couple of paragraphs, before examining a diagram. "I can see in the documentation the point where aspects subtly change to suggest other people became involved, but that's mostly if not entirely in the practical engineering side of things. I would imagine that once they had hand-built working prototypes their team spent time optimizing the designs for mass production, which would undoubtedly involve multiple engineers and technicians feeding back ideas and modifications to the originator of the system."
"That's the way it normally goes, yes," she nodded. "I take it they have a well equipped facility?"
"Very much so, yes. One can instantly tell that resources aren't the bottleneck," he replied with a small smile, facing her. "And from what I saw on my visit, they have a considerable number of very talented people from different disciplines working together. I was genuinely impressed."
"High praise indeed," she teased, making him smile slightly again.
"Well deserved praise, I think. The end result is remarkable, and I can see several immediate applications for it in my own work, once I get clearance to field the end result." He leaned over to the side and retrieved an egg-sized device, encased in a smooth polymer shell. Holding the small ovoid machine in the view of the camera, he tapped a key on one of his keyboards, then let go. "This is my own duplication of the patent for the basic reference frame regenerator. I built one exactly as in the design notes provided by Gravtec to validate the design, then spent some time optimizing it for size. I can go smaller but this seemed like a practical test version."
Dragon inspected the thing with interest as it placidly hung in space without any sound or visual effect. He gently prodded it, making it move sideways, then reached over and turned a control on the console next to him which made it go up, then down. "I can't see any visual distortions like you commonly get with some antigravity Tinker designs," she commented. "And it appears to be completely silent."
"It's amazingly efficient, and very powerful," he replied, nodding. Turning the thing off with his hand under it, he caught the device, then held it up between thumb and forefinger. "With suitable software it can provide lift, propulsion, inertial compensation effects, and a number of other useful functions. This one is more than powerful enough to act as a drive for a two person aircraft without any difficulty."
"And you're going to make a flying bike with it, of course," she said wryly, her avatar's mouth rising on one side.
Colin almost grinned. "You do know me rather well," he admitted.
His friend laughed. "I do, yes. Well, be careful with it. Don't accidentally end up in orbit. The Simurgh might take offense."
Putting the device back, he shook his head. "I'm not planning on spaceflight any time soon, but a more efficient bike with flight capacity would be very useful," he replied.
After a couple of seconds, she asked, "You're totally certain it's not the work of a Tinker or Thinker?"
With a nod, he replied, "By now, yes, I am. I was mostly sure when I left Gravtec, almost certain when I read the final patents once I got clearance for them, and having built the design several times now, and made modifications to it for my own purposes using the theoretical calculations, I'm entirely satisfied that it's not in any way the result of Parahuman powers. It's too… understandable… for that to be the case."
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed the side of his nose as he tried to work out how to explain it, while his friend waited patiently.
"Over the years I've studied a lot of other Tinker work, yours included," he eventually said. "For want of a better term, there's a… pattern… to it. Even with my own work. Aspects of how the device in question is made, tiny tells in the basic design, minor similarities or indeed differences between different people's work in the same area… You learn to spot it if you look carefully enough."
She nodded slowly, looking thoughtful. "I understand what you mean, although it's not really something I've had to talk about before."
"This, though," he went on, holding up the little machine again for a moment. "This doesn't show anything like that. It's entirely mundane, if that's a good way to put it, even with the remarkable result it produces. Everything in this could be understood by any talented electronics engineer and probably at least crudely duplicated by a bright high school student. They might not understand the theory behind it, but they could copy the design and make it function, I'm fairly sure of that. In much the same way you don't need a postgraduate degree in electrooptics theory to make a functional if basic carbon dioxide laser from easily available parts, you merely need time and patience combined with care and a lot of hard work."
"A complex theory with a fairly straightforward practical implementation," she noted, making him nod.
"Exactly that, yes. Which is completely different from any Tinker tech I've ever encountered. The implementations are invariably entirely opaque, even if they work well. Many designs of that nature shouldn't work at all, according to everything science knows, and as you're well aware trying to reverse engineer such a device almost invariably results in nothing useful at all. Even when it does submit to some understanding of the basic principles those have always been trivial edge cases and aspects that aren't important in the overall design. You're about the only one who's ever been able to copy anything significant and you've told me more than once that even you don't often fully understand how something works, only that it does and how to functionally copy it."
"Yes, that's certainly correct," she said after a few seconds. "The more of that sort of work I do the more I learn, but I'd be the first to admit that almost every Tinker design I've investigated seems to be a completely unique design with little to nothing in common with anything else. It makes deriving the underlying principles almost impossible."
"I sometimes find myself wondering if that's somehow deliberate," he remarked, causing her to look at him with an intrigued expression. "Tinker tech is so opaque that it makes you wonder if somehow it's been designed specifically for that purpose. By who and why I have no idea, but it's crossed my mind more than once."
Appearing to think that over, she eventually nodded slowly. "I can't deny I've had similar thoughts once or twice. Powers are certainly extremely puzzling at the best of times, and that aspect is one of the more confusing ones. But I've never been able to work out how you could actually prove anything like that."
Colin shrugged a little. "Neither have I, not for lack of thinking about it." He glanced at the Gravtec document open on the monitor, then moved the mouse to close it. "But the one conclusion I am certain of is that Gravtec don't have those limitations, and their technology isn't the result of powers. Despite what I suspect certain parties might wish."
She smiled at him. "I can imagine." A moment passed, then she said, "That aside, have you had any more thoughts on the design I sent you last week?"
"The new thruster? Yes, I've been thinking about that and I believe I can see a few places where it could be improved," he replied, dismissing the Gravtec oddity from his mind in favor of collaboration with his best friend, something he thoroughly enjoyed.
Soon they were deep in discussion of some esoteric designs and having considerable satisfaction in the results.
As she studied the results of the last few hours work, Taylor yawned widely. It was nearly three in the morning and she really needed to go to bed, but she'd been so fascinated by some of the data she'd logged that she'd found herself losing track of the time.
Hitting a key, she reran the latest simulation using data from her subspace detection system and watched as a complex graph formed after a few seconds, trillions of calculations being done by the computer under the desk. It was something that most universities would have been pleased to have, absolute cutting edge parallel processing hardware, and had made her work much faster.
Although she had some ideas about how to make something better. That could wait for now though.
Leaning forward she inspected the graph very carefully, absently pushing her glasses up her nose a little, then made a few notes on a pad next to her. It was almost full by now.
"Hmmm..." she hmmmed in a reflective sort of way. "That's… Ahhh… I see. Yes. That makes sense. Kind of."
Tweaking the calculations in another program, she saved the result and ran it. The graph changed making her smile and nod. "Yep. I thought so. I wonder who's doing that and how?"
Sliding her chair sideways she grabbed the bench to stop, then tapped on the keyboard of her subspace detector computer system, while glancing over her shoulder at the other monitor every now and then. Shortly she'd added a function that should specifically look for the phenomenon she'd been studying and gather a wider variety of information on what was happening. With any luck she'd get a repeat occurrence and be able to narrow down on the variables she was still missing.
After twenty minutes she finished tuning the detector code and started it running, watched it for a little while to check nothing had gone wrong, then went back to her main computer. "Right, we'll see what that produces. And if I'm right, it could be really cool."
She wrote up more neatly some of her conclusions and observations in her latest project workbook, 'Subspace Portal Theory Notes,' then put it away. Having spent another fifteen minutes quickly sketching out a very preliminary prototype circuit block diagram based on the work she'd spent the evening doing, she filed that, got up, turned off the alien sound track, made sure that everything was recording properly, and went up to bed. The lights went out and the door at the top of the stairs closed, leaving the basement silent and dark except for faint fan noises and blinky lights all over the place.
Having bade farewell to the last of the people he'd wanted to talk to, Paul lifted into the air and headed east. His visit had produced quite a lot of information, but very little of it was new. Rebecca was going to be quite peeved, he was sure of that. The woman was not pleased about the current state of affairs and he was mildly worried about her likely reaction. She really didn't like not knowing things she felt she should do, and at times this was somewhat awkward.
Emily Piggot was entirely correct in her summation of his friend, he thought, feeling both amused and a little sad. Rebecca was a control freak's control freak at times.
He wasn't going to tell her that, though. That way lay a lot of shouting.
Flying slowly at a couple of thousand feet, he looked down at Brockton Bay. The city was definitely a strange place by most people's standards, Emily was right about that too. From up here it looked fairly normal, but at street level… odd things happened more often than you'd expect. Many of them very unpleasant.
Paul wouldn't want to live there.
He could see off to the side the docks and the Gravtec/DWU facility deep inside that area, which stood out by being well lit and a hive of activity even at five AM. Apparently they worked a very vigorous night shift. He wondered what else was going on there other than scrapping old ships and occasionally flying one across the bay.
Smiling a little, he shook his head. It seemed likely that even stranger things were on the horizon. Hopefully not dangerous ones, but who knew? All he could do right now was go back and tell Rebecca what he'd learned, which wasn't much, and see what happened next. He was fairly sure, as a result of his various discussions, that trying to push harder for real data was probably only going to backfire in a potentially serious manner and while he was very curious, he wasn't so curious as to want to risk that. Not yet, anyway.
And after he'd finally finished his mission, he could finally go home to his husband and get some sleep before the next panic, which was bound to happen soon enough. It always did.
Speeding up, he was shortly well off shore. Descending to a few hundred feet, he hovered in place and said, "Door to Rebecca's office." Once the portal formed he flew through it, the hole in space closing immediately.
In the Hebert household basement, various instruments noted certain new data and saved it for later examination.
