"Incredible."
Secretary Robinson looked at the report in front of him with raised eyebrows. "All this in three weeks?"
"The Prime Asset is… remarkably gifted," Doctor Hudson said in a somewhat wry voice. "General Calhoun is profoundly impressed by the abilities shown, as is everyone else cleared to know. The Prime Asset should undoubtedly have at least two doctorates purely on the basis of the work done in the last couple of months, and another one for the initial gravitic theory. There are also a number of pure mathematicians who would sell their own kidneys for a chance to talk for a day. I've heard talk of a Fields Medal in the near future."
"And probably a Nobel Prize at some point," one of the others around the table commented. She nodded with a small smile.
"Certainly. However protecting the Prime Asset's identity from unwanted attention makes such accolades problematic at best. Which is a pity. But perhaps one day..." She shrugged a tiny amount. "Until then our friend seems entirely content to rewrite science from the ground up almost as a hobby."
The Secretary nodded, flipping pages with a look of incredulity on his face. "Practical, reproducible hard light projectors, a sound suppression system, a hand held MRI scanner..."
"That last one isn't inspired by Tinker Tech, it was all an original design from the beginning," Doctor Hudson pointed out. "And it's not quite finished from what I'm told, although now that the process yield for the room temperature superconductor has reached a practical level, that's likely only a matter of time."
He nodded again somewhat absently as he kept flipping pages. "Structural integrity field?"
"That was the result of working out a way to increase the strong nuclear force in a suitably treated material to a frankly absurd level," Doctor Hudson replied as he looked up. "Without causing it to compress that material to a singularity, which is almost more impressive than the first part. The end result is going to be such things as armor plate two millimeters thick that's the equivalent of four meters of the best ceramic metal composite armors, at a minimum."
"Good god. And all this is the end result of a few million dollars off the defense budget to a minor Tinker villain?" He shook his head in wonder. "Money well spent, by anyone's standards."
"And both the Tinker and his colleague appeared quite content to rebrand themselves and leave their former lifestyle, which in many ways is almost worth the cost alone," the unnamed agency man put in with a certain amount of satisfaction. "As our projections indicated. It once again points out that a significant number of the Parahuman problems facing us could most likely be solved, or at least significantly reduced, merely by giving such people a way out of the situation they end up essentially trapped in by certain decisions taken in the past. Most of which were at the urging of the PRT, of course."
Robinson glanced at him with a thoughtful look. "A point that has been raised several times in recent memory, I agree," he said after a few seconds of consideration. "The PRT tends to push back quite hard whenever such an idea is raised, which due to a number of political problems has left us where we currently are. Perhaps it's time to look at it again now that we have practical data on the efficacy of the concept..."
The other man lifted a hand for a moment in a gesture of agreement. "We can provide a list of Parahumans who we suspect would be amenable to discussion," he replied quietly. "We've been gathering such data for a long time."
"I'll mention it to the Chiefs of Staff and the President at the next briefing," Robinson remarked, making a note. "Get the information to me by the end of the week on the top… let's say dozen possibilities and I'll work on it."
"Of course, sir."
A couple of other people also made some notes, looking intrigued. Robinson flipped through the rest of the folder then closed it, before retrieving the next one. Opening the cover he looked at the summary page then raised his eyes to scan those present. "Now, on the matter of the Prime Asset's life in general… Do we have any major concerns at the moment?"
"Our friend appears to be, somewhat surprisingly considering the location and previous events, a remarkably well adjusted person who makes friends easily," another security adviser said, referring to her notes. "Psychological screening carried out at the initial DARPA assessment showed a level of mental stability that exceeds quite a large percentage of the population, as you know, and there are no indications that the enormous change in circumstances have in any detrimental manner affected this. Of course most of the standard assessments break down with very high intelligence levels, and the Prime Asset is the most extreme case of that on record. In essence our friend is so far off the charts we need new terminology to cover it."
She smiled slightly. "There are people who would dearly love to investigate just how someone can be that smart and still function normally, of course. It seems unlikely that they'll have the chance."
"Absolutely no non-consensual testing will ever be done on the Prime Asset, by Presidential order," Robinson said firmly. "We were unbelievably lucky that we got the chance for this arrangement handed to us on a plate with full cooperation and there is zero inclination to risk that cooperation. The Prime Asset is certainly far more than smart enough to immediately discern any lack of truth in how we hold up our end of the deal."
"That much is definite," the agency man commented, smirking slightly. "Based on our own observation our friend has identified every single security measure and agent we've put in place on the spot. The Prime Asset would make one hell of an agent. But despite seeing through any cover we've so far managed, our friend appears perfectly content to work within the system we've established, and even proactively cooperates with the requirements of providing protective cover. Once again we were very lucky in how well things worked out."
"Understood, sir, I wasn't suggesting that we try anything underhanded," the woman said when her colleague finished. "Merely noting something that's been mentioned once or twice. In any case, as far as the Prime Asset goes, the situation is stable. Social contacts outside our friend's immediate family seem to be proceeding well too. There is the long term issue of a very close friend in a coma, which is definitely something our friend is affected by. We're monitoring the condition of the person in question, of course, and there are no immediate signs of worsening medical prognosis, nor, unfortunately, a recovery in the near future. We have people looking into anything that might help even so."
"Good," the Secretary nodded, writing on his pad for a moment. "Continue that. And outside the immediate family?"
"The Prime Asset's other friends and associates in general don't present any problems. Background security checks have been carried out on every person contacted or in proximity, including those at the new educational location. Nothing of serious concern has shown to date although the situation is continually evolving, as one would expect. There is no sign that any social contacts are aware of the Prime Asset's status other than through public knowledge and association with Gravtec. A number of known or suspected Parahumans are including in the individuals our friend meets in various locations, but with the exception of two, we don't know if the Prime Asset realizes that."
"I would personally be very surprised if our friend did not know," the agency man remarked with a bit of a grin. She looked at him, then nodded.
"Admittedly this is distinctly likely, but there has been no actual indication of such. If our friend does know, they are very discreet about it."
"I assume the two in question are the New Wave individuals?" Robinson asked.
"Yes. Panacea and Glory Girl do appear to have become well acquainted with the Prime Asset and are considered friends," she responded. "At Glory Girl's instigation, initially. She appears to be somewhat aggressively cheerful and made initial contact. Panacea was almost reluctantly involved but at this point seems to consider the Prime Asset a close friend, which is reciprocated."
"Security measures surrounding New Wave in general and both girls specifically have been increased as the relationship progressed," the agency man added, Secretary Robinson looking at him as he spoke. "As we reported some time ago, it's quite likely that at some point in time we will need to take steps to arrange security clearance for at least Panacea and Glory Girl. Brandish and Flashbang are… more problematic. The former due to a rigid psychological makeup that could become difficult to handle and the latter due to clinical depression issues."
Robinson nodded, jotting down some more notes. "Can the pair be trusted?"
"Our people believe that Panacea is a definite yes, Glory Girl may be somewhat harder to bring on board as she takes after her mother in some respects a little too much. On the other hand, there are definite indications that Brandish is… not as well suited to raising Panacea as one might hope. And recently Glory Girl has begun to notice this from what we've observed. The situation may require intervention before something unfortunate happens."
"Ah. That wouldn't be ideal," the Secretary remarked, frowning.
"No, although from what we can tell the Prime Asset is remarkably effective at helping Panacea deal with her own stressors, which is keeping the situation contained for now. One suggestion raised was to work on changing the relationship Panacea has with Brockton General Hospital to make it somewhat less stressful for her, and potentially more lucrative, which we think will defuse a number of likely problems for the future before they arise. It would take very careful handling of New Wave to avoid blowback due to a certain… ethical mismatch… but it's one avenue worth investigating in my opinion."
Having thought it over, the Secretary nodded slowly. "I agree. I'll bring that up as well but provisionally you have authorization to put in place the required assets. I'll let you know when we get full authorization."
The agent nodded calmly.
"All right." Robinson closed that folder too and opened the next one. "Next on the agenda; Progress on local military assets and upgrades. Colonel Young, if you'll give us a rundown, please?"
Everyone looked at the colonel, who nodded and started speaking. The meeting lasted another two and a half hours but when Robinson left he was very pleased with the progress so far and hopeful that the future held a lot more than it had done a year ago.
"Why are you so worked up about this matter, Rebecca?" The man speaking was doing so in a somewhat tired voice, his head resting on his fist and his elbow on the table. They'd been bickering now for close to three hours and he was getting to the point of just going home and writing the afternoon off as a bad job. Legend, or in his civilian guise, Paul, sighed as the woman on the other side of the table looked offended. As he glanced around he saw that the others were also looking a curious combination of resigned, irritated, and puzzled. With the exception of Fortuna who was leaning back in her chair with her hat pulled down over her eyes, appearing to be asleep although every now and then she twitched a little and her lips moved silently.
"Why keep pushing about who or what is behind Gravtec?" he went on. "The government has told you several times that you don't have the clearance to know any more that what they've shown us, they're pretty damned insistent about that, they've provided evidence and testimony that none of this is Parahuman-related, and they can prove it. I've seen the patents myself. And talked to at least one DARPA engineer who built one of those gravity generators right in front of me from parts he had on hand. It's not Tinker tech. Therefore it's not our business, other than it possibly being useful for our main goal of course."
He watched her face as he carried on, "Your insistence that we stick our noses in baffles me. We get the benefits of whoever is actually behind these technological breakthroughs without having to deal with any of the work involved, so from my point of view we should just accept that and get on with the things that are our responsibility. So, again, why are you so worked up about it?"
The woman stared at him for a long moment as he waited for an answer that would make sense. Which so far he hadn't had.
"There has to be a Parahuman element to all this," she finally said with an air of irritation. "And I want to know what it is."
"You're being more of control freak right now than I like, and you're a serious control freak all the time," David, who had pushed his hood back from his Eidolon costume and was currently eyeing up a plate of sandwiches with an interested expression, commented. He reached for one and picked it up, examining the filling. "Ah. Chicken salad." The sandwich quickly vanished.
"I am not a control freak," Rebecca snapped. Everyone present exchanged looks, even Fortuna pushing her hat up with one finger to peer at her, then meet Paul's eyes before rolling her own and dropping her hand again. He suppressed a chuckle, the woman was in some way more normal right now than she usually was and that was another example of it. "I merely am highly suspicious of how fast and how much things in Brockton Bay have changed. The technological leaps made there in six months are literally centuries past any current technology, excluding Tinker work. So logically it must be Tinker work."
Paul sighed very quiet. He held up a report in his left hand and pointed at it with the right one. "Yet DARPA have provided large amounts of information which prove that it's not, that there is no Parahuman involved in these breakthroughs, and that whoever the extraordinary mind behind it really is doesn't qualify as a Parahuman. Or are you going to argue that anyone with genius-level intellect is by default a Parahuman? That's a very slippery slope to start descending. Extreme outliers in any field you care to name do exist and always have done. Da Vinci, Einstein, any number of others. None of them were Parahumans, we know that for a fact, yet they were vastly past their contemporaries in certain fields."
"This goes beyond genius," she insisted.
He shrugged. "And? We don't actually know the true limits of the human mind without the interference of an Agent. Just having an IQ of 200 or whatever the hell it is isn't proof of Parahuman talent."
"The bulk of Parahumans fall within the normal distribution of intelligence," Doctor Mother commented, making him look over at her. "An Agent doesn't necessarily, or even commonly, increase that. If anything in many cases the opposite is true."
He gestured at her while returning his attention to Rebecca. "What she said. You're blowing this all out of proportion. Someone happens to be smarter than the entire Manhattan Project combined, came to the attention of DARPA, and the government jumped on it with both feet. Can you blame them? Just the inventions in this report will have any number of long and short term implications, and god knows what else might come from that direction. If anything we should be pleased that we could well find something helpful for us coming out of it. And we don't need to do anything, they're doing it for us."
She didn't look happy, he saw with resignation. David was right, he suspected, she was mostly upset that someone had told her 'no' and could make it stick. She didn't like that and wasn't used to it.
"Fine, you say there's no Parahuman involvement and so does the government. Explain why the Path has changed then." Rebecca pointed at Fortuna, who was still relaxing in her chair apparently ignoring them all. "The only thing that does that is something connected with a very limited number of sources."
"That we know of," he corrected. "We know far too little about Entities and powers. I'll admit it's odd, but once again you don't actually have any proof. We certainly don't have anything that would legitimately give us a reason to interfere more than we already have."
"Coil has vanished without trace," Rebecca said after glaring at him for a moment. "Several other Parahumans active in Brockton Bay seem to have abruptly moved out for no obvious reason. All three main gangs have gone quiet, including the one Lung runs. As far as we can work out without going there and checking the city is so full of intelligence operatives you probably couldn't walk more than twenty meters without tripping over a spook. The most deprived area in the entire city now has been massively repaired on the quiet, and we know for a fact that there's a very subtle but very significant military buildup both inside Brockton Bay and around it. Contessa can't Path a growing number of people and events surrounding that damn place, for no reason we can determine other than it's somehow connected to Gravtec. And Gravtec itself is churning out technology centuries ahead of its time like it's trying to win a bet. What about that isn't a reason?"
"All of it?" he suggested mildly. She opened her mouth to retort and he held up his hand. "The military buildup and the spook invasion are obviously connected to Gravtec and DARPA being involved. They're probably dumping literally billions of dollars into this, and protecting their investment and people is clearly something they're going to do. Repairing the city infrastructure on the quiet is perfectly sensible, it makes things easier for them and keeping it subtle avoid tipping off anyone who might want to take advantage of whatever it is they're doing. Having so many intelligence assets in the same place will also make it quite straightforward to warn off the gangs and anyone else who might cause trouble. I'd be surprised if that didn't happen, to be honest. When people like that get serious, they get very serious. Coil vanishing is either because he annoyed the wrong person on either side and legged it or didn't actually make it that far."
"And the issues with the Path?" she demanded.
He shrugged. "There you have me, I'll admit, but unless you can directly and positively link it to Gravtec and everything else going on there I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that it's definitely connected. Or even if it turns out that it is immediately say it's something we should get involved in. We've got far more important work to do."
"A sufficiently outside context source of data could cause the observed problems with the Path, due to upsetting the existing simulation parameters," Doctor Mother put in. "I believe that the ultimate source of the new technology may be behind this. If that is true, once Contessa's Agent compensates we should find the Path corrects itself."
Paul glanced at her, then looked back to Rebecca, who appeared unconvinced. "So, again, we should just wait and get on with our work," he said. "Pushing too hard on this matter is likely to cause significant problems with the government and they already don't have a lot of love for the PRT in all too many places. We don't really need to risk an open split, do we? Merely to satisfy your need to find out who's behind this?"
"I don't like it," she grumbled.
"Something that's abundantly clear," he couldn't help commenting, which got him a peeved look. "Leave it alone, Rebecca. You've been obsessing over this for months and you're no nearer finding out any more than you were weeks ago. Wait and see what happens. Or we could cause more problems than we solve."
She looked around the table, seeing that no one seemed to disagree with him. Kurt, who hadn't said anything for the last hour, merely shrugged. David was finishing off the last of the sandwiches and pretty much ignoring them all. Doctor Mother nodded, but was also now scribbling in a notebook having apparently decided that the matter was settled. And Fortuna was still relaxing there, although when Paul looked more closely he was sure he could see a glint of eyes in the shadows under her hat.
Rebecca turned in that direction. "What does the Path tell you?" she asked the behatted woman.
"Cannot predict now," Fortuna replied calmly, without moving.
"What the hell does that mean?" Rebecca snapped.
"Ask again later."
"Are you trying to be funny?"
"Signs point to yes."
Paul bit the inside of his cheek in an attempt to keep a straight face.
"Fine." Rebecca stood up and glared at them all. "I'm going to keep digging, with or without you. Something smells about all this and I want to find out what. And I will."
"Don't count on it."
"What does that mean?" She glared at Fortuna who tipped her head back and looked directly at her.
"Better not tell you now," she replied with what Paul could swear was a tiny smirk for a second.
After a long moment, during which he could see Rebecca trying to come up with something other than an unprofessional shout of irritation, she finally sniffed and turned away. "Door to my office," she snapped, then walked through the resulting portal without looking back. When it closed, Paul sighed heavily, shaking his head, before also standing. He looked at the others, all of them sharing similar thoughts.
Fortuna stood up, pushed her hat back on her head, looked at him with an oddly humorous expression, then left the room, tossing a small black and white ball in her hand. When she'd gone he turned to David.
"I told you giving her that thing was going to cause trouble," he remarked quietly.
David grinned at him before checking again to see if there were any sandwiches left.
"Right then," Taylor muttered as she made the final adjustments to what had grown into a ridiculously complex nest of machinery that now filled an entire workbench she'd set up off to the side of the main one. She'd built an entirely new subspace receiver specifically designed for this particular task, which had led her to make a couple of breakthroughs on her quest to make an efficient transmitter too. That was going to come in handy quite soon she thought. The receiver was actually sixteen parallel ones, rather than the single setup she'd started with, and it was linked into a massive amount of computing hardware she'd assembled for the job. It was nearly ten times the storage and processing power of her main machine, but optimized for signal processing rather than general purpose computing.
At the heart of this was an array of ultra high speed digital signal processors that ultimately fed into an experimental optronic computing node she'd been thinking about for a couple of months now, and had finally worked out the last details of two weeks back. It had taken a while to make the equipment to grow the processing crystals and figure out the necessary subspace interactions to properly configure the multidimensional hardware, but she'd cracked that a week ago and it passed all her tests. Writing the software was another four days of very long evenings and she wasn't completely finished, although there was enough of it working now to be useful.
And right in the middle of the whole receiver system was a very carefully tuned phase space interactor set up to monitor that little microportal that had been intriguing her for some time. The thing was still present, hadn't changed according to her instruments, and was if she had her way shortly going to give her a lot of very interesting data.
No matter what it thought about that.
Carefully going over a large checklist, she made sure that everything was correctly set up. "Interactor coils..." Peering at the neat row of faintly glowing metallic constructs, she nodded. "Interacting. Optronic array initialized. Parallel receivers synchronized. Transmitter configured. Storage on standby. Power source fully active. Flux capacitors charged." Leaning to the side, she peered on the next shelf down, which was covered with more equipment. "Subspace discriminator filters tuned to base parameters." Ticking each item off she kept going, the alien voices from the speakers around the room murmuring softly to her and making her feel satisfied. "...and De Sitter transformer reading nominal. Excellent."
Taylor tapped the last item, something that looked like it wasn't entirely present in the room, with the end of her pen, smiling a little at the green spark that snapped at the implement with a faint glassy chiming sound. "Everything is correct and accounted for," she told the aliens, making the last tick mark on the page then tossing the clipboard to her main workbench. Rolling her chair to the end of the experimental rig she pulled her keyboard close and pushed her glasses up her nose, leaning forward to examine the huge monitor covered in dozens of complex graphs in different colors.
"OK, my little enigma, let's have a good look at you, shall we?" she said very quietly as she made some calculations in her head then moved a few on screen controls. Finally, she reached out and tapped a key.
Graphs immediately changed rapidly as she watched intently. The optronic array glowed a pretty violet color, innumerable tiny lights deep inside moving around in a hypnotic display. The interactors interacted with a deep hum. The entire room vibrated slightly for a second, making tools rattle in their drawers until she tweaked a control a tiny amount.
And in a clear space just above a complex coil of gold wire in the center of the rig, a small pinprick of silver fire erupted into being.
"Got you," she said with glee, inspecting it carefully. "I knew it would work. Thought you could hide from me between quantum layers, did you? Tricksy little portal, you are." The girl grinned at the anomaly which was hanging in space and producing a subliminal hissing sound like St Elmo's fire during a thunderstorm, but emitting no smell or, rather weirdly, casting any light even though it was clearly illuminated. She saw with interest that while it was obviously right there and very small, it also gave the impression of being very far away and very large too. "Cool," she remarked admiringly.
After watching the phenomenon for half a minute or so, she turned back to the computer. "So that's got you located and locked. Let's see what you actually are..."
Taylor made adjustments both to the software and to various aspects of the equipment, the little pinprick of silver light wavering slightly every now and then, and each time stabilizing again. "Hah. I thought so. Carrier from one source, from another," she finally said with a smile, sitting back and admiring the incredibly complex waveform that was snaking across a window on her screen.
That had been her sudden insight back when she'd heard the two boats honking at each other. The signal she'd been chasing wasn't a single one, it was a mix of two very subtle subspace effects, coming from related but disparate sources. They were acting as a carrier signal with a high bandwidth modulation sitting on it, forming a subspace link between her house and… somewhere.
Her rig had successfully co-opted the carrier and corralled the microportal into a location where she could study it properly, and now she could use her equipment to delve into what the sources were and how they worked. Already she could see a number of paths of inquiry to properly analyze the effect and figure out what was behind it.
And she was going to do that. For Science.
Settling down for a long weekend of hard work, she barely looked up to thank her father when he came down a couple of hours later with some sandwiches and a drink, only absently thanking him while typing at a furious rate. He smiled fondly at her, patted her head, looked curiously at the tiny spark of light above her equipment, then went back upstairs.
It took Taylor a solid week of hard work before she worked out what was going on. When she did, she was very intrigued indeed.
"Well, making a translator is going to be fun," she muttered as she looked at the screen which was showing a reconstruction of the thing on the other end of the link she'd been deconstructing and analyzing. "It's so inefficient! I mean, yeah, organic computing on that scale is impressive I'll give it that, but… Come on, there are lots of better ways to do it!"
The signals twitched, making her smile a little.
"You want to help?"
They twitched again. She raised an eyebrow. "Fascinating."
Then she got to work. There was data to gather. So much data.
Whistling under her breath, Taylor began designing an interface system unlike anything else she'd done to date.
She liked a challenge and this one was fantastic.
