CH14 - Intermission I

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/AN: Warning: Explicit content.

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"I believe most people are essentially good. I know that I am. It's you I'm not entirely sure of." - Full Dark, No Stars, 2010

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When I had constructed my first base, I had fabricated more hab components than I used. While some rooms required custom parts, a lot of it was the same every time. It was a normal part of habitat processes to maintain a stockpile of replacement parts— even when the parts in question were as simple as carpet squares or room dividers.

As a result, when Paige first opened her eyes, it was not to a dilapidated warehouse. She was lying naked on a couch, in a room identical to the common room I had before. I was kneeling next to her, and she looked at me for a moment, before her eyes flicked to the side. Then back, then to the side…

"This is… confusing," she finally said.

"Don't try to focus on the entoptics— the stuff floating in your vision," I clarified. "Despite your instinct to look 'at' them, they are already in full focus. Your mind will adjust in time."

"This is what you see all the time?"

"No," I replied. "It's a tiny fraction of it."

"...Huh."

"I didn't install any software beyond the basics. I didn't know how you would feel about an AI listening to your thoughts, for example. Unfortunately most of the software I use depends on one."

"This is so out there. Does Lisa have this stuff too?"

"No," I said. "She may be upset once she realizes just what you have received."

"Okay… I have to ask. She was around before I got here, but I'm the one getting the scifi brain tech?"

"I don't want to give you the wrong idea," I said slowly. "Lisa has a way of growing on you— on me, at least. But what I like about her is precisely what makes her dangerous. She can be foolish. Impulsive. She turned on her boss as soon as a she saw a better deal, or worse, without proper thought at all. I don't think she will do that to me… but I've only known her a short time. I don't know. "

"You've only known me a few days," Paige said.

"I've researched you. You do not strike me as foolish, or impulsive, or fickle… and I think you have nowhere else to go. An ugly basis for trust, but a basis nonetheless."

After a moment, I reached over and cupped the side of her face. "We also have… a certain understanding, I think." I ran my hand down the curve of her jaw, and her cheeks reddened.

"...Yeah."

She just laid there, gazing at me, as I slid my fingers down her neck. She reached out and tugged lightly on my arm, and I got up, my bodysuit coming apart. I slid behind her on the couch, and she pressed herself against me, opening her legs just long enough to allow my cock to slide between her thighs.

We laid there quietly for a while.

"Have you thought about reaching an understanding with Lisa?" she asked suddenly.

"I have," I admitted. "But she has made very blatant comments discouraging such things. I don't think she would respond well to an aggressive approach… and fear is unattractive."

"...Huh. Not a one woman kind of guy?"

I abruptly recalled that the sexual mores of this time were very different from my own.

"Is that a problem?"

"...Well," she said, her tone awkward. "Um."

"I hope you aren't upset by—"

"No. Well, sort of? I've been in an open relationship before. Not that I'm assuming, I mean, okay if I'm supposed to be with only you I'd feel kind of bothered, I guess," she said, stumbling.

"I don't expect you to limit yourself," I said quickly.

"Heh. There aren't any other men around, anyway. Just Lisa… which. I'm into girls too." She paused. "Hypothetically, not really because I agree with you about her, but hypothetically, if I wanted to sleep with Lisa you wouldn't get mad or something?"

"No."

"And… if it was a guy?"

"...No," I said slowly, the word tasting bitter. "But… I might get a bit aggressive." I wrapped an arm around her and gave a sharp squeeze. "In the end, I'm still an animal."

"Okay. Okay," she breathed out. She wiggled a little, her thighs flexing around my shaft, and I slid my hand down her stomach. Her slit was slick, wet. I slowly ran my fingers along it, dipping briefly inside. She squirmed, and I laughed.

"I… I wouldn't want anyone else anyway," she said. She twisted, forcing me to pull my hand away long enough for her to roll over, and locked eyes with me. She reached down and gripped my cock, giving it a tug.

"So, um, everything feels a little more… intense," she said, her voice hitching as I resumed fondling her sex.

"I thought you would appreciate it," I said, my voice edged with a dark amusement. I pinched her clit, and she jerked.

"Is my body just a toy for you?" she said, pumping my cock.

"Yes," I said, and I heard her breathing deepen slightly. I took my cock, still in her hand, and rubbed the head along her cunt. She let go, bringing her hand up to suck on her fingers, her eyes still locked with mine. I pushed the head into place, and in a single motion, I reached behind her and pulled.

She gave a short gasp, her fingers coming free, and froze, a stillness betrayed by the wet heat clenching and twitching around my shaft. After a few seconds, she breathed out raggedly, and began moving her hips in a slow, circular motion. She gave me a saucy grin.

"Definitely… beats the birdcage," she breathed out.

I rolled her up on top of me, still impaled on my cock. Getting a firm grip on her ass, I swung my legs off the couch and stood. A playful upwards jerk got had her yelping into my shoulder, and I walked into the nearest bedroom. Laying her down on the mattress, I yanked her legs up, pulled most of the way out of her and then stopped. I held it there, waiting.

She gave me a tortured look. "Fucking do it, come— oh!" I thrust deep, burying myself inside her, my balls audibly slapping against her ass. I pulled back out and slammed it home again. If there was anything I had learned about Paige, it was that she liked it hard. Fast, rhythmic pounding, reducing the girl to a incoherent, hot mess rippling and spasming around my dick.

" —I want you, it, fucking do it, come in me baby, come on please fuck—"

Balls deep, I relented, a switch flipped in my mind and my rock-hard cock pulsed, firing in hot spurts, and Paige exploded, her cunt squeezing hard enough it hurt.

I dropped on top of her, then rolled us to the side, and just watched as she slowly pulled herself together.

After a minute, her breathing slowed, and she smiled at me. "So... tell me more about that AI thing."

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I had infected Brockton Bay.

My most troubling limit had been power. Coil provided diesel for my initial expansion. By the time of his final betrayal, I had reached the farthest heights of nanofabrication. Amongst the benefits was metallic hydrogen. While there were times and places for more sophisticated composites, metallic hydrogen had a brutal simplicity. It was perfect for solving my power problem.

It only took a day and a half before protean nanoswarms connected my new home with the old network of thin, superconductive metallic hydrogen power lines that spiderwebbed beneath the city. Through this method, I could steal unlimited amounts of city power without creating a traceable anomaly.

The same cables tapped every available data line, providing an ever-increasing amount of bandwidth. Which, it turned out, made it ever more apparent that shoving a fork of my relatively dumb muse AI at problems had limits. The debacle with the outing of E88 proved this— generic algorithms for collecting daily news weren't cutting it anymore, not with the threats that were out there.

I dug into my solarchives and located a proper SIGINT AI. Dubbed Artemis, it held a constant finger to the pulse of the internet, from global media to a near-realtime observation of every Brockton-related forum or mailing list in existence. I would not be caught off guard like that again.

Similarly, the new base had a proper hab AI. The effect was less obvious, but noticeable nonetheless. Congested fabber instructions were untangled more smoothly, priorities were inferred better, hab construction was parallelized more efficiently at the automech level…

For the first time, I also had access to fissiles. In as little as twenty years— in my timeline, at least— the basic methodology behind practical seawater mining for uranium entered practical use. Adsorbent synthetic fibers accumulated the desired elements, then chemical doping and irradiation released them. From there, it was often as simple as rinsing into a centrifuge.

Needless, to say, by the time transhumanity was conquering moons like Oberon the technology was orders of magnitude more sophisticated. Where crude techniques in 2018 might get two grams a month for every pound of fibre, it was more than five, and tow-drones or artificial currents could increase the yield even more.

All that mattered was, courtesy of a dozen metric tons of synthetic fibres and automated aquatic drones, I had a small but more than plentiful supply of elements that were difficult to buy. Or, in the case of transuranics, just could not be bought. Somehow. Earth Bet was suspiciously competent in certain things, it seemed.

This meant radioactive isotope generators and microreactors, which together with practical manufacture of momentum batteries allowed drones unlimited by the distance to the nearest power line. Artemis had requested and then deployed stealthed drones which were exploring the country even now, searching for targets of opportunity and threats alike.

Right now, my biggest concern was Coil. With the E88 reveal he had broken the silence, and I wasn't sure how to respond.

"You don't know where he is," I repeated.

"Nope," Lisa said, popping the P as she gave me a irreverent smile. She was far too cheerful for someone being so very unhelpful.

"How is that even possible?"

"Coil is super paranoid. His big ace is the two timelines, but it is only good if you don't know where he— and even his men— sleep. Otherwise he'd be just as vulnerable as every other faction to attacks on his enemies terms. Skitter says she might can find out, but let's face it— she isn't me. Jury's out on that panning out."

I frowned. Without a location to hit, it was impossible to retaliate against Coil. Or rather, impossible to put a permanent end to the threat. Attacking his soldiers or airing his laundry was escalation that provided no real benefit.

Perhaps I could reach a truce? …No. As halfhearted as it was, his attack on my reputation was unprovoked. He did not communicate. Irrational agents could not be trusted.

I glanced at Lisa.

"What he did isn't worth paying attention to," Paige said suddenly. Lisa scowled at her, giving me an upset glance, then turned back to her tablet. She had quickly divined some of what I had done to Paige before the first day was out, and ever since had been a smoldering pile of resentment. She wouldn't say anything, and to be honest I didn't know what to say myself.

There wasn't really a tactful way to say I didn't trust her with full-contact connectivity to my burgeoning mesh. Transhuman network security was hardened by decades of sophisticated infowar, and then brutally tempered by godlike superintelligence, physics-breaking exsurgent strains, basilisk hacks, ETI threats, and more. But…

Her power. I did not understand it, but I understood how it helped her subvert security systems in Earth Bet. Combined with my uncertain understanding of the girl herself…

I shoved my confliction down.

"I will just have to ignore Coil for now. I'm not interested in a street war. According to Artemis, general sentiment is that the claims about me and Tattletale were nonsense. If anything, this will provide an extra layer of disbelief against similar accusations in the future."

I paused.

"With that said.. what do you mean, Paige?"

"Something that was beaten into me early on with my label was there's always somebody spinning bullshit about you on the internet," she said absently, her eyes flicking in response to something unseen. "If you respond, in a sense it, like, legitimizes it? It says it was worth you speaking up about. It can also put whatever bullshit front-and-center for all your followers. Usually making the drama bigger. Sometimes it's already that bad so that's okay, and maybe this was like that, but I'm still leaning toward saying nothing. Ignoring is the go-to response."

"That doesn't really explain why his attack isn't worth any response."

"Because it wasn't serious. He spent god knows how long prepping to dox E88, then half-assed that. As an attack, it was a joke. Literally the equivalent of attacking one of the gangs by just posting their locations online." She glanced at me. "Honestly, he did worse by silently quitting on the materials. At least that isn't deniable. Though you are just as much at fault for not even calling him."

"He is bad at calling people," Lisa snarked.

"He was operating in bad faith from the start," I said, a touch defensive. "Perhaps I should have spoken up, but I was happy to be rid of him."

"Then be happy," she said simply. "Lisa says he was trying to murder you, but, well, he can't. I don't think he is going to do anything more serious unless he finds a way that doesn't leave you around to retaliate."

"Yeah, sure, ignore the control freak bond villain," Lisa interjected. "What could possibly go wrong."

I sighed.

"Fuck it, why am I even bothering, you're just going to side with her because she's riding your dick," Lisa said with sudden harshness, standing up. Before I could formulate a response, she walked out.

"...Awkward," Paige said.

"...Yes."

It was quiet for a minute.

"Oh, yeah. Have you heard anything from that Parian girl? She isn't explaining anything to her followers about the stop on your collabs. Some of the rumors on PHO are really wild." There was something in her tone. Jealousy?

"No. She has not called me since we moved. I don't think she wants to speak to me."

"Wow. That… sucks." She sighed. "I miss performing."

"Hm."

I thought, measuring the risks. She could do so anonymously, but it would be difficult to avoid stochastic links to Brockton Bay. Combined with the means of her jailbreak, attention would end up on me. Simply admitting possession of Canary would increase my threat rating, but contrasted against my silence afterward, and the perspective held in the PRT files on me that Lisa had dug up while searching for the convoy in the first place…

This 'WEGDGD' added a new dimension to mutually assured destruction. If the enemy can divine the future, it made dead man's switches much easier to use as a threat. They wouldn't need to be convinced— they would simply know it was true.

As for the other factions, I could go whole hog, take credit for alpha-striking the terrorist Purity as well. It had a perfect casus belli, and the strategic implications of that kill was powerful all on its own. Perhaps.

"You seem to have some experience with matters of reputation," I said slowly. "What do you think about this?"

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[Artemis: We have a problem.]

You're going to have to be more specific.

[Artemis: There are other AIs.]

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/AN: There's a calm before the storm… and there is rain on the horizon.