CH15 - Intermission II

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"A strange thing happens when you are very rich, even when one's wealth is as artificial as in our society. You develop a solipsism of sorts. The world yields itself to your will. Everything becomes your reflection, and after a while looking into your own eyes is dull." - Hannu Rajaniemi, The Quantum Thief

— — —

When I entered the other room, Lisa was curled up in a chair. She glanced up at me, then returned to boring a hole in the tablet in her hands.

"You're upset," I said.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm upset."

I hesitated. She looked up and scowled.

"You do a lot of stupid bullshit, and it only works because your tinkertech is even more bullshit. But that can't last forever, and it's like you don't even see anything wrong with what you're doing!" She stood up, and started pacing. "That's not even getting into this third wheel bullshit just because I didn't jump your dick—"

"That's not it," I interrupted.

"Oh? Then what, then?"

I could hear the hurt in her voice, and it left me at a loss to respond.

"I… am afraid," I said slowly. "Maybe I am too casual about threats, but it is as you say: I am protected by my technology. By my secrets. You… I've been unfair, maybe."

"Oh," she said dully, stopping. "That's… worse, really. You don't trust me."

Fuck.

"It isn't that I trust Paige more," I said. "You are just more capable. But... I've treated you poorly."

I made a decision: no more waffling. This was weakness, and it was becoming both distasteful and untenable. I should either throw her out, or bring her in…

...and I wasn't willing to just throw her out.

Damn it all.

"Come on," I said. She looked up, surprised. "You need the mods I gave Paige."

She got up, disbelief still painted on her face, and followed me. "Don't think this means everything is shiny, just like that," she mumbled.

I said nothing.

We stepped into the manufacturing floor, and I led her to an empty vat.

"This is a healing vat. It also serves the function of installing biomods and cyberware. By the time you are done, you will heal faster, live longer, sleep less, require less hygiene, resist disease better— if not be flatly immune— and possess immunity to zero gravity, depression, shock, and allergies." I paused. "Also internet in your brain."

She blinked. "Well shit." Without any further prompting, she stepped up to the vat and started to strip. "Don't get any fucking ideas," she shot over her shoulder, but I caught the edge of a smile. She was fucking with me.

I took it as a sign that our friendship wasn't as irreparable as it had started to appear.

— — —

"Where's Lisa?"

"In a healing vat."

"Ah," Paige said. She chewed her lip thoughtfully. "I thought about saying something, but you know her better— I didn't want to criticize. But with the way she was going I was afraid you'd end up causing the bullshit you were worried about. Which leads to what you brought up earlier."

"Hm?" I said.

"Okay. So if I understood correctly, you were thinking about, like, openly saying you busted me out, deliberately setting up horrible stuff to happen if you were crossed, and publicly declaring you killed Purity? All to, what, intimidate everyone so much I could perform?"

"Yes. Though it was just a hypothe—"

"No." She sighed. "I'm touched. Really. But. That's just… ugh. It might even provoke an attack."

Paige gave me a serious look. "I thought about it, and asked Artemis to look at stuff, and aside from some concerns about nanotech, you're barely on the radar as a big threat. Doing that stuff would make you into a bad guy. Like, not just villain bad guy, but kill order bad guy, PRT losing sleep unless you're dead bad guy. And I don't think it would work. The PRT is obligated to try to break up a fucking concert, it's suicide not to. And then what?"

She paused.

"Also, Lisa would have an aneurysm. Possibly froth at the mouth."

I couldn't help but laugh. "Very well. If they must attack a concert… what if they can't. Physically can't."

"I'm not following. What, like Triumvirate-tier super force fields?"

"No, no. Like… augmented reality. Your power-related physiology wouldn't work purely in simulspace, but that's easy to work around. Attendants get VR helmets, and experience a perfect simulation of a concert hall with a duplicate of the real you, visual and auditory. Conversely, the simulspace attendants are replicated into your senses by your cyberware. I'm sure there are even drivers somewhere to finagle physical contact, if you wanted to touch the crowd…"

Paige seemed lost in thought. "That… wow. I don't know if anyone wants to hear me now, though," she said.

The room was silent as we both sat in thought. Such technology, all for Canary's benefit… it would suggest powerful Tinker support. Which could be a problem.

Unless, of course, the technology wasn't for Canary's benefit. Not specifically.

My mind flashed back.

There are other AIs.

Artemis could not tell me much more.

Compromised accounts and forums, dummy websites, indirect data sources, like common platforms that allowed third parties to see what page another user was currently looking at… he had picked up evidence of intelligent action taken at speeds no normal human was capable of. Perhaps there were one or two parahumans with both enhanced minds and an equally fast web interface. Unlikely, but possible. But the glimmers of activity detected were more... inhuman. So Artemis said, at least.

He was attempting to trace them. But the internet architecture, designed with parahumans in mind, was resistant. Even deploying methodologies Sia was never capable of and ludicrous computing power, progress was slow. Dangerous, too— Artemis could compromise a honeypot system, fumbling blindly inside an illusion while they learned about us.

But sometimes… multiple problems could converge to a singular solution.

In my timeline, the internet of now emerged from unimaginably rapid technological growth and the Fall as something altogether different. The mesh.

A decentralized 'internet-of-things', hosted across everything. When a device the size of a credit card had processing power measured in exaFLOPs, the paradigm changed. Anything short of scientific-research-grade physics simulation or sentient minds could essentially run for free, just off the idle cycles in everything: clothes, weapons, appliances, the walls, knick knacks, even nanotech in the very air.

While such computational capacity wasn't simply laying around in people's discarded soda cans on Earth Bet, that wasn't a problem. There were designs for backbone mesh servers, even if they were not normally required. Just by giving people the ability to create, customize, and share even basic simulspaces, I would have created something no one could ignore. A perfect neutral platform for Canary…

...and with a few more features, also the perfect bait for possible local AI— whether at the direction of their masters, or because they were full-fledged AGI exploring it for themselves.

With all the mesh nodes under my control... Artemis could passively observe everything.

There was a trust issue, of course. But it wouldn't matter in the end. The carrot was too big. Those with little to lose, or little to be gained from, they would make the jump— whether a calculated risk or a impulse borne of false invincibility or naivete. They would build worlds. Curiosity and cajoling would bring in others, and those around them, a cascade that, in the end, would bring all but the most suspicious and skeptical to try the technology. To see imagination made real, worlds without limit. To be… everything they couldn't be. Not in the real world.

Not yet.

Despite the sudden urge to design a mesh topology for Earth Bet, there was one thing I still needed to do first.

The construction of redundant resleeving facilities. Not much to them: five exowombs, a handful of synthetic case morphs, a healing vat, ego bridge, desktop fabber, and some automechs. The modest power requirements were met by small polywell fusion reactors.

Shipping-preparation algorithms converted the design to a densely packed cube of prefabricated parts, and Artemis would airlift them to remote locations across the east coast. From there, the cubes would handle constructing a buried or otherwise hidden room themselves.

The exowombs would take time to bear fruit, unfortunately. But the sooner they started, the sooner they would finish. Biosculpting could render a standard splicer morph nearly indistinguishable to someone's original flat, so that wasn't an issue.

Of course, I didn't use a flat. Paige had genetic changes that might actually matter. Lisa's DNA had nothing of value, but… somehow I doubted she would see it that way.

I went ahead and configured one exowomb in each facility to grow clones of the Hyperbright morph, Paige, and Lisa. Lisa didn't need a custom morph, but it wasn't like it cost me anything. If they became necessary… the first resleeve was traumatic enough. Better to avoid extra loss or alienation.

Of course, this touched on the real issue. The slow growth rate of biomorphs. I believed it was deliberate, perhaps something to do with an artificial scarcity, but the fact remained. Designing a stable, holistic improvement to growth speed would be a daunting task. Even for me.

I needed a easier way to speed things up. I needed to cheat.

Convenient, then, that this world was full of cheats.

A tinker had previously contacted me through PHO. A man named Blasto. He was looking for custom lab equipment; I gave him that, and something extra. A delivery of a dumbed-down healing vat, and huge tanks of laboratory-grade CHNOPS biological feedstock. He paid with tinkertech organisms, samples, and associated notes.

I imagine we both thought ourselves to be getting the better deal.

From what little he had been willing to explain, and from what Artemis could put together, he could grow human-sized or larger organisms in a matter of days. Whether his methodologies would work for human-level intelligence, or could be used to produce a more properly human body… that was less clear. But if it was possible, it might represent a solution, if only to supplying generic biomorphs. I doubted it would be effective for proper morphs, like Hyperbrights. The obligatory plant hybridization would surely screw something up.

I considered other avenues. Dispatch, in Houston, time acceleration bubbles. Lizardtail, regeneration bestowal, in Boston. Panacea, a healer right here, in Brockton Bay.

Dispatch was unlikely to work out. But Lizardtail and Panacea… they merited further consideration.

They weren't tinkers, of course, but Artemis had pointed out a statistically unlikely pattern between Bakuda's more exotic bombs, and the abilities of parahumans in New York and Brockton Bay. Blasto had provided further insight: a tinker could learn from powers, though the most he had accomplished to date was small boosts to regeneration and durability.

Well, there was a reason Bakuda stood out. It was time for me and Bakuda to have a proper conversation. And if it didn't work out… well, it wasn't like I was stopping the other experiment I had in motion.

— — —

"I should have paid way more attention to Brian and his workout shit."

Lisa bounced a tablet in her hand experimentally. After a minute, she stepped over to and dragged a case morph. "Bullshit." She came up to me, and unceremoniously grabbed my arm, pulling hard enough for me to brace myself.

"Lisa, you're acting silly."

"You know why!"

She'd adapted to the entoptics almost seamlessly, but unlike Paige seemed fascinated with her strength. I didn't see why— it wasn't even peak human, since by default the vat preserved her outside appearance. But… on second thought, I could see it. A given person's physical limit was a shackle they didn't even recognize, because they'd never been stronger. Someone weak getting fit for the first time might feel the same— it might even inspire a fierce dedication to self-improvement. Apparently Lisa hadn't been willing to suffer long enough to get to that point.

"Okay, so, Coil. Please tell me you aren't really going to ignore him."

"What would you have me do?" I said rhetorically. "I don't know where he is, and even if I did, he has not overtly attacked me. You say he wants to, but you don't know for sure. I've taken steps to make it so you and Paige can't be killed. If I openly hunt him down, that violates the 'unwritten rules'. If I just attack his men, that escalates any hostility without solving the problem. I have Artemis quietly looking for him, but he isn't a fool. Until he slips up there just… isn't anything else to do."

"Look… I'm scared, okay? Maybe this mind copying shit is being unkillable to you, but I don't know if I can believe that. I don't know if Paige believes it either. Hell, what if we aren't killed. You expect us to pull the trigger on ourselves?" She sighed. "I just want to do something. I'm afraid I'm going to be stuck inside your base, or always looking over my shoulder, you know?"

"...What exactly did you see in Coil's files?"

She hesitated. "You can't tell Paige."

I frowned. "Why."

"Because she'll want to do something right now, and you just said you can't."

"Lisa."

"Okay. There was a kid, alright? He kidnapped her during the bank robbery. I thought it was temporary, like a ransom or something. But she's still missing, and Coil's got a dirty nurse on staff and orders for some nasty drugs. Special drugs, too. Tinkertech migraine suppressants. He had some investigator notes on file about her, headaches and shit— I put it together.

She's a Thinker, and he's keeping her prisoner."

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/AN: Wryyyyyyyy