Signal to Noise

17


"Claire?"

I ignored the familiar voice as I filled a plate from the Chinese buffet. A moment later, a hand touched my arm, before sliding down to my hand, and turned me slightly to face the familiar form of Amy Dallon. I frowned. "Sorry, I don't—"

"You don't have the elf ears, but I recognize the face and hair—you got lazy and recycled them. And my power can't read you through whatever hologram you're wearing," she murmured, quietly enough for me to hear.

I didn't want to deal with teen girl drama bullshit, at all. On the other hand, I really wanted to sit and eat my honey chicken and chow mein in peace, without having to pack it up and go elsewhere. There was only one 'neutral' Chinese place in Brockton Bay, that being the one on the Boardwalk, the rest were firmly in ABB territory. And Chinese was never as good reheated.

With a quiet sigh, I dropped the hologram. Around us, people looked over at the sudden change—a few even took out their phones and started taking pictures and/or filming. "Fine. Let's grab a table."

I turned and walked away, making my way to a booth in the back, where I set up a soundproof barrier. Setting down my plate and drink, I took a seat with eyes on the rest of the restaurant and dug in. A few moments later, Amy slid into the seat across from me. She watched me in awkward silence as I ate my lunch—with a fork, because I didn't see a point in using chopsticks when forks were available.

After almost a full minute, Amy broke the silence. "This is stupid." Huffing out a breath, she said, "I'm sorry. How I reacted was dumb. I could have just said I wasn't interested, but I panicked. I felt like I'd been lied to, but I realize now that you didn't. You were being irreverent about it and that's just how you are…"

I looked up and raised an eyebrow. "How much of that came straight from your aunt's mouth?"

"All of it," she muttered.

I jabbed a piece of chicken hard enough to make the plate squeal and draw a wince from her at the sound. Jabbing the chicken at Amy, I asked, "What did you do wrong?"

Amy winced. "Jumped into bed with someone else. Intentionally. Knowing you'd find out."

"Why?"

"…To hurt you. Because I wanted to get back at you for hurting me. For getting my hopes up and then dropping that on me and because I thought you were cheating on me with Lisa. And before you say it, I know. Aunt Sarah already beat that horse into paste. Two wrongs don't make a right."

Nodding, I popped the chicken into my mouth and chewed as I considered the girl. After a moment, I swallowed and asked, "Okay. Great. Thanks. What do you want me to do with this?"

"I want my friend back," Amy murmured, absently picking at her vegetable medley. "I miss you. I thought that if we could just talk like we used to, things could… go back to how they were between us?"

I put my fork down, leaned back in my seat, and actually took her in for the first time since she had called out to me. She looked… good, really. Like she was actually sleeping and eating properly, and keeping up with the exercise regimen I'd put her, Taylor, and Lisa on. I made to answer, only for Enola to alert me to one of the priority targets I was tracking in the Bay to cross the two block invisible perimeter around myself, heading straight for the restaurant. I hummed as I saw who it was, but decided to leave it be for now.

"…And I broke up with Taylor."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "Why?"

"She's very…" she frowned. "Needy. And controlling. Insecure," she said the last in almost a whisper. "Can we, I don't know, start over? Can I get a do-over?"

Meeting her pretty hazel eyes, I shook my head. "Amy…" I sighed. "Amy, no. It doesn't work like that."

"Why not? I, I want to try—"

I held up a hand to silence her. "This is going to be a hard lesson to learn. Brace yourself."

"Okay…?"

"You get one shot with someone. One. If they cheat, it's over."

"But—"

"Ah, ah, ah!" I waved my finger, shutting her down. "No. You don't take a cheater back in. You certainly don't jump back into a relationship with them. You can forgive them, but you'll never forget—and that knowledge is going to taint anything you ever do with that person. Forever. Worse, if you make the mistake of taking a cheater back, they don't learn. Well, no. They do learn something, but not the right thing. They learn that they can betray you in one of the worst ways a person can and you'll take them back. They'll learn that they can get away with it in the future. That kind of person isn't going to ever respect you. That's just human nature. It skews their sense of self-worth, into believing that they're worth more than they are because even though they cheated, you took them back. And their sense of your worth, because you were desperate enough to take them back.

"On the side of the person who was cheated on, even if it wasn't serious at the time, you know what kind of person they are now. That kind of thing kills friendships dead. They don't come back from it. There will always be that lingering hurt in the background. The suspicion and distrust. And can you blame them? I owe you a lot… but I don't owe you that. I don't owe you putting on a smile and trying to act like it never happened. Nor do I owe you subjecting myself to a constant state of emotional baggage and uncertainty. You saved my life and gave me my freedom. That, I owe you. So if you need help, you have my number. Call me and I'll be there. Beyond that? We can be cordial and work together in the field, but I'm not your friend anymore. I can't be, and I don't want to be."

Amy's eyes grew wet with unshed tears, but I refused to be swayed by her turning on the waterworks. Before she could do or say anything, a slim, slightly older Asian woman wearing a red cheongsam pressed herself into my side, laying her hand on my shoulder. Amy looked confused. I looked up and greeted Ryuu, in her civilian identity, with a raised eyebrow.

Glancing between myself and Amy, and taking in the healer's damp eyes, Ryuu smiled. Then, the sexy older woman laid her hand on my cheek, leaned in, and kissed me full on the mouth. With very obvious tongue. There was a rustle from the seat across from me, before Amy nearly sprinted outside. Ryuu broke away with a chuckle.

"Did you have to?" I sighed. "I'm never going to hear the end of it. Five minutes from now, her sister is going to be breathing down my neck and I'm going to have to put her down this time."

"You're welcome," she countered. "May I sit?"

"Business or pleasure?"

"Yes."

Snorting quietly, I scooted over in my seat and she slid in beside me. I was a bit more annoyed when she grabbed a set of unopened chopsticks from Amy's side and snatched up a piece of my honey chicken. "…They have an entire damn buffet you could get and you choose to take my chicken? Why?"

She popped the chicken into her mouth and chewed for a moment, before smiling. "Because it tastes better when you've taken it from someone else."

I sent her a flat look. Deciding to drop it because I could just go back for more, I asked, "What's up?"

"We're finished." I raised an eyebrow and she elaborated. "We've detained everyone involved in the human trafficking ring and turned them over to police, along with those taken. We're tracking down the buyers and attempting to get the victims back, though some of them were sent overseas by Mover, so recovering them is beyond our ability. Everything else that isn't what we explicitly agreed upon has been shut down."

"Really? Enola, can you verify that?" A moment later, I received a summary to my interface, complete with timestamped video proof, and whistled quietly. "You really did."

"Yes. A criminal I may be, but I am a woman of my word. Are you?"

I nodded. "That was what I wanted, so yes. I'll leave you alone so long as your people leave me and mine alone. No blue lasers for you."

"Thank you," she smiled, before stealing another piece of my chicken. "So. When are you going to come over for tea?"

"Mm. Good question. Let me know when you're free and I'll see what my schedule looks like." A thought occurred and I added, "Though, just so there's no misunderstandings, I'm seeing someone." Or I would be as soon as I got off of the meat brain and onto digital. "I don't want to lead you on or give you the wrong idea."

The woman nodded once. "Understandable. Thank you for that. I appreciate your honesty."

"So, if you're done cleaning up your brother's mess, what are you doing for business now?" I changed the subject to move us away from any lingering awkwardness.

"Ah, well, gambling mostly. Also, protection. Actual protection, not protection rackets. I've got the men patrolling the streets, keeping the Merchants and other unsavory business out."

"No trouble with the Empire?"

"No. Less than usual, in fact. I've been in talks with Kaiser. We've agreed to extend neutrality to certain streets and places of business, for people openly flying gang colors. So far, businesses on both sides have seen an increase in revenue over the last week. Each side is expected to police their own people, and if someone starts shit in the other's territory, they will answer directly to their leader—that is, myself or him. There has been the usual shit talk and a few bare-knuckle brawls, but no one has drawn a gun yet."

"About the best result you could hope for."

"It really is. And you. I saw the videos. Nilbog and the Machine Army? I'm impressed. What are you doing with the reward money?"

I shrugged. "Same as with the money for the Nine. I gave the majority of it back to the people affected, or donated to have those cities rebuilt. Kept a bit for myself. Dragon's using her cut for humanitarian stuff."

We chatted a bit and I went back and got another plate for us to share, before we parted ways and I went back to my lab.


"Run another check, please Enola."

"Running test number nine thousand and one—"

I tuned out her verbal sass and watched my display. Everything looked green across the board, but I wanted to be absolutely certain, thus the excessive number of checks.

Sitting on the table in front of me were two bodies. One, a perfect copy of the one I was in at the moment—at least, on the outside. The second, a male body that had all of the best features I liked about myself and none of the downsides.

Actually, I might have embellished a bit on the height and stature. And the equipment downstairs. Just a bit. It was realistic, at least.

Look, don't judge me. If you're going to design a body for yourself from the ground up, you might as well go with something you're going to enjoy wearing. And, perhaps more importantly, something your partner is going to enjoy experiencing.

Checking my consciousness transfer waveform one last time, I created a holographic floating chair and sat down. "Alright. Here goes… literally everything."

I paused as fear of imminent death welled up, yawning wide as my heart began to race and I gripped the seat tightly. "Enola, do it before I change my mind. Just uh, put me to sleep first."

I wasn't brave enough to face potentially accidentally killing myself conscious—

Everything went black.

And then, I woke up immediately. It was at once just like waking up normally and nothing like waking up at all. It was like waking up, and up, and up as I found myself filled with an energy I'd never felt before on waking. Instead of waking up and being tired and feeling shitty, and like I needed more sleep, I woke up feeling like I could do anything. My mind expanded and I felt like I had been thinking on slow motion my entire life. My body felt perfect in every way—responsive, light, strong, healthy, and ready to take on the world.

It worked! I didn't die. I giggled quietly, heaving a huge sigh of relief as I sat up.

There was just one little problem…

I looked down at myself, then over at the male body on the other table. "Enola, why didn't you put me in the male body?"

"You didn't specify which body to put you into."

"I thought it was obvious," I muttered, shaking my head. "No. You know what? I'm feeling so good it doesn't even fucking matter."

Hopping up, I pulled on the body suit Enola supplied and a moment later, holographic hardlight clothes appeared over it. Then, I made my way over to the sleeping body in the chair. Reaching out, I tentatively touched her face, brushing a few stray strands of hair away. "Alright. Put her in suspended animation in the backup pocket."

The backup pocket was a small pocket dimension I'd made separate from my main power source dimension. This one was about ten cubic miles worth of space and had nothing in it but a small star generating power that should last for decades, a small 'space station' I was using as physical backup storage, and a backup copy of the combined shard knowledge repository. Now that I had backup bodies, I would be filling it with them. "While you're at it, store the John body as well, and start making copies. I want at least… a hundred each. Just in case."

Enola acknowledged my order and I stretched, testing out the range of motion of my new body. It was, quite honestly, ridiculous. While I'd kept to the general human skeletal and muscular structure, I hadn't exactly been strict with it—it was more of a guideline, really. That allowed me to bend, flex, and turn in ways that would have broken human joints, snapped spines, and broken necks. Fingers, toes, wrists, ankles, elbows, knees, shoulders, hips—everything was reversible in the socket and all of the synthetic muscles could action properly in both directions, for some definition of 'properly.' Yes, that meant I could effectively reverse all of the fingers on one hand and write or type backwards with it, and yes, it was very gross to look at… but it was still fucking cool to be able to do it.

Once I finished with testing my body's physical limits, I went to checking the digital stuff.

Enhanced hearing in ranges humans couldn't hear. Different vision modes including thermal, UV, and tinker-shit like electric, radar, sonar, and penetrating scan aka 'x-ray.' Being able to turn my eyes in two different directions, which was weird. Then there was the stuff built in to pick up and send signals on all bands, and all the traffic I was picking up on every frequency—all of it decrypted and sorted into something I could understand and not be overwhelmed. Electronic warfare and countermeasures suites. Hacking suite using reverse engineered space whale effector beam technology.

Then, I checked out my new brain and its capabilities. First, I had the holographic room produce a ball for me. Then, I upped my brain's clock speed and tossed the ball into the air. It looked like it was moving through molasses as it flew up, reached the apex of its flight, and began to slowly descend over the course of what felt like a minute, subjectively. Reaching out, I slipped my hand over it, then under it, back and forth several times as it fell a few inches—my body's synthetic muscles allowing me to move much faster and with more accuracy and coordination than a base human. Next, I offloaded my processing to my halo and the ball stopped entirely.

I dropped myself into a VR simulation and brought up my tinkering interface. From there, I designed and prototyped a device for getting off this rock—something to make portals and punch holes between dimensions. But since I didn't want to go blind, I also built in a scanner to map the local multiverse around it, so it would be able to tell where it came from and where it was going.

Then, I sent the design to a simulated version of the machine nanite colony stored in my body. With a mental command, they extruded out of my hand in a wave of black sand before solidifying into a glove over my hand. A gesture and the portal device 'activated.' Of course, since this was just a simulation, nothing happened except the simulated reality spitting out the expected data—that everything should function as intended, but there was no way to tell without a real world test. Then, because I didn't want to give away the fact that I had nanites to anyone, I reworked the design to not use them and sent it to a virtual fabricator, to spit out whole in seconds. A test there showed the same result, so I called it good enough.

Dropping out of the virtual environment a few subjective hours later, I found the ball had only dropped an inch or two. Reaching out, I caught it and allowed my CPU to drop back to its normal clock speed. There was a bit of heat buildup in my brain, but not much—since the majority of the load had been done by the halo. Technically, when I offloaded processing to the halo, I wasn't actually occupying my body and was instead occupying the halo itself… which was a pretty wild thought.

Shaking my head, I sent the design to the fabricator waveform and my nanite colony. A moment later, I began producing the machine needed to get off this rock in the corner of the lab. It was done in mere moments and, with a mental/digital command, it fired up and turned on, opening up to… empty air. I blinked. Holding out my hand, I used my nano swarm to create a small drone and tossed it through. It hovered in midair, its entire body made of cameras giving me a sphereical view of the world on the other side. I could see my portal, myself, and below a green Earth covered in trees.

Nice. Let's just… save this one. I recalled the nanites and shut off the portal. Then, I created a much smaller, barely square foot version of the portal and set it up inside an isolated containment field in a corner of the lab, sealed off from everything. I sent the mental command to Enola to start scanning and cataloging the local worlds and left her with that and a newly fabricated set of disc drones.

And while I'm at it, I might as well. Putting in a production order, I told Enola to start making disc drones and sending them all over—to the location of every known Tinker on the planet first and foremost, followed by every major city after that. Those that were known elements were to be tracked down ASAP and the pirate ray used on them. The rest of the drones were to sit and scan for more Tinkers and copy their databases as soon as they were discovered.

"Now… where's my waifu?" I murmured, pinging the hologram around me connected to the building. Finding nothing, I checked her gynoid body's locator. Seeing she was at the Rig, I hummed and called her.

"Claire! I thought you were still working."

"Just finished a project," I explained, moving through the hologram to the exit and looking out over the city. I stepped out into thin air and took to the sky, tapping into my drones and getting a look at local crime. "Decided I'd stretch my legs. What're you up to?"

"Actually, we're working on something."

"Yeah? Want some help?"

"Nope! It's a surprise!" she chirped happily.

"Fair enough. Who's working on it? You and Halbeard?"

"Ah… yes. Also Gearbox. And Kid Win. And I pulled in Chariot, Trainwreck, and Leet."

I whistled quietly. "That's a lot of tinkers. Well, I'll send you the project files for the new toy I just made. In the meantime, I'm going to go visit some people. Have fun."

"We will!"

I disconnected the call and sighed, feeling a bit disappointed. I had wanted to share with Tess, but… If she's busy, she's busy. I get like that too, so I understand how it goes.

I'd just have to put it off for later. Until then, I had shit to do. I pinged Amy's location and sent her a text, letting her know I'd be swinging by the old base and dropping off someone in need of covert medical attention.


"No."

"What do you mean, 'no?'"

"I'm not doing it! That's what I mean."

I sighed. "Amy, look. She needs your help. I can't do everything needed to fix her. To make sure she's safe for other people."

Crossing her arms under her breasts, Amy glared at me. "Claire, it's fucking Bonesaw! Turn her over to the authorities and be done with it!"

"Absolutely not," I shook my head. "Riley here was a victim in all of this. Jack got into her head. He hurt her parents, then made her try to fix them, specifically to try and make her trigger as what she did. Then he spent years getting deeper and deeper into her head. If we remove the contagions and explain to her that Jack's dead, that she has a chance here to start over, she may just take it. I'm pretty sure she has a backup copy of her mind from before Jack got to her too bad."

"I don't know how I can make this any clearer. It's. Bonesaw. I'm not touching that with a ten foot pole!"

"Please?"

Amy made a frustrated sound. "Arg!"

After a moment of glaring, she reached out and laid her hand on the younger blonde girl's arm. Her annoyance quickly faded and she blinked, before tilting her head sideways. "Huh."

"Thanks. I have a meeting with Toybox, so I'll leave you to it. If you need help—"

"Yeah, yeah. I'll call Enola. Go."

I left the hideout and put in a call for my contact with Toybox. "Alright. I'm heading to the meeting point now."

Little did they know, I didn't care about the trade at all. What I really wanted was to meet them and get my hands on that sweet, sweet data their shards had with my pirate ray.


Looking at the hotel, I hummed as I considered it for a moment, looking at it through my new visual penetrating scanner. It was full of crap, rotting, and a health hazard. Also, unoccupied. That it was rotting crap didn't matter much, since my matter-to-matter converter just needed raw mass to convert into other elements. So, I had Enola project a hologram of the exterior of the building over the exterior of the building, then turned on the deconstruction part of the matter-to-matter waveform—breaking down the building wholesale into its constituent elements, separating them, and storing them in the backup storage pocket dimension.

Then, once the building was disassembled and only a hole remained where I'd even gone down into the sub-basement and parking garage, I constructed a giant hardlight structure in its place. Large, spacious open labs. Multi-floor sized living quarters. Everything someone could want in a futuristic home. Water from the city was pumped up and filled a large pool on the roof set under a force field to keep out the snow, which I then heated up to a comfortable temperature that steamed in the cool breeze coming in off the bay—I even added lighting so it would glow with a pleasing cherenkov blue-purple. Beside it, I put in an actual hot tub with all the fancy water jets.

Then, because I didn't want to start incubating nasty germs up here (let alone get them on or worse, in my shiny new gynoid body) but also didn't want to waste money on chemicals, I brought up one of the tinker soap formulas in my list and added a batch to both—the same one I used for my showers, in fact. Non-foaming, no residue, no funky chemicals being absorbed by the body, safe to drink, and eye-friendly. Then, because I figured I might as well while I was there, I added the same force field micro scrubbers to it that my shower had. Tinkers really were bullshit.

Stripping down, I slipped into the tub with a sigh and just floated, enjoying the way the jets felt on my new body. I stared up at the stars above for a while before closing my eyes and slowly dozing. I did have the presence of mind to legalize everything, though. I sent in a statement, not a request, to the city letting them know what I had done before sending off the appropriate sum for the building, land, and water connection to the relevant account.

I was pulled from my rest when I heard the crunch of gravel underfoot. "See? I told you something looked fishy. There shouldn't have been any steam up here."

"Good eye, Little V," an irritatingly familiar voice answered. "Looks like someone's laid claim to the hotel. Don't they know it's the makeout spot?"

Sighing, I didn't bother sitting up as I kicked in the water, the splash drawing them over. "It's mine now. Don't make out on my roof."

Cracking one eye open, I spotted Glory Girl and Vista looking over the lighted pool. "Oh, it's you," Vicky frowned.

"You uh, you're naked there," Vista pointed out.

"Yep." I studied the pair for a moment before closing my eye again. "In or out. No fighting or starting shit. This is a fucking neutral zone."

"Come on, let's go."

"Wait, now hold on," Vista protested, and I heard some rattling around.

"What are you doing?"

"What's it look like? It's fucking cold and I want to warm up!" the younger girl countered.

"You don't have a swimsuit."

"Doesn't look like that's bothering her," Vista snarked. A moment later, I felt the water move as she slipped in. "Ahh~ that's better. In or out, Big V."

"Arg. Fine. Fine!" A moment later, I felt as Vicky slipped in a well. "…Okay, yeah, this is nice." She hesitated and added, "Thanks, Claire."

"You're welcome."

"So… you're Azazel?"

"Just Claire is fine. It's not like I ever had a secret identity to begin with." Sitting up, I eyed the pair and raised an eyebrow. "Are you seriously wearing a mask?"

"I mean, yeah?" the younger blonde shrugged, her shoulders briefly slipping above the bubbling water before going back down. She wore a green domino mask over her face and that appeared to be it. "I keep a backup mask on me for emergencies."

"Whatever works for you. I'm just saying, the glue is going to come off in a few seconds, because this isn't just water. There's tinkered—" the mask fell off, revealing the other girl's face, "—soap in it."

"Shit!" Vista yelped, picking up her mask out of the water, but it was entirely too late for that. After a moment, she let out a disgusted sigh and flipped the wet mask over to the side of the tub. "You aren't going to tell anyone, right?"

"Nope," I denied, studying her face. She was cute, really. Heart shaped face, green eyes, little bow lips, button nose, and a few freckles. Going to be a real heartbreaker in a few years, when she fills out. "You two on patrol?"

"Yeah," Vista nodded, leaning back into the bench seat and making herself comfortable. "Well, not officially. We were just hanging out."

"See anything interesting?"

"You mean aside from a pool on the roof of the old abandoned hotel?" Vicky snarked. "Not really, no. It's quiet tonight. Has been for a while. It usually gets this way in the dead of winter. Too cold for most people to be out and about causing trouble. A few still try it, but most just stay home."

"Makes sense." My sensors picked up Dragon approaching from the direction of the Rig. "Incoming. Don't worry, it's just Dragon."

"Dragon's coming?" Vista perked up.

A moment later, Dragon crested the lip of the building and looked around, spotting us immediately. She flew over and landed her power armor on the roof. It actioned open and the gynoid stepped out, wearing a body suit similar to my own, but in green. "Claire, what did you do while I was gone?"

"Hm? Oh, nothing much. Just disassembled the old hotel and converted it into a base. We have dedicated labs now. And living quarters. And a pool and hot tub. An entire new domicile for you to regulate." Tess rolled her eyes. "How'd you like that toy I left in your inbox?"

"It's great! It'll be an immense help," she smiled, before turning to the other two girls. "Vista, Glory Girl, how are you?"

As they chatted, Tess stripped down and slipped into the water beside me. I closed my eyes, leaned against her, and allowed myself to drift again.

Still time until the next disaster. Over a month. I can just… take some time to enjoy myself for a while.