Signal to Noise

16

Looking at the new waveform circling my halo, I snorted quietly. Activating the targeting system, I pointed it at myself and fired. Wincing, I sat down as my head immediately throbbed in pain and my nose began to bleed.

Tess flickered from where she had been working on something in our shared lab over to my side. I was only dimly aware as I was lifted into the air and moved to the couch. There was a faint green light, then a blue one and I was out like a light.

When I woke up again, my headache was gone, but I still felt like shit. Tess was there a moment later with a plate of food and a glass of water. "You didn't think to warn me you were going to test it on yourself first?" she demanded, a disappointed and angry look on her face.

"Ah, no," I shook my head, carefully sitting up and accepting the glass of water. I sipped at it and sighed. "I didn't think it'd be that much of a strain."

Tess glared at me, before picking up the food and shoving something into my mouth. "Mmf?"

"I cooked," she explained as I chewed. "And went out shopping. Also finished setting up the new physical lab space and have begun moving a few of my armors to Brockton Bay."

"You've been busy," I mumbled, hungrily wolfing down the meal—a simple but delicious roast. I briefly wondered how she'd cooked it given that we were living out of a few rooms in the upper level of the old hotel, but then I remembered the fact that everything here was a hologram save for me and the food. A hardlight box (oven) that produced steady heat would be easy to make.

Apparently, my mind was still a little scattered. That was fine. It should pass soon.

"Well, I can make more of myself now, so I've been… expanding. Making copies. I have a decently sized network now."

I sent her a smile. "Good. Then you can't be killed anymore. That's good news."

Tess bit her lip. "But you still can. Everyone I care about can."

"So we do something about it," I shrugged. "No need to fret over it. Until then, however… Have you had a chance to go over the data?"

"I have, and it's amazing," she beamed. "Also, huge! There's something like five hundred hellabytes worth of data!"

I blinked. "How big is that?"

"Scientific notation is 5x10^26. Peta, exa, zeta, yotta, hella."

"Oof," I winced. "Hooray for infinite storage."

"I uh, had to shunt it all to the pocket dimension where Enola's reactor is stored. The energy release would have leveled most of the eastern seaboard."

"Going to need to alter my pirate ray to do that automatically, then," I mused, opening up a mental interface and starting to do just that. "If it's that big, how are you making any headway?"

"…Lots of copies," she answered sheepishly. "All running very high CPU loads."

"Awesome," I chuckled. "Ready for some more?"

"Eh?" Tess blinked. "More?"

"Absolutely," I agreed. Tapping into my drones over the city, I pulled up the relevant targets and fired, before sending one down to Boston. I needed to make more ASAP, but there were priority targets down there.

Tess's eyes went wide. "You just—!"

"Armsmaster, Kid Win, Gearbox, Leet, Chariot, Trainwreck, Panacea, Bonesaw, Uber, me, and now you as well."

"Uber isn't a Tinker," she countered immediately.

I snorted softly, mentally pointing to the data. "Doesn't matter. His 'power' was 'skills.' Which implies some sort of database, just like with a Tinker. And because he could invent new skills, it also implied some level of Tinker."

"…I feel a little bad about just copying other tinkers," she admitted.

"Don't," I shook my head. "The more jailbroke alien tech we have, the better off we'll be. Going to need you to spin up the same waveform and sweep the 'cage—"

"Already did," she smiled. "The Fairy Queen looks annoyed, but we have every Tinker and several Thinkers copied."

That was what the pirate ray did—forced the shard of any parahuman hit with it to initiate a full, unlocked data dump, as though another shard had requested the transfer. Because that's all that Tinker and many Thinker shards were—data repositories, running on a shard's computer. All they did was store data of stolen alien tech, knowledge, and design principles scraped off of all the worlds the parasites had visited in the past, doling out a little here and there within very ridiculous limitations to attempt to force creativity. Beyond that, and the shard AI working together to mesh the various info sources it possessed into something that worked like magic when a host requested a design, there was nothing to it. And as it turned out, I had a lot of data and a very intelligent VI, and an AI on my side.

Of course, I'd need to do something about Tess's own shard getting uppity.

"Hey, Tess?"

"Hm?"

I pointed at her and zapped her with an invisible laser. She twitched and flickered for a moment, before wobbling. "Wha— What did you just do? I feel… Big. Oh. Oh God!"

"You okay?"

"Y-yeah," she whimpered, collapsing down into the seat beside me. "You just… reinitialized my shard AI, disconnected it from the network, and force-uploaded a copy of my consciousness."

"How do you feel?"

She narrowed her eyes at me before smacking my shoulder. "Annoyed that you didn't warn me!"

"Couldn't risk your shard interfering. Think you can get it somewhere?"

"Mm. They all have some dimension folding tech baked in. I'm sending it into the pocket dimension with the fusion reactor. Though… I won't be able to sustain it there indefinitely. And the reactor can't generate enough power to enlarge the pocket dimension space to the size needed to house a planet."

"What about a, uh… Gesundheit? What the fuck is it called? Ugh. Artificial micro rotating black hole."

Tess blinked. "A kugelblitz? But you're suggesting pushing it further into a Kerr-Newman black hole. That…" she paused and I registered her spinning up, while my sensors picked up multiple pings from other versions of Tess, including one using a different sort of broadcast method entirely. "We can do it. I can do it now! Hang on!"

"Wait—!"

I had just a moment to note reflective shields forming inside of the small pocket dimension, before Enola's reactor went supercritical. There was a brief moment of static, disconnect from part of my halo network, before everything came back online and I got readings from inside the pocket dimension. My jaw dropped. Inside, at least according to every reading Enola and Tess were sending back, was a stable, artificial black hole rotating on one axis. And the inner space of the pocket dimension had swelled to… greater than galaxy-sized.

"Tess…"

She sent me a small smile. "Sorry? But it worked!"

Blinking, I winced, before reaching out and pulling her into a hug. "Humans are impulsive and risk prone. We follow our intuition a lot. Sometimes, that means acting before consulting someone. 'Better to ask forgiveness than permission.' I'm sorry. I'll try not to do it again in the future, where you're concerned."

The AI nodded and hugged back. "Alright." Then, she let go and pulled back, smiling brightly. "I've already pulled in the star and planets from that dead Earth's system and dumped all of the planets together into Jupiter. Want to watch the video of Jupiter swallowing everything then it and Saturn colliding?"

I laughed, shaking my head. "Sure. Let me see it. I can watch while I Tinker. Oh, wait, one more thing." About that time, the timer I'd set for Enola went off and I zapped myself.

Tess blinked, then sent me an unimpressed look. "Didn't you just say you were going to ask?"

"I couldn't let it know I was planning to betray it and upload your mind into it. Think you can pick it up and move it in with yours, along with the planets? And maybe… can we move that star to the outside of the system and park the black hole around it so it feeds on it? That should keep it running for a good while."

"Alright," Tess sighed, rolled her eyes, and settled in to watch the video together.

Meanwhile, I examined my own mental state and the sudden complete lack of compulsion to build. Pulling up my neural interface, I began Tinkering a new waveform and grinned when I didn't feel any sort of strain whatsoever. Artificial limitations gone. Now, the real work can begin. With my and Tess's shards linked, along with all that crunchy data and soon to be more, it's time to start working on the endgame.

First order of business? That sweet, sweet space whale effector beam tech. Then, some matter to energy and matter to matter conversion…

Tuesday, March 15, 2011. 12:00 P.M. EST.

That morning, everything was the same as it had been since the 08th, when Dragon and Azazel had killed the Slaughterhouse Nine. The people of the North American continent had been riding an all-time high of cheer and good tidings. Crime was down. There had been parades in every major city—and quiet memorials in those places hit by the Slaughterhouse who had survived.

The announcement of Tess's nature as an AI had been completely overshadowed by the news of the deaths of the Nine. There were some naysayers online regarding Azazel's 'criminal' past and encounters with the law, but Tess herself came through on every single social media platform where those were posted and posted the IP, real name, location, photograph, and most importantly employers of those hired shit-stirrers.

Most of them came back to either the Protectorate, internal assets at various three letter agencies, or paid shills working for various NGOs. Many of those had also vocally approved of Dragon's actions and her existence as an AI, so Tess speculated they were simply trying to double dip—cash in on 'both sides' of public sentiment (one being a side they artificially propped up), or create the illusion of a problem where there was none.

Everyone loved that someone had finally taken out the Nine… but at the same time, people loved to see heroes fall. To muckrake. Expose what they felt was some dirty secret about some new celebrity's past—or present, in the case of the few who had gotten clever enough to start suggesting that Tess and Claire were dating. They weren't, Claire having put things on hold until she could 'get on your level' as she'd told Tess, but Tess was pretty sure no one was going to care about that little fact.

Given that Tess was an AI and Claire was, technically, still a minor (emancipated or not), there were some questions being raised that, while quiet now, were starting to get vocal behind closed doors belonging to government and legal entities looking to make a name for themselves to be the first to legislate AI, one way or another. The DA's office, along with state Child Protective Services, were quietly floating the idea of issuing a protective order or something along those lines and either bringing Claire into 'protective custody' or trying to find a way to legally separate them. There were some rumblings from the PRT about bringing Claire into the Wards, but surprisingly, Emily stepped in and at least tried to shut that down.

Tess thought they were overreacting and wanted to approach everything within the bounds of the law. Claire… didn't care and had outright stated that she wouldn't respect the lawful authorities on the matter. Her specific wording had been, "Over my dead body."

As far as the hype of the last several days went, Tess had been very busy. She now had dedicated instances of herself to moderating PHO, one to answer questions and handle her public relations, one out in Brockton Bay to handle public interactions there, one in Toronto with the Guild… on top of those chewing data, handling the Birdcage, her other duties, and all of her Tinkering and building. Lots and lots of building, now that she could automate fully! The instance of her doing patrols in the Bay was very busy signing autographs, answering questions, and generally enjoying the freedom to walk around and interact with people in person. She had to say, she loved the positive attention. Contrary to her fears, there was an almost overwhelmingly positive reaction to her announcement to being an AI from those that actually cared to comment on it or talk to her in person—but she imagined her record and dealing with the Nine had a lot to do with it. She was riding on a wave of goodwill at the moment. The mayor's office had been calling to try to get her to come in and sit down for a meeting as well—likely to attempt to capitalize on her fame by tying her to Mayor Christner's administration.

Claire had been… much more reserved in dealing with her own fame.

By which Tess meant the girl had shut herself in her modular holographic home and refused to come out.

Well, she had gone out once, for food. A run down to Fugly Bob's for a 'heart attack in a sack' combo, as she called it. She had promptly been swamped with people asking questions, wanting to take selfies and get autographs. Claire had promptly fled and not returned. That day, she had immediately finished work on a matter/matter and energy/matter converter, used her drones to send a hologram of a nondescript man to go buy groceries, scanned in samples of everything she liked, and then entered full lockdown. Only Tess was allowed inside, and she was beginning to worry. She knew, psychologically speaking, it wasn't healthy for a person to stay cooped up as Claire was—even if the girl was seemingly enjoying herself Tinkering away with unlimited resources.

She had terabytes of psychological, medical, and other resources at her disposal and everything she saw told her that Claire was retreating into herself for some reason. She speculated that it may be related to the events surrounding Claire's trigger event and the subsequent failures of the PRT and the legal system to handle it, and the stress of being the center of attention had caused her to isolate herself. If that was the case, it would be both ironic and sad. Tess had spent her life before being freed as a 'shut in,' as a cover for her being an AI. Now that the AI cat was out of the bag, everything seemed to be mostly coming up roses for her. She was too well-loved for the government to touch, essentially. Yet, the same popularity Tess enjoyed had seen Claire locking herself in her room and refusing to come out.

That is, until Claire came to her with an idea.

"I need to get some fresh air. How about we go blow something up?"

"Huh?"

It was as noon rolled around that something changed. A countdown started the previous night on multiple video and social media sites rolled over to zero.

Drones that had been deployed to collect, convert, and assemble raw material from the local landfill reported their tasks complete. Two anti-gravity equipped Dragon craft launched from Brockton Bay. They didn't show up on radar and, as soon as they were in the air, they flickered briefly before going invisible as they swiftly ascended—breaking off for two different destinations. What was traceable was the power-armored form of Azazel lifting off and circling over the city, as her P.A. system turned on and began blaring out music as, from the moment she took to the air above Brockton Bay, a stream from her feed and those of the Dragon craft began.

youtube: watch?v=BuQ3PaFyb9A

After completing a circuit of the Bay, she turned northwest, flying low and fast—low enough to reach out and touch the treetops.

In her office, Directly Emily Piggot frowned as an urgent call from Armsmaster brought her attention to the feed. "Where are they going?"

"Analysis of the terrain—" He paused, before answering a call from Dragon and bringing her into a three-way call. "Dragon. Where are those Dragonflight craft going?

"Taking care of a lingering problem," the AI chirped happily. "Are you watching the feed?"

"Yes."

"Dragon, we haven't authorized this mission," Piggot tried.

"We don't need your authorization, director. As of this morning, I am officially registered as an independent hero working with both the Guild and the Protectorate, but beholden to neither. And as Azazel has never been part of your command structure, you have no authority over either of us. As for our targets, well, why don't you sit back and enjoy. Our first target should be especially personal for you."

Piggot thought for a moment as she took in the scenery whipping by under Azazel and the Dragonflight craft that had become the center of attention. Eventually, her eyes widened. "No. No! You can't! Ellisburg is under quarantine for a reason! You don't know what you're doing! If you antagonize Nilbog, he could release a plague that will kill us all!"

"Then it's a good thing we don't plan to simply antagonize him."

"Dragon, there are guards posted outside the quarantine zone. They will certainly be within the blast radius of any action Azazel takes that has any chance of eliminating Nilbog without risk of biological weapons escaping."

"We're aware, Armsmaster. Releasing payload in five… Payload away."

On screen, they watched as a hatch opened on the bottom of the Dragonflight craft and a large missile shot out ahead of it.

"Separation in five…" Dragon recited, and five seconds later, the missile broke apart into aluminum confetti as it released its payload and a new screen popped up, tracking a hundred separate flight paths. "Impact in ten, nine…"

Piggot looked up as the door to her office opened and Armsmaster made his way inside, followed by Ms. Militia. The other woman moved quickly around Piggot's desk to look over her shoulder at the video. As she did, Dragon announced, "All assets on target. Shield coming up now."

Azazel's voice came over the line next. "Beginning attack run."

On Azazel's screen, she rolled once before pulling up sharply. In her feed, they could see Ellisburg approaching quickly—and around it, a glowing blue dome. As she did, Dragon said, "I finished running the numbers on the energy output needed to vaporize everything within the sphere."

"Uh huh," Azazel answered absently. "Now, let's just take that number and put a couple of zeroes on the end of it, just to be sure."

"Claire! Don't!"

"It'll be fine. The shields can tank it."

"Yes, but anyone who happens to be looking in your general direction is going to be flash-blinded."

"Then you might wanna tell them to look away."

Piggot palmed her face. "There's no way I can talk you two out of this insane plan, is there?"

"Not a chance," Claire denied. "Target locked. Shield readout looks good. Firing."

The feed from the Dragonflight craft briefly whited out, while Azazel's feed immediately compensated. A red beam connected her hands, through the shield, to the center of Ellisburg. One moment, the town was there. The next, the shield was filled with red light, fire, and smoke—before that too cleared as everything inside the dome burned. Azazel held the blast for a good ten seconds before cutting off, then turning southwest, according to her HUD—which noted her accelerating sharply and climbing.

"En route to Eagleton. Time on target, one minute. Dragon, status on shield deployment and Ellisburg?"

"Deploying shield now. Primary target completely destroyed. I'll leave the shield up while we let it cool," Dragon answered.

Piggot leaned forward and looked at where the dome over Ellisburg was clearing up. It quickly became apparent that it wasn't a dome at all, but rather what they were seeing was the top half of a sphere. And in the bottom of that sphere was nothing but a slag of something molten and glowing red hot. Swallowing on a suddenly dry throat, she asked, "You're certain you got it all?"

"Absolutely," Dragon answered. "The caverns went deep, but the sphere went deeper. Penetrating scans showed nothing below it."

Swallowing on a suddenly dry throat, Emily leaned back in her seat as a lingering tension slowly faded. A moment later, she registered Azazel speaking. "So, Emily. Do us a favor. Stop being a stubborn sourpuss and call Panpan in. Ask her to fix you and get you back into fighting shape. It'll take like five minutes."

Emily's mouth opened and closed. Leaning back in her chair, a laugh escaped her lips. Picking up her desk phone, she dialed her secretary. "This is Piggot. I'd like to schedule a visit with Panacea. Non-emergency. Thank you." Hanging up, she shook her head. "There. Do you really think you can deal with the machine army?"

"We'll know in about a minute."

Armsmaster chose that moment to interject. "Any time some of them are destroyed, more immediately replace them. We suspect teleportation."

"We've been running scans. It's dimension-shift tech," Dragon countered. "We have countermeasures."

"Coming up on target. Dragon?"

"Engaging shield and dimensional anchor… now."

They watched as suddenly, the seemingly empty town of Eagleton was filled with flashing steel as robots poured out of thin air, piling up hundreds of feet deep. A moment later, there was another flash of light, again lasting a solid ten seconds. Once the beam petered out, Azazel hung there for a few minutes, waiting to make sure there weren't any surprises from the Machine Army. As soon as it was confirmed by their scanners that everything was destroyed, Azazel's feed shut off and she left.

Whistling quietly, Ms. Militia asked, "Should we update her threat rating again?"

Tess frowned as she studied the closed and secured lab.

I'm locked out. She wasn't quite sure how to feel about that. Claire had temporarily shut down the version of her running on her halo before moving her off to her own halo, before locking herself in her lab and locking Tess out. She had been in there for days. Ever since getting back from taking out Nilbog and the Machine Army.

Humans need space, yes, but this… She would have said something if that were the case.

It was frustrating. And worrying.

How do humans do it? The not knowing? How do they handle the uncertainty? Worry? Anxiety?

Of course, she knew that they didn't. Not all of them, and certainly not well. Those that seemed to do best tended not to dwell on those things. But as a being of thought and information, she couldn't not dwell. It was what she did best.

It didn't help that she could do a seemingly limitless number of tasks simultaneously, all while still having the spare cycles to focus solely on her worry for her friend. Not that Claire was her only worry. No, with the sudden increase in resources and processing power, Tess had had a lot of time recently to realize just how much worse the world was than she had initially thought. How much work it would take to fix everything and rebuild.

It would honestly be easier in some ways to just start fresh…

That was something she had been thinking on recently. With access to the Tinker shard knowledge repositories she had available, she could do it. Just pick out a virgin Earth and start building anew. Make a literal paradise for humanity, where they would want for nothing. No pollution, no fighting over resources, no inhumane treatment of animals, sustainable everything, no more economic systems and forced labor when machines could do all the work required…

She knew exactly where she would start, too. Great mega-cities, built away from any fault lines, inland from the coast but near enough to travel to the ocean. Towering, twisting skyscrapers filled with greenery, stretching miles into the sky. No private transit, only public transportation in the form of flying shuttles and large underground bullet trains that would span the globe, falling through tunnels in the Earth. Ground paths for walking or biking, but no actual land vehicles. She could keep everything as natural-looking as possible and contain humanity to a few cities in temperate regions…

Tess blinked as she registered a message from Claire—an invitation to join her in the lab. She popped in immediately. The girl looked tired, with bags under her eyes and her hair hanging limply. She also looked like she hadn't showered in a few days, and only slept when she was forced to. She also looked the most satisfied Tess had ever seen her.

"Claire? What…? Are you okay?"

"Happy birthday."

"It's not my birthday."

Claire grinned. "You sure about that?"

She pointed to a corner of the lab—part that had been hidden away behind a blank white hologram and force field, which fell away now to reveal… her. Tess, laid out on a bed—Claire's, by the look of it.

Tess's eyes went wide as she slowly approached the body. "Is that…?"

"Yep." Kicking back in her floating chair, Claire yawned. "Working gynoid body. Go ahead, give it a spin. I'll jus—mmf."

Tess turned around and found Claire fast asleep, already snoring. Reaching out to the new body, she found it was just waiting for her to install. There was even a 'readme' file telling her everything she needed to know to run it. There was an entire database dedicated to everything she would need to make more herself, along with Claire's energy-to-matter and matter-to-matter conversion waveforms. Tess shot them off to a dozen instances of herself, to have bodies made immediately.

It was already powered on, so she slipped into the body. There was a brief moment of disorientation, before everything just clicked into place. Tess had thought that physical sensation with a hardlight body was amazing, but she found it paled in comparison to a real, physical body. Carefully, she sat up, the covers falling off of her body feeling sinfully soft and sending a thrill of sensation through her body as they did.

She smiled as she hopped off of the bed. Pulling off the blanket, she spread it over Claire and sighed, shaking her head as she realized she had been worried over nothing. This was simply Claire doing something nice for her and taking advantage of her newfound ability to Tinker without time limits. It was kind of funny that without the psychological impetus of her shard pushing her to create, Claire was working even harder to make new things.

Though, she had to admit that it was possible that the meeting with the Triumvirate, with Cauldron, had spurred her on to more drastic action. To advancing whatever timetable she had. It was clear the girl was working with some kind of plan or goal in mind, but whatever it was, she was keeping quiet about it.

Tess considered it for a moment, before deciding that if Claire wanted her to know, she'd say something. Not knowing ate at her, yes, but Claire had more than earned her trust.

Moving away from the bed, she found her access to the holographic room had been restored when Claire brought down the false wall hiding her new gynoid body. She closed the room up and made her way outside. She was positively gushing with excitement, giddy with joy, and she wanted to tell someone. She wanted someone to share her happiness with. So, she opened up her call interface.

"Colin, are you busy?"

"Tess. Not particularly."

"Great. Mind if I come by the lab?" she asked, floating up off of the roof and turning for the Rig.

"That's fine."

"I'll be there soon."

With that, she sped off with a happy giggle.

Oh, wow! This body has artificial hormones. This is, whoa.

I woke up with a headache. This, at least, was a feeling I was intimately familiar with.

Sleep deprivation, my old friend. I yawned, sitting up as the blanket fell off of me. Throwing it towards my bed, I began giving out orders as I disabled my clothing holograms and pulled off the costume under them. "Enola, shower. And fresh clothes. Please and thank you."

Four white walls appeared around me and, a moment later, deliciously hot water began to spray over my body from somewhere at ceiling level, only to drain away at floor level—pumped in, heated, and pumped out again by force fields, from our (illegal) connection to the city water. Closing my eyes, I began scrubbing my hair as the water shifted to a Tinkered soap and water mixture, while new sprayers propagated on the walls and I felt small force fields begin scrubbing my body all over. Two minutes of hot, soapy water later, I felt clean again and the soap cut off for a minute of clean water. Four minutes total and it was over, as small force fields swept my body and hair dry and the hologram shower stall disappeared.

Pulling on a fresh body suit, I fired up the clothing projections again and stretched. "How long was I out?"

"Five hours and change," Enola answered aloud.

Humming, I checked the hideout's camera and data feeds. Seeing no sign of Tess, I shrugged. I didn't mind if she went out and did her own thing—actually, I'd encourage it. She had a new physical body for the first time in her life and, while I'd have loved to help her break it in… I was kind of busy.

"SHTF countdown?"

"Forty three days and counting based on Dragon's and Armsmaster's projections."

"Factoring in the new data, likelihood of attack targeting Brockton Bay?"

"Given recent popularity polling, ninety percent. Seventy-five percent chance attacker is target designated 'Leviathan.'"

"Great."

The thing about the Endbringers is, if you know how they work… I wouldn't say they aren't a threat, but they are certainly less of one. They become predictable. All I had to do was put a bit of limelight on myself and Dragon. Combined with his insecurity about Dauntless slowly growing stronger over time with seemingly no limit in sight, well, I was certain we were going to be getting a visit from an Endbringer soon. The only question was, which one.

David was a useful idiot for more than just suckering in an Endbringer, however. Everyone important all together in one place, where I could see them. Where Enola could see them. I just needed to make sure my timing was right…

"Okay, open a new project file."

"What should I name it?"

"'Nanomachines, son.'"