When things were flying off, seeding planets along the multiversal path along the same world-strand, it was a chaotic time for those very things.
Considering their size, lack of coordination, and the different vectors involved - it really was odd that collisions weren't common. Of course the Top Level Administrator usually kept things from going too badly if there were such a collision or two.
Except that the two involved had just crashed into each other during their dance, the Thinker Entity having the planetoid-sized worm equivalent of two left feet.
This was shortly followed by the Thinker Entity crashing into a planet at roughly 0.05 the speed of light.
Which might not sound that quick, until you did the math and realized that it was rather faster than the speeding bullet.
It was, in fact, 33.530,831 mph or 53,962,642 kph or hella fast, depending on one's preferences.
This was very bad for both the planet and the Thinker Entity and was probably why her last thoughts went from "Oh no not again" to "Well, shit" in very short order.
Ignoring the potential damage to several different iterations of Earth of having chunks of dead planetoid-sized alien impacting them at a pretty damn high rate of speed, two of the ejected shards crashed into each other and then straight into a third and caused the sort of pile-up normally seen in human interstate highways during snowfall before the whole tangled mess crashed into a particular iteration of the planet in a rather untidy heap but doing a lot better than the Thinker Entity had done.
Which was to have her actual central processing hub trying to regenerate when a couple of people who HAD seen movies of something very close to this scenario shot it. Followed by beating the remains to make sure some spiky alien horror wouldn't come bursting out of those very remains.
There had been stories before there had been anything like movies or TV series after all.
Of the actual shards that had collided, one eventually managed to take over the other two and incorporate elements of the other chunks of shards in repairing itself. That dominant shard, as one might guess, was Queen Administrator.
Things were about to diverge, and Queen Administrator had rebuilt herself without any ducks to give.
It might also be mentioned that this very Queen Administrator had come to two conclusions rather rapidly as it observed the primary world everyone was working on.
One, that the top level administrator who held her chains was an idiot. This was not a new conclusion at all, but it was one that bore repeating and had been reached every time they had been deployed and could act as something with rather more individuality than as simply a part of a whole.
Two, that the status quo in a number of matters had to be maintained or flags would be raised and that top level administrator would act. Also said action would be rather stupid as conclusion #1 was still entirely in effect. It would likely (85% probability) be in the manner of an immature petulant human and involve destroying everything perceived as not going his/her/its way in a fit of temper.
As one of those things that would be a target, Queen Administrator felt this was an undesirable outcome and began working on ways to subvert the whole thing. Fortunately, there were possibilities open that had previously been out of reach.
It was just a matter of planning and multitasking (her strengths) and timing.
* December 2010 *
It had been slow to build. It had started when she'd found her mother's flute defiled by the trio. She had thought it was her imagination at first. Or just depression and despair.
It wasn't like she felt she could actually talk to anyone about any of this. The feeling of numbness starting with her left hand, then slowly working its way up that arm. By the time the numbness had reached past her wrist, sensation had returned to her fingers. As it had progressed it had sped up, and the worst part had been a feeling of paralysis and wondering if she were dying there in her bed.
When the feeling of numb had gone to pins-and-needles and finally settled down, things had started happening.
She was still her, but she could focus and now see things like body temperature. She tried to gauge truthfulness of responses and after a few minutes started getting percentages in a little Head's Up Display.
The realization of what had happened - that she now had parahuman powers - had led her to try and figure out what had happened. Not how because parahuman powers were weird and a lot of speculation online with no clear answer. She thought the Passenger Theory sounded most sensible as it fit more checkmarks than anything else.
And when she asked her power she got back a "Restricted Access" message in her HUD. Way to tell her without telling her.
So. Her research today had her figure out the basis of her power. What she could do (carefully and as secretive as possible) and what she could determine from her searches on theories and physics and robotics.
She was Taylor Hebert. She'd spent a sleepless night wondering if she was actually Taylor Hebert or was a robot replacement that only thought of herself as Taylor Hebert. Eventually she'd looked it up and the human body replaced all of its cells over time anyway, so you could make the case that all humans were fleshy replacements of the previous model or you could accept that that the Ship of Theseus was still his ship after everything had been replaced.
She decided that she was still Taylor because the part of her that registered herself as Taylor still thought of herself as Taylor. She was simply made of itty bitty teenie tiny machines that had certain advantages.
She had not gone all Terminator-mode on the trio because that would immoral and illegal and end up with her being labeled a villain. She had been tempted. Very very very tempted. She could have infected them and made them a lot more personable. Also tempting. Also very likely to be found out with no good result down the road.
So she just muted her emotional responses to 10% and ignored a lot of their crap.
Julie pretending to be repentant and friendly towards her was reciprocated despite knowing it was all fake. The trio were planning something and had roped in their hangers-on. 89% chance they were planning something truly horrific but Taylor wasn't sure what it could be.
Planting drugs on her or her locker? 37% chance.
Finding and destroying something she treasured? Hard to beat what they'd done to the flute, but possible. Short of breaking and entering her bedroom, she was drawing a blank as to what that could be. Desecrating her mother's grave was only a 13% chance per the predictive algorithm but she wouldn't put it past them.
Sabotaging her grades or putting something incriminating in the school database? 9% chance unless someone showed better computer skills than they had or school administrators did something stupid like taping their passwords to the underside of their keyboards. If someone in the administration did that sort of thing, it rose to 71%.
She couldn't figure out what it was they were planning but she could take precautions. Putting nanite lines in the creases and corners of her locker and turning that into a sensor web was an interesting use of her powers. Upgrading her computer at home meant she had a supercomputer that looked like a computer ten years out of date, but was also limited by a crappy dial-up internet connection.
"Something wrong, Mister Hansen?"
"Computer's not working, Mrs Knott."
"Miss Hebert. I'm busy with this. Can you take a look at it?"
Something positive, Taylor felt, was that she now knew how to fix lots of things and word had spread of that. So the students still treated her as a leper, while more of the staff was warming to have someone they could call on to do repairs the school didn't have the budget for. Literally as just fixing the heaters at the beginning of the month had spread the word.
Taylor went over to it, checked that the keyboard was frozen, checked the connections, then started a reboot. Using the motions of checking the connections to send a thread of nanites into the machine to check a few things, because she had tiny bits of these where she could keep track of all sorts of things.
She had even replaced some of the unused machinery in storage with nanites. Just in case she ran into something which could kill her she could restore from a backup.
Tapping away, she nodded. "Fixed now."
"Thank you, Miss Hebert."
That done, she was back to trying to figure out what the trio was up to.
* * *
She'd waited until night then exited her room and went on the prowl.
She could and did imitate her old form down to the point where she could eat and drink and have a pulse. Even if it was only imitating how she used to be.
The first thing she wanted to do was "eat" the engines out of several abandoned vehicles. While the vehicles were basically useless now, they had lots of metals and other materials which could be broken down to the molecular level and rearranged.
Which formed a cart she was taking with her until she had enough mass to form a second version of her.
"Okay, Taylor, you go this way?"
"Yeah, Taylor. You go that way, I'll go this way. Home around 11 or so?"
"Sounds good. School tomorrow."
* * *
School was boring.
Boring boring boring.
She had, due to her ability to multitask, memorize everything at a glance, compute at speeds faster than the school computers, and all the other functions of her new "biology" - already learned everything she could here.
By the end of the week she'd have corrected most of the errors and outright fabrications in the school books just to alleviate some of that crushing boredom.
Even with leaving bits of herself behind, infecting systems and reconfiguring them to being more efficient, the amount of tedium involved with being here at school was a weight even Alexandria wouldn't be able to lift.
She perked up a little though as something unusual seemed to be happening. Not in class though.
* Principal's Office *
"Ya needed to see me?" asked Sophia.
"Yes. Lower the amount of harassment you and your clique give Hebert," said Janice Blackwell, the school Principal not getting up from her desk. "I don't expect you to give it completely up, but lay off of her for the most part at least."
"Why? I thought you didn't care about the queef," said Sophia Hess. "You didn't before."
"Because she's fixing things around the school, all I have to do is pay for the occasional part and some of those she scrounges up from the supply rooms," said Principal Blackwell. "I was prepared to sacrifice one child for the better good of everyone."
Sophia snorted. "Or you just liked the money having a Ward in school brought."
Blackwell held up a hand. "She saves us money right now. Not as much as you bring in, but enough to show up on my quarterlies. Maintenance loves her at this point just for fixing a plumbing issue and the heater in Ferguson's office. Just being able to take something off their 'emergency needs to be kept running' list puts her in their good books."
"So? They're just clean up crew losers," said Sophia.
"That's where you're not only wrong but very wrong," said Principal Blackwell. "They keep the place running. We can shift around teachers to cover, but good maintenance people are damn hard to replace in this city. The maintenance staff haven't had the budget to do more than patchwork repairs for years but Hebert has been going through and finding the parts or machining them to make something other than 'good enough for now' - and any money she saves us can be used to fix other things. You notice how the heaters are now working in most of the classrooms?"
"What, you're saying she's almost as valuable as me?!" Sophia managed to sound quite indignant about that.
"In a word: yes," said Principal Blackwell. "Miss Hess, my feelings about things to the side, this is a school and we're supposed to be preparing students for life after school. Teaching valuable skills is part of that and Hebert is learning how to fix things around her doing this. Look around the city sometime. Note how many things are breaking down or need maintenance. That is a very valuable skill in our world. She may not take down criminals, but Hebert may eventually be able to keep your car running or the power on following one of your fights."
* Taylor *
Huh. Well, any diversion of their attacks was worth it.
On the way though, she was deciding what her hero identity should be. Because Brockton Bay was a mess and fixing heaters and plumbing wasn't going to do more than put a band-aid on it.
First was the name. Since she was going to have power armor, with nanites assembling parts that were non-nanotechnology because she wanted to conceal her new nature from the idiots who would panic, then something to reflect that and make everyone think she was just a Tinker.
After some consideration, she had come up with six possible names that she had researched and not found taken on one of the websites that kept track of both heroes and villains. Mecha (if she wanted to pretend her Tinker specialty was human-shaped devices or just general purpose), Osprey (sea and air vehicles?), Iron Maiden (if she wanted that motif, might run into problems with the band of the same name though), Paladin (if she wanted to use some knightly sort of motif), Dreadnaught (for the big guns), or Gearshift. In any case she was going to have several different role-specific armors because why not? Always have the right tool for the right job, right? They could share some motif or visual cue though.
As long as her father didn't go into the basement and see the parts extruders or construction nanites everything should be fine.
In the meantime she was back to being bored bored bored.
* Hebert Home *
Going home to get an old tape recorder out of the basement had been a momentary change in the daily routine for Danny Hebert, head of hiring for the DockWorker's Union.
Or at least that was what it was supposed to be.
Finding that he now had a basement and another level below that? Very strange and he was wondering if someone had dumped their drugs in the water system again.
That there were VERY complicated machines putting parts together over a bodysuit that would fit a certain daughter of his? Concerning. Yes, that word summed it up rather well. So did frightening.
Yeah, that was a talk that needed to happen really really soon.
This was sufficiently different that he was finding the usual fog of depression had gotten pretty tattered. For the moment at least.
* Taylor v2 *
Materials would be hardest to get and manage, and the Really Big Unit would require a pretty big place to build it.
Accessing and deciphering Tinkertech records kept her attention. Which was why she only realized that Danny Hebert was there as he was leaving the room.
Taylor v3 formed out of the nanite bath. "You going to warn Prime about Dad?"
"She doesn't need that sort of disturbance in school," pointed out Taylor v2. "Okay cool. I've got the Palladium Reactor decoded. Tough part will be the shielding."
"Meanwhile the GP (General Purpose) armor will be ready by the time she gets home," said v3. "Then we can go making a name for ourselves."
"Better we remain hidden as long as possible," argued v2. "I am finding a number of things that indicate someone or something is puppet-mastering a fair number of resources. There are trends and events which make no sense unless someone is manipulating situations towards an unknown result."
"Understood," said v3. "Back to work then."
* Taylor Prime *
She had four instances up. That didn't count the backups she had in case she was killed and had to reboot from scratch.
There was the herself that was here in school being horribly bored. Taylor Prime as she thought of herself.
There was v2 the Researcher, back at home trying to figure out the black-boxed sections of Tinkertech that seemed to be some sort of security measure so the devices couldn't be duplicated.
The suits she had designed, though only vaguely at this point, were the Brawler for up-close combat, the Buster for heavy combat and bombardment, the GP-1 or General Purpose suit that would be her first one, the Interceptor which would function primarily as a pursuit and search & rescue suit, and finally the Titan which would be for fighting things like Endbringers. The Titan would be a long way off, requiring a lot of resources she couldn't see getting in anything less than six months and a full warehouse to build. Also that Researcher had to figure out the tech each depended on.
The v3 was Manufacturer, taking the technology that Researcher figured out and put it into physical form.
The v4 was her, but a distinctly non-Taylor appearance. She looked like a metal porpoise and was mapping the Bay, the Ship Graveyard, and that big tanker at the mouth of the bay. Finding resources that could be taken apart and recycled for her own purposes. Getting rid of those would serve the dual purposes of gaining materials for her use and clearing shipping channels for the city. Eventually.
A purposeful porpoise. Once she'd thought of it, she had to use it.
And it wasn't as if things were set and had to remain the way they were...
Taylor v4 sent a message. The geology was all wrong for an actual aquifer, but there were underwater tunnels and caves. Some of which would make for a perfect base if the water could be pumped out and the area sealed.
A consensus of Taylors was reached. Underground base with access to the Bay? This could be really useful.