17

Friday Evening, January 21st, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Brockton Bay General Hospital​

The van pulled into the ER entrance with the lights flashing and the siren blaring. Snow had radioed ahead, and a line of ER staff ran through the doors. They helped us get Agent Johnson and Vista onto gurneys as I rattled off their injuries. I got some odd looks but they mostly took it in stride as they quickly rolled their new patients into the hospital.

Vicky gave me a pat on the shoulder. "I'm glad you're okay, Taylor. I have to go find Amy."

I nodded. "Thank you again," I said. She gave me a big smile with a jaunty salute and went flying through the doors to look for her sister.

Agent Snow was busy with the radio when I walked over to return my borrowed helmet, though she looked up when I placed it on the passenger seat and gave me a tight smile. "You did good, kid. Ever thought about joining the PRT when you grow up?"

I shook my head. "Not really my thing, I think."

Her head tilted in a way that implied she was giving me a good glare. "From what I saw out there, that's a lot of nonsense. You're cool as ice under pressure, and that's not common," she pointed out. "Getting out of the van to fight Hookwolf with a gun was the stupidest damn thing I've ever seen, of course. But it might also be one of the bravest, and we might not have gotten out of there otherwise. When it counted you had the guts to step up against something bigger and scarier than you were. That's exactly what we do."

"Thanks, I'll...think about it," I said awkwardly, the promise empty. "You stay safe," I added, turning to walk away from the van before stopping and leaning my head back in.

"Change your mind?" Agent Snow asked.

I sighed. "I realize you're going to have to report everything that happened to the Director, but I'd rather not have any crazy stories about me circulating around the water cooler, even if they're true. Would you mind keeping my stupid heroics under your hat?"

"Hah!" Her laugh was subdued, but genuine. "Well, it'll pain me to take all the credit, but I'll just have to soothe my guilty conscience with all the free drinks. Least I can do to thank you for the save, partner."

"Thank you. Good luck," I said, and headed inside to find an empty waiting area.

As I took a seat my thoughts turned to the injured agent, and I considered how much better his odds would be if I were his surgeon. Even with only the tools and drugs available here, if he had a brain bleed I could add maybe twenty or thirty percent to his survival odds.

But of course me walking into the OR and scrubbing up was quite impossible. If he didn't wake up, I might never know if my knowledge would have made the difference.

Mouse Protector took a seat next to me, evidently having followed me inside.

"Want to talk about it?" she asked.

I looked down at my hands, messy with Vista's drying blood. I clenched and unclenched them.

"I'm trying to do my best, but I feel like the world is out to get me," I complained, tilting my head back to rest it against the wall.

"Cape life can be that way sometimes. You can't let it get you down," she said, voice soft.

I turned my head and gave her a long look.

"What? I've lived this life long enough to know what it means when things don't add up. You're not a normal teen," she pointed out, and it looked like she was mentally weighing something for a long moment. "Thank you for the letter," she added.

I allowed myself a long sigh. An unknown cape contacted her, and brought attention to Taylor Hebert. A Taylor Hebert who had acted decidedly strangely tonight. It wasn't a hard jump to make. I only hoped that Piggot wouldn't make a similar jump after this latest incident. Without the critical piece of a letter directly connecting Scientia and Taylor Hebert hopefully she wouldn't.

But perhaps with Mouse Protector this could be an opportunity.

"I couldn't let them get you," I said at last, after the silence had stretched on long enough to become uncomfortable.

Mouse Protector's smile was gentle and bright. "It's appreciated. One hero to another," she said, offering me a lazy seated salute.

I nodded. "You're welcome. I'm just...trying to help quietly right now. I wasn't supposed to do any fighting at all."

"Pay no attention to the wizard behind the curtain?" she asked, her smile turning wry.

"Yeah. At least until the wizard has time to get his hat and robe. Until then the wizard is anonymously donating the hearts, courage, and brains," I joked.

"Thinker of some sort?" she asked.

"Sort of," I said, with an idle gesture. "I know things. A dash of precog, in a manner of speaking, but mostly knowledge and skills. I've picked up some advanced medicine, science and technology way beyond cutting edge, and other things. I keep adding more."

"Oh," she said.

Oh indeed. "Yeah. That's why this wizard needs the curtain."

"You should talk to Dragon. She's always really nice. I bet she could help, and keep you safe. Maybe you could work with her on projects," she suggested. "She's always trying to invent new things, usually inspired by some tinkertech or other."

I winced.

"I would like to, but there are bad guys who've tapped into her systems. They see everything she sees, and if I tell her or they find out that I know they'll kill her and go after me next," I told her.

In an instant Mouse Protector's smile disappeared.

"Who?" she asked, an angry edge to her voice that was entirely unlike the happy go lucky persona she'd had before.

"The Dragonslayers," I explained. "The taps in her systems are how they keep shutting down her suits and stealing them. I need to find their base and take away the terminal that has root access to Dragon's systems before they can use it. They're fanatics; they think that Dragon is a threat to the planet."

Her expression turned to disbelief. "She would never!"

I nodded firmly. "I know. Not in a million years. But in theory she could build things like the Machine Army or worse, so they're holding a gun to her head. And she doesn't even know. I can't even tell her or they'll probably kill her with the push of a button just to be safe."

Mouse Protector's expression wavered between fury and concern. "I didn't know she had a life support system. Is she sick?"

What to tell her? She'd already assumed it was life support, so it made sense to run with that for now. "It's complicated. I can't say more without revealing secrets that are Dragon's to keep. I'm going to help her, though."

Mouse Protector turned to gaze off at the opposite wall. "Yeah, we all have those. It must be hard, knowing lots of things about people."

She didn't know how right she was. The fate of not just this Earth, but every Earth, rested on my shoulders. And the best I could do was try not to dwell on it, just keep moving. Keep working. "I'm just trying to save as many good people as I can without drawing attention too early," I said, tiredness coming through my voice. "So many things go wrong otherwise."

Then something occurred to me. "You're different now," I pointed out.

She shrugged laconically, relaxed a bit from her steely anger a moment earlier. "I always feel mellow after a good scrap. Not sure why, just the way I'm built, I guess."

If I explained why that was, as I had for Lisa, would it help her while opening the door to building a working relationship?

"Ah," I said out loud. "No, that's your shard messing with your head. Shards want to be used, so it's rewarding you for being in a fight. It explains why you rile people up, too; your shard thinks that's a good way to provoke conflict, so it nudges you to enjoy it more than you would on your own."

Mouse Protector turned and gave me a perplexed look. "My shard?"

I waved a hand in a so-so gesture. "Your power."

She stared at me. "You know how powers work?"

I sighed and nodded. "Where they come from, how they work, what they want, where they're really located."

Her voice raised an octave, and shifted to a hushed whisper. "Are you serious?"

"As the grave," I said. "This isn't one of those delusional Myrddin things, either."

"Mouse biscuits," she swore. "What are they?"

I turned fully to her, and gave her a long look. The door had opened, but I had to invite her to walk through. "There are secrets in my head which could end the world. Are you prepared to keep them, and help me set the world right?" I asked, grim.

Mouse Protector matched my evaluating look. "I don't think you're messing with me, are you? I don't think you're like old Myrddie, either." She sighed. "Is this like Pandora's box or something?"

"Pandora opened the box and all the horrors of the world came out, but at the bottom of the box she found the spark of hope," I said, recalling the myth. "...I suppose it's exactly like Pandora's box. The horrors are already out of the box. What we're up against, it's huge and callous and cruel and has such a head start on us. But knowing at least brings hope of working toward a solution."

"Scientia. The name you picked. I looked it up. It means knowledge, right?" Mouse Protector asked.

I smiled. "Greek. Same root as the words science, or omniscience. I thought about how I wanted the world to see me, and decided that a personification of knowledge was a good place to start. I thought about some names that emphasized creation, or unity. Athena, a goddess of both war and wisdom, might have been more accurate to what I will need to be." I shook my head. "But a personification of war isn't what I want to emphasize to people, or the symbol I want to be. Or my essence. When you get down to it, I am the woman who knows. The more people trust in that one day, the better."

Mouse Protector was quiet for a while after that.

"Taylor, you know you don't need to take the entire world on your shoulders," she said finally, slowly. "Other people care too. About the world, about people like Dragon. You can get help if you ask."

I turned to look at the far wall and anxiously tapped my fingers on the arm of my chair, while I put voice to some of the thoughts to a wordless internal debate.

"I do really, really need help right now. Things that nearly get me killed keep happening. I was going to work with New Wave but they've been radio silent for long enough that I've got a bad feeling. I can't safely work with the Guild until I free Dragon. I can't work with the Protectorate or...any other option because I think they would probably try to control me too much.

"But you're not with the Protectorate. You left for some reason, I don't know what that was, but you kept on being a hero afterwards, and a good one. You push the envelope sometimes, I think because your shard is pushing you to create conflict, but that's something that I can work with. And now that you know it's at least partially an external master effect I suspect you'll probably resent it and try to resist it."

Mouse Protector nodded besides me, her jaw clenching momentarily.

"On the other hand I'm physically and mentally exhausted, and coming down off an adrenaline high from a fight. I can't trust my ability to make big decisions right now. Who to trust is a monumental decision."

She gently patted my hand. "I understand. Take your time."

I patted her hand back. It was comforting. "Thank you," I said, the two words heavy.

This approach would let me make an ally of Mouse Protector, gradually pulling her into greater and more dangerous secrets and projects over time as needed, which was the best of all worlds. Time to build trust, time to build defenses, time to head off problems. And it enabled me to be honest about not being forthright, when the only other means to do so is 'you will literally die if I tell you certain things, trust me', which might or might not be believed, or scare her off. It would scare off many sane people, but I was still getting a good grasp on the ways that Mouse Protector wasn't normal.

"Why are you being so understanding, though?" I asked, hoping to improve that understanding a bit while the opportunity was there. "I'm surprised you aren't demanding to know everything."

Mouse Protector snorted dismissively. "What, and be like Armsy or any of the others who take things too seriously? No, I don't need to be in control all the time. I can take things as they come. Improvise. Life's a band that's always changing the tune, so you just gotta dance with it. Is any of this making sense?"

"Sort of?" I answered.

"Ah, I'm not explaining it well. I've been where you are; I was a little younger than you when I triggered. I really needed someone who would be there to help but didn't push. The Wards helped, but there was always this pressure to be someone I wasn't. To dance to their tune, you might say. That's why I left, in the end. So I could be my own mouse. You're clearly a good person. I want you to have what I didn't. And if I can be that for you, well, I owe you one anyway. A big one."

"Why?" I asked, quizzical.

Mouse Protector grimaced. "I got the news yesterday. The Nine showed up looking for me in my old haunt. Killed a whole bunch of people and got away. Ravager was there too. Bonesaw had done something to her. The Protectorate team had to put down what was left while the Nine got away."

Yikes. I didn't know it happened so soon this year. It was a good thing I'd sent that message when I did.

I sighed heavily. "I'm sorry,"

Mouse Protector took a long breath, and gave my hand a squeeze. "Not your fault, Taylor. If they caught me by surprise that might have been curtains. That power nullifier of theirs is nasty. Thank you."

"Any time," I said.

"I keep doing this partly for the thrills, but if it were just that I wouldn't have lasted so long. I want to help, too. Help Dragon, help you, help the world with whatever it is you're foreseeing that's scaring you so much. How can I help, Taylor?" she asked.

There it was, what I needed. She wanted to help. Should I feel guilty for accepting, even though I'd hoped the conversation would go in this direction?

On reflection, I decided that would be stupid and counterproductive. Mouse Protector was an adult able to make her own decisions, and I wasn't making her do what I hoped, only setting the stage to make it more likely by presenting myself in the best way possible. That was reasonable, and I shouldn't second guess myself over it. My general insight into human motivations was not a form of coercion all by itself.

"I've been wasting a lot of time because it would draw too much attention to have all the stuff I need to build delivered to my house," I told her.

Mouse Protector's smile grew big enough to be suited for the Cheshire Cat. "If you need a sneaky courier who no one will ever see or suspect, then you just asked the right mouse."

I took a breath. "Alright. Prometheus will buy things and let you know where to pick them up. Prometheus, leave a fork on Mouse Protector's phone. Keep her safe and informed about things I tell you to purchase, please."

"Command acknowledged, Miss Hebert," spoke my phone.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught the way Mouse Protector's hand twitched towards the grip of her sword at the sudden voice before she stopped it. "Who is that?" she asked, wary.

"That's Prometheus, my virtual intelligence assistant," I explained. "Like an artificial intelligence but not actually alive or aware. Just a really, really clever piece of software. I built him. He's very useful. Please keep him secret though, the PRT would shit bricks if they knew what he could do. And the world's governments. And just about everyone else. He put a fork of himself in your phone, you can talk to him any time you need to get a hold of me. Or if you need help. He can do a lot, and erase all the evidence."

Mouse Protector took a moment to take that in, before her smile got really big. "Useful."

That he was, but it was a little alarming just how happy Mouse Protector had been about it.

I nodded and ignored a sudden feeling of creeping doom. "Speaking of evidence, Prometheus, I'd like you to shift your focus to finding the Dragonslayers. I want to know where they're living. You can increase your footprint a bit if you need to; let's set the cap to a thousand simultaneous forks for now. Maintain stealth though, and avoid tracking them by following Dragon's systems directly. We'll save that as a last resort."

"Command acknowledged, Miss Hebert. Initiating search. I will alert you if I find anything. As an aside, under your directive to maintain your anonymity I have looped the hospital's security camera footage so that it will not show the two of you."

"Good work," I praised.

"He sounds so real…" Mouse Protector said, looking at where the voice had come from my pocket.

I shrugged. "It's an illusion, although the illusion is so good that I sort of pretend. I don't really have friends."

The look Mouse Protector directed at me was a heavy one. Empathy? Pity? It was hard to read with the helmet blocking much of her face.

"I should clean up my hands and head home. I've wasted too much time. I need to get serious and start building. Thank you for the talk, and for being willing to help," I said. "I'll see you soon."

"How are you getting home?" Mouse Protector asked.

"I'll ask Agent Snow. The PRT can probably get another van over, or I can call a cab."

Mouse Protector nodded. "It was my pleasure, Taylor. And don't you worry, I'll bring home the cheese."

I laughed once. "I'm sure you will. In more ways than one. Stay safe. Prometheus will watch your back, but I'm sure the Empire will be rather unhappy with you after tonight."

"Better they focus on me than you," she said, seriously. "I'm a hard mouse to pin down. Good night, Taylor."

With that she disappeared, a faint breeze of air the only evidence of the transition.

I really wished I had a teleportation device. If only the laws of physics didn't make it aggressively difficult. If the shards could do it though, then there had to be some way of doing it.

I'd figure it out eventually. If I ever got time, and the chance to study the shards properly.

It turned out the PRT had sent a second team out to relieve Agent Snow while I was inside. They were not as accommodating as she was. When I told them I just wanted to go home they made it clear they would prefer I stay and give a long and detailed report on what happened.

Threading that needle sounded like an enormous pain, and I wasn't one of their agents, so I firmly demurred and caught a cab home after washing the blood and smell of gunpowder off my hands in a hospital bathroom.

Danny was sitting in his armchair when I walked through the door. His face was pale and he bolted upright the moment he saw me. The PRT had called him, then.

"I'm okay-" was as far as I made it before he crushed me into his arms. "Taylor, thank god!" he breathed into my hair.

I wrapped my arms around his sides from the awkward position and allowed him to hold me for a minute. He needed this. I'd put him through a lot just in the last couple of days.

It would only get worse from here.

Finally he released me and took a step back to look me over.

"Really, I'm okay," I said before he could say anything. "Let me make you some dinner and I'll tell you all about it."

Danny blew out a breath. "Fine. But Taylor, you were targeted again."

I took off my coat and handed it to him so I could remove my shoes. "Believe it or not, it wasn't me. Just a freak coincidence," I explained as I grabbed onto his arm and looped my own around it as we walked toward the kitchen.

"Really?" he asked skeptically, his eyebrow raised as if to say 'you expect me to believe that'.

The situation wasn't funny, and Danny was in classic dad mode, but I laughed anyway. Between the absurdity of being parented again and the absurdity of the situation I couldn't help it.

So as I was preparing dinner I told him about Vista drawing off Hookwolf for the nearest source of help after...something had happened. She hadn't been clear about how a fight with Hookwolf had even started or what exactly went wrong, but of course that led to Hookwolf literally smashing into the van.

I strategically glossed over the whole getting out and fighting Hookwolf part of the story that happened afterwards.

"Wow," Danny said after I had finished (both the story and dinner). "Maybe it's a good thing I didn't push to place you in the Wards after all."

"I think that sort of thing is unusual even in Brockton Bay, but yeah, the Wards do get into fights here," I agreed as I placed the dirty dishes on the side. "Are you okay to wash up? I think I need to just go chill in my room after the day I've had."

He smiled at me. "Sure, honey."

"Thanks, Dad," I said as I headed up the stairs.

Closing the door behind me I parked myself in front of the computer. The desktop had folders and folders of notes and theoretical designs I'd put together already, and as I thought about them I decided to pull on four charges of manufacturing, one after another.

Now that I had a way to get materials it was past time I actually made things. Not just knew about how they could work in theory, or how to design them on paper, but how to quickly and efficiently produce them.

"...Miss Hebert. Miss Hebert!"

My eyes went wide as I nearly fell off the seat. "Wh...what?" I mumbled, looking around.

"It has been sixty minutes since you last moved, Miss," Prometheus informed me.

Damn it. I should have learned by now not to dump so many charges in at once. It was far too easy to get lost in the flood of information without some pressing distraction, like I'd had when I pulled on knowledge of gunplay. There were just so many fascinating answers and possibilities each time. It was like trying to put down a really good book when you always wanted to see what was on the next page.

"Oh. Thank you," I said out loud.

"Of course, Miss," he hummed in response.

Closing my eyes again I thought about manufacturing methods and they came easily to the surface. Four charges covered every method of making things from the primitive - blacksmithing, carpentry, and many other trades - to the advanced. Countless options for fabrication on scales from the grand to the molecular, from rapid prototyping to mass production.

Wherever my knowledge came from, it had at some point contemplated how to rebuild a tech base from scratch as quickly as possible. Thanks to knowing what I was doing I'd be performing the equivalent of skipping over the bronze and iron ages, progressing from banging rocks together straight to quality steel.

Except instead of steel I would be building machines that could manufacture what I needed, and bend the laws of physics as far as they would go.

Wherever this vast database of knowledge originated, they had seen such limits as fetters to be shattered in the pursuit of the next horizon. They'd applied endless ingenuity and had never given up until each barrier crumbled or they found a way around it.

I would do the same.

Working designs took shape on the computer under my direction, and I turned that into a list of materials and parts that I was going to need. By the time I was ready to go to bed Prometheus had prepared a long list of rush orders to various prototyping machine shops and industrial suppliers to send in the morning.

The deliveries were going to go somewhere where Mouse Protector would pick them up and deliver them directly to me; Mouse Protector and Prometheus had apparently already worked out the details between the two of them as I cranked away.

That partnership was going to get on like a house on fire, I could tell. I should probably fear what I'd wrought, but I was morbidly curious to see what it would turn into.

With the edge of exhaustion creeping in I took a shower, did my usual stretches and light exercise, and went to sleep with thoughts of creation still spinning through my head.

Friday, May 2nd, 2341

Starlifter One, Sol System

Earth ???

​I wasn't myself.

I was a weightless engineer, floating at the front of a crowd of people in the observation room of a vast space station in a close orbit around the Sun's equator. I knew with memories that were not my own that countless people, AIs, and governments had contributed to the station's design and construction, but that I - or rather, the I that was in this dream - was its chief designer, engineer, and the reluctant organizer of the whole project when it became clear that nobody else was going to spearhead something so ambitious.

It had taken decades, many technical challenges, and far too much political wrangling, but finally, finally, it was complete.

Visible outside the artificially dimmed window extended the station's massively powerful array of magnetic engines clad in ceramic insulation, glowing white with the heat of the Sun. Beyond that the surface of the Sun filled the entire panoramic view, a constantly roiling wall of plasma mesmerizing and awe-inspiring in its vastness and power.

I was clearly dreaming of the future - or the future of another world - but everything about it had an emotional, nostalgic tinge of something long past. Like watching dinosaurs, or the formation of the Earth. Not my nostalgia, but an impression from the woman I was dreaming I was. As if she thought of this as something long past.

"All systems are green, ma'am. You have the honors," said Thomas, the AI who'd taken the job of station manager for the duration of the project.

The I who was the project lead and chief engineer smiled, and with a thought her neural implant submitted the authorization codes that initiated the station's stellar lifting for the first time.

A slight hum could be heard from the walls as a magnetic field the size of a major city came into being and reached out for the surface of the star's corona of superheated gas. As the crowd watched, breathless, a tendril rose up like a questing vine to meet the station's yawning plasma collector. The tendril widened into a column, the trailing edge a spectacular dissipating trail as it fell outside of the magnetic confinement due to the station moving in its orbit. The column then thickened until it was nearly opaque, flowing upward like a turbulent fiery river through space.

Through her I knew that the engine had begun to feed the gas into a long succession of fusion reactors. About three percent of the resulting power went straight back into maintaining the magnetic lifting field, necessary to overcome the Sun's powerful gravitational pull on the plasma, and as thrust to maintain the station's orbit. The rest of the power was fed into the specialized reactors that produced various forms of exotic matter and antimatter in staggering quantities.

Meanwhile the fusion process could be continued in a chain to produce any element and isotope needed as a byproduct of generating all the energy, producing vast amounts of atomically pure raw construction material made to order. A forest of kilometers long radiators on the lifter's outward side would hit their blazing white hot design temperature managing all the excess heat.

"Startup successful. All systems are performing as simulations predicted. Congratulations, Project Leader," said Thomas, a smile audible in his synthesized voice, and the hushed silence of the room broke out into ecstatic cheers.

I felt her heart nearly burst with joy, relief, and pride. For a moment she joined in the cheering, and then she turned and raised a hand.

The crowd obligingly quieted down. She was struck by a touch of stage fright, with so many people waiting on her words. A thought from her bade her anxiety be gone, and that was all it took for her implant to take care of it so she could deliver the words she had prepared for the occasion.

Managing people came less naturally to her than managing machines, but she'd learned a great deal over the course of the Starlifter Project.

"My friends!" she began, letting her eyes meet those of the people in the crowd, moving from one to the next. "At this very moment, millions of tons of matter are being harvested and fused into the forms needed for any project we can imagine. To start with, the shipyards orbiting Earth will have an endless supply of building material for the extrasolar colony and exploration ship programs. Their hulls will be made of the metals made here. Their drives will be built with the exotic matter produced here. Their fuel tanks will be loaded with the antimatter produced here. Our production capacity will grow a thousandfold starting today!" she told them, her smile and conviction carrying the words.

"Because of what we have accomplished in this project, humanity will finally be able to spread out, to leave our cradle, to explore the stars and live among them. So many have contributed resources, expertise, and hard work to this project. We have labored together, and today we have cemented a future together that is as bright as the unfiltered light of Sol beyond this window, as limitless as the stars themselves!"

With that she half turned and stretched out an arm to let the view of the star behind her punctuate her point.

The cheers and applause were thunderous. It shook the room, and their jubilation was echoed by countless people watching from their homes on Earth, Luna, and Mars.

I startled awake in the middle of the night with a gasp, damp with sweat and disoriented.

For a moment I thought back to the time I had learned about martial arts before bed and had odd dreams as my mind tried to process all the knowledge, but this had not felt like a dream. No. It felt like a memory, or a hallucination. It was too sharp. Not at all fuzzy like the haziness of a dream, even a lucid one.

I'd been suspecting for some time that my power was knowledge from the future, or a future. Was this a clue? A memory related to manufacturing activated by the charges, perhaps. A memory of that woman's, the engineer? Yes, if it was a memory it would be hers.

Was the knowledge from people in her civilization, recorded with their implants?

Thoughts swirled as I rested my head back against the pillow and fell back to sleep almost at once.