20

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence​

I woke disoriented. Another dream that wasn't a dream.

After learning about manufacturing I'd relived a memory from a great engineer. After learning about security I'd relived a memory from a professional spy.

Was all the knowledge and skill I was taking from real people, recorded by their implants and saved in some sort of enormous database?

I remembered the feeling I'd gotten with my peek at the fullness of my power in the hospital. There was an immersive vastness of almost endless knowledge. It was too large to really comprehend, but along with it there was a feeling of awe, of importance. An instinctive sense of something unspeakably precious and sacred, like the first time someone hands you a newborn to hold, trusting you to keep it and its future safe from falling by only the strength of your arms.

If they were real - and it was hard to imagine anything else - had an entire civilization entrusted me with everything they knew?

How, and why me?

Were they from the future, or from another universe? Both?

Was it just a gift, or did they want something in return?

I couldn't think of any way to tell.

Mr. Ghost had been on a ringworld. It wasn't a complete one, but even so...that was a project on a staggering scale. Trillions of people could live on a ringworld with room to spare. Whatever civilization that memory was from, it was hard to imagine the size of it. Or the technical capability. I knew enough about manufacturing, physics and chemistry to understand the challenges.

With more investment could I build one?

...Yes, I realized. If the fullness of my power contained all the knowledge that these people had, then I almost certainly could, in theory. Probably with thousands of years of effort.

An unaccountable shiver ran down my spine. I wasn't even sure what to feel about being able to do something like that.

Surveying the paltry breakfast options in the house, I decided that the best way to ameliorate feelings that language didn't have satisfactory words for would be good food.

So I used my cooking knowledge, and the resulting omelet was delicious, fluffy perfection.

Going over the dream memories again as I ate, I realized they had at least firmly answered one outstanding question. At some point at least part of that civilization had switched over to a sidereal calendar that counted days in reference to the starfield rather than the position of the local sun as seen from the surface of a planet.

The only way I could see something like that making sense is if the people using that calendar didn't live on planets anymore, or typically rely on a star for light. Given that they could build something as staggering in scale as a ringworld, that probably wasn't surprising. If Earth-like planets were rare it would probably be easier to construct comfortable ships and habitats than to terraform barren rocks or worlds with hostile atmospheres.

It was possible to build stations that rotated once every twenty four hours and provided standard Earth gravity, although they would be...very, very large. Roughly one and a half million miles in diameter. Not ringworld large, but far, far bigger than any planet, even if the mass could be lower.

In any event, on Earth the sidereal day was four minutes shorter than the solar day. My power was recharging earlier because it'd defaulted to a different timekeeping convention. One occasionally convenient to a spacefaring civilization.

I felt like such an idiot that I hadn't thought of it earlier. I'd been trying too hard, wondering at esoteric explanations, but it was something simple the whole time.

Ah well, one mystery solved, so very many more to go.

It was evening and I was calibrating the delicate servos that would aim the nanoassembler's optics when Prometheus made himself known from my pocket.

"Miss, I thought you might wish to know that my surveillance on the supervillain designated 'Coil' suggests he is planning on moving his criminal operations out of Brockton Bay," he informed me.

"What? Did he catch on that the PRT knows about him?" I asked, immediately setting my tools down.

"Unknown, but not likely. His civilian persona is still going in to work at the PRT building. However, he has given orders via email to one of his mercenary captains that his men are to avoid this street."

My heart skipped a beat as I realized what that meant.

"Oh hell. You've been scrubbing the PRT's records of me, right?"

"Yes, Miss," he confirmed.

That left one option I could think of. "He must have gotten something from Sophia, then. A report after the fight where she tried to attack the house. Then he got interested and tried to make a move, thinking I was a parahuman he could recruit."

I paced anxiously.

"It must not have worked, or I'd be in that timeline. Probably because Mouse Protector can jump right to me or Danny if we get snatched. But failing at a kidnapping attempt wouldn't make him run from Brockton Bay entirely when he could just cancel that timeline, right?"

"Unknown, Miss."

I sighed. It was hard to write a heuristic that reliably recognized hypothetical questions. And predicting complex human behavior in unusual situations was right out.

Then I had a horrible idea and froze.

"Prometheus, what would you do if Coil's mercenaries succeeded in killing me?"

"Under my primary directive to preserve your safety, I would be forced to kill Coil immediately to compel him to close off that timeline, Miss," Prometheus answered.

"...And how would you do that?" I asked, a feeling of intense foreboding in my gut.

"I would use all methods at my disposal to respond with the fastest available necessary force. If Coil were located at his home or his work at the PRT building, I would falsify authenticated deployment orders for a repeated Tomahawk missile strike on his position from the destroyer USS Farragut.

"If Coil were located in his underground base or his position in Brockton Bay were unknown, I would falsify authenticated deployment orders to the ballistic missile submarine USS Maryland for a single Trident-II missile carrying multiple W88 475 kiloton nuclear warheads suitable for bunker busting in ground burst configuration."

His response was chilling, and the feeling in my gut only intensified. Even one warhead that large would kill essentially everyone in the entire metropolitan area. Brockton Bay and its nearby suburbs would cease to exist.

"You could start a nuclear war if you wanted, couldn't you?" I asked quietly, equal parts awed and horrified.

Even so, he heard me and replied. "If you ordered it, or my primary directive required it, yes Miss. Although it is widely believed that Scion would interfere in a full scale nuclear exchange, or a limited exchange if he was sufficiently close, as he did when he destroyed a missile in Africa."

Oh yes. Scion.

"Can't have the lab rats killing themselves," I muttered. "Prometheus, what is your ethical analysis of your proposed plan to nuke Brockton Bay to kill Coil in the event that he causes my death?"

"There is no ethical weight to the lives of innocents in a timeline that never occurs, Miss," he answered. "There is a chance that Coil locks in the timeline in which you are deceased before he can be killed. Minimizing the chance is why a swift response would be necessary, and missile strikes are the fastest effective response to that end. If they were not fast enough the innocent population would be killed for nothing. However, as my primary directive is to preserve your life, I would accept the risk if there were any chance of saving you."

Maybe it wasn't quite as bad as it first sounded, although the willingness to risk so many lives was still enough to make me uncomfortable. "I see," I said.

I'd deliberately made Prometheus to be as ruthless as he needed to be to keep me alive. In a world as horrible as Worm, how ruthless was too ruthless?

I didn't have an answer, just then.

It did seem likely that Coil was running because whenever he tried to kill a fifteen year old girl he got blown up or nuked. If he even figured out why he was dying; all he might know is that whenever he succeeded he died a few minutes later no matter what he did or where he went.

And whether he knew why or not, that would be enough to terrify him.

"How did you even get nuclear codes, anyway?" I asked. "Don't they keep those on paper? Putting them in a computer would be just asking for someone to steal them."

"The gold codes are changed daily for security, and the NSA uses a computer to generate the replacement codes. It is air gapped to keep it from being hacked, but as you know, Miss, there are methods of indirectly reading air gapped machines using nearby machines that are not so protected. I have subverted the networked machines in the building as a precaution. Someone else who accessed the codes illegitimately might use a nuclear strike to kill you."

"...I suppose they could. Thank you," I said. Great, that was a nightmare scenario I hadn't even considered.

"You are most welcome, Miss."

"Would a submarine captain really fire on U.S. soil like that?" I asked, finding it hard to believe. "I know they're loyal, but that seems...unquestioning."

"I have insufficient data to build an adequate model of likely human behavior in such a situation, Miss, but several secret contingency war plans stored on Department of Defense systems do already call for the deployment of nuclear strikes on U.S. soil. Two examples are scenarios where the Machine Army or Nilbog break containment and the President does not believe they can be recontained," he told me. "It follows that such plans would not exist if the Pentagon believed they would be unlikely to be carried out when ordered."

It didn't take me long to work it out. "The captain would believe that some awful thing had happened to Brockton Bay that needed to be stopped," I gasped out, horrified. I kept forgetting how living in a dangerous world must change people's perception of what's normal on Earth Bet. I needed to be more careful about that.

A moment passed and I drew my thoughts back. "Prometheus, I want to review your activities since I completed you and make sure there isn't anything else I would find surprising."

As a VI, he didn't take offense at the request. "Of course, Miss," he replied.

"First though, we need to send another letter to Director Piggot," I said. "What have you managed as far as infiltrating Coil so far?"

"A fork on his personal cell phone infiltrated his base systems when he visited. I have copies of the useful files from his personal computer. I also have control over the alarm, the self destruct system, the doors, communications, surveillance, and some minor systems," he reported.

I smiled, and it wasn't a kind smile. "Nice. What's in his files?"

"Of likely interest are financial records, the locations of safehouses, dossiers on all of his employees and informants, reports from informants, notes from his interrogation sessions, and notes on his various criminal schemes and contingencies," Prometheus recounted.

I grinned. "Oh Prometheus, that is very good work."

"Why thank you, Miss Hebert," he said, voice conveying pride.

"Get ready to take all his electronic financial assets and put them somewhere safe when the PRT moves on him or if it looks like he's trying to do something that would put them beyond our reach. I'd also like you to take all the files you think would be useful tactically or for prosecuting him and his employees to send along with my letter to Director Piggot. Keep the financial information out of it," I ordered.

"Command acknowledged, Miss. Would you like me to include all of Coil's parahuman dossiers?" Prometheus asked.

Huh. I knew he had released the Empire's civilian identities in the original story, but that wasn't until sometime in May. "Who does that include?" I asked, curious.

"He has composed dossiers on the powers of all of the parahumans in the Brockton Bay area. The dossiers include the real identities of the Wards and Protectorate, Kaiser, Purity, Hookwolf, Stormtiger, Cricket, Lung, Oni Lee, Skidmark, Squealer, and the Undersiders," he answered.

"He hasn't finished gathering all the identities yet, then," I said to myself. It sounded like gathering names must have been an ongoing process for Coil for some time by the point Taylor joined the Undersiders. No one from Faultline's crew either, although perhaps they weren't a priority. "Prometheus, does he have documents confirming that he recruited Shadow Stalker?"

"Yes, Miss," he confirmed.

That answer brought me a certain savage joy, I had to admit. Not that he recruited her, but that I could prove it. "Excellent. Do they record where she is?"

"Not explicitly. There is a location recorded for the Undersiders' safehouse, but I do not know if she is in residence. Coil has not made any calls to her since my fork began tracking his phone, so I have not been able to locate the device she is currently using, if any," he said.

I hummed while I thought things over.

"Exclude the dossiers," I told him. "I'll just mention that he knows. What have the Director and Armsmaster worked out with regards to Coil so far?"

"Yes, Miss," he said in acknowledgement of the order. "Armsmaster tagged Coil's civilian persona with a covert ingested tinkertech tracking device, and confirmed that he visited the underground base yesterday. Director Piggot and Armsmaster appear convinced that your allegations are correct, and are making plans for how to arrange his arrest."

"Score one point for Armsmaster," I said, approving. "Alright…"

Director Piggot,

I'm afraid you're going to need to be prepared to move quickly, as Calvert/Coil appears to be boxing up his operation.

I believe the most likely reason is not anything you've done, but rather actions I may have been forced to take in his false timelines. I would have no moral choice but to act if he attempted murder or kidnapping while I was watching, and the rapid responses presently available to me are all lethal measures that would have immediately closed his timelines.

Given that kidnapping targets to torture for information is a favored use of his power, my interference being required repeatedly would not surprise me one bit. If he's been dying suddenly and repeatedly to my 'killing' him no matter where he goes to commit his crimes, his choosing to run wouldn't be surprising. He's grown rather dependent on doing horrible things in simulated timelines to operate, and an unknown opponent that can kill him seemingly on a whim would be frightening.

As an aside, I do not relish the use of lethal force. It is simply the only tool I have at this time, and legally permitted even for private individuals when necessary to prevent the crimes I've outlined. Non-lethal alternatives are an area of active development.

I do bring very good news. I now have control of the self-destruct, doors, communications, and surveillance systems in his lair. If you attack the lair directly I will make it as easy as possible for you.

I also found a treasure trove of information on his personal computer. The files should be very helpful in identifying and prosecuting his co-conspirators. His detailed documentation of his own schemes should make prosecuting him easy as well, at least for the crimes that actually occurred outside of his simulated timelines.

Be aware that he was also collecting secret identity information on as many of the capes in the Bay as possible. I mention it so that you can head off any possible blackmail or chaos causing gambits he might otherwise attempt in custody. You will have to restrict his ability to communicate very carefully.

Good hunting, Director.

-Scientia

It turned out there wasn't anything else quite as heartstopping as 'oh by the way, I hacked the NSA and have the nuclear codes', although Prometheus had been busy. In part he'd been completing freelance programming jobs, then using the money to buy cloud computing time to complete more freelance programming jobs, and so on, until he was covering a small but not insignificant fraction of the global market the last few days.

That was also how he's squirreled away over one hundred thousand dollars in anonymized bank accounts, the money he was using to pay for my various orders.

He'd stopped scaling up operations though, both out of stealth concerns and because I'd ordered him to divert his primary focus to tracking down the Dragonslayers.

That process was ongoing. The group was very careful about their digital footprint, evidently. Which made sense given that Dragon was doubtlessly looking for them too.

Prometheus had also been monitoring a variety of other targets; PRT systems unlikely to be monitored directly by tinkers or thinkers, key U.S. and Canadian government systems, known villains in the Northeast United States, Medhall, and the people I'd told him to monitor specifically, including Tattletale and Mouse Protector.

Apparently Mouse Protector was trying to teach the fork that had gone with her how to plan pranks and tell better jokes, which really shouldn't have surprised me.

I hoped Prometheus didn't pick up any bad habits when those forks merged.

As I got back to working on my nanoassembler my mind wandered to thinking of the things I wanted to build with it. Taking some more charges of mechanical and electrical engineering and chemistry, I had a lot of ideas.

First some better hand tools, and some simple items that would offer better personal defense options than a Glock. Some basic armor would be a good idea, too. Then a series of bigger and even more practical things so I could really start getting things done.

A ship, in particular.

I was looking forward to it.

September 2nd, 310,021

Cat's Eye Nebula Orbital, Milky Way, Earth ???

Two Glove Arena, Kasai City​

I wasn't me, again. The dreams were getting somewhat less disorienting.

I was a man walking down a dark tunnel toward a light. His every movement felt perfect. Casually powerful muscle was loose but ready, and his steps kept a balance that left him able to move however he might need.

"Now for the fight you've all been waiting for!"

An announcer's voice, coming from the end of the tunnel. A crowd roared its enthusiasm in response.

"The reigning champion of not just the orbital, but the entire Perseus Arm-"

I stepped out into the light of a packed colosseum and the sound of the crowd swelled. Humans and embodied AIs stood at every seat, on their feet and cheering for me. A cocky grin came to my lips as I stopped to take them all in.

"-today, on the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of his first championship title-"

On the far side of the arena fifty fighters stood in neat ranks, looking equally excited. The bodies had been grown just for this, each of them being teleoperated by a skilled fan. They carried a wide variety of traditional weapons. Swords, spears, knives, guns.

"-he's going to celebrate by challenging the unaugmented, unarmed, and unarmored melee record. Before today it stood at forty three-"

I resumed walking, my steps taking me towards the center of the arena. My opponents moved too, walking along the walls in files to surround me in a great circle.

"-and today he's trying for an even fifty! Can he do what no man has done before? Will his ambition finally meet its end?"

Movements precise, I bowed gracefully to my opponents and to the crowd four times, once in each direction.

"Or will Sidar Lenn prove once more before your eyes that he is The Invincible Man?!"

The crowd thundered. I smiled, my heart thrumming, my blood singing with the anticipation of violence.

The crowd quieted and leaned forward, knowing what was about to happen next.

I brought up my hands and slammed the back of my fist against my open palm with a slap.

And then my opponents raised their weapons, and I moved.

Out in the open I was a sitting duck for the opponents with guns, so I picked a side and closed to melee range with sprinting steps. The first bullets shrieked past me, and one clipped my side.

No matter, I thought.

My first target had a knife. I seized and twisted his lunging arm to force him to drop it, caught the knife, buried it in his neck and pulled it out in time to parry a sword cut in one smooth movement, then lashed out a kick at just the right angle to break the swordsman's knee.

Four more melee weapon users closed in on me during that time. I danced around their blows while I culled their numbers, preserving enough upright bodies to be sufficient cover from the ones with guns.

Each of my opponents was good. Fan volunteers they might be, but I'd selected people with combat ratings of their own. Fellow experts, operating bodies in full immersion.

But while they were each skilled in their own styles, I knew those styles as well as they did. Few people managed the dedication to master more than one or two modes of combat. They got bored, found other pastimes.

I'd started picking up styles more than five hundred years ago and never stopped. I knew every movement they were going to make, and practiced counters to them all.

I drew the crowd of meleeists with me, using them to allow me to close in on a woman expertly using a pistol to try to snap off shots in the brief windows I wasn't obstructed. As I closed in I used a gap to throw my knife, burying it in her gut and causing her to slump to the ground. I took out two meleeists I'd been stringing along with swift strikes to crush a windpipe and snap a leg, then rolled through the sudden opening and came up with the woman's pistol and my knife.

This, the man that I was thought as he reentered the melee swarm, knife fighting with one hand while he used the pistol to pick off ranged opponents with the other, his whole body working with the perfect synchrony of endless training.

This was the puzzle of tactics, the physical challenge of combat, and the psychological reality of violence. It was a peerless expression of the self triumphant over all comers. The will to overcome any challenge. This, he knew in his bones, was to him what it meant to truly live.

By the time it was over I had three bullet wounds, multiple serious cuts, and too many bruises to count. But as I stood triumphant over the bodies of my opponents littering the arena none of the bleeding wounds mattered.

Tossing aside my weapons I held up a fist, and the crowd and announcer went wild. The millions watching over the datanet would no doubt be doing the same.

The gladiator basked in the adoration, but part of him was already thinking about how he was going to top this.