24

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence​

I spent all the time I could get away from school working in the basement away from anyone.

Time was precious now, and I had an idea I should have tried days ago to speed things up.

Imagine you have a black box, and you suspect the box is a wireless communications device. You want to talk to it, but you're not sure what band it communicates on, or what protocol it might use. How do you figure out how to talk to it?

You just had to make some educated guesses and try to work it out, of course.

The size of the box is the maximum size of the antenna, which established some practical limits on frequency. The wavelength also had to be something that can propagate through the material of the box well enough to not noticeably heat it up.

For the network protocol, I started with guesses about how someone intelligent might design a simple message that would get a reply and go from there, trying a vast number of possibilities starting with the most likely ones.

It took about an hour of letting the test transmitter I fabricated transmit guesses at high speed before something odd happened.

Midway through bolting a plate onto the project dominating the basement space, I got a vague but insistent sense of something not being ready, and a sense of urgency, followed by the sense of being asked a question.

When I did nothing, unsure how to react, it repeated.

"Yes," I said.

Nothing. It repeated.

I tried thinking 'yes' at it.

And promptly lost all of my senses as for a long, terrifying moment I was floating without sensation in silent darkness, utterly isolated.

Then my senses came back and I was lying on the floor with an aching hip, head, and shoulder where I must have hit the concrete as I fell.

"Miss! Miss, please respond," Prometheus urged.

"I'm okay," I said. I brought a hand up to where my head hurt and it came away with some blood. "Probably okay," I amended.

Emergency user interface calibration procedure complete. User interface online. Implant at 89% mature growth. Would you like to authorize the wireless access request?

It wasn't quite a voice, more like the understanding of the words that a voice would lead to. An inner monologue without the words. Odd, but distinct and quick to apprehend.

'Yes,' I thought at it.

Access granted.

The little cube I fabricated chirped once, the signal for success.

'Status,' I tried thinking.

User Warning: User interface operating in emergency mode.

Implant maturity 89%. Current implant storage 1.1% used.

Security Advisory: Fleet Council Authorization granted for Project Keyway, Omega Black Twilight.

Security Advisory: Project Keyway sets Condition Torch.

Security Advisory: Condition Torch ACTIVE.

Security Advisory: Condition Torch ACTIVE.

Security Advisory: Condition Torch ACTIVE.

Security Advisory, Condition Torch permissions are set:

All access granted.

All means authorized.

All overrides enabled.

User Advisory: Implant architecture set for expanded storage, full militant augments.

User Warning: Interface assistant read error. Cause logged as emergency self-deletion.

User Warning: No simulative interface environments available. Cause logged as emergency deletion, initiated by interface assistant.

User Advisory: Wireless communications channel operational. Hostile territory mode active. Transmission requires user authorization.

Limbic and neural regulation operational.

Combat augment mode use is presently inadvisable due to implant immaturity. Emergency override available, authorization: Condition Torch.

Uplink module found.

Uplink module reports stability, operating in Keyway experimental mode.

Keyway mode reports brane penetration: ACTIVE.

Uplink module reports less than 1.0 x 10-16 ​% of maximal entropy.

User Advisory: Entropy saturation will result in irreversible uplink collapse.

Uplink module reports projected pocket collapse in 449,570.1 standard days at theoretical maximum data transfer rate.

Uplink module reports primary data transfer mode unavailable due to implant immaturity.

Uplink module reports emergency data transfer mode available.

Mindstate backup unavailable due to implant immaturity.

User Advisory: In the event of mindstate transmission, uplink module must be retrieved manually.

User Warning: No mindstate capable transmission network detected. Avoid fatal incidents.

That was...a lot to parse.

'Help,' I tried.

Interface assistant read error. Cause logged as emergency deletion, initiated by interface assistant.

I was guessing the interface assistant was a VI, but it deleted itself? Why?

Okay. Backing up. I definitely had a working neural implant, at least somewhat similar to the implant the project lead in my...memory, I supposed, had. It had already been enabling me to control my emotions and sense of pain; that was a basic feature.

It was also capable of some sort of augmentation in an emergency. From my knowledge of neural laces I was guessing that was an accelerated processing mode, where the implant sped up thought to many times the usual speed by taking on duties usually performed by much slower neurons.

If I was right, it worked by essentially running an emulation of the brain temporarily on the much faster lace hardware before merging it back with the organic tissue.

Which was creepy, but I'd already been seamlessly accessing skill and memory on the lace hardware as though it was 'me' without even noticing, so...it was hard to be as creeped out about it as I might have been before waking up in a hospital bed in the wrong body.

What else did it tell me?

The implant wasn't fully complete. It was unclear what would happen when it was, if anything. It might just be growing more storage, or there might be more capabilities there.

The security alerts were...concerning. The Fleet Council sounded like whoever was in charge of the group that created the implant. The body in charge of a military branch or of the whole civilization, perhaps.

The choice of the word 'Torch' and the code 'Omega Black Twilight', along with everything being unlocked to a likely dangerous degree and the credentials being transferred, well. Putting it all together seemed to support my working theory that all of this was the last thing this civilization did. Either a bequest, a final gift and legacy hurled into the void, or some sort of last ditch plan.

Brane penetration suggested that the implant was indeed transmitting across universes with what it called an uplink module. It had to be a wormhole whose other end was in another universe.

That was how I was connected to the database. There was a wormhole in my head. Ironically, the origin civilization had done with technology something similar to what the shards did with pseudo biology to connect to their hosts.

The wormhole had a size and entropy limit, dictated by its mass at the time of creation. That put a cap on the total amount of matter or information that could be pushed through it before it collapsed, as well as the maximum physical size. The number of photons that could be sent was very, very large, though, despite the wormhole likely being somewhere around the size of an atomic nucleus. Larger was possible, but the costs grew exponentially the larger the wormhole became. Something on a macro scale large enough for a human to walk through quickly became measurable in planetary masses of exotic matter necessary for stability.

There had to be a massive database on the other end, but was there anything else?

Was the original civilization still alive?

I couldn't think of a way to check. There were hints that when the implant was mature a primary data transfer mode would become available, that might give me more options.

Wondering about the unknowable wasn't productive, so I spent the next few hours working on building a software interface that could convert between the protocol my neural lace was using and Earth Bet computer systems. Prometheus did most of the tedious work, laying down code as fast as I could puzzle out what the lace's native protocol was by experimenting with it.

'Experimenting' mostly boiled down to taking educated guesses and poking it with a stick, but I got the job done.

With a working interface I could perceive and manipulate connected systems. It was an odd sensation at first, a bit like having a separate mind's eye that I could do things in. But with Prometheus' assistance it did not take long to get casual interactions with regular computer systems going.

It wasn't exactly technopathy, in that I had to worry about interfaces and connection mediums, but it was close. I could browse the internet in my head, if I wanted.

But even more usefully I could manipulate CAD and 3D modeling programs nearly as fast as I could visualize objects.

I finished the remaining part models of the craft I was building, and thought about what else I was going to need.

I was missing a close combat option. The blinding amulet and flechette pistol were a start, but there were quite a few threats that they wouldn't help against. The flechettes wouldn't penetrate power armor, and a blinding flash wouldn't work against a competently designed power armor helmet. Transparent visors would be a pretty primitive choice.

There were a fair number of brutes or breakers that neither would likely work against, either. Or not long enough to be useful.

So I needed a trump option, something that could bypass most defenses.

I...could build ranged options that could do that, but not in a package smaller than a very bulky rifle.

No, what I wanted was a melee option. And there was a fairly obvious route to go.

An antimatter-catalyzed fusion torch took shape under my thoughts. A cylinder small enough to comfortably fit in the hand, contoured with swells to match the size of my hands for better grip.

After thinking about the design, I stylized the swells to look like a pair of entwined fire breathing serpents with their jaws wide open at the mouth of the torch, a nod to the description of Excalibur in The Dream of Rhonabwy, of Welsh myth, where it was described as a blade made of flame.

The most difficult parts of miniaturizing a fusion reaction chamber so much were the metamaterials needed to insulate against gamma radiation and heat sufficiently. But it was possible.

The end result wasn't exactly a lightsaber. It didn't magically contain the heat or stay somehow solid. What it did do was produce a three foot long plasma plume much hotter than the Sun that should be able to effortlessly cut through just about anything that wasn't truly invulnerable.

The downside was that unless I wore armor that could deal with the radiant heat I'd be restricted to split second bursts if I didn't want to give myself the world's worst sunburn.

I should probably think of a name for it. Excalibur seemed a little presumptuous, although perhaps not inaccurate. The name did refer to the sword's ability to cut, after all.

And there was the point that one popular version of the Arthurian myth portrayed him as residing outside time in the extra-worldly fae island of Avalon, awaiting the hour of direst need to return once more as a savior.

The fit wasn't perfect, but I was a person out of my time, I was on a mission to save the world in its darkest hour, and I bore knowledge from another world that would have been seen as magic.

What the hell, Excalibur it would be. As something real it would be a truer bearer of the name than any mere myth could ever be, and it wasn't like I was going to be shouting the name before I attacked like a lunatic.

With the design finished I added my new sword Excalibur to my nanoassembler queue, then started thinking about armor. I'd need it to use the sword, but it would be good to have anyway for the times I expected trouble. I might hope to mostly avoid fighting, but there would be times I needed to do risky things.

I understood the materials I wanted to make armor out of well enough, but I was lacking in knowledge about how to tailor things for the human body, or the many special concerns regarding armor itself.

One charge of tailoring and four charges of personal armor later and I had a pretty good grasp on things.

I found Danny's tape measure and took my measurements. A tailor's measure would have been better, but I made do.

From there I started with some outfits of regular clothing that looked conventional, but were made of a flexible and extraordinarily strong and cut resistant blend of fibers. They would be as light and breathable as linen, but reasonably cut and puncture resistant. Knives and all but the most excessive small arms fire would bruise but not kill, as long as they hit the clothes.

I tossed those into the queue, then parlayed the experience into proper light armor.

I started with a fast wicking underlayer, added a second layer made out of a flexible aerogel derivative that would insulate against electricity and heat fairly well, and on top of it a third layer of something called high entropy gel that had the unusual property of efficiently converting much of the shock of kinetic impacts into heat. I finished with carefully articulated plates of metamaterial armor up to a centimeter thick and an electrically controlled chameleon coating over it all, the same pairing I was using on the hull of the craft under construction. The armor's lines were sleek and would default to bone white, but it could reflect or absorb any wavelength in the near ultraviolet through near microwave bands.

I put the electronics in the helmet. It had no visor; invisible pinhole cameras would feed an image into a head-up display inside. That would protect me from bright lights, like my sword, and allow me to alter the wavelengths that I saw via false color projections. Useful for seeing in the dark, or picking up transmission sources.

The last touches were deliberate thinning of the underlayers in key areas of the gloves for dexterity, self-adjusting boots under the armor plate that would support long runs if necessary, attachment points around the waist for equipment, and a limited built in autodoc that could inject any of a dozen drugs as needed in a pinch.

It was not power armor; that would be considerably longer to design and fabricate. But for a light suit made in an evening that would keep me alive against many middling parahuman opponents, it would do.

The last thing I made was a quick portable fMRI machine the size of a deck of cards, and turned in.

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Arcadia High School, Girl's Bathroom​

"There's a whole brain scanner in this thing? How is it so small?" Vicky asked, examining the portable fMRI as I handed it to her.

"Room temperature superconductors make high strength electromagnets a lot smaller," I explained. "Don't need all the machinery and insulation for liquid helium. Do you have anything electronic or metal on you?" I asked.

Vicky used her spare hand to dig around in her pockets, handing me her phone and house key. Then she took off her rings, earrings, and necklace, and handed me those.

"Good," I said, sticking it all in my pockets and taking several steps to the far side of the bathroom where I pulled out my phone. "Now hold the scanner up to the side of your head and try to keep it steady."

She lifted it up. "Is it working?" she asked.

I used my lace to interface with my phone and the scanner. I triggered the scanner and had the phone display a false color two dimensional representation of the three dimensional data the scanner was receiving from Vicky's head.

With a thought I narrowed the area down to her brain, colors flashing and fading on screen as neurons in various areas became more or less active. The data I perceived through my lace was far more comprehensive and properly three dimensional, but it was good enough to show Vicky what was going on.

I turned my phone around so she could see. "This is you, watching yourself think," I said with a smile.

"Whoa," she said, peering close.

I had to hold up a hand. "Don't move, we don't want that massive magnet too close to anything else."

She stopped. "Ah, right. So...can you see anything?"

I turned the phone back around and pretended to look at it, although I was really going through the feed via my lace.

"So far, normal brain activity. Could you float a bit for me?"

"Sure," she chirped, lifting off the floor about a foot.

Her motor cortex lit up into activity, along with the coronas.

Interesting. Was that how shards wired into the brain? Piggybacking on the existing architecture for controlling voluntary muscle movements made sense for any voluntary power.

"Okay. Move around a bit?"

Vicky drifted up, down, side to side, and spun slowly. The motor cortex was definitely triggering the changes, communicating with the corona gemma via an outgrowth of neurons that formed a tendril between the motor cortex and the gemma proper. The gemma itself looked like it was communicating with the corona pollentia, but that relationship was less clear.

It would stand to reason that the pollentia was essentially a modem that communicated with the shard, somehow via transdimensional nonsense that might be some form of wormhole tech, while the gemma was a processing node that interfaced between the shard and the host's brain.

"Okay," I said, "I've got a good grip on how that looks. Let's see if your aura looks the same way, or different. Can you hit me with something?"

Vicky swallowed and nodded, and I felt the tiniest twinge of fear before I pushed it aside.

"More?" I prompted.

Vicky nodded nervously, and I had to push a larger rush of fear aside.

"Got it," I said, catching a pattern in amygdala activity that wasn't there with flight, tracing it back in my mind's eye to another slim neuron outgrowth connecting that part of Vicky's brain to her corona gemma.

That made sense, if the aura part of Vicky's powers was triggered at least in part by her own emotions. The amygdala was the emotional center of the brain, so the corona needed a connection to sense what was going on there.

I wasn't seeing any obvious wormhole in the parahuman coronas, but then I didn't expect to with only a magnetic resonance imager. When I got serious about figuring out how the shards did their dimensional nonsense I'd have to build specialist equipment. But I was getting mentally off-track.

"Switch to awe for me, and slide the intensity up and down?" I prompted again.

Vicky nodded, and I absent-mindedly pushed the feeling aside, engrossed in what I was looking at.

There.

I had the pattern, and it was something I could use.

"Okay, you can stop," I said, and the distant remnant of the feeling I'd been pushing aside abated.

"So, figure anything out?" she asked.

I smiled. "I did. One second. Oh, and you can put the sensor down."

I deactivated the sensor and mentally slapped a 3D model together. The core was a tiny sensor, far weaker than the one I'd been using to get a good look at the entirety of Vicky's brain in molecular resolution. It would be just good enough to pick up detail of neuron activity in her nearest amygdala, though, with a magnetic field too weak to notice. Just sufficient to pick up when the connection to the gemma was active.

It would do for my purposes.

As a housing I made it look like an only slightly bulkier than normal earring back.

Telling the phone to display the model, I turned it around.

"Think you could wear something like this?" I asked.

"...That'll help me with my aura?" Vicky asked, hesitant.

I nodded. "The idea is that you wear it with any earring you want. As long as it's close to your head it'll detect when you're using your aura and vibrate slightly. It's just there to be a reminder, so you're aware. I think that should be all you need to train yourself to only use your power when you want to, since you do have reasonable voluntary control over it. I'll make a thing to recharge it with, too, so you can use it for years if you need to."

Abruptly I was being hugged.

"Thank you," Vicky said. "This is amazing. You're amazing." She pulled back and gave me a look. "And we still need to go shopping. This weekend, I'm taking you."

I chuckled. "Alright. I...actually started making some of my own clothes, but it might be fun to go and get ideas about what's in style."

"You can make clothes?!" Vicky shouted, her sudden grip on my upper arms tight.

I winced, and she let go. "Oh, sorry!" she apologized.

"It's okay," said, rubbing my arms. "And yes. I can show you, if you want. But we should probably get back to lunch if we want to beat the bell."

"Okay, but don't think you're getting out of showing me everything."

"I would never," I said, wryly, and started handing Vicky back her things.