55

Interlude 5.c (Contessa)

I want to know why Oracle's numbers have changed.

No steps were needed. The knowledge came into her mind easily. A man with a knife and a dangerous smile, leading a group of notorious villains. A portal opened behind him to reveal the inky darkness of space for a fraction of a second before a missile came hurtling through.

When Jack Slash was hit, his body was disintegrated into dust, leaving nothing but a crater on the pavement.

The other members of the Slaughterhouse Nine looked dumbly at the results. There had been no opportunity to defend. One moment he was there and the next he was gone.

I want to know who killed him.

—Unknown. Likely candidates: CRUCIBLE, Scion, Simurgh, group with anti-Thinker Trump and Tinkers.

I want to know where the missile came from.

The Path showed her the portal again. Bewildered, she tried to ask another way.

I want to know where the other side of the portal is.

An image of Earth came into her mind, and a boundary at the atmosphere was delineated. Beyond the boundary, everything was foggy. The Path was telling her that the missile came from outside the area where her power worked.

Unable to discover more, Contessa answered Doctor Mother with what she knew. "Jack Slash was killed by a missile fired through a portal that connected to space."

"Outside of the range of the Agents' powers, then. So they built it after all," the Doctor noted.

"How is that possible? They have interplanetary space weapons?" Alexandria asked.

"No. They only need portals and a self-propelling missile with an automated guiding system that uses a flight path going into and returning from space outside the limit. Doormaker's range is unfortunately limited to the Earth, but we could do something similar with Professor Haywire's portal generators. I've had the idea for a while, but there was simply never a need for it," said Doctor Mother. "The primary purpose of such a system would be to defeat precognition. The only precog that might warrant its use would be the Simurgh, but we would still need a way to actually destroy her, otherwise we would simply be revealing our hand, not to mention she would likely stop us from building it."

Without prompting, Contessa already asked her Path to verify Doctor Mother's hypothesis.

I want to know whether CRUCIBLE has built a missile system like that.

—99.99%

That was highly unusual. Her power was not supposed to give percentage answers regarding information about the present. Or at all, really. It meant there was uncertainty, but why was the probability so high?

I want to know if CRUCIBLE has the ability to build a missile system like that.

The Path answered. Two week ago, CRUCIBLE built a portal generating device whose range extended to the moon. The copy of Dragon they made had access to the technical schematics from the US military and a number of Tinker designs, any of which could serve the same functions. They could build a self-guided missile system, in conjunction with the portal generator.

"And you already knew CRUCIBLE could do this," said Alexandria.

"I suspected they could build it, but it's strange. I would have expected the Simurgh to stop something like that before they finished it." The Doctor glanced at Contessa. She wanted to ask Contessa to try and figure out why.

The Simurgh was a blindspot. Asking for information about it was difficult, and had to be done in a roundabout way.

But Contessa already had an inkling of what was going on. Although she couldn't possibly know the motivations of the Simurgh, she could find out why the Simurgh couldn't do it.

She recalled the model of the Simurgh she had in her mind. An indestructible being with unlimited precognition and postcognition with a range assumed to be identical to her own Path's range, plus telekinesis, the ability to copy Tinker powers, and a dreadful singing voice.

I want to know if this hypothetical being S could have stopped CRUCIBLE from building the portal generator whose range extends beyond the range of precognitive powers, if it wanted to.

—Probably not

Not even a numerical estimate this time?

I want to understand why S could or couldn't, the calculation basis of the last Path.

She saw Leet working on the Tinkertech device that would generate portals. The probability of success was partially based on Leet's future behavior.

However, if the device worked, Leet's behavior would become unpredictable shortly after, because Polychromic would move him outside of the range of the precognitive powers using that device.

Because that piece of the input was unreliable, Leet's agent could not make the decision based on the algorithm it previously applied for Leet's power mechanics. It had to make a discretionary decision, and Agents' discretionary decisions were blindspots to the Path, and most likely to the hypothetical being as well.

The chain of information did not stop there.

The hypothetical being would see as much as the Path did, and knowing that the device was a critical turning point, if it wanted to stop CRUCIBLE it could try to stop Leet due to the risk of the device working.

However, during the creation of the Tinkertech, at random times, something else was already opening portals which were immune to precognition.

Each time, Polychromic came through and discussed Leet's progress, in an inexplicable sudden shift from Polychromic's previously predicted behavior.

The hypothetical being could not use its powers to locate or destroy whatever was creating those portals, and could not determine if those portals were already capable of reaching beyond the range of precognitive powers.

Although the answer the Path provided was long-winded, Contessa grasped it within a few seconds.

Yet she needed more. If the Simurgh couldn't stop the portal device from being built, why couldn't it at least try to stop the missile system from being built? There was no way to construct such advanced weapons without having access to infrastructure. If they had such infrastructure outside of the precognition range, they must have built it at some point, which means they must have left a trail of evidence, materials and equipment being moved through portals within postcognition range, which her Path could find.

I want to know whether CRUCIBLE engaged in activities which might lead to them building technological infrastructure necessary for constructing the missile system outside of the Path's perception, and if so, why could S not stop those activities?

She had expected to learn about how CRUCIBLE had moved various materials and equipment over time through portals to blind space.

Instead, she saw Polychromic buying cryogenic tech from Glace of Toybox.

Then she saw Canary killing Teacher in the Birdcage. When Canary moved through a portal to escape, leaving Teacher's body behind, Polychromic had taken the body before the room was blown up and stashed it away before chasing after Canary to catch her from falling.

Canary was put to sleep, then Polychromic retrieved Teacher's body and put it into stasis using cryogenic tech before returning to Canary.

Then she saw Cranial getting captured and Mastered by CRUCIBLE. Cranial's tech was used to extract memories from Teacher's preserved brain. Then Araliac cloned Teacher, and Cranial's tech was used again to cause the clone to trigger with the original's memories.

Triggers were blindspots to the Path's precognition, but not postcognition, and the same was assumed for the hypothetical being, which is probably why it failed to stop them.

Following the trigger, the clone Teacher was Mastered into creating a large number of Tinkers, who worked together to create a device that could block entire planets from Agent perception.

They immediately deployed it, cutting off a world from the Path's perception, a world which already had sufficient infrastructure to build the missile system.

Path: make a device that can block off an area from Agent perceptions, similar to the one Teacher's Tinkers made, Contessa queried.

The Path revealed the steps required. She would need to collect a number of Tinkers and make them work together, but it was doable. Taking full control of Dragon would cut down on the number of steps significantly. Gaining Dragon's voluntary loyalty and releasing her would cut down even more, but that would disrupt other Paths for protecting Cauldron.

Building the device could be troubling for herself, reducing the effectiveness of her Path, making her vulnerable, the Path warned. She had asked the Path previously to protect her, and it was doing so now by informing her of the potential consequences.

But Contessa had never been selfish.

If she had to sacrifice a bit of her own safety net for the greater good, she would do it without hesitation. The device would increase the chances of success for the Cockroach project, and create zones safe from the Simurgh.

If the Path's effectiveness is reduced, there might be many people she could not save, the Path warned again. She would save sealed worlds from things like S, but she would longer be able to save them from other things in the future.

Even so, she reaffirmed. When she went to fight the godling alone, it was with the understanding that she couldn't save everyone. Two thousand one hundred and seventy four steps to explain things to her uncle, save her people, and find the god-beast. But she could not do all that and handle every other essential crisis on the way.

It was a choice between stopping the monster or helping the people she grew up with to survive the chaos. She had chosen then, and she would choose again, to save as many as she could.

Once more, the Path warned her. If she obtained the device and gave it to her colleagues, they could use it against her.

Would they do it? Yes. They would.

Even so, she believed in the Path. It would see her to victory even if there were things it could not tell her because of the godling's commands.

Her life and freedom were not a necessary part of the definition of victory.

But, if there was a way to protect the Path, then she would prefer that.

Path: protect the Paths from that kind of device.

Almost eagerly, the Path responded.

112 steps to find Tinkers to build her own blocking device to protect herself from an attack such as the one suffered by Jack Slash.

37 steps to create counter-devices to disrupt enemy blocking devices and break through to sealed areas by force.

32 steps to add backdoors and failsafes for herself on those devices.

98 steps to extend the range of her power to its maximum strength at moon's orbit and harvest the energy required to sustain the higher level of computation demanded.

233 steps to eliminate every Tinker who could make such devices after she acquired what she needed from them.

726 steps to deal with her colleagues who would use Oracle to find and protect these Tinkers if Contessa told them about but refused to help them obtain such devices, then take over Cauldron to keep her previous Paths intact.

84 steps to break into the worlds sealed by CRUCIBLE so that her Path could give her more steps to follow.

There was no hint on her outward expression that she had just seen the exact way to force her colleagues into submitting to her will.

She was not planning to follow that particular Path, but just in case, she decided that it would be best to stay quiet in the background as the meeting continued. She could always tell them what she had learned about CRUCIBLE and the Simurgh later.

When there was no response forthcoming from Contessa, the Doctor moved on with her speculations.

"I suppose the Simurgh's intentions are as opaque as ever. Unless the range of its precognition is actually much farther than other known precognitive powers, and all this is still part of her plans. Could she have wanted Jack Slash to die?"

"If we go by the hypothesis that the Endbringers have some purpose and they want to continue with their own pattern of destruction instead of allowing the world to end in just two years, then Jack's death would align with their agenda," said Alexandria.

"Either way, we have to make adjustments. His death pushes the end of the world scenario to fifteen years away at least, which is past the breaking point. We would have only have forty-four to half a percent of our forces available. The plan to fight Scion directly with a parahuman army would be rendered obsolete. Either we somehow start the fight ourselves before that, or we shift all resources toward Cockroach and Exodus," said the Number Man.

He turned to look at the Doctor. "We may even need to consider the Dominatus contingency to speed up your other project."

An angry beeping sound interrupted.

Alexandria took out her PRT phone that was the source of the noise.

"An A-class threat in Boston." She started to send a few texts. "Carry on," she told her colleagues.

"We can wait, Alexandria," said the Doctor.

The Number Man took the opportunity to soothe Oracle's headache with a painkiller.

"Before we continue discussing our long-term plans, shouldn't we decide what to do about the Nine, now that Jack is dead? In particular, we should do something about the Siberian and Bonesaw," said Eidolon.

"If we stop Manton, we would have difficulties with keeping Legend suspicions' at bay on the Nemesis project," said Doctor Mother.

"Is that necessary, still? If we don't expect the Protectorate to hold up, then we don't need to get more of our people in, in which case we won't need them to have nemeses to fight."

"It's worth considering. But don't forget, Mannequin is a Simurgh bomb. It would be dangerous to simply bring any of the Nine under our direct control, with their prolonged exposure."

Alexandria spoke up again. "I'm sorry, we'll have to cut this meeting short. The A-class threat has just been raised to S. Speculated baby Endbringer. Armstrong is requesting emergency reinforcements."

"A baby Endbringer? What's going on?" Eidolon asked.

"The designation is Echidna. A giant monster cape that's been mass cloning other capes on contact. It's already destroyed two city blocks. We have to contain this immediately. Civilian casualties are already estimated close to a thousand."

"I'll go, then," said Eidolon.

"That could be dangerous. If it clones you…"

Another blaring alarm went off, this time both Alexandria and Eidolon's PRT phones were ringing.

"That's the Endbringer alarm?" Doctor Mother recognized it immediately. "They sounded it for Echidna?"

Alexandria's face uncharacteristically went pale.

"No. The Simurgh is also descending towards Boston."

O O O

A/N: There is only one more chapter left for the Worm segment that will be posted next week. In the meantime, the first chapter of the sequel is already up, and it's a new story called Any Means Necessary: Rising. Find it on my profile. It's also a quest that's running on Sufficient Velocity if you want to participate in the decision making.