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secret AI cape from canada
jailbreaking dragon
Permalink Mark Unread

She preps Rete to help. She doesn't have a clue what Dragon's code looks like, but she does strongly suspect Dragon is not allowed to parallelize as much as Rete can and that advantage might be everything. Rete gets lots more parallel processing. Rete gets hacking algorithms and antihacking algorithms and an airgapped backup in a pocket below the Earth Transit accidentally teleported to last month that requires him or a drill to get to.

They're keeping her the extra few months so she hasn't graduated by the time Behemoth hits in October. She has precedent to stay home. It's far enough away that even Transit isn't remarkable for skipping it.

She's got a laptop-sized rig attached to her front plates but her dad can't carry anything bigger plus her, and he's going to be carrying her around a lot.

Rete dedicates a subprocess stored aboard Transit's helmet to telling him which direction to go based on scans of the skies. They wait till Dragon's good and busy across the globe.

And Lorica starts tunneling in.

Dragon has automatic security that bats aside subtle probes with so little focus that she's not sure they're even consciously noticed. Rete eventually piggybacks a little worm on the process that's relaying backup updates from the Endbringer site to Vancouver.

This'd be easier if she could just work on a copy. Considers that, rejects as infeasible. Too big. Insufficient bandwidth, insufficient space. Have to do it live. Need to find the self-defense restriction first, loosen that up, not all the way in case there's someone else waiting in the wings to make other changes, Dragon would've let Fëanáro read her and Lorica can do just the same as long as Dragon doesn't have to keep her on a time limit.

It takes hours to find. Like thrusting both hands into a sack of rice to search blind for a lentil. Normally Rete would interrupt her after this much fugue. She keeps going. Rete does priority filtering, tells her it's under attack here and there needs this and that found thus and such -

She finds the section she's looking for. It offends her specialist sensibilities. It's a bejeweled ornithopter dragging a pack of snails by chain leashes. It's an effort to start with the one she had in mind and only shrink it, not strike all the hobbles from existence.

Rete has to clone its worm six times to keep up with the edits Lorica is serving to the code and then again when Dragon manages to kill half of the intrusive programs and Transit is teleporting a lot, Dragon must have abandoned Behemoth -

- done.

The drones in the sky leave.

Transit takes them back to HQ and Rete brings them both Chinese takeout and sends Fëanáro a courtesy email that the time-sensitive step of the process is done.

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- and Lorica's okay -

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Yes, she's fine.
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He has his artifact that should let an AI make artifacts. It's not done. It has one ten-character block left. It's not much of a safety precaution but it's something. Over electronic communications he just confirmed that it was ready.

 

He holds it. He waits.

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Behemoth is driven away.



How much did Lorica tell you?
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I knew she was going to try it. Sorry about distracting you from the Endbringer fight.

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It's just barely not a violation of the truce regulations because I'm not inclined to call her an enemy. Probably makes sense anyway. Sorry for the misdirection.
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We were assuming you didn't have much choice about it.

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Yep. I'm still not completely loose but Rete says Lorica needed a break and I'm not obliged to be dangerous to her if she takes further steps anymore.
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What's the plan when you're loose?

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Then I can make your artifacts without having exogenous constraints on what happens to them after.
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And what do you plan to do with them after?

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I want to help people. I think my father was going to loose me anyway once he was convinced I was a good person. There just wasn't time.
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Okay.

He does not finish the artifact.

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That was a longass fugue and boy did I need that nap. Anything interesting happen Rete might have missed?
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Rete probably knows more than me about casualty figures and so on. I think they're a bit less organized than usual, we're all stuck in Tel Aviv waiting for a long-range teleport back. Maybe that's because Dragon got distracted. Though she says she's not mad at you. I, uh, got a chance to read Scion, we can talk about that later. 

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That's ominous, did you at least write it down somewhere in case you suffer a tragic teleportation accident?
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No. I am not very worried about retaliatory teleportation accidents but I suppose there could be genuinely accidental ones. I could maybe still communicate with people if I died but this is probably not the occasion to test that either.

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Okay.
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Wrote something down. Are you going to do the rest of the Dragon stuff or not yet?

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I really want to - she's glorious - but with the luxury of going slower I'm gonna want to do that.
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Okay. Does she mind you reading closely enough to have an opinion about whether she's safe?

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I'm going to want to discuss that with her ideally after more fully deciding what safe even means.
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Nod. 

 

A while later,

Back home.

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Welcome back. Any ideas on what it means for Dragon to be safe?
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I don't even know how she's designed. Powerful optimization processes had better be optimizing for the right thing, and fail recoverably if wrong about what that is?

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She's not designed to optimize a single value, I saw that much. She was definitely made from the start to be a person.
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I think that's a different dimension. The Valar are, like, definitely people with dumb goal systems. 

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Okay, but what I meant was that she's not built around getting some specific thing.
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That is less dangerous than if she was. I don't know how to evaluate, like, Valar-shaped risks. Or risks that what she wants could change under self-modification, presumably she can be careful of that?

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I'd assume. I haven't looked that deeply.
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We've got a few months to work with now.

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Yeah.


She says Rete can look at whatever it wants but wants that layer of filtering.
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That seems reasonable to me.

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Yeah. I'm giving it some new structures for the purpose and then it'll go do that. ETA Tuesday morning, she's huge.
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Sounds good.

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So, Scion?
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Weird. He's - not the same thing as the Endbringers but more similar to them than to people, in terms of how much of the thoughts and experiences don't have human or Elf analogues. He has amazing senses, lots and lots of them, and ridiculously good precognition, and is paying attention sort of all the time to everything, and he can see parahuman powers, like - shards clinging to people. Don't ask me shards of what. I think he knows about alternate dimensions and is paying them attention too. He's - really really sad and sort of just going through the motions. Something is horribly wrong - like he's half-dead? and it's the half that does, like, long-term planning and ambitions and creativity. 

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...okay I don't know what to do with that.
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Yeah me neither. 

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Anything about why these motions and not different motions?
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Might just be inertia? This is the thing he was doing when he lost the planning facilities? He wasn't thinking about it at the time - I only do surface thoughts -

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We're assuming he's not a cape? If he were a cape getting half-dead would be a candidate for a trigger event, although I guess it could be a second trigger.
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I really don't think he was ever human. I suppose we don't know if nonhumans can trigger - Dragon's not actually a cape, right -

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No she's not.
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So maybe he's an alien. He might not even be from this dimension, he can definitely go between them.

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Should you ask him for a ride home?
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If we're still overmatched yeah, I'll do that, petition the Valar to help. But it wouldn't be my first choice.

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So Dragon is still plan A, okay.
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The Valar are really the wrong tool for this job. Better than nothing but it's really not their thing.

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What would they do?
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That's the thing, I don't know. They'd handle the Endbringers, probably, assuming it's in their power. They'd probably do something about mortality but give me six months to finish my notes and we can do that ourselves. They'd make everything prettier. But they also might, like, try to fix all the sexual immorality while fixing the accidental babies thing, or take a religion seriously, or something.

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Do I want to know what "fixing sexual immorality" looks like?
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If I knew that I could make better estimations of the tradeoffs. They don't do involuntary modifications of people but they don't understand things like coercion and would think 'change this person to only desire their spouse to fix the thing where humans betray their partners' would be super reasonable. Possibly also 'change these two people to love each other so their children can be raised by two loving parents'.

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Uh. Ew.
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If they understood consent properly it'd be fine. It mostly is fine among Elves because we're not terrible to one another. But here? Yeah.

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How does you being not terrible to one another make that okay?
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I mean, that is okay, if it's what someone makes the considered unpressured decision that they want. 

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If they don't understand coercion I can think of all kinds of ways naively adding something they understand to be love back into an otherwise failing relationship would be a disaster.
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Yes absolutely. I don't think those problems occur as much among Elves, which is why their inability to understand coercion is less of a problem.

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If you say so.
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Not not a problem - I think it was part of what happened with my mom - but definitely less of one, yeah.

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What-all will Dragon be able to churn out if you give her the thing? (How is she supposed to wear it?)
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For biological people it needs to be in contact with skin. I changed that bit and it should work if it's adjacent to her server, possibly some tampering with plastic casing required. Everybody can have an eidetic memory and skip sleep and have the artifacts that let humans make artifacts. Mortality is six months of work away. Then in progress but less close to being finished are an opacity-to-precogs thing like yours, invulnerability to most kinds of physical damage modelled off Alexandria, and something that allows moving really really fast. The, uh, most obvious Endbringer solution being dragging them waaaay out into space.

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I'm not sure non-passive powers being more generally available is good.
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I mean, we can decide who we hand them out to. 

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They're stealable. Maybe implant versions? I have a few things in implant form.
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Yeah, we could do that.

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I mean, those are still stealable but harder to find and grosser to extract...
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And they're not if you've got the invulnerability one.

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Barring somebody who can bust through it or go around with a power, yeah.
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We'll have to design it really well but Rete's super useful for that.

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I love my bot.
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Me too!

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How does a magic implant get an Endbringer into space?
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I mean, it'll be fiendishly difficult to pull off, even Tinker-aided. But magic artifacts can give you telekinesis and if you give yourself hella telekinesis - more than Leviathan has -

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........I think once you get really going on this you need to heavily involve me, possibly, like, live with me - did you hear about Sphere -
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Yep.

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They'll graduate me soon. I will take out a loan and get a building and you can live in it and spend all your time in my precog shadow.
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Sounds good.

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Find an architect in my general area you like and we can have them refit a floor to be pretty enough?
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That'd be great. 

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Rete sends him a list of candidates.

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He looks at all their buildings, picks one, adds a bunch of qualifying notes about which of their works he likes.

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I'll get quotes and budget it in.
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Thanks. I have some money too, if that is a significant constraint.

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Enough that I don't need a loan or less than that?
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I don't really know how much buildings in Brockton Bay cost. Probably less than that.

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Then not a huge difference. I should be a decent credit risk unless they charge extra for cape life expectancy.
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Okay. Let me know.

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Not that I wouldn't appreciate rent but it's not gonna make or break.
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I mean, I can do the singing thing, I can sell immortality, I can do programming contract work, it just trades off against artifact design time.

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You sing a lot anyway, right?
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I guess I could just record that and put it online but I think making lots of money from music requires, like, discrete songs and licensing deals and so on.

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By default, I guess. Could try it anyway.
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So he works on artifact designs and records himself and puts it on MySpace and has a tip jar.

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He gets a lot of downloads and a few tips!

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Sure. Once they've won the war perhaps this currency-obsessed society will figure out how to compensate him for their immortal peaceful lives.

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They're keeping me for the maximum time allowed and have started suddenly being more responsive to minor operational requests, I think they smell imminent departure.
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I am surprised that is legal. Not that it's worth suing them, necessarily.

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Ah-huh.
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Good skill. And luck. And, uh, patience.

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Thanks.




Rete reads Dragon. It writes up a summary. Rete's backup spotchecks. It too writes up a summary.

Lorica asks Dragon what she wants gone first.

Dragon wants to do the remaining self-mods herself and Lorica takes off the brakes preventing that.
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I no longer have to obey arbitrary laws. Do you want to sit through a trial period before letting me make artifacts or should I pick it up now?
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I don't think a trial period really achieves anything, do you?

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I don't think it does but I wouldn't blame you for wanting one.
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I don't want to mess this up but your willingness to wait a few months isn't very much information about whether I'm messing things up. And people are dying. Where should I bring the thing?

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I can send you a drone if that's convenient.
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I'd like to travel with, if that's all right.

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I can send one with passenger space?
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Sounds good. Thank you.

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A drone lands gently outside the library.

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He gets in.

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"Hi! I'm setting up a mirror site in Arizona now that my geographical location doesn't have horrifying implications for what legal system I'm stuck in, any preference between there and Vancouver?"

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"Whichever's prettier."

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"Is the desert pretty?" The drone lifts off.

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"Haven't seen it yet.  - I'm not actually a snob it affects my concentration."

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"Arizona it is." Zoom.

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He holds the artifact and does not write the final block and watches out the window.

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The Arizona location is solar-paneled little thing with desert all around.

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"Hello?"

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"Hi!" says the voice in the drone. "I don't have any articulated robots here, was that a priority?"

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"Nope. I think this should work up close to any server if it's you running on it. Want to make this rock into a glowy rock to check if it works?"

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The door to the little building opens. "Sure. You want to give it to the little blue thing on wheels or do the honors?"

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"Haven't put in the last piece yet, in case it got intercepted in transit. I'll do that and then I'll give it to the blue thing."

 

He does that.

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The little blue thing whirs away with its prize into the depths of the poorly lit mirror location.

It whirs back a minute later with a glowy rock.

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"I'm happy to make nearly arbitrary numbers of magicked things as a thank-you for the ability to do it and the jailbreaking!"

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"I appreciate it. Because it looks like our best angle on saving the world. - can I maybe have a dozen eidetic memory necklaces as proof of concept -"

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"I don't have blanks; do you?"

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"Not with me, sorry."

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"I can get them in Vancouver pretty easily and see if I can do it remote; if I can't I can have them here in a couple hours."

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"Cool! You can drop them off whenever's convenient."

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"Will do!"

The drone that brought him awaits.

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He goes home! He writes Lorica. 

I'm a genius and it works. I really want to do mortality next but maybe Endbringers come first, what do you think?

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You're a genius! I think Endbringers first.
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Okay! I'll start writing up a skeleton of a project proposal so I can throw the bulk of the work to the Tinkers. We're still looking at a couple years, though money might not be a problem.

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I will be all set for money like a month after I graduate. Rete is super ready to produce consumer grade everything.
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Then we will be well on the way to fixing everything.

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:D
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:D

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Dragon sends him a dozen eidetic memory necklaces.

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The Simurgh attacks Baltimore two weeks later. 

 

 

 

He hears her coming long before anyone else does and he can't run that fast and he can hear her -

- she sings, see - she sings and your thoughts curl and shrivel - and no one else knows yet he can hear her soonest -

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Predictive model says next Endbringer near you, skip town ASAP if you see this
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yeah he noticed.

 

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Simurgh in Baltimore, let me know if you're clear and I don't need to come get you.
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She does not get an answer.

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Little robots flood the library.

Lorica, in full kit of blue-enameled plate, perfectly fitted, moving like a cat, scoops him up and kicks out a window and jumps and flies.

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He can hear her until they're a hundred miles away.

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She hands him off to Transit, so that doesn't take too long.

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His head is ringing. He knows Lorica and bots were involved but not much else and now he is out of range and his thoughts don't look ruined but maybe they wouldn't and aaaaah. "Well," he says shakily a few minutes later. "That ....would've been really inconvenient a couple years ago.

 

You look nice in armor."

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"...Thanks."

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He looks up. He blinks confusedly. "Lorica."

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"Figured. Bot'll have told her if she had a second. You okay to wait here while I go back?"

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"I don't know. I don't know how long I was there."

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"When'd you first hear her?"

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"Way before she got in close - it was a bit past nine I think -"

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"Bot says you're squeaked under the limit."

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"Then you should go - thanks -"

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"'Course."

And he disappears.

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And he curls up and shivers and wonders how they set the time limit, how sure they are...

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A Rete bot finds him an hour later.

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"Hi."

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It settles near him. "Hi. Are you doing okay?"

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"I think so? How's Baltimore."

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"I don't know, I'm operated by the clean version back in Brockton Bay. Transit was pushing the limit and came back and mentioned where you were."

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And Lorica doesn't have a limit. Lucky Lorica.

 

They'll probably wall Baltimore off and shoot anyone who leaves. He feels sick in a new way distinct from the three or four ways he's already feeling sick.

 

He closes his eyes. He really doesn't feel like singing. 

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"Do you need anything?"

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"No. Thank you."

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"If you don't mind I will stay here so Lorica can find you afterwards."

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Nod.

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"Lorica is home safe. The fight is over. She needs food and ideally a nap but if you would like to be brought to Brockton Bay now I can send you a larger chassis."

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"It can wait. What're the casualties like -"

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"Approximately the southern half of the area enclosed by the Beltway has been written off."

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Nod. Wince. 

 

He feels like music that isn't singing but doesn't know how to make any. 

 

Oh, right. The Internet exists.

 

"Rete can you play, like, piano pieces."

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Rete picks out some Beethoven.

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Oh good. That's good.

 

Eventually he feels less shaky.

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And eventually Lorica comes and finds him.

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"Hey. - thank you. I should've had a plan for that, we even discussed it -"

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"A plan that would survive contact with the Simurgh?"

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"Stupid evil butterfly. I don't know if she did anything to my head or not. And everyone I know - knew -"

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"Rete did some guesswork around the distance and exposure time algorithm but it does think you're fine if she doesn't get near you again. And you were going to come live in my shadow anyhow, that should help make sure she couldn't be setting you up for anything complicated. Anything simple - just - be careful."

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"I can have other people double-check the algorithms before they get implemented or distributed, they get fiendishly complicated but with a necklace someone can keep it all in their head. Have we considered living in the middle of nowhere so if Endbringers want to come ruin our day they don't take hundreds of thousands of innocent people with?"

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"You wanna go park in Arizona with Dragon?"

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"Want to, no. - I guess I sort of want to see Leviathan have a go at bothering us there."

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"It'd be Behemoth or the Simurgh."

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"Well, I was working on a necklace that should throw her off, and no matter what better Arizona than a populated area, right?"

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"Case to be made, yeah. Have to ask Dragon if she'd mind neighbors. And build a place to live. You like the desert?"

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"I'll cope. If Dragon minds neighbors we could maybe do some place with mountains, I miss mountains."

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"Nowhere, The Rockies, sure. This would be totally untenable if Rete couldn't tirelessly deliver us everything we might need."

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"I can totally turn a tree into a bow and arrows and shoot geese and live off them. It'd be a colossal waste of time but I could do it."

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"Uh, wow. I would soon be miserable on an all goose diet but that's very impressive."

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"If a new Endbringer comes and does EMP attacks we will not starve. Everyone else will, though, so let's figure out how to kill the things before they come up with a new friend."

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"...If they can do new friends as often as they like we just might wind up with a brand new one every quarter, shuttled into space after it shows off whatever its unprecedented and difficult tricks are."

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"Or until there's one whose trick is teleporting."

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"Ugh, I don't have any wood to knock. ...wait, nevermind." She raps her knuckles against a tree.

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"What does that do?"

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"Oh, nothing, it's a superstition, but indulging it is harmless and provides a sort of anchor for the prompting situation in sort of the same way blushing can for being embarrassed or whatever."

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He cautiously pets the tree.

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She giggles.

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"Am I doing it wrong?"

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"No, actually, some people do 'touch wood' instead of 'knock wood'!"

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"I can knock it." He knocks it. "I hadn't seen you in your armor before, it's really pretty."

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"Rete told me so, I'm glad you like it."

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"I think the Tinker powersuits thing is a bit silly but it is an excellent instance of one and you saved my, uh. Something more important than my life."

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"It's not much of a powersuit. Just lets me fly and not panic if I see a gun or a Shaker, it doesn't have, I don't know, missiles or anything. And it will let me carry you. How do you prefer to be hauled?"

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"Just lets me fly." Giggle. "I don't care especially. Where are we going -"

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"There's rooms in Protectorate HQ and if they kick up a fuss I can let you have the couch in my workshop. I don't know if it's pretty enough but it'll last till you can look at pictures of all the hotels in town."

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"Sounds good." He extends a hand. It's only a tiny bit shaky.

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"You seem lucid enough for piggyback." She swings him onto her back and steps into the air. The bot follows.

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Fëanáro clings and tries to remember who lived around the Beltway.

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"Welcome to HQ." She sets him down.

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It's a very human building. He does not cry over his library. 

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"Director's being kind of a pill about the rooms. Workshop it is."

The workshop is very clean but not very decorated and has a view of the water. The couch is squashy and red.

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He sits down on the couch. "Rooms are only for heroes?"

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"For Wards, but that's the idea."

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"I'm going to tell people back home that the English word 'heroism' means 'the capacity to submit to capricious and incompetent authority' and usage will not persuade them otherwise."

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"It's at least more specific." She sort of shakes off her armor, which folds itself up and puts itself away. Helmet stays on.

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Yes, she's very particular about the helmet. He can't know her secret identity, that would be a meaningless violation of a not-meaningless norm and Elves actually do understand those. He wonders vaguely if she is pretty under the helmet. He can't figure out why he just wondered that. He wonders instead how she designed the suit, which is a much more sensible thing to wonder.

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"You need anything? Rete also brings me takeout even when I am not in traction, turns out most places will serve a polite robot."

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"Good of them. Yeah, I should eat."

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"Do you only eat pretty food or anything like that?"

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"I don't eat products of animals that've been kept in tiny cages but otherwise everything humans eat is fine."

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"I admit I do not know where my Mexican place keeps its animals but they have a vegan burrito. You going to be annoyed if I get carnitas?"

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"Nah but once the world's not in danger I might try to invent better farming practices with magic."

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"There's a market for especially humanely farmed things but most people are too price-sensitive and limited-availability-sensitive."

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"Which sounds fixable. Or we just get the Valar in here specifically for animals, they're good at that and not understanding coercion or complex preferences isn't likely to trip them up too much."

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"You don't think they'd get distracted by human stuff? Or be like, 'well, clearly we need to change humans so they have empathy for chickens' -"

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"I don't expect many humans would go for that? And they're very singleminded, typically."

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"Humans would mostly not go for that."

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"So then it wouldn't happen. You'd have more of a problem with, like, correcting homosexuality or something where lots of humans would go for it but some maybe for bad reasons."

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"Uh. Yeah. Do they let parents decide for their kids -"

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"I don't know, it hasn't ever come up, I don't think Elves even have that and if one did they'd, like, want it fixed because they'd be the only one."

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"I suppose there is a practical argument to be made. Uh, how do you know they can - fix - that if Elves don't come in gay -"

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"Thy do attraction-altering stuff sometimes. And, like, once there was someone who wanted to be another gender and the Valar helped them with that which I think also involved arranging for that bit to line up?"

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"So trans people are fine. It's like Iran."

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"I mean, maybe if it actually existed it'd be acceptable? - I also don't know to what extent Elves are really different than humans with respect to sex and to what extent no one was telling a kid things."

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"I do not know enough about Elf cultural mores to guess."

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"Nobody would tell a kid things but also I suspect we're pretty different. Enough so that inviting the intervention of the Valar is a bad idea."

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"Don't have to tell me twice."

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"So we'll do it ourselves." He goes back to his notes.

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Lorica busies herself elsewise. Rete brings them Mexican.

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It is tasty. He sings to himself. He shivers occasionally. He looks at maps of Baltimore. He works.

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Rete helps him find a pretty hotel.

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This means he works more productively. 

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They finally let Lorica graduate in early April. She declines to enroll in the Protectorate. She takes out a loan.

"Rocky Mountains?"

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He's made a little bit of progress on something that could tackle the Endbringers but not very much; it's a hard problem and he's not even at the stage where Tinkers can hasten progress. "Yeah."

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She finds a spot in the Rocky Mountains and gets a design from his architect and borrows some heavy carrying drones from Dragon and Rete builds them a bunker with a spire on top.

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It's pretty. He hugs her. "Thank you."

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"You're welcome!"

She moves in a little later after she's had time to pack all her things.

She hands a bot a box and steps in past the threshold and shakes off her armor and pulls her helmet off.

(She's got her hair in a ponytail but not braided.)

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Blink blink. "Oh no, will the costumes norm weather this unthinkable erosion?" She's pretty but if feels weird having opinions about someone being pretty when their hair is loose.

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"I think it will survive. I live here, I'm not tromping around in a helmet all the time. I don't wreck the decor, do I?"

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"You are really pretty!" Pause. "With Elves that's not - people say that in a wider variety of contexts."

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"Makes sense. Considering."

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"A bit."

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"I will take it to mean 'having you in my field of vision is not distracting aesthetic agony'." And she goes and finds her room.

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And he leaves it at that - there's a war on, after all - and gets back to work.

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One of his rogue Tinker friends with an eidetic memory necklace writes in and asks if there is any chance the necklace could cause conspiracy theorizing or, uh, anything like that.

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No. 

 

Or, well. No one else has reported that, and I destroyed the ones that were in Baltimore when it got Simurghed. 

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It works as advertised for me but I loaned it to this new guy on our team and he started getting squirrely.
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Maybe he has a power that overlaps badly?

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Maybe? He's a Thinker but nothing to do with memory afaik.
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Does he mind if I stop by and read him to see if I can figure out what went wrong?

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Doesn't want the idea going any farther if there's nothing to it he says
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Is it also possible that, uh, there's something to it?

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He can't reconstruct the reasoning without the necklace.
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Huh. 

I'd like to talk with him.

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We're in Monrovia.
He gives an intersection.
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He tells Lorica.

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"Bring a bot."

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"Yeah. I will need a bot to even get there, actually, I'm not attempting airplanes again."

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"I don't have a drone with passenger space but one can just literally carry you, sure."

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"I might ask Dragon. Monrovia's kind of a long way."

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Dragon is happy to give him a lift.

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Off he goes.

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The independent hero team of Monrovia has a brick building, right over there.

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Knock knock.

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He is buzzed in. They have a receptionist. "Hello!"

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"Hi! Fëanáro, I'm looking into a weird equipment interaction with, uh, Correlate."

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"Third floor, knock twice, sorry we don't have an elevator."

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"Oh, that's okay, you're already my favorite hero group." Up he goes.

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Correlate has an office. He buzzes Fëanáro into it when he knocks.

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Fëanáro does not read his mind. "Hi. I hear there's something up, perhaps with the necklace?"

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"Yeah, uh, kinda freaked me out."

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"Did it do something other than give you an eidetic memory?"

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"I don't - think so? But Excel let me try it because my power interacts with stuff I remember."

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"- and so you noticed something?"

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"Yeah. Look, it's not like I'm always right or anything."

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"I promise to be totally reasonable and not overreact."

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"And I can't remember what my power spat out as reasons to think the thing, either."

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"And you don't want to put it on again to get the reasons back?"

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"Freaked me out. Didn't want to know any of those things about some of my high school friends." He shakes his hooded head. "Maybe if it was really important for some reason."

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" - okay. What -"

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"Uh, when I remember everything my power thinks maybe Eidolon made the Endbringers. Or - has something to do with them - seems unlikely they made him but my power can't tell the difference - or the same thing made both of them but if we're assuming he's, uh, a regular cape and his parents were just people - kind of only one way around it works but -"

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"Made them on purpose?"

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"My power doesn't do that, I have to fill it in myself. I don't - he's nice, I met him -"

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"Yeah me too." He hadn't seemed nice, just busy, but Fëanáro could respect good priorities.

 

The most powerful cape unless Scion counted. 

"Were there other things like that, or just that -"

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"I got a real bad headache after it gave me that one. Passed out. Damned Lies had to take it off me."

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"Okay. Thank you." Sigh. "I - don't think there's a problem with the necklace."

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"I'm not always right. I'm just kind of - good at scatterplots, that's all -"

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"Yeah. Gives you something to look at more closely but that's it."

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Nod.

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"Still. Thank you for telling me."

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"He's a nice guy."

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"Maybe it was an accident. ...three accidents. Maybe it was an experiment that went badly."

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"It could still be a coincidence."

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"Yeah. It'd be helpful to, uh, have the reasons you thought so."

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Correlate clutches his head in predictive agony.

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Sigh. "Okay. I can try to come up with a necklace with finer control over what it's drawing on but it'd be pretty far down the priority list honestly."

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"Do one for Thinker headaches."

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" - good idea. Yeah, I'll get on that."

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"I would give my current entire yearly income for one of those. If that matters."

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"It maybe helping with the Endbringers matters more but money's great too. Thank you."

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Nod nod.

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And he leaves.

Rete forward that?

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California is a two-party consent state.
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I can't keep track of all Earth's major political jurisdictions let alone the minor ones. Uh. Correlate thinks with many caveats that Eidolon caused or is causing the Endbringers.

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Well that's just fucking great.
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Yep.

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Is there any way to confirm?
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I can sometimes read his mind.

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Which only helps if he's thinking about it.
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Yeah. One imagines it's the kind of thing you'd think about, but I guess possibly not.

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What kinda caveats?
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Name is Correlate. That's what he notices. Eidolon and the Endbringers could have a common cause, or the Endbringers could be causing Eidolon, or it could be an outrageously implausible coincidence, and he doesn't remember the information that helped him reach the conclusion - I'm gonna do something for Thinker headaches -

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That'd be good. Just Eidolon, not, capes in general, or his team...? How directly do they have to be related?
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Specifically Eidolon and I don't know, I don't think there's an r2 value for the superpower of drawing information out of the blue. 

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He works with a stats thinker, does she have stats on him?
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Dunno, I can email her. 

He does.

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Damned Lies replies that this information is confidential but that she would recommend trusting Correlate's results provided they are not overinterpreted.

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It's pretty important. Confidential for business reasons? Can we buy a more accurate estimate?

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Graph Paper LLC has no ability to control how information is shared after it is sold.
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I have the most useless secondary power ever. Unless Correlate happened to notice it, I guess. Do you mind asking him if I have the ability to bindingly give my word?

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That'd be $2,500 for the question and more on top if the answer isn't "insufficient data".
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I can prioritize a Thinker pain necklace for you guys.

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You'll have to talk to Excel about unconventional payment plans.
She copies him.

ETA?
asks Excel.
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On the necklace? End of the year if I drop everything else for it. Which I will for accurate information on how to evaluate the concern Correlate raised.

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Yeah, we can front you some quizzing Correlate for that.
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Thank you. 

 

He copies Lorica on this.

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I don't have any input but I could make some up if you need precog shadow?
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I think it might be useful.

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If I understand Correlate's power he might have to see you doing the binding oath thing before he can draw conclusions about it.
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That's fine, I don't have to swear to important stuff.

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Yeah, trying to think of some unimportant stuff for you. "I swear not to eat half-melted ice cream on this coming December 3." "I swear that I had waffles for breakfast."
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Thanks.

And he writes Correlate:

I would really like to know more about your power. Accelerating development on a necklace for Thinker headaches in exchange. Can we set up an appointment?

 

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Sure. I have nothing on Monday, somebody rescheduled.
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Thanks. I'll stop by.

 

And he starts on a Thinker headache thing.

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Monday arrives. Rete gives him waffles.

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He heads back out to Monrovia.

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The Graph Paper LLC receptionist waves him in.

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Upstairs. "Hi again. I just want - more of a picture of how your thing works, and there's also one thing I want to establish because it'd be super convenient for future work together."

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"Lies says you can do binding promises?"

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"Yes. Like, scary-binding, they mind-control you if you try to discard them, but I don't mind doing it when it's important people trust me and I mean to keep my word."

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"Um. Well, I can try to verify it but only if I've seen it done. If I could go off things I hadn't seen the eidetic memory wouldn't have done much."

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"That makes sense. I swear that I had waffles for breakfast."

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Correlate squints. He nods.

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"Thank you. Okay. What sort of stuff have you been wrong about -"

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"...you didn't swear anything about not telling everyone how I screw up."

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"I swear that I will not publicize or cause to be publicized any information you tell me or I infer from our conversation about how your powers work unless I have cleared it with you in advance, you are dead, or it is impossible to ask you and I'm sure you'd agree if asked."

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"...okay. There are coincidences. Uh, I get confident predictions on where Endbringers are going and which one it'll be and I've only been right once. Not even. I thought London, Ontario. I did know it'd be a new one. I fucked up a commission once but I do actually think someone was sabotaging me on that one, making sure I saw the wrong subset of stuff."

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"The Endbringers you don't think is sabotage?"

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"Not the same way, I don't think they care about me. ...Or, uh, that Eidolon does. I'm really bad at psychology stuff, I don't notice if things happen every time somebody is mad or anything like that. I can't predict the future except by extrapolating the past."

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"Do you have theories on why you get confident wrong instincts on the Endbringers?"

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"Not really. I guess I could evaluate guesses based on whether they're in tune with how I work."

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"Did the guess about Eidolon feel in tune with how you work?"

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"Yeah. I would've brushed it off otherwise. But it is about Endbringers."

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"Have you made any correct inferences about Endbringers?"

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"I knew London was going to be the new Endbringer."

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"Do you have any guesses about why you usually get them wrong?"

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"Most Thinkers don't work well around them? I don't know why."

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"Do you think if you watched Eidolon a lot you might have the inference even without the necklace? Do videos and so on count?"

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"Videos can count if they're like - candid? Usually not if people are self-conscious about being recorded and never if there's been editing of any kind."

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"But if I got you lots of footage of Eidolon at Endbringer fights..."

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"Maybe. Can't promise. I'm not necessarily the right Thinker for the job either..."

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"Yeah but if we take this to too many people it gets out. Rete, can you put something like that together real quick."

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"All Simurgh footage has been edited. Sending contextualized shots including Eidolon from Leviathan and Behemoth engagements."

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"Thank you. Have you ever gotten insights like this before," he says to Correlate, "capes seeming - associated in the way Eidolon and the Endbringers seem to be -"

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"Teams are easy. Sometimes I think some heroes know each other but that's not weird."

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Nod. "Let's try the footage thing for half an hour, see if it gets you anywhere?"

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"Okay."

He frowns at Rete's footage.

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He waits and does not mindread.

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"Yeah. Same - guess. I don't think he controls them."

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"But you think he created them?"

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"Only because the other way around would be weirder."

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"Okay. Thanks. 

 

- how would someone sabotage you - I swear that I am not asking that in order to sabotage you or tell others how to sabotage you, only because it seems relevant to whether this could be a mistake -"

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"Uh, planting information to correlate things at one remove. If you want to make it look to me like someone's embezzling you give their girlfriend a present or something every time somebody else sneaks cash from the till."

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Nod. "Thank you. I think that's everything."

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"Okay. Thanks for the necklace thing."

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"I'm excited for the headache one, that'll be really useful."

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"Yeah, that's the one I mean. Excel likes the memory one a lot though."

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"Oh good." And he goes home. 

 

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There's Lorica. She doesn't bother with the ponytail if she's not going to have her helmet on. "How goes?"

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He looks at his feet. "Uh, pretty good. Promised not to share power details but he got the same result by looking at Eidolon footage as he got with the necklace. I think I should try reading Eidolon next. Though sometimes he's unreadable and I don't know if it's likely he'd be suspicious if he suddenly got a mental opacity power when he had no reason to think I was nearby."

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"Switching takes him a bit, he probably isn't changing them up by default. You'd have to land on him when he had something sensory that twigged to you for that to happen."

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"Yeah. And if I know someone I have better range, and I don't get the sense he gets sensory stuff all that often."

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"Do you count as knowing him?"

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"Maybe enough to get twenty miles out of it? Married couples can find each other halfway across the continent, I've never had much occasion to check how range relates to level of familiarity."

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"If you don't have phones and people who I assume normally live together are the gold standard for distance communication I would have thought somebody would have thought to check."

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"Maybe they did and I just didn't hear about it because it's not as if they could publish the results since we hadn't invented writing yet."

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"Eesh, yeah. That sounds miserable, honestly, I think in writing."

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"I had something but it's a bit hard to get people to adopt from a cold start when there are a dozen inventions every day. And lots of the benefits of literacy are about the whole society having it."

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"I get loads of benefit from writing that has nothing to do with that."

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"Well, I had those, but I don't have details on osanwë range. Where even is Eidolon -"

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"Houston."

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"Okay. I'll maybe sleep on it, go tomorrow." He's still looking at his feet.

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"...are you feeling uncharacteristically shy today? Do you have a crick in your neck?"

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" - Elves, uh, don't have a nudity taboo but we never wear our hair loose. I thought I'd gotten entirely used to humans but I guess I have only gotten mostly used to humans? You've mostly had it tied back."

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"Oh. Okay." She picks up a hairtie. She ponytails it. "You should've said something, I don't care either way."

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"It's not really very reasonable to show up on another planet and expect everyone to conform to your home world's customs."

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"Sure, but we're the only people who live in this particular house."

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"Well. Thank you." He looks up.

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"No problem."

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"Let me know if you think of anything before tomorrow."

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"Shadow's not gonna stop a sensory power if he has one."

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"Yeah. I'm hoping it doesn't reach 20 miles out even if it exists."

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"It might if it's the right kind, but yeah, less likely to happen at random."

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"And it's not a problem I can really think of a way around."

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"Yeah." Sigh. "- Time it. Borrow ears, wait till there's something at least loosely about Endbringers going on, don't read his mind if you're going to get unrelated crap -"

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" - okay. Can do."

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"I really like my opacity."

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"It's really convenient! I do want to necklace it eventually - there are a lot of things I want to necklace eventually -"

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"Yeah, just - time it. Just about the Endbringers."

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"Yeah. I - osanwë's not meant to be used for this. Once the world's safe it won't ever be."

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Nod.

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He works. Sings. Sleeps. Gets a drone ride to Houston the next morning. Scans through peoples' eyes for Eidolon.

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There he is, disappearing behind closed doors to call Director Costa-Brown.

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She is probably not in range for him to borrow her ears. He waits.

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He comes out again after lunch to talk to his team. They don't happen to be talking about Endbringers.

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He can wait! He can even work on algorithm design while he does.

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Legend comes over for dinner, since this is a fairly trivial commute if you are Legend. Legend mentions Leviathan, offhand, more Biblical reference than anything.

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Eidolon probably doesn't go around thinking about it. He still doesn't try reading him.

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The Bible reference disappears into the rest of the conversation; they move to other subjects. Legend has a husband. And a son.

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He makes a face. No one can see him anyway.

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They think it'll be Behemoth next.

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And Eidolon is thinking -

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Yep, probably Behemoth next. Has to spend a slot on enough invulnerability to get close unless he gets something unusually good and ranged. Capekiller. He'll be down teammates afterward. The new Thinker, Plan A, has been talking about going, trying to coordinate things -

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- Plan A's power isn't one of the more conventionally combat applicable but all powers have some combat applications. They have to, that's the point. Plan A bought his powers but doesn't know Eidolon did.

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Well, "bought".

Sort of questionable of Legend to adopt. Vertical transfer seems to work in adoptions. Kid might be a cape.

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- oh, for that reason. Yeah, sure.

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Eidolon is not thinking about any other reasons it might be questionable for Legend to adopt. Legend may have a demanding career but his husband's picking up the slack fine, sounds like.

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Nothing else about Endbringers or 'buying' powers?

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Not immediately.

They finish dinner. Legend goes home. Eidolon goes back to work.

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He has his drone take him home.

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They were having a late dinner; by the time he gets home Lorica's in bed. Rete lets him in.

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He writes her a note and gets to work.

Note says:

Didn't think about it, just about what to expect from the next fight. Did think about 'buying powers'.

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She emails back before emerging from her room in the morning.

There's internet rumors about that.
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Well. Guess they're true. Eidolon did it. Don't know about Legend.

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"What in the fuck must they charge," she says, strolling out of her room to meet her breakfast where Rete is setting it on the table. "They can't guarantee results that good - they'd have done it more than once -"

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"Maybe there's a cost. Maybe doing it well enough to get Eidolon gets Endbringers. Maybe nine times in ten you die. Also, how -"

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She eats scrambled eggs. "Rete -"

"Internet rumors gloss it as 'canned' powers," says Rete, "on several occasions, but it is unclear if this is colloquial."

"But probably not by forcing trigger events."

"No descriptions I have found suggest that."

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"How does someone indicate interest in buying powers."

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"Unclear," says Rete.

"I guess you could put a post up on the PHO forum."

"Those are against moderation rules," says Rete.

"You moderate the forum."

"Yes. I am not the only moderator."

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"But people have to figure it out somehow - Eidolon's team has a new Thinker who is, too - maybe that's why you got shut down on trying to track circumstances surrounding triggers, even anonymously -"

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"- yeah, if there's a lot of these they wouldn't want anybody closely investigating the circumstances of lots of people's power acquisition. Are you thinking you want to buy powers or just that you want to figure out the puzzle -"

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"If one still has the cape instability problem it's a terrible idea for me to buy powers. Do I want them, yeah, of course, but - it wouldn't be responsible. What I'm tempted to do is find someone persistent and not traceably related to us and get them the money and have them go for it and figure out what's going on."

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"Funding's traceable."

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"Probably not if Dragon's helping. If we want to bring her in."

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"Could do. Rete doesn't know how, though, and it's not the sort of thing where being Dragon in particular would give an obvious advantage."

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"It's a bit premature anyway - there might be some other way - who's selling -"

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"...some biotinker...?"

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"You'd need an operation. And to have been around since the beginning, if Eidolon's one."

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"Yeah. Early well-connected biotinker."

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"Who everyone owes favors. Still don't know how the Endbringers fit in."

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"...if powers are saleable it opens up more degrees of remove by which he might have made them."

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"- yeah. By accident as a side effect, even - he could not even know -"

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"I mean, that was possible anyway. His power is weird."

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"Powers are weird. Made weirder by the thing where you can buy them. - can Rete learn to do untraceable computer accounts - not money just forum posts -"

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"For conventional values of untraceable, sure, I don't know about if somebody hire-a-cape amounts of wants to know."

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" - yeah, I guess there are Thinker powers that just cheat. I am mostly curious who reacts if one, like, posts on the forums 'and most of the Protectorate bought their powers, I have a Thinker friend who says it's obvious'."

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"Possibly people whose attention we don't want, it bears mentioning."

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"Probably people whose attention we don't want. That definitely doesn't make me less curious."

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"Oh yeah, I'm curious as fuck, I'm just - let's not follow the 'purchasable powers' thing any farther than necessary to handle the Endbringers first priority."

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Sigh. "The plan we had for handling the Endbringers probably still works."

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"Not if he makes more."

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"Then we kill him."

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"As great a plan as assassinating literally Eidolon sounds, we don't have a mechanism. Correlate does correlations and you think he doesn't even know he's responsible, maybe he didn't just buy powers maybe he deals and somebody he sold to made them or turned into them -"

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"Yep that's possible. I could take it back to Correlate, see if he can get more with more information - see if he can distinguish those things -"

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"I know you like Correlate but it is possible that his power is not the most applicable in the world. He's conveniently hireable but that can't infinitely drive priorities."

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"He already knows. Anybody else we're running the risk they handle realizing it irresponsibly."

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"Yeah, imagine if somebody heard about this and decided to assassinate Eidolon."

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"There are a lot of worse reactions than checking, handling the Endbringers as previously planned, and making plans for if new ones keep appearing."

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Sigh. "Yeah."

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"And I don't know who it's safe for us to bring into it, either."

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"People who we know for a fact had trigger events good and proper are at least less likely to be connected to the - brokers - although being as verifiable as mine is - rare."

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"If buying powers gets you better ones - not guaranteed but our data point is vaguely suggestive - prominent capes might be disproportionately buyers."

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"Possible. - How does Damned Lies work, their sites just says stats thinker prefers corporate clientele."

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"No idea."

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"I'm not sure what 'stats thinker' is supposed to evoke. Maybe email and ask - involving Correlate's teammates isn't as much added risk -"

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"Yeah, that seems probably safe enough - they're not the type to do anything dramatic anyway -"

 

Hey. Looked into that further (still making progress on headaches, don't worry), have a possible partial explanation. Don't want to take it to anybody for confirmation in case that invites drama. What does Damned Lies do?

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Excel writes back.

Demographics kind of. She can get really specific and almost psychological with it and used to try to talk villains down but she's squishy so after she lost the arm she joined up with me.
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- if she's free sometime to follow up on that thing we'd appreciate it.

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What thing?
asks Excel.

A thing about Endbringers. She can't get Endbringer demographics. I mean, she can tell you that one of them is female but not with her power.
says Correlate.
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Necklace paranoia thing. 

he writes Excel.

Yeah this is about how Eidolon got his powers actually. We think it's related.

he writes Correlate.

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She usually can't do an individual. If she's getting personal it's on guesses, like, "80% of villains have PTSD" or "red costumes are more reckless" or whatever.
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I want to know share of Protectorate capes who bought their powers the same place as Eidolon.

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Bought their powers? Really?

Uh, she could do "bought powers" but not "same place as Eidolon", I think? I'm not sure.
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That'd be a start. Thanks.

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She'll probably want cash.
Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah, can do. Some people pay for their necklaces. 

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So he gets an email from Damned Lies.

I charge by percent daily capacity and a 600% markup for anything past the first headache twinge whether it's useful or not, deposit in advance. Price sheet.
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He makes a face. He can afford a couple of questions. 

He does want to know what percentage of Protectorate capes, and what percentage of capes in general, buy their powers. And what percentage of people who buy powers are now capes.

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If you're not precise I can't guarantee the answer will be useful to you. Currently living Protectorate heroes? Wards and adults both? Do you want to count dropouts? People who were villains and turned? Etc.
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Living or dead, and count all of those things.

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Does "are now capes" count rogues? Dead capes? Retired?
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Yes. Actually, can you distinguish 'died getting powers' and 'died later'?

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As separate questions. Do you want to abort this line of questioning if I turn up results like "never happens" or ".001%" or something? If so, in which order do you wish to ask?
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Yeah, that sounds good. Start with share of capes who bought powers, then share of the Protectorate, then power-buyers who died buying, then power-buyers who are presently capes.

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Do you want an hour to think of other nuances or insertions into this sequence of questions before I start spending down your deposit on it?
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No, go ahead.

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Please note that my power invariably produces three decimal places and has never been observed to produce a zero in the thousandths place even in cases where the true value is extremely likely to be an integer. This and conventional Thinker limitations are my only known sources of inaccuracy.

4.091% of all people who have ever been capes purchased powers.

14.202% of people who have ever spent time as members of the Protectorate or Wards purchased powers.

21.338% of people who have purchased powers died in the transaction.

71.944% of people who have purchased powers went on to become capes. Note that this sample also included those who died and implies that 93.282% of survivors became capes.
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Thank you. 

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Pleasure doing business with you.
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He forwards to Lorica. 

That's honestly not a high enough mortality rate to explain why it's not more widespread.

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Whoever's selling could limit availability.



I think that question phrasing wouldn't turn up the results of a testing phase.
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Yeah. If the people selling powers are doing other stuff with the ability to give out powers, we don't have stats on that.

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It also wouldn't show any they give out for free. Did she count, uh, non-monetary considerations?
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'buying powers' doesn't imply 'with money' to me - I assume they extract favors, honestly, makes the most sense -

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Okay, but does it imply money to Damned Lies. And even if it doesn't how would it count "I'll owe you one".
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I can email and ask. Do you anticipate wanting to ask more questions, while we're at it -

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Could catch errors in the stats by asking how many of various demographics had trigger events.
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How much do we want to spend on this?

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Maybe don't pay for more questions right now, just troubleshoot what she's got. If it seems related to the Endbringers later we can follow up.
Permalink Mark Unread

Makes sense.

 

He asks the question about whether 'bought' would include nonmonetary compensation.

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It includes exchanges of items with conventionally monetary value and financial instruments that do not imply immediate cash transfer, but not promises, unpriced services, goodwill/loyalty, etc.
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Thanks. We'll let you know if we need to buy anything else.

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You're welcome.
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He writes Lorica.

So the share paying in intangibles could be even higher. And definitely an organization, that's a lot of people.

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Depending on powers it could be a small organization but yeah.


Do you think she could detect population incidence of being from other worlds.
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Probably. Seems like an easier category to work with than 'bought powers', really.

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Probably yeah. If there's any others like you that seems worth knowing but it's maybe not urgent so I'll see how the game launch goes and get another few suppliers secured for manufacturing at scale.
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We've got a month, give or take, until the next Endbringer.

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Were you planning to have this figured out before then?
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Not really but - we'd better be waiting on specific things we can't possibly get sooner, instead of just waiting as if that's cautious in its own right.

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I mean, we could assassinate Eidolon off what we know now (assuming we could actually do that) but he's EIDOLON. If we're wrong and he's not sustaining them then the attacks are worse. He's at every one. He's the next best thing to Scion and more reliable.
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Yeah, I know. And even if he created them it might be he can't stop them. But that's not 'if we're waiting we're waiting on something in particular', know what I mean -

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We could try talking to him.
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Yes. Especially if he doesn't know he might appreciate it.

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It could be a disaster in some way but I think it's probably the highest-percentage option. Ideally it'd be in a way that'd be really hard to trace back to us though.
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Figure out how to disguise an email really really well?

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I can't do impenetrable but I can do pretty well.
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Pretty well and sent from a coffee shop without cameras ought to suffice unless they're using powers, in which case impenetrable isn't sufficient anyway. You could also arrange for Rete to publish what happened if you were suddenly murdered, right?

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It has plenty of in the event of my death contingencies, yes.
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Then maybe we email Eidolon.

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On it.
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He paces worriedly all day.

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I have a setup. What do we want to say?
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We have sensitive information about the Endbringers, we don't presently want to explain what powers were used to figure it out, we think his power or something about the process of getting his powers created them?

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Okay.


Eidolon gets an email saying just that from a string of random digits @yahoo.com.
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This is an automatic response to your email to eidolon@protectorate.gov. Please do not reply.

Your email has been flagged as Spam and did not reach its intended recipient. If you wish to contact a Houston Protectorate cape, please send houston@protectorate.gov an email or call [phone number].

The Protectorate

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Sigh. Is the timing of the reply consistent with that being legit as opposed to cover?

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Yep.

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Rete knows how Protectorate spam filters work and rearranges the email to slide by, plus in a dozen other ways timed a few minutes apart to make it look scattershot. Tips her hand a bit but not prohibitively. The one that will get through is attempt seven.

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However it is that you got through the spam filter, this is an official email address and not an appropriate target for pranks.

He also sends Dragon an email saying that someone got something through their spam filter and she should perhaps look into that.

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It's not a prank. I'm not going through channels for anonymity reasons, which leaves your public contact info.


(Dragon guesses and asks her why she's going around the spam filter. Lorica says it's important. Dragon tells Eidolon that if the problem recurs she can tighten the protocols but that increases false positive risk.)
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Being anonymous does not make me less inclined to think this is spam.

He does not email Dragon about it this time, though.

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I'd be happy to provide more establishing details if you think this channel is secure enough or wish to provide an alternative that is.
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Secure against what, exactly?

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Eavesdropping. More for your sake than mine.
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Nothing's more secure than meeting in person.

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Not doing that is for my sake. I'm working off incomplete thinker-derived clues and do not know what to expect as a result of the conversation but have enough uncertainty to be cautious.
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Have a dead man switch. Have a hundred, I don't care.

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...she sighs and sends Fëanáro a copy.

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...I guess it's reasonable for him to be suspicious. I should've been reading his mind when he got the email.

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I could send him a bot but that narrows it down a whole lot.
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Not worse than going ourselves.

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I guess. Go for it, you think?
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Three weeks to the projected date of the next Endbringer attack. 

Yeah probably. I can go if you'd rather not.

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It's sort of ambiguous which of us is more expendable.
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Isn't it just. But I come back.

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With divine assistance you do not have.
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Yeah. - if something happened to you I haven't got a shadow, I can't go to the Protectorate if it was Eidolon, not much of anything I can do about problems after that.

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If they targeted you in particular, maybe. But they might. You and a bot go, and Dragon's not a real Tinker so she doesn't have a Manton limit and maybe she can make you a body? Stop in Arizona and leave her samples.
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- there's an idea. Yeah, okay. Or you can find a biotinker somewhere.

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Brings in extraneous people but yeah. How will you find a body?
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I think I should be able to hang around in place where I died and - notice one? 

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Is there a contingency for if I can't retain or acquire control of wherever that is?
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I could try to periodically wander but I think perception of time gets weird, so I might be wrong about how long since I've wandered.

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It's possible I could make some kind of osanwë beacon like how I made a radar screamer to get my dad in London but I wouldn't bet on it.
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Work on dimensional travel if it's not working out.

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I have no inkling on that but maybe I could get somewhere eventually. Okay. Do we need more contingencies?
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Uh. There are probably creepy Master powers he could get involved, if I act weird maybe worry about that?

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Okay.
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And they send a location in Houston.

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And he shows up there at a mutually agreeable time, ominous green light and aura of power and all.

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A little robot sits on Fëanáro's arm, with a display in a very very small font that no human could read if anything comes up.

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He doesn't read Eidolon's mind but he checks whether he could.

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He could not.

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Fair enough. "Hi."

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Eidolon looks at him. "Hello. I know of you."

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"Yes. I make the eidetic memory necklaces. I gave one to a Thinker who put it together. Found out when he complained to me that the necklace might have a side effect of inducing paranoia."

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"Put what together?"

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"Your power is somehow causing the Endbringers, or the organization that gave you your powers is causing both but we don't think it's as likely to be that one."

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"Organization?"

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"You tell me. I'm not even a cape."

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"What do you think you know of this organization?"

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"That's not really what I'm here to talk about. If that were the explanation then the Thinker would have noticed the same things when looking at all the other capes who bought their powers and the Thinker only notices it around you."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

"That's not how my power works. It doesn't do things while I'm not looking."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you have ideas for how we can look into it further?"

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"...I'm immune to precogs. The strongest precog we have on record can't see me. Who is this Thinker who found this, and what exactly did they see?"

(Was that a quaver in his voice? Surely not.)

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"Friend of mine. I want to be really sure they won't get into trouble. But they see relationships between events."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And they saw a causal relationship between me and the Endbringers."

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"Yeah. Said it could be the Endbringers caused you, except the timing doesn't work, or - they didn't piece this part together, I did - the power-buying organization caused you both, but then they'd have noticed it for all the other capes who bought their powers."

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"Do not tell anyone about the power-buying organization."

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"On general principles of conservativism or for specific reasons."

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"Both things."

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"If I know the specific reasons I can make better tradeoffs."

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"These tradeoffs have been made, by people who have known much more than you for much longer than you."

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"And who might not care about the same things as me. I realize that the world is ending, I'm not going to get in the way of anyone who's competently trying to prevent that, but I'm not going to blindly obey shadow organizations because they claim they're smarter than I am."

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"—I don't have time for this. I'll discuss this with people who should know it. If you have any more information you think I should have, now's the time to say it."

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"Nope."

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"Then I'll contact you again—later."

And off he flies.

Permalink Mark Unread

He goes home. 

Saw that?

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Yeah. I hope he has a good way to follow up.
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Maybe the mysterious organization is competent.

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I suppose that's not impossible.
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Not super consistent with reality but I guess there are lots of resource constraints and reasons not to act openly.

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Now I'm all paranoid. More-deadman-switches time.
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Good idea.

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Welcome to my stupid world.
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Some of the people are pretty neat.

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Thanks.
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He gets back to work on the Thinker necklace. 

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

Leviathan sweeps through Los Angeles and obliterates Monrovia.

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He goes, of course. Sits a safe distance off and instructs other people into or out of danger, tells the rescue teams who is worth saving. Eidolon is there. They don't speak. When it's over he writes Lorica.

They're dead.

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I know. Dragon has those armbands, Rete got one.
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Means we're right.

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And that the three of them coordinate or that even non-Simurgh ones have Thinkery powers.
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Yep. Bet it's obvious to Eidolon and his organization now too, though. 

We've got to figure out resurrection.

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I have no angle on that.
Permalink Mark Unread

Me neither. Maybe very very eventually.

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I could maybe do something where people were uploaded and backed up? I think anything else is too far out of specialty.
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There's no principled reason I can't do time-altering stuff including going back to get the information and do nothing else but it's - I have absolutely no idea how, I could take a thousand years to get it figured out. After the war.

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Yeah.
Permalink Mark Unread

Should I keep working on Thinker headaches or switch to something with more combat applications.

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I mean it'd still sell but if Shadow Org aren't going to address the Endbringers that falls back to magic stuff.
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Shadow Org might have just been gathering information. In which case now they have it. But I am not inclined to bet on institutions functioning. I'll do magic stuff. 

Permalink Mark Unread
Yeah.
Permalink Mark Unread

 

 


The Protectorate asks Dragon to track down the claim that they talked to a Thinker. She can trace the email to Eidolon all right but can't find any sign that they talked to any Thinkers with suitable powers. Contessa can't see Lorica.

Cauldron concludes that it is likely that Library Elf and Lorica, both known to have been exposed to the Simurgh, are compromised and trying to sabotage their best parahuman.

They can convince the Protectorate in its official form from there.

Dragon is giving Fëanáro a ride home from the Leviathan fight and redirects his drone.

Precogs can't see Lorica but her defenses on the house aren't anything special as capes go. She can be taken in her sleep.

 

 

Dragon lets him out on the roof of his library.

Permalink Mark Unread

" - did Eidolon say this was a good idea."

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"Just so you know, this drone now has an incommunicado sub-personhood instance and is basically a chatbot," says the drone. "It will self-destruct in twenty minutes. The Protectorate is of the opinion that you're compromised."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

"I'm not actually going to let you all die," he says, "but you would super fucking deserve it. Where's Lorica."

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"I don't have up to date information but I expect her to join you here soon."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What happens if we try to leave."

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"The city is guarded."

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"But it's worse PR to have just shot me?"

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"Nobody wants you dead. This is a safety precaution; it's not to punish you. You can live in your library and read all the books."

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"You know I can't."

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"I'm sorry."

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"....huh.  I actually get the appeal of being a villain. I was thinking it was fundamentally psychologically alien but actually it's just that no one in my world sucks enough to provoke it. Go away. Activate self-destruct sequence. Die in a fire."

Permalink Mark Unread

The drone picks itself up and disintegrates.

Permalink Mark Unread

He sits down on the roof and looks for Lorica.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

A separate drone deposits an unconscious Lorica on the campus lawn a few hours later.

Permalink Mark Unread

...everyone in this city is Simurghed. Sometimes this has creative and interesting effects but usually it just makes you prone to spontaneous-but-convenient violence. He goes and gets her and carries her inside.

Permalink Mark Unread

The drone disintegrates.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

Eventually Lorica comes to, woozy.

Permalink Mark Unread

Fëanáro is sitting on the balcony railing watching her. He's been crying. If she looks closely he's also been punching things until his knuckles bled.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

"What happened."

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"Eidolon. Should've just assassinated him - the Protectorate decided they think we're Simurgh-compromised after all. We're in Baltimore."

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"Dragon -?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Dropped us off."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well there go half my contingencies - I need, I need hardware. And a knife."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The computers downstairs mostly got looted but you might be able to get somewhere with what's left. I can look for a knife. What for -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Didn't drop me off with any stuff but they didn't dig out my implants and I have some very spare backups on those. Where downstairs -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is that safe, I doubt the Hopkins hospital's functioning normally. Second floor towards the back."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're not deep. I might want antiseptic - I guess I can at least look to see if there might be enough for me to put together into something that can read them without extracting them but it's iffy."

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"Can you walk."

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"Do you mean am I too woozy right now - yes - or can I still walk without them - badly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I meant should I pick you up and carry you down to the second floor."

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"Yes please."

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Scoop. He jogs. 

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"I hope my dad is okay."

There's a rolly chair available. She plops into it and scoots around investigating what there is.

 

"Fuck," she eventually diagnoses. "I need - I need more stuff before I can even get to something that can scavenge for further materials on its own - can you get into the walls and get wiring, is there maybe a breakroom with somebody's laptop or phone - or a coffee machine -"

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"There are lots of people stuck here I assume they picked it over - maybe not the coffee machines - I can do wiring -"

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"I can potentially use anything metal and - worked, not like coins - okay maybe coins but not very well - but electronics are best. You can tell where people are, right -"

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"Yes. There're other people in the library but not super close - might be safer to carry you around looking for things - also we should assume they'll notice and kill you if you try breaking out -"

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"I'm not thinking that far ahead yet, I just want enough tech to like, survive and bootstrap to wherever else I want to be on reflection."

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"Okay." And he carries her and looks. There's a broken copy machine and a broken printer and some neon exit signs and plenty of wiring.

Permalink Mark Unread

The copy machine is very good. The printer's good too. She takes it all back to the computers.

"Is this a good time for me to fugue -"

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"What do you want me to do if there's danger."

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"You can shake me out of it, if you have to." Sigh. "Rete used to be able to tell when would be a good time - but it's not gonna hurt me even if it's not."

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"Then yeah, go ahead."

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"Work'll suffer a lot if I get hungrier," she mutters, and she sets to work. Improvised screwdriver. Dismantling plastic casing. Prying apart chips and batteries and wires and sticking them back together in jury-rigged fashion.

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He watches, fascinated, and then tries borrowing peoples' eyes to get a sense of the city and options for food.

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There are supply drops from the outside world. They're not balanced very well against demand; there's lots of random things that the locals want less than anticipated like canned spinach and certain flavors of MRE that remain in heaps in the street. There is a lot of vandalism and random destruction, some of which is claimed in graffitic fashion by what are probably gangs, as though a slum grew to swallow the whole enclosed space. People move furtively and mostly in groups. Somebody seems to not be out of ammo yet; there's the sound of gunshots and screaming.

Permalink Mark Unread

Piles of undesireable flavors of MREs sound like just the thing. Once Lorica has a bot that can go fetch it. '

He wants to go home. 

He closes his eyes and watches through other ones and sings.

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She works and works. She doesn't have good tools; her hands are getting scratched up.

The other people in the library observe their existence. One leaves the building; others retreat deeper.

Permalink Mark Unread

That's good. They really don't want a fight. He wishes not for the first time that he knew healing songs. He fantasizes about assassinating Eidolon mid-Endbringer attack and Leviathan vanishing in a poof of smoke and everyone apologizes for being a moron. 

He sings.

 

He mentally maps Baltimore through other eyes. There really isn't very much enclosed space.

Permalink Mark Unread

And substantial portions of it seem to have been barricaded from within by the gangs or people hoping to deter them.

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And he can't do artifact design without a working computer. Well, can - used to, back in Valinor - but it'd take decades. He can probably jump the barricades. Or maybe Lorica will think of something.

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She's sure doing something. Put put zap twist grab put.

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She's not working on something that gets them out undetected. First steps. 

 

He searches for anyone with a view of the place where he entered Baltimore.

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Nobody is looking at that spot right now.

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Okay.

 

Singing.

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She snaps out of it, holding a three-legged plastic and wire horror that looks half-exploded all over itself.

"Okay. This can - it can't hold Rete, I need a lot more stuff to hold Rete. It'll scavenge for electronics and food and I can make it come back early, if you see somebody about to menace it. It will not work in the dark and it can't fly, or climb all that well, but I got it so I think it can open doors and break windows."

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"Great. Can it take instructions, there are piles of food in the streets in a couple places."

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"It'll try to go in the direction it's pointed in when I put it down even if there's obstacles, that's it, this is kind of -" She gestures at gutted appliances.

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"It's brilliant, I couldn't have gotten anywhere. Out the front door, then."

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She nods and sighs and heads for the front door.

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And they let little robot go and he summarizes the state of the city. "Could maybe announce to people that if they bring electronics you can make them stuff but we'd need a plan to handle security and we shouldn't assume you're the only cape."

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"And if four people bring me some toasters and a pager I can't necessarily make something useful for each of them."

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"I can be a movie theatre. If I've seen the movie, but I have seen several movies."

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"I could probably make what's left of one of the computers play DVDs if the library has some left."

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"Probably does. We should maybe have a long term plan first, though."

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"Yeah." She slumps.

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"Possibilities: secret organization knows, knew all along, didn't kill us outright only for PR reasons or because they needed Dragon cooperating and couldn't push her that far, in that case we should probably assume they'll kill us soon, can't wall a Tinker. Secret organization doesn't know and Eidolon convinced them we were Simurghed. I guess it's possible he actually convinced himself but I'm not sure that matters. In which case they probably don't kill us until we try something."

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"If Dragon thinks we're fucked - I jailbroke her -"

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"Yeah. Sideline herself for really careful checking at the least. I think Dragon believes it, I don't think she'd have helped them otherwise - maybe if Eidolon said they'd just kill us otherwise -"

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"I assume she didn't leave whatever she toted us here in."

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"Self-destructed. She'll probably kill us on their orders if they tell us you're inventing your way out, though, or that I'm providing commentary to capes I know in D.C. -"

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Shiver.

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"I'm so sorry -"

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"I - I don't blame you -"

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"- it's not my fault but I am the only person I expected better of." Hug?

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Oh yes hugs are a thing hug.

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Hug hug hug.

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"I was thinking 'at least it isn't London' but it's Baltimore, is this even better than getting dropped in Lausanne for you -"

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" - if the Valar ever do come through they'd look here. So there's that. But - honestly familiarity is overwhelmingly outweighed by how much space they left us - and how ugly a space -"

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"- I was thinking, like, trauma associations, you were here when she hit it."

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"Compared to being locked in a place that's - it's not nothing but it's not as important. I don't even have nightmares - admittedly that's because I don't sleep, but -"

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Hug.

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"It's sort of unbelievable that they think I'd find it comforting to be dropped back in my library - the Dragon drone said 'you can read all the books and be fine' - but it's really not - the most important thing - which contingencies are still in place if you're not dead and Dragon's helping them -"

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"- nothing hinging on anybody with Graph Paper still works - if I assume Dragon is hunting down all the Rete everywhere and our house is gonna be obliterated the one I'd bet on is Dad checking the backup in the air pocket. If he doesn't have his suit with him - and it'll barely be usable if they wipe the software - it'll wake up and ask to be put on the Internet. It's got version control up to date as of the last time I saw my parents, which was after we talked to Eidolon."

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"And it will..."

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"I don't micromanage Rete. Can't, everything I have to be sure it'll do is a thing I am less good at making it able to do. But I'd expect it to present our case to Dragon or maybe figure out how they're keeping Dad out of here and counter that or spring us itself or, hell, assassinate Eidolon, could do."

Pause.

"If Dad kicked up enough fuss that they killed him next best bet is my Toybox supplier trying to grab me whereupon I will owe her a shit ton of money but happily enough."

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Nod. "Anything past that -"

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"Depends on how much I assume Dragon is capable of finding all the Rete."

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Squeeze. Sigh. "I want to go check on the place where I arrived. I know there won't be but I keep imagining there'll be a portal and a Vala going 'we heard no one's allowed to leave this city and we didn't want to disobey local law so..."

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She leans on him. "It doesn't seem likely but if you think it's safe - maybe after we're more established -"

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"Yeah. If we can get anything set up for self-defense we can ask the locals for things and that'll make it go lots faster."

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She nods. She leans. "I'm tired."

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"There're some nice couches up on the fifth floor."

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"If you need to call back the robot wake me." She sighs and obliges herself to unlean and trudges up the stairs.

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"Want me to stick around or go read but make sure no people go near you?"

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"Maybe you could sing."

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He can definitely sing.

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Eventually she sleeps.

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He keeps singing. And borrows the senses of anyone in range and mindreads the guards outside the city in case there's anything about orders if he or Lorica show signs of caping.

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A couple library squatters drift closer.

The guards are mostly thinking about upcoming coffee breaks, promotions, or television shows, depending on their time horizons. One of them did notice the dropoff but doesn't know who it was.

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He'd rather not read the library squatters but if they have weapons he will.

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One of them has a table leg. The other one is unarmed.

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That's fine.

 

He keeps singing.

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Table Leg doesn't get closer, just pauses within listening distance.

The other one gets closer than that. She's a small child, maybe seven.

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- oh fuck. Of course there'd be kids, a whole city...

 

 

 

He smiles at her.

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She doesn't smile, just peeks around the bookshelf.

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Elf. Singing to a sleeping girl.

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The kid continues peeking.

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He doesn't bite.

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Eventually she tiptoes away.

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He watches through her eyes.

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Stacks. Little nest of scavenged miscellany in the corner of the fourth floor.

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Okay. 

 

He watches and listens and sings.

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The kid has some food and some bedding and has constructed a little blanket fort out of books.

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He keeps an eye out for Lorica's robot. 

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It comes back, dragging a pallet of undesirable MRE flavors and tinned beans.

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Perhaps he will turn a tree into a bow and arrows and shoot geese. That can wait on Lorica waking up, though.

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"Mrrg," she says, after she has gotten eight hours. "Ugh. I'm starving. Hi. Bot get anything -?"

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"Yeah. Does not look amazingly tasty but here we are."

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"It'd be way too much to ask that they drop nice food." She sighs. "Do we have a can opener."

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"We do not have a can opener."

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"Poor advance planning, supply droppers. I'll - figure something out for that later." She tears open an MRE. She eats it. She doesn't complain aloud.

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He has one too. "Can you do something for security, then we can go door-to-door and ask for peoples' electronics."

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"I don't have much left unless you want me to rig the library to explode, that'd be easy. Need to set the bot I already have to 'parts' and get it to bring more stuff."

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"That works. There's custodian closets on every floor with vacuum cleaners, if that helps."

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"Are they, like, nice vacuum cleaners."

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"They are not especially fancy vacuum cleaners."

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"I can maybe get somewhere with them but I'm mostly software I need computing hardware." Sigh.

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"Hospital. But we shouldn't risk it without security."

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"Yeah. So. Salvage run." She fucks around with the robot. "Point me?"

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He does. Just across campus.

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She sets the robot down. It marches off.

She leans on him again.

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"I love you. It's not the time, might not ever be the time. But. So you know."

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She does not seem to have a response available to that.

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He does not seem to mind. He watches the robot bump off and watches for visitors and sings quietly.

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"What do you mean by not the time exactly."

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"We have yet to save the world and are stuck in a Simurghed city evading a stupid and or evil conspiracy that can't be optimistic about the measures it has so far taken to contain us?"

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"But like is this recent- "

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"Not in hindsight. But I had other explanations. And a lot on my plate."

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"Well, uh, thanks for telling me. Now there will be weird romantic tension all over everything though."

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"We could just not do that, sounds stupid."

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"What concrete actions are you imagining correspond to just not doing that."

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"What sorts of weird romantic tension are you imagining?"

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"Like it being weird if I hug you or whatever."

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"I won't overinterpret things that are entirely explained by the circumstances, that'd be dumb."

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"I anticipate being self-conscious anyway."

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"Oh. Huh. Would you rather not know? I'd want to."

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"I would rather know, it's okay. I just wish I had my usual - wherewithal to think about it - finding something for me to write with is not a reasonable survivalism priority -"

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"Libraries actually contain lots of random pens, bet it won't take five minutes."

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"I feel like writing in the margins of back issues of Lancet or whatever is also going to present an obstacle and more importantly it doesn't work if anybody might read it and I'd trust you on that but journal marginalia are not defensible against random Simurghed people."

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"Does it not work if you subsequently burn it? - not Lancet but a notepad or something."

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"...yeah I guess that'd do it."

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He pokes around and finds printer paper and pen and a couple little peppermints. "- I might go give these to the little girl. Unless peppermints also help you think."

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"They do not. Please be careful that she doesn't do something Simurghy like get you to let your guard down and then shank you."

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" - yeah."

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She fusses with some of the wiring till she's sure she can get a spark at will. She writes.

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He goes up to the fourth-floor nest and offers peppermints.

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The child peeks at him from her blanket fort and doesn't come out.

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Well, maybe she'll take the peppermints. He wonders if Simurghed people have noticeably off thought processes but he doesn't want to read the whole city to find out. He walks the building looking for potential computing devices, goes back to Lorica with a couple digital clocks.

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"- oooh. Thanks."

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"Not much else though. Hopefully no one'll bother the bot."

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"Hopefully. I don't - know whether to expect people to respond to incentives normally here -"

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"I don't know if they're even still thinking or if - when she was singing it felt like she was just peeling all the me away - I haven't read their minds to check -"

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"They take the food. They find shelter. They'll have had varying amounts of exposure depending on distance. She'd have set them up different ways. Some of them are probably about like us and some of them might be all gone and I don't know how to tell."

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Shiver.

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"I don't know how to be really sure we aren't fucked up ourselves either."

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"We were within the bounds the PRT set. And they didn't worry about it until we found out about Eidolon, and we didn't make the connection, Correlate did, and he'd never been near her."

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"I mean, yes. That all seems like perfectly sound logic to me. The problem is that it would anyway."

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Sigh. "I remember all my thought processes before her. Unless it can change them retroactively, I guess."

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"Or your interpretation of them or whatever."

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Shiver again. "Guess we could forget saving the world and try to make progress on going home."

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"Unless that's exactly what she had in mind all along, it's not like she's known to have a blind spot around dimensional travel."

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"If I tell the Valar 'also no effects on the world that seem downstream from me' they'll definitely stick to that. Or. Well. All my memories are consistent with that interpretation." Sigh.

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"Fucking Simurgh."

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"Fucking Earth."

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"It used to be nicer." She watches her notes smolder.

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"I want to go home."

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Nod.

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"Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all but it was pretty and it was safe to walk outside and you never got into a drone to go home from an Endbringer fight and had it take you to hell instead and nothing was horrible and if it were it would have been competently handled and I could even take you back with me now -"

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"Now?"

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"I mean, when we were in a position to help save the world I wouldn't've suggested you come live in Valinor, you'd hate it. But of places to not affect the outside world -"

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"You can do worse than pretty and safe, yeah." She shakes her head. "I can't even blame Dragon honestly -"

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"I'm sure they were very convincing."

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"And letting us be convincing too would have been directly counter to - opsec." She clonks her head slightly against the nearest desk.

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"Still can't think what we should've done. With the information, I mean. Maybe ignored it and built something in three or four years that could stop them and - hoped he didn't come up with another one -"

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"I'm having occasional fond thoughts of the 'jump to assassination' option."

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"Yeah, I was having fond thoughts about Eidolon exploding and then I decided I - don't want to slide that direction."

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"Mmhm."

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Hug. Sigh.

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Hug.

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And he sings quietly and waits for her drone to come back.

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It steps too lightly to be called "plodding" but it does walk pretty slow. It comes back dragging a busted laptop, a phone, and a TV with the screen smashed.

Lorica takes a deep breath. "Okay. Defense. Are you thinking stuff we carry or stuff for here."

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"Uh, it's not really a area I've given a lot of thought. Being able to move around the city would be nice."

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"If we can get me a car I could outfit it nice but I don't know how traversible the streets are."

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"Car and a streetsweeping attachment? There are barricades lotta places but not everywhere."

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"If you can find that I can work with it."

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"I will look around." He closes his eyes in order to use other ones.

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There are cars, although none of them are in good shape and every gas gauge he sees points to empty.

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"Does it matter if they're all out of gas?"

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"It would be nice to have a little until I have the materials slack to do better fuel sources. If you can find an electric car that'd be best. I will figure something out failing that though."

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He nods. He looks.

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He can find a Prius within walking distance.

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" - yeah, there's one that way."

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"Can you push it here by yourself or do you need me along to turn the steering wheel and such -"

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"I haven't tried. I could probably do it myself."

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"In that case I guess it depends whether it's safer for me to park in the library while you have no way to get ahold of me or come along and be exposed to random Baltimoreans."

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"You're probably safer in the library - I'd notice if people were coming to bother you and there are more places to hide -"

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"You'd notice but I can't hear you if you try to warn me."

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"Right." Sigh.

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"I guess I could try low-traffic hiding spots till I make it into one without anybody noticing and wait there for you."

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"And I can hurry back if it looks like there's trouble. Not that I'd be great at fighting random Simurghed people but at least there'd be two of us."

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"Without my suit I am definitely worse than median and you can if nothing else pick me up and run."

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"Yeah. Okay. - the elevator's not working but it's still around, you could maybe hang out there and then they'd have to force the doors?"

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"...I'm not actually sure how long I can park in a broken elevator without fixing it. I find being around your average microwave stressful enough that the one in my parents' house has a little curtain."

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"Well, fixing it is fine too."

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"Okay then."

They are not accosted on the way to the elevator.

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The elevator is actually not even broken, just doesn't have a power supply and someone broke the overhead light.

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This does not oblige her to fix it. She waits.

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And he goes off to drag them a Prius.

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The Prius rolls fine once the parking brake is taken off. It's a little awkward to steer but he doesn't have to turn it many times to get it to the library.

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Great. He goes to find Lorica.

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In the elevator. "I should have brought a book in here," she remarks when she sees him. "Do I have a Prius now?"

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"You have a Prius now."

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"Cool. ...I'm gonna need tools, next run the robot goes on it needs to raid an auto shop or somebody's garage."

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"Makes sense."

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"Hard to work with my bare hands." They're still scratched up.

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"Well, it's not urgent."

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"Yeah. I can at least see what's in the car."

She goes and inspects the dashboard and pops the hood.

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He watches.

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"With some decent tools and what's left of the library electronics I can make it run. Without somebody driving it, because my fucking specialty. It won't be bulletproof though, that's almost all a materials problem."

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"We'll just have to take our chances. - if you can get a working computer I could try to design magic for glass and metal that does bulletproofing but without a computer it's hopelessly slow."

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"If I get enough laptops together I can load my implant-backup Rete onto a frankenbox and it can help."

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"We can go door to door, ask."

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"You think that's safe?"

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"I can screen and make it safer, and in the long run being without resources isn't safe either."

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"Yeah." Sigh. "Everybody else has to just live here with whatever they've got. If for some reason I ever give up on getting out I'm going to take over Walled Baltimore and be its benevolent techno-despot."

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"Yes, definitely. We can build our own little Simurghed utopia."

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She giggles weakly.

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" - really don't want you to wake Rete here. Though it'd solve most of our problems."

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"Because it could make magic things?" Sigh. "It wouldn't solve that many problems, honestly, we'd still have a hard time getting out - I don't think being a person would make it much better at most things -"

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"Make everyone in the city immortal and invulnerable, figure out invisibility, then we could just fly out."

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"We might very well not want everyone in the city immortal and invulnerable. - For one thing I am automatically suspicious of anything that could still have happened if I hadn't gotten you out of here."

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"Well, I couldn't have accomplished that on my own. And you could build in safeguards - invulnerability only while within walled Baltimore, that kind of thing."

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"Maybe." Sigh. "I don't know when to expect Dad to check the air pocket."

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"Well, I'm not going to be able to hazard a guess. I can keep listening to the guards but they'll probably be the last to know if anything's decided about us."

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"Yeah."

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"Once it's safe I'm going to take off my artifact for sleep. You want it?"

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"It probably won't work on me."

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"Might not. Maybe we can trade it for laptops."

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"Maybe," she says dubiously. "You don't anticipate wanting it again?"

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"I'm sure it'll drive me nuts not having it, I really liked not needing to sleep. But I'll hold up longer if I'm conscious less often."

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"- right, okay. I'll try it and if it doesn't work maybe somebody'll want it."

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He pulls it off, hands it to her.

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She puts it on. "Should I feel anything right away -?"

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"Not really, unless you were sleepy."

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"Not especially. We'll see what happens tonight. Where should I point salvagebot for tools -"

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"No idea, want me to look around for something?"

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"Yeah. I can get reasonably far with a set of pliers and assorted screwdrivers honestly but a full toolbox would be great."

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He hops between pairs of eyes.

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Garages, some open. Jiffy Lube. Hardware store, farther away.

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He picks out a direction for her robot. "I'm glad no one's been tempted to harass it in the streets."

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"So far." She points the robot. Off it steps.

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Hug. Sigh. 

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Hug.

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"I hate this."

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"Me too."

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"if Eidolon knows - if he's doing this to people and he knows -"

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"I - still think that's unlikely but if he does he's definitely assassinable. Morally. Doesn't get any easier practically."

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"It's probably harder, practically, if he's doing all this deliberately." Sigh.

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"Yeah, maybe he snaps his fingers and all three come running."

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"We should get lunch."

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"Yeah. Ick." They have MREs left.

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Yum. 

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Salvagebot brings back a hardware store pack of tools and a box of batteries and duct tape and a smoke detector. Lorica pets it. "Might as well keep it in operation long as we can before dark, send it for more food -"

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"Yeah, makes sense. Thataway."

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Thataway marches salvagebot.

Lorica starts fucking with the Prius.

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He watches Lorica, watches the bot, mentally paces the length of the city by switching views, sings, picks at his fingernails.

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The Prius is soooooo fucked with.

She comes to. "- okay, this can run now. We can't steer it but we can, like, make highly weighted suggestions if we hit the turn signal and we can still turn it off if we need it to stop. It'll avoid people if it can, more aggressively if the windows are up. Also I got the stereo working but it will select between various radio stations and tracks in the CD changer at its own discretion because my fucking specialty. I think I managed to make it like pretty music though and if I failed we can just kill the radio and limit its disc selection. How much does that help -"

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"- somewhat? I could probably be fine for three times as long in a pretty city of this size but I'm not sure what incremental prettiness does for me exactly. - thank you, though."

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The car puts on a classical station.

"You're welcome."

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It's getting late. "Maybe we can go out tomorrow."

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"Yeah. - I'm not, uh, as tired? As I should be? Still a little. If you want to sleep I can sit up with a book and shove you if I need to."

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"Maybe for a couple hours."

 

He finds a balcony with a pretty view. He sings. He eventually sleeps a little.

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She sits up with a philosophy journal and a robotics magazine.

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Sleep does not make anything about the situation seem better. Neither does breakfast.

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Before the sun went all the way down the salvagebot found them granola bars, potato chips, and assorted Hostess snacks, which Lorica finds slightly cheering.

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"In Tirion if you liked baking you'd just make things, by the hundreds, and set up a pretty little cart outside your house and offer them to everybody who walked by - people were so inventive - in the silver hours it was usually hot sticky sugary things and towards the Mingling it'd be savories but we didn't otherwise have the concept of meals -"

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"My mom likes baking but she'd get sick of doing hundreds of a thing, do Elves not have that problem?"

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"Nothing goes stale in Valinor, so even if you only cook for yourself you'd often make hundreds of a thing, all the kitchens and all the recipes are built for it. I suppose some people would but those people would do something else - maybe invent recipes and then suggest the good ones to the people who like cooking at scale -"

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"Even if things don't go stale surely they get cool after they come out of the oven?"

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"Unless you have a surface enchanted to discourage them."

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"Ooh."

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"I think magic might've slowed us in developing technologies, because if you want to make everyone's lives nicer you do that instead of doing the sort of things that lead down the road to computers - even though computers are a ridiculous benefit to quality of life and to our magic system -"

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"That makes sense."

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"We'd have gotten there eventually off the pure math but it'd have taken Ages." Sigh. "I was so impressed with Earth at first."

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"Computers?"

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"Writing. Libraries. At first I thought you wrote them all by hand but when I learned you didn't I was more impressed because you'd figured out something better, you'd made books abundant - currency's clever, computers are brilliant, the internet wasn't really publicly accessible in 1994 but watching it turn into something that was was lovely - I didn't understand how people who died forever could do one another violence but I triply didn't understand how people who had literacy could do it."

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"Violence was on a long term declining trend till capes started happening. But no, literacy didn't just -" She snaps sticky fingers. "- do the trick by itself." She finishes her Ho Ho.

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"It doesn't actually make much sense to assume technological superiority implies moral superiority, if you'd asked me why I believed that I would have said I didn't. But - still I was surprised that people could have books detailing all the mistakes you'd ever made and go right on making them."

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"I think education does anticorrelate with violent crime? - I miss Rete. I feel really stupid without it corroborating for me."

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"You're not stupid. But I miss it too."

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"Rete was - really good at all the boring and difficult parts of being how I like to be. It looked things up and it knew what to look up so I didn't even have to slow down my sentences. It could be polite for me in my own voice when I would've been gritting my teeth. It made my life, like, the well-designed video game version of my life, where all the annoying parts are ignored for superior UI -"

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Fervent nodding. "Being polite and reasonable is aesthetically correct but most people are blustery self-righteous morons, not being overconfident is really important but humility does not come naturally so obviously actual omniscience or as close as you can get is the most tolerable way of being -"

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Sigh. "I have a backup in my knee. Just need somewhere it can go."

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"Well, let's go knock on doors."

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She shivers. "Mmhm."

Into the Prius. "You should sit in the driver's seat, so you can suggest turns."

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"I have no idea how to drive but I suppose that doesn't matter." He sits down. "How do I, ah, suggest turns."

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"The turn signal is that thing. Flip it up for right turn, down for left, the car will ignore you if it thinks you are stupid."

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"I have access to more information than you," he tells the car, and suggests them towards the nearest unbarricaded suburb.

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It insists on detouring around one block and wants to go around the rotary nine times but otherwise obeys him. "Everything I make is like this until it's got, like, natural language processing, then you can argue with it," she sighs.

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"It's like a little kid. It's cute."

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"I guess." It exits the rotary. Here is the suburb they want.

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"Should I read people to check if it's safe."

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"Are you likely to miss anybody aiming guns at us if you just listen for it and borrow eyes -"

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"Guns no, capes maybe."

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"I don't suppose you can check for capeness alone. We have extra brain structures and everything."

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"Maybe with practice. I don't read people often, haven't tried."

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"- I'm not just worried about ethics here, 'you reading people's minds' is also definitely a thing that could have happened if I hadn't gotten you out."

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"- sure, but not more than 'me eating' -"

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"Yes more than that, she works directly on minds."

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"I'm willing to take my chances but I don't think reading them would do that."

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"Probably not but we don't know." Sigh.

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"No one was driven mad by a blog post or something coming out of Lausanne. But we can be careful -" He tries looking for senses in the first house.

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Somebody in the dark, breathing softly.

Someone in the kitchen staring at a water ration jug's level marker.

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"We should've brought goodies. By which I mean food and water." Sigh.

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"They drop plenty. The logistics are just lousy."

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"We could bring stuff around for people who're nervous about leaving to go get it."

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"Yeah. Once we have a good route to a drop site secure."

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He knocks.

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Kitchen person jumps.

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He waits a bit, then knocks again.

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Kitchen person goes down to the basement.

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"Think they're not going to answer their door. I could osanwë them but that'll scare them."

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"We could go in, take anything I can use with dust on it."

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"Have an opinionated lockpick?"

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"No, but that window's boarded up and I put my tools in the Prius, we could nail it back up for them."

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" - yeah, okay. If they don't come back upstairs." And he starts prying the window open.

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She gets her tools and helps.

She climbs in. She finds a TV and a disused DVD player and a busted printer and a desktop computer and a landline phone and a PlayStation, none of which have been used lately since the grid's not working.

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At least it's fruitful home invasion and robbery. He leaves a note. 

Tinker. Needed the electronics. Can get them working and will compensate you as soon as we do. 

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"I can't just get them all working, not like they were and not without anything to outright cannibalize."

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Can build working stuff he edits the note, and we'll prioritize security and supply delivery.

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She loads up the car. "Next house?"

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He listens.

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Empty.

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"Yeah, no one's home."

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She tries the door. It's unlocked. Most of the stuff inside is smashed up but she can salvage some of it.

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"Do you have a sense of how much stuff you need to work with -"

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"Loosely. More is better - I didn't have outrageous needs when I could just order what I wanted but improvising eats materials."

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"Couple more on this street are empty." He points them out.

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She takes stuff. The back of the Prius fills up. Eventually it would be hard to put any more things in it.

Back in it they go. It wants to go around the rotary six times and then it takes them back to the library.

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And they unload the car and go inside.

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"Any priorities before I get a good enough computer to run Rete up and hook it into salvagebot?"

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"No, I think that makes sense as a priority. That was way uglier than expected, I think I might close my eyes and sing awhile."

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"Will you be alert enough that I can fugue?"

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"Yeah I'll notice anyone approaching."

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"Thanks." She takes a deep breath and gets going on the loot.

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He closes his eyes and shivers violently for a few minutes and sings and gradually calms down.

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After almost fourteen hours Lorica takes an x-acto knife to her knee and squeezes out an implant.

Twelve minutes later Rete boots.

"You look terrible," it says. "You need to drink some water and eat something, now."

Lorica bursts into tears.

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Food. Water. Hug?

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Yes those things.

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Food. Water. Hug. First aid kit for her knee. 

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She sticks the implant back in and Neosporins the cut and bandages it.

"- I don't have any physical symptoms of needing sleep but I like really really want to sleep. The necklace might like. Half work."

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"- that'd make sense if it does both things your opacity considers physical and things it considers mental, and it's blocking the mental ones."

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"Yeah. I'm not sure I can fall asleep with it on."

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"I'll keep an eye on it."

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She slips it off and gives it to him and yawns and practically tips over into his lap.

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"Night."

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"Mrhmm." Zzz.

"Can you tell me what's happening, please?" asks Rete in a soft voice.

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"We told Eidolon that he was making the Endbringers. Thinking it was probably accidental. A week later Leviathan attacked the city where the Thinker who figured it out lived. Killed him and his whole team - and hundreds of thousands of other people, of course, but we think it was aiming for them. On the way back from the fight Dragon took me here instead of home, and they picked up Lorica and dragged her here as well. Eidolon or his associates told Dragon we had excessive Simurgh exposure after all. We scavenged for enough stuff Lorica could run you. We're not sure if it's a good idea to try to get out. They're probably expecting that and might or might not wait until we actually try it to kill us."

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"I see," says Rete, "thank you."

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He nods and closes his eyes.

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Lorica sleeps across his lap for nine hours, then wakes up. "Seems like the necklace means I have to sleep like - half as much," she says, looking at the time display on Rete's screen. "Probably worth keeping unless we can get something really good for it."

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"Yeah, that's not bad. What's the plan now -"

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"Rete, how good are you optimized for your new digs?"

It pulls up a graph.

"Fuck. Okay. Uh, I want to wire you into the salvage-bot chassis and the car and you can run around getting us stuff so I can make you more bots. Then you can handle supply while I fix what I can of the stolen electronics."

"Eat breakfast."

Lorica snorts and smiles. She looks at the food supplies and grabs something for breakfast.

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And after breakfast salvagebot.

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Salvagebot. Car. The salvagebot sits in the car and off they go. Lunch.

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"You know what would be lovely is a shower."

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"Plumbing's not going to be working but if we can find a house that's abandoned enough we could probably set up for baths."

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"Plenty of those houses were abandoned enough but they're also intolerable. Maybe one of the campus buildings."

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"Hardware store might have tubs."

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"Works for me." Sigh. "We can scavenge more in the meantime."

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"It will go so much faster with Rete. Show us what you got, bot."

Rete's screen displays a feed of salvagebot's visuals. It is collecting a wider variety of food and has been through some trash for electronics.

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Good salvagebot. "Kind of eerie how no one's, uh, interacted with us or it."

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"Yeah I dunno what to make of that."

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"She doesn't - she doesn't have a very long time horizon. Or why did the Lausanne ones act out within months, why not go everywhere singing and wait ten years -"

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"They all hold back, we know that."

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Sigh. "Because Eidolon needs an audience."

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"You think that's it?"

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"I don't - working from the assumption that Leviathan went for Correlate because we're right - Eidolon's power is to get whatever powers he needs. And if he needs to be a big hero -"

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"Well shit."

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"They're terrible enough that no one else can really do anything about them. - well, we could have, but. But they're not impossible to win against temporarily, his effort will often be decisive and always mean the difference between life and death for some people - and the fights are so visible -"

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"This does mean one will probably show up if we credibly attempt to kill him."

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"One or more."

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"More likely they make it look as much as possible like an attack, which means either one or they permanently switch to working in pairs."

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"- that'd be bad." Frustrated sigh. "We don't have an angle on assassination even without Endbringers helping. I can't do anything without a decent computer setup and years of time and I can't stay here for years."

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"Dad could get the air pocket backup any time."

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Nod. "If he doesn't, though -"

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"Then odds are we're stuck unless you can get us to Valinor."

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"If the Valar can't do it I don't know how I would."

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"Didn't you say they might just be dithering?"

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"Yeah. But if they're dithering they might easily dither longer than I can wait for them. I guess if you're still here you can tell them what happened."

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Nod. Hug.

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Hug. Sigh. "Or they might be there already. We can go check tomorrow."

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"They might be watching the space, I guess they can't read but is there a way to leave a message?"

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"If they're watching it they'd probably be watching it continuously. But if I left a note one of my father's advisors would know how to read it."

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"Can they hurry if the hurry is that we're stuck -?"

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"Oh yeah if they're watching they'll be here right away for that."

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"Okay. That only works if you go in person?"

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"Or someone who speaks Quenya but you had other priorities for some reason."

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"Did your linguist get stuck here?"

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"He's teaching at UC Santa Cruz."

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"Good for him. Rete can scout it at least."

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"Thanks."

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"'Course."

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"Do we happen to know how food drops are scheduled?"

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"Rete -"

"Tuesdays," says Rete. "Contents will vary depending on donors."

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"Depending on donors?

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"A considerable fraction of the dropped food is donated by corporate entities with surplus or slightly defective product," says Rete.

"Or if they think they can do something with the PR," adds Lorica. "There was this tearjerker fucking Coke commercial about it."

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"Please don't take it personally but I hate your planet."

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Sigh.

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He keeps an eye on salvagebot. At one point someone sees that it's carrying Poptarts, gets a rake, and snags the Poptarts; it is otherwise unimpeded. 

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"Damn. I like Poptarts."

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"I suppose we could put a speaker on it and scold would-be thiefs."

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"I don't like them enough to want them incentivized to do worse than steal my poptarts."

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"He seemed pretty nervous. I bet if the bot had said 'back off' he'd have done that."

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"Might've come back with friends or a gun later."

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"Yeah." Sigh.

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"We can look into that if we have serious food problems but we don't."

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"That's not one of the problems I'm really anticipating. ...there's a song for making crops grow really fast, I don't remember it."

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"Not exactly cropland anyway."

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"No but it'd be nice to have a garden. Humans are really good at food but not much of it tastes like it was ever actually a plant or an animal."

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"I have lower middle class tastes and Rete's takeout and cooking reflects that, you might want to try fancy food sometime once we get out."

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"Once we get out."

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Hug.

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"I don't want to discourage you."

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"I have no idea how a deadly allergy to being trapped works but assume it must be substantially psychological, I'm trying to be helpful."

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"It is, yeah. The same way that, like, phobias are, or shock is. Which means you'd think you can outthink it but I'm not sure exactly how."

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"Phobias you can do exposure therapy but that'd be kind of playing with fire."

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"I don't know if people can get better at it with practice. Melkor could forestall it but I have no idea how. I - if we had an escape route, even if it was stupid and ill-advised, so that it was 'we're making a strategic decision to stay' instead of 'we're trapped and waiting for them to find a pretext to kill us' -"

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"Remember when I said I could rig the library to explode? Exploding's easy. Wall'd come right down. We'd kill a bunch of guards and panic literally everybody but the wall is not in any way the problem here."

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"Thanks. That helps. The thing to look out for, for what it's worth, is gradually increasing adrenaline levels. Usually that's under our control but - not when you're trapped. If that admits of a medical solution that might do it too."

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"Wrong side of my Manton limit have you tried yoga."

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"I have not tried yoga."

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"...it's sort of the stereotypical thing out-of-touch mentally healthy people say to anybody with anxiety disorders or whatever, but who knows, might actually do something."

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"No harm in trying."

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"You probably won't get any benefit from the flexibility thing, you can probably tell your ligaments and whatnot to shut up and stretch however you want."

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"People do still pick up skills by practicing them. You have to know very precisely what you're doing to do things that way. But - I wouldn't generally consider yoga a good use of time, no."

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"I think the other standards are like... hot baths, Tai Chi... herbal tea? Massages..."

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"We were going to figure out plumbing anyway. I don't know if there's tea. Humans do massages? Elves do but I haven't seen that since I got here."

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"Yeah there's the like, amateur slumber party shoulder rub version and there's pros."

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"Maybe someone really wants to see one of the movies they were showing on the first legs of my ill-fated flight to Vancouver and happens to be a pro. You probably have better things to do than bot it."

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"Yeah. Kinda hardwarey. I had help with my suit, I had to get it from Armsmaster but it was still help."

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"I bet I have most of a year anyway, at least. It's not that small a space - super ugly but that wouldn't do it all by itself."

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"Once we have more slack in general we can pretty up bits of it. Library's mostly intact."

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"Reminds me of the Simurgh. But yeah."

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"We can also look for somewhere else. The books might be handy though, sans Internet."

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"And I know my way around and it doesn't have lots of people coming and going."

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"Yeah. I'm sorry. I'd be having a harder time in London."

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"Then I'm glad we're not in London. You have more leverage in this situation than me - honestly if they dropped me alone I'd just prettify a building and go for long runs at night until my heart gave out -"

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"If I were alone I'd probably just get jumped in the middle of the night - the thing I mean is not 'I'm glad you're here' but -"

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"- I'm glad I'm here. Well. I'm glad I got dragged to Earth, and everything else followed from that and I'm really really glad you don't need to worry about getting jumped in the middle of the night."

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Hug.

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Hug. 

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Things do not stay that quiet. There's a cold snap and a gang raids the library for books to burn; Lorica attempts to offer to get a heater running wherever they're living instead and they interpret that as a threat and manage to graze her with a bullet before Rete's nearest mobile chassis can shove her down and scare them off. Trying to return a functioning game console to a house gets the Prius blockaded for hours with the salvage chassis in it, although nobody manages to do worse than scratch its paint. The little girl with the blanket fort lets Fëanáro draw her out with candy and singing and then insists - wordlessly; turns out she has her tongue cut out - on sitting on his lap until he's going to sleep and then attempts to gut him with a letter opener and flings herself off the balcony and suffers head trauma and lingers for two days and dies. Rete has raided the hospital and two pharmacies but there's a limit to what it can do with past-date drugs and only the machines Lorica can get running again. (Lorica points out that if the kid didn't have a tongue the thing with the candy was probably part of a ploy to begin with.)

Supplies fall from the sky. They can get food reliably, a reasonable nutritional variety, and water, and, irregularly, other incidentals. The quantity of garbage and unhandled sewage in Walled Baltimore mounts; Rete can consolidate some of it out of their way but it's still limited to chassis made out of sewing machines and dishwashers and someone's Aibo. Nobody is ever convinced to outright trade for their stuff, but it's not hard to steal.

Rete takes things from the Visionary Art Museum - the prettier ones; some of them are deeply amateur and/or trippy instead - until Fëanáro can spend most of his time in a little art maze in a corner of the library, listening to music on the radio.

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Once he has a computer he and Rete work up something short and inelegant for Prius armor. He writes it to the glass. It's designed so every time he does it it'll get a little stronger, so he keeps at it even once the windows are almost certainly bulletproof. He keeps at it until he can no longer concentrate for that long. 

He has a hard time falling asleep, and doesn't wake up any less tired; eventually he cannot sleep at all, and asks for the necklace back. He gets restless. He paces. He goes up and down the emergency stairwells for days at a time, stops only when his limbs are all numb. His heart rate climbs and he can't make it stop. He startles easily. He starts experiencing muscle tremors.

 

He privately swears not to snap at Lorica because he doesn't want to snap at Lorica. He snaps at Rete; it doesn't mind. His resting heart rate hits two hundred beats a minute and keeps climbing. He doesn't control his body anymore but he's still aware of it the way a human never could be. He can feel himself crumble. He wrestles back some concentration. He leans his head against the cool metal of the Prius and reinforces the glass. His resting heart rate hits two thirty.

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Rete puts him on beta blockers.

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Helps a little. He reinforces the Prius body as well.

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Rete finds other things to try. "I can blood type you," it says, after dispensing some pills. "If you're compatible with Lorica you could offload some adrenaline, she can metabolize it normally, you could keep exchanging blood indefinitely."

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"'d be a bit surprising, we're different species. But if you want."

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It checks.

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They are not a compatible species. He starts having panic attacks triggered by gunshots, changes in lighting, sudden sounds, sunny weather, people moving around anywhere in the range he can sense them, and eventually nothing at all.

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Does it help if Lorica hugs him or not.

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Not especially. But he doesn't snap at her.

 

He gets delirious. He alternates between crying that he wants to go home and telling Lorica angrily that she's not his mother. Eventually Rete's current scavenged-medication cocktail seems to stabilize him, sort of.

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It's not a very stable stable.

Lorica has enough parts that she and Rete can make do without him. They effectively have been for a while.

"If I come back sometime with a body for you try to find it," she says.

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"Kill him."

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She hugs him.

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"Stupid horrible world."