I want to go charging in and just start in on the adrenaline of action over thought, but Tessa pulls me away from that level of foolishness.
“Penny, we don’t know the lingering effects of you aether injury, and the response crew won’t be in position until morning. Alaris just arrived on station and the shuttles are just being deployed.”
“Well, crap.” I’d really like a reason not to think too hard about my personal issues. “I also didn’t think about what I should be doing after this. I can buy higher level meds for our physicians, but what else can I do that a team of Sailors and Marines can’t do better? “
I can use my voice of command if people get unruly, I can shield and teleport, but not to the extent of a powered shiel generator.
“I know it doesn’t seem important, but just being seen coordinating with response crews will help. Seeing the Empress actively engaged in helping her people is something we have not been diligent in projecting. A reason the actors in government have been acting so defiant I imagine.”
PR is you answer? That’s what you think I can do better than helping.
As Naomi would likely tell you, this attitude against PR is exactly why you need to do it.
Buuuh. What would that even look like? I mean I do need to talk to old US Navy brass to see what they want to do going forward. Can I just have that conversation in public? Beside the gateway maybe, but not getting in the way of transiting refugees. Perhaps outside of the checkpoint checking for citizenship or contract agreements. Mmm, that’s not a terrible idea.
Seeing that as a show my face and shake hands in Bikini Atoll, I should plan a route to the other gathering points and do much of the same hey? If I’m going to be transiting around, I should bring my shuttle, bit that’s a week’s journey, assuming it takes that long for whatever this burning tingle is in my body.
“Penny, you are far too close to the problem. You can summon that shuttle from anywhere.”
“Oh, hell. Maybe I do need some rest, I forgot I carry that dimensional space with me.” Talk about good lessens on the difference between recovering aether levels and fully recovering. Benefit of this is that my new EVA suit should arrive tomorrow. Master Armorer Tennison didn’t convey much, but he basically said he would upgrade the suit to my uses, even asking Tessa for my armor usage history.
Left to my own devices for half a day is not my favorite, but I do take the moments to message Katie asking if she’ll be at a place in her vengeance quest to have dinner with me, and I message Jenna to tell her what we’re up to, knowing that she’ll be there for another three weeks or so. I don’t expect any type of immediate response so I continue to my other messaging.
I tell Naomi that I’ll be on Earth for at least a week, I ask Francesca if she wants to be involved in our response, and she immediately tells me that her efforts are better spent churning out food to broaden cheap food choices.
“Tessa, are you working tonight?”
“I would like to, but that would require I transport my projects to the Garden Penthouse.”
“Of course you can. You put extra equipment in there so I could work next to someone. By all means, be that someone.” Her posture and body position conveys reluctance and nervousness. A somewhat absurd emotion for an AI, but her responses have been much more organic since she’s been living mostly in that body instead of my brain. That gives me an uncomfortable thought.
“Tessa, are you planning to move out?” My extremities tingle as anxiety consumes me.
“It requires your permission, but I was going to ask to move the majority of my swarm to an artificial host. Obviously I would keep the necessary swarm to keep up normal functions and level-ups, and my symbiotes cannot move to a synthetic host; so it’s most of a mixed bag.”
My feelings are all over the place on why she want’s to move out, but I have been encouraging her independence. Perhaps she is anticipating my need to use more of my Multiprocessing ability, or perhaps she just doesn’t like hearing my thoughts.
I will be able to skim your thoughts regardless. But Moving Out would keep me less present in multiple processes, so much less desperate for input. I thank you for allowing met to become my own person, and this is part of that.
Yeah, I get that. I’m happy that you’re happy. It’s just that I’m feeling that my people don’t have time for me.
You also don’t have much time for us, Penny. We’ve adapted to protect our feelings as well. As brilliant as you are, and as caring as you can be when you focus, you just don’t focus on anything for long enough.
The part of that statement that hurts, is that I have never had much focus for people, and with all of this Empire fostering that’s coming up that’s not going to change. You get that I’m not consciously ignoring you right? It’s more of a conditioning from my childhood than something I’m trying to do?
“Katie and I get it. Katie since your tier 2 revival is having a hard time with it. I’ve disliked it since after our first crisis when you started treating my like a search engine. You’ve changed that since I’ve started getting sassy with you, so that at least is better” She turns to smirk at me. “Francesca and I talk often. She wants more of your time, and also a field search protocol for willing workers.”
“I thought we have a job board?”
“We do, but it’s on the Exchange and that’s not what kind of jobs people go there for. She wants and Empire Employment Portal.”
“Shit. Wow, that’s got solid potential. Cand we add a subsystem for that and add it to the que of prompts within 72 hours of arriving on Astoria?”
“The module’s not quite finished yet. Our local access network needs a plus up.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Hmm, I have a million square foot underground warehouse on Mercy, do you need server space or satellite coverage?”
I didn’t know I had the ability to shock Tessa, kind of cool to see.
“Ten thousand of that would be a sufficient boost for current and future endeavors. Crys-tor processing units and Corundum-silicate lattice storage systems would turn Mercy into the most powerful computer system Humanity has ever seen, and it would allow us to host an intermediate Exchange for local goods and hex-bit currency.”
“Wait, why do we need a currency exchange?” Not sure why I asked Tessa that. My wife and Mr. Mercer have more in-depth knowledge on finance. Tessa pings me the affirmative on that idea.
I ask my AI and then Francesca if they want to have an evening together, they both decline as they both have workshop business to tend to. I ask Francesca if she needed anything for her shop, and she replies that she sent a proposal for a T-3 sequencing printer to Mercer and that she’d appreciate a quick turnaround.
Lack of other purpose, I head to my spa with a walk-up bar, where I have installed Oslo, mark 2 service bot. He serves me a Whiskey Mule and I take a half hour to decompress in the spa and think about the way ahead.
Sustained refugee ops are going to be a constant thing for months. Housing, services and Urban planning are going to be huge in the way forward; but I still need the Astorian Forum to survey those projects. I need to make a ripple cannon for Alaris, and I need to figure out the location and access to my Vault. There are also several modules I have neglected, but I suppose that is the curse of advancing too fast.
Short list is the Rippe cannon and the vault. The drive uses a rotating set of relative time-space anchors for propulsion. Right now, that requires a bunch of wheels and a pass-off systems. I’d rather let that one foment in my brain before trying to process it. Next is the vault. It came with a vision so let us focus in living in that moment, that arrival in the mind space the wind, the hard sand and fine layer of rotting biomist.
A war of magical origination was fought here, by at least tier 5. Planet wreckers did this. I definitely could have done it, it just wouldn’t be this sandy in my version. I receive more from the edifice: it’s almost clean on the outside, no doubt from the sandblasting for centuries. I take off my mental shoes to get a grounding in the swirling chaotic energies of the planet.
I summon some void into a shield then a complete and concentrated vision of the memory solidifies in my mind, the quiet re-enforcing the senses I am receiving. Soon, the experience is intense enough to feel real, and the desire to touch the door becomes so ever present that I cannot help but think “I need to be there” and shortly after, “I need to answer the call.” Without thinking about it, I teleport to that visceral realty the memory is based on.
When my feet hit the sand I can feel aether concentrations trying to balance into me. The air is buzzing with aether as well and completely saturating my senses. The air is a bright white and tastes of camphor and the sand is blinding white and smells of a violently burning forest. Overwhelming my senses, sticking to the inside of my lungs and outside of my legs, I feel like this environment is trying to drown me with sheer power. Panic sets in and I start trying to wipe it off me and hack it out, making it all worse.
YOU DON’T NEED TO BREATH!
Tessa shouts into my mind. I hold my breath after I exhale and slowly focus on why I breath: to collect aether faster. Right now that is wholly unnecessary as this environment may be the only place that could cause me to mutate. With Body of Power V, this is a very improbable condition to be in. Now that I am consciously controlling my breath, I have a spare mind to focus on my surroundings.
The building that was supposed to be clean and towering, is just a blasted edifice half-buried in sand. The windward bank is pilled up 15m tall and wraps around the sides for a goodly distance. Guess I have some digging to do. I try to connect to the Exchange to get a shovel, but no dice. No connection whatsoever. I try and add some space manipulation to it but it’s spotty and flickers in and out, even with significant effort.
Shit. Well, I know of a thing that I recently discovered eats anything. I shrug my shoulders and spray a swatch of this aether infused sand with Nighmare Napalm. As it eats down, more sand fills in and continuously feeds the hungry black maw. Fun way to dig, if it weren’t ejecting furious amounts of aether as a biproduct. The idiot that I am, I’m standing next to the pit watching it devour without paying attention to my aether levels. With that burst I am oversaturated.
I try for a moment to bleed some of it off with spells, but is too late. The overcharge collapses to my chest so fast it feels like a kick and then my back starts spasming with crippling strength. Some popping, snapping and bleeding later, the pain subsides. I reach back to feel the bottom of some dense bumps where I can reach from the bottom and nothing I can reach from the top. I start pinching and poking the new lumps and it tickles so I squirm a little bit when I notice they’re not just lumps, they’re muscles. For fucking what?!
Focus up Penny, one of my other minds reminds me that if I continue to soak aether up at this rate I’ll mutate again in an hour. Fine, fine. Shoot more napalm, run away from the whole, see if I can shield some of this bullshit.
I paint the expanse with a heavy layer of napalm and scamper around the side of the building and erect a thick repulsive shield above and below me. The assault from the sand is furious and it’s draining my mana so fast. Sure, I can just recharge quickly in this environment, but just like burning through aether too quickly, charging too fast can be harmful and can also lead to mutations. Maybe a percentage shield would work? I think about configuring my shield to block about half of the ambient aether. It works to some extent, lessening the strain on my absorption processes, and also allowing me to redirect some of the bombarding energy back into the shield. Yeah, that’s manageable. Uncomfortable, but manageable.
Ten minutes later I walk back around to find the mound of sound greatly reduced. Round three then, I say to myself while making a conscious effort not to spray toward the building this time, and only spray in a line across where the base of the steps should be from the vision I was imprinted with. Fifteen more minutes later and the top of the doorway is visible in the pile and ragged depressions around the stairs area. Any more void, and I risk eating into the building.
Time to break out a rune set I haven’t made personally in over a year. I visualize the vortex runeshape and force it to manifest on both of my palms. I activate them from the side and in short order I create a billowing cloud of infused sand. I close my eyes and continue to sweep my hands around to where I remember the stairs and door to be and keep on vortexing until my aether is about a quarter left. I sit in silence with my eyes closed in a shield for a few minutes, trying to manage my absorption and focus on cycling as much as I can back into the shield without my body trying to store and then re-issue the aether.
I wipe my face with a short spray of conjured water, which evaporates immediately, and open my eyes to see that a cloud still exists, but it is much reduced. I trigger my shield ring and hope the thing isn’t overwhelmed by the aether, but provides adequate protection for my eyes.
Rounding the corner again, I see the clean building front from my vision, with the notable features of the coded runes on the two massive doors. I create another, smaller, wind jet to focus on cleaning out the nooks and crannies of the doors and runes.
Time to look at the vision again. I see the sequence and press them, but nothing happens. Do I have to embody the vision again, full experience the codification? Alright. Well, it worked on getting here, mayhaps it will work on activating the damned door.
I stand within arms reach of the doors and start overlaying the vision in my vision, then in my other senses, until my physical aether sense is triggered with a pull and a shaping of power. I form the first rune on the first position tile, then the second, and I get the message. I quickly form and deposit the runes as the vision requires across the two doors. As the last rune is formed, I feel the vision push power into the final rune until the doors begin to open. Repeating the action, I flood it with aether until a resounding crack sounds as the semi-welded doors separate for the first time in millenia.