“OK, so it’s sorta doing what I tell it to do now,” Anna said with her head tilted and looking at the potted fern that was imitating her for the moment. “I gotta be, I dunno definite about what I am saying. Like how I say it has meaning or something. “
She had changed back into the t-shirt and shorts she had arrived in after the morning’s activities, and we were currently sitting at a table in the caf. Honestly, despite Liam claiming everything was still a work in progress, he had been getting really good at this stuff, my burrito had the right mixture of distinct flavors and texture to it. Plus the smell didn’t seem to be putting anyone off, although that might have been them being used to it by this point.
“That’s kinda neat, it’s the opposite of talking to robots then,” I commented, she gave me a curious look so I elaborate. “They don’t care how I say something, or if I stutter, all they care about is the strict and literal meaning.”
She nodded then absent-mindedly scooped another spoonful of stew into her mouth, her attention still on the plant as one frond twisted in various directions while alternating between curling and unfurling. She paused for a moment then looked between the plant and her spoon a couple of times, then took the spoon by the middle of the handle and waited while the plant furled up its leaves. Once it was just a long strand of bundled greenery she offered up the spoon right near the end of the frond, a moment later it began to roll its stem back and around the spoon. Hesitantly she released her grip, the spoon stayed suspended in the plant’s grasp even as the whole frond dipped over from the wait.
Anna flashed a huge grin at me. “It worked!”
“Sure did!” I confirmed returning the grin while she had the plant release the spoon back into her hand. “How are you feeling? I know getting that tomato to grow took a lot out of you.”
“I don’t really notice this, I guess I’m not really making it do anything but move though.” She said thoughtfully while considering the fern, then got a look of concentration. After a brief delay, one frond started to grow longer, initially slowly and then it rushed out fast enough to smack Molly in the face between bites of her burger. “Omigod, sorry! Are you ok?” Anna whirled around aghast.
Molly didn’t seem the least bit fussed, breaking out laughing while pushing the plant away. “it’s fine, it’s fine! It didn’t hurt or anything and that’s awesome!” She grinned while looking at Anna speculatively. “I wonder what you could do with like a bramble or something? Those grow quick already and grab at people without you involved.”
I noted that while Anna looked flustered, she didn’t seem wrung out to the degree she had after the tomato. Maybe the complexity of the plant or how long it normally took to ripen mattered? Anna was still frowning while sliding the pot between our trays to the end of the table before turning the long frond away. Evidently, one incident with the plant was enough to turn her off it for now, I will admit the poor thing looked a bit unbalanced, but I wasn’t going to comment on that.
“Maybe later,” Anna answered, then changed the subject. “You two have a meeting in a bit right?”
“Yeah,” Molly confirmed then looked apologetic. “Sorry, but you will probably have to find something to do for a few hours, as it’s confidential and all.”
Anna nodded while looking uncertain, so I interjected with a suggestion. “Mum will be in today, so you could talk with her about me or the drones you are working on.”
She looked uncomfortable for a moment, then spoke quietly. “I’m not sure about talking to her after learning what she did to you.”
I reached out to take her hand while smiling supportively. “She really didn’t know, and was pretty upset when she realized herself.”
Anna nodded. “I get that but like…”
“I won’t force you, but you already know her a bit does she seem like a problem to you?”
“No,” Anna admitted with a sigh. “If anything she seems to dote on you.”
I patted her hand gently. “Have fun with it, I’m sure there are all sorts of interesting things about me she could tell you.” Anna reluctantly nodded again.
“What’s this about a drone?” Molly asked into the relative quiet that followed.
“Anna’s been working on props for a cosplay I was going to do, and we think I might be able to interface with a controller that would let me directly control some drones which will let us do something really cool.” I explained. “her progress has been really good but she’s still not ready to hook anything up to me yet.”
“Yeah because I don’t want to injure you if something goes wrong!” Anna pointed out.
I glanced at her with a smile. “That’s why you should talk to my mum again, she can make sure it’s safe.”
“Yes Sam, I will.” She responded with exasperation.
“Huh, do you know what controlling them is like?” Molly asked me curiously.
“Not a clue, we don’t even know if it works,” I answered with a shrug. “If it doesn’t we were just going to add a simple pattern or two and I would just use a remote to trigger them.”
Molly’s phone started beeping. “Oh shit, we gotta go. Come on Sam!”
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“Thank you for coming today.” Summers began as the last of the core team filed in. “I’m sure you are all roughly aware of what this meeting is about, but to make sure you are all on the same page, I will confirm that yes we will be laying an ambush for the Fairfield Foreign Item Acquisitions organization in approximately two weeks’ time.”
He glanced around the room quickly giving people a moment for it to sink in before continuing. “We have a few goals with this operation. One, disrupt their activities and possibly recover whoever or whatever they are using to fuel their portals. Two, secure additional portal devices, both to deny them use and open more possibilities. Three, secure greater interdimensional support, there are multiple countries and companies that we are interested in working with us to establish stable and productive relationships, aiding them will improve their confidence in us.” He leaned forward. “Beyond the objectives of the mission itself, this also gives practice at operating within other dimensions as needed. With the increasing scope of the role my superiors are letting us take, I’m sure it will become a regular occurrence. Wilson, would you mind filling them in with some of the background information?”
“Yes sir,” Wilson answered before clearing his throat and starting to glance between us and his laptop. “With Sam’s report and the news feeds we have started to get from Mech-tech, you will probably be aware that in the last few months, there have been an ever-increasing number of raids on US warehouses associated with robotics and automation over the past two months. Now, while we aren’t really interested in protecting the property of large corporations, particularly when they aren’t even paying the taxes that keep us operating.” He smiled up at us at his half-joke then sighed. “They don’t seem to have any qualms about disappearing anyone who is guarding their targets, knowing their modus operandi here I’m sure I don’t need to lay out what is probably happening to them.”
There was a grim atmosphere in the room, Wilson tried to put on a confident smile to break the tension but it was still a little shaky. “Fortunately, this does mean that they have been predictable. While those in Mech-tech are having a dreadful time attempting to counter these incursions, we can make use of their trouble thus far to strike at a complacent FFIA.”
“So far as we can tell, their modus operandi is to look through company reports and learn approximately when and where items of interest to them are moving, then use a mixture of public floor plans and infiltrators to scout their target buildings.” He paused for a drink from his mug. “The raids themselves are simple, but difficult to figure out from the CCTV footage without awareness of portals. They open a portal extremely close to their target, often amongst the shelves if they know specifics of where in the building their targets are. Then throw down visual-audio disruptors-“ I recognized the small cylinder he lifted as being the same sort of device I had seen on my trip to Guelph months before. “Before making off with their targets and anything else not nailed down.”
“Thanks to Sam’s research we can correlate the location of kidnappings in our dimension along with raids in Mech-tech. We believe this is sufficient to justify the belief that they are opening portals from our dimension and that Most likely the kidnappings are them going for targets of opportunity.” He brought up a slide with distributed markings of attacks each with a notation of probable clash association. “This closes a piece of the puzzle that was throwing out predictions of their attacks, as for our response…”
Wilson glanced at Summers who nodded to urge him to continue. “We intend to make use of their predictably to lay a trap, and we already have the bait thanks to an upcoming shipment for General Synthetics. They are bringing in a major shipment to their Tennessee warehouse on July fifth, and we found evidence of at least a few feelers from the FFIA that imply they are probably going to go for it. I’m going to let Mary talk about what we can do with that.”
Mary had already been hooking her laptop up to the projector, and a floor plan of what must have been a spectacularly large warehouse took over the projection. It was really more a collection of tightly linked buildings rather than a single structure, it must have been the size of a small town judging off the scale of the roads running through it. “This is the General Synthetics global distribution hub, we are only concerned with this part of it fortunately.”
Mary tapped into the next slide, showing us a tiny slice of the original floorplan that didn’t have anything to differentiate it from the rest. “Receiving bay seven, it’s high-security temporary storage for anything they are particularly concerned about. It has a combination of modern security systems and twenty-four-seven guards, but I doubt that would have been enough if we go off any of the previous raids. As for the bait, they are taking delivery of the control systems for a new generation of…” Mary paused to read her notes. “Rainer Constellations. Sam?” She looked toward me expectantly.
“Uh, probably automation for a factory or something, Rainer is a brand name for the industrial stuff General Synthetics does.” She nodded in thanks then continued.
“Since we can’t know precisely where and when they are going to open up their portal, we are going to run you two through a significant number of variations in the time between then and now, but there are some constants between them all.” She then highlighted a centrally located point in the warehouse. “Contained in a dummy box here will be… Peter and Katherine, what did you call it?” She glanced at where they were sitting on my right.
“Door wedge!” Peter called out cheerfully before Kat could respond, for her part she rolled her eyes before offering her own answer. “Portal maintainer is what our internal documents call it.”
“Right, to get around potential portability concerns the portal maintainer will be mounted on a modified combat synthetic frame that General Synthetics will be supplying.” Mary continued as Peter gave her puppy eyes that she ignored in favor of starting to tap through a number of slides, each associated with a subsection of the warehouse with marked locations. “These spots will have combat synthetics provided and operated by the states and will start obscured in containers, hopefully evading notice from the FFIA. And these spots are where the shipment is to be placed. We don’t want to give the trap away by disrupting their normal process, so we will be setting up amongst a working warehouse.”
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“As for you two, you will be picking up the night shift for the security guards. This gives us an excuse to have you loiter without attracting too much attention, along with giving you access to a safe house that you can fall back to.” She indicated a little structure with vision down the center of the stacks, directly facing the bait. “It’s primarily concrete and we’ve arranged additional armor.”
“After that, the broad strokes version of the plan is that, ideally, Molly disables most or all the raiders with Sam acting as support while directing the portal maintainer.” She tapped at one of the marked crates. “The combat synthetics will have local handlers and will aid as needed, since we will need to pass back through the portal, they will be used to breach rather than putting you two at unnecessary risk.”
“Once secure, Peter has volunteered to bring the portal device back up to maintain the connection from that side as the maintainer is only expected to work for a limited time.” Molly was leaning past me to frown at a guiltily smiling Peter. “He will be escorted by a local US forces team that will also be on standby nearby in case they are needed to help.”
“We are expecting this to not be a long stakeout, the FFIA has been very consistent in their nighttime raids, but this is a stake out, so you could be there for a week or two.” She finished her outline. “We will be going more in-depth on this topic, but do you have immediate questions?”
I raised a hand. “They are throwing those audio-visual holograms everywhere, right? How will we work around that, surely they would just put the portal where we can’t see it and then roll forward with those.”
She nodded. “Peter, care to explain your team’s solution to the problem?”
He looked grateful to escape Molly’s deepening frown. “This is something Drew has been working on, so we knew the concealers can network to provide better coverage. All you have to do is turn them on, they beep when they are in range of one another and link up even before being activated. Anyway, we can use this against them, we modified two of them so that instead of beeping they trigger an attached device that relays a warning to you two and any other systems we have hooked up.”
“Which leads into what you can do about them, we went back and pulled out the one we tore apart ages ago.” He was clearly getting into one of his lectures at this point. “We know they use small particles to project the hologram onto somehow, and Drew looked into what could break them. Which turns out to be simpler than expected, exposure to excessive heat, light, or a concussion will shatter the particles.” He then got a guilty look again. “So we uh took one of ours, turned it on, and then threw a flashbang in the room with it to see what happened. What do you know, it quite thoroughly disrupted the hologram, unfortunately, that does only leave us with one of those artifacts that have not been discharged or modified.”
“I believe that is an acceptable sacrifice, I said as much when you proposed the idea.” Summers pointed out. “I expect we would be able to replace them if we needed to between any the FFIA have and potentially through trade with the dimension of origin in time.”
“Right.” Peter acknowledged still shifting uncomfortably. “The idea of these things not being irreplaceable is still, uh new to me I guess.”
“Any other questions?” Mary asked, I shook my head not having anything come to mind immediately, and I guess there was a similar response from the others as she continued a moment later. “We plan to arrive a couple of days early to practice with the local forces and get to know them, but Joyce will explain that side of things more…”
The rest of the meeting was dominated by a discussion of the practical logistics, which gets complex with cross-dimensional travel being involved along with three nations (sort of four but our US would be in the dark for most of this due to their leakiness), and nearly a dozen different organizations when you count all the various companies and government organizations. I mostly just tried to passively absorb it all, it came back to things I could more directly grasp at the end though.
Mary unfortunately wouldn’t be involved past getting us through the portal, she was the closest thing to an agent we had left with our two trainees not likely to be ready to take on a problem without support. While it was unlikely for another clash to occur that soon, Summers was uncomfortable with the idea of having no one to take command of the facilities assigned troops or experienced agents available in case of either additional FFIA activity or something else. Mary also mentioned that she would most likely just have made an already complex command chain more of an issue, as she wouldn’t have authority over anyone in the other dimension including, technically, us.
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“Hey, Molly?” I started as we walked toward the Artifact Engineering section, Peter and Kat ahead of us animatedly discussing some aspect of the ‘door wedge’ as Peter insisted on calling it.
“Yeah?”
“Is it just me or are we giving the two new people quite a bit more formal training than I had? You had me out with you long before that point, so I’m surprised Summers isn’t fine with the other two holding the fort alone.” She nodded and looked guilty.
“Er, honestly yeah.” She admitted before starting to explain herself a bit defensively. “When you started on, things were kinda still ramping down, right? Well, between that and how little help you needed to get into the fighting side of things, I kinda just let you get into this by immersion since I thought you would be fine.”
My eyebrows rose while she continued. “Summers and I had some talks while you were gone, and while the… ambush.” She grimaced. “Wasn’t at any fault of you or your training, it was us not anticipating that would happen. It did show that we are getting more attention from both our government and our new opposition, and with us taking on more responsibilities and growing again.” She shrugged. “We can’t really just wing it anymore.”
“We are anticipating growth and while that’s probably mostly going to be focused on Orchard Ville since that’s where the portals are and we should be able to help, we aren’t going to afford the luxury of bringing on new people in a lackadaisical manner. You know the new guys are officially full-time too?”
“Sure I guess, I know we’ve been in for like normal workdays lately and I thought it might be like that.”
“Yeah, so the idea is basically that we get the summer to train them up so they become like a ready team and can train others.” She continued. “Summers super values us, but at the same time, he wants the CRD to not be dependent on us either. If we are away, like for this ambush or because of school, he wants them available for more mundane problems.” She snorted. “From the way, he was talking, it’s like we are gonna be his special forces. The guy trusts us to act the way he would want, whereas we might have to make compromises when selecting the greater agent population.”
“Huh, interesting.” I paused then asked my next question with a guilty smile. “So er, what exactly are most of the agents going to be for? Clashes obviously, but those aren’t as common and stuff like our trip aren’t going to be that common right?”
She nodded, not particularly concerned by my question. “Right now, the immediate thing we need is people for representing for the CRD when across in other dimensions, right now Ivy is doing that all but full time with the summer but that’s not sustainable. Since the portals are ours and we have responsibility for them, Summers wants us to have people that aren’t just figureheads he wants them to be people in our style as opposed to redressed soldiers or something.”
“We expect to see greater involvement in cross-dimensional incidents too, as we know the FFIA isn’t limiting themselves to just mech-tech and here.” She shrugged. “Not to mention that that’s just covering the org we do know, if the FFIA is here somehow then maybe there are others too. at some point, we can start proactively contacting dimensions too.”
I nodded as we entered the engineering space, Kat and Peter immediately broke from us to head towards the table occupied by the work-in-progress maintainer, where Alica and a couple of other people were already poking around in the large case, the knobbly football I recognized as the weapon fired at me just visible amongst a mess of other equipment.
“It’s not like we are lacking options of places we can contact either.” She finished with a snort while indicating the contents of the tables to our right as we continued toward the end of the open area where the imaging lab was.
“is there any process for deciding where next?” I asked as we turned right to pass beside the main work area towards the corridor beyond.
“Nope, we’ve been lucky with the ones we have directly interacted with have been receptive but I don’t know how long that will continue.” We followed the corridor until we reached one of the doors lining the hallway that had a general synthetics logo on a piece of printer paper stuck to it, with the label ‘Representative team space’ scrawled below it. Molly paused not ready to open the door yet in case it interrupted her thought. “I am worried about what will happen when they aren’t, particularly as Ivy will be at the pointy end for that.”
“Yeah, I guess she would be.” I agreed, then considered the rather inoffensive nature of our small spherical friend. “Er, can she protect herself?”
“Kinda, she can scream in people’s brains, but her telekinesis isn’t really suited to causing harm,” Molly said with a frown, then sighed. “Let’s just get off this topic and see how you’re girlfriend is getting on with Dr. Woodward.”
Putting action to words, she pulled the door open revealing the room beyond, I’ve been in it a couple of times to see mum before but it looks like her team has been settling in as it’s dramatically changed. It’s still roughly the same layout, four huge desks with power outlets on them equally spread out in the middle of a room. Not wanting to waste any possible space the builders had covered the walls with cabinets, shelves, and countertops, which had already given the room a bit of a cluttered feel. What was new was the sheer volume of stuff piled up on every previously open space, there wasn’t a clear spot in the room and that included the spare chairs.
The countertops at the sides of the room were filled with a variety of machines, small synthetics of various kinds intermeshed with computers and analysis devices. Any large enough spot between the machines had a cardboard box, some open and overpacked with equipment, while others were still taped shut or in the midst of being unpacked by someone on mum’s team. One side of the room differed only in that it had the combination of a mechanics toolbox and a watchmaker’s finest implements spread across a mixture of trays on shelves and the pegboard on the wall itself. A pair of guys I somewhat knew, but couldn’t remember the names of, were unpacking containers of mechanical computer parts into an open cabinet at the back of the room, judging from the pile of boxes nearby they had a while yet in their task.
One of the tables was mostly occupied by what I recognized as a humanoid synthetic transport container, its rather coffin-like shape providing a hint of its purpose even if I hadn’t known my sister is in there. Another table was filled with what looked like a mini clean room with holes leading to gloves on one side of it and an array of tiny arms visible through the glass front facing us. The next table was split between four computers with people at them and a work area that had thin wafers of crystal awaiting etching on small shelves with a couple of people I recognized from the mage workshop organizing the area. I was astounded that general synthetic had allowed two of their mages to join mom’s team, that’s probably enough to impact their output!
The last table had some unrecognizable model of tripodal mechanics assistant synthetic partially disassembled on it, the lower half was still mostly complete at one end along with the detached manipulator limbs, and the rest was spread across the table. The mechanical computer that would have been the core of the robot was taking center stage on the table, there was a rat’s nest of cables running from it to a monster of a ‘portable’ mechanical computer. its clean beige case at odds with the mixture of messy breadboards and the jade green of circuit boards laid out before them acting as some form of interface for the CRD laptop they fed into.
The sight of the disassembled synthetic was kinda gross, a little too much like a butcher shop. There was enough order to the scene to be not outright horrifying, but not enough to avoid the image of a mechanical Frankenstein’s monster being worked on. Fortunately, the attitudes of the two seated at the table were enough to blow away the stray thought, mum was excitedly pointing at something on the screen of one of the laptops while in some rapid-fire discussion with an equally engaged Anna sitting on a stool next to her.
The room was loud enough with the various conversations and the clatter of unpacking that I don’t think anyone had taken much notice of us entering at first, but Anna looked up as we approached a broad grin on her face. “They have some really cool stuff they are setting up here!” She said cheerfully while turning towards us. “And dr. Woodward said she would be fine with me bringing in the drone props so I can test them! Er, I think.” She finished uncertainly while looking at mum.
“OF course.” She said as if it was absurd to think otherwise, then got the hint of a frown. “I’ve already said you can call me Jess, you don’t have to be so formal.”
“Ah uh, it feels a bit weird to call my girlfriends mom by her first name,” Anna said sheepishly. “It still feels like I should be asking you or the other Woodwards for permission or something.”
“Come on Anna!” I interjected exasperated. “We aren’t in the eighteen fifties or something, it’s not like it matters they said no.”
“Nor would I want to,” Mum interjected with a smile before patting Anna on the back. “I can show you more later, so feel free to head off with those two if they have plans for you.”
I glanced at a grinning Molly. “Do we?”
“For sure! We have enough time to visit a couple of abandoned buildings before dinner.” She paused. “Wait can five fit in my car?”