#21 (Dizzy Beacon) [https://i.imgur.com/lPjbUoI.png]

Ikaroa stared out of the cabin window, willing the boat to move a little faster. She was feeling vaguely murderous toward whoever had decided to paint this submarine yellow; it had sent Kaito's already annoying propensity to make his points using famous quotations in a rather… avant-garde direction. When he started talking about "yellow matter custard", she'd finally snapped, and had left their voyage floundering in an awkward silence, even if making a steady clip through the more literal ocean.

Finally, the navigation system indicated they were close enough to need to start descending in earnest.

"I suppose you're going to tell me my great-grandparents went to a lot of pointless trouble hiding this place so well," ventured Kaito.

"Honestly, they could have just built it on Sydney Harbour with a big neon sign saying 'secret laboratory'," replied Ikaroa.

Kaito huffed. "The Meitagenans would have killed them on the spot."

"Yeah, but not for the sedition so much as for not getting into the spirit of things."

"Orcas," Kaito said, in such a non-sequitorial tone Ikaroa actually looked out the window expecting cetacean companions. "They're like orcas. All that intelligence wasted on playing with their food. And I never knew. How proud I have been. Proud enough to deserve Hell, and I'll get it, only the Devil has seen that living in anticipation is the greater torture."

"Oh, don't get mopey," Ikaroa chastised. Kaito nodded, and straightened slightly. Ikaroa, though, looked more troubled than she was letting herself verbalise.

As they descended, what little natural light there was to see by vanished, and the view from the window faded to black, supplemented by a 3D interpretation of the submarine's sonar feedback projected onto the front window.

Though the Movement tried to keep its operations as decentralised and cell-structural as possible, some of their activities necessitated a much greater degree of central coordination. Kaito and the rest of the leadership team dealt with this by maintaining no overall headquarters and moving around as much as possible, but for their scientific and engineering work, more equipment was necessary than would allow this as a practical solution. As a result, the Movement's laboratory had been built into a natural cave system about two-thirds of the way to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and though over the years the useable space inside had been significantly expanded, all that remained to be seen at the entrance was a natural, if rather ominous looking, oblong cave mouth.

Carefully steering their way in, Ikaroa manoeuvred their submarine round to the air pocket that served as a dock. Opening the hatch, they were surprised to discover nobody was there to meet them.

"You did call ahead?" asked Kaito.

"I did," confirmed Ikaroa. "But no-one replied."

Kaito stopped for a second. "That's odd."

"Nothing to do but go in and see, I suppose."

"Mmm."

As the natural cave gave way to artificial walls, if they had had time to worry, it was quickly dispelled. The whole place was a hive of frantic activity, with people bouncing around between conversations as though everyone was scrabbling to get a handle on a single problem. The two voices they were here to hear, though, were raised considerably above the rest.

R&D, while not an inaccurate description of the function of the Movement's secret lab, had come to be the customary nickname for the installation lately not because of its aptitude, but rather because of the larger-than-life personalities that headed the scientific and engineering divisions respectively: Rui and Darya, who as Kaito and Ikaroa arrived were having an extremely heated discussion.

"If you weren't fucking taking this personally," shouted Rui, "You'd see that the obvious Bayesian inference is that your shitty equipment is as fucking useless as the Kook who put it together."

"Dude, chill out," returned Darya. Her voice was raised to match Rui, but only in the literal 'volume' sense; the effect was rather like hearing a meditation tape blasted out of the speakers at a heavy metal concert. "I've run, like, a ton of diagnostics. Have a look," she added, proffering a tablet.

Rui looked like he was about to slap the terminal out of her hand, but stopped short and instead raged, "Run them again, and think of some more!"

Darya held firm. "The spectrograph's working, dude, I'm, like, trying to give you some space to figure that out, but you're gonna have to get there."

Rui kicked a table, sending various expensive-looking tools flying. "So it's my fucking job to sort this out, is it?"

"Guess it is," Darya said, lightly.

She bent down to pick up some of the scattered equipment, and, standing back up, finally noticed Kaito, who had been observing with a wry smile and a raised eyebrow.

"Shimizu-san!" exclaimed Darya, spotting him.

Rui looked round, mouth a little wide with surprise to see them, but his brow was furrowed into a frown. "What the fuck took you so long, Dino?"

Kaito smiled, but Ikaroa chided, "Nice to see you too."

"Am I to assume," breezed Kaito, "That there has been some urgent and confusing discovery that has yet to filter through to the leadership?"

"You didn't see it?" Darya replied, looking puzzled.

"You should try fucking looking up once in a while," said Rui. "Or you wouldn't have missed an explosion the size of a small nova just outside our sector of the galaxy."

"Oh, that!" replied Kaito. "I must admit I failed to interpret that as of significance."

Rui rolled his eyes. "Just fucking once in my life I'd like a boss who knows the first thing about science."

"'Those who are too busy can't be wise'," countered Kaito. "I admit it was a flaw, but in this case I was too busy not to underweight what seemed to be too bizarre a coincidence to matter."

Rui looked mutinous; Darya looked pitying, which was definitely worse.

Kaito shrugged. "All we saw was a bright light in the sky. It could have been anything."

"'Anything', is, like, exactly what it can't be, turns out," interjected Darya, who looked briefly puzzled by her own sentence structure.

"What do you mean?" chipped in Ikaroa.

"We just got the spectroscopy results," explained Rui, "and they make no fucking sense. Even if there was a star there on the charts, it doesn't look like a nova. Kook here won't admit that it's equipment failure."

"Dude, I'm telling you, my gear's solid," pouted Darya. "It's not, like, hard or anything."

Rui trailed off into muttered curses.

"Let us assume for a moment that you're right," Kaito said to Darya, "Are we to conclude that this explosion had an artificial origin?"

"I dunno," she replied. "It doesn't look like anything. Could be natural, could be artificial, but it's new to science either way. Human science anyway."

"Rui?" Kaito invited. "On the assumption that it's not a false reading…"

Rui, with what looked like a significant degree of effort and reluctance, gathered himself to think. "Based on the magnitude and duration, best guess would be some kind of plasma explosion. But fuck knows what kind of plasma."

"So not Meitagenan tech?" pressed Kaito.

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"Ask Kook," grumbled Rui. Addressing Darya, he added, "If you wanted to make an explosion that looked like that, how would you do it?"

Darya pondered it for a moment. "Like, who knows what weird stuff they could have been getting up to back then, but if it was just one of their normal engines blowing up or whatever, it wouldn't look like that. It almost looks like a quasar from the spectrum, but it's too small and way too close. Maybe someone was trying to use a black hole as an engine core, but that's, like, insane. Way beyond even the Meitagenans."

"Back then?" queried Kaito.

"Oh, yeah," explained Darya, patiently. "This thing was about a thousand light years away, like, right on the edge of the galaxy."

Kaito nodded, realising. "Of course." He scratched the back of his neck. "When exactly?"

"1776 on the old calendar," interjected Rui. "Over 250 years before those fuckers got here."

"Fireworks," mused Kaito. "Apt."

"If that history nerd shit's so useful," advanced Rui, "You tell me what fucking happened."

Kaito shrugged. "I don't know."

Rui growled. "Looks like I'm gonna have to do all the shitty work again."

"Don't misunderstand me," returned Kaito, with the slightest hint of an eagerness to impress. "It's not easy to learn Meitagenan history without full Network access, beyond their veneer of glorious conquest. However, if there is something that we need to know, we have ways to find out, though they're not without cost or risk." He pondered it briefly; his eyes kept darting between Rui and Darya. "I'll call sigint now."

He wandered off to find a quiet corner for a secure call with signals intelligence, leaving Ikaroa, Rui and Darya in a pregnant, awkward silence.

"Sup," Darya eventually tried.

Rui rolled his eyes. "Why the fuck did you come here, then, if it wasn't about this?"

"Oh!" replied Ikaroa, having almost forgotten. "We have a high priority project for you, quite sensitive." She looked around, warily, though the other researchers seemed to have pushed past paying them any notice.

"Everyone here's got top clearance," assured Darya. "It sorta helps with keeping secrets if you live and work seven thousand metres under the sea."

"Alright," Ikaroa agreed. "Um, now what I'm about to ask might sound impossible, but…"

"Fucking hell," moaned Rui, "It's fucking thankless, this job."

"But," Ikaroa reasserted. "It has been judged at the highest level to be of critical importance to the progress of the Movement."

"You mean Dino over there's got a bee in his hat about it," retorted Rui.

"Trust me," replied Ikaroa, "If you start to accept that's enough of a reason to do something, life gets a lot easier."

Thankfully, this sent Rui into enough of a rage for Darya to have an opening to continue the conversation. "What is it, dude?"

"I… that is…" Ikaroa had imagined Kaito would be having this part of the conversation. "Let's say it like… The Movement has acquired a double agent who is in a position to be given ascent by the Master. I'm sure I don't need to tell you what a potential advantage that could be, except…"

Rui caught her direction, "Except it's fucking ridiculous. Ascenters don't fight back. They can't."

Ikaroa's sinking feeling came back. "Can I ask… why, specifically, this seems impossible?"

Darya was the one to reply. "Well, I mean, Ascenters don't think like we do. They stick nanites in you, and they totally convert your body and brain. You might still look almost human on the surface, but you can't hang on to anything that the Meitagenans don't want you to."

"But why exactly do they stop wanting to fight back?" persisted Ikaroa.

"Because fighting back is fucking insane," replied Rui, bitterly. "They don't even stop you wanting it, they just make you understand that there's no way a revolution against them could possibly succeed."

Darya nodded. "You keep your values, like, your personality, and your desires. But the way you think, like, the way you judge facts to be true or false, or… likely and unlikely, you get all of that from the Network. And the Network thinks the Meitagenans are here forever."

"Fighting back just feels like some stupid childhood fantasy," said Rui. "We're just fucking kids playing makebelieve to them for even trying."

At this point, Kaito rejoined the conversation, pocketing his phone with a ponderous expression.

"The strangest thing," he said, not quite looking at them. "There's nothing. No record of the explosion in any Network database we can access. When you consider that it's been appearing in various alien skies for a thousand years now, that seems extremely implausible. Someone is very determined to keep this matter extremely secret."

"Which makes it the second thing that's happened to us this year that the Network failed to record," mused Ikaroa.

"My thoughts exactly," agreed Kaito. "Having dismissed one important coincidence today, I feel inclined to scrutinise this one with considerable diligence. I suppose it is entirely possible that the two events are unrelated, but I can't resist the potential advantage in discovering they're not."

"What potential advantage?" challenged Rui. "You sure they didn't take your marbles when they took your brother?"

"Rodrigo!" chastised Ikaroa.

Kaito smiled at her. "It's alright. As I think you know—" he looked round at Rui again "—it, it is actually something of a relief to be seen. But I believe any objective eye would agree that both events are suggestive of us having a powerful ally against the Meitagenans."

"Who exploded a thousand years ago, dipshit."

"Not all of them," interjected Ikaroa. "Not if they're both the same."

"It's not strong enough to abandon our other offworld objective," considered Kaito, "But our need for an Ascenter agent has just become doubly important and so rather urgent."

"I was just fucking telling Puppy here that…"

"Puppy?!" exclaimed an outraged Ikaroa.

Kaito spluttered out a hard laugh at that; an event so rare and welcome that Ikaroa forgot her rage immediately. He clapped her on the back. "I would prefer that one to Dinosaur," he squeezed out through his giggles, "But then, I would, wouldn't I?" He kept laughing well beyond what Ikaroa felt was the 'getting a bit weird' level.

"I was just telling her," Rui seemed to grind this out as much as anything he said, but Ikaroa thought there was a brief appreciative glimmer in his eyes, "That it's impossible."

"Oh…" Kaito wiped his eyes and gathered himself. "Oh, surely not. Not entirely."

"Oh well since you fucking say so…" growled Rui.

Darya, though, was more receptive. "What's your idea, boss?"

Kaito's unusual mirth seemed to have left him a little giddy; unbelievably to Ikaroa, he started singing:

"Hear me now, oh thou bleak and unbearable world,

Thou art base and debauched as can be;

And a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled

Now hurls down his gauntlet to thee!"

"Uh, what?" said Darya, wide-eyed and a little perturbed.

"He's saying, Kook, that it's not necessarily wrong to want impossible things," said Rui, looking quite intently at Kaito.

"A person may be possessed of perfect reason and still define themselves as such virtuously," explained Kaito. "Though I suppose Don Quixote is perhaps not the paragon of rationality I should have chosen to illustrate that."

"And you think that's me?" interjected Ikaroa, incredulously.

"Wait, what?" said Darya.

"She didn't tell you?" said Kaito. "It's Ikaroa here who will be subject to all this, assuming there is a 'this' at all."

"Puppy's a fucking double agent?" gaped Rui.

"It's a… recent development," said Ikaroa sheepishly, and left it at that.

"What sort of batshit crazy idea was that, Dino?" returned Rui. "Just how fucked are we if they think they have a spy at Puppy's level and they're not suspicious?"

Kaito looked at his feet. "I wouldn't describe it as an idea so much as a frantic improvisation. And as for how, um… 'fucked' we are, all the more reason to take a chance on a plan like this. We need help, and we should pursue even the faintest avenue of hope for that with all our vigour. Pessimism often looks quixotic when it reveals that extreme risk is your only viable road to success.

"And on that point," continued Kaito, "My notion was that the process of ascent might be modified to reinforce certain values, rather than just leaving them untouched. It is an interesting irony that we might use such apotheotic technology to install faith, as it were as an application, in a conscious mind."

"So, like…" Ikaroa was looking off into the middle distance, "You'd make me want the revolution more? Rewrite my mind so that I believe in our cause enough to fight for it, even in the knowledge of certain defeat?"

Kaito nodded sadly.

"Is that, like, ethical?" asked Darya. She turned to Ikaroa. "That'd mean, like, changing who you are as a person, on a deep level. Even the Meitagenans aren't doing that."

Ikaroa thought about it. "I don't mind. I actually… the person you're talking about turning me into, that sort of sounds like the kind of person I've always wanted to be. I never felt I measured up to that standard."

Kaito's lower lip curled, as he looked round to Rui and Darya expectantly.

"This is still fucking insane," said Rui.

"I reckon we could reprogram the nanites if we got our hands on some," countered Darya. "From what we know, it looks like a lot of their operation uses flocking behaviour; the algorithm will still be, like, crazy, but maybe not as complicated as you'd think."

"You'd still have to get her Network privileges or the antivirals would shut her down," dismissed Rui. "And if we could do that, we wouldn't need this shitty plan in the first place."

"Could you use the nanites to modify Ikaroa's values without inducing a full conversion?" asked Kaito. "After that, she could just ascend in the normal way, with our intervention virtually undetectable."

Darya held a very vacant, dumb expression for a while, though those who knew her would recognise it as her 'pensive' face. "It'd be heavy, but yeah, I think we could."

Kaito brightened into a wide smile. "Then there we have it. I have a plan. Ikaroa, we need to put a crew together. We're planning a nanite heist."