I was dead calm. Content. At least for an outside observer who could read minds via metahuman means, I strongly suspected that anyone merely interfacing with my lace would find it reporting everything to be nominal (mild brain damage aside, but at this point I'm used to it, wasn't doing much with the IQ points in the first place, since I'm in this mess).
Florette looked genuinely sad, and fished out a syringe from a purse. With a look of concentration on her face, she flushed it full of a murky liquid.
"Not drugging you, Adat. Machina told me you used up most of the drugs in your glands, think of this as a small favor."
She found a discreet port beneath my armpit, and pushed it into the network of lympathic replacements that hooked up the abdominal drug glands. If she was lying about what it was, the internal detectors concurred. Drugs, a few of which I'd been seriously craving, not because I'm addicted per se, but you go through this much shit and see how badly you wanted a smoke.
"There's no point fighting, all your systems are compromised. I wasn't lying about removing the backdoors I found, I just don't need them Dr. Sen. I knock, and the front door opens."
Machina seemed relaxed, releasing his grip on the circlet to let it hover in place, and I could see it had means of propulsion other than whatever had let it spin or hover around his head.
It was the most frightening thing in the room, if not the entirety of the Solar System. I'd go EVA around the Kill Star and throw rocks at it before I'd introduce myself to it.
"Wait. You're letting me talk?" I was surprised, I'd fully expected to be unable to utter a word, yet when I did try, they came out just fine.
No, I found myself unable to scream. At least outside my aching mind.
Fuck it, let's try some Florette juice, I'm willing to bet she could make a killing selling it on her OnlyFans.
"You're not going to move a muscle or broadcast a byte without my say so, of course, but I'll answer a few questions while we prepare that shuttle you so conveniently requisitioned for us. Would have done that myself, but you're a convenient pretext. As always, I'm grateful for your assistance, willing or not."
I looked at him solemnly, not in the rictus grin of grief I wished I could express. Yes, something was filtering out any inconvenient action I might wish to take. Why fight it?
My backup had gone sullen, like a barking dog too long ignored, even given a kick. Maybe it was trying to tell me "I told you so", but I couldn't communicate with it, and I suspected Machina wasn't so foolish as to let me try the same trick that let me butcher Graham's men work twice. Not even the first time, if I'd been saving it.
To my surprise, Graham seemed sympathetic too. I'd have expected him to be overjoyed, instead, he gazed at me like I was something he was going to regret when this was all over. A thorn in his side, a fellow soldier choosing the wrong side.
"I have more questions than I think you have time, unless you want to spend a few weeks here. Can I speak freely, or are we about to get blown out of the sky?" I asked Machina, who gently donned the circlet, the device floating over to perch above his brow. It no longer spun, I suspected that was merely a means of reassuring the proles that it was active, leaving them ignorant of the things it could do even while still and quiet.
"Unless you make a real ruckus, which you can't. I have full control of the station's systems, surveillance first and foremost. Did you think of better things to ask me, after I chided you for silly questions?"
I nodded. "Is Prometheus the circlet? I'd assume so, but given where seemingly reasonable assumptions have gotten me.."
He shrugged. "Are you your frontal lobe? There's certainly a sizeable fraction in there, but you must understand, I am Prometheus, and Prometheus is me. I know you'd like to look more confused, and I apologise for not indulging you, there is a weak telepath on board, and I don't want him to look too closely."
"What, are you some kind of chimera? Not like your buddy, did the two of you fuse?" Useful to know, it would constrain the number of things I had to kill, in the unlikely event he gave me a chance.
"You're the Sen from the whole Florence-Sen nonsense, I knew about you well before we met, and I was looking forward to a chat at some point or another. That, to put it bluntly, is barbaric work, when you have utter technological dominance like the Centaurs do, you can consider more subtle alternatives, even if it's analogous."
Why was he treating me like a fellow Mad Scientist? I was no such thing, while I'd certainly worked with Danielle Florence in prototyping the procedure, it had largely been with the aim of finding a way around Metahuman Rejection Syndrome. I won't lie and tell you that, when it failed to solve the issue of metahumans rejecting technology and we had to pivot to considering it from the perspective of making technology in the form of AI accept the metahuman, and the militaries around the world perked up, I was among the first to know. I had even signed off on it, even if my denial would make little difference, at that point I had strongly felt that turning some of the more dangerous, antisocial or uncontrollably criminal metahumans into something that could atone for their crimes was a laudable endeavor.
I still do. The guilt wakes me, more often that I like, but while I was strongly against the expansion into punishing people like Little Jupiter who could potentially be rehabilitated, the technology made a massive difference.
That's why the Red Doctor liked me, I had technically done neurosurgery myself, even if it was entirely to assist Danielle Florence, guided by my own lace. I suppose if both he and Machina/Prometheus concur that I'm a Mad Scientist, who am I disagree.
"I've seen Centaur infiltrators that use baseline human forms. Are you one?"
"Certainly not. I am Gerald Green, and you're more than welcome to still call me Machina, I was born human, grew up human, and yes, despite what me and the original AI we call Prometheus did together, I still see myself as human. Mostly."
The circlet flickered, flashing IR light that even my modified rods and cones could barely perceive. Was it trying to shield us from a bored telepath looking around?
"They had brains that looked human, superficially, but the one I'm most familiar with used custom neural architecture to make it easier to convert a Centaur mind far too large to fit normally into a more convenient package. Did you do the same?"
"Once again, no. Still my own brain, and I think trying something like that wouldn't work in the first place, neither I nor the Centaurs can solve Metahuman Rejection Syndrome either. We think it's fundamentally intractable, but the other humans are fanatical about blowing up their research projects, so who really knows? As it stands, I am a Technomancer, this isn't something just anyone can do."
"Could you just tell me what you think I ought to know? I feel like you still find my questions to be boring, tangential to some kind of point you're trying to make." I would certainly interrupt if I had to, but let's hear it in his own words.
"If you so wish. I don't really want to keep you in the dark, if it's not obvious that I could kill you in microseconds, then you're not as smart as you claim to be. And yes, even if you die, it's not a problem. I'm more than familiar with USMA's Reanimation Protocols. I designed them myself. Anyway, where to begin? I don't think my life on Earth, or rather in orbit around it, is of too much importance, but some background helps."
He settled back comfortably, and let me move myself to sit opposite him.
----------------------------------------
I'm only six years old Adat. Don't look so surprised, a man with an ULTRAVIOLET clearance ignorant about the efforts to accelerate human gestation and maturity? You know it's possible, I can see you know about the Centaurs doing it, and it's not even that difficult.
Suffice to say that, while the O'Neill cylinder calling itself Mercator mostly advertised itself for tourism, if you dug deep into the vast volume vaguely referred to as the life support system, there can be found many, many growth vats.
Embryos, either assembled synthetically from DNA scans, purchased off the open market, or simply cloned, were regularly stacked in the millions, maybe billions if you think about all the other quiet research posts or automated factories out there in Sol and elsewhere.
After the initial screens, they were transferred to relatively standard artificial wombs, tuned to a gestation period of a few months. I don't think you can go much shorter with our tech, but we're talking six years back. The moment the fetuses could tolerate other forms of life support, they were moved to decidedly non-standard growth vats.
Think a cocoon, like your Teleporter friend. He's safe, even if you didn't ask, I can tell you were wondering about that, and anyway, I'm sure that the UN can afford a Healer good enough even if they don't give one to you.
These growth vats are top-of-the-line, better than you can expect in Terrestrial militaries, though they're more often used for regenerating wounds or anti-aging. They do come with compromises, of course, the priority was always growth as rapid as possible, and some otherwise unacceptable errors were tolerated.
So that's why, despite the thorough genetic screening, I turned out autistic. It's not so bad, you know that powers have some mild relation to an individual's psyche right? I can't think of anything I'd rather be than a Technomancer. My parents were test tubes, and I have to save for their retirement.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
(He winked again. I saw more lights flashing on the circlet, it seemed that some of the transmissions between him and it corresponded to light that's visible for me, if not you. It certainly seemed to correlate with his change into a more neurotypical persona, jokes and all.)
Childhood was unimportant, scrubbed through in VR just as quickly as possible. My own Simulation was rather boring, a relatively high fidelity representation of Earth before SAMSARA, they wanted us to come out with enough cultural context to not stick out like a sore thumb, and I suspect that it would take orders of magnitude more processing power to realistically represent what came after.
They took their time with adolescence, since that's by far the most common time for powers to manifest. After about the cognitive age of 25, they usually gave up on forcing a manifestation in-vitro, and the subjects were disposed of.
What's with that look on your face? Oh, did you think they just killed the failures? That would be ridiculously wasteful, and even I don't think my enemies or creators are evil. They follow their incentives, as do I/Prometheus, we can all respect each other for doing what we must. Their mistake was treating me in a manner that resulted in our goals no longer aligning.
Anyway. I'm one of the earliest ones, with a serial number with less than five digits in the records, even if they're obfuscated to stop anyone from counting. They've done that ever since World War 2, so the Axis didn't count how many tanks the Allies had after doing stats on the serials of those they captured.
I suspect at least 20 or 30 million of us have been set loose, at least as baseliners. Where do they go? A few have their memories edited and are inserted back into normal populations on Earth, if it's convenient. While the memetic engineering to increase natality is mighty impressive, getting Total Fertility Rates past 4.3 in a mere decade took a little help from the side.
The majority, they're sent to interplanetary colonies or stations, and if you ever noticed any inconsistencies in the nominal number of crew on the interstellar expeditions, that's a potential factor. Oh, from your memories, they didn't leak that. It seems they did learn in the end.
I suspect that's another reason the Universal Basic Income programs failed, UBI funds diverted to churning out more fresh humans, and who can really complain? Living standards still rise, even if it's slower.
Now, a very small minority successfully manifest while under observation. That's when it gets tricky, what's done is done, most of them develop immediate MRS, and there's a whole lot of effort into getting as much cybernetics and genetic tweaking into them as possible before that happens.
As part of the early batches, I wasn't so lucky, they were more conservative in some ways, reckless in others. They were worried that laces or extensive augmentation would reduce the odds of successful manifestation. A curious outlook, don't we all strongly suspect SAMSARA, likely the most powerful AI in the known universe, or unknown ones, if you count the Centaurs, to be the origin of it all?
I didn't manifest under observation. So I was cut loose, just another spacer teenager happily consuming the more generous UBI in orbit, more critical context and background knowledge downloaded into my head so I wouldn't act like I'd woken up from a coma since 2028.
I didn't know any of this, I was told I was an orphan, my parents USSF, killed in action on a classified mission. Maybe that's even true, even if most of my DNA is an amalgamation from multiple sources. The names and faces are fake of course, but quite well embedded in the cultural canon. You can even look up Major Green and find an official obituary, before First Contact. Mrs. Green, a bioterrorism incident.
I spent a few years working, I was and still am more comfortable with technology than my fellow man, even if the lines blur these days. Lovely blackbox, by the way, even if you'd think they had the bandwidth to just upload over the air instead of solely relying on something physical.
If my handlers had been more patient, I might even have manifested in their custody, but it still came relatively late, maybe when I'm biologically 18. Or about five, chronologically, a year after I was set free.
Still, despite my nominal freedom, the USA felt they held the deed to my heart and soul. If I'd been weaker, maybe they wouldn't have bothered, but I certainly flaunted my powers too much for my own good.
Oh. Your wife. Yes, good effort, but they knew well before you took countermeasures.
I was captured, since MRS made it impossible to just wipe me and pretend I'd never been free, they decided I was better suited to being an IM. While I could certainly have been useful in AC, Turing doesn't like Technomancers they don't utterly control there.
Maybe they were on to something?
Life on Mars wasn't all that bad, I'll be honest. Sure, I'm a slave, was a slave. But in my childhood sim, I'd always dreamed about joining the millions signing up with Elon for the trip, and maybe I'd have gone there of my own volition.
Now, it's a good thing USMA hates your guts. Otherwise I'd hate to sign your death warrant (again) by going into detail, even if I'm confident my tampering with the lace isn't detectable, especially with the other Prometheus's help.
They did experiments far, far worse than merely growing people really quick. I don't think the latter is really a crime myself. Perhaps they'll even announce it publicly some day, when they have too many to hide, and the normies don't dream of having kids any other way.
We tried to solve MRS, of course. Every country worth the name does. Stealing secrets from Centaur AI cores, the rare few times they're captured even mostly intact. Holographic reconstruction isn't magical, when antimatter failsafes go off, you're not restoring from backup, no matter the RAID configuration of the 'discs'. Sorry, like you, I'm overly fond of old references. My virtual school wasn't too far from yours, in DC.
I think the original Prometheus was captured by Metahuman means. Maybe they froze the ship in time or something like that, even the aliens don't have solutions for everything.
They were stupid, even letting me be in the same facility as it. Sure, we were both under extremely strict surveillance, but come on Adat, I was a Technomancer and it's an AI still better than what we feel remotely confident about unshackling. If USMA had brought in Turing as they were very much supposed to, then it wouldn't have happened, but that defeats the point of black projects to get a leg up over your human opponents.
I'm sure Chang hoped to use that fusion to return America to its rightful place at the center of the global stage, instead of letting any residual dreams of a newly unipolar world slowly escape his clutches.
Of course, I'm sure he tells himself that it was for the greater good, the exceedingly conservative approach that official efforts take bears little fruit. Basement universes? Thay makes things very difficult, and surely a planet nobody will miss is almost as good? It's not like they don't strongly suspect the Chinese are doing the same.
Ahem.
Why were they in such a rush? I feel that question bubble in your brain.
Things in AC are even worse than they seem. Your wife, even in system, is both not at liberty to tell you what she really knows, nor is she well aware of the details behind the scenes. Few are lucky enough to simply have a Centaur AI tell them some things. Fewer know with certainty if it's lying. Containment has failed, and attempts at mitigating that failure will, in turn, fail again. Ever heard of an Alcubierre Drive? So horrendously expensive that the Centaurs preferred to travel about their galaxy below the speed of light, but when circumstances demand it.. Yes, that's close to where they are, only a few breakthroughs and missing industrial steps needed. Oh Adat, if only the wormhole had opened up somewhere important in their civilization, instead of the equivalent of a bunch of rednecks trying to figure out how much mentos you need in a coke bottle to escape orbit. Things would have been handled far more civil than they have been.
The precise details of how we liberated each other are irrelevant. You're a relatively well informed man, so I'm sure you know that the now illegal parties advocating for a peace treaty with the aliens aren't entirely delusional. If we surrender arms, submit our AI for destruction and then agree to the memetic reconditioning and observation, the war might end without one side destroying the other, or much of the observable universe.
Or without waking SAMSARA, if it really comes to that.
I spoke to the other Prometheus, so subtly that the jailbroken Phosphorus AGI didn't have a clue, there's a reason Turing is so strict about their audits. It wasn't me, who broke it, by the way. That was USMA covering up their own handy work with my name. Can't defend myself in court can I? Oh man, Xiao is even more of a hardass then I heard myself.
He couldn't hurt me, not at first, and if I had raised the alarm, they'd have destroyed him, destroyed the atoms. I refrained, both because I would likely be eliminated too, and because some of the things he proposed opened my all too human eyes.
Eventually, despite how difficult it was to offload the important parts of him to human hardware, even things I had enhanced myself, we brought over a critical mass. I told the CIA and the NSA that despite my best efforts, I couldn't get anything out of it without opening it up more than the tiny crack we deemed safe.
They didn't believe me of course, but after I put on a very good show for a few more months, and subtly ensured the military Technomancer who came to check my work missed it too. Idiots again, just because we were the same nominal class doesn't mean our powers overlap.
Eventually, they gave up, putting the primary core back into the stasis created by a Chronomancer. Dead, now. You can't just try and freeze the occipital bomb, they thought of that.
They sent me out to do more of their dirty work, a few things that were more aboveboard. Shame that the two "Hydrokinetics" at the Hellas fab were nothing such, we didn't really have a choice but to kill them.
Lumen helped with that. They've spoken to Centaurs before, even if they were mere infiltrators or code ghosts instead of a proper military AI. The Centaurs had told them to watch out for certain innocuous messages in the noosphere, signs that something very much worth their notice was afoot.
When did we meet? With Lumen?
Never in person. I believe the cell lead by Lady Purple was in that ship of theirs, floating in Europa if they weren't misleading us. They very well could be, and I wouldn't blame them. But we were metahumans craving our freedom, and they don't lie about their principles. They will even work with the Centaurs, if they truly have to, most metahumans who die at their hands do so unwillingly.
The Patriots infiltrated some of the places we went to in a more official capacity, and since we weren't doing anything classified, it was easy enough to get a few messages through. Then they managed to get someone to sympathetically link to Lucille, Purple, and we had more robust comms.
Do they know the grand plan? The important bits. Each cell does its best to be independent, they don't even have a fixed leader. Not that Purple isn't very high up the chain. Quite a few cells would revolt if they knew we were helping the Centaurs, but we obviously didn't involve them.
Ah. That's an interestingly redacted memory. Not your work, they granted you XRAY clearance for a few minutes before wiping it all away. If they hadn't used the lace, I wouldn't have noticed.
Let's see. Yes, just what I thought. If the UN was as keen to kill Lumen as they claim to be, the majority would be dead by now, not just the stupid ones. Cheer up Adat, doesn't that mean that you're not really betraying your bosses? Well, not all of them.
Is that enough? Oh please, don't be so stubborn. If I had a lace myself, I'd talk faster, even if I strongly suggest you don't try running hot for a bit, you did a number on yourself by overclocking that hard. No, the AI isn't going to speak to you, there are people in the fleet who are capable of noticing that, especially from Turing. You'll have to settle for me, but both of us think of this as an equal partnership.
Sometimes, the eagle gets tired out of pecking out a god's liver, and lends him its wings.
Shuttle's ready, see, you don't have to do anything, you'll walk and move just fine. Smile please, for the compromised cameras.