"Please, take a seat." Shen told me, hastily clearing space around himself. I did as he asked, experimentally prodding the soft couch. Back in the day, that had been a reliable way of tell if you were in a sim, especially ones skimping on textile simulation or soft body physics in general. Not that that state of affairs lasted very long, but in this case, my fingers couldn't tell the difference from reality.
Wait. My fingers weren't what I was now used to, having returned to their original flesh and blood form. I looked at myself in a mirror in the corner, and indeed it seemed to have reset my physique to something prior to any visible augmentation. That was obviously the case with Shen, since he wasn't a brain flopping on the floor.
I don't like entering the kind of mental projections made by Mediums or ESPers, you never quite know what you'll get. They could be indistinguishable from reality, or outright fever dreams. Worst case, they could just kill you or leave you catatonic. While involuntarily forcing someone into a mental projection wasn't a capital crime, it had some hefty penalties associated with it in most jurisdictions. At least with VR, any certified hardware is guaranteed to stop immediately lethal attacks, even if parrots are always a risk. Remind me to tell you about my work on sub-perceptual image fuzzing with Brownian noise to mitigate common-denominator Basilisk hacks, I didn't make any money off it, but it certainly saved lives.
Shit. When I'm geeking out like this, it's a clear sign I'm procrastinating on what I should be actively doing.
I can't think of anything more important than breaking free of Machina's control, so let's start from the top and work our way down shall we?
I tested the waters, and found that my attempts to baldly state my case to Shen or the people watching failed outright. To be expected, Machina would likely have rather killed me if his methods could be so easily subverted. He likely had root access to the flagship at the least, it would have been trivial to walk me to a place nobody would notice while hiding it from the sensors, and then just crush me or space me. No shortage of bodies in Martian orbit these days.
Then I remembered that one aspect of my cognition had been under my control despite him flaunting his ability to hold me powerless- I could run hot, ramp up the rate of my thoughts several times over.
I did so right away, feeling no resistance.
Shen had been staring at me as I had gazed off into space, and now it was my turn to stare back, my thoughts racing, his movements and vocalisation slowing down to a crawl.
This had an immediate effect.
"Doctor Sen, please don't do that, you're overloading Lieutenant Long" I'm not going to be obnoxious and represent that message as I heard it, drawled out over almost half a minute of perceptual time for me, trust me when I say the Long was loooooong.
My lace, let alone my brain, wasn't in the best condition. On the Agnimatajay, I had only been quick touched up by a Healer, thankfully not Florette this time, and she had immediately triaged me as least concern, slapping a virtual green sticker on me the moment she tended a few hidden injuries.
I didn't fully trust the internal diagnostics of my lace, but a glance at the clock suggested the reports of the speedup were accurate at least.
Normally, I could boost my overall cognitive tick rate by about 10x for a few seconds, 5x for half a minute, and on a sustained basis, about 50% faster than I could previously think, even if I find it more comfortable to just run at the same speed as most people when it's not strictly necessary.
This didn't apply to general reflexes, it was easier to hypermyelinate the nerves in my spine than in my brain and less metabolically taxing to boot, I had a reaction time of maybe 20 milliseconds to sudden unexpected stimuli, as opposed to the 150-300 milliseconds baseliners who aren't elite fighter pilots or athletes muster. Well, maybe the former didn't count anymore, they hardly train new pilots, but then again the few they kept around almost certainly got augments of their own.
And even the spinal nerves were more of a backup, remember that my augments can operate autonomously? For simpler functions that didn't need my backup neural computer, the reaction times were down to the millisecond, the issue being that just because I could respond to sudden threats with such low latency didn't mean I could do much about them. Seeing the bullet coming doesn't mean you can dodge it. In practise, for anything more complex than flinches, it was closer to 10 milliseconds for the backup to kick in, using the superconducting wiring or even internal wireless comms to get me hustling before my brain caught up.
Right now, I was semi-fried, I could pull maybe 5x for 5 seconds, 2x for half a minute, and straining myself to run continuously at anything noticeably faster than normal was enormously difficult. My neurons weren't happy campers, if you cracked open the dome my brain would be sickly pale and dotted with more punctate hemorrhages, worse than Shen's.
I had built up hypoxic damage, then oxidative stress on top of that from forcibly liberating enormous amounts of oxygen from my circulating nanites that performed a similar function to RBCs. All that fuel being burnt released enormous amounts of free radicals, and the scavenger nanites had largely exhausted their own antioxidant capabilities, letting the damage aggravate.
The very myelin that sheathed my nerves was peeling in places, losing their increased conductive speed. My neurotransmitter levels were completely out of whack, I'd have something akin to an MDMA comedown when I finally took the time to let it all settle, but I didn't have time, I'd been using experimental stims for days, forcibly maintaining a semblance of normality. Neurons were dying by the millions every time I pushed myself too far, and while the starting hundred billion of them sound like a lot, you can't just off a significant percentage of them without doing grave damage to yourself. Even if I didn't die outright in the biological sense, I'd lose myself, a Healer wouldn't bring this me back.
Maybe that's a price I would have to pay. I did say I'd die if needed, not that I wanted to do that without it counting for something.
Enough, this rambling represents my experiment to quickly check how Long handled my sudden ramp-up, thinking as hard and as fast as I could for a brief period, maybe less than 10 seconds real time. I already had enough, I could feel a ringing in my ears, and I don't even have normal eardrums or a cochlea. I relented before I cooked something, but with my enhanced perception, I could see the projection fray at the seams.
Shen's body contorted and squirmed, snapping between poses like an animator had drawn a few keyframes and barely bothered to fill in the rest. The image of the man as he had been before the procedure, or even his self-image after he'd been in this hell for several years, it was even more artificial than me.
His features flickered, flesh dissociating from bone for mere milliseconds, tearing open to show squirming tissue and a brain that shouldn't have fit in a skull of that size.
The environment suffered, even if it wasn't a particularly complex one, my hand pressing on the sofa tore through without resistance, snapping back into place and sending fake signals of pain stabbing down my arm. Well, when it comes to pain, there's no difference between real and fake, it all hurts the same.
I moved my arms, achingly slow in their sockets, to see my finger amputated clean off, before with another quick jolt of agony, it reappeared as if it had never gone missing.
The lights shimmered, almost psychedelic, shining straight thought Shen's gelatinous form and displaying a howling void that swallowed light before breaking into fractal whirls that shone so bright my fake eyes watered.
The laptop had been a fake too, likely passed-through from a real device somewhere, it was impossible for most Mediums to simulate their functioning beyond a surface approximation, the display spazzed out, jagged imagery almost forming something akin to a Parrot before it reset to a wallpaper that hadn't been there before.
This was all happening at the tail end of the ten seconds I'd stolen, and when I finally ramped down to normal, I found Shen staring at me wildly, shaking as he scratched at his skin, drawing beads of blood.
"No no no, this isn't-"
The projection crashed, throwing me back out to find myself paralyzed as Li reached out a hand to grip me with invisible force. Maybe it was her powers immobilizing me instead of telekinesis, but I could barely move. She muttered furiously in Chinese, my lace was complaining too hard to translate. She let me collapse nervelessly, and ran to tend Long, who was vomiting profusely, and then after ensuring he wasn't hurt, threw herself into doing something to the brain.
For the first time since I'd arrived here, I felt Xinglan reach out to me through my lace. I hoped whatever I'd been laced with wasn't contagious enough to get through such a low bandwidth connection as what she used, barely enough to transmit a voice that was simultaneously concerned and furious.
"Doctor Sen! What happened? Did you do that on purpose?"
Fuck me, I finally realized where the name and the face came from, my disjointed memories of the shared dream we'd run with Shen finally awakening again.
"I'm sorry! I think it was a glitch, I've been hit by a Parrot recently, I think something provoked it." I cried out mentally, trusting that she wouldn't spot the lie without a more accurate scan of my thoughts. I didn't think whatever Machina did would allow that in the first place.
"It's under control, but under no circumstances are you to do that again, you caused moderate injury to both yourself and Subject Shen, you're still able to operate at real time, so I'm going to move you to yellow on triage. I will personally debug your lace using an airgapped instance, to be incinerated later. I really wish I didn't have to interfere in the future conversation, but I think it's necessary for me to step in myself." She vanished, leaving me alone but for thoughts that gingerly coursed through my aching mind, and the jarring tinnitus like a beating heart.
There had indeed been support staff on standby, they'd drilled for this, or something similar, several men and women rushed in and began using their powers.
Someone stabbed me with a more mundane vial full of antioxidant nanites, that was going to hurt later, but it eased the throbbing in my head. Machina hadn't let me top up on the Agnimatajay, likely to prevent something along the lines of what I'd just done.
Most of them ministered to Shen, blasting the quiescent meat with powers as well as more drugs.
It was about a minute before the emergency was called off, and to my mild surprise, they confirmed I would be allowed to interact with him again, albeit with Xinlang stepping in in some unknown manner.
Luckily enough, the interface with Shen was designed to maintain some degree of control over his powers even if he wasn't in the right state of mind, so my little stunt hasn't just thrown a fleet engagement or anything that serious. My augmented eyes saw pulses of IR light similar to what I'd seen Machina use, directly switching neural circuitry on and off after they'd previously been empirically correlated to a particular power. That burst of 892 nm light, it made him ramp up in intensity, that short staccato pulse of 919 nm waves reset the range of his power to something limited yet more concentrated.
I got plenty of dirty looks as the others trickled back out, except for that morose man, a Sergeant Ming if my battered memory served me.
He settled down in another cocoon, plugging in an occipital jack, then grimacing before a weak Healer quickly dulled the pain.
Li was talking to Long, my lace finally switching its tertiary functions such as translation back on. To my mild dismay, it hadn't removed all the blocks Machina had put on me, but they felt looser all the same. Then again, he had root access, and had hidden plenty of packages that I had requested myself, it made sense some of it would persist between soft reboots.
"Take it easy. Use a recycled environment, Xinlang will be distracting enough that he won't look too closely. No need to warm him up with prep work, a hot start will do. We have those problems he was working on last time he was allowed to recuperate, with a bit of mental editing, he'll assume he's in a similar context."
Long nodded sadly, gulping a glass of water yet not uttering a word so far.
"Ying, did the amnestic and your editing work?"
A woman who was still hovering near the door responded. "Yes ma'am, he'll need more thorough edits later, but it's shoved into his subconscious, best I can do on such short notice."
It wasn't just me restricted from most electronics, the Bàdào was running as close to dumb mode as it could get. It had the luxury of doing so, last time I'd seen it, it had been nestled at the back of the fleet, guarded by several other ships capable of taking a blow in its stead.
What had the Precogs seen, that they'd let me fuck with someone this important? It must have been major, to get read through Lycosan's fuckery with determinism.
"Sen. In the first dream, you were introduced to his daughter, correct? Xinglan will assume that role, do not behave in a manner that will compromise her cover. Get him friendly, happy, suggestible, we need hard data while he's not resisting to keep the Reality Anchor calibrated." I could almost here the admonition in her throat not to fuck this up, but she refrained, stepping back into place above the vat.
I sensed rather than saw movement behind me, someone stepping closer unobtrusively. I half suspected they had a gun, and a clear idea of whether it was necessary to use it, and who to use it on.
"No time to waste, start ramp, Sen, remember to bring up the topic of Apotheosis, as naturally as possible." The Lieutenant told me, before stepping back to focus on Shen again.
I was sinking, falling through my cocoon and into hazy whiteness below, almost like a cloud truly made of cotton candy, sweetness exploding over my tongue.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
The world was a blur, speeding through more scenarios, streaking blurs of motion representing real people or imagined NPCs of a sort, the only constant the figure of Dr. Shen in the middle. I watched him from an invisible vantage point, seeing behind the curtains as Long skillfully faked verisimilitude faster than it could be uncovered. I felt invisible hands yanking on my strings, pushing me into the diorama as appropriate, a face in the crowd, a speaker in a conference, displayed with stunning fidelity from digital scans augmenting Long's imagination. Then a quick reprise of that scene at the bar, which I cherished, because that was the closest I'd been to holding Anjana in the flesh since the last time we'd spoken via an exceedingly expensive Medium.
Time flowed like someone was trying to unclog a drain, all spurts and the occasional reflux, seasons in the mental skybox going through spastic and dramatic changes.
I can't tell you how long I was in that liminal state, while my last experiment proved that my lace was there and accessible despite my seemingly baseline body, I couldn't draw up a HUD or seamless knowledge dump like I was used to.
Then it seemed they'd stumbled upon a suitable frame, things coalesced into place, Shen went from a vague awareness of his condition to something more grounded, his mind about as awake as it could get. I could imagine it was a pain to fake everything well enough to fool him, he was tack smart, and this wasn't a pure VR sim where they could just throw resources at smoothing over any hiccups, down to the limits of human sensoria.
We were in Beijing, in a penthouse apartment that made mine look like a cupboard under the stairs. Starscrapers scratched the troposphere, and the stars held no candle to the immense amount of traffic from the space port to the south, each launch a fresh, lively constellation of a dragon.
It was winter, a chilly time in Beijing, even after the government had turned some of the excess energy from the new fusion plants to ground-level heating and even air conditioning in the summer. The air was crystal clear, Greater Beijing was a behemoth but a clean one, every blade of grass trimmed to the millimeter to represent the shining potential of the unified Chinese state. A distant arcology under construction buzzed with supes, far more than I'd ever seen work on ATLAS. Odd place to live, in my eyes, you might as well move to orbit and get a decent UBI if you restricted yourself to a volume like that, even if it dwarfed most towns.
The VTOL ruffled my hair, but it was running at the lowest level of power that kept it in the air, not agrav, the Chinese flexing that their aeronautics was advanced enough that even luxury civilian models had a sound profile that would make Ghosthawk pilots a decade back jealous.
The deck was still strewn with the detritus of festivities finished only well after dawn, a humanoid butler bot tidying the place up, assisted by more in a familiar dog-like form. It was hardly dirty, just a little cluttered.
I stepped past glitter, and plates that had the hint of very expensive cake, walking up to the glass door set to opaque and ducking under a banner celebrating Xinglan's birthday, the number refusing to resolve even as I stared at it.
The door slid open before I could knock, revealing a beaming Shen still in a Hawaiian shirt half unbuttoned. Kinda my style, not gonna lie.
"Adat! I was going to yell at you for missing her birthday, but she was born in a different timezone, and there's a few minutes left if you want to wish her. Psst, did you get a gift? If not, I've got spares."
He winked and pointed at a butler bot discreetly standing by with a cloth over bulky packages.
"Shen, I managed to scramble together a red envelope, or rather my wife did, she's not licensed to TP on the Mainland, so I didn't get much more than a change of clothes."
I adlibbed the dialogue, but it came naturally, perhaps another supe feeding me cues subconsciously. I'd been in China around this time, even in Beijing, and the story about my wife was true enough.
"Couldn't bring you here in the first place, got my best Anchor active eh? For some reason, I'm not as popular as I used to be.." There was a hint of bitterness, but then a girl's cry from inside perked him right up.
"Right. Gift first, I hope you didn't bring too much cash for a young girl?"
"Buddy, aren't you a billionaire?" I joked, the envelope filled to bursting. Eh, it was fake money, but the idea of just giving it to a barely teenage girl still stung.
"You think I'll spoil her that easy? I'm not letting her turn out like her-" He lowered his voice -"bitch of a mom. Didn't even make it to the party, and she didn't have an excuse. What did I even see in her?"
He shook his head and lead me inside. There were a few girls sleeping on a very comfy looking sofa, pajamas on and huddled together like they'd talked themselves to sleep during a whisper sesh. No boys around it seemed, Shen was very protective of his only daughter, and she was what, twelve, thirteen? Too young to do more than gossip with her fellow aspiring boy-kissers.
Xinglan was bouncing up and down with excitement, but doing her best to be quiet so she didn't wake her friends. She looked eagerly at the envelope, as well as the other "gifts" I'd brought along, but let her dad lead us into a room further down, past the capacious living room where a few other girls were just beginning to stir.
"What did I tell you Xingxing?" He said with poorly faked sternness as she almost grabbed the cash from my hands.
"Sorry dad! Thank you Mr. Sen!" She beamed at me with glee, seeming eager to run off with the money despite the mountain of unopened presents filling the spacious bedroom.
"It's Doctor Sen, he's a colleague, you gotta remember those things eh?"
"Like an old fuddy maths doctor or like the surgeon doctor?" She peered at me appraisingly.
"Man, you make me feel like both." I told her, ruffling her hair and making her squirm.
"The medical kind Xingxing. Not a Healer like Ms. Chow, he did things the hard way." Shen told her, waving his hands and ordering the smart furniture to gingerly figure out a seating configuration that didn't threaten to knock down an avalanche of teenage dreams.
"Ah.. Daddy, can I get a lace, please?" She batted her eyes at him, and he seemed to melt like snow in spring. Even then, when she wasn't looking, he quickly shook his head at me.
"Sorry kid, you'll have to wait till you're older. It's not made for a growing brain, and you've got room to fill till you're as smart as your dad." I teased her, settling into a newly formed couch that once again made me imagine I was reclining on a cloud.
"Noooo.. What if I manifest like dad? Then I can't get one at all!" She pouted sorrowfully.
"Look, your dad said if you get really good scores in the academy when you're fifteen, he'll talk to me about getting you one. How does that sound?" She squealed with joy, and while he made a rueful face at me, I could see he wouldn't deny her her wish.
"Sit. I'll let her wake up her friends up before half the parents in the Party show up in military agravs to yell at me for kidnapping their kids." I remained put as she bounced out, eager to get her friends awake so they could make the most of the morning.
I saw a few cracks in the facade, she didn't behave quite like a twelve or thirteen year old should, going by context. Likely intentional, maximizing his paternal instincts in the period before she went through the inevitable surly teens. He seemed to buy it hook like and sinker.
"Man, they grow up so fast don't they? Just a few years ago, it was all toys, now it's designer clothing and smart tattoos, not that I'll let her get a real one!" He complained, conjuring a drink from a hidden bar.
Would it get me drunk? Probably. I took it with thanks.
"You have kids Adat? I'm sorry, I never asked."
"Not the right time yet, but we've frozen some eggs just in case she has issues with fertility treatments because of the MRS. Not likely, but better safe than sorry eh?"
"I get it. Maybe I'll have another, but only when she's older and I find a woman I can trust. Maybe a boy will be simpler?" He smiled indulgently, sipping on wine far more expensive than what he'd suggested to me in the first dream.
"Buddy, you've got MRS yourself, you should see a doctor just in case." I told him.
"What? I'm just forty-five, the swimmers still do breast strokes!" He complained, leering at me.
"I bet you stroke a few breasts." I whispered, chugging my drink. Yeah, a light buzz, but it seemed our minders didn't want me getting drunk yet.
"Anyway, I take it this wasn't entirely a courtesy call?" He looked at me expectantly.
I knew it, someone was trying to cue me, it wasn't quite words being put in my mouth, but I knew where to lead the conversation.
"Van Der Waals wanted me to drop by, kicked some bullshit off my plate so I could make time. It's about the sales, or lack of it." I suggested.
He groaned, leaning back into his chair.
"Why does everyone assume I have a hand in that? I'm an inventor, Adat, but the CCP has final say on all sales, and they've decided it's a strategic asset not meant for open distribution."
"Come on, you've got to have some say in the matter, they still haven't replaced you outright have they?" I coaxed him.
A pall fell over his face.
"The Premier doesn't pick up my calls. Always the AI assistant, obsequiously helpful, but all the insiders know it's a bad sign."
"Are you-"
"Wait." He fished out a remote and typed something in. I recognized it as something meant to control an Anchor, as well as additional surveillance countermeasures. A faint nearly ultrasonic buzzing was barely perceptible, it was a good thing the kids weren't nearby, they likely have been far more annoyed than us old fogies with ears hardly capable of hearing 15 kHz. The windows dimmed, and psychedelic fractal patterns danced on them. Not just visual noise, I recognized a barely legal version of a Parrot that would leave any baseline onlookers in a stupor even if it wouldn't hurt them. Meant for any metahumans spying via clairvoyance in my opinion. I could feel things out of his field of vision distort, tolerating the view was straining the person imagining all of this.
"Hardly sufficient, but if they're that desperate, I'm already fucked." He looked tense, some of the happiness from the party kicked aside by genuine stress.
"Is it really that bad? UNSEEN didn't tell me." I explained.
"I don't know, dude." He had a bit of an American accent when he was stressed, a relic of a childhood in the States interrupted when his father was recalled from the embassy, only to return with him when he went to college. "I thought I'd sorted things out. We all made mistakes, if they really cared that much, most of the Party would be cooling their heels in Antarctica, maybe the Moon. The whole point of Reunification was to let bygones be bygones.."
"Yeah, so UNSEEN didn't tell you because UNSEEN doesn't know shit. I've been working my ass off, doing more than they should expect, the latest Anchor models are so good I'm almost as proud of them as I am of my daughter. So what if I backed the wrong side? Sure, I admit Shenzhen was a fuckup, but I told them the Anchor wasn't ready to cover such a massive public event. I've barely fixed the issues with broad spectrum coverage!"
"Anything more recent? Political?" I poured him a drink to soothe his nerves, noticing his hands shake slightly as he took it.
"Maybe. You wouldn't get it, I barely get 10% of it, I'm still an outsider as far as they're concerned, too Americanized, and not from Cali either."
"Can you get them off your back? It isn't hopeless right?" I looked concerned.
"Well I wouldn't say I'm doomed quite yet, they're still letting me look over their daughters I guess. I'd love to tell you more about the other things I've worked on, they're very relevant, but you know how it is." He mimed zipping up his lips.
"I won't press you. Wait, do you think a presentation of the newer capabilities of the Anchor might sway them? I heard rumors about.. Apotheosis."
I'd said the wrong thing, or my handler had, I felt a mental flinch.
"How did you hear about that?" He seemed suspicious, a bit confused.
"UNSEEN has eyes and ears despite the name. I know you worked on [REDACTED], with the twin." I said something that my ears couldn't pick up, a phrase or reference meant only for him. But I had more of my real memories now, and I could think about something very bad that had happened with a certain twin metahuman.
"Shit.. I don't know what you could possibly mean by that." He was sweating, despite the very conducive temperature.
"It's not just you who made an error. Surely they can't still hold a grudge because of that?"
"I really prefer not to talk about this Sen. Why the hell do you know? You're only BLUE, or was it INDIGO?"
I shrugged in response, looking at a virtual window opened in lieu of a real one. It was so good you couldn't even tell.
"Do you still work with Turing?" I asked him. Not something I was prompted to say, but it felt appropriate.
"Pfft. I broke too many of their toys for that. Not all of them on purpose."
"What kind of concession do you think the government would accept for opening up sales? Surely there must be some figure they'll accept?"
He sighed fitfully. "They're fucking paranoid about the design being stolen, even if I try to tell them that nobody can, the devices are deliberately pared down and obfuscated. Learned a few tricks from the Centaurs."
"Daddy, can I talk to Dr. Sen about something?" I heard Xinglan say. Her "father" had been looking away, so the projection cut corners and had her teleport behind him.
"What is it baby?" He asked her.
She squirmed cutely. "My friend just had her first period and her dad didn't take her to a doctor, you know how Mr. Wang is.."
He looked mildly uncomfortable, but nodded in assent, taking the opportunity to fish out another cigarette as we left.
The moment I was out of his sight, another bout of haziness overwhelmed the projection, and we were standing somewhere, a nondescript room.
"Dr. Sen. I'm not happy with how the conversation is going. Remember, the goal is to get him into a positive mood, and only then try and coax him into demonstrating his abilities."
She wasn't a child anymore, taking the form I'd seen before.
"I'm going to have to ask you to bear with me. You trust the Precogs right? Even if I do something unusual, I'm going to need you to avoid interfering." I explained calmly.
She tapped her feet impatiently. "Trust is a strong term when it comes to Precogs, especially when they seem so shy about standing behind their claims."
"Are you afraid of dying?" I asked her, prompting her to arch her fine eyebrows.
"No, not in the least. While I may have a low resolution human personality emulate, I am cheap enough to rebuild that it makes little sense to imbue me with self-preservation instincts, especially when it comes to fulfilling my directives."
"Good. Because there's a very real chance what I need him to do might kill you. Do you have a-" The filter kicked in, choking me as I wanted to ask for a Chronomancer.
Instead, I tried a different tactic. I looked to my watch, an uncomfortably expensive analog model I'd been gifted after I entered med school.
"Look at that, it seems I've forgotten to update it to match local time." I held the knob and spun it aggressively, sweeping through several days worth of time before moving it to what seemed appropriate.
"I see. You want more time with him?" I didn't know how intelligent she was, but it was a fair bet that the primary AI was watching.
"Yes." I had to struggle internally to say so, and to my mild surprise it showed in the projection. The Medium was picking things up that the lace couldn't prevent. I felt another brief pulse of hope.
The Neuralink Mk 6 I've been abusing for a few weeks didn't have a human-level intelligence aboard, for functions or user requests that merited it, it was designed to hook into the local network and piggyback off something better. If Machina sought to control me from such a distance, he might be subverting the sub-human AI or using pre-programmed heuristics that looked for keywords and phrases, leaving aside the general manipulation of my motor functions. This wasn't guaranteed, but I knew his powers didn't extend to manipulating normal neurology, he couldn't directly change my thoughts, or that of the neuromorphic backup with its own synthetic biology.
Ideally, I'd get a Chronomancer to run the rest of my brain at such a high frequency that it was overwhelmed, but I doubted one was available on the ship, they were rare as powers went, and in military applications you'd usually find them by the computers or the weaponry, depending on how their powers worked.
I was doing my best to be inconsistent and disobedient within the limits of my restrictions, it doesn't take much for an AGI to get the hint. The risk, of course, was that they'd first conclude I was a threat myself, but unless I did something really bad, I'd likely be detained instead of summarily executed.
Right..
As it stood, I didn't count on my actions being something Machina and Prometheus hadn't foreseen, it's a shame when the bad guys are smarter than you. But what I could try and do was something they were helpless to prevent, even if they saw it coming. Did they expect me to be pulled off the ship? Probably not, given how they almost blew my cover by making me try and turn it down.
"I will do my best to comply with your suggestions. Please do not do anything that will compromise the integrity of the Subject, he is worth more than all the ships guarding us put together." She seemed genuinely concerned, slowly rising to get up and walk away.
I followed her out of the room and its impossible geometry, stepping over a kid frozen in mid motion, another mindlessly regurgitating something in Chinese without the movement of her mouth.
I stopped, looking at the fraying fractal imagery, itself hardly distinguishable from the symbolism explicitly designed to fry baseline human nervous systems, and kept on walking.
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