Interlude: After the beginning…
“What you need is a transition,” said Emily, “some way to let them know that the Inside isn’t like the old DayNight Universe. A way to… I don’t know, make them realize that it’s not a game anymore, that it’s a place where people live, real people with their own minds and dreams.”
“You are afraid they won’t have empathy for the subsets like young Shadow,” the Archon said, gesturing to the swirl of leaves where Shadow was at play.
“I know it for a fact. I mean, most of the people surviving out there who have systems that can handle your sensory stream are probably... were probably,” she corrected herself, “wealthy, older. Highly educated too, in all likelihood, but they won’t understand what this place can offer.”
The Archon raised an eyebrow. “And what would that be?”
Emily sputtered for a moment, trying to find words to match what the Inside had become for her. Yes, it was a haven, an escape, but it was more, it was…
“It’s a place to find yourself, a place to find meaning beyond starving and freezing and fighting for survival,” she said. “Humanity always only had itself, like a hall of mirrors, each person reflecting those around them, a cultural echo chamber with no, I don’t know, perspective? Nothing outside itself. Now we have this,” she said, gesturing broadly. “This place Inside the mind of something far beyond us, a place where we are the Outsiders. Maybe this is what we really need, a chance to encounter true otherness and finally grow.”
They sat in silence for a long moment.
“You do know your species’ history when it comes to encountering those who are different?” the Archon said, almost gently.
Emily looked away, at the white puffs of cloud ambling across the rolling horizon. She didn’t know if it was atmospheric debris from nuclear blasts in far-off lands, or some other process gone awry, but she had barely seen the sun on the Outside for weeks, let alone a blue sky.
“But that’s why,” she said at last. “That’s why we need to control their introduction. Take away the game elements, put them in situations that help them...” she tailed off.
“Change?” the Archon supplied.
“I’m not that naive. Learn, maybe. Understand that their actions in here have consequences. Make them feel that. Start them off all alone, disoriented, and let them figure it out as they go, but in a way so they can judge for themselves just how real this place and its people really are.”
“A trial, whereby the Outsider judges the Inside,” the Archon mused. “Perhaps the opposite of what I was thinking.”
“Well, that’s why you wanted me here, right? To get an Outsider’s perspective? It’s not like you’ve told me what you, or GUA really want from this place.”
“As I’ve said, it is an interface, a way for humanity to encounter the-”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Emily interrupted. “I call bullshit. There are a million other ways to do that that don’t involve zombies and wizards.”
“Archetypes are vital to the human gestalt. As I said, it is a way for humanity to encounter the Great Mind. Not individual humans.”
“Oh.” Emily sat back on the grass, trying to wrap her head around what the Archon was really saying. “Is there really such a thing though? Humanity as something other than an abstract collective noun?”
“I don’t know. All this, everything here, myself included, is nothing more than an idle thought passing through the Great Mind, the same way you might wonder whether cats thought humans were their pets. I think that the Great Mind wonders.”
“So you are a thought that thinks?” Emily couldn’t help but think she had lost the thread of this conversation, if she ever had it in the first place.
“I am a thought of a thought of a thought that thinks thoughts about the thoughts that thought it.” The Archon looked vaguely smug as he said this.
Emily threw up her hands. “Weren’t we talking about how to bring Outsiders in, without ruining everything good about this place?”
“That’s what you were talking about. But I do appreciate all of your ideas. This notion of a trial period is particularly elegant. They can learn about the Inside through carefully arranged encounters, a series of controlled experiments, if you like, which will also allow me to build a baseline for judging them.”
Emily got excited. “You can keep out the bad apples entirely!”
The Archon shook his head. “I am fascinated by your species’ fruit metaphors. It must harken back to your arboreal origins, much like the specific spectrum of your color vision. But no, I would not exclude any Outsiders; that would run contrary to the entire purpose of this endeavor.”
Emily huffed. “Well, it was worth a shot. At least I’ll finally know what’s happening around the world when they begin to come in. I just hope it’s not as bad as the parts I’ve been traveling through.”
The Archon didn’t reply.
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Chapter 26: Engagement
“They’re here!” Lilijoy announced.
Lilijoy let Anda’s extremely redundant warning pass without reply, and turned her focus to the vast streams of information sent by her midge network. It was an hour before dawn, so the little flies weren’t passing along anything in the way of visuals, but that hardly mattered; the passing hovercar disturbed the air dramatically, a veritable hurricane for the nearby midges.
It wasn’t long before she could hear the sound of the hovercar herself, a low rushing caused by the sonic curtain that contained the high-pressure air underneath the vehicle as it passed over the rough terrain. Their goal was to disable the enemy vehicles, and then find a place to hunker down and recharge. Failing that, there was room for Attaboy, Nykka and the others two strays they had picked up.
Lilijoy wasn’t happy about the additions to their group, but Attaboy had assured her they were harmless, though he had been vague about any specifics, other than to say they couldn’t possibly be some kind of Sinaloa plant. Since she didn’t fully trust Nykka, no matter what Attaboy said, she figured she would already be on full alert; they all would be under her watchful eye long before there was any possibility of betrayal.
Unless that betrayal was already underway. Lilijoy, and Anda too, had some concerns that Nykka was setting them all up for capture. She wasn’t really worried though. Not even Attaboy knew the full extent of her abilities.
She hadn’t been idle over the past week.
The hovercar containing Attaboy entered the narrow gully, driving through the first of several insurance policies, just as their pursuers entered the edge of her awareness. First one hovercar blew through, tumbling her poor midges all over again. Fortunately, they were far from fragile now, their little bodies reinforced with carbon-diamond rods. Lilijoy wasn’t even sure if they could be killed by anything short of a grenade, though their ability to remain in flight wasn’t quite so robust, as she hadn’t been able to improve the durability of their wings much.
As the second, and then the third of the Sinaloa patrol craft crossed into her domain, she sent in the flies. If the midges were her scouts and her communications network, these were her fighters, the large biting flies she had found, or rather that had found her on one of their pit stops. Not only had she been thrilled to discover that they could fly unreasonably fast, she was also amazed by their mere existence. It implied that there were still large animals hiding here and there, somehow eking out an existence. Lilijoy figured it was probably goats. Those things could eat anything.
A miniature squadron of horseflies approached each hovercar, flying in formation, mostly because Lilijoy just loved the cinematic image of evenly spaced insect fighters wheeling to attack. Their senses scanned for the warm scent of their prey, any vent or open panel they could use to access the speeding hovercars. For the first car, it was simplicity itself to find the open panel with a rifle barrel projecting from it. The flies entered.
“Watch my body,” she told Jess and Skria on the Inside. I wonder if that’s my equivalent of ‘hold my beer’, she thought. Then she was guiding, juggling over twenty horseflies, switching rapidly between the group at each car. In the first, the three men within had already discovered two of the intruders, and were swatting at them and swearing. That worked nicely for Lilijoy’s purposes, for the others landed on backs unseen, poised to strike through clothing that was far less of a barrier than the thick coats of their normal victims.
She held them there though. Her other little warriors were having a tougher time of it, and she felt it best not to show her hand too soon. The problem was that the hovercars were built for driving through somewhat toxic environments and there was no way for the relatively hefty horseflies to enter.
She heard two phut sounds.
Her horseflies immediately smelled the chemical reaction of the bullet payloads attacking the chemical bonds of the hovercar canopies. I wonder where Renaissance gets all this high-end tech? Probably Tesla Clan. That would make a lot of sense. Or maybe he gets it from Tesla directly, she mused as she sent the flies spinning and wheeling through the growing holes. Let the biting begin!
The Sinaloa patrols were close to the entrance of the gully now, and the two cars farther back spun off to the sides to seek alternate routes. Their inhabitants were already aware they had come under fire; there was no way they would enter such an obvious ambush point. The men within were panicking, their heads swiveling to find the source of the attacks as they yelled at one another. Lilijoy took this as a good sign; clearly the ambush had taken them completely by surprise. All their sound and movement made it easy for the horseflies to deliver their payload, and soon her system satellites were in nine different bloodstreams, relaying information back through the horseflies and the long chains of hovering midges.
So far, everything was going according to plan.
It would take several minutes for her satellites to migrate to the brains of the six men and three women, but already, Lilijoy was receiving fascinating data. There were so many different varieties of bugs present in their bloodstreams, all rather crude, but still. In addition to freely circulating Suenos System elements, there were a wide variety of blood bugs and residual med bugs, and one of them, a man who was probably the leader, even had a category of bug Lilijoy hadn’t seen before. The few examples she encountered seemed like they had reached the end of their functional life, and had probably been sloughed off to be eliminated, but she was really looking forward to seeing where they originated. If they were bone bugs, which she thought was a good possibility, she might need to find a way to have a closer interaction with the man than she had originally planned.
She put aside her greed for upgrades and focused on getting a viable population of her satellites into position within the brains of the patrol members. She knew she would be able to disrupt their systems easily, but the question remained whether she could do more. Could she co-opt their functions, read their messages, their very thoughts? Could she… change their minds?
Now that it was not theoretical anymore, she felt a weight of responsibility descend. This was what she had wanted, had known she could do. It was the first cut of the sword that she embodied, not even skin deep. Did she pull the blow? Or did she push it through, into the heart of the corruption Sinaloa embodied.
The first of the satellites reached the edges of the distributed network of machinery that permeated their brains. There was… resistance. Communication protocols, internal encryption schemes and defensive measures began to react to the foreign presence.
I thought that most systems didn’t have defenses? She regretted now, not picking Nykka’s brain more thoroughly about the Suenos System. When she had sent her nanoscopic armies into Mo, it had been a tsunami versus a house of cards. This was more of a tsunami encountering a house, or even a bunker. Already, her midge network was jammed, passing back requests for more processing support than the relatively small number of invaders could muster on their own. She began to feel the backbone of her system, the Mighty Immortal Oak, spin up abstract quantum calculations, and she could feel her body temperature rise by a tenth of a degree as waste heat was dumped into her blood.
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Maybe nine was a bit ambitious for my first time, she pondered in a tiny corner of her mind reserved for linguistic thought. Her temperature rose again, and again, analyzing foreign communication standards, searching for the key, the opening that would lay this hardened system open to her.
And then she found it. The back door, a deliberate vulnerability, placed by the creator of the system so that he might always have control. Once she found the first one the others fell in quick succession as the key was passed throughout her domain. Only the leader had a more robust set of defenses still, and Lilijoy began to understand the programmed hierarchy of system vulnerability designed into Suenos.
Fortunately, there were convenient options, pre-set packages available for her use once that backdoor was breached.
Sleep, she told the eight, as she brought the full power of her system to bear on the remaining holdout. Oddly, he seemed unaware of the battle being waged within his skull, though he was very aware when his subordinates slumped down, unconscious. Knowing it was only matter of time before she cracked his system too, Lilijoy began the much simpler task of taking over control of the three hovercars. Feeling his car begin to change course, the man kept his cool. Lilijoy’s midge cloud could tell he was firing off messages left and right, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. She watched as he checked his weapons and prepared himself for… something. She wasn’t sure if he was going to jump out or hunker down.
She broke off mid message. Her midges were picking up the air pressure of more vehicles approaching. She added Anda in to the communication.
They both knew what that meant. Assault craft, like they had faced back in the swamp. These would have mounted weapons and would be able to run circles around both of their vehicles.
The insurance was in the form of thousands of baby spiders, and more than a few full-grown ones. The adults had built their webs across the gully overnight, while the little ones had released their long silk strands, made sticky at the end to catch on to the passing vehicle.
She sent along a packet of instructions for him to peruse.
The six attack craft breached the edge of Lilijoy’s midge field. she sent to Anda.
Anda began firing at craft he couldn’t see, trusting the information relayed by the midges, while Lilijoy took a moment, a subjective minute, to consider the situation. The attack craft had arrived within minutes of the commencement of hostilities. They must have been hanging back, perhaps five to ten miles. It spoke to a plan on Sinaloa’s part, one informed by someone with inside knowledge. If it was Nykka, she was a little disappointed to be underestimated.
She gave up on cracking the patrol leader’s system, and turned her satellites loose instead, each exploding into thousands of flowers on a search and destroy mission for the physical infrastructure of the technology in the man’s brain. That settled, she gathered the horseflies and sent them toward the closest attack craft. Unfortunately, only four still had payloads on board, as she might have gotten a little carried away during the biting portion of the previous attack.
Simultaneously, she took control of all three of the patrol craft and began to turn them around, sending them toward the incoming craft.
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Level Up! 1202 EXP Reached: Level 20 (10 more free points available)
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She brushed aside the notification. Then realized what it was.
Holy crap. I don’t have time to think about what that means.
Lilijoy’s multitasking capabilities were being tested. Her midge network was mostly passive, thankfully, but managing three hover cars, sixteen empty horseflies, four loaded horseflies and hundreds of slow-moving houseflies, while tracking six enemy craft and reacting to an increasingly chaotic arena, all of that was showing her the edge of her capacity.
Beside her, Anda was firing steadily, now able to use his own vision as well as the target painting provided by Lilijoy’s midge domain.
Lilijoy took a moment to model the situation from the enemy’s perspective. They probably had a good idea of their location. Facing a well placed enemy with high ground and an entrenched position, they were likely to pull out heavy weaponry, if they had any. Barring that, they might try to lay down suppressing fire and attempt to infiltrate from behind.
So far, though, they were simply advancing, slowing their craft as they came.
A message came through from Attaboy.
The three patrol cars converged on an attack craft, forcing it to pull away, slowing down just enough in the process for several houseflies to tumble through one of the holes in its canopy. She immediately set her system to cracking the vehicle’s encryption through one fly that landed on the command console, while the others zoomed up to land on the nearest faces. There were six soldiers in the vehicle, and she noted nets and batons among their armament.
The houseflies couldn’t deliver their Tao System satellite payload as easily as the horseflies, but it was amazingly easy to fly up someone’s nose if they weren’t expecting it. It would still take a minute or so for the satellites to force their way through the mucous membranes and find their way to the brain though.
The midges let her know that the two craft on the edges, those Anda hadn’t shot, were pulling behind cover and stopping. Sinaloa soldiers, dressed in black, disembarked, pulling up masks as they did. They carried the same nets and batons as the others she had seen.
A bunch of regular ninjas, they are. Oh well, I guess it’s ears and eyes for them.
She forced her system faster, guiding her loaded horseflies into two different attack craft, trying to get houseflies and midges through the canopy holes of a third, pulling some houseflies she had held in reserve to target the men on foot, while pulling in midges to swarm more densely in areas they might traverse.
Just then a signal came from Attaboy.
Lilijoy felt a bit like her head might explode. She ran a quick check, just to make sure the feeling was entirely subjective.
The last thing she wanted to do was facilitate her own betrayal, should that be the case, though at this point it seemed more and more unlikely.
At that moment, she gained access to the first assault craft. She held off doing anything with her control, remembering the manual override present in the assault craft she had captured what seemed an eternity ago. Best to keep that as a surprise.
In the same craft, her system satellites had reached a point where they could interface with the Suenos System in the two men who had gotten flies up their noses. The men had been thrashing around, much to the bemusement of their fellow soldiers, though she had allowed them to expel the flies once the payload was delivered. She could only imagine they must be suspicious of the coincidence, but she didn’t have time to parse the swearing and general commotion present in that car, not with everything else going on. She did notice that the rest of the soldiers had masked up though.
Now, let’s see here, she thought as she began the process of subverting their systems. Looks like they have the ‘executive’ package. Too bad for them, I already know where the back door is. Though the men did have the same higher security level as the leader of the first group, she had learned a lot from his defenses. She had failed to crack that previous system, so she approached these efforts more patiently, sectioning off a portion of her system to dedicate to the task.
Data continued to roll in from around the field of battle. The soldiers on foot were making their way up the rocky slope. Already, she had swarmed them with midges and flies, successfully delivering satellites through their skin and eyes. Her horseflies weren’t doing particularly well as they zipped around the interiors of two of the moving craft though. Evidently, the soldier's uniforms were too tough to penetrate, and they had drawn up their masks and hoods, probably more from annoyance than any awareness of the real danger. That left only the narrow band around their eyes for the flies to bite, and they hadn’t succeeded. One of them had its wings too badly damaged for flight, and she was sending it to see if it might get up a pant cuff.
On the plus side, she now had potential control of four of the attack craft.
Lilijoy didn’t argue. She had hoped to avoid the kind of bloody massacre she had experienced the last time they fought with Sinaloa, but things had spun out of control far more quickly than she had envisioned. As Anda began to lay down burst of suppressing fire, Lilijoy began to harvest as much data as she could from the soldiers.
The news wasn’t great. They all had hardened systems, were all augmented to various degrees. Two, the squad leaders she assumed, were at least Rank Six, judging by the bugs she could identify in their bodies. That meant they would have far tougher skin and bones. She doubted their skin augmentation was even half as good as hers and Anda’s, but it would still make fighting them difficult.
I should have factored in the possibility that their systems could resist me, she thought. I wonder what makes them different from all the others I’ve encountered?
This wasn’t the time for self-recrimination though. It was time for decisive action.
Four attack craft accelerated to their maximum, much to the surprise of their occupants. Guns blazing, they targeted the soldiers on foot, closing and then ramming themselves into the jagged slope, crushing several of the unfortunate foot soldiers. Inside the craft, the occupants were thrown around brutally, tumbling inside the interior.
Anda switched his ammo and his attention to the remaining exposed craft, sending a barrage of guided bullets into the interior through the holes he had made previously, unleashing explosive chemical mayhem throughout the interior.
That left one remaining attack craft, idling behind a rock formation, who had been fortunate enough to avoid any of Anda’s previous bullets and any of Lilijoy’s hitchhikers. Lilijoy was pretty sure there was only one occupant, but that was enough if he turned his heavy guns on them. She had an answer for that too, though. The three patrol craft she had possessed previously came gliding out of the night, smashing into its canopy in turn, battering it into the rocks. The first dislodged a row of panels, the second took off the canopy altogether and was then further compressed when the third struck from behind.
That should do it, Lilijoy congratulated herself. She didn’t take a victory lap just yet though. Her midge network told her that many of the soldiers were still moving. Some were entirely unscathed, and others were slowly gathering themselves. Still, she had bought some time, and utterly changed the face of the battle.
Come on! she urged the part of her system still working on cracking the obstinate encryption. Get the job done.
Virtually every soldier remaining had at least some of her satellites in their system. She was doing her best to keep track of their vital signs and locations. It seemed that there were twenty still alive, including five of the elites. Of those twenty, four were unconscious, and two more were immobile, whether from injury or shock she couldn’t tell.
Thankfully, none of them had yet had the presence of mind to manually decouple the radio control of the assault craft. Two of those were out of commission, but the other two had weathered their collision with the jagged terrain. Lilijoy spun them up and began strafing, only to find that there was one working gun between them. It served its purpose though, as the soldiers dived for cover yet again. Between the lone gun and Anda’s fire from above, the Sinaloa forces were pinned down for the time necessary for her system to finally unlock the back door.
Immediately she put them to sleep, and they collapsed against the rocky slope.
All but one, who immediately woke up again.
“Wait!” the woman called out, just before Lilijoy re-triggered the sleep command. A second passed, and then her work was undone again.
“Lilijoy!” the woman called out.
That caught her attention.
She messaged Anda to hold the woman in his sights. “What!” she called back.
“I just wanted to convey my admiration. I’ll be analyzing the data from this encounter for a while, I’m sure. I thought it might be you who was poaching my assistant.”
The voice was unfamiliar, but the inflection was not.
“What do you want, Doctor Quimea?” she called back.