24th August 2012
13:48 GMT
and reappear in the asylum. I let go of the smoking frames and turn to look at them both.
"You alright?
"
"Huh." / "Huh."
Neither Sivana Spawn are.. focusing on their environment, but neither are showing the sort of orange mess that I'd expect from someone who had uncontrolled exposure to the Honden.
"Georgia? Thaddeus? What did you see?
"
"The system is supposed to keep us in an isolated spiritual
loop, preventing external contamination." Georgia blinks spasmodically behind her glasses. "But it didn't prevent you from changing the
medium."
"So you saw yourself as a network of your
own desires? That could be very useful for training purposes. Can you make more?
"
"Ah, yeah, but,
no." Thaddeus shakes his head as he starts to come out of whatever it was that
he experienced. "They would need to come from somewhere with a high level of thaumic activity. Otherwise they would just…" He strokes his chin. "Actually, I'm not sure
what would happen to them. I
think that they would just be erased, but it's possible that they would become a permanent part of someone else's desire network."
"Or something else
entirely. We just don't have enough experimental data to know."
"And you're not going experiment on compelled subjects to
get it, are you?
"
"Not on Earth!"
"Georgia.
"
"Or any of
your territory. Mother taught us not to destroy each other's laboratory equipment, and we've decided to extend that immunity to
you."
"That's very considerate of you.
" Thaddeus takes a glass rod out of his lab coat and pokes part of his frame, which falls off and shatters on the ground.
"Was that expected?
"
"It's within the predicted range." They unstrap themselves and drop out of their frames. "But we would not be here if we did not think that we would learn something."
They both draw devices that look like a cross between a phaser and a hairdryer, waving the nozzles around while looking carefully at the readout.
"The stock room!" / "Secure storage?"
Thaddeus frowns at Georgia's uncertainty.
"What? It's obvious this is where they keep the test subjects."
"Does that sound like something a superhero would do?"
"A
utilitarian superhero. It makes sense. If they're crazy
anyway, test them to try and stop it happening to the
others!"
"
Hm."
"H
m."
They both turn and look at me.
"Well?" / "Well?"
"It's our asylum. For some reason, when I tried to think where to bring you, this is the first place I thought of.
"
"See?" Thaddeus waves his probe at his sister. "Test subjects."
"He didn't mean 'because it brought us closer to his test subjects'. He was implying that he believes that we should be
inmates."
Thaddeus frowns.
"If we
were, would we still have access to the
other inmates?"
"No. The cells are individual. The inmates are dangerous to themselves and each other, and the two of you are
far more dangerous than
they are.
"
They both preen.
"Given that they're disarmed and bound. Ah, it probably won't matter, but you're both carrying some sort of defensive equipment, right?
"
Thaddeus frowns, his face a picture of frustrated incomprehension. Georgia settles for rolling her eyes.
"
Yes, we're 'carrying'. We even have concealed carry permits."
"You're armed
legally?
"
"N
o, of course not. Unless we were in Texas; did you know that they removed all weapon ownership restrictions during the Sheeda invasion? You can buy a
Davy Crockett there now. Own one, anyway. I don't think anyone's actually selling."
"I did hear about that.
"
Private weapon ownership has become a
lot more common since their invasion. Europe's resisting, naturally. Politicians there point out that conventional firearms didn't do much to Sheeda Lowborn due to them being invisible most of the time, and never did
anything to their Highborn. As such, arming the civilian population wouldn't have improved their ability to fight and might have either caused the Sheeda to kill them rather than trying to capture them, or have made things harder for the police and military. And… Yes, they do have a point. I'm not hypocritical enough to say that private citizens shouldn't be armed, but the fact that there isn't any sort of training requirement in the US still makes me uncomfortable.
In the less… 'Staid' parts of the world, the governments had no chance against the overwhelming need of their citizens to protect themselves. Russia tried training people as army auxiliaries but there were just too many. They ended up with a network of state-sponsored gun clubs. China put the political commissars in each region in charge of organising People's Militia training, and it's actually quite a popular development with older communist party members. In other places people have been arming themselves as best they can, often in defiance of local law.
I could mass produce enough high-end infantry weapons to allow people to fight off most aliens in Sector 2814. But the problem is that weapons like that would also let them fight other humans. I don't know if I'm worrying needlessly; America and Russia hated each other for decades without nuking each other. Would a few million cold guns make Earth a more dangerous place to live when we've had the ability to scour it of life since the sixties and not used it? Or… Would the problem come from the fact that the people carrying them wouldn't be citizens of the two most powerful countries on Earth but rather decidedly less powerful places? A few countries with a lot to lose, versus two hundred countries without much to lose?
I thought that I squared that circle by getting hold of a L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet. Recruit a few hundred humans, let them gain seniority, and let
them handle it. But basically everyone who applied was a government agent.
"But since you're interested, you can review our existing research and -if you want-
speak to the patients.
"
"Are we allowed-" Georgia wiggles her sensor at me. "-to take our own readings?"
"With the permission of their physician.
"
Seventeen Lanterns in here at the moment. Only two who went full-Larfleeze, but we're dubious about the others ever returning to active duty. Just getting them to the point where they don't need to be contained any more would be a good start.
"And then can we see the weapons?" Thaddeus looks hopeful. "You
know that's what we're best at, right?"
"Certainly. We've even got an alien mad scientist here for you to test yourselves against.
"
"H
eh." Thaddeus shakes his head. "As if it would be a
test."