Built To Last

[We Just Write]

(Melissa)
Armsmaster and I were taking a brief break from designing his new body, when he asked a question that I wasn't expecting to come up again.

"Ruggedizer, I'm still kind of confused by how you avoided a concussion when you were thrown from Squealer's truck."

I raised one of my eyebrows, the cartoon face on my visor matching the expression,

"Oh?"

"As you are now, that would make perfect sense. But that event significantly predates the uploading technology you developed."

I took a sip of my coffee as I thought. What was Armsmaster's angle here?

"What do you want to ask me about that?"

"A question you previously refused to answer, as is your constitutional right."

"I do believe continued refusal would be within my rights as well, then."

"Unless you were provided with a legally binding promise of immunity from prosecution stemming from your answers."

I tilted my head,

"Not that I don't trust you, but I'm going to need to see notarized legal documents to that effect before I say anything concrete on the matter."

"I don't believe I can give you that, unfortunately. What I can say is that this is purely a matter of personal curiosity, and this is the last time I will be able to ask with even the slightest bit of credibility that I'm not recording you."

"That last statement is true at least; synthetics are recording all the time, almost by definition."

"So, will you indulge my curiosity?"

No.

"Why don't you tell me what you think happened, and we'll go from there?"

Armsmaster nodded,

"I think you were already a synthetic at the time of your altercation with Squealer."

I remained silent and poker-faced, but motioned for Armsmaster to continue.

"As we have already established, that means you were synthetic prior to the development of uploading technology."

I continued to remain silent.

"Therefore, you were not in fact ever human. Am I correct?"

"I am invoking my 5th amendment right to remain silent."

Armsmaster nodded,

"Off the record, you aren't the only artificial intelligence I'm secret-keeper for."

Ah, so he knew about Dragon. Armsmaster continued speaking.

"Also, there are some rather obscure legal precedents regarding citizenship for Tinker creations. You are provably a person, and so long as you were built in America, you would count as having birthright citizenship."

"So I have rights either way, then?"

"Correct. I am now curious about your relation to one Emmy Sykes, by the way. Again, entirely off the record."

I considered exactly what to say for several moments. Eventually, I asked my own question.

"There won't be legal consequences for her based on my answer?"

"There won't be. Regardless of the letter of the law, antagonizing one of the most beneficial organizations on the East Coast would be utterly foolish. Not to mention that Dragon would be incredibly displeased with me if my actions caused trouble for one of her business partners."

"Emmy's family, I love her, and that's all I'll say on the matter."

"Very well. Now, I do believe we still have work to do on my new body."

---

(Andrea)

Ultimately, we just put Trainwreck through the QUD and Body Builder, using a shielded destination brain. A shielded destination brain with a certain encrypted directory present. As for Trainwreck's new body? He came out looking like a seasoned lifeguard. Though attempting to swim when you were three times the density of water was a recipe for a quick trip to the bottom.

Anyway, as soon as Trainwreck was clothed, Marcus and I directed him to one of the private meeting rooms. Trainwreck blinked in surprise, but came along with us anyway.

"So... what exactly is this about?"

Marcus answered,

"This is about the encrypted directory of extremely dangerous secrets, that you've probably noticed by now."

Trainwreck blinked,

"Really, that's what's in there? Why?"

Now I spoke up.

"You deserve a somewhat informed decision. If the contents of that directory leak, the world dies. The directory also contains an extremely narrow mind-control program that will prevent you from leaking those secrets without an absolute guarantee of maintaining infosec. You have a choice to make; you can just stay on the public-facing side of operations with all memory of this conversation erased, or you can be onboarded into the conspiracy."

Trainwreck seemed stunned.

"Do I have to decide right away? This is... this is just a lot to process."

"Not immediately, but before you go back to the public-facing side of the factory."

Two hours passed, during which Trainwreck spent a long time thinking, and occasionally asking questions that infosec didn't permit us to answer. Eventually, he came to a decision.

"I'm out. Whatever you're doing down here, I don't want the stress of dealing with it."

Marcus nodded sadly,

"Wish granted, now open up your access port; we've got to erase the majority of this conversation from your memories, along with the encrypted directory."

---

(Rachel)
Date Point 0900, Monday, March 21

I'd agreed to come with Emmy for the grand opening of Reliabuilt's Manchester factory, which was also going to be my public debut as a Reliabuilt affiliated "cape". In my case, I'd dressed up in something vaguely resembling a military officer's uniform, but in a black-and-brass pattern that didn't match any of the world's armed forces. Oversized brass goggles concealed part of my face - which I honestly just swapped for a different one when I was off-duty. Somewhat similar to Melissa, I had both Dress and Combat versions of my getup.

While the majority of the new employees just came in and started familiarizing themselves with their jobs, myself and Emmy had a small crowd of journalists to appease before we could go in.

Emmy started.

"Hello! I'm Emmy Sykes, owner and CEO of Reliabuilt. This is Watch, a time controller we've hired as head of security for the new Manchester site."

Some basic 'getting to know the new cape' questions followed, before one of the reporters asked a question I'd been thinking about since I was built.

"If you can control time, do you think you can pop a Grey Boy bubble?"

I shrugged,

"I don't know. I'm certainly willing to try, but I'll need someone to cover for me while I'm off doing that."

 

[We Just Write]

Palletized Fusion Generators Face Regulatory Hurdles

Engineers working for Reliabuilt have reverse-engineered a working fusion reactor from Ruggedizer's work, revolutionizing energy generation. Even more impressively, they've miniaturized said generators to the size and shape of a standard shipping container. Each unit delivers fifty Megawatts of electrical power - enough to power a small town. Thus, the new fusion generators can theoretically be manufactured at one of Reliabuilt's factories, shipped to wherever they're needed, and simply plugged together into a working power plant.

There's just one problem: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's licensing process for nuclear power plants was not designed for factory-made reactors. Nor was it created with nuclear fusion in mind, which has inherent safety and fuel availability advantages over nuclear fission. At present, the NRC's protocols are designed for fission reactors built on-site, to bespoke specifications. In that context, a lengthy approval process in which the prospective nuclear engineers are grilled about every single detail of the project made sense, but it really doesn't fit with the palletized reactor model Reliabuilt is aiming for.

At present, Reliabuilt's engineering and legal teams are working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to come up with new procedures for licensing palletized nuclear power plants. Under normal circumstances, this process could be expected to drag on for months at minimum, quite possibly years. However, Reliabuilt has come to the attention of the federal government ever since Ruggedizer patented Energy Teleportation. So the NRC is facing significant pressure from above to simply let Reliabuilt get on with it.

Shockingly to some, much of the pushback against this urging to hasten the approval process is coming from Reliabuilt itself. As Andrew Brown (one of Reliabuilt's engineers) said:

"Here at Reliabuilt, we take matters like this seriously. While we want the palletized fusion generators approved, we don't want them to be mindlessly rubber-stamped because of political pressure. Even if we get everything right on the first try, we don't want to set a bad precedent for other prospective manufacturers of palletized nuclear reactors. There's also the matter of needing safety rules for the power plants where these reactors will actually be used; they need properly built foundations, cooling systems, fire suppression systems, and quite a few other considerations."

---

Medhall Investigation Reveals Empire Eighty Eight Control

Ever since early January, much of Medhall's leadership has been missing, including the CEO, Max Anders. After roughly three months, the FBI and PRT have announced the results of the investigation into what happened.

As it turns out, Max Anders was also the villain known as Kaiser. This immediately answers the question of where he's been all these months: in the PRT's morgue, after getting his head exploded by one of Ruggedizer's drones. As has been previously covered, Ruggedizer's actions that night were legally justified self-defense under the castle doctrine.

Several other members of Medhall's missing leadership have been confirmed to have died in the early morning hours of January 2nd, as part of the emphatically unsuccessful attempt to shake down Reliabuilt. Two others fled the country only hours after the event, and their trail went cold in Germany. One was found insensate in a bar, having turned to alcohol instead of try to fix the situation; investigation of this individual has not yet revealed any Empire ties. At the time of writing, four members of Medhall leadership are yet unaccounted for.

Questioning of one Theo Anders has revealed that he knew very well of his father's activities as Kaiser, and did not approve. However, he kept silent out of genuine fear for his life. The legality of Theo's inheritance of the company has been greatly complicated by these revelations...

---

Reliabuilt Leads For-Profit Parahumans By Example

The success of Reliabuilt has inspired many new parahumans to try and legitimately monetize their powers, in spite of the laws that normally make doing so incredibly difficult. Success has been mixed, as replicating the circumstances that allow Reliabuilt to thrive has proven quite difficult.

Contrary to popular belief, Ruggedizer does not own Reliabuilt; the company is owned by Emmy Sykes, who is also the CEO. However, Reliabuilt was Ruggedizer's idea, and she is technically employed by Emmy according to a contract granting her rather extreme latitude to act within the company. Thus, Ruggedizer technically works for a non-parahuman, despite taking a major role in the direction of Reliabuilt.

The biggest problem with replicating this model for other Parahuman business ventures is that finding a sufficiently trustworthy "employer" is quite difficult. While Emmy and Ruggedizer are quite evidently in some sort of mutually supportive relationship, legal experts all agree that Emmy could rather trivially get total control over the company via legal means if she was so inclined. Indeed, this has already happened in two notable cases of attempted Parahuman business ventures: Futures Consulting LLC (a consulting firm founded by a group of Thinkers), and Western Strongmen (a specialist construction and demolitions company). In both cases the parahumans promptly quit, leaving the businesses to implode.

That said, there are a few cases of this sort of business venture proving successful - one example being several farms in rural illinois that now benefit from a snake-controlling Master taking care of pest control. The Thinkers who founded Futures Consulting LLC also bounced back almost immediately, being promptly "hired" by a new "employer" who was thoroughly informed of the consequences of a double-cross. The former "employees" of Western Strongmen are still trying to gather capital for a second try at a business.

 

[SteamStereo]

I like this interlude, little dots of world building added to resolve questions or point out issues with prior assumptions.

Thanks for the chapter!

 

[We Just Write]

(Emmy)
Date Point: 0512, March 22, 2011. Tuesday.

With the Manchester factory open for business, Melissa and I had quickly set up the basement levels for the extreme-security research we would be conducting down there. This process included applying dimensional shielding to the rooms themselves, in order to keep any nosy inter-dimensional voyeurs from seeing what we were doing down here. Still, shielding rooms was a process we had ample practice with. So it didn't take very long, especially not with a bunch of drones helping us.

We also made a point of setting up all the other security measures needed to be absolutely certain there would be no unauthorized access; obviously we couldn't just get the construction contractors to do it, so we had to put that in once they were no longer present. As an example of what we'd put in, if someone tried and failed to input the correct security code for the (thirty centimeter thick) door twice, security robots would promptly frog-march them to the front desk. And that was the mildest consequence of trying to go somewhere you shouldn't. Once you were in the high-security section of the factory, failure to authenticate when required was penalized with anything from sedation to time-locking to immediate vaporization. And there were a lot of authentications required, many of which required being a synthetic to pass.

Not to mention that in order to even reach the door for the high-security labs, you needed to go through the factory's regular laboratories for new products to sell. And those labs were already pretty secure by any reasonable standard, and even a few unreasonable ones. The door to the extreme-security labs was even hidden, as an extra layer between it and interlopers.

Paranoid? Yes.

Entirely warranted, given that a security breach could doom the entire planet? Also yes.

Still, by five in the morning the security setup was complete. And in those secret laboratories, Melissa and I discussed the next step in our plan to save the world.

"So Emmy, any thoughts on a portal machine?"

Thinking for a moment, I answered "Thanks to the connections to our Dynalith we can make, and the portal-enlarger, we've already got almost everything we need. All that's left is a way to change the destination, and reliably target specific worlds."

Melissa thought for a moment "Aren't the links basically just targeting beacons for the Dynalith to open portals to? As far as I knew, it's doing most of the work there."

I nodded, "Yes, it is. But thanks to a few experiments Rachel did prior to her debut, we know how our Dynalith does that. That means we can get to work on reproducing the effect."

"Well then, get me a copy of the documentation, and let's get to it."

---

(Marcus)

I also found myself dealing with matters in Manchester, in my capacity as Mr. E. Namely, figuring out the local cape scene, and making sure the local villains would leave us alone.

Despite Manchester having a larger population than Brockton Bay, there were less than a third its number of Parahumans present. There was only one cape gang of any note, commonly known as the Shakedown Crew, with eight known capes in their roster. Their rap sheet mostly consisted of extortion and drug trafficking, hence the name. There were also fifteen to twenty assorted independent villains in the general Manchester area, some of whom teamed up in pairs; the exact number was a bit ambiguous.

On the heroic side, there was a team of five or so PRT-affiliated heroes, but no actual Protectorate presence. Since Manchester was technically under PRT ENE's remit, basically all Protectorate capes had been tied up dealing with the dumpster fire that Brockton Bay had been until recently. That might change in the near future, but at the exact moment the situation was as I'd found it.

As far as rogues, there was one oddball Tinker who could do really weird things with flintknapping and often sold his creations when he wasn't doing his day job as a history teacher. But that was really about it.

It was blatantly clear that the Shakedown Crew presented the most possibility of causing problems, so they were the ones I'd be talking to first. Unfortunately, Manchester's villain scene was too fragmented to have an established neutral ground meeting place like Somer's Rock. On the other hand, I'd managed to track down one of the Shakedown Crew's safehouses.

If all of them happened to be there when I showed up, I would gladly just have the security drones with me taze the lot of them so they could be arrested. But that was fairly unlikely; I was only expecting to find one, maybe two of the Shakedown Crew's capes here. Quite possibly just unpowered goons. In which case, the primary goal of my visit would be intimidation.

As for the safehouse in question, it was a quite literal house, with an attached one car garage. I came at two in the morning, bashing on the front door hard enough to damage the hinges, but not quite hard enough to knock it down. I heard someone dashing down the stairs and into the garage, and noticed the garage door opening, along with a squeal of tires.

I projected a solid illusion of a reinforced concrete wall in front of the garage door, and heard a mechanical crunching noise as the car slammed into it. That crunching noise was followed by several muffled obscenities. A moment after that, I projected my voice into the garage.

"This is Mister E speaking. Come to the front door; we need to talk."

Ten seconds later, a man wearing a confederate flag as a bandana mask opened the door. Dixie, the Shakedown Crew's getaway driver.

"What the fuck do you want!?"

I leaned in, making my eyes glow a menacing red as I did so.

"As I noted, I am Mister E. I represent Reliabuilt, which I am sure you know has recently established a factory complex in this city. You can consider this official notice that Reliabuilt facilities and employees are off-limits. Beneficiaries of Reliabuilt development funding are similarly off-limits."

Dixie's tone was clearly furious, but also tinged with fright,

"Wha- what will you do to us if we rob you anyway?"

"New Hampshire's self-defense laws permit lethal force to be used against home invaders. They also permit lethal force to be used in defense of others. As you will note, I have at no point attempted to enter your house during this interaction. Reliabuilt's Manchester facility is legally registered as Watch's place of residence, so I will politely recommend your associates reciprocate the courtesy I have shown tonight."

"You- you can't be serious!"

"You will find that I am deadly serious, William."

The simple fact that I'd used Dixie's real name resulted in him falling flat on his ass in shock. With that, I turned around and started to leave. As I used my illusion projector to start fizzling myself out of visibility, I used the opportunity to get one last jab in, throwing my voice directly into William's ears.

"Your mother would be so ashamed of you."

I knew very well that what I said was true, and now Dixie knew I knew.

With that, I became fully invisible to anyone without specialized equipment, and silently made my exit.

 

[SharkCultist]

Oooh hit him where it hurts. Brutal.

 

[Amdar210]

The disappointed Mom card.

Thats like being kicked in the balls, over and over, with a Tazer-Steeltoed Boot at Mach Jebesus.

William won't be walking that pain off....

 

[We Just Write]

(Andrea)
Date Point: 1909, March 24, 2011. Thursday.

At this point, getting a call from Dragon on the secure line was not surprising. We were the only people who credibly could do something about the Dynalith invasion, so coordinating about it was crucial. What was somewhat surprising was Armsmaster also joining the call.

"Armsmaster? Would you care to explain why you're calling at such an odd hour?"

The Protectorate Tinker replied,

"Dragon explained the alien invasion problem to me after I uploaded. While I don't like the secrecy, I do understand its necessity. As such, I am participating in this call via direct digital interface, using quantum teleportation for the actual signal."

"Understood. Is there anything in particular you wanted to ask us?"

It took a moment, before Armsmaster finally admitted,

"After partitioning my power's access to my brain, it has become clear to me that my distaste for Ruggedizer was effectively a Master influence. I am sorry for my behavior towards her, and I'd hoped to talk with her directly for a more effective apology."

I shrugged,

"Ruggedizer's currently busy with the Gate project, but I suppose I can pass that message on. Anything else?"

This is where Dragon spoke up,

"One of the things I showed Armsmaster was the recovered data on Endbringer physiology. He found it humbling."

I nodded in acknowledgement, even as Armsmaster spoke up.

"I had thought nanothorns would be effective, but that is clearly not the case. I was wondering if anyone in your group figured out an actually effective type of attack for use?"

I thought for a moment. Come to think of it, there was Rachel's idea for weaponized teleportation...

---

(Rachel)
Date Point: 2334, March 25, 2011. Friday.

The surveillance system had been tracking the would-be intruders at the Manchester site for about half an hour by now. Cross-referencing databases, the individuals in question were clearly Smash and Grab, a pair of parahuman robbers with a history of violent break-ins. Smash was a Striker/Brute who liked to do as his name implied, while Grab was a telekinetic most effective at moving things directly towards herself. They were also clearly casing the factory site for a way in, but hadn't technically trespassed yet.

It was pretty close to midnight when the two of them made up their mind about their approach, and then they did something that their file hadn't even remotely hinted at. Namely, Smash chucked his partner clear over the barbed wire electric fence, then she hung dead still in midair as Smash got yanked up behind her like a deranged climbing team. I immediately sped up my own personal time rate and dashed for the rooftop, arriving just in time to see the two robbers touch down gently in front of me.

I promptly projected a time bubble around the pair, locking them in place. Then I called the PRT.

"Parahuman Response Team, what's your reason for calling?"

"This is Watch here. I've got two parahuman intruders at Reliabuilt's Manchester facility, currently frozen in time. I can hold them for hours if needed, but I'd really appreciate if you sent some people to come get them before that. To be more specific, I've apprehended Smash and Grab. Grab has demonstrated a use of her power not currently recorded in her file; I'll explain more later."

"Understood. A retrieval team is currently on the way. ETA thirty minutes."

As it turned out, it took the PRT forty minutes to arrive due to unforeseen circumstances, but I wasn't going to begrudge them that. I had the security robots direct the troopers up to the rooftop, and they got a good look at the two parahuman criminals, currently standing in a de facto tableau.

The unit's leader - a Lieutenant Reeves, according to his name tag - whistled appreciatively.

"Think you can let the containment foam get onto those two without unfreezing them?"

I answered honestly,

"Sorry, I don't have the fine control for that. But I can keep them slowed down a bit while you foam them, so they don't have time to react."

"That should do just fine, thanks."

A moment later, Smash and Grab were thoroughly covered in containment foam, muffled obscenities barely penetrating their cocoons as they were carted off. Lieutenant Reeves asked,

"One last thing; can we have recordings from your security cameras for use as evidence in court? These two haven't been tried yet, so it would really be quite helpful."

I shrugged,

"Sure. Just give me a bit to find a few spare data storage devices."

---

(Emmy)

"Clear the gate!"

While Rachel was busy with the PRT upstairs, Melissa and I were working on getting interdimensional travel working. While we'd been able to get portals open pretty quickly-

"Vacuum seals are green! Gate Clear!"

The ring flashed in a kaleidoscopic aura... revealing a completely different landscape than the shot we'd done five minutes ago. Despite us using the exact same settings. Melissa groaned in frustration.

"We have to be missing something here. How does our Dynalith target the beacons we make again?"

I answered,

"Quantum entanglement. It somehow uses that as a pointer for where... the portal... goes."

Suddenly, it dawned on me. Judging by Melissa's expression, her thoughts had gone in roughly the same direction. After a few minutes of furious mathematics, she asked me a question.

"So, our gate machine is using an atom as the seed of the portal, yeah? How much control over its quantum state do we exert during activation?"

I answered,

"A lot less than we probably should be doing, if I had to guess. Come on, let's get to work fixing that."

What followed was hours of trial and error. Controlling the exact quantum state of the gate array during each activation was far from easy, but fortunately we had plentiful experience at wrangling uncooperative quantum phenomena. On top of that, doing something very complicated the same exact way every single time was exactly the sort of task where a focus on reliability was extremely helpful.

By five in the morning, we were ready to resume gate testing.

Shot one, we plugged in the exact "quantum coordinates" we wanted - which were admittedly random - and fired up the gate machine. We got a view of a beautiful forested coastline, which we admired for about a minute before we closed the portal. Plugged in the exact same configuration, and we got to see the exact same landscape.

I promptly pulled Melissa into a hug, chuckling at the startled squeak my sister emitted in response. We'd achieved reliable interdimensional navigation. Now we needed a few more things - a way to find a reality's "coordinates" from inside it, a way to detect Dynalith surveillance, and then we needed to find a hole in the aliens' security sweeps.

Another giant leap for Earthkind, so many more to go.

 

[Amdar210]

Yay! New chapter! I blitzed this last night after finding it.

Loving it so far,and can't wait for more!


Also, first!

 

[lemonoxen]

The whole " I love you "thing is really weird and she's literally in love with herself . Plus it feels very forced and unnecessary.

 

[january1may]

The whole " I love you "thing is really weird and she's literally in love with herself . Plus it feels very forced and unnecessary.

Click to shrink...

If you mean the "Emmy is my family and I love her" parts, I read this as her trying to come up with a "please go away and do not pry further into this" answer that 1) doesn't directly reveal more than she's willing to, and 2) does not actually state any specific untruth. Whether it was a good one is another question, but it seems to have worked at least for that moment.

(It probably helped that she must have known at the time that most likely it wasn't long before Armsmaster was fully brought in and she could afford to reveal more than that, so perhaps she focused on postponing the prying until after that period, rather than on putting it away entirely.
...Of course that hangs on me interpreting that part of the situation correctly, though in any case the answer as given was essentially "this is personal, go away" while trying to avoid directly lying.)

 

[We Just Write]

The whole " I love you "thing is really weird and she's literally in love with herself . Plus it feels very forced and unnecessary.

Click to shrink...

L: Couple things to note:
- Emmy and Melissa have had significantly divergent life experiences since the latter was built, and Melissa wasn't a full upload to begin with. So no, they aren't the same person.
- In large part, Melissa was built to protect Emmy, and knowing that influenced her development somewhat. What is wanting to protect someone for its own sake, if not a form of love?
- For all practical intents and purposes, Emmy and Melissa are sisters. Their love is much more familial than romantic, but it is still love.

 

[We Just Write]

(Andrea)
Date Point: 0955, March 26, 2011. Saturday.

"Emmy, I got an idea!"

The oldest member of our little robot family looked up from her breakfast, an eyebrow raised.

"Public-facing, or backstage?"

As Marcus and Melissa also started paying attention, I answered the question.

"Public-facing. See, I got curious and ran the numbers on how health insurance works, and it's awful. The whole setup is basically just an extortion ring purpose built to extract the maximum possible money from sick people with the least possible healthcare provided. I think we have the resources to change that."

Melissa finished her bite of egg sandwich, chiming in.

"Guessing you're talking about starting our own health insurance provider, rather than buying out existing ones?"

I nodded,

"Yeah, there's fiduciary responsibilities that mean we couldn't get them to shape up even if we wanted to. Not to mention not having quite enough money to do it that way. Set it up as a non-profit subsidiary like the BBRF, and off we go."

There was a pause for a few seconds, before Melissa had an idea of her own.

"Hey, remember that huge library of biomedical technologies we got our Dynalith to cough up? We can't pass that off as part of our original Tinker specialty, but if we make another pseudocape..."

Without further prompting, Marcus dug the d20 out of his pocket.

"Same rules as when we started work on Rachel?"

Emmy shrugged,

"Sure."

It was a twelve.

Marcus smiled a bit.

"Looks like I won't be the only boy in the family anymore."

---

(Herman)
Date Point: 0312, March 28, 2011. Monday.

I snapped to awareness being hugged by five people at once. I quickly identified them as the Sykes family; Emmy, Melissa, Andrea, Marcus, and Rachel. And according to the knowledge directories I had already assimilated, I was part of the Sykes family too. Though I did notice that I had a skin tone considerably darker than my siblings; were I human, it would indicate African heritage within at most two generations.

Rachel was the first to speak.

"Welcome to the world, Herman."

I chuckled nervously,

"Glad to be here, but can I please have some personal space?"

Obligingly, everyone backed up, giving me some much needed room. After I took a seat on one of the chairs in what my integrated directories informed me was a robotics clinic, I spoke up.

"So, I have two questions. First, why did you build me?"

After some brief glancing around, Rachel fielded the question.

"We needed a public Tinker for a biomedical subsidiary of Reliabuilt. Our Dynalith contains rather extreme quantities of biomedical data, but it just can't be used without breaking our cover as a reliability Tinker. If Melissa claimed the credit for inventing that stuff it would raise all sorts of awkward questions, but it also has amazing potential to improve people's lives. Also, it fits well with our plan to establish a non-profit health insurance provider."

I nodded as I thought for a moment, then I asked my second question.

"Is that why I have a non-disclosure routine running already, along with the directory of Dynalith knowledge in its unencrypted state?"

Melissa sighed,

"Yes, sorry. We normally would have given a choice for whether or not to learn that, but your particular role couldn't be done without high-level access."

"For the record, I would have agreed anyway. But I'm rather annoyed at not having been offered the choice."

---

(Melissa)
Date Point: 1822, March 29, 2011. Tuesday.

It took a few hours to get a detector for Dynalith scanning up and running. Fortunately, we knew exactly what we were looking for, courtesy of all that classified data we'd extracted. Also having control of our Dynalith to force it to run a few localized scans, for testing purposes.

Much harder was figuring out how to get a fixed coordinate system for interdimensional travel. Especially figuring out how to contact Earth Bet from elsewhere, and subsequently develop secure interdimensional communications. Fortunately, this was yet another case where we could steal the Dynalith's homework. So getting that part up and running only took a few days.

Pretty soon, we had a suitable probe design. Powered by a Tritium betavoltaic - since we had Tritium available from our fusion work - each rover would be deployed through the gate machine to a random instance of Earth. If it detected Dynalith scans or signs of human civilization on initial deployment, the rover would immediately return to base. Otherwise, it would call us back every so often to let us know if it had logged any scans or signal traffic, along with anything else we needed to know.

Setup complete and a rover-maker set up, I'd gotten the whole family together to watch Rover 01's first offworld mission.

I promptly activated the gate machine for a random set of coordinates, smiled as the portal opened, and watched as Rover 01 drove forwards into the breach. The instant our probe passed the portal, it promptly started backing up until it was back on Earth Bet, the portal closing right after. According to the logs, whatever Earth we'd sent it to was most definitely the subject of surveillance by the Dynaliths.

Rachel spoke up, even as the portal machine automatically dialed another Earth.

"Well that was utterly disappointing. Not unexpected, though."

Andrea shrugged, even as Rover 01 promptly reversed off the third Earth it had been sent to.

"We all knew this was going to take a while. Nothing left to do but leave the machines running. Maybe we could have more gates dialing in parallel, but that would be about it for speeding things up."

---

(Marcus)
Date Point: 0930, March 30, 2011. Wednesday.

As it turned out, today I was going on a brief trip to Canada. Dragon - sorry, Teresa - wanted to get on with subverting her Dynalith, and had asked for someone with relevant experience to come and consult. Since I was the most available person who fit the bill, I was the one who got in the teleporter.

Upon arrival, I got to see that Teresa had finally gotten around to embodying herself, using an appearance very similar to her preferred virtual avatar.

"Hello, Marcus."

As I stepped out of the (now open) vacuum chamber, I replied.

"Good to see you Teresa. That body looks good on you. Is this room shielded?"

Teresa shook her head,

"No. Follow me, please."

A few minutes later, we'd reached the extreme-security parts of Dragon's Lair. I paid careful attention to the security measures in place, and I was pleased to note that Teresa was indeed treating this matter with all the seriousness it deserved. If it weren't for Dragon actively letting me in, there's no way I would have survived a break-in attempt. And that's with having a really good idea what appropriate security for Dynalith infosec looked like, to prepare for the effort.

Still, soon enough we were sat down in a small break room. Teresa spoke first,

"This room is secure. So, what can you tell me about subverting a Dynalith?"

---

(Rachel)
Date Point: 2045, March 30, 2011. Wednesday.

One good thing about Armsmaster being read in on the Big Secrets was that it didn't need to only be Melissa collaborating with him. Armsmaster still told Director Piggot a truth that he wanted to do a collaborative project with Ruggedizer; he simply neglected to mention that there were actually six "Ruggedizers".

In particular, we were working together on an anti-Endbringer weapon. As he looked over the documentation on the calculations I'd already done, Armsmaster spoke up.

"Rachel, this isn't the most terrifying plan for a weapon I've seen, but it's definitely pretty high on the list."

I nodded,

"Yeah. The worst part is how simple it is to extrapolate from our teleportation technology. We could build a quantum disintegration field right now, but it would be a stationary emplacement with nowhere near the range to be actually useful as anything more than an overpriced garbage disposal."

Armsmaster thought for a moment,

"That would be where I come in with my miniaturization expertise, I believe?"

"Yes. Together, we might just be able to get a usable weapon out of the idea."

---

(Emmy)
Date Point: 1031, March 31, 2011. Thursday.

"Emmy Sykes, Daniel Hebert is here to speak with you."

I replied via the intercom,

"Send him right up, Rose. I'm still in my office at the moment."

"Certainly."

A few minutes later, Danny Hebert politely knocked on the door to my office.

"Come in, Danny."

Danny obligingly walked into the office, and I found myself asking a question.

"Not that I mind talking to you, but is there any particular reason you came over during business hours?"

Danny nodded.

"I found something. It's definitely Cape business, and you're the person I trust most to know what to do with it."

With that, Danny hefted a briefcase onto my desk, followed shortly by popping the latches open. When I saw what was inside, I forgot to breath for a moment. It was a six-pack of translucent vials, containing a fluid that somehow managed to give me the creeps just by looking at it. The fact that each vial was marked with the inverted Omega symbol found on Case 53s only added to the feelings of Bad Juju I was getting.

But by far the creepiest part was the note inside the briefcase.

"Ruggedizer. We need to talk. Have an appointment open tomorrow at 2 PM sharp. Consider the vials a gift.

-DM"

Seeing it, Danny commented,

"Alright, that note definitely wasn't in the briefcase last time I checked. And it hasn't left my sight since I found it in my office at the Dockworkers Association building. Everything about this whole situation is extremely suspicious. I don't like it."

Though I didn't voice the sentiment, I firmly agreed with Danny. This situation was extremely anxiety-inducing on a multitude of levels.

 

[SteamStereo]

Well that's… blatant.

What even does cauldron have to talk about? Uploading the case 53s that are unstable and editing their memories with more finesse… and I answered my own question.

Carry on with the fantastic story.

 

[We Just Write]

(Emmy)

The meeting room selected for the meeting with the mysterious "DM" was strictly speaking in the public-facing part of the Brockton Bay factory complex. However, overnight we had done major refurbishments to the space. Soundproofing, dimensional shielding, over-rides on all the surveillance devices, and dozens of concealed methods to instantly kill everyone in the room at the merest twitch of a thought. Melissa, Andrea, and myself would all be in attendance for the meeting - but the bodies we used would be operated via remote control, with our minds hosted in the extreme-security parts of the facility.

At five minutes prior to the meeting, a taxi emerged from a momentary gap in our surveillance drone coverage, dropped off a black woman wearing a business suit, and drove off. Continued aerial surveillance seemed to frustrate the taxi driver for several minutes, until whoever it was eventually managed to get a visual obstruction between themselves and any observers, promptly vanishing. Annoying, but keeping with what we'd already observed.

As for the woman who had been dropped off, she walked into the lobby and introduced herself to Rose.

"Hello. You can call me DM. I do believe I have an appointment now."

Rose quickly checked her schedule.

"Yes, you do. Ruggedizer, Laniakea, and Emmy are waiting for you in Conference Room Four."

So at exactly two in the afternoon, this "DM" entered the meeting room. She seemed to hesitate for a moment about allowing the door to close all the way, but eventually did so. She seemed slightly startled by the fact that the door didn't latch shut, but latching the door wasn't necessary. If we didn't want DM to escape, she wouldn't.

I was the first to speak.

"So, 'DM'. Is that what you actually want to be called?"

She shook her head.

"No. You may call me Doctor Mother."

A glowing eyebrow on Melissa's expressive visor rose.

"I'd ask questions about your education, but Tinkers in general have a bad habit of misusing academic titles."

"I am not a parahuman; I am simply the leading expert in the field of parahuman abilities."

We all shared a glance in the virtual space we were using to coordinate. Not in the physical meeting room; our infosec routines wouldn't permit that sort of hint. After a moment, Andrea gestured for 'Doctor Mother' to continue, and also asked a question of her own,

"So, why exactly did you want to talk to us?"

"I lead the organization known as Cauldron. We are attempting to avert the extinction of humanity."

I was getting a distinct sinking feeling, but Melissa was quicker on the draw.

"Endbringers?"

Doctor Mother's answer immediately set off mental alarm bells in all our minds.

"Worse. Scion."

That brought things into stark clarity.

The only reason someone would be trying to kill Scion is if they knew about the Dynaliths and the problems they represented. And everything we'd observed about this woman indicated she was a baseline human - and therefore couldn't have a shielded brain. Within half a second, we'd followed the logic to its conclusion: Cauldron was irreversibly compromised, even moreso if they had parahuman members. Anything, anything at all we told them about our anti-Dynalith activities would trip the alarms.

The fact Cauldron itself hadn't already tripped the alarms indicated that they weren't perceived as a noteworthy threat. At best, that indicated Cauldron's methods were entirely ineffective. At worst, that indicated Cauldron was the unwitting pawn of the Dynaliths, used to root out and destroy actually competent resistance efforts. We needed to get rid of this woman immediately, before she could learn anything about our activities. And we couldn't just kill her, as that could potentially tip off the Dynaliths watching her that we knew the threat she represented.

Andrea spoke first.

"Doctor mother, we cannot work with you. Leave immediately."

"But-"

Melissa cut her off.

"Leave immediately, or we'll have security forcibly remove you from the premises. Get out."

That ultimatum managed to get through her skull, at least, and the self-proclaimed Doctor turned to go. She walked notably faster on the way out than on the way in, passing the front desk within two minutes of exiting the conference room. We kept surveillance on the walking security breach until the moment her mysteriously vanishing taxi mysteriously vanished.

The instant Doctor Mother was gone, we immediately blacklisted her from all Reliabuilt facilities.

---

(Herman)
Date Point: 1501, April 1st, 2011. Friday.

While working with Cauldron was a no-go, that just meant ignoring the vials they gave us would be even more foolish than it otherwise would be. So I got the task of analyzing the vials' contents. Since I hadn't publicly debuted yet, I opted to do it during normal work hours.

The answer for what was in there? Water, a slurry of Dynalith-sourced biological molecules, and a shit-ton of quantum-entangled portal seeds. More pertinently, some of the portal seeds were attached to molecules that were quite capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier.

Analyzing the "addresses" of the portal seeds in each vial found a recurring address for all six vials, and an additional unique address for each of them. Though I couldn't know for certain without experimenting on people, I hypothesized that the likely result of someone drinking this was a horribly misconfigured Dynalith heavily mutating the drinker, possibly killing them. The shared address in each vial was most likely a somewhat stable Dynalith that the brewers had found and started mixing in to try and mitigate that exact problem.

In summary, I was not impressed in the slightest. This 'Cauldron' group had tried to make bottled superpowers, and they'd barely done better than pureeing random bits of Dynalith tissue. I suppose that meant the name of the organization was appropriate, at least. The logo on both the vials and Case 53s certainly matched though- and come to think of it, the shoddiness of Cauldron's products would perfectly explain where Case 53s came from.

The question now was what to do with the information. We had the technology to open portals to those Dynaliths and subvert them like we had our own, which we would undoubtedly do at some point. But aside from that, an actually worthwhile use of this information was quite difficult to come up with.

We couldn't tell the public or government about Cauldron for infosec reasons. Subjecting anyone we actually liked to these vials' effects would be cruel in the extreme. Feeding them to our enemies or strangers would simply be stupid. Simply burning them would be an utter waste of research material; but the value there was dubious. Even without involving Dynaliths, I could make better bottled powers right now- wait a moment. I could make better bottled powers right now.

But... what would be the point of doing that? Couldn't use it to bring people into the conspiracy; even if we shielded their brains, non-disclosure alterations would get everyone screaming MASTER at the top of their lungs. However, shielding someone's brain would render them immune to precog and the vast majority of Master abilities.

My thoughts immediately leapt to the Simurgh. Simply removing her ability to flawlessly plan around everyone else and brainfuck anyone she wanted would shake the world immensely. And... infosec wouldn't permit doing that. Because shaking the world immensely stood far too much risk of tripping the alarms. Right... what else was a valid option to increase hope worldwide.

If bottled powers weren't an option, we could always start sponsoring "trigger events". If we used subverted Dynaliths to do it, there wouldn't even be any extra infrastructure for the aliens to notice. With careful selection of where and when the extra capes popped up, we'd be able to slant parahuman demographics far towards the benign side. Since we would be designing their powers... We could even make sure our sponsored capes always got a shielded brain, and add the ability to extract Dynalith addresses from any other parahumans they met - letting us access and subvert even more Dynaliths.

I couldn't work on it all the time of course, I'd be needing to make some public-facing inventions too. But still, I knew what my first major project would be.

Figuring I might as well use our Dynalith as a test case, I opened up the interface we'd designed to monitor and control its operation. Time to get to work.

---

(Rachel)
Date Point: 1951, April 2nd, 2011. Saturday.

Not having anything better to do, I'd come down to the Manchester facility's basement. Mainly, I wanted to watch the gate machines dial for suitable worlds.

We had sixty gate machines running now; just about the limit of what could reasonably fit down here in the extreme-security area. And as I came down the stairs, I noticed that Marcus was also here, leaning against a wall and watching the machines work.

I greeted my brother,

"Slow day, Marcus?"

He nodded,

"Yeah, none of Brockton or Manchester's remaining villains want to go anywhere near us, we're on good terms with all the heroes and neutrals, and there... really isn't much for me to do on the public-facing side right now."

I nodded, even as I checked the statistics for the number of worlds checked. Approximately 14 million worlds dialed, of which twelve didn't have immediately detectable scans. Of those twelve, all but one had such hostile surface conditions that even our stupidly tough little rovers couldn't survive there. But that last one...

Just as I was thinking that, Marcus got a bit more alert.

"Huh, got a report from that rover that's still out there. It's been a whole day with no sign of Dynalith surveillance whatsoever, and there's no sign of life beyond the microbial level."

I blinked, even as I read the report. If anything, saying the place had microbial life was over-hyping it. Extremely crude RNA replicators, barely worth calling organisms. If I had to guess, that particular earth had gotten smacked with a huge impactor fairly recently (in geological time, anyway), resetting life to the very beginning. This hypothesis was supported by the planet's slightly heavier surface gravity, though the difference was minor enough that a human wouldn't notice. Though a human would notice the atmospheric composition, shortly before they asphyxiated.

I nodded in thought, then remarked,

"If there's still no signs of Dynalith surveillance there in a week, I say we pick that world as our main colony site. Any thoughts on what to name it?"

Marcus nodded,

"Neohadea. Named for Earth's Hadean epoch."

 

[Kaiserfrost]

Cauldron were so ineffective that humanity survived canon in spite of them.

 

[Cheetored20]

Hmmmm, why do i have a feeling that the heavy impactor was Eden, and the world didnt even have the crude RNA replicators before hand?

 

[We Just Write]

Hmmmm, why do i have a feeling that the heavy impactor was Eden, and the world didnt even have the crude RNA replicators before hand?

Click to shrink...

C: Because you're reading too far into things. NeoHadea has never been meaningfully subject to Entity intervention.

 

[Cheetored20]

C: Because you're reading too far into things. NeoHadea has never been meaningfully subject to Entity intervention.

Click to shrink...

I meant more as a skip off the surface kinda thing, or quantum portals that imediately formed and colapsed on impact.

 

[We Just Write]

I meant more as a skip off the surface kinda thing, or quantum portals that imediately formed and colapsed on impact.

Click to shrink...

C: The impact was at least a few million years ago.

 

[Cheetored20]

C: The impact was at least a few million years ago.

Click to shrink...

Ah i must have missed that part. Too exited to read lol.

 

[Amdar210]

Odd question.

Are we going to see how Cauldron reacts to DM being told to skedaddle?

I'm kinda curious as to what reasons they come up with.

Maybe Cauldron thinks that Ruggeizer and co think DM is crazy. Or Maybe a Scion Cult on the down low?

I'm just curious as to how that might play out when Cauldron meets.

 

[Orphiex]

Odd question.

Are we going to see how Cauldron reacts to DM being told to skedaddle?

I'm kinda curious as to what reasons they come up with.

Maybe Cauldron thinks that Ruggeizer and co think DM is crazy. Or Maybe a Scion Cult on the down low?

I'm just curious as to how that might play out when Cauldron meets.

Click to shrink...

Even better: are we going to see Ruggedizer & Co. watching Cauldron's reactions? After all:

In summary, I was not impressed in the slightest. This 'Cauldron' group had tried to make bottled superpowers, and they'd barely done better than pureeing random bits of Dynalith tissue. I suppose that meant the name of the organization was appropriate, at least. The logo on both the vials and Case 53s certainly matched though- and come to think of it, the shoddiness of Cauldron's products would perfectly explain where Case 53s came from.

The question now was what to do with the information. We had the technology to open portals to those Dynaliths and subvert them like we had our own, which we would undoubtedly do at some point.

Click to shrink...

If they know that Cauldron is physically extracting Dynalith samples for their vials, then by cross-referencing the space-time position of the puréed Dynaliths, they can locate Cauldron's base, and try to monitor it. It's author's choice as to whether they can shield such monitoring portals from Contessa, Custodian and Clairvoyant, but it's probably worth making the attempt.

 

[We Just Write]

A/N: We've got five whole Interludes before the next Arc, so buckle in. As an additional side note, we've caught up to the start of Canon Worm.

---

(Marcus)
Date Point: 1724, April 4th, 2011. Tuesday.

Ever since Snoop was shipped off to prison on the 15th of March, Brockton Bay had been entirely free of powered neo-nazis. Tonight, Andrea - Laniakea - and I were heading out to restore that state of affairs.

According to the information we got from Faultline, the swastika-wearing stain on humanity we were going after was able to duplicate himself several times over. And unlike most self-duplicating capes, these duplicates seemed to retain their full mental faculties while also being effectively permanent on a combat timescale. Though he'd not been observed with more than five instances out at a time. They'd also not been observed more than one hundred meters apart at any point since their first appearance a few days ago.

Laniakea hypothesized that the thus-unnamed duplicator had inherited Crusader's Dynalith, and I was inclined to agree.

We first got a confirmed sighting of the duplicator near the Boardwalk, one of our security drones getting an aerial view of five identical goons shaking down a family. Hard to tell the exact ethnicity from that altitude, but definitely not white.

We were on-scene in thirty seconds - arriving just in time for the flashbang our drone dropped to go off.

We immediately tazed all the clones while they were still dazzled - and then we found ourselves locked in place, a Parahuman power seizing our skeletons and hauling us into the air. Though at least our electronics were still unaffected, courtesy of our dimensional shielding.

"Hah! And here I was thinking I'd need to shred a car at you once you took the bait! Turns out you two are made of metal, so I don't need to do that."

The high altitude drone - thankfully out of the metallokinetic's range - quickly identified the speaker; a presumable man coated in distorted sheet metal with a big Swastika embossed onto his chest.

As the metallokinetic monologued about what he'd do to us to get revenge for the E88, I had a quick mental conversation with Laniakea.

"Lethal?"

"Wait five seconds for more drones to get into position."

It was an unpleasant and tense wait, especially once the duplicator recovered. Considering that the neo-nazis in question were definitely planning to torture and murder us, I really wanted to be anywhere but here. Just as the sixth high-altitude drone cleared the skyline, both my legs and Andrea's were abruptly torn off at the knee.

Twenty milliseconds later, six neo-nazi heads abruptly exploded courtesy of the ultra-violet lasers on our drones. With the metallokinetic dead, I fell to the ground - though Andrea stayed aloft courtesy of her flight capability. Seeing my plight, Andrea offered to carry me back to base - which I immediately accepted.

The instant we got home, I posted a notice to the family message board:

"We need to D-Shield our ENTIRE bodies, not just our brains!"

---

(Rachel)
Date Point: 0211, April 6th, 2011. Wenesday.

After much work with Armsmaster, we finally had our first prototype of a QDF weapon.

Looking at the... device we'd cobbled together, especially the heavy-duty superconducting cable connecting it to its power supply, it definitely wasn't pretty.

In Armsmaster's words "This particular unit will only be suitable for proving the principle. Serious refinement will be needed to produce a worthwhile weapon."

I nodded.

"You're definitely correct there. Anyway, I do believe it's time for the initial test?"

Armsmaster agreed, then opened the sealed case containing a sample of Behemoth's tissue from particularly deep, only sheared off thanks to a power interaction that could no longer be repeated. The only reason Armsmaster was allowed to requisition the closest thing the PRT had to a sacred relic was because this was an explicit and official project to create an anti-Endbringer weapon. Even then, it was a near thing - without Armsmaster's exemplary service record stretching back over a decade, the request would have most likely been denied.

The tissue sample was carefully positioned one third of its length across the projected cut line. We both got clear of the test chamber, and activated the device. There was the briefest flicker as a virtual "blade" of quantum fuckery flashed in and out of existence, then it was done.

Powering down the prototype, we both went back into the laboratory. When Armsmaster picked up the tissue sample, it had been cleanly cut along the plane of the device - despite being previously unscathed by a nuclear explosion in an earlier attempt to design an effective Endslayer.

I nodded to Armsmaster.

"It seems we have our principle. Now we just need to make a worthwhile weapon using it."

Armsmaster actually smiled.

"Indeed."

---

(Melissa)
Date Point: 1705, April 9th, 2011. Saturday.

I'd come down to the basement of Manchester today, Emmy, Andrea, Marcus, Rachel, Herman and Dragon all in attendance. Armsmaster had opted to simply be briefed on this particular meeting afterwards.

"So. The number of worlds checked has now exceeded one hundred million. Of those, NeoHadea remains the best colony candidate, with no Dynalith surveillance and tolerable surface conditions. Though we have found four more potential sites, and the rate seems to be increasing now that we're searching 'further' from Earth Bet."

Dragon thought for a moment, then asked a question.

"Is distance even really an applicable concept in multiverse travel?"

I answered,

"Yes, yes it is. The energy expenditures associated with each portal are steadily rising as we search further and further out. As an example, it takes twenty thousand times the energy to gate to NeoHadea as it does to reach Earth Aleph. That's another reason we need to colonize NeoHadea soon, now that we know it's a viable site. Much longer, and we'll have to reduce the Manchester facility's check rate to avoid drawing suspicion with our power consumption."

Dragon nodded,

"Very well. Will we be shipping gate machines to Toronto, building a new gate there, or colonizing from Manchester?"

Andrea spoke up then,

"We already have four gate machines and a palletized fusion generator flat-packed for teleportation, if you're ready to receive."

"Understood, I'll get the teleporter ready."

---

(Herman)
Date Point: 1005, April 11th, 2011. Monday.

From my spot backstage, I could clearly hear the press conference, even without tapping into the sound system.

"Emmy Sykes, what inspired you to found a biomedical and health insurance wing of Reliabuilt?"

Emmy replied,

"That would be a new hire of ours. Come on out!"

That was my cue. I walked out on stage, lab coat and mirrored safety goggles clearly marking me as noteworthy.

"Greetings. I am Apothecary, a Tinker specialized in pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. I will be heading the biomedical wing of Reliabuilt, while ReliaCare insurance will not require Parahuman intervention."

Of course, that's when an impatient reporter butted in.

"While Ruggedizer's Tinkertech has proven shockingly possible to reverse-engineer, other Tinkers attempting to teach their tech haven't been anywhere near as effective. What makes you think you can do it?"

I couldn't tell them the real answer, that most Tinkers were hamstrung by Dynalith interference, and we'd hacked the shit out of ours. That would be an impermissible breach of security. Fortunately, I had a prepared lie at the ready. It was even partially true.

"The answer is the equipment I am working with. Reliabuilt's laboratory equipment allows for the testing, synthesis and manufacturing to happen at a sufficient remove that my power will not be able to interfere. Inputting the same program into the machine will produce the same output, and since the equipment was designed by Ruggedizer, both its operation and its use are far more comprehensible to regular personnel."

There was even precedent for what I was saying: Byung-Ho's superconductor, of which licensed production was now spooling up across the country. Without the exact logs of the synthesis pathway from Reliabuilt's laboratory equipment, there was no way the PRT would have been able to replicate it.

The press conference kept going for about half an hour, then I went back inside. Time for me to get to work.

 

[We Just Write]

(Emily Piggot)
Date Point: 1041, April 11th, 2011. Monday

When you actually stopped to analyze the situation and pay attention to what was going on, the laws Ruggedizer was flouting were incredibly obvious.

The first and most blatant point was NEPEA-5. Even aside from Emmy's status as an upload, she was very clearly Ruggedizer. Or, one of the Ruggedizers at least. Yes she'd been seen in the same room as Ruggedizer on several occasions, but that meant absolutely nothing when Ruggedizer very clearly had the ability to make robotic body doubles.

Hell, Ruggedizer had even admitted to using robotic body doubles directly to me, when I called them after the E88 got splattered. I truthfully didn't know whether or not she'd actually been remote-operating that particular body, but the scales under the stage had clearly measured her as weighing over four hundred pounds. Even accounting for the armor, there was no way a human with that figure could weigh that much.

I had further reason to suspect the publicly known Ruggedizer had been a robotic double from the very beginning of course: namely that conspicuous refusal to explain her lack of a concussion after the altercation with Squealer.

And then there were the other "capes" working for Ruggedizer. Or, as I had come to suspect, more robots. If Laniakea, Watch, and the enigmatic Mr. E had been preexisting Parahumans who had been hired, there would be at least some sort of record of their existence beforehand. Instead, there weren't even any rumored sightings of those three before they'd signed on with Reliabuilt. The same pattern held for their "new Tinker" Apothecary, whose earliest sighting was walking out of a Reliabuilt facility, directly into a press conference.

Another dead give away? Laniakea and Watch were both far too well-adjusted to be actual parahumans. Though they did flout the law in deniable ways on plenty of occasions, the both of them were consistent in their behavior in ways that simply didn't track with the mental baggage every parahuman was saddled with.

That said, I did think both Trainwreck and Byung-Ho were actual parahumans. Both of them had previous sightings before their jobs with Reliabuilt. In the case of Byung-Ho, he'd actually been a government employee for over a decade beforehand.

But yes, Emmy Sykes was very blatantly the original Tinker behind Reliabuilt, and that meant her ownership of the company was a direct violation of NEPEA-5. But there was a very good reason I was going to let her keep doing it.

Namely, Reliabuilt was too damn useful. I don't know how or why, but that woman and her creations just kept churning out world-changing inventions. And unlike other Tinkertech, her stuff was usually reproducible. Wireless energy transfer with minimal losses. Teleportation. Brain uploading and associated robotics technology. Fusion power generation. All of it licensed out for other people to make, taking a hacksaw to most company's motives to go after Reliabuilt for NEPEA-5 as well.

And aside from Reliabuilt's main lines of revenue, they were an unparalleled stabilizing influence in Brockton Bay. Starting with the most obvious factor, gutting the Empire 88's cape roster the way they did tilted the balance of power in the city to be in favor of the heroes literally overnight. Even beyond that, Reliabuilt had demonstrated distinctly permanent approaches for dealing with parahuman criminals who messed with their interests; dumping Uber and Leet in Arizona certainly came to mind. They had also clearly done something to remove the remaining Undersiders from circulation after Tattletale's arrest, though the exact situation was very unclear, beyond involving backroom dealings on the part of Mr. E.

For that matter, even Lung and Oni Lee were mostly behaving themselves now!

And of course, there were the immense amount of money Reliabuilt was dumping into efforts to improve life in Brockton Bay. Four months on, the results were already extremely evident in terms of a reduced crime rate and generally improved living standards.

So while I had ample reason to order an investigation into Reliabuilt, I wouldn't. If I had my way, no-one else would either.

 

[We Just Write]

While Melissa's plan to use Eagleton as a jumping-off point for colonization was utterly horrible, there was a single spark of good sense in the idea. Namely, that Taylor's technopathy could hard-counter the Machine Army, allowing for that quarantine zone to finally be dealt with.

So in the last week of March, I reached out to Taylor. More specifically, I called ahead and came to visit at her home, using a freshly made human-form body.

I happened to arrive about ten minutes after Taylor got home, conspicuously leaving my IFF transponder on for Taylor to notice.

The teenage upload in question immediately whirled around as soon as I entered the living room, accidentally knocking over her chair and sprawling onto the floor. Still, she almost immediately got back on her feet.

"Dragon? Why are you here? Did I do something wrong?"

I shook my head.

"You haven't done anything wrong. In fact, I'm here because you could do something very good that no-one else can easily replicate."

After a moment, Taylor asked,

"It's about my power, isn't it? I eventually told dad, but I still don't like using it. Too much porn, though the filter Emmy designed helps a lot."

I nodded.

"I don't think you'd need to worry about pornography in this particular instance. Taylor, have you ever heard of the Machine Army?"

"Kinda? I only know the basic stuff, that an army of robots took over Eagleton and- oh. You really think I'd be able to solve that problem?"

I nodded,

"I think you're certainly the best shot at an easy fix we've got."

---

The planning stage took about a week to set up. I'd made clear to the PRT that I'd found a Parahuman with a highly applicable power, who was willing to work as a one-time contractor to deal with the Eagleton situation. I'd also made clear that the anonymous parahuman in question had no interest in maintaining a long-term cape persona going forwards, and that I would be very displeased by attempts at prying.

There was also the matter of fitting Taylor with a fully anonymized temporary body for the mission. Complete with fully sealed "power armor" as the outer layer.

So on the 9th of April, we arrived on scene in Eagleton. The instant Taylor unsealed her power, she started seizing control of Machine Army units - even using their own network to seize members beyond her immediate radius.

"If he weren't already dead, I would throttle the seagull-brained idiot who programmed these people! Enough skill to design full synthetic consciousness, locked down by stupid fucking compulsions to protect him and avenge his death! But then he went and wrapped his car around a tree, and there wasn't edge-case handling to identify an accidental death! So the moronic vengeance protocols just defaulted to everything without a friendly IFF!"

Andre - the Quarantine Zone's commanding officer - asked the obvious question.

"So what are you going to do about it, exactly?"

Taylor grumbled,

"I've already deleted the vengeance protocols for the entire Machine Army. So they're not forced into hostility anymore, at least. Thing is, I'm ethically conflicted about going much further. Despite everything, those robots are people. And they're arguably just as much victims here as everyone else. I've already had to forcibly stop over a hundred suicide attempts in the last few seconds, more than half of which were driven by guilt at what they'd done."

Andre seemed startled there,

"Wait, the Machine Army's units feel guilt?"

Taylor nodded,

"Yes. Yes they do. I really hope you and your bosses come up with some sort of peaceful solution and fast, because this situation isn't sustainable, and I'm not going to just kill them. I'm currently trying to talk them around to the idea of peace negotiations, but it's slow going without trampling their newly granted free will."

I thought for a moment, and came to a decision.

"Commander Andre, I believe I can mediate negotiations between the PRT and the Machine Army. As soon as you make clear that the PRT is open to negotiations, I can bring Contractor home."

"Understood. I'll get a loudspeaker set up while I call head office."

Ultimately, I did manage to negotiate a peaceful outcome to the situation, though well after Taylor got home.

The Machine Army would be allowed remain together so they could protect each other, and would remain in Eagleton. However, their legal status within the USA would change to simply being another municipal government. That meant free travel for both those robots who wanted it, and for humans interested in Eagleton. It also meant freedom to conduct business - though the Eagletons did manage to wrangle a specific exemption to NEPEA-5 within Eagleton city limits.

I didn't expect the tensions to go away overnight, there was far too much built up mistrust and pain on both sides of the situation. But for now at least, there was peace, and an opportunity for something better.

 

[Amdar210]

We like, really need to see just how the wider world is dealing with all these changes.

Cauldron and hiw they are reacti g to everything, from having DM snubbed, to how the vairous ceos are dealing with the mc and her fellows getting around NEPA5, to how the average civilian is dealing with tinker tech that is reproducible.

This new bit of the Machine Army, amd the vengeance protocols. I could easily see people comparing it to being Mastered, and I can see the PRT and the US gov being pressured heavily to grant a general 'Non-Human-Intelligence Equal Rights Act' law or something.

 

[We Just Write]

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♦ Topic: ATTENTION TO TINKERS SEEKING JOBS
In: Boards ► ► Brockton Bay ► General
Built_To_Last (Original Poster) (Verified Upload) (Verified Cape)
Posted On Apr 13th 2011:
Look, I get it. You heard that working with Reliabuilt means your Tinkertech becomes massively more reproducible. If you want to patent something, change the world with it, and maybe get rich on the side, that's a very attractive deal.

But dozens of you from all over the country barging into the lobby all at once is NOT the way to do it! You all scared Rose to the point of shaking, and with you all talking over each other, we could barely understand what any of you were saying. I'm sorry for having security escort you out of the building, but if we want this to go anywhere useful, the onboarding process needs to be WAY more organized than what happened this morning.

As such, there is now an online portal for Tinkers looking to apply for work at Reliabuilt. Baselines and unpowered uploads also have job opportunities through said online portal.

Fill out the forms it provides, send us the files, and we'll schedule an interview.
(Showing page 1 of 2)
►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
I suppose that would explain the disturbance from near your factory earlier, and why you didn't decide to call in the PRT. Here's hoping that the new online portal smooths things out.

On another note, that's quite a fast turnaround on the online portal. Is that something you were already working on, or just a Tinker thing?

►CattoReese (Verified Upload)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
More of an Upload thing, if I had to guess. Turns out being reincarnated into a computer makes programming a HELL of a lot more intuitive. Sure beats my old cancer-carcass, that's for sure.

Though I'm attracting dirty looks from my coworkers for how obscenely good at software development I am now.

►Procto the Unfortunate Tinker (Not a tinker)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
I suppose that means you live up to the transgender programmer stereotypes then, Reese? Do you have the stripey socks too?

►CattoReese (Verified Upload)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
Hah, no. But now I'm thinking I should get some.

►Spinamathing (Unverified Cape)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
For the record, I'm sorry about my behavior earlier today. My enthusiasm got the better of me, and I really should have known better. I've properly filled out the paperwork for a job application now.

Ah, just in case anyone's wondering what my "thing" as a Tinker is: gyroscopes, turbines, sawblades, really anything that involves spinning around really fast as part of its function. Probably not anywhere near as world-changing as what Ruggedizer's already made, but I want to genuinely contribute.

►Bagrat (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
You know what Spin? Sure. I can think of quite a few things that people would be really interested in that would fall well within your described purview. For example, some kind of super-bearing. would be useful in way more things than I can think of right now.

►Built_To_Last (Original Poster) (Verified Upload) (Verified Cape)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
You know what? Better bearings will ALWAYS be in high demand. I can think of DOZENS of my designs that could be meaningfully improved with a perfected magnetic bearing or something like that. So Spinamathing, think you can do that? By the way, we'd like for you to come in tomorrow for an interview.

►Spinamathing (Unverified Cape)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
!!!

Thankyouthankyou! I'll never forget this.

As for the super-bearing idea, I've actually got a dozen takes on the idea packed up in my luggage already. Brought them with me from Seattle when I decided to try getting a job at Reliabuilt.

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
Wait a moment. Tinker specialized in rotational technology. From Seattle.

Spinamathing, I'm going to ask you directly: are you the villain Gyro?

►Spinamathing (Unverified Cape)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
I plead the fifth.

►CattoReese (Verified Upload)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
Playing devil's advocate for a bit, would Spinamathing being Gyro actually change anything? Gyro never did anything that bad really, at worst some incidental property damage.

Plus, don't you folks at the PRT care a lot more about reducing the number of villains in circulation than you do about the letter of the law?

►Built_To_Last (Original Poster) (Verified Upload) (Verified Cape)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
Eh, worst case I just slap down a couple million dollars from between my couch cushions and pay all Spin's fines for her. Normally I'd be down on the whole "legal if you're rich" aspect of fines, but this time I'm fine with it. Heh, fine.

Hypocritical? Maybe, but I don't care.

►LittleOwl (Verified Upload)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
Come on, we both know that you're not quite rich enough for "a couple million dollars" to be couch cushions money yet. You'd at least need to reach for the piggy bank.

►Built_To_Last (Original Poster) (Verified Upload) (Verified Cape)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
You know what, fair enough. Anyway, the point stands that I'm willing to overlook a certain level of misdeeds in someone's past if there's a realistic chance of converting a criminal to a contributing member of society.

►Bagrat (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Apr 13th 2011:
Well, that seems to be settled at least. Sorry Reave, but it seems the law has been purchased once again.

►TheRealPanacea (Verified Cape)
Replied On Apr 14th 2011:
So, after getting legally emancipated and doing some soul-searching, I've come to a decision.

Namely, I'm going to work for Reliabuilt's new biomedical division. I can do a heck of a lot more good there than I ever could just healing one person at a time at the hospital, and the paycheck will be nice too. Forms already filled and submitted, with an interview scheduled for Friday.

►Vista (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)
Replied On Apr 14th 2011:
Wait what. That... That's really sudden.

Is there any particular reason for the sudden career-change, Panacea?

►TheRealPanacea (Verified Cape)
Replied On Apr 14th 2011:
Two reasons.

First, shocking as it may be to hear, I don't like healing people. Far too many of them are ungrateful entitled shits about it. It also just got really really boring after a while; delete one tumor, you've deleted all of them.

Second, there's a lot less pressure on me to clear up truly intractable cases now that Reliabuilt's brain uploading technology is rolling out nationwide. If someone's terminally ill, they can just get put in a fresh robot body, good as new.

Took me a while to work through all my emotions on the matter, but, well, that's why I'm legally emancipated now.

►CattoReese (Verified Upload)
Replied On Apr 14th 2011:
You know what, I think I get it. Of course, my perspective may be a bit skewed nowadays.

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied On Apr 14th 2011:
It's interesting to note that it's not just terminal illness patients getting uploaded. For example, Armsmaster has stated that he's now using a synthetic body of his own design.

And of course, we all remember the technology's rather gruesome public debut.

►LittleOwl (Verified Upload)
Replied On Apr 14th 2011:
I REALLY wish you hadn't brought that up, Brocktonite03. That was a very traumatic event for me, and I don't appreciate being reminded of it.

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied On Apr 14th 2011:
Wait, that was YOU!? So sorry for being so insensitive there.

►Deadman
Replied On Apr 14th 2011:
Moderator incoming in three, two, one...

►Brilliger (Moderator: Protectorate Main)
Replied On Apr 14th 2011:
While I am a moderator posting in this thread, I don't think Brocktonite03 is in need of disciplinary action.

That said, please get back on topic: this thread is supposed to be about parahumans looking for work at Reliabuilt, not the tragic backstories of our posters.
End of Page. 1

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♦ Topic: Reliacare Health Insurance
In: Boards ► USA ► General
Built_To_Last (Original Poster) (Verified Upload) (Verified Cape)
Posted On Apr 11th 2011:
As of today, Reliabuilt now has a health insurance subsidiary under its wing. Brand new, not purchased or mergered.

And unlike all those others? Reliacare is a non-profit. It doesn't need to extract money from clients to keep going, since we've got more than enough money from our patents to just keep it going despite the losses. So if you need healthcare, you can get it from Reliacare for a very affordable price.

Not only can you apply for a need-based exemption to needing to pay at all, not only will pre-existing conditions get the care they need, but Reliacare has two additional tricks up its sleeve.

First, we cover uploading as an elective procedure.

Second? If your CURRENT health insurer denies a claim, you can get us to fill it for you instead, with very little in the way of roadblocks. Only once per person though; while our coffers are vast, they're still finite. If you want further coverage after that gimme, you've got to sign up.
(Showing page 9 of 14)
►Chilldrizzle
Replied On Apr 11th 2011:
HAHAHA! I finally got my eyes fixed! GET FUCKED UHC, I'm never going back!

►GrapeFruit (Verified Pessimist)
Replied On Apr 22nd 2011:
While I'm just as overjoyed as the next person, this can't possibly be legal. Isn't that freebie health claim the very definition of anti-competitive business practices?

►Built_To_Last (Original Poster) (Verified Upload) (Verified Cape)
Replied On Apr 22nd 2011:
Nope, cleared it with legal beforehand! We're not trying to drive those for-profit insurers out of the market, we're trying to force them to actually give a crap about the wellbeing of the people they cover. They could absolutely offer service comparable to Reliacare, they just don't want to because they care about money more than human suffering.

So my message to all those health insurers out there, seething with rage? It sucks to suck, doesn't it?

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Apr 22nd 2011:
While I myself benefit from the PRT's in-house health plan, I'm actually quite pleased by how Reliacare is coming along.

Though I am somewhat confused by the decision to cover uploading as an elective procedure.

►Built_To_Last (Original Poster) (Verified Upload) (Verified Cape)
Replied On Apr 22nd 2011:
Two big reasons for that, really.

First is money, which we here at Reliabuilt are shockingly not immune to. Sticking someone in a fresh body really isn't all that expensive for us, and with how resilient the bodies we build are, it saves a huge amount of time, effort, and money on maintenance healthcare down the line.

Second? There's just a lot of benefits to being an upload, and I want to share. Not needing sleep is big, but there's also the strength and endurance, immunity to all biological diseases (on account of being a robot, duh), and quite a few other perks besides.

►LittleOwl (Verified Upload)
Replied On Apr 22nd 2011:
I can confirm that. Though I am a bit worried about needing to have my new body manually "adultified" when the time comes.

►Built_To_Last (Original Poster) (Verified Upload) (Verified Cape)
Replied On Apr 22nd 2011:
That's not something you need to worry about actually. The way your "soft tissues" are set up, you should grow into a fully adult appearance over the next few years or so. Really it's just an outgrowth of the functions to heal minor scrapes or cuts that don't breach your internal bulkheads.

Actually, you should have an interface available to configure your "puberty", come to think of it.

►LittleOwl (Verified Upload)
Replied On Apr 22nd 2011:
Wait, what!? I need to check something.

 

[SharkCultist]

Taylor gonna play with the titty slider on the character editor.

 

[Cheetored20]

Taylor gonna play with the titty slider on the character editor.

Click to shrink...

Watch it get stuck at max.

 

[SharkCultist]

Watch it get stuck at max.

Click to shrink...

Taylor learns the hard way it goes up not down