Sep 27, 2018
...fuckin’ tinkers.
seen from Brazil
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...fuckin’ tinkers.
“That’s the best case scenario?” Alexandria asked.
It’s interesting that he seems to think a 51.4% population reduction is better than a 33% reduction. Maybe he’s accounting for overpopulation? (Someone get Thanos in here.)
The man shrugged. “It’s unlikely it will occur. The bare minimum of people would have to die, there couldn’t be any bodies, and there wouldn’t be anything left unattended that could cause uncontrolled fires or nuclear incidents.
Oh wait, I see what he means now. That best case scenario is what would happen after a third of the population dies to the apocalypse.
If I were to ballpark a number, talking about events that could kill one-third to nearly all of the world’s population, I’d say roughly seventy-two percent of the earth’s population are likely to die. That leaves one billion, nine hundred and fifty million alive.
Damn.
Also, while I don’t think fast math is the full extent of his power, it does seem to be a part of it.
More than half of those individuals would die over the following twenty years, and more than half of those who remain would die in the ten years following that. Keeping in mind these are estimates, of course.”
So then after thirty years we’re down to a quarter of 28%, i.e. 7%.
“Of course,” The Doctor said, “Precogs are unreliable. I’m surmising this girl doesn’t know exactly how this occurs?”
I think I’ve got a better idea due to the kind of future vision I try to avoid.
Those doubts had become quiet conviction after he’d gone to see Battery in the hospital. One of Bonesaw’s mechanical spiders had cut her suit. He knew exactly the kind of disorientation, hallucination and waves of paranoia she would have experienced as the gas took hold.
So he found out about Battery’s secret mission, did he?
While she reeled and tried to get a grip on reality, she’d likely left herself open for further attacks. Whatever the case, one of the spiders had injected her with a poison Bonesaw had devised.
Uh oh.
Her death had been slow, painful and inevitable.
Fuck. RIP best Brockton Bay Protectorate member.
It had been engineered to strike those notes in a way that millions of years of evolution had yet to refine a plant’s toxin or an animal’s venom. Lying in the hospital bed, still delirious, Battery had used halting sentences to tell him about Cauldon, about buying her powers, and about Cauldron asking her to help Siberian and Shatterbird escape. She’d planned to pursue the Nine, to offer assistance and then kill one or both of the villains.
So she didn’t intend to go along with their mission, even if that meant Cauldron would come after her. Nice.
Battery had begged him for affirmation that she’d tried to do the right thing, that he would find the answers she didn’t. He’d reassured her the best he could.
You did, Battery. You did.
“And you don’t know anything about how William Manton is connected to all this?”
“I’m as mystified as you are.”
LIE.
Yeah, they definitely knew this one.
He knew what came next, with the conversation fresh in his memory. He didn’t want to press the button again, but there was little choice.
“I’ve trained myself in kinesics. I can look at a person’s face and body language and know if they’re lying. And I can tell you the Doctor is telling the truth.”
The red text popped up as the last four and a half words appeared. LIE.
Called it!
So why is Alexandria backing up the Doctor? Did she also get her powers from Cauldron, for that matter? Did they all?
Alexandria knew. Of course she had. Her ability to read people, her vast troves of knowledge, her ability to see patterns. And she was the most willing of their group to take the hard, ugly road. Had been since Siberian had hospitalized her.
Ouch. Before that, she was the one who seemed most reluctant to harm Siberian’s victim.
I can’t say this doesn’t also feel like a parallel to Taylor’s development, even if Taylor does surround herself with others that are more willing to take the hard, ugly road than herself.
Click.
His own voice. “I’m sorry to accuse you.”
Hah. I was kind of thinking it too that I wasn’t sure he actually was sorry.
LIE.
Had he been lying? He supposed he had. He didn’t like the Doctor, and he hadn’t truly felt sorry for his suspicions. Ever since he’d seen William Manton with the Slaughterhouse Nine, he’d harbored doubts about what was going on.
It’s the kind of lie almost everyone tells from time to time, just to be polite.
Instead, Legend descended on the rooftop of the NYC Protectorate offices. A tinker-made scanner verified who he was and opened the doors for him in time for him to walk through.
Yep. Protectorate HQ.
Is this where he finds out the Simurgh is swooping down towards Brockton Bay?
He nodded a greeting to everyone he passed. When people asked him how things had gone, he offered them a response that was polite but short enough that it was clear he wasn’t looking for further conversation.
Relatable.
He reached his office and closed the door.
He was careful to start up a virtual operating system preloaded with the standard PRT databases and software. Nothing that would leave a trace on his regular OS.
...alright. Secrecy required?
He unplugged the fiber-optic cables and disabled the wireless.
The precautions were little use if he was already being watched, but it made him feel better.
Who’s watching you? The PRT?
Once his computer was isolated from outside influences, he withdrew a USB cable from one drawer, plugging one end into the keyboard. He reached up to one ear and withdrew an earbud. The other end of the USB cable connected to it.
ASCII art of Kid Win’s face popped up as the earbud connected to the computer, along with the text, ‘thank you’.
Oh right, this part of the chapter’s plot. The thing he had Kid doing.
I love how cheeky Kid can be sometimes. :P
But also... he’s saying “thank you”, not “you’re welcome”. He took a moment to add this thanks for their conversation before saying he was done. Aww.
“I read what you provided, though I’m not sure what you’re referring to specifically.”
“Siberian.”
Ah, here we go. A great thinker in the sense that he’s a scholar. With a bonus thinking alike because Alexandria is also a scholar of sorts.
He saw a change in her expression, saw Eidolon flinch as if he’d been slapped.
“I’ll explain for those of you who lack access to the PRT records or the time to peruse them. Siberian is not a brute-class cape. Siberian is a ‘master’, and the striped woman is a projection.
I suppose Master is appropriate, considering he controls the projection.
I caught a glimpse of the man who is creating the projection before they retreated.”
Keep an eye on the Doctor’s reaction, Legend.
“And?”
“And he had Cauldron’s mark tattooed on the back of his left hand, a swan on his right.”
With the exception of himself, the Number Man and the woman in the suit, everyone present reacted with surprise.
Even the Doctor?
Is she surprised at Legend having caught this? Or maybe she’s just acting.
“You don’t think that was William Manton?” Alexandria asked. “But why the mark on his right hand?”
Ahhh. There were three scholars to choose from.
Also, I thought the right hand mark, the swan, was the one Legend recognized him by. Apparently not. So Manton may have had something to do with the early days of Cauldron before disappearing to become Siberian.
(It didn’t occur to me until now that this all means Cauldron is at least twenty years old.)
“Quite,” the Doctor replied.
Legend glanced around the room. Alexandria leaned back in her chair, her helmet on the table in front of her, a star-shaped scar at the corner of one eye. Beautiful, Legend was sure, but more in the way a lioness was beautiful.
Majestic, with an air of power and danger?
In her black and gray costume, she was intimidating, her expression regal.
Let’s keep in mind that this is being described by one of the few people who are on roughly her level of power. And more importantly, by a man who started us out by indicating that intimidation and the fact that he himself didn’t want to intimidate people (except villains, I suppose) would be themes of this chapter.
I’m not sure how clear I made it that that was the vibe I got from Legend’s initial thought towards Kid at the beginning. That it was going to be a major theme of the Interlude, one that will also likely close us out at the end.
(It’s like Piggot thinking about the world going mad and her opinions on parahumans at the beginning of her Interlude, and those themes coming back in full force by the end.)
Eidolon was the opposite. He had lowered his hood and removed his glowing mask, revealing a middle-aged man with thick eyebrows, thinning hair and heavy cheeks. He looked more like an average family man who was getting dressed up as Eidolon for a costume party than he looked like Eidolon himself.
Hah, I like it.
I wonder how much that reflects his personality. I do like the contrast between how normal he looks without his mask and how alien he looks with it. Though I’m not sure the latter is an intentional textual thing so much as my opinion of how he looks in fanart.
There were others around the table. The Doctor: dark-skinned, hair tied into a prim bun with chopsticks stuck through it, wearing a short white dress beneath a white lab coat. The Number Man, with his laptop set in front of him, looking more like a businessman than one of the most influential and lesser-known parahumans on the planet.
I can’t help but imagine Richard Osman on Pointless.
So what kind of numbers do the Number Man deal in? On a related note, what would his power be? Surely it isn’t fast math, but it presumably has to do with the numbers somehow.
Maybe he rates powers? But I’m not sure how that would make him influential.
There was also the woman in the black suit, who had never introduced herself or been introduced by name.
Rude.
Maybe a direct subordinate of the Doctor?
Whenever Legend came here with the others, the woman was there with the Doctor.
Yeah, sounds like it. That or the exact opposite.
She’d died not long after.
He almost couldn’t bring himself to click the yellow button again. Alexandria had been lying to him. And that only left…
Eidolon...
Click.
Eidolon’s voice came from the speakers. “I can’t add anything here, and my power’s not volunteering anything that could help to solve this particular mystery. I guess we have yet another unanswered question on our hands.”
Well then. So he does know something he didn’t want Legend to know, or something he didn’t want the Doctor to know that he knew.
The word was in red letters on the screen. It could have been his own pulse behind his retinas, but the letters seemed to throb with a heartbeat of their own. LIE.
“All lies,” Legend whispered the words to himself.
There seem to be a lot of those going around.