Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Six - Emergency Override

Two salesmen sit at a bar, scrolling through a catalog. The holodisplay stops rolling as a four-armed and snake-legged mannequin comes into view, wearing an ethereal battle dress with long streamers of translucent energies bearing a variety of explosive ordnance, and a shapeshifting rifle connected via tubes to a jacket-slash-pauldron-slash-backpack combo.

The article's title reads "Esoteric Defense System And Weapons Platform Combination: Class II 'Chrysaora Plenum' EDSAWPlatform, AI-supported; Class II 'Auxiliant' EDSAWPlatform, AI-supported".

The salesman on the left shifts on his coiled tail—the observer will note that it is an exact copy of that of the mannequin—and points at the title. Specifically, he points at the letters spelling "EDSAWPlatform".

"Is it the engineers or the designers that come up with the stupid acronyms?"

"I dunno? Maybe it's Marketing?"

"...I don't think I have what it takes to get promoted."

"What? Why not?"

" 'Cause there's no way I can come up with stupid acronyms."

"...Ah. Shit."

– Some experiences are shared by sapients of all stripes and shapes.

 

***

 

– Overriding… –

– Overriding… –

– Self -> True-Self Emergency Override: Active –

> LOGGING PROTOCOLS ENGAGED

> Evaluating user status…INJURIES DETECTED!

> PHYSICAL: evaluating wounds…excarnation of lower left limb, 50%. Time until exsanguination…12 minutes. Evaluating Time To Live…16 minutes. Evaluating medical options…HEALING ORGAN DETECTED! 1x Class II 'Mother's Blessing' Bionite-Nutrient Admixing Lobules.

> Prioritizing preservation of life. Rerouting bionites. Evaluating Time To Live…no time limit found. Stabilization successful.

> SITUATION: evaluating…ANTITHESIS THREAT DETECTED!

> COMBAT PROTOCOLS ENGAGED

> COMBAT READINESS: evaluating mobility…impaired. Mobility alternatives…propelled-flight device 'Second Wind' detected. Mobility nominal. Weapons…1x tail-mounted Class I Mark VII Adapting Sentinel. Weapon alternatives…network connections detected. Available alternatives…1x Class I 'Myriad' Regenerating Micro-missile Hive. Evaluating situation…combat readiness suboptimal.

> Analyzing recent user activity…weapons upgrade in progress. EXCEPTION! CLASS XII PERSONAL ASSISTANT AI 'TYNEA' DETECTED!

> VANGUARD PROTOCOLS TRIGGERED

> Contacting Class XII Personal Assistant…

> CONNECTION ESTABLISHED

> Transmitting user status…

> Transmission logged and acknowledged.

> Evaluating recent user actions…intent to upgrade present.

> Transmitting trade request…

> TRADE REQUEST LOGGED AND GRANTED

> Trade accomplished, payment and new balance…inerrant.

> Equipping additional weapon platform Class II 'Chrysaora Plenum' AI-supported EDSAWPlatform.

> Planning mission…

> Allocating fabrication resources…

> Initiating fabrication of munitions…

> Fabrication complete.

> COMBAT READINESS: Optimal.

> COMBAT PREPARATIONS COMPLETE!

> Engaging threats…

 

***

 

Sam was grinning a lot. He was happy since Jora held his hand, but he was also jittery and kinda nervous. Not 'cause of Jora holding his hand, even if Jenny said so all the time. But she was wrong, and Sam knew that for sure, because he always felt less jittery and nervous with Jora close.

So he figured his nervosity was 'cause it was the first time that big sis Leah hadn't come to visit them for several days now—especially since Sam had just gotten used to always having her around in the shelter, before the first incursion ended.

Instead, they were watching Leah on the TV, and Jora and he were cheering her on. She had really, really cool spider mechs! Sam was jealous. He was totally going to ask if he could ride in the big one, the one with the massive wedge thingy at the front that kept chewing up trees and shoving Antithesis away. It had those construction stripes, just like the small diggers that made the new cellar! He hadn't been allowed to ride those, but that made sense because they'd had no seats.

He also hadn't been allowed to use the remote control, which was less cool. He'd even asked first if it was okay with red-green colorblindness! But Sister Lana'd said they didn't belong to the church, so they couldn't play with them. The spiders belonged to Leah, though! He was gonna annoy her until she said yes.

Anyway. The spiders were shooting at all the Antithesis. The littlest spider, which was still really big, was shooting the most. It was really, really throwing the bullets around. Sam had only ever seen that many shooting lights in samurai movies. Which made a lot of sense, since Leah was a samurai now! Sam was still jealous.

They were watching big sis Leah, and it was just like a samurai movie, but without sound. He knew that you needed microphones to record sound, and he figured that the camera was flying too high to hear so far.

Sometimes, the middle-sized spider, the one Leah was piloting, would use its big cannon. Everytime that happened, weird black lightning skittered over the skittering spider (Sam liked the word skitter. Lana had explained it to him, and he thought it was the funniest word ever.) and Sam would feel a bit dizzy and queasy. It wasn't enough to make him hurl, but it was a bit like when he and Jora were playing and twirled each other until they fell over. Except the twirling made him dizzy for way longer.

"Oh, look, something's happening!" Jora yelled, bouncing against his shoulder and stabbing a finger at the screen. Sister Lana bopped her on the head to be quiet, but Jora didn't even notice. "What's happening, Sam?" she asked, "It's blue!"

Ah. There was a ball of water floating on the screen. That kind of thing would be red-brown to Jora. Kind of like the ground behind it. Sam nodded. Then he stopped.

The nodding was an e-pi-de-mic in the orphanage, according to Sister Lana. Big sis Leah had dragged it in, she'd said. Sam knew e-pi-de-mics were bad. Made sick. He didn't know how or why nodding would make him sick, but he'd avoid it just to be sure.

"That's lots of water. Like one of those goldfish swimming pools at Newtainment Park!" he said. "I don't think there are any goldfish in there, though." Then the water exploded and boiled. "And now it's cooking?"

"Um?" Jora froze in confusion. "Why's water up in the sky?"

"Dunno? It's all around Leah's new friend. Maybe she made it appear?"

The water turned into clouds and covered up everything. They couldn't even see Leah anymore. Andi made some questioning noises behind them and Sam turned around to see Sister Lana hug her. The little girl was staring at the screen, squinting, trying to see Leah. Andi looked unhappy and Sam didn't like that. Andi was supposed to be smiling as much as she could, according to Sister Lana.

Sam had an idea. He was about to tell the TV to call big sis Leah, but he paused. Big sister Sun had told him to stop sometimes and think about what he was going to do after he'd burnt himself the second time grabbing InstaNoodles before they'd finished cooking themselves.

He wasn't supposed to make the adults stop when they were working. But Leah wasn't working, she was on her way home, wasn't she? And she'd often call and smile while going home after work, when she'd been in one of the other orphanages.

"Okay," Sam decided and spoke to the TV, "call Leah!"

The screen instantly went gray, with the rotating wait circle in the middle and Leah's avatar picture inside. Sister Lana made a sound full of e-xas-per-a-tion and worry. Sam realized he'd made a mistake somehow, but he wasn't sure why.

Sister Lana started saying something just when the TV cleared up and a distracted big sis Leah appeared. There were lots of little thumps that sounded a bit like the stomper the diggers had used in the cellar after they'd poured in the gray stuff. Cement. Or concrete. Sam kept forgetting which did what.

"Yeah?"

Jora grinned and cheered, and waved at her. Leah smiled back and winked an eye.

"Sorry, Leah," said Lana. "Kid called you and I got caught off guard."

Sam felt sheepish. But he'd properly stopped and thought about it! Unfair!

Leah chuckled distractedly. She was a bit different from when they'd talked earlier. Um. More scared? Oh! She wasn't using her avatar! Sam could see she was wearing a black…swimsuit thing? It was so black he couldn't see her shape. Like when Jora hid in the dark attic. But the swimsuit had golden lines on it that made Leah's shape visible again. Although it had a hood, so maybe it wasn't a swimsuit?

There was a loud bang and Leah rocked sideways inside her cushions. She started to curse, interrupted herself, and grimaced. There were more thumps. And a bigger, deeper thump.

Something about that one was really weird. The picture of Leah went all black-and-white for a moment and Sam felt like he could count every single one of Leah's hairs. Black lightning came out of the TV and flickered around its frame with a really quiet crackle.

Then everything went back to normal and Sam felt dizzy and like he'd forgotten something. Jora clenched his hand so tight it hurt, and Andi retched. Sister Lana made a very disturbed sound, loud enough to draw Leah's attention, whose eyebrows drew together when she looked at her.

"Sorry. That was a recoil management system. It messes with causality or something. I didn't even think it'd reach you. Ypsi?"

Ypsi's avatar appeared. She wore a frilly black and red dress today. Jora perked up. She really liked Ypsi, and she really liked the dresses Ypsi put on.

"Um! It's not dangerous! Even if it feels really bad. Anyone who's in range of any effect of the cannon's being fired will experience the bits of the shunting! And it gets a bit worse the more, um, depth you experience. It's like reality needs to patch itself up and that can chain to anyone who was present enough to be exposed. Even through calls, and they're both hearable and seeable! The dizzy stuff will go away in a moment, though." she said and smiled at us.

Ypsi used big words sometimes. But she'd explain them if they were too difficult to understand. Sam didn't think this was the right time to ask what shunting meant, or reality. He'd try and remember for later.

Leah's eyes flashed between the kids and she chewed her lips. She only did that when she was really worried. Sam was feeling worse nausea, not less, no matter what Ypsi had said about it getting better. He'd really messed up, somehow. But he didn't know how.

"Won't use the cann–"

A really loud hum interrupted her and her face jerked upwards. Then her eyebrows rose and her mouth dropped open. Sam knew that expression. Something had really, really surprised her. She'd looked just like that when something had knocked at the door of their little shelter during the incursion, and when Leah had opened it, there'd been the weird, ugly doggy Antithesis, not Sun and Jem.

Sam swiped his hand from left to right, and the TV reacted by minimizing Leah to a corner of the screen and returned to the previous top-down view of Leah's spiders.

The big ball of water was gone, splashed all over the ground. It had filled up a bunch of the exploded holes. Sam had forgotten what they were called, but he'd usually see them in samurai movies. And in the fighting promos from those battle people that got together and made groups that wore uniforms. Pirate mitilary companies. Sam barely stopped himself from nodding and returned his attention to the screen.

Leah's friend had a new skirt. It was big. Waaay big. It covered like half the screen and Leah's spiders were in the middle below it. The skirt was made of, um, lightning? And colorful, glowing mist in long, long fluttery streamers that reached out to form a gigantic and shallow upside-down bowl.

It had loads of long tubes stuck to its inside and rim. Too many for Sam to count, though he thought he might be able to if the weird black-and-white thing from Leah's thumpy thing happened again.

Stars ignited all over the skirt, and then the tubes fell like ice rain towards all the Antithesis. But a lot more painful, Sam thought, from the way the green monsters blew up. Most of the tubes raced away from Leah's friends to reach every alien, even those at the edges of the big circle Leah was fighting in.

And then everything was silent, and the big breezy skirt shrank until it was a normal size. Even the constant thumping from Leah's call had stopped. The smallest of the spiders wasn't spitting bullets anymore, and Sam realized that was what the thumping had been.

"Well…" mumbled big sis Leah. Sam thought she sounded a bit breathless. Um. Stunned? He remembered Sister Lana using that word sometimes.

There was still one enemy moving, and it was a really big one. When Leah noticed, she made a really disgusted face. Even worse than when she'd accidentally stepped in Andi's diapers, back when she'd still needed them. And unlike then, there was a lot of anger in there. Really bad anger, the kind Sam had only felt when one of the short-term workers had been mean to him and Jora. He'd gone to Leah about it, and that woman had never come back.

Sam had a feeling the big, stumbling monster wasn't going to be around for much longer either.

And Sam probably had some apologizing to do. That always made him feel horrible and twisty, but sometimes it got better afterwards. At least Sister Lana always hugged him and explained when he really didn't know what he'd done wrong.

She wasn't like his real mother.

 

***