simurgh, meet your nemesis

[mxglam]

So Glam tests their power some more, and then has a meeting with Piggot where they explain the Siberian. She listens carefully, then asks them not to demonstrate, and says she will communicate that to the appropriate people. That takes a while, and then Lorica is asked to confirm this, and then Glam is asked to demonstrate to very few people with very high clearance.

This should not get out, it would be a PR nightmare, but if the Sibarian copy does what it looks like it does, its help will be invaluable in the upcoming Endbringer fights. When Glam decides to use that power, the story will be that a power copier has grabbed the Siberian's and is using it against the Endbringer, that people should not panic, and that she is an ally. Glam mentions, since they're all being so cooperative about telling everyone on the comms, that the Siberian copy doesn't have to look like the original, so people can know whether to panic or not based on her shape.

That leaves, of course, Glam's own willingness to face the Slaughterhouse Nine. Even if they don't know that Siberian is them, they will likely cause problems, and this will need to be carefully planned.

Careful plans tend not to survive contact with reality, and that is doubly true when the next Endbringer attack happens only two months and nine days after the previous one.

Not that it would matter much: Glam is definitely not going to a Simurgh fight, not yet.

Comments

[msglam]

Sadde cracks up, making her cake float and doubling over. Willow is infected and laughs, too, and even Annie cracks a smile.

"...uh, I shouldn't have said that, it's the meds, not really? We were just joking around to pass the time on patrol. We also discussed the possibility that everyone but us was actually created by her," she says, pointing at Sadde.

[thinkering]

"We were kidding," says Silica, "honest."

"All right," snorts Lorica.

[msglam]

"Wait, but where did I figure in the robot Lorica scenario?" asks Sadde.

"You didn't," she admits. "That's part of the reason why we came up with everyone being made by you. First we thought maybe Transit was a really specific Tinker that made Lorica, then that you made them both, then that you made everything!"

[thinkering]

"Glam is not secretly God," giggles Windflower.

[msglam]

"I might be!" she protests.

[thinkering]

"If you're secretly God we're going to have words," says Lorica.

[msglam]

"I knew you were going to say something like that," she says, smiling fondly at Lorica.

"Aaaaawwwww!" Rewind and Echo say at the same time.

[thinkering]

Lorica giggles.

[msglam]

"I love you," Sadde says.

[thinkering]

"Love you too."

[peterxy]

"Aaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwww!" Rewind and Echo repeat, then Rewind adds, looking at Lorica: "So you're into girls?"

[thinkering]

"No, but it seems really labor-intensive to adjust not only whether I am kissing her but also whether I'm in love with her based on whatever she's presenting as at the moment, so I don't."

[msglam]

"I'm glad you don't, it'd be inconvenient if you did!"

Rewind looks like she's Thinking Thoughts, but for once she manages to hold them back in spite of the meds.

[thinkering]

"I talked to your paramedic contact," Lorica tells Rewind, "and he says once you're off bed rest they can accommodate you even if you need mobility help, so you can still handle emergency civilian patients."

[peterxy]

"Oh that's awesome," she says, meaning it.

[thinkering]

"I thought so too."

[peterxy]

"So, after this, I think I kinda want a flying suit, too."

[thinkering]

"Rewind, what exactly do you think happens when I jump off a building?"

[peterxy]

"...you hover?"

[thinkering]

"No. My software figures out - based on my posture, what I'm looking at, what's going on around me, my feedback from past building-jumping occasions, and its own personal opinions - whether and where to float me. There are situations where it'd drop me to the ground. Or rocket me into the sky. Or waft me to the next building. Or hover me in place. Or juke me suddenly in some other direction. Or spin me around and put me right back where I was. And I do not, in the moment, control that. I can't make things that I control on that level. If I try to make something that point-and-click, my Tinker knowledge deserts me and I am a regular non-engineer sixteen-year-old girl staring at parts and code that doesn't make sense anymore. Have you noticed that my dad doesn't fly? He hovers sometimes; he doesn't try to fly."

[peterxy]

"Oh. Why can't other people use the same software?"

[thinkering]

"They could. In theory. My dad could work on building enough understanding with the program that he could fly, say; he hasn't bothered because teleporting and running together usually does the trick. His suit works as well as it does because I'm working from a very good base model of what my dad is like. I could probably build Glam a flight suit if they needed one, because Glam goes around with a robot practically all the time and the bot has a good base model of what Glam is like. But I can't make them for just anyone. They have to be extremely well-customized, and to use them, you have to trust something that has no controls to take you for a ride."

[msglam]

"Oh."

Sadde butts in: "Does your suit upload data in real time to the main AI?"

[thinkering]

"Yes. It's slightly ratcheted - my implants talk to the suit, and the suit talks to the bot, but outside of emergencies the bot only controls some of the suit functions - can't move my arms and legs for me unless I'm unconscious or something - and nothing is allowed to talk to my implants."

[msglam]

"Couldn't Rewind get one of those suits and rewind if it ducks up so that the suit would know in real time when it did something wrong? She already stutter-rewinds her movements all the time."