lung, meet rewind

[msrewind]

She gets the note just before lunch. She's in the PHQ in less than twenty minutes, then she knocks on Piggot's door politely.

Comments

[mxglam]

"I'd need to know where it is. If it were really obvious and there was time enough, yeah."

[thinkering]

"Or contain her parents in something."

[mxglam]

"Yes but that assumes the thing that's rigged to explode isn't, like, on, or in them." They look at Rewind. "Uh, sorry."

[msrewind]

"I'm not about to sabotage the plan because of squeamishness," she waves her hand. "What's important is that my parents be safe."

[thinkering]

"If you contain them in something sturdy enough then even in that case it does at least as good a job as the bagging-gore-from-around-the-room idea," Lorica says, "for letting Rewind bounce them back."

[mxglam]

"Yeah but then the gore will be in the same place as the bomb and the bomb will be rewound with the gore and it'll all have been for nothing."

[thinkering]

"Until we can get the bomb removed or neutralized," Lorica says, "at somewhat more leisure than 'literally in a room with Lung'."

[mxglam]

"But they'd be literally in a room with Lung anyway, if we move them with whatever container, when Rewind boops them they'll return to their original position in the room."

[thinkering]

"...Ugh, we need to start separating things into plan A and plan B and so on, I was still assuming Dad was here, I'm all mixed up."

[mxglam]

"...right. Okay, we should draw, like, a decision tree, for possibilities. Can bot project...?"

[thinkering]

Bot can project! It has "Copy of Rewind goes to meeting point" at the top and branches off from there.

[mxglam]

"Okay, so, from there, either Lung wants to just bait her or he doesn't. If he does, whatever, nothing to be gained. If he doesn't, he has to provide evidence that Rewind's parents are alive, which can come in the form of a recording or be in real-time. If it's a recording and Rewind-the-copy can't convince Lung to provide real-time evidence, also nothing to be gained. If it's real-time, either he'll produce her parents in person or he'll use some form of remote transmission."

[thinkering]

The bot draws in the tree.

[mxglam]

"So now we're planning out the produce-parents-in-person branch. There's a strategic difference between what we'll do if they're together or in different locations," they recapitulate. "If they're together, Transit can pop relevantly close to them and rescue them at the same time, correct? What's his maximum distance?"

[thinkering]

"Thirty miles. That's not the limiting factor in a situation like this, the limiting factor is if there's a place he can stand such that the only safe landing in a certain direction is where he wants to be."

"Not a lot of tall buildings near the address," the bot says.

[mxglam]

"No, I meant, the maximum distance he can be from passengers."

[thinkering]

"Two point zero eight inches, counting armor thickness," the bot says.

[mxglam]

"Okay so parents need to be pretty close together, in which case Transit can reliably rescue them if they're not rigged with something. Uh, yeah, that's actually an important branch to the tree, parents rigged or not. So, if they're close together and not rigged, the problem has been solved by Transit popping there and popping out, right?"

[thinkering]

"Unless the bot has trouble with getting him a path for any reason, there's usually a way to get to a ground floor location from a nearby tall building in one hop barring subways that neighborhood doesn't have, yeah."

[msrewind]

"Your robot said there weren't lots of tall buildings around that warehouse, didn't it?"

[thinkering]

"No tall buildings is bad. Sparse ones is good, it means he doesn't have to hope he doesn't land in the seventh floor bathroom of one while he's angling down from the sixteenth floor of another. But bot, do we have a good path origin point?"

"Yes. He can fly to the top of a nearby tower and should have a clear angle to any point in the warehouse."

[msrewind]

"Oh. That sounds good, then?"

[mxglam]

"That it does, yes. So, that's one branch of the plan tree we got covered. If they're separated and not rigged with anything explosive, I could speedster them together for Transit to pick them up?"

[thinkering]

"Maybe combo speedster-brute in case they're attached to things that are hard to move."

[mxglam]

"Will do. Now, suppose they're together and rigged with something? I guess that depends on the something but I think the most obvious ones are gun, explosive, poison...?"