Aberrant: Children of Quantum Fire - [CoQF] Raging & Thrashing with the Machine [5.0]

[SalmonMax]

Alex shrugs. "Frankly, I'm not sure. I've deviated from the original Typhoon design a lot. The engines are more modern, the reactors stronger, and the whole thing is a bit lighter. I've never actually field tested it, so some of its performance characteristics are just...not known yet. But it shouldn't be fast-fast. I'll guesstimate around fifty knots, maybe fifty-five absolute tops."

[Courier]

Deeply impressed on many levels, Warren said, "Whoa, it's like home away from home. Moving base, no, moving five star hotel. This is amazing... I know what kind of stuff I hauled in. I knew these molecules back when they were raw ore."

As an afterthought Warren added, "When do you want to steal the plans for a stardrive?"

[LydaLynn]

Nodding with deep appreciation, Epiphany sent a quick mental image of a standing ovation to Alex. She didn't feel the need to say more.

[Butch_Cole]

Primus, their new home-away-from-home, was quite simply amazing. Butch was astonished by the work that Alex had done to produce such a technologically complicated thing as a submarine. During her explanation and tour, Butch remained quiet, taking everything in. He made a mental note to look up information about submarines and naval tactics when he got a chance later on.

When the tour was over, Butch nodded at Alex, and said, "Hot damn, Alex. Primus is one mighty fine vessel. I'm impressed. But I should never have expected anything less than the best from you."

He winked at her.

Then, to no one in particular he said, "So, when do we shove off and what's our plan?"

[Maia]

Maia smiled. "You did amazing work Alex, truly amazing."

[Toby Lupin]

"Primus truly is a prime example of craftsmanship." Darrik agreed. "So as Butch said, what's the plan for how long we stay out here?"

[Quantum Fire]

"A week is the minimum safe time for the possibilities to fall to almost nothing for the next few months.. but once the sub is launched, I suspect it may be best if we keep it a mobile base, with Darrik or Warren shifting folks in and out as necessary." He paused a moment, before turning to look at Alex for a minute or two. "I suspect, you've designed it for much deeper pressures then most of the subs presently active in the ocean, is my guess correct?"

[SalmonMax]

Alex grinned, liking the praise even if she didn't want to seem too bloated over it.

"The Typhoon is already capable of deep dives, by sub standards. With the changes I've made to its hull material, it should be able to go much deeper than anything out there right now. The only thing that could reach us would be a nova with the appropriate abilities. Nothing else."

She looked around at the others and added, "Just to be sure we're clear...this submarine was designed to be home. Once other factions start making concerted efforts to find us, the island won't be secure anymore. We did fine shielding ourselves against accidental discovery, but no amount of safeguards or surveillance can protect us from metaperceptions like precognition and remote viewing...or stop a teleporter or warper from showing up on our doorstep. That's the key advantage the submarine has. In order for remote viewing, or teleportation, or warping to work you have to know where you're going. An island is easy to do that with. A submarine isn't."

With a nod at Shen, Alex went on, "His precognition has saved us before and again...but like I've told Warren, I don't like hanging all our lives on one person's abilities. Any engineer knows that systems that are meant to last will have multiple points of failure before systemic collapse. In our case that means we'll listen to Shen's warnings, but we won't depend on them alone. We'll make ourselves as difficult a target as we possibly can as well. That's what Primus is all about. Three quarters of the Earth's surface is ocean. Needle...meet the haystack. Let the Directive and everyone else look to their heart's content. The odds of us being found are in our favor."

[LydaLynn]

Epiphany nodded. "I'd actually been thinking along those lines. That we shouldn't all depend on one person's powers and . . . I think it would be a good idea to develop a way to communicate that others wouldn't understand outside of my network. I have a few thoughts, but if anyone was free to help me, I'm gonna need someone who can help me with it. Because, language is just code, code that everyone who speaks the language understands on a level that is so ingrained we don't have to think about it anymore. But we're all novas, we all have a node, and we can all feel, and to some degree, alter quantum energies. I was thinking of creating a code language using that ability but I need someone else who can feel what I'm doing as I'm working to help develop the language. While we're all keeping low for the next week might be the perfect time. That is, if anyone thinks it's a good idea. I just worry about what would happen if someone attacked the network or somehow took me out of the equation. Another quick communication technique that our enemies didn't understand seems like something we should have."

For all that she was stoically silent alot of the time, when Pip spoke, she discoursed. Now that she had said what she was thinking she stood their awkwardly, trying not to blush.

[Karren Gaunt]

"It is a good idea, Pip, and if you need someone to test your code on after you develop it, you have at least one volunteer in me," Coraline commented gently, shaking off the pulse of sadness at the fact that her doubts had been right about the island not really being home again after this. A place you were prepared to run from on a moment's notice wasn't really a home. It was a bolt hole, a way station, and while family could make any place pleasant, knowing it wasn't thought of as safe anymore would rob the island of... something she really didn't have a word for and had gotten used to these last seven years.

[SalmonMax]

Alexandra shrugged. "Some kind of quantum pulse code could be useful, but it's not really a good substitute for the telepathic link. I think for that plain old radio would work. It'd be the work of a few seconds to give you mastoid implants that could send and receive encrypted transmissions to and from anyone else's. Size of a grain of sand. Range of miles...out to the horizon basically."

[Butch_Cole]

Butch ran his hand through his dark, crew-cut hair. The idea behind using the base as home opened up new possibilities. Alex was right about how it would make things more difficult for their enemies to locate them now, and Butch thought they should start using that in their favor more.

Adjusting his duffel bag, he said, "Secret quantum codes and implant radios are all well and good, but I was asking about bigger plans. How we fit into the world and what we should be doing to make an impact. We did good work helping out Zia and Eric for Sophia Rousseau. I'm sure we could work with her again to good effect. And then we got some intel from Anna DeVries in exchange for some modeling contracts. We can start using that or we can start gathering some more intel of our own. I think it's time we consider making some moves against our enemies. If people are looking for us...people that want to take us out, well, maybe we work towards taking them out first."

[SalmonMax]

"Mmmmmmno," Alex said, shaking her head. "Bad idea. Right now the world is a rather delicately balanced set of mutually antithetical factions who all believe themselves more or less equal to one another...and that therefore open conflict would be a zero-sum scenario. This misjudgement is the only thing that's stopping the world from slipping into open global warfare."

"Now, if we were to pop in and destroy one of these factions...we upset the balance of power. That faction's enemies become, perceptually at least, stronger. Bolder. More likely to believe they can act against their remaining enemies without risking their own annihilation. And who are they most likely to come after? Us."

"Ethical considerations of plunging the world into chaos aside, right now we are only hunted by relatively small, specific task forces within much larger and more powerful frameworks. If we show our true power as quickly and disruptively as that, we will suddenly face the full fury of every remaining faction, because if there's one thing they will all agree on, it's that they do not want another global power to have to take into account. Especially one as rash and powerful as we will have shown ourselves to be."

She taps the side of her nose. "This has to be a shadow war for now. A struggle for the fate of the children that takes place underneath the viewpoints of the vast majorities of the factions. We'll fight their so-called 'mother hunters.' Their seek and kill squads. Those are all black ops. Their assignments and fates are necessarily secret, often even to the main leadership of the group. That hides our strength, and our purpose from the world, and gives us time to decide how to introduce ourselves to everyone when the time to go public comes."

[Courier]

Warren said to Pip, "Right here, one volunteer. Communication is huge and will get larger as we expand."

Turning to Alex he said, "The one point of failure thing is a big deal, but at the same time, I can reach places no one else can. If I found another timeline, a safe one, do you think you could build a star gate or something to move sideways in time to that one spot?"

[Karren Gaunt]

"I would feel better if we could at least look into this 'Aeon Society' mentioned in the folder. I looked them up a little, says they're a charity but if they're deciding things like whether or not Utopia should motherhunt... We need to factor them into this 'shadow war' now. If this Mercer scares Proteus's Baseline puppetmasters so much, I'd like to know what kind of monster he or she is and why Proteus is afraid," Coraline intoned in her chorus of voices, expression much more certain now, a sidelong glance at the two children firming her resolve, "And that's just one lead in that folder. We owe it to every Second Gen out there to follow our leads to actionable intelligence even if we don't act on it out of fear of upsetting the Baselines and Slaves 'too early'."

She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, looking around the siblings and 'cousins' for signs of reaction. The young metamorph begrudgingly agreed with Alex they shouldn't just kick over the table, but they needed to do *something* to even begin solving the problem.

[SalmonMax]

"Aeon Society is the backer of Project Utopia," Alex said, scratchin her chin. "They go back a ways though. It was an old Rich Boys Club in the early 1900's that morphed into a philanthropic foundation. It was that foundation that donated the initial capital for the non-profit organization that would eventually become Project Utopia. I'm fairly sure the Society and Utopia are under the direction of at least one, maybe two, nova-level masterminds."

She looked at Warren and nodded. "If it can be done at all, I can do it. But I'd rather no go fishing for alternate universes. That adds way too many uncertains, way too many variables. Lets stick with this universe."

[Toby Lupin]

"That's the interesting thing." Darrik murmured. "Mercer founded Aeon, didn't he? According to public reports. In any case, the thing I wonder- is how much power he really has. Still involved with the organization obviously, though he's pushing one hundred as a baseline. Yet, it sounds like he's unaware of Proteus' full campaign, though I get the sense this Director Thetis worries he could bury them if he tried. The other thing, Alex? We'd have to do some digging, but I feel this may be a case of all baselines running the show. It would take a rare kind of nova to sign off on these things. Not impossible, I admit, only improbable."

[Karren Gaunt]

"A Mercer founded Aeon, possibly not the same one mentioned," corrected Coraline distractedly, step by step thinking having avoided that particular assumptive leap, "Or it could be a codename. I don't know. That's why I'm asking the rest of you. And I'm liking Aeon less and less the more I hear. Charity is never free. What do they want aside from all of us dead or enslaved to baseline humanity?"

Coraline frowned worriedly.

[Quantum Fire]

As you began to discuss Max Mercer a moment, Shen glanced over at Serenity a moment, then spoke up.. "I've met Max about 11 years ago, he's no ordinary human, but his capabilities are not based on quantum energy, some other form of energy energy is the source of his capabilities, from my assessment, he is a different evolutionary direction then Homo Sapiens Novus." He paused to allow the children a moment that before he continued. "You might want to consider that a bit, it is a significant point to think about.."

"He's also physically, somewhere in his 30's, despite having founded Aeon ... I have no way to be sure of this, sense I can't fully see him, he's occluded to my ability to see the future, but based on my rather long talk with him, and what I can tell, the best description for him, is unstuck in time. There are times and moments, he simply doesn't exist within that moment, and others when he does... Warren might understand that better then I do, his powers deal more directly with time then mine. However, that said, Max is a good man, with a strong degree of idealism mixed with a measure of realism, he might be willing to help us. Two issues though, I think he's more concerned with humanity as a whole then with individuals, and I don't know that I can find him make contact with him again.. and I wouldn't go though Utopia to do it, according to what I understand he views Utopia and of shoots as rogues of a sort."

[SalmonMax]

"Uh...I wasn't gonna say anything," Alexandra mentioned, "But the whole 'slave' thing is...well, it's definitely borrowing a page from the Teragen playbook. I always kind of hoped you didn't really mean it, but really...it's going a bit far. Novas are some of the most respected and compensated people in the world right now. While there's obviously some buried angst on the part of baselines...and some fringe groups willing to act on that angst...it's not just unfair, but unrealistic to call 'novas who don't mind being in the same room with baselines' baseline slaves."

She pointed at Warren. "We need to do some experiments soon. I have new theories you can help me test."

...

Alex listens to Serenity silently, and settles back as her paradigm reorients. "That...actually explains a lot of anomalous data about Aeon that I was writing off as poor record-keeping... Well then. Food for thought."

[Maia]

The slave things had always bothered Maia as well. She had a good number of baseline acquaintances, and a few she truly called friends.

She looked at Shen. "Sounds like someone who it would be good to know, if we can find him. And with Utopia secretly financing and backing the Motherhunters, and God knows what other clandestine ops, I'd wager it wouldn't be too hard to convince him that the actions of Proteus at least affect humanity as a whole."

[Karren Gaunt]

Time travel. Perfect. At least they had another time traveler to deal with him. "So we get at him through Aeon then," she said aloud, tone even, "See if we can turn the snake even a little."

Inwardly though, her mental broadcast to Alex was far less civil just this side of barely polite, tinged with old personal memories stirred by the abandonment of the island. 'Even taint-obsessed idiots can have a good point from time to time, Alex. What other word would you use to describe for a relationship that results in someone who just wants to be left alone, to raise a family if they can, and not put their talents to baseline use being hunted over and over and over again until they are just too slow to escape the hunter's noose or they find a fortress strong enough or cave deep enough to hide in? Slavery seems a good fit to me, even if it's very well-compensated slavery. And I know you probably have some so-much-more than me counter argument, but from where I stand... That's what I see.'

[SalmonMax]

Alex grimaced, and Cora 'heard' a telepathic babble for a second...like a recording of a human voice speaking too fast to be intelligible. With effort she slowed her thought process enough to project...and her own tone wasn't much different than Cora's in terms of restrained annoyance.

Then you're misusing the word 'slave.' Being hunted is not slavery. And a few malcontents doesn't equal everyone. Just like your personal hardships don't apply to everyone. You want to think of your parents as slaves? Fine. I personally don't know why you'd want to do that, since it make them into helpless victims instead of the courageous people they actually were, but that's your call. But don't expand that to every nova everywhere, which is what you CONSTANTLY do. It implies we have no free will, and it's very disrespectful. All right?

"And," Alex said aloud then, "Just to make things clear, Proteus is ONE GROUP of 'mother hunters.' The Directive has teams on this too. So does the Teragen, though their tactics are generally different. Second generation novas are hot property, people. This is not 'us against Utopia.' It's us against a small piece of everyone. Believe it or not it's GOOD for us that this is the case, because it means we're not up against the 'heavy hitters' of any of the major groups. Team Tomorrow isn't involved. Neither are most of the Teragen 'A' list. Keeping those guys out is why I'm harping on secrecy. The hunters HAVE to be secret. What they do is monstrous...they'd be disavowed if it came out. We can use that need for secrecy against them."

She glanced at Cora. "But only if we don't let our feelings kick the asses of our brains."

[Karren Gaunt]

Cora was in no mood to be lectured, and by someone who applied her Father's word for all those who bowed to Baseline domination to her Father. THAT was a red flag, and she barely kept from shouting her emotions into her sibling's head.

'My Father told me this when I was child wondering why we had to run away again and again and why I couldn't fly as high and as fast as my body told me I could. 'We all have a basic choice to make. To decide or to obey. Humans decide; slaves bow. Deciding is hard and requires thought. Bowing is easy and doesn't. And most people, almost all of them, Nova and Baseline, bow. Even your Mother bowed until the Baselines made her push too hard too many times and she became the everywoman I love. Then she decided. You're going to have to choose whether or not to decide or bow every day of the rest of your life, Coraline, and you can always change your mind.' My parents decided. So may have a lot of other people. But until I see Utopia fighting for our interests, too, motherhunters of all stripes blunted, exposed, and kept from the innocent... I won't trust them. Can't trust them. And, yeah, I'm probably wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But... I haven't seen it yet.'

She smiled grimly for Alex, adding a final mental comment, 'At least not in the form of great acts of goodwill towards one of us yet.'

[SalmonMax]

That's a naive and divisive philosophy. Decide or bow? It implies two false premises. One, that in order to have free will, one cannot choose to abide by any limitations. Two, that abiding by social conventions represents an abdicaton of self-determination and a surrender to tyranny. While either premise can, in extreme situations, be true...neither is always true, or even most of the time true. The fact is that abiding by social conventions benefits individuals FAR more often than it hinders them. Another fact is that if you decide not to...and you can decide not to...then you will have a very lonely, lonely life.

Look Cora...I know your parents had it rough. I know YOU had it rough. But you've really got to start seeing past your past...its contaminating your understanding of the world, and one of these days you'll be worse off for it.

[Courier]

She pointed at Warren. "We need to do some experiments soon. I have new theories you can help me test."

Warren said, "Love it."

She looked at Warren and nodded. "If it can be done at all, I can do it. But I'd rather no go fishing for alternate universes. That adds way too many uncertains, way too many variables. Lets stick with this universe."

Warren took the veto with good grace but replied, "3D thinking beats 2D. 10D probably beats 3 and I think you're up to it. Think of a tech high enough for a stardrive but no novas."

At Uncle Shen's statement about Mercer, Warren frowned. Different Evolutionary Direction? That was pretty serious. Warren replied, "'Unstuck in time' is a fancy way to say, 'Uncontrolled or partly controlled Time Travel.' He's 30, this might be early in his personal history. Which means current Max might be a nice guy but Project Pro might be run by future Max. Oh, grief. Project Pro knows time travel is possible, that's why they're always so hidden. It also explains why Utopia was ready for novas on day one, they were waiting."

Warren paused then went back, "Hold it. Different Evolutionary Direction? Could there be like... groups of these dudes? That'd explain a lot too."

[SalmonMax]

"If he can't control his shifting, he's probably not in charge of anything personally," Alex points out. "He's too unreliable. Rather, he probably lays down broad guidelines when he can, and if he has future knowledge he lets them know, so they have an advantage. But permutations like Proteus and so on...that kind of thing requires leadership that's updated and present in real time. It's possible Mercer outlined the need for a clandestine ops wing, in other words...but I can't see how he'd be running its operations. Or any other operations for that matter."

"And of course, he'd be totally dependent on the administrators to fill him in on what's going on when he appears. The potential for him to be out of touch with the organization he founded is very, very high."

[LydaLynn]

Epiphany smiled at Cora and Warren at their agreement to help with her project. The smile lingered in Warren's direction until the buzz of rapid, emotion laden communication between Cora and Alex caused her to look between the two, her brow furrowed. Pip couldn't hear what they were saying to each other, not without using her telepathy to intrude, but she could feel the emotional weight of it. For now she wouldn't intrude or ask, but if it kept up at that level, Pip resolved step in and see if there was anything she could do.

[Karren Gaunt]

Look Cora...I know your parents had it rough. I know YOU had it rough. But you've really got to start seeing past your past...its contaminating your understanding of the world, and one of these days you'll be worse off for it.

That last bit soothed Coraline a little in rememberance of the fact Alex wasn't out to hurt her, and was, in fact, family. Only a little out of a lot of her upset, though. 'Maybe you're right, Alex, but... Given the fact we're in the middle of evacuating our home at the mere shadow of discovery, I'd say the situation *is* rather extreme, wouldn't you? And how many of our generation weren't as lucky as to have been rescued and given a new family, even if they had the chance to be conceived? Sometimes when I think about it..,' the thought trailed off in tinges of bloodshed and slaughter and rage at the betrayal of innocense writ far, far too large and far, far too personal for words to convey, 'But that would be counterproductive and stupid. And whatever you may think of my Father's philosophy, he didn't teach me to be stupid. The rest of you didn't eiether. So I'll be good and careful.'

[SalmonMax]

This isn't about you being good and careful, Alex mentally replied. There's never been any question about that. It's about getting you to see that there's more than two categories for people to fit into. Everyone is not either predator or prey, slave to the law or freedom fighter. When you only pay attention to the extremes, you miss the middle...and the bell curve distribution means the middle is where the vast majority of people...baseline or nova...fit into. We've all suffered a lot, and yeah our situation can seem precarious at times...but 99% of people on Earth don't know we even exist. We can't blame them for the 1% that are making our lives difficult, and we can't use the same criteria to judge them either. Not if we're going to be honest with them, and with ourselves.

[Butch_Cole]

"I wasn't talking about trashing the whole world," Butch said, holding his hands up in front of him. "And before you go all smarter-than-thou again, I recognize what upsetting the balance might lead to. I was just talking about taking the fight to our enemies a bit. We're a smart enough crew to figure out ways of not blowing up the world with our actions. If that's gotta be done in the shadows, so be it. And I get that we're dealing with groups within groups, but we can't target all of them at once. I was just hoping for a bit of focus on our part, a bit of direction. I'm thinking about long term here. Are we just gonna pick away at parts of all these groups or do we take them one at a time."

He paused for a moment. "Mercer sounds like an interesting fellow, but I think you're right, Alex, in assuming that he's probably out of touch with the organization he founded. Do we try and find out more info on these other voices and people in the info DeVries gave us? Seems like there are plenty of interesting angles we can approach this from."

[Karren Gaunt]

'It's the 99% percent of baselines and novas who ARE the problem, the innocent eyes and ears who feed information to the 1% who actively instead of passively consider us a threat. And honestly? I'm afraid most of them would be too happy to cheer on that 1% if they saw what we can do post Apothesis with a little nudge from the people they consider authority figures and protectors of the status quo. The world hasn't given me a lot of reasons to trust anyone outside the family yet,' Coraline countered with perhaps more melancholy than anger at this point, but the heat is still there like magma under a brittle shell, 'And, yeah, that's my problem to fix. But not today and not in one go.'

Outwardly she broke her look away from Alex and commented, softly "Disconnected or not, he still has some pull it sounds like. We should at least get him to try to shut down even one group of Motherhunters, the one's from Proteus. If he's as... human survival oriented as Uncle Shen says, he has to know that what Proteus is doing is only adding fuel to the fire of something very ugly if what I'm feeling about this is in any way typical. And if he isn't... Well, we might be able to cut Aeon off from their oracle worse comes to worse."

[Quantum Fire]

End thread: 2 Standard, 4 Baseline, 2 nova xp