Aberrant: Phoenix Rising - Book 2: Chapter 5: The Final Cut

[Courier]

Doug replied, "I have to be physically there listening to them. If it doesn't work for conversations I'm overhearing on the link then it won't work over the radio. And as you said, they're going to be tempted to just take us out. That limits our options."

"We have to give them the option to do the right thing and make this right, and when we do we have to be checking for lies. If the worst case is right, then you have to be able to make your move and that's not going to happen if they take both of us out."

"I don't see any other way to do this but for me to put my neck in danger and you to keep yours out of danger. I say you stay linked and out of sight."

[Mr Fox]

Raider nodded, "Yeah, I don't see any other way either. I will have the 'response' ready to go should they preemptively kill you just because they can. It's not much consolation but it's all we can do and I'm fresh out of ideas for finding the ever elusive proof."

[SalmonMax]

"You're both going on the assumption that this was the result of some science project gone wrong," Ashley points out resignedly. "When it could just as easily be this guy, this anti-nova guy, overloading and exploding by accident."

"Give me a second to look around. I've gotten...sensitive to light when I'm switched on lately. Maybe I can see something you guys can't."

Soft white light burns out of her skin as she unleashes the quantum power seething inside. The hard lines of her body soften, as she seems to actually move from being a solid thing of matter to a creature of pure energy and floats upwards to get a better look down at the former town.

(Activating Bodymorph, and Electromagnetic Vision. That's 12d to perceive by sight, and she can see in ultraviolet, infrared and telescopic magnification of x10)

[jameson (ST)]

Ash rose into the air, the others momentarily halted in their quest for revenge and retribution by the potential for more information. She glided over the area scanning multiple wavelengths in the middle of the EM spectrum, examining the occasional odd bit in greater detail, and then continuing. She rose higher, looking down now on the scorched ground from above, taking in the many charred acres at once. There was something there, she could see it at the very edge of her visual capabilities but it wasn't clear enough to make out. If she could push higher into the EM spectrum she might be able to see what it was, as it was she was only able to isolate an general area, roughly a quarter of the burned out town, the quarter where Johnny's home had been, not that she knew that.

[SalmonMax]

She drifted lower, squinting her 'eyes' out of reflex, even though in this state the very notion of eyes were rather quaint. Dimly she realized she wasn't using her power to its full extent...it could go so much farther if she let it. All she had to do was let go of her attachment to her human shape, her human habits. She could be radiance, as pure and as unfettered as a beam of light.

...Ashley pulled herself away from those thoughts, recognizing them as a precipice. If she ever did that; lost herself in these changes, there would be no turning back. Right now she could still turn it off and be something close to what she'd been. She wasn't ready to give that up. Yet.

"There's some kind of radiation," she called. "Or maybe fluorescence...it's way up high, past blue and ultraviolet. I can barely see it, but I think it's coming from somewhere around here..."

She slowed to hover over that eerie not-glow that teased the very edges of even her enhanced perceptions. Damnit! This was as far as she knew how to go!

"I can't quite SEE it! What's past ultraviolet? I could never keep that straight."

(OOC - I think there's a separate enhancement that allows perception of x-rays and gamma rays, isn't there? If not, is it possible to 'max' EM-vision to temporarily gain that ability?)

[Courier]

Doug replied, "It's called 'Hot'. Radiation. X-rays or something. Raider and I used to have giger counters for getting close to the burn areas. The city might have them."

[Mr Fox]

Raider agreed, "Yeah, X-ray's and gamma-rays and some other weird high end stuff."

[SalmonMax]

Ashley hesitated at that. There were worlds of energy dancing just beyond her perceptions. She had but to reach out to touch them. Visions of Gregory degenerating into a lizard flitted across her memory though, and of Anna rooting into the ground. And, of course, Doug's girlfriend sparking and ranting about being a goddess.

She'd reached out before and gained the power to fly...all it had cost her had been the physical structure of her body. But she could still turn solid if she wanted. She could still turn it off too. She hadn't walked so far on this path that it couldn't be taken back. But each step felt shifty to her now. Which one would crumble the ground and toss her into the abyss? Even if this one wasn't it, what toll would it exact? Suppose to -see- x-rays you had to -emit- them, and you became toxic to living beings? Would she still be able to turn it off? Would her mind be intact enough to care?

Then again, if she didn't... She couldn't stop both Doug AND Raider. Especially since Raider's control over the satellite seemed instantaneous and mental. Ash had been a soldier, she understood force and its limitations. Raider was holding the future of humanity hostage, and Doug was covering him. Shooting wasn't an option. Doug might not listen to reason, but the only one she had to convince was Raider. To convince him though, she needed facts. With sickening certainty she knew that Raider would launch on suspicon alone if the facts weren't crystal clear. The moon men were guilty, unless she could prove them innocent.

In a very real way it was all of humanity on trial here, civilization itself.

No pressure though.

Ashley's 'body'...little more than a stable hologram of light locked in a standing wavefront...began to glow more brightly as she opened her 'eyes' wider, taking in more of the world, more of the power. Her color shifted, sliding from a warm yellow-white towards green, and then blue. Alien impulses flooded her mind, born of senses no human brain was ever meant to possess.

Through it all, she clung to her oath, taken in the courtyard of West Point, surrounded by other cadets speaking the same words in unison. She was a soldier still, offering her life up for humankind...and she would not fail.

The blinding glow faded, though the blue-violet color persisted, flashing and flickering within Ash's energy body. When she opened her eyes, each one was a deep indigo, almost black, but somehow still glowing in a shade that hurt the eyes to see. They widened as she took in the transformed landscape around her. She felt different...hotter, so much so that she felt cold; so fast she could barely hold still. But the core of her, that part of her that was Ashley, still held. For now.

"Now I see," she said softly.

(OOC - Spending 5 exp to acquire Quantum Attunement...I'll save the High EM stuff for when I get a leetle more exp, cuz it's all in theme. Using QA to scan for any quantum wackiness that the 'taint bomb' may have left residually.)

[Courier]

(Only sent to Raider) *You ready to get moving on this? Port me to the moon and we'll just do it. I don't see any reason to involve Adam or Ash, if it goes well then we won't need them and if it goes poorly then they'll just get killed.*

[Mr Fox]

I'm ready, but lets wait to see if Ash comes up with anything new first. Just because we don't need her now doesn't mean we won't need her later and she is still one of us even if she refuses to see sense about the moonies.

[jameson (ST)]

Ash hadn't known what to expect; how could she? What she got was a momentary blinding, forcing her to blink back tears of pure energy before her new eyes could adjust. The entire area was bathed in quantum, in fact it damn near well seethed with it. Ash swept the area once noting that both Courier and Raider were also aflame with energy. She was viewing the very stuff of matter, the strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity, the totality of electromagnetic energy, all that and more. After she recovered from the sheer wonder of it all she started to look at the area more precisely. Drifting up once more she beheld an ever so faint gradient of power. Higher and higher she flew and as she did the expanse of power and the gradient became more clear. This was the place where the energy had originated. Ash flew higher, into the stratosphere like a blazing angel, and saw hot spots doting the landscape like imperfections, each where the bombs that had destroyed the world had been especially numerous or close together. After a moment, little more than mere seconds, she descended, now certain of the exact location of the event that had flooded the earth. She touched down mere feet from the spot, a tiny globe that hung in her vision like a micro sun. Though she knew it not she stood where Johnny's home had been, the exact spot. Whatever had caused this had been here, above the ground, inside the home that once stood here.

[SalmonMax]

"It was here," Ashley said with a certain reverence in her voice. She reached out with an incandescent hand to brush her fingertips across the blazing remnant of the event.

"It's still here. There's something like a residue, or imprint in midair here."

She looked from it to the others, and stared for a moment, transfixed by their beauty in the quantum realm. There was something tragic about such beings of light who did not...maybe could not...see their true natures. It made her wonder if perhaps aberrancy and madness was just some kind of birthing pain. Was there something on the far side of that? Something that a human mind; mired in flesh, would never understand?

Abruptly Ash realized they were waiting for more. She shook her head.

"I don't know what it is, exactly...it's giving off a concentrated field energy, but there doesn't seem to be anything -there- exactly. But it's where the nova-overload thing happened. It's the center of it. I can tell that much."

[Courier]

Doug asked, "Mid-air? Where specifically?"

[SalmonMax]

She waved her hand right next to the little sphere, to Raider and Doug's eyes it was about waist-height in the middle of the blasted foundation of what had once been the house of a man who could shut off nova powers.

"Right here."

It was hard to stay focused in this state though. There was so MUCH to see! Already she was noting differences between Doug and Raider. Differences in intensity and 'purity' for want of a better year.

"It's absolutely incredible," she said distantly.

[Courier]

Doug floated up and 'stood' on air at the corner of the building and sorted through his memories.

After a moment he snorted and floated back to the others. Doug said, "Unless I'm badly mistaken, that was Raider's Dad's room. He lived in the same building. Better still, that guy who stabbed me saw John die, and it wasn't there."

"Ergo John's death was the result of all this, not the cause."

[SalmonMax]

"John's death," Ashley said. "Are you sure, Doug? Because that would make a lot of sense. If John was keeping all that nova power back...he'd be like a dam. If he died, all of the sudden that dam bursts, and the power that's been held back for so long just surges outward. I mean, you have to admit, that seems plausible."

She looked back at the shimmering sphere of quantum. "But that still leaves us with how John died."

This wasn't going to work.

"I need to check that computer again, back at the city," Ash says. "See what it comes up with, simulationwise, based on what I'm seeing here."

[Courier]

Doug replied, "You just narrowed the starting point down to a few feet. John couldn't possibly have been there since he was seen to die on the street. Said starting point just happens to be where the suspected Loony criminal lived. Said criminal had access to absurd levels of technology and was condemned to die very slowly by novas."

"Motive. Opportunity. Means. Mind set. Past history of this kind of crap. The more we learn the more their name comes up. I think we've learned enough, and I for one an done looking for excuses to not do the right thing."

[Mr Fox]

"Ash, how big is that residual energy? Is it small or the size of the building?" Raider was thinking if it were small it was probably a device, if it were big it was probably John's death that caused it.

[SalmonMax]

"It's small," Ash replied defiantly.

"Then what's the 'right thing?' Wiping out what's left of humanity because they might have indirectly contributed to this?"

[Mr Fox]

"Small means one of two things. Either this was the result of a single nova which I find very hard to believe, or it was a device." Raider gave Ash a hard look, "So let me understand, you're saying that guilty or not they are the surviving members of the human race and therefore they should go unpunished for committing genocide? Not that I am saying they did this, we still don't have evidence that is conclusive. But this brings us back to where we were before. We've got lots of suspicions and circumstantial evidence, but no hard proof."

Raider made as if to sit down but rather than sitting on the muddy ground he sat on the air itself crossing his legs indian style. "So lets review...

1) The Earth has very few survivors, in the hundreds or maybe thousands at best, maybe less, certainly not more.

2) The entire population of billions was destroyed by a war between aberrants and humanity and it's nova allies.

3) We know the moonies were aware of the burn and existed before it happened. They were surprised any of us survived.

4) They have the ability to manipulate the flow of time.

5) The are very technologically advanced.

6) They despise novas/aberrants considering.

7) They were aware of the asteroid and did nothing to prevent it from hitting the earth even though they had the means to do so.

8) They viewed the asteroid as clensing the earth of the taint that remains. That taint being in the form of radiation and novas.

9) My father was technologically advanced.

10) My father was here in this place, in the building that once stood on this spot."

"It would be speculation to tie these various events together, but not wild speculation I think. It seems more of an educated guess to me."

"Even so, whether they are directly guilty, or indirectly the fact remains, we are among the only 'innocent' survivors of a horrible chain of events. The moonies may want us dead and they may be responsible. Our choices are confront them and ascertain their guilt or innocence, try to live in peace, or flee to someplace safe and hope they don't pursue."

"So if we confront them we have three possible outcomes, they are guilty and we seek retribution, they are guilty and we flee, or they are innocent."

He finally looked at both Doug and Ash again, "Did I miss anything?"

[Courier]

Doug replied, "Indirectly??? John was indirect by keeping him alive, I don't blame him. James was indirect by not using a quicker poison, and I don't blame him either for this."

Doug continued, "It's not 'indirect' when you give a child gasoline and matches and tell him to go play with them. It CERTAINLY isn't 'indirect' when you deliberately move someone forward in time so his family with think he's dead, NOR is it 'indirect' to move a rock and then stand back and watch to see how many people it will kill."

Doug's voice got louder and louder until he was shouting, "They deserve to DIE for what they've done. They deserve to be TORTURED to death for what they've done."

Doug held out a hand and breathed heavily for a moment, then he continued as though he hadn't lost his composure, "But we're not going to do that. What we're going to do is ask them to undo the damage they've done."

"But we should bring the nuke with us in the off chance that they'll continue to act true to form. Using it should be a last resort. If you have some other way to make them stop abusing us then now would be a good time to mention it."

[SalmonMax]

"We don't know they did anything," Ash points out. "There's lots of possible places advanced technology MIGHT have come from."

She shakes her head.

"But as long as we're putting our cards on the table, here's what I really think. I don't think it matters anymore. What's done is done. The Earth, humanity, it's all screwed. Maybe it was on purpose, maybe it was an accident, but what's important now is what happens next."

Ashley looks levelly at Doug and Raider. "We can't save the world by ourselves. We can't save humankind. We're three people, against a planet full of aberrants. And that's assuming we won't join them eventually. We've all already changed. Greg...Anna...even me. There's no reason to think it won't keep going that way...that we all won't eventually slip off that cliff."

"The way I see it, there's exactly one hope that humanity will get back on its feet and survive. There's exactly one group of people with the strength to defeat the monsters that most novas have become, and who the few humans will trust enough to unite behind. And it's not us. It's them."

"I can argue morals and ethics, but in my heart this is about whether or not humanity lives or dies."

As she spoke, Ashley took on solidity again, and the ceaseless light shining from her body dwindled and died. She stood before the two novas in her human self, all but defenseless.

"I think we need to accept the fact that this isn't our story anymore. We're not the heroes anymore. The future belongs to them now."

[Courier]

Doug replied coldly, "Sure. It's not like they're a group of genocidal sadists who can't be trusted. Given their long history of benevolence they're exactly the people who should be trusted to rebuild humanity."

Doug waited a heartbeat and then added, "Or we could trust you. That's my plan. Go back to the city Ash. Get Adam and the others to help you find people to populate it. If there's no one around capriciously knocking down civilizations, then you should be able to make it work. The reverse is true too, if we leave someone around who is gleefully knocking down civilizations, then there's no way anything can succeed."

[Mr Fox]

Raider shook his head. "No Doug, there is another way. We could flee. We could gather as much of humanity as we can find and go to another world and try to rebuild there, far away from Earth and the moonies. There is nothing to say the moonies won't pursue us to space, but that would be a long time from now I think, long enough for us to have rebuilt civilization or fled on even farther out."

[Courier]

Now this was a thought that hadn't occurred to Doug. He liked it, a LOT, but...

Doug paused to digest it then replied, "An Earth 2 would have a lower Q field, and no aberrants. If you know of a place like that, and if Adam has the range, then I think we should do it. Absent either of those I don't think we have the time or resources."

[Mr Fox]

Raider shrugged, "I don't have knowledge of such a planet, but I know they will exist, it's only a matter of finding one. We can gather as many people as possible in the city and make plans while we search. Given what we know of the moonies I don't think they would pursue us, at least not for a long time. Their main concern so far seems to have been reclaiming the Earth, if our speculations about them are true. Also if they are true then we both win. They get what they've wanted and we get what we want, all of us."

[Courier]

Doug said in half exasperation, "Raider... what you mean is no, you don't know where such a planet is, and no, you don't know how to get there. So we're years, decades, or longer away from such a thing. Do you really think the Moonies are going to wait that long?"

"I mean, I guess we could ask them if they knew a place and were willing to help us move, but short of that it doesn't seem like an option."

[Mr Fox]

"No, it depends entirely on Adam and his warping ability and how strong it is. I can go scout out distant planets by teleporting and I suspect I could find one pretty quick, but I can't open big holes in space the way Adam can, so if he is strong enough to open a hole from here to whatever planet I find then yes, we can do it and do it in the short term, but it's all on him." He thought for a minute, "I might be able to learn his ability since I can already teleport, but that would take time."

"Speaking of time, given their previous behavior I speculate that the moonies are waiting for the abbys to die off which would give us at little time, maybe enough to evacuate any humans that would be willing to come with us."

[SalmonMax]

Ashley's quiet, staring at the two other novas and hardly daring to believe her ears. Just like that, as if they hadn't been hellbent on nuking the moon at all, they were pursuing a completely different agenda...one that seemed to her to be much more constructive.

Was it a ruse? Were they trying to get her off balance?

No...that made no sense. They had the advantage. They had the cards. If they wanted to launch, she had no power to stop them...at least not reliably. They gained nothing by toying with her.

It took her a second to regain her mental feet, after being prepared for the biggest tug of war of her life, and pulling for all she was worth only to find the other side had dropped the rope.

"The city," she suggested quietly. "It's probably got data from before the Burn about stars and planets. Maybe people had already found what you're looking for...or found likely spots for one."

[Mr Fox]

Raider could see the hope in Ashley's eyes and didn't want to dash them. "Don't get me wrong, it would take me many many jumps to get to even the nearest star and unless Adam can make a warp directly to another planet then it won't do us any good even finding a planet so this may just be idle speculation. We'll have to ask him what he's capable of, but yeah, asking the city's AI would be a great start. I know some searching was done before the burn so they would have had any knowledge available. Doug, can you contact Adam and ask that he send us back and ask him his range?"

[SalmonMax]

Ash grinned at Raider's delicacy. She wasn't sure if he realized why she was suddenly so relieved, but this wasn't the time to discuss it. She didn't want to derail what was happening.

"It doesn't have to matter if he can't get there in one hop," she points out. "You can build a ship. Just a big pressurized can, basically. Doesn't need an engine because -he's- the engine. Plot the course using visual references he can recognize...and then jump. Over and over. As many times as it takes. I mean, obviously I'm oversimplifying...but how big can he make one of those portals? Big enough for a vehicle?"

[Mr Fox]

"I think the record is about nine feet by nine feet that's not very big, but I suppose we could make it as long as we needed to, as many feet as necessary to fit however many people we can fit, but there would still be limits. The more people the more oxygen and water and other supplies we'd need to pack in there, and what if it's too far to jump before he runs out of energy and has to rest? What if quantum energy that fuels us is more scarce out there between stars and it takes longer to get there, people could run out of oxygen. There are a lot of what ifs, but it's still worth checking out. At the very least I'd like to have a fallback plan if a confrontation with the moonies goes badly."

[Courier]

Doug replied crossly, "No, I won't contact Adam. That's because I can not. The link's range is effectively unlimited for most uses, but he's on the other side of the planet and that's out of range."

"Similarly after you take us back to the city I'd like for you to visit... Mars. You're thinking Teleport don't have a range because you've never found one. But I want some confirmation on that before we invest more resources into it."

"Before the burn there were far more teleporters and warpers around, if leaving were a serious option then I don't understand why they didn't."

[SalmonMax]

"Maybe they did," Ash suggests. "How would we know?"

[Courier]

Doug replied, "Because they didn't come back. Dozens of novas take maybe tens of thousands to safety, and no one checks us out later? No one sets up trade routes, or comes back for their relatives, or recruits slaves? Everyone everywhere remembered their tooth brush? All the colonies had enough water, iron, women, and such?"

"I was seriously tied into the rumor mill on much of the Eastern Seaboard and I've never heard of such a thing. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but... if it's too good to be true then it's probably not true."

[SalmonMax]

Ash shrugged. "If they were running from a war, or from the circumstances just before the war, then I could see them not wanting to come back. But yeah, I guess that's pointless to guess about now. We need to get back to the city. How do we do that if you can't talk to Adam?"

[Mr Fox]

"I can take us there one at a time." He walked over to Ashley and placed his hand on her shoulder. He detected a slight flinch, not as if she were afraid, but more that there were trust issues now. It took only a moment to pop back and forth and soon the three were standing in the city again where they had left from.

"Give me a sec and I'll check with the AI about other planets."

He walked over to the console and quickly entered his query which was simple, Are you aware of any extrasolar planets that might have the ability to sustain life, or of any other stars where it is suspected there might be earth-like planets?

[jameson (ST)]

Despite the active warp only a few meters away Raider blipped across space three times in as many seconds to translate them back to the city, back to the cluttered studio of an artist who had become an inadvertent mass murderer. Leaving Doug and Ash as they got their bearings once more Raider moved to the AI interface and posed his query, Are you aware of any extrasolar planets that might have the ability to sustain life, or of any other stars where it is suspected there might be earth-like planets?

The AI's red sphere avatar came up at once and replied, I am unaware of any extrasolar colonies. According to my records there may have been a nova group, what you would call aberrants perhaps, called the Daedalus League that may have known of habitable extrasolar planets but they did not work with baseline or any governments. There were habitats at the LaGrange points, the moon colony, and, if Chinese intelligence is correct on the matter, the United States, a country before the war, had established a colony on Mars.

[Mr Fox]

"You don't know of any colonies, but do you know of any extrasolar planets that might be earth-like? Also, do you have any knowledge on any of the known colonies, or evidence that a Mars colony might still exist?"

[jameson (ST)]

My apologies for being unclear. There are no known extra solar planets capable of supporting human life; had there been it would have been a priority to colonize those worlds. As for the purported Mars colony I have no way of knowing if it still exists. The knowledge in my data banks does not indicate the status of the Wet Mars Project after the nuclear strike.