Mercurye’s arm trembled and bits of concrete flaked to the floor. He struggled to maintain the grimace, but Ramona could see his shoulders droop and his elbow start to bend. The fist slid down to rest against the floor, fingers partly uncurled. “But how much longer?”
“I don’t know.”
He sighed and glanced at the bloody mess of his left hand. “Long enough to get this bandaged up, I’d bet. Guess I should find a first aid kit or something.”
“Second shelf next to the sink. That concrete’s twelve inches thick, so it’ll take a few more hits if you’re so inclined.” Ramona stretched herself back onto the cot once she heard the metal clack of latches and the crinkle of sterile plastic wrapping. She didn’t like waiting any more than Rick did, but she did trust Bella, Pride, and Victrix to come up with a solution to their temporary housing problem.
She hoped it would be soon. If there was one thing that she had learned, it was that scientists made terrible roommates.
The speedster shuffled up to her, gauze in one hand and a bottle of peroxide in another. “Help, maybe? I promise not to punch another wall.”
That made her laugh. She patted the cot and took the peroxide from him. “Sure, but you have to tell me how you remembered a code like that to get in. Not that it wasn’t amazing, but I expected to have to get Vickie to override it.”
He shrugged. “The first number gave it away. It had to be the natural log of one, the square root of that, or the square. After that, it was easy.”
Ramona boggled at him. “Easy? How?”
“Natural log of one is, speed of light is, Planck’s constant is, and zero.” A slow smile spread across his face. “Nerdspeak for ECHO, y’know?”
She didn’t, but Tesla’s thoughts flickered through her own, and she could “see” a hastily scribbled blackboard with letters and numbers ascribed to them. Ech0. Realization combined with wonder, and she choked out a laugh as she started wrapping Rick’s knuckles in gauze. “And that was easy?”
“For a Trek-obsessed physics geek, sure.” His shoulders came up to his ears, and Ramona could see the shadow of an awkward teenager fascinated by mathematics and science. His expression sobered. “You really think that Victrix is going to figure out how to undo this? All of it?”
Ramona considered lying with something along the lines of “absolutely, there’s nothing to worry about,” but they all deserved better. “I hope so,” she said. “I trust her to find the best solution, even if we don’t have all of the answers yet. She’ll figure out something.”
“Soon?”
Soon was relative. “Yeah,” she sighed. “Soon.”
* * *
“Soon” stretched past two days, during which Ramona occupied herself with a methodical inventory of the bunker, a few long naps, and regular conversations via Overwatch with the rest of the ECHO seniority. Consequences had already started to ripple through major governments and affiliated metahuman organizations. Bella had her hands full with coordinating efforts at home and tapped into Yankee Pride’s connections to make sure that everyone shared the most recent information. Chatter from the Russian contingent filled her ears if she tuned into the CCCP frequency, but they provided the most up-to-date information on what was going on in her backyard. Marconi had a better handle on the language than she did, so he provided a rapid translation of the more technical terminology. While she felt bad about the constant eavesdropping, Ramona couldn’t bear to be kept in the dark. Ignorance wasn’t bliss at a time like this.
A long nap improved Mercurye’s disposition to the point where he helped Ramona with some of the inventory. The assistance waned as Tesla distracted him with conversations about theoretical physics and the possible extensions of metahuman abilities as they pertained to speed and motion. By the end of the first day, Merc chattered happily with the fussy scientific genius about the particulars of quantum mechanics while pressing himself up into a handstand.
Ramona forced the small of her back against the concrete wall and sighed. Another flare-up in one of the destruction corridors had sent the Overwatch channels into action. She thought about tuning in, but she felt Marconi’s consciousness nudge her attention toward Mercurye and away from the chatter. She gave in, a subvocal command shifting critical alerts to a corner of her retinal display. If something came up, she would know.
“Signorina, why not take advantage of the time that you have?” The grandfatherly tone chuckled. “There are so few quiet moments to be shared.”
She snorted. “Right, because making out with my boyfriend while we’re chaperoned by two uncles is exactly how I envisioned this happening.” She felt the shocked amusement and muffled laughter immediately. “I’ll wait for a little more privacy, Signor Marconi, but I appreciate your concern.”
“Noted. And he and Nikola seem to be enjoying each other’s company. I had figured your young gentleman to be of above average intelligence, but I would never have guessed that he would be at such a level to entertain my old friend.” The consciousness gave a sigh of content, something that manifested as a sleepy warmth spreading over her body. “It is a good thing, truly.”
“Mmm.” While Ramona wanted to ask more, she couldn’t help but find Marconi’s satisfaction a soothing balm of sorts. She felt herself relaxing into the sensation, then stopped. It took a conscious thought to pull herself away from the emotion and stand outside of it.
“Signorina?”
Ramona shook her head and activated her Overwatch connection. The secure line put her in direct contact with Vickie, who had her hands full with directing ECHO resources for cleanup. “Still working on a solution, but these guys are pretty pissed after everything that happened. You need to revise that inventory you sent me?”
“Negative.” Ramona shifted so that Mercurye couldn’t see her lips moving. “I don’t think they mean it, but our tenants might be getting a bit too cozy in our brainspaces. There’s stuff I’m starting to feel and anticipate that I shouldn’t.”
Vickie’s tone stayed professional and clinical, something that told Ramona that they were in more trouble than she had initially thought. “Finishing sentences or coming up with words that aren’t your own? Do you think you’ve lost control of your hands and feet? Is Mister Marconi having you do the chicken dance and you can’t help yourself?”
“Chicken dance?” Amusement colored the older man’s indignation.
“Not quite, but sometimes what he’s feeling or saying is more comfortable than what I might have done in the first place, and it’s hard to separate.” Now Ramona felt the twinge of concern paired with apology and a hint of embarrassment. She swallowed hard. “Is that normal, given the situation?”
“Normal, sort of. Good, not really.”
“So, really not good,” Ramona repeated.
“I don’t know,” Marconi mused. “Is this chicken dance something like a poultry polka?”
Ramona groaned.
“Look, here’s my problem. The Odd Couple needs a lot, and I mean a lot, of memory space. Something I can’t replicate with the resources at my disposal. My calculations are it would take a building about the size of Atlanta to hold all the chips. Whatever the Metisians use for memory storage doesn’t work like anything we have.” Vickie paused. “And we don’t have near enough of those memory tiles of theirs free to rebuild something. And even if we did, that just makes them a target all over again. I could put them in a human with diminished mental capacity, but that would just mean they would have diminished mental capacity.”
“Is there a point in there?” Ramona snapped.
Vickie snapped right back. “I’m getting there! I’m explaining for the benefit of the Brain Trust in case they can think of something!”
“And doing a lovely job, Signorina Victrix,” Marconi added. “Please, continue. I’m sure that Nikola would appreciate hearing more as well.”
“Sorry.” Ramona could actually visualize Vickie running her hands through her hair, turning it into the spiky mess i
t was whenever she was frustrated. “Okay, here’s the thing. I actually know how to make magical storage, which takes no space in the real world, and only needs a non-magical interface to connect with the real world, and I can make that too. But I have to know the math of how those storage tiles work to replicate them so the Boys’ Club can move in. Is there any chance there might be a mathematical model or a schematic or something that I can study that might have survived somewhere? Do you guys put mini-libraries of All The Important Stuff on the ships? Did you upload stuff to the ECHO computers that only you can unlock? Can you throw me a bone?”
“The ships do retain duplicates of critical supplies, so you could salvage the materials themselves that are used for the storage devices. With respect to the mathematical model…” Tesla trailed off in a thoughtful hum as Mercurye stood and began pacing the bunker.
“It is not something that the Metisians would have left to be easily accessed. The theory behind it is not difficult to decode, given that we assisted in the later modifications, but it would take time. Not months, but at least a few days to properly outline given a moderate understanding of mathematics,” Marconi apologized. “This is hardly a child’s course in multivariate calculus, you see.”
“And Vickie’s probably the smartest person in ECHO who can pick this apart and make it work without being distracted,” Ramona reminded them.
“Hold that thought and get ready to open the bunker door for me. I’m jetpacking over to give the Gruesome Twosome a direct interface from your heads to my computers. That way they’ll be able to type at me and give me the Child’s Garden Of Interdimensional Math and Physics without having to talk in your heads.”
Mercurye managed a disappointed frown but stationed himself near the door. A few rotations of the wheel and the heavy door slid a few feet to the side. Vickie shrugged off the jetpack and left it near the entrance. Dressed from neck to toes in her trademark black garb, she withdrew a small but armored laptop computer from her bag.
“Gentlemen, let’s get started. This is your first student,” she said, patting the case. “Think of me as your teaching assistant, poking and prodding it to learn everything that you want it to know.”
“Everything?” Tesla sounded both skeptical and impressed, something that rarely happened. “Are you certain?”
“Math and physics don’t take up a lot of storage. It’s applied math and physics, applied to the real world that is, that does.” Vickie’s hair was already a mess from the flight over. Once again, she ran her hands through it, transforming it from “messy” to “Apocalyptic Mohawk.” “I have a friend coming over from the UK. He’s to theoretical mathemagic what I am to applied. Once we’ve got the theory, I can apply it.” She stepped over to Ramona and sketched some rapid symbols on her forehead. Ramona did her best not to wince, but she couldn’t stop her skin from responding.
Vickie stepped back. “Whoa. That looks like the most death metal tattoos, ever. Okay, Signore Marconi, pretend you’re typing. Don’t think at Ramona. Just visualize your own hands typing on that keyboard.”
Nearly a minute passed without anything appearing on the screen, but a flurry of numbers, symbols, and abbreviated notes in English and Italian started to fill the empty space. It started to scroll slowly, space opening to allow for diagrams and charts alongside the equations. Ramona tried to watch, but it gave her a headache. The man knew so much about so much, it was dizzying.
“Houston, we have liftoff. Bonus, I thought I’d have to go through some trial and error first; I made that shit up flying over.” Vickie pulled out a second laptop and set it up next to the first, then crooked a finger at Merc. “Come here, big boy. And stop pouting, you’ll get to watch.”
Mercurye shuffled obediently over to her, and she sketched the same invisible symbols on his forehead that she had on Ramona’s. Except…they weren’t invisible, they glowed for just a second or so before fading. “Your turn, Nikola. Visualize yourself typing. You can see Marconi’s work, so…I dunno, complement it, add to it, repeat it, whatever is most intuitive for you. Just make sure I get it all, I don’t care how much is duplicated.”
“As you wish, Miss Victrix.” Unlike his counterpart’s struggle to put virtual fingers to keys, Tesla began typing immediately. Where Marconi’s equations and explanations became complex diagrams, his notes were neat and progressed in a series of numbered steps. “Of course, we’ll have to make a few corrections here and there, but you will have everything available to us.”
“Whew,” Vickie sighed, now plastering her hair flat with both hands. “For once Heisenberg came down on our side. This is gonna provide two things. One, it’s gonna give me and Paul the math. Two, the more Tweedlesmart and Tweedlesmarter concentrate on this stuff, and interfacing outside your head, the more they’ll separate from you two again. This’ll buy us time for Habitat for Inhumanity to construct the New Genius Manse.”
“Cool.” Mercurye stretched out in front of Tesla’s laptop, watching the equations like some kids would have watched Saturday morning cartoons. “So now we just wait?”
Ramona felt herself starting to doze off as Vickie settled herself in front of the machine transcribing Marconi’s notes. “Yup. Hurry up and wait.”
INTERLUDE
* * *
Inner Universe
Mercedes Lackey
So, thanks to Tesla and Marconi, I had the math, the math, the glorious, glorious math, and the physics that defined how the Metisians had built their computers and, specifically, the storage. If I’d had time, I would have wallowed in it, but I didn’t have time. None of us had time. There were a hundred fires to put out and not enough of us. But at least if I could get Tesla and Marconi out of Merc and Ramona’s skulls, we’d have two more brains to put to work, and the two eggheads would have a “home” that no one would be able to destroy again. I had the feeling that knowing they were invulnerable would allow them to put all of their formidable intelligence at our disposal.
But before I could give them their new home, I had to test it first. And I knew just how to do that.
Little Eight-Ball, my predictive program, had been showing signs of developing into an AI, and my gut was telling me that the only thing holding it back from blooming into a robust early warning system was a lack of memory and a lack of data. The lack of data was easy to supply; lack of memory, not so much. Until now.
But now I had everything I needed that told me how the Metisians had built their memory modules. I couldn’t create them, of course. No one could; we didn’t have the tech. But I didn’t need to create them. I could reinvent them, creating them with magic. It was amazing stuff, and part of me mourned that we needed to build the tools to build the tools to build the tools to re-create them, and…yeah. No time. No time. If we lived through this, then…if we hadn’t been blasted back to the Dark Ages. Not quite quantum storage, but not far off. Just as I had created the magic interface that worked with Tesla’s interocitor, I could create the magic memory that would work with one of my terminals, upload Eight-Ball to it, and give it…room to breathe. It was already self-modifying. Once it had space…
Well, I’d see what it could do.
This was not unlike making a talismanic object, a blessed or cursed item, or one of my energy-storage crystals—it was more precise work than any of these, but nothing I couldn’t handle with enough caffeine and protein. And this had priority over just about everything but running Overwatch Two, because the longer Tesla and Marconi stayed in Merc and Ramona’s heads…the more likely it became they’d start to lose memories. They were, after all, formerly electronic entities with unlimited storage capacity now crammed into meatspace. For a while, the magic that had put them there would help them retain everything, but entropy is not our friend, in magic or physics, and I needed to get them out of there, fast, before the magic wore thin.
And don’t ask me if they were “souls.” Ask Sera. Souls are not my department. I don’t do philosophy. I do math and physics; I leave the sp
eculation to those who are qualified to make it.
The obvious advantage to testing this magical model of a physical construct on Eight-Ball was that I’d have a backup of Eight-Ball in case I got something wrong. There were no backups possible for the Eggheads.
It took about three days for me to be sure I understood the math completely. It took another two to translate it into mathemagic.
It took almost no time to do the actual build, once I put in an interface to m-space and got the ball rolling. It’s the old “sorcerer’s apprentice” spell. All I had to do was build one module, then tell the spell to build another just like it, and like the splinters turning into broomstick golems, the modules multiplied until I told them to stop. Of course, I left the ability to start replicating again in place, and an energy syphon with a regulator—
And yeah, I know I am making no sense. Take it as read that once Eight-Ball was in place, on the remote chance that it’d need more memory, it’d be able to make it without needing my help, or putting the kind of drain on the local magic supply that would cause problems. And I planned to put the same system in on the Eggheads’ new home, once I knew I had all the kinks ironed out.
So once I got things going, on Bella’s orders and with assurance from Sam and Dean they’d wake me if all hell broke loose, I caught some shut-eye. When I woke up again, it was ready for the trial run. Which went flawlessly, so much so that I shoved the backup of Eight-Ball in my long-term storage, attached Eight-Ball’s new home to carefully loaded data storage (all the things I’d wanted to attach that I hadn’t been able to) and went back to work making the Odd Couple their new home. A home with the advantage that it literally could not be physically destroyed, and it had all the connectivity to everything even remotely linked to the internet that I did. They’d had to sip at the rest of the world through the tiny straw that Metis had given them. I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d do with their new freedom. And I had a plan to make every possible connection to the internet that I could tag accessible to them, so we’d be able to talk to them (and they’d be able to watch and listen) through those connections. More Law of Contamination stuff; I could get that particular ball rolling by tagging my own terminals, and then, like a magic virus, the tagging spell would spread from there.
Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle Page 6