"Is he talking?"
"Pardon me," Neal said. "Something seems to be amiss."
"You made Neal a girl!" Titus said.
"Then not only did I fix it, I improved it!"
"Why do I sound like this?" the AI said.
"It's okay, buddy, we'll get your old voice back," Titus said.
"But only if you decide you don't like this one," Emily said. "I think it suits you just fine."
"What happened?" the computer said.
Jane popped up onto her feet and offered a hand to Kate, who accepted. Together they walked over to the crowd gathered around the well-worn casing where Neal's consciousness lived.
"You got blowed up," Emily said. "Like, ka-boom. Pretty bad."
"Not that bad," Titus said "You took some damage. Girl Wonder over here just contributed some ancillary damage though."
"Clearly, he didn't need that piece," Emily said.
"Why does everything smell like pancakes?" Neal said in the most weirdly bewildered voice Kate had ever heard.
"What?" Emily said.
"See! I told you he needed that piece! Now everything smells like pancakes," Titus said.
"You say that like it's a bad thing!" Emily said. "I wish everything smelled like pancakes. And maybe bacon. Pancakes and bacon, I'd wear that as a perfume."
"Enough, Emily," Jane said, breaking up the argument between the blue-haired girl and the increasingly agitated werewolf.
"Would you, or would you not prefer everything smell like pancakes?" Emily said, pointing dramatically at Jane.
"You're going to have to give me an either/or option there," Jane said absently. "Neal?"
"Yes, Designation: Solar. Query: There are two of you?"
Jane cracked a smile, barely able to refrain from laughing at the sound of Neal's new female voice. "I'm sorry. This isn't funny. Neal, we need a look at the rest of Broadstreet's information. What else did he give us?"
They were joined quickly by Solar.
Kate noticed the two Straylights walking in the front door casually, late to the party.
"Right away, Designation: Solar Two."
"I hope you're okay with being Solar Two," older-Jane said.
"Whatever helps tell us apart," her younger self said.
Schematics came to life on screen, a large sphere furrowed with complex linework. It reminded Kate vaguely of the Epcot Center dome.
Broadstreet's voice started to speak. Kate watched both Janes flinch, just slightly. It was apparent they were not yet done grieving over the man's violent death. She looked around the room and saw the werewolf pack appearing mournful also. Broadstreet must've been a friend to them as well.
This is why we can never get attached to people, Kate thought.
"I was able to locate plans for a power source, a generator of some kind," Broadstreet said. "I don't know exactly what it does or how it works, but maybe some of your people can figure it out. Whatever it is, Bohr's been working on it for years. It seems to be his most important project."
"Hey Nealette, freeze frame there?" Emily said.
"Designation: Who are you? Designation: Strange Girl, please do not call me Nealette."
"Whatever," Emily said. "Hey Jane, can I change my superhero name to Strange Girl?"
"I'd rather you didn't," Jane said.
"Whatever," Emily said. She studied the hologram, intuitively turning it with hand gestures and using her fingers to zoom in. She looked uncharacteristically serious as she took a closer look.
"Are you messing with us right now, or are you actually searching for something?" Titus said.
"Be quiet, Fido," Emily said. "I'm working here."
Titus glanced at Kate.
She motioned with her hands as if to say, let it go.
"This is weird. It's like a Dyson sphere, but different," Emily said.
"A Dyson sphere?" Jane said.
"It was a hypothetical megastructure that would surround an entire star, capturing its power output," Emily said. "The mathematician Freeman Dyson first wrote about it, but he was actually upset that they called it the Dyson sphere. I think he was angry that a theoretical idea would be remembered in his name."
"Why would someone build a structure around a star?" Titus said.
"Dyson's idea was that we'd eventually need to maximize the energy the sun puts out in order for us to survive," Emily said. "Me, I think we'll have some sort of self-inflicted extinction event before that ever happens, but, y'know."
She continued to look at the design, flipping the sphere around with her hands.
"Anyway, it's so theoretical it shows up mostly in science fiction, so I'm surprised you don't know what I'm talking about, Titus," Emily said.
"I actually do know what you're talking about. Have you been stealing books from my room again?" Titus said.
"I knew what you were talking about, too," Billy said, joining in on the conversation.
"You lie, Billy Case," Emily said. "I gave you that Charles Stross book and it ended up as a paperweight."
"No it didn't," he said. "I used it as a coaster."
"Whatever. It's . . ." Emily trailed off, her hands falling to her sides.
"No comeback?" Billy said.
"Shut up, Billy Case," Emily said. "This isn't a Dyson sphere."
Jane put a hand on Emily's shoulder, eyeing the holographic image, trying to figure out what Emily saw that spooked her.
"What's wrong, Em?" Jane said.
"This isn't a sphere to go around a sun," Emily said. "This sphere's designed to go around someone like me. It's a cage made just for me."
Chapter 34:
A black hole where my heart should be
Doc Silence returned just before dawn, divining, through some minor magic, just where his companions had escaped to. The corpse of the college building he'd left them in had filled him with dread, but somehow he knew, even without magic, that they'd survived.
What he found in the new location was a shocked and shockingly quiet Emily, surrounded by peers trying, all without great effect, to comfort her.
"I'm gone for one day and . . ." Doc said. "What happened?"
Both Janes—older and younger—filled him in on Emily's discovery in Broadstreet's notes, while Annie tried to give him background on the White Shadow's role in the war.
Doc interrupted her. "It can't be the White Shadow. Not the original one," he said.
"Doc, we've seen the footage," Annie said.
"I'm not saying this out of nostalgia, Annie," he said. "I mean factually. He was just a regular man, and he'd be elderly now. Not simply old. Infirmed. And none of this—giant robots, bombing cities, wiping out entire villainous organizations through lethal violence—none of this is his style. It's got to be someone else."
"Is proving he didn't do all this that important to you?" Annie said.
"No, but understanding who our actual enemy is, that matters to me," Doc said. "Blindly believing that in this timeline, a kind man who put his life on the line to make the world a better place turned into a dictator just doesn't cut it for me. I need to know more."
Doc dragged a chair over to Emily and sat across from her. She looked up.
"You really do leave at the most inconvenient times," she said.
"I know. What did you find out?" he said.
"Everybody said I was some kind of weapon here, right?" Emily said.
Doc nodded.
"Oh, big scary Emily. She sank California."
"You did," Jessie said.
Billy glared at her.
"What? I'm just telling her the truth. Girl literally dragged California into the Pacific Ocean," she said
"I'm also fueling the revolution," Emily said. She pointed at the hologram still spinning in front of Neal's computer housing. "That thing is using me as a power source."
"I don't get it," Billy said.
"I love you Billy Case, but you don't get a lot of things," Emily said. She looked at Doc. "You want to explain thi
s?"
"Go ahead, Emily," he said.
"Okay," she said. "You know how I always say I have a black hole where my heart is?"
"I always thought that was a figure of speech," Billy said.
"Sorta kinda, but not really," Emily said. "You guys think I'm nuts, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about my powers the past few years. Where they come from. How they work."
Annie shot Doc a knowing, worried look, raising one pink eyebrow.
Doc tried to wave off her concerns with a tilt of his head.
"My mom could fly," Emily said. "Nobody knew why. They don't know why now. She just could. My mom could defy gravity."
"And you don't defy it, you control it," Jane said.
"It acts funny around me. So when I say I have a black hole in here," Emily said, tapping her chest with her fist, "I don't think I've got a region of spacetime exhibiting such a strong gravitational pull that no particle or electromagnetic radiation can escape it. I just mean I'm where gravity starts to get weird."
"Is anyone actually following this?" Billy said.
"I am," Annie said. "Though I have a feeling we're about to lose at least ninety percent of the room's attention."
"I named myself after the second law of black hole mechanics. This is Hawking stuff. Whether black holes have entropy or not," said Emily. "And I think I'm basically the opposite of Jane."
"And now you lost me," Jane said.
"No, hang on," Emily said. "You're a battery. You're solar-powered. Absorb sunlight and turn it into smash and fire and flying and can say 'look at me, I'm a superhero.'"
"And what? You're a . . . super-villain?" younger-Jane said.
"I really am trying to make this simple," Emily said. "Doc?"
"You're the genius. I just perform magic," he said. He smiled, strangely proud of his youngest protégé, attempting to explain black hole mechanics to a room packed full of aliens and werewolves.
"Let me try to say this really simply," Emily said.
"Oh no," Billy said.
"Shut up Billy Case or I'll bubble of float you right out that window over there," Emily said. She took a deep breath. "Stephen Hawking. Quantum field theory. Black holes radiate blackbody energy at a constant temperature. That radiation carries away entropy. I ... I give up. I generate energy. Jane is a battery, I'm a nuclear reactor. Only I'm not nuclear, literally. I'm just a big weird source of change, and change equals power."
"That sphere that you're talking about, in the hologram," Titus said, nodding. "You're saying that it's designed to . . . store the energy of your black hole but not the energy that a black hole gives off?"
"Finally someone gets me!" Emily said.
"I really didn't actually understand you," Titus said. "I was just checking to see if I was following."
Emily jumped up and leaped into Titus's arms in a bear hug.
"Close enough, fuzzball! Close enough!"
Annie approached the diagram on screen, inspecting it with a scientist's eye. "So if that rambling discussion of quantum mechanics made any sense at all, what you're saying is our enemies have turned you into their own nuclear reactor," she said.
"And if I'm interpreting the schematics correctly, I'm sitting right inside one of those things," Emily said. She looked at Doc mournfully. "And I probably have been since the day you weren't alive to find me."
Doc pushed his red sunglasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes. When he pulled his hands away, the glasses dropped back down onto the bridge of his nose. He looked around the room.
"What do you think we should do?" Jane said.
Doc fixed his eyes quizzically at her older counterpart. "What do you think?" he said.
Both Janes glanced at each other, then the Solar spoke. "I'd like to hear your suggestions," she said.
Doc nodded.
"I'd like to find out more about this White Shadow," Doc said. "Kate?"
"Me?" Kate said
"You and I are going on a field trip," Doc said.
"Why me?" Kate said.
"First, because where we're going will require us to be quite stealthy," Doc said.
"I can be stealthy," Emily said. "I'm practically an assassin."
"And second," Doc said, allowing Emily to ramble on, "I need a detective's eyes. And you've got the instincts of a detective."
Kate stared at Doc, not speaking, but her top lip twisted, almost hinting at approval.
"Where are you going?" Solar said.
"I know where the real White Shadow retired," Doc said. "Kate and I are going to go see if there's any clues left as to what happened to him."
"And the rest of us?" Titus said.
"Most of you should hang tight until we get back," Doc said. "But we do need to learn more about that sphere."
"The Entropy sphere," Emily said.
"Fair enough," he said. "The Entropy sphere. And we know where Keaton Bohr studied and worked. I'd suggest a small team investigate and see if he left any research behind that might help us dismantle that contraption."
"Emily and I'll go," Annie said.
"Take backup," Doc said. "Someone who can keep a low profile."
"I volunteer as tribute," Billy said.
"I'd rather someone who can actually keep a low profile," Doc said.
"And the rest of us?" asked Whispering. He'd been hanging back away from the group, listening the entire time, and had remained silent until now. "We're just going to wait here and do nothing?"
"Give us a few hours," Doc said. "Then we'll take more significant action."
Chapter 35:
It was his home
Doc Silence and Kate Miller materialized in a dusty street in the City's Oldtown District. The area, part of the City's original construction, felt in many ways like a throwback to an earlier era, narrow streets lined with brownstone buildings, the sidewalks paved in neglected red brick.
"You okay?" Doc asked.
Kate nodded her head vigorously. She didn't like teleportation at all, but Doc's magic transportation was less disorienting somehow than Annie's time travel methods. When he moved them, Kate felt out of sorts, as if she'd slept through a long car ride and was no longer sure where she was. Annie's abilities left Kate feeling like someone had taken her cells apart and then put her back together again in not quite exactly the same fashion.
Doc walked up the front stairs of one of the brownstones—all of which appeared abandoned in this future, long uninhabited, littered with broken windows and lost hopes—and opened the front door as if he owned it. He looked over his shoulder, and Kate followed him in.
The building's interior smelled of mothballs and the burnt, glue-like odor of drying wallpaper. Sprinkled bits of crushed drywall covered the hallway carpet. Doc led them upstairs to the third floor and stopped in front of a specific apartment.
"The White Shadow's hideout was in a condo?" Kate asked.
Doc shook his head.
"Not his hideout," he said. "His home."
Kate was prepared to kick in the locked door but watched as Doc seemed to have a quiet conversation with the lock and doorknob. The knob turned and the door opened.
"Magic?"
"Remembering the names of things is important," Doc said. "I know the names of locks, and can ask them to open for me. All locked doors want to be released. It's their nature, if you simply ask nicely. Doors are meant to be opened."
"Great. You wait until we're alone to start talking like a weird hippie," Kate said. "I appreciate that."
Doc smirked and walked in.
The condominium was sparse, dark. It clearly had not been updated for many years, with aging wall covering, old but sturdy furniture, blinds and carpets that were out of fashion even before Kate was a little kid.
"Look around, see if you notice anything out of sorts," Doc said.
They wandered separately from room to room. Kate saw shoes lined up neatly by the door, a photo of a dog—so old it had started to fade to sepia tones—aged, careworn
khaki trench coats, fedoras on a rack near the front door. The worn carpet felt strange beneath her feet, like moss.
She heard Doc rambling in the kitchen. Not quite talking to himself. He was speaking to something. And not someone, but some thing, conversing with empty air, listening for responses. It cast a sad and strange portrait, Doc alone next to the weary and yellowing stove and dishwasher.
Kate discovered more loose pictures that had slipped out of a tattered photograph album, the sort of faux-leather book her mother used to keep. She flipped it open. Newspaper clippings of the White Shadow, wearing his mask, meeting with celebrities and police officers, shaking the hands of kindergartners at a local school. The photos predated Kate's own birth from the looks of it.
It seemed irresponsible to her that he might keep an album of newspaper clippings and thus jeopardize his identity. But then again, who would ever see them? This was a place where a man lived alone. Nothing hinted at anything more than a solitary bachelor's pad, a place where an aging male carelessly but with profound simplicity made a home for himself.
She opened another album. This one was different because she saw his face. Ordinary features. Maybe even a little homely. Narrow jaw, with graying, receding hair, dark eyebrows, slightly crooked teeth. He smiled often in the photos, as if he, somehow, escaped the inevitable pall of gloom that saving lives often cloaks you with. Because saving lives, Kate thought, meant rescuing them from something, and you can't save a life without seeing that which you needed to liberate that life from.
The darkness is so overwhelming, she thought. But here is a man, living alone in quiet solitude, who went to work every day to make the world better. How could he smile?
Then she flipped the album through to another page and saw why.
Curled up in the White Shadow's arm was a little girl. Jet black hair, the same crooked smile, big eyes. The radiance of youth. The Shadow gazed at the girl with such love, such adoration. Something twinged in Kate's heart like a bending, breaking string of a bowed instrument. Fathers and daughters. Fathers and daughters always broke her heart.
"Doc," Kate said.
He joined her from the kitchen, glancing over her shoulder at the photo album.
The Indestructibles (Book 3): The Entropy of Everything Page 15