System Supervillain, Chapter 97 (Patreon)

Chapter 97 – Consult

“Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, Iceblade.”

I chuckled as I sat down at the table. The room was almost painfully average. Not just its size and shape. Everything about it was completely indistinguishable from millions of rooms like it across the corporate world.

The walls? White, and unadorned. Basic drop ceiling with tiles that were sold by the pallet at every home improvement store in the country. Lights were the basic bright white of corporate offices. Grey, unassuming carpet that refused to show any character at all. Even the table and chairs were generic. They could have been purchased at any business supply store, from the looks of things.

Of course, that was only partly true. The walls were loaded with wards and defenses invisible to the naked eye, and more were packed above the ceiling tiles. The carpet was of a special make which made it easy to clean, and impossible to stain, even when cleaning blood or using bleach and industrial solvents. The lights also had special emitters to create forcefields.

In fact, the only ‘ordinary’ parts of this room were the table and chairs. They were purposefully purchased from business supply chains precisely because they were so generic. If anything happened, they could be easily thrown out and replaced, without any sign of things being different.

There was a reason for all the security, and the ‘blandness’ of the room. This building was one of the few public areas where people could speak with the Archivist branch of the Guild. A bland, unassuming office space in the middle of Manhattan. The perfect camouflage, especially since the building they were in had over fifty other businesses renting space here.

Of course, this was only a meeting place. Basically, where the Archivists met with heroes and villains to set up accounts, deal with management issues, and things like that. And while the terminals here could access and update the Archives, each one had security that would make even Web Mistress admit that she couldn’t get through it without being physically on site.

After all, every terminal needed a physical access key, fingerprint and retinal biometrics check, and a password to access. Each of those were hardware systems, not connected to the network or the terminal itself. Those unlocked the case to the terminal, and allowed the user to enter a second set of passwords to actually unlock the terminal itself, and allow it to work. And a second wrong password attempt caused the system to lock, and needed an administrator to come in to reset it. That was how seriously they took security here.

The only reason I knew all of this, of course, was because this much was just the level of security that the Archivists admitted to. It was part of the sales job on why you could trust the Guild with your strengths and weaknesses and all that. Everyone knew that they had more than that to secure their systems, but no one knew just what they had.

I turned my attention to the man who’d greeted me. Like the room, he was painfully bland. Average height, average weight, white male, dressed in a grey business suit with white shirt and grey tie. Average men’s haircut, no distinguishing facial features, brown hair, brown eyes. His own mother would have trouble picking him out of a lineup compared to all the other corporate drones in the city. And that was why I knew he was dangerous, even before he introduced himself as John Doe.

“Well, Mr. Doe it isn’t often that the Archivists reach out to me, or anyone. Usually, people come to you with requests, or you send information to the various other parts of the Guild, like the Tailors or Physicians. So, when a request came to me specifically, asking for a meeting? Well, you had my attention.”

Doe smiled a perfectly average business smile, and said, “Yes, well, there have been some questions and concerns, given the length of time between the System’s initialization, and when we’ve heard from certain clients. Notably, two time travelers, and all known reality warpers. Reports say that they were quarantined by the System Administrator.”

Ah, so that’s what this was about. “Yes, the Doctor of Time and Master of Paradoxes fighting caused the System to be forcibly restarted, and their quarantine was done during the initial stabilization. The reality warpers, well, they were trying to break things, so I put them in a box so that they couldn’t cause any trouble. Several patches needed to be put in place quickly, to keep time travelers and dimension hoppers from causing trouble, and I haven’t even begun figuring out how to rewrite a reality warper to fit within the System and not be at risk of breaking things.”

“I understand. For clarity’s sake, could you describe how the time travelers or dimension hoppers could break things?”

“Basically, beyond the normal shenanigans with time travel, like bootstrap paradoxes or time loops and so on, it was unknown whether a time traveler going back, before the System came online would lose access to the System when they went back, or would cause the System to forcibly start, causing a further wave of paradoxes. So, a restriction on time travel, preventing anyone from going back, before the System came on, was put in place. Then, a second restriction had to be put in place on the dimension hoppers, so that they couldn’t move to another dimension where the System did exist, go back in time, and then hop back to this dimension in the past, effectively skirting the first restriction. The restriction also keeps them from dimension hopping to dimensions that don’t have the System online.”

“Why keep the dimensional travelers from moving to dimensions without the System?”

“Because one of two things would likely happen. Either their arrival would force-start the System in that other dimension, or they would be outside the System, and the restrictions put on them would not be effective in stopping them from traveling to the past. Both scenarios would cause too much chaos, and not the profitable kind.”

“Thank you for your answers, Iceblade. The Archivists have been wondering about those things since the System Initialization. Now, for the main reason we asked you to come in today. Would it be possible to retrieve the quarantined individuals? Or should we archive their accounts?”

“My only concern with releasing the time travelers is that the Doctor of Time and Master of Paradoxes have been fighting each other for an incalculable amount of time, and releasing both of them will likely cause them to go back to fighting. However, only releasing one of them, without the other to hold them in check, is just as problematic. I would have to do some edits on their status to prevent them from destabilizing the System.”

“Would the System going down temporarily really be so bad?”

“Remember the Gel-nak invasion? For a super-advanced alien civilization, they certainly went down like chumps against Earth’s militaries, much less the super-powered individuals. My read on things is that they were tied into the System, and without it, they did not have access to much of their abilities. Which is also why we probably haven’t been visited by aliens more often. It is quite possible that, now that we’ve been initialized into the System, everything going offline would strip most people of their powers, possibly removing them altogether.”

Mr. Doe nodded in bland agreement. “Ah, and that would be terribly bad for business, yes.”

“Worse, there’d be no guarantee of myself or my co-administrator being able to reboot the System, if our System access was interrupted. So, we would have to wait for something else to kick-start things. Which would also be bad for business.”

“Ah. Then what would you recommend we do with the different accounts? With the understanding that this will also reflect on their civilian properties and finances, as well.”

I paused to consider that. There were a number of things that I could do, especially since the individuals had already been quarantined. Those kind of people were the ones System Administrators were supposed to deal with, after all.

“Since their actions have led to them being quarantined to prevent System destabilization, some of the restrictions on the use of Administrator privileges have been removed. I could change the individual files, for lack of a better term, to limit what each individual can do. The Doctor and the Master will almost certainly have much of their ability to use ‘Time Energy’ and ‘Paradox Power’ stripped away, possibly even being limited to just time traveling, with whatever gadgets they might come up with. That shouldn’t be too hard, actually.

“The real trick will be the reality manipulators. Sorry to say, but the only way they’re getting out of quarantine is if their abilities are taken down straight into the ground. I can probably work with giving them some kind of variable power structure, but it would have firm limits in the system. Honestly, they’ll probably end up being like many of the ‘energy manipulators’ in their scope of powers, but without being restricted to a single energy type, like with how Pyra is all about fire.”

Mr. Doe nodded, with a perfectly average grin on his face. “I understand that this is quite a lot of work for you and your co-administrator, especially as you are doing this outside your normal work. But if the accounts are left ‘Active’, but idle too long without being updated, then it may add instabilities in our own systems, which could open up vulnerabilities. Naturally, we would like to have them to be returned to actually active, with the updates and business that entails, but, if not, we would like to have reason to at least ‘Archive’ the accounts.”

He paused for the length of an average breath, and then leaned forward an average amount. “Of course, we are not asking you to do this for free. We are prepared to offer a consultant fee for each account referenced, with variable pay depending on how they are handled.”

Well, now they definitely had my interest. I’d already been considering going in and ‘fixing’ the different accounts, if only because the quarantined individuals kept showing up in my Administrator logs as unresolved problems. Quarantine was supposed to be a temporary thing, after all. The fact that they were offering to pay me for this only made it better. I did have a lot of children, after all, and kids of supers often needed better medical care than what normal doctors could handle, which meant the Physicians were involved.

“What kind of fee are we talking about? And what variable structure?”

“We are prepared to offer fifty-thousand dollars, per account moved to ‘Archived’ status, or one million dollars per account restored to active use. Given our records, there are seventeen accounts in need of servicing, so that is a sum ranging from eight hundred and fifty thousand to seventeen million dollars.”

“No, that’s not good enough. This deal serves your ends far more than it does mine, after all. Make it fifteen million per Archived account, and two hundred and fifty million per account restored to full activity.”

“Please, Iceblade. We are both reasonable people. That is simply too large a sum to consider. There are more than a few countries with smaller GDPs than that number. Seven hundred and fifty thousand per closed account, and ten million per restored account.”

I considered for a moment. “I understand that getting that much currency together can be an issue. In that case, how about a compromise? Ten million base, per account, paid directly, with a credit for Guild services equal to 5% of each account’s transactions for the next ten years.”

Mr. Doe considered for a moment, and then nodded. “We already have systems in place for providing ‘store credit’ to individuals for services rendered, which we can use for this. Very well, Iceblade, you have a deal. When can we expect action on this?”

“Assuming my women and children don’t need me for anything, I’ll start work on reconfiguring the individuals today. I won’t know how long each account will take until I get into them, but I will give you an update after I’ve completed the first one.”

“That is acceptable. I will have the digital contracts sent over to your Guild account within the hour. I am glad we could come to an agreement on this, Iceblade. Though, I do hope this is the last time that we here at the Archivists need your assistance.”

I chuckled at that, and stood. “Yes, I respect the work you do, and your neutral status, but that is why I would rather be as far as possible from your actual work. Spending too much time in your offices would cause people to ask nasty questions. If there is nothing else, I’ll take my leave.”

Mr. Doe just shook his head an average amount, and offered an average smile, and a handshake with an average amount of strength. “No, thank you. Have a pleasant day, Iceblade.”