The Daily Grind - Chapter 142 (Patreon)

"Normal" is an illusion.

_____

“We’re all the time confined to fit the mold.  But I won’t ever let them make, a loser of my soul.”  - Metric, Synthetica -

It was a matter of scale.

James could understand the scope of the problem when it was just him, easily.  He needed to pay rent, and eat.  He existed inside systems that were orders of magnitude larger than himself, and nothing he could do as an individual was going to disrupt those.

James could still see the whole puzzle in his head when it was him and his friends.  Anesh, Alanna, JP and Dave, even with Rufus and Secret and any potential dogs in the mix.  The world was still huge, and the objective was simple; be able to afford to live in society and sometimes buy a new TV.  Struggle through work, thrive through the dungeon, make it to anime night and perfect his chili recipe.

James started to have problems after becoming the de facto leader of fifty other humans.  No individual part of the problem escaped him - he knew, for example, how much it cost to have one of the recovering survivors stay at a hotel for a month - it was just that in aggregate, he started to lose focus.  Of those fifty people, for example, thirty nine of them were staying at hotels around the area, at first.  The actual math was simple, cost times thirty nine.  But the number was… too big.  It was a level of money he’d never worked with before, never even pretended he’d ever have access to before.

James had absolutely lost track when they’d actually begun hiring people.  The survival instincts of modern society that had ingrained themselves in his head told him that the most money possible was roughly two thousand dollars a month.  That was the absolute maximum, full stop.  The thought of paying out almost double that to even the small handful of people who they’d brought in scared him, even if the Order *did* have an income stream, and *could* afford it.  Sort of.  Mostly.  He didn’t have the full scope of their finances.

James truly began to have a mental breakdown when they’d started the Response program.  Hired more people.  Brought on *interns*.  Set up a trust fund for the camracondas.  Leased a building.  Money was draining out like a waterfall, their finances were in freefall, and he was panicking.  Never mind, of course, that they still had a buffer of government funding, that they were selling off rare resources harvested from the dungeon, that they averaged about one briefcase unlock a month, and that there were a dozen small plans to generate funding in play.  It was all too *big*.

They were sitting now on a stockpile of dungeontech that could probably allow them to pull off some truly ridiculous bullshit.  Every week, dozens of new skills flowed from Officium Mundi into the minds of the knights of the Order, many of them inconsequential, but some of them passing on the expertise to make a real impact on some, admittedly esoteric, problems.  The Order and its members spread their arms wide, inviting and accepting new people, and new magic, in equal measure.

They finally had the power that James had yearned for.  And he had no idea what to do with it.

James was *one person*, looking at a planet that had seven billion people more or less like him on it, and wondering what he could do to help all of them.  And the annoying thing was, while he could catch sight of a few cracks in the seemingly impenetrable wall of humanity, he didn’t know how to turn them into handholds.

Homelessness was a problem.  There were enough homes, though.  There was a solution, just waiting there.  But it would require a massive organizational undertaking that James and his people weren’t prepared for.  Even with magic and dedicated virtual intelligences, it would take more than a hundred people to set that system up and keep it running, nevermind actually getting anyone to agree that it should be running in the first place.

Hunger was a problem.  There was enough food for everyone.  There was the crack, but how to widen it into something they could latch onto and use to pull everyone up?  Buy the excess food, maybe? They could teleport, they could maybe destroy modern logistics networks overnight.  But what would they *do* with it? He could only see half the problem, and half the answer.

Nations were a problem.  They didn’t have the best interests of their citizens in mind.  They certainly didn’t have the best interests of anyone else in mind.  They also had nukes, usually.  Or worse, propaganda.  James didn’t even see a crack on this one.

So what he really needed was something that would let him truly understand the higher tiers of the power structure of society.  Something - training, skill orb, magic potion, *something* - that would let him see the bigger picture, see where he was needed, and apply perfect pressure to the right spot to solve the problem.

There was nothing like that in the option presented to him.

“Choose!” The baleful sharp thing screamed at him again.  “Students shall cease stalling!”  It slammed a bladed scythe that had the markings of a perfect meter on it into the blackboard, hewing a line underneath the three options written there.

James had finished his biology Lesson.

The strange figure in this place was difficult to focus on.  It was the shape of a person, but it was all teeth and malice.  James knew he wouldn’t remember a lot of this mental place when he left, just the choice he was offered, but he still couldn’t help but try to see the thing for what it was.

It was wearing a tweed jacket with padded elbows.  It was also a starving hole in the world, consuming the desk it stood behind with an endless nightmarish maw.

James looked back to the options.

Endurance. Instinct. Toxicity.

He was having trouble getting his head around his choices, too.  But at least this time, the logic was all personal, and he could work through it given enough time.  Which he actually had; as much as the monster that ruled this place screamed at him to hurry up, he really did seem to have all the time he needed to think.

Toxicity was probably the first one ruled out, but it wasn’t a snap decision.  That one had gotten a double take out of him, he wouldn’t lie.  And it wasn’t like it didn’t have some perks.  The number of things that had bitten him in the last year made it kind of appealing.  But, toxic didn’t specifically mean poisonous; it might just make him the kind of shithead that made transphobic comments on Reddit.  And he would have thought that as a joke, if they didn’t know that Lessons *could* cause personality changes.  And even if it did make his physical body more dangerous, James actually had at least one person he kissed. Regularly.  And he would like to keep doing so.

Instinct was the second choice, and it was probably also on the chopping block.  Instinct could mean a lot of things, and James wished he had access to whatever version of Wikipedia the Akashic Sewer was using to reference.  This one *could*, in theory, help him react faster, make choices in combat without conscious decision making, and take advantage of openings and weak spots in his enemies.  It could *also* do… well, all of those things in a darker way.

James still remembered how Anesh had been made very uncomfortable with the orb that gave him knowledge of weak points on other humans.  Just knowing that it would be so much easier to kill someone unsuspecting was a creepy thing to live with.  And James already had enough nightmares about killing people without them being anatomically correct.

So that left Endurance.

It felt weird to be picking what was probably the least interesting option, and also to make a choice by eliminating problems first instead of primarily looking for a solution.  It went against his actual gamer instincts to make interesting choices even if they were suboptimal.

But Endurance would, undoubtedly, be useful.  And probably useful all the time, not just when he was in a fight to the death or actively being chewed on.  It just didn’t do a damn thing to help with wrapping his head around the bigger picture.

“Endurance.”  James said, mildly regretful that he hadn’t said Instinct, no matter how little he trusted that skill.

The thing sighed, a noise like several metal chairs being scraped across the floor.  James smirked a little at the obvious relief the overtly hostile monster was feeling.  And then, the thing flicked a bladed hand, and the filthy classroom pivoted around James, walls sliding until he found his desk sitting just outside the classroom’s door.

Then the door slammed shut, and James woke up.

_____

“This the last thing we need right now.”  James sighed, resisting the urge to slam his forehead into the kitchen’s stainless steel counter.

Despite being nominally ‘in charge’, Nate still had the power to make him clean everything, and James didn’t want to invite that ire.  Especially not when the gruff man was in an especially bad mood.

“Yeah, well, you get what you get when you get it.”  Nate replied.  “I’m not on your timetable.”

“I swear to you, we do not have a timetable.”  James said, holding up one hand in a solemn oath.  “But yeah, we do have a lot of projects whirling up to full speed.  Response, the arcology thing, especially as we start doing more with orange orbs, the infomorph creation thing… yeah, it’s a bad time.  Okay, so, the Old Gun is operating out of Texas, huh?  That… I mean, okay, I know, the name I gave her is kind of a placeholder, but that fits I guess?”

“We don’t know she’s based there.”  Nate said, sliding a sheet tray of potatoes into the oven with a little too much force.  “Just that she was there.  One of our rogues is tailing the person the Old Gun was meeting with, but we-“

“Hold up.”  James cut him off.  “One of your what now?”

Nate crossed his tattooed arms, relaxing without leaning on anything, and glared at James.  “Don’t pretend you don’t like it.  Besides, it was JP’s name.  I don’t care, as long as it’s consistent.”

“Alright.”  James hid a grin.  “Carry on.”

“Myles is tailing the contact.  And the Old Gun either couldn’t, or didn’t, notice us telepad out.  If she knows about the Lair, then it’s not because we didn’t take precautions, it’s just because she really is beyond our capabilities.”  Nate didn’t look happy admitting that.  “So?”  He asked, eventually.

“So what?”

“So what do we do?”

James blinked at the ex-agent.  “I… don’t know why you’re asking me that?”  He said.  “Nate, I’ve got no fucking idea what the Old Gun is, what she wants, what she can do, or what we’re supposed to do about her.  I honestly hoped that we could start off with something simple, like overthrowing the government and taking over the world, and then move onto killing the mad godling.”

The kitchen door swung shut with a thump, and both men looked up to see a disappointedly frowning agent DeKay standing in the doorway.  “Is this a bad time?”  She asked.

“Nah, fuck it.”  James sighed.  “Come on in.  We’re plotting the downfall of America.”

“That’s not true.”  Nate flatly corrected.  “He’s plotting.  I’m cooking.”

“Sure.”  DeKay said with a total lack of interest, pulling her hair back into a ponytail with practiced motions as she walked into the kitchen space.  “I’ve been asked by my bosses to request your organization’s assistance with a missing persons case.  Would you be willing to cooperate on that?”

“Absolutely.”  James said, at the same time that Nate said. “No.”

James glanced over at the person who would actually be doing most of the cooperation.  “Oh.  Uh… no, I guess?”  He rolled his eyes.  “Alright, why no?  I don’t care about the secrecy thing Nate, just tell me what’s up.”

“He doesn’t trust me.”  DeKay said.  “JP doesn’t either.  But JP is also awful, so I’m asking you instead.”

“She works for people who have a vested interest in suppressing and silencing you and your goals.”  Nate told James, talking like DeKay wasn’t in the room.  “She isn’t your friend, and she absolutely isn’t your ally.  The only thing she has to offer is ‘not actively taking away your rights’.  Cooperation is a bad idea.”

James briefly considered pointing out that Nate was *also* originally from the FBI, and that maybe people were more capable of change than he thought.  But then, Nate had always been a generally good guy.  He’d just pivoted to where he thought he could do more good when offered the chance; he hadn’t really changed at all.

So instead, James turned to DeKay.  “Your counterpoint to being, as the kids say, ‘called out’?”  He spread his arms in invitation.

“A librarian recently found records of people that no one remembers existing, including people mentioned in the records.  This sounds like your kind of bullshit, we just want help finding the people.  The bureau is willing to offer you full ownership of any ‘dungeon’ you uncover, if that’s the case, as well as your standard consulting fee.  You will not be required to participate in any activity that violates your stated ethics, and I will be the AiC with final say on any arrests.  With that in mind, it is within my authority to defer to your judgement if I so choose, and I would, if you agree to help.”  The words were rattled off more mechanically than a camraconda, like the agent had a script scrolling across her vision to read from.

“Nate?  Counterpoint? That sounds pretty good, honestly.  Wait, what *is* our standard consulting fee?”

“A lot.”  Nate conceded.

“Extortionist.”  DeKay confirmed.

“I really like how that sounds.”  James admitted.  The Order’s money problems going away for a few months was not a small thing.  “Alright.  She seems to have gone out of her way to make this sound good to us.  So I’m gonna say yes, and I’m gonna politely ask you to take care of this, because JP would make it worse somehow.”

“He would.”  Nate agreed with a slight scowl.  “Alright, fine.  I’ll task two rogues to it.  Give them advice and training as part of the payment.  If you need more help, I’ll stay on call to warp on site when needed.”

“Sounds fair to me.”  Agent DeKay nodded.

Nate grunted.  “It’s not about whether it’s fair.  It’s about getting as much out of you as we can.”

“It is also kind of about being fair.”  James stage whispered to the blonde agent.  “But seriously, we’ll help.  People missing is… yeah.  It’s not okay.  I’m more than comfortable helping, and I appreciate you taking steps to ask nicely.”

The federal agent nodded back at him, and they briefly shook hands to settle the agreement.  She left the kitchen, and James shook his head with an amused smirk as he noticed the barely manifested spectral hands of the infomorph paired with her, reaching out and snagging cookies and scones out of the breakfast bar.

“Hey, three questions for you.”  James said to Nate as soon as the agent was gone.

“Sure.  Also I’m okay with helping, I just want her to know where she stands.  And it sets me up as a solid ‘bad cop’.  I’m fine doing search and rescue.”  Nate sighed as the oven buzzed and he started pulling out thirty percent of the lunch orders that would be rolling in soon.  “What questions?”

“Two are definitions.  What’s a librarian, in spy-speak? Also, AiC?”

“An archivist, basically.  Someone who maintains the hard copy records.  Most intelligence agencies are a little nervous about the internet, for some reason.”

“Can’t imagine why, mister ‘I am building a panopticon’.  Stop working on that, by the way.  I know no one has said this, but it’s a bad idea, and stop.”

Nate grunted in mild acknowledgment.  “We’re not really building a panopticon.  Just hijacking the one that’s already there.”

“That’s so much worse.”

“Anyway.  The other one is just agent-in-charge.  Whoever is assigned to a case that has the final word on decisions.”  Nate sighed.  “She’s not wrong, she would get to ignore the law in favor of whatever we decided, if she wanted.  Have to write a report afterward, but here? For this? She’d get away with it.”

That entire package deal made James feel pretty uncomfortable.  “Scary.”  He said.  “I don’t think… hm.  Yeah, no.  If you have to come up with personal exceptions to the laws, those probably aren’t great laws.  But then, I dunno how I’d do a better legal system, so maybe I should shut up for now.”

“Maybe.”  Nate half-agreed, scraping potato wedges into a hotwell.  “Alright.  Servers are gonna be here soon for lunch.  You got anything else before I do this, then go work on a plan to kill god?”

“*A* god.  God-ish.  Look, it’s not… oh, whatever.  Wait, yes!”  James snapped his fingers.  “How many fucking spies in training do you and JP have, anyway?  You said you’d task *two* to DeKay, and you’ve got one other one in Texas?  Is this… is this gonna make payroll worse? We’re already in trouble.”

“No you aren’t, because we rent out our spies at stupidly high rates.”  Nate reminded him.  “Also we have seven.  It’s a work in progress.”

“Fuck, you guys need to tell me about this stuff.”  James rubbed at his temples.  “Anyway.  Can I get a burger, well done, no pickles?  I haven’t eaten today.”

“Go sit down like a normal guest.”  Nate ordered, pointing his spatula at the door like a baton as he slapped a patty down onto the grill and the smell of sizzling beef began to fill the air.  “Fucking kid.”  The chef muttered as James laughed his way out of the kitchen.  “I’m gonna quit one of these days, and then he won’t have a good spy *or* a good chef.”

_____

James actually did sit and eat lunch like a normal person, instead of just inhaling a burger and larking off to fix whatever new disaster had come up.  Or trying to find a few moments of quiet in a dark room somewhere.

He was joined by two of the trade contractors that had joined the Order recently.  Their names were Bill and Mark, and perhaps in defiance of the generic monikers they’d been given, they had surprisingly exciting lives before coming here.

“Yah, I spent, oh, six years on a salmon boat before this?  In between doing renovations in the off season.”  Bill took a swig of his beer, and cracked a grin.  “Alaska is beautiful, and salmon boats honk.  So does salmon!  You will never get me to eat fish!”  He declared.  “I have smelled enough fish for a lifetime.  Love fishing though.”

Mark hadn’t been taking quite the same bombastic approach to things, but his resume wasn’t any less fun to hear about.  “I think the weirdest place I ever wired up was a coal mine.”  He told them as the conversation drifted.  “Dark, cramped, and you gotta make sure there’s zero chance that anyone accidentally rips a cord down that turns off an air vent and kills everyone.  No fun, no fun!  I moved out here after that, got into a company that does the electrical for all the state’s school districts.  No one dies if I mess that up.  And now this, obviously.”

“Yeah, what is this, anyway?”  Bill finally asked the question both of them were thinking but hadn’t put to words yet.  “What do you need a couple’a old guys like us for anyway?”

“Hey!”  Mark protested.  “I know we’re older than most everyone in this place, but you don’t gotta just, just say it, man.”

James gestured with a fry before popping it into his mouth.  “If it’s any consolation, at some point we’ll probably be able to help you live a lot longer.”

Both other men froze, briefly, before sharing a look and then focusing back on James.  “How much longer?”  Mark asked.

“Good question.”  James replied.  “I’ll get back to you.  Anyway, why you? You’ve got tons of experience building things, people like you, you didn’t tell racist jokes during the interview-“

“Seriously?”

“-seriously, a few people tried.  And we want to build something.  Something big.  We want a city in a bubble, basically.”

Bill fielded that one.  “I can follow a blueprint.  I can boss around a bunch of guys with hammers.  I can lay some mean roofing tile.  But, uh…” He didn’t have anything after that, just let the uncertain grunt stretch until he ran out of breath.

“Oh, we’ve got some magic bullshit in the works.”  James ‘reassured’ him.  “But like you said, you’re gonna need some goons with hammers.  And before we hire more people, we want to make sure everyone new gets into the flow of our culture here.  And sees at least one dungeon.”

“Like the attic?”  Mark asked.  “I’ve seen that place.  It hurt my head.  It’s also a massive fire hazard.”

“We’re not actually sure that dungeons would burn normally.”  James again failed to reassure anyone.  He took another bite of his sandwich, leaving a piece of lettuce poking out of the corner of his mouth.  “But yeah.  You’re here to help us spot problems we don’t have experience with, solve those problems, and when we start scaling up, guide other new people into doing the same.”

“And live forever.”  Bill looked forlornely at the empty beer can in his hand.  “Is it too early to get really drunk?  I think I need to be really drunk for this.”

“Well not *forever*.”  James said.  “Just for as long - oh, thanks Frequency.”  He nodded politely at the camraconda as she slid past their table, plucking away empty plates and cups.  “Just as long as… as long…” James trailed off, flicking his gaze sideways in a narrow-eyed glance.  “Sorry, did anyone else see that?”  He asked the two men sitting with him.

“What, the snake?”  Mark glanced over his shoulder.  “Yeah.  How do you keep track of their names, anyway?”

“They have color patterns, and I have a memory upgrade.”  James said.  “I meant that she grabbed our dishes.”

“Yeah? Is that… is that not normal?”  Bill looked worried.  “This place is freaky, man!  I don’t know what I’m supposed to be worried about!”

“Frequency!”  James called after the camraconda, who turned, bracing two trays of dishes she’d collected from around the busy dining room on a series of jointed metal struts that were coming out from behind her back.  “What the hell is going on here?”

“Cleaning!”  The camraconda called back.

“No…” James pinched the bridge of his nose.  “Where did you get *arms* from?”  He asked more directly.  “Not that they aren’t cool, but when did this even happen?”

“Recently.  I am testing.”  The camraconda bobbed at him in a friendly gesture, and promptly lost control of one of the trays she was holding, practically throwing a half dozen plates onto the tile floor in front of the kitchen’s doors.  The camraconda glared at them, actually managing to catch the last one as the tray overbalanced and freezing it in place, but a couple of the dishes shattered to pieces on impact.  “Testing.  Ongoing.”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight sounded disappointed.

James sighed.  “Alright.  I’m gonna go sweep that up.  If you’ve got more questions, well, someone’s always around.  I’d check in with Research, honestly.  You two could be really helpful with the orange totem experiments.”

“The… what?”  Bill asked, unamused.  But James was already out of earshot, hurrying off through the growing crowd in the dining room to help a magical machine snake clean up the mess her new limbs had made.  He glanced over at Mark, the one person here who he felt like he had a similar understanding of the world with.  They hadn’t been friends before, but shared background, and shared exasperations, had made them drinking buddies pretty quickly.  “I dunno if I can deal with this place sometimes.”  He admitted.

“It doesn’t smell like fish, at least.”  Mark shrugged.  “Also…” He gave an embarrassed grin, “isn’t it just kinda cool?  When my kid gets home from college, he’s gonna love this shit.”

“Aw, yeah, it is.”  Bill sighed.  “I dunno if I should tell my wife about what I do now.  Is this even a job? I haven’t been yelled at to work faster once in the last week.”

“Fuck, man.  Tell her!  Invite her to see the place!  They don’t care!”  Mark countered.  “Also, maybe we should find something to work on, just so we, you know…”

“Make ourselves useful?”

“Exactly.”

The two of them leaned back in their seats, watching the dining area for any ideas.

A duo of a human and a camraconda were emerging from the Response office, grinning at a successful deployment as they pulled off armor plate.  An older gentleman sitting at a table in the corner made notes into a journal, occasionally flipping the page to glance at a worn photograph he kept in it.  A group of high schoolers helped serve the rotating crowd lunch.  A packed table full of Research and support group members cheered as two of their number raced drones down the hall through their skulljack links, clumsily learning the skill and eliciting a yelp about every five minutes from someone caught off guard.  Several other people sat in companionable silence, having mutually agreed their table was for reading, as they all either worked to catch up on the Order’s documentation, or their own literary backlog.

Mark and Bill traded a look.  “Wanna go see if the kids in the basement need anything heavy moved?”

“Thank Christ I wasn’t the only one thinking that.  Yeah.  Let me just bug Nate for another beer first.”

“Get me one too.”

_____

Battalion chief Herman Harrison was having a fairly normal day, all things considered.  The round faced man, past his own prime but still stronger than most everyone he met just by virtue of a life of activity, had basically gotten his daily routine down to a science.

Mornings were checkin with one of his crews.  Followed by paperwork, followed by scheduled disciplinary actions if any needed to happen, followed by lunch.  He had an office at the largest station house in his battalion’s territory, but he could work anywhere.  Firefighters had to pick that skill up.

After lunch was scheduling, then drills, then equipment tests.  Then he’d go home, and say a small prayer to whoever was listening that everything stayed standing while he was gone.

Any or all of this could be interrupted by an emergency.  Most emergencies, he wasn’t needed for anymore.  But he’d spent twenty two years at this job, and the bell was the bell was the bell.  And sometimes, he *was* needed; when it was something really bad, really big, that took on site coordination.

Herman had no illusion that he was going to end up as fire chief one day.  He didn’t particularly want the job; it sounded like his job, but with more paperwork, and less running.  And he did still love a good jog, if only to offset the damage from the good chili they had every Friday.  But he was *good* at his job, dammit.  No matter how many budget cuts or policy changes he had to live through.

Today, he opened the door to his office to see someone sitting in one of the visitors chairs, typically reserved for his son, when they ate lunch together, or his delinquent probies, when they needed a good talking to.

“How the hell did you get in my station.”  Herman walked past the lanky kid, dropping the paper bag with his sandwich in it onto his desk before taking his own seat and loosening his shirt collar.

“Magic.”  James replied.

“Uh huh.”  Harrison rolled his eyes internally.  And a little externally.  “Alright kid.  Most people make an appointment, but we’re not doing that right now.  Are you state?”

“No idea what that is, so probably not.”

“Fed, then?”

“Oh, hah.  Hell no.”  James grinned.  “You’re not gonna get it by process of elimination.”

Harrison rolled his eyes again.  Bad habit, he needed to stop.  He knew it made him look stupid, but it was an old reflex he’d stolen from his wife.  “Alright.”  He unwrapped his lunch, pulling back the paper to reveal a hot meatball sub.  “You’ve got until I finish this to make whatever sales pitch it is today.”  He said, taking a massive bite of his sandwich.

Internally, James had a lot of questions.  First of them was a curiosity as to how often this guy had people break into his office that he was this casual about it.  The door had been locked!  Also, James was a little concerned at how fast the man was destroying his food.  The garbage disposal in the Lair’s dish pit wasn’t that efficient.

Externally, he got to the point, before the aging firefighter choked to death on pepperoni.  “I… Jesus, okay, the fast version.  I’d like to offer you help with search and rescue operations, from people who can teleport.”

“*Hurk*” Was the noise that Harrison made.  Or something like it, anyway.  He dropped his sandwich to the desk as he coughed a couple times, took a long pull from his bottle of water, gasped for air, and then met James eye, leaning forward onto a thickly muscled arm.  “Hah!”  He opened with a bark of a laugh.  “Okay, that’s cute.  Seriously, kid, what’re you here for?”

“James, please.  And I’m here to offer you what I said.”  James adjusted his own shirt collar; he’d even dressed kinda nice for this.  “We have the ability to teleport, and we’re interested in operating as crisis intervention in the area.  Ideally, we’d like to partner with you and your people, supporting your crews whenever we can using the… well, the magical bullshit… that we have access to.”

“Alright, now you’re wasting my precious lunch time.”  Herman pointed a thick, scarred finger at the kid who’d snuck into his station just for a joke.  “April first is almost two months off.  And I’m not laughing anyway.  You had your fun, now get out.”

“Alright.”  James sighed.  “Well, here’s a number you can reach me at.”  He set a small card on the desk.  “I understand that it’s hard to take at face value, but next time, maybe just ask for a demonstration.”  He said, shaking his head as he pulled a telepad out of his coat pocket, tore a page off, and vanished out of the office.

For the next two minutes, Herman stared at the empty chair.  Then he got up, stalked over to his door, and popped it open suddenly, rattling the blinds as he stuck his head out into the hallway and looked back and forth.  Nothing.

He went back to his seat, picked up the phone, and dialed.  His meatball sub was left cooling and forgotten.

“Y’ello.”  The smug voice on the other end answered.

“What’s the catch?”  Herman asked, bluntly.

“No catch.”  James told him.  “We want to help.  Working with you helps us help.  Though, some training for our team members wouldn’t be a bad thing.  Maybe we can use you on a resume or two as a character reference.”

“You don’t want a bribe or something?  No… blood sacrifices or anything?  Not setting me up to take the fall for some conspiracy?”

“So far we haven’t found… oh, well, I guess we *found* a thing that ate blood.  But we blew that up.”  James ‘reassured’ the battalion chief.  “And I don’t need a bribe, I own a gold mine.  No, seriously.  No catch.  Just conditions.”

“Hit me.”

“Some of our members are nonhuman.  If you agree to work with us, you agree to go to bat for them when the time comes.”  James stated.

“Done.”  Herman agreed.

“Our help isn’t a replacement for anything.  We might not always be available, so you don’t get to rely on us.  We’re extra support, not a budget replacement.”

“Kid, don’t talk to me about budgets.”

“Ugh, fuck, I know, right?”  James replied.

In this, the two of them were perfectly on the same page.

“Anything else?”  Herman asked.

“Not off the top of my head.”  James told him.  “Sound good?”

“Can you teleport an engine?”  The part of Harrison’s brain that made him a good chief, that optimized crew logistics and found solutions to shortfalls, kicked in.  “How about in or out of structure fires?  Or just taking people with you?”

“We can take people with us.  Getting into a fire is hard, getting out is easy.  Moving a truck… I’ll call you back later on that.”  James told him.

Harrison didn’t have to think long on it.  “I’m in.”  He snapped off the answer.  “When…”

“Someone who’s smarter than me will make a real appointment with you later this week.”  The smile James was wearing was audible over the phone.  “And… thanks.”  He told the firefighter, before hanging up.

He meant it, too.

The Response division was rapidly becoming more than even his own rather ambitious vision had seen it as.  Forty six humans dedicated time to it’s operations, with about a third of those being full time in some way.  Twenty two camracondas added to the mix, the majority of their people finding satisfaction in assisting.  They had arrangements with three hospitals, and now one chunk of fire department.  People were starting to *notice* them.

They needed more friends, and this was how they made them.  They also needed more expert skills, and this was a good way to pick them up and spread them through the Order’s membership.

They were backing off on spreading knowledge of their presence in the Portland area.  For now.  They were following a good suggestion from Harvey, and pivoting to Ohio.  And maybe this would be where they sorted out how they were going to set up branch offices, too.

James sighed with contentment as he leaned back into his chair, letting the arm holding this particular burner phone droop limply to the side.  He was already tired, and even though it was a good tired, he still had to take care of ‘meetings’ with two more fire and rescue people, a CEO of an ambulance company, and four small hospital administrators.

Then, and only then, would he get to take a nap.

Assuming nothing exploded.  Or he didn’t get sidetracked asking questions about the camraconda arm setup that one of the new engineers had cobbled together.

_____

“Hello?  Is anyone there?”

Momo stared at the words, worrying at her lower lip as she considered kicking open the door to the small basement room she’d set up in, and screaming into the hallway until someone either told her everything was fine, or someone told her everything was absolutely not fine but they could fix the problem.

The problem was, her setup was… well, ‘working’ wasn’t perhaps the most accurate word.  ‘Setup’ wasn’t a great descriptor either.

Momo had built, mostly out of parts salvaged from Officium Mundi, a network of computers.

Then, feeling ambitious, she’d started using the emerald chips they had to grow programs that could read the output of the red orb totems that she’d gradually been learning to build and fine tune.

Worth noting that the ones she couldn’t fine tune made pretty good weapons; equivalent to memetic flashbangs, really.

The chips had been useful, and had worked, too, which was a little worrying.  But Momo wasn’t here for philosophy, she was here for *results*!  So she’d asked for some help, learned some programming both through magic and wisdom coffee and also sort of the normal way, and started to build a database that could interpret the red totem signals, collate the data, and compare it against recorded statistics from the internet.  Then, it looked for deviations, and reported on the glaringly obvious ones.

It kiiiind of worked.

It didn’t really accomplish anything, though.

So Momo, refusing to surrender, doubled down.  She already wasn’t really sleeping anymore anyway, so she had plenty of free time.

Free time in which to build more data matrices, generating plenty of bugs to feed the shellaxies with, while she waited for the new round of chips to grow more programs that could connect the other programs.

While she was at it, she also got some of the members of Research to help her make inputs for audio and visual stuff.  Since they were already compromising the security of all the traffic cams in the state, may as well make use of that.  She’d set up some webcams around the Lair, too, to test it out.

A couple days ago, she’d had a good feeling about the growth of her chips.  So, just before the weekly foray into Officium Mundi, Momo had plugged the programs in, distributed them to the machines they needed to be on, made sure the network settings ‘worked’, and turned it all on.

Then she’d run out to get into fights with paper pushers, and forgotten about it.  Her brain, flush with relief at actually hitting a milestone in her project, had just relaxed to the point that she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, think about the whole thing for a few days.

And now, she returned to a monitor with a blinking message on it.

“Is anyone there?”

Momo looked around the room that she’d redecorated with cables, computer screens and lava lamps.  Most of the monitors were off, but the one in the middle of the room was glowing in the colorful light of her workspace.  A simple white-on-black line of text displayed on it.

“Reed?”  Momo called out into the room that contained no people but herself.  “Nik?  Is this a prank?”  She glanced back at the closed door to the hallway.  “If this is a prank, I’m gonna rig your chair to detonate chocolate pudding into your ass next time you sit down.”

“Hello?!”  The monitor changed words, fans in the many computer towers on and under the desk beginning to hum a hair louder than before.  “Hello?”

“Fuck.”  Momo muttered under her breath.  “Can you hear me?”  She asked.

Nothing.  Of course not, she hadn’t put a microphone anywhere in here.  “Can you read this?”  She typed onto the keyboard.  But there was no response to that either.

Finally, fumbling through loose cords and tools on her workstation, she found a pad of paper that wouldn’t teleport her anywhere when used.  Uncapping a sharpie, she scrawled large words on it, and then held it up to the webcam sitting on top of the central screen.

If this *was* a prank, this was a good way to dispel it.

“Can you see me?”  She wrote.

The text on the screen vanished.  And then, a second later, replaced itself. “Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  Hello.  Who are you?  Who am I?  What is happening?  Hello?  Are you there?”

“Uh ooohhhh.”  Momo breathed out. “I have made a mistake.  And an AI.  Good.  Good good good.  This is… great.  Oh god, James is gonna be *dad disappointed* in me, isn’t he?”

But then, maybe not.  And weirdly, the Order actually had a *protocol* for this.  Momo took a second to pull up the relevant part of the operations manual on her phone, and checked it to make sure she wasn’t doing anything awful.

Through some experience, and a lot of foresight, they had an actual outline for how to handle making a new life.  And, as near as Momo could tell, this counted.  There was a very, *very* long ongoing discussion in one of the Order’s chat channels about what defined a person, but the thing she was talking to had shown it could take input, ask questions, and appeared to feel, even if the only feeling it had shown so far was anxiety, and that might just be Momo projecting.  That was close enough to a person.

So.  Ethical considerations first.  Momo was going to need to stop trying to build a magical spy satellite, if the magical spy satellite was thinking and living.  She had made the new digital creature, so she had a responsibility to it.  That meant caring for it, helping it grow and live in a way that it found fulfilling.  Treat it like a child, with all the ups and downs that entailed.

Momo tore off the page she was writing on and composed a new note.

“I’m Momo.  I don’t know who you are yet.  You’re new!  Don’t worry, I’m here for you.”

She had to write it on two pieces of paper.

A brief pause.  And then, the words changed again.  “Is this you?”  It asked, along with a still image of Momo from the webcam.

“Yes.”  Momo wrote back.

“What am I?”  The screen asked her.

Momo thought about how to answer that.  And then, to be polite, she wrote a question.  “May I move one of your eyes?”  She asked it.

“Yes.”  It replied.  Followed by a replacement to the question of “What am I?”

Plucking the webcam off the top of the computer, Momo shifted the cord to the most length she could get out of the hardware, and turned it around, panning the camera across the construction of hard and software that she’d accidentally grown something alive in.

“I am this.”  It stated, showing a repeat of several frames of the footage of its body.  “Am I also this?”  It showed a picture from another part of the Lair, from one of the other connected webcams, a frame of another computer.

“I don’t think so.”  Momo wrote to it.

“Are you this?”  It showed her a frame of James walking through the front door.

“No.”  She wrote, setting that page aside for when she needed the simple word.  “Minds live in bodies.  Different bodies, different minds.”  Momo told the AI.

Back and forth they went.  The computer would ask a question, or, more likely, several questions at once, and Momo would do her best to answer.  She tried to get the creation to ‘hear’ her when she typed on the keyboard, but it couldn’t find the input from it, so she stuck to showing notes to the webcam for now.

It wanted to know how bodies worked, how minds worked, why it was different from other bodies, where they were, what Momo was thinking, what ‘lunch’ was.  It wanted to know everything.  It was like all the questions a curious child accumulated over their life, all at once.

Eventually, it got into questions that Momo just didn’t have a good way to answer, much less enough paper to try.  What was life? Why was it asking questions? How did it know things?  What should it do now?

What was its name?  It would like a name.

Momo, eventually, on the cardboard back of her now-empty notepad, informed the AI that she needed to go get more paper.  And also tell some of the others about this.  And, reassuringly, it didn’t try to keep itself secret or stop her leaving.  It seemed *impatient*, but not angry or conspiratorial.

So Momo had given the webcam a small bow, and opened the door to her workroom to sneak upstairs and hopefully bully Nate into serving her a late lunch.  And also find a ream of printer paper to work with.

Coming off the elevator, she ran into James chatting with Sarah, halfway through taking a bag of ceramic shards out to the dumpster.  “Ah!  Boss!”  She called out to him.

“Is there any chance I can get people to stop calling me that?”  James asked with a slow smile as he tilted his head at Momo.

“Nope!”  Sarah informed him.  “What’s shakin’, basement witch?”  She asked Momo with trademark enthusiasm.

“Uh… I… don’t wanna interrupt your conversation.  I’m just getting… some stuff.”  Momo suddenly realized she felt *very* uncomfortable sharing what was going on.  Not in a shameful way, just… well, maybe exactly that.  She didn’t want to say anything in front of everybody.  Just in case.  “Can I maybe talk to you later, when you’re done here?”  She asked James.

“First off, our conversation here is Sarah complaint about words…”

Sarah threw her arms into the air.  “Shorts mean short!  We should call full length pants ‘longs’!  It just makes sense!”

“...And naturally, capris would be ‘mediums’?  Don’t answer that.”  James shook his head, shifting the garbage bag to his other hand.  “Anyway.  I won’t be around later.  Anesh and I have a date tonight.”  He told Momo.  “So if you need anything, you’ve got until I pitch this into the bin to get to me.”

“Ah!”  Momo waggled her eyebrows at him.  “Gonna have some romantic skulljack fun, eh?”  She suggestively asked, leaning into elbow at his side.

James gave her a nonplussed look.  “No, we’re gonna have sex.”  He said, and seized control of the conversation.

Next to him, Sarah burst into laughter as Momo choked on her own friendly ribbing and turned a shade of red usually reserved for crippling sunburns, or tomatoes.  “Uh… wha… what?”  She coughed out.

“So, you know how when you do a full meld with someone with the skulljacks, you become the same person? One tiger, many stripes, that kind of thing.  Well, it turns out, it takes a lot of the excitement out of sex.  It’s still *fun*, but it really isn’t the same.  And because of the difficulty of doing partial melds without assistance, it’s *really* hard to stay focused enough to, say, *just* share physical sensation.”  James explained dryly to the person who absolutely hadn’t asked.

“I’m sorry!  I surrender!”  Momo tried to concede the conversation, while Sarah gasped for air, kneeling on the floor next to them.

“Anyway!  The point is, ‘fun with skulljacks’ can be a lot of things, but sexy usually isn’t as much of one as you’d expect.  So we’re gonna have some good ol’ normal lovemaking.”  He raised his eyebrows at Momo.  “Does that answer your question sufficiently, or do I need to go into *very explicit* detail about the way that Anesh is going to...”

“Please, I give up.”  Momo tried to hide her head under her arms, mortified.

James chuckled.  “Alright, alright.”  He said.  “So, I’m headed home now.  Unless you have anything to ruin my night of passion and romance?”

“I made an AI in the basement and I need some cash for a wireless webcam.”  Momo retaliated with a mock glare, cheeks still bright red.

There was a pause while James waited for the joke to land.  And then an awkward silence as Sarah picked herself up off the floor and dusted off her capris.  And then, a moment of realization that Momo wasn’t kidding, and had that *look* that showed up around here all the time, when someone did something impossible.  Again.

After a long, long sigh, James turned his head slowly to his friend.  “Sarah?”  He asked.

“I’d *love* to help!”  She clapped her hands over her head with a grin.  “Go, go.  Take out the trash and then enjoy having Anesh pound you like a carpenter.”  Sarah shot an eyebrow waggle back, alternating between Momo and James, until James eventually shook his head and headed for the front door.  After he was gone, Sarah turned back to Momo and threw an arm around the shorter girl’s shoulders.  “Alright!”  She asked.  “So!  What kind of AI are we talking about here?  Living program, android, some kind of infomorph thing?”

“Uh… I built a computer to look for dungeons and now it’s asking questions.”

“Good.  Good.”  Sarah nodded.  “Alright!  Well, the good news is, if it didn’t self destruct and almost kill us all yet, then you’re doing a better job than Research did last time this happened.  So!  Let’s get to work, eh?”