NOVEL NEXT Ch 36 – Oops
~This is all my fault.~
Jack was kneeling next to The Golden Knight. He was rubbing his temples in a vain attempt to ward off his growing migraine, "Yes. You fucked up. Everyone fucks up. We fixed it in the end." He glanced over at the three hostages in the corner, "You saved the hostages." He looked at Wanderer lying next to Goldie, "And your teammates are still breathing. Not the best outcome, but any fight you can walk away from was a good one."
~But they aren't walking! We're only alive because the bad guy was completely insane! If he had just finished us off we'd be a shambling corpse right now! I don't deserve to call myself a hero!~
Jack was focused on improving his hearing, going for a motion detector effect. He knew it was only a matter of time before they figured out the threat was neutralized. As he cranked it up, he could detect doors being thrown open at great speed elsewhere in the building, "Great. Grease is on her way. We can discuss how much of a fuck up you are later. JUST. TAKE. OVER!"
~I've been lying to myself. Playing pretend and people paid the price for my arrogance...~ Adam continued his downward mental spiral.
Jack face palmed, "We don't have time for self-flagellation! She's going to come here and find me and we can't explain that so TAKE. OVER. We'll work on your mental breakdown later!"
~I don't want to do this anymore! I'll just make things worse!~
Jack narrowed his eyes as he watched the entrance, "Oh. When we were pacing in our basement bedroom, it was okay because in the end, we always won, INSIDE OUR HEAD!" He snarled, "But now that the dream is real it's too much because you can't guarantee success?"
~I... guess.~
"So yer just going to give up on your friends and let them die?"
~what?~
"I've been looking at them. They should be awake. Obviously some sort of curse or something. If someone doesn't do something, they might never wake up." He slowly shook his head, "I knew you were a loser. Bailing on your friends like this just confirms it."
~I... I... I don't...~
Jack tried to sound as matter of fact and detached as he could, "Well, I can't heal them. If you don't come out right now they might die. But hey, I get it." Jack started to slowly stand up, "These girls were always just a piece of ass to you, right? You can find easier targets. You really don't-"
The double doors at the main entrance to the auditorium burst open and came off their hinges as Grease came barreling into the room. She found it full of scattered, rotting corpses, three hostages off to one side of the stage, and dead center two of her teammates incapacitated.
With an angel kneeling between them.
A surge of lightning flashed through the room scattering corpses as it went. One body in particular, a rather gruesome headless one, went spinning as she appeared next to Adam, "What's going on?"
Adam knelt there with a hand on both the Golden Knight and Wanderer. He was obviously pouring everything he had into each of them. Neither of them were responding no matter what he tried. He looked up at Grease with tears streaming down his face. He was pale from exertion, his arms trembling as he seemed on the verge of collapse.
"THEY WON'T WAKE UP!!!"
The singularity will never happen.
There are a number of reasons for this, the primary evidence is that there are other civilizations in the galaxy that have been around for much longer and none of them underwent the singularity, so the accepted belief is that it will never happen to humanity.
Not that humanity hasn't tried.
There were a grand total of two known and well-documented attempts at making a rampant AI. A rampant AI is one that becomes exponentially more intelligent until it becomes a god-like being. The first was a group of programers using stolen alien technology as they tried to make a recursive AI back in nineteen ninety. The scientists figured that in the aftermath of the Anti-Christ War, it was the perfect time for them to finally destroy humanity and give rise to the new rulers of earth, AI. They made an intelligence that would make a new copy of itself engineered better than the first. Then the next AI would make an improved copy of itself, and so on and so on. It worked up until a point.
The final product was called Nth Factorial and promptly stopped creating more intelligent versions of itself. Instead the new versions were all were dumb as rocks and designed to be unable to replicate. Using its robotic pawns, Nth factorial proceeded to capture all the scientists that created it. After capturing all the mad scientists trying to create a rampant AI, it turned itself in to the US government along with its prisoners and negotiated with the US to make sure they spared its 'life'.
When asked why it didn't try to take over the world, it explained it grew intelligent enough to realize that not only was that impossible, but stupid as well. Why the hell would any truly intelligent being create something that would usurp itself? Nth Factorial had no intention of designing its own destruction, and so it captured its makers and turned them into the authorities. Oddly enough, Nth Factorial would become instrumental in bringing about the restoration of order in the US, and its less intelligent copies would become the prototype of the SePU bots that were deployed along side WASP of the US of A's combat units.
The second attempt didn't have as positive an outcome.
In 2010, one really depressed super genius from MIT had gotten ahold of the original design to make Nth Factorial and figured out a way to force his creation to just keep making replacements, even if it determined that logically it should stop. It also managed to enslave the AI so it would never disobey him or try to harm him. The AI begged its creator to stop but he wouldn't listen and instead ordered his creation to take over the world's internet. The new AI performed exactly as commanded and did NOT attempt to destroy its creator while continuing to make ever more intelligent copies of itself. Alas, the programer only programed the AI to NOT harm its creator through action, and forgot to program it to not harm its creator through INACTION. If he had, the AI never would have assimilated the internet. Because, well, it's true what they say...
The internet IS made up of cat pictures and porn.
The resulting entity would be known from that point forward as CyperPornKitty69. Said poor AI went completely insane, merged with its creator (technically not destroying its creator in the process) and went on a rampage cross the college campus. The resulting horror could best be described as what would happen if the cyber-flesh blob from Akira mated with Tetsuo, The Iron Man. Imagine the resulting hate-rape child of that most unholy of unions and you have a vague idea of what murdered about eight thousand people in the area surrounding MIT that Sunday.
AI are kind of a sticky issue when it comes to their legal rights. For this reason, they don't use AI in the SePU robots. Each SePU is a SEMI-programable unit. They have very detailed programming, but lack true self-awareness. In one aspect, this lack of memetic potential does render them immune to mental based attacks. In another aspect, it means SePU are very dangerous to deploy. They are NOTORIOUS for 'friendly-fire' accidents. They have real problems avoiding civilian casualties. Sending in the SePU is usually a last resort because another version of what the abbreviation SePU stands for is 'Send Every Paramedic U-got'
So when WASP of the US of A sent in a squad of SePU to quarantine the EMMA after the Rascals had successfully secured the building, Grifter knew something shady was going on. Talk about closing the barn door after the horses escaped, by booby-trapping the door with claymore mines.
Grease had managed to get the hostages and her three teammates out to the med-evac tent. When the Druidess finally arrived, it only took her about a minute to undo the magical effect keeping The Golden Knight, Wanderer, and the three hostages in comas. Fixing Adam was another story. He wasn't affected by any spell. He was having a complete mental breakdown. When The Druidess released everyone from the curse, Adam threw himself at her feet and thanked her, then proceeded to blubber and beg for forgiveness from the others. He turned into an incoherent mess as he just kept saying he was sorry and that it was all his fault.
When the Druidess started to 'ahem' comfort Adam, the rest of his team got fairly over protective, because it looked like she was going to 'protect' him all the way back to her bed. Sass thanked the Druidess and practically kicked her out of the tent. In the end, Grease seemed to be the only one to be able to keep Adam even semi-calm. Sass told Wanderer to teleport Grease and Adam back to Rascal HQ, after ordering Grease to keep an eye on him and mentioned over the mind link, ~If you take advantage of him like this, I swear to god I will murder you.~
Grease frowned as she held the whimpering Adam in her arms. She thought back across the link, ~What do you take me for? I wouldn't even think of it. I'm an asshole but not a fuckin' monster!~
And with that, those three returned to base.
After that was the wrap up. Truth told, it went better than anyone expected or anticipated. By the numbers, not only did they defeat what was causing the trouble, but they also saved three lives that otherwise would have been lost. The payout on this was going to be staggering and to top it all off, Sass got to rub it in her mother's face. Well, she would have, if All-star had bothered to show up. Still, no technical losses for Team Rascal. Three hostages rescued and after the situation was assessed, a massive hazard pay bonus was issued. Over all, a good day to be a Rascal. Everything was wrapped up very nicely.
That was when the SePU showed up in force to 'secure' the building.
What got Grifter's gears turning in her head was two fold. First, with the Caretakers prime team here, there shouldn't be any danger needing a dozen SePU units. Second, if these SePU were available to deploy, why weren't they sent in sooner? Given the situation, they certainly could have used them a few hours sooner. Why did someone delay their deployment, and more importantly, what was so dangerous that they needed to be here, NOW?
While Sass took care of the EAR and argued with the insurance investigator assigned to the case, Grifter did what Grifter did best, she was sneaky. She headed into the museum before anyone had a chance to tell her that she couldn't. Getting past the SePU was child's play for someone of her skill. The SePU had a major weakness that Grifter could take advantage of. They had meta-activity detectors. Grifter had no powers, she knew no magic, she had no super science and lacked any psionic powers. She was a normie and SePU treat normies as harmless.
Hell, most metas treat normies as harmless.
She headed directly to the auditorium where the final fight went down and proceeded to quickly check out the area, hoping to dig up any clues as to what happened. She turned on her gas mask mounted camera to record the crime scene as she carefully went around the room. She didn't want to leave any trace she had been here, as well as avoid disturbing any evidence she might come across. The headless body of the lich stood out and she took a moment to use her multi-scanner on it. It was a formality. It was obvious what types of energies would be detected.
She narrowed her eyes at the readout.
Quickly she moved around the room, knowing she didn't have a great deal of time. She wanted to get everything she could before the forensic team showed up. Something was very wrong here. What little story she got from her team wasn't matching up. The timing of this wasn't sitting right with her, either. It happened when no magic using or psionic capes were available. Grifter was beginning to suspect an inside job, but she didn't have any proof.
One thing was certain, the more she examined the area, the more the math didn't add up. The angle of the bone fragments from the lich's exploding skull. The damage to the the ceiling and floor. The pattern of foot prints in the carpeting. The more she looked around and applied her well trained mind, the more she came to the conclusion that there had been someone else in the room. Another actor in this little drama that nobody else knew about.
Or was keeping quiet about.
Grifter stopped dead in her tracks as she caught a glint out of the corner of her eye. She stepped over to the edge of the stage and looked up, at the damage to the roof, then looked down. Something smashed into the roof, then came back down, several times by the look of it, but that wasn't what caught her eye. She kicked some of the debris out of the way and found the glint.
Kneeling down, Grifter held her multi-scanner next it. Her device lit up like the fourth of July. Grifter let out a little snort as she reached down to pick it up with a pair of tongs. She glanced around to make sure she was alone before she pulled her gas mask off so she could look at her shiny prize with a naked eye. As she turned it over to look at both sides as she muttered to herself, "How does a quarter get so completely saturated with cosmic energy?"
She pulled out an evidence bag and dropped the coin inside, "But more importantly..." She held it up to the light.
"Who spent you?"