Electra
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"There's no way to know for sure," Miss Americana admitted, "but I think it's safe to assume it was mostly for research. The Curator is a being motivated by an endless and pitiless curiosity about the universe. In many cases, it has confined its explorations to the macro scale, but in cases of Curator-bot replacements, that is replaced by intense individual focus. I believe the Curator put enough time and energy into understanding the people it replaced, that it became loathe to kill them without studying them further. The abductees have said that they were placed in a sort of simulation to test their reactions; that is something we might expect to see if it was interested in continuing the research on them."
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She considered the question for a few moments, as long as one could comfortably pause during an interview and not one iota longer, then responded. "I suppose it was a mix of emotions. I was terrified, of course. At that point we had no way of knowing for sure what had happened to the people who'd been replaced. The Curator has been known in the past to digitize and simultaneously destroy entire worlds, feeling that if he knew everything about them, there was no need for them to exist any longer. There was a strong possibility that Harrier and the others had been murdered in order for their replacements to take their places. And yet at the same time there was a tiny feeling of relief," she admitted. "I know in the deepest fiber of my being that Harrier is a good man and a true hero, but seeing him do the things he did that day had shaken me. Knowing that it wasn't him who had done or said any of those things... it let me be sure that I hadn't been catastrophically wrong about someone I cared for. And of course that just motivated the incredible sense of urgency we all felt to find our lost friends and colleagues and loved ones."
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Paige sighed. "It certainly wouldn't be the only reason I'd do a show about the Curator, but I suppose they do reflect a continuing public interest in the story." She smiled ruefully. "And after all these years and the letters and tweets and videos, it's possible that they are objectively our biggest fans. But I am absolutely one-hundred percent not doing that interview." She stood and stretched, then began shucking her clothes to put on a comfortable nightgown. "We'll toss the Curator idea to the production team, see what they think. Could be that it's too long ago, or too Freedom City centric."
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"That's definitely been a theme we've seen from other people who've spoken about their experiences," Paige agreed. Her very first interview had been of the teen heroine, if that was even the word for a girl who'd been only fourteen, Quickstep and her family. It had been chilling to hear that any parents, disengaged though they might have been, could simply have missed their own daughter's abduction for literal months. The Curator did good work, indeed. "So you had no warning going into this that anything was wrong, right up until that one day. Can you tell me how it happened?"
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"Once reports started coming in, the picture began to come together fairly quickly," Miss A explained, her demeanor sliding back into the normal easy composure of previous interviews. "The replacement bots were programmed to cause as much chaos as possible, then self-destruct as soon as capture became inevitable, so there wasn't a lot of physical evidence to work with. Midnight, Dragonfly and I began to analyze the remains of destroyed robots even as other heroes in the city were dealing with the ones still at large. Fleur de Joie was able to capture one that was still functional and interrogate it briefly, and with the help of that and several other heroes gathering information and doing research, we came to understand that the Curator was behind everything that was happening."
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"You want to get Miss Americana back on the show because she boosts ratings," Paige guessed, sedately floating the lipstick back to her makeup caddy. "Or wait, do you mean those nutjobs in Greenbank with the TikToks? Oh Richard, no..." She laughed out loud as she began replacing the tops on her beauty products. "Every time they at us on Twitter, you get caught up in whatever bizarre idea they've got going. They're funny, sure, but they're conspiracy kooks, and I don't even want to know what kind of wall-sized spiderweb they could get going on robot doppelgangers."
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"Those are some familiar names," Paige agreed, smiling. "We've arranged to talk to Crimson Tiger for this program as well, though I think Richard is taking that interview. You keep good company! I know that Blue Jay was one of the heroes abducted by the Curator for his infiltration. Did you have any warning ahead of time about what had happened to her, or that something wasn't quite right?"
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Paige nodded, though her fingers itched for a tablet or even a notebook to write this down. Who had laser eyes among the abductees? "So the replacements you saw, they were heroes you recognized but not anybody you could name?" she nudged. "Do you remember which parts of the city you passed through while you were running? Or if you saw any other heroes or villains along the way?" Likely nothing, she reminded herself, but it would be dumb not to run any anomaly to ground. Even dead ends could make interesting television.
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Skill mastery nets Singularity a 20
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Chelone: Fury Road The Best Offense Fiery Gospel Singularity: Auspicious Season Vignette Hologram: Everything They're Asking For And More (OMTB) Interview: Ghost (OMTB) Interview: Blodeuwedd (OMTB) Interview: Jill o'Cure The Old Girl is Dying on Her Feet Miss Americana: Dreams Into An Empire Where Do We Go? Vignette
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Chelone will attempt to maintain the stun, yes. Since that's a lasting effect even if she switches her array, she's also going to try and get in another bite on Drone 2. She rolls a 22, which I believe is a hit.
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Miss A picked up her coffee and took a steadying sip before answering. "Both robots were destroyed, of course. After the Beekeeper's riot in 2011, the prison's systems were substantially upgraded against robotics, a project I actually had a small hand in. This was long before I decided to go public with details about Miss Americana, to the point where even other heroes didn't understand that the figure they worked with was more of a powersuit with no body in it than anything else. I was able to give Gabriel a quick warning of what was going to happen, but not much else. Luckily for me, the Miss Americana design was substantially different than the Curator's design, so it was pretty obvious that I hadn't been replaced. The haptic feedback from having a robot I was inside destroyed was quite painful and I needed medical treatment afterwards, but another hero came to my assistance. By the time I was able to get back to work, we were getting reports from around the city of the same thing happening to other heroes that had happened with Harrier. It was clear that something major had taken place."
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"The thing you need to understand about the replacements," Miss A began carefully, "is that they were incredibly detailed and sophisticated. The Curator did not choose his targets at random, and the people he chose, he studied beforehand. Once he had them, he was also able to duplicate portions of their actual memories and personalities and program those into the replicas. It wasn't a matter of just a physical resemblance, these robots knew how to act and what to say to make people not look twice at them. I noticed changes in Harrier's personality, but nothing that made me suspicious. My experience, and the experience I've heard from others, is that the replacements deliberately tried to keep loved ones at arms length to avoid being found out." Her smile was tiny and humorless. "I thought we might be fighting, but no, I had no real idea." She looked upstage for a moment, concentrating on the fake back wall before turning back to Richard. "I hadn't known Harrier was going to be at the prison that day, so it was surprising to see him there. They were interviewing a dangerous prisoner, trying to get information on possible Terminus activities. I stepped over to help, so I was only a few feet away when it seemed as though the prisoner's taunting enraged Harrier into running him through with his sword." She took another deep breath. "That wasn't how it actually happened, of course, but at the time it seemed very real." Now that she was on a role, the superscientist seemed to want to keep going. "Gabriel and I tried to stop him of course, but it had been incredibly shocking to see someone who always looks for a nonviolent solution just murder a man like that. It gave the replacement enough time to damage the prison's security systems and start heading for the nuclear reactor. I went after him and he was able to use those borrowed memories and observations quite ruthlessly to say things that would slow me down and make me doubt myself. By the time Gabe and I caught up with him, the only reliable way to stop him was to call on the prison staff to release an EMP blanket on the entire area."
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"That's harder than you think, we've been involved in a lot of stuff," Paige pointed out. "Or if we haven't been involved, we've reported on it already. I suppose we could break out one of the biggies we never felt like we could cover in a standalone, or the ones we didn't have time to do all the legwork on." She smoothed lotion over her jawline and down her neck, filling the air with a delicate scent of lemons. "The three days of laughing in Manila in 78, or the Moore Era superteams, or what the hell the Curator actually did back in 2013 while we were mountain climbing." She slanted a look his direction. "Or just give the audience what they really want, a ninety minute blooper reel with fifteen years worth of you running into things."
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Miss A laughed at the description of Bryant's favorite toy, but the amusement cleared from her face when Richard moved on to the real topic. She drew a deep breath and released it slowly. "It was a long time ago, but it's easy to remember," she admitted. "Harrier and I were dating back then, but it was still pretty new and we were keeping quiet about it. Both of us happened to be in Blackstone Prison that day. He was interviewing a prisoner with Gabriel and I was doing some upgrades to a different cell." She took another deep breath and tucked invisible strands of hair behind her ear, looking more visibly discomfited than Richard had ever seen the poised heroine. "I'm sorry," she told him. "This is more difficult than I thought it would be."
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Paige glanced at Richard for just a moment, looking almost worried, but her smile was back in place by the time she answered Will's question. "We're scheduled to broadcast the show with its live segments in June, and we'll be teasing for up to a month before then. If you decide that you don't want to be in the show or only want to participate behind the scenes, it's okay. We aren't going to be mad at you, we just wanted you to have the opportunity because it's been such a big part of our lives all these years." A moment later, Will could hear his mom's soft mental voice in his head, a broadcast only for him. It's normal to worry about your family, baby, but the soldiers happened a long time ago. Do you want to talk to Dr. Marquez or someone else about it again? I want you to be able to feel safe.
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Paige nodded in understanding of Blodeuwedd's evasiveness. Her own heroic teenager had gone through Claremont shortly after Blodeuwedd had finished, but it was a small community. Heroes knew about Claremont, but they tried hard not to let the news spread too far, for the sake of the kids growing up there. "That's a common patterns for young heroes; we've done several shows centered around the adventures of teen teams." she commented with a smile. '"Who was in your group with you back then?"
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The studio door was opened quickly by a young person in a lime green beret and a black SuperCrime! jumpsuit. "Hi! Welcome!" they said brightly, holding the door open for her. "Come on in, we're all ready for you!" The studio was a bit on the warm side but not terrible, and was set up in a classic interview style with two chairs angled towards each other and a small table in between for coffee and a potted plant. "Would you like some coffee or tea or a pastry?" Paige rose when the door opened and turned to greet their guest as well. "Hello," she said warmly, coming over to shake hands. "It's lovely to meet you! I'm Paige Cline, you can feel free to call me Paige or Hologram, whichever is comfortable. Thank you so much for coming in today to speak with me!" Her eyes held a hint of amusement, but nothing else in her face or voice suggested that she wasn't meeting the healer heroine for the first time.
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"No, not really," Danica explained, "but there's a lot of turnover here, with new kids coming and old kids graduating. Even if everybody only gets one, it's kind of a lot." She rolled her eyes. "I thought about just saying it preemptively when I meet new people, but it sounds kind of weird. 'Hi, I'm Danica, please don't pick me up and carry me!' I already have to explain the eight year plan and the scooter and everything else. It's like... people here are mostly nice, and I like to be nice to people, but it's hard to be the weirdest one even where everybody is weird." She picked up her cocoa and finished the whole thing.
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"The fair sounds good," Paige agreed, covering his hand with her own well-moisturized fingers for a moment. "But no teaching the kids to line-jump, I mean it." She laughed. "I'd also like to get a chance to see if Julie's oldest and Josh's boy are showing any powers yet. Julie hasn't said in her letters. By all rights they ought to be in Nicholson, just given their heritage, but I think it's going to be a long walk to convince them. Maybe we can talk about how Bryant is going to be starting there in the fall." She squeezed Richard's fingers once, then went back to her pots and tubes. "I know it's a little strange, but I'm not as worried as I thought I'd be about what our next project will be. It seems like something always comes up when we need it to. I mean, we got this gig in the first place because I was busking magic on the street with Holly on my back in a snuggli. We don't do things like normal people. When the next thing comes along, we're going to be ready for it. I just want to make sure we finish this current thing up right."
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Miss A smiled at the woman who pinned the lav mic to her lapel, then smoothed down her collar and crossed her legs comfortably. "I believe that the last time I was on your show, I spoke with your wife a little bit about the medical prosthetics we've been working on. ArcheTech is a company that covers a great many fields, of course, but medtech has been my interest for years. Nanotechnology is heavily regulated, and for good reason, but we've gotten some truly promising results with microdialysis devices that are currently in testing." She smiled. "And I'll confess that I put my hand in a little at ArcheToys with the designs of the new updated Freedom League SuperPlay SuperFun sets that will be coming out next Christmas. I think kids are going to be very excited to see what the new toys can do."
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Paige paused for a second before asking her next question, a rare break in her usually smooth interview rhythm. She'd researched all of the abductees from the infiltration, and she didn't recognize the description of red cape and laser eyes as belonging to any of them. That was a little odd, but peoples' memories of events a decade in the past could often be mistaken, especially memories of fights in Freedom City. "What did you do?" she asked, covering for the moment of inattention.
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"That's fair," Paige agreed, laughing a little because she knew he wanted her to. "Call it a sabbatical, then," she suggested, unscrewing another tube of lotion and smoothing it over her cheekbones. "We don't even have to make a plan. We could get another RV like when the kids were little, take it across the country. We've been so busy these past few years, I don't think we've ever even taken Bryant camping. And it would be nice to get out to Iowa and see the family." Whenever Paige said "the family" in that diffident tone, she didn't mean Anna or the kids. Getting her nieces and nephew supervised release and eventual pardons or commutations had been the work of years, but nobody could argue that there hadn't been extenuating circumstances involved. The Psion children had been just that, children, and under the control of a power telepath at that. They'd never really had meaningful choices for what they'd done, and though Ember still wasn't out of the secure psychiatric floor at Blackstone, at least they were all safe. Even Josh, at long, long last. "I got a note from Julie the other day; she's expecting again. She's actually happy about it this time." Paige's face was tired in the mirror, but she was smiling.
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"Mm, seems like that's always the way," Miss A empathized politely, sitting down in her own chair. "I've never been to Bhutan myself, but I've met several climatologists from there who are doing very exciting work. I hear it's a lovely country. I suppose that by the time you got back, everything was over and done with." She looked over to where Richard's crew was assembled. "I have a speaker setup in here, but I assume you prefer to use your own microphones?"
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Chelone watched the progression of the fight, her lips pursed as she watched her allies not making a lot of progress against the drones. "Weaknesses, she muttered to herself, trying to think back to her classes. "Omegadrones, obeyer-drones, zaps and magnets make them stay at home!" she chanted to herself. She'd gotten an A on that test thanks to her made-up rhymes. "Guys!" she called out. "Try electricity, magnets, or mind control if you've got them!" She took a deep breath and opened up the part of her brain that was full of tortoise-feelings. Slow and wise and ponderous, powerful but honestly kind of boring a lot of the time. It was the same part of her brain she used when she was trying to calm down excitable human brains around her, but this time she wanted to do more. "Slow, slow, slow, slow, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep!" she chanted at the two drones, over and over again. It felt like she was pushing the tortoise-thoughts straight into their heads. They obviously didn't like the feeling, swerving away from the onslaught, but they couldn't avoid it entirely. Within a few moments they were both slowing, slowing, slowing.