ic (OMTB) Dreams Into An Empire

[Electra]

Miss A shrugged. "My robot was toast. I had to scrap the entire unit and start from scratch, and I didn't have a backup unit available. Even if I had, my ability to interface is far less than the distances we'd be traveling. I needed to be there in order to help with the engineering, but that meant I had to go in person." She smiled, a little bit thinly. "I've spoken publicly in the past about my struggles with agoraphobia and anxiety. It was hard, very hard, to even leave my house, much less go into space. I owe a lot to Dragonfly and to the other heroes who were there that day for their help and understanding." The smile warmed into something more real, if still small. "It was after that when I really started to work on getting help for my problems, so I would be better prepared for the next time." 

 

[Avenger Assembled]

"That's really great. Talking about struggles with mental illness or addiction are just as heroic as anything else, because then you're showing people they're not alone. There was room for plenty of questions about Miss Americana and her history here - but as tempting as it was to talk to the pretty lady about herself all day, there was the show to film. "Changing subject a little bit. As one of the world's greatest scientists, I know you've worked closely with r-synthetic beings like Citizen and Angelic, and of course you're operating a robot body as we speak. Have you ever felt like the Day of Wrath changed anything for synthetic life?" 

[Electra]

"That's a complicated question," the heroine began. "Partially because it covers a lot of ground, and partially because it can be hard to tell what makes life different for a group of individuals when the group is small and so uniquely positioned. ArcheTech has been the world leader in medical robotics and prosthetics for a decade now, so I feel very confident when I say that no two synthetic life forms have the same story. Angelic is young enough that she barely remembers the Day of Wrath, while Citizen does not remember it because he was willing to give his life and did sacrifice his consciousness to stop the Curator's plan. I personally was very concerned with how other heroes would view me if it came out that I was piloting a robot and pretending that it was my own body, but I was fortunate that my colleagues were both perceptive and understanding. Society at large and heroes in particular were able to tell the difference between synthetic life forms who just want to exist like anyone else whether their consciousness is AI or human and the Curator drones, which were designed specifically for purposes of infiltration and deception. Once the Curator bots were gone, there was really no more robot paranoia to speak of." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"That's good to hear," said Richard automatically. "I know people haven't always been that understanding when there's an alien invasion." He definitely was not going to mention her Omegadrone husband - how did that even work? It wasn't really worth thinking about. "That's something I didn't quite understand. We talked with Citizen by phone from Vancouver and he used those words "sacrificing his consciousness" about what happened to him during the invasion. He actually said if I had any questions, I should ask you about it." This was certainly true; Miss A knew it from the report she'd gotten of Richard's interview with Sharl. 

[Electra]

She nodded. "Citizen has no memory of the events of those few days. While most of Earth's powerful heroes were distracted and confused by the infiltrators he'd placed in Freedom City, the Curator made an attempt to steal a number of priceless and extremely dangerous artifacts from a secured place on Earth. As an artificial intelligence, Citizen was able to interface directly with the Curator, who is itself an incredibly sophisticated program, and severely damage and overwrite portions of its code. Doing so, however, required Citizen to essentially destroy his own program, which would have been an experience very much like death for an organic human being. In every way that counts, Citizen sacrificed his life to stop the Curator. It was a combination of good fortune and good planning that allowed me to restore him from backups that we'd made a short time before the infiltration. I'd never had to restore him before, so it was all theoretical until the moment it actually worked. All of his memories from after that backup were lost, but the core of him survived. And his plan worked." She smiled. "I'm very proud of him." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Richard took a minute to puzzle that one over, his eyes wide. He wasn't sure exactly how it worked with robots and such, but he was pretty sure he understood the details of what Miss Americana was describing. "Well that's how it is with kids," he said sincerely. "The moments where you're really proud of them, it's when you realize they've gone past you. I'm glad he turned out to be okay." He thought of his own kids and decided he'd maybe run home at the end of the interview just to see what was up. "So, the Curator today - we haven't heard anything from him in a while, I know. What's his story?" 

[Electra]

"I'm afraid that's not information for public broadcast," Miss A told him, apologetic without a hint of actual remorse. "I'll talk about it on background, but it's sensitive enough that I don't believe the details should be broadcast. We can talk about it later, or you can turn the cameras off and back on again, if you prefer." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Richard considered that for a moment. "Hey yeah, can you cut it?" he said, making a little gesture at his team. Sure enough, almost as soon as it was made, the recordings were off. "...why is it secret?" he asked her. "I mean, we get a pretty wide broadcast with the show but I don't think we get it out into deep space." 

[Electra]

"Because we don't know jack," Miss A told him bluntly, a rueful smile accompanying the words. "We haven't heard a thing since we left the Curator's program rebooting on the ringworld. What Citizen did..." She sighed, her gaze far away for a minute. "He implanted his own code into the Curator's program. The code that made him who he was, inquisitive, courageous, loyal, devoted, he pulled himself apart and used himself to infect the Curator like a virus. We have no idea what the results of that would have been, once the program finished recompiling. The good news is that when the Curator program shut down, everything it was doing on Earth just stopped in its tracks. The bad news is, we didn't have an opportunity to ask questions about what it really wanted from us besides Tronik, or what it planned to do next. By allowing the program to recompile, we rolled the dice that the new thing would be better in the long run than whatever reprieve we'd get from making it recreate itself from a backup. We didn't expect to hear nothing." 

[Avenger Assembled]

A thought crossed RIchard's mind. "Has anyone ever gone to look? I mean, I know the Lor aren't what they used to be, but if you could get a ship out there, you'd think they could stop by and check...aw, listen, I guess I'm talking out my ass here," he admitted. "It's just a hell of a thing to find out the Big Metal Bad is still out there in some form or another, and has just been sitting there doing who knows what." 

[Electra]

She shrugged eloquently. "No hero can cover every beat," she reminded him, "and space isn't one of mine except in very specific circumstances where someone kidnaps my boyfriend and drags him halfway across the galaxy. I won't swear to it that nobody's been out there in the past decade; I just haven't heard anything about it. And if anybody from Earth had gone out to take a look, I'm pretty confident I'd have heard of it. Midnight's flying saucer may not be the only spaceworthy FTL vessel we have, but there aren't many." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Richard resisted declaring "Ah-hah!" but it showed on his face for just a second before he said, "Oh yeah, space can be a real trip. Last time I went past the Moon it must have been back in '77, '78, when the Lor were-well, that's a story for another time, ha-ha!" Even with the cameras off, he still wasn't sure if he was technically pardoned in space - or it was a running gag to act like he wasn't sure, anyway. Making a little nod to get the camera back on, he said, "So, you were in the ship, having a rough time - what happened when you got to the Ringworld?" 

[Electra]

Miss A relaxed back into her seat and recrossed her legs as the recording started again. "That was right about when we got the first piece of luck we'd had all day. You must understand, the ringworld is massive, the size of a star system, and filled with thousands of planets worth of land and populations. It would be possible to spend a lifetime searching for one person in all the noise. We had a device we were hoping would let us find at least one of the abductees, but if they were scattered or shielded, we'd have been in trouble. Instead, by the time we got there, they'd not only organized themselves, they'd gotten to the control center for the Ringworld and were in the process of arranging their own escape." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hologram's talking to Jill O'Cure and some of the others who were taken," said Richard, having figured out a long time ago that superheroes didn't like talking about being kidnapped. "I guess there are advantages to rescuing superheroes!" He smiled, setting what could have been a tough situation at ease. "So you came all this way, you got past the Grue and every other space monster, and you made contact with Harrier and the others. Tell me about the moment." 

[Electra]

"We first made contact with a small Lor exploratory vessel," Miss A recalled. "They'd been sent out to investigate the disabling of the Ringworld's security systems, and had already gotten in touch with our people. Most of them were still inside the control center, trying to neutralize the Curator completely, but we were able to speak to Jill o' Cure and Quickstep, who told us that everyone had survived the abduction." She took a soft breath, her smile growing distant, reminiscent. "You have to understand, we'd gone all that way on nothing but hope. We hoped we were right about where they'd gone, we hoped they'd been taken alive, we hoped that they were still alive. They'd been gone for over a month by that point, and Quickstep had been gone for twice that long. Learning that we'd been right and that they were all alive... it was an intense relief. It made all the fear and discomfort of the trip worth it."

 

Her smile curved wider and became wry. "Of course we still had to fight a couple of opportunistic Grue raiders and put down the remains of the Curator that were left after its encounter with Young Freedom on Earth before we were properly reunited, but considering what we'd already done, that was just mop-up work." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Richard asked a few more questions about the details of the rescue, keeping things focused on Miss Americana's side of things. There was plenty more to the story, especially the way Dorothy Langford had reacted to her reunion with her parents (which made his stomach churn the more he thought of it) but this story was about Miss Americana and her reunion. Speaking of which..."So, when you and Harrier were reunited..." He grinned. "I hope he was suitably grateful, knowing you'd crossed the depths of space itself to rescue him." 

[Electra]

"It was really, really good to see him," Miss A agreed with a soft laugh. "For a long time, Harrier was one of the only people who knew all of who I really was, and he's always been my biggest supporter. He understood exactly how hard it was for me to leave my house and get on that ship, but he didn't understand that I'd have gone twice as far if I had to. Seeing that robot replacing him was so awful, especially knowing everything he's had to overcome in his life already, how he had his personhood ripped away from hin for so long...Having him back felt like being able to breathe again." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Aw, jeez, thought Richard, who had at times been called a 'soppy romantic' in his private life. "I'm sure he must love you very much." We probably can't use all of that, but maybe we can slip the footage the guy's way for a late Valentine's Day present. He decided at that moment that whatever reservations he'd felt about an Omegadrone living in Freedom City were stupid. If he could get a woman like this to love him like that, the guy had to be all right. He had a box of tissues to hand so fast that his movement was barely visible, though he wasn't actually sure if that was something robots (even robots piloted by humans) actually needed. "Can you tell me what happened when you were reunited?" 

[Electra]

Miss Americana's eyes were dry, though whether that was composure or a feature not built into her robot body was open for debate. The question made her chuckle, though. "Oh, it wasn't any run through a meadow with our arms spread, I'm afraid. The abductees were trying to stop the curator without an engineer on their team, which is a pretty tall order. Dragonfly was piloting the ship against the Grue, so I used my technopathic abilities to get into the computers aboard the control module. Once I was there, I could use the cameras and speakers. I saw him, and he heard my voice when I told them to get to the ship.

 

"Afterwards, once we had managed to stabilize the Ringworld and neutralize the Curator's threat, the Lor helped him and the other missing people get to our ship." Her face was an odd mix of fond amusement and embarrassment. "He found me where I was sitting at the engineering console, and I all but dragged him into an auxiliary  control closet. Not like that!" she added, holding up a hand before even Fast Forward could get a word in. "I was absolutely at the end of my rope in terms of being around other people. Couldn't handle another minute of it. We rode all the way back to Earth crammed into a space the size of a broom closet, and he never complained once. After that, I think we both slept for a couple of days straight." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"There's no love like super-love," said Richard with a grin. "I'm sure the two of you must be happy together. And hey, what a story!" The first time he and Paige had been kidnapped together, the Atoms had tried really hard to make them break, but he figured that story probably wasn't appropriate for the moment. I guess all that time with one of the world's greatest technopaths counted as his post-kidnapping examination? After all that time with the doppleganger, I bet you couldn't have been too careful." 

[Electra]

"I knew it was him," Miss Americana insisted, her voice steady and sure. "There was a warmth and an aliveness that his doppelganger lacked. The infiltrator had made it a point to stay away from me as much as possible after replacing Harrier, but even in the brief times we were together, I noticed something was wrong and just wasn't sure what it could be. When he came back, the real him, it was a difference like night and day. The Curator was very skilled, very technically proficient in its creations, but what it didn't really understand was human emotion. That was the real difference, that's what cannot be faked."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hum, okay," said Richard, looking confused for just a moment before he quickly moved on. Maybe I've been spoiled by being married to a psychic, he thought, not everybody can go digging around in their lover's body and mind as easily as Paige can. He smiled and asked a few more questions about Miss Americana and Harrier's relationship, the better to make sure the two lovebirds had some nice footage to put into the show and maybe to set Miss Americana at ease, before he said, "I guess we're close to wrapping up, but I do have one big question. On a scale of one to, ah, the Terminus - how concerned are you about another incident with the Curator?" 

[Electra]

Miss A gave him a look that said she wasn't terribly pleased to be asked a question so close to one she'd gone off-camera for, but this time she did answer for the audience. "I certainly wouldn't say that the Curator's threat is completely gone," she said carefully, "but I do believe that it is much less than it was. It's certainly a threat that we have been thinking about and making plans for, just in case. What Citizen did to the Curator changed it in a fundamental way. We don't know exactly how that change would have manifested itself, but I am hopeful that it will be a change for the better. We are keeping in touch with our Lor allies and other spacefaring races, so that if the Curator ever turns its attention towards Earth again, we will be ready."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Beautiful," said Richard honestly, meaning it and hoping he'd reassure her it was a good shoot in the same bargain. He pointed at the camera and said, "That's right, space creeps! Earth is ready for you!" He grinned, then looked back at Miss A and said, "Is there anything I've missed - anything you want to make sure we get before we stop rolling?" It was a standard question, but with someone as smart and charismatic as Miss Americana, who knew what she might offer up? 

[Electra]

"I don't think I have anything to add to the interview," Miss A told him with a smile, "but I would like to take a second to congratulate you on the fifteen year run of your show, and to thank you for everything you and Hologram have meant to the hero community. I personally have been a devoted fan for many years, and I've gotten the answers to questions I'd have never even thought to ask! I'm definitely going to miss SuperCrime!, but I can't wait to see what you're going to do next."