ic A God Needs Compassion (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

Spring 2022 

HAX

 

When she was in America, it was not unusual for Eira to stop by Mara's place to collaborate with Ryder, or just to carry a message from Miss Americana to her erstwhile colleague. But Ryder wasn't at work on the April morning when Angelic landed on HAX's roof, her blue and gold cape flying behind her in what was actually a raging storm. She was tall and blonde in her adult body, looking a bit like a Viking warrior, a bit like her biological mother, and if you looked closely quite a bit like Miss Americana, right down to a costume in Swedish patriotic colors. Showing unaccustomed hesitation, she stood there in the driving rain, carefully clutching a plastic-wrapped box under her arm that bulged about the size of a loaf of bread, before she strode for the elevator down into the main body of the building. 

 

[Fox]

The elevator doors slid open just before Eira reached them; sitting directly in the center of the elevator floor was a plastic sphere, perhaps a foot in diameter and clear to reveal the collection of electronics inside - the most notable of which was a large, glowing blue eye. It made a happy trilling noise, rolling to the side to make room for its mistress' guest.

 

Puppy had placed itself near the elevator buttons, and apparently not by coincidence - it waited for her to enter the elevator and then made a suspiciously low, monotone three notes, the elevator starting its descent with no buttons pressed. The display, which should have listed a destination, instead scrolled text as the elevator dropped past the main floors and just kept going:

 

BUSINESS OR SOCIAL?

[Avenger Assembled]

Eira smiled down at Puppy, a restrained version of the infectious glee she'd once had the sight of the little mechanism. "Hello, valp!" She cocked her head and vocalized aloud: "Social." She clarified by accessing the building's computer network and uploading an image of December 2021's calendar with a date circled and the number 30 written on it in a mechanical hand. Eira had not been present for that particular day. She hefted the box in her hand as a signal of what she meant. As the elevator went down, the familiar shape of a translucent, scuttling spider crawled out from her hair to perch on her shoulder. Ping looked down at Puppy and drummed its forelimbs on Eira's shoulder, a greeting between two not-quite-sentient machines. 

[Fox]

The display had nothing further to say, but it wasn't much longer of a ride; several floors' distance below HAX's single basement, the doors slid open into a short hallway and the ajar door to Mara's secret workshop. Or, perhaps, Dragonfly's - Mara herself was not armored up but the drone sitting on her center table was unmistakably the heroine's, half-disassembled and pierced straight through by a long metal spike. Puppy was fearless as ever, slowing only to shoot Eira and her spider a friendly glance as it bumped the door open and ran off to affectionately bump Mara's feet.

 

She cut the flame on her acetylene torch, sitting it down to cool. "Slow day. Wanted to get some work done anyway," she said by way of greeting, pulling her goggles down around her neck. "Could've scrapped it, didn't seem right. Would've met you upstairs, but I'm not supposed to be back until later, might cause questions."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh!" said Eira, eyes blazing with righteous fury at the sight of the wounded drone. She thought suddenly of how deeply that spike would have penetrated into Mara's flesh if it had gone into her rather than the drone - not as deep but certainly deep enough - and her lip curled. "What jävla did that?" she demanded as she looked at the machine, sounding for all the world as if she was about to go out looking for them herself. Stay calm, stay calm - you're here for a reason. "Er...I am sure you have it well in hand, yes?" She smiled, showing those perfect white teeth. "Mara, I...I have something for you."  She handed the box over to Mara, heavy and obviously powered by something electrical inside. "I know it is late - but, ah, thirty is a big year, yes?" 

[Fox]

"Disgruntled civil engineer," said Mara, sounding like she didn't quite like the sound of the words. She wiped her hands clean on a rag before carefully accepting the box. "Invented a robot that ate buildings, built buildings. Lost his job. Tried to add rebar support to ex-coworkers." She tapped the back of a finger against the metal spike. "Don't worry. Couldn't get through shields. Drone only took that hit keeping someone safe. Engineer learned an important lesson: without his robot, he was an idiot with a fancy remote control. Without my robot, I had several other robots. And a suit."

 

She pushed some of her tools aside, making room on her table to gently set the box down. "Thirty..." the heroine said, eyes unfocusing for a moment as her brain switched contexts; the pause didn't quite reach her hands, which were busy carefully removing the plastic so that she could open her present. "...yes, a big year. A younger me would be surprised I lived to see it."

[Avenger Assembled]

"He should not have attacked you," Eira said firmly. 

 

The contents of the box turned out to be a metal sphere with a holographic projection lens; the sphere, rising under its own internal magnetic power, hovered briefly in the air and projected an image of - Dragonfly. Mara recognized the older version of her armor, over a decade old now and long-since surpassed by the latest model. This version of her was speaking reassuringly at the camera about the quality of the visual feedback before offering a friendly, slightly hesitant, greeting to Eira. From the quality of the projected image, this had been recorded by the first audiovisual feeds Eira herself had had. Over a decade ago. 

 

"Sharl helped me access some of the core memories he has stored," said Eira with a hesitant smile as the image moved forward in time, this time something Mara remembered recording for Eira's own twelfth birthday. "With all the, ah, boring or embarrassing bits cut out, so that it is only the good things, yes?" The projected Mara was a bit taller than her actual height, after all, these were the memories of a child. "It's all the ways I've seen you, from when you first met me to now. Well...all the memories I could access, anyway. The organic memories don't display this way." 

[Fox]

Mara's expression was almost unreadable, only softening around the eyes as she watched the hologram play.

 

"This is...extremely personal. As a gift," she said at last. "It's...a piece of you. A copy of a piece. And...a rare perspective." Mara's face bore a rare expression - no grump, no impatience, eyes wide and all the little muscles smoothed out in surprise and a sort of wonder, minus the reverence. "We're usually limited to our own perspective. Experience. Unless you're psychic, but they cheat and it wouldn't work anyway." She made a wavy motion near her own head as if that explained the comment at all. "That's...thank you. It's...thanks."

[Avenger Assembled]

Eira lit up, smiling like the child she'd once been. "Oh...thank you!" She folded her hands behind her back, unconsciously mimicking Miss Americana. "It is from the heart," she said, putting her hand on her chest where a powerful chemical battery drove her internal workings. "A heart your hands helped make, yes? You are one of my synth-mothers. You mean a great deal to me." She looked uncertainly at Mara for a moment, then took a few steps closer and pulled her mentor in for a firm hug. 

[Fox]

Mara hesitated a moment; she'd come a long long way in dealing with affection, but distance was relative. "Glad I got to be part of that project," she said, returning the hug. "Don't know how much I can claim to be a mother, but you've done well with what we made. Made it your own, which is most important. Never stop improving," she added, patting the younger - if taller - girl on the back. "Best part of science, in the end, and teaching, and raising. Shoulders of giants. You stand on many very tall shoulders; you'll be great, and should help others to be great too. Already have."

[Avenger Assembled]

A little verklempt, Eira held onto the hug and whispered in a strained voice "Thank you." She decided at that moment, with the lightning-fast calculation that only a diamond-powered brain could generate, that this was the perfect time to move onto another important topic. "I will improve myself for as long as I live," she said fervently. "And that is...another reason I am here." She considered again, folding her hands in front of her, then said, her voice shaking just a little, "I know that you have been concerned that your powers are difficult to duplicate synthetically, but I have been working on that problem and..."  Eira's suggestion involved organic recreations of the parts of Mara's brain that drove her powers, followed by nanotechnological replacement of individual cells to allow full technological transformation. "It would take some time, but I could start on it within twelve months. And within a few years, it could be directly incorporated into a synthetic body. You could have a synthetic upload before the end of the decade, yes?"

[Fox]

"No." It was not an unkind 'no', but it was a firm 'no'. "I respect the interest, and the science. An interesting concept. But, no. Unless something goes very wrong with my current body I will not be a synthetic upload this decade."

 

She was smiling as she stepped back from the hug a bit - a sad smile, but a smile. "My power does not define me. If it was the only obstacle to becoming synthetic, I would have done it already. I would miss it - the song of it is hard to describe - but it would be done. I would have other advantages to trade it off, and could work on replicating it as an addition later. My mother would help, she can do what I can do, probably better."

 

She shook her head, strands of hair escaping from behind an ear. "Organic is not worse," she said. "Synthetic is not worse. They both just...are. Advantages and disadvantages. I have thoughts on...fail-safes, I do not look forward to death, but I will not shed my body for the sake of it."

[Avenger Assembled]

Eira crossed her arms and looked vulnerable for a moment, not quite able to meet Mara's eyes. "But..." She looked down at her hand, obviously visualizing the plastic bones and muscle within, the magnetic fluid moving within that provided power to the body she'd helped design. "superheroic life is so dangerous," she said, moving to the spiked drone nearby. "This could have been you! You could have just - stopped existing. A couple of years ago, I met my own ghost," she confessed, her voice tight as she studied the memory, an incarnation of Mara still active nearby as the drone kept playing her memories. "And perhaps some part of her is still - aware on some plane, but she was not alive. Not something that could grow, or change..." She shook her head and looked at Mara. "Mara, people tell stories about death giving meaning to life, or the curse of immortality, or the...the flaw in a silicon soul. But those are stories people tell because there is nothing better. People do not have to die."  

[Fox]

"Reading too much into it," said Mara, flatly. She'd crossed her arms, finger tapping against her bicep as she tried to arrange the words. "Immortality is a tricky subject. Definitely arguments for death at scale, societally. Irrelevant here. At the individual level, I don't think death gives life meaning. Life gives life meaning. Life doesn't have to be organic, people who talk about 'flaws in silicon souls' are afraid of things too different from themselves, or have only met Talos and his idiots. Same arguments for flaws in alien souls, or souls in people who aren't colored the way they like. Stupidity."

 

She'd accompanied that last bit with an ugly dismissive noise that came from somewhere in her nose. "Not everything good is safe. Also, in case you make this argument to others, 'I met my ghost' is not compelling." She'd said that much more gently than the rest, but it was still a teacher's critique. "You are not less alive because you met your ghost, but a ghost would mean some part of you moved on while the rest lived. In theory. Metaphysical implications I'm not equipped to discuss."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Miss Americana said the technology was not yet ripe; Uncle Magnus said he'd already tried that and wouldn't go down that road again." Eira looked away for a moment, then seemed to deflate a little, even as Mara knew her computer brain was working in rapid calculations. "But it has worked. It has been proven to work. I am that proof, and so are others like me. If organic life can make the transition to synthetic, why - why should it not be so? Why must you seal yourselves away in bodies that age...and get sick..." She fell silent for a moment, looking down on a polished part of the workbench at the reflection of a young woman that had once been a very sick little girl. "I am sorry, Mara," she said apologetically. "I should not have - brought my personal - my life into your birthday." 

[Fox]

"You didn't - it's January." It was a joke; Mara had taken a seat on a work stool, one cheek resting on her fist. She gave a lopsided smile, grabbing a small metal nut with her free hand and flicking it at the young robot's forehead. "Proven to work with you, and others. Proven not to work with other others. Proven nasty side-effects on more still. That's what 'not ripe' means: not reliably repeatable. Too many open questions, uncertainties. If it did work, perfectly, every time, all the CEOs and politicians would have robot bodies already. Also, freedom of choice - not everybody wants the same things, or for same reasons. Ask twenty people, get fifty answers. Most people don't want to die. Many people don't want to live forever. Lots of variance in the human condition."

 

She shook her head, still resting it on one fist. "Also, would be remiss as a...parent figure?...to not point out that you age. You are still made of physics, and your mind was originally purely human, inherent limitations. Entropy always wins. You can also get sick - can't get the flu, but have seen nano-viruses that would pass me by and turn you inside out. Likely to get more common as time passes, nasty to fully contain. Current median technology level in the world leaves hardware more open to exploitation than wetware. Synthetic's not a bad option, good option if you're already in trouble, but isn't a pure trade up, even before human sentimentality."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Your advice is 'Memento Mori', really?" Eira's smile took any sting out of the words. "We will see about that," she said, reaching down to scrub away a smudge on her reflected face before looking up at Mara. "I have always known that immortality is an illusion. The person who remembers being me in two centuries will have enough accumulated experiences that she will not be the person I am today, yes? But for now, I am happy with what I am. I am the girl that was born to my parents; and I am the machine that you and the others made. That is enough. For now. " She grinned.

[Fox]

"Good," said Mara, with satisfaction, she propped herself back upright, wheeling her stool back over to her drone. "And yes, momento mori," she insisted, propping the drone up to stare down its wound again. "People who forget momento mori are people who end up cackling on rooftops about showing them all. You're better than that. You'd better be, we put enough work into you."

 

She grimaced, reaching to one side for a pair of machining gloves. "Before you go, though. Could use a third, shock-resistant hand. Pretty sure the rebar's going to clip a loose power cable on its way out. If you wouldn't mind?"