The City of the Future (IC)

[Fox]

Dragonfly took a deep breath, centered herself, and stepped through the door.

True to Miss Americana's warnings, Tronik took some...adjusting. There was data, certainly, but at first it didn't quite snap into shape - glitchy-seeming ghosts of shapes swam in her vision as dissonant sounds played in her head. Before too long, though, the world started sliding into place: colors shifted back into the normal ranges, visual information sorted itself back out into edges and planes, and her ears started to sift sense out of the city noises. Even the ground under her feet felt normal again, though for half a moment her brain was near-certain that 'down' was up and to the left.

She shook her head, trying to clear out the last of the confusion. "Hate new systems," she muttered, frowning at the texture of the ground's surface, which was rapidly shifting in depth as whatever part of her brain handled these things sorted out the details of how her surroundings were supposed to work. "Still. Well-designed. And lucky. First experience with Linux gave me synesthesia. You two adjusting okay?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl stepped through the gateway and was assaulted by strange sensations: air that tasted green, sounds that blew cold winds across his skin, sensations beneath his feet that jangled like alarm bells! He forced himself to adapt to the synthesisia, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths, and gradually his body and mind adjusted themselves to their new surroundings. No, not new surroundings; to the surroundings where he'd been born and raised, to the place that was "Home..." He opened his eyes and found himself back in a place once familiar and alien: they were back at the base of the 30th district, the familiar white-blue glow of the ground sector lights the only reliable illumination. The distant, reassuring hum of the air recyclers that were all that kept the land at the base of hundreds of mile-high towers inhabitable by humans sounded in his ears as he looked up, and up, imagining his family so far overhead. In the deep sky, where sectors bent together like trees to form a forest of steel overhead, he could just make out a few slivers of welcoming green sky, with little flivvers moving back and forth between buildings.

For Miss Americana and Dragonfly, Tronik was a considerably more alien place, and it took a few moments for their perspectives to adjust. They were surrounded by buildings that were more like tremendous towers, huge skyscrapers cast in dark blue and gunmetal grey, rising far higher and bulking far thicker, than any building on Prime had ever dreamed, packed so closely together they blotted out the barely visible alien sky overhead. The Pyramid Plaza in Freedom City would have been lost in the forest of steel overhead. The air had the faint smell of ozone and the whine of equipment was everywhere; the glare of artificial light glowing all around them. Overhead, half-visible craft flitted silently from building to building, without even a glow at their tailpipes to show what might be powering them. There were no birds against that sky; no sign of animal life in the alley they shared. From outside the alley came the sound of people and conversation, but no one who sounded like they'd noticed their arrival.

"There's an elevator just around the corner," called Sharl to the women, "with my passcode, it'll take us right up into the sector! It...oh." Sharl fell silent as the wall near them flickered to life, the sensors built into the building sensing a human presence: just as he'd expected, the usual bills had been posted even here. And the leading one was written in a style familiar to anyone from a civilized world: SHARL TULINK LAST SEEN 1/3/18242, and the sort of smiling teenager shot underneath that was that of any civilization. Sharl put his hand against his face in the wallscreen. "I guess they're still looking. We...we need to get up there!" Next to his picture, though, was another poster, smaller and more utilitarian, that the native hero didn't notice: IF YOU SEE A MUTANT, REPORT IT.

[Electra]

Miss A battled displaced vertigo for a moment, first from the bizarre mix of data signals imposing themselves on her consciousness, and then from the sheer height of the buildings. She'd been in big cities, but this was insane, absurd. Her brain told her that it couldn't exist, even as another part was calculating tensile strengths and material load and another part was reminding her that of course it didn't exist, it was a computer program. She took a deep breath and looked to where Sharl was pointing. "They'll be glad to have you home," she told Sharl kindly. "I'm sure they've worried a great deal." She paused when she saw the other sign. "Are there very many mutants in Tronik?" she asked him. "I didn't realize that was a phenomenon here."

[Fox]

Dragonfly - Ema, she reminded herself - frowned as she was distracted from furrowing her brow at the nonexistent skyline and followed Miss Americana's (Mary's) gaze to the mutant-warning poster. "Don't remember it being mentioned," she agreed, tilting her head. "Is....concerning."

She shot a glance at Miss Americana. rampant fear - bad sign for Sharl's future acceptance - singular or distributed source? "Mutations could be normal...or could be introduced by subtle system glitches. Possibly victims, either way. Frequent enough occurrence to require a poster is...very concerning. Also possibly a reflection of public danger or fear-based discrimination. Or both."

[Avenger Assembled]

"No..." said Sharl, tracing his fingers over the utilitarian display. "I mean, there are people occasionally hurt by weak nuclear radiation, but nothing that would need a poster." He shook his head. "You hear rumors about it, but believing in mutants is as crazy as believing in aliens. Or other dimensions...I don't know." He pulled his glasses back up so they better covered his eyes. "We can ask my parents about it when we get there, or when we see it on the news going up." He led the way out of the alley, turning them down into an alien city street.

This far down; the streets were nearly deserted. Which was to say, it looked like a typical weekday on the streets of Freedom City. Despite the crowd, though, no one looked their way. Or did they? It was hard to tell who was looking anywhere in a society where everyone wore dark glasses and nearly identical clothing; the main fashion variant that some people favored form-fitting black leather rather than the long coat that young men like Sharl did. Even Sharl's black hair and short haircut seemed to be a common strain among the citizens of Tronik.

Sharl quickly led them to a door in the side of the building that was rapidly filling with people, obviously Tronik's version of an elevator. Once a dozen or so people were inside, their little box began to rise with a smoothness that belied what a look outside revealed was fantastic speed: they were rising faster than the mightiest express elevator in Earth-Prime. And no wonder, with so much space to cover. Sharl looked out the window at the familiar sights of the city, murmuring to Mary nearby, "There are more militia cruisers flying around than I remember..." His discretion got him a glare from the man opposite; indeed, almost no one else was talking at all. They didn't look frightened, either; just very quiet.

On the wall opposite in the elevator, the commuters were watching the news, flashes of images like a rapidly changing channel flicking on the nearby wallscreen: "...Council President Batage reports that effective plankton harvests are expected to double with the deployment of new oceanic grafting technology...solar plant on the sunward continent target of opposition by anti-government protesters who claimed that..." The face of a uniformed humanoid in futuristic black body armor replaced the news anchor: "The Tronik Militia reminds you: If you see a mutant, report it. The life you save may be your own." And with that, with the elevator's most recent stop, Sharl turned and headed off. "This is it, Ema and Mary," he murmured as they walked out into a steel-lined corridor cast in greenish-blue by the glowstrip overhead. "This is our floor..."

[Electra]

Miss A remained quiet in the elevator, studying and memorizing all the data being broadcast on the news programs. If this mutant issue was new in Tronik, it could mean that the simulation was breaking down even faster than they'd realized, Relatively small programming errors could lead to extreme parsing problems, especially in programs as complex as the citizens of Tronik. They could be dealing with more than an environmental problem, they could have a fatal epidemic on their hands. Of course, that was nothing to be said in a crowded elevator, so she quietly followed Sharl out and down the hall toward his habitation.

[Fox]

'Ema' made her way off the elevator a bit faster than was strictly necessary; she'd been awfully glad for the long coat and sunglasses. The latter, especially: they weren't as good as her visor for hiding her face, but they did a fair job hiding her rather profound discomfort until she could get moving again. "Hate crowded elevators...." she muttered. "Shouldn't be that many people in a closed space. Ever. For any reason."

She adjusted her coat and tried to keep her mind off the sheer number of people the city seemed to hold. Instead she pulled her shades down a bit, glancing around the corridor with a critical, dark blue eye. "Looks...almost like something I'd design. Steel and long glowing lights, I mean. Not really a compliment for interior decorating, I think. But simple and efficient. Could be worse."

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl himself was silent as he led the way down the hall, the walls silent and still as they went. In a city so greatly crowded, soundproofing was a very important strategy for sanity. At first it looked like there were no doors at all, but on closer inspection the two tech heroes could easily make out the handpanels evenly spaced in the walls where seamless Tronik-style construction let them hide doors away. At what was evidently his own door, Sharl paused for a moment, composed himself, and placed his hand against the doorpad. "Sharl Tulink," the wall said gently. "You have been away for 8.82 years." And with that the door slid open, and Sharl stepped inside.

Despite the tremendous bulk of the massive buildings here, the Tulink family dwelling was small: no bigger than a smallish two-bedroom apartment in Freedom City. Where there were no visible doors in exterior walls, on the inside almost every room was visible: a big master bed in a room on one end and a smaller one at the other, and a big central room with what looked like a tiny, smooth-walled kitchenette, the far wall gone transparent to show the nearest massive structure miles away. Despite the small size of the room, the giant window gave it a feeling of space, along with ceilings cast much higher than they would be on Earth.

But Sharl had no eyes for the habitation where he'd grown up, not with his entire family there! A conversation around the table had been interrupted. Aba Tulink, a middle-aged woman who'd gone skinny where Sharl was tall and gawky, stared at him, disbelief written in her eyes; Bel; a bearded man with something of a belly, by her side. At the other end of the small table in the middle of the room, facing him at the head of the little triangle was even his big sister Sieva. She was the first one to say softly "...Sharl?" And then suddenly they were up in a body, and there was tearful embracing, and rejoicing, and then suddenly his mother smacked him in the head!

"Where have you been!?!" She stared at him, grief in her eyes. "I've cried my eyes out every night for nearly nine years! We thought you'd gone off and joined the cults, or gotten on the drugs!"

"Honey, honey, it's okay," said Bel reassuringly, "Let him sit down and talk. I'm sure our boy has a lot to tell us." He shot Sharl a not-unfriendly look that said he damned well better have a lot to say. "Who are your friends?"

"Uh, Mom, Dad, Sis, this is Mary and Ema. They helped me where I was...which is, um, a really long story..."

[Electra]

Miss A stepped forward, her voice and manner soothing even though she didn't have her fantastically perfect face and body to fall back on here. "Sharl was the victim of a terrible accident," she told his parents. "He became lost through no fault of his own, and ended up much further away from here than you can probably imagine. We found him and nursed him back to health. He was always adamant that he must return because you were sure to be worried about him, but it took us a long time to find a way. We're very glad to have had a part in reuniting your family." Initially the timing had given her a bit of a turn, but of course years on Tronik, with its tiny star, were a mere three and a half weeks long.

[Fox]

Mara said nothing, other than a quiet wave when she - or, at least, 'Ema' - was introduced. Social niceties were not her forte and she knew it; that was something far better left to Miss Americana. Instead she stood behind the more socially-capable heroes, trying to look as quiet and unassuming as possible with her hands in her pockets and her glasses concealing her eyes as they took in the small apartment and the underlying code. She did, at least, try to keep that code from distracting her too much from the conversation, nodding where she felt it was appropriate.

[Avenger Assembled]

"It's...it's more than that," said Sharl, giving his parents and sister an open, almost hopeful look. "All those reports that I was following about aliens visiting the city? Well...well, they were true," he said, growing in confidence. Impossible as the story was, it was true! "I found a hole in our reality and I stepped through it, and that's where I met Mary and Ema. They helped me, they saved me from being lost in the middle of forever, and they helped me survive." Well, it had been mostly 'Mary' who'd done that, but there was no need to single Dragonfly out now. "I've found out how our reality really works, and I've learned how to transcend it. I-"

"Oh, it IS the drugs!" said Aba, throwing up her hands in horror. Sharl's mother wasn't usually this emotional, but after his many months away he could understand why she was so upset. "We're lucky the militia hasn't come and..." Sharl suddenly realized he couldn't bear that look on his mother's face another second, and so he flew up into the air. He was surprised when his family didn't react that much, until he remembered belatedly where he was.

Duh! Flying wasn't so unusual in a city where antigravs were as commonly available as internal combustion engines on Earth. He threw off his coat, revealing that he wasn't wearing an anti-grav. "Look, I can fly!" he said, "and I can do this!" He put his hand right through the wall for further emphasis. "They had to adjust me a little so I could survive there. But I'm okay, this was just so I could survive. I...I was so scared," he said, landing before his shocked parents and sister. "But I knew I had to come back here. I'm so sorry I left without saying goodbye, it...it was an accident..."

After a long pause, and a exchange of looks, Sharl's family stepped forward and embraced him again. "Oh my baby," said Aba apologetically. "I'm sorry I was so angry, I've just been so afraid for so long..." "Tell us everything," interjected Bel, not impolitely. "What happened, exactly? How were you changed?"

Sieva suddenly seemed to jump, hand over her mouth. "Wait, don't you see! Does this explain-" She gave Mary and Ema a hard look. "Were there others like Sharl? People who just wandered into your world and got experimented on?"

[Electra]

"Not that we know of," Miss A replied reassuringly, "and we'd have been in a position to know. The changes we made to Sharl weren't for scientific curiosity, they were to save his life and his sanity. The word we come from is very different to yours, and Sharl's body and mind were incapable of handling the environment. We did everything possible to make sure he stayed the same person, even though he can do things now that he couldn't before."

Miss A looked more closely at Sieva. "We saw the posters and warnings about mutants in the city. Is that why you're wondering if there were other people we've performed experiments on?" she guessed.

[Avenger Assembled]

"There have been more and more of them in the last few months," answered Sharl's sister, folding her arms in front of her briskly. "Physical changes, mental abnormalities...some of them are even supposed to be dangerous just to touch. The council only acknowledged they existed about the time Sharl disappeared. We were afraid Sharl had been taken by them, or hurt, or changed. That's one of the things we were worried about; it's why I moved back in here."

"You moved back into my room?" For a moment, Sharl looked like any appalled teenage boy would be. Particularly here, where his personal space was something he'd spent many years trying to maintain."But all my things were in there! And all my space!" He gave a look back at his room, as if expecting to see all his childhood toys piled up in boxes along the side, ready for the recycler. He'd gone to a lot of work to persuade his sister to move out to her artists commune.

"Your things are fine!" she shot back, sounding like any older sister. "You think we recycled anything of yours?" she asked challengingly. Sharl looked a little stricken at that, and they both fell silent.

"None of us have seen a full-blown mutant," said Bel, wringing his hands a little. "But one of Aba's patients was taken away when his symptoms started showing, and some of the contamination has even appeared in my work. The government keeps downplaying it, but we're not stupid. Something's going wrong in this city. People are scared."

[Electra]

"You're right," Miss A told them simply. "Something bad is happening to Tronik, and you're right to be afraid. Your world is in flux right now, with forces beyond your science putting strain on the foundation of reality. That's why Sharl had his accident, that's why people are becoming mutants and why the city itself sometimes seems to act strangely. It's only going to get worse if something isn't done. But that's the other reason we came," she added, with a sudden reassuring smile. "Ema and I know how to fix what's wrong with Tronik, and we want to help. Sharl's an important part of our project as well. The first thing we need to do, though, is to get a better idea of exactly where and how things are breaking down."

[Fox]

"Not expecting detailed maps and official reports," Dragonfly chimed in, tilting her head. "But...general ideas are helpful. Details about abnormalities, common areas problems occur, frequent symptoms. Rumors, even: assuming mutants are quarantined, but no secret is perfect - knowing what is done with - to? for? - them could be useful. City itself, too, like Mary said. 'Bad' areas, locations recently labelled unsafe for civilians. Significant disasters without explanation. Don't know how much of it is helpful, but better over-informed than under."

[Avenger Assembled]

The Tulinks were distracted by Sharl's return, occasionally they or Sieva would just turn and hug him, but they did their best to help. A command from Bel turned their tabletop into a computer drawing pad, and together he helped sketch out on a tremendously detailed 3-D map of the city the rumors they'd heard about. Mutant sightings tended to happen in the ground sectors: the surface areas where the travelers from elsewhere had first arrived. That had furthered the conspiratorial angle; people tended to stick to their own sectors and levels if possible, and the people on the bottom had relatively little voice and political power in Tronik's society. "A few weeks ago I was called in for an emergency job on the west coast," said Bel, zooming out a little to show the further details of the Greenland-sized crescent that was the largely uninhabitated industrial 'suburbs' of Tronik Island. "There'd been an 'industrial accident' at the space port where weather satellites are launched. No one would tell me anything, but the entire facility was locked down, and there were militia there with plasma burners incinerating an entire launchway. There were a couple of mutant sightings there later, and one of the men I worked with was...arrested."

"I've heard stories of...abnormal births," said Aba, reaching over to hug Sharl and Sieva at the words. "Children who are born changed, or inhuman in some way or another. Like the symptoms I saw in my elderly patient, but advanced at birth. Some of those were taken away, other times they'll destroy a whole bank if they find genetic contamination. But it doesn't make any sense! Genetics doesn't work that way, mutant genes can't infect other embryos, much less gestational equipment! But doctors who ask too many questions...stop asking them. One way or another."

Sieva finished the story with, "A friend of mine, you remember Joba, Sharl, was part of a pro-mutant demonstration a few days ago. She said she was lucky to escape without being confined; the militia came down on them harder than even the space activists. They read them the Treason Act and moved in before they could even react." She shook her head and said, "People our age like to talk about the militia like they're all bullies and thugs, but I don't think that's true. They don't come down like that unless they're scared."

"The big worry is that something will happen to the lower level of a sector," added Bel. "If what they say about plasteel being contaminated is true, theoretically something could happen in a super-structure and cause a full-scale collapse. They're supposed to fall in on themselves rather than over, but who knows what could be going on if reality itself is rotting?" he said, making a lame joke of something horrible.

"And if that happened, millions would die," finished Sharl, looking sick. "A entire sector collapsing would kill everyone inside it, and probably everyone in the sectors next door if it fell the wrong way. Tronik isn't designed to deal with a disaster like that. And if all that happening was big enough that...everything else couldn't handle it, it could be the end of everything." He rubbed his eyes. "Could we evacuate people if we can't fix it?" he asked Ema and May. "Something that..." Suddenly, Sharl was interrupted by a sound from outside: a deep bass series of notes that made all the locals jump. "The militia?!" Sharl headed straight to the window, where sure enough three cylindrical craft were flying by the window on silent anti-gravs. "They can't be coming..." Sure enough, he was right: the militia closed in not on their window, but one further down on the same level.

On the family wallscreen, that deep bass sounded again before the face of a helmeted militia officer appeared. "Citizens of Sector 30 Level 8," intoned the militiaman, "there is an anti-mutant raid taking place on your level. Please stay in your homes," he advised, "and wait for further instructions."

[Electra]

Miss Americana looked up with interest at the alert, but didn't seem terribly worried about it. If anyone did come to this door, it would be a simple matter to disappear the visitors, including Sharl, in the wink of an eye. She knew what the coding was for all the sensory processing data in Tronik, becoming invisible to it was child's play. "If they're cracking down hard, it may be harder for us to move around, but we need to get more data on at least a few aberrations. Sharl, you can stay here if you want to, and we'll just use the city map to get around. It may not be safe for you to be seen with us."

[Fox]

"Would be...complex to evacuate everybody," Mara replied. She'd very obviously heard the alert, but apparently decided it was a point worth addressing. "Possible, but relatively time and resource intensive. And likely carries any number of risks. Best to try to fix things first, concentrating on tasks at hand."

She chewed on her lip for a moment - it was her instinct to try to save whatever mutants were getting raided, but she had to admit that probably wasn't the best option. Uncomfortable to not do, but not wise to try. "Could try taking a look at closed-off areas, first. Immobile and hopefully less reactive hazard. Mutants would be...unpredictable. And possibly dangerous, given the...mmh. Paranoia. Don't know if they deserve raids, but must be some small reason somewhere to justify police action. Or justify small events, then escalation that lead to police action."

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl was torn. Go with his friends and allies to help save his city, or stay with the family he hadn't seen in months? For the moment, at least, a teenager's impulse to be reunited with his family won out. He couldn't just walk out of his mother's embrace for goodness' sake! "I'll...I'll stay here for now," he finally said, feeling guilt both for his choice and for debating it for so long. "You can keep in touch with me, right?" he asked Mary. "In case you need help with anything, or any guidance in the city, I'll be there. I told you about the slideways," he reminded himself, "and the anti-grav transports, if you need to get there faster..." On the map, the nearest 'blocked off' zone was at ground level in the industrial world outside of town; an oxygen-scrubbing plant having been closed down and blocked off some days earlier.

[Electra]

"We won't be long," Miss A promised, then nodded to Dragonfly to follow her out of the apartment. "If they're doing raids, we're better off in stealth mode," she suggested to the other technopath in a soft voice. With a thought, she changed the coding of her program, rendering her invisible and intangible to the sentient programs, while still able to interact with the physical world of Tronik. "Let's check out a few of these places and get the lay of the land, then say goodbye to Sharl and bail. From the sound of things, we have even less time than we thought."

[Fox]

"Mmh." Dragonfly nodded, and something behind her eyes - Ema's eyes - shifted. She wasn't as familiar with the code as Miss Americana was, having simply spent less time around Sharl (and almost no time poking at any of Sharl's code that wasn't immediately obvious; it just didn't seem comfortable somehow), but she'd been observing and carefully exploring the surrounding simulation almost nonstop since they'd arrived. perks of not being the one who has to talk to people or lead the way

Like Miss Americana, Dragonfly's projection went invisible and insubstantial; unlike Miss Americana, she also physically changed, turning a little more abstract and ghost-like. "Could get used to this," she noted, floating about an inch off the ground as she kept pace with the other heroine. "Convenient."

[Avenger Assembled]

It wouldn't have been easy traveling in Tronik without the ability to go invisible and intangible to the computerized world around them, but luckily Miss Americana and Dragonfly did indeed both have those fantastic abilities. Traveling on the ground as a local would, going by the slideways that hummed along as fast as a car might in Freedom City, or riding in antigrav 'buses' that seemed to fly via no particular means of propulsion, gave them a perspective like a citizen of the city might have. And what a city it was; gigantic towers of alien steel as wide as the entire Pyramid Plaza complex at their tips stretching miles high towards an impossibly green alien sky, streets crowded with a torrent of humanity as reserved as commuters on a Freedom City busline, spectacular technology all kept locked away within a black box of acceptance.

In general terms, Tronik was a city much more aware of its inhabitants than Freedom: people were often greeted by name by faces flashing to life on walls that could evidently function as well as screens, and all those antigravs they took around the city to navigate seemed to flying with perfect functionality without any human pilots. The people were quiet, certainly, but from what Sharl had said that was just the way of things, not a result of the mutant fear that was clearly being layered onto the culture from the semi-frequent public service announcements that came and went on every wall. The people all bore a faint resemblance to each other, too, the way any confined population might after a few generations of breeding. No wonder Sharl had been so surprised by the diversity of Freedom City. As they headed towards the edge of the city, the number of travelers dropped away substantially, leaving them with more space in the automated antigravs heading out to the oxygen factories and food reprocessors.

[Electra]

Despite her intangibility, Miss A breathed easier once the population density thinned out a little bit. "This is really intense," she murmured to Dragonfly. "I'm starting to realize why Sharl was so amazed just walking around the block when he first got to Prime. He must've felt like he was in a ghost town. The program surely wasn't designed for anywhere near this kind of population density. I should've asked what the rate of reproduction is here. It might be something we need to think about dialing down, so they don't fill up the new memory as fast or faster than the original."

[Fox]

Dragonfly had, even after 'ghosting' herself, been visibly uncomfortable around the crowds of people; she relaxed more as the population thinned out. At the very least her finger stopped its nervous and unceasing tapping against her leg. "Digital fertility inhibitors?" she questioned, raising an eyebrow toward 'Mary'. "Not against some editing, if done cleanly, but should be careful how low it goes - both relative and absolute. Sudden drops in birth rate could cause social problems; extremely low birth rate could...not even sure. More social problems, at least. Hard to predict how people will...reorganize, if children become too rare. Still," she agreed, "small adjustments would be good for future stability. Worth looking into."

[Electra]

"Of course," Miss A agreed easily, "it's not something to do without taking a hard look at the science first. But if Tronik's not going to be stable without someone coming along every couple decades and fixing it up, then we haven't done our job right. It could even be that they've already solved their population explosion and we're just seeing the lingering effects. Sharl did mention that people tend to live a long time here. I wonder how many people from Tronik would actually move to a new, less populated place right away," she mused. "I'm sure there are people desperate to escape the crush, but at the same time, it would be quite a change to leave this hive."