The City of the Future (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

"We tried to go to the other city-states and warn them to organize a planetary evacuation, but they didn't believe us!" said the old man, remembered agony in his reedy voice. "They...they thought we were trying to score against them in the old trade wars, that we would get them to send their ships away and strike against them. None of them would help, they wouldn't even try to save their own citizens. We didn't have the resources to move tens of millions of people into interstellar space, and we were alone, all alone...You have to understand, this was two thousand of your years ago, the Republic could barely defend its borders against the Grue, much less evacuate one planet at the edge of Republican space! So...so I told them we could contact another race for help in building a teleportation device. I had...I had heard that the Curator was a collector. Of rare species, of planets, of people...I used the neutrino column to contact one of his starships and plead for help. I offered him anything, everything, my life, all of our lives, if he would save us. And he...he replied, and he made a pledge to me. He said that if I would build his machines all around the city, that he would make sure that Tronik and its people never died."

[Electra]

Miss A listened to the story with a noncommittal expression on her face, her arms folded. "I assume that if you were singled out for special treatment from the Curator, it didn't take you too long to realize that the immortality he offered was a curious sort indeed. Why did you choose not to tell anyone? Why let them go on allocating their resources this way, letting the population and the city grow like this? You have to know it's completely unsustainable."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I couldn't tell them anything. For 2000 years, they were digital bits in the Curator's mainframe. And so was I, except when the Curator wished it, I was conscious and aware of all that was going on." The old man looked away. "He picked me out of them all, he said he wanted to digitize other worlds, other peoples, and experiment on them to his heart's content, but he needed sentients inside the programs to be his agents. Not only were my people going to become his toys, his pawns, but our enslavement was going to be the gateway to the enslavement of billions more." Running his hands through scraggly white hair, he said, "He showed me things, terrible things, that he had in his memory banks; plagues and monsters and devils, that he wanted to introduce to Tronik. I lied to him as long as I could, I pled for more time, asked to see more data, until finally..." A faint, faint smile crossed his lips. "The Curator caught something. Not just an alien: a super-alien. He took the Centurion to his homeworld and tried to use him to digitize Earth as Tronik had been dignitized. But the Centurion could do things I couldn't. Be something, I couldn't. I managed to upload myself into Tronik's program just before the Centurion tore the hard data away. And I was waiting here, when he came to see us, to tell him what had happened to us, and what we had once been."

Pulling out of his ramble, he seemed to force himself to answer Miss A's question. "I can't...I can't face them. To be a computer program, to have been a man and to know I am now just a toy for programmers to manipulate at their will...I couldn't tell my people what I'd done to them! They don't even think I'm alive, I couldn't face them as their hero knowing I was their ultimate betrayer! How can we hope to be worth anything when we're nothing but computer programs in a lab?"

[Fox]

"And ultimate savior," Dragonfly pointed out, tilting her head. "Sort of. Made a...phrase...'deal with the devil' but didn't have many alternatives. Was risky, maybe foolish depending on information you had at the time. Had very low odds of working out in your favor - but still did work out in your favor." She frowned, gesturing at their surroundings. "Technically saved the lives - or minds - of millions of people. Luck-based success is still luck."

She tilted her head back the other way, looking grimly amused as a thought occurred to her. "Didn't make the good choice - but seem to have made the right one?"

[Electra]

"Thinking of yourself as nothing but a computer program is self-defeating anyway," Miss A pointed out. "So what if you're a collection of data now and you live in a hard drive that sits on a table? Is that functionally really so different from being a collection of carbon chains and water molecules that was about to be shamelessly manipulated by a sun going nova? It's the consciousness that matters more than the vehicle. If that didn't matter, I certainly wouldn't have put in the hundreds of hours required to get Sharl up and running again, adapted to our world, and then bring him back here because it's where he wanted to be. Now what sort of control do you have over this place?" she asked, impatient to move on to other things.

[Avenger Assembled]

"I have full administrator access," replied Leroj. "I can rewrite any part of it I wish, though I have learned from bitter experience that I must be careful. I am a man, not a computer, and a programming error would be...has been disastrous. I live in fear of making a mistake I cannot repair, or of making the growing disasters all around here even worse. I know about the problems you've mentioned and I've done my best to correct them, but I'm alone and there are so many of them these days, I..." He rubbed his eyes again. "My own program is one I cannot change; I am not part of the Tronik software package itself. I can only be awake so long, and work so hard. But never mind me. You have more memory for the system? How is this possible? The Centurion told me that the mainframe running the Tronik program was more advanced than any on his home world, and impossible for your science to improve on."

[Fox]

Dragonfly snorted, rolling her eyes. "Then, maybe. Phrase...'science marches on'. Besides. We're...a little more advanced than most." She paused, and gestured at Miss Americana, correcting herself: "Mostly her. Not that I'm not very good, but have to admit that she's better and this project was largely her. Likely can't fix your problems overnight, but plan is to try to keep Tronik from...collapse, or catastrophe. And improve from there as we're able."

Her head tilted back the other way, yet again, and she looked thoughtful. "Experienced administrator would certainly be helpful, if you're able. Likely know the system better than either of us."

[Electra]

"It's been twenty-five years," Miss A agreed. "And Dragonfly and myself are both skilled technopaths, that's how we're here at all. We have access to many resources and skill that the Centurion didn't back when you met with him. He laid the foundation, which we are more than capable of building on. Your help would be extremely valuable in that effort." She looked around at the room, then wished the walls clear so they could see the city looming around them. "We don't believe Tronik is sustainable on its current growth axis. Getting your input into what needs to be done to fix it with the least damage and trauma would go a long way towards making you the hero you wanted to be all along."

[Avenger Assembled]

Leroj did his best to help, but it wasn't easy. The computer architecture with which he was familiar was very different than what Miss Americana and Dragonfly had worked with: as they'd seen, computers on Tronik were substantially different than their earthly varieties. But he wasn't just a teenager like Sharl, he was, or had been, one of the city's leading scientists, and of course he was talking to two women who were vast geniuses in their own right. His ideas for improving Tronik's systems were largely internal: he proposed that the new memory capacity be used to generate a 'habitat' to be discovered in the ocean by the plankton fleet; perhaps a crashed 'alien' starship or an undiscovered island. A largely empty, if habitable environment, would be the subject of much study, and then gradually colonized as population pressures in the city grew. In particular, an island that lacked the mass of complex 'technology' on Tronik itself would be much easier to build. "It will be a mystery to solve...but from what you've said, my people are more interested in those mysteries than I've believed." He was open to suggestions, though, and looked almost pathetically grateful for new ideas. He'd been without an ally or confidant here for a long, long time.

[Fox]

"Crashed ship might delay colonization," Dragonfly noted. She wasn't typically the one to point out social factors, but she'd seen a lot of curious or unsettling behavior today. "But...not without compensation. Mmh. Would be a very easy way to introduce new tools or technology that might solve other problems; local authorities would want to investigate thoroughly before allowing too many citizens, but it would at least support military, officials, scientists, possibly their families in the meantime."

Her brain, being her brain, was already sketching out a crashed alien 'city'; she was pretty sure she'd seen some television show along those lines. But she frowned and shook her head, trying to ignore it until others had weighed in.

[Electra]

"Crashed alien ship," Miss A mused, "or perhaps the remains of an ancient civilization. Sharl indicated that the citizens of Tronik believe that they relocated to a new planet, away from the supernova. It shouldn't be too hard to mock up a recently uncovered island with certain advanced artifacts. For extra authenticity, we could rig a few harmless temblors, some storms in the upper atmosphere. It would help to take attention away from the work we're doing, and provide a plausible pretext for raising an island from the sea."

She tapped her fingers against her lips thoughtfully. "First, though, we need to get the worst of the errors fixed up, before any more lives are lost. It'll take a minimal memory reallocation to stabilize the city as it is, then we can add the extra as needed to facilitate the rebuilding. How many major error sites have you pinpointed?"

[Avenger Assembled]

The three computer experts spent quite some time talking about the problems of Tronik, taking the time out to straighten up the inverted super-freighter as they worked. With Leroj's help, what might have been the work of hours was only going to take a few minutes: they'd have Tronik straightened out and have plenty of time to join Sharl's family for supper before leaving him in his home. The old man was incredibly grateful to have someone with which to share his burdens, and full of the ideas he'd been powerless to act on for the decades of Tronik's confinement. Just as they were making their plans to integrate the expanded memory into Tronik, which would then be followed up by the creation of the 'island' there, suddenly Leroj's head jerked up. "Oh no! I've been so focused on the allocation that I missed-" And then the others felt it too, just a step behind the man with a permanent connection to the program: something was going wrong.

He pulled up an image in the 'air' to show them the ongoing disaster: a large hoverbus, big as a jet back on Freedom City, was heading towards the massive silver bulk of a sector, and heading there fast. "There's a microfault in the programming of the engines, but it's spreading fast. If it strikes thewall, it'll spread directly into Sector 30 and the hundreds of thousand of people there. Oh no, oh no..." Suddenly, on the screen, the situation changed: a black dot, rapidly resolving into a humanoid figure, flew straight out of the sector wall and made a beeline for the out-of-control hoverbus!

[Fox]

Dragonfly raised an eyebrow as the black dot hurled toward the hoverbus, stopping in the middle of a gesture that was fairly reminiscent of her teleporting back in Freedom City. "Mmh. Forgot he was here for a moment. Still."

She finished the gesture, feeding a little code into the physics of the simulation, and a large ghostly platform formed under their feet. The trio stopped being here and started being over there, platform and all, suspended in the air not too far from the action. "Much easier without having to worry about power drain and spatial stability," Dragonfly noted with no small pride, turning ghost-like again. "Fixing earlier errors was good insight into the physics engine. Mmh - are...probably impossible to see while on the platform, but would recommend more personal invisibility if you can. Much harder to mask three people and keep the sky from distorting."

[Electra]

Miss A pursed her lips till they whitened as she watched the situation unfolding overhead. Her fingers curled and uncurled, catching invisibly in the code of the world around them, ready to intervene at an instant's notice. "He should be able to handle this," she murmured, "he's got the right idea,the physics should work. We'll let him try anyway, it's what he wants to do most..." Even so, it was very hard to stand by and watch her "sidekick" as he faced down the hoverbus on his own.

[Avenger Assembled]

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! The chimes were everywhere, violently interrupting the Tulink family reunion and Sharl's fantastic tales of another dimension. The face of the city's auto-militia came on the wallscreens as the exterior walls blanked to transparent, showing the citizens the disaster coming their way. AIRBUS COLLISION IMMINENT. PLEASE EVACUATE- "Oh no!" called Sharl over the sound of the alarms, "they'll never get the building empty in time!" His parents and sister, all looking at each other, knew that was much was true.

"Sharl, your friends," said Aba, "can you call them? If they can change so much, can they catch it?" There was no point in running; they were waiting for the emergency elevator to form up on their floor so they could get away.

"I...no," said Sharl decisively, "I'll never reach them in time. They're too far away. This is a job for me." And with that, the teenager took a running start and flying leap and flew right out the window. He was fast in the air, very fast, much more so than he'd been in Freedom City. He thought of Miss Americana, Gina, the other heroes of the city, as he turned and buried his shoulders in the onrushing plane. So heavy, so heavy, so heavy... He pushed as hard as he could, feeling the tremendous mass at his back slow and slow, even as the huge wall of the sector before him got closer and closer. Stronger here, so much stronger, got to catch it, got to BELIEVE in myself! Do what Miss A would do! And with that thought and one last outpouring of tremendous energy, the bus slowed to a stop behind him! He caught it before it could start to fall, his muscles screaming with the exertion, and began to lower it to the walkways far below, heedless of the city of cameras all watching their savior with electronic eyes...

[Fox]

Dragonfly made an approving noise, relaxing a bit as the airbus started its controlled fall toward level ground. "Impressive," she complimented, "him - and you. Modifications held up under pressure. Probably going to draw a lot of attention, though."

The engineer glanced at the code around her, taking a mental step back to see things in their more abstract, program-filled nature; her eyes darted around as she took stock of observing entities and cameras. "More than it already has, anyway. Very dramatic. Likely a very good first impression."

[Electra]

Miss A released the breath she'd been holding and relaxed her hands, smiling as Sharl began lowering the hoverbus to a safe landing spot. "Good work, Sharl," she murmured under her breath. "But you're right," she told Dragonfly, "that's going to attract a lot of attention, and he's not used to needing a secret identity. Now's probably a good time to give him a hand." She lifted into the air herself, smoothly as she did in Freedom City, and flew to where Sharl was just setting down the bus. Settling a hand on his shoulder, she made him invisible as well, causing the world around them to go just a bit gauzy. "Nicely done," she told him. "But now might be the time for a graceful retreat, before your face and family are plastered all over the city."

[Avenger Assembled]

With his glasses and coat on, Sharl looked as anonymous as any other citizen on the street, but he didn't object to what was going on. "Yeah, I guess we'd better do that," he said, still a little breathless after his spectacular catch. Behind them Leroj was repairing the damage to the bus as the shocked people inside made a hasty evacuation onto the pedestrian walkway where Sharl had deposited them. "I can't believe I caught that whole thing," he said, looking back at the bus in shock. "It's so big!" He caught sight of Leroj, a question on his face, and the Tronik sysadmin introduced himself. When he learned that this was the man who'd called the Curator to save the city, Sharl hesitated just a moment, then shook his hand in a very Freedom City way. "Good to know I'm not alone here." And with that damage repaired, they were up in the air again!

[Fox]

"Good job," Dragonfly distractedly - but honestly - observed, floating ghost-like in the air and working on....something. To Leroj and Miss Americana it probably looked like just a small and unrefined mass of code for some semi-autonomous process; to Sharl it probably looked like nothing at all, bits of motion and tiny disturbances in the air feeding into something invisible as Dragonfly frowned over two-dimensional windows she'd literally pulled out of nowhere. "Very good first impression to make, though good to stay anonymous for now. Monsters and threats don't save buses. Less likely to hunt you down as a threat now."

[Electra]

Miss A took a couple extra minutes looking at the coding for the hoverbus, giving Dragonfly time to take care of her project and Sharl and Leroj time to talk. As she'd expected, over the years enough extraneous machinery had been stripped from the buses to ensure that if they had ever been workable in a normal-physics environment, they certainly were not anymore. Still, they worked in Tronik, and that was what mattered. It was kind of nice, she thought privately, being able to walk around in a city completely unseen, neither admired nor reviled. She might have to work on a project for that when she got home.

[Avenger Assembled]

Tempted as Sharl was to rejoin his family, he stuck by the others as they finished repairing the city, all of them invisible and insubstantial to the gathering crowd of shocked people below. He was vaguely conscious that everyone down there was talking about him, or at least that "flying citizen!" who had caught the falling bus, but he was mostly focused on the work and the reality of repairing the city. When they were done, his family would be safe, his city would be safe, and he even (he mused as he studied the older gentleman who was showing him segments of particular Tronik code) would have someone around who knew the truth about the city. But, of course, when they were done, for all that he'd be back in the fifty millions of Tronik, and back with his family to boot, in many ways he'd be very much alone.

Eventually, as the darkness of Tronik's night settled overhead and as Miss A and Dragonfly began to feel some of the fatigue of their physical bodies leaking through, the coding was finally done: though more work would have to be done to get the habitat itself coded in, the extra memory would be there: no more outbreaks of bad programming if they kept at their repairs, and with the prospect of reasonable expansion as the years went by. The job was done.

[Fox]

Even balancing her own project and helping Miss Americana and Leroj, Dragonfly's mystery project was barely done by the time she could feel her tiredness really set in; even her projection was starting to look tired, as if it was thinner or less substantial, as she put in the final touches and a few little bug checks. Still, she looked pretty pleased with herself as she told the collection of programs and threads to run itself.

When the code pulled itself together it looked for all the world like a big furry puffball, oblong and maybe half a foot across: it had four stubby little legs that barely poked out of its fluff, a long tail, and four thin antennae arching back above two little iridescent eyes. It even opened its mouth (full of pointy, pointy teeth) and made a cute little purring chirp as she gave it a pet and shooed it off toward Leroj, zipping winglessly through the air in little happy swooping motions. She gave it a little time to settle down before even trying to cut in.

"Gift. Know what it's like to spend too much time alone," she explained, a little awkwardly, watching the little thing dance through the air and explore its surroundings. "Not to mention, maintenance workload probably isn't kind, even with our fixes and new memory in place. Thought you could use some help. And...company. Borrowed a little code from living things here, improved on an old design from when I was very young: it isn't very smart, yet - didn't have time - but it learns quickly. Won't do anything you don't tell it to, can carry patches to where you want them to go, and isn't visible or tangible to others unless you tell it to be. Can split it for more help - very light-weight process, and they share information and orders. At very least, can help keep an eye on things while you rest. At best, can give them write access and basic instructions to fix minor errors while you deal with bigger issues."

She yawned, but still looked happy with herself, for all that she'd hadn't quite been able to make it from scratch. "Can call them whatever you want. I call them sylphs."

[Electra]

Miss A stepped over to Leroj to get a better look at the sylph, looking past the fluffy exterior and into what was making the goofy little thing tick. "Interesting," she said, "and elegant on the inside. These should come in handy for basic maintenance projects." She looked to the darkening sky and stifled a yawn. Far away, her body was sore, tired and hungry, things that were becoming harder to ignore. "Looks like it's about time for us to go. You have the communicator I made you, right Sharl? You can call anytime."

[Avenger Assembled]

He demonstrated that he did so by taking out the Tronik-styled 'cellphone' Gina had programmed for him, one that had a direct line to Gina's computer systems. "I won't leave home without it," he promised her. "I'll keep it close at hand." said Sharl, who was too much the teenage boy to give in to the tears he wanted to shed. Instead he hugged Miss A, giving her a searching look. "I'll call you if anything ever comes up," he promised. "Or if, you know...I just need to talk. It's not going to be easy being the only superhero here...but at least I had a really good teacher." He smiled bravely. "Thank you for being my friend, Miss Americana. Thank you for making me who I am today."

For his part, Leroj was startled, then amused by the little sylph. "Well, hello there!" he said, automatically petting the little thing as if it was a cat. "You're quite friendly, aren't you?" He hmmed, and studied the code himself, experimenting with a brief cloning that turned into two identical little sylphs, both sitting on his shoulders and making a noise that sounded distinctly like purring. "Yes, I think I can..." One of them butted his cheek, and he resumed scratching it. "Yes, I think I can come up with a working relationship with these. Thank you," he added to Dragonfly, then to the others. "All of you. After lifetimes alone, now I know I'm not anymore...and neither are our people."

[Fox]

Dragonfly scratched at her neck, where she - the real her, not the ghostly, floating her surrounded by hard-light constructs - had been developing an itch over the course of the day's work. "Happy to help. Very...interesting project. And no major disasters, out of control bus aside, which helps. Didn't almost die or anything, so turned out well." She made herself stop trying to scratch an itch that wasn't coming from this body. "Don't...know how often I'll be able to help out after this. Likely to see more of Sharl and Miss Americana than me. Still. Will help when I can, when asked or allowed."