[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I try to post new chapters about every two weeks, and the next one is planned for around July 10th.]

Previous: Chapter 23

…and the instability (equation 72) should grow until the resulting energy release destroys the portal. It does not, however, because of an interaction between the stabilizing effect and the interference patterns between the Discrete Fields from the separate universes in the zone where they overlap (equation 73). This effect (see equation 4), though not yet well understood theoretically, has been empirically measured to be at least twice as strong as background in every such zone checked so far, implying a direct relationship to the field overlap.

Doc looked away from the display for a moment to think. Ashil’s ‘stabilizing effect’, theoretically well understood or not, came from the quantum level basis for what he had always thought of as the virtual time travel flux–which underlay magic and much else that was extraordinary. It seemed to be what made portals possible, too.

And Ashil’s descriptions of why recreating a portal to return home from wherever you’d traveled to worked, and how to reopen an old persistent portal even if you didn’t have the original data, were beautifully elegant. Doc had managed to do that, a few times, but he’d never really understood it. Ashil had made it rigorous. It was brilliant work.

But, apart from that, how did you aim? Starting from Earth, how did you portal jump to star X? Or to be more precise, the equivalent of star X in a universe similar enough to yours to be indistinguishable at interstellar distances? There were so many free or unknown parameters… Every theory used by the Grs'thnk portal explorers had been wrong. They’d wondered why so few of their probes had come back. Doc wondered why any of them had. The odds were trillions to one or worse against it happening by chance.

The only people who ever managed new portals on Earth were magicians, who could cheat the odds. And Golden Valkyrie, who could see what future would result, if she opened a particular portal–and only open it if she approved. Which was another way to cheat.

Doc snorted to himself. Maybe all the old Grs'thnk portal explorers had been magicians; they were notorious enough for being unstable and drifting off into mysticism that it was a Grs'thnk cliche, like the 'absent minded scientist’ was for humans.

“Your bacon is getting cold. Ashil’s work?”

He looked up. Stella smiled and sat down across from him in the breakfast nook, cradling her coffee cup like it contained the Elixir of Life. A near-silent hoverbot had already delivered her breakfast. Though it was past noon by now.

Doc returned his attention to his breakfast long enough to take a bite. "Yes. I indulged myself–I wanted to start the day with something pleasant. I didn’t expect you to sleep so late,“ he said while chewing.

"Needed it. Yesterday ran late, and I spent most of it in multiple split-attention conversations. DASI helps, but they’re still draining.”

“With Auditors, yet. Zirjack joked to me once that their main job is to be exhaustingly annoying all the time, so that everyone is used to it when they really need to be.”

Stella took a sip of coffee. "That’s a little unfair. They preserve social trust by keeping watch on its foundations. They’ve established definitive identity and communication protocols for DASI, Black Swan, and me; verified to the limits of their ability that DASI and Black Swan are both what they claim to be, and that I can, in principle, audit both of them according to Grs'thnk standards; and that all of us can at least simulate rationality, goodwill, and ability to compromise. That’s big.

“And I learned something telling. They’re very twitchy about AGI, and I expected them to react poorly to finding out that DASI used probability manipulation mediated by Grs'thnk quantum processors to kick off her most recent round of self-improvement. Instead, several of them were relieved. But I don’t think they know I can read them that well yet.”

“Oh ho,” said Doc. "I can think of several reasons for that. But I’ll bet they pulled some AI experts from other projects, and they were worried about what might be happening back home. If the quickest way to DASI’s level requires magic, it means they have more time. Or at least, believe they do.“

Stella smiled wryly. "Yes, that’s what DASI thinks, too.”

“Well anyway, I’m glad you got your rest. We’re probably looking at another long day.”

Her smile faded. "One way or another. What did you discuss with Elder Trig, apart from his model skepticism?“

"History. War, famine, pestilence, and death. Superheroes as anti-Horsemen. And what happens when we stop, or get interrupted.”

“Fun.”

“Actually, it was. He’s mastered idiomatic English and human body language better than any other Grs'thnk I’ve met. I found him interesting and entertaining–he’s made a living as a stand up comic, specializing in linguistic humor and imitations. And at 127, he has a perspective that is a little different from most of the rest of the mission. For instance, he knows quite a bit about refugee camps, because he ran one for five years, that started with 150 people and ended with 6 million.”

Stella raised an eyebrow. "That’s not a refugee camp, that’s a city.“

"It is now. There’s still a neighborhood named after him. Former refugees elected him as a write-in after his country changed to at-large representation, and that’s how he ended up in high-level politics. He’s not really a Technotraditionalist, he says, but they can’t get rid of him because of a loophole in their leadership seniority rules. He’s quite a character.”

Doc paused to take a drink of his own coffee, then continued. "Talking is all he can do, officially. But it’s very useful talking.“

"I’m inclined to agree. His complaint about the aid mission’s sociopolitical models working 'too well’ was dead on. Your models have a similar problem, and DASI has been warning you about them for a while–I’ve had her building new ones all night.”

Doc frowned. "I know the domain of validity boundaries are fuzzy, and parts are ad hoc. But Stella–they work. I’ve stopped wars with them. And the ultimate test for any model is how well it predicts.“

"Indeed. But they only seem to work well. You rarely use them except while trying to restore the status quo, either explicitly, or by moving toward the implicit future status quo from the background of your nightmares. Because that’s the lowest risk way to defuse an immediate crisis.”

“So? That’s only a problem if something else major is driving the status quo that I don’t include. Is there?”

“Oh, yes. You allowed for the effects of probability manipulation making things more difficult. But not for it helping. Which was reasonable when you made them, because you’d already noticed the way the long-term struggle between the Wanderer and Golden Valkyrie made a hash of your attempts to refine Bayesian models that included magic. You just didn’t know the cause. That’s over now, but you’ve never revisited your models.”

“Mm.” Doc sighed. "Never enough time. How bad is it?“

"I’m not sure yet, DASI’s still working–that’s why she’s been so quiet. But that overlaps with another problem. Tabula Rasa.”

“Yes, having him loose is–”

“Do you really think his current situation, if he’s still alive, can reasonably be described as 'loose’?”

Doc stared down at the last bit of breakfast on his plate for a moment, then pushed it aside, no longer hungry. "No. No, I don’t.“

"So how would you control him, if you were an ethics-free NIA black program director?”

“Neurotoxin implant with a mechanical deadman switch, on a short timer, continuously reset by non-repeating codes from a wireless remote or set of remotes. If he erases or alters anything he dies. And, of course, let him know that. Something like what the NIA used on those poor bastards in their 'Superagent’ program during the Lost Years.”

Stella nodded slowly. "That’s more or less what the head of NIA Special Projects planned for me, if the kidnapping had worked. Which is why Yiskah and I strongly suggested he trigger his suicide pack and make such a mess of his office. And my personal hunch is that he was the main conduit between whatever deep-cover group has Tabula Rasa and the rest of the NIA.“

Doc leaned back in his chair. "So you took a chunk out of an already shaky link–shaky because they have to be using a no-electronics, personal contact only, cell-based organization, to hide under cover of some other black program. Or DASI would already have found them.”

“Yes. And it’s worked, for at least three years and probably much longer. They did hide from you. So how does that affect the politics?”

“Oh, hell. The culture of deniability. Don’t tell the president, to protect him. No oversight at all. The probability of stupid black-ops tricks goes way up. And there haven’t been any obvious consequences of the assassination attempt on Flicker yet. So they’ll think they’re still in the clear. Joy.”

“It’s mostly my problem now, but I’m holding off on detailed plans until I have better models. It is something to keep in mind when you talk to the Grs'thnk. I strongly suspect I’ll be busy with something else today.”

*****

Flicker glared at the display of the laptop. “Damn it, DASI, there is no justification for blocking this.”

DASI’s avatar looked back calmly. "I’m very sorry Flicker, but I am afraid there is.“

"Donner is right here, this only concerns him, and he told you he doesn’t mind me hearing, too. Do I have to leave anyway? Will you answer his questions if I do? I don’t need to know, but he does.”

“Flicker…” Donner’s voice came from behind her. He wasn’t putting any special power into it, but it was still soothing. She refused to be soothed.

She turned around. "There’s no reason for a block under DASI’s privacy protocols–I know very well because I helped design this part of them. This is–“

"Flicker, don’t… just don’t sweat it, okay?” He opened his arms.

She crossed hers. "I’m fine! I don’t need calming!“

"I do.”

She stared at him for a moment, “Sorry.”

“S'okay. You were just trying to help. And I’m pretty sure I know what the problem is.” He raised his voice slightly and spoke past her to the laptop. "DASI?“

"Yes?”

“Is there something specific I can do to remove this block?”

“There is.”

“Like, maybe, having the private chat with Dr. Stella Reinhart she’s wanted for the last few months?”

“Yes.”

Flicker turned around again. "Now that’s not fair. Yiskah told me he’d agreed to talk to her, then Stella said no.“

"Yiskah has the relevant memories,” said DASI, “but cannot assume moral responsibility for acts before her instantiation, as long as Stella lives.”

“But that’s–”

“Flicker, just let it go,” said Donner. "Thanks, DASI.“

"You’re welcome,” she said, and the screen went dark.

Flicker used a few of her high-speed calming tricks to take the edge off her outrage while she waited for Donner to sit back down on the couch, then picked up her soda and joined him. She could tell he was still upset–but not at her, there wasn’t anything she could do about it, and he was pretending not to be as part of his own calming methods.

She moved into his lap, tucked her legs under her and leaned her head against his chest.

“Sorry,” he said. "Didn’t mean to make your stomach ache worse when you’re still recovering from your flying lesson.“

"You didn’t,” she said, accepting the change of subject. "It’s not from stress.“

"Oh?”

“It’s from an interaction between physics and biology that’s a little gross, but I can tell you about it anyway if you want to know.”

“It can’t be worse than recording contract negotiations,” said Donner. "I’m all ears.“

"Do you know what Casimir radiation is?”

“No clue.”

“Um. Okay, if I push too hard, or close to my limit and I’m even a little sloppy about getting everything balanced right, I radiate. And for complicated reasons, that starts from my center of mass. My high speed nervous system only connects to my body’s cells–and there aren’t any at my center of mass, because it’s in my digestive tract. So it can take me a little bit to notice.”

“A little bit.” She could hear the grin in his voice.

“Yeah. A hundred picoseconds or so. Which is enough time to transfer plenty of energy to turn whatever I had for breakfast into plasma.”

“Ouch.”

“Oh, that’s not a direct problem, because if I’m accelerating that hard I’m already clamped down, and I can entropy dump soon enough. The organic goo left after it cools down doesn’t have much in the way of food value, but the real problem is that it kills off my gut flora. And I have supplements to put them back, but that takes a biology-scale 'little bit’, and I can’t digest very well in the meantime.”

She took a drink of her soda. "And that happened this morning, so it’s simple sugars only for a while longer, even though I’m hungry and cranky. Alcohol works too, but has its own problems. I should be okay to eat by dinner time.“

"Anything I can do to ease things?”

“You’re already doing it.”

Flicker adjusted her position slightly, then relaxed. Helping her really did seem to help him, too. Osk had said that was a very common trait for healers.

“How did things go with Osk? She didn’t give me many details.”

“Oh, they went fine, after I managed to pull my head out of my butt.” Donner laughed. "The same thing happened as in Tokyo–strong, widely different reactions from everyone who heard, because she’s inexperienced with humans and doesn’t shape crowd convergence. And I overreacted, because I wasn’t immune. She seemed a little disappointed that I didn’t actually want to spar by voice, but that’s way too dangerous.“

"How is Wendy?”

“She’s fine. Still a little pissed at me, but that’s nothing new. Ernie is feeling stupid because he turned the headphone gain down too far based on his own reaction–but Osk was using direct empathic projection as well as singing, and his filters don’t do squat for that. So it wasn’t necessary and didn’t help.”

“Why did she do that?”

“Because that’s what she did in Tokyo, and I asked her to sing the same way, with the same intensity, as she had the first time, so I’d know for sure what happened. All my fault.” He laughed again. "We talked shop for a while after we straightened things out. Our strengths are a little different. I’m better with crowds, she’s better on defense, and with a single target.“

Donner put an arm around her. "If she tells someone to 'Stop, drop and roll’, they will. Even if they’re on fire. Which is kinda the point.”

“Did the mythological stuff bother you?”

“Nah. I chose my stage name when I was thirteen and never looked back. But I’m not about to pick up a hammer and start smacking people, so it’s just about power flows and dealing with a new kind of fan. I’ve had worse.”

Flicker was silent for a moment, thinking about some of the 'worse’. "I know I’m sensitive about family stuff,“ she said softly. "But Stella should not be able to block knowing about your own family from you, whether you talk to her or not.”

“You’re not going to leave off, are you?” Donner sighed. "How much did you dig out on my family when you were doing your research?“

"Nothing direct or original. Doc has you marked as 'family off-limits’, like all the superheroes who lived through the Lost Years, and all the public stuff has active disinformation in it–some of it put there by Doc. So I just pulled the Database copies of your CBI, NIA, and FSA files, for all they were worth.”

Donner snorted. "Do they have any idea you use them like a library?“

"A library mostly filled with paranoid misinterpretations of facts that are true, sober assessments of facts that are wrong, bad fantasies constructed from hearsay, and obtusely archived data chunks that no human has ever looked at? Yeah, they do. But that’s buried in the paranoid misinterpretation section, so hardly anyone reads it.”

“Heh. So what did you find?”

“Lots about you, very little about your family. Your mother and her husband were members of a Protestant religious sect and seemed to take it very seriously, which led to a lot of conflict when you were growing up. He was listed as the father on your birth certificate, but there was plenty of anecdotal evidence that no one really believed that.”

“They got that part right,” said Donner.

“…and there was also plenty of evidence, not all of it anecdotal, that he abused her. But no one ever filed charges, or even a complaint.”

“They got that right, too,” said Donner, more softly.

“You ran away from home at twelve. She died of a prescription painkiller overdose a year later, and he died in an auto accident involving alcohol a year after that. And that’s it. Except for a huge pile of speculation about who or what your real father was, all of it in the 'paranoid misinterpretation’ and 'bad fantasy’ sections, with no hard evidence at all.

"Oh, and there were a few comments from your school records. Most of your teachers disliked you, but they disliked your step-father more. I remember those because I spent a while wondering why you got a better grade in physics than music.”

“Music teacher was a prick. Physics teacher wasn’t–he taught me about resonance.”

“Oh. Anyway, there was nothing else in the Database that I could access at the time. I was almost certain your father wasn’t human, or wasn’t completely human, but why speculate when I could study you directly? I did hope that it might make you more understanding of my own family uncertainty.”

Flicker leaned her head back to look up at his face. "And it sure seemed to. You never wanted to talk about it, but that didn’t bother me, because I only cared about you. But if there’s anything about him in the Database you want to know, that’s different.“

"Well, Osk got me thinking about a few things, so I asked DASI. I didn’t expect you to go ballistic when I told you about the block.”

“Stella has always been my friend,” Flicker said slowly. "But she doesn’t act much like it, anymore. Yiskah does, so I know it’s not just me. And I could override that block if I hadn’t agreed to the new security restrictions.“

"It’s all right,” said Donner. "I’m pretty damned sure of one thing, now, that was just a guess before. Might as well tell you so you’ll quit obsessing about it.“

"Okay.”

“I always kind of wanted to see if I could track down my real father–no matter what kind of person he was–just to know. Which I’m sure you can understand.”

“Yeah.”

“I knew a few things nobody else did–what he looked like, and some quirks and habits. My mother really didn’t want to tell me because of this redemption religious mold she kept trying to force me into. But when my voice started to change, I said I had a right to know, and put all the power I could manage into it, and she told me.”

He paused. "Then she told me, with absolute conviction, that I was the spawn of the Devil, irredeemably evil, and was going to go to hell forever. I was ten.

“We never really got along.”

Flicker thought of about fifty questions, and didn’t ask any of them.

“I first seriously tried to find him when I was fifteen,” said Donner. "The only thing I managed to verify was that someone who looked like him still seemed to be somewhere in this country, but he moved around a lot, and was good at just disappearing, so finding him was going to take way more legwork then I had time for.

“Then I got distracted by my career taking off, and after the assassination attempts, I wasn’t sure it was all that bright an idea to try to find him. But by the time I was twenty-three, I had a lot of money, so I hired Gumshoe.”

“I remember him!” said Flicker, brightening. "Not well, but he found me. He was investigating corruption in a whole string of orphanages that were really dumping grounds for unwanted mentally disabled children. He called V-man after the orphanage director tried to use hostages and I made his head explode. I wish Gumshoe hadn’t died so soon after that, I wanted to thank him after I learned how to talk. And I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.“

"It’s okay. He was pretty old and cynical, and drove like people were shooting at him all the time, but boy could he dig. And he was willing to take my money.

"And he found my father.”

Donner took a long breath. "Who was dead, and had been for about two months. Someone had blown his head off with gelignite, but the coroner wasn’t able to tell if that happened before or after he died. And there was no shortage of suspects, because, as I’d kind of suspected, he was a serial rapist. But whoever did it was careful, there were no leads, and nobody missed him, so that was that.“

"Did… Did he have a voice like yours?”

“Nobody he’d ever talked to wanted to talk about him at all, so he had something. Gumshoe said it seemed more like fear and superstition. So he was probably 'just’ an incubus. But I don’t know. There were a lot of things that I had to give up on ever learning.”

Donner’s voice grew distant. "But maybe I can still learn a few of them. And if I’d tracked him down myself, and used my voice to get him to talk, I’d have had to decide what to do with him afterwards. He was never going to be convicted of anything–he was good enough at appearing human, and mind control can totally break the justice system.

“I’ve never killed anyone, and I’ve never really wanted to. So if you look at it from that angle, Dr. Reinhart probably did me a favor.”

He pulled out his phone and stared at it for a moment, and Flicker held her breath. Finally he tapped it and held it to his ear.

“Hey, DASI”, he said. "Can you leave a message for Dr. Reinhart? I’d like to–

“Uh, hello. I know you’re seriously busy, but–

"Well, I can be ready in an hour, but I don’t expect–”

Donner paused to listen. "Up on the west side, the part that burned during the fleet battle? Yeah, I’ve been there on my bike.“

"Yeah. Listen, you’ve got Lizards and prisoners and starships to worry about, so you don’t have to drop–”

He listened for a while more. "No, that makes sense.“

He snorted suddenly. "Well, Old Highlands Single Malt 1926 is… Wait. That fast? I was joking, I’ve never actually…”

“Of course he did. Guess we’ll find out together, then.”

“Listen, if we’re going to be… yeah, that works. Yeah. Yeah.”

Donner took a deep breath. "Well, I’ll see you in a couple of hours, I guess. Bye.“

He put his phone back in his pocket. "Well. I expect you’ve got a few questions.”

“Not really,” said Flicker carefully. "You’re going somewhere private to meet Stella.“

Donner nodded. "And drink. And talk about family.”



Next: Chapter 25

