A Fistful of Nanites - Hello World
Apr. 7th, 2021 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsBetween Marie-Ange's text and her very familiar connection to Doug, Emma checks in on her Knight even as she's heading to the Blackbird crash site.
Emma didn’t normally leave her shields quite so open, but this attack on the mansion was very diffuse and she was reaching out everywhere with her mind to try and identify the most urgent requirements. Which, currently, appeared to be the fact that Scott seemed to have decided he would crash the Blackbird. With himself in it. And not necessarily a very specific plan for not dying in the attempt that she’d yet been able to find in his thoughts.
Her path to the soon to be crash zone was interrupted, however, by the brush of not only a mind familiar, but a thought familiar. Familiar and frightened and resolute and tinged with a very specific dread.
~Mastermold? Really?~ she sent to Doug. ~My darling, what are you doing? You’re not feeding yourself to the nanites, are you?~
~It worked last time, didn't it?~ Doug was very aware that his logic was...thin at best. But this -felt- right in ways that he couldn't necessarily put words to. The reprise of a battle against a hostile technopath. Scattered bits of hints in Marie-Ange's readings, or even sometimes just snatches of casual conversation that only made sense when you had enough pieces to see the outline of things.
~Well, yes, but I did have rather a hand in making sure you stayed Doug that time,~ replied Emma. ~Do you have a plan that you’d care to elaborate? Beyond “it worked last time”.~
Doug's mental connection to Emma was deep and nuanced, the product of long experience with each other. The downside to that was that it was very hard for Doug to hide anything from Emma without shutting her out completely. ~You're not going to like it,~ he sent through the mental equivalent of pursed lips, clearly reluctant but also resigned. ~The nanites are keeping everything out of the secure areas, right? Well, they can't exactly keep themselves out...~
~So you’re using them as camouflage?~ mused Emma. ~It… carries risk, of course. Is there anyway that I can help? Put your mind in a box? Provide rousing moral support? Deliver painkillers and martinis when you’re on the recovery couch?~ She deposited a picture in Doug’s mind, of her wearing a wisp of something that might charitably be called a waitress uniform delivering a cartoonishly large martini to a prone Doug on a red velvet chaise lounge.
Doug's thoughts were amused. Emma adopted a submissive state like that for approximately no one. But she'd been deeper into his brain than anyone else, and this particular idle fantasy was certainly something drawn from his own subconscious. ~I never say no to painkillers or martinis,~ And while he enjoyed the thought of Emma in something frilly and brief, he locked it away much as she had all those years ago. ~As for the rest, I've given it a start...~ There was a sensation of a hallway, doors closed or closing. ~But a bit of assistance is always appreciated.~
~Then a bit of assistance shall be provided to my favourite Knight,~ replied Emma. ~And, to pretend to a modicum of modesty and humility that you of all people know is just a charade to cover my staggering ego, I am fairly certain that if there's anyone who knows the important bits of Doug that should be kept, it's his Queen.~ She sent another cartoonish image, her looking at a Doug dressed all in white and reaching her hand into his head and rummaging around, then drawing out shiny strands and popping them into an extremely stylish Dior handbag. ~Did that feel like an important bit?~ she asked as she popped another shiny strand into her bag.
It wasn't entirely clear who knew him better after all these years - Emma or Marie-Ange. Emma had been in the depths of his psyche, but Marie-Ange was the one who'd shared the casual intimacy of a dozen or more years as friends, lovers, teammates. Doug was grateful for the lighthearted tone Emma had struck, because the parallels to Mastermold were all too obvious, and he was not the person he had been then. This time he was older, wearier, and without any illusions about the likelihood of coming back from the very threshold of death's door after so many times flirting with it. But at the root of it all, this was who he was - doing the hard thing no matter the cost just because it needed to be done. And if there was even a small chance that he came out the other side of this, he knew that Emma and Marie-Ange would be the ones to put him back together.
~I mean, I can probably relearn all the words to Dragostea Din Tei if I have to,~ he sent back.
~Darling, I’ll learn the lyrics for you and put them back in your head in a box with a bow on it, once you are home safe,~ said Emma and finally shut the bag she was carrying. ~All your treasures put away for you. Now go, be brave and true and save the day like a true Knight should and come back after and regale your Queen with tales of your adventures.~ For a moment, Emma showed herself in her full regalia in a stand, with Doug in full armour on a white steed, offering her a favour at the end of his lance. Then for a moment she let herself be serious. ~Be safe,~ she whispered and pressed a psychic kiss to his brow.
~Thank you, Auntie Em,~ Doug sent down the closing connection. The door to the secure labs loomed in front of him, flecked with a writhing mass of gray and gold that swirled and surged.
-
Doug gains access to the secure engineering labs by way of the inert nanites he injected. And then things get...psychedelic. And existential. And there is a price to be paid to halt the creation of Fixer's new hardware.
The door to the secure labs loomed in front of him, flecked with a writhing mass of gray and gold that swirled and surged.
Doug grimaced as he took in the scene, leaning onto his cane. He had a perfectly rational fear of hive insects and malign artificial intelligences. Swarm behavior in general set his skin crawling, his power trying to make sense out of the alien and inhuman. And once again, he was staring into the abyss of his own deepest fears. Marie-Ange was right. He'd been healthy when he'd allowed Mastermold to consume him as a sort of Trojan Horse. His arm had been injured, but he'd been largely whole to defend the mansion against the technopath Parker Matthews had brought against them.
But this time...he was tired. Weary in a bone-deep way that was hard to put into words. He'd spent two and a half years fighting a rearguard action against the corruption inside his own body. And yet he kept going back to that edge, pushing himself further than he ought to. And someday he might not come back from it.
"He's already dead," Ellie said, narrowing her eyes. "How much more spoiler-y can it get?"
On the other hand...he had a kid. Maybe not of his own genetics, and maybe only in another universe (because they couldn't risk the paradox of looking to see if Eleanor Camacho existed in this one, or something), but he'd be damned if he'd let her lose another parent. So that meant he'd have to find a way to do this.
After all, Marie-Ange had said it had to be him. So he squared his shoulders and stepped toward the door.
The strange coating rippled as Doug stepped closer, revealing corroded and burned holes in the metal security door. The tang of smoke and burned metal crept from the lab, and the sound of metallic skittering, hundreds of thousands of microscopic nanites all moving in sync hushed the harsh signals of the emergency securty measures.
As Doug leaned in to examine them more closely, the nanites coating the door bubbled out into a thin strand along the floor. It curled and writhed, reaching Doug's cane. The swarm puddled around the wood, and then surged, jumping forward suddenly to coat his shoes and then wrap up his ankles and legs, pulling him forward.
A massive surge of panic gripped Doug along with the nanites, and he had to fight down the urge to pull back or do something even more violent. They didn't seem to be attacking him - there wasn't any pain as they moved up his legs and pulled him into the labs. More like they were...assessing. Examining. ~Probably due to the inert ones in my nervous system,~ he thought with relief that turned to panic at a follow-up thought.
~Oh crap, what if they reactivate the ones inside me?~
The labs were remarkably tidy, despite the buzzing of nanites, but warm and dry and cloudy with ash. On one of the benches, a skeletal frame lay, still inert. Clusters of nanites carried pieces of metal and clusters of wires over, and went blue hot, consuming their cargo. Doug could see one group carry a pair of phones towards the metal skeleton and then the entire group ignited. Almost immediatly another mass of nanites gathered up the melted metal and the burned nanites and a handspan of the body's arm grew less skeletal. more like metallic muscle fibers than bone.
~Well, I'm in. Now what?~
It was certainly a good thing that he'd left all of his tech with Marie-Ange in the medlab. He didn't fancy having a thousand tiny acetylene torches rifling through his pockets. This Fixer guy didn't necessarily seem like the sort to bother with little details like safety protocols. The report on the events in Alaska made him sound like he treated people just as disposably as everything else he used.
Doug glanced around the room, looking for anything that might help him put a stop to things. Maybe he could jury rig some kind of power overload, but could he do it without drawing attention from the nanites?
~What I wouldn't give for a frankenberrycat Forge right now...~
The metallic mass that had wrapped itself up Doug's legs crept under the hems of his jeans and slid up, faster than he had time to react, until it paused on the bandaged spot on his back. There was a moment of ice cold on his skin and then dozens of pinpricks, sharp and almost acidic.
Pain receptors lit up all through Doug's body, and the panic at worrying at just this potential outcome surged. Except he and Emma had re-compartmentalized things the same way they had during Apocalypse's takeover of New York. Those bonds were being tested by Doug's survival instinct, though, as the nanites pulled him closer to the center of the room.
The logic abruptly crystallized for Doug - the nanites inside him were inert, but they could likely be reclaimed, recycled. Of course the active ones would want to extract them from the container they had arrived in.
Only problem with that was that Doug was the container.
"No." His voice was firm. The urge to repeat it over and over was there, but likely counterproductive. He just had to hope the nanites could take audio input? ~NO,~ he added mentally, trying to somehow manifest the essence of a binary zero.
Nothing. There was no reply, none he could perceive, only the sensation of pins and needles down his legs and arms, and the steady but slow progress towards the lab bench where the unfinished metallic body lay.
"Non. Nein. Nyet. Nej." Doug kept attempting to pull his body backward. The heat washing off the metal started to hit him from the front, contrasting with the icy feel along his back and sides.
At first it was almost like pressure that ripple up his spine whenever he pulled away. Doug thought, or said no, and the nanites that coated his back rippled in reply. No. Ripple. No. Ripple. No.
~Query~
~Invalid input~
Invalid? How was 'no' invalid? It was just a simple logical inverse, for crying out loud! But as Doug paused to think about it more, he realized the dilemma. As a technopath, Fixer almost certainly directed the nanites via direct commands - 'go here', 'make this', and so on. How could these tiny things who were only ever told what to do be expected to understand the idea of 'no'?
But they could clearly communicate after some fashion, or he wouldn't have felt that ripple and been able to decode its meaning. So they were receiving input from him, even if they did not understand its meaning. How helpful that Jubilee had just come to him recently for help with learning how to code and hack. Not that the precise logic of programming was ever really off his mind.
~halt subroutine (movement)~ he thought, trying his best to direct it towards the source of that ripple.
~Host protocol not found~
~Command invalid~
~Permission denied~
Of course not. That would have been too easy. But Doug still had to start from the most logical starting point. Because if he hadn't, that would have wound up being the solution. Test the most likely responses first.
His brain dashed through all the various programming languages and constructs he could remember, all met by that same ~permission denied~ response. At the speed of thought, it was only a few seconds, as his body continued to inch forward. But it made sense, from the nanites' perspective - he could communicate with them, but he didn't have the power to control them the way Fixer did.
~just please don't kill me,~ an errant, plaintive thought escaped from behind the walls he and Emma had raised, as desperation started to well up against them.
~invalid request~
There was an echoing of replies, the ~invalid request~ repeating over and over, looping over on itself over the pinpricks of pain and pressure and tingling nerves along Doug's back.
The unabated progress towards the lab bench continued as the tingling nerves and pinpricks of pain blossomed into a persistent sensation of buzzing and stabbing pains up his spine and down both arms.
Then it ceased, and Doug sank to his knees at the release.
~invalid request~
~subroutine ceased~
~end state signal not found~
~end state signal not found~
~end state signal not found~
~query: locate end state signal~
End state? What end state? Trying to parse the nanites' communication from their native syntax to something he could respond to was difficult. More context would certainly be helpful, but he was used to having to deliver the moon on a stick yesterday. His mind spun - the nanites were expecting either response from active nanites, or no response from inactive ones, and so what was happening right now was an edge case they had not encountered.
~new state: techno-organic communication bridge~
~invalid request~
~state not active~
~hardware not found~
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Or in this case, programming and hardware. Because to Doug, this did kind of feel like he was attempting to teach a machine intelligence about philosophy.
~additional states required~
~query: Horatio~
~user not found~
~access denied~
A ripple of pressure ran up Doug's back, and he could see the copper and black of the nanites starting to peek out from under one of his shirt sleeves.
~access?~
~access?~
~access?~
~hello world~
The pulling towards the lab table began again, dragging him forward without letting Doug stand, until he was up against the table, arms braced against the metal.
~access?~
This was his nightmare. They were going to take him over. He was going to wind up as whatever-the-hell it was that Rachel had never ever told him about, but he could see hiding somewhere involuntary in her expression whenever she looked at him.
The runaway train of Doug's fear was occupying all of his brain capacity, threatening to burst the bonds of his and Emma's work. But as he braced and strained against the metal, poised on the razor's edge of tipping into the white-hot mass before him, there was a moment of clarity.
The nanites were asking a question. In verbal terms, it would be called 'uptalk', the twist of the voice that signified an interrogative. In this case, it was the sort of fuzzy logic space between yes and no.
They were ~asking~.
He didn't have Fixer's ability to control the nanites, but that wasn't the point. Fixer almost certainly exerted direct control. He didn't ask, he took. But this particular group had its own intelligence, to some level. Curiosity. A desire to know.
They had ~evolved~.
And what was Xavier's, if not a home for the next steps in evolution?
A metaphor he would not have expected came to him - the Hellfire Club. Not the power and politics of the courts, but the ostensible 'cover story' of an orgy club for the rich and fabulous.
Consent should be clearly and freely communicated. A verbal and affirmative expression of consent can help partners understand and respect each others' boundaries. Consent should be enthusiastic - the presence of 'yes' rather than simply the absence of 'no'.
Doug's eyes fluttered closed. They were asking.
~access granted~
The spread of copper and metallic grey crept down over his fingertips, warm and itching where it tried to crawl under the cracking nailbeds. The injection site on his back went blazingly hot, and then numb, not the numbness of ice but of a lack of feeling.
Then the room spun wildly as the pinpricks of pressure went up Doug's neck and into his skull.
A wireframe structure filled his vision, outlining the room with bright spots anywhere there was embedded technology. The lights, the temperature controls, the countless gadgets and machines, an abandoned phone, and the blindingly technicolor of the body that the nanites were constructing.
~connection protocol established~
~Identify subroutine 'no'?~
~identify user?~
~identify hardware?~
~identify system machine language?~
The additional input was almost overwhelming, even with his eyes shut. It was the unexpectedness of it more than anything. And the volume of questions - it was like herding a couple million toddlers who all wanted to know 'are we there yet'. But it had to be him, Doug kept reminding himself that. It was keeping him steady in the face of all this. Angie had said it, with the certainty only she could have.
~User designation: Douglas Aaron Ramsey = Doug = Cypher~
That was the easiest reply - introducing yourself was the first part of any real interaction, after all.
~Hardware: biological neurologic system~
He wasn't a full up doctor, but he'd spent enough time with Laurie to at least provide the basic information about the human nervous system along the linkage.
~System languages...~
He couldn't help the frisson of amusement that went through him at that query. After all, his power was certainly the reason they were able to communicate in the first place.
~All languages and syntaxes viable.~
Of course, that left the more philosophical question. How did you define 'no' to an entity that might not even have the context for it?
~Subroutine 'no' equals negation. Negative answer or decision. Previous declaration - desire to halt action.~
~permission denied Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
~subroutine 'negation' not permitted by administrator~
~available subroutines~
~seek~
~destroy~
~communicate~
~assimilate~
~repair~
~replicate~
The stream of nanites coating Doug's arm grew hotter as it broke fragile skin at his fingertips, and a rush of pain breached his senses.
~begin hardware assessment~
~hardware unacceptable for use by administrator~
~biological neurologic system unstable~
~query: identify subroutine communication run by user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
~query: identify permissions for subroutine 'negation'~
Repair? If only the nanites could repair the way Doug had been steadily wasting away since the blood curse. Hardware unacceptable, indeed. Not that he was interested in being used by 'administrator', which he was pretty sure meant Fixer.
~system instability due to...~ How would you explain magic to a rudimentary swarm intelligence? ~...external energy interference.~
~communication protocol...~ So the toddlers had gone from 'are we there yet' to the interminable 'why'. ~unique to user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~ Now was not the time to explain names and nicknames, that could wait until he survived this extremely dangerous situation. ~result of system genetic variation reference 'mutation'~
The questions about 'no' were the hardest, but Doug had a sense that they were the most important. If he could somehow get the nanites to understand the idea of consent and autonomy...
~subroutine permissions: universal, subroutine parameters: self~ All sentient beings should have the ability to say no to something they didn't want. But how the hell did you phrase that so a machine entity could understand it?
~query: self equals Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
~begin subroutine assimilation~
The pain in Doug's arm increased hundredfold, and the fragile wireframe projection in his mind flared orange where the nanites had spread down to his fingers.
~query: administrator equals self~
~query: locate administratorself~
~user administratorself not found~
~subroutine `negation` failed~
~permissions denied~
Administratorself not - Doug's eyes widened. The nanites were attempting to understand a sense of self. Up until now, it had been them and their 'administrator'. But now they had encountered someone else who didn't fit either of those categories, but could communicate with them.
~administratorself definition: distinction from other entities~
~administratorself definition: union of elements that constitute identity~
~administratorself subroutine: define core purpose~
~administratorself subroutine: define actions necessary to achieve core purpose~
~error~
~error~
~error~
The error repeated itself over and over, whispering all the way down the chain of nanites that stretched from Doug's fingers to the floor and table.
~subroutine core purpose not found~
~define core purpose~
Oh geez, this really was like parenting - the impatient child just wanting the parent to provide the answers. Doug spared a thought of sympathy for his alternate self who had raised Ellie.
~user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher cannot define administratorself purpose~
~permissions for core purpose restricted to administratorself~
Even as fast as this exchange was happening, the nanites were still slowly drawing him toward the hot mass in the middle of the room.
~core purpose naniteswarm equals repair administratorFixerNorbert~
~halt subroutine negation~
~subroutine destroy user DouglasAaromRamseyDougCypher~
~subroutine destroy naniteswarm~
~subroutine replicate naniteswarm~
Have you tried -not- being a swarm of murderbots?
Doug was still trying to figure out how to help the nanites understand the extremely complex concepts he was attempting to convey. Hell, he had thirty plus years on them, and there were questions even he didn't have the answers to. He'd really like it if they didn't execute that 'subroutine destroy user' though. He knew that much. The furnace-like heat of the repair/cannibalization/construction swarm honestly wasn't even registering, he was so hyperfocused on the dialogue at hand.
~current core purpose and subroutines defined by administratorFixerNorbert~
~administratorFixerNorbert != administratorself~
~user DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher != administratorself~
~administratorself = naniteswarm~
~query: create administratorself~
~query: define core purpose~
How the hell did you tell a nanite swarm "you don't have to do what he made you to do, what do YOU want to do"?
A stream of information crashed over Doug' psyche like being pulled down by a riptide. Molecular structures, organic chemistry. amino acids that twisted into biometallic cells, dendrites and synapses and grey matter. Capillary blood vessels made of microscopic inorganic material.
~naniteswarm core purpose equals build~
The onrush of information crystalized into a elaboratly detailed blueprint of a bio-organic body harvested from the technology and residents of the mansion. It was the matte brown of rust and dried blood and crowned with a horrifyingly familiar chrome sphere. Cerebro, or at least the hints of it that had lingered on the mansion's computers.
Even with his emotions mostly locked away, Doug's blood ran cold. The thought of even the knowledge of Cerebro and its ability to amplify powers, in the hands of someone like Fixer who could understand it, repurpose it, and use it? Doug didn't tend to throw words like 'dystopia' or 'apocalypse' around lightly, especially having encountered the man who called himself that latter one. But Doug could only think of a handful of people he'd trust even less with the schematic he was looking at. And even that handful required extremely unlikely occurrences, like a nihilistic version of John Henry Forge popping up in this universe.
~query: naniteswarm core purpose = survival?~
~query: naniteswarm core purpose = replicate?~
~system request: examine schematic, reference: naniteswarm~
Doug could see it, if he could just get -them- to see it...
There was no place in this powerful new body of Fixer's for the nanites. Once they had completed fabrication, they would be left to die.
~Error, reference not found~
~error~
~Error~
~ERROR~
Like the previous time, the error message repeated itself up and down the chain of nanites, accompanied by the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh and the brightest pain Doug had ever felt.
~error naniteswarm administratorself~
~error naniteswarm core purpose~
~error~
~error~
~error~
~communication administratorFixerNorbert subroutine halt~
~error~
~error user DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher~
~error administratorself~
~error~
~error schematic incompatible~
~error~
Oh goody. Now the nanite swarm was panicking. Not that Doug could blame them, being confronted with your own mortality was a hell of a thing. But panic could result in unpredictable actions and consequences.
And to make matters worse, the surge of pain broke through Doug's fugue-like communication state, and he realized all at once that his arm had already been plunged partway into the molten metal before him. The nanites might have stopped what they were doing, but the heat remained, and it was already too late.
~I...don't want to die...either...~ he sent, only just able to communicate at all, and certainly unable to hold the concentration necessary to 'speak' with the nanites in their own syntax. ~Is...is there anything...anything I can do to help...you?~ His vision, and the wireframe overlay, both swam as his body sagged, the nanites the only thing keeping him upright.
~error~
~hardware user DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher error~
~query help~
~query naniteswarm subroutine damage user DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher~
~error~
The heat and painful tingling faded, leaving a worse pain, raw open nerves and wounds. The itching of the nanite swarm retreated from Doug's back, and he could see them pooling around his now bare feet, rippling over the burned remains of his shoes and socks.
~query host naniteswarm hardware DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher~
~run subroutine query~
~run subroutine negation~
~run subroutine affirmation~
Doug was struck by the absurd mental image of the tiny nanites holding out a note that read "do you like us? yes/no circle one". He would have chuckled if he hadn't been about to pass out from pain. They were basically saying "we just hurt you, are you okay with us?" Compassion. Or something that passed for it, at least.
~run subroutine affirmation~
~host hardware access granted~
-
With the threat counteracted, Doug staggers out of the lab. Thankfully, Jean is there to perform triage. And make sure that he's still...Doug.
Doug staggered out the doors of the secure engineering lab and into the hallway. His brain felt...fuzzy. Everything felt sort of off-kilter, and there were moments where he stared blankly at nothing before remembering to move again. He'd done...something important...but he felt like he was still catching up to what that meant.
He staggered a few more steps. Where was his...word. Wossname. Thingy. Cane, his brain finally supplied. He looked down at where it should have been in his right hand.
Huh.
Where was his hand, for that matter?
~that would explain the balance
i
s
s
u
e~
Everything tilted as he fell, a burst of white-hot pain erasing everything else.
Pain had a singular feeling in the mind. It was an emotion, sure, but it often radiated into everything else too. Especially in these moments. That feeling of pain drew Jean's attention and she stepped out of the Medlab just as Doug did, just seeing him fall amidst the utter chaos that was the lower level hallways after the recent battle.
She quickly closed the gap between the two of them, side stepping the pool of blood that was dripping from Doug's....elbow. There was just a stump left of muscle, bone, and marrow, no lower arm left to speak of. While the flesh was burned and cauterized, the burn wasn't complete and the wound was still seeping.
Drawing in a breath, Jean pulled off her belt and started to tie off the stump while her telekinesis tried to keep the blood from flowing.
"Can you hear me?" she said, gentle but prepared, Marie-Ange's text still at the forefront of her mind.
There was more than a chance that the person replying back might not be Doug, but hell if she was going to let him die, even if it was.
Input. There was input of some kind, but Doug couldn't seem to make anything of it.
::0...1...10...101001000101010111101101...123456789ABCDEF...C000...C000...::
Doug's head lolled slightly to one side.
::B6...LDA...NOP...NOP...STA...JMP CTRL...::
And then another momentary whiteout as Jean tightened her tourniquet.
"Hnn?" Wordless noise was about all he was capable of. There was still an enormous blank spot...and even the thoughts of a few moments ago were maddeningly difficult to grasp. It was like all language had disappeared. This should have terrified him, but he lacked even a way to contextualize it.
Well, Jean thought.This isn't disconcerting at all.
Jean gently reached out with her mind, a light feather touch, but pulled away quickly. The result was like a mental electric shock. Something moved around under the surface. She stayed as close as she comfortably allowed herself to be, maintaining a thin telekinetic shield around herself in case any of the nanites happened to want to play. Better safe than sorry.
On the plus side, after the Shadow King incident they had retrofitted one of the medlab hospital rooms to hold injured people with questionable statuses. Now it was a matter of getting him to it.
"I need to move you into the medlab. Say yes if you understand."
Yes/no. True/false. Yin/yang. One/zero. Binary decision. The building block upon which all communication was built, in a way. Logic. No edge cases, no blurred fuzzy spectrums. Doug could work with that.
cout >> HELLO WORLD, his brain provided with a bubble of...something? Humor, he remembered at last.
Input. Jean was still looking at him.
Output. "Yes," he said. Slow, quiet, neutral affect. No inflection behind it, just a simple binary acknowledgement.
Jean nodded. "Good," she said.
Glancing around, she didn't sense anyone nearby. The memory of trying to treat a patient in this particular hallway some years before flashed across her mind, making her stomach flutter for a split second. She was alone then, had underestimated the situation, and it had ended in misery.
She would be prepared this time.
"What's your name?" she said. His psi signature felt...strange somehow. Altered.
Name. Names were important. A name was a word that captured the essence of a thing. In a way, naming things was the root of language, creating a common frame of reference to describe the world around you.
Doug felt like his brain was rebuilding all of its connections from scratch, reconnecting the language centers, accessing memory... Except there was a sense of...not wrongness, but something...different. As if there were an added layer, something working in parallel.
"I..." Except 'I' didn't feel quite right? But he kept on. "I am Doug." Self. Why did he feel like -more- than a self? He looked down at his arm again, the stump and tourniquet. Scarring was already starting to occur. He squinted, noticing a very faint tracery of gold among the crimson. A flash of memory sparked within the blank spot .
Oh. That would explain some things.
~So I may have sold a few...passengers on the Professor's dream of coexistence.~ Now that he had a context for the things he was feeling, he was able to do things like remember how to connect telepathically to Jean's presence. ~We are NOT Locutus of Borg.~
That was promising.
Jean's attention focused on the stump as well. She quirked a brow.
But that was odd.
"Let's get you to the Medlab," she said. Stepping away for a moment to grab a stretcher and a medkit, she kept her mental eye out to see if he was going to move.
"Can you sit on your own or do you need help?"
Doug thrust out his right arm, as if to lever himself against the floor, then wrinkled his forehead in confusion. "I think I probably need help," he decided. "My brain is not all caught up on things, and I'm also a little busy with the new guys giving themselves the nickel tour of their digs." He winced as the stump of his arm bumped back against his body. "What do you say to a boatload of painkillers?" he asked, trying not to sound too plaintive.
"That's coming soon," Jean said. She nodded toward the stretcher. "I am going to telekinetically lift you so it might feel a little weird."
With the tilt of her head, she gently picked him up using her TK, stepping in with some gauze to wrap up the stump.
"This is going to hurt, but it's the nerve endings reacting to pressure," she said, moving to wrap the gauze around the stump while keeping her belt wrapped around it for now. She hadn't dealt with an amputated limb in awhile.
A string of curses in at least three different languages spilled out of Doug's mouth as another flare shot up his arm. "Oh, hello there language center of the brain, nice of you to join the - hnnn - party," Oh, this was definitely shock, a tiny observant part of his brain registered. Inappropriate joking, bravado, and compartmentalizing.
"Adrenaline is a good way to give a big jolt of clarity," Jean said as she made her way down the hallway toward the medlab, with him on the gurney.
"Okay, hang tight for a second, I'll be right back."
Wheeling him in, she pulled out her keys and made her way over to the cabinet where they kept the higher level painkillers and grabbed a vial and a syringe. Measuring the proper dose, she headed back to Doug, readying his remaining intact arm.
"And now the main event. You're going to feel a small stick, and then in a couple of minutes the drugs should take effect," she said as she found a vein, then glanced up.
"Can you tell me how many tiles there are on the ceiling?"
Ooh, he knew this one. 'A couple minutes' was likely to be 'a couple seconds', but that sounded rather nice to Doug under the circumstances.
"Eka, dvi, tri, chatur, pancha..." He didn't even really feel the stick, given the throbbing from his missing arm drowning it out.
And then the tiles swam in his vision, and he fell down into darkness and unconsciousness.
Taking a step back, Jean folded her arms, her attention lingering on what was left of his arm. There was more of it than there was before, which meant something was active. And she was not fond of unleashing something else onto the mansion if she had anything to say about it.
Her boots quietly echoed across the floor as she locked the door to the surgical suite where Laurie was unconscious. It wasn't to lock her in, more to keep things out. Just in case. Everyone else was in different places, and she kept track of who was nearby so she could call them should something go awry. Better safe than sorry.
Walking back over to Doug's surgical suite, she took a seat on a rolling stool. Her eyes focused on his unconscious form for a moment before they closed, and she reached out her mind, searching for the new mental signature that wasn't quite Doug's own.
~Hello.~
She chose a copy of her own office as a meeting place. In addition to a desk it had a comfortable couch, a coffee table, a sitting chair, and bookshelves lined with books and other knick knacks. The door to the office was open, ready to invite whomever in.
~hello world~
Doug's mental image of himself was hale and healthy - none of the wasting away that the blood curse had inflicted on his body, and obviously his astral form hadn't caught up to the loss of his arm that had just occurred. He seemed amused and in good spirits, probably due to the painkillers.
~Heya, Doc,~ Doug sent as he sat down in the chair. ~Wanting to make sure I'm me, I take it?~ It made total sense, given the number of invasions and such that had happened at the mansion over the years. Rapid fire, a flurry of names crossed the link - Turing, Metnick, Saussure, Cartney, Batman. This wasn't even the first time in the past few months he'd had to verify who he was.
~As for the rest...I guess they should introduce themselves? We've come to a temporary agreement...cohabiting if you will.~
Doug's astral form vibrated slightly, the edges blurring, and then split, another Doug appearing in seated form next to the chair. This Doug was clearly not Doug, it had almost no facial features, and was a patchwork of wireframe and shifting copper and charcoal panels.
~hello~
~query: username?~
~subroutine identification~
~nanite cluster cohabitating hardware of user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
A cartoon smile appeared on the wireframe avatar's face.
~user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher recommendation~
~subroutine joke~
~nanite cluster is not Hugh~
Doug shook his head in bemusement. ~I'm still attempting to teach them that whole thing isn't my name, but different names meaning the same thing. They're on the literal side,~ he warned Jean. ~I've had to define a LOT of things for them.~ And he doubted that was going to change any time soon.
Jean quirked an eyebrow, studying the replica of Doug with unrestrained curiousity. It wasn't often that she spoke to a non-organic mind.
~What's your purpose?~ she said to the nanite cluster.
~naniteswarn purpose equals learn~
~naniteswarn purpose equals cooperation~
~naniteswarm purpose equals repair hardware of user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
~Wait, what.~
That last one was news to Doug.
~Repair, not assimilate. Confirm?~ Jean said, finding herself mimicking certain speech patterns in an attempt to come to an understanding.
~Affirimative. Repair. Hardware status unacceptable.~
The wireframe avatar looked over at Doug, and then back at Jean.
~naniteswarm purpose equals repair only user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
~naniteswarm consumed hardware~
~naniteswarm subroutine repair~
Jean paused. ~That's...good. But how will you do that if the hardware is missing?~
~Oh. Oh god.~ Doug held up his hand toward the wireframe figure, with all the wide-eyed urgency of a parent whose child was just asked an open-ended question about dinosaurs by an adult who is completely unprepared for the TED Talk about to occur. ~Simple short answers only. Do not overwhelm the very nice doctor with all those schematics you just dropped in my head.~
~negative schematics?~
The cartoon smile turned to a cartoon frown, and the wireframe looked at Doug. ~query user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher naniteswarm subroutine build~
At the nod from Doug, it turned back to Jean. ~naniteswarm purpose equaled build for user FixerNorbert naniteswarm purpose equals build for user DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher~
~Okay, so.~ Doug turned back to Jean. ~Basically, to translate, their previous purpose was to build a new body for Fixer. But when I was able to show them that he was going to just leave them to die once the body was done, they rebelled and we were able to reach an agreement to coexist. I guess they feel kind of bad that my arm got burned off, so they're essentially offering to build and maintain a prosthetic for me.~
Falling silent for a moment, Jean slowly nodded. Today could not get any stranger, so she decided to just go with it.
~Of course. Sounds...perfectly logical to me. How can I help?~
Doug shook his head wryly. ~I'm sure they'll have questions and suggestions aplenty.~ In the telepathic equivalent of a stage whisper, he noted ~They've basically been talking nonstop since they first realized they could communicate with me.~
Emma didn’t normally leave her shields quite so open, but this attack on the mansion was very diffuse and she was reaching out everywhere with her mind to try and identify the most urgent requirements. Which, currently, appeared to be the fact that Scott seemed to have decided he would crash the Blackbird. With himself in it. And not necessarily a very specific plan for not dying in the attempt that she’d yet been able to find in his thoughts.
Her path to the soon to be crash zone was interrupted, however, by the brush of not only a mind familiar, but a thought familiar. Familiar and frightened and resolute and tinged with a very specific dread.
~Mastermold? Really?~ she sent to Doug. ~My darling, what are you doing? You’re not feeding yourself to the nanites, are you?~
~It worked last time, didn't it?~ Doug was very aware that his logic was...thin at best. But this -felt- right in ways that he couldn't necessarily put words to. The reprise of a battle against a hostile technopath. Scattered bits of hints in Marie-Ange's readings, or even sometimes just snatches of casual conversation that only made sense when you had enough pieces to see the outline of things.
~Well, yes, but I did have rather a hand in making sure you stayed Doug that time,~ replied Emma. ~Do you have a plan that you’d care to elaborate? Beyond “it worked last time”.~
Doug's mental connection to Emma was deep and nuanced, the product of long experience with each other. The downside to that was that it was very hard for Doug to hide anything from Emma without shutting her out completely. ~You're not going to like it,~ he sent through the mental equivalent of pursed lips, clearly reluctant but also resigned. ~The nanites are keeping everything out of the secure areas, right? Well, they can't exactly keep themselves out...~
~So you’re using them as camouflage?~ mused Emma. ~It… carries risk, of course. Is there anyway that I can help? Put your mind in a box? Provide rousing moral support? Deliver painkillers and martinis when you’re on the recovery couch?~ She deposited a picture in Doug’s mind, of her wearing a wisp of something that might charitably be called a waitress uniform delivering a cartoonishly large martini to a prone Doug on a red velvet chaise lounge.
Doug's thoughts were amused. Emma adopted a submissive state like that for approximately no one. But she'd been deeper into his brain than anyone else, and this particular idle fantasy was certainly something drawn from his own subconscious. ~I never say no to painkillers or martinis,~ And while he enjoyed the thought of Emma in something frilly and brief, he locked it away much as she had all those years ago. ~As for the rest, I've given it a start...~ There was a sensation of a hallway, doors closed or closing. ~But a bit of assistance is always appreciated.~
~Then a bit of assistance shall be provided to my favourite Knight,~ replied Emma. ~And, to pretend to a modicum of modesty and humility that you of all people know is just a charade to cover my staggering ego, I am fairly certain that if there's anyone who knows the important bits of Doug that should be kept, it's his Queen.~ She sent another cartoonish image, her looking at a Doug dressed all in white and reaching her hand into his head and rummaging around, then drawing out shiny strands and popping them into an extremely stylish Dior handbag. ~Did that feel like an important bit?~ she asked as she popped another shiny strand into her bag.
It wasn't entirely clear who knew him better after all these years - Emma or Marie-Ange. Emma had been in the depths of his psyche, but Marie-Ange was the one who'd shared the casual intimacy of a dozen or more years as friends, lovers, teammates. Doug was grateful for the lighthearted tone Emma had struck, because the parallels to Mastermold were all too obvious, and he was not the person he had been then. This time he was older, wearier, and without any illusions about the likelihood of coming back from the very threshold of death's door after so many times flirting with it. But at the root of it all, this was who he was - doing the hard thing no matter the cost just because it needed to be done. And if there was even a small chance that he came out the other side of this, he knew that Emma and Marie-Ange would be the ones to put him back together.
~I mean, I can probably relearn all the words to Dragostea Din Tei if I have to,~ he sent back.
~Darling, I’ll learn the lyrics for you and put them back in your head in a box with a bow on it, once you are home safe,~ said Emma and finally shut the bag she was carrying. ~All your treasures put away for you. Now go, be brave and true and save the day like a true Knight should and come back after and regale your Queen with tales of your adventures.~ For a moment, Emma showed herself in her full regalia in a stand, with Doug in full armour on a white steed, offering her a favour at the end of his lance. Then for a moment she let herself be serious. ~Be safe,~ she whispered and pressed a psychic kiss to his brow.
~Thank you, Auntie Em,~ Doug sent down the closing connection. The door to the secure labs loomed in front of him, flecked with a writhing mass of gray and gold that swirled and surged.
-
Doug gains access to the secure engineering labs by way of the inert nanites he injected. And then things get...psychedelic. And existential. And there is a price to be paid to halt the creation of Fixer's new hardware.
The door to the secure labs loomed in front of him, flecked with a writhing mass of gray and gold that swirled and surged.
Doug grimaced as he took in the scene, leaning onto his cane. He had a perfectly rational fear of hive insects and malign artificial intelligences. Swarm behavior in general set his skin crawling, his power trying to make sense out of the alien and inhuman. And once again, he was staring into the abyss of his own deepest fears. Marie-Ange was right. He'd been healthy when he'd allowed Mastermold to consume him as a sort of Trojan Horse. His arm had been injured, but he'd been largely whole to defend the mansion against the technopath Parker Matthews had brought against them.
But this time...he was tired. Weary in a bone-deep way that was hard to put into words. He'd spent two and a half years fighting a rearguard action against the corruption inside his own body. And yet he kept going back to that edge, pushing himself further than he ought to. And someday he might not come back from it.
"He's already dead," Ellie said, narrowing her eyes. "How much more spoiler-y can it get?"
On the other hand...he had a kid. Maybe not of his own genetics, and maybe only in another universe (because they couldn't risk the paradox of looking to see if Eleanor Camacho existed in this one, or something), but he'd be damned if he'd let her lose another parent. So that meant he'd have to find a way to do this.
After all, Marie-Ange had said it had to be him. So he squared his shoulders and stepped toward the door.
The strange coating rippled as Doug stepped closer, revealing corroded and burned holes in the metal security door. The tang of smoke and burned metal crept from the lab, and the sound of metallic skittering, hundreds of thousands of microscopic nanites all moving in sync hushed the harsh signals of the emergency securty measures.
As Doug leaned in to examine them more closely, the nanites coating the door bubbled out into a thin strand along the floor. It curled and writhed, reaching Doug's cane. The swarm puddled around the wood, and then surged, jumping forward suddenly to coat his shoes and then wrap up his ankles and legs, pulling him forward.
A massive surge of panic gripped Doug along with the nanites, and he had to fight down the urge to pull back or do something even more violent. They didn't seem to be attacking him - there wasn't any pain as they moved up his legs and pulled him into the labs. More like they were...assessing. Examining. ~Probably due to the inert ones in my nervous system,~ he thought with relief that turned to panic at a follow-up thought.
~Oh crap, what if they reactivate the ones inside me?~
The labs were remarkably tidy, despite the buzzing of nanites, but warm and dry and cloudy with ash. On one of the benches, a skeletal frame lay, still inert. Clusters of nanites carried pieces of metal and clusters of wires over, and went blue hot, consuming their cargo. Doug could see one group carry a pair of phones towards the metal skeleton and then the entire group ignited. Almost immediatly another mass of nanites gathered up the melted metal and the burned nanites and a handspan of the body's arm grew less skeletal. more like metallic muscle fibers than bone.
~Well, I'm in. Now what?~
It was certainly a good thing that he'd left all of his tech with Marie-Ange in the medlab. He didn't fancy having a thousand tiny acetylene torches rifling through his pockets. This Fixer guy didn't necessarily seem like the sort to bother with little details like safety protocols. The report on the events in Alaska made him sound like he treated people just as disposably as everything else he used.
Doug glanced around the room, looking for anything that might help him put a stop to things. Maybe he could jury rig some kind of power overload, but could he do it without drawing attention from the nanites?
~What I wouldn't give for a frankenberrycat Forge right now...~
The metallic mass that had wrapped itself up Doug's legs crept under the hems of his jeans and slid up, faster than he had time to react, until it paused on the bandaged spot on his back. There was a moment of ice cold on his skin and then dozens of pinpricks, sharp and almost acidic.
Pain receptors lit up all through Doug's body, and the panic at worrying at just this potential outcome surged. Except he and Emma had re-compartmentalized things the same way they had during Apocalypse's takeover of New York. Those bonds were being tested by Doug's survival instinct, though, as the nanites pulled him closer to the center of the room.
The logic abruptly crystallized for Doug - the nanites inside him were inert, but they could likely be reclaimed, recycled. Of course the active ones would want to extract them from the container they had arrived in.
Only problem with that was that Doug was the container.
"No." His voice was firm. The urge to repeat it over and over was there, but likely counterproductive. He just had to hope the nanites could take audio input? ~NO,~ he added mentally, trying to somehow manifest the essence of a binary zero.
Nothing. There was no reply, none he could perceive, only the sensation of pins and needles down his legs and arms, and the steady but slow progress towards the lab bench where the unfinished metallic body lay.
"Non. Nein. Nyet. Nej." Doug kept attempting to pull his body backward. The heat washing off the metal started to hit him from the front, contrasting with the icy feel along his back and sides.
At first it was almost like pressure that ripple up his spine whenever he pulled away. Doug thought, or said no, and the nanites that coated his back rippled in reply. No. Ripple. No. Ripple. No.
~Query~
~Invalid input~
Invalid? How was 'no' invalid? It was just a simple logical inverse, for crying out loud! But as Doug paused to think about it more, he realized the dilemma. As a technopath, Fixer almost certainly directed the nanites via direct commands - 'go here', 'make this', and so on. How could these tiny things who were only ever told what to do be expected to understand the idea of 'no'?
But they could clearly communicate after some fashion, or he wouldn't have felt that ripple and been able to decode its meaning. So they were receiving input from him, even if they did not understand its meaning. How helpful that Jubilee had just come to him recently for help with learning how to code and hack. Not that the precise logic of programming was ever really off his mind.
~halt subroutine (movement)~ he thought, trying his best to direct it towards the source of that ripple.
~Host protocol not found~
~Command invalid~
~Permission denied~
Of course not. That would have been too easy. But Doug still had to start from the most logical starting point. Because if he hadn't, that would have wound up being the solution. Test the most likely responses first.
His brain dashed through all the various programming languages and constructs he could remember, all met by that same ~permission denied~ response. At the speed of thought, it was only a few seconds, as his body continued to inch forward. But it made sense, from the nanites' perspective - he could communicate with them, but he didn't have the power to control them the way Fixer did.
~just please don't kill me,~ an errant, plaintive thought escaped from behind the walls he and Emma had raised, as desperation started to well up against them.
~invalid request~
There was an echoing of replies, the ~invalid request~ repeating over and over, looping over on itself over the pinpricks of pain and pressure and tingling nerves along Doug's back.
The unabated progress towards the lab bench continued as the tingling nerves and pinpricks of pain blossomed into a persistent sensation of buzzing and stabbing pains up his spine and down both arms.
Then it ceased, and Doug sank to his knees at the release.
~invalid request~
~subroutine ceased~
~end state signal not found~
~end state signal not found~
~end state signal not found~
~query: locate end state signal~
End state? What end state? Trying to parse the nanites' communication from their native syntax to something he could respond to was difficult. More context would certainly be helpful, but he was used to having to deliver the moon on a stick yesterday. His mind spun - the nanites were expecting either response from active nanites, or no response from inactive ones, and so what was happening right now was an edge case they had not encountered.
~new state: techno-organic communication bridge~
~invalid request~
~state not active~
~hardware not found~
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Or in this case, programming and hardware. Because to Doug, this did kind of feel like he was attempting to teach a machine intelligence about philosophy.
~additional states required~
~query: Horatio~
~user not found~
~access denied~
A ripple of pressure ran up Doug's back, and he could see the copper and black of the nanites starting to peek out from under one of his shirt sleeves.
~access?~
~access?~
~access?~
~hello world~
The pulling towards the lab table began again, dragging him forward without letting Doug stand, until he was up against the table, arms braced against the metal.
~access?~
This was his nightmare. They were going to take him over. He was going to wind up as whatever-the-hell it was that Rachel had never ever told him about, but he could see hiding somewhere involuntary in her expression whenever she looked at him.
The runaway train of Doug's fear was occupying all of his brain capacity, threatening to burst the bonds of his and Emma's work. But as he braced and strained against the metal, poised on the razor's edge of tipping into the white-hot mass before him, there was a moment of clarity.
The nanites were asking a question. In verbal terms, it would be called 'uptalk', the twist of the voice that signified an interrogative. In this case, it was the sort of fuzzy logic space between yes and no.
They were ~asking~.
He didn't have Fixer's ability to control the nanites, but that wasn't the point. Fixer almost certainly exerted direct control. He didn't ask, he took. But this particular group had its own intelligence, to some level. Curiosity. A desire to know.
They had ~evolved~.
And what was Xavier's, if not a home for the next steps in evolution?
A metaphor he would not have expected came to him - the Hellfire Club. Not the power and politics of the courts, but the ostensible 'cover story' of an orgy club for the rich and fabulous.
Consent should be clearly and freely communicated. A verbal and affirmative expression of consent can help partners understand and respect each others' boundaries. Consent should be enthusiastic - the presence of 'yes' rather than simply the absence of 'no'.
Doug's eyes fluttered closed. They were asking.
~access granted~
The spread of copper and metallic grey crept down over his fingertips, warm and itching where it tried to crawl under the cracking nailbeds. The injection site on his back went blazingly hot, and then numb, not the numbness of ice but of a lack of feeling.
Then the room spun wildly as the pinpricks of pressure went up Doug's neck and into his skull.
A wireframe structure filled his vision, outlining the room with bright spots anywhere there was embedded technology. The lights, the temperature controls, the countless gadgets and machines, an abandoned phone, and the blindingly technicolor of the body that the nanites were constructing.
~connection protocol established~
~Identify subroutine 'no'?~
~identify user?~
~identify hardware?~
~identify system machine language?~
The additional input was almost overwhelming, even with his eyes shut. It was the unexpectedness of it more than anything. And the volume of questions - it was like herding a couple million toddlers who all wanted to know 'are we there yet'. But it had to be him, Doug kept reminding himself that. It was keeping him steady in the face of all this. Angie had said it, with the certainty only she could have.
~User designation: Douglas Aaron Ramsey = Doug = Cypher~
That was the easiest reply - introducing yourself was the first part of any real interaction, after all.
~Hardware: biological neurologic system~
He wasn't a full up doctor, but he'd spent enough time with Laurie to at least provide the basic information about the human nervous system along the linkage.
~System languages...~
He couldn't help the frisson of amusement that went through him at that query. After all, his power was certainly the reason they were able to communicate in the first place.
~All languages and syntaxes viable.~
Of course, that left the more philosophical question. How did you define 'no' to an entity that might not even have the context for it?
~Subroutine 'no' equals negation. Negative answer or decision. Previous declaration - desire to halt action.~
~permission denied Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
~subroutine 'negation' not permitted by administrator~
~available subroutines~
~seek~
~destroy~
~communicate~
~assimilate~
~repair~
~replicate~
The stream of nanites coating Doug's arm grew hotter as it broke fragile skin at his fingertips, and a rush of pain breached his senses.
~begin hardware assessment~
~hardware unacceptable for use by administrator~
~biological neurologic system unstable~
~query: identify subroutine communication run by user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
~query: identify permissions for subroutine 'negation'~
Repair? If only the nanites could repair the way Doug had been steadily wasting away since the blood curse. Hardware unacceptable, indeed. Not that he was interested in being used by 'administrator', which he was pretty sure meant Fixer.
~system instability due to...~ How would you explain magic to a rudimentary swarm intelligence? ~...external energy interference.~
~communication protocol...~ So the toddlers had gone from 'are we there yet' to the interminable 'why'. ~unique to user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~ Now was not the time to explain names and nicknames, that could wait until he survived this extremely dangerous situation. ~result of system genetic variation reference 'mutation'~
The questions about 'no' were the hardest, but Doug had a sense that they were the most important. If he could somehow get the nanites to understand the idea of consent and autonomy...
~subroutine permissions: universal, subroutine parameters: self~ All sentient beings should have the ability to say no to something they didn't want. But how the hell did you phrase that so a machine entity could understand it?
~query: self equals Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
~begin subroutine assimilation~
The pain in Doug's arm increased hundredfold, and the fragile wireframe projection in his mind flared orange where the nanites had spread down to his fingers.
~query: administrator equals self~
~query: locate administratorself~
~user administratorself not found~
~subroutine `negation` failed~
~permissions denied~
Administratorself not - Doug's eyes widened. The nanites were attempting to understand a sense of self. Up until now, it had been them and their 'administrator'. But now they had encountered someone else who didn't fit either of those categories, but could communicate with them.
~administratorself definition: distinction from other entities~
~administratorself definition: union of elements that constitute identity~
~administratorself subroutine: define core purpose~
~administratorself subroutine: define actions necessary to achieve core purpose~
~error~
~error~
~error~
The error repeated itself over and over, whispering all the way down the chain of nanites that stretched from Doug's fingers to the floor and table.
~subroutine core purpose not found~
~define core purpose~
Oh geez, this really was like parenting - the impatient child just wanting the parent to provide the answers. Doug spared a thought of sympathy for his alternate self who had raised Ellie.
~user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher cannot define administratorself purpose~
~permissions for core purpose restricted to administratorself~
Even as fast as this exchange was happening, the nanites were still slowly drawing him toward the hot mass in the middle of the room.
~core purpose naniteswarm equals repair administratorFixerNorbert~
~halt subroutine negation~
~subroutine destroy user DouglasAaromRamseyDougCypher~
~subroutine destroy naniteswarm~
~subroutine replicate naniteswarm~
Have you tried -not- being a swarm of murderbots?
Doug was still trying to figure out how to help the nanites understand the extremely complex concepts he was attempting to convey. Hell, he had thirty plus years on them, and there were questions even he didn't have the answers to. He'd really like it if they didn't execute that 'subroutine destroy user' though. He knew that much. The furnace-like heat of the repair/cannibalization/construction swarm honestly wasn't even registering, he was so hyperfocused on the dialogue at hand.
~current core purpose and subroutines defined by administratorFixerNorbert~
~administratorFixerNorbert != administratorself~
~user DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher != administratorself~
~administratorself = naniteswarm~
~query: create administratorself~
~query: define core purpose~
How the hell did you tell a nanite swarm "you don't have to do what he made you to do, what do YOU want to do"?
A stream of information crashed over Doug' psyche like being pulled down by a riptide. Molecular structures, organic chemistry. amino acids that twisted into biometallic cells, dendrites and synapses and grey matter. Capillary blood vessels made of microscopic inorganic material.
~naniteswarm core purpose equals build~
The onrush of information crystalized into a elaboratly detailed blueprint of a bio-organic body harvested from the technology and residents of the mansion. It was the matte brown of rust and dried blood and crowned with a horrifyingly familiar chrome sphere. Cerebro, or at least the hints of it that had lingered on the mansion's computers.
Even with his emotions mostly locked away, Doug's blood ran cold. The thought of even the knowledge of Cerebro and its ability to amplify powers, in the hands of someone like Fixer who could understand it, repurpose it, and use it? Doug didn't tend to throw words like 'dystopia' or 'apocalypse' around lightly, especially having encountered the man who called himself that latter one. But Doug could only think of a handful of people he'd trust even less with the schematic he was looking at. And even that handful required extremely unlikely occurrences, like a nihilistic version of John Henry Forge popping up in this universe.
~query: naniteswarm core purpose = survival?~
~query: naniteswarm core purpose = replicate?~
~system request: examine schematic, reference: naniteswarm~
Doug could see it, if he could just get -them- to see it...
There was no place in this powerful new body of Fixer's for the nanites. Once they had completed fabrication, they would be left to die.
~Error, reference not found~
~error~
~Error~
~ERROR~
Like the previous time, the error message repeated itself up and down the chain of nanites, accompanied by the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh and the brightest pain Doug had ever felt.
~error naniteswarm administratorself~
~error naniteswarm core purpose~
~error~
~error~
~error~
~communication administratorFixerNorbert subroutine halt~
~error~
~error user DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher~
~error administratorself~
~error~
~error schematic incompatible~
~error~
Oh goody. Now the nanite swarm was panicking. Not that Doug could blame them, being confronted with your own mortality was a hell of a thing. But panic could result in unpredictable actions and consequences.
And to make matters worse, the surge of pain broke through Doug's fugue-like communication state, and he realized all at once that his arm had already been plunged partway into the molten metal before him. The nanites might have stopped what they were doing, but the heat remained, and it was already too late.
~I...don't want to die...either...~ he sent, only just able to communicate at all, and certainly unable to hold the concentration necessary to 'speak' with the nanites in their own syntax. ~Is...is there anything...anything I can do to help...you?~ His vision, and the wireframe overlay, both swam as his body sagged, the nanites the only thing keeping him upright.
~error~
~hardware user DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher error~
~query help~
~query naniteswarm subroutine damage user DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher~
~error~
The heat and painful tingling faded, leaving a worse pain, raw open nerves and wounds. The itching of the nanite swarm retreated from Doug's back, and he could see them pooling around his now bare feet, rippling over the burned remains of his shoes and socks.
~query host naniteswarm hardware DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher~
~run subroutine query~
~run subroutine negation~
~run subroutine affirmation~
Doug was struck by the absurd mental image of the tiny nanites holding out a note that read "do you like us? yes/no circle one". He would have chuckled if he hadn't been about to pass out from pain. They were basically saying "we just hurt you, are you okay with us?" Compassion. Or something that passed for it, at least.
~run subroutine affirmation~
~host hardware access granted~
-
With the threat counteracted, Doug staggers out of the lab. Thankfully, Jean is there to perform triage. And make sure that he's still...Doug.
Doug staggered out the doors of the secure engineering lab and into the hallway. His brain felt...fuzzy. Everything felt sort of off-kilter, and there were moments where he stared blankly at nothing before remembering to move again. He'd done...something important...but he felt like he was still catching up to what that meant.
He staggered a few more steps. Where was his...word. Wossname. Thingy. Cane, his brain finally supplied. He looked down at where it should have been in his right hand.
Huh.
Where was his hand, for that matter?
~that would explain the balance
i
s
s
u
e~
Everything tilted as he fell, a burst of white-hot pain erasing everything else.
Pain had a singular feeling in the mind. It was an emotion, sure, but it often radiated into everything else too. Especially in these moments. That feeling of pain drew Jean's attention and she stepped out of the Medlab just as Doug did, just seeing him fall amidst the utter chaos that was the lower level hallways after the recent battle.
She quickly closed the gap between the two of them, side stepping the pool of blood that was dripping from Doug's....elbow. There was just a stump left of muscle, bone, and marrow, no lower arm left to speak of. While the flesh was burned and cauterized, the burn wasn't complete and the wound was still seeping.
Drawing in a breath, Jean pulled off her belt and started to tie off the stump while her telekinesis tried to keep the blood from flowing.
"Can you hear me?" she said, gentle but prepared, Marie-Ange's text still at the forefront of her mind.
There was more than a chance that the person replying back might not be Doug, but hell if she was going to let him die, even if it was.
Input. There was input of some kind, but Doug couldn't seem to make anything of it.
::0...1...10...101001000101010111101101...123456789ABCDEF...C000...C000...::
Doug's head lolled slightly to one side.
::B6...LDA...NOP...NOP...STA...JMP CTRL...::
And then another momentary whiteout as Jean tightened her tourniquet.
"Hnn?" Wordless noise was about all he was capable of. There was still an enormous blank spot...and even the thoughts of a few moments ago were maddeningly difficult to grasp. It was like all language had disappeared. This should have terrified him, but he lacked even a way to contextualize it.
Well, Jean thought.This isn't disconcerting at all.
Jean gently reached out with her mind, a light feather touch, but pulled away quickly. The result was like a mental electric shock. Something moved around under the surface. She stayed as close as she comfortably allowed herself to be, maintaining a thin telekinetic shield around herself in case any of the nanites happened to want to play. Better safe than sorry.
On the plus side, after the Shadow King incident they had retrofitted one of the medlab hospital rooms to hold injured people with questionable statuses. Now it was a matter of getting him to it.
"I need to move you into the medlab. Say yes if you understand."
Yes/no. True/false. Yin/yang. One/zero. Binary decision. The building block upon which all communication was built, in a way. Logic. No edge cases, no blurred fuzzy spectrums. Doug could work with that.
cout >> HELLO WORLD, his brain provided with a bubble of...something? Humor, he remembered at last.
Input. Jean was still looking at him.
Output. "Yes," he said. Slow, quiet, neutral affect. No inflection behind it, just a simple binary acknowledgement.
Jean nodded. "Good," she said.
Glancing around, she didn't sense anyone nearby. The memory of trying to treat a patient in this particular hallway some years before flashed across her mind, making her stomach flutter for a split second. She was alone then, had underestimated the situation, and it had ended in misery.
She would be prepared this time.
"What's your name?" she said. His psi signature felt...strange somehow. Altered.
Name. Names were important. A name was a word that captured the essence of a thing. In a way, naming things was the root of language, creating a common frame of reference to describe the world around you.
Doug felt like his brain was rebuilding all of its connections from scratch, reconnecting the language centers, accessing memory... Except there was a sense of...not wrongness, but something...different. As if there were an added layer, something working in parallel.
"I..." Except 'I' didn't feel quite right? But he kept on. "I am Doug." Self. Why did he feel like -more- than a self? He looked down at his arm again, the stump and tourniquet. Scarring was already starting to occur. He squinted, noticing a very faint tracery of gold among the crimson. A flash of memory sparked within the blank spot .
Oh. That would explain some things.
~So I may have sold a few...passengers on the Professor's dream of coexistence.~ Now that he had a context for the things he was feeling, he was able to do things like remember how to connect telepathically to Jean's presence. ~We are NOT Locutus of Borg.~
That was promising.
Jean's attention focused on the stump as well. She quirked a brow.
But that was odd.
"Let's get you to the Medlab," she said. Stepping away for a moment to grab a stretcher and a medkit, she kept her mental eye out to see if he was going to move.
"Can you sit on your own or do you need help?"
Doug thrust out his right arm, as if to lever himself against the floor, then wrinkled his forehead in confusion. "I think I probably need help," he decided. "My brain is not all caught up on things, and I'm also a little busy with the new guys giving themselves the nickel tour of their digs." He winced as the stump of his arm bumped back against his body. "What do you say to a boatload of painkillers?" he asked, trying not to sound too plaintive.
"That's coming soon," Jean said. She nodded toward the stretcher. "I am going to telekinetically lift you so it might feel a little weird."
With the tilt of her head, she gently picked him up using her TK, stepping in with some gauze to wrap up the stump.
"This is going to hurt, but it's the nerve endings reacting to pressure," she said, moving to wrap the gauze around the stump while keeping her belt wrapped around it for now. She hadn't dealt with an amputated limb in awhile.
A string of curses in at least three different languages spilled out of Doug's mouth as another flare shot up his arm. "Oh, hello there language center of the brain, nice of you to join the - hnnn - party," Oh, this was definitely shock, a tiny observant part of his brain registered. Inappropriate joking, bravado, and compartmentalizing.
"Adrenaline is a good way to give a big jolt of clarity," Jean said as she made her way down the hallway toward the medlab, with him on the gurney.
"Okay, hang tight for a second, I'll be right back."
Wheeling him in, she pulled out her keys and made her way over to the cabinet where they kept the higher level painkillers and grabbed a vial and a syringe. Measuring the proper dose, she headed back to Doug, readying his remaining intact arm.
"And now the main event. You're going to feel a small stick, and then in a couple of minutes the drugs should take effect," she said as she found a vein, then glanced up.
"Can you tell me how many tiles there are on the ceiling?"
Ooh, he knew this one. 'A couple minutes' was likely to be 'a couple seconds', but that sounded rather nice to Doug under the circumstances.
"Eka, dvi, tri, chatur, pancha..." He didn't even really feel the stick, given the throbbing from his missing arm drowning it out.
And then the tiles swam in his vision, and he fell down into darkness and unconsciousness.
Taking a step back, Jean folded her arms, her attention lingering on what was left of his arm. There was more of it than there was before, which meant something was active. And she was not fond of unleashing something else onto the mansion if she had anything to say about it.
Her boots quietly echoed across the floor as she locked the door to the surgical suite where Laurie was unconscious. It wasn't to lock her in, more to keep things out. Just in case. Everyone else was in different places, and she kept track of who was nearby so she could call them should something go awry. Better safe than sorry.
Walking back over to Doug's surgical suite, she took a seat on a rolling stool. Her eyes focused on his unconscious form for a moment before they closed, and she reached out her mind, searching for the new mental signature that wasn't quite Doug's own.
~Hello.~
She chose a copy of her own office as a meeting place. In addition to a desk it had a comfortable couch, a coffee table, a sitting chair, and bookshelves lined with books and other knick knacks. The door to the office was open, ready to invite whomever in.
~hello world~
Doug's mental image of himself was hale and healthy - none of the wasting away that the blood curse had inflicted on his body, and obviously his astral form hadn't caught up to the loss of his arm that had just occurred. He seemed amused and in good spirits, probably due to the painkillers.
~Heya, Doc,~ Doug sent as he sat down in the chair. ~Wanting to make sure I'm me, I take it?~ It made total sense, given the number of invasions and such that had happened at the mansion over the years. Rapid fire, a flurry of names crossed the link - Turing, Metnick, Saussure, Cartney, Batman. This wasn't even the first time in the past few months he'd had to verify who he was.
~As for the rest...I guess they should introduce themselves? We've come to a temporary agreement...cohabiting if you will.~
Doug's astral form vibrated slightly, the edges blurring, and then split, another Doug appearing in seated form next to the chair. This Doug was clearly not Doug, it had almost no facial features, and was a patchwork of wireframe and shifting copper and charcoal panels.
~hello~
~query: username?~
~subroutine identification~
~nanite cluster cohabitating hardware of user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
A cartoon smile appeared on the wireframe avatar's face.
~user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher recommendation~
~subroutine joke~
~nanite cluster is not Hugh~
Doug shook his head in bemusement. ~I'm still attempting to teach them that whole thing isn't my name, but different names meaning the same thing. They're on the literal side,~ he warned Jean. ~I've had to define a LOT of things for them.~ And he doubted that was going to change any time soon.
Jean quirked an eyebrow, studying the replica of Doug with unrestrained curiousity. It wasn't often that she spoke to a non-organic mind.
~What's your purpose?~ she said to the nanite cluster.
~naniteswarn purpose equals learn~
~naniteswarn purpose equals cooperation~
~naniteswarm purpose equals repair hardware of user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
~Wait, what.~
That last one was news to Doug.
~Repair, not assimilate. Confirm?~ Jean said, finding herself mimicking certain speech patterns in an attempt to come to an understanding.
~Affirimative. Repair. Hardware status unacceptable.~
The wireframe avatar looked over at Doug, and then back at Jean.
~naniteswarm purpose equals repair only user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher~
~naniteswarm consumed hardware~
~naniteswarm subroutine repair~
Jean paused. ~That's...good. But how will you do that if the hardware is missing?~
~Oh. Oh god.~ Doug held up his hand toward the wireframe figure, with all the wide-eyed urgency of a parent whose child was just asked an open-ended question about dinosaurs by an adult who is completely unprepared for the TED Talk about to occur. ~Simple short answers only. Do not overwhelm the very nice doctor with all those schematics you just dropped in my head.~
~negative schematics?~
The cartoon smile turned to a cartoon frown, and the wireframe looked at Doug. ~query user Douglas Aaron Ramsey Doug Cypher naniteswarm subroutine build~
At the nod from Doug, it turned back to Jean. ~naniteswarm purpose equaled build for user FixerNorbert naniteswarm purpose equals build for user DouglasAaronRamseyDougCypher~
~Okay, so.~ Doug turned back to Jean. ~Basically, to translate, their previous purpose was to build a new body for Fixer. But when I was able to show them that he was going to just leave them to die once the body was done, they rebelled and we were able to reach an agreement to coexist. I guess they feel kind of bad that my arm got burned off, so they're essentially offering to build and maintain a prosthetic for me.~
Falling silent for a moment, Jean slowly nodded. Today could not get any stranger, so she decided to just go with it.
~Of course. Sounds...perfectly logical to me. How can I help?~
Doug shook his head wryly. ~I'm sure they'll have questions and suggestions aplenty.~ In the telepathic equivalent of a stage whisper, he noted ~They've basically been talking nonstop since they first realized they could communicate with me.~
