Jaclyn sent me a message via her implant, “You mentioned it.”
Ignoring her, I replied, “Both of you should get them. Everyone else did yesterday. I’ve checked on the specs, and they’ve been designed to work even with people who have magnetic powers.”
In the back of my mind, though, I did remember that the implant could be used to immobilize someone at the command of a Xiniti citizen—which might be useful if Dominators got past their buzzers. Continue reading Bigger Things: Part 9
From there, the day turned into planning sessions, the first with those of us who hadn’t been drugged. By the afternoon, even those of us who had been drugged were with it enough to participate.
From there, it grew into a cast of thousands or at least it felt like it. We had everyone—Amy, Tara, Samita, Rod, Alex, Brooke, Jenny, Sean, Dayton, every member of the original Justice Fist but Jody, and every living member of our original group. If that weren’t enough, Dr. Transylvania, Ape Nasty, Prime, and his second-in-command attended remotely. Continue reading Bigger Things: Part 8
“Good. We don’t have a timeline yet, but given that we need to rest and it needs to be as soon as possible, we might hit them early in the morning, but dawn would be coming soon.”
Dr. Transylvania nodded, “Not all of my servants are vampires, and we’ve had centuries to work out a system for operating in the sun.”
He looked past me into the lab. “I’m impressed with your setup. We should get together one day to discuss technology. My interest in robots and swarms has been minimal, but when I see you operate, I’m reminded that my use of magic sometimes distracts me from investigating areas that might be useful.”
A few minutes later, we’d closed out that conversation, and I’d passed off his information to Kayla to bring him into planning meetings remotely. Continue reading Bigger Things: Part 7
“I didn’t either. After the government went after you, I thought all the areas where you’d set up communities had been identified.”
“Right,” Prime grunted. “They got the Cabal’s breeding program. We hid the people we cared about. The Cabal didn’t need to know about them, and they didn’t care. They wanted a supply of soldiers descended from us. We made sure they got one, but we kept our families out of sight. This isn’t the first time that the leadership shifted, and the new people used the Dominators on us. We have backup plans for how to handle it. We needed to know where to aim them.”
“Do you have transportation? We’ve got a jet, but we can’t hold more than fifteen without cramming people into the bathroom and engine room.” Continue reading Bigger Things: Part 6
With Sean up, we didn’t have any reason to stay. We’d given everyone some privacy when they woke up, limiting the attendees to Alex and me and moving conscious people over to the side rooms.
It had been Alex’s idea. As he put it, “With poison, people sometimes vomit or… worse.”
No one needed to ask what was worse. Continue reading Bigger Things: Part 5
I get it; I thought back, and I’m glad you’re worried about lowering your ethical standards, but I think this is an okay exception. We’re talking about the possible destruction of Earth. That doesn’t come up too often.
I felt relief and then a stab of worry from Daniel, but he replied, In our lives, we’ll see more situations that we can justify exceptions than most people. Tell me if you think I’m being too cavalier with other people’s personalities. Because it does matter. It’s the right choice for now, but for all I know, that distrust I added might migrate to his thoughts about his father, and they might not ever reconcile or might attach to all his relationships, making him less connected to anybody. It shouldn’t be an easy choice. Continue reading Bigger Things: Part 4
Everyone tensed, a reasonable response, given that I’d told them that the end of the world was on its way and that my social skills might be the only thing standing in the way of planetary destruction.
Jaclyn responded to me first, thinking back, “Coming to meet you or coming to kill you?”
I shrugged, “That remains to be seen, but Kee thought he’d be interested in meeting because to the degree that I’m an Artificer, I’m descended from Nataw, his brother. He was also a friend of Lee, but he probably feels a bit betrayed by him. So, mentioning that is to be avoided.”
Haley looked up at me and thought, “And he could randomly show up at any time? Anything we do could be interrupted and then—BOOM—end of the world?” Continue reading Bigger Things: Part 3
“I can see not mentioning Lee because Nataw’s brother is in the Destroy faction, but is there more than that? Does he just not like Lee?”
Kee sighed, “No. Lee and Govan were good friends. Back when Lee was in Destroy and I was pretending to be, they became closer—because they were both worried about Nataw. When Lee left with the Galaxy Core Device, Govan felt personally betrayed. Govan isn’t vengeful, but I think he feels very hurt. He’s not a terrible being, but I can imagine that he’s felt abandoned by us over the last few thousand years.” Continue reading Bigger Things: Part 2
“The one good thing is that we don’t have to worry about how to keep them imprisoned. The bad, I guess, is that we have no chance of that. Now that I think about it, the base had teleportation blockers. They shouldn’t have been able to take anyone from upstairs at all.”
Rachel glanced over at me, “I think they’re off. I tried to get over here and help as soon as they appeared, but I couldn’t float through the walls. I found that they’d ripped the door off its hinges outside, but they’d also blocked off the stairwell on the lowest floor and broken the elevator. I was about to give up and go outside, but then everything worked and I could float up the tower.” Continue reading Bigger Things: Part 1