AP5: Ch. 51, 52, & Interlude: Davi (Patreon)

52 is very short, but I don't figure that'll matter when I publish it in book form. There might be some shuffling in order of the various interludes I'm writing, but I'll let you guys know if I do any reordering of anything I've already shared.

Chapter 51

The wheels of justice turn slowly, and I guess putting warp drives on justice doesn’t make it move much faster. 

We spent several days talking with Fluffy, filling them in on everything they’d missed during the broadcast blackout. Ariel gave them a full download of the recordings immediately, of course, but as Fluffy put it: “We received 2 full yottabytes of data, and isolating the most applicable moments is best done by interviewing the sapients involved.”

I got to meet several of the other Voices for Non-Citizens, including the author of the adorable “poems” Pointy had shared with me, Greenfern. I was a little horrified at first, when I realized Greenfern was a nightmarish head-sized blob of writhing tentacles, but he got cuter as we got used to each other. A lot of his initial writhing was due to extreme anxiety, and as he got calmer I began to see the person I’d gotten to know from the transmitted letters, a shockingly earnest and caring young… man? I wanted to do right by the Voices, of course, but internalizing the things I knew - such as the fact that the pile of dark spaghetti was a person, a good one - was taking both effort and time for me.

I’d get there.

At their insistence, we sold several plots of land around the world to the Voices for Non-Citizens, where they were building little bases where their multi-species staff could relax in the comfort of environments more appropriate to them.

“I’m sure the UGE would have been happy to just give this to you. You’ve done so much for us!” I said.

“Selling us the land for Commonwealth credits helps set the value of land on your planet as well as your authority to sell it. That said, if you wish to make donations of currency after your own situation has stabilized, and after enough time has passed that the donations cannot be directly correlated with our purchases, the Voices can always put those to good use.”

I laughed, amused. “It’s strategy all the way down with you, huh?”

Fluffy’s fins rippled. “Let us say that the Voices are quite used to needing to find every advantage. I am thrilled with the opportunity you’ve provided, but it only means we must work harder.”

I frowned. “Fair. What can I do?”

“Honestly? You are not a lawyer, Meghan Moretti. You are central to several of our cases, and I believe you will be called on to testify in at least one, but you have told me all I need to know. I can’t rest, but you can rest! It will be months before you are called to speak. Go home.”

“What if you need more from me?”

“Do I have permission to visit you at your domicile?”

“Yes, of course! Anytime. Although… I’m not sure where we’ll be living just yet…”

“You don’t-” Fluffy started, then stopped. They made a fluting noise I wasn’t sure how to interpret. Laughter? Something else. “Well, perhaps this is a good time to figure that out.”

I thought about it. Part of me wanted to stay, but if Fluffy said I wasn’t needed… the kids could use some structure in their life. Some stability. Some parenting that didn’t relate to their combat readiness. Maybe we could get Cassie to stop sucking her thumb again. And Gavin’s handwriting was atrocious…

“Maybe you’re right.”

…

I made the suggestion to my family that night. We’d been staying in the area where we’d been at the end of the contest; not for any real reason, just exhaustion and inertia. There’d been a hotel a couple miles away from where we’d had our impromptu wake, which I had judged a good enough place to stay. “We should get a house again. A home.”

“I want our house,” Cassie said. “With my bedroom and my bed like when I was little.”

“Like when you were little?” Gavin laughed. “Cassie, you’re still little!”

“No! I am big!”

“Yeahhh… Sure you are…” said Micah. “But our house is gone. We took it down to make room for Fort Autumn. And then the monsters destroyed the Quarry, which was kind of our new house.”

“Some of our stuff might still be okay?” I said. I flickered Analyze, trying to determine whether any of our stuff would survive being crushed under tons of rock and dirt. The answers I got were inconclusive. “It depends on if any of the walls or roof of the Quarry survived. Some of our clothes should be recoverable, at least. We’ll still need to find a new place to stay.”

“A place for you to stay exists in your neighborhood.”

The voice was unfamiliar, but there were no strangers in our hotel room, just Pointy, my husband, and my kids. It took me a moment before I realized. “Ariel? Is that you?”

“Yes. Auditory projections are well within my capabilities, and I realized recently that there was nothing preventing me from communicating this way. Cricket believed humans might prefer this to mental communication, so I have spent some processing cycles on developing subroutines to facilitate it. Was I in error?”

“Definitely not! Talking to you normally is great, especially if you’re talking to more than one of us.” 

Cassie looked around, and after not seeing anyone, stared at the ceiling as she had seen me do in the past. “Ariel? Am I your big sister?”

“Yes.”

Cassie’s eyes widened and she squished Pointy tight against her chest. “Yesssss… I am big.”

“Hi Ariel! Nice to meet you!” Gavin waved at the ceiling.

“Yeah, hi…” Micah’s grumbled greeting was less welcoming, but I let it slide.

“What’s this about a place to stay?”

“I would prefer not to share more details, but an order will require me to do so.”

A slow smile tugged at my lips. I glanced at Vince, who shrugged. I glanced back at the ceiling. “Fine, then. Keep your secrets. We’ll head home, check on our stuff, and see what you have for us.”

“Thank you.”

…

It didn’t take us long to get home. There were plenty of flyers available, and with no Titans in the skies to defend against or dodge, many could carry heavy burdens at high speeds. There were still way more people wanting to travel than flyers available to take them, but rank - and friendship - have their privileges. 

“We won’t be too heavy for you?” Vince asked Davi. “I know you couldn’t fly us over from Colorado…”

“That was mostly because of the monsters. As for weight, you know I’ve got an ability for that!” the shorter woman chirped. I felt my weight decrease substantially as she hit me with Gravity Null. “Right this way, folks!”

Davi opened the door to the strange red boxy thing she’d brought with her as she spoke. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t place what it was exactly. Metal walls surrounded six seats, with open-air windows interrupted by horizontal bars that made it harder to fall out. It couldn’t possibly have been made recently - there were too many materials involved - so it must have been used for something pre-apocalypse.

“Was this from a Ferris wheel or something?” I asked.

“Close! I know some people are using those, but I was lucky enough to get ahold of this instead. It’s a sky gondola, like they use in ski lifts! Not many in this part of the country, but I picked this one up in Gatlinburg. Got a lady with Improvised Equipment to reinforce it, Analyst to say it’s safe, and I’m told it’s a pretty comfortable ride! Bit windy, though.”

“Windy” was an understatement, but helmets kept it out of our eyes, and the kids - nah, all of us - had an absolute blast, even if Pointy had to be secured in a mesh pouch to be sure she didn’t blow away. The wind roared through the cabin, pushing at our skin, but Davi kept the acceleration low enough that the force was more “whoa, weird!” than anything truly uncomfortable, at least to our altered physiologies.

She didn’t fly too high, either, only a few hundred feet up. We were well above any trees or buildings, but we could see the ground clearly, and even make out people fairly clearly. Expressions were too difficult for us to make out, but we could see them look up as we passed to wave at us. 

The countryside was in sorry shape. All the major roads had been torn to shreds, and most buildings had suffered at least some damage, with many completely burned or flattened. Still, I could already see signs of hope. We passed crew after crew working on repairing the roads, with augmented people working to shift large chunks of debris as telekinetics shifted smaller ones, and shapers worked to smooth out the resulting surface. We saw even more people working on rebuilding and repairing cities and homes. In one burned-out area I saw a neighborhood of little dome-shaped houses, sort of like the ones from the Flintstones, something completely new to replace the old. That tickled me, but my favorite efforts were the ones that reminded me of the Japanese art of kintsugi, where some of the old was kept, but there was no effort to hide the supernatural nature of the repairs. We passed a civic building in Georgia where only one of the columns was the original marble, while the others had been partially or completely replaced by some kind of metal molded into the same shape. I liked the way that it acknowledged the damage, but didn’t let the damage remain. It sang to me of humanity’s resilience.

By the time we reached Madison, I was in such a good mood that I’d almost forgotten about our destroyed home. Instead, I was looking from one local landmark to another, overjoyed to see that some of what I remembered had survived, even if some of it bore scars. The Saturn V replica was askew, and part of the bottom looked shinier, as if recently replaced, but it was still there.

I was looking backward, at Micah and Gavin’s elementary school, which had partially survived, when Davi slowed. “What is that?” I heard her shout, her voice now audible over the reduced wind.

I whirled, looking toward our neighborhood. 

Autumn Hills had borne the brunt of Hamlet’s attacks for a long time. Few pre-apocalypse houses were left standing, even partially. Plenty of new constructions had popped up, however, and I could see more homes in progress, with people working to clear debris from the landscape. 

None of this had prompted Davi’s reaction.

Standing on the site of Fort Autumn was a… a… thing.

A house? A castle? A treehouse? None of these words were right. It was a building; I could at least say that much.

“Do you like it?”

Ariel’s voice emerged in the dead silence that followed our reaction.

“Ariel… Did you… make this? For us?”

“Yes. I scanned my memories for every stated preference members of our family made regarding their place of living and incorporated them all into one structure.”

“Ah,” I said, stalling for time as my eyes locked onto the swirling slide making its way down from one upper-floor window. “It certainly seems… spacious.”

I tried to keep my mind away  from less flattering adjectives, like “insane” and “incomprehensible.” I tried to keep myself from wondering “Why didn’t Ariel just re-make our old house? She must have some memories of it.”

It reminded me a lot of the Shops, the way that different architectural features had been blended tastelessly together into one edifice with no understanding of the traditions they’d come from. 

But… this was Ariel’s surprise. She’d been trying to help. To do something nice? I wanted to encourage that. Instead, I focused hard on the idea of not making judgements yet. “Let’s see what it’s like inside.”

“It’s awesome on the outside!” Gavin said. I followed his gaze toward the three-story climbing gym just barely visible, partially hidden behind a turret. I flinched, then reminded myself: a three-story fall wouldn’t kill Gavin, even assuming my monkey-boy somehow fell and didn’t catch himself, which was… vanishingly unlikely.

Still, I was definitely nervous as Davi set us down and I climbed out of the gondola. I had to like this, for Ariel’s sake, but it was just so-

I stopped, staring up at the trees that lined the path to our front door. “Ariel, are these… No. They can’t be. Those died! We killed them when we dug the quarry.”

“You expressed your regret for the destruction of these crepe myrtles. I was able to find a partial root system with some cells still alive, and from there it was relatively simple to replicate it, provide nutrients, and accelerate the growth. Your directives - and those of my other linked users - have given me wide freedom. As long as I do not directly impact sapient life, I am relatively unconstrained, at least on property directly controlled by me. You were kind enough to allow me that same privilege on property you owned.”

I had? I checked Eidetic Memory. “Oh! I… I thought that was just so you could get food to people more easily, directly following the contest.”

“That was my first application, but I have taken further liberties. Is that acceptable?”

“Yeah.” I said, my heart lurching as I walked through the arbor of hot pink blossoms toward the front door of our… castle, I was calling it a castle. The door, like so many other things about the castle, was out of place. It looked more like something that belonged on a typical home. It didn’t even look like a front door: no peephole or windows, no number, no knocker, no doorbell. It was just a plain white door. Actually, no, it was a little dirty…

I gasped.

Beside me, Vince stiffened, not sure if I was upset. “Meghan?”

“It can’t be… it would have gotten crushed in the Quarry.” I pushed past my husband, kneeling beside the door. I ran my fingers over the faded, half-erased permanent marker of Micah’s signature.

“I retrieved this from the rocks below, repaired, and reinforced it. Did I err?”

I felt a lump rise in my throat. It took a moment to swallow before I could answer. “Ariel, it’s perfect.” I looked back over my shoulder, smiling at my family. “Guys, look! We’re home!”

Chapter 52

Fluffy came to visit a week later, their large bulk just barely fitting through our front door. Fortunately, Ariel had registered our many, many complaints about the tight living quarters in the Quarry, and the castle was spacious enough that our cavernous living room could comfortably hold a bus-sized alien lawyer.

Well, comfortable for us, anyway. Vince and I were sitting on a cushy couch, but Fluffy was just kind of standing. “Should we get some furniture in here for you? If you’re going to be visiting often, don’t want you to just stand around. Unless that’s best for your species?”

“I am fine standing.”

“Is that how your species usually relaxes?”

“No, we typically rest around real or artificial branches or tree trunks, but you need not-”

I’d already put in a mental request to Ariel, and she had started work immediately. Fluffy stopped speaking as the new architecture slowly fuzzed into place. 

“Like this?” I asked.

“This is delightful,” Fluffy said. Their many feet bit into the wooden column as they ascended, then flowed out to drape their top end off the side of a faux branch that stuck out into the middle of our living room, almost up to the high ceiling. “Unnecessary, but delightful.”

“Both Mother and I are very grateful for your efforts on our behalf. Creative application of nanite abilities does not come easily to me, but you are worth the processing power. Please, be comfortable and inform us of the progress on the many cases,” Ariel said. 

“We have some time to prepare,” Fluffy said. “The Maffiyir Company petitioned to have the cases heard in Gliese 738, as the system is relatively close, but-”

“If Meghan leaves this star system, I will destabilize!” Ariel said.

“Indeed. Do not fear: I am confident that your unique circumstances will allow us to successfully lobby for local hearings, but I expect it will take us several Earth months to receive a judgement to that effect. After that, I would expect a delay of at least one more month for a suitable venue to be built or relocated.”

“And… our chances at victory?”

“We will win at least some of the cases,” Fluffy said. “Many of the actions taken by the Maffiyir Company were too blatantly illegal. The two of most concern to me are the humanity of Ariel and the Informational Assistants, and case dependent on that one: the ownership of the unclaimed land on Earth. Those will both be challenging cases to win.”

“And they’re very important to win,” I said. “Well, we’ve got time: tell me what I can do - what we can do - to prepare.”

Vince stood, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “And while you do, I’ll try to help the kids get back to normal. Of course, if there’s anything I can do more directly to support you-”

We both looked at Fluffy. “Not at this time. I will keep you informed, Vincenzo Moretti.”

Interlude: Davi

The tiny Asian woman set the gondola down on the tarmac in the Los Angeles airport as the summer twilight faded. Six people piled out, taking off helmets and stretching. One man came up to her. “Thank you so much! I’ve been on the waitlist for a ride out here for over a month. Not a lot of people wanting to make the trip across the whole country. It’s a long flight!”

Davi yawned. “It is! But… I might come out this way more often.”

“Oh? Family in the area?”

She shook her head. “No. That’s part of what delayed me. I grew up on the East Coast and I had a lot of family and friends there I needed to check on, and I’ve been living in north Alabama and had a few people there I needed to help out.”

Her passenger looked confused. “If you don’t have family or friends out here…”

“Oh, I have friends! I was actually in Colorado at the start of the apocalypse and we met this eSports team-” Davi paused as she saw her passenger’s confusion deepen. “It’s a long, long story. Basically, we owe our lives to each other and I heard they moved back out here as soon as things calmed down. I sent them a message that I was coming…”

The short woman stood on tiptoe, craning her neck to peer around the airport. Derelict planes cluttered the area, few of them intact. Many had missing panels, presumably “mined” for materials. Others were crunched or torn apart, damaged by monsters.

The man shrugged. “Well, I hope you find them. Thanks again!”

He jogged off, not even heading to the terminal, but directly north out of the airport.

“No problem!” Davi called. She stood for a moment, nonplussed, then began to walk to the terminal. Hopefully she’d find them inside

She had almost made it when a faint sound made her pause: “-vi. Davi!”

When she turned, she saw a small crowd of people charging toward her, almost fifteen people. In seconds, they’d reached her, enveloping her in a crushing group hug.

“Avalanche! Bolero! Joey! Zephyr! I’m so happy to see you! I’m so glad you’re okay!” Davi laughed. “But who are the rest of these people? Family?”

“Family and friends!” Bolero said. “Davi, this is my mom, Valentina, and my cousin Abril.”

Davi, still squished in between her friends, extracted an arm to shake their hands. “Great to meet you! I’m so happy you made it.”

Zephyr smiled. “Almost all of our families did - at least everyone that was local - and we have Bytez to thank for it. They had a game house around the block from ours.”

“Yeah, we thought you were so lucky for making that invitational, so you were on our mind,” called a tall man. “After we got our feet under us and found our own families, we tried to look for TAF’s people.”

He looked vaguely familiar to Davi. “Bytez Piledriver?”

The man laughed. “In the flesh! We had to come meet one of the people we’d heard so much about. And you were traveling with the guy who adopted the system? You actually know them?”

“Yeah…” Davi said.

“How’s Vince doing?” Joey asked. “All his kids made it?”

“Yeah! He’s doing really well.”

“What about everyone else?” Avalanche asked.

“Pretty good, honestly. Byron lost a lot of family-” 

“We heard about that,” Avalanche said, subdued.

“-but we got his grandma and cousin back to Huntsville and it turns out his dad made it through okay. Kurt and his family are doing well, and I got John back to his wife first thing after it all ended.”

“Eyy! Good for him!” Bolero said. 

“Is Vince’s wife really connected to the game system?”

“Ariel? Yeah. Uh… actually… Ariel, are you listening? Mind saying hi?”

“I was not previously recording, but a subroutine has drawn my attention to this location. Greetings.”

The overmind’s words hit the group like a water balloon, shock splashing over people’s faces and making them jump back and look around. 

Bolero took a suspicious look at Davi. “Is this a joke? Do you have someone with a sound ability hiding nearby?”

Davi shook her head. “No joke. It’s really her.”

Bolero looked stunned for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Well, might as well go big. Hey, Ariel - that’s your name, yeah? - Ariel, can you fix all the damage to Earth? Power lines, computers, houses? I’d love to get the internet running again”

“It is technically feasible, but more difficult than you may assume.”

Bolero frowned. “Go on.”

“I lack authority to act independently in areas claimed by humanity. While I can still act freely in over two-thirds of the planet, the areas unavailable to me are heavily correlated with the presence of human technology and habitation.”

“Because people ‘claimed’ the land they were living in first.”

“Precisely. In addition, Detailed records of Earth’s initial state were not taken. Degradation of wiring and combustibles were directed by subroutines I did not write, and I have given up on rewriting that code to attempt to reverse the effects.”

“Why?”

“The initial code took them from ordered states to highly disordered ones. Then, time, heat, and intervention by humans and contest entities further increased the disorder. I judged that repairs were best done on a case-by-case basis.”

“Are you doing those?”

“Occasionally. I am pursuing many projects. For example, I am continuing to provide basic rations where necessary, but I no longer have access to Maffiyir Company stockpiles. As such, I am synthesizing them from base elements rather than teleporting them in. It is consuming a considerable amount of my attention and resources. I have also been consulting with the UGE. They requested targeted repairs on individual high-capacity devices. Fortunately, the vast majority of your data storage remains intact, so repairs are needed only to allow access to that data.”

“So… we still have Wikipedia?” Zephyr asked.

“Wikipedia?! How about the Library of Congress? That’s millions of books!” Bolero said.

“Legend Scramble?!” Joey added.

“All of those, although I currently have access only to Legend Scramble client software. It is likely I will be able to retrieve the server software in the future, but that is not high on the priority list as it is likely to be some time before individual computing devices become commonplace. A team of experts has been tasked with finding the best ways for me to assist with jump-starting your industries, but any solution will take time. In terms of infrastructure repair, the UGE has requested I focus on long-distance power and telephone lines. I also have some projects of personal importance I am pursuing.”

Joey’s face rose and fell as Ariel spoke. He sighed and smiled. “Well… I guess getting back to normal tomorrow is a bit much to hope for. I guess I’m kind of excited to hear that it’s all out there somewhere. That we can get it all - or most of it  - back eventually.

“Telephone lines would be a great start,” Bolero said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Using people with Mental Speech to pass messages is too much like the kids’ game ‘telephone.’ I assume your original message actually told us which terminal you planned to land at?” 

“Of course!”

He laughed. “That didn’t make it to us.”

“How’d you find me, then? LAX is a big airport.”

Bolero pointed at a little fluffball on the ground nearby. “One of my scouts spotted you. I can send out a lot of them now, and I can move them pretty far. Their vision is pretty good too!”

“Nice!”

“Yeah, it’s been real handy! I’m starting a kind of lost-and-found business, searching ruined houses for people’s stuff.”

“Life moves on, huh?” Davi asked.

The words caused a momentary freeze in the group. Davi flinched at her inadvertent reference to the teammate they’d lost. When she’d last seen TAF, they’d been taking his loss hard.

After a moment, though, Avalanche smiled. “Yeah. Life moves on. Speaking of which, there’s a new restaurant right outside of the airport. Can we treat you to dinner?”

“I’d love that!” Davi said. “I want to hear everything you’ve been up to.”