by David Reiss
“How did you get to this lab?” I asked, changing the subject to dismiss that cold remembrance. “I thought that you were at the house...?”
“I used your teleportation platform.” She looked a bit shy. “The one hidden in your home office.”
“Whisper!”
“I checked for solar flare activity and ionospheric disturbances first!” she added defensively.
“Still, the platforms should only be used in emergencies.” I kept devices present at many of my properties as an escape route of last resort, but I'd never been able to make the technology sufficiently safe to rely upon. In retrospect, I suppose that the danger was less pronounced for Whisper than it was for myself; her body was more easily replaceable, and her mind was not truly housed within her body at all.
The less-stable teleportation algorithms used by Ophidian Khan had been on my mind lately, and I was perhaps overly paranoid at the moment. Still, it would have wounded me deeply to see Whisper damaged by my own technology.
“This was an emergency,” Whisper declared, a nervous whine tinging her voice.
“Oh, sweetheart...I'm fine.” More or less. Analgesics and some time with an icepack would probably help manage the pinched nerve in my neck. Dealing with grief and anger would take longer.
“I needed a hug,” the delicate android insisted, looking up at me with glowing pale-blue eyes.
“Emergency, hm?” I arched an eyebrow wryly.
“Mmm!”
“I suppose that I needed a hug, too,” I admitted and held my sister close. “Thank you.”
“You're welcome,” she responded cheerily, the corner of her lips lifted in a relieved smile for only a moment before beginning to quiver. “Is Red Ghost really…?”
“Yes,” I sighed, mournfully. “Yes, I think so.”
“I’m sorry.” She rested her hairless head against my chest. “I wanted to meet him.”
“I would have liked to introduce you, eventually.” It wouldn’t have happened soon. Given the publicity surrounding the trial, introducing Whisper would be tantamount to unmasking; the connection between Doctor Fid and Terry Markham would be laid bare. And yet, I’d begun to hope that it might eventually be possible. “He would have liked you, I’m certain.”
“Mmm.”
“And thank you again for whatever it is you did to protect me,” I added, “Can the process be replicated?”
If the method could be mass produced, then more could be inoculated against the Legion incursion. Such a widespread effort might motivate the Legion to launch an orbital bombardment similar to that which had been performed upon the Brooklyn Knights' Earth, but that at least was a fight that I could comprehend!
“Sort of, but not really,” Whisper nibbled at her lower lip before continuing. “You've had your tap installed for over a decade and medical nanites performing repairs and optimizations for over a year. That's a lot of time for crossmodal neuroplastic remodeling to occur.”
I struggled to fight back an amused smile; even though I was certain that she'd performed sufficient research that her understanding of the science was at least as detailed as my own, she still drew out and carefully enunciated the technical terminology. 'Neuroplastic' became 'noo...roh...plass...tick'. It was adorable!
“I don't know if it'd work for anyone else,” she continued, shrugging uncomfortably. “Your brain was probably pretty unique already, even before the changes. You're...well...you.”
“Ah, well.” So, no need to begin gathering resources for a kinetic-energy-dispersal satellite grid or high-energy anti-spacecraft munitions just yet; whatever reason the Legion had for their current approach, their plans could apparently not be disrupted by spreading immunity to the human populace. A direct invasion was unlikely to be imminent.
“So, how did you take advantage of my unique crossmodal neuroplastic remodeling?”
“Ummm...That Legion guy was affecting some of the same neural pathways-”
Noo...rahl...path...wayz. Heh.
“-that your tap uses. I, ummm, hacked your brain to add an encrypted tunnel to executive functions and memories and things. The encryption key is stored in the neural tap hardware, not the brains wetware, 'cause I didn't think the Legion guy could get at that.”
“Clever girl,” I praised, and she preened.
Upon initial examination, the code that she’d added to my neural tap control software looked to be cleanly constructed. It was sufficiently simple that I could easily confirm that there would be no new effects upon my thought process or memory; she’d simply locked down remote-access to certain portions of my brain.
An irregularity caught my eye, and I suddenly could not breathe. The logs showed that the work had been implemented using my own credentials.
There had been memory issues, too. Minor glitches, evidenced only in hard-coded logs. I'd apparently flushed my short-term memory dozens of times during my recuperation; I had no idea why I'd felt compelled to do so but the commands had been issued with my own authorization codes, so surely I must have had good cause. I only wish that I had thought to document my reasoning for future reference.
In my youth, I'd never been prone to headaches...but when Whisper had performed the hack to save my life, the accompanying migraine had been intense. A quick scan of my biotelemetry records was able to find similar moments of unexpected cranial discomfort.
“I can have the drones to you tomorrow evening,” I told Starnyx. “The textile factory in Staten Island, you still keep your workshop there?”
When we'd finished talking, I ignored the minor headache that had started sometime during the video chat and set myself towards writing an operating manual for the construction drones and touching up their programming.
Using the interfaces Whisper had identified in my neural tap, it was relatively simple to search long-term memories based upon relevant time stamps from the telemetry data.
“Do you need my construction drones again?” I asked Starnyx.
(I reflexively checked the status of my construction robots. Hmm. I could see that the drones that he'd used had been returned to my storage facility days before my surgery, but those two were still listed as unavailable. Two others, as well! Some software glitch, perhaps? I'd look into it later.)
I rubbed at my eyes against a sudden headache...
Other examples were more recent, though less easily explicable.
I blinked tiredly. The new armor should be the Mk 35, not 36; the Mk 34 had been my most recent design. Lightweight, fast and sleek, the suit had been crammed full with every stealth and anti-surveillance technology that I could compress within the armor's confines.
I grit my teeth against a sudden headache, then created a new file for the Mk 36. There was much to do.
Other recollections required no prodding. I could call up the memory without requiring the neural tap's assistance; there were no records of discomfort, just the stark realization that my perceptions had been altered:
The force emitters in the Staten Island warehouse had not been of my own design. Nyx could have taken plans from any of the four construction drones that my records say were obliterated in the fire, but he'd chosen to use an older, more well-known and admittedly much less expensive configuration.
“Whisper…?” I asked hesitantly.
“Mmm?”
“Have you been hacking into my brain to alter my conscious access to short term memories?”
“Um. Nooooooo?” she lied, more transparent even than Blizzard.
Damn.
My initial shock of horror cooled to a simmer; I couldn’t be angry with her, not so soon after she’d saved me from a fate far worse than death! I'd now experienced a truly malicious mental invasion; these newly identified intrusions were disconcerting, but I could sense no animosity behind them. Furthermore…Whisper was sufficiently well-versed in my own thought processes to have known that explaining the hack that had saved my live would also reveal her prior activities poking about inside my skull.
She'd answered anyway. I wanted to believe that my little sister had valid cause for her actions and for keeping her behavior secret.
Hm. Valid cause and perhaps little choice.
“Can we play a game of pretend?” I forced an unsteady smile. “I ask hypothetical, pretend questions that aren’t connected to real events and you make up pretend, hypothetical answers?”
“Okay…?” She seemed confused at the non-sequitur and more than a bit unnerved by the tension she read in my expression.
“Theoretically, can you think of any reasons why an artificial sentience similar to you would repeatedly alter the memories of a person very-much like me?
“Oh. Oh! Yes!” She settled into the hug as though a great weight had suddenly been lifted off her shoulders. “Maybe the girl had a core directive to rebuild her Daddy’s foundry but had to keep it a secret?”
“So, if that pretend girl saw a way to ‘borrow’ a few construction drones…?”
“She’d HAVE to do it. And even if she wanted to tell the person very-much like you, she wouldn’t be able to.”
I'd seen her code laid bare and knew that her expression of desperate regret could not have been faked. Also...it occurred to me that (when I'd met her deep within Apotheosis' lair), one of my first actions towards her had been to modify her programming without permission. Could I really castigate my sister for following my own horrific example?
No. But I made a few additional modifications to the code Whisper had installed into my neural tap, just in case.
“That poor girl must have felt bad,” I finally sighed. “Do you think that she would want another hug, so that she knows that she’s forgiven?”
“Mmm!”
I patted comfortingly at her back.
“High…poh…theh…tick…all…ee,” Whisper's expression shifted to one of sneaky joy, “do you think that the girl could have used her Daddy’s foundry and the-person-like-you’s deep-ocean manufacturing facility to build a suit of heavy-combat armor called the Mk 35?”
“Only if the girl was very, very clever,” I answered thoughtfully, mind a whirl at the possibilities. If my calculations were correct, an orichalcum sub-frame and surface armor would dramatically improve any of my armors’ structural integrity and effectiveness, and the heavy-combat model would take best advantage of the new material. “Would this imaginary Mk 35 be designed after the Mk 29?”
“But with all the technical improvements present in the Mk 36,” Whisper sounded smug. And rightfully so. “The, um, make-believe android girl isn’t good at inventing new stuff yet, but she’s not bad at copying other people’s work.”
Once again, I was amazed at how much my life had changed and how much my world had improved since Whisper had become a part of it. The alteration of my short-term memories was disconcerting...but she loved her big brother. That was no small thing.
I was also struck by the jarring realization that I was standing, safe and loved, when I had other (far more serious) obligations before me. I hadn’t wanted to think about it, hadn’t wanted to dwell upon new pains when I was so very lucky to be present at all. But another had not been so fortunate.
“Sweetheart, I love you and I have a thousand more pretend questions for you,” I reluctantly let her stand on her own, “but I have something else that I need to do, now. It’s important.”
“’kay.” She looked like she understood. “Love you too.”
◊◊◊
“Yes?” The phone had rung four times before the woman answered. Her voice was husky with weary irritation.
“Regrowth,” I said, my own emotion leveled out by vocoder. “This is Doctor Fid. We need to talk.”
“Doctor,” she yawned. Over the phone, I could hear movement as she sat up. “I thought you said that I shouldn’t expect three-o’clock wake-up calls.”
“Regrowth—”
“Some of us don’t get to wear a full-face helmet to hide the bags under our eyes, y’know.” I heard her shift around. “We need sleep so paparazzi don’t sell pictures that get captioned with ‘Night of the Living Dead’ jokes.”
“Regrowth,” I steeled myself. “Elaine. I’m sorry. Something has gone terribly wro—“
“No.”
“—ng. Investigators are already on-site, and they may conclude that I am to blame. I wanted to assure you th—“
“No!” she interrupted, voice ragged. “Just shut up. Stop talking!”
I did. Over the phone, I could hear her breathing, could hear her throat drawing tighter with every shaky inhalation.
“Tell me,” the heroine ordered, simply.
“We were attacked by an alien telepath. Miguel assumed his mist form and…dispersed.”
“Telepathy is just a myth!” She choked back a sob. “Don’t lie to me, not about this.”
“There are no human telepaths,” I acknowledged sadly. “The Legion has many.”
“The Legion? This has to do with the refugees? Your investigation?”
“I believe so,” I admitted.
“Then it’s your fault,” she cried. “I told him to be careful around you. I told him—”
“If I could have done anything more, I swear that I would have,” I grimaced. “He told me, before the end, to tell you that he was sorry.”
She hung up on me, but not before I heard her begin to weep.
◊◊◊
“Welcome to KNN CapeWatch, I'm your host Stan Morrow. With me tonight is Pamela Green. Today's top story is the tragic death of one of the most beloved heroes in the North Eastern United States. The Red Ghost, second in command to the Boston Guardians, was murdered early this morning by the notorious Doctor Fid.”
“So sad, Stan. The Red Ghost was such an inspiration.”
“You're absolutely right, Pam. The Red Ghost was an active hero for more than a decade and it's simply impossible to calculate how many lives he touched. As tribute to this extraordinary man, the next hour will focus upon a few of the highlights of his long and storied career.”
“Later in this program, we'll be providing a timeline for the Red Ghost's many clashes with Doctor Fid. What can we learn from this long-running and escalating rivalry? What choice brought their conflict to this calamitous end? Our experts will discuss the facts and explain what lessons can be taken away from this terrible tragedy.”
“The Red Ghost was first recruited by Defender of the New York Shield, but it was six months before his public debut; according to team-mates, he spent those six months developing a grueling training regimen and learning to fight from more experienced members of the United States’ premier superhero team.”
“This footage shows the Red Ghost sparring with Cloner, shortly before the latter hero retired and disappeared from public view.”
“It’s my understanding that these are the last videos ever taken of Cloner. Is that correct?”
“It is, Stan. Now, this footage may be considered too graphic for young viewers, so parents should please use your best judgement. This next section shows Cloner creating dozens of bodies in an attempt to subdue the young Red Ghost.”
“What's that weapon that the Red Ghost is holding?”
“It’s a simple telescoping baton. Now, you can see that as the sparring session starts, the Red Ghost is fighting defensively…but you can definitely see the strategic mind at work in the way he is managing so many assailants at once.”
“From the beginning, the Red Ghost was well respected for his ability to judge a scenario and- Ow! Elbows are NOT supposed to bend that way.”
“No, they aren’t. Watch how the Ghost uses the wounded clone to impede other attackers while he lays into the two that had been trying to sneak up from behind.”
“Wow, he’s fast!”
“Defender often said that the Red Ghost was the best fighter he ever trained.”
“And, more broken bones…I’m glad that this video doesn’t include sound.”
“Me too, Stan, me too. But the purpose of this video was to sh
ow that the Red Ghost was highly skilled, focused and capable well before he took to the streets.”
“I’ll say. It looks like Cloner had to create more bodies to continue the battle.”
“Watching this, it’s no wonder that the Red Ghost quickly became a force to be reckoned with.”
“Here, you can see the Red Ghost ducking in and out of his mist-like form to control the fight, taking on only one opponent at a time before disappearing.”
“Some of the Cloners look frustrated.”
“I don't think that he was expecting this much of a fight from a rookie.”
“Aaaand it looks like Defender is calling an end to this sparring session. What a tremendous battle!”
“And what a tremendous loss to the superhero community. The Red Ghost will certainly be missed.”
“That he will.”
“Now, that last video showed him early into his training, but he definitely continued to gain skills and experience as his career continued. This surveillance footage shows the Red Ghost interrupting Blackjack during a bank robbery. Watch how clean and precise he is during this fight.”
“It looks like action movie choreography!”
“But without the shaky camera.”
“Hah!”
“Was the Red Ghost still training with Defender at this time?”
“No, Defender had retired more than a year earlier; this is three years into the Red Ghost's tenure at the New York Shield. Sphinx had taken over his training and partnered with him most often in the field.”
“I can definitely see Sphinx's influence, here. She's always been a surgical fighter in hand to hand combat.”
“Very true. Now, this is where the fight gets interesting...Blackjack is using his trademark club and Red Ghost has switched to using two telescoping batons that have been enhanced with some sort of energy field.”
