Possibility of tangles
David Eborrenial sees a point in the future. A burst of light. A flash. An explosion. Can’t be anything good. Probably not. It doesn’t put anyone in immediate danger but it might be a problem so he tries to avert it.
It’s ballistics. A falling object. A projectile. A slave to the lao explore. Codifies that option into the correct series of mental commands to exercise Protinam powers and tugs that thread of the timestream. He is testing out dodging the place it’s going to be. That usually works. Chaos theory. A small change puts everything about to happen out of whack. Statistically, that’s all that should be needed.
It isn’t.
He scans quickly over the other timelines. They show the same result. Unambiguously, fed to his mind - result of taking evasive action, failure. Not only that, they show a result. Which means that the event must occur in all timelines currently visible. That isn’t exactly unheard of, but it’s concerning. The last time this happened - a certainty - was the plague. But that was due to interference from Antarctica. This is a different scale.
He tries things. He wanders quickly down different branches, through different decisions, pushing and pulling on the timestream to see the results. He tries moving the target. He tries shifting the goalposts. He tries sounding the alarm and calling Celling to this position. That position. Nudging to a side. Saying different things hoping that through people’s actions they exert enough influence to shift the outcome. He tries hiding in different places. Nothing works.
Isolated? he wonders. Was this a situation he had no influence over? But no. He realizes that all the decisions still have the sort of… glow, the mental highlight, the sharp yellow line around the event that means that his decisions have an impact. In fact he can’t even see anything that he can’t affect with his decision, that isn’t connected to the Independent Variable. Everything he really doesn’t have control over is greyed out. The things that the decision he’s considering can affect, they’re in color. He can see it.
So my decisions have an impact but the impact is that the same result is reached? David thinks, unbelievingly. So just by chance everything I do doesn’t make it change? He keeps trying decisions. He keeps looking for ways out. He jitters through the timestream trying to find every course of action. Every one hits the same wall. The same unbelievable result. Result successful. Result: Failure.
Mirage, he realizes. Fata Morgana. A puddle in the desert. No matter how far you run it’s in front of you. But this isn’t a natural phenomenon. Not light. Not refraction The timestream doesn’t bend. We bend it. But something’s there. Everywhere.
Not everywhere, he corrects himself. Everywhere he looks. And it’s everywhere he looks if it follows where he looks. If it’s always in front of him, dancing before his eyes, he assumes it’s everywhere. That’s where it is. Like a hand, clenched, rushing in front of him.
Not a natural phenomenon. Artificial, he realizes. Chase scenes are a human construct. Nothing natural does this. Intelligent design, he thinks, and his eyes snap open. Intelligent design. A human construct. Fata Morgana. The castle of the sorceress. We bend the timestream. Who bends the timestream? Who else?
And then it hits him.
And then it hits, as the moment of the point comes screaming in. As his senses go into overload from the proximity of it, both real and false, in space and time. Of the probability, infinite and shockingly, roundedly complete. Unpredictable because it’s too predictable. The chances running upward and stomping on that three digit number. Certainty. One over zero. One to the infinity.
The flying bullet hits the slowly rotating staff of mercury and silver. The lead of the bullet simply melts into the metal of the staff, the kinetic energy breaking apart the glyphs and the edges.
Several psi-mystic command strands are cleanly severed instantly. The deformation of the base substrate and disruption of the relevant golden glyphs shuts down most of the subroutines controlling the psychic beacon and they just wink out of existence. The signal continues to broadcast for a few seconds, resonating up and down the transmitter, but the wires are pulled.
The explosion of arcane energy is palpable. Everyone is knocked right off their feet besides David Eborrenial, who has some inkling of what's going on and can brace himself against the shockwave, and his fellow Visionary Angela Davis, who struggles against the raging mental energy for a few seconds before collapsing to the ground.
David is winded, but retains enough presence of mind to begin constructing a shield, a heat sink of sorts, for when the staff fully fails a few seconds later, the metal melting from the heat and releasing even more heat in a cascading chain reaction. The energy, no longer used for maintaining the signal, simply takes the path of least resistance into the real world, bursting forward in a wave of blue light. David slams his hands together, touching his fingers to make the shape of a square in front of him, rerouting the energy and dumping it harmlessly (but wastefully) back into the aether. There is a noise like thunder and the world seems to shudder before the light fades and the staff falls to the ground, snapped neatly in two.
David staggers over to the unconscious guard next to him and pulls out his radio. He jabs his finger at the call switch. “Celling.”
“David?” Celling asks.
“Notify your people that any remaining mental symptoms or hallucinations they are experience are harmless aftershocks and will fade over the next few minutes,” David says.
“What?”
“Someone just destroyed the beacon staff,” David explains. “Which means no more beacon, which means no more predictive power, which means my abilities are useless now.”
“But… but how?” Celling asks.
“Hit it with a sniper round from long range,” David answers. “The more interesting thing is why I didn’t see it coming. We’re looking at an enemy Visionary, Celling. The rebels have access to the timestream.”
Dead silence followed from Celling’s end. “...one of the rebels is a prophet person?”
“And a damn good one, too, from the looks of it. He - or she - was able to run circles around my predictive power. Observing my process of decisions and adapting his own to them in real time.”
“I thought you kept tabs on everyone with the genetic background capable of becoming a Protinam?”
“Yeah?” David says. “Well, there’s a very good reason I do that, no? Now, I have two options. I can’t predict squat without a focusing beacon, so what I probably should do is just go back up to the Citadel and get some new data.”
“Yeah. And?”
“But I’m actually really, really pissed at this person,” he continues. “I’m pretty sure the enemy Visionary is going to be totally powerless without my beacon to piggyback off of, but at this point I don’t know what to expect. And although Protinam powers are mainly observational, there are some offensive maneuvers available to us as well. If they decide to attack you psionically, you’re going to need me here to neutralize. At the very least, I can try to track the enemy based upon their energy signature.”
What do you tell him to do?
A: “Get back to the Citadel and monitor for more important information in the future. We don’t want stuff sprung on us.”
B: “If you’re ready for a rematch, go ahead. Advance to the dock and merge with the patrol group there.”
C: “Stay where you are and feed information about the location of the rebels to us. Can you see them now?”
No revert, by the way. And this isn’t because you chose to reroll, it’s just a thing I was getting ready to spring on you at some point.
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Topic: (SG) SPAMOVERLORD: Epilogue: Guest Week (Read 307659 times)