TanaNari
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Amelia, Ch 25
Taylor and I eventually conceded to watching the kid show off the dumb video game. Crystal and Lisa both opted not to visit, with flimsy excuses like "My powers aren't good for works of fiction or theoretical biomonsters" and "My mom's already going to kill me, but if I don't go home soon she'll make it take longer."
Those traitors.
Clarice was all too enthusiastic, and Taylor and I almost had no choice. We were the ones who would be benefiting from the ideas, after all.
And thus we found ourselves in one of the subbasements that Clarice had me construct for her. It's where we kept the pods and most of the heavy computer tech. Well, that and Lisa's little command center. It took him a few minutes to set everything up, and since we were using Riley's somewhat tinkered up computers, we were treated to a massive holographic display... of badly pixelated art...
"Err, sorry about that," Respawn offered with his usual grin. "This game's from, like, '98... and it wasn't exactly heralded as a graphical masterpiece even back then. It wasn't meant to be played on a screen that's as tall as I am."
"Okay, I can fix that," Clarice replied. She stood there passively for a minute, and the screen split into four reasonable sized screens, one for each of us. "These screens are all going to show exactly the same thing yours is showing, and if you need to you can tap the screen itself and it'll highlight that area so the rest of us can see it clearly."
"Oh, that's cool," he replied. "But this is a real time strategy game, so unit highlighting is a big part of the interface."
It took us maybe a minute before we had questions.
"So, what's with the purple stuff on the ground?" I asked.
"That's creep. It's how zerg feed their minions and buildings. Kinda like your Yggdrasil. Without it, the hive dies."
"It's all veiny and ugly, though," Taylor replied.
"It's suppose to be. The zerg are organic and collect all the DNA from every species they encounter to become the perfect life forms."
"That's dumb," I replied. "Animals are hit hard by the square-cube rule. They'd be much better off using a plant and fungus base instead of animal. Except for a few things, like muscle mass. I mean, that building has a pulse, what's the point of that?"
"It pumps nutrient fluids through the creep."
"Why not just use what plants use?" I asked.
"For that matter, why put the buildings on the surface at all?" Taylor continued. "It'd be far more secure for them to grow underground and simply poke up holes to release their units. It's what our setup is designed to do."
"Because it's a video game and the sides are suppose to be fairly balanced so they all have a chance of winning," Respawn said with exasperation.
"That's why video games are dumb," Taylor stated. "There is no such thing as 'balance' in war. It's all about who got luckier. Either by having lots of power or skill of their own, or their enemy not having very much. Plus or minus natural disasters and other parties that might be involved."
"Okay, fine!" he agreed. "It's not very realistic. But I'm about to start showing off the monsters now. This is the cool part."
....
"These are larva," he explained, showing the purple maggot-things. "Basically, they can morph into any kind of zerg, at your command."
"No point," I replied. "We can just grow things right out of the ground. Or create dedicated growing pods that'll do nothing but make monsters."
"Okay. No larva."
...
"So they're suppose to be like worker ants?" Clarice simplified.
"Yup, pretty much, plus they turn into buildings."
"One of those dumb RTS things?" Taylor asked.
"Yeah, one of those dumb RTS things," Respawn sighed.
....
"So six legged monster dogs with giant scythe claws," I summarized.
"I think of them more like mutated great cats," he tried to correct. "Sure they hunt in packs, but they burrow underground. Could probably hide in trees, but 'dumb RTS thing'."
"I can make that work," I replied. "Probably be pretty effective, too."
Taylor glanced at me. "Yeah, those could be pretty useful," she agreed.
"In the sequel there's a version that suicide detonates into acid bombs and can wipe out everything nearby," he offered. "But I can't stand that game, they butchered the story worse than the Star Wars prequels."
"That... I could really use one of those against Hookwolf," Taylor stated.
"So... mutant dog beasts are a 'go'. Probably better just to create projectiles that fire the acid, though."
"Ah, that brings us to the next unit!" He exclaimed.
....
"So they're... giant snakes with claws? What's the point of that? Either take away the claws and have a snake's stealth and mass efficiency, or give it legs so it can move faster," Clarice complained at the screen. "This is the worst of both worlds." I nodded in agreement. Totally inefficient design.
"Because it looks cool as hell?" he asked.
"Stupid RTS thing," Taylor concluded.
"Stupid RTS thing," Respawn relented.
"The acid spine idea's good, though," I added. "I can install them into those zergling creatures."
....
"Flying troop carriers that can sense invisible units, huh?" Taylor said with a smile as she looked at me.
"Not possible. Too much mass for an organic thing to do. I can do the whole 'sensor suite' thing. But making something big enough to carry eight of those dog monsters and still fly is a bit much. An underwater version, sure. But not a flyer. We'd need some kind of antigravity for that."
"We can always see what Toybox has to offer," Clarice suggested. "Interface its power source into the organism and we could make it work."
"Can you do that?" I asked.
"Easily," she replied. "I never really gave it much thought, but I think my tinker specialty is actually cybernetics. I'm very good at interfacing organic with machine."
....
"Giant bat monsters that fire smaller attack monsters?"
"Basically."
"Can't make them jump around like that, wouldn't if I could, too much risk of collateral damage," I stated.
"But a giant wasp-monster that shoots living projectiles?" Taylor asked hopefully.
"How about if they fire something based on a squid or octopus. For nonlethal takedowns?" I suggested.
"Speaking of nonlethals, how are the tranquilizer mosquitoes coming along?" she asked back.
"The problem is controlling them. I trust you, but your power has gaps. You can make mistakes and we're not sure what happens while you're asleep. We don't want these things getting into the wild. It would be an ecological nightmare even before considering the risk to human life."
"Uh... why not make them all work like male mosquitoes and only feed on plants? We could even limit it to just Yggdrasil, like these 'zerg' use creep." Clarice offered.
"That... that's a really good idea. We could do it to almost all the construct, in case we lose control of them somehow, they can't cause much damage at all," I said happily. And then immediately felt stupid for not thinking of it earlier. It was my one great hangup about making self replicating life, aside from Class S status, which we basically already were anyway.
"Told you this wouldn't be a waste of time!" Respawn crowed.
"Okay, so the tranqsquitoes are approved," I said.
"That... is a really terrible name," Taylor shook her head.
"My abominations against nature, I can name them whatever I like," I insisted.
"I like it," Clarice and Respawn said at the same time.
"Okay... now I wanna change the name..." I muttered.
....
"Pass on the queens. Nothing to offer that we'll ever use. One of its tricks is something Khepri can do with every bug in the city already. And the other is both incredibly difficult to do for no real reward, and too horrific to contemplate. "
....
"Those are buildings," I stated.
"More like defense turrets. They automatically attack enemies that get to close."
"The spike one would be way too much effort to punch through all that ground, and anyone who's got two working legs could avoid the attack. Besides, I can just control the Yggdrasil and impale them myself if I want to use that kind of lethal force." I dismissed that one.
"Acid cannon sounds cool and all... but they can miss and when that death ball comes down, it'll do a lot of damage, possibly to us. I think we should stick with the 'guided missile' approach." Taylor rejected the other.
"Uh... it doesn't have to be spikes or acid?" Clarice offered. looked at her. "It wouldn't be too difficult to set them to be microwave, laser, sonic, or even EM cannons. We'd still need to aim them manually, though I could help fix that a bit, but at that proportionate size, it could store and release enough power to cut through an aircraft carrier. Or any amount less we prefer. I'd recommend using only a fraction of maximum power at a time. With ways to delimit it for brutes or when we're willing to use lethal force."
I was still hesitant. That kind of damage potential would be absurd. Enough to take on an army. Or an Endbringer.
"We're doing it. The turrets are approved." Taylor said. She'd been thinking the same thing I was thinking. I simply nodded.
....
"Flying suicide acid bombers?"
"Too large, inefficient. We can do better with a larger number of smaller bugs that fly fast and can reproduce. Lets us control the damage better, too." I said, looking over at Khepri. She nodded this time.
"Same thing as the mosquitoes?" She asked.
"Yup. But we need something larger and faster."
"Hummingbird moths," Clarice volunteered, and an image popped up. "One of the faster species of insect. Especially for its size."
"Those are kind of adorable," Taylor agreed.
"They're big enough," I added. "And they already feed on nectar, so it'll be an easy mod to link them to the Yggdrasil."
....
"No, just no, that thing has no purpose except collateral damage." I insisted.
"Yeah. This is made of bad idea."
"Aww, I thought it was cute," Clarice pouted.
"Alright, the Defiler is rejected," Respawn agreed. "I think I won't even bother showing you the Infested Terran unit."
....
"Flying artillery platform, huh?" Khepri said with a smile. Oh boy.
"Same problem as the carriers," I said. "We'll talk shop when we pick up the ability to mass produce antigravity. And even then, it's kind of a problem since that thing has to have massive amounts of recoil."
"So, filed away under 'haven't reached that part of the tech tree'," Respawn clicked a couple times. "And now, the grand daddy of them all. The ultralisk!"
"Okay, that is shiny," Taylor leaned forward to the screen.
"Very," Clarice agreed.
"Too big," I said. "The square-cube law, again. If I reduced its size to that of, say, a bull elephant, and did some shenanigans with incorporating plant biochemistry into the bone structures and gave it a super efficient system and specialized it a dozen ways... I could make one of those things per month. And they'd be basically useless against just about anything. Too slow and bulky for most targets. Too fragile to go up against Endbringers. Against anything else, I'd rather have the hundred or so zerglings we could build instead."
"What if we modified the carapace to also be a capacitor?" Clarice suggested. "The biggest weaknesses of large organisms are a lack of energy and oxygen levels."
"We'd have to power it with lightning strikes," I said. "The Yggdrasil doesn't collect enough power to run something like that."
"Or... Sundancer?" Taylor offered. "All you need is power, right? Well, she can generate a lot of it very quickly. Can you use her to charge the Yggdrassil? And use that to power these..."
"Ultralisks," Respawn supplied.
"I could build a framework out of lightweight metals," Clarice volunteered. "We can grow them around that, so they're not as heavy and we can transfer lots of power really efficiently."
"I... I can work with that. It'd still take a while to build these things."
"Yeah, takes forever in the game, too," Respawn agreed. "I was using cheat codes just to show you everything."
"So that's it?"
"Well, there is one more thing..." he said with a smile.
....
"No, not happening," Taylor said, staring in horror at the screen.
"Why not?"
"Because that armor is so badly designed I don't know where to begin. Back mounted claw wings are just ridiculous, how do you balance with something like that? I'd keep falling over. Her hair is- there's no words for how awful that looks. And I have nothing resembling her figure."
"Actually, you're wrong about that last part," I corrected.
"Are you blind?" She shot back.
"No, but as an outside observer... she's tall, slender, athletic and has absurdly nice legs," I smiled at her. "All we have to do is ignore the, *ahem*, implants, and you're not so far apart from her."
I saw the red rising to Taylor's face. Oh god, I made her blush! And then I felt my own face heat up.
"See? That right there? THAT is why I am convinced you two are together!" Respawn insisted. "Now just accept that you're the Queen of Blades and be done with it!"
"It's still not a good design," Taylor muttered. "Sure, it looks great. But how it looks and what it's capable of are two very different things."
"What... what if we can make the wings work?" Clarice offered. "We're back to the antigrav stuff, but, that'd be relatively minor for this. And it'd let you use them very effectively in combat simply by altering gravity as you use them. Your bug control means we can tie it all in with maybe a dozen or of the more intelligent insects- say, cockroaches. The best part is, you could even fly!"
"You're saying you can make this," she said pointing at the screen. "Flight capable?"
"Easily. It's even a really efficient way to do it. Maybe not as efficient as something resembling dragonfly wings, but close."
"Dragonfly wings would make her look like a pixie," I replied.
"Yeah..." she said slowly. "I think I'd rather avoid that. Sounds like something the Protectorate would do for a PR thing."
"So the deadly claw wings are good, then?"
"Okay, they're in," Taylor relented. "But ONLY after we get the antigravity!"
Respawn smiled. "Oh, I can't wait to tell my friends in Korea about this..."
===============
A/N- Ah, the amusement and nostalgia this chapter brings me.
Taylor and I eventually conceded to watching the kid show off the dumb video game. Crystal and Lisa both opted not to visit, with flimsy excuses like "My powers aren't good for works of fiction or theoretical biomonsters" and "My mom's already going to kill me, but if I don't go home soon she'll make it take longer."
Those traitors.
Clarice was all too enthusiastic, and Taylor and I almost had no choice. We were the ones who would be benefiting from the ideas, after all.
And thus we found ourselves in one of the subbasements that Clarice had me construct for her. It's where we kept the pods and most of the heavy computer tech. Well, that and Lisa's little command center. It took him a few minutes to set everything up, and since we were using Riley's somewhat tinkered up computers, we were treated to a massive holographic display... of badly pixelated art...
"Err, sorry about that," Respawn offered with his usual grin. "This game's from, like, '98... and it wasn't exactly heralded as a graphical masterpiece even back then. It wasn't meant to be played on a screen that's as tall as I am."
"Okay, I can fix that," Clarice replied. She stood there passively for a minute, and the screen split into four reasonable sized screens, one for each of us. "These screens are all going to show exactly the same thing yours is showing, and if you need to you can tap the screen itself and it'll highlight that area so the rest of us can see it clearly."
"Oh, that's cool," he replied. "But this is a real time strategy game, so unit highlighting is a big part of the interface."
It took us maybe a minute before we had questions.
"So, what's with the purple stuff on the ground?" I asked.
"That's creep. It's how zerg feed their minions and buildings. Kinda like your Yggdrasil. Without it, the hive dies."
"It's all veiny and ugly, though," Taylor replied.
"It's suppose to be. The zerg are organic and collect all the DNA from every species they encounter to become the perfect life forms."
"That's dumb," I replied. "Animals are hit hard by the square-cube rule. They'd be much better off using a plant and fungus base instead of animal. Except for a few things, like muscle mass. I mean, that building has a pulse, what's the point of that?"
"It pumps nutrient fluids through the creep."
"Why not just use what plants use?" I asked.
"For that matter, why put the buildings on the surface at all?" Taylor continued. "It'd be far more secure for them to grow underground and simply poke up holes to release their units. It's what our setup is designed to do."
"Because it's a video game and the sides are suppose to be fairly balanced so they all have a chance of winning," Respawn said with exasperation.
"That's why video games are dumb," Taylor stated. "There is no such thing as 'balance' in war. It's all about who got luckier. Either by having lots of power or skill of their own, or their enemy not having very much. Plus or minus natural disasters and other parties that might be involved."
"Okay, fine!" he agreed. "It's not very realistic. But I'm about to start showing off the monsters now. This is the cool part."
....
"These are larva," he explained, showing the purple maggot-things. "Basically, they can morph into any kind of zerg, at your command."
"No point," I replied. "We can just grow things right out of the ground. Or create dedicated growing pods that'll do nothing but make monsters."
"Okay. No larva."
...
"So they're suppose to be like worker ants?" Clarice simplified.
"Yup, pretty much, plus they turn into buildings."
"One of those dumb RTS things?" Taylor asked.
"Yeah, one of those dumb RTS things," Respawn sighed.
....
"So six legged monster dogs with giant scythe claws," I summarized.
"I think of them more like mutated great cats," he tried to correct. "Sure they hunt in packs, but they burrow underground. Could probably hide in trees, but 'dumb RTS thing'."
"I can make that work," I replied. "Probably be pretty effective, too."
Taylor glanced at me. "Yeah, those could be pretty useful," she agreed.
"In the sequel there's a version that suicide detonates into acid bombs and can wipe out everything nearby," he offered. "But I can't stand that game, they butchered the story worse than the Star Wars prequels."
"That... I could really use one of those against Hookwolf," Taylor stated.
"So... mutant dog beasts are a 'go'. Probably better just to create projectiles that fire the acid, though."
"Ah, that brings us to the next unit!" He exclaimed.
....
"So they're... giant snakes with claws? What's the point of that? Either take away the claws and have a snake's stealth and mass efficiency, or give it legs so it can move faster," Clarice complained at the screen. "This is the worst of both worlds." I nodded in agreement. Totally inefficient design.
"Because it looks cool as hell?" he asked.
"Stupid RTS thing," Taylor concluded.
"Stupid RTS thing," Respawn relented.
"The acid spine idea's good, though," I added. "I can install them into those zergling creatures."
....
"Flying troop carriers that can sense invisible units, huh?" Taylor said with a smile as she looked at me.
"Not possible. Too much mass for an organic thing to do. I can do the whole 'sensor suite' thing. But making something big enough to carry eight of those dog monsters and still fly is a bit much. An underwater version, sure. But not a flyer. We'd need some kind of antigravity for that."
"We can always see what Toybox has to offer," Clarice suggested. "Interface its power source into the organism and we could make it work."
"Can you do that?" I asked.
"Easily," she replied. "I never really gave it much thought, but I think my tinker specialty is actually cybernetics. I'm very good at interfacing organic with machine."
....
"Giant bat monsters that fire smaller attack monsters?"
"Basically."
"Can't make them jump around like that, wouldn't if I could, too much risk of collateral damage," I stated.
"But a giant wasp-monster that shoots living projectiles?" Taylor asked hopefully.
"How about if they fire something based on a squid or octopus. For nonlethal takedowns?" I suggested.
"Speaking of nonlethals, how are the tranquilizer mosquitoes coming along?" she asked back.
"The problem is controlling them. I trust you, but your power has gaps. You can make mistakes and we're not sure what happens while you're asleep. We don't want these things getting into the wild. It would be an ecological nightmare even before considering the risk to human life."
"Uh... why not make them all work like male mosquitoes and only feed on plants? We could even limit it to just Yggdrasil, like these 'zerg' use creep." Clarice offered.
"That... that's a really good idea. We could do it to almost all the construct, in case we lose control of them somehow, they can't cause much damage at all," I said happily. And then immediately felt stupid for not thinking of it earlier. It was my one great hangup about making self replicating life, aside from Class S status, which we basically already were anyway.
"Told you this wouldn't be a waste of time!" Respawn crowed.
"Okay, so the tranqsquitoes are approved," I said.
"That... is a really terrible name," Taylor shook her head.
"My abominations against nature, I can name them whatever I like," I insisted.
"I like it," Clarice and Respawn said at the same time.
"Okay... now I wanna change the name..." I muttered.
....
"Pass on the queens. Nothing to offer that we'll ever use. One of its tricks is something Khepri can do with every bug in the city already. And the other is both incredibly difficult to do for no real reward, and too horrific to contemplate. "
....
"Those are buildings," I stated.
"More like defense turrets. They automatically attack enemies that get to close."
"The spike one would be way too much effort to punch through all that ground, and anyone who's got two working legs could avoid the attack. Besides, I can just control the Yggdrasil and impale them myself if I want to use that kind of lethal force." I dismissed that one.
"Acid cannon sounds cool and all... but they can miss and when that death ball comes down, it'll do a lot of damage, possibly to us. I think we should stick with the 'guided missile' approach." Taylor rejected the other.
"Uh... it doesn't have to be spikes or acid?" Clarice offered. looked at her. "It wouldn't be too difficult to set them to be microwave, laser, sonic, or even EM cannons. We'd still need to aim them manually, though I could help fix that a bit, but at that proportionate size, it could store and release enough power to cut through an aircraft carrier. Or any amount less we prefer. I'd recommend using only a fraction of maximum power at a time. With ways to delimit it for brutes or when we're willing to use lethal force."
I was still hesitant. That kind of damage potential would be absurd. Enough to take on an army. Or an Endbringer.
"We're doing it. The turrets are approved." Taylor said. She'd been thinking the same thing I was thinking. I simply nodded.
....
"Flying suicide acid bombers?"
"Too large, inefficient. We can do better with a larger number of smaller bugs that fly fast and can reproduce. Lets us control the damage better, too." I said, looking over at Khepri. She nodded this time.
"Same thing as the mosquitoes?" She asked.
"Yup. But we need something larger and faster."
"Hummingbird moths," Clarice volunteered, and an image popped up. "One of the faster species of insect. Especially for its size."
"Those are kind of adorable," Taylor agreed.
"They're big enough," I added. "And they already feed on nectar, so it'll be an easy mod to link them to the Yggdrasil."
....
"No, just no, that thing has no purpose except collateral damage." I insisted.
"Yeah. This is made of bad idea."
"Aww, I thought it was cute," Clarice pouted.
"Alright, the Defiler is rejected," Respawn agreed. "I think I won't even bother showing you the Infested Terran unit."
....
"Flying artillery platform, huh?" Khepri said with a smile. Oh boy.
"Same problem as the carriers," I said. "We'll talk shop when we pick up the ability to mass produce antigravity. And even then, it's kind of a problem since that thing has to have massive amounts of recoil."
"So, filed away under 'haven't reached that part of the tech tree'," Respawn clicked a couple times. "And now, the grand daddy of them all. The ultralisk!"
"Okay, that is shiny," Taylor leaned forward to the screen.
"Very," Clarice agreed.
"Too big," I said. "The square-cube law, again. If I reduced its size to that of, say, a bull elephant, and did some shenanigans with incorporating plant biochemistry into the bone structures and gave it a super efficient system and specialized it a dozen ways... I could make one of those things per month. And they'd be basically useless against just about anything. Too slow and bulky for most targets. Too fragile to go up against Endbringers. Against anything else, I'd rather have the hundred or so zerglings we could build instead."
"What if we modified the carapace to also be a capacitor?" Clarice suggested. "The biggest weaknesses of large organisms are a lack of energy and oxygen levels."
"We'd have to power it with lightning strikes," I said. "The Yggdrasil doesn't collect enough power to run something like that."
"Or... Sundancer?" Taylor offered. "All you need is power, right? Well, she can generate a lot of it very quickly. Can you use her to charge the Yggdrassil? And use that to power these..."
"Ultralisks," Respawn supplied.
"I could build a framework out of lightweight metals," Clarice volunteered. "We can grow them around that, so they're not as heavy and we can transfer lots of power really efficiently."
"I... I can work with that. It'd still take a while to build these things."
"Yeah, takes forever in the game, too," Respawn agreed. "I was using cheat codes just to show you everything."
"So that's it?"
"Well, there is one more thing..." he said with a smile.
....
"No, not happening," Taylor said, staring in horror at the screen.
"Why not?"
"Because that armor is so badly designed I don't know where to begin. Back mounted claw wings are just ridiculous, how do you balance with something like that? I'd keep falling over. Her hair is- there's no words for how awful that looks. And I have nothing resembling her figure."
"Actually, you're wrong about that last part," I corrected.
"Are you blind?" She shot back.
"No, but as an outside observer... she's tall, slender, athletic and has absurdly nice legs," I smiled at her. "All we have to do is ignore the, *ahem*, implants, and you're not so far apart from her."
I saw the red rising to Taylor's face. Oh god, I made her blush! And then I felt my own face heat up.
"See? That right there? THAT is why I am convinced you two are together!" Respawn insisted. "Now just accept that you're the Queen of Blades and be done with it!"
"It's still not a good design," Taylor muttered. "Sure, it looks great. But how it looks and what it's capable of are two very different things."
"What... what if we can make the wings work?" Clarice offered. "We're back to the antigrav stuff, but, that'd be relatively minor for this. And it'd let you use them very effectively in combat simply by altering gravity as you use them. Your bug control means we can tie it all in with maybe a dozen or of the more intelligent insects- say, cockroaches. The best part is, you could even fly!"
"You're saying you can make this," she said pointing at the screen. "Flight capable?"
"Easily. It's even a really efficient way to do it. Maybe not as efficient as something resembling dragonfly wings, but close."
"Dragonfly wings would make her look like a pixie," I replied.
"Yeah..." she said slowly. "I think I'd rather avoid that. Sounds like something the Protectorate would do for a PR thing."
"So the deadly claw wings are good, then?"
"Okay, they're in," Taylor relented. "But ONLY after we get the antigravity!"
Respawn smiled. "Oh, I can't wait to tell my friends in Korea about this..."
===============
A/N- Ah, the amusement and nostalgia this chapter brings me.
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