Danse Macabre chapter 2

Chapter Two: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes I eye the breads dubiously. "Are you sure these are actually safe to eat, Ordis?" "Analysis of the foodstuffs suggest high caloric density, along with complex proteins and simpler amino acids generated by yeasts. The caloric density is mitigated, however, by the relatively low overall density due to vacuoles in the finished 'loaves'. A small portion should be adequate to test compatibility with your digestive system." "Maybe I should just stick to standard rations?" I suggest hopefully. "That is a possibility, but the foundry is not designed for nutritive synthesis. Furthermore, it will take significant time to adapt it for such, and will commensurately reduce production availability of omnimunitions or other resources and equipment you may need." I grimace a little at the unfamiliar smell of the bread. "Right. And since we don't know how long we'll be here..." I take one of the slices of bread, and take a small nibble. Frankly, I'm not impressed. The crusty, weirdly tough sponginess of the stuff accompanies a sourness that hits my mouth. Even so, I chew... And chew some more. After a couple of seconds, I force myself to swallow. "... What was that one called again, Ordis?" "It was 'Snyder's Classic Sourdough,' according to the label," Ordis answers. "The nutritional panel indicates a good mixture of various minerals and vitamins; thankfully even in this archaic time they have the rough concept of dietary science." "... If I have to, I'll eat the native foods," I comment. "But I don't have to like it." "Fear not, Operator. You have procured a variety. I am certain there are things here that you will find palatable." --- As it turns out, Ordis is correct. In particular, a fruit called orange is especially enjoyable, an acidic sourness only adding to the intense sweetness of it. The interior sections are so natural to peel apart into bite size pieces without spreading its sticky juices everywhere that I can only conclude it must have been engineered this way. Genetic engineering this far back in human history, though? Common enough that its results can be left in the open for people to sift through, buy, or reject? Maybe the ancients weren't so primitive as we assumed. They're certainly much more developed socially than we could have guessed. "So, we have a better idea of the lay of the land, then?" I ask, popping the last wedge of orange into my mouth. "I have managed to infiltrate some local servers to patch into their internet," Ordis says. "It is surprisingly pervasive, despite their glacial data transfer rates. The sheer volume of data is actually in excess of my own personality matrix, and an appallingly large percentage of it is dedicated to {FUCKING} various sexual recordings." I blink, open my mouth, then shut it again, swallowing. "Run that by me again?" "Much of the data traffic of the internet is devoted to, well, pornography. Both real and simulated, some of which is simulated through computer generated programs, while others are sequentially illustrated by human hand. Still others are a combination of two or all three of the above." I spend a brief moment considering this distracting but unimportant information before I firmly set it aside. This is not something I want to be thinking about right now. "Ignore that stuff. What about resources? Any signs of more of those things that weren't infested?" "There have been no reports of them in any of the local news feeds. However, they may be connected to another phenomenon which is concerning." "Oh?" I don't much like the sound of that. My foreboding turns out to be justified. Ordis's elaborates, "There are apparently humans in this time period which exhibit powers similar to those of the Tenno and their warframes. Humans with these powers are relatively uncommon, and are referred to as 'parahumans,' or colloquially as 'capes,' due to the syandanas frequently attached to costumes they wear to protect their identities from public knowledge." My HUD overlay gains a window, within which a recording starts playback. Unless there's sample footage out there already, I'm guessing Ordis just assembled a bunch of different clips together to illustrate the variety of powers out there. "Pyrokinesis, telekinesis, shapeshifting, enhanced strength, flight, force field generation, cognitive enhancement, and hypovulnerability are a few of the most common variety of powers that have been catalogued by the various corporate and governmental entities I've surveyed on their internet. But a comprehensive list of potential abilities is seemingly unavailable even to them. The scope of their powers ranges from noticeably but not significantly above baseline human to catastrophic. One to several government organizations in most of the numerous political entities have classifications for them, but the most prevalent one is the ranking system developed by the local nation's Parahuman Response Teams, also known as the PRT." My mind immediately goes to the black smokescreen I encountered earlier tonight. "Then that cloud earlier tonight, was that a parahuman? One of their powers, I mean." "I believe so. The footage we captured of the helmet wearing individual matches, within a point zero four percent tolerance, descriptions of a local criminal whose cape name is 'Grue'." The HUD display shifts to an article of some sort, displaying a lot of text in spindly symbols that resolve almost immediately into standard writing. "According to the entry for this individual, he creates smoke pot p0 clouds, although I have extrapolated that the cloud does in fact appear to absorb all forms of electromagnetic radiation. In a future encounter we may yet be able to ascertain more, but for now I have updated the page to include an accurate account of his height in local measurement, estimated weight based on displacement and momentum of his motions while visible, and the energy absorbing effects of his smokescreen ability." Ordis's voice turns a little edged. "I then was forced to fend off another editor who attempted to {hide their tracks}erase and misrepresent the data I had entered over the span of twenty minutes. The attempts stopped after I began a trace on the connection path of the second editing account, which closed the connection almost immediately upon my initiation of the trace. I am maintaining a watch on the page every fifteen seconds to ensure my efforts are not desecrated. "From there, I followed suit with the other three individuals, providing better imagery of them to their respective pages, including providing a photo and detailed height, weight, and build measurements for the formerly almost blank page assigned to the member named 'Tattletale'. I suspect her to be a Thinker, as the local designations go, and indicatedthe possibility on her page." I rub my chin thoughtfully as I stare at the page, reading. Then, suddenly, something Ordis said strikes me. "Wait a second. You said governments, plural? On one planet?" "Actually, I said 'various governmental entities'," Ordis corrects pedantically. "Even so, you are correct, Operator. Reports are conflicted regarding the number of legitimate and independent countries, but the closest tally to a consensus is that there are one hundred eighty six distinct, generally recognized nations on this planet with their ownarticles of sovereignty, laws, citizenships, claimed territories, and economies." "Almost two hundred governments jammed onto a single planet?" I blurry out, flummoxed. "How do they get anything done? How do they feed everyone?" "Put simply, very inefficiently and frequently unsuccessfully," Ordis replies. "There are further complications-- most significantly, a trio of severely destructive entities called 'Endbringers'... and we have already seen one of them. The orbiting statue." My sinking feeling drops into an even lower orbit. "Didn't you scan it?" Ordis's avatar gives a little shimmy, his equivalent of a shrug. "I saw no need for more than passive scanners; it displayed no trace of self directed movement, ambient returns gave albedo consistent with travertine, and gravitic readings indicated a specific gravity of 2.45, which is close to the median for limestones with the expected terrestrial impurities." I grunt quietly. "In other words, it blended in with our expectations." "That is one way of putting it, yes." I tab into the previous display, and look over the listing of power classifications. "... I'm not sure about this 'Breaker' listing. Wouldn't any of these powers technically be breaking physical laws?" "I believe these would be more blatant breaking, such as this one..." Ordis calls up another entry. I read the entry. "Shadow Stalker?" I say, smiling slightly. "Does she have a sword?" "Hardly," Ordis says. "Her primary weapon appears to be a sedative crossbow. But her power causes her body to dissolute into a cloudlike mass that is capable of passing through solid objects." "Weird," I comment. "Is she still affected by gravity? Does she somehow bypass orbital electron repulsion in this Breaker state?" "Gravity appears to have an effect on her, although at a reduced rate. And that does seem to be a logical assessment of the effects of the power. By what video is available of her fighting style, she is able to focus on attack almost exclusively without significant concern over defense." I nod. "Like a Tenno voidwalking." "Very much so, yes." "Okay, Breaker is just shorthand for 'even weirder than usual' then." I tab back into the screen showing several pictures of a 'Hellhound'. "So this one was the one who made the monsters out of those, uh... dogs? They would have rampaged through all those people in that building if I hadn't killed them. And if she can make more of them, she definitely needs to go." "As public safety issues go, even locally she is a relatively low priority," Ordis says. "There are much more significant local dangers to be considered, such as this Empire Eighty Eight, which seems to embrace suppression or elimination of other ethnicities that do not have a common genetic background. What an absurd premise; do they not understand the importance of diversity in their gene pool?" "Sounds an awful lot like the Grineer to me," I comment. "And we know how well that's working out for them. Ordis, what would the Lotus tell me to do here?" "Do not discount the successfulness of the Grineer, Operator," Ordis says chidingly. "Oh, please, what have they ever done besides bleed on me?" I ask. "Everyone knows that their genome is degrading. I hardly see anything to qualify as successful." "Operator, you are the fifth most junior Tenno on the rosters. And while you have been very active the last month, I feel the need to remind you that {you're a scrub}thus far you have not been sent against any of the more serious threats the system has-- or will have-- to offer. You have only faced the garrison troops on less than a hundred fifty Grineer bases, bases which the Grineer feel are expendable, unimportant, or suitable as decoys. I have seen the logs of Tenno who have been awake longer than you, especially for specially assassination missions and sabotage to prevent one or another of the major Grineer factions from securing a disastrous advantage. I can assure you that, degrading genome aside, not only are there Grineer units that pose a threat to a lone Warframe, there are lone Grineer officers and leaders that are a threat to full teams. You have not been assigned to face then because, to put it bluntly, you are not ready." I clench my teeth. "I WAS part of the rebellion against the Orokin, you know." "And how much do you remember from the old war, Operator?" And there's the question, isn't it? I know what I was. I have scattered, fragmented memories of that time, memories broken and disarrayed from a thousand years of cryo sleep. There are images, and sounds, and emotions, but they're so disjointed that I can draw no meaning from them. Anything that involves violence from my old memories is shattered beyond coherent interpretation. And now, much like the rest of the Tenno, I've been using muscle memory-- warframe transference memory?-- to recall who and what I was. I don't even remember what my original frame was. "Not enough," I say after a minute. "I, too, seem to have... misplaced those memories," Ordis replies. "Perhaps in time we may both recall." Muscle memory. When in doubt, go to work. "Ordis, is there anything here for me to accomplish? Anything that needs elimination?" "Hmm. Perhaps. The most glaring targets which appear to be difficult for the local authorities to deal with are the three major gangs in the city. Of these, the worst would seem to be the Merchants. Even with this in mind, however, there is some sort of a custom that condemns the summary execution of criminals without extensive amounts of legal drudge work, with processes that can take upwards of twenty five years to complete.. and the number of persons incarcerated permanently without hope of release is truly staggering. In this nation alone the number is well into the hundreds of thousands." "That's sick!" I exclaim, horrified. "Permanent incarceration-- nothing to look forward to but potentially centuries of imprisonment? Inevitable confinement madness? Even the Orokin weren't so..." I pause. "Well, it actually does sound like the sort of thing they'd do, but only in certain circumstances, to specific people, not wholesale..." "The average lifespan here is around seventy one years, Operator. Confinement madness is rarely so fast unless they are placed in utter isolation... which many of the prisoners here are." Ordis's avatar gives another shimmy. "I'm afraid we will be unable to rely on the local authorities for intel or reasonable instruction." "Autonomy." It's not a welcome thing. Temp without the guidance of a superior have a tendency to become monsters. "Ordis..." "Fear not, Operator. I will {revel in} ensure that you do not fall prey to overconfidence, excess, or wanton abuse of your power." Trust the cephalon, I tell myself. Trust the cephalon. Of anyone I've ever encountered, the only one more trustworthy than Ordis has been the Lotus herself. As Ordis begins discussing targets for worthwhile elimination, though, his glitchy comment gives me a sliver of doubt.