Once the cabal had finally dispersed, Gridstation killed the video feeds coming from the condo.
“Maybe I heard it wrong,” said Gridstation, “but that sounded like some genuine supervillain shit right there at the end, didn’t it?”
“Olivia fits the profile,” Maddy said. “Surprised about Bradford, I admit.”
“Wait, what part was villainous?” I asked, attempting to skate by on good old-fashioned newb sincerity while I scrambled to figure out what the fuck was happening on pretty much every single level of my existence at the moment.
“Well, let’s step through it,” Maddy said. “She figured out our teleport sequence, which is suboptimal right out of the gate. Sounded like they were comparing it to a more powerful but more difficult sequence they already had, which they called ‘transmutation.’”
“Isn’t that some kind of religious thing?” Gridstation asked.
“That’s transubstantiation,” she told him, “but the principle is similar: it’s a conversion of one substance or element into another. Alchemy’s the classic example, where people thought you could transmute lead into gold. But chemical elements do convert into other elements via nuclear transmutation. That’s the gist of the concept anyway.”
“So, but—what are they transmuting?” I asked. “People into—other people? People into—something non-people?”
“I don’t know. But Olivia wants to combine our teleport sequence with their transmutation sequence. Specifically—sounds like she wants to extract the precision visualization piece of the teleport sequence and weld it to their transmutation sequence, which is missing a reliable control mechanism.”
“Which begs the question,” Gridstation said, “how do they even know enough to call it transmutation if they can’t control how it works? Who was the moron who signed up for that experiment?”
“They don’t have ethical problems with testing on unwitting subjects,” I said.
“Testing this sequence could kill an unwitting subject,” he replied.
“Maybe they tested on people who were on the verge of dying anyway,” Maddy murmured. “People with terminal diagnoses, who had nothing left to lose, who needed cash for medical bills, whatever. Eventually they might have figured it out through trial and error.”
“Okay, but then once Olivia figures out a working teleport/transmute combo sequence, then she wants to broadcast it,” Gridstation said slowly. “That’s a hell of an escalation, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Maddy said. “That’s weaponization.”
“That’s definitely enhancing it from a close range effect to a wide area effect,” I said. “Doesn’t have to be an attack.”
“Well, they called it their ‘battery,’” Gridstation mused, “so assuming that’s a metaphor, is it a metaphor for an electrochemical battery that stores potential energy? Is it a metaphor for—like, an actual artillery battery, with rocket launchers and mortars and missiles and stuff like that? Is it a metaphor for—a gun being in battery, meaning it’s loaded and ready to fire?”
“In any of those metaphors,” Maddy said, “‘mass populate’ has to mean moving people, lots of people, either to store as potential energy, or to load up like ammunition. Right?”
“How many people is ‘lots’? Like, how freaked out should we be?”
“Even one person should freak us out plenty,” I said. “No one but us even knows to freak out on their behalf, you know?”
Maddy nodded in agreement. Maybe she was warming up to me a little.
“Fine, step one is freak out,” Gridstation said. “Then what do we do?”
“Then,” I said, “maybe we send the Queen of Sparkle Dungeon on a quest. See what we can learn by talking to Alexander Reece in person.”
“Finally,” Maddy muttered. “Let’s get this woman a console.”
Gridstation nodded and asked me, “Do you have a preferred brand?”
“I use the SparkleCo white label of the—”
“Well I’m sorry, because all we have are weird Chinese knockoffs. I’ll be right back.”
After he’d gone, I said, “Who are all these people?”
“We’re incorruptible anarchists, working to save a planet that barely deserves it.”
“Uh-huh. Is that your Craigslist ad?”
“No, that’s our marketing slogan. Our Craigslist ad is ‘Looking for bomb-throwers to murder billionaires and destroy the capitalist world order.’ Oh, of course, I’m just kidding, Isobel—why heavens, an advertisement like that would violate the website’s terms of service.”
Smooth.
“Why do you care about any of this if you just want to destroy society?”
“Isobel, I’m joking, if that wasn’t clear,” she said. “Look, people think anarchists just want to tear down the world order out of spite or because they prefer chaos for aesthetic reasons. That’s exactly what the oligarchic media machine wants the masses to believe—that anarchists are dangerous and immoral and out of control. The oligarchs don’t want people imagining a world order where they’re not trapped at the bottom of the pile, where they’re more than just cogs generating wealth they don’t get to share.
“But anarchy really means you allow people to self-organize, instead of letting dictator-presidents and corporations rule by fiat. Anarchy means you volunteer to live in a network of empowered communities instead of just passively accepting a militarized police state as the default. Anarchy means you look out for the people around you instead of counting on some inevitably corrupt, top-down system of government to catch everyone who falls on hard times.”
“And how do you just magically pull off a transition from top-down corruption to pure idealistic anarchy?” I asked.
“You change people’s minds, one at a time,” she said, “like maybe I’m changing yours. Not with power morphemes or whatever—but with compassion. Like you said—even one person in that battery is too many, and the same is true for any human being out there getting crushed by society.” She looked at me closely for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry we scared you. From our perspective, some of the worst people we know had their hooks in you, and maybe … we overreacted, how we came to get you.”
“Maddy, please,” I told her, “I feel like I’m waking up for the first time. Don’t apologize for giving me that.” The urgency in my own voice surprised me. Maybe I was still experiencing emotional aftereffects from what we experienced together at the party.
“Fair enough,” she said. “Apology rescinded. It won’t happen again.”
She waited a perfect amount of time, and then she smiled at me. I hadn’t seen her smile before that moment. I mean, I’d seen it but I hadn’t seen it.
Hmm, yeah, these weren’t just aftereffects from the party I was feeling. Brand-new effects were underway.