Chapter 148 – The Deus Ex Machina Protocol, Act I

"During the avalanche's so-called initiation phase, the first failure occurs often due to an external force, such as the weather, a skier, an explosion, or even just natural instability. The snowpack layers weaken, causing a fracture."

– Jenny, huddling underneath her blankie, Educablet™ in hand. She'd finally managed to jailbreak the glitchy thing, but finds her YouTube-archeology dive going down an unexpected rabbit hole. Fantastic, impossible discoveries: Snow! Skiing!! Avalanches!!!

⁂

"Yesss! Bingo," Yasmin bragged as she crossed off the fifth and last box in a line: Used scythe to pole vault over angry underwater cactus.

Ding! Level up!

You are level 6353.

New decor unlocked: Golden Coptic Sofa!

BinGoGo Idle subscription adjusted: +ERR cr/h.

Yasmin oohed at the cute and dignified and totally cool piece of digital furniture rotating slowly in the preview box. She had just the right place to install it too!

Ah, but this was the wrong time to get distracted. Her friend and idol and weirdo-in-chief Dolores was fighting. In fact, she was about to end the fight.

Just as she was about to re-engage the in-body stream, a notification blinked in the top-right corner of her vision. New mail? And it had gotten through her spam filters, too.

from: BinGoGo Idle, Best Idlers World Wide!to: [email protected]

subject: Action Required: Please update your payment details!

Dear Valued Subscriber,

Your last subscription payment has failed.

Please update your p̶a̶y̸m̸e̶n̴t̸ ̵d̷e̶t̵a̵i̸l̸s̸ ̶a̴s̶s̴o̷c̵i̷a̴t̴e̴d̷ ̴w̶i̷t̶h̷ ̴y̷o̵u̸r̷ ̷c̷u̶r̸r̶e̷n̶t̸ s̸̑͜ũ̵͕b̴̟̈s̶̘͛c̶̰͆r̶̲̓i̴̯̎p̶̙͛ṫ̵ͅȉ̷̼o̶̟͂n̵̙̄.̸̙̇ ̵̠͝O̸͉͌u̸̘͂r̶̭͘ ̶̲̌r̷̦͛e̵͔͑c̶̼̆o̷̼͑r̵͈͋ḓ̴̐s̸̛͇ ̴̤̏i̸̡̔n̴̙̈ď̷̲i̶̠̇c̸̬͊â̵̺t̵̺̓ë̶̬́ ̷̪͗t̷̘̆h̴͇͝a̷͚̅t̸̞̾ ̵͓̆y̵̪̿o̷̤͋ù̴̗ṛ̸̿ ̷̩̑c̴͓͠ų̵̓r̵̪̋r̷̦̋ē̵͕ṉ̴̕t̴̫̒ ̸̼͑p̶̖̈́a̵͈͊y̸̻̕m̸͉͐e̴̯̿n̵͙͘t̶͉̽ ̸̤͑m̴̠̔e̵̖̾t̵̝̄h̷̩̉o̷̘̿d̷́ͅ ̴̀͜h̴͖̏a̶̱̚s̶̢̏ ̴̼̍e̶͎͊i̷̻͑t̷̥͛h̴͖̕ȩ̴͌r̵̯̊ ̷̛͔ȇ̵̮ẋ̸͇p̴̻͛i̵̞̍r̷̡̍ê̵̪d̸̝͒ ̷̨͝ỏ̴̳r̶̡͑ ̴͎̊i̶̗͘s̷̞̒ ̶͓̈́n̸̪̚o̵͇͊ ̵̳̋l̵̩͗o̷̝̔n̶̥̒g̵̟̕ḛ̶̇r̵̼̎ ̷͍͝v̶̜͆å̴͕l̶͙̑í̸͔d̴̪̃.̷͎͝

T̷̬̭͝ò̷͈͆ ̵̗̙͛̽ȧ̵̹͘v̶̼̱̽͝o̷̥͒̇i̵͍̱̿d̴̪͉̋ ̴̛̳͇͊a̶̦̣̔͝n̴̠̟̚y̵͚̙̋ ̷̜̥̇̍ì̸͍n̵̺͇͊t̶͕̽̈e̷̱͓̍͆r̷̳̱͛͆r̷̺̩̅͝u̶͕̯͠p̷̛͜ṯ̵̅i̸̟̲̾̓ǒ̴̘n̵̜̦̈́̕ ̵̰͆͜t̶͔̑ȯ̸̯ ̸̞̓y̴̺̍͝ǒ̵̐ͅu̶̥̿̇ͅṛ̸̅ ̴̣̣̐̚s̶̻̔̎ë̵̝́r̷̫̈́v̴̠̅i̴͔̅̉c̴͕̮͋ë̴̫ͅ ̷̼̉̇ͅa̷̺̒̈ͅn̵̞̰̉̕d̷̪̫͠ ̸̭̅̍p̴͕̺̓ő̶̥͠ẗ̴̮̠e̷̡̟̔̚n̸̙̩̈t̸̨͑i̸͋̀͜ͅa̵͚̫͊͝l̷̪͈̎ ̶̢͓̑a̶̠̎́d̵̮̍̿ď̵̮́i̷̧̬̓̆t̸̯̽i̵͙͝ǒ̵̰̥n̶̢̊͠á̴̘̟́ĺ̷̺͓ ̶̭̈̀f̷̝̫̈͆e̵̮͘ē̷̳͔͐s̶̟̰̾̆,̸̮͒ i̴̞͔͙̩͕͌͝t̸̛̲̟͔͇͉̭͒̋ ̵͖͙̞̭̪̉̎̿ȋ̷̧̖͚̭̲̌ͅs̶͓̩̙͈̾̔̃ ̸̢͓̘̝̭̯̐e̴̛̯̟̽͋̊ş̷̧̛̟͊͛̔͋͆ś̶̥͖͕̜̋̚e̶̜̊͐͊ṋ̵̣͚̤͙͌͆̓́̐͠t̷̡̲̳̅̐̂̒̿̈́i̶̪͎͈͔͔͑́̋̊͠͝ͅa̷̝̝̲̙̫̍̐̕l̷͇̯̺͎̩̇̈́̄́̌̚ ̷̗̘̿́t̶̫̞͇̯̟̊̄̇̌̈́ḩ̵͚͍̣̦̐͜á̴̠̇̋̿̆ţ̷̮͖̝͈͊̔̑͑̃̉ ̶̤́̏̄̒y̶͙͗̎̀͋ö̴̢͉̖̜̱́́̎͐ų̷̻̥̇̋̈́́̓͜ ̴̺̙̭̈́̈̓̈́̅̚û̴͚͍̹̝p̴̻̀d̵̬͕̫͚͇̄͆̆̔͋̚a̸̬̰̅ẗ̸͚̙̗̖͐̎ȩ̴͍͍̌̚ ̸̨̨̢̒̋̀̓͠͝ÿ̴̹͇͎̼͠͠ọ̵͕̲̑̕̕ů̵̠̬̍̈̇͘r̷͚͒̈́̆̇́ ̶͔̇̐͒̊͝p̵̢̢̫͔̰̬̌å̸̢̤͉͓̞̊̎͛̌͠y̷̟͕̱͓̙͑͘͜m̸͓̝̝͠͠e̵̮̫͙̓̈́̈́̚͜͝ņ̸̎t̴̡̡͖͖̹̮͆̏ ̷̨̗̞̻̆̚͘ị̷͉͍̇̓̌n̷͓͈͌͆̕f̶̢̳̩̠͈̄̓̊͛ȏ̴̫̰͙̰̹͜r̷̦̦̔͐̐́̏́m̵̗̼͕̓a̶̠͆̓̿̇̋̕t̶͈̙͓̰̪̋̿͗̊̊î̶̱̰͉̓͆͗o̷̯̔̽̚͠ṇ̴̝̝̝́̏̔̿ͅ ̴̢̹̖̼̓̀ǎ̸͚̞̥͂͑̓̒s̷̢̍̿ͅ ̸̨̙̙͚̫̓͋̑̈̐̒ṣ̸̰̍͆͂͘o̸̪͎̯̾́͊͝͝o̸̢̢̫͉͆̋n̶͙͈̼͓̬̗̈͐̋̀͠ ̵͉́͑́͘a̵̼̟͒̅̈́͛͆ͅş̶̺͍̙̙̄̕ ̸̣́̈͑̉͜͝p̵̮͇̑̽̄̋̊o̴̡̪͎͓̳̿̾́̍̾s̴̢͔͚̩̒͌̑̆———

She had to grin at the increasingly corrupted email demanding payment—Adymra's work, on behalf of his Vanguard. Yasmin sent Dolores a Thank You in the form of a small collection of obscure game secrets, links and blogs that she'd saved for occasions just like this one. Her friend took care of her own, if sometimes in somewhat unique ways. It was kind of adorable, really, and Yasmin had put a lot of work over the years towards making sure she felt appreciated.

Happily enveloped in her friendship, she re-engaged the somatic stream and her hands touched what Dervish touched, and her eyes saw what Dervish saw. Power suffused her limbs with the promise of effortless weightlessness, and the familiar grip of her scythe's template came alive in her hands.

⁂

Standing atop the corpse of the bound and savaged model Thirty-Three, Dervish was satisfied. Her friends were celebrating a fun hunt, and she was basking in the success of a good stream.

Truly, life was good.

Unfortunately, she also hadn't covered much ground and the river's Antithesis remained mostly unmolested. With the fun battle already finished, the cleanup xenocide would be a boring…chore.

That wouldn't do.

Dolores scratched her chin.

"Adymra. My stream appears to be suffering from sudden-onset narrative bankruptcy. We might have to initiate the deus ex machina protocol."

I see. On a scale from subtle miracle to orbital recalibration, what level of effect are you looking for?

Dervish's eyes wandered up, to gaze past all the water at a tiny spot hanging in the sky. She smiled.

"How much can we compromise the little firecracker up there, do you think? Give her a real show? She seemed awfully susceptible to the sight of that gargantuan swarm. Think we can beat that?"

I am not certain that 'compromising' members of your team is advisable, Dolores.

"Hah," she chuffed wryly. Memories of villagers on adrenaline-fueled crusades played behind her eyes. "No worries, Adymra. It'll do the opposite of slowing her down."

I suppose the numbers you're facing might warrant some…zeal.

"No shit, Sherlock."

The Class III samurai studied the underwater Antithesis' movements on the map. She'd cut a neat hole into their masses next to Baie-Comeau, and bought herself a little time, but it was vanishingly small against the raw size of the St. Lawrence and the, well, river of aliens streaming in from other parts of it.

"Alright. River's bigger by itself than all the area I need to cover overland. It's too much. I need something to draw every Antithesis towards me in one go."

I do believe that you already have all the tools you need, Dolores.

"I do?"

Yes. In fact, all you'll need to do is to use your Wide-Area Gas Recombinator to evaporate enough water to create a large vacuum around you, in this pattern.

Dervish received a ping from the AI, a data packet containing the plans to reconfigure the St. Lawrence River's flows for a few hours. It was a huge file, but her manager had little trouble crunching the numbers in the background.

Her eyebrows hit escape velocities. Adymra was suggesting alterations to the river so massive they'd have permanent effects on the surroundings. To generate the kind of vacuum she needed, she'd be evaporating a country's worth of water mass—climate change had nothing on the flash floods she'd trigger.

"We're not doing that next to the village."

Just don't flash-boil the water. We're looking to generate a pressure differential, not explosions. Fun fact: If you did flash-boil that much water, the resulting shockwaves would level more area than the standard nuclear warheads of the old US military services could.

Dolores repeated, this time with a raised finger: "We are not doing that next to the village."

The ecological damage forecast is lower than the damage the Antithesis will cause in this incursion alone, Dolores, nevermind the continued consequences of their prolonged presence. I made sure of that when I designed the plan.

Dolores's finger bent in half as her search for another retort came up blank. Sighing to herself, she trudged her way towards the opposite river bank to enact Adymra's proposal.

As she began to excite the atoms of thousands of tons of water, she found herself relieved by the knowledge that the people of Baie-Comeau had already earned a great deal of expertise at rebuilding their lives. Doing so once more would barely even be a disruption to the village, really.

Samurai carrying the torch or not, the war had always been costly.

⁂

That's new, Tynea murmured into my head. Her quiet voice echoed loudly against the forced silence of my controlled breathing.

I was looking at a bipedal brute of an Antithesis. It had long legs, the kind that would devour distance in a sprint, and use barricades as springboards. Compared to a normal Twenty-Three, it had more bone plates and a very long beaver's tail—also armored. It looked like a pangolin had transformed into an alien, off-color T-Rex made from weeds.

It was built heavily enough to be a battering ram, with contours flat enough that it could hunker down against shockwaves. Long legs designed to run down speedy things, and a tail to give it maneuverability despite its bulk. Part of a pack of six more just like it.

The things seemed purpose-built to take out Leah's Hatchets. They were also purpose-built to distract me from the brain-breaking, monumental attention of the million model Ones testing my skyfire dome. They pushed and pushed, burning up by the ten thousands, and it would take only one flock breaking through to make every other One race for the weakness.

There were so many of them. Our points counter was going mad. We'd already passed the 100k, and I couldn't even read the lower four digits with how quickly they were scrolling. They'd tear me apart in the air.

I breathed deep, forcing the giddy insanity down, feeding it into single-minded focus.

The Twenty-Three variants. They were only a few, but if they reached Leah, they might trip her up in a bad way. They needed killing.

"Firing mode: direct fire, single shot, low-v sustainer, terminal sprint self-guided," whispered Auxiliant.

My fighting experience shoved its hand up my lizard brain and reared its head like a sock puppet, unhappy with the outcome it sensed. That skirt of hyperdense armor on this strange, new variant of a Twenty-Three looked like it would just shrug off a single shell, even if it were a hypersonic 20mm Javelin.

I'd need…six rounds. Cryo first, to ice a spot on that boney exterior. Incendiary next to superheat it, followed by another cryogenic round to fatigue the material. Then a shaped charge to add kinetic stress, a Javelin to shatter the plate, and finally, a high-explosive grenade to take advantage of the compromised protection and mangle the insides.

The part of me that was the Quanta converted my expectations into an actionable plan for the Auxiliant: "Set six-round burst, order magazine: cryo, incendiary, cryo, shaped charge, penetrator, high-explosive."

"Firing mode: six-round burst, low-v sustainer, terminal sprint self-guided. Magazine…" I felt the little fabricator on my back vibrate, and less than a second later, a feeding tube jerked with the weight of a few heavy rounds being fed to the Mission Kill. "...readied. Assume firing posture."

As the Auxiliant's weapons platform retooled itself into the Mission Kill configuration—a twenty cal cannon longer than I was tall, hovering on maneuvering thrusters, accurate only by the grace of guided rounds—I found myself idly thinking that her unprompted switch to a dead-neutral tone of voice might just be wise design. It did something to get itself out of the way of my attention.

I let my canopy fully unfold in a sudden burst before I packed it away, violently converting speed I wouldn't need into a few meters' additional altitude.

Then, the Second Wind's jets stabilized my attitude directly behind the flying weapon whose optics switched modes as well—information specific to my firing solution replaced the Universal Soldier's battlefield awareness maps. There were wind speed readings along the predicted trajectory, the interference zone of Baie-Comeau's broadband jamming through which communication with the traveling bullet would be impossible, and a marker where the ballistic round would engage its rocket engine for the terminal sprint.

The ripping noise of the wind faded as I stared through the scope, occluded from my attention in its irrelevance compared to the hissing snarl of my jets as they continuously balanced my posture.

Twenty seconds of fuel, my flight-brain told me in the language of detailed impressions.

A gust of wind broke into my antennae's sphere of awareness from the left. 61 kilometers per hour, point three seconds. My finger caressed the trigger, my wing arms repositioned to countersteer.

I breathed out. Fast-moving air brushed my left antennae. My right side thrusters' output cycled twenty percent up. The Auxiliant followed suit.

My lungs emptied. The world froze.

My finger gently tickled the firing pin through the tension of a cocked spring freed from the leverage of a trigger. A tiny, crackling arc of electricity played ignition backup, just in case and almost too quiet to notice—but I didn't miss the little friend.

The gunpowder caught fire.

My mass-sensing organ detected an explosive compression of density just twenty centimeters from my cheek. Shockwaves rattled the chamber's stubborn material, far too sturdy to let itself be changed.

Rainbow-streaked energy fields clamped down on the air surrounding my sensilla, but even through the energetic baffles, they caught the vibrations traveling down the barrel.

From Auxiliant's barrel rode the bullet-shaped courier on a beast made of scorched gasses, carrying a cryogenic death curse at thrice the speed of sound; gone from even my perception in but an instant, trailing nothing but angry plasma.

Recoil punched my shoulder, forced my body out of alignment. Dream-trained reflexes compensated faster than Auxiliant could complain about losing windage.

Twelve seconds.

Like clockwork, the next shell loaded itself into the chamber with discreet mechanical clunks, visible only to the hypersensitive hairs of my antennae.

The firing pin was already cocked again, just waiting to punch that cap.

My brain was already overloading from the pleasure of violence and happily drowning my spine in quicksilver fizzies, drunk on the impossible combination of mortal danger swirling above my head and the drug of projecting my own will onto the enemy in the form of fast-traveling savagery.

I could swear I heard the firing pin go, Oh no, we have only just begun! as it advanced to take the virginity of another shell.

⁂