Chapter 164 – Yeet The Mind

"Please don't throw the nukes? Pretty please with a bow on top?"

– Geneva Suggestions, 2025

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With the Sim Cell's strategic systems otherwise holding fire across the fleet, the Sol round fired from beneath my feet was the first projectile to pierce the wall of gas my thrusters had ignited.

There came, along the way, that ever-thing ringing of its impossible metal-beyond-metal tip. A singing pitch utterly singular in its ability to make itself experienced. Unforgettable and unmistakeable, even if I'd only heard it once before.

The shell itself was moving slow, well below the speed of sound, but even so it easily outpaced the conflagration of the heavy amine aerosols. The beast, too, had time to realize that the lack of gunfire was suspicious—but not enough to do more than reveal its wire-throwing trunk again.

The glowing stains on the notched teeth plates shone brightly even in the presence of the fire, bright enough to illuminate its tongue twisting inside its trunk especially to my dilated perception.

It had several orifices in its tip, from each of which it extruded bits of wire. It looked like it was going to send them probing through the fire in a wide fan, with two headed directly for me. I'd be outpacing them, I thought.

The Sol bullet was a little misaimed, too far to the side. I bounced a signal through the Sim Cell and the pod to connect to it.

I was greeted by a rudimentary flight system's output, designed less for steering and more for stabilization. Tracking its arming distance and such. The safety protocols attached to it, however, were far more robust, and demanded I identify myself and supply proof of sanity at once, or else.

I threw Tynea at them.

The stabilization system itself was functional enough to effect the corrections I intended, even if I would have to misuse it a little. It stabilized the bullet not by adjusting fins, but via electromagnetic drag, which gave my Chrysaora's streamers plenty to work with.

Faster than I could ever hope to perceive even in dilated time, my streamers snapped to surround the projectile and had it surfing the inside of a tunnel. The abrupt shunt still wasn't quite enough to get it inside the face-orifice of the alien, but we did have another round ready and loaded.

As the warhead closed in, I waited for it to arm itself…and nothing happened. Confused expectation resolved quickly as I remembered that part of the conditions was that the shell should be lodged inside the target. That wasn't going to happen here, and I had to ask my AI to step in before the protocols finally acquiesced.

There was a tangible energy buildup in the bullet, a sudden increase in stoppered potential looking for a way to vent. It found it in the instantaneous teleportation of the entire ogive tip.

Yet the ringing from the now-absent tip only grew louder; building a second pool of potential waiting to culminate.

Soon, the rear half of the bullet flashed with circuit lines of electricity and discarded its shell to reveal an engine inside. This one I did recognize—it was a twin to the hypersonic screamers of my rocket-powered Javelin penetrators, only it was gimballed inside a special construct to point anywhere at all. It flipped around at some angle roughly between night lies that way and away from the sun.

"Why would the weapon need to do that?" I queried Tynea.

She answered, To counteract Earth's orbit around the sun. Gates don't alter the momentum of whatever moves through them, so if we don't want a piece of the sun to go flying off in whichever direction is opposite to the Earth's travel around the Sun, we need to apply that velocity to the gate itself instead, if only for the most minute of moments.

Ah. Orbital mechanics.

I was shooting bullets that needed to compute heliocentrism to work properly.

Somewhere deep inside, through a crack in the quarantine I knew was laid by my first schism, manic laughter bubbled.

– Warning! Cognitive decoherence measured at 20% of sanity safety thresholds! –

That was not ideal. I was having too much fun for the Quanta, apparently.

"Trend?" I asked Mission Control.

– Rising at 0.96% per millisecond, ±0.05%. –

83.33 real milliseconds until I'd suffer another schism. Multiplied by 3600…almost five subjective minutes. Probably considerably less in active combat—my adreno-dopamine reflex was too practiced to be controlled by mere will, and it would chip away at my cognitive coherence.

If I couldn't keep myself from responding to the reflex, then I would have to exit the Quanta before my brain finished spearing itself on the split between mania and emotionlessness again…

Yet, the more confused I'd get, the more I'd be unable to recognize the point of no return—by definition, one couldn't see the moment that they ceased being able to see the moment. I'd wind up trapped; unaware I needed to quit the dilation, unable to shut out my conditioning.

That was what had happened to me the last time, and handling the problem now had become a necessity—the dilation was too much of an advantage to forgo.

Solutions…I would not be able to consume a hormone-regulating drug within 83.33 milliseconds. Any solution would have to come from within the Quanta, from within the time dilation.

"Tynea, I require immediate alterations to the Quanta's Emergency True Self Override protocol thing. Enable manual ejection from the dilation even without a schism, and without engaging the override itself. A stray intention to eject, even when opposed by the rest of me, must suffice."

There came a strange tingling sensation in a section of the Quanta I'd been heretofore unaware of, hidden behind a blind stronger than even Sonde's privacy barrier; if of similar nature. I supposed I'd just discovered where Sonde had found her model to copy from.

Unlike her barrier, this one possessed an active component of mental misdirection, something to keep even the user's subconscious unaware of its very existence. It had lost its effect now that I knew where to look.

But the protected space itself remained hidden, though I suddenly came to notice how literally every pattern sparked within the Quanta passed through this sizable cluster of neurons at least once.

That was an immense degree of…precaution, I assumed?

…Done. Expect crippling migraines when ejecting forcefully.

"Tynea, what is this section? Why did I not know it existed?"

I may have been submerged within the unnatural calm of the Quanta, but a spike of mistrust nonetheless worked its way through the quarantine. Some part of me expected more bullshit. The decoherence jumped by nearly ten percent.

That is the Quanta's firmware partition, responsible for the augment's ordered functioning. I had to physically alter the…wiring of the Override protocol.

Nothing nefarious, then. But why… "Why would I be held intentionally unaware?"

The perception mask is the equivalent of a developer mode toggle. It's meant to keep the untrained layperson safe by simply not existing as far as they are concerned. Knowledge of its existence, such as gained during a technician's training, disarms the safety, and your incidental exposure through my actions acts much the same. But please, Tinea, do not actuate the toggle. Awareness does unfortunately not equal qualification, and the settings in the firmware are existentially dangerous to modify.

Access to advanced settings was a real temptation to the freelance software engineer in me, enough so that another spike through the Quanta's curtain cut my time to schisming even shorter. The reluctance against turning away was weirdly strong—something I couldn't account for, not considering that I was in combat and faced more immediate trouble.

A symptom of my increasing decoherence, then. 38% already. The alteration to the Quanta, and the following…distrust, had been costly.

I shook myself to refocus on the battle, yet even that increased the percentage a little more…the awareness of which was immediately followed by another damaging impulse to curse.

I realized it was a runaway effect. The more decoherent my cognition, the less I could think clearly, the more it would agitate the loss of further coherence.

The five minutes I thought I had were a lot closer to one minute, perhaps one and a half. At least my brain should order itself very quickly again, once my awareness wasn't being split between existing within and without the augment.

One minute. I needed to use it well.

Problem number one: I didn't believe for a second that the alien thing didn't have hidden friends. I wouldn't be able to suss them out in the few milliseconds I had. Sonde would focus on that instead, and continue coordinating with our strategic network.

Problem number two: Daddy-Long-Legs was out of position and I didn't need him anymore. Combat command relinquished him, and Sonde suggested that he was best used carrying out reconnaissance in force to find the other critters waiting in suspected ambush.

The Sim Cell's strategic computers answered by gathering a nest's worth of robotic scavengers to wait inside Daddy-Long-Legs's abdomen. They'd cannibalize him for parts if he caught a little too much attention at once.

I hope Leah's gonna be okay with that.

48%. Ouch.

Problem number three: I wasn't able to shrink the first Sol bullet's energetic bottle as much as I thought it needed to get through the alien's armor. The containment field was only so strong, and it had to leave enough open space inside to avoid failing against the coming explosion. If the enemy was indeed one of the Thirties, it wouldn't suffer very much damage. Perhaps I could fall back on the old trick with the thermic shock?

No, that'll be unnecessary—the other rifle was already traversing towards the thing's face. It wouldn't fire before I'd have to eject myself from the time dilation, but its load was going to bury itself in the thing's tongue and beyond. It would blow up inside, the way it was designed for.

I retasked the first Sol bullet. Its original mission was a failure, so I would use it to sabotage the monster's stealth for good.

– Warning! Cognitive decoherence measured at 50% of sanity safety thresholds! –

Still enough time to see the results, I figured.

The Quanta made it easy to approximate what shape of the electromagnetic bottle would cause the most damage to the Antithesis's surface layers, and I uploaded that configuration to the left-behind half of the Sol's warhead.

Its waiting, endlessly ringing, built-again potential suddenly fulminated and blasted an electrical charge through my senses like unseen lightning. For a liminal moment, one too short to have existed yet scored indelibly into my memory, my mass-sensing organ screamed in panic as though I was falling into the sun.

My heart skipped a beat sideways and up and around, and something spoke into my head, but only half of me dreamed in bleeding existence, a̴n̷d̷ i̵t̷ ̷l̶a̵u̶g̶h̴e̷d̶ ̷̨́6̸̨̪̯̋̓9̶͍͕͎̋́̈%̴͎̖̥̑̽̌.

Impossible power—drunk were my antennae, drunk so much I fell inside out in dilated time that didn't let me move my body plus biggy bigly big massful mass—streamed through a pinprick heavier than the planet at my feet and was rudely forced to shape a bottle breaking against the thing I wanted dead. A star's worth of energy pressed against the pinprick and wanted through, but the gate was too small and it couldn't even as it did.

P̵i̷p̴e̴ ̷e̷q̵u̶a̷t̶i̵o̴n̶!̵ H̷̱̯͐a̶̎͜h̴̺̊̀!̴̹͇̏̍ G̸̢̣͉͂͋̉̄͛͜e̵͇̘͊̊t̶͈͙͕̭͈͛͆͆ ̵̛̟̠̙̠͕̉̇͝f̴͈̈̿̚͠u̷͖̇̾͝c̸̢͕̞͐ḵ̷̗̲̄̄e̴̡̛͍̫͉͒͘͜d̵̛͇̰͠!̴͙̓̆̂̍͝

The pressure was impossible and it fed the gate and the bottle and washed my skull clean from the twin spots where my antennae rooted, and I laughed and waved neon lights that wrote poems into the sky about numbers 78% through 83.3333333333 milliseconds.

The star and the pinprick, they mated and birthed a little star, so dense, too dense to stick together because it was too small and free, and the baby blew up like the biggest tantrum.

I loved the little one that grew so fast, but it was too hot to cuddle so I smiled at it and laughed and waved the neon 91%.

I saw a shimmering field glittering with UV lights that tried to help the little one stay together, but it was too big inside and the newborn star had too much space to stay, so it moved sideways in a blink and played upon the plated armor of the Antith—

"EJECT!!!" I screamed and didn't, laughed off and cried.

A shiver zagged through my spine and crashed into the underside of my skull like blinding sunlight spiked with taser strikes, I tasted battery acid, and the world sped up. First like tar, then like molasses, then like syrup, and finally like bubbling juice; pain ripped through my brain and brought minty-menthol clarity. The impossibly bright fireball grew in fragmented stop-motion until it strained against its cage of energy.

Teleported sunrays pricked my corneas even through the barriers of the bottle and my streamers, through my eyelids and membranes.

The wall of air pressing against my back reverted to the hurtling wind of a controlled fall. I twisted around to face the direction I was going, glad to be protected from most of the miniature sun's radiation by the shield woven from the Chrysaora's streamers.

Still shuddering from mismatched emotions and thought, I packed away the stillborn schism and wondered at the weirdly sullen battle reflex that didn't want to laugh me into violence, left battered by an agitated migraine.

I worried, wincing, about what would happen once the strange, plasticky, staticky headache settled—but decided it was enough to know the eject had worked.

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