Lost in Waves

Nicole Taylor

## Debriefing - Patricia Jane

Quarantaine

‘Hello miss, nice to meet you.’ The young man, barely not a boy anymore, brazenly offers his hand to the woman. She is slightly surprised. Arrogance was not something she expected from anyone send to debrief her.

‘There's no need to be nervous, miss, this is just a standard conversation.’

‘Why exactly would I be nervous?’ the woman in white asks.

‘There's no need to be, miss, no reason at all.’

‘How about you? Aren't you nervous at all?’

The repetition of his words combined with her tone makes him a little uncomfortable. ‘No, miss, not at all. Why would I be?’

She stares at him. They send a flunkie to interview her without even telling him? What has he done to deserve this? She answers: ‘No reason whatsoever, agent whatsyourname?’

‘Agent Brown, miss. Franz-Roderik Brown.’

He continues: ‘Shall we start with the standard questions? Can you tell me what happened on your mission?’

‘What's your security clearance, mister Brown?’

‘Ow, enough, no need to worry about that’

‘Yeah sure. Show it to me.’

The boy shows her his tablet. She looks at it. ‘I figured.’

‘Let me tell you what you’re allowed to know. We were sent to retrieve our missing coworker. We found her. We brought her back. We also found 186 enlightened individuals in need of help and an interesting housekeeping device, which we also brought back. That's about it I guess.’

Now I’ve answered your question, it's only fair if you answer some of mine, isn’t it? Have you done these kind of interviews before?’

‘This is my first real assignment’, he answers enthusiastically.

‘You must miss your relatives and friends on earth then?’

‘Yeah, a little, but if we work hard we are sometimes allowed a telecall.’

Patricia looks at him to test if he's serious. He seems to be. And they call her a sadist.

‘So, what is it like, living here? Anything fun to do? Bars, fitness centre, clubs, wellness centre, anything?’

‘There is quite a lot. Look, here's the schedule I got. Work is scheduled 8 till 5, bar 5 till 6, 6 to 8 is fitness, and 8 till 10 is study time. Tomorrow I’m allowed a telecall at 5.’

Patricia checks. Yup, he's still serious. No wonder Nicole used to be so boring. She has adapted nicely though.

‘So, shall we start with the standard questions?’ he asks.

You must be a littler nervous, she says in a subtle commanding tone. ‘I’ve already told you that. But let me type it for you.’

‘Subject claims she was sent to retrieve missing coworker. Ergo, subject followed coworker. Resulting in found coworker. In the meantime, 186 enlightened individuals were found. Occasionally interspersed with conversations with an interesting housekeeping device. Understanding this completely was not possible. Since options were slim and we trust the security measures of the VE, we took everything with us. Last but not least we suggest intensive screening of these individuals and of all electronic devices.

Yours truly, agent Jane’

While she is typing, she starts reprogramming agent Brown’s tablet.

‘Here you are, agent Brown.’ She shows him the text. Of course, he is not able to read it that quickly.

‘Thank you. Now for the questions, can you tell me what happened on the mission?’

Patricia sighs internally. She wondered if she would get a reprimand if she left a mangled and bloody corpse in here. But it’s not his fault he is programmed to stall her. She starts focussing on his supervisor, while continuing the conversation.

‘You must be quite nervous. I already told you about that, my dear. Look here, you've made notes. Is there anything on your conscience that you are nervous about?’

‘No miss, just about this first assignment. I wouldn’t want to make a mistake.’

Patricia meanwhile is using his tablet to zoom in on the mindlink the kid has with his supervisor. Major Zhu did some work on his brain, but there is also a more skilled hand at work here.

‘So, can we start with the questions? What happened on the mission?’ the boy repeats again.

Patricia ignores his question: ‘So, why the VE? The NWO is the best choice for a psychologist after all.’

‘I don't want to be one of those creepy torturers.’ Patricia looks at the camera in the corner, her body language clearly saying: Really?

‘Also, I always wanted to be an astronaut. Now I can be.’

‘Yes, that is a bonus. The NWO barely does that. But why do you think of us as creepy torturers?’ she asks innocently

‘Oh no, that's not, I didn't mean it like that. Wait, did I say that? I meant friendly tort... wait’

Meanwhile, Patricia zooms in on the link he has with this second supervisor. She sees a mental image of a graying African American woman. She connects it to her knowledge of VE psychologists. Agent Conny Saunders. Supposedly an exemplary record, but not promoted as often as she should be.

‘So, what is your preferred method of torturing?’ the woman asks the increasingly more nervous boy.

‘I, I don't torture, miss.’

‘Oh no, I meant of being tortured. I could give you a graphic list of options, but I've always considered it polite to ask the victim for his preferences.’

Franz-Roderik is at a loss for words.

‘S-so, shall we start with the questions, mam?’

Patricia is actually quite impressed. That annoying reset he was programmed to actually wavered. The kid did have a healthy sense of self preservation left.

She sighs internally. It would be so easy to let the kid torture himself. She got back to the mindlink with his supervisor.

And she was through. She's picking up the brainwaves she sends to him. Now she only has to reverse the polarity, and that is quite easy. Too easy. Patricia is fully aware of that. But it doesn’t matter. The other options are boring herself to death or the death of the kid. So she reverses the polarity to establishes a mindlink towards agent Saunders and gently slides her consciousness towards the agent’s mindscape.

She's picking up Conny Saunders’ point of view. Apparently she’s in a major control room. Nicole is talking to some bigshot on one of the screens. In a split second Patricia blocks it. She's playing around with the security, she does not wish to break it. Of course, if Conny is any good, this is a fabricated mindscape. Patricia looks for a way to really enter the other agents’ mind. After some wrong turns, she’s certain she has found it. She hesitates for a second. And decides to knock.

The images of the control room disappear. A graying woman in a Void Engineer uniform appears: ‘That was a bit too fast, you messed up my schedule. Zhu ain’t going to like that. Oh well, nothing I’m not used to.
I am supposed to fight you and stall you. But I’m busy as hell with 542 refugees to screen. I might not even find the time to cure poor Franz-Roderik of a suddenly developed healthy respect for NWO-ers. Since you’ve already started screening and conditioning the refugees, I think it’s much more efficient to continue with that together than to start over alone. What do you think?’

Patricia smiles. ‘I always wondered if DIMH would be a fun place to work.’

‘Of course I do need to report this as a mindbreach. Protocols need to be followed after all,’ Saunders winks. ‘Take the left gate. See ya.’

Patricia smiles barely noticeably, and raises her hands in anticipation for things to come.

‘ALARM! Mindbreach. Employ units to interrogation room six’, she hears Conny announce via the fading mindlink.

A siren goes off. Six space marines, with mirrorshades, heavy armor and big guns enter. Patricia allows herself to be restrained and calmly lets the men lead her outside. When she sees Nicole in a coffee corner, she winks. When they arrive at the gates towards the main quarantaine area she subtly takes the left one.

One version of Patricia exits the gates with the marines and is escorted to her room. Secretly she’s enjoying the stares she gets from the other technocrats. And the whispers behind her back...

Which are loud and clear for the second, version of Patricia. This hologram version steps out a duplicator in a control room with screens monitoring the quarantine area. Agent Saunders is talking to her supervisor. ‘Yes major Zhu, everything is under control. You can go back to your meeting now.’

The two women smile to each other. ‘Shall we start?’

## Debriefing - Nicole Taylor

Nicole took a deep breath, throwing the Erg Cola she just emptied in the trash. The quick “break” was over - or at least, so it seemed, since Patricia was being escorted along the corridor after her little game. So far, she’d only gotten through the relatively simple bits - and while General Blackwell had been pretty understanding so far, that major Zhu from DIMH was being a real hardass about it all. Probably because they’ve never actually been in the field yet, she thought. They’ll learn.

Exhaling, she found herself back in the small spartan room with the general. Not truly, of course - she was still under quarantine, after all - but close enough. “Show’s over, I guess the major will be back soon”, she added.

The general smirked as he looked at his pad. “She really can’t help herself, can she?”. “Ah, Zhu, you’re back as well”, he added, just as the major sprung to attention, “Let’s continue then; where were we?”

“I want to go over your decision to take the AI on board again”, Zhu added, as Nicole groaned. “The dangers of such an action…”

“Enough”, the general interrupted, “this is a debriefing, not a performance review. You can discuss that with Franklin when you debrief him” he added, prompting a groan from Zhu in turn.

“Tychoides just informed us that he couldn’t detect the rift where it had been before”, she started. “So, we were stuck. Sofie plotted a course to evade any attempts to follow, and I planned a meeting for once everyone got settled in and had a time to think of ideas.”

“You were lucky you have an expert on Everett Volumes in your construct, then”, Zhu mumbled while looking at the files in front of them.

“We would be,” Nicole replied, “if we brought him along. Anyway, turns out we had something more important to discuss during the meeting - our scans picked up a distress signal. From the Technocracy.”

“Which Technocracy? Ours or… theirs?” Zhu asked.

“Theirs… Well not the one on earth, it went on a different frequency”.

“So, a third one,” the general added. “We’re the normal Technocracy, you’ve dealt with alt-T0, and you thought this was alt-Technocracy”.

“Right”, Taylor added. “It was a meeting request - we analyzed it before we opened it, Zhu, you don’t have to look at me like that - with coordinates at Betelgeuze. And no, we didn’t just rush in either, but right then it was the best chance we had. It was signed by Xerxes Jones, ETD.”.

“Him? Huh, wouldn’t have guessed. From the contents of your ship I’m guessing it wasn’t a trap”, said the general.

“Not for us, anyway. We found a small fleet – 20 ships, standard technocratic models, more or less. More importantly, there was a small cruiser, cloaked much like ours, nearby. The fleet didn’t seem to have picked it up - and neither picked us up. So, we started to do some passive scanning.”

“Autopolitans?” the general asked.

“Autopolitans. And they were sending data back - tactical data, arriving ships, stuff like that. We didn’t see where exactly, but it can’t have been anywhere good. The AI got a bit restless when it found out, because they weren’t sending the report to it, and he was expecting them to.”

“And you still didn’t throw it out of an airlock…” Zhu added, quickly turning quiet when Blackwell glanced at him.

“We didn’t know if the fleet was friendly, but considering their enemies, we figured we had to take a chance. First, Patricia took over their outgoing comms, feeding false intel to whoever was receiving. When that was done, we lit up the ship. The fleet didn’t take too long to respond, and alone and surprised the lone cruiser didn’t stand a chance. We had hoped to observe their response for a bit longer, but the lead ship hailed us shortly after.”

“Friendly after all, then?”

“For now, at least. They were understandably suspicious, but they invited well, ‘invited’ us on board of the lead ship. So, on we went, after some initial scans of course. It helped that we knew Xerxes – well, the normal one.”

“Your alter egos in that volume were traditionalist, I understand,” Zhu remarked. “How did that go over?”

“Now that you mention it, it never came up,” Nicole continued. “I guess they didn’t have datalink access; plus, they already had plenty of *other* reasons to distrust us. Especially when Patricia brought up the Computer from Autochtonia…”

Unable to hide a smirk, Zhu asked “How did you talk your way out of that one? I’m guessing they had their objections as well?”

“I don’t quite get that either, to be honest;” she mused, “Patricia might occasionally talk too much, but she always manages to talk herself out of it as well. There’s a reason we keep the NWO around… besides, it was contained in our ship, and with everything going on there wasn’t too much time to discuss it, yet. But we’d revisit that later. For now, after they inspected us in turn, they figured we weren’t with the enemy, at least, and would decide on what to do with us during the ‘big debate’, later. To be honest, I think it had a lot to do with the apathy…”

“Apathy?”, Zhu asked. “What do you mean?”

“Patricia noticed it first – there was an atmosphere of apathy in the whole ship. Understandable in part, of course – they were worn down more than anything else. But there was something deeper going on – we theorized it was because most of the personnel was originally from Dark Side Moon Base.”

“Good to know, we’re going to have to factor that in to rehabilitation…”, Zhu added while making notes.

“Exactly. Although, we did team up to take some of the edge off – after a quick analysis, Patricia picked some uplifting audio to broadcast, and did so with the help of Franklin. That kept the crew going through… well, what was coming.”

“What was this debate you mentioned?” Blackwell interjected.

“Right, the fleet scheduled a meeting. We were invited to attend as well – along with all the rest of the surviving enlightened personnel. Around 150 in total.”

“That was *all*? After so little time?”

“All present in the fleet – they had a few ships out on missions. But yeah, basically that was all that was left. And they weren’t expecting to last much longer themselves.”

“We did the whole introduction spiel – convincing them we were from an Everett volume, go over comparative history. They were quite shocked when they found out the Dimensional Anomaly was still going. Even more when they found out that we were sustaining it…”

“Why did you tell them that?”, Zhu interrupted, quickly adding “Oh, Franklin…”

“Right. At any rate, without the Nichols’ engines, their Earth was basically defenseless. But – they repeated what Victoria station had said earlier – their T0 had Void Engineers. And they came in force. The fleet was fighting a guerrilla war for years now – cut off from earth, and losing fast. They were preparing a last stand”.

“We gave them another option”, Nicole continued. “We wanted to get back home, and if we’d manage that, they could come along. They’d get to fight on, and we’d get any intelligence they had. It… didn’t take much to convince them at all, to be honest.”

“You didn’t have a way back yet, though”, Blackwell added.

“Right – but we did have sensor data, from when we entered. And as luck would have it, Matrim – their version – was one of the few surviving Technocrats. He’s the one who figured it out the first time, so if anyone could find a way back, he was it.”

“And looks like he did”

“Didn’t take him long either – although, with a Time expert, it never does. It wouldn’t be easy though – the only way back was near the galactic core. And the window was closing fast – next one wouldn’t be open for decades. We had to go quick.”

“That’s not an easy route in the best of circumstances,” the general remarked.

“Luckily, we have one of the nimblest ships in the fleet” Nicole added, with a hint of pride. “Plus, Sofie’s one hell of a pilot. Besides, it was still safer than the alternative.”

“Ah, very true”

“Anyway, we took the fleet to Victoria first – wouldn’t hurt to have them to debrief first, and since the enemy had our position, we had to regroup somewhere else anyway. We couldn’t fit all the crews in our ship. Since the regular cruisers were too bulky to properly attempt the run, we did some quick math and figured we could bring 2 frigates along. Xerxes would pilot one with around a third of the Technocratic personnel, and the Etherites would board the other one. And so we went”.

“Why did you take the risk to bring along the Etherites?”, Zhu remarked with a critical note.

“They are an ally against T0, Zhu. We couldn’t just leave them – not if we could bring them along with relatively little effort. And if it helps you sleep, they’re an extra source of intelligence on what happened.”

“The journey itself was a lot less eventful than I expected”, she continued. “There was a lot to do, what with everyone packed in like that, but no major issues. It helped that we were going away from them, I think. The course I plotted with Sofie went off with only one problem – we detected an enemy vessel on the route near the core. We managed to detect it early enough to plot around it before it could intercept, though. We were almost there when our luck ended…” Nicole took a deep breath. “When we dropped the STAR-TPU, we found ourselves in a field of asteroids. And we weren’t alone.”

“T0?”, Blackwell added.

“In a sense.”, she continued. “We knew we didn’t stand a chance in a firefight – their main ship was gigantic – and we were too far to make a run for it. And that’s when we got the hail.”

“Please tell me you didn’t actually…” Zhu began with shock.

“We had to stall for time, Zhu. And we’re trained for that – plus, Patricia was there to filter the comms. Nothing was going to come through that way.”

“Can’t say I like it, but sometimes you’ve got to risk it”, Blackwell added.

“At any rate, turned out it was worse than we thought. As I said, it wasn’t exactly T0 – it was the Computer.”

“The one in your ship?” Blackwell asked surprised.

“No – this one was quite a bit different. Quite a bit pissed off, too. I thought it was the Computer from our reality at first – we were near the rift, after all. But it turns out it wasn’t – and it wanted to talk to the one in our ship”.

“I assume you didn’t let it do that”, he said.

“It wasn’t too happy with that,” she added, her face turning grim. “It didn’t take long for it to lose her patience. For whatever reason, it didn’t want to hurt the one on board of our ship – but that didn’t keep her from targeting the other ship. The first warning we got was Xerxes’ ship, vaporized in a ball of plasma. No survivors.”

“Damn.”

“We were too far away from the rift to make it – especially the other frigate. And I couldn’t let them talk. So, I figured I’d try to compromise. I asked it what it wanted to tell it.”

“That worked?”

“It took some convincing, but somehow, it did. I guess it figured that the only alternative was to destroy us, and the other computer with it.”

“So, what was the message?”, the general asked.

“Just three letters – E.A.P.”

“What’s that mean?” Zhu asked.

“I’m not sure – but I have a hypothesis. There were two computers – but how? I think the one near the rift was the original one. The other one – the one we had on board – was a copy. Originated through all the chaos resulting from the war…”

“Through the Enlightened Anthropic Principle. Fascinating”, Blackwell added.

“Right. At any rate, it wasn’t exactly happy, but it grudgingly let us pass. And so we went, through the rift. Well, apart from one thing – Franklin couldn’t go with one parting gift. Did I mention he upgraded the main cannon? With a SPAM-cannon?”

“Oh, for the love of… how in the world does he keep managing to build those?” Blackwell gasped.

“What’s a SPAM Cannon?” Zhu asked.

“It’s a big gun. And trust me,” Nicole said, “you don’t want to know the rest. Anyway, I doubt that took out the computer, but it sure won’t be following us. The rift collapsed shortly after, and we contacted Fleet.

“Right then,” the general added. “Let’s call that a successful mission. What are your recommendations on follow-up?”

“We’ve got 500 new sources of intel”, Nicole started. “They might be from a different reality, but they’ve got valuable information on how T0 might fight, especially if they come to the mudball. First thing should be to get that information to some statisticians.

“Sounds sensible”, the general added, noting to Zhu “DIMH will handle the specifics, I’m sure”.

“After that”, Nicole continued, “they won’t be able to safely be posted on earth for quite a while, with what they know. They’re all fully qualified for deep space operation, by now – post them there, after rehabilitation. The Etherites – much of the same. They’ll be harder to manage, but they’ve got front line experience too. Plus, we saved them – that tends to do well in recruitment drives.”

“What about the computer?”

“Pretty much what I mentioned earlier. It might be a copy, but it still had at least some control over the Autopolitans. That can be studied. Its temperament is friendly – I don’t think that’s an act. It might be a powerful ace in our hole later, either for dealing with the real Computer or Iteration X. But all that has to wait until some serious deep analysis, of course.”

“I still think it should be destroyed,” Zhu added. “It’s simply too dangerous to keep around.

“It probably is,” the general added. “Then again, it might be too dangerous not to. At any rate, that’s something for the whole directorate to weigh in on.”
“Well, Nicole,” he continued, “you’re confined to quarantine for 7 more days. Take some time to relax – you’ve earned it – and send the full written report to my office when you get to it. Dismissed.”

## Debriefing - Franklin Salisbury

TRANSCRIPT: Debriefing of Franklin Salisbury
PRIMARY INTERROGATOR: Major Zhu

(...)

Zhu: What made you think to try the door of the ship when you knew it was DNA-locked?
Salisbury: It just seemed like the kind of thing I'd build if I were one of the good guys.

Zhu: We \*are\* the good guys.

Salisbury: If I had a week I couldn't list all the reasons that's wrong.

Zhu: That could be arranged - you're in quarantine, remember.

Salisbury: Fair enough. [grabs a mini-computer from his pocket] Reason number one...

Zhu: NEVER MIND.

(...)

Zhu: Why did you take the AI on board?

Salisbury: Because I've seen movies.

(...)

Salisbury: Look, if it \*was\* an evil AI trying to get on board to murder us or whatever, its approach was one of the least likely to succeed - the only reason it did is because I happened to be there and not have time for all that protocol nonsense, which is a good thing in hindsight, because otherwise we would've been stuck there for 2 more days and those refugees would've been dead-fugees before we could meet them.

Zhu: Maybe the AI was counting on you to do just that.

Salisbury: [sarcastic tone] Oh yes, because \*clearly\* the AI somehow managed to figure out I would be there even though my personality is significantly different from my AU version, and decided that relying on my lack of impulse control would be the most optimal path to take.

Salisbury: That was sarcasm, by the way.

Zhu: I know.

Salisbury: See, what I meant is that's a ridiculous assumption to make and you should think less of yourself for making it.

Zhu: I KNOW.

(...)

Zhu: I've been reading up on this "SPAM Cannon" you apparently built - how did you even manage to build another one?

Salisbury: Well, that's easy. All I did was [CENSORED] the [CENSORED] with the [CENSORED], then rotate the [CENSORED] [CENSORED] through a [CENSORED], excite the [CENSORED] by reversing the spin of the [CENSORED], overclock the [CENSORED] by [CENSORED] percent, make a [CENSORED] bubble around the [CENSORED] so the magnetic [CENSORED] don't [CENSORED], and Bob's your uncle.

Zhu: And that's how you built it?

Salisbury: Of course not. That's just how I modified my tools so they'd be capable of performing the weapon modifications. Do try and keep up.

Zhu: [annoyed groan]

(...)

Salisbury: Fortunately, we had plenty of soul coins on board from our poker nights, so I didn't have to use Jane's.

Zhu: Soul coi-

Salisbury: [interrupting] She got the screamiest, you see, so she's pretty attached to them.

(...)

Salisbury: Anyway, the effects should wear off in a few more days, but until then, it's best not to go anywhere near the cannon, or point it at anything important.

Zhu: But it's currently pointed at [CENSORED].

Salisbury: Like I said.