77

Introductory Text

77th Post

Posted 4 June at 01:30:14 UTC

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> When we got to the Clearview hospital, it was like Karen said it would be. The emergency room was flooded with patients coming in from Atlanta, but the readjustment center was empty except for a lone staffer who was watching the lobby's wall set and praying. The set was showing footage of the black cloud over Atlanta. Or maybe it was Denver. Or Riyadh. 12 cities had gone up in the last hour. They weren't the largest or most powerful cities in the world. Hefei. Zhengzhou. Bengaluru. What was the pattern? What the hell had Bengaluru done to anybody?
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> Karen said there was no real pattern.
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> > this is Q's opening move. her entrance into the world. she wont destroy everything. but she will kill and kill until she thinks we are ready for her demands.
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> I found a wheelchair by the readjustment center's entrance and wheeled Karen down to the EMRT room. Somewhere, a hygiene bed's life alarm was ringing. I ignored it. My goal was to get Karen some muscle treatment. A single treatment probably wouldn't give her enough strength to stand on her own, but she could at least hold her head up and move her arms, and she might regain her voice and sight.
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> In the treatment room, I filled a treatment tub with the minty-smelling conducting gel and washed Karen off and fit her with breathing tube. These were normally tech duties, stuff I thought I would never be doing again. Looking down at this little twig of a woman on the table, it occurred to me that all I had to do was tie off her breathing tube, and that would be the end of her. I asked her the question that kept coming to my mind. "How do I know for sure that you didn't blow up Atlanta yourself? How do I know you aren't full of shit?"
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> My set was blank for a while before she answered.
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> > well... how could I prove it?
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> I tried to think of a way. Some kind of test. "I don't know," I said finally.
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> > u know much about statistical proxy distillation tracing?
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> "No."
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> > then it would be hard to prove it to u
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> "So how do I know it wasn't you?"
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> > u cant know.
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> "I need to know if I'm going to help you."
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> > then learn about SPDT
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> "I don't have time to learn about fucking SP fucking DT."
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> > then u cant know. ur just dealing with stuff thats too advanced
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> I walked away from the table and sat down in a nearby chair. I felt like I was cracking up. The urge to cry had come and passed every few minutes, and it came again. "I don't know what to do."
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> > i told u. we must get to upstate New York. there's a way to defeat Q.
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> "Maybe you are Q."
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> > listen before u put me in the gel, I want u to pull my jack battery. cut it off
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> "And that would prove you're not Q?"
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> > not really. i couldve scripted everything
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> "Oh."
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> > but it would mean i cant directly order nuclear strikes
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> "Oh, well, that's a relief," I said, rubbing my face and trying to blink away the fresh wave of tears. "What's in upstate New York that's so important?"
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> > there is a resource Q cant access. something she cannot defend against.
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> "What?"
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> > honestly, if u dont understand something simple like SPDT, u wont understand this.
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> "Fucking great," I said. We sat there in silence for a long moment. Finally, another message showed up.
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> > im not Q. i spent my life fighting Q. i fought Q instead of living a life. we still have a chance to win. we must win.
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> I sighed and stood up and walked over to her. "Well, then let's get started."
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> > good
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> I found the jack patch on the back of Karen's neck and squeezed at the tattooed points. Her battery capsule slowly slid out of her skin like a giant blackhead. I disconnected the wire. Now she was completely disconnected from infraspace. I picked up her body and gently lowered it into the conducting gel. It took a minute for her to sink to the bottom, for the gel slowly slide over her face like a closing curtain. I dialed up 90 minutes of muscle treatment and 30 minutes of eye treatment and started the tub up. I sat for a while, listening to the soft wobbling sounds of the gel shifting as Karen's muscles clenched and unclenched at a rapid-fire rate. This was the sort of spare moment where a person would stare at their set and look at game replays or something, but my set was a just a long list of red interrupts, telling me about how everybody was dead.
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> I realized that the hygiene bed's life alarm was still going off in some other room. Usually when I heard that sound, I went racing to find out what was going on. But I had just ignored it. Well, the person was probably dead before we got here. What were the odds that they had just gone into arrest when we walked in the door? And who gave a shit anyways when a 100 million people had also died today. Still... there was an instinctive part of me that wanted to run toward the sound, that wanted to help. I got up and walked down the hall. The ringing got louder. At the end of the hallway, there was a small room with 4 hygiene beds that had been brought in for in-hospital disconnection, a procedure usually reserved for really complex cases. The last bed was blinking red. I took a look at the readout, but it didn't show cardiac arrest. In fact, it was showing 260 bpm. It must have been malfunctioning. I looked at the patient chart. Zhenzhen Sobakin. 24 years old. Total connection duration: 47 minutes. It must have been runtime crash. Unlucky.
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> I pressed the seal button, and the bed lid opened up. When she came into view, I staggered back and shouted for help.
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