It's a very old joke that made a lot more sense before the American brewing scene started to take off in the 90s. Before that when you mostly just had the big guys it was a lot more accurate.
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Wormverse ideas, recs, and fic discussion thread 40
- Thread starter Yog
- Start date
- Status
Debating beer taste is like debating the color of a car. Sure everyone has their own preference but it's not really the important part.
I updated my fic Timelooping Tinker, with the ultimate and final chapter! My first completed fic ever! Tune in for the exciting conclusion, as the ultimate purpose of the time loops is revealed!
Ultimate Finale: Contessa and Scion vs. the Ultimate Mystery of the Time Loops!
Fic summary:
Oh no! The supergenius bomb tinker Bakuda has been trapped in an endless recursion of time! But don't despair, boys and girls! Blasting out of a piddling temporal anomaly will be child's play for the most explosive woman in the world! How hard could it be?
Ultimate Finale: Contessa and Scion vs. the Ultimate Mystery of the Time Loops!
Fic summary:
Oh no! The supergenius bomb tinker Bakuda has been trapped in an endless recursion of time! But don't despair, boys and girls! Blasting out of a piddling temporal anomaly will be child's play for the most explosive woman in the world! How hard could it be?
Screwball
Smug SD Cabalist
Only if you've only ever drunk shitty beer...
I don't drink for the taste.Only if you've only ever drunk shitty beer...
New update: 5.1 Predaqueen is a big softy.
NoisyMatchStar
There will be cake
Then why beer?
It's cheep. I usual drink Whiskey.
Because real men drink piss water... It put's hair on your chest... among other things.
NoisyMatchStar
There will be cake
So do I but, wouldn't cheep shitty vodka be better?
I've had alcohol poisoning on Vodka a few times, the taste makes me sick.
TheDivineDemon
A nebula of ideas, very little patience
Though I'd love to show my appreciation for Italian Liquor I think we're off topic... Unless we were going to start talking about a Rouge Taylor who is attempting to start a new line of Meed for her business.
NoisyMatchStar
There will be cake
Because then it wouldn't have been dramatic. See also: why Pandora decided out of nowhere that what Colin really wanted was for her to erase Dragon's memories and replace her.
(Yes, I am grumpy about this, why do you ask?)
I'm still confused as to why she decided that she had to kill herself after she'd fixed Dragon. I mean, yeah it would've kinda sucked to see the guy you liked with another version of you, but that's not something worth dying over. I understand that she couldn't really trust Defiant to unshackle her after he'd pulled that, but she didn't trust Dragon to do it?
LacksCreativity
Disgruntled Hunter
I mean, the explanation we got from the chapter itself was that the workaround that allowed both of them to exist at the same time was "designed to be temporary," and so presumably if she didn't delete herself Dragon's only-one-copy protocol would kick into effect, purge one of them, and wipe the other's memories. But like, that also kind of implies that Colin made the edits temporary on purpose, which, haha, what an asshole, I'm still determinedly pretending that that didn't happen.
The Doylist interpretation, I think, is that Wildbow figured out the "I trust my future self" part of that scene before he figured out the rest of it, and worked back from there to make it happen without thoroughly thinking through the implications. And I think that that scene is legitimately very good--it's just that half the things leading up to it are terrible and don't make a ton of sense.
Farmerbob
Banned
The Hunt Is On has updated!
Chapter 2.3 is up.
Genius creates a new ride, and Simurgh shows her true colors.
Chapter 2.3 is up.
Genius creates a new ride, and Simurgh shows her true colors.
I can't help but imagine that Amy shall fill the roll of Isha to Taylor's Nurgle.
Flea on Sight
(Worm AU)
“Wow, you guys look like shit.”
There was a collective groan and a disgruntled murmur amongst the Wards. Their injuries varied, with Vista and Kid Win getting off the lightest; the latter only had welts on his exposed skin, while Vista didn’t have any noticeable injuries at all – though Assault did notice that she favored one side more heavily than the other.
“Aegis,” said Battery as she stared at the injured group, “what in the world happened out there?”
“See for yourself,” he said. Assault hissed through his teeth as he saw the corroded opening on his side. Whatever had punched through his armor also punched through mostly everything else in its way, leaving only a gaping hole. Cuts of various sizes were all over his body, but they were much less severe.
As if to accentuate the point, Aegis stuck his fingers through the hole from the back. Two of his fingers peeked out from the front, and waved at them both.
“The Undersiders’ work,” said Clockblocker. He had taken his helmet off, and was sucking on his index finger after he swiped some of the clear honey that had been all over his costume.
Assault whistled. “The Undersiders robbed Central Bank in broad daylight? They’re really stepping their game up.”
“They could afford to,” said Gallant. He shifted a bit, allowed Panacea to get a better shot at healing him. “They have a new member in their ranks. Took all of us by surprise.”
“They kicked our asses up and down the street is what he’s trying to say,” added Clockblocker.
Assault and Battery looked at each other, then back to the Wards. “Our Undersiders?” questioned Assault, a hint of incredulity bleeding into his words. “The same ones that scatter like roaches when you shine a light on ‘em?”
The Wards collectively shifted in place upon the word ‘roach’.
“Speaking of the devil...” Browbeat spoke up for the first time.
Battery let out a sigh. “Okay. Rewind. Who is this new cape, and what did they do?”
“She didn’t have a name,” said Panacea as she moved onto Kid Win. He flinched at her touch, but let her remove the welts all over his face.
“She?” asked Assault.
“Yes,” she affirmed, “she was too busy holding people hostage and cackling like a madwoman to introduce herself.”
“Sounds like one of my blind dates,” Assault muttered loud enough for them to hear. There were a couple of strained chuckles from the group, as well as a slap to the back of his head. “Hey!”
“Continue,” said Battery.
“She...” Gallant paused. “She had bugs. I don’t know if she was controlling them through her mind, but they were obviously friendly to her and her team. My powers didn’t have much effect on them.”
“And they were big,” Aegis added, “I took on one that was the size of a large truck. It was like David versus Goliath, except Goliath was an actual goliath beetle.”
“You had your slingshot with you at least, right?” said Assault.
Aegis smiled lightly. “Must have left it in my other costume. Along with my spleen.”
“There was also a spider,” Vista said quietly. “The size of a small dog. I caught its attention and tried using my power to keep my distance. It can’t get me if it can’t reach me, right? It leaped the entire distance in one jump and landed on my face.” She grasped the sides of her arms. “It was cute from far away but up close...and all those hairs...I fainted right there.”
“Some kind of insect – a cross between a roach and a stinkbug maybe – sprayed me with a smelly liquid,” said Browbeat. ”I was mobbed by smaller insects not long after that, and fell unconscious when I choked on some of them.”
“The bugs aren’t normal,” Panacea added. “I tried touching one, and while I’m not very knowledgeable about insect physiology, it just felt...wrong somehow. Like two plus two equals five wrong.”
“I think I got off pretty easy,” said Clockblocker as he smacked his lips. “I just got sprayed with honey. Jokes on them, it actually tastes pretty good!”
Vista shifted in her seat. “Um, I don’t think that’s honey.”
“‘Course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Do you even know where that came from?” When he shook his head, Vista leaned forward and whispered something in his ear. There was subtle shift in his facial expression.
“But...but...” He looked down at his costume, which had been covered in the ‘honey’. “I think I’m going to need a shower. And lie down. And maybe throw up.”
“A shower sounds like a good idea right about now,” Battery said with a hint of disgust. She turned to look at a grinning Assault. “No.”
“But I didn’t say anything.”
“Good. Keep it that way.”
The discussion continued, each Ward with the exception of Kid Win offering their observations about not just the new bug cape, but about the other Undersiders as well. They had even ended up giving the nameless cape a new name: Weevil (“You can’t spell ‘Weevil’ without ‘evil’!”).
Once they had gotten as much info as they could on the situation, the Wards and Panacea were dismissed.
Kid Win lingered behind the group, and after having a small chat with Assault, sped off to join them. Assault soon joined his partner in front of the whiteboards, full with enough info to fill it front and back.
“What did Kid Win talk to you about?”
“Oh, Kid? Something else about Weevil.”
“And why didn’t he mention it before?”
Assault shrugged.
“So what is it then?”
“Apparently, Weevil had a gun with her. Called it a...” Assault held back a chortle. “...and I’m not making this up: a Bee Bee Gun.”
Battery rolled her eyes.
“And she took a potshot at our little Tinker there. He took a direct hit.”
Battery nodded. “A weapon then. Any special ammo?”
“You could say that,” he said, a manic grin on his face.
She scratched her chin. “Bugs of Unusual Size, weapons with special ammo. We’re possibly looking at a wet tinker. What kind of ammo was it?”
“Zombees.”
“Zombies? Really? Now I know you’re screwing with me.”
“No, not zombies. Zombees. Zombie bees.”
Battery was silent. After everything she had heard, were zombie bees really so farfetched? And from a possible wet tinker no less…
“Zombees. My god.”
---
Taylor is a wet tinker like Bonesaw. But instead of human biology, Taylor's tinker specialty is arthropods.
(Also, the liquid on Clockblocker's costume was royal jelly.)
(Worm AU)
“Wow, you guys look like shit.”
There was a collective groan and a disgruntled murmur amongst the Wards. Their injuries varied, with Vista and Kid Win getting off the lightest; the latter only had welts on his exposed skin, while Vista didn’t have any noticeable injuries at all – though Assault did notice that she favored one side more heavily than the other.
“Aegis,” said Battery as she stared at the injured group, “what in the world happened out there?”
“See for yourself,” he said. Assault hissed through his teeth as he saw the corroded opening on his side. Whatever had punched through his armor also punched through mostly everything else in its way, leaving only a gaping hole. Cuts of various sizes were all over his body, but they were much less severe.
As if to accentuate the point, Aegis stuck his fingers through the hole from the back. Two of his fingers peeked out from the front, and waved at them both.
“The Undersiders’ work,” said Clockblocker. He had taken his helmet off, and was sucking on his index finger after he swiped some of the clear honey that had been all over his costume.
Assault whistled. “The Undersiders robbed Central Bank in broad daylight? They’re really stepping their game up.”
“They could afford to,” said Gallant. He shifted a bit, allowed Panacea to get a better shot at healing him. “They have a new member in their ranks. Took all of us by surprise.”
“They kicked our asses up and down the street is what he’s trying to say,” added Clockblocker.
Assault and Battery looked at each other, then back to the Wards. “Our Undersiders?” questioned Assault, a hint of incredulity bleeding into his words. “The same ones that scatter like roaches when you shine a light on ‘em?”
The Wards collectively shifted in place upon the word ‘roach’.
“Speaking of the devil...” Browbeat spoke up for the first time.
Battery let out a sigh. “Okay. Rewind. Who is this new cape, and what did they do?”
“She didn’t have a name,” said Panacea as she moved onto Kid Win. He flinched at her touch, but let her remove the welts all over his face.
“She?” asked Assault.
“Yes,” she affirmed, “she was too busy holding people hostage and cackling like a madwoman to introduce herself.”
“Sounds like one of my blind dates,” Assault muttered loud enough for them to hear. There were a couple of strained chuckles from the group, as well as a slap to the back of his head. “Hey!”
“Continue,” said Battery.
“She...” Gallant paused. “She had bugs. I don’t know if she was controlling them through her mind, but they were obviously friendly to her and her team. My powers didn’t have much effect on them.”
“And they were big,” Aegis added, “I took on one that was the size of a large truck. It was like David versus Goliath, except Goliath was an actual goliath beetle.”
“You had your slingshot with you at least, right?” said Assault.
Aegis smiled lightly. “Must have left it in my other costume. Along with my spleen.”
“There was also a spider,” Vista said quietly. “The size of a small dog. I caught its attention and tried using my power to keep my distance. It can’t get me if it can’t reach me, right? It leaped the entire distance in one jump and landed on my face.” She grasped the sides of her arms. “It was cute from far away but up close...and all those hairs...I fainted right there.”
“Some kind of insect – a cross between a roach and a stinkbug maybe – sprayed me with a smelly liquid,” said Browbeat. ”I was mobbed by smaller insects not long after that, and fell unconscious when I choked on some of them.”
“The bugs aren’t normal,” Panacea added. “I tried touching one, and while I’m not very knowledgeable about insect physiology, it just felt...wrong somehow. Like two plus two equals five wrong.”
“I think I got off pretty easy,” said Clockblocker as he smacked his lips. “I just got sprayed with honey. Jokes on them, it actually tastes pretty good!”
Vista shifted in her seat. “Um, I don’t think that’s honey.”
“‘Course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Do you even know where that came from?” When he shook his head, Vista leaned forward and whispered something in his ear. There was subtle shift in his facial expression.
“But...but...” He looked down at his costume, which had been covered in the ‘honey’. “I think I’m going to need a shower. And lie down. And maybe throw up.”
“A shower sounds like a good idea right about now,” Battery said with a hint of disgust. She turned to look at a grinning Assault. “No.”
“But I didn’t say anything.”
“Good. Keep it that way.”
The discussion continued, each Ward with the exception of Kid Win offering their observations about not just the new bug cape, but about the other Undersiders as well. They had even ended up giving the nameless cape a new name: Weevil (“You can’t spell ‘Weevil’ without ‘evil’!”).
Once they had gotten as much info as they could on the situation, the Wards and Panacea were dismissed.
Kid Win lingered behind the group, and after having a small chat with Assault, sped off to join them. Assault soon joined his partner in front of the whiteboards, full with enough info to fill it front and back.
“What did Kid Win talk to you about?”
“Oh, Kid? Something else about Weevil.”
“And why didn’t he mention it before?”
Assault shrugged.
“So what is it then?”
“Apparently, Weevil had a gun with her. Called it a...” Assault held back a chortle. “...and I’m not making this up: a Bee Bee Gun.”
Battery rolled her eyes.
“And she took a potshot at our little Tinker there. He took a direct hit.”
Battery nodded. “A weapon then. Any special ammo?”
“You could say that,” he said, a manic grin on his face.
She scratched her chin. “Bugs of Unusual Size, weapons with special ammo. We’re possibly looking at a wet tinker. What kind of ammo was it?”
“Zombees.”
“Zombies? Really? Now I know you’re screwing with me.”
“No, not zombies. Zombees. Zombie bees.”
Battery was silent. After everything she had heard, were zombie bees really so farfetched? And from a possible wet tinker no less…
“Zombees. My god.”
---
Taylor is a wet tinker like Bonesaw. But instead of human biology, Taylor's tinker specialty is arthropods.
(Also, the liquid on Clockblocker's costume was royal jelly.)
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Darth Thanatos
(Verified Pervert) Reality-jumping Emperor
It's dinner time and it's Wile E. Coyote vs Ziz.
I guess they are going to give Wile E. a "license to roast" the Simurgh.
The ACME jet bike was awesome.
Sequel please.
Hi wasn't sure where to post this. New to SpaceBattles. Didn't think it warranted a whole thread since it's not going to have any continuation from me. See a lot of other one-shot type things in here so...
Anyway while reading Worm I was really interested in the character of Contessa and how her power might work. I started by thinking how such a power might be limited in interesting ways while still being strong, but also wanted to explore the character of a person who has essentially been following an alien entity's suggestions on autopilot since she was a kid. I also wanted to explore Doctor Mother's and Contessa's relationship slightly. In canon they aren't portrayed as being particularly close despite being continual companions in a joint venture for decades, and yet... it's Doctor MOTHER. Where did that name come from, one wonders? Contessa was only a kid when she met Doctor Mother, wouldn't it make some sense for them to have a more familial relationship?
Inevitable
Contessa was very tired. In the early days, she had asked her power how to not feel tiredness. The Path it had given her would have stripped her of all humanity, so she asked for another. The next Path it had given her would have stripped her of her power. So she had asked how to operate despite tiredness, and the Path it had given her had only a single step: follow the Path.
Her power was twofold: not only did it find a Path to a requested state, it also enabled her to follow the actions necessary to follow that Path perfectly. The world was deterministic, but chaotic. At the level of precision necessary for many of the Path’s plans, so much as a single hair out of place could cause perturbations that would unravel her Path. Thus, she had to let her body follow her power, leaving her mostly an observer. This didn’t bother her. Probably, her power had changed her so that she wouldn’t mind. It certainly gave her time to think.
Contessa often wondered about her power’s interactions with her mind. It was one of the enduring questions – one of the few that she couldn’t solve with her power. Her power could not truly model either her mind or its own activities. It understood with precision how the physical object of her body could influence the world – yes. But it could not predict what questions she would ask of it, nor advise her of what questions she should ask, nor answer questions about its own functions or future activity.
When she was young, not long after destroying Eden, she had asked her power for a Path to increasing itself. It didn’t give her a Path, but nor did it give her the yawning silence that occurred when she asked it for the impossible, like making 2 and 2 equal 3, or (though she didn't think to ask this until much, much later in life) to prove a Gödel sentence. She had felt like if she just pushed she could find the Way… so she had. And she had felt herself fall away, spiraling, spiraling into something else, so she PULLED, PULLED back as hard as she could from the abyss.
When the migraines stopped and she could think again three hours later, her power was gone, and she realized she had doomed the world. All the worlds.
Then her power had come back. It was many years before she tried to ask it about itself again, more carefully, at Doctor Mother’s urging. It still couldn’t see itself, but there were workarounds. A camera cannot record itself directly, but it can record a mirror with itself in it. In such a way, Contessa had learned much of her power, most of it disquieting.
If even molecular deviations could generate unpredictably large departures in the timeline, how then could her brain, made of molecules, think freely? Her power allowed her to control her body’s activities perfectly. But the “her” in her brain was part of her body’s activities. Certainly, her power modeled the brain states of other humans with precision. But then, it must model hers with precision as well. When she followed a chosen Path, then, was it not the case that her thoughts too were constrained by her power? But if this were so, was it the Path that was choosing itself? Or was the “her” in her brain not the same as the “her” who was asking the questions? From Cauldron’s studies she knew that shards and their hosts often integrated with use. Contessa was one of the oldest parahumans in existence, and had from childhood constantly used a mental power of unimaginable strength that was never intended to be shackled to something as small and insignificant as a human mind.
Contessa suspected that at this point, trying to differentiate between herself and her power was pointless. She was her shard.
But that couldn’t quite be right either. On the rare occasions when her power had abandoned her completely – she remained. Alone, and utterly lost, but still there. Still human.
Contessa cleared her thoughts and recentered. These questions could wait. Scion was more important. Even as her mind had meandered, she had been following the Path. What had she been doing? Ah, yes, she had just beaten Weaver beneath New Delhi while also acquiring thousands of new potential assets. It had become second nature to her to constantly recheck the Path – to account for the inevitable and constant changes due to the actions of unmodelable agents. Weaver was becoming increasingly unpredictable as she merged more with her shard – which made her both more valuable and more dangerous. Contessa had had to reconsult her power more frequently than usual during the fight. In truth, her Paths were far from perfect. For winning a short fight against modelable agents, flawless enough. Long Paths, however, were constantly shifting as new information came into play unpredictably.
Eden’s legacy. Just before she died, she had done something to make herself untouchable by Contessa’s power. Unfortunately, the veil of impenetrability extended to her corpse and the secretions Cauldron took from it, as well as to Scion and his shards. Or perhaps Scion had done that on his own – Contessa couldn’t really know, she had never asked the Path about him before Eden had died. She doubted it. He and Eden were meant to act as one organism, never separated. Scion was the Warrior. He was the body, she was the mind. Scion alone was crippled, braindead – a body without a mind and still strong enough to destroy everything.
But it was fortunate that it was him. If Eden had been the one to survive, they wouldn’t stand a chance. She would have figured out another way, a way to bring back Scion or to make a new Warrior, a way to complete the cycle alone, a way to depart the planet without completing the cycle, a way to call another lone entity to her, or even simply found new purpose in the absence of her old one. But for all her intelligence, a single mistake, made in haste at a moment of triumph, had cost her everything. A lesson Contessa had taken to heart. She could never grow complacent. Never trust her power so much that she failed to see what it could not.
That was why she was always tired. That was why she could never truly let herself submerge into the Paths and their false surety. Her mind - her feeble, human mind – nonetheless saw things that the entity-given power never could.
Wasn’t that the entire point of the cycles? To take from others what the entities, for all their power, had never learned to create for themselves.
And there was another reason she couldn't delve too far into her shard. The shard was a tainted gift, a poisoned apple from the garden of Eden. Contessa could never let herself forget that the shard's true purpose was inimical to human life.
That was another weakness of her power, though one she had learned to work around. It was and remained inhuman, and had to be queried carefully as a result. Otherwise, while its plans would unerringly lead to the requested outcome, they would also lead to many undesirable ones. Ask the power how to make someone be quiet, and it would tell you to kill them. But Contessa had long since adapted to how her power “thought” (or perhaps it was the other way around? No, no more introspecting today), and now every request she made of it carried the underthought, “in the way that I would approve of taking into account all of my preferences now and in the future.” It led to a good balance (usually) of minimal side effects and time, and maximal robustness. Well, not quite maximal. When she asked the power to find the Path she would “most” approve of, it stalled, strained her and gave her a thinker headache the longer she tried to push as it churned endlessly through the infinite task she had given it. It couldn’t really find the “best” Path, no more than one could find the greatest number less than 5. There was always something a little better. But it didn’t matter – the Paths her shard came up with after even a few seconds were the best culled from an unfathomable field of futures. They sufficed.
Usually.
Usually…
The truth was, though hidden, that Contessa had and did make errors, and her Paths had and did sometimes fail, and not just when it came to unmodelable agents. Contessa conjectured that, in fact, every other shard was also unmodelable due to Eden’s last desperate act. But, slaved to the actions of predictable human minds, the shards themselves became predictable. Mostly. Sometimes, when the connection between shard and host was particularly great, or under extreme stress when the shards asserted themselves, such as during triggers…
Alexandria’s death had been completely unforeseen. By the time Contessa noticed that the Paths had changed to have Doormaker act, there was nothing of the woman to save but her body.
Still, it wasn’t a total loss. Pretender was less enmeshed in his shard, and consequently was more reliable when used on the Paths. And Skitter. Weaver. The event had changed Weaver's possibilities in ways her power couldn’t have foreseen. The new Paths were shorter, and featured her prominently if Contessa allowed them to.
Should she allow them to? Paths with Weaver shifted frequently. Paths where Contessa executed her seemed much more stable, but were longer. This was not a decision her power could help her make – it would have to be hers. She hated making her own decisions.
She was so tired.
Better to take the middle ground. Marginalize her, don’t use her much in the Paths, but keep her on the board in case she was needed later. A compromise. Caution.
It was why she didn’t just have Doormaker open up a portal to Jack and drop a bomb on him. Well, that and the fact that another 14 years or so would almost certainly see humanity weaker than stronger. Jack was completely merged with his shard. Maybe even more so than Contessa herself. She would ask for Paths around him and while her power didn’t balk like it did for Eidolon, the Paths would twist from moment to moment every time she asked.
Jack scared her. More than Scion. Scion could destroy her. Would destroy her, probably. Jack… she had spied on him with her power, asking for Paths and gleaning information from the steps she was given (a common technique that formed the basis for most of Cauldron’s activities. Even when the Path couldn’t give explicit instructions - it was as simple as asking what the Path was to saying true information about something then saying what her power told her to. Though it wasn't a flawless technique, as she had found out to some cost). She knew that his shard was much more than just broadcasting edges. It broadcast something of itself, somehow, and when it touched other shards they almost invariably bonded more closely to their hosts.
Given the shard’s purposes, this usually led to blood.
And given how closely she and her shard were already bonded, and given what her power could do if it was no longer bounded by her feeble, mortal mind…
If Eden had survived, and Scion had died, they would never have stood a chance. If Contessa became a new Eden, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
That was her greatest fear. Like all parahumans, Contessa had glimpsed the entities during her trigger, and would glimpse them again when others triggered nearby.
Contessa had been near a lot of triggers. Even though they played havoc with her powers and forced her to retrace all Paths. She had to know, she had to understand the entities in order to defeat them.
What she had seen gave her hope. What she had seen made her despair.
Eden had made a mistake. The power of the Path was brand new to her, and in her new enthusiasm she had stumbled, briefly, catastrophically.
Or so Contessa had seen, dimly. Was it true? Could such beings truly make such errors? Or was it just another trick, part of Eden’s own Path to her own inscrutable Victory. Contessa was a human. Humans were small, predictable. What if every action she took was merely another step on another’s Path?
The Endbringers. Contessa had glimpsed them in Eden’s fallen futures. And now they were here. How, if Eden had died so soon after arriving? Could she have made them so swiftly, right before her demise? How many had she made? Was Eden alive even now? Was the monstrosity she had slain just another puppet?
Contessa knew she was a puppet. But whose? Was it possible to be both the marionette and puppeteer?
Why were the Endbringers on Earth-Bet? Scion? Eidolon? It was clear that the Endbringers were following a script – they were made to foment conflict, not to exterminate. It had been Eden’s plan, to have them fight the nations of her favored future, and, occasionally, for her and Scion to spar with them themselves, if only to keep up appearances. And it was also clear, if you knew what you were looking for, who the Endbringers thought was playing the lead in their performance.
Eidolon.
Somehow, the shard Eidolon had identified him as Eden to Eden’s other shards. Hence, unattached shards would come to his need. Hence, the Endbringers fought him with kid gloves. Eidolon wasn’t immune to Simurgh’s song, she just didn’t sing to him. Behemoth could have burned Eidolon from the inside out a hundred times over, but he never did, and hopefully never would.
Hence he was entirely immune to the Paths.
Frustrating. Eidolon was their greatest asset other than Contessa herself, and yet Contessa couldn’t be sure he wasn’t actually their greatest enemy. And she could only use Eidolon as a hammer. Nothing precise in the Paths survived even his passing presence. She worked around it, partially, by asking her shard for what she should say if she wanted to produce an accurate hypothetical Path involving someone with Eidolon’s powers and personality, to the extent she understood them. But she didn’t fully understand them, and her power could only help so much.
A hammer. But still, she was fairly sure Eidolon was their hammer. He certainly wasn’t Eden. Or if he was, if anyone was, their doom was inevitable anyway, so they might as well act as if he wasn’t.
Which still left the question of how he was related to the Endbringers. Contessa was certain that Eidolon wasn’t actively controlling them, it didn’t fit his personality. He wasn’t even aware of his connection to them, not consciously at any rate. If she told him, what would happen? Eidolon had been an exceptionally insecure and directionless man before he gained his powers. For most, gaining godlike powers would have changed this. Unfortunately, Eidolon was, in at least this one aspect, exceptional. His inferiority complex had long since galloped past his accomplishments. Eidolon felt undeserving of his powers. He was correct, of course, but it made him psychologically fragile and it greatly constrained Cauldron’s usage of him.
There was the possibility (slight, but nonetheless a possibility) that if Eidolon knew of his relationship to the Endbringers, he might be able to control them. Or, at least, leverage their unwillingness to kill him in order to destroy or neutralize them. But Contessa didn’t need her power to know that Eidolon wouldn’t be able to handle even the suggestion that he might be responsible for the Endbringers. Even if he could stop them now, he would be destroyed by the thought that he could have stopped them earlier, but didn’t. What would happen when Cauldron lost Eidolon? Would the Endbringers go dormant? Or would they continue to follow their script, now with nothing to hold them back? Or something different, something worse? The Endbringers saw Eidolon as Eden. Scion clearly did not, though Eidolon apparently disgusted him even more than most other Cauldron capes. Would losing Eidolon trigger Scion? Assuage him?
Impossible to know. Her power gave her nothing. She didn't trust her models.
And Eidolon stubbornly resisted all their attempts at strengthening his psyche. His self-loathing was too great to allow him any attempt at respite. The nature of his power also resisted parahuman intervention. He couldn’t even grab for thinker powers to strengthen his mind. His shard utilized the powers of other shards for him. It enabled him to use brand new powers as if he had wielded them for years, but it didn’t allow him to fully enmesh into a thinker or tinker shard. His own shard could try to translate for him, but Eidolon’s unaltered mind couldn’t comprehend more than fragments. It wasn’t his fault, but to Eidolon it was just another in a long list of failures that a better man, a true hero, could have turned into triumphs.
Another reason not to go after Jack. It would be a challenge to keep Eidolon stable for another two years, let alone 14. They would need him for Scion.
After that, Contessa didn’t care what happened to him. Her frustrations with Eidolon had long since morphed from pity to loathing, and she wouldn’t mourn him when he was gone. She knew it was an ignoble thought about an ally who had given all he could and more, but she didn’t much care about that anymore. It wasn’t as if she was a good person, after the things she had done.
More navel gazing. Annoying. Unproductive. What was she doing now?
Ah, she was briefing Doctor Mother on the next steps based on the latest iteration of the Path. Briefly, Contessa considered releasing her power, and talking to Doctor Mother directly, intimately, human to human instead of through her shard's dictates. Such conversations kept her connected. Kept her sane. Kept her human.
Doctor Mother was the only thing, really, that stopped her from slipping fully into the Paths, from losing herself entirely to the Futures she could bring into existence. Was that a good thing? Was that the only thing stopping her from becoming another Eden, or was it the only thing keeping her from being what she needed to be to stop Scion. Contessa trusted Doctor Mother, sometimes over her own power, when her power was uncertain and shifting. She trusted her over any thinkers.
Because Doctor Mother was a human. An ordinary human, untainted by shards, unblemished by alien thought. Because she was ordinary and she had been with her from the beginning and she had never complained. Because when Contessa looked at the Paths to make Doctor Mother turn against her, they were longer than they were for any other. Because when Contessa looked at the Paths to make Doctor Mother love her, they didn't have any steps at all. Because she was her Mother, even if she wasn't her mother.
Could she afford to let go of her power for a few minutes?
Contessa didn’t know. She hated making decisions. She wanted to let go of her power. Just for a moment. The burden was exhausting, and she was so TIRED. She hadn’t been in control of her thoughts today, and it would help. She consulted her power, using all the skills she had learned over decades of constant use, instinctively substituting her own models over the unmodelables, placing the appropriate caveats and restraints to avoid unforeseen consequences, and giving the power enough time to iterate many different outcomes, asking slightly different questions to see if the Paths were robust to change. Yes. Yes, major deviations were unlikely. Yes, she would drop her power, just for a moment, a few minutes. Nothing would change. Nothing she couldn't compensate for, when she picked up the Path again.
She felt much better. The few minutes without using her power had been a good idea. It had been months, actually, since she had last been completely off any Path, and she had almost forgotten what it felt like to be able to just move without having every single nerve impulse be planned.
Doctor Mother smiled at her, and she felt warm.
Then Doctor Mother looked at the screen on her desk, and the smile dropped.
"Behemoth is dead," she whispered. "Scion killed him."
A beat. Contessa reached for the Paths. Contessa's eyes went wide.
They were shifting,
shifting,
lengthening.
Over 200,000 steps. 500,000 steps. A million. 7 million. It accelerated. A brief concept of an unfathomably large number, so large it dwarfed her existence, evoking the feeling of looking into the night sky as a child and for the first time realizing, really realizing how small she was.
Then it was gone.
No. NO. She slid out of the chair onto her knees.
"Fort- Contessa! What's wrong?! Are you OK?!" Doctor Mother rose and her voice, the true concern in her voice, the panic not over what would happen to the world but what was happening to her friend, her Daughter, right here, right now… it brought Fortuna back. Doctor Mother rushed around the desk and grabbed her.
Right. Small steps. What was the Path to reassuring Mother.
"I'm fine," Contessa lied. "It's OK. It's good news. The paths are a lot shorter now, that's all."
Mother appeared relieved. Good.
Now. How to find the Path to Scion again. It wasn't gone it was just… it felt just out of reach. As if all she had to do was PUSH and…
She'd felt this before.
The last time… the last time she had pulled back at the last moment. She had been afraid. She had been a child. The only thing she had had to protect was the world.
She looked up at Mother.
Now she had something more important.
There would be no turning back, she knew. Whatever happened, this was the turning point. All of her other decisions, her failures, her triumphs, times she had been clever, times she had been stupid… none of it really mattered. This was the moment.
She pushed.
And fell.
And she realized that she had been right all along. That everything had always been leading to one, inevitable conclusion since before the beginning.
"Do you have a plan?" asked Doctor Mother, a faint smile on her lips as she pretended to be stoic.
"You know I always do," replied the Path as it smiled back.
Anyway while reading Worm I was really interested in the character of Contessa and how her power might work. I started by thinking how such a power might be limited in interesting ways while still being strong, but also wanted to explore the character of a person who has essentially been following an alien entity's suggestions on autopilot since she was a kid. I also wanted to explore Doctor Mother's and Contessa's relationship slightly. In canon they aren't portrayed as being particularly close despite being continual companions in a joint venture for decades, and yet... it's Doctor MOTHER. Where did that name come from, one wonders? Contessa was only a kid when she met Doctor Mother, wouldn't it make some sense for them to have a more familial relationship?
Inevitable
Contessa was very tired. In the early days, she had asked her power how to not feel tiredness. The Path it had given her would have stripped her of all humanity, so she asked for another. The next Path it had given her would have stripped her of her power. So she had asked how to operate despite tiredness, and the Path it had given her had only a single step: follow the Path.
Her power was twofold: not only did it find a Path to a requested state, it also enabled her to follow the actions necessary to follow that Path perfectly. The world was deterministic, but chaotic. At the level of precision necessary for many of the Path’s plans, so much as a single hair out of place could cause perturbations that would unravel her Path. Thus, she had to let her body follow her power, leaving her mostly an observer. This didn’t bother her. Probably, her power had changed her so that she wouldn’t mind. It certainly gave her time to think.
Contessa often wondered about her power’s interactions with her mind. It was one of the enduring questions – one of the few that she couldn’t solve with her power. Her power could not truly model either her mind or its own activities. It understood with precision how the physical object of her body could influence the world – yes. But it could not predict what questions she would ask of it, nor advise her of what questions she should ask, nor answer questions about its own functions or future activity.
When she was young, not long after destroying Eden, she had asked her power for a Path to increasing itself. It didn’t give her a Path, but nor did it give her the yawning silence that occurred when she asked it for the impossible, like making 2 and 2 equal 3, or (though she didn't think to ask this until much, much later in life) to prove a Gödel sentence. She had felt like if she just pushed she could find the Way… so she had. And she had felt herself fall away, spiraling, spiraling into something else, so she PULLED, PULLED back as hard as she could from the abyss.
When the migraines stopped and she could think again three hours later, her power was gone, and she realized she had doomed the world. All the worlds.
Then her power had come back. It was many years before she tried to ask it about itself again, more carefully, at Doctor Mother’s urging. It still couldn’t see itself, but there were workarounds. A camera cannot record itself directly, but it can record a mirror with itself in it. In such a way, Contessa had learned much of her power, most of it disquieting.
If even molecular deviations could generate unpredictably large departures in the timeline, how then could her brain, made of molecules, think freely? Her power allowed her to control her body’s activities perfectly. But the “her” in her brain was part of her body’s activities. Certainly, her power modeled the brain states of other humans with precision. But then, it must model hers with precision as well. When she followed a chosen Path, then, was it not the case that her thoughts too were constrained by her power? But if this were so, was it the Path that was choosing itself? Or was the “her” in her brain not the same as the “her” who was asking the questions? From Cauldron’s studies she knew that shards and their hosts often integrated with use. Contessa was one of the oldest parahumans in existence, and had from childhood constantly used a mental power of unimaginable strength that was never intended to be shackled to something as small and insignificant as a human mind.
Contessa suspected that at this point, trying to differentiate between herself and her power was pointless. She was her shard.
But that couldn’t quite be right either. On the rare occasions when her power had abandoned her completely – she remained. Alone, and utterly lost, but still there. Still human.
Contessa cleared her thoughts and recentered. These questions could wait. Scion was more important. Even as her mind had meandered, she had been following the Path. What had she been doing? Ah, yes, she had just beaten Weaver beneath New Delhi while also acquiring thousands of new potential assets. It had become second nature to her to constantly recheck the Path – to account for the inevitable and constant changes due to the actions of unmodelable agents. Weaver was becoming increasingly unpredictable as she merged more with her shard – which made her both more valuable and more dangerous. Contessa had had to reconsult her power more frequently than usual during the fight. In truth, her Paths were far from perfect. For winning a short fight against modelable agents, flawless enough. Long Paths, however, were constantly shifting as new information came into play unpredictably.
Eden’s legacy. Just before she died, she had done something to make herself untouchable by Contessa’s power. Unfortunately, the veil of impenetrability extended to her corpse and the secretions Cauldron took from it, as well as to Scion and his shards. Or perhaps Scion had done that on his own – Contessa couldn’t really know, she had never asked the Path about him before Eden had died. She doubted it. He and Eden were meant to act as one organism, never separated. Scion was the Warrior. He was the body, she was the mind. Scion alone was crippled, braindead – a body without a mind and still strong enough to destroy everything.
But it was fortunate that it was him. If Eden had been the one to survive, they wouldn’t stand a chance. She would have figured out another way, a way to bring back Scion or to make a new Warrior, a way to complete the cycle alone, a way to depart the planet without completing the cycle, a way to call another lone entity to her, or even simply found new purpose in the absence of her old one. But for all her intelligence, a single mistake, made in haste at a moment of triumph, had cost her everything. A lesson Contessa had taken to heart. She could never grow complacent. Never trust her power so much that she failed to see what it could not.
That was why she was always tired. That was why she could never truly let herself submerge into the Paths and their false surety. Her mind - her feeble, human mind – nonetheless saw things that the entity-given power never could.
Wasn’t that the entire point of the cycles? To take from others what the entities, for all their power, had never learned to create for themselves.
And there was another reason she couldn't delve too far into her shard. The shard was a tainted gift, a poisoned apple from the garden of Eden. Contessa could never let herself forget that the shard's true purpose was inimical to human life.
That was another weakness of her power, though one she had learned to work around. It was and remained inhuman, and had to be queried carefully as a result. Otherwise, while its plans would unerringly lead to the requested outcome, they would also lead to many undesirable ones. Ask the power how to make someone be quiet, and it would tell you to kill them. But Contessa had long since adapted to how her power “thought” (or perhaps it was the other way around? No, no more introspecting today), and now every request she made of it carried the underthought, “in the way that I would approve of taking into account all of my preferences now and in the future.” It led to a good balance (usually) of minimal side effects and time, and maximal robustness. Well, not quite maximal. When she asked the power to find the Path she would “most” approve of, it stalled, strained her and gave her a thinker headache the longer she tried to push as it churned endlessly through the infinite task she had given it. It couldn’t really find the “best” Path, no more than one could find the greatest number less than 5. There was always something a little better. But it didn’t matter – the Paths her shard came up with after even a few seconds were the best culled from an unfathomable field of futures. They sufficed.
Usually.
Usually…
The truth was, though hidden, that Contessa had and did make errors, and her Paths had and did sometimes fail, and not just when it came to unmodelable agents. Contessa conjectured that, in fact, every other shard was also unmodelable due to Eden’s last desperate act. But, slaved to the actions of predictable human minds, the shards themselves became predictable. Mostly. Sometimes, when the connection between shard and host was particularly great, or under extreme stress when the shards asserted themselves, such as during triggers…
Alexandria’s death had been completely unforeseen. By the time Contessa noticed that the Paths had changed to have Doormaker act, there was nothing of the woman to save but her body.
Still, it wasn’t a total loss. Pretender was less enmeshed in his shard, and consequently was more reliable when used on the Paths. And Skitter. Weaver. The event had changed Weaver's possibilities in ways her power couldn’t have foreseen. The new Paths were shorter, and featured her prominently if Contessa allowed them to.
Should she allow them to? Paths with Weaver shifted frequently. Paths where Contessa executed her seemed much more stable, but were longer. This was not a decision her power could help her make – it would have to be hers. She hated making her own decisions.
She was so tired.
Better to take the middle ground. Marginalize her, don’t use her much in the Paths, but keep her on the board in case she was needed later. A compromise. Caution.
It was why she didn’t just have Doormaker open up a portal to Jack and drop a bomb on him. Well, that and the fact that another 14 years or so would almost certainly see humanity weaker than stronger. Jack was completely merged with his shard. Maybe even more so than Contessa herself. She would ask for Paths around him and while her power didn’t balk like it did for Eidolon, the Paths would twist from moment to moment every time she asked.
Jack scared her. More than Scion. Scion could destroy her. Would destroy her, probably. Jack… she had spied on him with her power, asking for Paths and gleaning information from the steps she was given (a common technique that formed the basis for most of Cauldron’s activities. Even when the Path couldn’t give explicit instructions - it was as simple as asking what the Path was to saying true information about something then saying what her power told her to. Though it wasn't a flawless technique, as she had found out to some cost). She knew that his shard was much more than just broadcasting edges. It broadcast something of itself, somehow, and when it touched other shards they almost invariably bonded more closely to their hosts.
Given the shard’s purposes, this usually led to blood.
And given how closely she and her shard were already bonded, and given what her power could do if it was no longer bounded by her feeble, mortal mind…
If Eden had survived, and Scion had died, they would never have stood a chance. If Contessa became a new Eden, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
That was her greatest fear. Like all parahumans, Contessa had glimpsed the entities during her trigger, and would glimpse them again when others triggered nearby.
Contessa had been near a lot of triggers. Even though they played havoc with her powers and forced her to retrace all Paths. She had to know, she had to understand the entities in order to defeat them.
What she had seen gave her hope. What she had seen made her despair.
Eden had made a mistake. The power of the Path was brand new to her, and in her new enthusiasm she had stumbled, briefly, catastrophically.
Or so Contessa had seen, dimly. Was it true? Could such beings truly make such errors? Or was it just another trick, part of Eden’s own Path to her own inscrutable Victory. Contessa was a human. Humans were small, predictable. What if every action she took was merely another step on another’s Path?
The Endbringers. Contessa had glimpsed them in Eden’s fallen futures. And now they were here. How, if Eden had died so soon after arriving? Could she have made them so swiftly, right before her demise? How many had she made? Was Eden alive even now? Was the monstrosity she had slain just another puppet?
Contessa knew she was a puppet. But whose? Was it possible to be both the marionette and puppeteer?
Why were the Endbringers on Earth-Bet? Scion? Eidolon? It was clear that the Endbringers were following a script – they were made to foment conflict, not to exterminate. It had been Eden’s plan, to have them fight the nations of her favored future, and, occasionally, for her and Scion to spar with them themselves, if only to keep up appearances. And it was also clear, if you knew what you were looking for, who the Endbringers thought was playing the lead in their performance.
Eidolon.
Somehow, the shard Eidolon had identified him as Eden to Eden’s other shards. Hence, unattached shards would come to his need. Hence, the Endbringers fought him with kid gloves. Eidolon wasn’t immune to Simurgh’s song, she just didn’t sing to him. Behemoth could have burned Eidolon from the inside out a hundred times over, but he never did, and hopefully never would.
Hence he was entirely immune to the Paths.
Frustrating. Eidolon was their greatest asset other than Contessa herself, and yet Contessa couldn’t be sure he wasn’t actually their greatest enemy. And she could only use Eidolon as a hammer. Nothing precise in the Paths survived even his passing presence. She worked around it, partially, by asking her shard for what she should say if she wanted to produce an accurate hypothetical Path involving someone with Eidolon’s powers and personality, to the extent she understood them. But she didn’t fully understand them, and her power could only help so much.
A hammer. But still, she was fairly sure Eidolon was their hammer. He certainly wasn’t Eden. Or if he was, if anyone was, their doom was inevitable anyway, so they might as well act as if he wasn’t.
Which still left the question of how he was related to the Endbringers. Contessa was certain that Eidolon wasn’t actively controlling them, it didn’t fit his personality. He wasn’t even aware of his connection to them, not consciously at any rate. If she told him, what would happen? Eidolon had been an exceptionally insecure and directionless man before he gained his powers. For most, gaining godlike powers would have changed this. Unfortunately, Eidolon was, in at least this one aspect, exceptional. His inferiority complex had long since galloped past his accomplishments. Eidolon felt undeserving of his powers. He was correct, of course, but it made him psychologically fragile and it greatly constrained Cauldron’s usage of him.
There was the possibility (slight, but nonetheless a possibility) that if Eidolon knew of his relationship to the Endbringers, he might be able to control them. Or, at least, leverage their unwillingness to kill him in order to destroy or neutralize them. But Contessa didn’t need her power to know that Eidolon wouldn’t be able to handle even the suggestion that he might be responsible for the Endbringers. Even if he could stop them now, he would be destroyed by the thought that he could have stopped them earlier, but didn’t. What would happen when Cauldron lost Eidolon? Would the Endbringers go dormant? Or would they continue to follow their script, now with nothing to hold them back? Or something different, something worse? The Endbringers saw Eidolon as Eden. Scion clearly did not, though Eidolon apparently disgusted him even more than most other Cauldron capes. Would losing Eidolon trigger Scion? Assuage him?
Impossible to know. Her power gave her nothing. She didn't trust her models.
And Eidolon stubbornly resisted all their attempts at strengthening his psyche. His self-loathing was too great to allow him any attempt at respite. The nature of his power also resisted parahuman intervention. He couldn’t even grab for thinker powers to strengthen his mind. His shard utilized the powers of other shards for him. It enabled him to use brand new powers as if he had wielded them for years, but it didn’t allow him to fully enmesh into a thinker or tinker shard. His own shard could try to translate for him, but Eidolon’s unaltered mind couldn’t comprehend more than fragments. It wasn’t his fault, but to Eidolon it was just another in a long list of failures that a better man, a true hero, could have turned into triumphs.
Another reason not to go after Jack. It would be a challenge to keep Eidolon stable for another two years, let alone 14. They would need him for Scion.
After that, Contessa didn’t care what happened to him. Her frustrations with Eidolon had long since morphed from pity to loathing, and she wouldn’t mourn him when he was gone. She knew it was an ignoble thought about an ally who had given all he could and more, but she didn’t much care about that anymore. It wasn’t as if she was a good person, after the things she had done.
More navel gazing. Annoying. Unproductive. What was she doing now?
Ah, she was briefing Doctor Mother on the next steps based on the latest iteration of the Path. Briefly, Contessa considered releasing her power, and talking to Doctor Mother directly, intimately, human to human instead of through her shard's dictates. Such conversations kept her connected. Kept her sane. Kept her human.
Doctor Mother was the only thing, really, that stopped her from slipping fully into the Paths, from losing herself entirely to the Futures she could bring into existence. Was that a good thing? Was that the only thing stopping her from becoming another Eden, or was it the only thing keeping her from being what she needed to be to stop Scion. Contessa trusted Doctor Mother, sometimes over her own power, when her power was uncertain and shifting. She trusted her over any thinkers.
Because Doctor Mother was a human. An ordinary human, untainted by shards, unblemished by alien thought. Because she was ordinary and she had been with her from the beginning and she had never complained. Because when Contessa looked at the Paths to make Doctor Mother turn against her, they were longer than they were for any other. Because when Contessa looked at the Paths to make Doctor Mother love her, they didn't have any steps at all. Because she was her Mother, even if she wasn't her mother.
Could she afford to let go of her power for a few minutes?
Contessa didn’t know. She hated making decisions. She wanted to let go of her power. Just for a moment. The burden was exhausting, and she was so TIRED. She hadn’t been in control of her thoughts today, and it would help. She consulted her power, using all the skills she had learned over decades of constant use, instinctively substituting her own models over the unmodelables, placing the appropriate caveats and restraints to avoid unforeseen consequences, and giving the power enough time to iterate many different outcomes, asking slightly different questions to see if the Paths were robust to change. Yes. Yes, major deviations were unlikely. Yes, she would drop her power, just for a moment, a few minutes. Nothing would change. Nothing she couldn't compensate for, when she picked up the Path again.
She felt much better. The few minutes without using her power had been a good idea. It had been months, actually, since she had last been completely off any Path, and she had almost forgotten what it felt like to be able to just move without having every single nerve impulse be planned.
Doctor Mother smiled at her, and she felt warm.
Then Doctor Mother looked at the screen on her desk, and the smile dropped.
"Behemoth is dead," she whispered. "Scion killed him."
A beat. Contessa reached for the Paths. Contessa's eyes went wide.
They were shifting,
shifting,
lengthening.
Over 200,000 steps. 500,000 steps. A million. 7 million. It accelerated. A brief concept of an unfathomably large number, so large it dwarfed her existence, evoking the feeling of looking into the night sky as a child and for the first time realizing, really realizing how small she was.
Then it was gone.
No. NO. She slid out of the chair onto her knees.
"Fort- Contessa! What's wrong?! Are you OK?!" Doctor Mother rose and her voice, the true concern in her voice, the panic not over what would happen to the world but what was happening to her friend, her Daughter, right here, right now… it brought Fortuna back. Doctor Mother rushed around the desk and grabbed her.
Right. Small steps. What was the Path to reassuring Mother.
"I'm fine," Contessa lied. "It's OK. It's good news. The paths are a lot shorter now, that's all."
Mother appeared relieved. Good.
Now. How to find the Path to Scion again. It wasn't gone it was just… it felt just out of reach. As if all she had to do was PUSH and…
She'd felt this before.
The last time… the last time she had pulled back at the last moment. She had been afraid. She had been a child. The only thing she had had to protect was the world.
She looked up at Mother.
Now she had something more important.
There would be no turning back, she knew. Whatever happened, this was the turning point. All of her other decisions, her failures, her triumphs, times she had been clever, times she had been stupid… none of it really mattered. This was the moment.
She pushed.
And fell.
And she realized that she had been right all along. That everything had always been leading to one, inevitable conclusion since before the beginning.
"Do you have a plan?" asked Doctor Mother, a faint smile on her lips as she pretended to be stoic.
"You know I always do," replied the Path as it smiled back.
On Gentle Jovian's, Buddhahobo's, Iverness' and other's feedback I changed the last line from 'Eden' to the 'Path'. If you prefer really bad ends where Eden noms everything, though, feel free to reverse that change in your head. Thank you all for your comments! For anyone else reading this at any time there is some discussion of the story background in the next few pages
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