2-51: Slightly Unhinged Wildly Dangerous Terran Thinking
I came to rest on a support strut that stuck out of the debris field and paused for a moment, my hands out to my sides.
I didn't exactly need to balance like that. It just felt like the thing to do in the moment. I stood there and looked out over the Undercity.
We were still in the chasm leading down to a lower level, of course, but from this high up on this part of the chasm I could get a good look at everything all around us. Especially on the other side. I could see the same twinkling lights that seemed to extend off into the distance everywhere down here.
There weren't nearly as many twinkling lights as I’d see up in the city proper. The entire city of Imperial Seat seemed to glimmer and gleam with the lights from the towers and traffic moving through the air at night. Like chains of bright jewels moving this way and that.
But there was still the occasional gleam down here. The occasional fitful light that said there were people down here making a life for themselves. Maybe it wasn't much of a life, but there were people down here making a life for themselves in clear defiance of the empress and everything she stood for.
That filled me with hope as I stared at all of it, one leg resting on the support strut and the other one pulled up and pressing against my thigh.
"Um, excuse me."
I blinked, and then I looked down. I saw some of the guards who were supposed to be keeping an eye on us. They didn't quite look like insects all the way down there, but they certainly seemed smaller. I blinked as I looked down.
Right. If I'd managed to get high enough that I could see to other parts of the Undercity off in the distance, then I'd gotten high enough on this side of the cliff face that they would look a lot smaller than usual.
Varis was also down there. I could still feel her through the link, of course. There was nothing that would get in the way of that, a frightfully useful thing, and I could see how that sort of thing added to the whole martial society the livisk had built up over the millennia.
A hint of amusement came through the link as she stared up at me with her arms crossed. Followed by a touch of annoyance as she turned to regard the livisk guards all around her who were staring up and calling at me. One of them had pulled out a comm unit and seemed to be using that to be heard all the way up here.
"Can I help you?" I called down to them.
"Yes. We were wondering if you could maybe please come down here and rejoin us."
I looked all around. There were still a lot of glowing bits and bobs of debris and detritus sticking out of the cliff face that I wanted to try climbing up. I was getting really good at this. It helped that I could slow down my perception of time, which basically made it like doing a platforming game in virtual reality on easy mode.
Parkour civilization, motherfuckers.
But those guys were also down there, and they were the ones who were going to take us to have a little meet and greet with the Spider. The last thing I wanted was to annoy them to the point they decided to start shooting at us instead of leading us to their lair so I could spring a trap.
Assuming I could spring a trap.
"You're doing quite well, William," Arvie said.
"I like to think I'm doing really damn well," I said.
"Okay, then you're doing really damn well."
I looked at the long drop below me. I got a touch of that vertigo that was always there when I was up in a high place and there wasn't any sort of antigrav or other technology keeping me in place.
"What would happen to me if I fell from here?"
"That depends," Arvie said.
"On?" I asked, looking at the probe that had floated up and was hovering next to me.
"If you fell and managed to get hold of one of the many bits of debris sticking out of this wall then you would probably merely be injured. If you fell down to the ramp below then it's possible you will break several bones in your body, but we've already established that you have the ability to heal yourself once that has happened, so you would probably be up and moving soon enough."
"And if I managed to sail past all of that and go down into that darkness down below?" I asked.
Though looking at it from up here, it didn't look as dark as it had before. No, there were faint hints of light down there as well. Like there were livisk living even in the bottommost layers of the Undercity. Which made sense if that's where this Spider lady kept her lair. But it was still odd to be able to look down there and actually see something from this vantage point.
Or maybe we'd simply caught some of the habitations down there on a sleep cycle. It's not like they were beholden to the livisk sun up above.
"I imagine if you fell down there, then you would splash when you reached the bottom," Arvie said.
"Right, so something I want to avoid," I said.
"If it's at all possible? Yes," Arvie said,
"So how do I get back down there without breaking anything or splashing?" I asked.
As soon as I said it, there were more bits of debris sticking out that were illuminated in front of me and below me.
"That's really useful," I said.
"It's useful, but there are limits to it."
"Like limits to how far I can jump?" I asked.
"That is certainly a limit, yes," Arvie said. "But I was thinking more that there is the limit of you having to have a Combat Intelligence around who is able to do an analysis of your surroundings."
"So if I don't have you around with a probe, then I'm not going to be able to do anything fun like this."
"You don't necessarily have to have me around, but it would certainly be helpful," he said.
"Can't you just see what I see?" I asked.
That was a test and I was very interested in whatever his answer was going to be. He paused for a moment, like an actual pause.
"You are aware already that I can't see everything that you can see, William."
"Yeah, well, I just wanted to make sure about that," I said. "I figured you might get so excited about everything we’re trying here that you’d give something away.”
"It was an admirable attempt, I will give you that," Arvie said. "But you're not going to catch me that easily."
"Which would imply that there is something you're doing that I can catch," I said.
"Which would imply that you're not going to catch me doing something like that because it's impossible for me to see through your eyes even if I want to. Even if you gave me the permission to do that, it still wouldn't be possible because there are safeguards that have been hard coded into this sort of implant that make that impossible."
"So I have to have a fleet of probes all around me if I want to be as badass as I can possibly be," I said, scratching my chin.
That was starting to bring all sorts of interesting possibilities to mind for me. I imagined being surrounded by a fleet of probes that were assisted by Arvie. I had visions of holding my arms up and having an army of those probes rising all around me, every one of them holding a blaster they could use to hunt down my enemies and kill them before they even had a chance to think about the mistake they made by picking a fight with me in the first place.
It was a compelling mental image.
"You're thinking about something, William," Arvie said.
"Am I that obvious?"
"As obvious as I apparently am when I have to pause and think about something you've just done."
"Damn," I muttered. "But yeah, I am thinking about something."
"And what is it you're thinking about?"
"We had a little bit of trouble when I was taking control of six fighter craft and running them at the same time, right?"
"Correct," Arvie said, but he said it slowly. As though he was starting to wonder if I was about to do something monumentally stupid.
"Do you think that sort of thing scales with size?"
"How do you mean, William?" he asked.
"Like if I was talking about flying a fighter craft that's one thing, but what if we're talking taking control of a probe like the one you’re tooling around in right now? Would I be able to take control of a lot more of the little guys at one time compared to taking control of a few bigger things at the same time?"
There was another pause. It was a pause I wished I could feel good about, but it was also a pause I didn't like. I figured if he had to think about it then it meant my idea didn't have as much merit as I thought it did.
"I'm honestly not certain about that, William," he finally said. "It shouldn't make much of a difference exactly what is being controlled because you are trying to use a similar control unit regardless of size."
"Damn," I muttered. "Well, I figured it was worth a shot."
"What was worth a shot, William?" he asked.
"I was just having thoughts about taking control of an army of these little probes and using that to defeat my enemies in honorable combat, is all."
There was another pause from Arvie. It was a pause that seemed to go on for a lot longer than the last one.
"That is a compelling idea, William," he finally said.
"You really think so?" I asked.
"I definitely think so," he said. "But it's something that we would need to test thoroughly before we introduced it into a combat scenario."
"So why don't we do a little bit of testing out right now?" I asked.
"How do you mean?" Arvie asked.
"Well, you have this probe hovering right in front of me. Why don't we see if I can take control of it and if it has any negative effects on me?"
"I don't know if that is a good idea when you are balancing this high above the world, William.”
"Nonsense," I said, grinning up at him. "It's definitely worth a shot. I figure the worst that happens is I fall and break some of my bones, right? Besides, you'll be right here to help me if it looks like I'm starting to have any trouble. And I need to have a chat with those bastards down there and make sure they don't start taking potshots at me. That would be far more dangerous to my long-term health than potentially losing my balance, right?"
"William."
"Yes?”
"Everything you just said is bullshit. It's exemplary of the kind of thing you do when you really want to pull something that is monumentally stupid and risking your life."
"Thank you," I said,
"It wasn't a compliment," Arvie said.
"Damn," I muttered.
"Having said that," Arvie continued, "I really want to know about your ability to control a probe, because this idea is an example of exactly the kind of out of the box thinking that only a slightly unhinged Terran who is prone to doing things that are wildly dangerous and not thought through entirely could come up with."
"So that's a yes," I said, grinning at the probe.