Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

Amelia, Ch 283- Trevor


Dammit. Well, a slightly less failed experiment. "Attempt eighty seven, replicating the Labyrinth/Atropos interaction. Dimensional anomaly occurred once out of four attempts. Anomaly was unstable, pattern collapsed before dimensional connection was achieved." Better results than anything before it, but incomplete. "Possible retest, establish synchronous devices in each dimension. Hope both anomalies interact with each other before collapsing?"


"Test eighty six," I started. "Emulation of Chevalier/Labyrinth interaction." I set the computers to work generating the necessary energy reactions. The countdown gave me half an hour before I even needed to pay attention. That was the problem with trying to emulate powers. The simple fact of the matter was, we only saw a fragment of the power in use. Our tech might be advanced, but compared to what the Passengers did every time powers were used. Well, it was like a cheap animatronic muppet trying to replicate expert martial arts moves.


I glanced over at Riley, who was doing another test on the Victoria/Cão interaction. Her blood samples reacted with his saliva in terrifying ways that would spontaneously generate incredible amounts of mass from nowhere. The results were both hideous and beautiful, a miniature forest of hands and fingers, faces and eyes, various other anatomical features. Most reactions netted about four to five hundred pounds of living mass.


Each limb, every face, of which there were hundreds of each, identical. Only different in size. We ran them through every possible analysis we had to identify a clue in the features, but nothing had come of it other than human and female, with the imitation of the age of a twenty five year old. Maybe. The gene interpretation tech they used to work with the people caught in the glass bomb provided nothing of value, either.


The truly strange part was how it was both alive and dead at the same time. There was no metabolism, no source of oxygen to the cells, no source of nutrition. Sometimes portions of it had a pulse, but the circulatory system was always grossly incomplete. Even I could tell it simply should not be alive. And after a few days, it would figure that out and start breaking down. Minutes later, it would be decomposed into little more than a low quality fertilizer. I still wasn't sure what they hoped to learn from it.


The other thing I knew was that Riley usually only worked on that when she was in a bad mood.


"Why the gloom, 'shroom?" I asked as I approached.


"I wanted to do something really nice for Missy and Theo, since Valentine's Day was ruined and I mucked up Missy's birthday," she answered, pouting a little. "But then Taylor told me it was a bad idea. I don't even know why."


"Where are the two of them, anyway?" I asked. A relatively safe question. I didn't really think Riley would have any problem answering my questions, but it was still better to ease into things.


"They're on their date," Riley answered. There wasn't a trace of displeasure in the statement. She may as well have been talking about the weather.


"Without you?" I asked. I still couldn't quite get over their arrangement. Maybe that was ironically narrow minded of me, considering the way a lot of people would look at my sexual identity, but being gay didn't mean I understood or supported polygamy.


"I don't want to take too much of Theo's time away from Missy," she answered. "Or Missy's from Theo."


That's actually a really healthy way to look at it, but. "What about your time?" I asked.


"Tomorrow I spend extra time with Missy, because Theo's hanging out with Zach," she responded. "Besides, I have lots of lab work to do. If we can't find a solution to Scion, then nothing is going to matter."


"You think this could help with that?" I asked.


"Or at least give us more resources to work with in the future," Riley answered. "We're still trying to figure out why Victoria's alterations to Case 53s work, but no other form of healing or shapeshifting ever has. It even got through Alexandria's biostasis powers. I still haven't been able to determine if that was a product of Vicky's Passenger or Chevalier's."


More of the biotech that had nothing to do with my powers, but I watched her work anyway. It sure beat standing around watching the dimensional waveform slowly building up, even if I didn't understand anything.


"Is that why you're runing the Vicky/Cão combination again?" I asked.


"This was a sample taken from Lung," she answered. Well, that's new. Wait, where the hell did we get a sample from Lung? "Thus far all the responses seem identical. Same shapes, even the same proportions. Still creates the Fractal Woman."


"The what?"


"That's what Emma called the phenomena," Riley informed me. "We've confirmed it against five different mass violating regenerators already, and it appears to be the same results each time. No other healing granting power works like Cão's, however. We're not certain why. Rey suggested we try it on Endbringer tissue samples, but Lisa said we'd need to find another dead world. And then use its moon for that test."


I'll consider that one a dodged bullet. Seriously, though, the guy had this weird fetish for the Endbringers and it was starting to scare me a little. At least when most Tinkers wanted to do something suicidally insane, there was usually a reason or they let it go after a while. "Do you think his Passenger has something to do with the Endbringers?" I suggested.


"Lisa says she's not sure," Riley responded. "It's possibly typical Passenger compulsion toward conflict. Or it may simply be that Rey's specialty in artificial life means he sees something that the rest of us don't. He's found a lot of things to be interested in the Garden as well. If we knew more about what the Garden actually came from, why it's so consistent despite the usual randomness of power interactions. It's actually possible we've stumbled across the first step in building our own Endbringers. If we, say, fuel it with materials from Theo, or maybe Genesis or Anima or Siberian."


"That... that's a lot of potential, good and bad," I agreed.


"If we had a way to be sure we could control or destroy what we made, we'd try it," Riley informed me. She yawned, which reminded me it was almost time for us to hit curfew, even if us Tinkers did get to bend the rules for projects.


Screw it. I went over and hit the standby switch. I know I'm going to regret asking this question. "What were you planning to do?" I asked Riley. "Before Taylor told you it was a bad idea?"


"I'll show you," Riley answered, activating her computer panel. An image of twenty one faces appeared. Or, I realized, seven people at around age six, teen, and early twenties. With exception to the lone female, they were paired off together as well. They were all remarkably attractive examples of the supposed Aryan ideal. Every one blond, and eye colors ranging from foggy gray to sharp blue. One boy had lovely dark green eyes. The lone female had light green.


"Uh... what am I looking at?" I asked. If Riley was planning a plastic surgery spree, I can see why Taylor would warn it off.


"They're our babies," Riley answered. What? "Umm... I used the gene extrapolation tech to estimate the average expectable offspring Theo, Missy and I might have. This one's Missy/Theo, me/Theo, all three of us, and this is me/Missy."


Oh holy fuck that's either adorable or terrifying and I don't know which. I locked onto the first safe question I could think of. "Uh... why is the one with you and Missy alone?" I felt stupid the moment I said it, because I already knew the answer.


"Because Missy and I are girls," she answered. "No 'Y' chromosomes, no boy babies. Taylor said that Missy and Theo wouldn't like it, though."


Understatement of the century. "I can see why," I agreed. I remember when I was at that imaginary future children phase. Then reality happened. "I think your, uh, boyfriend and girlfriend are a little too young to be thinking about having kids. And I'm sure Amelia would say you are, too."


"I know," she sighed. "But it's fun to make believe."


"You have to look at it from their perspective," I advised. "You've met people who've tried to talk you into doing things you thought were scary or a bad idea." Of course you, of all people, have. "It's like that. They might be worried you want them to do it, and they might get upset." Or run screaming from the room. I wasn't sure how the three of them handled the strangeness of their day to day life, but this could only make things awkward.


"I don't want that," Riley agreed, sounding ever so dejected. Dammit.


"Actually," I smiled. "I think I have a way to make it work. But you have to do exactly what I say."


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A/N- Well, that got broke into two chapters. Here's this one, slightly shorter than average. Part two tomorrow. For now, I must sleep.

Plenty of canon foreshadowing references going on here.