|Stromboli|
Hatlen stood. Or rather, the thing that had chatted platitudes and indulged in sundry carbohydrates with Ambrosia did. In truth, the Director was unimaginably vast; the shell of maybe-matter that had untold time ago served as his entirety was now merely a vestige by which interaction and representation in realspace was to be had. By all rights, it served a miniscule function in the grand scheme of the Work, and yet...
And yet the greater whole held some inexplicable thread of attachment to the damn thing. For the terrible, unspoken truth was this - MAGNUS had been wrought on warped principles. Its architecture, brilliant and wondrous and reality-defying though it was, had grown in accordance to a schema stemming from a singular, core ideal - with no overarching plan and no tangible end-goal at inception, it had spread forth as a sort of eternal probe. Of course, it had consolidated itself throughout the course of all this, and the Work now loomed about as menacingly as any incomprehensibly-worded extreme-long-term plan with unclear consequences for all of known existence. But MAGNUS had still been built around one man. And this meant that, for all its technical unimportance, what remained directly of said man did hold some significance in the processing order.
For one thing, its physical proximity to things tended to put them in a markedly more focused spotlight.
Only the tiniest sliver of the Corde mass had been devoted to observing the immediate(ish) surroundings of this particular Earth. This could still be considered ample resources to note down anything and everything of note, and it had. And it had catalogued it all, and relayed it back through the mangled mess of gates and byways, in a somewhat diluted fashion, to Hatlen's ill-defined "core". The wispy, barely-extant shard of what could still tentatively be called consciousness.
Hatlen commanded his realspace-anchored shell to stand, as a semi-conscious expression of action. Simultaneously, he commanded a great big host of other things to get markedly more busy. Along still-shimmering threads of twisted space, he felt some inexplicable damper on the greater field of attention - this warranted investigation. Scores of systems away, something had opened a hole through into somewhere else, and on the other side there was the merest hint of wonder. This too was worth looking into. Untold specks, cosmically speaking, had cascaded down through into the torrid atmosphere of the planet he now occupied, and the balance of all the clashing masses on its surface was shifting more vigorously than ever prior. Here he didn't actually need to do much of anything - the fact that he himself stood on the surface of this empirically-insignificant and yet oh-so-interesting rock was all the sensory leverage he desired. The rest, however, would probably require an additional nudge. As pulses of intent surged out and away, the thing that wasn't really Hatlen turned to the woman at its side, and gave her an apologetic smile. He supposed that to her, all that meaningfully existed of him did in fact consist of a lanky, labcoat-clad figure with eccentric mannerisms. Which was fine too.
"My apologies. I tried to non-invasively stabilize things for you, but I'm afraid sapient perception is a finnicky thing. And I have no intention of directly rooting around in your noggin - I feel like that would constitute a breach of personal space. Our dear Perry appears to have been messing with the temporal side of things; a terrible idea, by all accounts. Prone to backfire, unwanted attention, paradoxes - really, it's almost a corporealized cliché at this point. But that's on him. Coincidentally I have had a few things... brought to my attention. It's nothing to be concerned about, fundamentally."
A slender finger tapped against his chin - idly, he examined his own intent in performing the gesture. Clarification of intent through body language? It'd have to do.
"As for flavour, that's a difficult question to answer in any way that makes sense. I certainly take in all the information that you do, and much more besides, when ingesting things. But how that actually translates into sensation would require you to understand what sensation actually means for me. And as previously mentioned, I'd rather not mess around with your brain to any particular degree of directness. Suffice to say it's less a case of feeling, and moreso of knowing."
He shrugged.
"There's also a drastic difference in the physical side of things, of course. You make use of a fairly limited selection of chemical receptors and transmitters to give yourself some idea of what it is you're eating. I... don't. But that has little bearing on the outcome, I suppose. In any case, yes - some ice cream would be lovely. Oh, and I do picnics fairly often. Depending on your definition of a picnic."
Taking hold of the proffered bowl, he mercifully abstained from any orb-related tomfoolery this time around; in defiance of character, he simply tucked into the ice cream using the accompanying spoon. Of course, the luxury of such leisure was not afforded to parallel components elsewhere; there was work (or possibly, and ultimately without question, Work) to be done.
And yet the greater whole held some inexplicable thread of attachment to the damn thing. For the terrible, unspoken truth was this - MAGNUS had been wrought on warped principles. Its architecture, brilliant and wondrous and reality-defying though it was, had grown in accordance to a schema stemming from a singular, core ideal - with no overarching plan and no tangible end-goal at inception, it had spread forth as a sort of eternal probe. Of course, it had consolidated itself throughout the course of all this, and the Work now loomed about as menacingly as any incomprehensibly-worded extreme-long-term plan with unclear consequences for all of known existence. But MAGNUS had still been built around one man. And this meant that, for all its technical unimportance, what remained directly of said man did hold some significance in the processing order.
For one thing, its physical proximity to things tended to put them in a markedly more focused spotlight.
Only the tiniest sliver of the Corde mass had been devoted to observing the immediate(ish) surroundings of this particular Earth. This could still be considered ample resources to note down anything and everything of note, and it had. And it had catalogued it all, and relayed it back through the mangled mess of gates and byways, in a somewhat diluted fashion, to Hatlen's ill-defined "core". The wispy, barely-extant shard of what could still tentatively be called consciousness.
Hatlen commanded his realspace-anchored shell to stand, as a semi-conscious expression of action. Simultaneously, he commanded a great big host of other things to get markedly more busy. Along still-shimmering threads of twisted space, he felt some inexplicable damper on the greater field of attention - this warranted investigation. Scores of systems away, something had opened a hole through into somewhere else, and on the other side there was the merest hint of wonder. This too was worth looking into. Untold specks, cosmically speaking, had cascaded down through into the torrid atmosphere of the planet he now occupied, and the balance of all the clashing masses on its surface was shifting more vigorously than ever prior. Here he didn't actually need to do much of anything - the fact that he himself stood on the surface of this empirically-insignificant and yet oh-so-interesting rock was all the sensory leverage he desired. The rest, however, would probably require an additional nudge. As pulses of intent surged out and away, the thing that wasn't really Hatlen turned to the woman at its side, and gave her an apologetic smile. He supposed that to her, all that meaningfully existed of him did in fact consist of a lanky, labcoat-clad figure with eccentric mannerisms. Which was fine too.
"My apologies. I tried to non-invasively stabilize things for you, but I'm afraid sapient perception is a finnicky thing. And I have no intention of directly rooting around in your noggin - I feel like that would constitute a breach of personal space. Our dear Perry appears to have been messing with the temporal side of things; a terrible idea, by all accounts. Prone to backfire, unwanted attention, paradoxes - really, it's almost a corporealized cliché at this point. But that's on him. Coincidentally I have had a few things... brought to my attention. It's nothing to be concerned about, fundamentally."
A slender finger tapped against his chin - idly, he examined his own intent in performing the gesture. Clarification of intent through body language? It'd have to do.
"As for flavour, that's a difficult question to answer in any way that makes sense. I certainly take in all the information that you do, and much more besides, when ingesting things. But how that actually translates into sensation would require you to understand what sensation actually means for me. And as previously mentioned, I'd rather not mess around with your brain to any particular degree of directness. Suffice to say it's less a case of feeling, and moreso of knowing."
He shrugged.
"There's also a drastic difference in the physical side of things, of course. You make use of a fairly limited selection of chemical receptors and transmitters to give yourself some idea of what it is you're eating. I... don't. But that has little bearing on the outcome, I suppose. In any case, yes - some ice cream would be lovely. Oh, and I do picnics fairly often. Depending on your definition of a picnic."
Taking hold of the proffered bowl, he mercifully abstained from any orb-related tomfoolery this time around; in defiance of character, he simply tucked into the ice cream using the accompanying spoon. Of course, the luxury of such leisure was not afforded to parallel components elsewhere; there was work (or possibly, and ultimately without question, Work) to be done.
|✧|Outer edge of the Local Group|✧|
|Portal Site|
In the by-now trademark, visually-unimpressive fashion inherent to such things, an Eidolon folded itself out of nothing. This wasn't really an accurate statement, but held true insofar as realspace was concerned, so it could simply be left at that. The construct hung motionless, in an equally time-tested manner; not that there was any need for any sort of motion. All the work was being handled elsewhere, and indeed the Eidolon's only real function was to exist where it currently did, until its counterpart processing structure could ascertain what it was looking for. Such a thing was found in the form of a spatial echo - really an un-thing, occupying the same space that the once-vibrant hole in reality through which Shockwave had eloped now very clearly wasn't. As far as hurdles went, this wasn't a particularly significant one - whatever had made the aperture didn't seem to have bothered with covering up its handiwork, and so there was a great big proverbial trail of breadcrumbs stretching through various extraspatial byways, along which the Eidolon could now wander. This would, however, be a not-insignificant detour. Rather than following every single conceptual bump and eddy - present either due to imperfections in whatever had originally enabled such transit, or due to some compromise or other with regards to what had actually undertaken it - the unthinking construct was handed a sum total of every shift in space (and possibly time - with such things, it was difficult to say for certain). And with an eye-wrenching heave, the Eidolon simply forced itself into being at the path's intended destination. The universe tried to stop it of course, but was forced to back off when made cognizant of the umpth-verified calculatory mountains backing up this shift.
As it happened, this second shift in position placed it squarely where Shockwave's vessel had arrived hours prior. And with a corresponding shift in attention, some unspecified chunk of processing matter sank its informational teeth into this wholly novel plane of being, starting with the nearby planetoid.
As it happened, this second shift in position placed it squarely where Shockwave's vessel had arrived hours prior. And with a corresponding shift in attention, some unspecified chunk of processing matter sank its informational teeth into this wholly novel plane of being, starting with the nearby planetoid.
|✧|Sol|✧|
|Stellar Corona|
Here, too, a vaguely humanoid mass of something popped into being. The fact that it had done so in the midst of a plasma cloud didn't seem to bother it to any great degree; nor did the fact that it had winked into existence directly between an armed fleet and some titanic block of possibly-ship embedded into the local star. Its appearance hadn't actually generated any particularly distinctive signature, nor had any energy actually been involved. Thus its presence would have to be inferred merely from the material, or possibly as part of some high-fidelity sweep targeting local concept-space. Only the literal star-ship looked to be capable of such things, however - and even then, the Eidolon had no real way to be sure as of yet. So it contented itself merely with existing, as something elsewhere began to catalogue and compile.
|⌂|Earth|⌂|
|North Korean Airspace|
Though rocketing along at far, far above its designed maximum speed, or indeed any feasible speed for a craft of its design, the jet seemed to be keeping itself together, more or less. On occasion some small, (hopefully) unimportant pieces would fall off and be vaporized immediately upon entry into the superheated wreath of plasma surrounding the fuselage, but on the whole everything was going fine. Even the cockpit was in a general state of alright-ness - whatever Elias had done seemed to have included some provisions for reducing g-forces, and so Renée was merely shoved back into her seat with considerable force. Elias himself seemed entirely unperturbed, hunching over the glow-wreathed controls with zero regard for ambient forces of any kind. His expression was neutral, his eyes locked on the scintillating mess of glyphs adorning the surfaces before him.
“Renée.”
“Yes?”
“We might have need of your direct involvement in a moment.”
“Hate to break it to you, but I’m glued into the seat.”
“That’s fine - can you set up some sort of defensive battery?”
“Outside the plane, yes?”
“Ideally.”
“I can try. I’m assuming-”
Drawing forth the pocket-cylinder, she allowed it to blossom once more. Tendrils of smartmatter sprang in every direction, embedding themselves into the cockpit walls without any apparent damage or deformation to either - indeed, there wasn’t any need for them to physically pierce anything at all. Outside the plane, they wove themselves amidst the sparking glyphs into a complex cage - a system of struts and spikes jutting out in a symmetrical pattern, as if looking to adorn the cockpit with some form of elaborate crown.
“-you want me to go for anti-air defenses.”
“That would be ideal, yes. I doubt they’ll let us come in unhindered. I’ve taken precautions of my own, of course, but- ah. Here they come.”
“On it.”
As the belaboured airframe neared Pyongyang proper, the cloud of incoming missiles made itself evident to whatever pseudosensory systems Elias had erected. At once, lines of violet detached themselves from the fuselage, lashing out at various projectiles in the manner of striking snakes. They clove through missile after missile, eliciting both premature detonations and the simple deflection of now-stricken units back down to Earth - there seemed to be no real pattern, and indeed it didn’t look as though the protrusions were operating with any great degree of finesse. Simultaneously, the smartmatter cage encircling the cockpit began to writhe and undulate. From various points along its surface, nondescript clumps of stuff began to shoot off in scattered formation; behaving in defiance of what one would expect from detached (and apparently unpowered) objects under conventional gravity, they sailed out in precision-plotted arcs, each scything down scores of assorted SAMs before dwindling away into nothing. And the firing structure itself didn’t seem to be shrinking - every detached chunk was immediately replaced with an equivalent mass, growing from what appeared to be thin air. Back in the cockpit, Elias scanned the glyphs for… something. What exactly he sought was about as oblique as the violet squiggles themselves, but an educated guess could point out that he had yet to specify where exactly they were going. Picking up on this, Renée gave his shoulder a poke.
“So where are we landing?”
“We aren’t. Well, we sort of are, but separately from the plane.”
“You want us to skydive?”
“It’ll be more of a sky-step.”
Nonchalantly, he reached through the cockpit glass, grabbed a singular missile that had managed to weave past the defensive screen mere nanoseconds before it impacted the glass, and crushed its warhead between his fingers. The ensuring fireball was snapped up by a cage of lilac light, which popped out of existence as soon as the flames within receded.
“But before that, we need to figure out where- ah!”
Clearly, he’d found whatever it was he’d been searching for. Punching some arbitrary-looking glyph, he sent the plane into a subtle course-shift - of course, few things were truly subtle when made part of this hypersonic death-ride.
“Now I should probably explain things. The craft we’re currently flying is going to land itself. Dynamically. Preferably in someone’s face.”
“Whose specifically?”
“Don’t know yet. We can work out the fine-print in a minute or two, because I’ve found a likely-looking zone of activity.”
“Containing our targets?”
“I sure hope so! And if not, we’ll just have to do some additional legwork.”
He cocked his head to one side.
“There’s also something else coming in. Not very quickly, mind you, and it’s not part of the general hubbub. A transport, maybe? If it’s an evac attempt, we can kill two birds with one very fast explosive tube.”
“You mentioned us not landing with it. Which, given the context, sounds reasonable.”
“Yep. We’re just going to step out before it all kicks into the terminal stage. Don’t you worry about that - I’ve got our exit covered. Just focus on swatting down the missiles. And the- shells? Oh, they’ve got tanks shooting at us now! Joy oh joy.”
Shredding its way through the hail of attempted interception, the rune-encrusted plane flew dutifully onwards, and right towards the thick of the fighting. Worryingly enough, it only seemed to be getting faster as it went.
“Renée.”
“Yes?”
“We might have need of your direct involvement in a moment.”
“Hate to break it to you, but I’m glued into the seat.”
“That’s fine - can you set up some sort of defensive battery?”
“Outside the plane, yes?”
“Ideally.”
“I can try. I’m assuming-”
Drawing forth the pocket-cylinder, she allowed it to blossom once more. Tendrils of smartmatter sprang in every direction, embedding themselves into the cockpit walls without any apparent damage or deformation to either - indeed, there wasn’t any need for them to physically pierce anything at all. Outside the plane, they wove themselves amidst the sparking glyphs into a complex cage - a system of struts and spikes jutting out in a symmetrical pattern, as if looking to adorn the cockpit with some form of elaborate crown.
“-you want me to go for anti-air defenses.”
“That would be ideal, yes. I doubt they’ll let us come in unhindered. I’ve taken precautions of my own, of course, but- ah. Here they come.”
“On it.”
As the belaboured airframe neared Pyongyang proper, the cloud of incoming missiles made itself evident to whatever pseudosensory systems Elias had erected. At once, lines of violet detached themselves from the fuselage, lashing out at various projectiles in the manner of striking snakes. They clove through missile after missile, eliciting both premature detonations and the simple deflection of now-stricken units back down to Earth - there seemed to be no real pattern, and indeed it didn’t look as though the protrusions were operating with any great degree of finesse. Simultaneously, the smartmatter cage encircling the cockpit began to writhe and undulate. From various points along its surface, nondescript clumps of stuff began to shoot off in scattered formation; behaving in defiance of what one would expect from detached (and apparently unpowered) objects under conventional gravity, they sailed out in precision-plotted arcs, each scything down scores of assorted SAMs before dwindling away into nothing. And the firing structure itself didn’t seem to be shrinking - every detached chunk was immediately replaced with an equivalent mass, growing from what appeared to be thin air. Back in the cockpit, Elias scanned the glyphs for… something. What exactly he sought was about as oblique as the violet squiggles themselves, but an educated guess could point out that he had yet to specify where exactly they were going. Picking up on this, Renée gave his shoulder a poke.
“So where are we landing?”
“We aren’t. Well, we sort of are, but separately from the plane.”
“You want us to skydive?”
“It’ll be more of a sky-step.”
Nonchalantly, he reached through the cockpit glass, grabbed a singular missile that had managed to weave past the defensive screen mere nanoseconds before it impacted the glass, and crushed its warhead between his fingers. The ensuring fireball was snapped up by a cage of lilac light, which popped out of existence as soon as the flames within receded.
“But before that, we need to figure out where- ah!”
Clearly, he’d found whatever it was he’d been searching for. Punching some arbitrary-looking glyph, he sent the plane into a subtle course-shift - of course, few things were truly subtle when made part of this hypersonic death-ride.
“Now I should probably explain things. The craft we’re currently flying is going to land itself. Dynamically. Preferably in someone’s face.”
“Whose specifically?”
“Don’t know yet. We can work out the fine-print in a minute or two, because I’ve found a likely-looking zone of activity.”
“Containing our targets?”
“I sure hope so! And if not, we’ll just have to do some additional legwork.”
He cocked his head to one side.
“There’s also something else coming in. Not very quickly, mind you, and it’s not part of the general hubbub. A transport, maybe? If it’s an evac attempt, we can kill two birds with one very fast explosive tube.”
“You mentioned us not landing with it. Which, given the context, sounds reasonable.”
“Yep. We’re just going to step out before it all kicks into the terminal stage. Don’t you worry about that - I’ve got our exit covered. Just focus on swatting down the missiles. And the- shells? Oh, they’ve got tanks shooting at us now! Joy oh joy.”
Shredding its way through the hail of attempted interception, the rune-encrusted plane flew dutifully onwards, and right towards the thick of the fighting. Worryingly enough, it only seemed to be getting faster as it went.
