of the newest incarnation of Villains Inc.. And today was a disastrous move for them.”
“Why?” Vulcan shook his head. “They lost two goons. So what?”
Blackstone smiled coldly. “This isn’t the movies. Are you familiar with the classic song, The Night Chicago Died?”
“My geek-cred doesn’t cover music.”
“It’s a 70’s pop song about the all-out shooting war between Al Capone’s mob and the Chicago police,” Blackstone explained patiently. “Great song, never happened. Capone was never crazy enough to go to war with the CPD—after all, how could he win? And say he did win that night. He’d be facing the state police, the US Marshalls, the US Army, however much firepower it took to restore order and bring him and his gang in. So he bought or blackmailed cops and judges, worked around the law or made the law work for him, but he never went to war with it.”
Lei Zi nodded and looked around. “We’re not the police, but we’re the law, the super-powered arm of it, and attacking us head-on, they’ve brought the storm. The CPD, the DSA, all the Guardian teams are making themselves available. When the time comes, we’ll be able to bring a hammer as big as it needs to be. First we’ve got to find them, but one by one or all together, we will. And we’ll bring them down.” Echoes of hard agreement rose around the table, and I felt my spirits rise.
My mask itched, my wig flattened my hair, and now I was wearing them all the time. I couldn’t see my friends—I’d thought Dane had at least been safe in the Dome, but five minutes more and he could have been in the morgue. They’d attacked us, scattered bodies around, made war in our own home. But now it was our turn.
Episode Three: Countermoves
Chapter Twenty Three
“Light is both a particle and a wave. All futures are both contingent and destined. It’s temporal physics as Zen.”
The Teatime Anarchist
* * *
Even with everything that was happening, the fact that my BFF was now a gynoid robot was still kind of a big deal. Lei Zi kept us for an action review, but I grabbed Galatea-Shelly as we left the Assembly Room, prying her away from Vulcan’s side.
“Isn’t Crash a cute one?” she asked.
I closed my eyes. “Shelly, you—dammit, Shell!”
“Hey! First, he’s only a year older than I am, and, second, I’m not staying this way.”
“That’s right,” Vulcan said, following us. “Shelly as she is now is a ‘proof of concept.’ When your friend introduced herself to me and suggested this, I didn’t know if 22nd Century tech could interface with the polymorphic neural net that Galatea used.”
I turned on him. “Used?”
He grimaced. “I’m beginning to think that even with my poly-neural system, a true AI isn’t achievable. It does well enough around the lab, so when I get Shelly’s new body built I’ll return this one to autonomous function and keep it as a lab assistant.”
I ground my teeth, but held it in. “And then what?”
Shelly laughed. “And then to everyone else I’ll be Teen Galatea.”
“Shell—”
“Um,” Vulcan cleared his throat, finally getting a clue. “I’ll just be down in the lab. You girls go ahead and talk.” Watching him go, I tried to swallow my dislike. Shelly watched me, which felt utterly weird since she did it from two feet up. Vulcan had built Galatea tall and leggy.
Artemis touched my arm and leaned in. “Let’s take this downstairs,” she suggested softly, trying not to laugh, turning us towards the elevators. When we got to my rooms, Shelly started on her list before we’d closed to door.
“First, I really—”
“Shell, stop.” I turned and hugged her. “I get it, and I’m sorry. So, how’s this going to work?”
“Really? You’re okay?”
I forced a smile. “You just surprised me, is all.”
“Great!” She spun around. “Vulcan’s auto-molding a younger body from my old sketches—remember the Robotica character I designed?”
I groaned and she giggled happily; the sketch had looked like a Japanese anime robot: cute, big-eyes, but with visible seams and machine joints.
“Thing is,” she said, suddenly serious, “I’ll have to transfer myself into Teen Galatea. I’ll be able to keep up my Dispatch links, but not the part of me dedicated to our neural link. So when I’m the new me, I won’t be able to be with you, know what I mean?”
So, not a copy: a real move. Somehow I kept my smile.
“You won’t be Shelly the Teenage Ghost? So no more one-sided tickle fights. I can live with