Utopia War

Chapter 14 - Exigency (iii)

"I'm still not into any of this baseline physics garbage," said Xiaolongnu.

She found her brand new artificial body, advanced though it may be, frustratingly stifling given that it was weighed down by the laws of physics. The original ones, the old boring bullshit laws of physics that were even worse than she had dimly remembered them. It was like being stuck under layer after layer of wet blankets. She kept flexing one of her four hands as though by doing so she would be able to coax more performance out of it.

"Reality really is the worst of all possible worlds," agreed Hanuman, no happier with his superhuman body than she was with hers.

"I wish we didn't have to keep all the hardware here," Delphinus chimed in "We could just abandon the place altogether. Let the aliens have it."

The trio of bleeding edge top-level gamers has been incarnated into the real world for the better part of a standard day, and they had spent most of the intervening time complaining about it. Now they were sitting in a large and comfortable lounge, trying to squeeze a last few complaints in before the meeting.

"I thought you three were supposed to be hardcore," sneered Hannibal Barca, not looking up from his comic book. Hannibal had been recreated through guesswork, since no genetic sample of him survived, and it was widely believed that the fidelity to his original personality was less than 100%.

"Don't even start with that hollow psy-ops," snapped Xiaolongnu "We're here are we not? Enduring?"

"We're making sacrifices unspeakable for the sake of our people," said Delphinus "Nevermind hardcore we're downright noble."

"Almost brings a tear to one's eye," said Hanuman.

Erwin Rommel barely understood the exchange, but he watched in silent fascination from his own chair. Rommel hadn't fully decided if this was the afterlife, he had gone mad, or (perhaps more terrifying) if any of the claims made by the insane people here were remotely true.

"Hey now, everyone, we should be honored to be chosen for this," said Rover. The reddish-brown dog was sat atop one of the chairs.

In the corner Napoleon Bonapart was absorbed in a teaching game of chess with the gestalt intelligence Badema-Ivy-Smaragdine-Chrysanthemum-AmusingBubbles-Rokeach. To the gestalt this was about as exciting as teaching a child to play tic-tac-toe so it was also carrying on a few dozen telepathic conversations. Badema-Ivy-Smaragdine-Chrysanthemum-AmusingBubbles-Rokeach had chosen to represent itself physically with an eight-armed floating drone that resembled a metal octopus.

The door slid away, and the Proxima avatar shard led in a human and a probe.

"Allow me to introduce the two newest members of our team: this is TheBestAtJumping and Mac Marc Macademia."

"Hii!" yelling Rover, waving "Remember me? It's me, Rover!"

"Hello everyone," said Mac, bowing a little "Hey Rover," he added, nodding towards the dog.

"Greetings all," said TheBestAtJumping "If anyone wants to race later let me know."

<Not the time,> signaled Mac, privately.

<Oh you never think it's the time,> replied TheBestAtJumping.

The avatar dissolved away and reappeared in the center of the room.

"It has taken some time to put you all together, but luckily time is on our side. Now we need to get to work. With the consent of you all I'd like to begin by creating a sub-consensus consisting of everyone in this room, for which I will act as avatar."

"Does this new consensus have a name?" asked TheBestAtJumping.

"No," said the avatar.

"Teams should have names," agreed Rover.

"This one doesn't," insisted the avatar.

"I can give it a name if you like," offered Rover.

"No," said the avatar "You can't."