#Part 3: So I might get black-ops'd for this

[saphronethaleph]

Parahumans: A Measured Response

“Hey, L, you’ve got to see this!” Alec called, and Lisa groaned.

“Is this going to be you doing another headshot?” she asked.

“No, no, this genuinely is a big deal,” Alec replied. “It’s a big long video explainer thing, and, uh… I’m like five minutes in and this sounds like a big deal.”

“Fine, fine, whatever,” Lisa decided, thinking about the work she’d been doing for the Boss and how it really could wait for a bit.

Fuck him, anyway.

Besides, if it was some kind of big video explainer, she could get a fun few minutes out of taking it apart.

She locked her laptop and went through into Alec’s room, where he had his own computer on and was scrubbing back through a video.

“Okay, here we go,” Alec said. “It’s past the titles and stuff, this is where the first section starts.”

Lisa glanced down at the video scrollbar, and blinked.

“...Alec, this video is five hours long,” she said.

“Yeah, he’s outdone himself this time I guess,” Alec replied. “But the last one was, like, a hundred and ten minutes about autism and vaccines or something, so this isn’t that long in comparison.”

“It really is,” Lisa muttered, rolling her eyes. “Okay, let’s see if this is worth anything.”

Alec hit the spacebar, and the video began to play.

“Part one,” a British voice said, over a title card. “How do Tinker powers work. Spoilers: They don’t!”

Lisa blinked.

“Is this a conspiracy theory thing?” she asked.

“Shush,” Alec advised her, politely.

“I know, that’s going to immediately make me sound like I’m completely crazy,” the video creator went on. “How can Tinker powers not work when they clearly do? Well, that’s the thing, because Tinker powers are supposed to be about technology, but it’s been clearly and repeatably recorded in experiments going back decades that the technology Tinkers build only works when they build it.”

He threw up his hands, waving a sheaf of paper. “And I was as skeptical about this as you probably are, but I actually looked at the studies. The first one is by the British government, which did it in partnership with Oxford university, and – I know, but, listen, they sometimes do good research besides just coincidentally having one of their literature professors accidentally invent an entire genre…”

Lisa glanced down at the video bar again, which had barely moved, then frowned.

Her power hadn’t given her anything.

Well? She thought, gingerly poking the part of her brain that usually resulted in insights.

...section title is not incorrect, her power informed her, reluctantly.

“...Alec, what are the other section titles?” Lisa asked.

“You’re interested now, huh?” Alec asked, pausing the video, and showed the description.

“...part three: I might get black-ops’d for this,” Lisa repeated. “...the fuck? The leader of the PRT is a parahuman?”

Alexandria, her power stated.

“...fuck,” Lisa muttered. “Well, that’s not good… okay, unpause it, let’s see how bad this is going to get…”

Fortuna hit pause.

Two seconds later, the door opened, and Rebecca leaned in.

“What. The fuck?” she asked, then her gaze flicked to the screen of Fortuna’s computer. “Is that the video?”

“Yes,” Fortuna replied.

“How exactly could you let this happen?” Rebecca asked. “Have you seen what this video is about?”

“Yes,” Fortuna repeated. “The section titles make it quite obvious.”

“Yeah, the section titles make it obvious, all right,” Rebecca replied. “Section One: How do Tinker powers work, spoiler, they don’t. Section one point five, how does Dragon’s power work then. Section two: Wait, is Dragon an AI!?”

She pronounced the interrobang very well, and Fortuna looked up.

“Do you have a point?” she asked.

“Of course I have a point!” Rebecca said. “And I know you know that – you’re a precog, why are you asking?”

“Path to a productive end to the conversation,” Fortuna answered. “The next bit is that you continue listing off the section titles for rhetorical purposes.”

Rebecca’s eye twitched.

“Part two point five, why has nobody before figured out Dragon is an AI!?!?,” she recited, from memory, naturally. “With a bracketed subsection. We don’t count the Dragonslayers because they’re nutjobs. Part three: So I might get black-ops’d for this. Part three point five: Why has nobody before figured out the leader of the PRT is a parahuman? Part four: I absolutely will get black-ops’d for this.”

Rebecca paused, and glowered at Fortuna.

“Why was he even allowed to upload the video?” she asked. “Now that he’s uploaded it, then to… black-ops him is just going to make it obvious he was right.”

“Honestly I think it should be quite clear why by the time you reach the end of the video,” Fortuna replied, nodding at her screen, which showed that the pause bar was somewhere in the middle of section seven. “Though there may have been a flaw in Path To A Really Good Online Video.”

“You don’t say,” Rebecca muttered. “Didn’t it only come out half an hour ago?”

“Path to the Most Immediately Relevant Bits,” Fortuna answered, reasonably enough.

“You do realize he’s exposed us, though?” Rebecca went on. “Not just me, us. At least, I assume that’s why part five is called It’s a melting pot of every conspiracy, get it?”

Fortuna smiled, mysteriously.

“Stop it,” Rebecca grumbled. “And no, I’m not angry about part six, even though it’s called The Illuminati are really bad at conspiracies. Or part eight which is begging us to hire an eight year old as an advisor.”

“Part seven is actually the most relevant bit, for us,” Fortuna said. “So far he’s outlined three solutions to Scion which would be better than any plans we had before.”

Rebecca blinked.

“...are you sure?” she asked.

“That’s why part seven is called Apocalypse Soon,” Fortuna pointed out. “You should watch the video.”

“It’s five hours long,” Rebecca protested.

“Yes, which is why it’s fortunate that you’re going to have a lot of free time soon,” Fortuna replied.