[Fateverse Side Story: NC Bundle] Allegro
The Ringmaster: Chapter 4 of 13
Briefly, the symphony accellerates. With a new lab and five subjects, another pivotal discovery is made.
Warnings: Crossovers, fateverse, sci-fi, experimentation on prisoners, brief swearing.
Disclaimer: Recognizeable characters belong to DC/Marvel.
Timeline: Three days after Andante.
It is edifying, but not completely necessary, to have read the Dark Nights: Metal event.
Visit The Fateverse Glossary for important terms, concepts, and people.
Notes: See postscript; linked footnotes may open in a new tab.
Allegro
Five of them. The plan for long-term work is to use visualizer hoods (the sort typically used by the Network for photosensitive pacification) and tube-feed them in their catatonic state. The lab is big enough for fifty or more subjects (depending on how they’re arranged), and drenched in Nullres safeguards. For now, Bruce watches his boys as they’re transported and installed one at a time.
One is confused and depressed-Bruce showers him in reassurances and praise. Two is suspiciously optimistic. Three spits threats about what he’ll do to the others, but all his biometrics show fear-Bruce tells him (lies to him) that the others can’t hurt him and he’s just such a big help. Four is pretending to be dissociated from the situation, but his pupillary responses and beta-wave readings tell Bruce that he’s watching and observing. Five actually is dissociating, staring at nothing while humming quietly to himself.
“You realize that the fact this works at all has some pretty nasty implications,” the Savant says as he watches the fifth subject get fitted into his hood.
“That our blindness in the DC trunk has led to us retuning and incarcerating naturally occurring entropic loci?” Bruce suggests. “That we may have been actively destabilizing the Timestream based on shoddy guesswork?”
“No Joker we’ve ever brought in had the same chronometric signature until your first two,” the Savant points out. “Artificial phase-alignment and vitrification is a new thing for us. And only a handful of us can even enter the trunk, so nobody really understood his significance, even with metamedia bleed and subject shrapnel. To the Network, your little pets here are just high-entropy subjects who cropped up in ancillary branches and fucked things up there. Maybe they’re like Hopes, and they resonate with whenever and wherever they’re needed. Or maybe they’re like Wades, and they adjust to belong wherever they end up. Or maybe they’re something completely different, and they can end up in the wrong place.”
Bruce looks at the medical staff, busily preparing each subject to spend an indefinite amount of time essentially comatose.
The Savant eyes the EEG[ 1] readout on the screen beside Four. “Maybe they’re the Timestream’s version of a pro-drug, and they make it make the things it needs to fix itself. Maybe they make Batman who he’s supposed to be.”
“You sound like them,” Bruce scoffs.
“Isn’t that a good sign, as far as your application thesis[ 2]? Besides, soul-polarity, et cetera.”
Bruce hesitates. The greatest known chrononeurologist is staring at the brainwaves of Bruce’s chronometric antenna. “See something interesting there?”
“Their brainwaves aren’t completely synchronized.” He adjusts a control, and the display separates into what looks (to Bruce’s untrained eye, at least) like layered topographical maps. “The surface layer goes fluid, like all subjects in a Fidelis trance. The deepest layer is either unchanged or changing slowly. And in the middle is your Super-Joker, adjusting every time you add another node to your little mini-Network. Hard to say whether that personality could take over any particular one of them after the trance subsides. Maybe the puppy one would resist best. Maybe one of the megalomaniacs.”
Bruce notices something that makes him forget what he was going to say next.
The clowns are writing five separate data streams, even with their minds synchronized.
When he turns on the simulator, it becomes apparent that their timing creates a faster stream of numbers than a human hand can comfortably relay. The result is a much larger segment of the DC052 than every previous iteration.
The Savant looks up. “Oh, shit.”
“I need more,” Bruce says.
“Yeah, you do,” the Savant agrees faintly. “We’re gonna need new analysts, more equipment, a proper way to travel in and around the trunk… I don’t even need to see whatever bullshit paper you’re writing-as far as I’m concerned, the senior credentials are yours. If Hogan[ 3] wants to gripe about proper competency exams or whatever, send her to me.”
.End.
Notes:
1 Electroencephalogram, a method of observing electrical activity in the brain by observing electrical activity on the scalp. The Network possesses medical technology that can do this remotely, without having to place sensors on the skin.
2 The application for Senior Theory credentials does require a thesis paper in their field of specialization to demonstrate their advanced grasp of chronometric theory. In Bruce’s case, he is arguing that Jokers are entropic loci, so any resemblance they bear to known entropic loci supports his thesis.
3 Virginia “Pepper” Hogan is the sitting Concordat Chair of Competency and Academics. At the moment, she is also the Interim Chair of Theory, because Wade had her predecessor removed from office prematurely for incompetence (more on that later, perhaps).
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