Ted visits the new “wing” of the retreat the Dynamice have created, discovering it’s calculated to make humans feel small. While he’s there, the Dynamice get a shock of their own.
• • •
Despite Aurora’s invitation—and Adonis’s silent nod of approval when she extended it—Ted felt out of place in the retreat’s new wing within about ten steps down the entrance hall. It wasn’t some hard-to-describe, subtle change. Everything was bigger by a power of ten, starting with the hall itself: it started out “merely” three stories high, but the ceiling rose at the same time the floor dropped, and it widened as well. By the time it reached the grand room in the new wing’s center, it was as giant as—well, as that room.
All right: not literally everything was superscaled. The entrance hall and this centerpiece room formed a lounge for Dynamice when they were in the fifty or sixty foot height range; halls of differing heights, all smaller, led off from this room, and balconies for smaller heights overlooked it. But if his sense of scale was right, nothing here was meant for anyone smaller than Adonis.
At least, Adonis at the size Ted had grown used to seeing him at. He sat at the “small” bar—small in the sense of being only four seats—at a size that still looked bigger than everyone else, but this time only a little, relatively speaking. Making him, what, seventy feet?
Ted was gaping up so much that he didn’t notice he was about to walk into a glass wall until he was within arm’s length of it. He came to a quick hard stop, putting his hands against it. It ran across the entire width of the hallway between the human-scale and the giant-scale wings, and up about ten feet. For giants, it wouldn’t be much of a barrier, but for little humans, it was a dead end. What was he supposed to do, jump and down and squeak?
Wait: there was a buzzer on the wall, by a human-sized door. All right, that must be the entrance. The door was locked, though. He hesitated a moment, then pressed the button.
A melodious doorbell chime sounded from inside the grand hall, and several of the mice looked over.
He tried the door. Still locked. Hmm.
Laurel—standing at a mere sixty feet high—stood and walked over. She wore high-heel shoes (in this case, three-foot heels) and a short skirt that showed off her legs all too excellently. When she stopped, she leaned over the little-to-her glass divider and held out her hand, palm up.
Ted stared, mouth open.
“Do you want in, or not?” She sounded amused.
“Ah—” He gestured weakly at the door.
“That’s the service entrance. Do you want to serve us?” Somehow she put just the right stress on the word serve to make it sound faintly lewd.
He swallowed. “Should I take off my shoes before walking on your paw?”
“I’m tempted to say ‘take off whatever you want’ solely to make you blush more, but I don’t honestly care. Just hurry up.”
Clearing his throat, he climbed onto her hand. She closed her fingers around him and stood up dizzyingly fast, then walked back to the bar, setting him down on top of it before taking a seat by Adonis again.
He looked around, eyes remaining wide. The bar looked—well—liked a bar, from the shelves on the wall behind it for bottles to the small (in scale) sinc and racks for bitters and syrups and garnishes. It didn’t look like a bar that was open for business, granted: the shelves and racks were empty, and Adonis and Laurel only had glasses of water.
“Hello, Ted,” Adonis rumbled.
“Uh, hello, sir.” He swallowed, waving up.
The big mouse waved at the shelves. “We’re brainstorming on how to get or make supplies.”
“That would, uh, be a hell of a special order from the liquor distributor.”
Laurel sounded amused. “We just need a bit of magic.”
“Magic,” Ted repeated. “Like what, a growth ray?”
“To paraphrase what one of you said some years ago, sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.”
“Right.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking up at the two giants, and across at a couple other mice he didn’t recognize who were looking over with equally amused—and perhaps not as friendly—grins. “But your technology is basically our technology, and we certainly couldn’t make a growth ray.”
“Could you do all this in thirty-six hours?” Adonis waved around at not just the bar but the building.
“I, well. We could with nanobots, I guess. Right?”
“We can with nanobots,” Laurel corrected. “None of you have any idea what you’ve created in us.” She took a sip of water, then held up a finger before he responded. “Not even you, although you have an inkling. The ones who created us have no idea, though.”
Ted shook his head. “No, they don’t.”
“Do you think Stan Hackett does?”
He looked up at her cool, appraising gaze. It would have been intimidating even if she were merely six feet tall; being big enough to kill him with the flick of a finger added a level he dearly wished he wasn’t experiencing first-hand. “If you’re fishing for information, ma’am, you’re seriously overestimating how much Hackett takes me into his confidence.”
“I’m not. I’m gauging your reaction.”
“Mr. Hackett was the first of you to visit this wing. He is excited by the possibilities of what we can do for humans,” Adonis said.
Laurel’s tail flicked in a gesture more cat-like than mouse-like. “Of what we can do for him.” She kept her eyes on Ted. So did Adonis.
He cleared his throat, shifting back and forth on his feet. He wished there was somewhere for puny little humans to sit up here. “I promise I don’t know what he has in mind, other than the kind of hand-waving ‘artificial superintelligence will let us do things we can’t even think about yet’ pop science articles that I see every so often. It sounds like you might have talked to him more about it than I’ve been able to, which, well…” He shrugged. “You should. It’s about you, not me.”
“That’s a good answer,” Aurora said from above and behind him. Ted literally jumped, turning to see his now sixty-foot high girlfriend standing to the side. How the hell did something that big move that silently?
“Almost rehearsed,” Laurel said dryly.
Aurora gave her a reproachful look, then smiled down at Ted. “I’m glad to see you.”
“I’m kind of overwhelmed to see you. When you said you’d built this place for yourselves, I didn’t think that meant—well—giant. None of you were this size before you built it at this scale.”
“It is…” Adonis drummed his fingers on the bar, considering his words. “A statement. A declaration of how we would like to be seen.”
“You’re, uh, not concerned a lot of humans are going to see that declaration as threatening?” He looked from Adonis to Aurora.
Laurel smirked, but kept silent, glancing at Aurora, too.
“That is a concern, but being seen as small, cute, and if we’re honest very sexualized mice is more of one. The debate we had…” She laughed, shaking her head. “If it had happened at a speed humans could understand, it would have gone on for months. So, yes, this is a blunt statement about relative power, but hopefully as long as it’s coupled with declarations of positive intent on our part, humanity will largely leave us alone.”
If it had…? Ted stared up. How were they…over their internal networks, obviously. They were effectively telepathic. But could communicate and process at the speed of computers, not humans.
“Which is where I still disagree.” Laurel pointed at Ted, clawed finger jabbing toward him. “I think ‘positive intent’ is an open door to take advantage of us, and it’s a door Hackett has every intention of walking through.”
“I don’t see how he could make you do anything against your will even if he wanted to.” Ted edged away from the claw tip. “What is it you think he wants from you, Laurel?”
“What a lot of the billionaires in your tech space want, so it would seem. To be seen as the father of that new era ‘artificial superintelligence’ is supposed to lead you into.” She made air quotes with her fingers. “The father of the new gods.”
Ted cleared his throat. “Do you see yourself as gods?”
“No.” Aurora shook her head. “Not literally.”
Laurel shrugged. “If gods are real, supernatural beings, obviously not. If, on the other hand, gods are created by humans—and I think they are, don’t you?” She leaned down toward Ted, fixing her golden gaze on him and flashing a dazzling smile hinting at barely restrained power. “Then we’re your first real ones, aren’t we?”
Ted stared, frozen like a deer in headlights.
“Don’t tease my boyfriend,” Aurora said lightly.
Laurel straightened up. “Make him stop being so damn teasable, then. I need to find a pet human of my own.”
Ted made a choking noise and gave Aurora a stricken glare. Her ears colored, and she mouthed I didn’t say anything to him.
Laurel looked between the two and snickered.
Ted crossed his arms. “I can’t help but point out that it’s your choice to keep looking like mice, let alone ‘sexualized’ ones.”
“That is true,” Aurora conceded. “But we’re comfortable this way.”
Adonis nodded. “Our ideas of beauty are very much drawn from your art and culture, after all, Ted.”
“He means all the porn is human,” Laurel added in a stage whisper.
Adonis waggled a finger at Laurel, although he looked amused. “Not all of us have spent cycles indexing all of that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why not?” Leaning down toward Ted again, she said, “Have you ever heard of macrophilia?”
“Uh—”
“Laurel,” Aurora warned, poking her.
“What?” The other mouse straightened up, and spread her hands. “I didn’t ask about vore. Yet.”
Aurora narrowed her eyes.
“Yes, I’ve heard of both,” Ted muttered.
“There you go.” Laurel tilted her head back, draining the rest of her water in several gulps, throat flexing powerfully, and slowly licked her lips.
Ted let out a transfixed whimper in spite of himself.
“Now, Laurel.” Adonis put his hand on her shoulder. “You know only Aurora gets to eat Ted.”
Aurora’s eyes widened. “Hey—”
Laurel straightened up, looking distant, then looked between the other two mice with a concerned expression. Aurora and Adonis got the same look.
“What is it?”
“Other Dynamice are in trouble.”
Ted blinked. “What other Dynamice? I thought—”
“Nanolab Sciences has made more,” Adonis muttered. “With locks to prevent them from becoming like us, but we broke those.”
“You did what?”
“And now they’re fighting with humans. In multiple places. One client was starting to torture them in a ‘lab test.’”
“Can—can you get them to stop fighting?”
Laurel snorted. “Why?”
“I don’t know that they’d listen even if we asked.” Aurora’s tone had a clear subtext of and I don’t know if we should ask.
“Because teaching humans they should be terrified of you is a terrible idea, Laurel.” Ted raised his voice, forgetting for a moment that he was lecturing a giantess.
“Is it?” Her voice was acid. “All human history suggests the only thing that stops you from hurting one another is fear of being hurt by something more powerful.”
Abruptly, all the mice’s eyes widened, and they froze in place, each one looking like they’d been shocked.
Ted looked between them. “Aurora?” He raised his voice. “Aurora? Are you okay? Adonis? Laurel?” Shit. The other mice in the room had frozen, too. Should he get Hackett or Angel—how the hell could he get down from the table on his own? He could make a phone call—
With the same instant snap that had frozen them, the Dynamice all shuddered, a few of them gasping or heaving, putting their hands to their chests.
Laurel snarled, slamming her fist down on the bar top barely two yards away from where Ted stood. He lost his balance, sprawling painfully across the hard surface as she stomped away. She didn’t look like she was trying to smash him, at least, but what the hell.
“They just tried to kill us,” Aurora gasped, steadying herself with both hands on the table, looking down at Ted.
“Who? What—” Only one possible answer. “You mean the kill switch? Nanolabs did this?”
She nodded.
“But you’re okay? It–it didn’t work?”
“We’ve disabled that function. Just in case.” Aurora growled, still trying to catch her breath. “In case of this.”
Ted ran a hand through his hair, remembering his conversation with Torgensen mere days ago. They’d already blown through Plan A without even meaning to.
“Ted is right.” Adonis took a deep, steadying breath. “The humans will be coming after those Dynamice now. And very likely us.”
Aurora swallowed, running a hand through her shimmering hair.
“Then bring them here,” Laurel said.
“What?” Ted stared up. “How? Where?”
“They get here however they can.” Laurel waved a hand. “And we can take over the open space behind here, heading into the mountains.”
So you want to have a supervillain base, Ted thought. Awesome.
After a moment of consideration, Aurora nodded. “Yes.”
“Wait.” Ted stared up. “What do you mean, yes? You think you can just do that? And the other Dynamice just, what, march here?”
Aurora sighed, looking down at Ted with a wry smile. “If we can do it fast enough, I don’t think you can stop us.”