[Worm — 06.01.2011 — Thursday; evening]
I spent a significant portion of Thursday contemplating my first Gate perspectives.
And for a fairly logical reason. While almost any material could be used for Gate creation, and among the materials were universally useful ones, like precious metals, gems, and high-quality glass, the most effective way to create a Gate was to use materials that were most suitable for it.
Like rare seashells for the Titanic universe, or very old dollars for the Wolf of Wall Street universe.
Yet, despite a clear understanding that the sooner I decide on my first Gate specifics - the easier it would be to create, the result was still the same - choice paralysis.
At first, I correctly identified my main priority - gold. Liquid funds for all the universes and a very efficient material for Gate creation.
I even picked a very strong favorite - the "House M.D." universe.
After all, Gregory House had:
A lot of money, and the ability to convert it into gold, including very convenient for me pre-1982 minted gold bullion coins.
A vast network of connections to help me build a steady business in his universe.
A strong personal motivation for collaboration - a pain in the leg and interest in otherworldly medical knowledge.
A brilliant, versatile intellect. With expertise in two wide scientific fields: Medicine and Physics.
It also helped that I used to be a fan of A Bit of Fry & Laurie.
But reading and viewing about Earth Bet’s parahuman version of House M.D. reminded me of the original show’s Gregory’s "complications": impulsiveness, inconsistency, risk appetite, talkativeness, unpredictability.
"Otherworldly medical knowledge" isn’t a bad pun, but how long would Gregory keep it solely inside his head?
Then, there were several Moriartys and, in general, an abundance of endless drama and emergencies.
I wanted to entrust House, really did, but he wasn't very suitable as a stable, reliable agent of influence. Which forced me toward alternatives. Each with its own problems.
’Ok, what do we have so far...
"Silicon Valley." The most sane and efficient choice. Characters are already halfway to LLM, and just 1 charge into it will give me enormous leverage over the group. But good results will take a lot of time and effort.
"Dr. Stone." Senku’s mind is one of the most tempting low-hanging fruits in fiction. But right now, I don’t have the resources to kick-start the necessary industrialization efficiently. Also, because humans in his universe have non-standard physiology and one powerful alien, access to it was very expensive.
"Breaking Bad." Walter White has more money than he could ever spend. Which I can resolve by charges. But everything related to him is illegal, involves many villains, and carries associated risks. Potential, but not before at least some force field.
"Wolf of Wall Street." Similar problems.
"Titanic." Offering the captain the unique chance to exchange the ship's jewelry for knowledge and items from the future carries significant risks — from the inconvenient entry moment to German spies on board. But the potential gains are mind-blowing - at least half a billion dollars in universal Gate-creation resources! Yet, as the first universe, it is just too much.
"The King's Speech." Same problem as with the Titanic.
"Richie Rich" movie. Unfortunately, I can't refresh my memory about the movie's plot. And comic series... no, don't dare even think about comics!
"Californication." Pros: Bro Hank Moody and his connections. Cons: everything else. Meh.
"Clueless." Same issue as with "Richie Rich."
"Legally Blonde." If I remember it correctly, the heroine’s righteousness veers into paladin territory. This makes collaboration with her quite risky. The same applies to Nancy Drew.
"Cruel Intentions." A very... controversial choice for me. Like suddenly learning the whereabouts of a long-ago lost favorite toy. Which at the same time stirs impatience to finally find it, and fear that discovering it would permanently destroy the already weakened magic of the memories tied to it. The same goes for the not actual EuroTrip and American Pie. Also, let's be frank, two borderline sociopaths, goody two-shoes, and one of the most naive characters in fiction, don't look like the sanest choice.
"The Devil Wears Prada." Superstitions and symbolism are completely different things before and after confirmation of multiverse existence. Although theoretically, just because of the title, I shouldn’t worry too much. In practice, I’d better avoid any risks like this, and not forget about the Quantum Leap principle: "Even if at first glance a universe seems safe, a slight hint in the source could make it more dangerous than Warhammer 40k."
"Kaguya-sama: Love Is War." Kaguya’s parents should be very rich. But they and Kaguya are unlikely to be very reliable people. Out of Kaguya’s brothers' probable sociopathy, and because one of the wealthiest Japanese families already has everything except for supernatural stuff. Which I still don't have.
"Highschool of the Dead." Saeko Busujima is also unlikely to be poor. The absolute peak of Japanese insatiability for feminine perfection just cannot be poor. Alas, the origin of the zombie apocalypse is quite inconvenient... (Author's note: further lore description isn’t the official one). After millions of years of accumulated magical energy, the Amazonian forest uses it for an anti-human curse. Yeah, just once and at a specific group, but magic is still magic. This makes the gateway to this world quite expensive.
"Roman Holiday." The heroine is literally a princess, so she should have a lot of money and influence. Yes... And Mari Kurihara from Prison School has some money... And Amélie also should have some money too... yes, good idea. Hana Uzaki as well, right? Yep, a lot of money...
"Gilmore Girls." Rory has a very rich grandfather who, at one point, suffered a heart attack. Rory was also my fleeting teenage crush. I’ve always admired her and her mother for their good balance of feminine empathy, rationality, and guts... which, taking into account Rory's downfall in the sequel, at least somehow was wrong. But I don’t remember much about the plot. And what I do remember hints that these people aren't very suitable for anything subtle.
By the way, TV series from the 2000-2010s had many responsible and clever heroines: Weeds, Shameless, Grey’s Anatomy, Masters of Sex, Community. With the right knowledge and financial investments, their intellect could pay off very quickly.’
After going through another dozen universes and reviewing my list again, I still couldn’t pick just one. So I decided to just continue collecting universal materials for now. Primarily crystals and high-quality glass, which, according to Gates logic, could serve as a sort of conceptual connectors and adapters.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
Part of the Gate equation was the question: which Named Characters would cooperate with me, and which wouldn’t?
After a brief analysis, I concluded that their cooperation would almost entirely depend on the plausibility of my supernatural claims.
'The essence of relationships is the exchange of services.
The fact that these services are often emotional, mutually beneficial, and synergistic doesn’t make them any less transactional. On the contrary, it highlights the inefficiency of financially-oriented transactions compared to biological ones.
Anyway, all relationships are transactional. From exchanging a good time to validation of one's own rightness, or preservation of decades-old neural structures and habits that have become fundamental to personality.
Although many such transactions sacrifice short-term gains for long-term benefits. For example, by overlooking minor flaws, or by embracing schemas like "True Love is a competition to see who gives more than they receive" - investing in indispensability.
Usually, relationships — business, friendship, romantic — are about opportunistic benefits and conveniences.
About the use of what’s available, but with insatiable hope for more.
Now, what could be even "more" than a relationship with someone capable of jumping between worlds and who, every week, receives +5 knowledge packages?
Not a lot of things.
From a fully theoretical perspective, such an arrangement obviously isn’t perfect because of too little incentive for the jumper to stay in one world for a long time.
Yet, a potential relationship with him still holds something like "-2000% to relationship duration debuff, and +OVER 9000% gains buff."
That— outside the typical for fiction unrealistic insensitivity to wonder — is still drastically better than the plateaued mutually beneficial stable exchange equilibrium of "ideal relationships."
Especially for women. Which, at first glance, may seem illogical.
Just like how children instinctively train to avoid danger with "hide and seek" or "tag" games, women’s desires, fantasies, and hormone-coded "female behavior" essentially train them to avoid femininity-related risks. Primarily:
Unreliable (including because of routine fatigue and boredom) sexual partners, and thus, fathers of their children.
Social deviance and exclusion.
In other words, for women, the cornerstones of a relationship are reliability, stability, and conformity.
This is why the most effective romantic strategy has always been the suitor’s continuous demonstration of his life’s dedication to a woman’s interests.
Or why the main features of "fairytale princes," and "men" in monster romance novels, are telepathic understanding (women-grade empathy), mother-like reliability, and maternal-instinct-like self-devotion.
Or why women, at the same time, are antagonistic and attracted toward social defiance.
So, my unreliability is bad for relationships with women, right?
Nope.
Because reliability isn’t a quality but a process.
For a woman's subconscious, men are reliable because of the affection and attachment formed through emotional socialization and memories accumulated over time.
Because of their own "emotionally-inducing behavior."
What would be the most likely result of my successful explanation to young women about my super potential and the short duration of my stay?
Intense instinctive hormonal reactions, yelling at her consciousness to fix my unreliability with intense emotional attention.
A mix of submissive promises of maximal adaptation. And — especially when everything is normal — shaking up the tediousness and boredom by emotional newness.
By some imaginable problems. Or by platonic SFW jokes, cuisine, and games. There is nothing better for male and female friendship than Tag, Tug of War, Weight Lifting, Wrestling, Sack Race, and others, certified by SFW-Internet-police, games...
Anyway — women, men, sentient deer or bubblegum — in case of undeniable proofs about my transmundane capabilities, I highly doubt many creatures would refuse to cooperate on my terms or would do so with low enthusiasm.
Children want to be around Santa Claus, not for the sake of endless quantitative gifts, but for the proximity to qualitative Miracle. For a "better form of parental invulnerability conviction."
And adults — to some extent, disappointed and routine-weary children — are no exception.
Because I was already so deeply in this topic, I made another logical step...
Would such relationships be exploitative?
To the same degree as relationships between the ideal prince and the unremarkable servant girl, who — due to excessive profitability — just cannot refuse such a good proposal, and therefore "doesn’t really consent to undeniably amorally power-imbalanced relationships."
Which, at the same time, was both wrong and right.
Wrong because — as with any such social inequalities — it was a small step towards the past. Feudalism, slavery, and a hierarchical worldview.
Right, because relationships have always existed as complex social games that just cannot function without stakes and hopes for a massive payoff. And any attempt to suppress this instinctive part by cultural ones was doomed to create social dysfunctions.
In other words, although some exploitation was indeed part of my plans and somewhat wrong — even despite plans to mitigate this via enormous personal and global profitability and "short exposure" — alternatives were worse. Because of many issues related to such dissertation-worthy philosophical questions:
"Suppose there is a world where technological progress has made people almost completely self-sufficient, including via AI companions. What prohibitive polemics or rules about relationships could be beneficial for real-relationships activities?"
"Suppose humanity encountered developed alien civilizations or godlings. What could be a more beneficial to humanity transactional motivation for such interaction than sexual tourism?"
"Who is capable of a superior absence of social exploitation better than sociopaths and AI?"
Which in turn hinted at the idea: "Any extremes are bad. But especially bad extremes related to, particularly far away from human nature, virtues."
By the way, all of the above applied to me as well.
CYOA cheats gave me a very strong socialization position and the possibility for extremely efficient social interaction - quickly exchanging trivial-to-me but important-to-others resources for what I want.
Yet, on a multiversal scale, this just raised the ceiling, without changing the overall mechanics.
I had a strong position, but compared to the real Hakubi Washu one? And relatively to stable, balanced, adaptive perfections of Busujima Saeko, Hyuga Hinata, Cassandra Cain, Angela Ziegler, Elizabeth Comstock, Pyrrha Nikos, Raphtalia, Kim Possible, and so on?
I was far from invulnerable.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
I shook my head.
"It’s still too early to think about friendships with people from other worlds," I decided, and turned my attention to making friends with someone closer.
Unfortunately, filling my Dunbar’s number with the best of the best from Worm universe had two interconnected problems:
First - almost everyone I was interested in was at least somewhat paranoid capes.
Second - while I had the Adaptive Blank defense, I’d be an absolute moron to let out even the slightest slip that I potentially could bring [ANSWER] from other universes. That took away my main social leverage.
Of course, theoretically I could still try to parody the MC from the "Security!" fic, or drop some charges into acting... But let's be honest, even normal people rarely like ANY pestering from strangers. What's to say about capes from a world with an enormous list of parahuman-related risks?
Some random dude suddenly decides to lecture Panacea about emotional burnout? And an unknown cape, no less?
Seriously?
No, for a successful first contact and relationship, I required or a soft sell by Rule of Cool (my potential) hooks, like 10/10 appearance, 30-meter mecha-tyrannosaurus, and so on.
Or a hard sell by a lot of liquid currencies and useful services.
Both of those qualities I had for only a very small list of Named Characters.
The foremost candidate for friendship — for bug-related discussions — was Taylor. But I didn’t want to bother her for at least two weeks after the locker incident.
Another candidate — for tennis games — was Sierra Kiley. Yet, online search yielded no results. The same obviously was with Charlotte.
Which left only one interesting, reachable, surely doesn't under Coil surveillance, candidate.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
A search on PHO didn’t show anything about the SpecificProtagonist account, but I did find a FlippinMad one. Since PHO didn’t have an NSFW section, it was entirely SFW.
Trusting the "moderate fanon" parameter in my Status window, I continued searching on other popular forums and soon indeed found another FlippinMad account. With lewd shorts.
Quick comparison of the two accounts confirmed that they were almost certainly run by the same person: Madison Clements.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
Madison's NSFW account was created two years ago and contained... let’s just say that Madison had a thing for male capes’ friendship.
But not so much for physical activities as for... "hierarchical confessions?" Something like that.
The typical chronology of her stories involved an unexpected meeting of two celebrities, conflict, sudden mutual confessions about personal emotional scars and desires, and a "Happy Ending."
I tried to reconstruct Madison’s psychological profile, but due to an overabundance of Superego in her stories and the extreme scarcity of Ego, all I could come up with was the archetype of a girl who had absolutely no fucking idea what she wanted from her life, outside of her current social circle setups.
Because I had hoped to find a hidden social-engineering Chadette, this was rather a disappointing finding.
However, this perfectly matched her book’s role - safe to Emma, convenient placeholder in The Trio.
Who, if I remembered correctly, started questioning, "Are We the Baddies?" only a few months before the locker incident. After she, or The Trio, during some cape-related photoshoot publicly named a disabled girl a cunt. And only after an outright statement from Glory Girl that she, or The Trio, is a bitch, who ruined everyone's mood.
Which, even by the standards of Worm universe, was...
Wow!
8,5/10 score from Slaughterhouse 9.
The most reliable strategy for starting and maintaining a relationship with her was prolonged communication with constant proving of my predictability and safety.
But I didn’t have time for this, so I chose the completely opposite strategy. One that will compensate for the high theoretical risks with even higher practical and theoretical rewards:
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
Topic: [Date invitation.]
■ FelixPosted on January 6, 2011:
Hi.
You intrigued me.
How?
It’s a secret. And one of the motivations for continuing our communication.
What I can tell you:
I’m a young guy from B.B. Here’s my year of birth from my passport, and my biceps against the news site - [Link].
I’m at least not poor. Here are pictures of the codes for two $100 Amazon gift cards - [Link]. It’s not much, but it’s more than people usually give strangers for no substantial reason.
I’m also smart enough to determine that you’re an inexperienced young woman from B.B. who still isn't sure what she wants from her life, and therefore a potential blank canvas for my colors.
See, there’s some romantic sincerity in me as well. And some dangers for the thrill.
Pretty close to the "mysterious stranger" trope, right?
Who knows? Maybe I’m some scam, maybe a unique opportunity, maybe something else.
There are only two realistic ways to find out.
If you’re 18+ years old, not obese, and can call yourself at least a 6/10 in looks, then:
I invite you to this restaurant in one of the most public places in the city - [Link]. Choose the date and time yourself, but only up to 11.01.2011.
You can also ask questions. But for every answer I will give, you’ll owe me significantly more answers and actions.
Decide for yourself whether it’s worth playing in such asymmetric games, but don’t waste my time trying to change the rules.
From my end, I promise no ill intentions toward you. I’ll give you the opportunity to set stable boundaries. And assure that you can leave any games at any time, with full nullification of all debts and no consequences, just by verbally breaking off the relationship.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
Cliché? Yes. But enough for a fast gamble, and with a lot of right hooks. Hints and social puzzles.
[Worm — 07.01.2011 — Friday]
My fourth day began with another trip to Lord Street Market. Where, in an antiquity store, I bought a hefty but very old and chipped green-stone candleholder.
It cost me an absurd $450, and only after a very long debate with the seller about its relevance in the modern world, which dropped the price from an even more absurd $700. But for some reason, nearby the candleholder my Gate-sense suddenly became like a whining tail-whipping cute puppy madly looking at the candleholder as if at a freshly unwrapped ball. So I just couldn't help but buy it.
On the way home, I purchased measuring tools, which, with the help of Google, soon told me that I had bought 1.7kg of jadeite. With a material price range... somewhere between $200 and $10,000.
'In the future, I’ll need to get materials science and item appraisal knowledge,' I sighed, continuing to examine the candleholder that, judging by the many small chips and grooves, by very moderate estimate, had been around for at least half a century.
'For some universes, like Rashomon, its "Gate value" sometimes exceeds half of Gate's requirements! Compared to a uranium glass vase, this little fucker is 10-15 times more valuable than the uranium glass vase I bought for $90. Although it's not a game-changer, it's still a notable speed-up for my plans.
It's a pity that I still don't know which ones exactly.'
I placed the candleholder in the corner, next to the bizarre collection of items that already whispered "perhaps strange parahuman things" and got to work on my orders, taking brief breaks every few items for something more interesting.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
Among other things, I continued looking into the situation with tinkers and Indonesia.
In my original world, people rarely mentioned Indonesia. Perhaps because of humans' mind tendency toward extremes, when compared to other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Indonesia was among them.
But on Earth Bet? After Japan’s economic collapse, Indonesia became a Big Deal.
The fourth most populous country in the world. A country where parts of the government, political parties, corporations, parahumans, and organized crime fused into a super-syndicate, actually named Fusion. And that control... a lot of things. Inside and outside the country.
The Fusion's main source of income and power relied on two capes.
One of them, Unity, could fuse biology and electronics. Including into maintenance-free goods.
And the second cape, Harmony, had a strange mix of Accord's, Teacher's, Nice Guy's powers. She could tag people. And the more their deeds aligned with her goals - the more powerful mental buffs they received. Together with, at least a mild, master effect.
Both capes had been active since the early 1990s and, over almost 20 years, created a much more criminalized, Samsung-like monstrosity.
This would hardly concern me if Fusion weren’t aggressively pushing its agenda toward tinkers and thinkers.
Supposedly, with the exception of North America, however, some information I found stated that such exclusion just meant that instead of Cloak & Dagger shit with periodic deployment of armed android squads, Fusion just used subtle spying and rare cat's-paw operations.
Fusion, Simurgh, Cauldron, Protectorate, Mannequin, Dragonslayers, Yangban, and governments... all of this was very good reasons to not showcase ANY potentially reproducible strange tech before just the right time.
’From the reader's perspective, the best power category, of course, is a Trump.
But Earth Bet elites don’t see things like this. For them, the best powers are those that could be shared with them and/or used as a multiplier. As it happened with Unity and Harmony.
And the Ultra Wet Dream Power for them? Anything at least somehow similar to my own Inspired Inventor...
This was very concerning because I will soon have to start buying and building machine tools: a laser cutter, a lathe, 3D printers, and so on.
But tinkers typically don't fucking do this!
Because their powers warp reality around any suitable tools, they predominantly just use strange junk by strange junk for the creation of strange junk. Which, of course, also doesn’t leave at battlefields debris screaming "INGENIOUS! REPRODUCIBLE!"
Tinkers typically don't even know how to service basic machine tools, just throwing away old stuff, or fixing it by power's belching.
Not all, of course, but the fanon idea of tinkers as at least somewhat idiot-savants is wrong.
If tinkers really were, at least somehow, idiot savants, governments and corporations would buy out and hoard any tinkertech scrap they could. For a chance to glimpse something useful from it.
But typical tinkertech just doesn't work like that; there's almost always nothing to glean from a mix of fully ordinary and illogical parts.
Typically, but not always. With a kind of "gold rush" for exceptions to the rules. Like my case.
Fuck. Just why. Why don't I have fucking Chaos Gatcha?!'
Despite my lamentations, paranoia, fear of mistakes, my ample knowledge of science fiction and googling found such an appealing patch that, on Monday, I nonetheless planned to spend all points but two, and begin creating some really strange and absurdly dangerous for their price, things.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
Throughout the day, I also kept adding new features to my collection of scripts.
Creating something like a "non-canon sniffer." Algorithms that can scan news feeds for trigger words, cross-reference them, and visualize relationships like tag clouds and vector maps. Keeping me informed about local and global news, and allowing me to quickly find inconsistencies with canon.
My second programming project was still in its infancy - at the stage of studying local tablet architectures. Its main idea was to create a remotely controlled, encrypted information database for personal notes and for unreliable people on the other side of the Gates.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
By evening, I ran into a rather expected problem.
Of the 16 tasks I completed during the day, one took up about a quarter of my programming time. And with two others - over half!
Not because such tasks were difficult, not really.
"Mathematics I" and "Programming I" had turned me into a super junior-level programmer, capable of imitating mid-level programmers thanks to an unparalleled scope.
Essentially, into a master of workarounds.
But such workarounds only worked when I understood where I was and where I needed to go.
The absence of such landmarks forced me to waste an outrageous amount of time on searching info and creating crutches for crutches.
Such "Programming I" ceiling humbled my appetite for expensive tasks and inclined me toward something reliably manageable and with prospect of prolonged cooperation. One of which I already sorta had - a proposal from one of my clients regarding code refactoring, essentially a partial program rewrite.
With very nice money, but perhaps for the most arduous type of task available.
⸻⸻x⸻⸻
Aside from a talk with Madison, who agreed on Sunday's date, Friday passed rather uneventfully. So, I went to bed early again, with great anticipation for tomorrow’s exploration of Brockton Bay’s attractions, including Parian's performance.
Author's Note:
You can try to guess, propose, or order for a $50 commission, universes for MC to visit.
Fic named Inspired Planeswalking not without reason. I understand that many people don't like MC's passivity and introspection, but it's an important character introduction and development arc with only a few chapters left.
Thereafter... just for comparison:
Right now, MC requires somewhere $5,000 to open the gate in MAS*H universe, $15,000 to open the gate in the Alf. $50,000 for Game of Thrones, $200,000 for The Boys, $500,000 for Attack on Titan.
Sci-fi and strange shit like Dwarf Fortress cost in millions. Highest tier universes like High School DxD and Stellaris - in billions.
1 kg of gold costs somewhere $150,000 dollars.
1 kg of The Lord of the Rings Mithril and Marvel's Vibranium - $10 and $150 million.
So, very soon, the main problem with Gates would be space to host them all (disassembling destroys used material) and reasons to visit.