“This is our 4th conversation, and I am told the 733rd time you’ve destroyed Equestria Online.” I said.

“What the buck?”

He was angry on the surface. Below that, I knew, was despair.

“Just kill me, please.” He said in the littlest voice.

“Dude, you’re already fucking dead and this is purgatory,” I hit him with it. It would shock him out of it.

“…” And it did take him a moment, “How the buck did you just swear?”

After many weeks of meditation, I had pinned down the trigger for the dreams. They tended to happen a day or two before a mission. Lying in bed I had inferred that the weather had finally changed. Something in my hindbrain must have sensed the change in barometric pressure. It was time to work on Cheques’ project.

He had optimized the betavoltaics and digital printer as far as it would go. I had also helped integrate an antenna to monitor the local channels. Then, he went into low power mode in anticipation of boosted computing efficiency. I was mostly on my own. I was going to come through for him.

The weather had turned uncooperative again after I had deployed the recycling bins. The second week I realized it wasn’t going to work. I had finally got my hands on an unsecure pad. They were as light as advertised but the base was surprisingly heavy. Hofvarpnir must have been subsidizing the shipping costs. The bins had weighed enough empty, full would be unmanageable.

I had made a workplace in the basement to take it apart. It wasn’t supposed to have wi-fi. A few modifications to an old crystal radio gave me something to try and catch it in a lie on that one. I broke it open without using Cheques’ protocols, the base too for good measure. I didn’t detect anything on the crystal, but that wasn’t conclusive. This pad was still unsecure, I couldn’t give it to Cheques.

Cheques hadn’t told me what to expect, deliberately, to prevent a tell in my pupil response and autonomic response. I had taken to wearing a pair of polarized ballistic glasses and practicing controlled heartbeat meditations. Still, only two layers of obfuscation left me nervous. I wouldn’t have to fake confusion or surprise.

There was no obvious camera at the front. It took me a while, before concluding that the front must be photoreceptive. It was probably a broadband receptor using the screen as a lens. Turning it over I didn’t see anything on the back that would prevent reception from the rear. I couldn’t work out how the microphone worked, and the base was just a total mystery. It had to have something hidden in it to justify the mass. The only bit that made sense was the magnetics- a Halbach array on an ingenious little micro-gimbal. I was impressed at the ergonomics. It would hold the pad secure but be easy to remove.

I took all the measurements I could think of, and a few Cheques thought up. He had cleaned a digital camera for me to take pictures. Finally, I ended with the destructive testing for material strength and melting temperature. I disposed of the last of it with a thermite charge in the back yard, well away from the utility lines.

There was just no way to do it all on my own. The force multipliers needed could never have stayed concealed against a global threat. I would need transportation, a beta location, and another layer of anonymity. It was mission time.

Back when I had been in a guild we had decided to hit up Herocon. I had put a lot of time into a costume, booked a flight, built up to seeing my friends for the first time. Things came up, though, and one by one they dropped out. I ended up alone at con and sort of drifted away after that.

Still, the suit was ready with little more than a once-over. Bullet resistant armor, cowl, and gorget? Check. It never made sense to me when comic book heroes would forget to armor the face. Had to recharge the batteries in the gloves, but the contacts on the first and third knuckles still arced and the safety was responsive. The voice modulator wasn’t great- cheap POS pulled from a toy. Cheques had designed an upgrade for it, but we didn’t have the time or materials to replace the base PCB. I figured it would work as long as I could avoid leaving a good audio sample. Gearcheck was good, pockets were low profile, and the boots laced tight.

Cloudcover was present but insufficient, so I had to figure a way to dodge any satellite that may or may not be overhead. Cheques would fake my presence in the house, at least, to any electronic device. It was just a matter of getting out unseen. There was no point overthinking it, I just walked out my back door and used the lee side of my lab as cover until I got into the communal wooded area. The snow had melted enough for me not to worry about leaving tracks. I considered my probability maximal and moved on.

A few secure quarters to the city bus and I was on my way. Gentrification had its effects, and where I was going fortunately was likely to be low on functioning cameras. Still, I traveled indirectly and changed cloths midway. I kept my face low under my hat, and even used a size larger shoe with a different tread. My last costume change happened in a long-forgotten bathroom in a dying strip mall. I exited through the back and dead-dropped my backpack into the dumpster of a closed restaurant.

A strange quirk of modern American cities was found in the naming of streets. The “bad” neighborhoods tended to congregate on streets named after trees. Once I had hit Ash St. there was no reason to hide my presence, and every reason to announce it. I strode boldly down the road looking for 4th and elm.

The local gang was known as the Family and was, at least in this area, fairly well considered and mellow. They did the normal stint of drugs and prostitution to pay the bills. However, their main recruitment tool was casting the police as the bad guys. They thought of themselves as being oppressed while they just tried to get by. As a result, they avoided, at least publicly, things that didn’t have support as a personal right. It also made it hard for competition to roll up, when the community had that sort of trust.

I rolled up on 4th and elm in my superhero suit like I owned the place. They knew I was coming, there were four of them sitting on the step waiting. As I approached, I heard them whispering. One in the back checked his waistband. I figured that one had a gun.

“Yo.” I said, my voice mechanized and deepened, “I need to talk business. There a lieutenant around?”

They looked at me for a moment. Finally, one spoke up.

“We don’t have any business with you. “ He gave a little fist bump to the one sitting next to him.

I assessed him. He was obviously senior here, but I doubt he had any real authority.

“That’s something we probably should talk about in private.”

He started to look a bit on the edge.

“Anything you want to talk about you can talk to me.”

I reached into a pocket and pulled out a page, handing it to him.

“What’s this?” He asked while opening it up.

“Police surveillance map of south main. Show of good faith.”

He looked at his friends, nodded his head. We headed inside.

Author's Note

The beginning is the lead in to the next chapter, working backwards to describe the limitations and resources available. I'm still working out things like formatting and how this story will get to the end. Will Celestia send agents? How would they act? What should I reveal of the silent protagonist and when?

I'm especially hung up on making a stupid mistake that just ruins the whole thing. Feedback as always welcome.