Embers After Flames, Chapter 6.0 (Patreon)

6.0

+++

October 10, 30 years post Fires of IBIS.

+++

Flatwell and I had been working together for the better part of six years, now. Strange to think of how quickly that time had passed, to be honest. Perhaps it was because I was always busy...

Well, regardless of that, the point I was actually getting at was that our partnership had been a mutual thing. A surface level look might make it seem unfair, considering that the RLF benefited from significantly more material support, but that wasn’t actually the truth. A good eighty percent of the shit that I pulled off only came about because I had access to the RLF’s intelligence and contacts, and most everything we did ultimately benefited us both, because the truth was, we had effectively the same end goal in our objectives.

It had, as such, always been in our interests to ensure that the RLF was well equipped. Unfortunately, equipment didn’t manifest from thin air, and neither did the training and the expertise to wield that equipment. This was further complicated by the fact that the PCA was not especially keen on the idea that the RLF should be allowed anything good in their lives.

As such, we had to be careful. Make slow steps. Build up over time, over a decent array of space, so that a PCA strike can’t end an entire program in a single action.

Still, we’d done so. Difficulty aside, it did have to be done, after all.

All the preparations we’d been making had started to add up. All the seeds we’d planted were truly beginning to bloom.

The first and most obvious thing had been from the vacuum chambers I’d supplied, giving Flatwell the critical boost in Coral production the RLF had needed to stay above water while the PCA had been shooting holes in the boat. With that, they’d been able to keep consistent food production going, in turn keeping up higher levels of morale and support. The knock on effects in medicine and material production had arrested the slow death spiral they’d been previously trapped in.

Things had just... kept going, from there. A little bit of tech, here and there. Some intel, some assaults, some minor interventions... Dolmayan’s upgrade to C5 Augmentations might have been the next biggest thing I’d done for the RLF, if only because I’d taken an already concerningly dangerous man and made him more dangerous and more fulfilled as a person. 

‘Absolved him of his sins’, as he’d once put it.

Not having to Dose up on Coral in order to hear Seria’s voice did him well. I was glad for it on its own, but it made Seria especially happy, and my daughter’s genuine joy made it all the sweeter.

And of course, since the RLF was half held together by Dolmayan’s force of personality, that certainly helped things out there.

The additional updates to his AC certainly didn’t hurt either.

Aside from that, though?

Well, the new greatest thing for the RLF that I was providing them again helped the both of us.

It had been about four years since the Firekeepers had come into existence. I had updated their arms and arsenals as time had gone by, done the full expansion of new Frames -which, as predicted, they had very much enjoyed-, but the program wasn’t over yet.

Far from it.

When you get down to it, the whole point of the Firekeepers is to explore symbiosis between Coral and Humanity. The fact that I was making ACs and weapons and other things was just a side effect of the environment the project was born in. If I wanted to make weapons solely to be weapons, I had the entirety of the Institute’s technical specs floating around my mind. Producing C-Weapons wasn’t difficult aside from the fact that most of them were bigger than the average AC.

But a horde of C-Weapons wasn’t going to bring symbiosis forwards. The Firekeepers? They would. All of them were Humans with personal ties to Rubicon, to the RLF, to the ideal. They weren’t just subordinates, either. Myself and my children had built long, lasting friendships with them, offering support and being supported in turn. Under that notion, the Firekeeper program was a resounding success.

But the Firekeepers were only twenty members strong, and there was quite a ways to go from there.

And, unfortunately, as effective as C5 augmentations had proven to be so far, each of the Firekeepers was effectively a bespoke project, watched and nurtured closely, with myself ready to intervene at the first sign of anything going wrong.

That was not going to keep working as the numbers grew, however. My attention and consciousness was vast, but not actually limitless. If the end goal for symbiosis was to allow anyone who wished to participate the ability to participate, then it couldn’t be just me and my children.

And, since the RLF also needed to get their hands on augmentation procedures that were safer and more reliable than the piles of junk that were generations one through four, then I may as well kill two birds with one stone.

I had started working on the next generation of Coral Augmentations quite some time ago, now. C5 Augmentations had turned out about as well as I could have hoped, and again, the only real problem I had with them was the actual implementation.

As such, that’s mostly what I’d focused on for Generation Six.

It had not been easy, unfortunately. Even with access to a much greater array of data than Generation Five, both from the biological observations acquired from the Firekeepers and the non-Coral based augmentation generation seven that Flatwell had gotten me, I had still been designing a procedure that was intended for usage by the RLF, a significantly less capable faction than I myself was. 

That... definitely complicated matters a lot more than they truly needed to be. Anybody else would have been able to employ medical nanotechnology monitored by fully trained technicians at all times without worry, but the RLF didn’t really have that privilege. They could make and program medical grade nanotech, yes, but that was a fairly intensive effort that required some specialized facilities. 

Unfortunately, it was rather necessary. Considering the degree of alterations that took place in C5 augmentations as well as the precision required, nanotech was about the only way to do it reliably. Trying to employ normal surgical procedures could only end in disaster.

So, nanotech was the only reasonable option, but on top of that, I couldn’t rely on whoever was administering the procedure to be completely knowledgeable, to have the full amount of necessary resources, or even to be able to ensure that the process wouldn’t be interrupted at any time for any length of time.

Given that, there was a lot of ragnarok proofing that I had to do. I needed some very thoroughly programmed nanotechnology here. It would have to independently assess the status of a person, identify any potential problems, analyze their bodies, determine the appropriate procedure forwards, and then actually implement it all safely.

It had been quite a fucking nightmare, that’s for sure. Generation Five had been finished from the start in a few months. Generation Six had reached over a year before I’d even gotten to the point of practical testing rather than simulations. Those first few blank flash clones... Well. Science was a process, and you learn more from your failures than your successes.

Of course, the only reason I had this much success in the first place was because it happened to employ Coral. Mixing nanotechnology with Coral significantly reduced most of the problems faced by nanotech outside of laboratory conditions. I could offload the processing, communication, and energy requirements to the Coral, which saved so much effort, and so much more error checking problems that normally arose from swarm computing. About the only thing that needed to be on the nanotech was the programming itself, the hard data and information that they’d be building from.

By the time that I’d reached the point that C6 Augmentations were acceptable by my standards, the process had almost nothing in common with the normal augmentation procedures. Where any of the other generations would have involved numerous long and involved surgeries, cybernetic additions, and more, C6 was very straightforward in comparison.

C6 started quite simply. 

First; the manufacture of specialized nanomachines which, despite what the term ‘specialized’ would typically imply, were actually less complicated than the normal ones. That was a very deliberate effort, to save the RLF some time and effort.

Second; flash the nanotech with the programming they’d need, and then put it in a vial and add some Coral to that vial. Wait about an hour or so for the nanotech to properly interface with the Coral, and run the tests to make sure everything returns greens. If it is all green, dump the vial into a slurry of materials and wait for the nanites to proliferate. 

Third: After a day or so, they’ll have finished gathering the necessary materials from the slurry. Here’s where it’s possible to send commands to the nanotech, and it becomes possible to direct it to create the injection canisters for the C6 augmentation process. In the event of breakage or larger numbers, it was possible to set stage two to only produce one of any of the set, or to keep proliferating beyond a single batch. Either way, you’ll have the results.

Fourth: You’ve got the injections. It’s time to start using them. Getting a doctor and/or trained technician is particularly helpful here, because the amount of time it takes to see results depends entirely on where and how the nanotech is injected. Best results vary from stage to stage, but so long as it’s going into a vein, it’ll eventually get the job done. Wait a bit and eat well for each injection, because you’re going to be pretty hungry while the nanotech is going to work.

There was very little actual work involved in the entire process. A lot of time spent waiting, yes, but that’s pretty important since the slow, gradual changes are a hell of a lot more stable than some of the quicker augmentation procedures. Since the entire thing was split up into stages, there it was possible to halt in the middle, or do it all in a row. It was stable at the end of each stage, so it wasn’t as much of a problem if there were interruptions.

Each stage did roughly mimic the process that the Firekeepers had gone through, though. Stage one was for preparations, producing few actual augmentations. Mostly just the alterations required to prepare the body for accepting and incorporating foreign material. It was the stage where it was most likely that problems would appear, so if you got through that you’d probably be fine.

The second stage was cleanup, and the third was where the actual proper integration would begin. Of course, where C5 would only now begin to introduce Coral, C6 would have it present from the very start, so it was more like properly making actual use of it rather than just the nanotech. Stage three didn’t go quite as far as the C5 augments did, though. It stopped before doing a full brain integration, something that would leave anybody at this stage with heightened reflexes and mental abilities, but not the ability to actually engage in Contact. 

Stage four was all about bringing the rest of the body up to the point that it could handle the strain of piloting the modern war machines. It was the most intense part of the C6 procedure, and it honestly wasn’t necessary if you didn’t intend to pilot an AC or similar machine. Stopping before now would still leave you a significantly more capable pilot with reaction speeds and accuracy far exceeding normal Human beings.

Stage five was the final stage, and the ultimate secret sauce. Its only purpose was to complete the full Coral-brain integration, making Contact with Coral Minds possible. That last one... probably wasn’t going to see much actual use, admittedly. Not right now, not when we were still one of the better kept secrets on this planet. In time, who knows, but not right now.

The best part of C6?

It was backwards compatible.

As part of all the safety measures and overengineered programming, it had the ability to take into account pre-existing augmentations. It wouldn’t try to overwrite what already existed. I’d applied it to my Firekeepers when I’d been confident in its success, and now their performance profiles had all gone up another three or four percent.

Flatwell had been pleased as punch to see C6 when I presented it to him, especially since it came just in time for his AC pilot crash training program to start bearing fruit. He planned on starting slow, with a few recipients, before increasing production and rolling out stage three of C6 to the more capable of the RLF’s MT pilots.

Eventually, he himself would likely upgrade, since it wouldn’t keep him down for a single long period of time. That would undoubtedly be a while off, though.

His choice, really.

Either way, I’ve got some new things of my own to do.