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CogX

Masks: Heartland Justice, 2024-10-24

ticking clock

AEGIS HQ was swirling with activity. The Rajesh incident, of course, stirred the hive. But even more, tomorrow Operation Rock-'n'-Roll would launch. Heartland Justice--poster children of AEGIS's "you'll be safe even with almost all of the Exemplars gone" PR campaign since they saved the mayor--were to be featured at the launch ceremony.

In the meantime, looking for help cracking their stolen computers, Blink Lightning, el Luchador, and the Glint found Void in AEGIS HQ. They thought his ooze interface could help.

ooze pool

They found Void at the center of a room surrounded by computer, power, and monitoring equipment, happily sloughing off ooze from his body into a shallow pool. Wires ran to and from the ooze pool. Around Void, scientist and lab assistants, computer technicians, a suit worked. Void was delighted to see the heroes, his best friends in this world.

While the others talked with Void, the Glint stuck his finger in the ooze pool. He had a sensation, just like when he nearly drowned in the river, except slower and with color instead of darkness closing in on his vision.

Void thought his ooze couldn't help, but Tyson, a computer tech working on this project, could. The heroes made plans to meet up with Tyson and Void after the testing shift was over at O'Sullivans, the not-so-Irish pub.

Phase Zero

Beneath O'Sullivans, in the Lightning family safehouse, Tyson cracked the desktop from from SkumTech's Architecture & Design department. Data for the smart home project filled a whole terabyte, most of which was a mysterious executable file. Something that linked with SkumAI servers was all Tyson could tell. Meanwhile, the heroes backed up the other data, including sewer, water, and electricity plans that seemed to confirm the future park as the dig site for the ancient artifact Patton seeks as "Phase Zero."

On the executive's laptop, Tyson found the mysterious SkumAI executable file too. Then, both computers pinged with notifications: on both, an email thread with subject line "re: re: re: Phase Z..."

The heroes resolved to open those messages and execute that file at Abed's mosque. Before doing so, Abed learned from his imam that the mosque rents from Serrano Investments, which Diego recognized as a PDG shell company.

Then they took the train to a nearby stop and walked a short distance the mosque. It was late, roughly 10pm on a Thursday night. The mosque was closed. The strip mall across the street was quiet. In the mosque parking lot, they started connecting the SkumTech laptop to the mosque's wifi.

flashback: pinky in the ooze

While eating and drinking at O'Sullivans, before Tyson hacked the computers, Abed stuck his pinky in Void's ooze. It happened again, like in the river, but this time he let it go on longer, to see if the colors resolved into an image. But Abed took a powerful psychic blow and lost control of his powers in a terrible way. None of his companions noticed anything more than Abed zoning out for a bit, but Abed could feel another consciousness taking control of him and revising reality, as he had done done before after the Vision Pros fight went so wrong.

Abed knew this consciousness was at work in the river the first time at St. Patrick's Day, either revising him into reality or revising his reality to give him his powers. Whether Void was aware of this Master Consciousness, Abed could not tell.

flash forward: big dig

The heroes took the train but couldn't get off at the stop nearest the mosque because of some construction project. They walked a long way past a dig site. Across the street from the mosque, the strip mall was gone. A city-block-sized hole had been excavated. But there were no trucks or equipment. Other than dig debris and sections staked out, the hole was empty.

Abed experienced a double memory: of the dig and of no dig. The dig is what the Master Consciousness had revised into reality.

They brought the laptop into the bottom of the dig site, and as the laptop connected to the mosque wifi, Diego stumbled on an ancient spearhead--which he recognized, thanks to his obsessive research, as Potawatomi, linked to the native burial site where Patton seeks the artifact.

They opened the email. At the end of a mundane thread between a suit and an underling about zoning and permits, were new messages:

• "i found you"
• "i can see you"
• "answer me"
• "i can wait"

They responded to the sender via email: "What are you waiting for?" Then they launched the SkumAI executable.

CogX

The webcam light on the laptop lit beneath the sticky note Diego had stuck there to block it. The screen filled with ASCII art:
Above a blinking cursor, it said, introduce yourself

> Spearhead. They typed.
> hello, Spearhead. i am waiting for you. It answered.
> Why are you waiting for me? They asked.
> i will be there in 15
> 15 what?
> minutes
> Who are you? They asked it.

And slowly ASCII art began to fill the screen, line by line. After about a minute, a head was clear, like an android. Then another minute and a torso.

Miles said, "'Fifteen minutes' was probably a lie." The heroes left the laptop in the dig site and scrambled for cover just in time to watch a chrome machine man like a Cylon drop out of the sky and crush the laptop. It stood from one knee and a fist on the ground and began scanning the surroundings with bright machine eyes. CogX.

Abed was recording this on his cell, and the machine locked onto him and started to approach him. "Engaging phase two protocol," CogX said in its robot voice. Abed created a construct copy of the machine man. CogX took a swing at it. Abed animated his construct and it dodged. When CogX seized it by the throat and was about to deal a killing blow, el Luchador intervened to protect it. CogX smiled an LED smile.

At super speed, Blink threw rocks at CogX's eyes, blinding it. "Leon said you were a formidable threat," it said.

Then the Glint's construct bear-hugged CogX and the Glint used his last burn to create a barrier, a containment cylinder of light, that CogX immediately started battering. It wouldn't hold for long.

El Luchador mustered all he had to end CogX and the fight. He did but also seriously damaged the mosque.

Wrecked CogX said, "Back up initiated." And Blink super-ran the mangled machine man far outside the city and left it. While Abed called Agent Rayburn. The call went to voicemail.

fin

• Feeling guilty, Diego spent his family's next rent payment to make a donation to the mosque.
• Diego was also angry that he couldn't do anything good without something bad happening too. Abed said, "At least you didn't kill any kids this time." And it worked! Diego was comforted.
• Abed was feeling hopeless since the Master Consciousness used him to revise reality. Miles stopped him before Abed went to fling himself into easy relief and ooze-meld with Void. Miles talked him down and said AEGIS and/or Void needed to be warned about his ooze.