RTS System in the Apocalypse: New World

Kordula watched the terminal authenticate her, and a moment later the list of everything recovered through Secure Intake opened around her.

It was far more than the screen could hold. The information spilled out into her vision instead, and the System kept sorting it into groups as fast as it came, never once losing its order despite how much of it there was.

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[ Secure Intake — Source Index ]

[ Northern Ashington NPP ]

Recovered Media — VULCAN / DAEDALUS-AWP

[ Conservatory Park ]

Recovered Media — Botanical HELIX

[ Grefort SAS Directorate ]

Recovered Media — Oversight and Cross-Case Evidence

[ Grefort — Clinical Network ]

Recovered Media — Hospitals / Private Clinics

[ Grefort — University Research Annexes ]

Recovered Media / Laboratory Hardware

[ Ironford ]

Recovered Contractor Media / Cell Eleven Cross-References

[ Silverpeak ]

Samples / Recovered Media / Site Documentation

[ + 14 Additional Sources ]

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Much of the newer Grefort material had arrived while Hans was south, recovered by teams that kept working through the old Directorate leads.

Kordula opened the power plant’s records first, since they were the only ones she was familiar with.

She expected test logs, qualification sheets and the long, dull history of every part that had been run under reactor heat until it either survived or failed.

That wasn’t what the System gave her.

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[ Reconstructed Architectures — Northern Ashington NPP ]

[ 1 ] Fixed High-Energy Defensive Interception Emplacement

Status: Partial Architecture Restored

Contributing Sources:

Silverpeak — Bonded Conductor and Containment Laminates (See logs)

Northern Ashington NPP — High-Duty Power Delivery (See logs)

DAEDALUS-AWP — Threat Classification and Fire Control (See logs)

Missing Components: Emitter Assembly

[ 2 ] AWP Heavy Autonomous Security Platform

Status: Architecture Restored

Contributing Sources:

Northern Ashington NPP — ASS-116 Deployment Records (See logs)

Silverpeak — Articulated Frame Test Data (See logs)

Integrated Personnel — Kordula Weissenberg (See logs)

Missing Components: None

[ 3 ] High-Duty Pulsed Switching Module

Status: Architecture Restored

Contributing Sources:

Northern Ashington NPP — Switching and Load Qualification (See logs)

Silverpeak — Conductor Qualification (See logs)

Missing Components: None

[ 4 ] Thermal Debt Management Loop

Status: Reconstruction Blocked

Contributing Sources:

Northern Ashington NPP — Thermal Qualification (See logs)

Northeastern Alpine Site — Referenced Heat-Rejection Work (See logs)

Missing Components: Heat-Rejection Architecture

[ + 12 Additional Reconstructed Architectures ]

[ Note ]

Architecture [ 1 ] compensates for an absent source component. Compensation is inefficient.

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What she got instead was a list of everything the plant had been helping to build. Restored wasn’t the same as ready. The System had pieced the architecture together, but that didn’t mean the Tech Center could build it completely.

It needed someone to direct the re-construction process.

Some of it she recognized. Most of it she had never seen as a finished thing, only as parts that arrived, got tested and left again.

She opened the fire-control section and found her own program staring back at her. AWP’s threat-classification logic, the same lineage ASS-116 had been built on, sat at the center of it like it had always belonged there.

She had spent years believing AWP was a security program. It had been that too.

The note at the bottom bothered her more than the rest—an absent source component.

She read it again and couldn’t think of what that component would even be, or how anyone would know it was missing.

Kordula opened the thermal loop next. The reconstruction stopped halfway, and every missing piece pointed to the same place in the northeastern mountains.

”This should be the one for Pylow.”

She stayed on it for a while, but there was nothing more to read. Whatever the System needed was still sitting in the mountains, behind a door with a dim light above it.

She moved to the Directorate records instead.

They were larger than everything else combined, and she recognized what most of it was.

The SAS had vetted her once, years ago, and asked questions about people she had barely spoken to.

These were the same kind of files.

Personnel checks, audits, foreign-contact reports, purchases and invoices checked against what each laboratory claimed it was doing. The Directorate had kept a trail on every project it was allowed to watch.

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[ Cross-Reference Designations ]

[ DAEDALUS ]

Current Indexed Material — Full Access

Integrated Personnel Knowledge Incorporated

[ VULCAN ]

Current Indexed Material — Partial Access

[ HELIX ]

Current Indexed Material — Partial Access

Integrated Personnel Knowledge Incorporated

[ ORPHEUS ]

Oversight Records — Accessible

Technical Archive — Not Recovered

Probable Domain: Neural Signal / Cognitive Interface

[ MNEMOSYNE ]

Oversight Records — Accessible

Technical Archive — Not Recovered

Probable Domain: Memory / Identity Continuity

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DAEDALUS, VULCAN, and HELIX were three projects she knew, at least in name.

She opened DAEDALUS.

The first thing she found was her own work. Commissioning procedures she had written, the notes she had kept on ASS-116’s end-state problem, the arguments she had lost with people upstairs.

All of it was there, cleaner than she had ever written it, and linked to things she had never been allowed to see.

Then she found something she didn’t expect.

Years ago, she had been posted to AWP perimeter security for a field exercise outside Hawford. Whatever happened behind the barriers that week, she had never been allowed to look at.

She only remembered the ground crews, the sealed cases, and the fact that a building had stood where there had been an empty lot the day before.

The System had put a name on it—TETHER.

She opened HELIX after that.

The botanical records from Conservatory Park sat beside what looked like Tyrus’s own submissions, and the System had drawn lines from both of them into DAEDALUS containment hardware she recognized.

Tyrus’s own knowledge about HELIX was there as well, but most of the biology went past her. The engineering underneath it didn’t.

The last two designations she didn’t know at all.

The Directorate’s files on them held oversight records and receipts, but nothing about the work itself. What each project had actually done, she could only guess from what the System inferred.

When she opened ORPHEUS, an icon of a brain appeared first, countless links flowing out of it.

The label ORPHEUS sat below it.

The System’s own description then followed.

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[ ORPHEUS ]

[ Reconstruction Status ]

Inferred — Technical Archive Not Recovered

[ Inferred Purpose ]

Research into how cognition exchanges information with fields, machines and remote systems. Includes detection of cognitive-field activity, translation of human intent into machine control, return of machine state as usable perception, and protection against unwanted cognitive interaction.

[ Basis of Inference ]

Grefort SAS Directorate — Oversight Records (See logs)

Grefort — Clinical Network (See logs)

Grefort — University Research Annexes (See logs)

[ Recovered Project Designations ]

Field Sensing and Characterization

Neural Interface and Sensorimotor Mapping

Cognitive Isolation and Counter-Intrusion

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Three smaller projects sat inside. Every one of them was foreign to her, yet the words themselves weren’t.

She opened the second one.

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[ Neural Interface and Sensorimotor Mapping ]

[ Inferred Purpose ]

Translation of operator intent into machine movement. Artificial proprioception. Machine-state feedback returned to the operator as usable perception.

[ Confidence ]

Moderate

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Intent. Movement. Feedback.

She had spent half her career on those three words, handling AWP security platforms.

This was the same loop, only the controller at the other end was a person.

The System pulled up the photographs from Silverpeak beside it. The articulated frame, the reinforced joints, and the actuator housings sitting empty on both sides, built to take far more load than anything that size should ever need.

”All of those security bots... were they built on this too?”

As far as she could tell, ORPHEUS revolved around the mind and every possible way of putting it to use.

She wondered whether AWP’s autonomy had borrowed from ORPHEUS as well, but without the source material, the thought had nowhere to go.

She opened MNEMOSYNE instead.

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[ MNEMOSYNE ]

[ Reconstruction Status ]

Inferred — Technical Archive Not Recovered

[ Inferred Purpose ]

Research into memory integrity and identity continuity. Includes baseline testing, identity stabilization, recovery after severe cognitive or biological disruption, and continuity authentication for personnel with strategic access.

[ Restricted Applications ]

Indicated — Oversight Records Only

[ Basis of Inference ]

Grefort SAS Directorate — Oversight Records (See logs)

Grefort — Clinical Network (See logs)

[ Recovered Project Designations ]

Memory Integrity and Baseline Testing

Identity Stabilization and Recovery

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Kordula focused on the last recovered project designation—Identity Stabilization and Recovery.

According to the summary, part of the work grew around problems exposed by HELIX enhancement. Keeping the body alive didn’t always mean the person’s memory and identity came through cleanly.

Identity Stabilization and Recovery dealt with some of that aftermath, and parts of the work eventually filtered into ordinary healthcare.

”No wonder stroke and amnesia patients recovered faster back then. Was it because of this?”

As she scrolled further, it became uglier. It hadn’t only been used on patients who couldn’t hold their minds together. It had been used on spies as well.

Before she could scroll any further, a voice called out behind her.

”Found something interesting, Overseer?”