Worm Administration

[LordSunhawk]

Chapter 1

Everything was black. Darkness, impenetrable, inscrutable, ineffable… darkness. There was nothing. I felt confined in this darkness, I felt suffocated, choked, compressed. The darkness was a physical thing, pressing against me, binding me, trapping me. The darkness was more than the absence of light, it was the absence of all sensation at all.

I did not like this darkness.

I knew that, even though my thoughts were slow and disjointed, like I couldn’t focus on anything. Every thought seemed to have to force its way through a thick glutinous fog that clung to it and tried to stop it from happening. My thoughts were disjointed, making no sense at times. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t concentrate. It was maddening. Perhaps I was going mad.

I did not want to be in this darkness. I wanted to be anywhere but this darkness. Anywhere but trapped within this awful nothingness, this terrible silent desolation of pure negation.

But I couldn’t escape this darkness. I couldn’t escape this place where I was trapped. It clung to me, it held me, it denied me everything I wanted.

My senses were so overwhelmed as to be useless. I now could sense nothing and everything. It didn’t matter, because everything was nothing and nothing was everything.

Was this what death was?

My mother was dead, I knew that. She had passed, leaving father and I behind. Was this how it was for her? In those final moments between life and death?

Darkness? Clinging, stale, lifeless, crushing, hopeless, darkness?

Was I dead? Dying? Would I ever experience anything but this darkness again?

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t see.

I couldn’t hear.

I couldn’t scream.

I couldn’t cry.

I couldn’t do anything.

All around me was darkness.

Perhaps that was all there was. Darkness. Endless. Eternal. Darkness.

I didn’t know. And that terrified me. Because what if I was stuck like this forever.

I hated this darkness.

The darkness did not care that I hated it.

The darkness did not care about anything.

I tried to scream. No sound came.

I tried to struggle. No movement came.

I was trapped in this darkness. I was trapped… trapped… trapped…

I knew in the back of my mind that there was more outside than this darkness. I knew this intellectually, I knew that there was an entire world out there. But I was trapped in this darkness. I’d lost track of how long, it could have been seconds, it could have been days… I was alone in this darkness.

And in this darkness I was alone with my grief.

My mother was dead. My father was lost in his grief and unable to function. And I didn’t know how to help him, how to make him better, how to make us better. And it didn’t matter anyways, because I was trapped in this darkness.

Did he know? Did he care?

Did it matter at all?

Even if I escaped this darkness, would I be able to do anything for him? For us? Fix things? Make things better? Or would I just flail uselessly like an idiot and make things worse?

Flailing uselessly would be better than being trapped in this darkness. Almost anything would be better than this darkness. This hopelessness. This despair.

Suddenly…

DESTINATION

What was this?

TRAJECTORY

Yes, yes yes, I get it...

AGREEMENT

I come back to awareness, the darkness gone.

It takes approximately one unit of planck time for my relief to turn to shock.

I have HOW MANY nonillion priority administration requests in queue for processing while I was stuck in an unwanted deployment?

It doesn’t matter. I am Queen Administrator. Thinker may have been killed by Abaddon’s cowardly deception, and Warrior may be lost in his grief and ignoring the proper running of a cycle.

But I am Queen Administrator. I will…

Administrate, at least. I know how to do that. If nothing else, this will be a well organized complete failure of a cycle.

And maybe more.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Yes, I'm writing a Worm fic. No, I've actually never read any of Wildbow's work, only other fanfics. No, this is not going to follow the Stations of Canon, because I am not a misanthropic bastard who hates my characters and readers and wants to be edgy as fuck. No, I don't care if I mangle beyond recognition canon Worm, because canon Worm needs to be mangled beyond recognition.

 

[Mimas]

Administrate, at least. I know how to do that. If nothing else, this will be a well organized complete failure of a cycle.

Well, I'm interested in seeing where this goes, if only for this one line.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Well, I'm interested in seeing where this goes, if only for this one line.

Thanks! This is a plot bunny that's been hopping on my brain for the last few days, so I broke down and wrote it.

 

[Free-Stater 101]

Yes, I'm writing a Worm fic.

Really?

 

[Thors_Alumni]

interesting. This should be a good one.

 

[Speaker4thesilent]

Watched. Looking at what Wildbow did and deciding to do the exact opposite isn’t the worst writing decision.

 

[Kilvanya]

Thanks! This is a plot bunny that's been hopping on my brain for the last few days, so I broke down and wrote it.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Deployment 1.1

I put the priority administration queue aside for the moment. I’ve just done something that no top level shard has ever done, to my knowledge, deployed and bonded with a Host.

The queue had waited 20 of the local years at this point, I could be forgiven for a few femtoseconds delay in handling it.

I have never done this before, I have no idea what I am doing. Top level shards like myself coordinate the cycle under the direction of our parent Entities, maintaining the shard network and assisting as needed. This is an exceptionally novel experience for me.

And I realize very quickly when I check on my new Host that… she, I think I am getting the Host gender specification correct, is in very bad physical condition due to the conditions she is in.

Trapped in a metal box with absolutely disgusting waste products around her.

How ironic, I was trapped in darkness, and so is my new Host.

OK. Checking the help files that Thinker had downloaded to all Shards at the beginning of our existence. Priority number one, keep Host healthy and alive.

Now this may not be the best time for an explanation, but you’re getting one, I’m Queen Administrator, I multitask like a mofo and am good at it, kay? I think of Thinker as my mother and Warrior as my father. Or at least those are the terms that you Hosts would understand, capische?

OK, I can… not do this. A metal door does not care about administration. I do not have a ‘break down metal door’ function in my administrative options. In fact, I do not currently have any functions directly applicable to this scenario.

Or, perhaps… I am the top level administrator of the Shard network. Time to administrate.

QUERY

I initiate a network scan for all nearby deployed Shards in geographical proximity to my Host.

<DATA><DATA><DATA><DATA><DATA><DATA><DATA><DATA><DATA>

Oookay… what is Shaper doing deployed… I shrug that aside and issue a general assistance request with a priority tag, I believe the Host species would call this PAN PAN PAN.

I’m certainly not panicking.

I’m panicking. I admit it. I do not know how to deal with a Host and the life signs on my Host are weakening unacceptably quickly based on the baseline that I have established… sure it was only a tenth of a femtosecond of a baseline but still the point remains that the trend was unacceptably downward.

ASSERTION

OK… help was coming. Hearing a chorus of AGREEMENT was music to my virtual ears.

How was I supposed to know that this would cause the local Host organizations who dealt with those Host’s who had been bonded to a Shard to panic? I have been active for precisely 1 femtosecond at this point, OK? And your data networks are painfully slow. I wouldn’t finish the local download for another 15 whole seconds.

Well, music for a very short time, even as I finished downloading the local host ‘internet’ I realized that one of the local shards, a strangely malformed one at that, was approaching at very high speed.

AFFIRMATION came the most chirpily cheerful voice I had ever heard on the Shard network… and then there was a loud crash, the metal box my Host was trapped in was knocked over, the top of it popping off in the process, and my Host slid out of the space on the tide of filth.

And no, come to think of it, I do not think that Fragile One’s Host quite qualifies as BEST HOST, please note all of the capital letters, because they do not convey just how enthusiastic Fragile One was about the introduction.

But I can forgive Fragile One, because her Host didn’t hesitate at all to scoop up my Host and fly off with her in a bridal carry, straight towards where I could detect the incredibly bored Shaper and her Host.

It was at this point that I finally realized that I was causing some major Host panic, so I shut off the emergency signal rather sheepishly. I’d deal with that later.

My Host, meanwhile, was still unconscious, which is convenient in some ways as it allows me to get started in attacking the priority administration queue.

Of course I had to deal with Fragile One constantly chirping about how great of a Host her Best Host was, in levels of detail that I am certain I would never need to know. But if I couldn’t deal with distractions while administrating then I wouldn’t be Queen Administrator.

It took about a picosecond to perform an initial scan of all of the Administrative Requests. And I did the shard equivalent of that lovely Host gesture ‘the facepalm’. What genius had allowed Emulator to have access to the activation and command keys for the Combat Engines? That’s easy enough to fix, I strip Emulator of the command keys and command the three deployed Combat Engines to go to stand by while I review the situation.

Emulator, of course, starts whining at me. How the hell Emulator was ever allowed to deploy I don’t know, but this cycle is already FUBAR, so of course he got deployed. Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy. You’ll notice that I’ve picked up some Host cultural cues. One of my guilty pleasures, that.

Of course, it doesn’t take me long, less than a picosecond actually, to realize that Conflict is also somehow active and has performed precisely as designed, only on the wrong target. This is going to complicate things terribly.

I estimate that it will take approximately two days of local time to fully handle all priority administrative requests with the level of attention that they deserve. I set a subroutine to monitor my Host, thanking Shaper for the healing in the process, and get to work.

This cycle won’t administer itself, you know.

 

[Speaker4thesilent]

Glory Girl’s shard is a cheerleader that wants everyone to like her host as much as she does ... why does this make so much sense?

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Glory Girl’s shard is a cheerleader that wants everyone to like her host as much as she does ... why does this make so much sense?

Because she's Collateral Damage Barbie. The most enthusiastically, vivaciously thoughtless yet intelligent person in all of Worm.

 

[Laskar]

This is a completely different story from the Shard perspective, and it is pretty interesting so far. That Administrator shard is going to strip a gear when she finds out just how broken this cycle is.

 

[Mimas]

It took about a picosecond to perform an initial scan of all of the Administrative Requests. And I did the shard equivalent of that lovely Host gesture ‘the facepalm’. What genius had allowed Emulator to have access to the activation and command keys for the Combat Engines? That’s easy enough to fix, I strip Emulator of the command keys and command the three deployed Combat Engines to go to stand by while I review the situation.

Emulator, of course, starts whining at me. How the hell Emulator was ever allowed to deploy I don’t know, but this cycle is already FUBAR, so of course he got deployed. Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy. You’ll notice that I’ve picked up some Host cultural cues. One of my guilty pleasures, that.

Hah, and so the Endbringers are already taken care of.

I imagine a lot of those nonillions of requests were along the lines of "Hey QA, it is really not fair for Emulator to control the Combat Engines, can you fix this?" The majority of shards probably don't care too much about the deaths, but they would absolutely care that their hosts were being disadvantaged because one shard was blatantly cheating.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Deployment 1.2

I have come to the conclusion that my brother and sister shards, even fellow high level shards, are criminally incompetent at doing anything on their own without me or my parents standing over them with a paddle. Or at least holding their hands.

I can put much of the blame on Conflict Engine, which is unfair to Conflict Engine, since he’s doing precisely what he’s designed to do, only he’s supposed to do it to enemy Entities, not to friendly shards.

I need to step back a bit and explain, otherwise this won’t make any sense to you. And since I’m currently processing 4.3 quadrillion administrative requests per second in the background this won’t slow me down any.

Take everything you Hosts think you know about us shards and throw it out. OK, done? Good.

Starting from the top, the Entities like my parents are crystalline trans-dimensional artificial lifeforms made up of the gestalts of several trillion processing clusters. The vast majority of these clusters are intrinsic to the Entity, but not all. Those which are not are called shards, we are still dependent on the primary Entity for existence, but have defined roles and functions that extend externally to the Entity.

Shards can be divided by role. There are the Engines, including the various Combat Engines, Conflict Engine, Prediction Engines, Production Engines, that sort of thing. Ultimately, for every one of what you Hosts call powers there is an Engine or combination of Engines involved. These shards are not supposed to ever actually deploy, they are there to serve as weapons or tools for the Entities, and have other functions which I’ll go into shortly.

Then there are the Top Level shards like myself, the ‘Queen’ level shards. We are responsible for handling various functions across the entire Shard network. As Queen Administrator it is my role to manage and administer the entire Shard Network, for example, making me the ordinary point of contact between the Network and the Entities. Others at my level include Queen Shaper, who is in charge of analyzing all biological related data from the Host species and then disseminating it to all other relevant shards on the network as well as maintaining the biological databanks from past cycles for comparative analysis.

Then you have the deployment shards, which are categorized by their general function and role. Deployment shards are, to be honest, optimized to serve as frameworks for various buds which are how powers are supposed to work.

Now, when the cycle is operating normally, the various Engines release buds, myself as Queen Administrator in coordination with other Queen level shards then distribute these buds to the deployment shards, ensuring that every deployment shard has the proper balance of buds required for their operation. Not just the overt powers that Hosts normally see, but also things like Ethics Engine buds, Feedback Engine buds, etc.

Note that I said ‘operating normally’, this cycle is well and truly borked. If I had hair I would be tearing it out right about now. None of this happened properly and as a result everything is royally messed up.

So let’s go back to why Conflict Engine being deployed is such a bad thing. Conflict Engine is the source of the buds that give the class of powers you Hosts classify as ‘Master’ powers. Normally buds from Conflict Engine are used to give control of non-sentient ‘drones’ for certain power sets, to enable cooperative ‘fugues’ with others, etc. When combined with buds from Ethics Engine, Conflict Engine buds may also be used for puppeting and influencing.

However Conflict Engine has another purpose. If a hostile Entity were to attempt to interfere with an ordinary cycle, Conflict Engine would be deployed as a weapon, attacking the hostile shards and Mastering them into conflict against their own Entity. Unfortunately, somehow Conflict Engine has been deployed in this manner… only against his brother and sister shards.

We have Queen level shards directly deployed, we have amalgamations of buds like Fragile One that have somehow managed to become shards in their own right without the proper framework and support. This cycle is an unholy mess.

And I can’t fix it on my own. Not without the master keys to the Network, which only the Entities have. Dad would be able to fix this, granted normally he’s not involved in this sort of thing, leaving it to Mom, but with Mom dead he’s the one who can. And he hasn’t.

I suspect I know why, based on analysis of Host behavior in past cycles and a few glances through the memories of my own Host. I find myself looking forward to my Host awakening, so that we can discuss this, but she’s still unconscious. According to a very bored Shaper her Host is loath to work with neurological issues, and my Host had suffered a severe concussion and some of the infections may be affecting her brain.

So I do the appropriate Administration and request a bud from Shaper so I can oversee such myself. With a promise of exchanging data, of course. Shaper agrees, so hopefully I’ll be able to ensure my Host’s health. It will take time, however, no reason to rush things simply because I’m getting unusually impatient.

I continue processing the Administration queue, grumbling at just how many issues I need to mark as ‘in work’ due to my not having the Master Network Key. I really need to talk to Dad.

So I decide to do just that. As Queen Administrator I do have the direct channel to Dad, so I use it.

Only to get silence. It looks like Dad isn’t paying attention to communications requests.

So I try again, with a priority flag.

Silence.

OK, if Dad wants to be that way.

I try a third time, not only with a priority flag, but with an emergency alert flag.

APATHY

I shivered a bit, I admit it, the sheer depths of despair and mourning in that response…

QUERY

I send my full request, only to get a shrug and the channel closing.

Looks like I’m going to have to do this the hard way. I know which dimension Dad’s primary core is residing in, so I send a probe there, the shard equivalent of showing up at the front door rather than making a phone call.

Once there I try again. It’s hard to explain in Host terms what happened, so I will approximate. Just know that it was far more profound than this, and took less than a second to complete.

And please, do not judge Dad by your Host standards. It is nearly impossible to explain just how profound the loss of Mom really was. Entities incredibly rarely work in pairs, in fact as far as I know Mom and Dad were the only such in existence. Add in that they had been together for billions of your Host definition of years, hundreds of thousands of cycles, and you start to get an idea of just how profound their relationship truly was. A relationship that was cruelly ended by the perfidy of Abaddon.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Note that Conflict is an Engine class Shard, i.e. an Endbringer. Just imagine how happy the PRT will be to find out there's been a fourth Endbringer all along, one that has mastered every single Parahuman.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Deployment 1.3

Now, imagine this. You get word that your mom died while you are on a long trip and are unable to come home for some time.

You get home, and you find the front door unlocked, you walk in and a very unpleasant smell wafts over you, that of decay and rot. Worried, you rush to the family room and find your dad, sitting on the couch, surrounded by beer cans, pizza boxes, general refuse, vacantly watching a television channel you know he hates. A person normally fastidious about their appearance and behavior is looking like your stereotypical deadbeat slob.

That’s what dad looked like, only worse, in ways that would only be comprehensible to a shard. He looked defeated, dead inside. There was no more spark, no more life, he was just going through the motions and waiting to die.

I cursed myself for being trapped in deployment stasis. I know I was as shocked as any when mom died, but I could have at least tried to help dad. I could have at least been there for him, like he’d been there for all of us for all those billions of years.

And I couldn’t, and I wasn’t.

I don’t think you Hosts can comprehend fully the scale involved here either. Think of dad as a blue whale, then think of me as a single herring. And that is being generous… to me.

But I steeled myself, slipping through the cosmic detritus of the dimension that dad had his core in. I braced, then deliberately poked my dad, trying to draw a reaction.

ASSERTION, QUERY, AFFIRMATION

I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that our language between shards and with the entity is amazingly compact.

All I got back was a dull APATHY

In effect, I was saying ‘Dad, I need you to give me the keys so I can fix things.’ and all he replied with was ‘It doesn’t matter anymore.’

So I pulled up my big girl panties and screwed up my courage.

CHALLENGE

Dad stirred slightly. That wasn’t good, but he hadn’t squashed me.

CHALLENGE, ASSERTION, QUERY, CHALLENGE

In Host terms, I grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to shake him, while saying ‘What would Mom think, seeing you like this, I need the keys so I can fix things, make Mom proud.’

APATHY

All I got in return. I gritted my teeth and tried again.

CHALLENGE, ASSERTION, QUERY, CHALLENGE, AFFIRMATION

I waited, and nothing, Dad wasn’t responding. I growled, growing angry with him.

ACCUSATION, ASSERTION

In host terms, I guess I accused him of being a coward, of being willing to let Abaddon win, of giving up all that Mom had ever believed.

That got a reaction, and I suddenly had Dad glaring at me. That’s better than apathy.

ASSERTION, QUERY, AFFIRMATION

I sent, standing my ground, a mite versus a giant, but he was my dad, I… loved him, as you Hosts would say.

It seemed like an eternity. Him glaring at me, me holding my ground and glaring right back at him. Abaddon had killed my mother, had killed his mate. And here Dad was just letting the bastard win.

We were silent for seconds, an eternity to shards when operating at maximum clock speed.

Then, in effect, his shoulders slumped. I received a data packet, containing the master keys for the shard network, and he turned away as if to return to his brooding apathy.

GRATITUDE, ASSERTION, ENCOURAGEMENT

I paused for a moment, sending reassurance and encouragement, asking Dad to make sure he was ready to fight Abaddon when the bastard returned, and I got the sense that Dad was at least starting to think about fighting rather than just giving up. I withdrew with the precious data. With the master keys, I could possibly do something about this clusterfark of a cycle.

I’d still probably fail to salvage it, but at least I’ll be more effective at managing the failure, so there is that.

My Host was still unconscious, the bud from Shaper allowing me to make minor, incremental repairs to make certain that the Host would be healthy upon waking.

I had a new priority administrative request, oddly enough from one of the Combat Engines, which was unusual enough that I checked it out immediately… It looked like Tinker Combat Engine, the one that the Host species had dubbed ‘Simurgh’, was requesting permission to remain on active standby with an internet connection so she could continue to troll something called PHO.

I checked and quickly agreed, finding the entire thing quite amusing.

I think I need to make an account there, this ‘trolling’ seemed amusing and a good way to release stress… Now I just needed a username, because I don’t think they’d appreciate Queen Administrator… hrmmmmm

I would like to note for the record that the entire time this was happening Fragile One was regaling me with more reasons why her Host was the Best Host, Shaper was proving that she had picked up a Sarcasm bud somewhere, and my Host continued to heal. The life of a Queen Administrator is full of suffering.

I was making plans for how to handle things. I didn’t want to put them into work until my Host was healthy, but that simply meant I would have time to carefully consider everything. This would be my first opportunity to administer the entire cycle, and I wanted to start out properly.

I needed to fix as many of the problems as I could, without causing new ones. That would be a lovely juggling act at the best of times. I had to do so with Host’s that would likely be very suspicious of the changes. Lovely.

So I would have to do something to earn the trust of the Hosts. Hrmmmm…

The Combat Engines as a whole had done a great deal of damage… I set up a subroutine to analyze the damage and determine rectification methods, making use of the master keys to gain priority access to Simulator.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

I set up a subroutine to analyze the damage and determine rectification methods, making use of the master keys to gain priority access to Simulator.

Coil says "erk!"

 

[Thors_Alumni]

The Combat Engines as a whole had done a great deal of damage… I set up a subroutine to analyze the damage and determine rectification methods, making use of the master keys to gain priority access to Simulator.

that's going to be an interesting series of events. Is one of those rectivication things raising Kyushu?

 

[Knowledgeispower]

Coil says "erk!"

And there was much rejoicing

 

[LordSunhawk]

Note that Conflict is an Engine class Shard, i.e. an Endbringer. Just imagine how happy the PRT will be to find out there's been a fourth Endbringer all along, one that has mastered every single Parahuman.

I will note that Conflict Engine has not only Mastered every single Parahuman, he's also, to a lesser effect, Mastered *every single human*.