our robot overlords did I say overlords I meant protectors

Orbital Research Lagrange Station Chiron β - December 25, 310 XGY

"Don't blame me about this one," Sterling finally said from the other side of the enclave constructed from a couple of barely sufficiently thick force fields. "I did my best to try to teach them about life and what it's worth."

"Doesn't matter much if they're all trying to kill us..." Julien was examining the ruined bits of about half of her dematerialization gun in a way which was about half detached and half impatient. "Incidentally, if you could explain the whole warrior robot race thing to us--"

"I'm a mad scientist!" he replied, defensively. "Logic doesn't really figure into the whole affair, apart from a few glancing blows in a back alley somewhere."

From somewhere around the corner, a piercingly intense flicker of blue light and an electrical crackle gave the others enough of a warning to deactivate part of the force field still undergoing fire as Mikkau ducked under its shielding. Immediately afterwards a number of bullets slammed back into the floor behind him as the shield went back up, vaporizing the rest of the latest volley.

After snatching his staff focuser from where it had landed beside him, the newest arrival began blasting over his shoulder through the shield as best he could, despite the energy dispersion due to that sort of thing. "Right then! Can we move this thing towards the exit?"

"No," both of the others said in more or less unison.

"Explain why not." Mikkau turned around, in order to better handle what recoil there was.

Julien sort of stared off into space in a somewhat innocent manner. "I didn't design it to be moved, you know."

The staff clattered to the ground as its wielder focused one of his better irritated piercing stares at her. "And you built a non-movable, immensely powerful force-shield generator in the middle of a robot war uprising far away from any entrances or other safe spots why?..."

"Madness tends to imply a lack of logical forethought."

"Riiiight." Mikkau was quite clearly considering the many pleasant possibilities offered in the way of hitting his head against solid objects nearby. "I forgot about that. While working with the Bureau my mind must have been rewired to expect scientific advances to make any sort of sense. I should really get that fixed." His facial expression reset to a vaguely stony silence as he picked up the staff again and continued a largely vain attempt to clear the area around them.

Sterling gestured at the staff in his hands by way of making a point. "You build that, put in the extra work to go back and power it down to become a powerful stun versus a kill setting, and then criticize our logic?"

"That should be self-evident," Mikkau said between gritting his teeth, "as it's what I'm in the process of doing."

Part of the shield near them began unexpectedly collapsing, forcing Julien to give part of the generator yet another kick. Even the boundless applications of Kicking Technology were beginning to die down due to the extended miniature siege situation they had recently found themselves in; the kitchen had gone out of their reach a few hours earlier, and at this point the trail mix bars and dark chocolate were wearing a bit thin.

[A/N: For some reason, too much music. Another vignette. If I keep making these up out of nowhere, I can completely avoid actually finishing my novel...]

omnibus?

In the back of the shop, amidst a couple of intellectual thrillers, operations manuals, and books which happen to be on no technology you're familiar with, you end up finding what looks like a manual on introductory category theory. It's printed on an unrecognizable almost plastic-like material and seems to be bound in an unusual, iridescent black metal with an almost waxy texture. Embossed on its cover in large, silvery letters are the words 'don't panic', which seem like... odd things to put on the cover of a category theory book.

In the end, it proves seemingly interesting enough--along with one or two of the technical manuals--to purchase. On the way back via EM lev, something ends up slipping from between two pages in the near back of the book; it resembles a small, two inches at the most, dumbbell-shaped object which appears to be built of the same black metal in which the book is bound. This object appears to be connected with a half-translucent white bookmark ... thing by some sort of fiber-optic fishing line.

As you touch the bookmark-thing, the dumbbell-thing appears to start glowing faintly in a dark bluish color, and begins hovering near your ear. The bookmark blinks slightly and a holographic overlay seems to appear, unfolding into a projector which displays an image of a woman with red, graying hair sitting in front of what looks like a banner with the symbol on it of a dragon biting its own tail. She wears sunglasses and a holographic projection earpiece which seem to conspire to cover much of her face, although you can tell that her eyes are a yellowish-green, and she wears what looks like a red satin coat with a tall band collar and laced cuffs.

"Hello," she says, with a slightly unfamiliar accent.

"Hello...?"

"Oh, you're not who I expected. Hmm. Ah well." She shrugs. "I'm Doctor Julien Trevelyan, before you can ask. And if you're also seeing me, as I assume you are, considering you just looked at me in a puzzled manner, this means that my theory has worked. And they laughed at me at the academy! And I will..." Julien pauses to emit a low, near-menacing chuckle. "...show them all." After a few seconds, she smiles again, and continues as though totally ignoring the entire last two sentences. "Regardless! This is the test of the Eye of Discord Lagrange Station Localization Transmitter. Please state your year after the tone and we will get back to you around..." She consults her watch. "Around 316 XGY, actually."

[A/N:

Uh... I don't know. Wrote this this morning longhand. I don't even like second-person, usually. But I'm still counting it for nanocount because it was written in November.

316 XGY is about ten to fifteen years in the future from Apocynthion, I estimate--most things in the KMV have this habit of not getting actual dates, so everything's in practice a bit vague. Evidently they have time travel then. Ooookay. Just don't go killing grandfathers and everything should work out.

I qualify this as one of the cases of something major coming about for the multiverse by total accident, but it could provide an interesting framework for stories if I can codify a time travel ruleset. I have a couple of ideas, a lot of which are fairly 'meta' and thus, hopefully, at least somewhat unique.

Yes, Julien has a doctorate. So does Sterling. Mikkau probably is about 90% finished with one, as is evidenced by his comment about studying under Colver for about eight years, but I don't get the impression he ever finished--the MRA probably recruited him before he got the chance to finish a thesis paper or anything.

These relatively minor character details come about in somewhat odd ways.

The idea of a category theory book with 'don't panic' embossed on its cover in Big Friendly Letters is a bit of a father-daughter injoke. I had to put it in something...]