Anna Murphy generally preferred the sedate pace that things seemed to naturally take at Teddy's warehouse to most of the other places she, as a technician, could have worked. Teddy, after all, took on the real burdens himself, and as a result, she could just do as she was told, usually a little slowly, and receive her pay at the end of the day. Where other technical jobs she could get were either maintenance or sales, this was just... more like a protracted funeral. Picking up the pieces of the past so that people could move on.

Comparing it in her mind to a sales job, she couldn't imagine leaving. Salesmen were always trying to look special. They thought the best way to become known was to become a character, a caricature. They put aside anything that might jeopardize sales and became the sale itself. Teddy... even when he was selling goods, it was an honest, somber affair. The truth was laid out, and it was usually enough on its own. When the truth wasn't enough... the thing wasn't sold. And sometimes the truth wasn't enough. There were racks of equipment stored here that none of the techs understood, and that made it hard to sell.

It didn't surprise Anna that this Archon woman knew a bit more than she did, nor did it surprise her that she still didn't understand most of what was stored in the back. But it was a little amazing that as Elaine poured over some of the diagrams Anna, Jim, and Teddy had made, she seemed to at least understand the point of the systems.

"I see what you were thinking," said Elaine as she gave a soft backhand slap to the life-sized piece of paper attached to the wall, depicting a 1/2 scale representation of a server farm attached to a set of ansibles. "But if these were 'blue' ansibles, as you have them marked, they weren't used for standard object motion stuff. Blue ansibles aren't the right kind to apply force to a larger object; they're for adjusting chemical structures. With how many data stores you have here, I'd say this was part of the system for rebuilding wounded Archons. Not the head, I think. I'd expect a whole set of racks just for backing up archon brains."

"Yeah," said Teddy with a dismissive handwave, "we saw those racks, and we figured it had to be something along those lines. But tracking the whole body, piece by piece, you think this is enough for that?"

"Oh... sure. As long as they have a template and stick to it, which is probably how they kept us forever young and healthy. I know people did tests, and Archons aren't like human bodies in most respects. The... normal human bodies have some kind of ecosystem... bacteria and other symbiotic life forms." Elaine sat on a stool facing the other three while another of her sat next to them, head propped up by her hands, studying the diagram along with them. "Big D just kind of emulated most of that stuff. Apparently the first few generations of Archons were pretty messed up biologically, but by my time it was working okay."

"Let me back up a second," said Jim slowly. "So based on what you said earlier, and we had just been guessing this before, but... you can have your brain destroyed, as an Archon, and survive?"

"Oh, sure." Elaine waved that off flippantly. "There's a whole sliding scale of damage for Archons, one that comes down as much to morale as anything. If you actively want to die it takes less to kill you than it would a comparable human. While you are in good spirits, you can come back from almost nothing. But... damage to your body affects your mind, and obviously brain damage and other major injuries do this more than flesh wounds. When your mind gives up, that's it. You're gone. It's actually..." she paused. "When you watch an Archon die... it feels... weirdly natural. Like at the moment they die, you know they accepted it. A lot of humans die unwilling to accept death, but it comes anyway. You can die regretting what you did, but Archons know... that their time has come. Because if they didn't know that, if they didn't accept it, they would still be hanging on to life."

"Obviously there's something else to it, though," opined Anna, cautiously. As curious as she was, this conversation was moving a little fast for, and she felt anxious speaking up without an appropriate period of silence. She blundered on anyway, not making eye contact with Elaine or anyone else, "since Archons died all the time. I'm sure most of 'em wanted to live in spite of their wounds."

"Oh, sure. Nobody's really happy to die. But, there's this whole feedback loop to it. Few Archons die in a single shot unless they're already on the way out. You end up in combat with people that will keep hurting you until you are willing to die, and if you aren't going to regenerate fast enough to put up a fight, you're left with this whole eternity of torture versus death thing." The Elaine that was facing the others gave a brief grin. "I cheated death a lot because I have multiple bodies, but even Duplicants like me bite the dust. You have a kind of resource limit, like food and water except it comes back on its own. Run out of power and you're helpless for a while. So I regenerate bodies after they die, but slowly. If I got impatient and ran out there with my last body, I'd have been a goner." Her face fell. "I had to stand by and watch other people die, because the alternative was to try to deny the truth--that I was helpless. A lot of people made that mistake."

"And you buried them," guessed Jim.

Teddy shook his head. "Archons don't leave bodies," he said. "Not once... they're gone for real."

Jim looked from Teddy to Elaine, and she nodded. "From what I heard, it was a choice made from the very beginning. If you've ever seen a holographic structure dissolve because the ansible broke... it kind of breaks into threads all of a sudden, and scatters like dust. That's what an Archon death looks like. We're actually flesh and blood, so it's artificial, but there's never anything to bury."

Anna felt herself blanch, and she couldn't help but flashing back to burying her father and brother in the sands of the broken wastes. "That had to have been hell," she said. "No closure, no saying goodbye, just... gone."

"It sucked!" replied Elaine, as cheerfully as she could muster. "Can we go back to talking about tech now?"

"Yeah... sorry." Teddy got up and moved over to the box of rolled up paper containing other diagrams. "So what kind of ansible does object motion? Black?"

"Red. We didn't have access to black ansibles." Elaine paused. "That probably means they were doing something that the Blackhats restricted. Everything they restricted was labelled 'black;' they even had double- and triple-black classifications for secrets. I was actually told a double-black secret once... it was keen." She grinned. "If it's a completely different ansible type... I'd guess spatial manipulations, teleportation, portals, that kind of thing. Archons actually could never do any of that. It was obviously happening, but we couldn't control any part of it."

"Really? Because I have tons of black ansibles sitting around." Teddy flipped through the sheets, pulling one out. "Here, look. This isn't the standard one that everyone has, it's some kind of special core. The skin markings of the Archon are on this corner..."

"Mecha Archon," Elaine identified immediately. "They would pop up armor and weapon or special power sets, but each set was thematic. Lot of weebs and nerds picked Mecha Archons because they used special sets modeled after pop culture icons--Iron Man, Megaman, Godzilla, lots of things. They weren't any stronger than anyone else, but they liked knowing that the set of powers were meant to be together, instead of... mixing and matching."

There was a long silence. "I have a lot of questions," asked Jim. "What is a 'weeb'?"

"A type of pop-culture geek focused on a specific niche. The niche was pretty large and included a lot of hero stuff, but it had a bunch of same-y elements to it. Not my thing." She paused. "For your other questions, let me guess... Iron Man was a fictional superhero focused on high tech weapons and a powered armor suit. Megaman was a game character that gained weapons by defeating enemies, a different set every game he was in. Godzilla was a giant lizard from classic movies that would destroy cities." She paused. "...Nerds and geeks are both types of enthusiasts of different types. Usually nerds were cerebral thinking types and geeks were people that formed groups around entertainment or other motivational things. Liked having a community."

"Okay." Jim was taking a moment to soak tha tin. "So I'm guessing they had some... free time."

"Oh yeah, this was pre-collapse, and it started before the big wars, when the economy was held up by threads but they were all pretending things were okay. Lot of entertainment, lot of backsliding on societal problems. Increased drug use, crime, wealth inequality... the kinds of things where you know, looking back, that everything was going to shit, but when you were born into those times, what could you do?"

"I don't think anyone here but you understands the history of the world pre-collapse," pointed out Anna, paying more attention to the diagram Teddy was pinning to the wall. "We have some records, but some of those are obviously lies."

"Yeah. Okay, well, we can have a history lesson another day." Elaine, too, was looking at the diagram, deep in thought. "This is... interesting. It's not just the black ansibles. It has its own power system and a set of reds. I bet this was an independent unit that was just stored inside the main unit."

"Independent?" Jim leaned forward. "How so?"

"The mech bodies were not part of the person who summoned them," Elaine said vaguely, as even the copy sitting in front of them turned to look at the paper. "They could be destroyed separately, and often broken into pieces. So they needed a system that was controlling the body separately from the main body. You could even hit one of those things with anti-holo fields or heavy weapons that could destroy the ansible from real-space, and the archon that used it would be fine. So this was probably in its own pocket space..."

Anna listened as Elaine rambled on, but an idea was forming in her head, piece by piece. Her eyes flicked from one piece to another. Finally, when the conversation broke for a minute and there was a long period of silence, she cleared her throat.

"If that whole unit was designed to be independent," she asked, "can't we just go find one and turn it on?"

There was only silence for a moment before the Elaine standing before her gave her a big grin, and the one sitting beside her gave her a playful (if unwanted) ruffle of her hair.

"I like the way you think," said Elaine. "Okay. If most Archon bodies are still where they were when...." she paused, but only for a moment, "...I went under, I think I could find at least one and bring them back here. What do I need to know about finding and avoiding those badlands monsters?"

"They are attracted to motion, they sense electricity... a lot of things," said Teddy quickly. "But also, you can kind of tell they're there if you are in the right mindset. Like you'll feel them on the edges of your mind long before you see them." He paused. " I mean, I do. I, uh, haven't asked others."

Elaine nodded. "That's spiritual perception stuff. Archons aren't known for it, but I can usually fake it if I have two bodies out. I can kind of sense the difference between the two. When you go to war against magic types that kind of thing comes in handy." She paused. "Anything else?"

"I suddenly have a lot of questions," said Jim slowly.

"About magic? Psh, yeah, I bet. Later." Elaine suddenly materialized a gun to her hand, one she had been given by the Administrators. "I've already got experience killing them... eh, I think I'll be okay." She paused. I'm gonna leave one of me here, though. Should be within range if I don't split, I don't think he was more than two... two-hundred-fifty miles away. Barely within range. But I'll have to be quiet for a bit." She stood up. "So... talk to you in a little bit."

Anna looked over at Jim and Teddy as she walked away. "Just like that, huh?"

"Anomalies have killed hundreds of people in this area alone," said Jim quietly. "But none of us had military training, let alone real experience. Some of the people on the wall didn't even hit what they were shooting at."

"I think it's pretty clear," said Teddy gravely, "that if Elaine Many decides to open fire, it's far more important what gun she's shooting than whether or not she hits. If she misses with an Administrator weapon... fine. But I don't for a moment believe she that she doesn't have more surprises up her sleeves, and probably will even if the Administrators try to shake every last secret from her."

In the dry silence between the three of them, Anna thought she heard Elaine chuckle, but when she turned her head, nobody was there.