Chaos Incorporated -

It's a whole new series! I know it's crazy out there on the world stage, but hopefully I can distract you from it for just a little while. This will be a long one, although I'm not sure what the update schedule will be yet.

Meanwhile, welcome to the year 2362, where national borders have mostly disappeared, most of the surface of Earth has been paved over for living and industrial space, Police, Fire, and Medical first responders have merged and dubbed themselves as "Heroes," and nanotechnology has created a special class of elites known as "Superheroes." Most of society has not only gone digital but virtual: virtual reality, on a network known as vSpace, is where most business gets done, and where most people spend their personal time to ignore the endless drab concrete corridors of the real world, now known as "realspace."

And the leading global political party, calling itself the "Paragon Party" has just become aware of a very concerning development in the region: superpower nanotechnology has just been released by criminals who (in response to police taking the name "heroes'') have dubbed themselves "villains" and "supervillains." Here, in the villain network known as LAIR, where cryptocurrency is supreme and NFTs are the key to supervillain powers, several women may determine the future of this technological and cultural revolution...

*****

Satya browsed her digital wardrobe, muttering to herself. She answered the private vSpace call, with full avatars, and she appeared in her home foyer with the new caller.

"Hey bitch! How you be?" the grinning face of her friend greeted her, arms open for a hug.

"Girl, I can't decide if the fashion police will let me get away with this top I just got."

"Ooh, show me!"

The suit-jacket-inspired garment snapped into position as she made her adjustment from the default load outfit.

Though conservative on the sides, the belt running through loops on the inside attached just below the swell of her breasts, with a single hook that looked as if the two parts were unattached and a stray breeze would throw the jacket open, making her obvious lack of a bra a decision just asking for an indecency citation in areas with all the physics turned on. The navy blue jacket was paired with a sea-green pair of flowing pants, tied off with strips of the pants cloth itself, bunching the waistline and tempting fate to cause another wardrobe failure with the short ends of the cloth barely completing the knot, with no length to spare for double-knotting or other reinforcement. Her floating earrings, each a bangle of invisibly attached emerald stars that swirled with a life of their own around her earlobes, were some of her favorites and matched the pants well, and she had a combination of delicate bracelets with different bright colors just thick enough to catch the eye but thin enough not to overwhelm the rest of her look.

"You're flirting with a warning, that's for sure. Look, the shop reviews for that say someone even got a strike against them on one of the conservative channels wearing it."

"I bet if I smile enough the boys won't complain. What's the latest dish?"

"You're on your own for bail money. I mean, you can call me, but I'm charging you full interest, for legal reasons. Anyway, you know that Cult of the Basilisk, right?"

"Some bestie you are! Those weirdos that think the computer god is going to be born any day and kill all of us that don't bow down to him, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, the AI worshipers."

"Sure. What about them, Venya?" Satya said, pouring a little extra sugar into her tone.

"Don't you 'Venya' me, just 'cuz I'm not backing your delinquency; it's called tough love. So, they hacked a system and made everybody have double x-ray vision. Like, you saw not only through their clothes, but their skin too. Everybody walking around looking like an anatomy diagram, all exposed bones and muscle. The whole place is closed while they clean up the code."

"Why would they do that!?"

"I know, gross right? But here's the thing, they made a statement where they said, get this, 'we're all just bags of meat, but the true lord of this universe is coming to cleanse us of our weak carbon selves.' I could not believe it!"

"That's not all of it right?"

"Oh, sure, they went on for pages with that nutzo stuff, a whole manifesto, you can go read about it in the usual places. Room full of people with no skin though, I knew I had to tell you about that, people were legit throwing up in real-space. Also, that new stereo-vision artist Bruto got sanctioned."

"What! You're kidding!" Satya exclaimed.

"Nope. They found out he was stealing fresh public-domain music from the Mother-Continent Consortium and copyrighting it as his own using custom synth instruments to defeat the content filters. He's on a temporary ban and can't post for a month."

"He really thought nobody would know. How embarrassing. What else?"

"OK, you know we've got that full-immersion program for people with disabilities, right?"

"Oh yeah, they're plugging people in with permanent implants into different universes."

"Right. So there's this guy, brand new player in one of the game universes that's been dropping in popularity. He's been disrupting the place using some kind of bug in the system and spreading sexual content. They're patching it of course, but the board of directors hasn't announced whether they're going to strip his in-game progress yet or revert to a backup. Meanwhile, a bunch of Keyboard Heroes are putting up a fuss about it being inappropriate, that the game isn't rated for public sex streaming, and they're petitioning to get the game rating changed. And of course, a full reset of the offender's account."

"Shit, I might actually start watching some e-sports," Satya said.

"You did NOT hear it from me, then. Somebody's gotta be out of the slam to start your go-fund-me bail account."

"Psh, whatever girl. You know I'm no rat. What else you got?" Satya grinned.

"At this rate I don't know if I want to tell you. You're too excited and hot as it is."

"OK, now you have *got* to tell me."

"God, this is such a terrible idea... fine. But then I'm cutting you off for today. There's a manhunt underway, the Heroes are looking for some guy they've dubbed 'The Technomancer.' Apparently he's got some kind of illegal gear and he's terrorizing the hallways in real-space."

"Doing what, exactly? Painting patriarchal misogynist memes?"

"No, like... you know how there's underground fights, boxing matches, that kind of thing; some athletes that wash out of the Olympic program get into?"

"Yeah, so?"

"So he's making these challenge arenas or whatever. There are those people who still hang around in realspace and dress up doing role-play stuff, besides the athletes and all that."

"You mean LARPers."

"Yeah, live action role play, something like that; I don't know why they'd bother when you can get a whole new outfit at the snap of your fingers in vSpace. So apparently they're real challenges and a few people have gotten hurt. The sector's Paragon has declared a state of lockdown while they try to find the guy, and the Heroes are strictly enforcing it. All packages are being inspected and they're going door-to-door doing searches, getting ID of everybody trying to figure out who's responsible and who's helping him."

"This never would have happened in the last administration," Satya said, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah well, the last administration tried to ban vSpace porn and content-aware vibrators, so here we are. Not that I do any of that stuff-"

"Sure you don't."

"-but I know you do, and I'm still your bestie, so down with those assholes sticking their fingers in your twat. Uh, metaphorically, I mean. Now we just gotta deal with this lockdown bullshit."

"You're the best, bestie. I gotta get my hustle going, I'll catch you on the flipside."

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do, crazy bitch."

"You know it," Satya purred sarcastically.

"Swear to god, if you bankrupt me with your shenanigans, you're never getting another birthday present."

Satya blew a kiss animation, and switched digital locations to her public booth in the vSpace mall where she worked. While she waited as early browsers checked out her inventory, she did some searching.

"Technomancer..." she muttered to herself.

That was a stupid name, surely he didn't call himself that.

"He'd have a better name, like Master Devereaux, or Overlord Mandla the Greatly-Endowed."

A warmth suffused her skin, and a hunger took hold. She felt it in her belly, but a little lower than where her food urges came from. She knew that hunger, and hoped she'd find the answers she needed before it consumed her life, and ruined her social position. Again.

***********

Kalyani snapped to attention at the sound of her name.

"As you were," her commanding officer said.

Her hand dropped back to the desk, where she was going through physical copies of photos. Why did the department still need hard copies? The rest of the world had moved completely paperless decades if not centuries ago, but here she was still shuffling bits of dead trees around. She sat attentively, still stiff-backed, watching her commander.

"Big man wants to see you," he continued, frowning. "Any luck?"

"Nothing conclusive, sir. Tons of correlation, but we haven't pinpointed any specific leads. Mostly just misdirection, is the going theory."

"We'll get this sick son of a bitch," her commander continued. "We've got to, before someone dies. You know we can't accept that."

"Preaching to the choir, sir," she said.

"Right, right. Look, he's not going to tell you this himself, because he's the Paragon and you're just a front-liner. But big things are at stake here. The Paragon Party are putting the heat on him to get some results, as there's some rumblings across other jurisdictions, rumors of copycats, and worse. There's risk here, but there's a real opportunity. You know what I mean."

Kalyani gasped quietly. "This is my big break toward Superhero track."

"I've been promising you that they'd notice your hard work and dedication. Well, this is it, your whole career could be fast-tracked if you do it right. This is all speculative, you understand, but I'd bet my last medal that it's true. Get out of here, you're officially summoned."

She took a deep breath, putting the files back in their folders and packing them away into the storage system with all their labels and QR codes. Her fingers trembled with nervousness, but she didn't dare break her carefully-cultivated habits that had given her so many wins; she wouldn't put this off until later.

She finished her work and bustled off to the Seat of Justice, where the Paragon officiated.

"Hero Kalyani, just the person I wanted to see," the man smiled behind his golden visor.

She saluted. "How may I serve?"

"All Heroes are Heroes, but some are more heroic than others."

"Sir?"

"Were I tempted to break with political correctness, it might be in order to say that you're the best-ranked officer in our sector. But of course, there are no ranks among us."

"Unless we are promoted to Superheroes, or elected as a Paragon."

"Exactly. But you may have noticed the assignments you've been given have been changing, with the most intricate forensic details to study."

"They have been a bit more... engaging, you could say."

The nanotech machines could see, taste, and touch far better than she could, of course, but she had an intuition on how to approach a situation that helped her direct the machines to cut down on the processing time, and brought her to some of the most important details of a scene that allowed her to preserve more of the perishable evidence that would crack a case wide open. It wasn't just criminal mischief, she had to assist with industrial accidents to determine which component had failed leading to a work-stop evacuation, or the subtle factors that endangered a wide number of people with minute amounts of bacterial contamination in the food fabber supply lines making entire service zones' worth of people sick, and reducing that golden Paragon principle, prosperity. The productivity of each geographic region was overseen by the elected Paragon, in this case the man sitting in front of her right now with a smile playing at the edges of his lips. She had indeed been wondering about those assignments, and her heart skipped a beat at the thought that he had been directing those changes, or was at least personally aware of them.

"I have a new assignment for you. We're breaking with tradition just a little bit due to the ah, sensitive nature of this particular issue. You're being sworn to complete secrecy - should you choose to accept."

The document popped up on the digital touchscreen embedded in the podium next to her, the non-disclosure agreement legally binding blah blah blah. She'd seen this a hundred times, if she'd seen it once.

"I do solemnly swear," she said, putting her hand on the outline indicating where her personal signature would be included with the documentation in her official file.

The Paragon was absolutely beaming now. "Excellent! Now, you're going to be given the training that Superheroes get. You won't be issued any Nano yourself, but it will be important for you to understand the intricacies of their care and feeding, because..."

His face dropped to a hard frown. "...we suspect, and this is where your secrecy is absolutely required, that there has been some kind of unauthorized breach of nanobot technology."

Her eyes opened wide with shock. "I thought the controls on those were airtight! Five levels of authorization checks, full surveillance recording of every use, an entire team of support specialists on every rig-"

"So did we. I've kept this quiet, even from the Paragon Party, until I have confirmation. But the projections indicate that without the fetters holding back the swarm and calling home, unregulated Nano could be ten times more powerful than a Superhero with the same material and energy resources. And if they get into the darker forces, like nuclear Weak Force and Strong Force..."

A chill washed over Kalyani's body, raising the hair on her arm and the back of her neck as she remembered the briefings about Superhero career paths, and why they were so meticulously chosen. Strong Force energy was powerful enough to punch a hole through the entire planet, and while the control system for Nano did not allow direct manipulation of those forces even by Superheroes, the protocols contained usage of it in order to make the swarm's internal mechanisms work. If someone had reverse-engineered that somehow...

She cleared her throat. "I understand. I won't let you down, sir."

She saluted, and he returned it.

"You'll be given a discreet means to communicate back on a private channel with need-to-know personnel and a direct line to me. If you get conclusive proof of his location and make positive ID, your orders are to blow that whistle with his last-known coordinates and exit like a bat out of hell. We don't know what this person - or, if he has accomplices, these people - are emotionally or intellectually capable of. Good luck."

"Glory to the Heroes!" she gushed, more passionately than she'd repeated the mantra in a long time.

"May our light shine, and all prosper," he responded.

**********

Chandra stepped into the cafe, and did a double-take. She ran over to the group hanging around the table, all dressed for some Ye Olde-Fashioned Adventure.

"Oh my god I love your skirt!" she gushed.

"Oh, thanks," the woman beamed, looking up from what appeared to be some kind of serious discussion. "What are you dressed as?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I love that hair, neon pink is a good look for you, but I'm not sure how far you're going to get with sandals," the woman continued.

"No way, the traps out there are real, put some pants on at least," one of the men said, noticing her for the first time. He had a broadsword and shield, and a pack suited to long travel.

"Yeah, I'm not carrying you back after you scrape your knee; you'll probably just call the Heroes and get us all in trouble," another of the men said, in some musketeer-looking costume.

"I can take care of myself!" Chandra bristled.

"Seriously, what is that getup, anyway?" the man with the shield said. "You gotta pick a class before we go at least. If we don't find one of the adventure zones, we're making up our own quest."

"I'm a pixie," Chandra announced haughtily.

"You... were going to join the adventure party, weren't you? Saw the vSpace ad?" the woman asked, introducing herself. "I'm Eiyana the Second."

"The second?" Chandra said.

"We all died a few weeks ago. Or rather, our characters did," the man with the shield said.

"Um, are we all just going to ignore the fact that she said 'pixie' like it's a real character class?" the musketeer said.

"Fine, she's a chaos ninja," Eiyana the Second said, rolling her eyes.

"That's not a thing either," the man with the shield said.

"Come off it Malak, it's all made up anyway," Eiyana continued.

"Nuh uh. I'm really a pixie," Chandra insisted.

"I guess you found the right table then," the musketeer groaned. "Why does somebody have to make this weird every time we get a party together?"

"Says the guy wearing a fake pistolero on his hip," Malak the Second said. "And that feathery cap that I'm sure is going to be super useful in an actual challenge arena."

"Is Durga going to make it?" the musketeer said, ignoring the jab.

"He said he was on his way... oh! There he is!" Eiyana said, waving at the front door.

Durga the Second walked up in a kung fu robe, headband, and great wooden clogs, making him looks like a sumo wrestler arriving for a match.

"Hey guys. Who's the anime chick?" he said, waving vaguely in Chandra's direction.

"I'm not anime, I'm a pixie," she put in again with a huff.

"Tell her she needs some armor or she can't come," Malak said.

"Look, if you're going to be a jerk about something that hasn't even happened yet, I'm out," Eiyana snapped. "Don't be a dudebro."

"Hey, hey, heyyyy, chill out peeps," Durga said. "Honey, he didn't mean it. Did you, Mal?"

Malak caught the glower on the big man's face just in time to change his mind about what was going to come out of his mouth as it opened.

"Yeah, uh, I mean I really don't want her hurt, but I was just exaggerating."

"See? Your housefly-stuck-in-bubble gum friend-"

"Pixie!"

"Sure, pixie, whatever, she can travel with and you can solve mysteries together. Or something," Durga finished. "Just hang back if it gets dangerous, the Heroes are already testy about people getting medivac'd out there. We won't be allowed in the eastern halls at all for like a month, I hear."

They all took a turn at the synthesizers on the wall, taking a drink of choice to go.

"What's he talking about? What's going on out there?" Chandra said.

"So let me tell you about this creep they're calling 'The Technomancer' and how the first of our names died," Eiyana said.

.....

Durga the warrior led the way. Behind him, his faithful mage consort, Eiyana, pattered closely with an anxious yet hopeful expression.

"No goblins down this hallway," Durga called back over his shoulder.

It was just as well. Durga's sword had been lost in a skirmish they'd simulated on their vSpace rigs together, and his armor was barely there.

"Come on guys," Malak the thief-tank complained. "How are we ever gonna level up if we never encounter anybody?"

"Don't say that! You'll invite disaster!" Eiyana said.

"Hah! Have no fear, I will protect you," Durga claimed, puffing his chest out and swaggering forward confidently.

"At least I've got a decent meat shield," Malak grumbled. "Not that I need it. That's supposed to be my job."