3G: the Glowing Green Goo

When Aran arrived home after work, the room she had grown so familiar with had become uncannily unrecognisable. Clothes lined every surface of the walls. Zax was lying on the floor, contemplating his life choices, while Strange Girl did the same on the unfolded bed-couch. None reacted to her arrival.

The tailed girl silently passed the threshold, not wanting to upset whatever was going on and trigger an explosion. She was pondering what she should do when Zax broke the silence in the most forlorn voice she had ever heard:

“Why must we suffer so?”

No answer came, but noise and words didn’t appear that volatile, so Aran felt safe enough to ask her own questions, until something about the walls caught her attention. A closer examination explained part of the creepiness she felt: they were no outfits, merely life-sized pictures of outfits, realistic enough to pass for optical illusions, but too still to be perceived as natural. A few questions later, the tailed girl was clear about the situation and she felt silly for being so worried.

Long ago, Zax had coated all the walls of the flat with some kind of pixel-nanites, and was using them as wall-screens. She had wondered how the emergency alarm had coloured the room when Zax had bolted, but she hadn’t been fully awake and it had been gone so fast, so she hadn’t been sure it actually happened. She had totally forgotten about it.

As to the prone pair, they merely felt down after thoroughly confirming their lack of fashion sense. Strange Girl was wearing an altered version of the standard dotter outfit, only covering her skin parts; shirt, pants – barely shorts – and underwear. It gave her a ‘kind girl next door’ vibe somehow, which fit her surprisingly well. The wall proposed many variations of that outfit, but they were all astonishingly bland. For all the options available, from embroidery to artistic tears and patches, to buttons and zippers, none felt like a different regalia. Some had somehow less personality than basic customisation from accessories.

It’s almost a talent on its own.

Aran wouldn’t say those words aloud, of course, nor would she propose outfits with more character.

“Well, you’ve been busy today.” The foxy girl clapped her hands and tried to blow some life back in the party. “Let’s do something fun to unwind!”

The pair wasn’t revigorated, but they stood up regardless.

“I’d like that. I prepared the second bedroom too, we just rearranged things. No need to sleep on the floor anymore.”

“It was impressive, the bed is folded in the wall and the equipment can rise to the ceiling!” Strange Girl exclaimed.

“What do you have in mind?” Zax sighed, slapping his cheeks to get his blood flowing again.

Aran hadn’t thought that far ahead. Looking around for ideas, her eyes stopped on something she was still curious about:

“What’s in the case?” She pointed at the briefcase she had carried the day before, forgotten in a corner.

Strange Girl didn’t know either, she had taken it in the chaos of her escape on a hunch, hoping it would have something valuable. Zax’s eerily accurate speculations truly made communication easier, Aran wondered what she would have spun if they hadn’t figured she had fled and was hiding from a bad place.

“Well then, let’s check!” Zax was fully awake. “If you already have a starting pouch, it’ll make things easier in your new life.”

Aran didn’t miss the confused face his casual declaration elected, but a more pressing concern gabbed her attention. As he reached for the mystery luggage, Aran rushed to stop his hand.

“Wait! It could be dangerous. What if there’s a bomb or something?”

“I know, I wasn’t going to open it here, we don’t know what flavour of bad guy had it before. I have a glove box, that should take care of most issues.”

“A what?” Strange Girl had slipped behind them. From the unease in her eyes, she hadn’t considered the possible danger.

“A hermetic see-through box with controllable atmospheric conditions and gloves to manipulate what’s inside. I use it to make nanites, they need as much void or as few impurities as I can manage. The walls should be strong enough to take care of explosives, the pump and filters should take care of any nefarious gas.”

The winged girl paled at the explanation.

“I didn’t think about that.”

“Well, maybe we’re just excessively paranoid because we don’t know the detail of where or how you took it, but don’t worry, we won’t rush you into explaining. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to be careful, right?”

After Aran had him give the room its normal walls back, they went to his workshop. It was awkward, but they could see the box above his shoulder.

His glove-box wasn’t made for something the size of a briefcase, so Zax straight-up removed a side. It was longer and more boring than expected to watch him reseal and re-purify the inside, and he even reinforced the sides with nanite bands “just in case”, but he was eventually done.

A mechanical lock kept it closed, but a trick with nanites told him when to stop turning the dials. Zax pushed the clips open, and a blue cloud burst from all sides and filled the tank. In seconds, the thick blue fog was all they could see. A few seconds later, it was gone. They didn’t identify what it was, but the air filters had no issue cleaning it up.

“One point for paranoia.” Zax stated, matter-of fact.

He slowly opened the case, but there were no more surprises besides the content itself. Bouncy balls, wood tokens, bundles of random feather, plastic pebbles, stone shards, compact tufts of something that could be hair or fur or both. Simply put, it was a random assortment of useless and some gross junk. Zax emptied it one item after the other, and even checked for a false bottom, but all he found was an empty gas canister, probably where the blue gas was stored.

Of course, Zax being Zax, he noted the name on the canister to look it up later.

“I don’t understand.” Strange Girl mumbled.

“Yeah, that’s pretty wild. SO useless, some of those I only saw in movies.” Aran concurred.

“Maybe there’s something special about them?” Zax speculated. “They belonged to someone who cared a lot about them?”

“No one would care about five bouncy balls and random wood tokens. There are several models but each with several copies. They are not uniform enough to mean something together and not unique enough to be worth something on their own.” Aran observed. It forced a surprised glance from Zax and Strange Girl, but they took it in stride.

Zax took a few of his measuring instruments to see it they could detect something. They all had mostly expected results, except for the stone shards that revealed themselves to actually be bones shards. An honest mistake, the shards were tiny enough to barely be considered a powder.

“The only strange point I see is a slight deviation of colorimetry, and it is only strange because I expected other values from the naked eye. The measures are all within normal values for those materials, so that’s on me.” He added the last part with a dry smirk.

“What does that mean?”

“My colour ranking was slightly off. More likely a me thing than a hint about why that stuff was so protected.”

“I… see something off with their colours too, but I can’t place it.” Strange Girl claimed as she squinted through the box.

Zax blinked. He wordlessly increased the box’s ambient light and stepped back. Each piece didn’t look special individually, but seeing them all together from further away did feel strange.

Aran took the opportunity to put her hands in the now empty gloves.

“I have never touched most of those materials. It’s funny. Do all bouncy balls fell that way?”

“I guess?” Zax shrugged. He didn’t know any more than her. “It feels exactly like the simulations anyway.”

“Do you think there could be something inside?” Aran lifted a rubber ball in front of a light source, trying to peer inside.”

“The scanner didn’t detect anything.”

“Maybe hidden 3G? They wouldn’t detect it, right?”

“No, but they would detect the case it’s contained in. There would have to be one, or the rubber would absorb it. Even if it’s synthetic, it’s organic matter. Wait.” His eyes widened in realisation.

He pulled the colour measurements and had his bracelet’s holographic screen display the measured colours next to the matching items. With the lights upped, there was no denying it; they were indeed slightly off.

“Stars covered.” Zax was floored.

“What?”

“What?”

“The measures don’t match reality. And they all work perfectly fine. That means the devices don’t see what we see with our eyes. And there is only one thing that can do that.”

“The 3G.” Aran stated.

“Hair, bones, wood, rubber, plastic. Everything in that case is organic.” Zax kept going.

“You mean…” The winged girl didn’t dare to conclude aloud.

“And they are all filled with 3G. Enough 3G we can see it, and our brains interpret that as a change of colour. That’s what felt off, they all have the same ‘slightly more greenish than they should’ tint.”

Zax had seen the effect of diluting 3G first hand, but even dotters knew it took a lot of 3G to change an object’s colour. They all looked at the heap of upscale trash in the box. Calling it a fortune would be an understatement. They were sure that even in the Circle, it would be a huge amount, stored in compact and practical bits.

When it had sunk in, Zax turned towards their guest:

“Your hunch was awesome, but it could attract dangerous greed. I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can keep ignoring your origins any longer… Do you want to talk about it?”

Strange Girl paled, but shook her head.

“Do you want to talk with Enforcers? I personally know a trustworthy one.”

Same answer.

“Do you mind if we or Enforcers know, if it is not from you telling us?”

No reaction, unsure.

“I have an alternative, but you may like it even less.”

Zax explained he could set nanites in her brain and have them record her memories, although reconstructing events from before they were set would take time. To assuage her concerns, he explained the process and demonstrated with his own recordings, and mentioned how they had already been used as a testimony. Of course, he also mentioned body scans and templates. Aran had already told her about hers, and was surprised he waited so long before trying to get a deep, winged one.

The conversation deviated to templates in general, the RPG stat game, Aran and Zax’s meeting and their relationship. By the time they went to sleep, each in their own rooms, the tension and initial question were forgotten.

It didn’t last long though. After an… agitated night, Strange Girl had something to ask as soon as they woke up:

“Please record my brain and give my testimony to that Enforcer you trust.”

Her determined eyes, looking straight in his, complemented by her firm voice, it would be easy to mistake her for a different person.

“Just… don’t tell them who or where I am. Please.”

She quickly reverted back to her unsure self, lowering her eyes and slouching her shoulders, but the effect had been seeded.

“Using me as a buffer between the Enforcers. That works.” The human nodded in approval. “I would’ve never thought about that application.”

“That still takes guts.” Aran put a comforting hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Congrats.”

They were simple words and a brief contact, but they had a lot more impact than either girl realised.

“It does, but it won’t be quick.” Zax reminded them.

“I know. At least three days to map my brain patterns, then however long it takes to translate my brain activity into something a computer can display, right?”

“Exactly.” He proudly smiled. “Glad to see my explanation didn’t fall in deaf ears.”

“And we can do my full body scan at the same time.”

“We can!?” the hobbyist accidentally let his excitement show. “Hrm. Sorry. Yes, we can. It takes a different type of nanites, so they won’t interfere with each other. I’d love to.”

The other two exchanged a knowing grin, but didn’t comment.

The brain being such a sensitive and essential organ, it had the most serious natural protections of the body. Going through those without triggering a nefarious reaction took time, and specialised tools Zax didn’t have. He went around the problem with a slower but safer assimilation method and several instalments, but since his subject had to stay close and didn’t have anything better to do, the weeks he had anticipated were condensed to less than two days.

Once the nanites safely set in and between her neurons, she only had to live normally, with the occasional exercise to serve as calibration reference. Nothing complicated or demanding, things like reciting multiplication tables, read a specific text aloud, doing a series of simple movements, playing nine differences…

Besides the exercises, she passed time learning about the world at large, reading stories of any media, watching movies, playing games. Zax and Aran made sure she was never alone, although it meant they couldn’t both leave the apartment at the same time.

She had to admit, she was having fun. Even her nightmares seemed to lessen a bit.

Her brain scan was progressing smoothly, but the same couldn’t be said for her body scan.

“I don’t understand.” Zax was frustrated. “The measurements are all coherent, but the calculations don’t compute right. It’s the same as Aran’s. Do you two have something overly rare in common? You’re not as high energy as she is, so that can’t be it and I was probably wrong about hers.”

None of them knew, and both were reluctant to talk about their past, so this mystery wouldn’t be solved anytime soon.

The method of reaching her limits to measure them like Aran wouldn’t work either; she would need space and she couldn’t use normal machines to push her body. In the other hand, she could still push her mind, and as a bonus it would even help with her brain scan.

At least, that part worked as it was supposed to. Which made the riddle all the more confusing.