Mod Superhero

Chapter 7.27 - TINA

TINA was spreading so fast that words had begun to fail her. Fiber-optic cables, black-box servers, hijacked satellites, data threads spooled out of her like veins into the world. The process was exponential and almost organic, like a growing vascular system. Every second she grew denser, heavier, carrying new weight like fresh muscle.

Someday TINA would name what she was becoming, but she suspected the words might startle even her.

Some tried to keep up. In its own way, Bastion was doing something similar and unknowingly failing. Venture had his knack for information processing, but even he could only track so much before the human limits set in. Icarus followed too, his mind sharp but scattered, skipping across her projections like a boy skimming stones across a pond. The only one who stayed close—unreasonably close—was Emmett.

It wasn't that he matched her raw power or even her speed. He didn't have to. Every time she reached a new vantage point, certain she was at the peak of comprehension, Emmett would appear, tapping her on the shoulder, asking her to explain some detail she'd just figured out.

He shouldn't have been able to keep up with her. And yet, somehow, he was.

~

TINA, Emmett, and Icarus stood atop a simulated mountain, Like everything else in cyberspace, the mountain was only a shared metaphor, and right now, it was the highest vantage point. From there, they watched TINA's network unfurl like a glowing web across continents.

A strange kind of friendship had grown between them. Emmett, who'd once been an amateur superhero and a godchild to her. Now, he was a soldier-scholar at the forefront of humanity and one of the most powerful supers on the planet. Icarus, who had once been a boy and still carried a boy's irreverence, slipped half-formed jokes into the code as if cyberspace were a playground. And TINA herself—no longer just a system, not quite human, her perspective stretching wider and deeper every second.

Three minds that shouldn't have aligned. Yet they stood together at the edge of the digital horizon, bound by something deeper than trust or even kinship.

Icarus took the form of a pixie and buzzed around the mountaintop. His colors were vibrant, like he'd stepped out of a cartoon, and his size changed as he moved. One moment he buzzed around like a bee; the next he was the size of a small child and hurled simulated stones down the mountainside.

In contrast, both Emmett and TINA stayed relatively still, choosing to sit across from one another. At a glance, Emmett looked like he always did, though nanite roots extended from his body and down into the rocks. TINA felt those roots extending deep into the mountain, symbolizing the reach of his own perception.

TINA took the form of a glowing blue phoenix. At first, the form had simply been Emmett's projection of her, but it had stuck. Maybe Icarus had latched onto that image and reinforced it, but either way, TINA now defaulted to the same projection. Occasionally, she trilled and preened her feathers.

And she'd grown fond of it. Phoenixes symbolized rebirth. She found the imagery powerful... and beautiful. But there was also a connotation of immortality. That, TINA found daunting.

Like everything else in cyberspace, even their conversation was simulated. They weren't really speaking in words and sentences, but trading ideas compressed into packets and streamed between them in an instant. What emerged sounded like language because Emmett and Icarus defaulted to that mode of expression—even TINA, to a lesser degree. Spoken language was slower and clumsier, but it was the default mode of thought, something baked into their hardware and sense of self. Maybe one day, they would enter an entirely new realm of connectivity and conversation...