Kill the chicken to scare the monkeys

It was not unusual for Lily to have a non-sapient AI in her head. In fact, everyone had them where she came from, even biomorphs. They were called Muses, and their actual primary use was sorting through social media, news and media on your behalf.

Lily used to have more than a dozen specialized and subordinate expert systems housed in her glorious spider body that ranged in function from laboratory and social assistants to combat precognition oracles. Still, most biomorphs usually just had a Muse.

It turned out that in the far future in her memories, nobody trusted the algorithms generated by that world's equivalent of Twitter, TikTok or YouTube, so they used their own AIs to suck in all the media and data they could and fashioned their own algorithms by training their Muse on their likes and dislikes throughout their life.

People also ran ubiquitously what was known as the ER, or Enhanced Reality system. It was similar to an Augmented Reality system that Lily remembered from America, but it was built into everyone's brains. It would display a name over a person's head if they were broadcasting a transponder, similarly to what Lily would expect from MMO games, creating labels on the fly for objects and other helpful tagging.

Even if a person did not have their personal transponder running, if someone saw them, their Muse would use facial recognition software and data mining of OSINT, social media and other publically available information to try to infer or deduce the identity of anyone their host saw anyway, giving a confidence level at their guess which was usually pretty accurate.

Lily's AI was still very stupid. It might be able to recognize a person if she left the room and came back, but if Lily came back the next day and that person was wearing a different outfit, it would be stumped, so she left that feature off so far.

She did take the time to train the object of interest system because she intended that to be running all the time. But it would take careful and monotonous identification of objects and categorizing why they might be interesting. For example, she set up a simple trip-wire trap using an inert grenade and classified it as dangerous, so a similar device would always be flagged in her vision.

Another feature of her incipient ER system was automatic radio direction finding. She had built-in antennas in many places on her body. Her shins contained heavy-duty antennas for really high-frequency microwaves and millimetre waves, which Lily intended to use as part of a synthetic aperture radar system for vision in low-light situations when she had more abundant auxiliary power. They presently weren't connected to anything, as it would depend on her finishing her entire skeleton, which also had embedded conductors built into them, to provide connections to these transceiver antennas and her computer.

Her skull contained seven separate antennas running from the megahertz and low-gigahertz ranges she used for high-speed wireless data connections to the kilohertz range she used for voice radio, be it listening or transmitting. Once her spinal vertebrae were completely replaced, there would even be one long antenna for those short-wave transmissions, although that would likely be receive-only.

Although she couldn't presently transmit her voice from her brain into the ether, she could send morse code or digital signals with her mind. And she could not only listen to Mnsr Three Dogs in her brain, but if she activated the ADF system and squelched it to his frequency, she could see the visualization of his radiowaves falling onto her head from the east southeast where the GNR building was located. Of course, it wasn't genuinely seeing the actual radio waves, it was just a rendered facsimile produced by her computer and pumped into her visual cortex, but it was still cool as hell.

That also meant that she would ALWAYS notice any radio transmissions on typical frequencies near her, and she had enough storage to log all of them even if she wasn't listening to them in real-time. So, she just needed to train the expert system, which could listen to all of them simultaneously, and give it some keywords to notify her if it heard one of them. Lily would become very challenging to sneak up on by people who used radios in the clear, which was both the Brotherhood and the Enclave at times, as far as she could tell.

Hell, even the most commonly used voice-radio encryption schemes by the time the bombs dropped only used a sixty-four-bit encryption key, which she could theoretically crack in real-time, given that most approved encryption schemes were not quantum-resistant.

Practically, she couldn't, as she had no software for cryptographic cracking. She just needed a little or a lot of time to program such utilities first, as cryptography was never one of her focuses. The problem was there were hundreds of such things that would be useful, and she had limited time and limited expertise beyond her focus.

Lily might, admittedly, be a genius, as her character sheet stated, but that in itself didn't teach you cryptography or other esoteric fields. In truth, she had been finding herself going to read advanced mathematics books in secret, as she hadn't really thought about mathematics the entire time she was a synth which was the vast majority of her life -- she just did it. If she wanted to know the answer to a mathematical question, she just KNEW it, without any consideration of the steps involved to get the answer.

Also, Lily forgot how dependent she became to the mesh, the internet of the future on steroids which she was perpetually connected to it on a mind level. Many people used continuous requests to encyclopedias as a form of memory if they didn't know something, so she often found herself trying to reach out to the ether to get answers to questions and find silence.

She mustn't let her Apprentice find out that her memory was a little rusty on linear algebra or vector calculus or similar disciplines, thankfully much beyond the Apprentice's own level thus far.

Lastly, the only other function her PC had out of the box was automatic triangulation if the transmitters around her were stationary and she was moving, although Lily hadn't gotten her moving map working yet so the triangulation just gave a bearing and a distance. There were still operating Global Positioning System satellites; Lily could sense their weak transmissions from overhead but hadn't managed to parse their data coding schema. The entire system used by the moving map on the PipBoy was entirely hardware-based, using a specific ASIC circuit, which was both impressive and horrifying.

Lily glanced down at the PipBoy; she wouldn't need this very much longer. Perhaps Alice would like it? Until she got her own personal computer, that was.

Glancing at her chronometer, finding it was about noon, Lily decided she would use the rest of the day as productively as she had utilized the morning.

She had been told that there was a vehicle for sale in Megaton, which did not happen often, and she was keen to purchase it, even if she was going to get bent over on the price. She was accumulating a fair bit of currency, and when the water and power company began operations, she would collect even more, and quickly.

Megaton was a small enough economy that it was important for her to spend most of what she collected, and rather quickly. If she just accumulated currency, or what served as it, like Scrooge McDuck, so she could swim around in it or observe it, she was going to be a big enough player that she would damage the local economy.

In Lily's opinion, wealth should act like a river, not a pond. Especially wealth in small communities like she found herself in. The current plan she had approved with Monsieur Tombs was to reinvest most of their earnings from Eastside Water & Power into the company by way of hiring workers at first. There would need to be a number of water workers maintaining the finicky water connections in "her" side of the city, although Megaton itself had some municipal workers that handled the Sewer itself.

Lily had invented automated water and power meters that used a low-powered digital radio that would report water usage numbers to the Water & Power headquarters which meant that there was no need for meter readers. Still, there was a significant staffing requirement for accounting and technicians who would shut people's water or power off if they stopped paying.

Lily suspected the technicians that went to shut off water to a building would likely be more along the lines of mercenaries, at first, until the gentrification process was farther along.

She was manufacturing the electronics for these electric and water meters in the hundreds every day, as she wanted an enormous surplus of them in the event she became too busy to produce them. If the Brotherhood examined them closely, they would be shocked, as amusingly enough, they featured what the Brotherhood would consider highly advanced technology in carbon-based electronics.

Lily doubted very much the Brotherhood would do such things, though, as the exterior of the devices seemed very ordinary, and the Brotherhood was very predictable in its search for technology. If it didn't shoot plasma or lasers, they generally weren't interested.

'The hypocrites,' Lily thought. Although their very Teutonic-seeming order was based on protecting the world from further nuclear war, they never even confiscated the active nuke in the middle of Megaton.

Leaving her bedroom, Lily searched for the Apprentice to tell her she was going out on a few errands but couldn't find her in any of her usual spots.

Finally, she found the girl outside, kneeling in what once was probably the parking lot of the apartment complex and was now just an open area of mostly dirt and occasional asphalt.

Lily's eyes narrowed. What was that... no.. it couldn't be.

Lily called out, disgruntled. "Apprentice! Are you feeding zhat beast?!"

Alice startled, jumping to her feet to reveal the mutant stoat that had escaped Lily. It had grown somewhat. The long boi then longed out to his full length, standing on his haunches like a meerkat and hissed angrily at Lily. It clearly did not like her.

While it once massed the same as a chubby cat, now it massed as much as the fattest of cats, easily ten kilos. However, it didn't look fat. It looked LONG. It had kept its smooth white fur in its mutation, which Lily thought was a little odd as most FEV mutants lost all of their hair. Its face was completely different from what she remembered as a stoat. Its scrunched in little face reminded Lily of a pug dog, actually, and was currently baring its fangs at her.

Altogether, the mutant reminded her of the appearance of a small Chinese dragon covered in fur instead of scales. It was clearly guarding some meat in its grubby little paws!

"I'm just paying Sir Longius what we owe him!" protested the Apprentice.

Lily fumed, 'Bullshit! If that shitty weasel has a name, and it most certainly does not, it would be Big Chungus!'

However, Lily just maintained her narrowed eyes and watched Big Chungus eat the meat it was carrying while it remained longed out on its hind paws, obviously trying to display how big and dangerous it was to her. "Owe it? What, pray-tell, are you talking about?" Lily asked calmly, not Dumbledore-calmly but actually calmly.

"Well, I first met him about a week ago, when he stole the rat kebab I was eating for lunch! He was quite quick and grabbed it and ran off with it while I was distracted with reading about the body's immune response," said Alice, sounding a little put-out.

Lily just remained silent, waiting. The girl continued, "But then the next day, he brought me two dead rats! Big fat ones! So that's how I started the arrangement with Sir Longius; for every two dead rats he brings me, he gets one of them cooked! He's already paid for this rat he's eating now, so it is just giving him what he is owed!"

Lily always thought the gesture where people were pinching their glabella was an effect that ham-fisted actors did until she found herself doing it in front of her Apprentice, "And its name?"

The Apprentice corrected her, "His name! Well, he is long..." she trailed off.

Yes, it certainly was. Lily stared at it, "And 'is noble station? Who knighted 'im? I've not met the chevalier of weasels."

Alice pursed her lips, "Well, he likes his rats cooked! That's pretty high-class tastes for a.." she trailed off, "... mutant weasel? So it is clear that he is a noble among weasels!"

Big Chungus alternated between stuffing its face and hissing at Lily as she stared at it. Finally, Alice piped up, "Stop, Dr St. Claire! You're looking at him like you want to vivisect him! He's smart; he can tell!"

Lily sighed, "I don't want to vivisect 'im," and she was technically telling the truth. She wanted to dissect it; the nuance was totally different. She doubted the creature had any organs or alterations that were different or unique enough that Lily would be interested in seeing how they worked when it was alive, after all.

Lily frowned, 'The little shit is smart, though. Clearly smarter than a weasel should be. Why is it smarter when humans get dumber? I need to see a Super Mutant's brain, and preferably to see the process of mutation from a flat to a Super-Mutant to find out why.'

Lily had to stop herself from saying, "Fuck it", as she tried to develop a cultured reputation. She only swore when homicidal Gary clones tried to murder her. Instead, she said, "You know what? It doesn't matter. Just keep 'im out of zhe basement or zhe medical areas of the 'ospital."

"Oh, don't worry, Dr St. Claire. He doesn't seem to like coming inside too much. I think he has too much territory to rule over," replied the Apprentice happily.

'Or more likely, it has some bad memories about my building,' thought Lily.

Remembering why she came to find the Apprentice, she informed the girl she was going to be out for a few hours before departing.

---

After what might be, charitably, called a test drive the man was walking around the truck with Lily.

"So, Doc, this is it. She's a beaut, ain't she? Maybe a few issues, but it is a one-of-a-kind Peterbilt concept car featuring a 1,400 horsepower Chryslus fission motor! I can't let it go for under 10,000," the man who claimed he wasn't a used car salesman said, pointing to the truck.

The truck looked somewhat like an two and a half ton commercial truck that she would recognize from the Army, although the long truck bed had been replaced with an improvised one of wood and aluminum sheets.

Lily mumbled to herself, shaking her head. "C'est un pas de merde," and then before the used care salesman could inquire, she enlightened him, "It's a piece of shit," Lily said plainly, completely ignoring the fact that she tried to stop herself from swearing just thirty minutes ago.

Before the man could complain, Lily sighed and shook her head once more, "Zhe transmission is almost shot! Zhe only gears that work are first through third! Reverse gear and fourth through eighth are totally shot! How do you expect to use a truck if it can't back up? And zhe fact that it is a unique concept car probably means it has zhe unique, custom transmission, no? Otherwise, you'd have replaced it by now!"

The man looked like he bit into a lemon, which Lily took to mean she wasn't too far off the mark. Still, Lily wanted the truck but wasn't about to get fleeced at it, "What's the fuel state of the reactor?"

At that, the man brightened, "Over 85%! It'll keep running for decades, for sure!"

Lily might be able to fabricate a new transmission but wouldn't be able to make it out of diamondoid materials as she would normally do -- otherwise, it would just crunch up the transmission input shaft gearing if that wasn't made out of diamond also.

But, if she did that, it would chew up the engine's flywheel. Lily wasn't about to rebuild an entire engine in diamond, especially since it was a fission reactor, so she would have to figure out some other way to machine or fabricate a custom gearing out of hardened steel, but it was worth it if she could get the truck for a good price. The high-powered reactor was unusual and could prove useful.

Lily shook her head, "Three thousand."

There were cries of shock, accusations that Lily was trying to drive his and his family, of seven hungry mouths, to starve to death in the street but none of that moved Lily too much. She wasn't a rube and wasn't about to be taken for a ride.

---

Walking home, Lily was in a good mood. She hadn't paid more than five thousand caps and forced him to deliver it too, as there was no way she was driving that POS across town. If he wanted his caps, he had to deliver the thing to her building in the next few hours.

However, as she was approaching a turn into an alley that cut back towards her area of town, her enhanced hearing picked up a group of men talking to one another, with one silencing them with a clearly audible, "Shut the fuck up! The bitch is coming. Remember what Blaze said."

Stopping a good twenty meters from the alley, she narrowed her eyes and glanced from left to right. She didn't see any obvious observers. Reaching towards her belt, she triggered a StealthBoy, and at the same time, her body vanished into a vague predator-like outline while she ducked back the way she came and decided to circle back on this alley from a different direction.

She had done a fair bit of research on StealthBoys before ever using one on herself, as she remembered something about them driving Nightkin insane. However, she couldn't find anything that would do that.

There were some interesting fields generated when the devices activated, but nothing ionizing and nothing that would damage or interfere with a brain's neurons or its chemistry as far as she could tell.

She started to believe that the Nightkin were just insane to begin with, or the FEV made them suggestible to the point where they considered the stealth provided by StealthBoys to be part of their identity. Lily didn't know, but she didn't think occasional use of StealthBoys would prove any danger to her.

StealthBoys lasted considerably longer, about five minutes compared to less than a minute in the game, so it was easy to double back around a block and approach the alley from the side the group of men weren't guarding.

"Where the fuck is she?" one hissed. "Shut up, she should be coming any minute," the leader replied.

Reaching down to her pouch she brought out her pneumatic injector, rotating it to the paralyzing agent. Frowning to herself, 'Maybe I should invent a dart gun. It wouldn't be hard. I wouldn't have to sneak up on all of these guys like a ninja.'

There were three of them, and they were facing away with her. They were armed with baseball bats and lead pipes. She quickly moved between them, pressing the injector into a random spot on each of their bodies and pulling the trigger.

They all said something along the lines of, "What the---" before the nanomachines paralyzed all conscious muscle control, and they slumped one at a time on the ground.

Glancing around, she found a suitably abandoned-looking building and nodded to herself. She deactivated the StealthBoy and started dragging each of the men one at a time into it.

---

Lous was in a good mood. The boss told him and his crew to mess up some Doctor bitch that had been moving into their turf without paying them anything. He wasn't to hurt her too badly, but she was supposed to be hot as hell, and that didn't mean he couldn't have a little fun.

He had to shut the other two up, in case they alerted the prey before she came up this alley -- the lookouts said she would likely come this way to go back to that nice building she was renovating.

They waited, and waited until Bones yelled, "Where the fuck is she?"

Louis hissed, "Shut up, she should be coming any minute!"

Louis stayed with his bat ready and watching the corner of the alley but suddenly felt a stinging sensation, like a bee sting. He went to slap the insect but suddenly discovered his muscles weren't quite moving right; he managed to get out, "What the--" before becoming completely paralyzed and slumping in the alley, completely unable to move. He could move his eyes and blink, and that was it.

After a time, someone dragged him into a nearby dimly lit building, and he managed to see that it was that bitch doctor! She must have used some sort of drug to paralyze them.

Uh, she had done it without any of them even noticing. Wasn't she supposed to just be some hot piece of ass doctor, not some kind of... sneaker upper drugger? Louis had to admit he was a bit scared, now.

She sat them all up against a wall, pulled something out of her bag she carried and fiddled with it for a while. Looking at each of them, she said in a weird acent, "You know... where I grew up we 'ad zhis saying zhat is pretty applicable to your situation, yes? It is... 'to kill the chickens to scare zhe monkeys.'" Her eyes were as cold as ice, and Louis didn't mean their colour, neither. But they were blue, too.

The demon-woman asked, full of malice, "Zhe question you need to ask yourself is... are you zhe chicken, or are you zhe monkey?"

Then she fiddled with the thing she carried, and they all could suddenly move their heads, mouths, tongues! They could speak! They couldn't move anything else, though.

Now, Louis would admit he isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he ain't totally stupid, either. As he was about to yell, "Monkey!" fucking Bones yelled, "What the fuck did you do to us, you dumb bitch?! Don't you know who we are?!"

The demon-woman's eyes locked on to Bones, and she grinned slightly, and she said while approaching him, "Chicken identified. You two monkeys, we will have zhe words, but first, watch zhis, please."

Oh, fuck.

---

Lily returned to her building to find the man had already delivered the truck and was waiting impatiently to get paid. She was whistling a jaunty tune, and her Apprentice tilted her head to the side, asking, "You sure are happy to buy a truck, aren't you?"

Lily chuckled, "Happy to send a message. Zhe truck is a bonus."