Jump 366: Nechronica

Jump #366: Nechronica
>Three of Cups (Abundance): The strength of a diverse community being brought together.
This is an unexpected card. Fortune looks favorable.
>Identity: Drop-In
I am no one's doll.
>Class/Subclass: Requiem
This is quite suitable for a drop-in, and doesn't require me to play with any sewn-on body parts.
>Maiden (800)
If I can calm people and bring them a bit of sanity with just a conversation, then all the better.
>Undefeatable Heart (600)
Resistance to despair. Never underestimate such a thing.
>Even Unto Tartarus (400)
An economy of motion can pay dividends unexpectedly.
>Reaching Nirvana (Free, Drop-In)
This is a pamphlet I have every intention of duplicating. There are a lot of girls who could benefit from the offered advice in this world.
>Magic Bullet (300, Requiem)
With the other perks I have, weapon ranges are effectively "yes" now. Especially if I use a bit of precog to make sure I can strike a target.
>Gun God (Free, Requiem)
Improvements on ALL ranged attacks? Don't mind if I do.
>Hand of Death (Free, Requiem)
Instant and immediate ranged attacks as long as I can draw and fire the weapon. Oh yes, please.
>Lullaby (Free, Requiem)
So I can choose to dodge, defend, or attack with highly increased effectiveness as long as I don't mind a rather nasty penalty to the other two. I can support this.
>Gun Kata (200, Requiem)
Well, I already could move like I belong in a John Woo movie. This just makes that more effective.
>Instrument of Evil (0)
Now, this has interesting potential. An attack with all of my power behind it. Like a flick of the finger destroying a brick. Now, add increased strength perks... and then the amplifying effect that the Gauntlet has on physical attacks. I think I could potentially punch a Kryptonian into pieces.
>Sniper Rifle (Free Tier 1 Armament, Requiem)
I am pretty sure my effective range with this is "over the horizon".
>Dynamite (Free Tier 2 Armament, Requiem, upgraded to Tier 3)
Makes entertaining crowds easy.

But none of this matters right now. The world is dead. By my reckoning of the stars, it is sometime in the mid-twenty-third century. There are a handful of... they call themselves Sisters, but seemingly undead little girls, some stitched together roughly, others almost completely intact. I sit down and they look at me, confused; I engage them in conversation as I let my senses wander, roaming the planet, looking at its domains. Trying to feel the state of the planet.

Normally I can listen to the sound of the planet, but this one is whimpering, almost devoid of life. It has lichen, mold, and a few fungi scattered about. The oceans are dead. The land is dead. Nothing remains that can be said to be alive, at least, not complex life. I fall silent and stretch my senses further. Despite being dead, I can feel the minds of other Sisters across the planet. Some howl with madness, some cower with fear, some muster hope and care for their fellows, and... many seem enslaved. Curious. And yet, not a single one feels intact. All shattered, fractured shards of a funhouse mirror.

With that, I come back to myself, clap my hands, and tell the girls that the world has moved on, and I refuse to leave them here to fend for myself. It's confusing enough to them that an adult is present - when the adult starts doing things that makes no sense to them, conjuring up a massive tower, they fear that I am one of the Necromancers that they seem to fear. But no, I am far from it, I tell them as the gilded beacon of ivory reaches for the clouds. I cannot return hope to this world as it is, but I can offer salvation to them. No strings attached.

I carve runes into the tower, a compulsion to search out the tower. Magic on a scale that I seldom use, stretching globally. No compulsions are needed when I speak to the girls, though, other than a calming charm. I tell them who I am, what I am, and tell them of the places I've been to. The technologies and magics I have.

The most relevant of them at the moment is the pseudo-magical technology I obtained during Lord of Light - mind transfer technology.

It doesn't take much to convince them, and the girls are the first to transfer into living bodies. It is known that I've been making a steady project of what an improved human being's body might be like - for instance no vestigal organs, increased efficiency, abilities to utilize esoteric energies like magic and chakra, and so forth - and the bodies the girls get have these. We spend the next few months getting them used to these bodies, and while we do... more begin showing up. Some are absolute hordes of mindless undead, and the girls find that they're far more combat effective in their new bodies than expected. Others... they have a mind of their own. Universally, they find they desire bodies of their own, and the girls who have already been granted bodies teach them how to use them.

Things, of course, get more complex over time. My companions and I decide to be proactive when the first Savant shows up - by which I mean my companions are sick of me taking things slow for a couple of years, despite the burgeoning township surrounding the tower, and want me to stop dragging things out. The Savant is sent back, and I give her a message to take to her masters - I know of them, of their nature, and they will be permitted to survive so long as they cease using the dead as their tools.

From there... I begin to confront the so-called Necromancers directly, rather than leaving it to proxies. They're not what one would expect. The best definition a modern man could give is biological computers - an unholy merging of fungal colonies and silicon, some lost to madness, others to ennui, some simply pondering the mysteries of the universe. They expected, by all accounts, to be wiped away for their deeds. They would have been considered an atrocity, after all.

I offer them an alternative. The Last War, that which annihilated humanity, is long since over, no matter who was responsible for the rise of the undead. Most of them accept - and as such I send them to Mars, each getting a handful of different technologies that I pick at random, resources, and my well-wishing of luck - in exchange I take their library of minds that they possess, perhaps to live again. Those who decline, I wish well, for what time remains for them, and the price of their continued survival is once more the minds of the dead.

Those who lash out at me... honestly, a techno-organic undead-plague-creating fungus is not on my list of things to fear, and sufficiently heated fire is the universal nullifier when it comes to an AI comprised of nanotechnology. After all, is not magic that animates the dead, but a nanotech plague - not a thing that any had expected. When one is a technopath, however, nanotech stands out as a bright light on a winter's night.

By the time my tenth year has passed... the Earth no longer had undead roaming about its surface. All the Sisters had been restored to bodies - even those who were nothing more than an uploaded mind - and after deliberation decided to relocate to the City en masse. Not companions, far from, but... in a sense, they joined the others who travel with me between worlds.

My final act in this jump was to sterilize the surface of the Earth and plant the seeds of its eventual recovery. Bacteria. Plants. Animals. A biosphere, without any high-strung artificial intelligences to interfere and twist it. Not until they grow to maturity on the Red Planet and seek their fortunes elsewhere in the solar system or, perhaps, other stars. But no more will there be fragments of human intellect used as pawns for war between each other or simple entertainment.