Chapter 212: Glamour Shot

Chapter 212: Glamour Shot

It didn’t have a name.

It didn’t really have a strong grasp of self, only Mate, Food, and Invader.

Those last two were interchangeable.

Not that it would understand the concept of ‘interchangeable’.

The capera stalked along the edge of its territory, on a constant watch for all three. The mating season was vibrating through his spine, and he was sure his massive range would prove irresistible.

But in order to maintain it’s girth, the capera needed to patrol it, marking his territory and converting all Invaders to Food.

The talons on it’s immaculately armored feet were the perfect tools with which to do so, and it’s maw full of serrated teeth made the task of pinning down Food and Mates all the easier.

Truly, I am the perfect lifeform, it thought in vague impulses and smug superiority.

The capera bent low to sniff the ground, carefully rolling the scents around in the oversized nasal passages on it’s upper beak, giving each whiff several passes across the sensitive organ.

No mates. No other males.

The capera hung its head.

It didn’t fully understand its own emotions, but if it had been able to, it would’ve realized that it felt somewhat disappointed that it wouldn’t be able to kill or breed anything today. Like a child who’d missed the ice-cream truck.

Wait.

The capera perked up, its head raising as it took a deep breath of the desert air.

It effortlessly sorted through thousands of uninportant scents until it settled on one faint cocktail in particular.

It was a foreign scent, an odd odor that didn’t align with anything the capera had ever experienced before. But under the strange metallic and acrid scents, it could tell from the faint smell of mammalian sweat on its skin, bacteria in its armpits, and food on its breath...it was alive.

Alive and on his territory!

INTRUDER!

The capera snapped to full attention, turning toward the scent, questing side to side and taking slow, snuffling breaths until it found what it was looking for.

That way!

The capera was flooded with gleeful adrenaline as it sprinted in the direction of the Intruder (soon to be Food). There was nothing more joyful than tearing apart an intruder and filling one’s belly with the bloody aftermath.

Except maybe breeding.

...No, killing was definitely better.

It didn’t take long to find the Intruder. It was a strange-looking creature, walking on it’s hind legs, something like a capera, but it had these weird dangly-things swinging by it’s sides that seemed to be attached just under the neck, and it stood far too straight.

It noticed the capera as it crested the hill, turning towards it.

There was no fear, no twitching, tensing, bolting, or fear-stink.

It just stood there, watching the capera like a baby chick might watch it’s mother. Completely devoid of fear...

Or perhaps like a greater predator might.

The capera came to a hesitant halt on the top of the hill, taking one cautious step forward.

Something about the two-legged thing’s lack of response put it on edge. Didn’t fit in the capera’s convenient Mate/Invader/Food categories.

Something about the creature’s unnatural green eyes, the way they remained unmoving, like a brilliant green stone pretending to be an eye...spoke of death.

But the capera had only one response to fear: Swift Murder.

He let out a ferocious ‘HONK!” and charged the impudent little thing, growing in confidence as he closed the distance and it revealed itself to be many times smaller than the capera himself.

The capera put on more speed, it’s jaws wide open to snap the impudent little mammal in half. It couldn’t wait for the hot red gush of coppery flavor as the Invader turned to Food in it’s mouth.

How could it possibly have been scared of something as small as-

On the coast of the continent they lured in a small horde of gorm and tested the laser on it.

The results were...disappointing.

A single gorm feather could scatter light.

A thousand thickly layered gorm feathers seemed to make light forget it was light.

Not having a whole lot of mass (an understatement), the reality warping effect was significantly diminished against light.

But, as it bounced around inside the layer after layer of interlocked feathers, the light quickly forgot what it was doing and dripped to the ground, sizzling against the stony beach they were running the whorls scattered reality around.

“Well, that’s disappointing.” Perry muttered from the deck of the flying observation platform.

“I can’t see, what’s happening?” Charles said, averting his eyes from the gorm so as not to suffer an aneurism.

“The light’s getting distracted after a few layers and turning into a liquid,” Perry said, scowling.

“Liquid light?” Charles asked. “You-“

“Way ahead of you,” Perry said, holding up a hand. “I’m already instructing some drones to collect some.” Might as well make lemonade.

Perry wasn’t going to pass up on a unique material no one else had ever gotten their hands on.

‘cept maybe Hardlight.

The super who specialized in light-constructs would probably come in handy right about now too, because Perry had realized that not only did he need to blast the gorm with thousands of beams of highly concentrated light in order to bounce a tiny fraction of them back together against the monster’s skin, he also needed to beam instructions to that light in order to remind it what it was doing. And instructions for the instructions, and so on and so forth.

Basically, he would need to include self-correcting code that could resist the reality-warping in the light itself.

Perry was both frustrated and impressed that he’d found something that was actually beyond his current capability.

Note to self, send this algorithm and the turret schematics to Hardlight if we get back and haven’t destroyed the gorm yet.

After several hours of observation with his Nerve as high as it would go...Perry noticed a pattern.

The gorm were identical. It wasn’t the passing superficial identicality of animals the viewer was unfamiliar with.

It was true identicality. The way they moved, the way the light whorled and looped around them... even the way the terrain wobbled underneath them as they passed. It was wild and crazy, so complex and difficult to perceive that a normal human would never have any hope of making that guess.

Are they really identical, or is my brain just playing tricks on me? Was it just wishful thinking on his part?

Following this train of thought, Perry switched tactics and began taking pictures.

Of course the camera couldn’t actually see the gorm, but proper recording equipment was able to corroborate the identicality of the side effects of the gorm passing by.

There was...almost no variation.

There seemed to be two distinct subtypes of gorm, and the difference between the two could only be measure by a machine.

Hmmm.

In the depths of his frustration at the laser not being a viable solution, Perry had a sudden realization.

We could still get some use out of the algorithm that powers the laser, and all the study that went into it.

The algorithm was meant to calculate the path of scattered light through reality-distorting plumage. All Perry had to do was change its primary function a bit, and...

“Ta dah!” Perry said, motioning for Charles to come check out the picture.

“Oh, dear god,” Charles said, peering at the screen.

The picture showed a horde of slavering capera roughly ten feet tall, charging toward them with their gaping maw of serrated teeth open and ready to slice through prey.

The background of the picture was eerily blurred out as the algorithm tried to make sense of non-scattered light, while the birds stood in stark relief, the only things real against a non-real background.

I wonder if that’s how the world looks to them, Perry thought.

The birds were light and crisp at the edges where the algorithm was able to make sense of them, and dark over the thickest areas of the plumage, where light couldn’t escape at all, or if it did, it was rambling nonsensically.

“That one’s going on the fridge,” Perry said, pressing the ‘print’ button.