Mod Superhero

Both Emmett and Clara spent the rest of the week and that weekend holed up in the apartment while Athena brought him scrap appliances. Emmett spent almost the entirety of those few days building servers for TINA and working on their disguise protocol. Clara meditated and caught up on TV shows and anime. Now and then, she topped off the batteries running TINA’s servers. 

The racks of servers and hardware steadily grew. It now encompassed an entire wall of Athena’s apartment. Even with the new additions, the fusion batteries were more than enough to power them. 

Clara sprawled across the couch, watching an anime on her phone. She muttered, “I never thought I’d get bored of free time.” 

Emmett chuckled, not looking up from his work-in-progress. “At least we still have internet here. I remember Wave Warrior’s autobiography… He talked about literally camping on the rooftops for days, waiting for something to happen. And that was before the internet.”

“I would explode,” Clara replied matter-of-factly. “What the heck did he do to pass the time?”

“He said he read a lot.” Emmett paused. “How he did that and kept a lookout, I’m not sure.”

“That’s probably why he had to wait so long—he kept missing things happening.” A few seconds later, Clara rolled over to look at Emmett. “Ready to take a break yet?”

“Yeah… I guess I should take a break.”

“Good, ‘cause we can work on our disguises.”

“...That’s not a break.”

“It is for me.”

The pair shared a chuckle, and Emmett agreed to take a break so they could work together. 

Emmett finished up the wiring that he was working on, then stood up and stretched. He’d been at it for three hours already and it felt good to get up. 

It was still odd how his brain and body responded to the work. The organic parts of his shoulders and neck were tense from being hunched over the table, but his prosthetics and artificial parts all felt fine. He blinked away the dryness in his left eye—the one that was still organic—but otherwise, his head felt fine. He’d yet to get a headache from the work, despite having to concentrate for so long. 

Then again, building servers had become so easy that it was almost routine. At the beginning, he’d been overwhelmed by how amazing the nanites were—it was surreal learning how they worked and learning how to use them. But as they’d become more and more an extension of himself, Emmett had gotten used to them. Guiding the nanites to melt, reform, and solder metals and other materials had almost become tedious. 

Emmett paced the apartment to get his blood flowing again and did windmill-style arm circles to loosen up his shoulders. 

After a few times down the hall and back, even his shoulders felt fine. 

Emmett glanced over at Clara and found her watching him intently. Thinking she was waiting for him, he walked over to the couch and sat on the floor. Only then did Clara glance away. 

“...What?” Emmett asked, oblivious.

Clara’s face flushed and she brushed her short hair back. “You’ve just come a long way. That’s all. Anyway, let’s get started!”

~

Throughout history, superheroes hid their identities by wearing masks, but the day was coming when that wouldn’t be enough. 

Cameras were the immediate problem. They were already becoming more numerous as Belport rebuilt, and drones would patrol the rooftops and the sky—nevermind cameras in every cellphone. It wasn’t enough to hide from people on the street. Now supers would have to hide their faces and their movements from mechanical eyes that didn’t sleep. 

One costume and one mask weren’t enough. Emmett and Clara needed more. 

That was where TINA and the nanites came in.

Both Emmett and Clara were sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing each other. A small hand mirror sat beside them. Emmett dissolved his chair and willed the nanites to him. The swarm flowed across the floor and pooled between Emmett and Clara. 

Clara looked up, excited. “You want to go first?”

Emmett smiled. She’d been looking forward to this all day. 

“No. You go ahead.”

Without a second delay, Clara put her hand in the gray-black puddle. Nanites flowed over her skin and beneath her hoodie. Clara tensed and held a breath as they covered her face and neck. With the swarm spread so thin, they took on a shade of gray. Soon the swarm spread to encompass Clara’s hair as well. 

It almost looked like she’d stepped out of a black and white film, except that the nanites were an even matte color across her skin and hair. 

Emmett’s phone was on the couch beside them, and TINA’s voice came out of it. “I’m ready when you are.”

Clara took another measured breath. “Neutral mask.”

The nanites shimmered, slowly blending in until they perfectly matched her skin and hair. The entire process took only a few seconds, and then it was impossible to tell the nanites had been there at all. 

Clara stared into the small hand mirror. “Alright… mask one.”

The nanites changed color again, this time giving her a warm tan complexion. But at the same time, Clara’s face shifted. Her nose grew thinner, her cheekbones even seemed to shift higher. Her hair darkened further, turning into a deep black. It was all nanites, of course, but this was a complex dance of shape, color, and shading. 

Again, the change only took a couple seconds but it was much more profound this time. This was exactly what they’d been working toward, but seeing it in real time still took Emmett’s breath away. 

When Athena had seen what the nanites could do, she called it new magic. Seeing the mask protocol in action, Emmett knew what Athena meant. 

This time, Clara winced and fanned her face. “God, that tickles!”

Emmett chuckled. “Faster than makeup.”

That first month of being a hero, back in early March, Clara had taught Emmett how to use makeup to hide his face. She smiled knowingly at his comment. 

“Better than makeup,” she corrected. “I might never go back.”

Clara spent the next minute changing through several preset masks. She’d worked with TINA over the last several days to set up faces and hair colors for herself. There were limitations to what the nanites could do. For instance, they couldn’t shrink features—they couldn’t make Clara’s nose smaller, her face thinner, or her hair shorter. The only way to give the illusion of a smaller feature was by building up another area, or using contour and shading. 

That was fine. Simple changes were better. The more complex or further away from her face the new one was, the longer it took to engage. 

Emmett hadn’t expected to revisit makeup techniques when working with nanites, but the refresher was a welcome one. 

In the end, Clara had made five preset masks, which could be engaged within 1-2 seconds. All of them were fairly close to her real look, with just enough differences to fool people at a glance.

After Clara had practiced for several minutes, Emmett took a turn. 

Nanites drained from Clara’s face and hair. Instead of letting them pool on the floor, Clara reached out. Emmett took her hand and held it while the nanites flowed from her skin to his. They felt like cool sand, except they didn’t stick to the skin and they flowed and stuck together like water. 

They flowed over his shoulders and up his neck before settling on his face. It almost felt like he’d dunked his head underwater, and the sensation nearly made him flinch as the nanites settled under his nose and around his mouth. Clara had said the sensation tickled, but it felt much more visceral to Emmett. It reminded him of the few times he’d wandered to the wrong side of the neighborhood swimming pool when he was little. 

He’d slowly moved past the point of panicking when the nanites covered his face and lips. It had taken practice, but now the sensation was tolerable. 

Instead of speaking the commands aloud, Emmett tried to internalize them. As he did, the command appeared for a brief second in the Heads Up Display of his cybernetic eye. 

NEUTRAL FACE

It was interesting to see the words appear at the edge of his vision, but he’d gotten used to it over the last few days. Weirder still, he almost felt like he could hear TINA speaking the words as they appeared. Emmett chalked it up to having the AI so close to his brain. 

He felt a tingle as the nanites across his face changed to match his skin tone, just like they had for Clara. The sensation was over as quickly as it had begun. 

Emmett had been so focused on the nanites that he almost missed Clara staring at him again. She let go of his hand, blushed, and glanced at the space between them. Emmett reluctantly let go of her hand and smiled, feeling his own face warming. 

“Here goes,” he said, awkwardly, and held up the mirror to watch. 

He’d also created five preset masks. His skin was darker than Clara’s, but otherwise the process was the same. 

One-by-one, Emmett tried on his new faces. Each time, he gave the silent command and the nanites obeyed. 

Each time the nanites swapped, Emmett felt like he could feel what his new face looked like, even before he looked in the mirror—

After Emmett made the fourth face, he froze. A tiny reflection of himself had appeared in the corner of his vision, just like the words of his silent commands. Emmett had no idea when it had started.

Emmett slowly lowered the hand mirror. “TINA, are you doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“I, uh… I can see my face in my HUD.” Emmett spent another minute explaining what he was seeing to TINA and Clara, and also confirming that he could see each new face after he changed it. 

“I can also see your face in your HUD, but I’m not actively overlaying that information,” TINA replied. “You’re doing that.”

“How?” Emmett asked, dumbfounded. 

“You're correct that the image is located in the HUD of your cybernetic eye. My hypothesis is that your mind has combined information from your proprioception, your sense of the nanites, and your eye’s overlay.”

Clara half-laughed, half-scoffed. “McGuire was right! Save some powers for the rest of us.”

Emmett exaggerated rolling his eyes. “Yeah. That was my plan all along—take all the powers for myself.”

Emmett stared at the image of his face in his Heads Up Display another moment before willing the nanites back to neutral. 

“TINA, do you think you’re ready to process masks for both of us at the same time?”

“I think so.”

“Let’s give it a shot,” Emmett said. “And if this doesn’t work, then maybe it’ll give us an idea how many more servers you need.”

~ ~ ~