8FOLD/META: Recap For My Sweetie

[Tom Russell]

Folks may be aware that Mary - the titular sweetie - reads my 8fold
stuff aloud as part of the proofing process. I'm actually sitting on
20+ installments of various series, waiting for her to have time to
read them. We have finally started making a dent in them, but it
having been awhile, Mary was having some difficulty remembering some
of the various threads, particularly in the Daylighters series, so I
wrote something I titled "Recap For My Sweetie" and plopped it into
the dropbox.

Mary suggested I post it on RACC.

"Well, okay, I'll just change the title..."

"No. You need to call it 'Recap For My Sweetie'. That's really cute."

"Yeah, but I'm not trying to be cute per se."

At this point, Mary gives me "the look", and I realize it is useless
to argue. And so, here we are. Spoilers, of course, for Daylighters #
1-6, Journey Into #24-25, and the Darkhorse miniseries.

     RECAP FOR MY SWEETIE!

Kate Morgan (Shimmer) is the sister of Cal Morgan (Mighty Inch), and
has essentially raised her and their brother Simon. In August 2014,
during a "save the world" thing, Kate goes out of synch with reality,
which is not a good time.

In December of that year, Melody Mapp (Darkhorse) brings Kate back in
synch with reality. During that same story, Cal is permanently
miniaturized, and Kate discovers that The Company (the big bad guys
from the Mancers series) is real. Claire Belden (Rainshade) is another
member of the Daylighters who works for The Company (but also not
really), and she erases Kate's memories of The Company.

Around this time, Bethany Clayton (Knockout Mouse) returns from a
diplomatic mission in deep space, trying to find allies for Earth's
ongoing war with the Pulse Collective. She makes an alliance with an
evil planet that circles a vampire sun, and brings back solar cannon
technology - essentially a very powerful weapon. Earth adds this to
its first "space defense station", the Prolix.

New Year's Eve of 2014, Cal is trapped on the Prolix, which has been
overtaken by "space wasps" in the employ of the Pulse. To prevent the
wasps from detecting Cal, her instance of Medusa - the Daylighters'
sentient self-evolving A.I. network - cuts herself off from the rest
of the network. Kate, Rainshade, and Julie Ann Justice lead a mission
to rescue Cal and the station from the space wasps.

While there, Rainshade is visited by a future version of herself, who
explains that in her timeline, the space station explodes and kills
everyone on board. Because of this, someone is unable to stop
something called the Paradox Heart. Our Rainshade assumes that someone
is Julie Ann, who stopped something called the Paradox Heart in the
nineties. But the readers know that the someone in question is Cal,
and that the Paradox Heart being referred to is a corrupting cosmic
evil that infected Knockout Mouse during that diplomatic space mission
from a couple paragraphs ago.

Our heroes save the space station but Kate is gravely injured and
would not survive teleportation back to Earth. Rainshade calls in
Trinity Tran (from The Company, in the Mancers series) who has "blood
magic". Tran is with The Company because when this magic first
manifested, she couldn't control it and lots of people died, so she is
a fugitive. Tran uses the magic to heal Kate, and then goes back into
hiding.

In late January of 2015, Kate discovers that it was Trinity Tran that
saved her - they had met before, in the pages of Jolt City - and
starts digging with the intention of helping her. Of course this
thread is going to lead back to The Company, and to Claire/Rainshade.

While all that is going on, the Daylighters are still trying to fight
the terrorist organization FEVER. What they don't know is that Cradle
Tech, who provides a lot of their technology and financial support, is
a front for FEVER. What they also don't know is that Cradle Tech is
owned by The Company. Rainshade, head of security for both The Company
and the Daylighters, orchestrates a data breach to convince the
Daylighters' inner circle that the Medusa network has been compromised
by FEVER. She proposes that they provide secret back door access to
the network to Cradle Tech so that they can monitor it -- and in so
doing actually gives FEVER access to the network. Oops. The vote of
the inner circle is contentious, and Darkhorse quits the team.

You remember back in the space station stuff where I mentioned that
Cal's Medusa cut herself off from the network? Because she did, she's
not compromised by FEVER, and because she's on the outside, she's able
to see that the network is compromised by FEVER through Cradle. And so
Cal and her Medusa hatch a secret plot to monitor the monitoring, to
prove the connection between FEVER and Cradle, and maybe take them
down once and for all.

==Tom