Wednesday morning. AP Physics.
The lecture hall was packed. The rhythmic scratching of pens gliding across paper rose and fell in quiet waves.
Mira sat with Peter Parker to her left and Gwen Stacy in the row ahead of her. With a thick notebook spread open on her desk, she periodically looked down to jot a line of equations. She looked exceptionally focused. The absolute picture of a model Ivy League-bound student.
Nobody realized that inside her Siren-enhanced cybernetic mind, she was currently multitasking like an absolute maniac.
On one virtual monitor, she was running a high-stakes campaign in Hearts of Iron III. Her German Reich had just steamrolled France and was currently shifting panzer divisions to the Soviet border. Her processor was running millions of calculations to determine if she should launch Operation Barbarossa first, or pivot to Operation Sea Lion to sink Britain—a fitting tactical echo of her recent fun with the Bismarck in the North Atlantic.
On her secondary virtual monitor, a live surveillance feed stread directly from a small desert town in New xico, courtesy of The Builder.
The star of the show was Thor Odinson, who had just woken up in the local hospital.
In the feed, the Asgardian prince regained consciousness following Jane's Taser attack. Surrounded by IV drips, sterile white walls, and human nurses, he completely snapped. He violently ripped the IV needle from the back of his hand, bellowing a war cry as he tried to charge through the ergency room doors. Two burly orderlies imdiately tackled him to the mattress. A nurse jamd a heavy sedative into his shoulder, and the God of Thunder went instantly limp.
Watching the feed inside her head, Mira had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from bursting into laughter. She quickly looked down, pretending to copy a physics theorem, though her shoulders shook with suppressed amusent.
[Mira, the target individual 'Thor' has been sedated and is temporarily stabilized,] The Builder's flat, monotonous voice echoed in her mind. [According to the audio logs, he shouted repeatedly in Old Norse upon waking. Core vocabulary included 'Mjolnir,' 'Odin,' and 'Asgard.' The dical staff has diagnosed him with an acute psychotic break.]
"He doesn't have a psychotic break; he just has terminal Main Character Syndro," Mira ntally snorted. "The dignified God of Thunder. The apex lee-mage of the Nine Realms. And on his first day on Earth, he gets dropped by a mortal nurse with a tranquilizer. If Odin saw this, he would scrub him from the royal family tree by nightfall."
While she ruthlessly mocked him, she queued up a new technology tree for her panzer divisions and shifted her attention back to the feed.
For the rest of the day, Thor essentially broadcasted a masterclass titled: An Asgardian Prince's Complete Social Death on Earth.
The mont the sedatives wore off, he took advantage of a distracted nurse, stole a doctor's clothes, and escaped the hospital. He wandered barefoot down the hot asphalt of the desert town, demanding to know the location of a hamr that fell from the sky. The locals avoided him like a plague victim.
He eventually managed to flag down Jane's SUV. Jane drove him back toward the crater, only to discover that S.H.I.E.L.D. had erected a massive quarantine periter. Thor wanted to charge the heavily ard checkpoint on foot, but Jane and Dr. Selvig forcibly dragged him back to town before he could get himself shot.
That evening, the group went to a local diner. Thor slamd a coffee mug onto the floor, demanding Asgardian ad, and subsequently got into a shoving match with several burly locals at the next table. He swung his fists with absolute confidence, but without his divine strength, the mortal thugs tackled him to the linoleum and beat him black and blue. Jane had to pay for the broken dishes to bail him out of the brawl.
Watching the sequence of iconic, humiliating events unfold live, Mira's second-hand embarrassnt was so severe her toes curled hard enough to dig a trench through the classroom floorboards.
"Help . I am dying of cringe," Mira wailed to The Builder in her mind. "It wasn't this bad watching it through a movie screen, but seeing a grown man act this delusional in real-ti is agonizing. To cure Main Character Syndro, you have to hit them with a reality check. When he finally sees 'w-w' in the crater, he's going to shout sothing embarrassing like, 'I am Thor, Son of Odin!' and S.H.I.E.L.D. is going to put him in a straitjacket."
[According to intercepted S.H.I.E.L.D. comms, Agent Coulson has established a fortified FOB around the crater. They have instituted twenty-four-hour ard patrols,] The Builder reported, syncing the latest tactical map. [Probability models suggest target individual 'Thor' will attempt to breach the periter tonight to retrieve Mjolnir.]
Mira's eyes instantly lit up.
Breaking into the S.H.I.E.L.D. base! That was the absolute climax of the first Thor arc!
Thor thinks he can just waltz in and pick up his hamr, only to realize he is unworthy. He fails to lift it, drops to his knees in despair, and gets captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. Then Loki shows up to mind-ga him by claiming Odin is dead. It would be a cinematic tragedy to miss that entire sequence in person.
But there was a massive logistical problem.
Her schedule this week was completely booked. She had classes to attend, and she had to report to Tony's workshop over the weekend—even though he was leaving for the Grand Prix in Monaco in a few days. She couldn't just skip school and fly to the Southwest. She couldn't exactly walk up to her professor and say, 'Excuse , I need a hall pass to go to New xico to watch a space prince try to steal a magical hamr.' If she did, she would be sharing a padded cell with Thor.
Mira slumped forward, resting her chin on her desk in utter despair.
Wanting to witness the chaos in person but being trapped by the Arican education system was the most agonizing feeling in the world.
[Mira, physical travel to New xico is unnecessary,] The Builder said, perfectly sensing her internal conflict. [Utilizing the core permissions of the Siren Antix System, I can construct an Autonomous Neural Proxy. You only need to initiate Consciousness Forking to pilot the proxy, allowing for simultaneous cross-regional presence.]
Mira blinked. "Wait. In English, please. What is an Autonomous Neural Proxy? What is Consciousness Forking? Drop the sci-fi jargon."
[In simple terms, I can manufacture a flawless 1:1 clone of your physical body,] The Builder explained, instantly switching to gar terminology. [It is equivalent to dual-boxing an MMO. Your primary consciousness remains in your current body to attend class, complete howork, and maintain your civilian cover. Concurrently, a thread of your consciousness pilots the clone in New xico. Audio, visual, and tactile teletry are perfectly synchronized in real-ti. You can sit in your classroom and experience the desert infiltration as if you were physically standing there. All mories are shared instantaneously.]
Mira's posture snapped perfectly straight. She nearly knocked her textbook off the desk, drawing a weird look from Peter Parker.
She quickly ducked her head, pretending to read her notes, while screaming internally at her AI. "Are you serious?! You have that kind of technology?! I don't have to skip class? I can sit in AP Physics while my clone goes to the desert to watch Thor get arrested? And it feels exactly the sa?!"
[Affirmative. There is zero sensory degradation,] The Builder confird. [The proxy can access all your Siren rigging and combat capabilities. It is biologically indistinguishable from your main body. Furthermore, Consciousness Forking places zero computational strain on your cybernetic brain. It requires the sa ntal effort as daydreaming during a lecture.]
Mira was in sheer ecstasy.
This wasn't just cloning technology. This was the holy grail of skipping class!
No, it was the ultimate tool for maintaining a work-life balance! From now on, whenever an MCU plotline exploded halfway across the world, she didn't have to buy a plane ticket. She could just spawn an avatar. Her real body could maintain her perfect academic and internship records in New York, while her clone traveled the globe to instigate chaos. It completely solved the dilemma of wanting to cause trouble without blowing her civilian cover!
"Holy crap, why didn't you tell we had this earlier?!" Mira cheered in her mind, completely buzzing with adrenaline. "Do it! Build the proxy right now! I am going to New xico to stake out a VIP seat for the base infiltration!"
[Command verified. Autonomous Neural Proxy construction initiated. Estimated completion ti: one hour,] The Builder responded smoothly. [Upon completion, the proxy will be deployed via spatial warp to the Socorro periter. The Consciousness Forking link will automatically engage.]
"Flawless!" Mira grinned so wide her cheeks hurt.
She had been agonizing over missing the action, and now she had front-row tickets. Her physical body would diligently finish her coursework at Columbia, while her avatar toured the desert. She could scout the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, laugh at Thor, and maybe even touch w-w herself.
First, she would head to the town to watch the awkward tension between Thor and Jane Foster. Then, she would case the S.H.I.E.L.D. periter. When Thor inevitably breached the camp tonight, she would find a lawn chair and watch the fireworks.
The more Mira thought about it, the more hyped she beca. She unconsciously began sketching the intricate Norse knotwork of Mjolnir into the margins of her notebook.
An hour later, the class dismissal bell rang. The professor packed his briefcase, and the students began flooding out of the hall. Mira slowly packed her backpack. She walked out of the science building, stepping into the crisp New York morning.
Just as she reached the campus gates, The Builder's voice chid.
[Mira, the Autonomous Neural Proxy is complete. The Consciousness Forking matrix is online. Shall I initiate deploynt?]
Standing in the sunlight, watching the bustling traffic of Manhattan, Mira smiled and snapped her fingers.
"Initiate."
The next second, thousands of miles away in the desolate badlands of New xico, a pale-blue spatial rift quietly tore open the air.
A silver-haired girl, biologically identical to Mira Vale in every conceivable way, stepped out of the portal. Her boots crunched against the dry gravel.
The proxy tilted her head, gazing up at the vast desert sky, and took a deep breath of the arid wind. A wicked, deeply amused smile spread across her lips. It was the exact sa smile currently worn by a high school student standing in New York.
New xico. Here she cos.
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