August 19th, 2005, Brockton Bay
You know, life is a constant cycle between actions and consequences. Some are subtle beyond most people's ability to comprehend, like a little kid throwing a ball across a street starting a sequence of event that ends with a famine in India seventy years later. On the other hand, some are as subtle as a jackhammer going off in the world's most quiet room.
Today is one of those jackhammer situations, I can clearly understand and see the consequences a small change could have created. If I had left just five minutes early, I would've completely missed the opportunity to recruit my two most important association members to date.
Two recently triggered siblings came to me for help barely a minute before my planned departure. They explained their situation to me in short order, parents kicked them out when they reached legal adulthood and they triggered a few months down the line. They heard about my plan for a tinkers association and my willingness to provide housing for members and they thought 'you know what, fuck it. It's worth a shot.'
I didn't mind so I brought them back home with me, they had all their worldly possessions on them so I didn't have to delay my departure any longer than I already did.
Their potential became apparent after a few hours of power testing which gave us a pretty good guess on their specializations. Matter creation and matter manipulation, two of the highest rated potential specializations. From one to ten, I'd rate their level at nine in terms of power in both categories.
Mansa, the brother with matter creation, can create rather complex arrangements of matter in large quantities with even his current piss poor equipment. Only reason he's not rich is the sales ban on materials created out of thin air by parahuman powers.
His younger brother, cape name undecided, has high potential as either a production type tinker or a frontline fighter. His power seems to work in the extremes, it's either large amounts of matter manipulated but with low level control or extremely precise matter manipulation but only small amounts manipulated at a time. Working together and with the right materials, the pair could build 3D printers better than anything I could build within the next four years.
Before I encountered them, my plans were to upgrade my tech gradually in the next two years with a focus on minimizing the Endbringer's impact on society, maybe try to kill one of them when my weapon technology reached a high enough level. Now though, I just need to work on a 3D printer with the brothers and I'll be ready to begin tests on anti-Endbringer weaponry within a year.
The only problem is the materials constraints. From what Mansa told me, all of his higher end ideas require extremely exotic materials. And when I say exotic, I mean the type of exotic materials that just don't naturally occur in our universe. Materials not even his tinkertech or my transmuters could create.
This is quite the problem indeed. My own inter dimensional tech isn't good enough for the task, the only things I have access to are scanners able to sense parallel universes with only a particle of difference to our universe and the ability to transport small amounts of matter to random universes. When I say random, I do mean random. I have no targeting system whatsoever, the destination could be dark space, a black hole's event horizon, a planet's core or even an anti-matter universe. Surviving the trip is highly unlikely and coming back alive to your original universe is statistically impossible.
To solve that problem, I'll have to raid one of professor Haywire's old workshops. Most of them were already emptied by the PRT years ago but the insight program located two untouched labs with a ninety eight percent likelihood of belonging to him. Anything there has probably broken down already but my repair power doesn't seem to care when the damage happened, just that it did. As long as there's something there, I'll have mint condition dimensional tinkertech to analyze.
Until then, my next 3D printer will be good enough for the foreseeable future. The miniature specialization twins will arrive next week and the simplified technology tinker is supposed to call me back soon to either accept or deny joining my association. When they've arrived, I'll be able to begin work on my next armor. Compared to the lungbuster, that one is gonna need extreme amounts of programming.
I'll spend the next few days going on patrols and working on incorporating everything I learned from the tinkers I spoke to at Sphere's facility. I also have to catch up on my healing sessions.
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August 20th, 2005, Brockton Bay
Besides my own future problems, I also have the preparations for the tinker's association to deal with. The basic structural materials for the facility are mostly done, just need to set up the ferroconcrete mixer and I'll have a steady supply for the foundations.
What's probably gonna take the most time is digging. The current plan for the facility is an earthscraper which means I have to remove a few hundred kilotons of rock to free space for it. Even if I transmute every piece of dirt I dig into high quality steel, I'm still left with a whole lot of materials I'm most likely never going to use in the next ten years.
That leaves me with a unique opportunity to promote the association to the tinker community. Here's my idea, a public announcement that I can give one metric ton of quality materials to any tinker who requests it for free. Delivering all those materials to every city in America is well within my abilities and there's probably no greater advertisement I could do.
I'll have to set up a website for it and hire a few secretaries to deal with the applications because there's over fifty thousand tinkers in America and I'm gonna go insane if I have to review even a fraction of that number in applicants. What's going to be even better, is the second phase of that publicity stunt.
The tinker's association headquarters will have enough space to accommodate more than a thousand tinkers, their workshops and living quarters. If I keep even a tenth of the materials I dig, I'll have enough resources to give every member an unlimited budget. Paired with the earnings they can make by joining the commercial side of it, the association will be the best place in America for tinkers to improve themselves. I just have to advertise it on my website once it's set up.
That's still a few months from now anyway, I have to dig out the construction site first and transmute a few hundred tons of construction materials. The carbon is done and I have quite a bit of steel already but I'm still missing quite a bit of concrete. I'll also have to create at least one hundred copies of a standard tool set to put in to put in the laboratories.
For now though, my machines have already started digging space for a temporary facility. It'll only be big enough for fifty people but at least I'll be able to finish it in a week. Soon enough to accommodate my first members.
More importantly, I'll have to build a shitload of portal drones if I want the materials delivery to be feasible. My current ones are good but I like to always use the best equipment I can build so I'll probably make a new drone design once the new 3D printer is set up. I need a boatload more anyway so I might as well make them as good as I can.
Another thing I have to focus on is finding a cheat property to buy for my hospital. Something under a hundred thousand would be ideal but I'm not that optimistic about it, there's a lot of people out there that will price gouge me due to my status and my civilian identity is public knowledge so I can't count on anonymity protecting me. I'll have to hire a good real estate agent to protect myself from that so that's another few thousands of dollars towards that project. Materials won't be a problem at least.
With everything I have to do, I'm gonna have a busy week.
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August 26th, 2005, Brockton Bay
The only reason I'm able to keep up with everything I have to do everyday is the time dilation on the VR room. There just aren't enough hours in a day for me to keep up my rate of improvement. I have to be conscious for just about twenty eight hours everyday if I want to deal with everything.
Although it's stressful, this situation won't last much longer. I just have so much shit to design every time I go through a full upgrade of my equipment and every time I upgrade, I can fit more tech in every piece of equipment so it's only going to get harder from here. By my estimates, my next upgrade phase after this one will need me to design for two weeks straight with thirty five hour days every day. I'll have to figure something by then because I'll have a breakdown at this rate.
It's not all bad of course, my custom coffee machine is steadily rising to the top of my most useful tech list and I get to work with other tinkers instead of getting blueballed by ideas I can't build like at Sphere's event. I managed to improve the basic matter creation tech and I can make any of my tech self-sustainable if I just miniaturize the production unit enough. And when I say self-sustainable, I mean able to remain in working condition until the heat death of the universe. At least energy and resources wise, I'd need some pretty durable materials for that.
Besides that, the temporary facility has been completely dug out and a good part of the structure's frame has been constructed. I'll need to manually install a dedicated generator and some wiring. The only things needed after that are to seal some gaps in the structure and to put some furniture in the living quarters. The people that'll live there are quite lucky, I'm probably one of the few people in the the world able to make high quality tinkertech furniture. They'll be sleeping in better beds than England's royal family.
Despite all the progress, there's also some dead ends. The shipment bringing the adamantium-b seeds got stuck in a massive storm and while the people were saved, the cargo was lost. If I want to have some of the material in any reasonable time frame, I'll need to illegally enter five different countries or pay some smugglers. Quite frankly, neither of those options sound good to me.
The diplomatic solution would be to exchange resources with those countries governments. Only problem with that one of those countries is at the CUI's border and I'm not confident in my chances of survival against a fifty cape strong parahuman assassination squad. Only other solution is working with a biotinker with a plant specialization, no organic printer I can currently make is good enough for the task. I'll probably have to go with the last option since it's the safest overall.
There's also been some unfortunate delays with their moving company so the miniature twins will arrive in three days instead of tomorrow. It's a bummer, I was eager to have their help designing some equipments. I've had a few extra ideas on ways for them to earn money and I wanted to start as early as possible. Besides them, the other members haven't had any unforeseen problem so they should all be here by the end of next month at the latest. I've written at least one suggested product for each of them so they'll have something to work on if they can't think of anything.
Now that I think about it, I'll probably also need to create a store to sell our lower priced tinkertech products. Another few thousands to be spent and I'm again despairing at my slow lost of common sense when it comes to money. I'm gonna need to make at least another hundred thousand real soon if I don't want to be broke after all those purchases.
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Short list of tinkertech product suggestions:
Suggestion for the miniature brothers.
Miniature models of cities and people paired with tinkertech CGI and special effects can be used to produce high quality cape movies. Furthermore, the right set up can make production much shorter than any modern method which can be used to market your abilities to film studios and PR departments.
Cost of production: 0(all materials will be provided freely)
Potential revenue: 5 to 20 millions per film at the beginning with potential for much higher pay once concept is proven and contracts are signed with big studios.
Suggestion for Carat.
Luxury products made solely from precious materials like gold, platinum, gems and crystals as a symbol of status. This might seem obvious to you but I thought it was a good thing to include due to your previous inability to tinker. Despite your lack of confidence in yourself, I believe in you, Carat.
Cost of production: 0(all materials will be provided freely)
Potential revenue: 10 thousand to a few hundred thousand dollars depending on the product(watches and phones to sports cars and jewelry)
Suggestion for Puzzle.
Your specialization isn't the best for solo work so I'm willing to have you help with high stake projects with you being pay proportionally to how much you helped a project. You were pretty vague about your specialization when we talked so this is the best I can think of with the information you gave me.
Suggestion for maestro.
You can do the soundtracks for the miniature brothers movies and I'll personally pay you whenever we need music for an advertisement. Otherwise, I suggest starting a dance club once you have enough starting capital.
Potential revenue: a few hundred thousands to a few millions depending on the project.
Suggestion for fable.
Your best bet if you want to make money is to go for healing myths next time you have a slot open. Personally, I think you'd be more useful in Endbringer fight but I won't push you to do it. If you accept this proposal then I'll have a few links to send you about certain legends for you to look at.
Potential revenue: selling legendary medicine to the rich and famous will quickly net you hundreds of millions of dollars if you do it right.
Suggestion for Cinderella.
You can make a killing selling interpretation devices to pet owners if you set your prices right. I know you would prefer going out to fight crime and I won't stop you if you really want to do it but I expect you to let me help you with your equipment before you do anything reckless. You have a lot of potential, don't waste it by dying in a ditch.
Potential revenue: hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions depending on scale of production.
Suggestion for slick.
I'd like to personally hire you to make the tires for my supercar project. Depending on how much I make per car, I'd be willing to pay you one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand dollars on every project you work on.
A.N: sorry for the late chapter, I didn't like how my first draft went so I had to delete over a thousand words and my muse wouldn't let me finish the new chapter fast enough. Anyway, since I can't always put everything that happens to everyone in every chapter, I'm thinking of putting a short recap after every chapter describing events not mentioned or people not interacted with. I'll still write my usual minimum of two thousand words per chapter but this will be added on top of it if I end up doing that. Since I've finally announced in the story that there will be universe hopping eventually, I'll let you know that I'm willing to consider requests for worlds to visit. Just know that no universes visited will be exactly like their canon version. Hope you enjoyed, till next time.