October 2nd, 2005, Brockton Bay
I'm sure I can safely say that the last few weeks have been the liveliest days of my life to date, there's no other way to describe it.
In those few weeks, I got to do things I would've never envisioned before I got powers. I got to explore the Martian landscape in a tinkertech dune buggy, I got to work on projects with over twenty different tinkers and I finally set up my first store for tinkertech products. Hell I've probably made more money in those measly weeks than any individual member of my family has made in generations.
Taking a step on Mars alone would've qualified that month as the best of my life, working on important projects with the association members was just the cherry on the cake. I think working on bigger projects instead of only giving advice in the virtual room was the biggest factor that changed the experience from tiring to exciting. Seeing all the methodologies used and all the workarounds they have in order to maximize their specializations was quite eye opening.
It's like seeing a new facet in the giant puzzle that is technical innovation every time I work with a new tinker. It's not all sunshine and roses of course, some of the members are recent triggers and working with them is more intensive on my parts. I don't get to enjoy the work as much and I have to focus more on giving proper advice but at least the time spent is worth the results.
Of the twenty one members currently on site, five of them are ready to announce their first products and another seven are in the last phase of testing. The more heroically minded members have been going on joint patrols with the Protectorate teams. They don't know the landscape of the city and the power interactions going on so I had to make a deal with the director to make sure they don't hurt themselves trying to take on more than they can chew.
In exchange for essentially lending their power to her, the heroes under her command will instruct them on the way thing happen in this city and who to look out for. The deal didn't really take all that much negotiation since it's beneficial for everyone involved. Those association members are safer and get to actually go on patrols, the city is safer and the director gets to have access to more manpower without having to dig into her limited budget for it. Having eight heroes helping you for what amounts to nothing is an opportunity the director would never miss.
Most of the finished projects that are geared to be sold in the association shop are relatively low priced and accessible. We are in Brockton bay after all, there's more middle class and poor people than upper class people here. The only exception is Carat, her specialization makes it impossible for her to make products accessible to anyone who's not a multimillionaire. You just can't make something out of precious materials affordable.
We can't sell those product cheaply even if we obtain the precious materials using transmutation or matter creation. If we did, people would inevitably just buy the products to sell the materials at a profit and we can't have that happen without having some governmental agencies breathing down our necks. At least Carat is the only member yet with a problem like that. Because of that, we'll have to use a catalog sell her products in order to lower the chances of theft.
She's also quite interesting to work with from a tinkering standpoint, especially when it comes to incorporating gemology into working equipment. Helping her develop her manufacturing tools was especially interesting.
Besides the regular shaping tools and 3D printers that are expected of most tinkers, a lot of her tools revolve around the artificial production of crystals, gems, opals and rare minerals. One of her best piece of equipment in my opinion is an accelerated petrification chamber.
It essentially creates mineralized versions of organic materials with an end result similar to petrified wood but on a much faster scale. The only difference is that it doesn't need any actual organic material to be sacrificed, it simply takes a deep scan of the target and replicates every cell out of minerals. One of her planned line of products includes crystal flowers and small animals like hummingbirds and mice.
For now though, the product she decided to sell is a tinkertech phone. A tinkertech phone worth over thirty thousand dollars based on the materials used alone. It uses around forty grams of atomically pure gold for a lot of the electronics, a reinforced diamond touchscreen, internal computers made of rutilated quartz with precisely placed inclusions and crystal coated lighting ridge black opal casing for the outside.
Other than the materials, the phone also comes equipped with a lot of things expected from a high class tinkertech phone. Over fifty petabytes of data storage and more computing power than any modern supercomputer, it has unlimited wifi access with faster speeds than any internet provider. Another thing of great interest to buyers is the phone's ability to make and receive secure calls from anywhere in the world without interruptions due to bad reception.
The whole thing also comes with top of the line firewalls capable of stopping hackings attempts from almost any tinker. It also has a price tag to match all those functions and the materials used to make it. For the meager price of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, rich people can posses the best phone money can buy in this day and age. As a bonus, the phone doesn't require any upkeep due to my repair power.
Comparatively, all the other products we're planning to announce are under five hundred dollars. Maestro and Raiden worked together to make two products, a handheld speaker and a pair of wireless headphones sold at fifty and twenty dollar respectively. Not as impressive as what Carat made but their sound quality is extremely good compared to what's on the market.
Another product we'll sell at the opening weekend is a short movie made by the miniature brothers. Instead of paying someone else for their patrol footage, we decided to use my own helmet footage from my fight with lung in order to reconstitute the whole thing and reproduce it. The finished product is a re-enactment of my fight seen from the best angles at all time. We set the price for the short film at only five dollar per copy since it's only a proof of concept that'll hopefully attract some studios. I decided to include some signed copies of the film and a few miniature models of my hypervelocity armor will even be on sale for a limited time
I've also decided on a few personal products to sell at the shop. All I can sell for now are lower priced goods like my VR chip for two hundred dollars. What I really want to sell are basic costumes and tools, things any new cape wants and needs but can't obtain.
I have three main products to go along with that idea. A low level power armor strong enough to give the wearer a brute rating of three but slim enough to be worn under clothes. Good for parahumans who lack durability or strength but still wish to fight in close quarters. The second one is a heightened mobility suit that allows for limited flight, good enough to give someone experienced in parkour a mover rating of four and just like the previous one, slim enough to be worn under clothes. That idea isn't really needed for a hero but it's mostly to test the product before I try to sell it to civilians.
The last one is a low level stealth suit, it muffles sound, hides from heat sensors and the human eyes have a hard time focusing on it. Mostly for heroes without the power or the will to fight on the frontline. Of course, any buyers will have to confirm their desire to be a hero and that they have powers. It won't stop all the problems but I can always remotely shut down the suit of any buyer that uses them to commit crimes.
If I get approval, I'll also be able to sell a modified flight suits to people with skydiving experience but with a few restrictions on where the suits can be used. Other minor ideas include starting tools for newly triggered tinkers and access to basic patrol gear useful for just about any hero. Ear pieces that boost range of hearing and automatically highlight suspicious noises, durable tape that can be used to immobilize criminals and night vision glasses for late night patrols.
If I can get that project to work, it'll lower crime and augment the survival rate of independent heroes. Speaking of survival rates, I've finally bought a plot of land for my hospital and construction will begin by the end of the week. It should be open to patients in early November if everything works out.
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In therms of both complexity and importance, the work we put into designing the Endbringer fight armors supersedes everything else any of us did to date. Even the mars base.
Every component was designed and improved on by tinkers with the best synergy we had access to. To begin with, we got rid of the whole armor's energy distribution system and replaced it with an electricity injector in order to send energy precisely where its needed in the exact quantities needed. It makes the wearer safer from Behemoth's dynakinesis and frees up space for more components.
Me and Raiden worked on the initial design for over fifteen virtual hours and what we ended up with was miniaturized and simplified by Toymaker, Simpleton and Armsmaster. We then had upgrade dump all his charges into the design for two days in order to squeeze out every bit of potential we could. The final result is a thumb sized device that's able to dump ten terajoules worth of energy every second in a radius of three meters with extreme precision.
We had to build specialized manufacturing tools with Commander's help because none of my 3D printers were good enough.
Once the energy distribution system was finished with, the next thing to work on was defence and mobility. The first thing we agreed on was the need to prevent energy overload. My best defence systems all work by absorbing the incoming attack's energy and storing it. On an opponent like Behemoth, a method like that would only work for a few minutes before something overloaded from absorbing energy on such a high scale.
Ironically, my main way of obtaining energy is also the best method we found to get rid of it. We modified the design for my ascendant matter reactor to make it able to dump massive amounts of energy into higher dimensions. With that problem solved, we could focus our attention on defence.
Defence is the area that saw the most improvement. We only managed to partially reverse engineer Fable's Svalinn shield but that was enough to make a large difference. The power of my HAF generator design was upgraded by several orders of magnitude and since every design based on the mute field emitters work on the same principle, all my energy absorption tech received a large upgrade.
In fact, that was one of the biggest upgrade not related to miniaturization that came from our efforts to reverse engineer Fable's equipment. It even lead to some improvements on the KEM units, now they transform four percent of the energy instead of only one.
Once the necessary defensive technologies were ready, we had to fit everything together in a way that maximized durability and space. Every bit of space we saved was space freed for more upgraded artificial muscles, hydraulic microactuators and KEM units.
When that step was done, we began to focus on the strength and speed aspects. The new energy distribution system and the defence system couldn't afford to lose power in exchange for the massive bursts of speed possible using KEM units, we had to find another way to cover ground fast at low energy costs.
To solve the problem, we focused our attention on improving my portal system. It was the cheapest and easiest option considering that keeping a human sized portal open cost about the same as keeping a lightbulb turned on. My drones couldn't survive in Behemoth's kill aura so we had to find another way to generate the portals at the right locations.
Using the combination of Toymaker, Simpleton, Armsmaster and Upgrade, we were able to expand the portal generators capabilities. A single device can now produce five portals anywhere in a twenty meter radius from it and change which portal linked to another instantly.
Our most useful discovery was found when testing the new portal system. Powers with limited range still work trough portals. This discovery lead to the creation of range boosters, a little device whose only capability is the production of microscopic portals. By including it inside Kensei's Endbringer fight armor, I can extend my power to the both of us. A last line of defence in the unlikely event all his protections failed but he wasn't instantly killed.
Compared to the rest, the armor's strength saw the least amount of technological progress. Instead, we found better ways to use what little we could upgrade. Simpleton couldn't simplify my artificial muscle design because it was already extremely simple. Toymaker suffered a lesser version of the same problem, he could only minimize the design by a factor of ten compared to his usual sixty.
His help still lead to improvements, smaller muscle fiber means you can fit more power in less space and the greater amount of muscle fiber allows for more complex arrangements and more precise motion. Both of those improvements can be put to great use when placed in the hands of a master swordsman like Kensei. Paired with a few augmented microactuators and KEM units in the right places, the armor should be capable of sustained brute level eight strength with short bursts of strength reaching brute nine in power.
Once we were done with all the designs, the creation process was initiated. Even using the specialized manufacturing tools created by Commander, the armors are so complex that the total time to completion is four weeks. Due to how important the project is, their creation is currently happening in the safest location I have access to. My mars base.
As for weapons, that task was left to Kensei and anyone he asks for help. He'll be the one attacking and he knows his specialization better than anyone, my job will be to move around the battle field to intercept any of Behemoth's energy attacks.
I don't have a way to directly combat an earthquake but I found a working solution. I'll have at least a hundred range extender drones burrowing into the soil of wherever the attack happens so I'll be able to use wide range repairing to at least mitigate the effects.
Designing everything took us fifteen physical days and two virtual months total but at least we're prepared for the foreseeable future. I can now focus on things that are productive to this city. Fighting the Endbringers is an important task but stopping gangs is just as important. The Endbringers might kill a few hundreds of thousands every three months but on a nationwide scale, the gangs kill just as much and ruin lives in even greater numbers.
The Endbringers might be monsters in appearance and actions but I shouldn't let them distract me from all the monsters in human skin.
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List of newly arrived association members and their specializations:
Slick: manipulation of friction through materials or tinkertech.
Maestro: sound based effects.
Puzzle: gains temporary and minor specializations based on problems encountered.
Carat: can build a wide range of tinkertech but the materials used must be considered precious or beautiful by at least forty percent of the planet's population.
Raiden: electricity tinker.
Primal: can create a wide range of tinkertech but the end result will always look primitive on the outside no matter how good the equipment is.
Smokey: can create smoke with different effects enacted on the things they touch.
Momentum: rapid acceleration and maneuvering dual specialization.
Cambrian: biotinker who specializes on self modification based on threats or problems previously encountered.
A.N: despite only focusing overall on two subjects, a lot of information is hidden between the lines. I wanted to get the major tinkering part out of the way to make space for everything that's going to happen in the next few chapters. Also, next chapter might be a small interlude but it's not certain. Don't hesitate to send your ideas for tinkers. Hope you enjoyed, till next time.