Power from nothing, Amps for free

(By CmptrWz)

"Again?" Taylor said, looking around the suddenly darkened DWU compound. "That is the third time this month some idiot has shut down the power grid around here." Granted generators would shortly be used to power areas people were working in but overall it was very annoying. The generators were notably more expensive than the bulk power from the electric company and the added noise and hassle made them less desirable. Not to mention the time wasted in switching over to them. Perhaps she should look into a generator that could power the whole compound? She would have to do some research.

Not that far away Kevin and Randall worked under the glow of battery-powered emergency lights.

"Are you sure you aren't coming down with something?" Randall asked Kevin. "I mean, you keep sneezing for some reason. Maybe we should have Amy give your symbiote a checkup."

"I'm fine," Kevin said, carefully ensuring that the short he had created a couple minutes previous wouldn't be an issue once someone restored the grid. "Though we should probably see why the breakers never trip on us when I do this kind of thing. The entire area gets shut down every time and I have no idea why."

"We should just ask Dragon about a tinkertech generator," Randall said. "Would probably be cheaper in the long run with the work you are doing with her anyway."

A couple of days later Taylor had researched quite a bit more on the power requirements of the entire DWU compound, including the supposed capacity of the incoming mains, and was working on her plans for a replacement for pulling power from the grid. It would require some trial and error, and a lot of work and calculations on her part, but she was confident she would get something put together eventually.

Varga had decided this was something that Taylor should figure out on her own and was somewhat intentionally ignoring her work, right down to usually running around in a second body and ignoring what Taylor was doing to the best of his ability during her experiments. She had been keeping the entirety of her mental notes behind one of her privacy fields, after all, and could always ask him if she wanted his input. Besides, how interesting could the process of coming up with a machine to efficiently move electrons around at normal levels be to him?

Pity the Varga, for he knows not what he is ignoring.

The power grid remained stable for another month, during which Taylor created, tested, discarded, re-created, tweaked, and generally improved her design. Though she did have a habit of overloading lightbulbs and frying surge protector strips as she tested the output of her designs as they were easier to replace than computers and power tools. Finally, however, she felt it was as good as it was going to get and she just needed an excuse to make and install the final version.

As luck would have it, some drunk idiot crashed into the local substation one night and took out power to the entire docks area. Taylor decided that now was a perfect time to upgrade the DWU and raced over to where the mains entered the compound while Varga popped over to where the bright flash had come from to investigate what had happened (and to render assistance if needed). She started by anchoring a new power-box to the bedrock (to avoid theft) and carefully placed her creation within it. She then tripped the compound cutoff switch before disconnecting and capping the original mains wires (on the compound side of the meter) so that they would be safe when power was restored to the area.

From there she made some new cables and attached them to the cutoff switch and her new creation, checked that everything looked ok, and sealed up the anchored box. A few warning and information labels later she flipped the compound cutoff switch and the entire DWU had power again. She monitored things for a few minutes, smiled, and then popped out of existence as she headed in the general direction of where Varga, as Raptaur, was working to extract the drunken idiot from the wreckage of the car.

Notably she had put the fact the new power source had been installed out of her mind by the time she got home and, beyond some thoughts about doing something similar at home, had put the entire thing on the proverbial back burner for now. Nobody was informed, and as everything was working at the DWU, nobody had reason to investigate at that time.

Two weeks later the power company had finished re-building the substation, having declined the help of Saurial and Raptaur due to the company having quality control procedures their creations had not passed through, and switched the docks area back over to the permanent installation instead of the temporary one they had gotten in place within a couple of days. Amazingly the temporary one had worked much better than anticipated, handling the load without any issues. They were doing routine checks of all the customers attached to the station when they found Taylor's box powering the DWU compound.

After a few calls up the chain the inspector moved on, allowing another representative to come along and see what was going on there as the disconnected wires were, in fact, properly capped and secured so it wasn't his issue. Said representative arrived a couple days later and after some confusion ended up standing next to the new box with Danny.

"As you can see," the representative said. "You appear to be connected to this FamTech® InfiniPower™ box instead of the grid."

"I hadn't realized we were running off the grid," Danny admitted. "But, looking at this, I know who to ask to find out if it is intended to be temporary or not. Why don't you grab something from the cafeteria while I go see if any members of the Family are around?"

"I could use a coffee," the representative admitted. "Though to be honest I am curious as to how this thing works. It is silent, isn't giving off any noticeable heat, the technician couldn't find any sign of radiation at all actually, and yet is providing enough power for your entire compound."

"Depending on the answers I get it may end up on the list of things the family eventually offers," Danny stated, scratching his chin. "Why would your technician be checking for radiation?"

"Tinkers," the representative said. No further elaboration was needed.

Danny entered the BBFO office to find Taylor in her Saurial guise sitting next to Lisa in her Metis suit snickering at the computers, it looked like they were on PHO actually. He assumed Amy, likely in her Ianthe suit, was in her workshop as the door was open. A quick peek and he saw that another Taylor, Raptaur in this case, was in there with Amy. Which one was controlled by Taylor and which one was controlled by Varga was probably irrelevant at this point. Still, PHO was likely better to interrupt than whatever Amy was working on.

Walking over to the computers he spoke up. "Hello Taylor."

"Hey dad," Taylor said, looking backwards over her shoulder at him. "What's up?"

"The power company sent a representative to ask about the box powering the entire DWU compound," Danny said. "The one that nobody in the union seemed to know about until said representative showed up and started asking questions."

"Oh, right," Taylor said, looking embarrassed. "Forgot about that. I installed it when that drunk driver took out the substation."

Apparently finding the situation with Danny more interesting than what they were working on Amy and Varga came out of the workshop. Lisa had also decided this was more interesting than PHO and had turned away from the computer.

"So it has been sitting there for a couple of weeks, with the entire compound running off of it?" Danny continued. "Giving off no noticeable heat or radiation, and making no noise?"

"Even if it was giving off heat or radiation it is in an EDM box," Taylor said. "As for noise, the solid-state energy tap doesn't have moving parts to make noise with."

"Solid-state energy tap?" Varga questioned. "Is that what you have been working on?"

"Yep," Taylor answered. "I started by being annoyed at the power going out due to various things damaging the grid, but the generators I kept coming up with either required more maintenance than I was happy with or were too noisy."

"We noticed," Lisa interrupted. "As did our neighbors a couple miles away when they filed the noise complaints."

"Yes, well," Taylor continued, glaring slightly at Lisa. "I first tried to come up with a way for the brushes in a generator to maintain themselves by automating the matter creation ability." Taylor stopped for a moment and looked around when she noticed everyone, Varga included, looking stunned. "But that didn't pan out," she continued. "I couldn't get it to adjust for the variable wear levels."

"That implies you did automate it," Danny said, still a bit stunned. "As in, you can set something up that just continually makes something?"

"I can't get it to make anything complex," Taylor admitted. "The math gets a lot more complicated if you aren't making small, consistent matter. Liquids and gasses are the easiest."

Amy and Lisa had gone silent thinking about the ramifications, both of their powers coming up with potential uses for a constant supply of various materials. Varga was trying to wrap his head around the concept, never having thought to do something like that before.

"It was around then that I realized that anything permanent done with the matter creation ability was tapping energy from somewhere," Taylor continued. "More specifically anything with qualities not supported by the local rules of physics, like EDM in general, spacial warping, or making more matter. That is why the permanent ones are more difficult to make, you aren't just powering the effect but creating the energy tap."

"So you figured out how to tap the energy directly," Varga said, sounding very impressed. He also prodded Taylor to let him see her work and shortly lost focus on maintaining the Raptaur body due to staring in mental amazement at her work, leaving a single physical aspect of their body in the room.

"So you powered the entire compound with an energy tap that pulls energy from wherever it is you and Varga get the energy needed for your various creations?" Danny asked after a couple of minutes, wondering about the implications.

"Yep," Taylor beamed as she held up her hand and a small box with electrical hookups appeared in it. "Free, effectively unlimited electricity. The hard part was getting the alternating current at the right voltage and amperage, it wanted to come out a lot more powerful than I wanted. After that I just needed to get three different phases going off of a single tap to replace the mains connection for the compound, which was a bit of a pain. Huh, now that I think about it I wonder if I should have just gone with three different taps and offset their phases?" She pondered that for a moment, putting the box down on the table where the others could see it.

Lisa had gone from merely being silent to gaping in awe at the little box. Finally her brain caught up enough to speak. "My power wants to know anything and everything about that box. How it is made, how it works, where the energy comes from, what variations you can make. All of it." She then paused for a moment and turned to Taylor. "Oh, and I think it is actually pissed off that you kept this secret for weeks, but will be willing to forgive you forever for information?" After a moment of slight glaring she turned back to poke at the box.

Taylor sighed and went to a computer to start typing. This was probably going to come up again as others found out. She suspected that Dragon, Armsmaster, and Kevin in particular were most likely going to want to know everything they could as well. As such a digital copy of her notes would probably be useful, and as she had no hardcopy yet either it was just as easy to enter into the computer as writing on paper.

Danny would eventually go and tell the power company representative that the box was, in fact, going to continue to power the DWU compound but couldn't provide answers for how it worked. He recommended that they direct inquiries directly to BBFO.