The Toybox of DOOM!
(By CmptrWz)
Taylor and Varga were working together to create various knick-knacks for the Family to have brought/re-created "from home". They even planned on having some of the "toys" and "teaching aids" pre-prepared in a box at home Taylor or Saurial could pull out during a math night. If only they knew what that would do to Vicky's theories.
"Think this has the right number of dimensions?" Taylor asked, holding up what had been a hollow tube. It was still shaped like a tube, but it no longer looked hollow, at least in three dimensions.
"Hmm," Varga said, looking up from what he was working on. "I'd twist the fifth a bit towards the eighth, but otherwise it looks good."
"I was aiming for a teaching aid for what happens with mis-aligned dimensions."
"Oh, right, in that case it should be good as-is."
The two of them had a small pile of items already, some duplicates so one could be brought to BBFO and another left in the box at home. This included some that were more crudely altered as though they had been childhood projects for the at home box with cleaner "re-made" versions from when said children were older, the latter sometimes being designated for at home and others being designated for BBFO.
Danny had provided a number of ideas as well, looking forward to (somewhat) being in on the joke beforehand. He still ran for the hills, metaphorically, when they started implementing things after dinner.
"I think this will make a good candidate for a 'toy'."
"Looks like a normal ball with fifth and sixth dimensional interactions."
"Close, that is fourth...no, wait, you are right, I apparently did that on the fifth. Good catch."
"Thank you. So it should trace interesting paths, depending on the spin you put on it when thrown."
"Yep. Rolling should be fun too. Also a good training aid for learning to apply spin in the higher dimensions."
"You might want to lock down the fourth a smidge more so it doesn't decide to go through the walls and floor, though. Or the user."
"Oooh, good point. Hadn't thought of that, given how easy things are to fix and how durable we are."
Yes, Danny had good reason to have run when he did. If only because some things were not meant to be known by man.
"Awww," Lisa whined as they found the internet wasn't working during math night. "What happened?"
"Not sure," Amy said, pulling her phone out. "Looks like I have voice but no data. Maybe something was just crashed into?"
"I'm dead in the water too," Vicky admitted, frowning. "What takes out everything at once?"
Taylor headed to call the ISP to see if they had a clue while Saurial checked and found that the cable was out, so no TV. They could still watch movies but they were planning on a PHO trawl before getting into math tonight. Chris even subtly checked his wards phone and found that it was in emergency data only mode, meaning that only the tinkertech data feed was working.
A few minutes later Taylor returned. "Something took out a common data relay station for the entire area. They don't know what yet, obviously."
"What will we do now?" Mandy asked. "A movie will take too long for Taylor's sensibilities."
"True," Taylor said, thinking. "Hey Saurial, think I should go grab that old box of toys and teaching aids we stored away?"
"That sounds like a wonderful idea," Saurial said, grinning. "That will give them some idea of what they could eventually work towards!"
"Be right back," Taylor said as she headed out of the room. Amy caught a smirk on Taylor's face and glared when nobody else was looking.
Due to being out of the loop in this case, not knowing that a box of items would shortly be making its way to BBFO, Amy had no idea what to expect. Which was both annoying and worrying.
Vicky, on the other hand, was wondering how often Saurial was around if they had an old box of stuff just being stored. If they had an old collection of toys and teaching aids stored here then that would validate Saurial having grown up with the Heberts.
Everyone else was looking confused, afraid to ask Saurial what "toys and teaching aids" meant.
It didn't take long for Taylor to return with a box, which she put on the table.
"Now be careful with these," Taylor said, pulling out a perfectly ordinary child's ball. This worried Amy quite a bit, though Vicky thought that she had been overthinking things again. "Even the ones that don't appear to be odd aren't necessarily normal as you probably see it."
Taylor then threw the ball with a gentle underhand toss to the left, and it traced a gentle lazy spiral around a semicircular path around the room until it caught by Saurial. Vicky struck down her previous thoughts about over-thinking things immediately, growing concerned about what else was in the box. She was then handed the ball by Saurial and, after a moment, gently tossed it upwards. It traced a couple of figure eights a moment before coming back down and landing perfectly in her hand. She smirked and tossed the ball up again, having it trace a knot in the air this time before landing back in her hand. She wasn't sure why, but she just understood how the ball worked.
Chris headed over to Taylor to look at the various things being pulled out, getting ideas but pushing them aside to learn more. Taylor handed him a small tube that gave him a headache when he looked into it. "This is a teaching aid to show what happens if you don't align your dimensions correctly. Pour a little water into either end. When correct the water should come out the other end with a significant spin, which direction will depend on orientation. Obviously you should be ready for it to not do that in this case."
"Here," Saurial said, handing Chris a glass of water. "This is temporary so we don't have to clean it up." Chris took the glass, held the tube away from himself, and poured it into the tube. After a minute or so nothing appeared to have happened. No water had exited the tube. Chris chanced a look inside the tube and got a face full of water for his trouble.
"See?" Taylor said. "When you are in that orientation tilting the tube after pouring the water in ejects it. Flip it and you tend to get hydrogen and oxygen beads instead of water coming out."
"Don't you mean hydrogen and oxygen gas?" Eric asked, looking confused about that as Chris found himself dry again.
"Nope," Saurial answered for Taylor. "You get solid beads of hydrogen and oxygen." She took the tube from Chris, flipped it over, and held her hand over the top. Water fell from her hand and a moment later a couple of beads fell out, and then started to sublime. "Obviously they don't stay solid long, though." The beads then vanished, presumably taking the sublimated oxygen and hydrogen with them.
"Here's a basic gravity drive," Taylor said, pulling a small transparent box with what looked like a water wheel inside out. It appeared to have a couple of crudely attached extra bits with a light bulb. "I think we used this to play with electricity at one point."
Saurial took the box from Taylor and after a glance placed it on the table such that an arrow on the side pointed down. After being oriented correctly the wheel started to spin, eventually going fast enough that the re-purposed crank-generator attached to the shaft sticking out of the box was generating enough electricity to light up the light bulb.
"Too bad they don't scale well," Taylor said, looking at the box. "Little ones work fine when you ensure the wheel is in something thick enough like the oil in this one, but bigger ones tend to get going too fast and become very hard to stop if you need to work on the thing they are attached to."
"You have a perpetual motion machine just sitting around your house?" Mandy finally asked, looking concerned. "Do you have problems with the laws of physics?"
"It isn't a perpetual motion machine," Taylor said, picking it up and turning it. "It only works in a gravity well and if oriented correctly due to the design of the internal spacial warps. As for the laws of physics, I have no problems with them."
"We are just working with a more complete set," Saurial said, grinning. "You humans generally haven't figured out most of the good stuff yet."
"Now if you want perpetual motion," Taylor said, digging around in the box before pulling out another transparent box, this one with marbles flowing in it. "Here, this should work."
"Er, what?" Mandy said as she took the box. It was, after a moment of looking, a perfect cube with six marbles in it, moving constantly and consistently along tracks. With no apparent regard for gravity, friction, or the orientation of the box.
It turned out that pulling out the box was a very bad idea from the point of view of getting people to learn math as the headaches generated were not conducive to learning. A few hours later everyone left, each person having taken Taylor and Saurial up on the offer of one "safer" item each to keep at home.
Amy wasn't sure why Vicky chose to take the child's ball home, but Carol was going to have a headache later that night.
"What have you two got there?" Carol asked when she saw Amy and Vicky carrying extra items with them.
"Some toys slash teaching aids Taylor had kicking around home," Vicky said. "No clue how it works, but this ball almost feels like it moves almost like how I fly, I think?" She demonstrated her control by tossing it off to the side where it flew in small circles as it moved over to the wall where it bounced off and came back, the small circles having transitioned from horizontal to vertical after the impact.
"Is that why you took that thing?" Amy asked, looking over at Vicky as she put a small cylinder down. Carol was standing there looking shocked at what Vicky's ball had just done. "I went with this. Taylor called it a whistle."
"Whistle?" Carol finally asked, looking down at the cylinder. Amy gestured for Carol to pick it up, and she did. "Which end do you blow it?"
"Either end," Amy said. "It makes a different sound in each direction."
Carol raised an eyebrow, then blew into one end of the 'whistle'. The sound that came out belonged more in a church with a pipe organ than from a handheld anything. In shock she almost dropped the cylinder, then curiosity got the better of her and she turned it around to blow in the other side. This time a sound almost like a foghorn, but deep in a way it shouldn't be, came out. The sound gave Carol chills, as though it shouldn't exist but did and frightened a primal part of her that she couldn't understand.
"That side can be a bit much," Vicky said, somehow having gotten the ball to orbit her.
"Yea," Carol said, carefully putting the cylinder back down. "You two have a nice night."
An hour later the 'whistle' had been blown twice more and Carol and Sarah were both plastered.
"You are horrible," Amy said to Taylor as they drove towards the DWU compound after school the following day. "Dropping those 'toys and teaching aids' on the group last night. And I still can't figure out how Vicky took to that ball so easily."
"Whether she realizes it or not I think her powers give her some idea about higher dimensions," Taylor said. "Probably has something to do with how her powers actually function, even if they don't give her the ability to see or understand the math behind what they are actually doing. I think it helped that it didn't look like it had extra dimensions bound up in it, though."
"I suppose you have a pile of those things to put around BBFO too?" Amy said, glaring at Taylor after stopping for a red light.
"Of course," Taylor said, pulling a small bag out of her backpack. "Varga and I made them all at the same time, this bag has the BBFO-destined pieces."
"Lisa is going to hate you," Amy finally admitted. "If only because she is one of the last of our group to find out about these things."
"She can't always be in on the ground floor."
"True, her reactions can be just as funny, if not funnier, as anyone else's."
"We should put that gravity-drive with the attached binary counting LEDs over here," Lisa said, having gone into 'interior decorator' mode. "To offset the perpetual motion marble box I placed by the computers."
"I think I am insulted," Amy finally said. "She didn't faint, freak out, scratch her head, or even pout or anything. Just calmly got you to describe everything and started figuring out the best places to put it all."
Taylor stared at Lisa as she went on decorating with the various items, shrugged, and suddenly Saurial was standing next to her. "We need to get ready for visitors anyway."
"What visitors?" Amy asked, looking at Taylor as she headed towards the workshop to get into Ianthe.
"Kevin and Randall are coming to meet with Armsmaster and Dragon about a few more bits of Kevin's tinkertech," 'Saurial' answered. "Which should be entertaining in multiple ways now."
"I should set up the last item," Taylor said, heading over to the corner and making a table with a dome on top and a magnifying lense.
Kevin and Randall showed up, as always, with a pile of pizza. They also showed up an hour before Armsmaster and Dragon would show up, so they could catch up with the girls on various things.
They found it interesting that Taylor was there as Taylor and not as, say, Raptaur. But then again, Raptaur wasn't supposed to be at the meeting, just Saurial. So whatever. They had, however, decorated some more.
Randall looked at the box with rails inside that had marbles flowing around constantly sitting at the end of the desk with the computers. After a moment he picked it up and flipped it around a bit, the marbles ignoring everything he was doing and continuing to move at the same rate. "Freaky."
"Dude," Kevin said, having zeroed in on the LEDs counting in binary. "Is this a perpetual motion machine?"
"Nope," Taylor said. "Randall has the perpetual motion marbles over there. You are looking at a gravity drive connected up to a small generator to power the LED circuit. It stops working or becomes problematic if the wheel is turned to a different orientation relative local gravity or if it is scaled up to a larger size." Kevin proved this accurate by rotating the whole thing 90 degrees, the wheel coming to a fairly quick stop. Moving it back to the correct orientation got it spinning again in short order.
Randall put the perpetual motion marbles down and wandered around, looking at the new additions while the girls grabbed pizza for themselves. They finally snapped out of being shocked when Taylor spoke up that Dragon and Armsmaster would be there any moment.
Dragon reviewed her notes on Leet's tech as she flew over Colin on their way to BBFO. She made sure her clarification requests were properly marked on her copy of Leet's notes.
She held up as Colin approached the DWU gate. Shortly after they were waved through and turned towards the BBFO office itself. She noted that Über and Leet were already there by the presence of their van. She touched down next to Colin as he got off of his motorcycle and the two of them approached the door. Dragon knocked and they exchanged a glance as they waited.
"Hello again," Ianthe said after opening the door. "Come on in. Über and Leet are, as you likely noticed, already here."
"We had noticed," Colin said. He then noted the pizza. "And per what I understand to be their usual behaviour they brought pizza."
"Feel free to have some," Ianthe said, then gestured at Saurial sparring with a girl they hadn't seen in the office before. "Saurial will be just a moment."
The girl was tall, but probably only fifteen or sixteen. Her likely naturally curly brunette hair was tied back into a ponytail and she had a look in her brown eyes that indicated amusement when she glanced over at the two. She was also doing a very good job sparring against Saurial, both girls using collapsable batons in this case.
Colin was not looking at the sparring match, though. He had gravitated over to a small cube by the computers which appeared to have marbles moving around within it. It took her a few moments to realize that there was no visible means of powering the phenomenon. A quick look around the area showed a number of other additions.
"Do you like them?" Metis asked. "Saurial and Raptaur decided that having some, I think you call them knick-knacks, from home might make the place less clinical."
"They are certainly interesting," Dragon said after a few moments. She was not sure she wanted to know about most of these. Colin had moved onto a small platform with what looked like a diamond floating over it with no means of support.
"Some of them are amusing," the girl that had apparently finished sparring with Saurial said. "Though barring an item or two nothing too complex or dangerous."
"Hello again Dragon," Saurial said. "I don't think you and Taylor here have met before?"
"We have not," Dragon said, extending a hand for Taylor to shake. "I am, as you likely know, Dragon."
"Taylor Hebert," Taylor responded, shaking Dragon's hand.
Colin wandered over now that Saurial was no longer occupied and offered his own hand. "Hello Taylor, I suspect you know that I am Armsmaster."
Taylor shook his hand as well. "Yes, you are quite distinctive. A pleasure to meet you both."
"Out of curiosity, how did you meet the family?" Dragon asked.
"My father is the head of hiring for the DWU," Taylor answered. "I believe you have met him?"
"Of course," Dragon said. "I should have known. My apologies."
"No worries," Taylor said. "Oh, Armsmaster, Raptaur said you were interested in her creation that helped level the merchant base?"
"I am indeed," Colin admitted. "As she isn't here though I don't think she could explain it?"
"She set up a demonstration piece over in the corner," Taylor said, pointing at said piece. "Smaller than the ones she used, a bit slower, yet with larger filaments so that things were easier to see."
"If you don't mind I think I will take a quick look," Colin said, before rushing over to do so.
Dragon decided that his recordings would likely be sufficient for her to examine things later, so continued talking with Taylor. Saurial appeared to be cleaning up the sparring area and converting it into more of a meeting space.
"So what brought you to BBFO today?" Dragon asked Taylor. "If you don't mind me asking, that is."
"Training session, mainly," Taylor answered as she got a soda from the fridge. "That and sometimes I like poking the knick-knacks they brought about."
"So you are knowledgeable about them?"
"Of course. Take this one, for example," Taylor said, picking up a small cube with cutouts in the sides that, if Dragon's sensors were correct, went deeper than the cube was wide without hitting each other in any way. The effect was disturbing, but not excessively so. "Makes a wonderful paperweight, of course, and is decent at holding pens as well. But if you hold it just right and throw it you can do tricks."
Dragon then watched as Taylor threw the little cube, only for it to loop up and back to Taylor. After catching it Taylor adjusted her grip before throwing it again, seemingly in the same way, but this time it curved horizontally before bouncing off of thin air and returning back the way it came.
"That is impressive," Dragon finally said, failing to understand how that was possible. Then again, there was one possibility. "Is that an example of parahuman powers at work?"
"Nope," Taylor said, apparently not concerned about the question at all. "Just higher dimensional interactions with our three dimensional world. And because I know you won't ask but are probably curious, Panacea somewhat recently informed me that I do not, in fact, have a Corona Pollentia or a Gemma, so I am not a parahuman. Just good at the Family's math."
"I see," Dragon said. She was probably going to end up discussing this with Colin later.
"So not only do they have a very interesting definition of knick-knack," Emily said, reading the reports that Dragon and Colin had drafted. "But we can basically rule out Miss Hebert as being a changer and part of this mess as Panacea herself basically ruled out her being a parahuman at all, which you found out after seeing her sparring with Saurial."
"That is correct," Colin said. "Furthermore, Raptaur and probably the rest of her sisters, at least those with the matter creation ability, are probably yet again more dangerous than we thought. The device Raptaur used to take out the merchant base is, if descriptions of the properly configured version are accurate, capable of tearing things apart at an atomic level within its range of effect."
"Don't you mean molecular level?" Miss Militia asked, hoping she was right and he had mis-spoken.
"The EDM fibers would be able to slice individual atoms away from the rest of the molecule," Colin said. "Even the demonstration piece was able to do that, as far as I can tell from watching it likely tear the very air it was operating in apart. They could probably wreck havoc with the atoms themselves, for that matter, if they came together just right."