After working alongside Kid Win in his lab, I could tell he was a bit miffed at having to share what was previously his space and equipment. But I think he was even more irritated by my Plasma pistol and its relative success since his own laser pistol was considered to be far too lethal to use.
After working on another plasma pistol for a while in the silent room, I took a break and made a big production of going through some of Kid Win's sketches to try and broach the subject of his tinkering.
A bit of minor future knowledge could help him out and ease the tension between us.
Honestly, the designs are a mess, extra needless crap everywhere, circuits that don't even seem to do anything other than make it more complex. Circuits that shouldn't be able to do what they're apparently doing. I guess this is what they meant by Tinkertech being too complex to manufacture.
I remember reading about an experiment using evolutionary algorithms for coding, where they had an FPGA chip, a type of chip that can change its circuitry electronically. They couldn't get the resulting "evolutionary-created" code to work on anything other than the original FPGA chip, the code itself was apparently using minute manufacturing flaws in that specific chip to work. This stuff seems to be very similar to it.
The tinkers themselves probably don't understand what they are doing or even why, it just works in the end if they build it "this" way using the instructions and designs created by their shards, adapting the designs to the various manufacturing flaws in the chips as they go, likely unaware of the flaws themselves. Oddly enough I understood fundamentally what was going on in Kid Win's schematics, I could alter and tweak them to whatever I wanted and I knew exactly how to build them. But when I thought about removing some of the tinker-hardware-DRM my understanding started sputtering out before the sheet just turned back into an incomprehensible mess.
Did I have some sort of tinker-ability myself, or was this just my "supercomputer" Stitch brain just tearing the technology apart for me or copying it? As far as I could tell, the federation based tech stuff wasn't being provided by any sort of "shard" but was instead provided by "Stitch's" programmed brain. I guess it was for the infiltration and destruction programming Stitch had.
The federation tech was unfortunately limited, besides hundreds of frankly useless "federation" security system schematics, it was limited to a variety of guns and a "jetpack". There were also plans for nearly every Federation spaceship but some of the major systems that the ships used were currently impossible to build. I couldn't think of ways to manufacture them with any of the equipment or materials we had in the lab, the precision and materials needed were just not available.
The anti-gravity system, powerplant, shields and spaceship-sized weaponry all seemed to require alloys that I didn't know how to make or had tolerances measured in the alien equivalent of Planck-lengths. The life support system was something that could be made fairly easily, but it wasn't particularly compact and I didn't really see much need for it.
I looked over Kid Win's stuff again, it was even easier to understand the second time. The schematics themselves were basically nonsense but I could easily see how to integrate his power supply into the federation pistol design. Somehow, instinctively I just knew how and where to attach everything together. Quickly a new design formed inside my head, the combined modular tinker power supply attached to the federation gun.
Making the combined gun... fairly useless as it became dependent on the tinkertech itself, killing the benefit of being mass producible. Still that power pack.. packed a hell of a lot more power then the federation stuff. I wonder how it worked.. and as I was concentrating on it the power pack design exploded in my head.
I almost gasped at the sudden influx of technology that was "Small Modular Powerpack" as it was dumped into my head.
The entire detailed design and how-to-make-with-what-you-have instructions basically unfolded before me, instructions on how to get various voltage out of it or how to alter the power packs shape, size, and total power capacity. I could see a 3-D holographic like model of it, the circuits continually fluctuated, flipping in between variations on the design.
Except, even as I thought about it and some of the federation tech.. some of the federation tech could be fitted with the modular power packs. Small Modular Powerpack seemed to drift around the various federation-tech schematics, connecting into nearly every gun and spaceship design in my head that I had. New designs appeared with itself Small Modular Powerpack added into the federation-tech guns in place of their mass-producible power packs. In just a few seconds I had an entire "row" of feasible designs using Small Modular Powerpack and several rows of "less than ideal" spaceship designs, some of the smaller spaceships had a few hundred power packs chained together to form one giant rechargeable power pack for the ship, replacing the original "I-don't-know-how-to-build-this" federation power generators. The larger spaceship designs ended up with tens-of-thousands and were just frankly impossible to build in a reasonable amount of time.
The Federation tech outside of the stuff I couldn't manufacture was of course just normal technology, sure it's intergalactic-level stuff but it's still designed and created to be produced inside of a factory instead of being hobbled by alien hardware DRM. The guns and jetpack were frankly dead-simple I only had to modify the designs a little to get them to work with the materials and manufacturing equipment I had. The new Small Modular Powerpack designs certainly looked to be considerably more powerful and longer-lasting but couldn't be mass produced like the original federation tech was.
I sat in silence for a while, ruminating on what this could possibly mean. I was planning on just spitting out the federation tech stuff simply to make some additional money on the side and to help out the PRT itself with mass-producible high tech guns. Unhindered with tinkertech DRM the federation-tech would provide an incredible advantage when every PRT officer effectively becomes a "blaster".
As just a "Stitch" level brute there wasn't much I could actually do that would matter much in the upcoming battles, besides Bakuda, Leviathan and the S9 most of the battles were all villain vs villain and didn't involve the PRT much. Spitting out mass produced guns and the jetpacks would certainly help the PRT, maybe even provide them with a way of "winning" against more supervillains nationwide (and then conscripting them into the ranks).
With actual pseudo-tinker abilities, honestly, I wasn't sure if that was enough either. What could I build that could take out the endbringers or the real threat, Scion? Was my "tinker ability" locked like everyone else's to prevent access/danger to scion?
Something to think about anyways.
"You know some of these designs you have here are rather interesting, I think I see a pattern."
"A pattern," he said dismissively while hunched over his own project.
"Yes, a lot of the separate components that you have here have extra connections which seem to be unnecessary for the job they do."
"Yes, Armsmaster complains about them frequently and instructs me on how to eliminate them." he says bitterly, not even looking up from the latest version of his own pistol.
"Well I'm not sure if that's the right approach, I think you two are accidentally working at cross purposes. The connections seem to be intentional because to me it looks like your components are modular. You know, use the same power pack for different things or attach components onto a device for different functions sorta like the batteries from power drills being able to be used in circular saws and hammer drills."
I held out one of his diagrams towards him, "The most obvious example is your power pack here which has separate connections for outputting different voltages for different requirements. I see where you and Armsmaster have modified that design and removed the extra power buses which allowed for that modular approach."
He looked at me for a few seconds, I could see his brain churning before he dropped the partially assembled laser pistol back onto the counter and basically ran to his empty sketchbook and started drawing.
"Yes... yes, that was it!" He turned to me with an actual smile plastered across his face, "Thanks, Six-Two-Six!"
"No problem" I replied before turning back to my own projects and tried to focus on my immediate plans.
I finished the fifth pistol and started on the six, now that I have a rhythm down, all the components arranged and the custom-parts fabricated I'm planning on assembling ten today. Most will be going to the local PRT employees, one for Armsmaster, one for Kid win, three for Dragon (along with the "official" schematics) for tear-down and examples for mass production.
One problem I still had was they still looked like toy ray guns even after I painted them black and tried a few other color schemes. The bulbous housing was necessary for the chamber inside of the gun. I did my best to at least make the handle and trigger look more like a typical gun handle for the testers and the PRT employees, the ones I had made for myself had much smaller handles and triggers fitted for my hands.
I also started work on recharge cradles, it had to both charge up the battery inside and pump the gas mixture into its storage container which dispensed a small amount to be heated for each shot into it. Each gun was capable of several hundred rounds on the low setting or about fifty shots on the high power setting. The power was select-able via a switch near where the thumb would be, which also turned the gun off and acted as the safety. There wasn't any magazine-type reloading mostly because I didn't want to bother with having to make them since the original designs didn't have them either, space for magazines would also reduce the number of shots that could be stored.
After finishing the ten pistols, I started work on the design for the larger rifle version. Basically just putting down on paper the rifle that Jumba used in the first movie, only a few minor tweaks were needed to use the current tech level of production and I threw in a few other firing options common to assault rifles.
"Damn Six-Two-Six, how the hell did you make so many of those already? It took me several days to make my laser pistol" asked Kid Win after he finally took a break from his schematic-drawing "trance".
I looked up from the schematics of the rifle I was still working on.
"Four arms, omnidexterity, x-ray vision to see into and through circuitry, the ability to bend metal with my bare hands and stunningly good looks," I replied.
To be fair, I am unnaturally good at soldering and drawing now, far, far better than I used to be as just a hobbyist. It's actually faster for me to draw the designs on paper with four arms going at it and then scan them into a computer, rather than using a computer program to do the layout.
I think I was benefiting from some of Stitch's incredible learning curve. In the movie, he picked up a guitar and mastered it in a few minutes. He... and I basically have some sort of perfect-hand eye coordination thing going on, combine that with the eidetic memory and some weird intuitive understanding of things and well... it gives me a sort of pseudo-"Uber" like learning power.
"Cheater," he said and laughed.
"If you're not cheating, you're not doing it right," I replied cheekily.
Only those who knew Colin well could tell he was excited, the refined plasma pistols were frankly amazing. But not a trace of that would show on his grim face, something about the schematics both tantalized and offended his tinkering abilities. There were plenty of places to make the pistol much more compact but frustratingly it would only make the pistol more difficult to manufacture.
His abilities went off into spiraling tangents while he stared at the circuit diagram, almost making him nauseous as his power pushed him to turn those straight and elegantly laid out traces into more compact and twisting pathways. The circuit design, so simple and full of easy to follow circuitry which taunted him so, looked like something you would find in a calculator and not in tinkertech.
This... this thing wasn't tinkertech, He assumed that the first pistol was just cobbled together, it's crap range and power a testament to the mediocre components and rushed assembly used in its construction. The quick scan made of that cobbled together thing with mismatched parts and hurried solder joints everywhere showed its potential and taunted him and Dragon with the possibility that it could be mass produced, but now looking at a completed design of the far superior weapon he felt almost offended by it.
Most tinkers wouldn't even finish something out of the tinker-tech pile of components used in the test but a tinker could show some sort of partial device or more often some designs. This, this thing was refined engineering from a designer who made this specifically to manufacture it in a factory on the cheap. This was like Masamune's work but writ large.
"This is the design?" Dragon said, snapping him out of his contemplation.
"Yes, it's... " Elegant, simple, complex, nauseating, horrifying and beautiful to look at at the same time. He didn't know what to say about it.
"...Something" he finished lamely.
She chuckled on screen, "Surprisingly simple perhaps? So how did the testing go?"
"It's powerful on the high setting, easily mimicking a force similar to what you would expect to find on most Blaster type capes with a three or four rating. Mostly kinetic and concussive force, some temporary electrical-disturbance in the nerves of the target similar to a weak taser and also causes minor burning on flesh. But it also tears holes in inorganic materials." The smell of the cold burnt pig had reminded him to eat lunch today.
"The low setting is similar to the first pistol, packing the force of a strong punch. The range on both high and low is nominal and are vastly improved from the cobbled together prototype, equivalent to the standard engagement range expected from pistols."
Dragon nodded on screen, "Well, like the first one and based on the designs I could probably manufacture these en-masse... or really anyone who had the industrial capacity to make a microwave could. Honestly these sound exciting, I can't wait to get my hands on the sample. Does the charger work?"
"Yes, it's just a battery charger, not much different than what you would find for any other lithium battery charger. The gas that it uses is just hydrogen and argon, both extremely common and cheap."
He frowned, "There's... there's just nothing exotic or tinkertechish about this, it's off-putting. It's... it's like looking at a microwave oven."
"But that what's so exciting about it Armsmaster, The manufacturing costs and complexity I estimate would be roughly on par with a low-end handgun. The entire PRT force could have these in hand in a few months" Dragon said excitedly, her on-screen avatar almost brimming with high-spirited energy.
Armsmaster stared down at the design again before picking up the pistol itself. It was useful, incredibly so, a game changer just by itself, a low lethality multi-shot pistol that cost a fraction of normal tinkertech. This pistol would effectively give the PRT officers all blaster ratings if that were true.
He wasn't sure how he felt about that.
The day wasn't even finished before the designs for a larger, longer range and even more, powerful Assault rifle version were handed over as well. The rifle itself showed up after dinner.
It could be dialed up further for more destructive blasts, had a lethal mode and had typical assault rifle settings like burst fire, automatic fire, and semi-auto modes and was just as mass producible as the pistol was.
Colin felt sick looking at it, it was not suitable for the Wards or the Protectorate members. It was obviously designed strictly with PRT officers in mind it even had standardized rails for customization on it.