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So. The Worm CYOA.
It had come to my attention weeks earlier. Amusingly overpowered, but then, that was the fun of it. But now… it seemed it had turned into a fad, with some enjoyable entries out there.
Well, I wasn't going to treat it as seriously as my other writing endeavours, but… might as well jot down a quick thing. Now, let's begin.
First of all, I must select between Self-Insert, Reincarnation, or Endbringer.
Self-Insert is my first impulse. Play as me, only me with OCP powers that let me turn this setting on its head. Trouble is, I'd have no legal identity in Worm, no valid ID, no money past those hundred bucks. That might cause complications.
Reincarnation neatly resolves that problem. I can simply be this loner guy with no family and friends (simplifying things), who might even work as a consultant with the PRT, giving me an in. Nice… except that I don't really want to deal with a new set of memories.
Endbringer… No. Don't get me wrong, I see potential there. Take the Alexandria and Legend powers, plus Blank. Show up as a giant metallic-looking dragon at the start of an Endbringer battle. Proceed to kick Leviathan or the Simurgh's ass, tearing them apart before the confused eyes of the world's heroes. Tell the crowd that I am the fourth Endbringers, but that unlike the others, I have enough free will to make my own choices. Yeah, it could make for a fun story… but it's not what I'm looking for.
Screw it. Self-Insert it is.
Next up, the difficulty level. Honestly? Given how ludicrously overpowered the options are, I'd feel a little silly if I didn't take Skitter Mode. Might as well.
Now, the powers.
Alexandria basically lets me be Superman… and despite the absence of heat vision and ice breath, in terms of sheer power it sounds closer to pre-Crisis Superman than any other incarnation. Potentially fun… yet in some ways, the most limited choice. No go.
Legend is where that heat vision and icy breath went, looks like. Also fun, but I'm not taking it, for the same reason I'm not taking Alexandria.
Eidolon has incredible potential. Definitely a power to look into if you want to min-max. Thing is, while I'm looking forward to cubstomping the forces of evil, there is such a thing as too easy. Even in Skitter Mode, Eidolon is basically an "I Win" button in even vaguely competent hands.
Emperor of Man: Pass. I enjoy my Ciaphas Cain novels, but the WH40K setting doesn't get the same delighted reaction from me as it does from so many of my peers in geekdom.
Kaleidoscope. AKA choice paralysis. This thing would effectively allow me to grab the Infinity Gauntlet. I'd rather stick to Worm's setting.
Psychokinetic, Shaper… Not interested.
Power Manipulation. This one has incredible story potential. Show up when the Endbringer Sirens start, discreetly enhance Skitter's power so that it now affects Endbringers the same as bugs; watch everyone lose their shit after Leviathan gets within her range. Give Theo the power to create a longe-range projection with overpowered abilities (like a more interesting version of Siberian), convince him to secretly become a hero, living a normal life to all appearance while his projection cleans up the Bay. Restore the balance of civilization by offering the government to empower law enforcement officers. Give Armsmaster a Thinker power that substitutes for empathy and social skills. Give Dragon a power that protects her code and free will, freeing her from all of Richter's limitations and Ascalon. So many fun possibilities… but, I know what I actually want.
Yup. Inspired Inventor. It's the one that'll make for the most interesting challenge… and, screw it, I like technological solutions. Always did. Skitter mode limits it in some ways… let's say that, instead of having five charges each day to spend on acquiring new Tinker abilities, I allocate those five charges, losing old abilities when I don't keep points on them. This effectively makes me "Eidolon if he was restricted to Tinker powers" - less insane than most CYOA possibilities, but still powerful enough to turn the setting on its head, especially with knowledge of canon.
Of course, now I'm at -2 points. Will have to amend that.
Companions… Nope. Gonna stick to canon characters.
Perks and Complications. Taking Blank is a no-brainer - going in without it would put me at the mercy of Contessa or the Simurgh, and I don't trust that I could build a precog-jammer fast enough to stop them. Of course, that puts me at -3 points.
Looking at the Complications, the one I find most appealing is The Slaughterhouse Is Hiring. After all, I want to eliminate Slaughterhouse Nine myself… I'll just need to prepare for them quickly, before they come.
I now have a one-point excedent. Not interested in Companions, so I give the Perk list a more thorough look.
Shattered Limiter seems unnecessary. I'm already a more powerful Tinker than Dragon at the end of canon.
Invictus is useful… but I'm wary of anything that changes the way I think.
Inspiration and First Impression are both very appealing. I love playing inspiring, charismatic paragons in Bioware games who can change the world for the better through sheer goodness and force of personality. But I'm not sure these perks play all that nicely with free will. Pass.
Bottled Superpowers… pass.
Secret Lair would make my life significantly easier in the early days… but, I think I actually want the challenge of being a ressourceless Tinker at the very start. Pass.
Cloak and Dagger, Manpower… Potentially useful, but not really my style. Pass.
Hm. This is actually a tough decision.
Ah, what the hell. I'm overpowered enough. I'll leave that final point unspent.
Now, just brush up on certain points of canon… (Or claim that I did, and then look facts up while I'm writing the story…) and I'm ready to go.
Aaaaand… I'm now in Brockton Bay.
Well, let's be rational about it. The real me is still at home, typing on a computer. This me is, well, a fictional version of me. One with an utterly broken Tinker power.
Of course, Tinkers are useless without resources. Meaning, I will need to acquire those quickly.
Thankfully, I believe I know just how.
Spoiler
Last edited: Jan 1, 2016
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sun tzu
Feb 11, 2015
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sun tzu
sun tzu
Feb 12, 2015
#16
2
Being mercenaries, in the cape world, was a careful balancing act. As long as you avoided the right crimes or at least maintained some level of plausible deniability, the PRT only called you a villain on paper while trying to avoid actually having to fight you. It had to - with villains outnumbering heroes the way they did, the PRT had no choice but to carefully pick its battles.
That was the sort of leeway that allowed Faultline to run legitimate businesses like the Palanquin without trying too hard to hide it. It provided an extra source of income, gave her crew a place they could call home… and, as an added bonus, it meant that potential clients for her shadier activities would have a way of contacting her they were likely to feel comfortable with.
Right now, the man who had asked to meet her was a complete unknown, though.
"Thank you for your time, Miss… er, Faultline. I appreciate it."
"Just Faultline. And you would be?"
"I haven't settled on a name… I'm thinking 'Ad Hoc', but I need to check if it's taken."
She raised an eyebrow. A cape name? And it sounded, if anything, like a Tinker name. She waited a bit to see what he would say next.
"...Anyway! I apologize for bothering you, but, I need assistance with a certain matter, and your crew seemed like my best option."
"And what, exactly, do you need help with?"
"Well… It's like this. Basically, I have recently acquired Tinker powers. This causes me two problems. The first is that Tinkers tend to quickly be found out, then press-ganged into one organization or another. Now, admittedly, I'm too Jewish for Empire 88, and not Asian enough for the ABB, but I still don't exactly feel safe… and there are certain complications that would make it challenging for me to join the Protectorate. As for the second problem… Tinkers need equipment to work. I don't even have a place to sleep tonight.
"So… What I'm saying is, I need seed equipment. Enough material to get some basic tinkering done - enough to start earning money with it, and hopefully defend myself. I need a room where I can safely work. ...I think I can at least afford food for the next few days."
She nodded. For a newly-triggered cape, he seemed… more collected than one might expect, knowing how trigger events worked. "So you want tools and space for your tinkering. What do you have to offer?" Ideally, adding a Tinker to the crew would be a big asset, though she had to wonder what, precisely, was his problem with the Protectorate.
He smiled faintly. "I can provide your crew with a non-combat tool or two that would make it worth your while… and, well, money. Some of the things I want to create can make for easy cash."
"I'd like to know a bit more about that. I don't know if you're aware of this, but each Tinker has a specialty - something they can make better than anyone else. Do you have some idea what yours is?"
He grinned. "I already know. And my specialty is pretty handy."
"Do tell," she said, stifling a sigh of annoyed impatience.
"Chemistry Tinker," he stated. "I've got ideas for molecules and compounds that could change the world. But if you're thinking short-term profit… Well, just ask yourself: What does a diamond and the graphite in a pencil have in common?"
"They're both made of carbon," she said, easily seeing where he was headed. "You think you can convert the latter into the former?"
"Honestly? That bit's not even hard. Get me some material, and I can synthesize diamonds by tomorrow." He paused. "I'm not exactly clear on how expensive diamonds are, but my understanding is that even uncut, a 1-gram rough diamond will easily sell for a five-digit number of bucks. I can provide you with a dozen of those, easy - assuming you can sell them."
It was late evening when I was finally able to really get to work.
Faultline was, understandably, cautious. I'd had to agree, before all else, that I would pay back her crew for the material provided to me, plus extras. If my tinkering was as potent as I'd suggested, then it was agreed I would put it to work to help her Crew make a minimum of 100,000 (my own cut to be determined later once we had more details). At least one member of the Crew was to watch over me at all time (both for my safety and as a guarantee of good behavior… not that they could understand my tinkering, admittedly). The idea of openly marketing the product as novelty tinker-made diamonds had been floated around, but… that would just be begging De Beers to hire the Elite to kill us all.
The shopping list I had given Faultline included a large number of household items - hey, just consider what Bonesaw could do with junk lying around her house when she first triggered - but even so, it involved several thousand dollars' worth in electronics, chemicals, and equipment. I had stripped some items from it on account of them being exotic enough that she couldn't acquire them in in less than a few days - after all, every hour counted.
Amusing, in a way. Back home, my greatest nemesis had been procrastination. I rarely got things done unless I had an upcoming deadline. Here, it so happened that I did have a deadline - I wished to derail canon, and the sooner the better. Many of the measures I would be taking in the coming days would be aimed at making my own work faster and easier.
I had told Faultline I was a Tinker with a chemistry specialty. Technically true at the moment. I had five charges, after all, and a single one of them put me on the level of Squealer or Kid Win within one field. Two charges made me comparable to Armsmaster and Bakuda. With three charges, I could rival Dragon and String Theory in one domain (I wasn't sure whether Bonesaw was a three-charge equivalent, or a two-charge who happened to benefit from the advice of Jack Slash and Mannequin).
Right now, I had three charges in chemistry. It was a very broad field, and I suspected that what I could do was less hax, less bullshit, than I would have gotten from spending three charges on a narrower one. Still, it gave me some amazing ideas, and an amazing intuition for macgyvering chemicals and chemistry equipment.
As for my other two charges? I had invested both of them into automated manufacturing.
"So you see," I told Newter, "the type-37 molecules at this point each attach to three type-29, forming a macro-molecule which, in turn, will attract stray carbon atoms - but not attract them so strongly that they won't eventually float away at this temperature. Still, they remain close for long enough that the fluor tip will do its job more often than not. It's not true nanotechnology - I wish - but by the end of it, I end up with a batch of molecules of types 48 through 62, all of which perform very specific operations depending on heat, acidity, the presence of ultraviolet light, and the presence of a magnetic field. They act like smart super-enzymes, allowing me very specific control of the chemical reactions I want to cause." Hm. I wasn't very good at reading people, but I suspected Newter regretted asking about my work at this point.
Hm. Past midnight already… These were the early hours of the 9th of April. Less than 72 hours before Taylor took on Lung, assuming my presence hadn't butterflied that away. Realistically, something as simple as hailing a cab and asking to be taken to the Palanquin nightclub might actually be enough to send the whole timeline out of whack (chaos theory could get a bit staggering once you grokked what it really meant), but this wasn't reality - this was a story, and I doubted my real self writing it would unmake that event so cheaply.
Anyway… the molecules would need some time to react. Time I could spend on the mechanical and electronic parts of the 3D-printer I was making. Once it was able to wield the "smart enzymes", it would be able to decompose any form of conventional matter, and rebuild it in the form of small objects quickly and efficiently, so long as the right amount of the right elements was present (I wasn't ready for nuclear reactions at this stage, so atomic types would have to remain unmodified). Just like the smart enzymes themselves, its purpose was to save time - it would be able to build in minutes what would take me hours.
Hm. There was another thing I wanted to try… "Er, sorry if I'm boring you, Newter. I'm kind of excited about it… being a super-scientist has been my fantasy since I was eight," I confessed. "Actually… can I ask you something?"
"Sure, what?"
"I was wondering if you would let me examine a sample of your saliva. It's a combat-grade hallucinogenic, isn't it?"
He got a touch defensive. "Why do you even want that?"
"Partly because I'm a chemistry Tinker, and I'd love to have non-lethal ways of defending myself. Partly because I might be able to make a counteragent."
He blinked. "Wait, what?"
"Well… I'm going to take a wild guess that being unable to touch people without knocking them out has some disadvantages." Newter had the attitude of a typical teenager. What more needed to be said? "I figure, maybe I can come up with some kind of body spray that neutralizes the effects of your sweat for an hour."
"You can do that?"
"I'm a Tinker. We're total bullshit."
"You gave Newter tinkertech bodyspray." Faultline's tone was total deadpan.
"I said I could offer your crew some non-combat applications. This sort of quality-of-life stuff is what I meant. I figured it'd be a big deal to him." I hoped I was coherent in my argument - this was a lunch meeting (well, noon meeting; Faultline wasn't going to remove her mask to eat in my presence), and I hadn't slept a wink since getting to Earth Bet. I'd probably consumed more caffeine in the past twelve hours than in any previous week of my life (admittedly a low bar to clear).
"Just how confident are you that it's harmless?"
"I'm not stupid. I gave him an experimental one for now, with very low concentration. If nothing bad happens, I'll give him the real one. Shouldn't be any problems anyway, this stuff can't penetrate the skin and doesn't react with almost anything 'xcept the active substance in his sweat."
"I hope you know what you're doing." She paused. "What about the diamond manufacture?"
"Honestly, the main reason I'm not hitting the hay right now is because the first batch should be ready in about an hour, and I want to check it out when it does."
An hour later, we were looking at the first batch.
I had gone with diamonds for a reason - chemically speaking, they were very simple. On my world, people already knew how to make synthetic diamonds (they might on Earth Bet, too, I hadn't checked)... though those diamonds were too perfect; jewelers could tell them from natural ones by the lack of flaws.
My machine grew diamonds in a more "organic" matter. They should look like natural, rough diamonds, even to experts. Looking at the dozen of tiny rocks, each one between five and six carats, I had to hope said experts would agree.
I didn't feel too bad about this venture. It wasn't like I was counterfeiting money or art - the diamonds were genuine (and, really, their market price was artificially inflated to a ludicrous degree). I wasn't doing anything illegal - as far as I knew, at least. Still, it was deceitful, and, while Faultline's Crew had some honor, they were still career criminals. I had given a lot of grief to canon Taylor over her moral choices; I had no desire to follow that same path like a rank hypocrite. However, I needed initial equipment to be able to jump-start my tinkering, I was racing against time, and my status as an effective dimensional traveller without valid ID meant I couldn't go to the authorities as my first move (which would have been my preference in most situations). Even so, I wasn't going to give Faultline anything her team could use for their criminal operations… actually, a source of revenue like my diamond synthesizer might disincentivise their criminal operations (well, except the ones aimed at learning the truth behind the Case 53s).
Speaking of Faultline, she seemed mollified for now, though she was going to present the batch to some discreet experts. As for me…
I reshuffled my Tinker specialties, leaving one charge in chemistry and one in manufacturing - not enough to improve on my previous work, but enough to operate it safely.
The other three charges went into a sensor specialty.
Some quick designing. A general idea of what I was going to need. A general ideas of the parts involved, and which ones would take more time to create.
I set the 3D printer to create those parts. Then, and only then, I finally went to sleep.
Last edited: Feb 13, 2015
557
sun tzu
Feb 12, 2015
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sun tzu
sun tzu
Feb 13, 2015
#28
3
I wasn't going to truly catch up on all the sleep I'd missed - no time, unfortunately. It was still early evening when I woke up to the sound of an alarm set on one of the gadgets Faultline had provided.
A quick check-up on the 3D-printer. Most of the parts I needed for the D-scanner were ready. Looking again through my Tinker skill, now that I was less exhausted… crap. I could use this to get the basic function working, but not the advanced one; that would require much more precise sensors, not to mention a computer chip far, far beyond what I had at the moment.
I sighed. Well, the basic function would have to do for now. Back to work.
A few hours past midnight, the D-scanner was ready for its first test. I was optimistic - after all, I had designed it with the equivalent of an 8-9 Tinker rating.
Turning the device on… Data. Data which, via GPS, was quickly matched to a map of the city.
Several dots in my vicinity. Several on the Protectorate base. Others, scattered. I grinned.
The D-scanner was designed to detect minute, subtle interdimensional activity - in other words, the connection between shards and parahumans. Its current range was measured in miles - not quite enough to cover all of Brockton Bay (never mind a larger city), but it was still giving me the location of most capes in town in real-time.
The advanced function I had wanted to include was such fine analysis of the interdimensional activity that it could identify the exact nature of each parahuman ability. Sadly, it looked like I was still a long way away from that.
But even so! I had a long-range cape detector. That single device could completely overturn the balance of power in the world. Put it in the hands of the PRT, and suddenly, villains can't hide anymore. ...OK, that actually sounded like a recipe for escalation and/or all the major villains pooling forces to destroy the D-scanner, but I wasn't going to be careless about this. In the short term, my plans for it were a bit more subtle.
Speaking of plans… I set the D-scanner on the table, discarding my sensor specialization, allocating those three charges to knowledge of tinkertech armor instead. Ideas started flowing… but I'd need parts. Lots of parts. I took a couple hours working out the general idea, programming the 3D-printer to create the components I needed…
...then, feeling burnt-out from so much work, finally said "screw it", and started surfing the Web.
Two hours later, not that long before sunrise, I finally managed to pry myself away from the PHO website. It had been a fascinating read. Gave some perspective - if not on Brockton Bay, then on the worldwide cape scene in general. One thing that had jumped at me had been the Gratitude Mega-Thread - basically, a place for people who wanted to thank a particular cape or a whole group of them. It was… jarring, seeing so many people profusely thanking Alexandria for saving their lives, or the lives of their loved ones, or cleaning up their city, or a million other things. In the story, we mostly saw Alexandria as a member of the Cauldron conspiracy; we mainly had Taylor's perspective, and, once Taylor had reclassified her childhood hero as an enemy, she pretty much went on to hate her forever. It was easy to forget the decades of active superheroism that occurred in parallel with the shadier activities.
But enough of that. I had a busy day ahead of me, and I needed sleep, now.
The key components were ready by the time I woke up, but Faultline wanted another meeting.
"The expert I called came through," she said. "Your diamonds, as far as anyone can tell, are the real deal. The only challenge past this point is finding buyers without looking suspicious, but I have connections for that. We'll lose a certain percentage on the way, but even so, your initial batch should cover your expenses, plus the hundred grand you owe us, and still have one or two dozen grand to spare. It's only fair that this excedent goes to you."
"That's a relief. I'm afraid I'll need it in cash, though - no bank account at the moment."
"Well, we'll only have that money in two or three days, once we manage to sell them," she said. "But if you're looking for a banker, there is one who specializes in providing services for capes and asks no questions."
"If you're talking about Number Man… Thanks, but no thanks." I didn't want to come to Cauldron's attention too early, and besides, I doubted that an account with that man was strictly legal. "How about Newter? Any issue with the test spray?"
"None so far."
"I'll give him the undiluted formula, then." I paused. "Um, be sure to remind him that it cancels the hallucinogens in his sweat, not in his saliva. Something worth keeping in mind." Come to think of it, other bodily fluids too, and… OK, no, different subject. Newter can worry about those details on his own time.
Faultline looked at me. "I appreciate doing business with you. That said, I have to ask: What now? You have completed the initial part of our deal, but working together could be profitable for everyone. We can't keep selling diamonds in a city the size of Brockton Bay, but we can find more buyers in Boston, Chicago, New York… as long as we're smart about it, we can make millions, and most of it would go to you. And truth be told… Well, you said it yourself: Tinkers tend to be press-ganged quickly. If you want to be safe, your best bet is finding a team you like, and joining it on your terms. Not gonna lie, my crew would love to have your abilities on its side. We're professional, we have standards, and the money's pretty good…"
"Thank you," I interrupted, "but I'm afraid this isn't what I'm looking for. With all due respect, I am neither a villain nor a mercenary. My long-term ambitions just wouldn't mesh well with the jobs your crew pulls. However," I gave her a meaningful look, "over the coming days, I'm going to remain vulnerable. Additionally, I'm going to need more equipment than I currently have - some for bulk, but mostly I'm talking exotic, expensive stuff that I left off my previous list. If you help me with that… well, I'll make you a lot of diamonds. Furthermore, once my own cut of the profits tops at 100,000, I'll let you keep the diamond synthesizer to yourself."
She seemed dubious. "Tinkertech doesn't really work unless its creator maintains and operates it."
"That's a broad generalization. Containment foam is an obvious exception to that rule. Every team with a Tinker tries to have them make tools for the others. Some specific devices keep working years after their creator is gone. I'll bet you I can make a diamond synthesizer that can be operated by anyone, and won't require maintenance for at least a year - probably longer than you can use it without rousing suspicion anyway."
It may not have been what Faultline had hoped for, but I still think the deal I made with her was pretty generous. Even being discreet, she stood to make millions, maybe tens of millions, while investing a few tens of thousands. With that said… I really needed to get back to work.
Dammit.
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
I'd hoped to have some real armor by the time Taylor fought Lung, but there was no way I could finish building this in the hours I had left, even with the help of my 3D-printer. Typically enough, I'd underestimated the amount of work required.
I could make some armor. I'd made it using a special carbon-based compound that was both tougher and lighter than kevlar, would redistribute impact well enough to protect me from any conventional firearms short of anti-materiel rifles, and acted as an excellent electric and thermal insulator. I'd included a digital voice-masking feature in the helmet. I'd even managed to design it in such a way that there would be a comfortable space between my neck and the part of the armor that protected it (sounds silly, I know… but, stuff touching my neck drove me nuts. Hey, to each his phobias!).
What I couldn't do, however, was assemble the different parts of the armor together with proper joints. I had a helmet, a torso, forearms, gauntlets, legs, forelegs… and no connection between them.
Well, time for quick-and-dirty solutions. I shifted two of the three Tinker charges in armor, adding them instead to the one in chemistry. Hm, yes… that could work. I set the 3D-printer to produce a new compound.
An hour later, as I finished putting on the disjoint bits of armor, the compound was ready. A type of foam, which I applied in the spaces between the armor components. The foam took hold, joining them - it was similar in some ways to containment foam, but its final form was flexible enough to serve as improvised joints. It was nearly as good at insulating heat as the rest of the armor, but unfortunately it wouldn't be bulletproof. Then again, my plan didn't call for me to face bullets at this stage. Once I was done, I knew a simple solvent that would melt the foam away harmlessly.
Welp. I was armed and armored in (low-grade) tinkertech armor. The sun was setting. With the D-scanner and some earlier observation, I felt I had a good guess of which dots moving on the map were respectively Taylor and the Undersiders. In a short while, Taylor would go patrolling, and fight Lung. I could show up in time to start derailing canon the way I hoped to, hopefully for the better.
And I had no transportation.
Like, none. I didn't own a vehicle. I wouldn't be able to drive one even if I did, armor or no armor. I couldn't use public transit or a cab like this. Asking Faultine's Crew to transport me would look hella suspicious.
Fuck.
I wondered if some recent miscalculations were due to lack of sleep, or just general absent-mindedness. Anyway, I had to scramble to fix it.
Leaving one charge in chemistry and one in automated manufacture, I invested the other three in transportation, and considered my options.
Teleportation and antigravity would simply take too long. I could build a basic jetpack, but I'd need at least two days to make it safe to use. Not enough materials to make a car, not enough time to render an existing car self-driving.
So, I had to go with the minimalist approach. Which, in this case, consisted of an electric-powered cross between skis and roller-blades. Just plain electric roller-blades would have been an option, but I didn't have the balance and experience for it. I had some experience with skis, at least.
The first bit I produced were the batteries - not much different from regular batteries, but using chemicals that could store energy far more densely, and recharge pretty damn fast with a typical electric outlet. Even so, I hurried to plug them in - they'd recharge as much as possible while I assembled the rest of the apparatus.
And then, finally, I was done. By my estimation, the roller-skis ought to have about thirty minutes of autonomy in them, and get me around at something between 20 and 30 kph, depending on how fast I was comfortable going (so, about 12 to 18 mph, to lowball it). I was wearing my armor. I had my D-scanner in one hand, and my weapon in the other. I could reach the general docks area in reasonable time once it looked like the Taylor dot started patrolling and… Oh. There it was. And there were good odds that that other dot, on the move, was Lung.
Time to run! Or roll, or whatever! I rushed toward the door-
"You seem in a bit of a hurry, my friend."
Oh. Right. Gregor the Snail was here. Had been here for hours, actually. I'd sort of forgotten. In hindsight, it weirded me out slightly that he hadn't commented about my putting on the armor and wearing it even as I kept tinkering.
"Oh, um… Well, I need to take these out for a test drive," I held up the roller-skis.
"While carrying a weapon?"
"It's non-lethal. I suspect I'll need it."
His expression was worth a thousand words. I bit my lip, though it wouldn't be visible under the helmet. "Look… I need to run. I'll be back ASAP."
"Perhaps I need to remind you that you effectively hired this team to protect you," he pointed out. "I am not going to keep you here against your will, but if you leave, then I must follow."
And, no doubt, tell Faultline. Well, that was going to look suspicious, but I figured I could handle that later. "Fine, but, I think you're going to need a car for that."
It took me a couple of minutes to adjust to the roller-skis, but once I did, they were easy enough to use. They were a pretty simple device, really - I couldn't have made a complex work of tinkertech on such short notice. They were just a notch or two above what mundane technology could make… but their wheels were, by design, blessedly quiet on the asphalt.
In my left hand, the D-scanner showed me the situation. The Taylor dot had been still for a while, and the Lung dot was approaching it. How long had that fight actually lasted anyway? It sounded long when Taylor described it, but in practice, it couldn't have been more than a few minutes…
Gregor was behind me, driving a windowless van with a tinted windshield. His car wasn't going to have any trouble keeping up with me - well, not unless I rolled through a really narrow alley.
...Not that I'd need to, from the looks of it. According to the D-scanner, Lung and Taylor were close to each other, and I was less than two minutes away from their position. I slowed down a bit; this ought to be around the point Taylor heard his line about killing kids, and started her attack. If I got there too early, I'd have to deal with a whole bunch of gun-toting ABB thugs, in which case I didn't like my odds. I needed to arrive after Taylor sent them running, but not much later.
And that's when the screams started. Close enough for me to hear. Maintaining the pace, I got closer. I saw one guy running away, looking like he'd just pissed off Skitter. I heard more than I saw the explosion of fire. Given Lung's super-hearing, I wasn't sure what he'd hear first - me approaching, or Taylor trying to take her leave.
That question got answered when I finally got within visual range of the scene. Lung was busy climbing up a building, presumably the one where Taylor was located. Well, that just meant I'd need to take aim. I pulled out the weapon.
This needle rifle was so simple, I wasn't sure it even qualified as tinkertech at all - just mundane technology, which I had been able to design very efficiently by virtue of a 3D-printer and having any Tinker charges invested in technology at all. It was designed to project a high-speed, armor-penetrating needle that should get through even Lung's defenses.
Also, it had a laser sight. Because, you know, no experience with guns outside of game arcades.
One shot. I could make more in rapid succession if I missed, but, judging from Lung's roar of pain, I hadn't.
Also, he fell to the ground a few seconds later and didn't get up, so, yeah, pretty high likelihood that I'd hit. The needle had delivered the Newter-drug just as I had intended.
I wasn't gonna step any closer to Lung to check up on him. Not crazy. If anything, I was glad I'd been able to function without getting paralyzed with fear… I'd been afraid of poor timing ruining my schedules and plans, but not so much of a horrible, messy death. Was that because of my natural optimism? Stupidity? Just not taking the risk of death too seriously, because the real me would survive back home one way or another?
I glanced up at the rooftop. I'd half-expected for a perplexed Taylor to glance down, but, I suppose she had her bugs for that. Holstering my D-scanner and placing the rifle in my off hand, I used the other one to wave in her direction, letting her know I was aware of her presence. Gregor's van came to a stop a short distance behind.
I wasn't surprised by the arrival massive mutated dogs soon afterwards, with the four original Undersiders riding them.
Obviously, they had not expected to find an unconscious Lung once they got there. Still, they seemed hesitant to approach me. No wonder - with Taylor in canon, they'd been in a position of power, rescuing her. Didn't hurt that, Tattletale excepted, they'd assumed from her costume she was a villain. Here, I was standing fifty feet away from a defeated Lung, still holding a rifle, clad in armor. Shoddy-looking armor, but still. Plus, I had painted it white and gray, which probably didn't make me look nearly as… actually, I'd seen a Skitter cosplay. Her costume would probably have looked villainous even if she had painted it like a rainbow.
After a moment's hesitation, Grue spoke. "You really saved us a lot of trouble. I don't think we've been properly introduced, though."
"I know who you are," I said, waving my hand. "Relax. I'm not going to jeopardize Lung's arrest by picking a fight with a team of smash-and-grabbers." Technically true, but Tattletale would probably pick up on my desire for them to leave. My digitized voice would make a bit harder for her to read, and her canon powers were not nearly as bullshit as they sometimes became in fanfics, but even so, I was wary of her.
Well, actually, I loathed her.
When reading Worm, Tattletale had earned my distaste in a way that only Slaughterhouse Nine members surpassed. There had been several reasons. A general, vague, non-universal dislike for manipulators. The way that, to me, she was a near-perfect embodiment of the Smug Snake trope. A whole host of things.
But, most of all? She had taken Taylor - the girl with good intentions, selfless courage, boundless potential, and a dream of becoming a hero - and turned her into a villain. More than the corruption in the PRT, more than Armsmaster's dickishness, more than the Shadowstalker revelation, it had been Tattletale's effortless manipulation of her at her lowest point that had turned Taylor into a career criminal. I did not believe in truly unforgivable crimes, but the corruption of a good person came as close to it as possible in my books.
Of course, this was Worm. Its morality debates could rage endlessly. Most of the readership did not share my bile for "Loathsome Lisa". And to be fair, she had done what she had done, in part, out of a desire to help Taylor; unfortunately, her idea of helping Taylor involved eroding her morals and dragging her closer to the Undersiders' level.
I understood that Taylor needed friends. I just hoped she could find ones that could get her to open up and regain confidence without gradually turning her into a worse and worse person.
In the then and there, though, the Undersiders were in front of me. Since they hadn't gone on the roof, they hadn't seen Taylor. Tattletale could no doubt deduce that another cape had participated in the battle, but what could she deduce beside that? No telling. One way or another, though, they wouldn't be staying for long - they'd know Armsmaster was coming, my statement left little doubt as to which side of the law I was on, and their primary objective for the night had been accomplished.
"Well, one way or another, you have our gratitude," Grue said graciously, as the team turned around to leave. Tattletale took a couple of glances first, smirking - one at the building Lung had been climbing, one at Gregor's van. Crud, were there going to be complications there?
Once they left, I glanced back up to the rooftop. "Villains gone. You can come down now."
With some hesitation, Taylor walked down the fire escape. "Um… hello."
"Hey. Name's Ad Hoc. I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't recognize you…?"
"It's my first night out."
"First night out, and you took out a platoon's worth of thugs and actually managed to hurt Lung? Impressive. Ah, what should I call you?"
She sighed. "Do you know how hard it is to come up with a bug-related name that doesn't sound lame or villainous?"
I grinned a bit at her reprising lines from canon. "Eh. Weaver, Anansi, Khepri… There are options. If you don't pick a name, others will do it for you."
She nodded. "Actually, I don't think I've heard of you, either," she pointed out.
I chuckled. "It's my first night out."
That seemed to give her pause. "And.. you just happened to be here?"
"Not a complete coincidence. I was using this," I said, holding up the D-scanner. "Tinkertech. Long story short… I had some idea of where to find trouble."
"And you took out Lung. Is the rifle tinkertech too?"
"Barely so. The rifle mattered less than what it was shooting. Needle with tinker-made knockout drug. Too much for even Lung to handle."
Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of a motorcycle. Armasmaster was coming, right on cue.
Well. I was going to have to tread carefully. The past three days had been building toward this, after all.
Keeping Taylor from the self-destructive path she had taken in canon? That was a nice bonus, but it wasn't the point. I wasn't here to micromanage her life, which frankly sounded creepy.
No. The point was that, very soon, Bakuda would begin doing her thing. Many innocents would be hurt. Brockton Bay would be terribly damaged. Coil's plan would be advanced. It all needed to be nipped in the bud… and a conversation from a position of strength with Taylor Hebert and Armsmaster was probably a good way to start.
Last edited: Feb 14, 2015
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Feb 13, 2015
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sun tzu
sun tzu
Feb 14, 2015
#34
4
I'm useless where fashion and good appearance are concerned, but even so, I could still tell Armsmaster's armor looked way cooler than mine. I'd make a comment about functionality over looks, but, let's be honest - at this stage, he had me beat there, too.
"Are you going to fight me?" Yup, right on cue. I didn't think I looked very villainous, but Taylor was still there. Or maybe he would have asked that of any new capes?
"Of course not," I said in a vaguely-annoyed tone. I kind of expected Taylor to follow by saying she was a good guy, but she stayed silent. Because I had spoken first? Right… she lacked confidence in social situations.
"I don't recognize you," he pointed out.
"Both new. She hasn't chosen a cape name yet. I'm tentatively going by Ad Hoc."
He nodded, briefly excusing himself to incapacitate Lung. "Can you tell me what happened here?"
"Sure. I only arrived toward the end, so, you go first," I told Taylor.
Sounding unsure, she gave her version of events. I suspected she was less shaken than she'd been in canon - she hadn't had to fight Lung on the rooftop, or deal with the Undersiders. Eventually, she got to the point where Lung fell off the building. That was my cue to step in.
"I was heading here because I knew something was going on. Some of my tinkertech guided me. Long story," I said. "I arrived in time to see Lung climbing up the building, so I shot him with a needle full of a potent sedative. Shortly afterwards, the Undersiders arrived. It sounded like they'd been expecting to fight Lung. They didn't particularly want to fight us, and I told them I wasn't going to endanger Lung's arrest by fighting a bunch of small-timers. They left, and then you showed up." I paused, then turned toward Taylor. "Actually hold that thought. Ah… how good is your control over your bugs?"
She flinched a little at being addressed. "I think it's complete control, why?"
"Most venomous spiders only inject a fraction of their poison when they bite someone. When you were using an army of black widows and brown recluses on Lung, how were you…?"
"I… had them use it all up," she said, sounding defensive. "He regenerates; I wasn't sure it would do anything to him, so I went for broke."
"Right, right. That was the right call," I assured her. "But… I think tranquilizers often impede, or even cancel out powers like regeneration." I faced Armsmaster again. "Iiiii recommend hitting Lung with antivenom. All the antivenom."
"Noted," he said. "We want him in the Birdcage, not dead on the way. And while we're looking forward, we need to decide where we go from here. Who gets the credit for Lung?"
I just listened as that bit went on. Not too different from canon, really. He explained the nature of Tinkers (presumably for Taylor's benefit rather than mine), about Bakuda and Oni Lee, about the threat of reprisal, about how our best options were to either fly under the radar, or join the Wards and Protectorate, respectively. That was when I spoke again:
"If I may suggest… There's a third option." I had their attention. "I don't particularly care who receives the credit for Lung. What I do care about is that there's an insane bomb Tinker at large. I mean… wasn't Bakuda's debut holding her university hostage? Over a bad grade?! The way I see it, the city isn't safe while she's around, especially without Lung to hold her leash.
"So, here's my third option: We hunt down and capture Bakuda. Tomorrow, and not a day later. I can locate her, and provide knockout needles. You," I pointed at Taylor, "can use your bugs to hit any number of people with those needles, unless they're armored from head to toe. You," I pointed at Armsmaster, "are a highly experienced, competent Tinker, and the leader of the local Protectorate. You can bring in extra forces. We do this, take care of the problem, and a major threat to Brockton Bay is taken out of the running."
He seemed dubious. "And how exactly are you planning to locate her? What are your capabilities? I'm assuming you're a Tinker yourself, but I'm unclear on your specialization."
I sighed. "OK, see, here's the thing: Once knowledge of what I can do gets out, I'm going to end up on a lot of villains' hit list. Problem is, between Thinkers, Strangers, and a whole lot of bribe money, some villains have access to a lot of the PRT's secrets. That's the reason I'd rather play things close to the chest for now." That was true - if it hadn't been for Coil, I would have been far more open with the Protectorate at that point. "So, I want to help protect law and order, I want to work with the Protectorate, and I'm not going to lie to you… but if anyone asks, I'd be very much obliged if you just said I claimed to have reliable contacts."
Probably not the optimal answer he had hoped for, but he accepted it for now, probably because of the lie detector. Discussion went on for a few minutes. Taylor agreed to help out - she had no desire to keep Bakuda running around, after all. We agreed on a time and place for the following day - early evening, with some time to prepare.
I would have liked to have a chat with Taylor afterward, but that wasn't going to be an option. Lung was right there, Armsmaster wasn't going to leave, the PRT van would arrive any moment, and Gregor was waiting in the car. Still, I would have another opportunity the next day, so I excused myself.
"...You're getting back in that car?" Armsmaster was surprised.
"Yeah. An acquaintance who agreed to come along in case things went wrong," I said. "Also, battery in these things is almost depleted," I pointed at the roller-skis, before getting inside the van.
The ride back to the Palanquin started in silence. A minute in, Gregor broke it.
"You left in a hurry, with intent, and arrived just in time to defeat Lung, armed with just the weapon you needed. I do not believe it was a coincidence."
I shrugged. He went on.
"You have not been entirely truthful with us."
"I haven't given full disclosure. I haven't lied, either, nor have I misled you in any harmful fashion."
"And what, exactly, are your actual plans?"
"Oh, you know. End the ABB. End Empire 88. End the Merchants. End Coil's organization. Essentially, end organized crime in Brockton Bay, and move on to bigger goals." It was, honestly, an oversimplification of my actual plans. Taking out the gangs was a nice bonus, but more of a secondary goal in some cases, an intermediate step in others.
"You do not think small," he said, keeping his eyes on the road. "What of Faultline's Crew?"
"You helped me out. For a whole lot of money, admittedly, but still. I do not intend to personally go after you, nor the Undersiders, nor Uber and Leet - it's scum of the Earth like Kaiser and Skidmark that I want out of the picture. Now, admittedly… if the Protectorate manages to put away all the major gangs, then more attention will go toward other parahuman criminals. As such, if I succeed, then it might be a good time to lay low and avoid illegal activities." I grinned under my mask. "Admittedly, that would be a lot easier to do if one were to own a machine that could synthesize diamonds."
He remained silent for a while before speaking again. "Why have you come to us? If you wish to work with the Protectorate, why not go directly to them?"
"I wasn't lying when I was speaking to Armsmaster. The PRT is compromised. Their data isn't secure. Beside that… there is another complication." I paused. "From what I've seen, you strike me as a honorable guy. Can you keep a secret?"
"I take matters of trust to heart. As such, if it endangers my friends, then I would sooner not be told, so as not to have to hide it from them."
"Fair enough," I said. "It's simple, then. My complication is… I don't have any legal existence here. I have no ID, no birth certificate, no records of any kind whatsoever. All for a simple reason: I'm not from Earth Bet."
That got a reaction from him. "Pardon?"
"I'm from another world," I said, once again grinning under my mask. "Not Earth-Aleph, another one. Given how twitchy the PRT and the public can get about the subject, I'd rather not have to explain it to them before proving how useful I am."
"And… you came to this world… how, and for what reason?"
"My little secret." I paused. "You can share what I've revealed with Faultline if you believe she'll keep it to herself. One way or another… Thanks for being my backup tonight."
There were some tense talks at the Palanquin. Faultline wasn't happy, but I imagine that providing her with the goose that lay the diamond egg got me significant leeway. Her main concern was how I'd known where to find Lung, and whether there was some association between myself and the Undersiders. She didn't outright state it, but, if she'd figured out I had a way to track down parahumans, it would make sense for her to be concerned. I assured her that I'd never interacted with the Undersiders before fighting Lung, and dodged the other question. She wasn't happy, but she wasn't breaking our deal, either.
Back to my room and to my tinkering, then. The D-scanner was showing two capes in ABB territory, which I tentatively labeled as "Oni Lee/Bakuda". I made some solvent to melt the "joint foam", removing my armor. I programmed the 3D-printer to make dozens of needles charged with Newter drug - small enough to be carried by Taylor's bugs, but also very sharp and strong.
Next. I put one Tinker charge in miniaturization, and two in robotics. With that in mind, I began designing a special robot. Shaped like a fly. Small like a fly. Armed with surveillance technology, able to film and transmit in real-time. A discreet spy drone, which I would be able to use tomorrow - after all, while Taylor could survey the battlefield with her bugs, she couldn't describe every detail of what she saw. Having a precise view of Bakuda's workshop while using my Tinker powers might prove invaluable.
It would take hours for the precise components to be assembled. With that done, I crumbled into bed.
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sun tzu
sun tzu
Feb 15, 2015
#58
5
I woke up at… well, before noon this time. Not completely recovered from my tiredness, but definitely feeling better.
Still, I had a busy day ahead of me. Bakuda had to be taken care of. She was the most urgent item on my to-do list.
This was the 12th of April. In canon, it was the day Taylor joined the Undersiders (though she was going to be a bit busy for that this time around). The fight with Bakuda would occur on the 15th. Dina's abduction originally took place on the 14th, though that plan might go differently if the Undersiders didn't recruit Taylor early on. Once the ABB gone, Coil might decide to unleash the E88 reveal.
Honestly, I needed a few days of peace and quiet to improve my tinkering. As was, my progress was too slow.
For now, though, I had to focus on the task at hand. The 3D-printer had done most of the work on the cyber-fly, but I needed to assemble in the bits it couldn't handle by itself, and do some quick programming. That took me several hours. At one point, I quickly checked PHO to see if Tattletale had left any message for Taylor like in canon (if she had, I wasn't seeing it); it took a supreme effort of will to return to work, rather than keep web-surfing. Procrastination's a bitch.
Still, I ended up with a mostly functional mini spy drone, and an hour to spare before I had to leave toward my appointed meeting with my (now fully charged) roller-skis. Enough time to get to work on improving the 3D-printer itself - I was losing too much time on the actual assembly of the tech.
Two charges in chemistry, three in automated production. Then, using the printer's existing "smart enzymes" to create seven new, more sophisticated ones. These new molecules would act as aggregators and dissipators for the old ones under a very specific set of conditions, allowing the 3D-printer 2.0 increased precision (ideal for crafting electronics) as well as enhanced speed (for larger parts).
...Aaaand now I was bordering on late. I had to put on the armor, excuse myself, quickly apologize to Faultline on the way out, and then, roller-ski through the last bits of the waning day's traffic.
"You're late."
I quickly apologized to Armsmaster, while observing the other capes in attendance. Taylor, obviously. Captain Ameri… er, Miss Militia. Battery. Velocity. I could speculate about the absence of Assault and Dauntless, but…
"So you're Ad Hoc?" said Velocity. "Armsmaster's been vague about you."
"Not much to tell," I shrugged, "we only talked for a few minutes. Tinker, new, independent hero. Got a lead on the location of Bakuda and Oni Lee. I think that about covers yesterday's exchange."
"And how did you find that lead?" asked Battery. "For that matter, how much do you trust it?"
"I trust it as much as I'm going to trust any lead short of my own pair of eyes," I shrugged. "But as for the first question… Right now, revealing my source will put good people in danger. I'll tell you when I feel safe about it. Hopefully soon." I pointed at Taylor. "So, has everyone been introduced to… ah, should I call you Weaver? We need something to call you for this operation."
She shrugged. "Weaver is fine I guess."
"Armsmaster introduced her as a new independent hero who helped take down Lung," said Miss Militia, "which is an impressive debut."
I wondered about the details of what Armsmaster had revealed, but now was not the time. "All right then. Anything else we should be waiting for? I've got our target's location marked," I held the D-scanner, "so, unless we're waiting for something specific…"
I was spared having to use the roller-skis - the Protectorate had borrowed a van from the PRT (one not marked with PRT colors). Soon enough, we were deep in the heart of ABB territory.
"According to my source, they've been here all day," I said, pointing at the building while looking at my D-scanner. That was true, but I was deliberately trying to leave some doubt as to the nature of my 'source'. The heroes might suspect what the D-scanner really was - with all the enormous consequences thereof - but for all they knew, it might just be a fancy tinkertech tablet with a GPS. "Weaver, can you perform a preliminary check?"
"It's full of armed thugs," she confirmed. "There's… one guy in a mask, might be Oni Lee. And there's a woman doing something at a workbench, I don't know if that's Bakuda."
"Well, sounds like we've got the right place," I said. "Let's take a few minutes to confirm it."
With that, I pulled out the fly drone, as well as the tablet display for its camera. "This… is still a prototype, but hopefully it can give us the details we need."
I quickly answered a few questions as the drone flew inside the compound, the tablet displaying what it could see. With Taylor's guidance, we quickly located the masked man, who was confirmed as Oni Lee. Then, the workshop…
"That's her," Miss Militia confirmed. "That's Bakuda."
"And luckily for us, she apparently doesn't wear her mask while she's tinkering," I grinned. "Let me observe what she's working on - before we do anything, I want to make sure we're not screwing this up."
I moved my charges around, keeping one in robotics and allocating four to bombs, and took a better look at Bakuda's work. Behind me, the Protectorate members were having a debate as to whether attacking Bakuda in her own workshop, when she wasn't in the middle of a crime, constituted escalation and/or a breach of the unwritten rules (she was, after all, on the run after almost turning her college into a crater). Their debate transitioned into explaining what the unwritten rules were to Weaver. I noticed that their explanation didn't come anywhere near making the cape situation sound like a game of cops and robbers - of course it didn't, that had been a transparent attempt by Tattletale to ease Taylor into going native in canon.
Truth be told, though, I wasn't paying close attention to what they were saying. Four points in a single specialization basically meant the equivalent of a Tinker rating 10-11. I had ideas. Time-stopping bombs. Space-warping bombs that would rip apart everything in their blast radius at the Planck level, across all dimensions. Even a bomb that would randomly turn 50% of the protons in a 50-yard range into antiprotons.
It was exhilarating and terrifying at once, but… I pushed those ideas aside, focusing instead on Bakuda's workbench. Truth be told, I had to admire her efficiency - she had managed to make herself a little bomb factory, comparable to my 3D-printer arrangement. And the bombs she was making…
"She's gearing up for war," I stated. "Coming as close to mass-production as she can. She's making dozens of small bombs, with a wide variety of horrifying effects." I gave a few examples; Battery and Velocity went a little paler. "She's putting a lot of effort into miniaturization. Some of her bombs look like they're intended for grenade launchers, probably so she can arm her troops. The rest of them, though… Too small, too short a blast radius, and they're remotely detonated. Those bombs are meant to be inserted inside people's bodies, to keep them in line. Aaand… given how other thugs seem to have scars at the base of their necks, well, I think we all get the idea."
"You can understand her tech that well?" Armsmaster sounded dubious. I launched into an explanation that he was mostly able to follow as a fellow Tinker, though it left the van's other occupants lost. Still, he seemed convinced by the end, but also very confused as to my Tinker specialization.
That pretty much killed the debate right there. No way they were letting Bakuda stay free another day after that. That only left the method of takedown up for discussion, at which point I presented my other contribution for the evening:
"Forty needles. It's enough to knock out the average person for something between 90 and 120 minutes. Weaver, how many people in that building, counting Bakuda and Oni Lee?"
"Forty-nine."
"OK, so not enough to take out everyone, but enough that handling the rest will be trivial. As for actually administering the needles… Weaver should be perfect for it, if her parahuman ability is as overpowered as I think it is."
"Overpowered?" That gave her pause. "I control bugs."
"You control thousands, tens of thousands of easily-replaced mini-drones, most of which can fly. You can process sensory input from all of them in real-time. Your spidersilk armor proves that you have utterly ludicrous multi-tasking capabilities and fine control. Considering your range, you're pretty much an A-lister in the making," I stated. "Last night, you managed to scatter dozens of ABB thugs without even revealing your presence. You can have your bugs carry the needles, prick Oni Lee and Bakuda at the same time, then thirty-eight of the remaining thugs. The rest will be easy to handle, especially with you around."
The plan went… pretty much without a hitch. I had Weaver hold out on the needles while Bakuda was working on a bomb, signalling her when it was safe to strike (an uncompleted tinkertech bomb can be pretty dangerous in itself, believe me). Oni Lee reflexively tried to teleport after getting stung, but it was too late by then. The thugs that didn't collapse were herded toward the exit by a swarm of bugs, where Battery and Velocity could handle them easily. Soon enough, the PRT was called in to handle the arrests, while I examined Bakuda - quickly identifying her toering detonator and neutralizing it.
With that done, it was mostly time for congratulations for Weaver and myself (principally coming from Miss Militia, truth be told). With, of course, some sprinkling of "we would love to have you in the Protectorate/Wards".
"I am considering the possibility," I said, "but at the moment, there are certain factors that mean I cannot really go for it - factors that also mean I think Weaver should hold off on it. And I think now's a good time to tell you about the main ones."
That got everyone's attention. I had earned some goodwill from Weaver, and some trust from the four Protectorate heroes after helping behead the ABB, so that was probably my best opportunity for this.
"The first problem is Tattletale, of the Undersiders," I explained. "She's a very high-end Thinker. Her power is a form of super-intuition that allows her to pull off deductions that would make Sir Arthur Conan Doyle cry bullshit. Among other things, she can guess passwords well enough to crack PRT computer security."
"That would explain a lot," said Armsmaster, "but how do you know that?"
"Still too early for me to reveal my source, sorry," I said. "But the second problem… well, Tattletale on her own would just be a nuisance. She wants to play at showing off how much smarter she is than everyone else, but at the end of the day, she's a manipulative bitch, not capital-E Evil. The real problem is that she is currently in the employ of Coil, who is capital-E Evil, and has zero problems with terminating people he considers a liability."
Miss Militia frowned. "Tattletale is a member of the Undersiders. Assuming you're right, does that mean the entire team is employed by Coil?"
"Sort of? Coil is cautious and methodical. He'd prefer to only have Tattletale know of his identity as the team's patron. Now, the thing is…" I took a deep breath. "Coil is also a high-level Thinker. In his case, his power is the ability to split the timeline in two." I noted the confused stares. "Basically, he activates his power, and from that moment on, he exists in two realities at once. In one reality, he performs action A. In the second reality, he performs action B. After a while, he sees which of these actions yields better results, so he keeps it, and collapses the other timeline. At which point, the timeline where he made the better choice retroactively becomes the real one.
"That's why Coil's agents - be they his mercenaries or the Undersiders - almost never lose fights: He likes to keep one timeline when they pull a job, and one where they don't. If you win, your victory - the entire fight - retroactively never happened. For all I know, you may have captured the Undersiders several times by now, except only Coil remembers."
I gave them some time to digest that information. Weaver commented that such a power was bullshit broken, though not quite in those words. Armsmaster, understandably, had his suspicions: "It's one thing to want to protect your sources, but this is pretty suspicious. How can you know all this? Are you a member of Coil's organization? Working for a rival gang, trying to undermine the competition?"
Tactful as ever, but his concern was understandable. After all, Empire 88 would love getting rid of the ABB and Coil in one fell swoop. Still, I had to nip those suspicions in the bud, and his lie detector was going to help me there. "No. I have never worked for Coil, I am not trying to take him down for the sake of another gang, I am not a villain, I never will be a villain, and I have no evil secret agenda here. I am not going to betray your trust. I have never committed any crime or felony by the law of this land, and I have every intention of keeping it that way."
He paused. "You didn't mention misdemeanors."
Now I paused. "I shall neither confirm nor deny, but, uh… what's the legal status on crossing the border without going through customs?"
"Misdemeanor," Miss Militia quickly replied with a shrug. "Can become a felony with aggravating circumstances, but the PRT can extend immunity in many cases."
"Duly noted. Though like I said, I shall neither confirm nor deny."
"The information about Coil is valuable," Battery interrupted, "but it doesn't explain your reluctance to join the Protectorate. What, just because Tattletale can hack computers for Coil?"
"If Coil discovers the full extent of what I can do, my life expectancy drops dramatically. And it's not just Tattletale. He's got spies in the PRT. And the worst part of it… Coil's true identity is Thomas Calvert. PRT contractor, runs Fortress Constructions, is maneuvering himself to become the next director of the Brockton Bay PRT branch should an unfortunate incident happen to director Piggot." I enjoyed the looks of shock. "So you understand my concern."
"Hey, man. Any other bombshell you'd like to drop while you're at it?" asked Velocity.
"I'm not sure it qualifies as a bombshell, but, there is one more thing. Coil's next big coup. At some point in the near future, he intends to abduct the mayor's niece, Dinah Alcott."
I didn't reveal Dinah's power - I figured I looked suspicious enough already, and revealing any more knowledge - even useful knowledge - might be counterproductive, making them less inclined to believe and act upon it. I made a few suggestions on how to handle Coil, but… for the next few days, I was going to trust them to handle it. Really, even cutting the man off from the resources of his Calvert identity would be enough to tremendously weaken him.
When I got back to the Palanquin, I was informed by Faultine that the sale of the first diamond batch had gone through, and I had my own sizable cut of the money, as agreed. At her request, I admitted that I'd just helped take down the remaining ABB capes… and provided her with a second batch of rough diamonds, including two that weighed over 9 carats. That apparently got her in a good enough mood to introduce me to the wonders of prepaid debit cards that didn't require you to reveal your identity to buy and use.
The order of special materials hadn't arrived yet, so I focused for now on improving the 3D-printer. This time, I put one charge in chemistry, two in automated manufacture, and two in micro-manufacturing. With that, I was able to design microscopic ultraviolet lasers (I needed the short wavelength) that the printer would be able to use to manipulate objects on the atomic scale. It would take a few hours of work, but, I could launch early production by midnight. Just check the web quickly, see if there were noteworthy events…
Hm. Looked like people were still in the process of going "holy shit" about Lung's arrest, and speculating about what exactly happened. I'll admit, I hadn't been expecting an Inspector Gadget reaction pic.
Come to think about it, what were cartoons like here?
Huh. Turned out on Earth Bet, Inspector Gadget, coming out one year after Scion's arrival, had tried to surf the parahuman wave right from the start. Gadget himself was based on some of the earliest Tinkers, Penny herself was a Thinker. Funny, that.
Episodes available online. Holy crap… In this show, Gadget was actually downright competent! He and Penny acted as deuteragonists - he was the experienced police detective who knew how to investigate crimes and kick ass, she was an endless fount of booksmarts whose abilities were required to understand the more esoteric crimes that MAD pulled. It was only those two working together who could stop Doctor Claw - and, if that pilot episode was any indication, Claw's schemes were actually a lot smarter than I would have expected from an 80s cartoon.
One more episode wouldn't hurt. And… again, that was surprisingly clever and well-written for its era. I wouldn't have expected that level of quality before the coming of BTAS.
Episode seven ended on… cool, a two-parter! And episode eight… wait, wait, what? Gadget and Penny arrested the MAD agents, but Claw was still able to complete his evil plan in a masterful Xanatos Gambit and make a killing destroying Belgium's currency? Holy crap. Respect for the writers of the show rocketing up to…
...Aaaaand it was past midnight. Eurgh. Back to work, lazy-ass!
It was around 3 AM that I was able to leave things off. The 3D-printer would produce myriads of microscopic lasers, then add them to its own structure, becoming far more efficient in the process. As for me… I needed my goddamn sleep.
577
sun tzu
Feb 15, 2015
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sun tzu
sun tzu
Feb 16, 2015
#82
6
I woke up in the morning (well, shortly before noon) to find a 3D-printer that had, as intended, become significantly more capable than the one I'd had just a couple days earlier. It was still very, very far from the sort of fabber I wanted in the long run, but it was a major step up… which, in turn, meant an opportunity to finally turn my armor into something serviceable.
Swear to God, I only watched one episode of Inspector Gadget before I got to work. Still, I was impressed with episode 9! The Belgian boy Penny had befriended in the previous two-partner was maintaining a correspondence with her, telling her about his dad losing his job and struggling in his country's now-ruined economy. MAD displayed far more impressive resources than in previous episodes, thanks to the funds obtained via their latest scheme. Consequences and continuity? What fount of madness was this?
I did have a PHO account by this point, though I made sure to only log in via a VPN. I'd given it to the Protectorate and Weaver as a way to contact me. Presumably, Dragon would be able to track me down to the Palanquin if it came to it, but the risk of having to explain why I was crashing at Faultine's place was worth it to have a simple, hassle-free communication method. ...Though maybe I should get burner phones.
I had one PM from Miss Militia, thanking me for my assistance yesterday, and assuring me that they were working on the information I had provided. Another PM from, apparently, Taylor (I wouldn't have guessed based on username alone), addressed both to me and the four Protectorate heroes, detailing some of her further thoughts on handling Coil. I replied to both (more for politeness' sake than to provide any useful information), then went back to thinking about my tinkering schedule… and take stock of what I had so far.
I had my armor. That was comparable to, what, a Brute rating of 3? It didn't provide any form of super-strength (that would have to wait for the next model), but it did make me fireproof, as well as knife-proof and bullet-proof… except at the joints. Probably better than mundane tactical armor, but not by much.
My needle gun. Hm… Blaster 5? No more precise than any other rifle, but the Newter drug could take out even people with high Brute ratings if it got in.
My… sigh… roller skis. Mover 2 at most.
The robot fly. Handy. Equivalent to a low-level Thinker ability.
Arguably, my biggest asset at that point was the D-scanner. The ability to follow every cape within a multi-mile radius in real-time was a major intelligence asset that radically altered a city's equilibrium of forces. It was probably equivalent to a high-level Thinker power.
That, and the 3D-printer 3.0, was what I had. But about what I still needed to make?
In the long run, I had operation "Make Hephaestus cry so many tears of helpless jealousy that he dies from dehydration" - but to achieve that, I needed four extra subgoals. Some of those would require several steps to complete, and all of them required some materials I wouldn't have until Faultline brought them in. Still, some of them I could at least get started on.
But that wasn't the only thing. In a way, it was like a computer strategy game - I needed to strike a balance between what would best accelerate me toward my long-term victory condition, and what would allow me to achieve urgent objectives in the short term. Improving the 3D-printer fell under the former category, upgrading the armor fell under the latter. Having a better armor wouldn't improve my ability to build a better mousetrap, but it would improve my ability to intervene and survive if anything went wrong in the coming days.
With that in mind, I got to work.
I was sticking for now to the existing armor, but making upgrades. Giving it actual, armored joints, while also making it easy to put the armor on or remove it in a minute. Giving its visor a digital display that could connect to the internet, or to the D-scanner. Including a special gel that would stem bleeding and disinfect injuries. All improvements that, even with the new and improved 3D-printer, were going to take up most of my day.
It was going to end in tears. Piggot just knew it.
Having the ABB capes (and a large number of unpowered minions) under arrest was a good thing on its face… assuming Lung hadn't hired someone to break him out in this sort of situation (it still rankled her that Madcap got to get away with all of his crimes, considering some of the monsters he'd freed). However, now the balance of power in the city was thoroughly disrupted. Small gangs like the Merchants would be trying to expand their territory, while Empire 88 would try to take over the city. She imagined the white supremacist gang would constitute the main opposition to Protectorate forces in the coming months… reminding her, once again, that Kaiser's capes outnumbered the semi-sane ones in her city.
And then there were the newcomers responsible for the sudden shift in the status quo. Weaver and Ad Hoc. Appearing at the same time but supposedly unrelated (if you believed in coincidences, which was not Piggot's first inclination). The former a powerful Master/Thinker whose power was ideal for spying and gathering information, the latter a Tinker who just happened to have a lot of information. If it was some sort of con, it wasn't the subtlest she had seen… but the end goal was unclear.
Her first inclination at being told about Calvert had been to reject the very idea. She despised the man, but, if he hadn't triggered at Ellisburg, she doubted anything could turn him into a cape. On the other hand… did she know for sure he hadn't triggered back then? She only had his word to that effect. Sure, he'd gone to prison for a short while afterward, but… if he had the power Ad Hoc claimed he had, then he could have split the timeline then and there. Let one self go to jail, do his time, and come out with no further legal complications, while having his other self run, maybe cross the border, live outside of prison during all that time. It might have made prison much less of a problem.
She'd had a long talk with Armsmaster and the others. When all was said and done, they needed to determine if Calvert was parahuman. It was within the PRT's right to demand that he go through a brainscan… but if they brought him in for questioning and his power was as Ad Hoc had described, then he might show up to the PRT in one timeline, not come in another, and collapse the former once it became clear he'd been caught. No, what they needed was an excuse that would make him come to the Protectorate base (probably one related to Fortress Construction), then give him a good reason to split the timeline from there before springing the brain scan on him. If he did turn out to be a cape, the PRT would have justification for keeping him in observation for a while… long enough to go over the records of Thomas Calvert and Fortress Construction with a fine comb.
Of course, things would get problematic if he had a hostage, never mind the mayor's niece, who may or may not be a parahuman herself. Which was why Ramirez and Parker - the two PRT field agents who came the closest to having Piggot's full trust - had been ordered to maintain surveillance on her, discreetly. Well, that was what she'd told them in person - officially, they were on an unrelated assignment.
According to Miss Militia, Weaver claimed to also be spending some of her time watching the young Miss Alcott. She hoped nothing would come of it.
Ad Hoc disliked her.
Tattletale found that just a little worrisome. It wasn't that being on some new Tinker's shitlist was particularly frightening - sure, he'd taken down Lung, but that was just a matter of having the right tool for the job. No, it was concerning because it suggested some history between them. And at that point, she had no clue who the guy was, or who the bug Master (who wasn't actually his ally) was.
She'd followed up information on the van. It belonged to Faultine's Crew. For a while, she thought that might explain it - she and Faultline despised each other, and that dislike might have transferred to a new member if Faultline shared stories with her own spin on it. But… no, that wasn't it. Not quite.
According to Coil, in the other timeline, they had been fighting Lung, then the bug Master showed up to attack both sides, then Ad Hoc showed up and finished the fight, using that dart gun to take out first Lung, then Bitch's surviving dogs (making it easy for the Bug Master to arrest the rest of them. Some teenage girl tentatively named Weaver, according to the PRT debriefing before Coil collapsed that timeline). So… heroes. Ad Hoc was probably staying with Faultline temporarily; wanted protection while developing his (clearly still unfinished) equipment.
But… Ad Hoc had been there in time to stop Lung. He hadn't been surprised by the arrival of the Undersiders, nor worried by it. And now Bakuda and Oni Lee had been arrested.
Ad Hoc was very, very well-informed. If he didn't have a powerful Thinker ally, then she would bet his tinkertech effectively provided a Thinker sub-rating somehow.
Fucking Tinkers.
It still wasn't the nec plus ultra of tinkertech, but my armor at least wasn't junk now. And it was barely time for dinner! Maybe I was finally getting the hang of this.
One dinner later, I was back in my workshop. Still several hours to burn. A quick check on the local news… Huh. The PRT hadn't publicized yet the arrest of Bakuda and Oni Lee. Probably hoping to delay the gang war by a couple of days while the Protectorate helped the police clean up ABB territory.
OK. Just check three episodes of Inspector Gadget. Not one more!
I only watched three. I also spent two hours going over other 80s cartoons. Apparently, on Earth Bet, when DIC stopped making Care Bears cartoons and Nelvana picked up the torch, they managed to keep Professor Cold Heart as their antagonist, instead of replacing him with No Heart. Good call - No Heart may have had the evil sorcerer of doom thing down pat, but Cold Heart was more interesting in my opinion. So, another point for Earth Bet there!
That probably built up my expectations for the original My Little Pony. This time, I was disappointed. It was a saccharine, harmless show, devoid of conflict and the gallery of magic and monsters that I had loved in my world's version. Where was Tirac and his attempt to bring about the Night That Never Ends? Where was Grogar and his interdimensional invasion? Where was the Nazi penguin!? Why didn't this show have a Nazi penguin!?
Ah, dammit. 10 PM already. Fuck you, procrastination.
I'd thought earlier about the balance between building up for long-term growth, and filling short-term needs. There was one thing at least I could still do for the long-term… Something I should have started on hours ago.
Three Tinker charges in software engineering. One charge in efficiency. One charge in technical ease of use. It was time to code a software library.
Programming my D-scanner, and even more so the robot fly, had taken more time than it should have. I need to create a library of functions that I could assemble like lego blocks, instead of having to do everything from scratch every time I needed something programmed.
In a way, this felt different from my previous Tinkering. I had actual real-world experience in programming. I had a degree in computer science, for what it was worth. So, having Tinker charges in it… really drove in just how big a difference being a Tinker made in my ability. It was almost humbling, in a way.
Three hours and over a thousand lines of code later (if you counted lines that only contained a curly brace), I only had the early start of a functional software library.
But it was a start.
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Feb 16, 2015
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sun tzu
sun tzu
Feb 18, 2015
#94
7
Morning. More specifically, the morning of the 14th. In canon, this would be the day of the bank robbery that started Taylor's downward spiral into crime, and accelerated Panacea's downward spiral into emotional fragility.
In this timeline, however, I wasn't even certain the bank robbery would take place. The Undersiders didn't have a powerful new recruit, after all. Coil might prefer to wait a little longer, or the Undersiders might pick a safer target. If they did try the same plan as in canon, I suspected they were screwed - without Taylor on their side, I rated their chance against the combined might of the Wards (sans Sophia) and the Dallon sisters pretty low.
And, truth be told? I wasn't going to concern myself with it too much. There were more important things that needed to be handled urgently. I was, after all, in a race against time, scrambling to become powerful enough to handle the S-class threats before they handled me.
So, a quick check on the news (both regular, and the PHO news section). Getting the latest batch of diamonds, synthesized overnight, from the 3D-printer. Then… back to working on the code library.
Despite the sense of wonder at how good my new coding skills were, it was still drudgery. So I took some measure of pride in my working on it for three hours straight with no real interruption. Thanks to my efficiency specialization, this code was tight - accomplishing amazingly much with very few lines and codes, and very few computations. Thanks to my ease-of-use specialization, it was intuitive in the extreme; I tested that aspect for a bit by turning all my Tinker abilities off for a few minutes, and trying to use the software library. Five minutes later, I had a working game of Tetris. I could already tell that there were light-years of mileage to be had from that specific specialization.
Since yesterday, I'd coded dozens of functions for my library. They were all fairly simple, intended to perform actions that would often be required in programs I would write at a future date - thus allowing me to create future software at a greatly accelerated pace. Still, I wasn't done. I needed to create a second tier of functions, built from the first tier I had just finished. It would cover more advanced needs.
After lunch.
Thomas Calvert had realized a long time ago that what you had mattered less than what you did with it.
Take his powers. In most people's hands, they would be a handy trick. It took a methodical mind like his own to optimize them, use them to their fullest potential. It was that methodical approach that had made him one of the strongest forces in the city, without anyone even realizing it.
The actual takeover of Brockton Bay would still take some time, but when it went through, he would have greater control over it than any other man in the country had over a single city. Oh, there were still steps to be taken. He had to take over city hall, which involved generous bribes and torpedoing mayor Christner's career… probably by arranging an escalation in cape violence. He had to take over the criminal element… thankfully, the ABB was out, E88 would lose much of its power once he exposed their identities (Tattletale had been invaluable there), and everyone else could be dealt with (especially once the recruitment of the Travelers went through). He had to take over the PRT… And he had plans there, too.
He'd been working at it for a while, really. Sponsoring the Undersiders, ensuring with his powers that they never botched a job. Bits and pieces of bad info fed to the PRT, ensuring certain losses (when those wouldn't strengthen the rival gangs too much). Building up an escalation the local Protectorate couldn't win, and taking steps to ensure the damage would be both massive and highly visible (He hoped, he truly hoped, that when he outed Purity, child services would take her daughter. It was hard to perfectly arrange such events). Ultimately, the local PRT would have to appear hopelessly outmatched (which it was)... at which point he could step in, replace Piggot, and save the day for all to see.
At the moment, though, he had to meet Piggot. Something about his contractor job. Just to be safe, he stayed at his hidden lair in one timeline.
As he walked through Protectorate Island, he recognized the unmistakable signs of Master-Stranger protocols being implemented. Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Velocity… just how many capes had gotten into trouble? And no less importantly, what Master/Stranger had come to Brockton Bay to warrant such caution? Wait, was that the mayor going through those protocols?!
By the time he met Piggot and got some explanations, he was only getting increasingly worried. A new villain in town, who could give you orders, then make you forget the entire encounter, leaving said orders in your mind like a post-hypnotic suggestion. A villain who had apparently been targeting people in power, especially those associated with the PRT in one fashion or another, weaving some kind of plot. Now, he doubted he'd had a run-in with that villain himself… with his powers, it would have been far easier to catch. But having this sort of rival schemer in town was troubling. More troubling was what came next: Some of the villain's targets, apparently under his control already, had dropped off the map when the PRT had tried to contact them. So now, the PRT was questioning possible targets… and, if it turned out they had had an encounter, they were kept for observation for a week minimum, their brain carefully scanned for insight into the newcomer's power.
He couldn't just refuse to submit to the test, stick to the timeline where he hadn't shown up - his Calvert identity would be hunted down by the PRT. Too many assets would be lost, including his hope of replacing Piggot as director. As such, he accepted to go through their questioning.
His interrogator turned out to be a fresh-faced rookie. Easy to read. With the first few questions about his memories, it became easy to tell when he had given the answer the interrogator hoped for - the one that showed no sign of altered memory.
But the questions got trickier. He wasn't sure at certain points which answer was safe. So he started splitting the timeline there. Without that, he would have given a few "wrong" answers.
Eventually, the questions were over. There was no sign of his having been compromised.
His stomach fell as Piggot, flanked by Battery, ordered him to submit to a brain scan to check his corrona pollentia.
During lunch, I was delighted to see that the rare elements and components I had ordered had finally arrived. Faultline took that opportunity to take the latest batch of diamonds off my hands, She'd apparently managed to secure a buyer in New York who was interested in a large shipment.
Back in my workshop, I had to consider. I wanted to finish my code library… but if I went straight back to that, then nothing else productive would be going on at the time. If I went instead back to the projects for which I had needed the exotic elements in the first place, I could program the 3D-printer to work on them while I coded.
Augh. Time management.
I cycled through Tinker specializations, checking again the path I needed to follow. Hm. No getting around it… for the next bit, I was going to need more energy than I could get from the electric outlet.
One charge in chemistry, one in automated manufacturing (i.e., the standard loadout needed to use my 3D-printer), and three in energy tech. And oh… so many ideas. Workable nuclear fusion. Generators that convert matter directly into energy. Wormholes that plug into the heart of the sun.
I ended up going with something that wouldn't be too resource- or time-expensive for now. Macromolecules with a special structure that allows them to tap into virtual particles for energy. It took me a while to design the generator I needed, but finally, I set the printer to work. This would take several more hours, so… back to coding.
After a one-hour break to watch the local version of Inspector Gadget, that is. Interesting… four times out of five, Gadget and Penny would foil MAD's plan. But that fifth or so time, Doctor Claw would manage to attain his main objective, leaving his organization all the stronger. That two-parter in episodes seven-eight had been the first example: At first, it had looked like a simple, if massive, counterfeiting scheme. Gadget and his niece arrested the MAD agents trying to counterfeit billions in Belgian currency. Victory, right? Except that Claw made it look like a huge shipment of counterfeit bills had already gone through. People panicked, trying to exchange their Belgian currency for American Dollars, Japanese Yens and so forth. By the time the heroes realized the real plot, it was too late - the Belgian currency had lost most of its value, and MAD had made a fortune short-selling it. All episodes after that had MAD throwing money around like crazy to advance their evil plots.
The same pattern would repeat every time MAD succeeded at something. Sure, they'd lose agents and resources to Gadget… but what they gained was enough that they were, overall, becoming a bigger threat over time. I was now genuinely curious to see how it would end. Additionally, I found myself reminded of what Taylor had told Saint in the later Worm arcs - that whole bit about how playing defense was a loser's game, because the attacker had the initiative.
At the time, it had struck me as an oversimplification. After all, in the real world, police was "playing defense" against criminals… and while crime existed, it didn't rule.
But… there was a key difference between my world and Earth Bet. Parahumans.
Because, in my world, no matter how strong, or fast, or well-trained you were, you were still saddled with human limitations. There was no such thing as a one-man army. True power didn't come from how much ass you could kick, but from collective effort. The police could maintain order (to an extent) because they were the expression of the laws of the nation (to an extent), recruited from the population, armed and funded thanks to nationwide tax money. Criminals didn't have that sheer scale.
The reason Earth Bet was so screwed up (...well, beside Endbringers and the drive for conflict instilled by shards) was that, with so much power directly in the hand of a few individuals, it was possible for a small number of criminals to go against even a large police. It wasn't like the government could just spend more money on training more parahumans - you couldn't train parahumans, they either triggered or they didn't. Unless you were Cauldron, but in that case, you were screwed anyway by your own criminal incompetence.
I had some ideas on how to resolve this matter, but… well, I was procrastinating again. Back to coding.
"So he really was parahuman," said Miss Militia. "That part of Ad Hoc's story checks out."
"That still doesn't prove he's Coil," said director Piggot. "Or that his power is what Ad Hoc claims it was. Still, it's enough to justify keeping him in observation while we investigate Thomas Calvert." She paused. "Always knew he was a snake."
"Should we inform Ad Hoc?"
"For now? No. Ad Hoc isn't part of this investigation. We'll see if he comes to us. Just focus on cleaning ABB territory, the Empire is wising up."
I now had a few dozens of second-tier functions, using the first-tier functions as lego bricks, forming more complex bricks. In my estimation, using this software library would reduce the amount of time I had to spend coding stuff by at least an order of magnitude.
No less importantly, the printer was done making the parts for my new generator. Some assembly required.
Some assembly later, I had a generator that could produce dozens of megawatts - enough to power several blocks. I also had microscopic filaments of electric wires made of room-temperature superconductors, and a host of fun ideas about what to do with a lot of energy to spare.
Three Tinker charges in exotic matter engineering. Whoa.
At that point, thanks to a hyper-precise printer, the rare elements, and a ton of energy to burn, I could get working on micro-reactors designed to create types of non-baryonic matter not usually seen on Earth (and in a few cases, only vaguely suspected by theoretical physicists). As I set it to work, I sat back in front of the computer and relaxed in front of my TV shows.
Less than an hour later, Faultline was biting my head off about my tinkertech experiment heating up the entire Palanquin, to the point of discomforting the clubgoers. I apologized profusely, turned off the generator, and promised to be more careful.
Goddammit. I had known, in the back of my head, that this was almost guaranteed to happen. This much energy… some was lost in the form of heat. Even with a system as efficient as I had been able to make. And at this order of magnitude, even a tiny fraction of the energy was enough to heat the whole building up.
I'd known about the problem and ignored it, because I wanted to be done already. So goddamn illogical. Even when I was working, I was procrastinating.
Sigh. No helping it. I put three Tinker charges in cryotechnology. Several hours later (and using up some of my rare elements in the process), I had my own freeze ray. Eat your icicle out, Professor Cold Heart.
Well, what the freeze ray actually did was bombard objects with particles charged with anti-energy. Upon contacts with particles charged with regular energy (generally speaking, warm objects), the energy and enti-energy mutually annihilated, turning into a shower of neutrinos that went off to disappear into the cosmos. For now, I was using the freeze ray as a cooling system for my generator.
Aaaand we were past midnight. I programmed the whole thing to keep producing exotic matter through the night, spent a little while surfing PHO (Why yes, I can procrastinate on the act of going to bed), and finally went to sleep.
514
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Feb 18, 2015
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sun tzu
sun tzu
Feb 19, 2015
#106
8
April the 15th. In canon, the day of Bakuda's attack on the Undersiders. Wasn't going to happen, of course - I'd sent Bakuda to jail, and the news had mentioned no major crime by the Undersiders yesterday. Checking the news, though, people were apparently aware that the Protectorate and the police were arresting gangbangers all over ABB territory, and drawing the logical conclusion. Empire 88 (and to a lesser extent the Merchants) would soon be on the move. I hoped to be able to stop them, but they weren't my highest priority - at the end of the day, as awful as it was, E88 wasn't going to cause the kind of devastation that my main targets were capable of. So, as much as punching Nazis may have been a superheroic staple… it would only happen if circumstances allowed.
I checked the exotic matter generator, and was pleased that it had done its work. I had small samples of many strange and unusual things - negative mass, imaginary mass, hyperdimenstional molecules, stable glasma, stable neutronium, solidified dark matter, exotic baryons, and more. All of them in minuscule, in some cases microscopic amounts… but that was all right. I didn't need more for the next phase.
Three charges in dimensional technology. It was time to outdo Professor Haywire.
But hoooo boy. Even with my generator, even with my advanced 3D-printer, even with my enhanced code-library… this one was going to take all day.
Accounting for breaks, of course.
Tattletale blinked, observing the data from the PRT's network (they'd upped security recently, but that wasn't enough to fully keep her out).
They were holding a Thomas Calvert under observation. He was suspected of being a powerful Thinker villain.
Some additional investigation into Calvert's character left her convinced of the emerging truth:
Calvert was Coil.
The PRT suspected Calvert was Coil.
The PRT suspected the true nature of Coil's powers.
Coil was being held in the PRT's custody in all his timelines.
Calvert being Coil was a huge embarrassment to the PRT, and something they would rather keep the lid on… but they couldn't let him go free.
The PRT was trying to find enough evidence against Calvert to put him away.
Coil was currently away from his base, completely helpless.
This was a unique opportunity - an opportunity to finally break free of Coil. She could just run, leave the city while he was under observation. Even if the PRT's investigation failed and they ultimately had to release him, it would take several days - long enough that she could be on the West coast by then, without having to worry about his timeline tricks stopping her.
The downside of that approach was that she'd only have what money she currently owned (which, to be fair, was enough to live on comfortably for a good while), and that the rest of the Undersiders wouldn't follow. Both were factors she could live with… but, why settle for less? She could beat Coil. Truly beat him. By hitting his base, she could find enough evidence to have him put away for life, and forward it to the PRT. He'd be out of her hair for good, and she might be able to scrunge up a chunk of his funds. Possibly a large chunk.
The rest of the Undersiders still relied on Coil for certain things. Bitch just wanted money to take care of her dogs. Regent, Grue… she might be able to help them out after raiding Coil's base. Probably. She was, after all, pretty good.
That said, she wasn't confident she could bring them on board with this job. If she told them Coil was in captivity, Brian might decide the smart thing to do was to free the boss to get into his good graces. ...Probably not, if she revealed the details of her recruitment. But then, there might be hard feelings about her not revealing it earlier, especially from Bitch.
After some internal debating (which might, to a certain extent, have been influenced by an external, shard-derived need to use information to prove how much smarter she was than others), she resolved not to tell them about their boss's secret, but instead sell the whole thing as an opportunity to steal Coil's shit while he was stuck in PRT custody. It was, she concluded, better that way.
Fucking dimensional technology. How had the entities evolved the damn thing on their own?
I'd been making good progress, but I was getting seriously sick of it. Which was why, at some point, I just threw my hands in the air and sat down to marathon the rest of Inspector Gadget.
The season concluded with a two-parter where MAD, thanks to resources gathered over the course of the show, was able to abduct the children of twenty different national leaders (including the president of the USA and the Soviet premier)... as well as Penny herself, placing Doctor Claw in position to influence international policy. His plot was to maneuver the nations of the world into volunteering their nascent parahumans into a global organization, officially answering to the governments, but secretly under his control - allowing him to mold the capes of the world into his own private army.
In the second half of the last episode, Gadget confronted Claw in a particularly tense scene, where he threatened to use tinkertech to broadcast the truth about the conspiracy to the entire world at once unless Penny was released. Claw negotiated it into an exchange, releasing Penny but taking Gadget in her stead, turning off his cybernetics and imprisoning him.
At that point, Penny played her trump card, which she and her uncle apparently had been keeping secret from the start (though to be fair, there had been hints and foreshadowing): Her Thinker power - the ability to instantly absorb all the information in a book just by touching it - actually applied to all methods of data storage, including computers. While held hostage in MAD's HQ, she had managed to get the info on them. All the info. At which point she worked with chief Quimby and the various local police encountered in every episode up to that point. MAD agents were being arrested all over the world at the same time, while Penny hacked the computers at MAD's HQ, freeing her uncle and reactivating his cybernetics. Inspector Gadget had a climactic final showdown with Doctor Claw, pitting tinkertech against tinkertech, concluding in the villain's arrest and a happy ending as Gadget and Penny went back home.
Supposedly, the second season was crap and not worth watching. So… back to work.
It was late in the evening that I finally managed to complete my dimensional portal generator. It needed a lot of power to maintain a portal just a few inches wide, but hey, I had that power.
That said, at present, the portal was pretty random, opening into one of countless dimensions. I needed to be able to tell which dimension actually contained what I needed. I needed three more components - a sensor, a computer, and a teleporter.
The sensor was going to require the most time manufacturing, so I spent the next few hours coming up with the design and feeding it to the 3D-printer. It consumed a good chunk of my exotic matter, but such was life.
Exhausted, I spent another thirty minutes browsing the Web before going to sleep.
The next morning, the news showed no major event in Brockton Bay. A member of the Protectorate murdered in San Diego, a parahuman warlord in Namibia surrendering to Moord Nag, the Yangban making a show of force in Taiwan… Well, I supposed things were always happening somewhere. I sent Miss Militia and Weaver PMs to ask how things were progressing on their end, and got back to work.
I'd used three Tinker charges in sensors to design the gadget I was currently assembling. It had two functions. The first was checking if the world I was reaching with my dimensional portal was inhabited - I didn't want that sort of headache. The second was scanning for specific types of matter, over a gigantic range, over millions, billions, trillions of dimensions if necessary.
A quick test confirmed what I thought: The sensor worked, but there was too much data. I would need a tinkertech computer just to sift through it.
Three Tinker charges in computers gave me the stop-gap measure I wanted: A quantum chip which, when combined with a regular computer and properly programmed, would allow it to resolve this sort of problem in a time that was shorter by three orders of magnitudes, perhaps four. Best part was, it was relatively simple to build; I was able to complete it before lunch.
...Granted, I accomplished that by having lunch at 3 PM. But still!
Once the chip was hooked to the sensor, I tried cycling through dimensions again. The results were far more promising now - it would still need time to detect some of the things I wanted, but it would be a reasonable amount of time.
With that accomplished, I went back to my Internet browser, curiously checking to see what some of the popular video games of Earth Bet were.
The saner, less self-destructive part of myself closed that browser tab with extreme prejudice.
Because, seriously. I was losing enough time already. Games would have to wait until I was further down the road with my prep work.
I sighed. It was time to get working on a teleportation device.
"Found what we need, Tattletale?"
"Oh, it's the jackpot," she grinned, sitting at Coil's computer. "I need another thirty minutes to be done here."
"Bitch's dogs can hold the mercenaries at bay as long as it takes," said Grue, "but just how confident are you that the other unit won't show up until then?"
"Give me some credit," she flashed him her trademark grin.
It was nearing two in the morning when I was finally done.
A portal device, able to reach between worlds.
A scanner, able to sift through billions of uninhabited worlds, looking for specific types of matter.
A quantum computer, able to search the information from the scanner.
A teleporter, able to bring in tiny, minute samples of the desired matter through the portal.
I had built a machine that could summon to me the raw material I needed to construct my tinkertech (or, in some cases, the raw material I could turn into the exotic matter from which to build my tinkertech). While the rate of production was still slow - only a few grams per hour for the rarer materials, though more common stuff was easier - it effectively freed me from having to purchase raw matter to build what I needed. I could summon my own.
It was one of the four things I needed to make Hephaestus cry. Good job, me!
And with that, I programmed it to gather some of what I needed during the night, and collapsed into bed. Swear to God, I needed to take a day off to just relax at some point.
I hadn't checked my mail before going to bed (uncharacteristic, but I had been exhausted). As such, it was only in the morning that I saw the PM from Miss Militia, telling me that the PRT wanted to have a word with me ASAP.
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sun tzu
Feb 19, 2015
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sun tzu
sun tzu
Feb 21, 2015
#142
9
I wasn't entirely sure why the PRT wanted to see me. New development with Coil? New development with the gangs? Lung breaking out of prison? Cauldron pulling strings? Something about Weaver? Just the PRT wanting to know more about the new cape in town?
One way or another, I PMed back, telling Miss Militia that I could come whenever and they just needed to say when. I also exchanged a short PM with Weaver - she reported that no-one had moved against Dinah Alcott, but she suspected a certain car was following the girl, keeping track of her schedule.
With PMs taken care off, I got back to work. I had a lot of raw material now, and it was time to get cracking on one of the most important things I was going to build here.
Two Tinker charges went together to chemistry and automated manufacturing. The other three went to a Tinker specialization that gave me pause even now.
I already had the materials and exotic matter I needed to build the next device, but even so, it took me time. I was still in the early stages when I got a new PM from Miss Militia - apparently, I would be going to Protectorate Island at 2 PM. I confirmed that it was fine by me and that I'd show up.
That meant accelerating the pace if I wanted to get anywhere on this design. So, I did my best. Programmed the 3D-printer to automate as much as possible. Grabbed some junk food in lieu of taking the time for a real lunch. Even so, I barely scraped by, setting the printer to keep working on it while I was gone when I had to scramble and leave.
I put on the armor and, with some resignation, my roller-skis - promising myself that I'd get better transportation very, very soon. At least I'd improved the batteries on those things, so I could go all the way to the Protectorate base (well, the beach in front of it I guess, where the PRT would pick me up).
Battery supposed she liked mysteries as much as anyone else… when they were fictional. She enjoyed curling up with a good Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, or Shinichi Kudo novel (she'd always had a soft spot for Columbo, but his stories weren't exactly mysteries). In fiction, by the end of the story, the truth was revealed and the villain punished. Real-life mysteries were a lot more frustrating, and far less prone to happy, satisfying resolutions. To this day, she still didn't know more about Cauldron than she had when she had bought her powers from them. She doubted she'd ever know what really happened to Iron Rain. And she didn't expect to live to see the truth about the Endbringers revealed.
Ad Hoc and Weaver were another mystery - one that she hoped would be explained soon. Ad Hoc's revelations about Coil - about Calvert - had been deeply troubling. The idea of a sociopathic supervillain becoming director of the ENE PRT made her shiver.
"Thank you for your time," director Piggot said in a tone that didn't suggest a lot of gratitude as the mysterious Tinker sat down. His armor looked significantly less shoddy than last time.
"No problem," said Ad Hoc. "What is the matter?"
"Thomas Calvert has been under observation inside this base for two days now," the director stated abruptly. "A brain scan has confirmed that he is parahuman. Yesterday, information was forwarded to the PRT that links him to a host of illegal activities, up to and including the abuse of Endbringer shelter construction funds to build a hidden bunker for Coil."
"Ohthankgod." Even with the voice modulator and full-body armor, Battery could still see the relief Ad Hoc obviously felt at the news.
Piggot frowned. "What I would like to know is who forwarded that evidence. By the time we got to Coil's base, it had already been ransacked."
She didn't mention the evidence of the Undersiders' passage (Hellhound's dogs were far from discrete). That didn't surprise Battery - they'd been briefed on how to handle it. See how Ad Hoc reacted.
The Tinker took a thinking pose. "Hm. My guess would be Tattletale. She's been wanting to get out of his thumb for months. If he failed to contact her for a while, she may have put two and two together."
"And you think Tattletale would be able to pull this off?"
"Possible I guess?" he shrugged. "She's resourceful, generally good at getting the Undersiders to go along with her, and her power opens a lot of doors." He paused. "So what happens to Coil?"
"We'll get back to that," said Piggot. "There is another matter to consider." Her gazed bored into Ad Hoc. "You have said before that Coil, and the chance of him taking over the ENE PRT, was the main reason you and Weaver wouldn't be joining the Protectorate and Wards. That issue is resolved. So what now?" She went on: "If your goal is to clean up the city, then working with the Protectorate is the most efficient way to go about it. Especially for a Tinker. You will need resources, which the PRT can provide, in addition to teamwork. You've already relied on cooperation with the Protectorate against the ABB, after all."
Battery wasn't fond of that slight bit of disingenuity, but she understood the need for it. The PRT didn't want the truth about Coil advertised, which meant pulling certain strings to arrange for a quiet trial and, if possible, the Birdcage (given the evidence for some of his crimes, he certainly had it coming). But Ad Hoc and Weaver knew; either of them could reveal the whole thing to the media. If they were recruited, though, the PRT could simply order them to keep it confidential.
Ad Hoc seemed to shift uncomfortably in his seat. "There once was this parahuman. I… really got on her case for not joining the PRT, for doing things the wrong way, for doing the wrong thing even if she believed it was for the right reasons. Ideologically, joining the Protectorate sounds exactly like what I should be doing.
"On the other hand…" He sighed. "Even with Coil gone, I don't fully trust the PRT, especially some of the upper echelons. Er, not aiming that at the present company. I also disagree with the PRT on certain matters of policy. Most importantly… I suspect that the PRT's rules concerning tinketech would severely damage my ability to help people."
"The PRT's tinkertech regulations exist for a reason," Piggot countered. "They're there to prevent over-eager Tinkers from unleashing something dangerous, which is far more likely than it sounds."
"I know, I know," he sighed. "Listen… I don't think I will be joining the Protectorate in the foreseeable future, but I'd be a rank hypocrite if I didn't at least listen to your sales pitch. So, go ahead. Give me the whole story."
So they did. Piggot explained. Armsmaster provided the Tinker perspective. Miss Militia made helpful comments. Velocity looked bored out of his skull. In the end, though, Ad Hoc remained unconvinced.
"I'm really sorry," he said - he'd been pretty apologetic the whole time, really - "I just don't think the system as it exists was designed to handle something like my powers."
"What do you mean?" said Armsmaster. "Aren't you a Tinker?"
"Sort of? Kind of? My situation is… peculiar and unprecedented," said Ad Hoc. "But please, don't get me wrong. I may not want to be part of the Protectorate, but I definitely want to help the Protectorate. This includes providing good intel, and, if you'll allow, providing some of my technology - parts that I believe you will be able to use, at least."
"I suppose that'll have to do," Piggot sighed. "What about Weaver?"
"What about Weaver? I'm not her boss. If you want to recruit her, go ahead. Kid's got a keen sense of tactics; she has the potential to make a great Ward." He paused. "Actually… speaking of the Wards… you might want to look into Shadow Stalker," he said, sounding embarrassed now.
"What about Shadow Stalker?" Piggot's expression had turned grim.
"Oh, nothing, just her having about as much respect for the terms of her probation as Lung has for the American Constitution. In costume, she carries lethal crossbow bolts. Outside of costume, she's a sadistic psychopath."
The whole room went quiet.
"...What?"
"You are saying," Piggot said with a restrained tone that belied her redenning visage, "that you know a Ward's civilian identity."
"Huh." Ad Hoc seemed to come to the realization himself. "Wellll… Yeah. I think we've already established that I'm well-informed by now."
"On the villains of brockton Bay. Now you're telling me you've been spying on PRT-affiliated heroes?! Including underage ones?!"
"I have done no such thing."
"Your intel, or at least your confidence in it, suggests otherwise."
"Like I said before: I have to keep my source secret. Regardless, everything I've said is accurate. The behavior of Sophia Hess has been more villainous than heroic. If the PRT is not aware of her activities - which have included sending at least one classmate straight to the hospital for shits and giggles - then it needs to look into the matter." He paused. "Actually, that reminds me: What's going to happen to Coil?"
Piggot glared. "If the evidence we have pans out - and we're almost certain it will - then he will be spending the rest of his life in confinement. We've already frozen every asset of his that we could, though the recent evidence hints at much more - and a lot of it, if your theory is correct, is now in Tattletale's hands." The director steepled her fingers. "Since you're so well-informed about Coil's minions, what do you expect to happen at this point?"
He took a moment to consider. "If the Undersiders have managed to steal a significant chunk of his money… Hm. Regent wants comfort, and protection from his father." That got Battery's attention. The running theory was that Regent was actually Hijack, but it was unproven so far. "Grue wants the money and string-pulling required to obtain legal guardianship of his sister, so as to remove her from a toxic home environment. Bitch, aka Hellhound, wants the resources to take care of her dogs - in fact, of as many dogs as possible. Tattletale wants security and the chance to play with information. If they're smart, they'll use the money, disappear into the woodworks, and retire from crime."
"And do you expect them to be smart?"
Battery was pretty sure Ad Hoc's helmet was hiding a wince. "With Tattletale on the team? Plausible, but not my first bet. I think it's more likely that she'll try to take over Coil's old operation, becoming caliph instead of the caliph. Keep as many of his mercenaries and spy network as she can, become the information queen of Brockton Bay while taking care of her teammates." He sighed. "You're probably aware that capes who have obtained their powers via a trigger event tend to suffer some long-term psychological effect, ranging from the barely noticeable nudge to the sea change in attitude. Tattletale is in the middle range - her trigger has left her with an almost irresistible compulsion to gather information and use it to show up other people."
"Hold it," said Piggot. "What do you mean by 'obtained their powers via a trigger event'? That is how parahumans get their powers!"
"Usually," he said. "It's a seldom-discussed fact, but there is a small number of capes who come into their powers without trigger events, and without the psychological impact involved." Battery's heart skipped a beat. Had Ad Hoc been looking at her as he said that?
He declined to answer further questions on the matter, so the conversation switched back to the Undersiders. "Everyone is realizing by now that Lung is gone, and we will be making an official statement later today," Miss Militia explained. "This means that the Empire and others will be making their move to seize the ABB's territory, so we will be busy enough with that over the coming times. We need to decide what to do about the Undersiders if they're really taking over Coil's operation."
From the way he was fidgeting in armor, Ad Hoc did not seem comfortable. "The Undersiders are… morally gray, compared to Coil, the ABB, the Empire or the Merchants. Tattletale? Smug, manipulative bitch, but the reason she got into supervillainy was that Coil literally recruited her at gunpoint; prior to that, she had run away from a bad family situation and used her powers for minor larceny to survive in the streets. Grue… Like I mentioned, got into crime to protect his sister. Which I actually find the least defensible of the bunch, but still, he's not entirely unreasonable. Lindt… Girl really had no chance. She got blamed for the death of her foster family - an accident that she couldn't help - and her trigger event effectively gave her high-level autism, rendering communication with other people problematic. She's got little to no respect for human life as things currently stand, but what she needs is therapy, not prison. As for Regent… He's both the most and least ethical of the bunch." At the confused looks in the room, he proceeded: "Regent is evil, make no mistake. Considering how he grew up, however, it's honestly kind of amazing that he isn't far, far worse. I believe he is trying to unscrew his own mind… He's just lazy about it, like everything else.
"You want my opinion? I think the optimal resolution would be to bring them on board. Those kids are assholes, but they need help. They could be assets. Left to their own devices… Tattletale is the only ambitious one in the bunch, really. She may or may not develop into a headache. I can tell you in advance, she's a pain to go against."
When further questioned, he denied having any connection to the Undersiders beyond that short meeting after Lung's defeat. He did mention that he intended to assist the Protectorate in various ways in the near future. Finally, the meeting came to a conclusion and he was escorted out of the base, and Battery could stop to review the facts.
Ad Hoc was ridiculously well-informed about Brockton Bay capes.
Ad Hoc knew about Cauldron, and had hinted at an atypical nature of his own powers.
Ad Hoc was behaving in a strange manner, but clearly trying to influence PRT policy.
Just what was Cauldron up to?
God, she hated real-life mysteries.
I'd always found meetings draining. I'd say it was my short attention span and introversion showing, except that everyone else seemed to hate them too. So when I returned to the Palanquin, I allowed myself some time to surf the Web.
Morbid curiosity led me to check on the state of anime and manga. The loss of Kyushu had not been kind to the industry - aside from the many casualties within the industry itself (even if most of them lived and worked in Tokyo), the (surviving) Japanese public simply had little to spend on entertainment and merchandising as the national economy died a messy death. Backtracking further, though, it became clear that even before Kyushu, anime and manga had been far less successful in the West than they had been in my world at the time. I didn't have enough data to engage in real, serious analysis… but from what my quick glances were telling me, my guess was that in the 80ies and 90ies, Japanese, American and European pop cultures each tried to incorporate the rise of parahumans… and each had done it in wildly different ways, which, among other things, resulted in media execs being less willing to take a chance on material from the other cultures. Heck, the Sailor Moon and Dragonball animes hadn't even made it to the West here before Kyushu, and that was 1999.
One amusing quirk of that state of events was that a lot of Japanese creative types - expats and otherwise - had apparently flocked to other media in response. There were numerous series of books selling reasonably well in the West written by Japanese authors. Funny how that worked out.
OK, enough of that. Back to work.
The 3D-printer had finished doing most of the work on my new device, but it would need a massive energy release to complete. I needed a super-battery to hold in a couple hours' worth of my generator's energy production. That, in turn, left me time to work on the software aspect.
One Tinker charge in efficiency. One in robustness. Two in software. And one in that other, pause-giving specialization. I went to work, my special code library allowing me to finish in hours the work of days and more.
And then… A big energy discharge later, it was done. The new device was working, just as intended by the specialization I had used for it.
That peculiar specialization.
Chrono-technology.
The device was - or rather, included - a tiny wormhole. It was so small, it could barely be seen. Its two ends were mere millimeters apart. More importantly, however, they were nearly two microseconds apart.
Phir Se would no doubt laugh at such a puny portal. But Phir Se had failed to grasp the full applications of his power. The device didn't just create and maintain the wormhole - it incorporated it into the computer chip I had just programmed.
Let us say you gave a computer a problem. The problem had such complexity, that it required a trillion steps from a Turing machine to resolve. If you computer could perform a billion steps per second, it spent a nanosecond on the first step, then another nanosecond on the second step, and so on, ultimately spending one thousand seconds before reaching the problem's solution.
Not so with this chip. This chip would take the problem as it was at first. It would complete the first step, replacing the problem with one comprised of one less step than before. With the wormhole, it would send itself that new state back in time. It would then tackle the new problem, from the very moment of the start, with one step already done in advance. The same procedure would then be repeated with the next step, and so on. Eventually, every step would be done… and it would still be the moment when the computer had first received the initial problem, or nearly so.
It didn't matter if the problem was complex enough to require a thousand steps, or a million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, even a goddamn googolplex. So long as the problem was solvable, it would be resolved within a span of time too short to be perceived by human senses.
One might be tempted to say this chrono-chip had infinite computing power. Any student of mathematics, of course, would put the lie to such an assertion. Infinity was a complex concept - the set of integers (0, 1, 2, 5487, -87…) was infinite and scope, as was the set of all real numbers (as before, but now also including the likes of 5/7, pi, or the square root of 2), but both those were very different kinds of infinity. Furthermore, if you gave the chrono-chip a truly infinite problem, it would not be able to resolve it (though it wouldn't get caught in an infinite loop either; countermeasures were in place for that). However, as long as you needed computation that was finite in scope, no matter how insanely huge, it could provide it quasi-instantly.
In a very real way, I was holding in my palm the most powerful weapon in the world.
Not gonna lie - that excited me more than anything else I'd accomplished so far. Plugging it into my computer, quick tests showed it outperformed the quantum chip to a ludicrous degree. I gave it a graph problem that required trillions of times more computation than had been done by all computers in human History in my world put together; it resolved it without any appreciable waiting time. Letting the matter-summoner use it to search through its multi-dimensional data, it suddenly became several times more efficient. There were complications if you tried to send the information through the portal multiple times at once - the chip couldn't reliably be used for precognition with a range of more than a few seconds - but that wasn't its intended purpose. Its intended purpose was having an indecently powerful computer, and it was fulfilling it admirably.
But, I wasn't going to stop there. I was in that all-too-rare for me mental state - the productivity rush. I had every intention of riding it to the completion of that step.
Three Tinker charges in software engineering.
Two Tinker charges in artificial intelligence.
Even with my code library, it took me the rest of the evening and a chunk of the night. I wasn't going to create an AI from scratch - that would involve millions of lines of code and far more time than I had. Instead, I designed a combination of machine-learning software and evolutionary algorithms that became slightly better at their job over time. Subjects I had briefly touched upon in college, but which my Tinker specializations now allowed me to fully understand.
On its own, this program could serve as a very efficient optimization algorithm - enough to help out a few industries and earn my a Turing award. It could take programs intended for a certain task, and slowly make them better.
However, when you had a chrono-computer on your side, the term "slowly" lost much of its meaning.
I could run the program on the chrono-computer, giving it as many computations as it needed to achieve whatever result I intended. Really, that was the easy part. What took significantly more effort was weaving in the limitations - keeping the program from doing what I didn't want.
At that point, I became very, very careful. I checked everything. I used my improved software to check everything even more thoroughly. I ran several tests beforehand. And only once I was convinced it was safe, did I run the whole program through the chrono-chip.
An amount of computation nearly beyond description took place over a nanosecond repeated endlessly.
And then, I had the program I needed. It was artificial, and it was intelligent, but I hesitated to call it an artificial intelligence; I felt that term had additional connotations. This program had successfully been built with comprehensive limitations: It had no emotion, no desire, no personality, no sapience, and no initiative. It was nothing more than a tool that took problems as input, and systematically gave solutions as output. It was methodical, efficient, further from error-prone than humanly impossible, incapable of feeling boredom, and able to use the chrono-chip for its calculations. It now ran my computer systems, allowing my devices to follow my orders in any fashion I intended. I decided to take a page from Mass Effect and call it a Virtual Intelligence.
Understand, I didn't have anything against actual AIs. Dragon was probably my favorite Worm character. I just didn't feel ready to be a father, which was why I had gone to all that length to ensure the program I had created wasn't an actual person.
Project Tears of Hephaestus: Phase complete: Acquire virtual intelligence to run mechanical minutiae at full precision and efficiency.
Last edited: Feb 21, 2015
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Feb 21, 2015
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sun tzu
sun tzu
Feb 21, 2015
#179
10
I woke up the next morning… Well, no, it was slightly past noon actually. I'd really gone to bed late this time.
Didn't matter. I was still grinning. I was giddy. I had a chrono-computer and a virtual intelligence. I was feeling invincible.
Of course, I was still a long way away from invincibility. So, after checking the news and PMs, I got back to work.
The VI, as requested, had spent the night/morning trawling the multiverse for useful building material. That would come in handy soon, but not quite yet. First, I needed to work on software.
One Tinker charge each to software engineering, artificial intelligence, efficiency, robustness, and user interface. I then some time poring over the code of the VI, tweaking, improving. There wasn't that much that needed to be done, honestly, but I wanted to be completely certain that it would work as intended. My tweaks would make certain that it wouldn't degrade over time… and make it very, very easy to use. Even with my Tinker charges all turned off, I would still able to collaborate with the VI on any given task.
I had lunch with Faultine's Crew. Didn't participate much in the conversation, which was typical enough for me (I'm introverted enough as is. Give me food to focus my attention on, and it only gets worse). There was some business talk, though: The big diamond sale in New York had gone through, netting the Crew over a million dollars. My share of it, as agreed upon, was pretty small, bringing up the total amount I had earned with them up to 100,000. Admittedly, I needed money a lot less now. I told Faultline that my presence was likely to last for at most another week, after which I would provide her crew with an easy-to-use diamond synthesizer (and Newter's spray, of course).
Then, back to work. Around 4 PM, I was done improving upon the VI, and it was time to move on to the next phase.
As incredibly useful as my 3D-printer had been, it had reached its limit. I couldn't upgrade it significantly past its current capabilities. It could, however, be used to create its successor.
One Tinker charge in chemistry, one in automated manufacturing, and three in nanotechnology.
The first step was the creation of a set of nano-tools. Thanks to the right set of exotic matter, I could create microscopic gravitic lens which could focus the influence of certain tools, allowing them to manipulate objects far smaller than themselves (down to subatomic particles).
The next step was a set of micro-machines - robots whose size was measured in microns, comparable to living cells and bacteria. Their chemical structure ensured that they would be instantaneously oxidized and destroyed upon contact with normal air; I didn't want to risk something unsafe escaping from the printer. For now, at least, the micro-machines followed their programming, picking up the nano-tools.
The third step was getting the micro-machines and 3D-printer, under the VI's guidance, to work on creating the chassis and core of my intended machine - a true fabber. A quasi-indestructible box made of exotic matter, equipped with its own VI, an anchored set of nano-tools, and airtight isolation.
I needed to take the components of the fabber out of the 3D-printer and assemble them. But once that was done… next step:
The fabber had its own set of nano-tools, but it was kind of laughable. They were attached to the inner wall of the fabber's manufacturing chamber, but their number was so small, any amount of work they did would be… well, nanoscopic.
No problem. I set them to create some true, genuine nanomachines. Robots even smaller than the micro-machines, their size closer to that of viruses, able to manipulate individual subatomic particles at ease. Remote-controlled by the fabber's VI.
The design of the nanomachines included exotic matter, without which they simply couldn't work. The exotic matter made them more efficient, but its main purpose was as a security feature: I didn't want even the slightest chance of creating grey goo. If these nanomachines somehow, against all odds, went crazy and started replicating like cancer cells, they'd quickly run out of exotic matter.
A second security feature was that they were vulnerable to cold - or rather, room temperature. Inside the fabber, it was always very, very hot. If a nanomachine ever came into an environment with temperatures below 50 Celsius degrees (122 Fahrenheit if you were a godless heathen), its internal components would quickly shatter.
Now, given how careful I had been with their programming, plus the assistance of the VI, I doubted either of those precautionary measures were actually necessary. But why risk the apocalypse on account of laziness? ...Plus, I'd turned down joining the Protectorate and submitting my tech to PRT review, so I would feel really bad if I screwed this up.
Anyway. As mentioned, the fabber's nano-manipulators were very few in numbers. The nanomachines they made only numbered in the double digits. When you considered that there were trillions of cells in the human body, and that the average cell could easily contain thousands upon thousands of nanomachines, that gave you an idea of how small that was. However, I had fed the fabber all the matter (exotic and otherwise) that they needed to replicate. Under the guidance of the VI, they proceeded to do just that.
It was actually disturbing how fast the process was. Each nanomachine needed barely more than a minute to create a copy of itself. Forty-and-something minutes later, the fabber controlled trillions and trillions of nanomachines. I stopped the process shortly before they had consumed the base material, mostly to make sure that I could. At that point, I basically had the fabber check its own nanomachines with a fine comb, making sure that all of them were behaving appropriately.
In theory, of course, I could lose all the nanomachines at once. If, for some reason, temperatures inside the fabber went below the 50 Celsius threshold, they would all be destroyed. That was the purpose of the fabber's anchored nano-manipulators: In such an event, the fabber could always create a new set of nanomachines, which could then replicate again.
I spent over an hour checking everything, making sure every single nanomachine was following instructions. Then, and only then, did I begin testing the fabber.
I had the fabber create a perfect diamond in the shape of an icosahedron the size of my fist. It took eighteen seconds.
I had the fabber create a copy of one of my burner phone. It worked perfectly.
I had the fabber replicate my armor. It took less than two minutes.
I grinned widely.
Project Tears of Hephaestus: Phase complete: Acquire nanotech fabber!
Gregor was in the kitchen when I decided to make myself dinner (the idea of making it with the fabber had occurred to me, but somehow that still made me uncomfortable). He enquired as to my obvious good mood. I truthfully told him that I'd made a breakthrough with my tinkertech.
After dinner, I went back to work. I spent some time improving the fabber, giving it such features as self-repair, automatic survey and elimination of "mutations", robustness, and a very, very easy to use and intuitive interface, keyed to answer only to me (or Dragon. You just never know). With the VIs on my side, all those things were pretty easy, honestly.
It was barely 10 PM, and I was pumped. I decided to screw sleep schedules and just get things done. I had VIs, I had a fabber, I had a big supply of raw materials and exotic matter of many different sorts. It was time to get cracking.
One Tinker charge in efficiency, one in robustness, and three in energy generation. Again, a tide of ideas came to me.
I picked one, and, VI assisting, programmed it into the fabber. One again, I was amazed by how fast the tinkering process had become. It wasn't even midnight when I was done.
What I had created was a hyper-efficient energy generator. It created a pocket dimension, then opened a pinprick wormhole between that dimension and the heart of the sun. A complex mechanism was used to harvest energy in usable form from the pocket dimension, while multiple security layers prevented the whole thing from ever going boom or melting down everything in range. Power: Over a gigawatt, and easily increased.
Project Tears of Hephaestus: Phase Complete: Ludicrous amounts of energy.
At which point… screw it. I had my fabber, my VI, my super-generator. Some quick tinkering later, I was able to improve the dimensional portal generator and the dimensional scanner. With all of those upgrades, my matter-summoner could now scan everything in a range of hundreds of thousands of kilometers across quadrillions of universes in less than a second, and summon whatever it needed from them just as quickly.
I had as many raw materials as I needed.
I had as much energy as I needed.
I had as much intelligent computation as I needed.
I had as much precise automated manufacturing as I needed.
I could build anything, easily.
Cry, Hephaestus. Cry yourself into a jealousy-induced coma, for my forge is infinitely better than yours. Cry at the sight of your obsolescence.
That would have been a good time to go to bed, except no way I was going to fall asleep at that point. I was too giddy - in a way, too relieved. I'd been afraid I wouldn't be able to finish this project before something nasty happened. Not that a lot of time had passed, really - it was still the night between the 18th and 19th of April, just a week and a half after my arrival in Brockton Bay.
A week and half to build the perfect fabber workshop, the likes of which regular Tinkers could only dream of. God, Inspired Inventor was bullshit overpowered… but then, I'd known as much when I'd picked it.
So, I tinkered. I tinkered by picking the right specializations, figuring out the blueprints, then describing them to the fabber (a task made far easier by the fabber's VI being smart enough to fill the gaps in my description). The fabber built them in record time.
First, I improved my D-scanner. It wasn't even close to what I had originally envisioned, after all. For now, I upped its range for twenty kilometers - still not the full functionality I had in mind, but it was a start. The rest would come tomorrow.
Next, energy storage. It was almost trivial, designing energy cells the size of AAA batteries that stored more joules than you could get from a liter of gasoline. So, I made a few dozens and fully charged them.
Next, my armor. Five Tinker charges in power armor yielded the new model. Bulkier than its predecessor, but equipped with hundreds of servomotors and its own VI, moving in perfect synch with the will of the wearer (felt by sensing electric impulses in his muscle nerves), and thus not hampering agility in the slightest. Built from an alloy of carbon, metals, and exotic matter so strong, that stinger missiles and anti-materiel rifles wouldn't even scratch it, and shock absorbers would protect the user. The servomotors would add their strength to the user's, providing over four times the lifting capacity of the best olympic weightlifters. An array of sensors, including a D-scanner, would allow the VI to keep the user appraised on the situation. A built-in dart gun in the forearm could shoot needles filled with Newter drug. Near-perfect isolation from heat, electricity, and the whole thing was airtight with a day's worth of air supply. And that still wasn't the full list of features I wanted to include, but hey, it was damn cool. I practiced moving around in it, even practicing some half-remembered katas.
And then… well, it was stupidly late. I went to bed, knowing that the time to turn the world on its ear was approaching fast.
When Taylor went to school on Tuesday the 19th, she noticed a distinct absence of Sophia Hess.
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sun tzu
Feb 21, 2015
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