Seed 1.3
It had been two days since her abortive meeting with the Protectorate and PRT, and Taylor had frankly forgotten about it for the most part. Though, it was more that she had buried herself in her work more than actually any conscious attempt to move past it.
While she could have easily obsessed over the setback, it honestly only provided her with the opportunity of more time to solidify her work and make further preparations. In this case, she was taking the time to further refine the programming and code for her Focus, while working on the next generation of it. With the former reaching the point where she would likely not be able to get anything more out of it due to the hardware limitations, and the latter was based upon a blueprint that had not even reached production.
Suffice to say, it was both frustrating, but rewarding at the same time, because while her knowledge in coding was probably the most advanced in the world, it was still just that, knowledge, static information that while a good base, could still reach moments of frustration when dealing with the fluid and unknown.
Right now, she was leaning back in her chair, keeping her eyes closed as she held an ice-cold water bottle against her forehead, fending off the burgeoning headache and frustration that was threatening to break her.
As there was no way in hell that he would allow her back into school, even if they moved heaven and earth to accommodate her, he had provided her with a small workshop in the DWU in which she could work. Honestly, though, even if she were willing, it was a pointless endeavor in her estimation. If she could actually get the funding and support for developing the Focus, she could probably use that to work on her GED and pass within months if she were so inclined.
But for right now, she would just work with what she had, two different laptops arrayed in front of her, as she bounced between the two for work, the Focus Zero, as she called it, sitting on her head with an extension cord leading into the wall to provide it with the necessary power to work without having to worry about exhausting the battery.
Thankfully, both laptops were wifi enabled, which meant that she could link them to her, and she could 'see' their screens, which was a godsend when her power wasn't providing her with assistance. It only seemed to want to jump in at certain times, but seemed satisfied with a distinctly hands off approach.
Or she was simply not ready for whatever data dump it wanted to drop on her, she mused, the ice-cold water dripping down her face providing her a welcome relief as she chewed on the problem in front of her, and the possible paths forward she could take.
She was fast approaching a bottleneck, she knew, where she could only do so much before the hardware limitations and logistical roadblocks in front of her would kill what momentum she had built up so far. When that happened, she had to wonder just how things would go. She was already beginning to feel just a little antsy in the face of the unknown and the silence from the Protectorate in rescheduling was only adding to it.
Perhaps it was time to begin looking into contingencies.
The door to her office opened, and her head snapped towards the sound in reflex, only for resistance to meet her head as she had forgotten the Focus was still plugged in, before it finally gave away and she overcompensated, nearly falling out of her chair.
Even in the faint fuscia-blue-purple, she could tell he was smiling without even hearing the amusement in his tone as he simply asked, "Problems?"
"Just kill me,please," she muttered embarrassedly, working to recollect herself into her chair, unplugging her Focus completely as she spun around in her chair.
"I brought lunch," he declared, closing the door behind himself and moving into the workshop, in his hand a pair of bags and a drink carrier. Placing it down on the table, "hope you're okay with turkey and swiss."
"I'll live," was her response as she settled behind the desk, Danny doing the same in his own chair, setting the food out for the both of them. While the Focus Zero could provide a level of fidelity, especially after she had put in a new patch this morning, there were still instances in which it had issues in definite certain features, in this case, the paper wrap she had to still use her fingers to feel for the fold of paper to unwrap it.
She took a bite from her sandwich as they both settled into a silence that was easier after the last couple of days, where they had been to reestablish just a bit more rapport that had been previously lost.
Her father had been absolutely irate when she had recounted her meeting, wanting to storm back to the building and giving a piece of his mind. It had only because she had urged that he didn't that he had stayed his hand.
"So how is it going," he asked in between bites.
Sipping from her coke, she took the time provided to consider what she would say. Her father was good, but his field was in logistics and management, when she had tried to explain previously what she had been coding outside the basics she may have just been speaking in a foreign language.
"It's a mixed bag," she finally answered, "I think I've reached the hard limit of what I can do with the Zero and a lot of what I can do for the Gen One is starting to dry up without any hard specs to work with. I can keep making blueprints and patents, but without the money," she trailed off and offered a shrug. There wasn't much to say beyond that. Her abilities weren't like classical tinkers where she could take household items and cobble them together with a healthy dosage of tape and bullshit. Her products were based upon hard science.
He grimaced, that was one subject that neither really wished to talk about, but it was the elephant in the room nonetheless.
"Have you thought of options?"
She sighed, putting down the half-eaten sandwich. She really didn't want to talk about this, but they had made a pledge with one another to talk and be honest in the process. Well, it looked like they weren't going to be able to avoid this conversation.
"Honestly? Outside of the Protectorate certifying my Focus as not Tinkertech, not a lot of the options available are good."
"And if they do?"
"Still quite a few hurdles, but it would make life a lot easier."
He sat there for a moment, and once again Taylor wished she had a more powerful focus. While the Zero provided imagery, it couldn't go too deep into detail for her to get truly to the basis of what her father was feeling in his expressions outside of the general. Tics and tells required too many resources for the system to adequately process and convey to the brain. So she was left with a painting that was honestly incomplete most of the time and forced her to attempt to fill in the blanks.
"Give me a list then. Maybe by bouncing them off me we can find something that can work."
Taking a bite of her sandwich, she considered his request while she chewed the bland material, being careful not to pull at the skin on her cheek while she did so.
Would it hurt to share with him? It wasn't like she had any ideas outside of some barebones contingencies that she was beginning to work on. Maybe he'd see something and offer an alternative that she didn't see.
"Okay," she finally agreed after swallowing her bite of sandwich..
"So even if the Protectorate deigns that what I'm developing and producing is not Tinkertech, all that will do is provide me a shield against NEPEA-5. It will not give me access to capital or investors, and even if it did, we'd have to be careful that the ones willing to foot the initial bill will do so without demanding my designs or make me an indentured servant as collateral," she offered a small shrug, "no big deal."
"That's most certainly a big deal."
"I'm joking Dad, relax," she then sipped from her coke, "the other problem is the Focus, as it is, will come in two forms, one will be able to provide vision to those who are visually impaired, and the other is a multi-purpose communications device that will revolve around the usage of augmented reality. You've seen the Dragon Phone, right? Think that, only a lot more compact, and on your temple, you'll never have to worry about a scratched or cracked screen, or rifling through your pockets again."
She then trailed off, watching her father's expression fall. It was still a sobering subject to talk about cell phones, but it was better than it was before. At times, she wondered if it would have been any different back then, she shook her head, dismissing that thought. It wasn't worth it.
"Returning to the problem, is that they have different purposes, which means that investors may want only one, but not the other. The one for impaired vision is what I really want to put out there, but I have to be realistic, it's a medical technology first and foremost, which means that it will be harder to profit off of, or even entice investors into putting their money into."
"You talk about how it'd help with the visually impaired, what's there to stop it from being marketed for situations where vision may be impaired for normal people. Say, firefighters, miners, divers, and so on, having a device that could let them see in darkness, or reduced visibility could make a lot of people's lives easier, if not help save lives."
"The problem is it's not designed for that. One of the drawbacks with the, you know what, fuck it, I can't keep differentiating the two by the design purpose, I'll start confusing someone," maybe even myself, she didn't add in her pause, running through her head exactly what to call it, something that fits with the motif of her knowledge, "They need a name. Okay, from now on, let's call the model designed as a medical device as Horus, and the one designed for normal commercial use, Hathor."
"Anyways, one of the drawbacks for Horus, as a medical device, is that it has to be calibrated for each individual, like eyeglasses. Because while the brain is basically a gigantic central processor, each one has their own uniqueness to it that requires special considerations, what may be good for me in providing the best data to work may not exactly be the best for someone else. It would get too costly, too quickly, for mass-productive use, at least from a logistical standpoint."
"Okay, and Horus streams directly to the brain, right?"
She nodded, "They both actually do, Horus is designed to be more intrusive because of what it's designed to do."
"Okay, so what's to stop Horus from being designed to stream to something else? Like say, maybe a pair of goggles?"
"Because that would require-," she trailed off, a sudden thought intruding. She pushed off the desk, all the while spinning the chair around, coming to a stop in front of the left laptop, tapping a few keys to link it directly to her focus so she could see the screen.
"Taylor?"
"One moment," she called back, opening a series of blueprints for the Hathor, looking through them, even as she felt an itch at the back of her brain. Closing her eyes for a moment, though it was kinda pointless due to wearing the Focus, the physical aspect was more for her to organize her thoughts.
She then shot up from her chair, and immediately moved over to her father and wrapped him in a hug.
"Wha-," he asked, tentatively beginning to return the hug.
"It'd work," she declared excitedly, even as she wrapped her arms tighter around him, already imagining what she would need to do in order to make it work, but it honestly wouldn't be that difficult. It'd just be an additional production process, but if she did that, then it's likely that she would be a lot more marketable, which meant that they could sell it to the investors a lot better, "you just made things so much easier for me to sell it, Dad."
It was then that his arms wrapped tighter around her, actually now firmly returning the hug.
How long had it been since they hugged like this, she tried to recall, just leaning into the warmth of her father. It had to be before mother died, because she honestly could not recall anything after that.
A knock on the door caused her head to rise up, before it opened.
"Hey Danny," Kurt, one of Danny's coworkers and a family friend paused, "Sorry," he then added realizing he had ruined a moment between them, as they broke their hug and Danny turned to him, "We got a problem."
Releasing a sigh, Danny asked wearily, "What's the problem, Kurt?"
"Armsmaster is outside."
"Repeat that by me again?"
"Armsmaster is outside, says he wants to talk to Taylor."
She couldn't help but look at her father, "Did the Protectorate contact you?"
"No. You?"
"...No."
"How the hell does he know that you're here?"
"That's what I would like to know."