The elevator opened into a mud-room-type arrangement, with coats and scarves neatly arranged on hooks and two shoe racks situated beneath them. There was a dozen different types of shoes, a well-worn, arranged on one rack, all in Lila's size. There were only three pairs of shoes sized for her mother sitting on a separate rack, all looking in good shape.
Lila and Lilly both removed their shoes.
"We don't normally wear shoes inside," Lila explained.
Taylor kicked off her own shoes while Lila also took off her socks. Lilly left her socks on and continued toward the living room.
"Taylor, you don't have to take off your socks," Lilly said. "Do you want some snacks or anything to drink?"
Before Taylor could answer, Lila asked, "How about some soda and water? Cookies if we have them."
Taylor managed to get her shoes off before Lila grabbed her hand an began dragging her into the condo.
"Wait a minute!" Taylor said. "What about your leg? Did you leave your crutch in the car?"
"Oh, yeah," Lila said through a smile. "I haven't really needed it since we left school. I'll explain it all in a few minutes."
"Lila," her mother said from the kitchen, "don't steamroll Taylor."
"Right," Lila responded, more to herself than her mother, but she stopped tugging on Taylor's arm. "I'm sorry Taylor, I haven't really had visitors in a while. Do you want to sit down on the couch? Watch some TV?"
Taylor looked around before asking, "What did you have in mind? You practically dragged me up here, so something's going on. You're not a cult, are you?" She asked.
Before Lila could answer, there was a snort, then loud, raucous laughter coming from the direction of the kitchen.
"Mom, you're not helping," Lila yelled toward the kitchen before turning back to Taylor.
"I'm not saying that's a deal-breaker or anything," Taylor, "I just want to know what I'm getting into."
"Mom," Lila called, "we're going to my room." Then, "Pull yourself together, woman." This just caused another bout of unrestrained laughter from the kitchen.
"Come on," Lila said exasperation gesturing down the hallway she was walking toward, "no cults here, I promise."
"That's just what a cult would say," Taylor replied, a smile now on her, still confused, face.
They walked down the long hallway past a bathroom. There was only a set of double doors at the end of the hallway. When they reached the door, Lila said "SANDI, authorize Taylor Hebert unrestricted entry."
Lila met Taylor's eyes as the double-doors opened to reveal Lila's workspace. It looked something from a Mad Tinker's lab from a comic book.
Taylor regarded the room wide-eyed as Lila walked inside.
"Just don't touch anything with any LEDs lit up," she said with a smile. "Welcome to my workshop."
Taylor took an unsteady step forward, looking left then right at the immense room. There were shelves and workbenches scattered everywhere. The room seemed to cover half the floor.
"MY GOD!" Taylor shouted, "YOU'RE A TINKER!"
"Oh, I'm not really a Tinker," Lila said with a smile. "I'm a Thinker who makes stuff, but I'm so much more than that. I can also be as tough as Alexandria if I want, but I can't fly. I have some other Thinker stuff that goes along with it. What do you think?"
"YOU'RE A CAPE!" Taylor said again, trying to look everywhere at once.
"Stuck on that, huh," smiled Lila before saying to the room, "SANDI, activate the prototyping bay and bring up project T1-091211, five percent density."
Lila took Taylor's hand and began pulling her through the room, around obstacles while speaking, "I triggered in the car crash," she began. "It took me a little bit of time to get a handle on it all. Sometimes I still have some issues you probably need to know about if you still want to be my friend," She continued, leading Taylor around a workbench stacked with generator parts. "I can tune my brain up and down. All the way down means I'm like Lila before the accident...not particularly smart...I really don't do that much. All the way up means that my brain is faster than the fastest Tinker supercomputer. If my brain is turned all the way up, I tend to forget people are people, as mom says. We kind of agreed that I mostly keep my brain around the middle. I try to keep some of my brain working on how to relate to people, otherwise, I'm kind of a bitch." It was hard to see how much Taylor was actually absorbing and she twisted her head left and right trying to see everything at once.
Taylor seemed to suddenly realize that Lila was talking. Hopefully she had caught at least part of Lila's speech. "Why do you want to be friends with me?" Taylor asked suddenly.
"What do you mean?" Lila asked. "I already told you why: I've been shut in my house since my accident. It was bad. I almost died. My dad did. I've been homeschooled since, and I thought I was doing fine but my mom didn't think so. She thought I needed some social interaction with kids my own age. I wouldn't be here if she hadn't made me come. When I look around this school, I see gang members, bullies, and follower drones. You could probably make your life a lot easier if you just joined one of the gangs for protection, but you didn't do that. You're an island in a sea of conformists. If I'm going to be friends with anyone, it won't be someone who is going to just do what I say. It has to be some with the will to tell me when I'm being dumb. It has to be someone who knows the difference between a Ainur and a Maiar. Sorry, Taylor, but you're the only friend candidate I see here," Lila repeated.
Taylor gaped at Lila, "Is that the exact thing you said at lunch?" she asked. "Did you just repeat what you said at lunch verbatim?"
Lila pointed at her head, "Thinker, Supercomputer."
"Right," Taylor responded, "so you're a Thinker? Are you in the Ward's? Why hasn't anyone heard of you?"
"I haven't joined any group," Lila replied. "They have all these rules..."
"...and Lila hates rules," her mother interrupted waling in with a tray of drinks and cookies.
"I don't hate rules," Lila said with a pouty lip, "only stupid rules."
"Lila is literally, the smartest person in the world," her mother continued. "I found out pretty quickly that rules needed to make sense in Lila's context. If she's being rude to you, just ask her to focus on interpersonal skills and she'll do better. I love her, but Lila can be difficult to manage sometimes."
"Yeah," Lila nodded, "Mom's being nice. I'm a real bitch if I'm running strictly science stuff without thinking about how it affects people." She stopped at a workbench and picked up an LCD screen, added a circuit board, quickly soldering a crystal into place. "SANDI, terminal," she ordered, and a computer terminal appeared floating in the air in front of Lila, a loud chime sounding. Lila began typing on the keyboard floating in front of her.
"You seem like a nice girl, Taylor," Lilly said. "Lila wouldn't make a mistake about letting you know this much if she wasn't sure you were going to be fast friends. Sometime Lila is a pain in the ass," Lila raised an eyebrow at her mother, but kept on typing as her mother continued. "She is also one of the most caring people in the world, even when she's being a pain in the ass. I'm sure she'll tell you about her grand plan at some point, probably sooner than later. She loves to talk about it. Even when she isn't thinking about people as individuals, she is still thinking about the human race as a whole. I'll let her explain that part," Lilly concluded, placing the tray on the workbench and walking to the exit, saying, "It's not a cult, but it can feel like that sometimes. Don't worry though, Lila cares about you, or you wouldn't be here," she concluded as she exited the room.
"Mom's just being dramatic," Lila said as she bent and shaped a length of titanium with her hands. A matching piece already sat on the workbench. She pressed the LCD and circuit-board into the metal and placed another piece over it, enclosing the entire thing in titanium. "SANDI, transfer program from the terminal to the reader."
A chime sounded from nearby speakers.
"Now transfer Taylor's programming tutorial program to the reader," she said next.
Another chime.
Lila handed the device to a dumbfounded Taylor, saying, "See, one e-reader, almost indestructible. The charge is good for about a year, and it should recharge just fine if you put it near a heater. In a pinch you can just stick it in the oven on the warm setting."
"You just made me a Tinkertech e-reader in a couple of minutes?" Taylor asked.
"Well, it's not just an e-reader," Lila said. "It will also let you surf the net by piggybacking on cellular signals. You can set up your email on it and do basic programming practice. It's also keyed to your biometrics. Also," she added, "It's not Tinkertech. None of what I make is. It's all reproducible by anyone who understands electronics, programming, and crystalline computer matrices."
"I can't take this," Taylor said. "This has to be worth a fortune."
"Taylor," Lila replied, "this is probably going to be the least expensive gift you get from me."
"Why me?" Taylor asked, a serious look on her face.
"For all the reasons, I said, Taylor," Lili said. "I know it's hard for you to trust people. Mom mentioned my brain focusing on interpersonal skills. My brain is like a computer. It's great at whatever I focus on. I don't know the details about what Sophia and Emma have done to you. I'm happy to listen if you want to talk about it, but my brain tells me who I could be friends with and who I can't. I can't be friends with anyone from before," she gestured around, "all this. They would expect me to be the old Lila. She's gone and she isn't coming back...ever. I have to find new friends, but my brain won't let me be friends with someone who would betray me or use me. You're a good friend for me...and I'll be a good friend for you," Lila paused to allow her words to sink in before saying, "So, prototyping?" and grabbing Taylor's hand, pulling her deeper into the room.
"Where does all this come from?" Taylor asked waiving her hand through the air at the workbenches. "Don't most Tinkers get caught because they are buying stuff to Tinker with?"
"Yeah," Lila responded, "but, most Tinker have this compulsion that makes them Tinker. I read some psychology journals on it. They actually HAVE to Tinker or they go nuts. They end up stealing or dumpster diving to get the stuff they need and get caught. I don't actually have to Tinker. I can go months without picking up a tool, in theory at least."
Taylor looked around thoughtfully at the room, "But, this is a LOT of stuff," she said.
"Right, supply chain," Lila replied. "Mom or I own a bunch of different small companies either in Brockton Bay, Boston or Portland. The condo used to be a ceramics factory, so there are all these storerooms in the basement. My mom owns the building and rents out space to our other businesses to store paper records or computer backups. When those trucks bring the records, they also bring in whatever I need: electronics, chemicals, raw materials. We have a couple of other buildings like this in Boston and Portland in case we have to GTFO. I also do some light manufacturing for one of my companies here, only a couple of hours a week. Oh, see, look at these," she said making a sudden turn.
Lila pulled Taylor over to a workbench stacked with boxes of parts. "These are the parts," Lila pointed to the boxes on the left, "and these are the finished product."
Each of the finished boxes was labeled with a stylized *DaVinci* on the side. Lila opened one of the sealed boxes and pulled out the plastic-shrouded object, looking at the label before saying, "This is for Eric Park. He lost his eye in an industrial accident making cars in Detroit." She handed the object to Taylor, who recognized it immediately.
"This is a DaVinci artificial eye," Taylor said. "You make DaVinci artificial eyes?"
"I am DaVinci artificial eyes, Taylor," Lila said with a smile. "The other prosthetics, arms and legs and such, are made in Boston based on my designs. The eyes are a little too complicated for the techs there to assemble easily. It takes a steady hand, especially the custom eyes like this one, she said, taking the eye from Taylor and putting it back in its box. I got the idea after I lost my eye in the accident, see" Lila said, reaching up and pressing her left eye. There was a hum and the eye popped out of the socket enough for Lila to grasp the sides, She paused before pulling the device out of the socket. "This isn't going to weird you out?" she asked as Taylor stared at her.
"You have a DaVinci eye that you made yourself?" Taylor asked excitedly.
"Well, yeah," Lila replied. "I really needed two eyes for Tinkering. After mom stopped freaking out, she suggested that other people might want binocular vision too. See, that's the kind of thing she mentioned that I don't think of when my brain is turned all the way up. I get focused on the end goal and forget there are steps along the way that can help other people out too."
"So do you want to see this eye or not?" Lila asked with a smile.
"Can you just handle it," Taylor asked. "Won't it get dirty if we handle it?"
"Doesn't matter," Lila responded. The cup that sits in the eye socket is the sealed part," Lila pointed at her eye socket and the blinking green light at the back of it. "You could probably roll this in mud," she said handing the eye to Taylor, "and as long as it fits in the socket, it would still work. The instructions say to clean the eye once a week with soap and water before you plug it in to charge.
"You only have to charge them once a week?" Taylor asked.
"Well, the normal ones," Lila replied. "Mine recharges off body heat and has a couple of other bells and whistles, that apparently aren't allowed at school anymore: heat beam, force beam, hard-light generator. Can you believe my mom actually called it weaponized?"
"She kind of has a point, Lila," Taylor said chewing on her bottom lip.
"I know, but," Lila responded, pointing at herself, "indestructible and as strong as Alexandria. I'm already weaponized."
"You said that before," Taylor said. "Is that why your leg healed so quickly. How did it even bruise to begin with?"
"Sliding scale," Lila replied. "I can change my strength and durability just like I can my brain. At the highest level, I am guessing I'm at Alexandria levels. At my lowest, just above 'normal little girl' levels. I was just about at my lowest level when Sophia kicked me. When I was waiting in the car, I turned it back up, so my leg healed. There is no way I am walking around with a crutch at school if I can help it."
"What about Sophia's foot?" Taylor asked.
"I may have been a little more durable than human when I fell on her foot," Lila said. "I hope you're not mad."
"Not mad," Taylor said, "but you probably shouldn't do it again. Assault with a parahuman power is a thing."
"I was careful," Lila replied. "Even if they knew I was a parahuman, they wouldn't be able to prove anything," she said. "Besides, I really do have three criminal lawyers on retainer, just in case."
"Finished with that?" Lila pointed at the eye, still in Taylor's hand.
"Oh, yeah, sorry," Taylor said, handing the eye back to Lila, who reseated it in its socket with a practiced motion.
"Now let's go look at your prototype," Lila said with a smile.
"My Prototype?" Taylor asked.
"Just a little something I cooked up while I was waiting for you in the car," she replied. "Come on," she concluded as she dragged Taylor further into her maze.
Looking around following behind Lila, Taylor added, "I can see what your mom was saying about cleaning your room."