Day 7, Tuesday January 11, 2011
+100CP Perk rolled, field Supplies: Mundane Small Scale unlocked. Cost 200CP/400CP. Perk The Midas Touch purchased for 200 CP. 200 CP banked.
Spoiler: The Midas Touch (200CP)The Midas Touch (200CP): You know what plebeians or Neophytes have to struggle for? Money. You know what gets mortals to move mountains and makes your summer trip for you and your friends amazing? Money. You know things you have trouble with? Money isn't one of those things. While you may be rolling in dosh already from your family's holdings or your own hard-earned cash, you are an amazingly competent businessman (or woman) who can quickly turn a dime into 10k with some time and investment, able to quickly secure a large amount of legal income for yourself with little effort. Of course, illegal activities or certain supernatural powers can make those dividends increase tenfold or more... just try not to get caught.
+100CP Perk rolled, field Knowledge: Abilities and Skills unlocked. Cost 200CP/300CP. Perk Crafting Tree purchased for 200 CP. 100 CP banked.
Spoiler: Crafting Tree (200CP)Crafting Tree (200CP): Ordinarily, you have to have all of the ingredients for a crafted item in hand, and be near the right crafting station in order to gain the mental recipe for it. Now, however, you can pick any item that you have, and gain a mental list of the recipes that item can be used for. This includes the other items needed for a given recipe, as well as what sort of crafting station, if any, is needed to actually successfully build it.
+100CP Perk rolled, field Knowledge: Abilities and Skills unlocked. Cost 200CP/200CP. Perk Experienced Eye purchased for 200 CP. 0 CP banked.
Spoiler: Experienced Eye (200CP)Experienced Eye (200CP): Spending so much time on experiments which tend to explode in your face (or the faces of your assistants) has given you a keen eye when it comes to potential. You just get how things work without needing to study it for long at all. Whether machine, or organic, you understand what it does, and how to dismantle it with ease.
+100CP Perk rolled, field not yet unlocked. Insufficient CP. 100CP banked
Well, that is productive. The Midas Touch I swear is my power screwing with me. The day after I commit to buying a business so as to acquire property, my power gives me a perk to earn money with business. It's not like I was hurting for cash before. I had all the gold I could sell. The second perk is interesting. I notice it as soon as I pick up my pants to put them on, it's telling me what kind of gun my Cult of the Gun perk can turn them into. I also see that I can disassemble it into cloth. And I just know I am going to see this for every object I ever pick up. I'm going to have to learn how to ignore it. And experienced eye just seems to make me smarter.
I take a look at the designs I had been drawing up last night. I can already see where I was getting things wrong. I just understood the toast cannon better. Those unidentifiable bits of tech were the stasis field generator. Why does a toast cannon need a stasis field generator? So the toast doesn't burn and break up as it is getting launched of course. I can already tell I'll be able to do a better job drawing out a design, but that will have to wait until after my run.
When I'm out on my run, I send my lawyer a text okaying the endowed scholarship idea. I get through the run without issue, and have breakfast and a qi pill as my dad showers. Then he comes downstairs and I go up to shower. Once I'm out, I sit down to draw up a schematic for the toast cannon. It goes fairly well, but I don't get it right before I need to leave for the meeting. I'm not worried, though. It's a matter of my drawing skill, not of understanding the mechanics or magic.
I get in my power armor, set up my invisibility images, and head to the auto shop I'm buying. Mr. Gursky is already there. He's standing next to a stack of scrap, decommissioned computers, broken garage door openers, worn out lawn mowers, old tires, all manner of prime tinkering scrap.
"Palladium! Good to meet you. I'm Leon Gursky of Gursky, Ederer and Calle. And you remember Kathy Ortiz of the same firm."
I shook their hands, or more accurately, moved my hand up and down while they held it. I didn't want to crush their carpals by trying to squeeze.
"Our common friend indicated you might be interested in opening a relationship with us to help facilitate your sales of tinkertech."
I nodded, realizing that I didn't want to speak so he could recognize my voice as the same as 'Nicole'. I should have made a voice modulator. The only problem is I have no idea how to do that.
"She also indicated you were interested in this type of scrap. The scrap itself is not very expensive, but most tinkers would value not being connected to collecting scrap. We could offer materials collection assistance."
I give him a thumbs up. I picked up a circuit board, and my mind was flooded by possibilities. Including putting it back in the game system it had come from. I could use this. This would be more than enough for the robot I'm working on.
"I have a standard tinkertech sales contract here. If you have any modifications you'd like to make, just let me know."
I take the contract and read through it. I've gotten an intelligence boost and business ability since then, and the contract makes a lot more sense than the last one I read. After I read through it once, I take his pen and start marking it up. I cut out all wording of likenesses and merchandising. Not that I care if they made a little extra money on them, but because I want to control my own image. I include some reasonable minimum performance requirements on their end and on my own and a suggestion on target markets and pricing with a comparison to my own production abilities.
Basically that idea amounts to sell my potions to hospitals for when surgery goes bad. If a surgery does go bad, it can save a life and reduce insurance premiums. If no surgeries run into complications and the potions would expire, they can use them up on random trauma victims. The potions aren't terribly useful to rich guys because they expire and only deal with trauma. Not much good unless they can expect to get hurt, and if they do, they would have paid to have that stopped. The lawyers will have to talk the insurance companies into it, but that's something lawyers are good at.
I make some further notes about setting up a company in Palladium's name, and maybe getting a store front. Problems for later once I'm actually getting paid for potions. I include a few things about expanding the company to sell other products and collaborations, a few other random business tidbits my brain calls up.
I hand the paper back to him and he looks through my notes. They're rather more extensive than I thought. Looks like the paper is more my handwriting than his pre-printed sheet.
"Hmm. This is quite a bit. But workable. Let me read this over carefully, include your changes and print a new contract. Feel free to play with the scrap while I work on this."
I go to the circuitry. Each piece tells me exactly how it can be used. I sort out the best ones for Sniper Joe's control circuits. I have enough here I should be able to put his brain together. Might need some more specialized motors to get him moving, though. But the brain is more important. I need to have that figured out before I can complete his programming, a task I can actually work on while Dad is around.
I get a pile put together for later use and move on to an old tire. I tear it apart with an embodied knife. It should be plenty of rubber scrap to get my armor modifications produced.
I'm putting back a bare rim when Mr. Gursky comes back. He has a new printout (did he have a printer in his car?) and says he has incorporated most of my amendments. He explains each one he included and did not include and why. Once it's all over, I've read through it, and I'm pretty satisfied, so I sign it. I use my toe print for this identity.
Once all that is done, the lawyers depart and I make up a box of robot brain parts and rubber scraps. I turn on my invisibility trick and head home. I stash my power armor. I want to start assembling a robot brain right then and there, but I have other things to do. My dad received more homework for me on Friday and I need to get that done, which means I need to access the books for those classes, which I do not have because my copies were destroyed in the locker. So I need to go to the library.
I grab some lunch and take the bus to the library. When I get there, I head to a computer and apply to the distance learning program my lawyer had recommended. It's just filling out a form, so it goes quickly. Then I check out PHO. Still no reply to my inquiry about Trainwreck. I move over to the cape watch section about new tinkers and subscribe to the thread in hopes Trainwreck will show up there eventually. I read through the last page, and all the comments are about Palladium. Not much is known yet. People know Palladium walked through town to the PRT building, went inside. The next day the PRT announced that they recognized Palladium as a local tinker. People are speculating about my motivations, specialization, origin story, gender, relationships... geez, there is a lot of shipping for someone most people don't even have the correct gender for. Apparently I'm Armsmaster's long lost son, in a tragic gay romance with some ward named Weld, and secretly a member of Toybox, with a simmering hatred of some tinker named Cask for being involved in my trigger event. People have more creativity than sense.
A thread for Palladium has been started up, but there's basically no information other than the official recognition post from the PRT and a post from Kid Win who said he met me, but didn't actually serve to present any additional factual information about me. He notably did not mention the healing potions. I guess the PRT wants to keep that under wraps for now.
After falling down the internet rabbit hole of self-searching for the hour I am allowed to use the computer, I had to let that go. I go off to find the right textbooks so I can complete my assignments. Homework seems easy. Far easier than it has any right to. I'm guessing my intelligence perks are making it easy for me. That's not a bad side-effect of powers.
Once I complete that, I go to another computer and start another search. I'm training my body and building my qi, but that isn't teaching me to control that qi. I look up Tai Chi. I figure that's as close as I am going to get to learning how to harness qi. If it helps me learn to fight a little too, that's a bonus.
Turns out there's an early morning three days a week tai chi group within running distance from my house. I start planning on attending in the middle of my morning runs. I'll get home a little later after attending, but that shouldn't cut into anything important. Especially if I don't have to go to school any more.
After that I head home. I'm able to finalize the design of the robot's CPU with the circuitry. I don't manage to assemble it, but at least I can progress on the programming now that I know what the hardware will be. And with the rubber, I am ready to craft my prism shielding armor mods as soon as I make the nuclear material. I'll queue that to synthesize overnight and I'll assemble it in the morning.
Dad comes home late and we have dinner. I tell him I want to take up tai chi. He worries that will bring me into the ABB's sphere of influence. It's a reasonable fear, but pretty much just a fear. If the ABB tried a protection racket on people doing tai chi, I could just stop going. I go to my room to draw out the design for the toast cannon. The plans come together much better than before. Pretty soon I'm poring over a design for it.
Spoiler: Designs (50CP)Designs (50CP): This small portfolio contains any three schematics of your choice, out of any you might find in Arcanum. You may choose both standard technologies such as the Feather Weight Axe and Elephant Rifle, as well as prototype inventions that aren't found in the curriculum of the technological disciplines, such as those for the Miracle Cure, Electro Armor or Tranquilizer Gun. You have learned Stun Grenade, Paralysis Grenade, Flow Specktrometer.+50 CP. 150 CP banked
The field is Databases: Magitech. The interesting thing is that this is the first time I haven't also gotten a 100CP power with the unlock. Instead it's a 50CP power and 50CP banked. I'm still not clear what a CP is, but apparently it does use 50s and doesn't just have everything in hundreds like I had been assuming. The designs themselves are fairly simple. Just combine a compass with some electrical parts and make a Flow Specktrometer, which finds traps. The stun grenade is just stearic acid plus saltpeter, both of which are things I can synthesize. The paralysis grenade is just a stun grenade plus strong poison, and I have many recipes for that in Dao of Alchemy. So it's all very usable, and useful. The paralysis grenade seems like a very good nonlethal option in a fight.
After that, I work on the programming for the Sniper Joe some more. Not for too long, though. I've got an early day tomorrow.
Day 8, Wednesday January 12, 2011
+100CP Perk rolled, field Skills: Alchemy unlocked. Cost 1150CP/250CP. Insufficient CP. 250 CP banked.
+100CP Perk rolled, field Quality: Efficiency unlocked. Cost 600CP/250CP. Insufficient CP. 350 CP banked.
+100CP Perk rolled, field Knowledge: Skills and Abilities unlocked. Cost 200CP/450CP. Perk Shielded Turbines purchased for 200CP. 250CP bankedClick to shrink...
Spoiler: Shielded Turbines (200CP)Shielded Turbines (200CP): You know how to close systems efficiently, protecting them from foreign matter. No longer will fish gum up your intake valves, or weeds tangle your propellers. Also makes your vehicles much quieter, which is handy in Reaper territory.
Spoiler: Skinsuit (0 CP)Skinsuit (0 CP): It's not armored, but it's climate controlled, and it comes with an air tank compatible helmet. Utilizes a small subspace inventory for the convenience of the wearer. The gloves grant extra traction, making it easy to grip slippery things like slimy fish scales. Skin-tight.
Spoiler: PDA (0 CP)PDA (0 CP): Loaded with an emergency intelligence and more data capacity than you could ever use, this is a survivor's second most powerful tool (after his or her brain.) The AI may get a bit ... quirky ... over long deployments. Your version is basically indestructible. Contains basic construction blueprints.
Spoiler: Pod (0 CP)Pod (0 CP): This emergency life pod has inflatable skids along the bottom to help keep it on the surface of the water as well as a hatch on both the bottom and top. It also comes with a radio receiver, six solar-charging batteries, and a universal fabricator. The storage container has enough food and water for about a week. A nano-med kit is synthesized and added to storage once a day.
I got something, and that something turned out to be four things. Weird perk, though. I don't have anything that has intake valves or propellers. Seems to be designed for underwater work. And the attached stuff seems potentially useful, even if it seems like it's focused on water world survival. The skinsuit might be a better undersuit for the armor, but the true power of that might be the subspace inventory. The fabricator in the pod could be useful, if I didn't already have one in my R&D center. The med-kits could be useful. I'd have to see if they did anything that the healing potions don't. The PDA is worrisome as it contains an AI. I browse through the blueprints and some of them look handy, but they almost all require parts of weird aquatic life-forms to make.
I pop down to the basement before dad can wake up and combine the nuclear material with the other components to make prism shielding for my power armor. I don't want to keep raw nuclear material around, that sounds like a bad idea. I was hesitant about incorporating it into my tech, but I did choose the least radioactive material I could and I am pretty sure those properties of the material disappear when it becomes equipment. I'm also pretty sure reality shouldn't work like that. But then again, I'm a tinker, so the laws of physics can go cry in the corner when I get going. I'm pretty sure making chemicals out of nothing and casting an omnispell are way outside whatever guidelines cover known reality. I take the opportunity to program the chemical synthesizer to make some batches of stearic acid and saltpeter. Once I have those I'll be able to make stun grenades.
I go out for my daily run and check my phone for messages. The first message is the lawyer asking if it is okay to park a broken car at the garage I'm buying for Palladium to repair and use to learn. I reply that that is fine. There is also a confirmation about my appointment to examine tinkertech this afternoon. While I'm out, I try to join the tai chi group. I get a few funny looks, but I just take it seriously and try to mimic what the instructor is doing and the videos I had watched the day before. I don't think I am doing very well at my first attempt at tai chi, but I do feel something. It is probably just the calm of meditation, but the focus on moving my body seems to make the moves feel like they have purpose. I feel the stirrings of something inside myself, maybe it's hope.
The tai chi was relaxing, so I feel refreshed as I run back to my house. Dad tries to give me a pep talk as I grab a quick breakfast. I grab my sack lunch and my backpack with my completed homework before I have to dash off to catch the bus. First period is pretty good. I finish Mrs. Knott's 'advanced assignment' before she actually finishes describing it. I use most of the period browsing around the internet to learn about business law. It is a complicated topic, so I am only able to skim the surface.
I make it through second period without incident. During the break, I go around to my later classes and turn in the homework I had for the last week. I don't trust the trio not to destroy this work before I can turn it in in class. I am not bothered by my classmates, but I do notice some students whispering about me. I don't know if my return is being noticed or if the trio has spread some new rumor about me. It's hard to imagine they could find a new rumor to spread, they've already spread more different self-contradictory rumors than anyone rational could believe. It's a pity people don't actually rationally analyze what they are told.
Third period math also goes off without a hitch, although everything presented seems like remedial work at this point. Then comes Mr. Gladly's World Issues class. The topic is international trade, which on its face is boring, but my recent business sense finds it fascinating, and I can feel the influence of Leviathan on trade. And the various countries' more or less xenophobic laws regarding foreign parahumans. It feels like a very complicated knot of stupidity. Everybody hurting everybody else out of fear and despair. This is also when the first attempt to bully me happens. Madison knocks my pencils and books off my desk as she walks by. It's petty and small, but it's a clear message that they haven't forgotten about me and they aren't going to let up.
I eat lunch while walking about, under the idea that it's harder to hit a moving target. I manage to eat everything and spend the rest of the time in the library, reading books about car repair. None of my perks really relate to cars, although my general aptitude with machines will probably mean fixing a random car is something I could attempt, rather than just being a fool's errand.
After lunch is gym class, which is a terrible time for it. It's also the class I share with Emma. She pretty much guarantees I'm picked last for every team sport, even if she is claiming she can't participate. It's dodgeball today. I'm not only picked last, but thrown out first, so I have a lot of time to be mocked and review my plans. Not much has changed. I'm excited to be seeing tinkertech this afternoon. But I think I'm getting good enough to actually consider going out and heroing. As a quick, area effect nonlethal weapon, the paralysis grenades will make that much easier. I've also got the power armor, although I want to complete the modifications before I get into a fight. I really should get myself some better weapons before I go out. I don't want to actually USE the toast cannon. That sounds like a good way to become a joke forever. I am hoping that the R&D center can come up with a design for that ice gun it thinks can come out of the Ceph nanotech. That sounds like a good weapon. Once I make a weapon, I can enchant it to make progress toward magic items.
Walking back to the locker room after gym class, it occurs to me that the trio has never messed with my gym locker. With my main locker they stole my flute and filled it with awfulness. But they've never stolen or dirtied up or tore my normal clothes while I was wearing gym clothes. It seems like it would be exactly the type of thing they would do, but they have never done it. I'm sure there's a reason behind that, but I don't have the clues to figure that out yet.
Last class of the day is biology. It seems easy. We're studying the animal phyla. Which somehow I keep relating back to the human medicine I know. Not that I share these observations with the class. I'm not keen to let the world know I'm a Bonesaw-lite. It is interesting stuff, though. My power is eager to learn more about different animals and how to treat them. Maybe I could become a vet.
Class lets out and I take the bus home. I put down my school stuff and take my Nicole Thomas clothes. I take a bus to the warehouse I'm supposed to meet at, and see Mr. Gursky waiting for me out front.
"Hello. Good afternoon. Good news, we've sold the first two items and should be able to unload the rest by Friday morning. So you can drop off another dozen on Friday, that would be great. We'll need another few days before we can sell the more expensive thing you left us." He hands me an envelope like the one on Monday. It shows how much they got for the gold, their cut, and my own credit.
We go inside and there are two guys waiting there. My lawyer greets the one in the cheap suit as a colleague and the other one stands with his hands in front of him like a bodyguard. He also wears black sunglasses like a bodyguard. Only, I suspect he's here to guard the tinkertech, not the guy. After some pleasantries, we head over to a table where two pieces of tinkertech are on display. Both are obviously broken.
The first one is an overly complicated radio. It has no microphone, and its display only has the ability to show up to five stars. I'm fairly sure it receives signals (I'm fairly sure it's tuned to the police band), does some pretty significant processing to them, and turns the data into a star rating. I'm no expert on video games, but it sounds like an overly complicated police scanner from their infamous Grand Theft Auto episode. The power source seems to have burnt out.
I take a moment to examine my list between items. Sure enough, I'm at four out of five pieces of tinkertech. I get excited.
The second seems to be a set of fingerless gloves. The palms have some devices built into them. They're plasma projectors. They're designed to work together when you make some sort of hand signal to shoot out a giant traveling fireball. One of the palm plates is cracked. I haven't seen the episode, but I'm guessing this was a Street Fighter item.
Spoiler: Fun in the Sun (100 CP)Fun in the Sun (100 CP): Plasma, radiation, and antimatter are all similar in that they relate to exotic and high energy states of matter, whether it is stellar mass or individual particles of subatomic size. You now are a master of Tau technology as it relates to manipulating these high-energy states of matter and the physics that underpin them.
Spoiler: Cybernetics (300 CP)Cybernetics (300 CP): You have a broad theoretical and practical knowledge of cybernetics and related engineering systems, and can recognize most systems with a glance. The most difficult repairs and programming come naturally to you, custom designs and components that would take an entire research team a month can be jotted down in an hour or so of casual work.
The most common form of cyborg in the Scrapyard has an armoured braincase piloting a robotic body, but you're familiar with the organic-inorganic connection technology and can create partial cybernetics as well as organ replacements for those who do not wish to lose their bodies - in effect, you are fully capable of the design, construction and application behind the Transhuman and Motorball cyborg perks.
In addition, you have the Cyber-Doctor equipment package and one purchase of Money for free.
Spoiler: Money (0CP)Money (0CP): It isn't much, but it's a start. You have enough to last a few weeks if you're thrifty. Each purchase doubles this amount.
Spoiler: Cyber-doctor equipment (0CP)Cyber-doctor equipment (0CP): As Medic, plus powered tools for cyborg disassembly and repair. Bulky diagnostic computer, ten kilograms of miscellaneous spare parts, very rare compact 3D fabricator capable of milling custom components and printing out or repairing circuitry. Free Rocket Hammer.
Spoiler: Rocket Hammer (0CP)Rocket Hammer (0CP): A two-handed warhammer with chisel-shaped head mounting a rocket booster that is activated by a switch on the shaft. It can be disassembled and comes with a rolling case and replacement parts. A rare weapon in the Scrapyard, while very difficult to control it performs superbly against heavy cyborg armour and is fully legal despite the firearms ban.
And that's what I was going for. Except for the part where a rocket hammer suddenly appears in my hands. Both lawyers looked shocked, and the bodyguard just boggled at the hammer. I put off examining the powers for just a second to gracefully bow out of the social situation. "It's all good. Pay the man."
I hurry outside and take a moment to examine what just happened. The field is Knowledge: Future Tech. That sounds like the heart and soul of tinkering. And I became an expert at high energy physics. Which is cool. And I got that power I banked last week. I can design, construct, and install cybernetics. And it comes with all the tools needed to ply the trade (in some bizarre universe where cybernetic doctor is a trade). And it comes with a computer, it may be bulky but I'm sure it's better than the brick we have at home. It's a remarkably useful power. There's some spare parts, but more importantly, there's a 3d fabricator. That will do wonders to speed up my robot construction. Heck, a robot is just a full cybernetic body that nobody bothered to leave space for a brain in. Well, that and the CPU and programming to control it, but that part is almost done already.
The hammer was a problem. I'll have to talk to Leon to figure out how much of a problem. I was just thinking about getting a weapon, but on the other hand, this is way too strong to use against normals, and I'm nowhere near strong enough to wield it. I suppose the power armor would be, but that doesn't make it any less bone-shatteringly powerful. I suppose there's also the problem that I don't have any skill at using it. Over all, it seems like a bad idea to use it as a weapon. Still, I can't just leave it here.
A minute later, Mr. Gursky came out. "What was that?"
"Sorry about that. I wasn't expecting that to happen."
"We're very lucky that didn't explode into violence."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay. No violence actually broke out. But the other party may suspect you are a parahuman. I gave them an apology and offered to double the fee."
"That's okay. Small price to pay."
"We're just lucky the guard was even more stunned than us lawyers and you backed out of the situation quickly. Is there any new business you want to bring up?"
"Uh, yeah, the loaner car. What kind is it?"
"Oh, um. Some sort of Dodge compact car I think. It's one of our paralegal's boyfriend's car."
"Any idea what's wrong with it?"
"Not really. It won't start, but the lights still come on, so it's not the battery."
"Mhm. Palladium isn't exactly an expert on cars yet. Hopefully it won't be hard to fix."
"Any other business while we're still together? I know we've still got several things in progress for you."
"Well, I think I'm okay for now. I'll call if anything comes up."
"Okay. Well, do you need a ride home?"
"No thanks. I'll take the bus."
"With that?"
"Uh... I can hide it. Thanks for the offer, though."
"Okay. Goodbye."
I wait until Mr. Gursky leaves, then embody an image of a guitar around the rocket hammer. Then I head to the bus stop. As I wait for the bus, I notice the weather is turning. That means I really need to do something about the wagon and pod taking up space in the garage before dad finds them. The only thing I can think of is to move them to the new property. There should be space for them there.
I end up working on my plan on the way home, but it comes together. I drop my new hammer in my room, then I put the pod on the wagon and pull the wagon to the garage using my power armor. To keep it concealed, I embody an image over the wagon. One of a street sweeper so I can stick to the edges of the streets and move slowly. I have to include my invisibility illusion over myself to hide the power armor. It's the hardest feat of magic I've ever attempted, and by the end, I'm actually straining whatever magic muscle I have.
I park the alchemy wagon in a garage, and even leave the power armor there. While I'm there I notice that my new cybernetics lab showed up there. I take a chance to play with the computer and examine the 3D fabricator. I program a variant of a cybernetic motivator it already has on file for my robot's actuators and tell it to fabricate them. Then I take a while looking at the car. If it just doesn't turn on, it's got to be an electrical problem. I use the diagnostic equipment to trace the flow of power in the car. It's time consuming, and the diagnostic equipment is not intended for this, but it's like using an X-ray machine to figure out what is in your Christmas present - it should work, it's just more complicated than it needs to be. I find a broken connection to the starter motor. It's not hard to remove the nut that the wire is supposed to connect to and reconnect it. Then I give the engine a try and it works. I get in and tentatively try moving the car forward and backward for a few minutes before I realize I'll need to get home before dad does.
I just walk back home. There's a message from dad saying he'll be home late, so I have some time to kill. I move the chemical synthesizer down to the basement and clean up the garage so it looks like dad will expect it to look. Then I head downstairs to the R&D center. As much as I want the ice gun, I just learned a ton about high energy physics, so I pull up the unfinished schematics of the energy rifle. I start tweaking things and entering formulas that I can now just pull off the top of my mind. The R&D center absorbs the information like it is a sponge. I put in a new computer model for plasma, and the R&D center runs dozens of designs through it, picks the most optimized version and runs varieties of that through simulations. In short order I've got a design for a plasma rifle that is pretty powerful. The power source still needs development, but it should be able to slag Hookwolf if I can hit him. It should be a reliable weapon. But it still seems too lethal to be a main weapon. I debate for a while, but eventually decide to print a copy out anyway. There are two reasons for this. One is that it's better to have a high powered option than to die from the lack of it. The other is that I want to enchant another couple items anyway, and this is gun-like enough that it probably won't be significantly changed by the enchantment. I tell it to churn through some more simulations and print the product.
When dad shows up, he has brought take-out with him. He asks me about my day. I tell him. He asks if I was bullied. I mention the "accident" of the girl knocking the stuff off my desk as proof it isn't going to stop. It's not as bad as the incident, but he's upset. I push for home schooling again. He still thinks the program is a long-shot, but I tell him about the home schooling requirements. We could manage to comply with them even without the formal program. I get him to agree to declare that I will be home schooled, even if I don't get the scholarship that I already know I will get. His signature goes on the form letter. I tell him I'll make photocopies of the letter and hand deliver it to the district office tomorrow. He doesn't exactly look happy about it, but it's the best we can do.
I sneak the plasma rifle upstairs while my dad is watching TV. I spend an hour enchanting it. It's now even more gun than it was before. What exactly that means, I don't quite know. I'll have to test out my inventions at some point. I do check my progress and now I only need to make one more magic item. I hide the plasma rifle under my bed with my warhammer for the moment. It strikes me as not a very secure place for it. I'll really have to give some thought to home security. And security for the garage too.
I have one more thing to try out. I take a batch of saltpeter and a batch of stearic acid. Despite the name, stearic acid is more of a fat than a flesh dissolving stereotypical acid. It's very safe to handle. Anyway, I turn the ingredients into my first stun grenades. There is some magic in the recipe, because it doesn't take any tools or any other materials to make the grenades, also the resulting grenades are significantly heavier and bulkier than the materials that went into them. I want to explore the other recipes. But to upgrade the grenades to paralysis grenades needs some poison. And the Flow Specktrometer needs a compass plus small electrical parts. I've got the electrical parts back at the garage, but I don't have a compass. I make a note to go shopping for a compass and poison ingredients tomorrow.
Interlude: Uber
"So how bad was it?"
"You'll never guess what happened!"
"Someone tried to steal my broken tech?"
"Not even a little. Want to take another swing?"
"You're too up for it to be bad news. Uh, we got paid in comic books?"
"Nah. We still need to eat. Keep hammering away at it, you'll get it eventually."
"I'm not going to sit around guessing all day, just spit it out."
"Fine, fine. So I go to the meet with Larry. In walks Mr. Fancy Pants lawyer guy and a girl in a ratty hoodie, shades and bandanna - so like the cheapest and worst disguise you can imagine. The weasels chat for a bit, and the girl bends over to look at your stuff. No touching. She was very respectful. Kept her hands behind her back. Once she finishes looking over your stuff, a warhammer appears in her hands. No warning. I take a real good look at it, and it ain't just a warhammer. It's Daisuke Ido's Rocket Hammer."
"No way."
"I kid you not. Perfectly detailed replica of the rocket hammer. I would recognize that hammer anywhere. Anyway, the girl tells Mister Big Shot to pay us and bolts. Larry starts freaking out. And the other lawyer calms him down by offering him double."
"No way. Double the money. And she actually just wanted to look at some broken tech?"
"True story, man. Maybe we should put together a Martian Memory homage."
"Neither one of us can pull off Alita. You could do a decent Daisuke, but if she's got a rocket hammer then you're using conflicting equipment."
"Maybe, but what if we can get her to be Alita? That would work."
"But can we trust her? I mean, if she needed my tech, we would have some leverage, but if she already has a rocket hammer, then she doesn't even need that."
"You have a point, but she has to be a kindred spirit if she made it in the first place, right?"
"I guess. Maybe we should try to get in contact with her again. We know anything else about her?"
"Not really. Just her lawyer. I'll talk to Larry, tell him we might want to talk to her again."
AN: I lost a planning document in a power outage. It only had a few paragraphs of actual writing, but it did have my notes on what was stated to be happening in the future of this fic and when. So if I mentioned something earlier and have forgot about it, sorry. Fortunately, I don't think much was lost. Still, it was a major disruption to the flow of my writing, so I'm going to gripe about it here.
Day 9, Thursday January 13, 2011
Workshop moved!
+100CP Perk rolled, field not yet unlocked. Cost 100CP/350CP, lock in ability? Y/N
My earlier decision to refuse powers that will need to be unlocked later still stands with extra emphasis after the rocket hammer fiasco. I need powers to unlock further fields, and I won't get them by buying things that are still locked. I answer NO.
Perk refused. 350CP banked
+100CP Perk rolled, field Quality: Efficiency unlocked. Cost 1100CP/450CP. Insufficient CP. 450 CP banked.
+100CP Perk rolled, field not yet unlocked. Cost 600CP/550CP. Insufficient CP. 550CP banked
+100CP Perk rolled, field Skills: Alchemy unlocked. Cost 600CP/650CP. Perk Trigram Knowledge and Manipulation purchased for 600CP. 50CP bankedClick to shrink...
Spoiler: Trigram Knowledge and Manipulation (600CP)Trigram Knowledge and Manipulation (600CP): Alchemy and matter manipulation with the understanding of the 8 trigrams to represent the fundamental forces of reality and how to represent and enforce change using these. Let me break this one down for you. It's like FMA alchemy but with less focus on direct creation and more turning one thing into another of a similar size, including living things. However it cannot create life where there was none and it requires you to write out a short formula describing the change you make it happen. Feel free to turn sand into water, sheep into boulders and anything else you can think of.
Spoiler: You Runed Everything (100CP)You Runed Everything (100CP): Before the development of the Arcane Enchanter in the 4th Era which streamlined enchanting to the point that any novice without even the barest hint of magicka could bind an enchantment, and even before the Guild-standardized enchanting techniques of the 3rd Era which drastically eased the process to a simple matter of binding stored magicka into an item, the tool of choice for infusing an item with a magical effect was the humble Glyph. A Glyph is a combination of three runes, one inscribed with the potency which determines the base strength and whether it adds or removes, one with the desired attribute to effect such as health or a specific element, and a third designating its aspect, ranging from Common to Legendary. You know enough to be able to use and translate up to Rank Five runes (Pora, Denara, Hade and Idode), with even more becoming available to you as you research and translate more.
That bonus perk is the unlock from having three magical abilities. The field I just unlocked is called Skills: Enchanting. And I suspect I will be making a third enchanted item today. Of course, the real superpower is the Trigram perk. It's full-on reality manipulation. Or, more accurately, it's hacking the program of reality to replace something with whatever you can manage to program a pattern for.
There are limitations, but it's more a matter of difficulty in specifying the effect rather than what can theoretically be accomplished. The power isn't kidding about turning a sheep into a boulder. It would only take sixteen trigrams to pull off. But that's a somewhat special case because one trigram can fairly directly relate to sheep, and another relates to mountain, which is fairly easy to limit in scope to boulder. There are only eight trigrams, but each one has many meanings. Which is broad in application, but results in added complexity to indicate which meaning you intend. So turning a sheep into a dog can be done in nine trigrams, but turning a phone book into a laptop computer would take many, many more trigrams - probably hundreds of thousands or millions of them.
The rune ability is interesting, and potentially useful, but immediately runs into a problem. It's yet another ability that is intended to enhance weapons, armor, and jewelry. And would almost certainly stack with the tech modifications I'm already putting into my equipment. The problem is it requires runes, and I don't have any. If I did, I would almost certainly start enchanting something immediately. I might be able to extract an aspect of an object, perhaps I could make some poison and extract a poison essence from it. But even if I did, I would still need an aspect rune and a potency rune and I still have no way to create either.
But there is one other thing of note there. It says my workshop has moved. I rush downstairs to the basement, and sure enough, the R&D center is gone. That's probably good for dad not learning I'm a cape, but takes away a little bit of the comfort I have enjoyed being able to work at home. I go back up to my room and check under my bed. Both the rocket hammer and the plasma rifle are still there.
Still, I'm trying to establish a morning fitness routine, so I go for a run. I check messages while away from my home, but nothing new is in. I do increase my run distance until I'm winded. I am starting to feel like the five blocks I had been running were losing their challenge. Back at home, I take my qi pill and have breakfast.
I grab a quick shower and manage to give dad a hug before he takes off for work. I'm excited that I'll be avoiding school and thus the trio for the foreseeable future. I leave just after dad and take the bus to the library. My first priority is to use their photocopier to make copies of the declaration. Then I go to a computer. I look up where the school district offices are. It's not a place I had ever had reason to go to. While I'm on the computer I browse through PHO, but there's nothing new on me or a hypothetical Trainwreck. Leaving the library, I drop a copy of the letter in the mailbox for the state Department of Education and take another bus to the school district office building.
I walk into the office and hand the letter to the secretary. I tell her what it is for, and turn around to leave. I hear a paper falling on paper as I walk away and she picks up the phone. A glance back lets me see she has swept my letter into her trash bin. That bothers me a bit. But I've been assured by my lawyer they don't have the authority to refuse. They can acknowledge it or let their school be blindsided.
I'm waiting at the bus station when a car pulls up. A guy dressed up as a security guard gets out. He says he's a truancy officer and he'll be taking me back to school. Are truancy officers for real? I have never actually seen one before. I explain that I just delivered my letter of intent to homeschool, so I'm not truant. I show him a copy. He crumples it up and tosses it in the street. Wow. Does anyone actually respect their legal responsibilities in this city? I guess not. He tells me to get into the car. I flat out refuse. He grabs my wrist and I try to get out of his grip, but I'm not strong enough. Still, I squirm as best I can, and yell for help, that I am being abducted. He pulls out his nightstick and hits me on the arm he's holding. Then he shoves me toward the door to his car. I pull out my pepper spray, turn around and squirt him in the eyes. His hand lets go to try to shield or wipe his eyes or something and I bolt away.
Spoiler: Ageless II (100CP)Ageless II (100CP): You do not age or otherwise degenerate over time in the normal manner:
Double the lifespan of your race, with peak performance and health throughout. This benefit is applied retroactively in jumps where your starting age would put you past your physical prime.
As above, but you will never die of old age and will maintain peak performance and health with no degeneration forever. You may choose to halt or resume your visible aging at any time.
And suddenly I'm immortal after having gotten in a fight (as un-epic as it may be). It doesn't actually help with the injuries I just received, but it does make me feel like I'm in better shape, just a little fitter, healthier. The field is called Protection, but agelessness seems a bit astray from that theme. But this doesn't seem to help me at all, not right now, not in developing as a tinker, even in the long term it's probably not really a boon.
But getting back to my current situation, there's no way that the one time a "truancy officer" just happens to try to abduct me exactly after I deliver my declaration of intent to homeschool. That can't be a coincidence. I'm betting the secretary called him. I spend a moment thinking about what my next recourse is. I could just go home and take a healing potion and move on with my life. But that would send the message that school administrators doing the expedient and irresponsible thing is okay. I don't want to do that. I could call up my lawyer. I'm sure he'd be happy to help. But I'd rather keep my identity and him separate. But I've learned a lot about the basic ideas of law. And in this case, what I need to do is document the abuse of power and protect myself. As it is, if I just go home and take a healing potion, he could come back with some story about how I assaulted him with pepper spray to cause me problems. What I need is documentation that he was assaulting me first.
So I head to the hospital. I have to spend an hour in the waiting room because my injuries aren't even close to life threatening. But I do get in eventually, and report the assault. They take pictures of my bruising (the wrist is lightly bruised but the upper arm where he hit me with the stick looks terrible) and x-rays and call the police. I tell the police the circumstances and give them another copy of the letter and file a police report. I don't have the name of the "truancy officer", but I remember the secretary had the name tag "Jackie" on.
I don't really think that anything will happen to the two, but this should be good protection if he tries to say I assaulted him. There is proof that he hurt me and I was defending myself. The x-ray comes back with a hairline fracture on my humerus, but they can't do much more than give me a sling for it.
It's past noon when I finally get home. I grab some lunch and head out on foot. I go to the main road that has my garage on it. The businesses there are run-down, but it's still a center of commerce for the neighborhood. I stop by a pawn shop and buy a compass. Then I spot a florist and see they are throwing out a bunch of wilting poinsettias they didn't sell during the Christmas season. I offer to buy the whole lot for twenty bucks and they take me up on it. It takes a while to get them back to my garage because I only have one arm, but a bit of cable and a furniture dolly turn into an impromptu wagon that helps.
I take my purchases and settle in to work at the garage. The first thing I do is I down my last healing potion that I was storing there, and my arm immediately feels better. The second thing I do is look around. My power said my workshop moved, and my R&D center disappeared, so I need to know where it is. Turns out it got moved into one of the garages. My chemical synthesizer is also there. As a total surprise, the office in the corner is furnished now. The break room has a mini-fridge, microwave and sink. Would almost work as a kitchen, if you didn't actually want to cook anything. The restroom is the same, but it actually has cleaning products and toiletries in it. The office itself has a sofa that turns into a bed and a dresser. The dressers even contain clothes sized for me. It's almost creepy. Thinking back, the Medicine perk I unlocked way back when was supposed to include furniture. I guess it just stored the furnishings until I had a place to put them. It's neat. It makes the place... comfy. I could crash here if my dad wouldn't worry himself sick about me.
The third thing I do is combine my new compass with some electrical components to make a Flow Specktrometer. It's supposed to find traps. I don't expect many traps, but it won't hurt to have something that can find them. Plus, it's a cheap and quick recipe.
Spoiler: Inspiration (100CP)Inspiration (100CP): Ideas crash like thunder through a genius' life every moment of their lives, barely contained, often barely understood. This is Inspiration, the illumination within, the raw stuff of genius. The greater a genius' Inspiration, the more power of creation and destruction she possesses. But there is a cost. As a genius Inspiration increases, she becomes less able to understand mundane concerns. She struggles to hold onto her Obligation, as people seem more like systems to be explored than individuals with their own lives and concerns. As she becomes almost godlike in her perspective, she must focus to concentrate on the mortal world and its concerns. As your Inspiration grows the burning power of Mania grows with it.
All Genii start with a free purchase of Inspiration, Lemuraians get three purchases free. It cost 100 CP to upgrade Inspiration. Your Inspiration can not exceed 10, free purchases included.
In addition to all of this you will suffer from the Jabir for the entirety of the Jump. As a genius grows more powerful, his Inspiration shines out of him to illuminate the world. This can be a curse for those mad scientists who want to look more "scientist" than "mad." The genius' Mania begins to tamper with perception and procedure, skewing any attempt to engage in normal science or to perform normal experiments. Though the genius himself suffers no penalties-the odd effects from his perception "cancel out" when brought into conjunction with the odd effects from his behavior-he struggles to communicate his ideas to others. Modern geniuses call this "technobabble" in an attempt to soften the horror of the phenomenon, but it's formally known as Jabir, a sudden, paralyzing loss of clarity and coherence when a genius interacts with a regular mortal.
Spoiler: Wonderous Creations (0 CP)Wonderous Creations (0 CP): Production of the Manic artifice these are the unique non-repeatable phenomenon that the Genius creates. They are subject to the only internally consistent principles and cause havoc when coming into contact with the mundane mortals who have never felt Inspiration, or another supernatural forces, touch. Havoc is Mania bucking against reality and it's death throes in one, usually accompanied by an explosive failure in the Wonder. An innate feature of creations that you might wish to note is the fact that they are firmly based upon non-repeatable phenomenon that are internally consistent. The recreation of Wonders is therefore impossible unless you had access to the exact method/blueprints used for the original model.
Spoiler: A Prized Aesthetic (0 CP)A Prized Aesthetic (0 CP): Chose a method of building technology, even a fantastic one like post-atomic cyberpunk or dieselpunk, and now you can easily craft Wonder with this aesthetic with little to no effort. This doesn't make them any better intrinsically, but some aesthetics do certain things better than others. Post-atomic is more rugged and has good energy weapon usually, cyberpunk usually has excellent software and technology compression, dieselpunk usually had a hard line to being the toughest type of technology on the block bar very few, things like that.
Dammit! That's almost more of a penalty than a perk. The majority of the description isn't how much smarter I am now, but how much I'm going to become separated from humanity and go mad due to the sudden genius I have received. The field is called Crafting: Magitech. As neat as the idea of mixing magic and technology seems, I almost wish I hadn't gotten that. I don't want to go mad. If I'm going to invent, I want to invent things that can be repeated and made by others. That's the only way to make the world a better place. Of course, doing any of that at all is more than the average tinker, so I guess I shouldn't complain. This also means that the Flow Specktrometer is a magic item. Which in retrospect I suppose it is since it also finds magic traps, of which I expect to find none.
I take a moment to recenter myself after the new power showed up and focus on my next move. I want to mix scavenged and fabricated parts for the Sniper Joe's mechanisms. I pick out the motors that I have that I want to use and plan out which ones I'll need to make. I had already done most of the shell and programming work before I got the cybernetics lab that lets me fabricate the rest.
While I wait for pieces to fabricate, I take the poinsettias over to the alchemy wagon. I spend an hour extracting poison from the plants and get a pretty good amount of toxin. I'm pretty sure I can use it to make stun grenades into paralysis grenades. And I can see those being a pretty core weapon of mine.
After I finish my alchemy, I start assembling the Sniper Joe. Pieces are still being fabricated, but I have enough to start on his core processors and legs. After a few hours of that I run out of fabricated pieces and take an hour break to practice driving. I can't take it out of the garage's little enclosed private property, but I can practice turning and parking. I don't get much experience dealing with traffic or getting up to speed. I'm at least making progress there, but it takes more than an hour to become comfortable behind the wheel.
I go back to assembling the robot and manage to get his entire lower body together. I leave the 3d fabricator printing another set of parts I need and head home. I get there before dad gets home and make us dinner of chicken and noodles and asparagus. I tell my dad about my encounter at the district office and he gets furious. I get him to calm down. I went to the hospital and reported it like I'm supposed to, so there's nothing for us to do right now.
After dinner, I run into a problem I haven't had in over a week, I'm bored. My workshop is a few blocks away so I can't tinker. I don't even have any programming I could do (or anything to do it on). I quit school for homeschooling and I haven't started that yet, so I don't have any homework to do. I end up spending an hour watching the TV. Then I go up to my room and pull out a bit of tinkering that I had ignored so far: the Survey. It's supposed to determine the precise parameters of the best weapon for any individual. It's already up to over three hundred questions, so it takes hours. The result is a cross between a rapier and a cattle prod with a wicked looking guard. It seems like the survey decided I was reasonably quick with good reach and gave me the rapier type poking attack style, combined with a desire to subdue nonlethally for the electrical effect, combined with a penchant for intimidation (I have no idea why it thought I had that) to explain the guard. I could have the electrical bits fabricated by the cyberlab, and I could probably smith the structure and the guard out of some of the metal from my bag of scraps. It also recommends a main gauche/pistol combo for the off hand, but I can look into that later.