"Is this stuff… real?"
Aware of the crazy nature of the things I'd decided to show her, I simply nodded, treating her question with the seriousness it and she herself deserved.
"Where? How? Do you know what you've just shown me?"
I stopped eating my burger and wiped my mouth. "I'm aware. I did say this was about business."
"Business?" she said, sounding out of breath for some reason. "This could revolutionize healthcare overnight. Do you know how many people die or end up disabled from diagnostic problems each year in this country? Almost ten percent of all patients. That's over 350,000 people. This…" she pressed her finger against the tablet screen, "can change that. No it's not even can, I'm 100 percent sure it will change that."
"And this is why I brought this to you. How many people do you know can give you those numbers off the top of their head?"
That seemed to calm her down a bit. She was coming to the realization of what I intended to propose.
"What you said is true," I continued. "I did the research and I intend to get these devices to every clinic, hospital, ambulance and paramedic across the country and even the globe. However, I need help, hence, you."
"You want me to do what, quit my job and then become your salesperson or something?"
"I was thinking more along the lines of joining me to create a startup with a high chance of success. But sure. What you said works too."
"Startup? You want to start a company?" she asked and gave me the 'eyes over the glasses' look.
I took the feelings it stirred in me in stride and answered. "Yes. In fact, I want you to be the face of it. You know about my other… engagements. I can't do multiple things at once. I need someone I can trust to take the reins."
She looked genuinely surprised. "And you trust… me? We've only known each other two months, and that was mostly over text."
"You're right. I don't trust you. What I do trust… is your smarts and willingness to help people. Besides, my gut says I'm making the right play here, and I trust it above anything else."
"That—"
"You don't need to say anything," I leaned over and placed a hand over hers, causing her to look down. "I don't expect you to just agree. Take the time and think about it. Keep the tablet too. It has an untraceable connection to my phone. You can reach me anytime, anywhere."
She nodded, and I changed the focus of the conversation to a heartier matter. "Sudden but important tangent," I said, grabbing her attention. "On the matter of trust, I have an idea on how we can improve it."
That got more of her attention, and her brain mouth filter experienced its regular malfunction as she pieced together what I meant.
"Are you asking what I think you're asking?" Her voice went lower for some reason. "Are you asking me out on a date?" she asked. "If it's a date then it's a massive yes from me. Wait, not a massive yes. Just a regular one. I don't want to come on too strong like I'm super interested in you, not because I'm not. Because I am."
She noticed my lean back, arms cross and smile and cut herself off. "I'm gonna stop talking now."
"It's a date then."
"Right," she smiled and tapped on the tablet for a bit.
"Say I agree to become the face of your," she made air quotes and the light glinted off her painted nails, "startup. Do you have starting capital? Where is it going to be? And what is it going to be called?"
"Capital should be rolling in soon. As for the location, I picked Bludhaven. No major corporations in the area and a large and private garbage dump. It's perfect."
"Garbage dump?"
"I'm afraid that's classified. Boss lady's eyes and ears only… should she accept."
"Will that secret include how you knew about me, even though we'd never crossed paths?"
Ah… that bullshit story I told her. Thinking about it for a bit, I realised telling her the truth of my origins, or at least some version of it, depended on how far I was willing to go with her relationship-wise.
"Maybe," I said after a while.
She stared at me for a bit and averted her gaze. "Hm. What about the name?"
"Rath Tech doesn't quite have the zing to it so I was thinking maybe Stark Tech, Rath International, Smoak Tech… basically anything good. I don't really care so long as it helps people and makes me a shit ton of money."
"Hmm," she hummed for a bit, a pen stuck between her lips. Where did she get that from? I sat up and looked over at her seat and found a partially open purse.
"I didn't graduate in the entrepreneurial arts, you know."
"I know."
She sighed. "Fine. I'll look these over and get back to you. Maybe on our date?"
"Whenever you're ready. How does Friday night sound? For the date, I mean."
"It's perfect," she smiled.
"Good. I'll make a reservation."
God, fried octopus meat sounded absolutely heavenly right now. I could practically smell the aroma.
"Do you like seafood?"
.
.
.
.
Happy Harbor
May 23, 10:22
The Zeta-Tube powered down as I walked out of it into the hangar. Zeta transmissions into the cave normally delivered League members into the mission room, but I had altered my destination.
I wanted to see where my ship would be parked.
My boots made dull thumps on the light gray concrete as I made my way to the giant red circle painted in the center of the huge, rectangular parking spot.
For the design of my ship, if I was being accurate, I was mainly going for a combination of the Zephyr design from the Agents of Shield tv show and then the quinjets from the movies, mainly the one the Avengers used.
Their overlapping phantom images took up center stage in the red circle, the Zephyr resting on its wheels. More and more ideas came to me and I incorporated them into my mental design, the size of the Zephyr shrinking by about 30 percent and the wheels vanishing from sight.
The imaginary aircraft still stayed in the air, now held aloft by the repulsorlift tech I'd sourced from the speeder. After a while of this subtraction and addition of components, I just shook my head and dismissed the images in my mind, recalling that I had a perfectly fine lab where I could be making all this reality.
Before I left though, I gave the bay doors at the end of the room and the water they'd trapped in here a long glance and added another capability to the long list I planned to incorporate into the ship.
Space travel was already a given, so adding submersibility wouldn't be so crazy.
Thankful that my visit here had netted me some fine ideas and eager to put said ideas to paper, I found the elevators and made my way to the workshop.
Upon arrival there I found that much of the space the gaudy, lemon colored speeder had taken with its arrival was once again free. Earlier this morning before I went to see Speedy, I'd started disassembling it with Mike.
I would've finished it with him but there was a lot on my plate today. Thankfully, my friend and self appointed assistant was every bit a genius his status afforded him.
"Hey," I greeted and set my bike helmet down, plopping myself into the seat behind my workstation.
Mike didn't stop manipulating the holograms above the holotable we'd built and responded. "Welcome back. How did the meetings go?"
"Hmm," I sighed and wore a unique looking ear piece over my ear. "Speedy's went about as well as it could go. I ruined the boy's revenge plan but I think he'll come around. He's a smart kid. As for Felicity, things were a bit awkward, then they got serious and then I asked her out. Overall, things went pretty great."
"What did she say about your proposal?"
"Said she'd think about it. Which is what I expected really. Actually, I won't be surprised if she refuses. I'm asking her to quit her perfectly fine job without giving her any guarantees. Shit. I should've led with that. I mean, she's working for money so giving her something that can keep her afloat would make her more eager to jump ship."
"Has Batman responded?"
I stopped going through the data Mike had recorded about the pertinent parts of the speeder and turned my wrist. A holoscreen popped up above it and I saw zero messages.
"No. But it'll be today."
The larger 3D holoscreen above resumed moving on its own. One by one I went through the components I'd 100 percent be including in my ship, Tech-Adapting and M and E working together in holistic harmony to make my dreams true.
Once I finished, I got up and joined Mike near the holotable. The fusion-plasma drive that would actually move the ships were finished. It was time to design the other parts. Before that though, it seemed Mike had something to say.
His two robot hands stopped moving and came together slowly, the holographic representation and parts of the propulsion drive coming together to form a unified whole.
"It has no moving parts," he said, blue cybernetic eyes staring at me.
"Yeah. I was looking for something that would work in a vacuum and the atmosphere and ended up with this. I originally intended to go with compact turbofans, but this is way better."
"I agree. Ionizing atmospheric gases and expelling them to create thrust requires no other fuel on our part than electricity. This allows us to add more drives, and the excessive amount of charged particles produced as a result can be used to interfere with radar and enemy communications."
"Huh, it can…" I said and read through the packet Mike just sent me. I already had ideas for stealth, but this had potential. Immense potential.
"What would I do without you?" I grinned at him.
"You'd be fine. Just a little less so."
I rolled my eyes. "Come on, let's do this."
The first thing we worked on was the fusion reactor. There was an existing one in the cave and it powered everything. My grabby mental mitts had already scanned it from top to bottom and stored all the insight about it away.
With the fabricator, there was nothing stopping me from building a replica that was five times better and a thousand times smaller. Add that to the fusion advancements in the Cyberpunk data pad and it made perfect sense why Mike and I finished the ships' power source in a short time.
Next on the list was inertia, and for that I was immensely grateful for the speeder's timely arrival, despite its ugly appearance. It had a lot of parts that were way more advanced than this world's equivalents, but not all of them were going to play a role in making my ship the beast it was going to be.
The ones I'd singled out though were the forcefield, the flywheel, the vibration absorbent material that comprised its hull, the electrostatic windscreen, the various anti theft and anti collision sensors, and the current subject of focus, the inertial compensator.
It basically worked by keeping the gs within whatever vehicles they were at normal levels while they accelerated at rates that were injurious or even lethal to the occupants.
Completing the design for it took even shorter time than the microfusion reactor, and soon were on the third item on the list; stealth. For that, I borrowed from the three different sources I had: Cyberpunk, Star Wars, and this universe.
Cyberpunk had corporations that were constantly on the prowl for ways to one up and destroy each other. They had entire departments dedicated to such purposes.So the sheer amount of technology focused on keeping their assets hidden and obscured didn't surprise me. In fact, it was such that, if I combined Mike's idea with the very best of them, I could make my ships totally invisible to most detection currently in existence.
Star Wars offered something more subtle but equally important. The hull of the speeder, especially around the engine where most of this material was concentrated, possessed an engineered property that allowed it to diffuse vibrations.
In the speeder, it was mainly used to protect the occupants from the intense operation of the huge jet engines a mere 2 meters away from them. But in my ship, they were going to serve a lot more purposes.
The role such a material would play in reducing the acoustic signature of the plane while it was in flight didn't need to be stated. It would also play the same role it did in the speeder, but another unexpected benefit we hadn't foreseen was the increased control it would grant a pilot over the plane at higher speeds.
For the obvious visibility problem, this universe's contribution came in the form of scans from Martian Manhunter. Continued examination of the scans obtained from his ability to shift his density revealed how he was able to camouflage himself.
Not only did he shift his own molecules when changing into what a chameleon wished it was, he actually interacted with the photons around him.
By dedicating a lot of time with Miniaturization and Efficiency to the device that would replicate this form of invisibility, I could push it to levels that exceeded what the Martian himself could achieve.
Making the ship invisible would be the least impressive thing I could do. I could make it appear however I wanted, make it any color or design that suited my fancy.
Mike and I spent a bit of time in this section, mainly due to the modules from Cyberpunk and the Manhunter inspired one. As for the special hull material, there was no work to be done there.
The next item on the list was supposed to be the forcefields. They were originally tractor beam units that had been incorporated into the speeder as "energy seatbelts."
Their role in my ship was going to be the same, but I envisioned more of them protecting the hull, the windshield, and other vital parts. One, or maybe multiple working together in concert (I needed to find out exactly how strong they were) would serve as a tractor beam.
Once the design for this was finished, I paused and took stock of what we'd accomplished so far. We'd done power, we'd solved the inertia problem, stealth only required rigorous testing, same for the forcefields, and then the tractor beam.
That left the flywheel, life support systems, control systems, power storage, routing and usage, weapons, what else, what else… and oh, the hull.
When it came to life support, I had a wealth of knowledge from Cyberpunk to inspire me, but my breakthroughs in fabrication was the lynchpin I counted on to make it perfect. Psi tech would be heavily involved in the control system, that much was obvious.
M and E would let me connect all the separate systems together and synergize their power usages, letting the waste energy from one feed into the other and pushing the efficiency of everything to the much desired 100 percent.
I hadn't thought much about weapons, but I wasn't worried on that front. Even if I didn't have the data pad, the ideas floating in my own head would be enough.
The vibration diffusion material would be part of the hull, but some work would have to be done on it and any other metals and materials that would support and reinforce the entire ship.
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1-10 advanced chapters on: https://patreon.com/MasterReigen