Once in the garage, I surveyed my new kingdom. The gleaming homogenizer, the massive heat press, the vacuum chamber... I looked at them not as tools, but as the foundation of the future. Our R&D empire with Peter. And the thought of taking apart a two-thousand-dollar homogenizer for its motor for some momentary experiment felt like an act of vandalism. This was equipment for creation, for pure science. And for what I had planned, a different approach was required. The approach of a survivor and a master of "built-on-the-knee" assembly.
Scratching my head, I made a decision. A trip to the radio market—or, as it's more correctly called in the US context, second-hand electronics. A small open-air pavilion in Brooklyn where the air hung thick with the smell of dust, the sweat of unkempt sellers, and old plastic. Mountains of dead technology piled on tables, waiting for either disposal or a scavenger like me. Without haggling, I walked through the rows. But now I looked at this junk with different eyes. My new engineering experience saw through the casings. In an old laptop, I saw not a pile of pixels, but a working voltage converter and lithium-ion cells. In a food processor—a powerful electric motor with a gearbox. Whether it worked or not didn't matter. I needed their organs.
Returning home, I dumped my loot on the living room floor, creating a veritable graveyard of technology. And for the second time that day, I scratched my head. Before me lay a mountain of possibilities, but there was no clear path. I felt I was missing a key element, some philosophy that would unite all this into a single whole.
Opening the System, I realized exactly what. In the technology tab, an unpurchased skill awaited me. "Risk of Disassembly." A skill allowing for the creation of modular, "properly breakable" things that retain a chance of reassembly after destruction. This was it. The philosophy of an engineer-survivor for whom any device is primarily a set of spare parts. I poured 100 OP into it without thought. Unlike the skull-splitting flow of "Technological Modernization," this was like a switch flicking in my brain. A quiet insight that didn't give new knowledge but organized what was already there, building it into a new, flexible system. 300 OP remained on the account. Two hundred were reserved for Uncle Ben's medicine.
Now, armed with double knowledge—the experience and genius of the colonial scientist, and the philosophy of modularity—I looked at the bought junk. Chaos turned into a library of components. And my brain exploded with ideas.
A hypothetical analog of Stark's arc reactor? An electrochemical plasma battery concept immediately formed in my head. It wouldn't generate new energy from nothing, but would release ionic energy from available chemicals with monstrous efficiency, creating a self-sustaining plasma reaction. Yes, it would be larger and cruder than Stark's creation, with lower efficiency, but damn it, it would be a portable power source decades ahead of Earth's technology! And I could assemble it here, in this garage, from trash!
And there were even more absurd concepts born of a genius from Mars. A quantum loop reactor. A technology based on quantum mechanics surpassing this world's understanding by an order of magnitude. It would literally "pull" energy from vacuum quantum fluctuations. A clean, inexhaustible source requiring no fuel. But it needed a completely different level of equipment and materials that I didn't have.
"Okay, enough daydreaming about theoretical physics!" I checked myself. I needed to focus on the immediate. I mentally audited my needs. Weapons? Check. They need modification, but for the current task of "sitting at home and staying out of sight"—more than enough. Mobility? Tempting. But without superhuman reactions, speed is just a way to break your neck faster. Flight? An interesting option for the future, maybe even the near future. Protection? That's it. Bingo. You can never have too much of it.
I felt a sting of annoyance remembering the "Protection Field Generator" from Arcanum. A useless recipe based on mythical ores that I am currently nowhere near capable of processing. I couldn't follow it. But what if... what if I solve the same task but with different methods? Create my own energy shield that can be integrated into "Proteus"? It sounds more than interesting. It sounds like almost the ideal first project.
I surveyed the electronics spread on the floor again. My gaze caught on an old hair dryer and a kitchen mixer. Why? For a second, I didn't understand it myself. And then the colonial engineer in my head obligingly laid everything out, and a flash of insight occurred in my brain.
Problem: Create an energy shield.
Requirement: A plasma source and its containment system.
Component Analysis: Hair dryer: high-speed fan + heating element = a directional emitter of superheated ionized gas. Proto-plasmagun. Mixer: high-speed electric motor + several neodymium magnets from old hard drives = a rotating magnetic field generator. Containment system.
Emitter + Containment = Plasma Shield. The concept was born. Crude, energy-consuming, unstable, but functional. For an ordinary person, creating such a thing in a garage was unthinkable. But not for someone who, even in a dream, assembled an anti-gravity grenade from several robot vacuums.
That scientist whose memory and experience were now mine had something more than just knowledge. It was a fundamental understanding of the very fabric of reality at the level of physical constants. And it was an absolute cheat. Now I knew a small "secret," a life hack that made the impossible possible. The secret lay in the use of resonant frequency. You didn't need to build bulky magnetic traps like in sci-fi movies. You just needed to make the system sing on the right note.
Thanks to the inherited knowledge, I felt, rather than just knew, that a rotation frequency of 47.3 hertz—calculated intuitively at the junction of thermodynamics and hydrodynamics—would cause a "plasma cascade." It would provoke quantum tunneling of electrons in heated air, turning an ordinary heat stream into a self-sustaining plasma shell. It wasn't magic. It was just physics this world hadn't guessed yet.
"So, I'm not just hacking technology..." I whispered stunned into the void while a step-by-step process designed itself in my head at the speed of light. "I found the 'language' to speak with the physics of this world, and it answers."
The excitement was akin to euphoria. My garage turned into an operating table for forgotten technologies. Screwdriver, soldering iron, multimeter, electrical tape—the simple tools of a surgeon about to transplant a soul into dead tech.
The hair dryer was the first on the table. Taking it apart with surgical precision, I extracted its heart—a nichrome coil. A simple heating element capable of heating air to 800 degrees—quite enough for primary ionization. Its motor and fan laid next to it. Then came the mixer's turn. Its steel beaters, crude and utilitarian, were to become a vortex generator, spinning ionized air into a turbulent cocoon. Its motor, more powerful and high-speed, would provide the necessary velocity. The source of life for this Frankenstein was to be a lithium-ion battery from an old cordless drill. I cracked its case, gaining access to the cells, and soldered in a simple stabilization circuit from capacitors desoldered from a laptop motherboard to avoid voltage spikes.
Next began the calibration—the most delicate part of the work. Connecting a multimeter to the heater, I began to correct its resistance, adding millimetre by millimetre of copper wire scraps. Мои fingers, guided by the precision of the Master Clockmaker and the knowledge of the engineer from Mars, worked flawlessly. I knew that at an exact resistance of 12.7 ohms, an ideal resonance with the beaters' rotation frequency would occur. This effect, similar to laboratory "plasma windows," would amplify ionization tenfold, allowing the plasma to stabilize without external magnets.
Having finished with the components, I proceeded to assembly, following the new philosophy of "Risk of Disassembly." No monolithic structures. Only modules. Heating module: nichrome coil in its own plastic case with screw mounts. Vortex module: mixer motor and beaters in a separate block, for which a case from an old router fit perfectly. Energy module: the battery, which could just be put in a pocket. For a strange hunter of mythical mice and a crafter of exotic traps, modularity was a religion. One part broke—replace it without taking apart the whole system. Need an upgrade—create a new module and connect it. All like Lego.
Pulling the "Proteus" suit out of the garage, I set about integrating my creation into it. The vortex module lay on the waist with sturdy clips, like a belt buckle for some cyber-samurai. I secured the heating module to the outside of my left forearm, being right-handed. The idea was for the heated air to exit it and be caught by the vortex going up from the waist. The battery went into an inner pocket of the jacket. I carefully laid modular wires with connectors along the inner side of the suit, adding a removable rheostat in another pocket for power control.
Very crude. Very primitive. Но it was a prototype. A trial run. And it had to work.
But before the final test, I picked up the vortex module. It wasn't just an assembly of a motor and beaters; it was a resonator, the key to the whole process. Closing my eyes, I turned it on. The hum grew, and I, orienting by sound, experience, and the supernatural precision of the Master Clockmaker, began to calibrate the rotation speed. It was like tuning a musical instrument where physical constants are the notes. I sought that one, unique frequency where reality would give way. 47.3 hertz. I felt the hum change, become deeper, gain a vibration that resonated in my bones. This was it. A competent calibration causing Rayleigh-Taylor instability. A cascade discharge. Self-sustaining plasma without a single magnet.
Now I could test it! I stood in the middle of the garage, took a deep breath, and flipped the switch on the vortex module. There was a low, rising hum, like the sound of a spinning turbine. Then I smoothly turned the rheostat knob. The nichrome coil on my arm instantly glowed red.
And then it happened.
The air around me hummed, vibrated. It distorted like heat haze over hot asphalt, and then flared with a barely noticeable, shimmering bluish mist. The turbulent flow from the vortex module trapped the ionized gas in a cocoon, forming a spherical barrier about a meter and a half around me. It was almost invisible, but I felt it—a light static prickle on my skin and a thin, high-frequency hum. Plasma, born from a hair dryer and a mixer, enveloped me in its protective field. I stood in the center of my own pocket miracle.
By my rough estimates, the shield would last no more than a minute on this battery. But in that minute, it would deflect pistol bullets and slow down rifle rounds so much that "Proteus" would handle them with ease.
[Created electro-mechanical construction "Thermal Plasma Barrier Generator." Difficulty: Normal. Received +200 OP!]
A protective device generating a barrier from a dynamic plasma gradient, created through thermal ionization of air with a resonant vortex.
The description was dry as usual, but the 200 OP pleased me. The fact that the System didn't give a pioneer bonus didn't surprise me. Patents for plasma absorption of shock waves surely existed in this world. Not to mention highly developed races for whom working with plasma was child's play.
I turned off the shield and thought. The technology worked. The barrier formed at a safe distance, creating an outer layer of ionized air that didn't contact the body. The inner side remained relatively cool. I could touch it from the inside and feel only light heat and a static prickle. A principle damn similar to Stark's shields from my meta-knowledge. But the construction itself... I had overindulged in modularity. Something on the sleeve, something in the pocket, something on the waist. Uncomfortable, bulky, a bunch of failure points. Ideally, all this should be in one compact device on the waist, and that could also be modular. But then the question of the power source arises...
"Hey, John, I'm back!" Peter literally tumbled into the house. He glowed as if he had eaten not sour cream, but a small sun. This absolutely didn't fit his morning depressed state. "Whoa! What kind of mad engineer production line is this?" He surveyed the chaos of tools and disassembled tech I had arranged in the living room.
"Spill it, why so happy?" I answered with a question, putting aside the prototype.
"Ah, is it that obvious? Damn... Need to work on my poker face," Peter muttered the last part to himself, but I heard. "Well, in short... MJ and I..."
"Decided to give it a try?" I finished for him. Inside, I went cold with icy contempt. A girl whose boyfriend mysteriously disappeared this morning, throwing herself at his—albeit former, but still—friend on the same day. Highly objectionable. It's no wonder her character in the comics often caused, to put it mildly, dislike.
"Yes!" Peter exhaled happily, not noticing my mood. "She said that since Harry decided to break up with her like that, she's not going to suffer and will live on. And that she's liked me for a long time... well, I like her too..."
"But didn't we discuss this morning that maybe things aren't so simple? That it might be a setup?" I pressed the sore spot, wanting to see his reaction.
"Nope, I checked everything!" he waved it off carelessly. "That boarding college actually exists, they have a website, registration in Switzerland, all official. And Harry's been enrolled there since the beginning of September. Apparently, he was stalling the departure, Norman didn't like it, and he went to extremes. Но that's their family business, who are we to judge them?"
I saw that a weight had literally fallen from his soul. Everything turned out to be so "simple." No conspiracies. The path to the dream girl was clear. I, however, felt in my gut that something was wrong. He checked? Did a five-minute Google search? Norman Osborn is a billionaire and a brilliant manipulator; his legend would be flawless on the surface. But arguing with Peter while he was under a hormonal cocktail was like teaching physics to a rock. Any word I said against MJ he would take as an attack.
"Got it," I forced a semblance of a smile. "Well... congrats, I guess. Lovey-dovey, happiness to the newlyweds, all that."
"Thanks, John!" the embarrassed youth beamed.
"As for this engineering chaos," I nodded at the parts spread on the floor, shifting the conversation to where I needed it. "In short... I've put something interesting together here."
I told Peter everything. Well, almost everything. I told him how after he left, a wave of inspiration hit me, how my hands themselves reached for the work. How I wanted to assemble something simple but practical that would solve the problem of rifle calibers for "Proteus." I naturally kept quiet about the System, skills, and the memory of the Martian engineer. But I told him about the concept of the plasma barrier in detail. His reaction was important to me. The reaction of a true Genius. Peter listened in silence, walked up to my prototype, walked around it, carefully examined the connections, touched the cold casing of the vortex module. Then he looked at me, and in his eyes was a mix of shock, admiration, and absolute bewilderment.
"H-o-l-y-s-h-i-t!" he said slowly, clearly emphasizing each syllable as if tasting the word. "You. Using. A mixer and a hair dryer. Managed to cause Rayleigh-Taylor instability?! John, this crap in lab conditions with millions of dollars in equipment isn't always stable! And the most, damn, hilarious part," he laughed nervously, "is that it works! It obeys all the laws of physics I know! This isn't a 'black box' like the muscle stimulant! So how the hell is this possible?! How do you know about resonant frequency and quantum tunneling?! You said yourself you're clueless in pure science!"
A good question. Fortunately, I had thought a lot about this myself over the last few weeks, and I had a legend ready. Maximally plausible in this crazy world.
"Look, Peter. There's Tony Stark, there's Reed Richards, there's you, after all. Dozens, maybe hundreds of people whose intellect allows them to create incredible things," I started from afar, choosing my words. "I think it's a kind of superpower. Super-intellect. I once read a book about costumed heroes... so, in it, such people had a separate category of powers. They called it 'Tinkering.' An intuitive understanding of technologies."
"And you?.." Peter arched a skeptical eyebrow, but I saw he was listening.
"Yes. I suspect something like that woke up in me," I spoke as if I had just come to this conclusion myself. "It started a couple of weeks ago. I got a terrible urge to do things with my hands. First origami, then a Potato gun and a PVC crossbow... And then 'recipes' started appearing in my head. Intelligence Potion, muscle stimulant... I didn't fully understand their logic, just followed internal instructions. Но today, after a rather serious headache... something more woke up in me. Not just a recipe. A full layer of knowledge in engineering and physics that seems to be decades ahead of modern science."
"And using that knowledge, you assembled a plasma barrier?" Peter pointed to my creation.
"Right. I don't fully understand the principle of my 'power' myself," I surveyed the electronic junk on the floor. "But I look at this trash and see... I see finished devices. And so far, I'm insanely pleased with it."
"No doubt!" Peter muttered with envy. "I'd also like to be a natural genius like Richards or Stark instead of slaving over textbooks."
"He doesn't understand," I thought. "He is a genius. A real one. And I... I'm just using cheat codes."
"By the way, speaking of intellect," he perked up. "Are we starting the work on the Potion?"
"Yes. Но not here."
"The lab at the institute is busy until evening," Peter spread his hands apologetically. "I can work on personal projects there, but if I bring you now, it'll cause suspicion."
"Well, then we'll go there in the evening," I shrugged. "Until then... we can assemble something else. My hands are itching."
"Ooh!" Peter's eyes lit up with genuine scientific excitement. "Any ideas?"
"Too many," I chuckled. "But since the protection issue is temporarily resolved, I think it's worth working toward mobility. How about..." I once again surveyed my "warehouse" of components. Several microwaves... their magnetrons. A pair of old vacuum cleaners... high-speed turbines. Yes. This is it. "...Gravity boots?"
"What?!" Peter literally jumped in place. "You mean to say something like that can be assembled from this trash?!" I looked at the mountain of junk, which in my head had already turned into a scattering of the most valuable resources, and remembered a character from the cartoons. A character who, being a pickle, assembled an exoskeleton from rat bones.
"You have no idea what else can be assembled from it..." I said quietly, and a steel confidence sounded in my voice. "Even I don't fully realize it yet."