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Built To Last
- Thread starter We Just Write
- Start date
Pyro Hawk
Unsure if Phoenix or Kitsune
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Huh. I wonder what Modularity and Reliability are going to create when combined. Or just inspire in the other.
Especially as I feel like Kid Win is a lot more likely to pick out either his specialisation or at least more awareness of what it might be in than he would with Armsmaster's aid so far. Modularity and Efficiency/Miniaturization do tend to work against each other in many ways after all.
Especially as I feel like Kid Win is a lot more likely to pick out either his specialisation or at least more awareness of what it might be in than he would with Armsmaster's aid so far. Modularity and Efficiency/Miniaturization do tend to work against each other in many ways after all.
We Just Write
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T: In many ways, Armsmaster was a very bad choice of mentor for Kid Win.
The Unicorn
Well worn.
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If that's how they talk about themselvs people are going to very quickly realize there's something odd about the relationship between the two.
If both Emmy and Mellissa were presenting as capes it wouldn't have been a problem, but with it being obvious to everyone that Emmy didn't have a relationship with anyone prior to Ruggedizer showing up they're going to suspect something's up.
Expansion 2-2
We Just Write
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(Melissa)
I was wearing my "dress armor" when the PRT showed up; less protection, but it was lighter, more flexible, and showed more of my face. Still had a visor covering the top half of said face, but it could externally display cartoony eye and eyebrow graphics to be more expressive.
As for the two Wards, they wouldn't be unsupervised; Miss Militia had come along to keep an eye on them. So when the three heroes showed up (Miss Militia on her motorcycle, Vista via warped space, and Kid Win on his hoverboard), I just waved.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Ruggedizer. I take it you're Miss Militia, Vista, and Kid Win."
Militia's eyes crinkled with a smile as she answered.
"Yes, that's us."
As we entered the factory building, something occurred to me.
"How does your scarf stay up anyway? It seems like it should be prone to wardrobe malfunction."
She answered,
"It's taped to my cheeks. Not the most comfortable option, but I'm used to it."
Huh.
I wound up working with Kid Win first; Vista was nearby eating a packed lunch, but was willing to wait her turn.
I'd brought out one of the electrolasers like we typically used on the security robots, while Kid Win brought a spare concussor pistol. The idea being we could compare how we built our stuff.
Kid Win voiced a concern,
"I really hope this isn't like those sessions with Armsmaster. He basically spends all the time pointing out all the stuff I'm doing wrong."
I shook my head,
"That's not how I roll, usually. Now let's pop open the casings and take a look."
My electrolaser was fairly straightforward; a cluster of ultraviolet laser generators around a heat sink, all focused through their own optics and with electrical contacts impinging into the beam volumes. As long as any two of the six worked it could tase a target, and even with one the UV laser could do some serious damage if pushed to the power levels it was actually rated for.
As for Kid Win's concussor... it was a mess. I eventually understood the principle it used; firing a gravitational pocket with a little plasma in it for added punch and visual flare. But the circuitry was a complete nightmare of dead ends and hasty modifications.
As Kid Win looked at the inside of my Electrolaser, he couldn't help but comment,
"If I'd built something like that, Armsmaster would be on my case about it for hours. So much wasted space and material, but I just keep putting extra parts in and needing to take them out again after!"
I thought on that for a bit, then answered
"I can see that; I don't tend to get along with Armsmaster. He's good at his specialty, but keeps thinking said specialty is the be-all end-all. The reason I put all those extra parts in is for redundancy; it means my tech still works after taking one hell of a beating. Meanwhile Armsmaster's kit crams a lot of performance in a tiny package, but needs obscene amounts of maintenance."
Kid Win nodded,
"Yeah, I was seriously impressed with that radio still working after everything it got put through. I'm not sure how that helps me, though. I tried mimicking that approach on the pistol I brought, and my brain just didn't want to cooperate."
I quirked a virtual eyebrow,
"Mind elaborating?"
The teenage Tinker frowned,
"I just can't integrate the backups well enough to make them work for proper redundancy like you do. They're always just barely connected and don't really add anything."
I racked my synthetic brain for an idea of what that could mean, coming up with an idea after a few seconds.
"Maybe your power thinks they're supposed to come off?"
Kid Win blinked.
"Huh? You mean like lego?"
I nodded,
"Not the worst way to think of it. I think there's a decent chance your specialty has something to do with modular technology. And I think I've got an idea for how to test that."
Kid Win tilted his head in confusion,
"So... collaborative Tinkering?"
I nodded,
"Let's make a basic plug-and-play attachment for that concussor you brought; if I'm correct, it should come really easily to you."
As it turned out, I was correct. Within forty minutes Kid Win had a barrel extension for the concussor that increased the effective range at the expense of being strictly lethal. And it could just get plugged in or taken off at a moment's notice.
That done, I noted,
"Thanks for the time Kid Win. I got a lot of ideas for improving my approach from that, and I think it'll be really useful."
Kid Win looked ecstatic,
"Thank you so much! I finally have a solid lead on my specialty for the first time ever!"
Vista got up from her chair, warping over to the conversation.
"Does that mean it's my turn?"
"Yep."
I quickly directed Vista to the observation area I'd set up. There were a few things on a table I wanted to look at when she messed with space in and around them.
Vista quickly asked,
"Any particular reason for the cardboard box?"
"I want to get good measurements of what happens when you make something bigger on the inside."
Vista snapped her fingers,
"Done."
I went over and took a look at the box and... yeah it looked to be about twice as big on the inside as it should be.
I quickly set up all sorts of measuring tools, even as Vista looked a bit bored.
"What are you trying to do anyway?"
"I'm trying to figure out the root cause of the spacetime distortions your power produces."
Vista thought for a moment,
"Maybe it would help if I made it move?"
"Sure? An oscillating pattern would be really helpful, I think."
Vista nodded, and quickly began growing and shrinking the inside of the box. The interferometers didn't pick up much in the way of gravity waves, but after a moment the quantum vacuum polarimeters reported a reading. It was very faint, but it seemed that Vista was messing with the energy level of the ground state.
"Could you pause for a moment? I need to put some measurement devices closer, and one inside the box."
Vista promptly released the warp,
"Sure?"
I promptly put one of the polarimeters inside the box, moved the rest of them to physical contact with the box, and motioned for Vista to continue. She began again, and the polarimeters immediately reported a reading. A much, much stronger reading than I'd been getting before.
After about half an hour, the measurements ended.
"So..."
I gave Vista the short answer.
"As far as I can tell, your power moves energy in the quantum vacuum from one place to another. The positioning of the negative energy density zones does really weird things to spacetime."
Vista blinked,
"Huh... I never needed to think about that part. I just decide how I want spacetime to move and it does."
Eventually, the Wards headed back to their base. I told Emmy what I'd learned, and we both started looking into relevant scientific literature. Eventually, Emmy had to go to bed, but I kept searching.
Finally, around midnight, I stumbled upon a hit: Energy Teleportation. In 2004 an Earth Aleph physicist had theorized a way to teleport energy from one place to another, and as a side effect it manipulated the energy levels of the quantum vacuum. I promptly began reading up on the subject, and quantum teleportation more generally.
By morning I was absolutely certain: not only could we build a working teleporter based on these principles, but it had the potential to be exceedingly profitable.
I was wearing my "dress armor" when the PRT showed up; less protection, but it was lighter, more flexible, and showed more of my face. Still had a visor covering the top half of said face, but it could externally display cartoony eye and eyebrow graphics to be more expressive.
As for the two Wards, they wouldn't be unsupervised; Miss Militia had come along to keep an eye on them. So when the three heroes showed up (Miss Militia on her motorcycle, Vista via warped space, and Kid Win on his hoverboard), I just waved.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Ruggedizer. I take it you're Miss Militia, Vista, and Kid Win."
Militia's eyes crinkled with a smile as she answered.
"Yes, that's us."
As we entered the factory building, something occurred to me.
"How does your scarf stay up anyway? It seems like it should be prone to wardrobe malfunction."
She answered,
"It's taped to my cheeks. Not the most comfortable option, but I'm used to it."
Huh.
I wound up working with Kid Win first; Vista was nearby eating a packed lunch, but was willing to wait her turn.
I'd brought out one of the electrolasers like we typically used on the security robots, while Kid Win brought a spare concussor pistol. The idea being we could compare how we built our stuff.
Kid Win voiced a concern,
"I really hope this isn't like those sessions with Armsmaster. He basically spends all the time pointing out all the stuff I'm doing wrong."
I shook my head,
"That's not how I roll, usually. Now let's pop open the casings and take a look."
My electrolaser was fairly straightforward; a cluster of ultraviolet laser generators around a heat sink, all focused through their own optics and with electrical contacts impinging into the beam volumes. As long as any two of the six worked it could tase a target, and even with one the UV laser could do some serious damage if pushed to the power levels it was actually rated for.
As for Kid Win's concussor... it was a mess. I eventually understood the principle it used; firing a gravitational pocket with a little plasma in it for added punch and visual flare. But the circuitry was a complete nightmare of dead ends and hasty modifications.
As Kid Win looked at the inside of my Electrolaser, he couldn't help but comment,
"If I'd built something like that, Armsmaster would be on my case about it for hours. So much wasted space and material, but I just keep putting extra parts in and needing to take them out again after!"
I thought on that for a bit, then answered
"I can see that; I don't tend to get along with Armsmaster. He's good at his specialty, but keeps thinking said specialty is the be-all end-all. The reason I put all those extra parts in is for redundancy; it means my tech still works after taking one hell of a beating. Meanwhile Armsmaster's kit crams a lot of performance in a tiny package, but needs obscene amounts of maintenance."
Kid Win nodded,
"Yeah, I was seriously impressed with that radio still working after everything it got put through. I'm not sure how that helps me, though. I tried mimicking that approach on the pistol I brought, and my brain just didn't want to cooperate."
I quirked a virtual eyebrow,
"Mind elaborating?"
The teenage Tinker frowned,
"I just can't integrate the backups well enough to make them work for proper redundancy like you do. They're always just barely connected and don't really add anything."
I racked my synthetic brain for an idea of what that could mean, coming up with an idea after a few seconds.
"Maybe your power thinks they're supposed to come off?"
Kid Win blinked.
"Huh? You mean like lego?"
I nodded,
"Not the worst way to think of it. I think there's a decent chance your specialty has something to do with modular technology. And I think I've got an idea for how to test that."
Kid Win tilted his head in confusion,
"So... collaborative Tinkering?"
I nodded,
"Let's make a basic plug-and-play attachment for that concussor you brought; if I'm correct, it should come really easily to you."
As it turned out, I was correct. Within forty minutes Kid Win had a barrel extension for the concussor that increased the effective range at the expense of being strictly lethal. And it could just get plugged in or taken off at a moment's notice.
That done, I noted,
"Thanks for the time Kid Win. I got a lot of ideas for improving my approach from that, and I think it'll be really useful."
Kid Win looked ecstatic,
"Thank you so much! I finally have a solid lead on my specialty for the first time ever!"
Vista got up from her chair, warping over to the conversation.
"Does that mean it's my turn?"
"Yep."
I quickly directed Vista to the observation area I'd set up. There were a few things on a table I wanted to look at when she messed with space in and around them.
Vista quickly asked,
"Any particular reason for the cardboard box?"
"I want to get good measurements of what happens when you make something bigger on the inside."
Vista snapped her fingers,
"Done."
I went over and took a look at the box and... yeah it looked to be about twice as big on the inside as it should be.
I quickly set up all sorts of measuring tools, even as Vista looked a bit bored.
"What are you trying to do anyway?"
"I'm trying to figure out the root cause of the spacetime distortions your power produces."
Vista thought for a moment,
"Maybe it would help if I made it move?"
"Sure? An oscillating pattern would be really helpful, I think."
Vista nodded, and quickly began growing and shrinking the inside of the box. The interferometers didn't pick up much in the way of gravity waves, but after a moment the quantum vacuum polarimeters reported a reading. It was very faint, but it seemed that Vista was messing with the energy level of the ground state.
"Could you pause for a moment? I need to put some measurement devices closer, and one inside the box."
Vista promptly released the warp,
"Sure?"
I promptly put one of the polarimeters inside the box, moved the rest of them to physical contact with the box, and motioned for Vista to continue. She began again, and the polarimeters immediately reported a reading. A much, much stronger reading than I'd been getting before.
After about half an hour, the measurements ended.
"So..."
I gave Vista the short answer.
"As far as I can tell, your power moves energy in the quantum vacuum from one place to another. The positioning of the negative energy density zones does really weird things to spacetime."
Vista blinked,
"Huh... I never needed to think about that part. I just decide how I want spacetime to move and it does."
Eventually, the Wards headed back to their base. I told Emmy what I'd learned, and we both started looking into relevant scientific literature. Eventually, Emmy had to go to bed, but I kept searching.
Finally, around midnight, I stumbled upon a hit: Energy Teleportation. In 2004 an Earth Aleph physicist had theorized a way to teleport energy from one place to another, and as a side effect it manipulated the energy levels of the quantum vacuum. I promptly began reading up on the subject, and quantum teleportation more generally.
By morning I was absolutely certain: not only could we build a working teleporter based on these principles, but it had the potential to be exceedingly profitable.
Pyro Hawk
Unsure if Phoenix or Kitsune
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And any teleportation of 'delicate' objects (of which Living Organics is the second most critical variant (the most critical is fail-apocalyptic like contained antimatter, strange matter, singularities or anything else where messing up means more than just one thing dies)) is an area where a 'Redundancies and Reliability' Tinker is going to be the most legally friendly one you can get. Because sure, they aren't going to get the raw performance, range or output rate. But the teleportation failing isn't going to fuck you over, it's going to be very hard for it to fail without a blatantly obvious cause (even if that's just 'the sensor reads say the universe is unhappy with how we're screwing it so we need to want for it to calm down') and even normal use is going to have a ridiculously low error or complication rate in a way anyone cares about.
Expansion 2-3
We Just Write
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I woke up to Melissa gently brushing my hair. I stretched out, and muttered thanks for it.
"You're so cute when you're just waking up in the morning."
"mrphh. Quantum?"
"Yeah, I found some scientific papers from Earth Aleph that point towards something called Energy Teleportation as the root cause of what Vista's been doing. We can probably make a teleportation system based on that. Anyway, it's the weekend, so would you rather sleep in or get right to work?"
"Sleep. Was up late."
"Alright."
By the time I eventually got out of bed, took a shower, dried my hair, and put some clothes on, Melissa had already made a wonderful breakfast for the both of us. Well, more of a brunch, since it was ten AM by now.
As I drank the very strong coffee Melissa had brewed up for me, I read the scientific papers she'd gone through over the night. In the back of my mind, I could feel my power turning over, trying to figure out the requirements needed to build a teleportation machine that would be completely and utterly reliable.
After a few minutes I asked,
"So, is the teleporter business or pleasure?"
Melissa shrugged,
"Could be both? It's a really neat idea to build just on its own, but we also stand to make a truly obscene amount of money from it if we play our cards right."
I thought on it for a moment.
"How about this, we start with small-scale prototypes on our own time, and only move the teleportation project to business hours once we've proven the principle?"
"Sounds reasonable to me."
As it turned out, our power was remarkably unhelpful on the subject of teleportation. All the ancilliary systems and such were easy to nail down, since our power definitely knew what it was doing there. But when it came to the actual quantum shenanigans needed to teleport the mass and energy making up an object from one place to another, we were practically flying blind.
Still, we weren't about to just give up. As Sunday rolled into Monday, we'd managed microscopic instances of teleportation, carefully following the scientific literature. Scaling it up to something useful would be somewhat troublesome, but the rewards would definitely be worth it.
Anyway, at Nine AM sharp, the employees we'd hired came in and got to their assigned jobs. The Marketing duo came up with Reliabuilt as a convenient brand to work under, which we accepted. As for Rose, she quickly notified us of some incoming business.
From the email Melissa and I read, what was going on was pretty clear: The eponymous Bob of Fugly Bob's had gotten fed up with his soft serve and milkshake machines breaking all the time, and the ongoing maintenance contract with their manufacturer had just expired. He was willing to pay us four times the going price for a replacement that would be much less cantankerous, and a lot easier to fix if it did break.
My jaw dropped. That was a price of forty thousand dollars per machine. Between the two of them, those transactions would go a long way towards getting our business firmly up and rolling.
As soon as I was done reading, I paged Rose.
"Rose?"
"Yes Emmy?"
"Ruggedizer's decided to take the job for Fugly Bob's. Can you let them know we're working on it? Please also contact the FDA so we can get some pointers on meeting legal requirements for food service machinery."
"On it."
And with that, Melissa got to work.
By Wednesday, we'd gotten the machines for Fugly Bob's made. Still, they needed to be inspected; both Fugly Bob himself and a small team from the FDA were coming over to take a look.
As it so happens, both parties of interest arrived at the same time. I quickly ushered them to the space where the new confection machines were waiting. Both of them had "ReliabuiltTM" stamped into their frontal plate.
Bob was the first to make a comment on both the machines, noting
"Well, they're a tiny bit bigger than I would like, but I can make room for them."
As for the FDA inspectors, they opened up the casing on both machines and took a look. They asked their questions, expressed mild incredulity at just how many redundancies got crammed in there, shined a UV light around to check for non-obvious microbial growths, the works.
Eventually, the lead inspector was ready to deliver his verdict.
"Ruggedizer, you've done the single most thorough job making sure microbes can't grow in there of anyone I've ever seen, even aside from all the other features designed to ensure absolute reliability of the overall system. Seriously, even if any ten different things went wrong at once, these machines would still meet food safety requirements. These milkshake and ice cream machines pass inspection."
Bob nodded,
"Right. I've got a rented truck waiting to bring these back to my restaurant. Good work. How would you like to be paid?"
Melissa answered, "Quickly, please."
Bob actually laughed.
We got a few more orders for specialty equipment during the first half of December. Subtracting taxes, we'd just about hit a million dollars of total revenue by the eighteenth of the month. That's when we made a breakthrough in our teleportation research.
We still couldn't quite teleport any object larger than a pea, but we'd made a major advance in Energy Teleportation: a pair of machines that could hook up to the electrical grid, and transfer large amounts of electricity with minimal losses. It had the potential to utterly revolutionize quite a bit about the world's energy infrastructure... provided we could legally patent it. Which required that it be reproducible.
Well, we strictly speaking sent the energy teleporters in for evaluation on the eleventh. But we didn't hear back about them until the eighteenth. And much to the shock of everyone involved, some engineers working for the PRT had managed to build a vaguely worthwhile energy teleporter. It wasn't up to the standards of our unit... but it proved we were elligible for the patent.
The instant Melissa heard the news, she came frighteningly close to cracking one of my ribs with her hug.
"You're so cute when you're just waking up in the morning."
"mrphh. Quantum?"
"Yeah, I found some scientific papers from Earth Aleph that point towards something called Energy Teleportation as the root cause of what Vista's been doing. We can probably make a teleportation system based on that. Anyway, it's the weekend, so would you rather sleep in or get right to work?"
"Sleep. Was up late."
"Alright."
By the time I eventually got out of bed, took a shower, dried my hair, and put some clothes on, Melissa had already made a wonderful breakfast for the both of us. Well, more of a brunch, since it was ten AM by now.
As I drank the very strong coffee Melissa had brewed up for me, I read the scientific papers she'd gone through over the night. In the back of my mind, I could feel my power turning over, trying to figure out the requirements needed to build a teleportation machine that would be completely and utterly reliable.
After a few minutes I asked,
"So, is the teleporter business or pleasure?"
Melissa shrugged,
"Could be both? It's a really neat idea to build just on its own, but we also stand to make a truly obscene amount of money from it if we play our cards right."
I thought on it for a moment.
"How about this, we start with small-scale prototypes on our own time, and only move the teleportation project to business hours once we've proven the principle?"
"Sounds reasonable to me."
As it turned out, our power was remarkably unhelpful on the subject of teleportation. All the ancilliary systems and such were easy to nail down, since our power definitely knew what it was doing there. But when it came to the actual quantum shenanigans needed to teleport the mass and energy making up an object from one place to another, we were practically flying blind.
Still, we weren't about to just give up. As Sunday rolled into Monday, we'd managed microscopic instances of teleportation, carefully following the scientific literature. Scaling it up to something useful would be somewhat troublesome, but the rewards would definitely be worth it.
Anyway, at Nine AM sharp, the employees we'd hired came in and got to their assigned jobs. The Marketing duo came up with Reliabuilt as a convenient brand to work under, which we accepted. As for Rose, she quickly notified us of some incoming business.
From the email Melissa and I read, what was going on was pretty clear: The eponymous Bob of Fugly Bob's had gotten fed up with his soft serve and milkshake machines breaking all the time, and the ongoing maintenance contract with their manufacturer had just expired. He was willing to pay us four times the going price for a replacement that would be much less cantankerous, and a lot easier to fix if it did break.
My jaw dropped. That was a price of forty thousand dollars per machine. Between the two of them, those transactions would go a long way towards getting our business firmly up and rolling.
As soon as I was done reading, I paged Rose.
"Rose?"
"Yes Emmy?"
"Ruggedizer's decided to take the job for Fugly Bob's. Can you let them know we're working on it? Please also contact the FDA so we can get some pointers on meeting legal requirements for food service machinery."
"On it."
And with that, Melissa got to work.
By Wednesday, we'd gotten the machines for Fugly Bob's made. Still, they needed to be inspected; both Fugly Bob himself and a small team from the FDA were coming over to take a look.
As it so happens, both parties of interest arrived at the same time. I quickly ushered them to the space where the new confection machines were waiting. Both of them had "ReliabuiltTM" stamped into their frontal plate.
Bob was the first to make a comment on both the machines, noting
"Well, they're a tiny bit bigger than I would like, but I can make room for them."
As for the FDA inspectors, they opened up the casing on both machines and took a look. They asked their questions, expressed mild incredulity at just how many redundancies got crammed in there, shined a UV light around to check for non-obvious microbial growths, the works.
Eventually, the lead inspector was ready to deliver his verdict.
"Ruggedizer, you've done the single most thorough job making sure microbes can't grow in there of anyone I've ever seen, even aside from all the other features designed to ensure absolute reliability of the overall system. Seriously, even if any ten different things went wrong at once, these machines would still meet food safety requirements. These milkshake and ice cream machines pass inspection."
Bob nodded,
"Right. I've got a rented truck waiting to bring these back to my restaurant. Good work. How would you like to be paid?"
Melissa answered, "Quickly, please."
Bob actually laughed.
We got a few more orders for specialty equipment during the first half of December. Subtracting taxes, we'd just about hit a million dollars of total revenue by the eighteenth of the month. That's when we made a breakthrough in our teleportation research.
We still couldn't quite teleport any object larger than a pea, but we'd made a major advance in Energy Teleportation: a pair of machines that could hook up to the electrical grid, and transfer large amounts of electricity with minimal losses. It had the potential to utterly revolutionize quite a bit about the world's energy infrastructure... provided we could legally patent it. Which required that it be reproducible.
Well, we strictly speaking sent the energy teleporters in for evaluation on the eleventh. But we didn't hear back about them until the eighteenth. And much to the shock of everyone involved, some engineers working for the PRT had managed to build a vaguely worthwhile energy teleporter. It wasn't up to the standards of our unit... but it proved we were elligible for the patent.
The instant Melissa heard the news, she came frighteningly close to cracking one of my ribs with her hug.
We Just Write
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Z: We legitimately can't tell what this is supposed to mean. Please clarify.
tarrangar
Versed in the lewd.
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It's an acronym meaning thank for the chapter, such posts count as low content posts which are against the rules I think(they do on SB, I can't guarantee they do here) they're frequent on Royalroad where there are no rule against low content posts, and you can't like individual chapters, just rate how good you Think a story is on a scale on 1 to 5, here the like button is supposed to be what you use if you have nothing to say beyond that you liked the chapter.
Concorian
Know what you're doing yet?
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hah also oh drear, Im imagining Megacities becoming a thing. With a few centralised Power plants teleporting Power to fortified cities. If she starts making Lawmaster Patrol Bikes and LawGiver Multi Use Sidearms it would be hilarious.
Also if they are small enough to move, then they are small enough to stick on Ships. Imagine designing a electric jet engine(prototypes exist) or drones and have the power teleported directly from their base carrier, more space for snesors and weapons.
Or Power Relays beaming power to electric Vechiles. The money you could make by selling a subscription service alone is massive.
The idea of Energy Teleporters is revolitionary.
Also if they are small enough to move, then they are small enough to stick on Ships. Imagine designing a electric jet engine(prototypes exist) or drones and have the power teleported directly from their base carrier, more space for snesors and weapons.
Or Power Relays beaming power to electric Vechiles. The money you could make by selling a subscription service alone is massive.
The idea of Energy Teleporters is revolitionary.
tarrangar
Versed in the lewd.
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I'm more imagining deserts, the arctic and eventually space being turned into giant green energy production facilities, with energy teleporting, it don't matter how inconveniently placed the generators are, and the fact that green energy such as solar and wind has variant output depending on weather and time of day, matter far less when you are generating the energy globally, but unless you crack matter teleportation in addition to energy teleporting, mega cities are still impractical, due to how much need to be shipped in and out of them, if a city consume the food production of half a continent, then you have to ship even locally produced staples half a continent, more and smaller cities are as such still more efficient.
And that's not touching on the Endbringers, you don't want mega cities on earth bet, that just mean bigger targets for them.
Nicohals J Westerberg
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Attention. They will gain attention from EVERYONE
XZR-2
Getting sticky.
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Thanks for the chapter
We Just Write
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J: Nah, we're actually drawing on some IRL scummy practices of soft serve machine manufacturers. In short, they DRM'd the interface needed for a repair technician to actually diagnose problems, and deliberately rigged them to have lots of problems needing a technician to resolve. End result is money for the manufacturer and a frustrated restaurant owner.
Pyro Hawk
Unsure if Phoenix or Kitsune
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Hell, I'm pretty sure they don't need to rig them to cause problems... They just make it so there's no 'reset and try again' when the cleaning routine and things like that happen and then have it just display an arcane error code for what happens which needs a technician to go in and flip something somewhere to acknowledge the error.
So every time the machine goes slightly outside of parameters during the overnight cleaning cycle it shuts down, pops up the relevant error code and waits for a technician to turn up to just work like normal again. Meaning whilst it's not as scummy as designing them wrong, it's almost so because designing it so it'll reset and pop up a 'error in process, try again' note or something requires so little effort you know they deliberately didn't invest just that bit more into making them.
That said, regarding the chapter itself I do have to admit that this isn't too much of a surprise. Because a Reliability and Durability Tinker is one of the ones which are most likely to be riding the edge of where the Tinkertech Black Boxing is actually effective for what they do. Because all of that redundancy costs resources and effort, it bulks up the machine by a fair bit and the performance of the machine is probably that much greater over what normal technology could do. So long as you don't bring in 'exotic physics' somewhere such as hardlight, time stops and all that.
Which the energy teleportation might count as... Except for how the actual teleportation event was done by pure 'fiddle around and work out from base principles' tinkering, not Tinkering, it would appear. They just benefit from the Tinker Power assembly boosts, the Tinker Power rapid design and blueprinting capabilities (because that does happen unusually fast you have to admit, even if the 1 month timespan means it was minimal for the actual teleportation aspect) and having the supporting components be Tinkertech grade.
Which is likely where the issues with the PRT assembled Energy Teleporter came from. They can make the Energy Teleporter component when you add in all the advanced prototyping tools they have on hand even if it's not as good, but all the supporting components are more of a pain.
The Unicorn
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This I can actually believe. And is considerably more scummy than all the "designing them wrong" stories (which pretty much universally turn out to be "designed to be cheap because people won't buy them otherwise"). This is actually deliberately making things difficult for the buyer, and something that would be fairly trivial to fix...
Expansion 2-4
We Just Write
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A/N: Wiggin and Nourie was a real law firm operating in New Hampshire since 1860. In our history, they went defunct in 2012. Since the story is set in 2010 at the moment and an alternate universe aside, it makes sense for them to still be around.
The very first thing Melissa and I did once we were awarded the Energy Teleportation patent was to hire a lawyer. Well, more accurately we turned up at the offices of the Wiggin and Nourie law firm as soon as they were open, with Melissa in her dress armor.
We actually caught a glimpse of Carol Dallon milling around the lobby with a cup of coffee, but she wasn't who we were here to talk to. Instead, we went to the front desk, keenly aware of all the eyes on us.
The receptionist - his nametag read Johan - greeted us.
"Ah. Ruggedizer, from the news? Do you have an appointment?"
Melissa shook her head,
"No appointment, but I've been approved for a very important patent, and we want some help with licensing it."
"And that would be a patent for?"
"Energy teleportation."
Johan blinked, and promptly started typing a message to someone or other at the law firm.
Half an hour later, we were sitting across from an attorney by the name of Lars Anderson.
"Ruggedizer, Emmy. I understand you are looking for help with your Energy Teleportation patent application?"
Melissa made a bit of an awkward noise, before answering.
"Not quite. I was awarded the patent through the PRT's reproducibility verification; that part's already handled. I'm looking for help with licensing it out."
Lars stroked his beard.
"That changes things slightly, but the broad picture is basically the same. There is also the matter of international patent registration. That's something the PRT doesn't handle, as far as I am aware."
I blinked, so did Melissa. Hadn't actually known about that. So I asked,
"You can handle the international patent applications, right?"
"Yes, but let's talk about the licensing scheme you're thinking of going with. What exactly are you looking to achieve with it?"
Melissa spoke up, the both of us having already decided on this part.
"We want to license it to damn near everyone in exchange for a small percentage of revenue. That way the tech gets widespread adoption quickly, while we also get the money needed to revitalize Brockton Bay."
Mr. Anderson adopted a thoughtful expression.
"I can help write up a licensing agreement to achieve that easily enough. That said, I must urge you to be cautious; there are many forces which go out of their way to eliminate ambitious and optimistic Tinkers, with very few of them opting for legal channels to do so. I would advise protecting yourselves."
There was an awkward silence for a moment, before we nodded. That was something we needed to consider. Perhaps an additional backup site in another city? Not to mention improved security for our existing factory complex.
We'd managed to scale up our object teleportation units to the size of a toolbox (and begun animal testing on rodents) by Saturday -- Christmas -- when we'd invited the Heberts over for dinner. Our factory-attached residence was much nicer now than when we'd first moved in, seeing as we'd been busily Tinkering up personal amenities in our spare time.
As Taylor remarked when they both came in, "Those chairs look like they'd survive a bomb going off."
Melissa nodded,
"Yeah that sounds about right. Awfully comfy too."
I thought to add, "They're color coded; shorter wavelength colors use stiffer foam. Seeing as Melissa's a robot, she needs tougher cushions to get the same effect."
As Taylor sat in one of the red chairs and Danny one of the orange chairs, we went to fetch the meal that our CookBot had whipped up for us.
As Melissa set the wonderfully baked shepherd's pie down in the middle of the table, Danny noted,
"That looks absolutely delicious. Thank you for inviting us."
I replied as I sat,
"It's great to have you over. Aside from that, we do have some good news we wanted to share."
Taylor and Danny both motioned for us to continue, and Melissa took the opportunity.
"We've been awarded a patent for Energy Teleportation; fully reproducible. The marketing guys have already figured out a couple products using it we can sell, and even aside from that, we're going to be licensing out the technology worldwide."
Taylor's jaw dropped, and Danny's eyes went wide.
"That's going to bring so much money into the city. It's... You are going to share, I hope?"
We both emphatically nodded. Melissa spoke first,
"Yeah we're going to be sharing our newfound wealth with the general city; Max Anders is not an example to be emulated."
I added on to that.
"We haven't quite worked out all the details with the lawyers we hired, but we're thinking of setting up some sort of fund to help Brocktonites set up their own businesses, get housing, get through rehab, that sort of thing."
Danny was so taken aback that he was crying tears of joy as he made his way around the table to hug us.
Taylor on the other hand just looked grim.
Seeing this, I asked,
"Taylor, is something wrong."
The teenager looked deeply conflicted, before eventually saying, "There's something I need to tell you. I've been getting bullied at high school."
Within an hour the whole horrid story of those three girls' torture of Taylor came out, tears streaking down her shirt as she told us everything. Neither Melissa or I had ever met this Emma... but the level of betrayal she'd done was inexcusable. Also, this Sophia Hess girl was clearly fucked in the head.
When things eventually calmed down, I brought up the obvious solution.
"You know, there's still two weeks of Christmas Break before classes resume. If you want, we can help you get into another school. We've got the money to put you through Immaculata."
Something in Taylor's gaze hardened.
"No. I'm not the only one Sophia and Emma torment, just their favorite target. They've got to be dealt with somehow before I leave Winslow."
Danny nodded,
"Right. I think we're going to need to talk to a lawyer about how we're going to handle this. Before you go back there."
I also chimed in,
"We're also going to make you some Christmas presents. Because there's no way in hell we're risking them hurting you again before this whole mess is wrapped up."
The very first thing Melissa and I did once we were awarded the Energy Teleportation patent was to hire a lawyer. Well, more accurately we turned up at the offices of the Wiggin and Nourie law firm as soon as they were open, with Melissa in her dress armor.
We actually caught a glimpse of Carol Dallon milling around the lobby with a cup of coffee, but she wasn't who we were here to talk to. Instead, we went to the front desk, keenly aware of all the eyes on us.
The receptionist - his nametag read Johan - greeted us.
"Ah. Ruggedizer, from the news? Do you have an appointment?"
Melissa shook her head,
"No appointment, but I've been approved for a very important patent, and we want some help with licensing it."
"And that would be a patent for?"
"Energy teleportation."
Johan blinked, and promptly started typing a message to someone or other at the law firm.
Half an hour later, we were sitting across from an attorney by the name of Lars Anderson.
"Ruggedizer, Emmy. I understand you are looking for help with your Energy Teleportation patent application?"
Melissa made a bit of an awkward noise, before answering.
"Not quite. I was awarded the patent through the PRT's reproducibility verification; that part's already handled. I'm looking for help with licensing it out."
Lars stroked his beard.
"That changes things slightly, but the broad picture is basically the same. There is also the matter of international patent registration. That's something the PRT doesn't handle, as far as I am aware."
I blinked, so did Melissa. Hadn't actually known about that. So I asked,
"You can handle the international patent applications, right?"
"Yes, but let's talk about the licensing scheme you're thinking of going with. What exactly are you looking to achieve with it?"
Melissa spoke up, the both of us having already decided on this part.
"We want to license it to damn near everyone in exchange for a small percentage of revenue. That way the tech gets widespread adoption quickly, while we also get the money needed to revitalize Brockton Bay."
Mr. Anderson adopted a thoughtful expression.
"I can help write up a licensing agreement to achieve that easily enough. That said, I must urge you to be cautious; there are many forces which go out of their way to eliminate ambitious and optimistic Tinkers, with very few of them opting for legal channels to do so. I would advise protecting yourselves."
There was an awkward silence for a moment, before we nodded. That was something we needed to consider. Perhaps an additional backup site in another city? Not to mention improved security for our existing factory complex.
We'd managed to scale up our object teleportation units to the size of a toolbox (and begun animal testing on rodents) by Saturday -- Christmas -- when we'd invited the Heberts over for dinner. Our factory-attached residence was much nicer now than when we'd first moved in, seeing as we'd been busily Tinkering up personal amenities in our spare time.
As Taylor remarked when they both came in, "Those chairs look like they'd survive a bomb going off."
Melissa nodded,
"Yeah that sounds about right. Awfully comfy too."
I thought to add, "They're color coded; shorter wavelength colors use stiffer foam. Seeing as Melissa's a robot, she needs tougher cushions to get the same effect."
As Taylor sat in one of the red chairs and Danny one of the orange chairs, we went to fetch the meal that our CookBot had whipped up for us.
As Melissa set the wonderfully baked shepherd's pie down in the middle of the table, Danny noted,
"That looks absolutely delicious. Thank you for inviting us."
I replied as I sat,
"It's great to have you over. Aside from that, we do have some good news we wanted to share."
Taylor and Danny both motioned for us to continue, and Melissa took the opportunity.
"We've been awarded a patent for Energy Teleportation; fully reproducible. The marketing guys have already figured out a couple products using it we can sell, and even aside from that, we're going to be licensing out the technology worldwide."
Taylor's jaw dropped, and Danny's eyes went wide.
"That's going to bring so much money into the city. It's... You are going to share, I hope?"
We both emphatically nodded. Melissa spoke first,
"Yeah we're going to be sharing our newfound wealth with the general city; Max Anders is not an example to be emulated."
I added on to that.
"We haven't quite worked out all the details with the lawyers we hired, but we're thinking of setting up some sort of fund to help Brocktonites set up their own businesses, get housing, get through rehab, that sort of thing."
Danny was so taken aback that he was crying tears of joy as he made his way around the table to hug us.
Taylor on the other hand just looked grim.
Seeing this, I asked,
"Taylor, is something wrong."
The teenager looked deeply conflicted, before eventually saying, "There's something I need to tell you. I've been getting bullied at high school."
Within an hour the whole horrid story of those three girls' torture of Taylor came out, tears streaking down her shirt as she told us everything. Neither Melissa or I had ever met this Emma... but the level of betrayal she'd done was inexcusable. Also, this Sophia Hess girl was clearly fucked in the head.
When things eventually calmed down, I brought up the obvious solution.
"You know, there's still two weeks of Christmas Break before classes resume. If you want, we can help you get into another school. We've got the money to put you through Immaculata."
Something in Taylor's gaze hardened.
"No. I'm not the only one Sophia and Emma torment, just their favorite target. They've got to be dealt with somehow before I leave Winslow."
Danny nodded,
"Right. I think we're going to need to talk to a lawyer about how we're going to handle this. Before you go back there."
I also chimed in,
"We're also going to make you some Christmas presents. Because there's no way in hell we're risking them hurting you again before this whole mess is wrapped up."
The Unicorn
Well worn.
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[QUOTE="We Just Write, post: 7680823, member: 55960] The very first thing Melissa and I did once we were awarded the Energy Teleportation patent was to hire a lawyer.[/quote]This line was really jarring and distracted me for the rest of the chapter. The mention of a lack of international Patent protection did halp a bit, but even with that I'd expect the PRT's confirmation the invention is reproducible to be only the first step in the filing process, much less being awarder the patent - if only because the PRT won't spend hours working out the right phrasing to produce a patant that is both valid and enforceable.
Nice twist. under the circumstances it makes sense for her to open up like this, but I think this is the first story I've seen Taylor open up to her father about the bullying without being forced somehow. Looking forward to seeing how this develops.
lopsigon
Know what you're doing yet?
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This has been so much fun to read! :3
Hehe, I keep imagining inventions like tires or a 'paper' car manual that outlasts the car itself.
If Emmy was in Battletech, "Lostech is trashtech! buy Reliabuilt™ today! Shoe-Laces stronger than the Star-League!"
Hehe, I keep imagining inventions like tires or a 'paper' car manual that outlasts the car itself.
If Emmy was in Battletech, "Lostech is trashtech! buy Reliabuilt™ today! Shoe-Laces stronger than the Star-League!"
Last edited:
Expansion 2-5
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
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One of the very first things on our agenda for Monday was a meeting at the Dockworkers Association. We needed to talk with Danny, Taylor, and whatever lawyer he'd hired about the bullying situation. So, Melissa made sure I had a breakfast ready when I woke up, we got dressed quickly, got in our carefully legal Tinkermobile, and showed up at 8:30 AM, sharp.
The Heberts were already waiting for us when we got there, as was a large-chested redhead in a suit we'd never met before.
"Ah, you must be the lawyer. I'm Emmy, and this is Ruggedizer. We're friends of the Heberts."
The woman nodded,
"Correct. I'm Sarah Cobbler, the attorney Mr. Hebert hired. Now, let's get down to business. First I have some bad news for Taylor: most of the testimony in your bullying journals will not be admissable in court. The only parts we can really work into the case are the printouts of those horrible emails you were sent."
Taylor nodded sadly.
"If I need to go back to Winslow to get what we need to keep Sophia and Emma's bitch brigade from tormenting someone else once I leave, I'll do it."
Sarah shook her head,
"I'd recommend against that. The records show a clear pattern of continuing escalation, with a tendency to hit you really hard whenever you're coming back from a break. I'm worried that they could seriously hurt you if you go back to Winslow for even one more day."
Taylor nodded grimly,
"I know. The risk is worth it if we can prevent them from tormenting anyone else."
This is also when Melissa chimed in.
"If needed, I can be waiting near Winslow that day? That way if anything really bad does happen, I can go in and rescue Taylor at a moment's notice."
Sarah thought for a moment.
"That could be workable; good samaritan laws still apply to Parahumans, meaning you can't be sued for actions taken to save someone's life. That said, we also need ways to make sure Taylor gets actionable evidence when something does happen to her."
I noticed that we'd all come to a silent agreement that something nasty would be done to Taylor if she went back, but we were going ahead with the plan anyway. I really didn't like that at all, but Taylor was so determined to make sure her tormentors faced justice, no matter the cost to herself.
Taylor asked, "Could I wear a concealed bodycam?"
"...Maybe. I'll need to look into it, but I'm fairly certain there's some sort of exception that would allow you to record things that happen to you and still have it be admissable in court. That could very easily make the case as open-and-shut as they come, depending."
Melissa noted,
"No matter what, I'm going to fit Taylor with a bunch of concealed biosensors. Heart and breathing monitors, that sort of thing. I want to know if Taylor needs a rescue, even if she's incapacitated and can't use her panic button."
Taylor nodded grimly.
The hardest part of designing the energy teleportation products our marketing duo had come up with was making them cheap. Sure a wireless extension cord or power strip would be really convenient, but if it cost twenty times as much as a normal one, no-one would buy it. The issue with that was simple: our power was fighting us every step of the way, trying to design the devices to be as durable and rugged as possible, cost be damned.
In fairness, we'd rather it be super tough too, but there were cost limitations in play here. Again, this was supposed to be a commercial product. Honestly it felt more like haggling than engineering, trying to get our power to compromise with us.
Eventually we got the unit cost down to the point where we could feasibly sell wireless extension cords for fifty dollars wholesale and still have a modest profit margin, and they would still outlast the vast majority of extension cords and surge protectors on the market to boot. But our power honestly felt like it was sulking in the corner. To make it happy I quickly threw together an Indestructium Edition as durable as I could design it without adding too much bulk; we'd need to charge way more for it though.
Still, when we got both of them ready and automated production, we immediately made our way down to the marketing office. Andy and Ruth (our two starting marketing people) had beaming expressions when Melissa set down the box full of wireless extension cords.
Andy cheered,
"That's great! We can make these sell no question about it. Though we're going to need some basic pricing information before we can shoot the commercial."
Melissa tilted her head,
"We've got a 5% profit margin with a wholesale price of $50. The Indestructium Edition goes for $420. Any thoughts on what the commercial is going to be like?"
Ruth smiled,
"Well, it's pretty straightforward."
"Are you tired of vacuuming over the cord?"
A video of a woman running over her vacuum cleaner cord
"Sick of tangled power cables?"
The same woman struggling to untangle a mess of power strips
"Introducing the Wonder Socket!"
The woman, wide-eyed, holding up a rounded plug in her left hand and a matching rocket in her right
"This revolutionary wireless power extension uses patented energy teleportation technology, able to connect anywhere within its transmission range!"
A basic graphic of lightning bolts blinking out at the plug and blinking in at the socket
"It's great for vacuum cleaning."
The lady vacuuming in a cramped space without needing to worry about the cord
"Makes the outdoor use of power tools a breeze!"
A handyman using a plug-in power drill as a screwdriver without an extension cord
"And your power cords will never get tangled again!"
A collection of Wonder Sockets powering devices in close proximity, all plugged into a power strip
"The Wonder Socket, by Reliabuilt. Buy two for $94.95. Call now at 555-RELY ONS!"
Two matched sets of Wonder Sockets spinning on a turntable in front a white background contract into the upper left corner of the screen, pricing information showing on the bottom with a footnote of "shipping and handling not included" immediately below it
The commercial turned out to be a pretty notable success, once we'd paid to have it shown on a few local TV channels. We actually had to hire a couple more people to take calls, who were pleasantly surprised by the living wages we'd decided to pay them. A few more Dockworkers also got hired on to handle the increased shipping and receiving volumes.
It was the twenty ninth of December, we had loads of money coming in from Wonder Plug sales, and we'd finally gotten a pair of teleporters built that could move a human between them. That's when I admitted something to Melissa.
"Melissa... I want to be a robot too. Can we work on that next?"
My double nodded,
"Sure. Making a new body won't take long, nor will making a new brain. The hard part is just getting you in there."
Looking at the teleporter we'd spent most of a month working towards, an idea occurred to me.
"Maybe we could use quantum teleportation? It's the highest-fidelity way we've got to move huge amounts of information from place to place, and it gets around the need for super-deep brain scans. Plus we've spent a lot of effort on related stuff recently, so we've already got some good inroads there."
Melissa thought for a moment.
"I can see where you're coming from with that. Though I'm pretty sure we're going to need a bit of work to get it to do what we need. Formatting a random chunk of matter into your bio-brain while turning the one in your skull to mush won't exactly be helpful."
I winced at the thought of that. Yeah, that would be a horrible way to die.
"Yeah, we need to really nail the process of translating the quantum structure of a brain into... well, me if born as a computer."
Melissa giggled and made a sarcastic, "beep boop" noise.
I chuckled too. Then I got serious.
"We need to figure out which animal we hate the most. There's going to be fatalities in early testing, and I'd rather not feel too bad about them."
Melissa added in,
"Needs to be a fairly brainy animal too, and one that's readily available."
I tilted my head,
"If we can't figure out anything else, there's always lab rats."
"Yeah, I suppose there are. I've honestly grown kind of fond of the ones we used for testing teleportation though."
Melissa frowned,
"Guess we'll just have to buy more and try not to get attached to them."
"Yeah..."
The Heberts were already waiting for us when we got there, as was a large-chested redhead in a suit we'd never met before.
"Ah, you must be the lawyer. I'm Emmy, and this is Ruggedizer. We're friends of the Heberts."
The woman nodded,
"Correct. I'm Sarah Cobbler, the attorney Mr. Hebert hired. Now, let's get down to business. First I have some bad news for Taylor: most of the testimony in your bullying journals will not be admissable in court. The only parts we can really work into the case are the printouts of those horrible emails you were sent."
Taylor nodded sadly.
"If I need to go back to Winslow to get what we need to keep Sophia and Emma's bitch brigade from tormenting someone else once I leave, I'll do it."
Sarah shook her head,
"I'd recommend against that. The records show a clear pattern of continuing escalation, with a tendency to hit you really hard whenever you're coming back from a break. I'm worried that they could seriously hurt you if you go back to Winslow for even one more day."
Taylor nodded grimly,
"I know. The risk is worth it if we can prevent them from tormenting anyone else."
This is also when Melissa chimed in.
"If needed, I can be waiting near Winslow that day? That way if anything really bad does happen, I can go in and rescue Taylor at a moment's notice."
Sarah thought for a moment.
"That could be workable; good samaritan laws still apply to Parahumans, meaning you can't be sued for actions taken to save someone's life. That said, we also need ways to make sure Taylor gets actionable evidence when something does happen to her."
I noticed that we'd all come to a silent agreement that something nasty would be done to Taylor if she went back, but we were going ahead with the plan anyway. I really didn't like that at all, but Taylor was so determined to make sure her tormentors faced justice, no matter the cost to herself.
Taylor asked, "Could I wear a concealed bodycam?"
"...Maybe. I'll need to look into it, but I'm fairly certain there's some sort of exception that would allow you to record things that happen to you and still have it be admissable in court. That could very easily make the case as open-and-shut as they come, depending."
Melissa noted,
"No matter what, I'm going to fit Taylor with a bunch of concealed biosensors. Heart and breathing monitors, that sort of thing. I want to know if Taylor needs a rescue, even if she's incapacitated and can't use her panic button."
Taylor nodded grimly.
The hardest part of designing the energy teleportation products our marketing duo had come up with was making them cheap. Sure a wireless extension cord or power strip would be really convenient, but if it cost twenty times as much as a normal one, no-one would buy it. The issue with that was simple: our power was fighting us every step of the way, trying to design the devices to be as durable and rugged as possible, cost be damned.
In fairness, we'd rather it be super tough too, but there were cost limitations in play here. Again, this was supposed to be a commercial product. Honestly it felt more like haggling than engineering, trying to get our power to compromise with us.
Eventually we got the unit cost down to the point where we could feasibly sell wireless extension cords for fifty dollars wholesale and still have a modest profit margin, and they would still outlast the vast majority of extension cords and surge protectors on the market to boot. But our power honestly felt like it was sulking in the corner. To make it happy I quickly threw together an Indestructium Edition as durable as I could design it without adding too much bulk; we'd need to charge way more for it though.
Still, when we got both of them ready and automated production, we immediately made our way down to the marketing office. Andy and Ruth (our two starting marketing people) had beaming expressions when Melissa set down the box full of wireless extension cords.
Andy cheered,
"That's great! We can make these sell no question about it. Though we're going to need some basic pricing information before we can shoot the commercial."
Melissa tilted her head,
"We've got a 5% profit margin with a wholesale price of $50. The Indestructium Edition goes for $420. Any thoughts on what the commercial is going to be like?"
Ruth smiled,
"Well, it's pretty straightforward."
"Are you tired of vacuuming over the cord?"
A video of a woman running over her vacuum cleaner cord
"Sick of tangled power cables?"
The same woman struggling to untangle a mess of power strips
"Introducing the Wonder Socket!"
The woman, wide-eyed, holding up a rounded plug in her left hand and a matching rocket in her right
"This revolutionary wireless power extension uses patented energy teleportation technology, able to connect anywhere within its transmission range!"
A basic graphic of lightning bolts blinking out at the plug and blinking in at the socket
"It's great for vacuum cleaning."
The lady vacuuming in a cramped space without needing to worry about the cord
"Makes the outdoor use of power tools a breeze!"
A handyman using a plug-in power drill as a screwdriver without an extension cord
"And your power cords will never get tangled again!"
A collection of Wonder Sockets powering devices in close proximity, all plugged into a power strip
"The Wonder Socket, by Reliabuilt. Buy two for $94.95. Call now at 555-RELY ONS!"
Two matched sets of Wonder Sockets spinning on a turntable in front a white background contract into the upper left corner of the screen, pricing information showing on the bottom with a footnote of "shipping and handling not included" immediately below it
The commercial turned out to be a pretty notable success, once we'd paid to have it shown on a few local TV channels. We actually had to hire a couple more people to take calls, who were pleasantly surprised by the living wages we'd decided to pay them. A few more Dockworkers also got hired on to handle the increased shipping and receiving volumes.
It was the twenty ninth of December, we had loads of money coming in from Wonder Plug sales, and we'd finally gotten a pair of teleporters built that could move a human between them. That's when I admitted something to Melissa.
"Melissa... I want to be a robot too. Can we work on that next?"
My double nodded,
"Sure. Making a new body won't take long, nor will making a new brain. The hard part is just getting you in there."
Looking at the teleporter we'd spent most of a month working towards, an idea occurred to me.
"Maybe we could use quantum teleportation? It's the highest-fidelity way we've got to move huge amounts of information from place to place, and it gets around the need for super-deep brain scans. Plus we've spent a lot of effort on related stuff recently, so we've already got some good inroads there."
Melissa thought for a moment.
"I can see where you're coming from with that. Though I'm pretty sure we're going to need a bit of work to get it to do what we need. Formatting a random chunk of matter into your bio-brain while turning the one in your skull to mush won't exactly be helpful."
I winced at the thought of that. Yeah, that would be a horrible way to die.
"Yeah, we need to really nail the process of translating the quantum structure of a brain into... well, me if born as a computer."
Melissa giggled and made a sarcastic, "beep boop" noise.
I chuckled too. Then I got serious.
"We need to figure out which animal we hate the most. There's going to be fatalities in early testing, and I'd rather not feel too bad about them."
Melissa added in,
"Needs to be a fairly brainy animal too, and one that's readily available."
I tilted my head,
"If we can't figure out anything else, there's always lab rats."
"Yeah, I suppose there are. I've honestly grown kind of fond of the ones we used for testing teleportation though."
Melissa frowned,
"Guess we'll just have to buy more and try not to get attached to them."
"Yeah..."
Last edited:
Interlude: Sophia
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
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It was just after Thanksgiving that Emma noticed,
"Taylor's too happy."
Sophia mulled it over. She was ever so slightly more confident, and sometimes even smiled a little bit when she thought no-one was watching. Not to mention that shitty red wristwatch she had now. She kept fidgeting with it, like it would somehow keep her safe.
"Maybe she has a boyfriend?"
Emma scoffed, "Her? Who would ever date Taylor?"
Sophia shrugged, "LSD-addicted gutter trash? If they're high on hallucinogens all the time they might not know how ugly Taylor is."
Emma's gaze steeled. "Either way, we can't let Taylor forget her place. We're going to have to do something about that happiness."
Sophia shrugged.
"Easy enough until Christmas, but how are we going to wreck her winter break?"
Emma got an evil grin.
"Remember that locker prank we had in mind?"
Sophia thought for a moment,
"You mean the one where we lock her inside with a bunch of used tampons?"
"Yeah, let's make it worse."
Sophia made a "go on" gesture,
"So those tampons are going to dry out right? Let's get a few bags of pig blood from a butcher, and set it up with a slow leak in there over the winter break, make sure they stay nice and wet and grow all sorts of nasty mold."
Sophia's eyes sparkled,
"That's a great idea! Maybe I can chuck in a few dead squirrels too, make sure lots of icky bugs move in there to keep Taylor company?"
Emma grinned, "I'll add some broken bottles too! Get her all cut up when we shove her in. The maggots will keep her clean."
Sophia grinned, "I'll do you one better. Used syringes. Perfect for the hoe of drug-addicted gutter trash like her."
Emma thought for a moment.
"Remember when we filled Taylor's flute with shit? Let's remind her about that. Buy a cheap flute, break it in half, glue the parts to the back of the locker, let her stare at it while she suffers in there."
"I like the way you think."
As it turned out, the alterations to the locker plan had rendered it surprisingly high maintenance over winter break. Sophia had needed to sneak into Winslow four times to replace the pig's blood and add more dead squirrels. Every single time it had gotten grosser and smellier.
By the end of winter break, Sophia was practically bursting with anticipation.
It was time to show that useless piece of trash her place once and for all.
"Taylor's too happy."
Sophia mulled it over. She was ever so slightly more confident, and sometimes even smiled a little bit when she thought no-one was watching. Not to mention that shitty red wristwatch she had now. She kept fidgeting with it, like it would somehow keep her safe.
"Maybe she has a boyfriend?"
Emma scoffed, "Her? Who would ever date Taylor?"
Sophia shrugged, "LSD-addicted gutter trash? If they're high on hallucinogens all the time they might not know how ugly Taylor is."
Emma's gaze steeled. "Either way, we can't let Taylor forget her place. We're going to have to do something about that happiness."
Sophia shrugged.
"Easy enough until Christmas, but how are we going to wreck her winter break?"
Emma got an evil grin.
"Remember that locker prank we had in mind?"
Sophia thought for a moment,
"You mean the one where we lock her inside with a bunch of used tampons?"
"Yeah, let's make it worse."
Sophia made a "go on" gesture,
"So those tampons are going to dry out right? Let's get a few bags of pig blood from a butcher, and set it up with a slow leak in there over the winter break, make sure they stay nice and wet and grow all sorts of nasty mold."
Sophia's eyes sparkled,
"That's a great idea! Maybe I can chuck in a few dead squirrels too, make sure lots of icky bugs move in there to keep Taylor company?"
Emma grinned, "I'll add some broken bottles too! Get her all cut up when we shove her in. The maggots will keep her clean."
Sophia grinned, "I'll do you one better. Used syringes. Perfect for the hoe of drug-addicted gutter trash like her."
Emma thought for a moment.
"Remember when we filled Taylor's flute with shit? Let's remind her about that. Buy a cheap flute, break it in half, glue the parts to the back of the locker, let her stare at it while she suffers in there."
"I like the way you think."
As it turned out, the alterations to the locker plan had rendered it surprisingly high maintenance over winter break. Sophia had needed to sneak into Winslow four times to replace the pig's blood and add more dead squirrels. Every single time it had gotten grosser and smellier.
By the end of winter break, Sophia was practically bursting with anticipation.
It was time to show that useless piece of trash her place once and for all.
XZR-2
Getting sticky.
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Integration 3-1
We Just Write
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A/N: On the topic of Christmas Presents, we'd really appreciate a tropes page for one of our fics some day.
The new batch of laboratory rats arrived Thursday, all twelve of them. I thanked the delivery man who'd brought them, and tried very hard not to think about how cute the rodents were. Very few of them would survive the experiments, after all. That done, I brought the rats to the private lab where Melissa and I could work on perfecting the brain uploading process.
As I set the cage down, I asked Melissa,
"So. Any thoughts on where we should start?"
Melissa nodded, and brought up some familiar code on one of the nearby monitors.
"Isn't that the brainwave monitoring code from the headset I used when making you?"
"Yeah, it is. It seems a decent enough starting place, since it already has some functions to translate what a bio-brain does into how my synthetic one works."
I nodded, looking at the rat cage again.
"So, which one are we experimenting on first?"
Melissa thought for a moment, before answering, "Whichever one's the most ornery."
We ended up carrying out the first uploading experiment on New Year's Eve. We'd got a rat level synthetic brain ready, a remote-operated robo-rat, and our first iteration of the QUD (Quantum Uploading Device).
We'd also picked out our first test subject, a particularly ornery rat which we'd named Grump. Melissa had caught him bullying the other lab rats, so he was going first.
I'd actually come up with an interesting diagnostic approach to figure out just how much changed about the rat's mental state as a result of the upload. Have a brainwave set on him prior, and once he was in the computer, run the "brainwave to thought code" translator backwards. If we got a successful upload, the changeover ought to be completely and utterly seamless, barring some mild disorientation.
So we wrestled the tiny headset onto Grump's head, chucked him into the QUD, and waited a couple minutes to get a brainwave baseline. Then I pressed the big red button.
The brainwave display spiked wildly as the robo-rat began flailing. Simultaneously, Grump's old body dropped dead. The display kept spiking, even as Melissa put the rat carcass in a sealed trash bag to make sure it wouldn't get too smelly.
After about half an hour of watching the robo-rat flail with no signs of improvement, I pulled the plug.
"Well, that's about what we'd expected to happen, unfortunately. Let's try and figure out what went wrong."
Later that evening, we visited the Heberts for New Years' Eve. As we showed up, Melissa noted that they'd fixed the step she'd busted last time. So we simply walked up the porch steps, and rang the doorbell.
A few moments later, Taylor opened the door.
"Emmy and Melissa! Nice to see you, please come in."
We obliged, and as soon as the door closed Taylor wrapped herself around Melissa in a hug.
"Thank you so much for helping with the... everything really."
Melissa and I both replied "You're welcome."
That's when Danny noted,
"I hope you don't mind if the food isn't too fancy. We ordered Chinese take out in the morning and it's been waiting in the fridge."
I shrugged,
"That's fine."
"Yeah."
As we sat down at the dinner table, I thought to ask,
"By the way, how are things at the Dockworkers' Association going?"
Danny smiled,
"Much better than they were. That fund you set up is already having its first beneficiaries; new businesses mean more money coming into the city, and more honest work for the people I'm looking out for. Not to mention the ones directly working for you. Thank you both."
A few minutes later, I had warmed up some fried rice that I was thoroughly enjoying. That's when Taylor asked,
"By the way, any projects you two want to talk about?"
I spoke first,
"Well, we finally managed to get teleporters that can move a human working. Though our version needs a receiver with a vacuum chamber, otherwise there are serious problems. Not submitting them for testing just yet since we want to focus on another project right now."
Danny raised an eyebrow,
"Hasn't teleportation been your major project for the last month though?"
That's when Melissa spoke up.
"Emmy got jealous of my amazing robot body. We're working on a machine to transfer her mind to the same sort of synthetic brain I run on."
Both Heberts blinked, before Taylor eventually got out a "Huh."
I nodded somberly,
"Yeah, though the process certainly isn't easy. And we fully expect to burn through quite a few lab rats getting it right."
Taylor looked a bit sick, while Danny seemed thoughtful.
"I'm not claiming to be some sort of cape expert, but I thought Tinkers just knew how to build all their stuff. Meanwhile you two seem to be figuring out a lot of your more exotic technology through plain old trial and error."
Melissa chimed in,
"Yeah it's the darnedest thing. It honestly seems like our power has massive holes in its knowledge base. Like, it wants to help us with the various exotic technologies we're developing, but it just can't until we've already put in most of the legwork. I swear, if it weren't for my awesome robot brain we wouldn't have made a fraction of our progress on teleportation research."
I chuckled,
"You're probably right, Melissa. One more reason I'm looking forward to the changeover."
Taylor took the opportunity to comment,
"You know, if you two didn't keep reminding me Melissa is a robot, I'd probably just think you were twin sisters. You just click with each other. Not to mention looking damn near identical, aside from Melissa being way more buff."
Melissa giggled,
"Hey, I was built as a body double."
That's when I remembered something.
"By the way, I talked with Sarah a bit and got clearance to put a bodycam on you. Mind if we take your measurements so we make sure it fits on you?"
Taylor nodded,
"Sure. After dinner though. By the way, I think a rear camera on there would probably be a good idea too. Maybe concealed. That way we still have video even if they push me down the stairs from behind or something."
I smiled,
"That works out quite nicely. See, there needs to be at least one easily visible camera to meet legal requirements. But if that camera's easily removed it could lead the bullies into a false sense of security about all the other concealed cameras on you. We're also going to be fitting you with a set of accelerometers to monitor your movement, sensors for your vitals, all that. Plus redundant audio recorders."
Taylor smiled.
"Thank you Emmy. Melissa too."
The new batch of laboratory rats arrived Thursday, all twelve of them. I thanked the delivery man who'd brought them, and tried very hard not to think about how cute the rodents were. Very few of them would survive the experiments, after all. That done, I brought the rats to the private lab where Melissa and I could work on perfecting the brain uploading process.
As I set the cage down, I asked Melissa,
"So. Any thoughts on where we should start?"
Melissa nodded, and brought up some familiar code on one of the nearby monitors.
"Isn't that the brainwave monitoring code from the headset I used when making you?"
"Yeah, it is. It seems a decent enough starting place, since it already has some functions to translate what a bio-brain does into how my synthetic one works."
I nodded, looking at the rat cage again.
"So, which one are we experimenting on first?"
Melissa thought for a moment, before answering, "Whichever one's the most ornery."
We ended up carrying out the first uploading experiment on New Year's Eve. We'd got a rat level synthetic brain ready, a remote-operated robo-rat, and our first iteration of the QUD (Quantum Uploading Device).
We'd also picked out our first test subject, a particularly ornery rat which we'd named Grump. Melissa had caught him bullying the other lab rats, so he was going first.
I'd actually come up with an interesting diagnostic approach to figure out just how much changed about the rat's mental state as a result of the upload. Have a brainwave set on him prior, and once he was in the computer, run the "brainwave to thought code" translator backwards. If we got a successful upload, the changeover ought to be completely and utterly seamless, barring some mild disorientation.
So we wrestled the tiny headset onto Grump's head, chucked him into the QUD, and waited a couple minutes to get a brainwave baseline. Then I pressed the big red button.
The brainwave display spiked wildly as the robo-rat began flailing. Simultaneously, Grump's old body dropped dead. The display kept spiking, even as Melissa put the rat carcass in a sealed trash bag to make sure it wouldn't get too smelly.
After about half an hour of watching the robo-rat flail with no signs of improvement, I pulled the plug.
"Well, that's about what we'd expected to happen, unfortunately. Let's try and figure out what went wrong."
Later that evening, we visited the Heberts for New Years' Eve. As we showed up, Melissa noted that they'd fixed the step she'd busted last time. So we simply walked up the porch steps, and rang the doorbell.
A few moments later, Taylor opened the door.
"Emmy and Melissa! Nice to see you, please come in."
We obliged, and as soon as the door closed Taylor wrapped herself around Melissa in a hug.
"Thank you so much for helping with the... everything really."
Melissa and I both replied "You're welcome."
That's when Danny noted,
"I hope you don't mind if the food isn't too fancy. We ordered Chinese take out in the morning and it's been waiting in the fridge."
I shrugged,
"That's fine."
"Yeah."
As we sat down at the dinner table, I thought to ask,
"By the way, how are things at the Dockworkers' Association going?"
Danny smiled,
"Much better than they were. That fund you set up is already having its first beneficiaries; new businesses mean more money coming into the city, and more honest work for the people I'm looking out for. Not to mention the ones directly working for you. Thank you both."
A few minutes later, I had warmed up some fried rice that I was thoroughly enjoying. That's when Taylor asked,
"By the way, any projects you two want to talk about?"
I spoke first,
"Well, we finally managed to get teleporters that can move a human working. Though our version needs a receiver with a vacuum chamber, otherwise there are serious problems. Not submitting them for testing just yet since we want to focus on another project right now."
Danny raised an eyebrow,
"Hasn't teleportation been your major project for the last month though?"
That's when Melissa spoke up.
"Emmy got jealous of my amazing robot body. We're working on a machine to transfer her mind to the same sort of synthetic brain I run on."
Both Heberts blinked, before Taylor eventually got out a "Huh."
I nodded somberly,
"Yeah, though the process certainly isn't easy. And we fully expect to burn through quite a few lab rats getting it right."
Taylor looked a bit sick, while Danny seemed thoughtful.
"I'm not claiming to be some sort of cape expert, but I thought Tinkers just knew how to build all their stuff. Meanwhile you two seem to be figuring out a lot of your more exotic technology through plain old trial and error."
Melissa chimed in,
"Yeah it's the darnedest thing. It honestly seems like our power has massive holes in its knowledge base. Like, it wants to help us with the various exotic technologies we're developing, but it just can't until we've already put in most of the legwork. I swear, if it weren't for my awesome robot brain we wouldn't have made a fraction of our progress on teleportation research."
I chuckled,
"You're probably right, Melissa. One more reason I'm looking forward to the changeover."
Taylor took the opportunity to comment,
"You know, if you two didn't keep reminding me Melissa is a robot, I'd probably just think you were twin sisters. You just click with each other. Not to mention looking damn near identical, aside from Melissa being way more buff."
Melissa giggled,
"Hey, I was built as a body double."
That's when I remembered something.
"By the way, I talked with Sarah a bit and got clearance to put a bodycam on you. Mind if we take your measurements so we make sure it fits on you?"
Taylor nodded,
"Sure. After dinner though. By the way, I think a rear camera on there would probably be a good idea too. Maybe concealed. That way we still have video even if they push me down the stairs from behind or something."
I smiled,
"That works out quite nicely. See, there needs to be at least one easily visible camera to meet legal requirements. But if that camera's easily removed it could lead the bullies into a false sense of security about all the other concealed cameras on you. We're also going to be fitting you with a set of accelerometers to monitor your movement, sensors for your vitals, all that. Plus redundant audio recorders."
Taylor smiled.
"Thank you Emmy. Melissa too."
Last edited:
KoshiroUnohana
Know what you're doing yet?
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Oohhh. Those Bitches are going to jail for assault with a biological weapon. Can't wait to see the fallout.
Also hope that Emmy gets Taylor out before she gets too hurt.
On the flip side, it will probably push them to look into medical technology...
Also hope that Emmy gets Taylor out before she gets too hurt.
On the flip side, it will probably push them to look into medical technology...
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
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L: Koalas fail the easily obtained and relatively brainy requirements. Also, New Hampshire's recording laws are a mess. 48 hours of back and forth on discord over whether or not it would be legal.
Cheetored20
Versed in the lewd.
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I dont remember the conversation, but people on one of mpi's threads have said it would be completely legal because its in a school.
We Just Write
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P: Yeah that was the overall conclusion, with a few caveats.