Chojin Patriarch
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Just because the camera is better, doesn't mean the tape recorder is. There's only so many upgrades he could safely make, and unless you want to try implanting a better visual cortex... Well, best to go with what you've got.10th April 2013
12:54 GMT -5
Karon peers at the pages of her novel as I deposit her lunch in front of her before sitting down in the seat opposite.
She looks up at me and shrugs. "It doesn't look much different."
A fairly simple process. This Wikipedia page has a basic one to try it out for yourselves."It won't. Remember, people don't see with their eyes. The eyes are merely light sensors. The image you perceive is assembled in your brain, and the human brain does a lot of editing before you become consciously aware of what you're seeing. Here."
I fabricate a classical 'blind spot disappearing shape' test on a sheet of paper and offer it to her.
I expect her field of vision is also a little better, especially if OL did any fine-tuning of the iris and lens."Ever done one of these?"
She nods. "In middle school." She then holds up the paper and moves it around, trying to find a spot she no longer has. "This… Huh."
Saccades. Unless you're absolutely focusing on one thing, your eye jitters about. You don't even notice it until you look for it, so to speak."Of course, because saccades are pretty much hard wired into the brain, that won't change much about the way you use your eyes even if they're pretty much unnecessary for you now."
"Saccades?"
...Huh, that might be a concern. T be fair, if you suffer damage that requires that sort of regrowth, your eye might be worse off than just a detached retina or something..."Small movements of the eye. Your brain 'knows' that it can't see part of its visual field, so it makes sure that you move your eyes around enough to let it build a picture to cover it up. Editing the rest of the body is a lot easier than editing the brain."
"And this doesn't cause a problem with… I don't know, my body won't try regrowing blood vessels over my retina?"
For instance, Wolverine's healing factor seems to have a firm template of Logan that it restores him to no matter how bad he's hurt. Like that stupid time he regrew from being reduced to bare bones. Or the way his hair constantly grows back into its' iconic points."No. Ah-." Hm. "If you got metahuman regeneration from somewhere it might, but… Normal human healing works by copying the tissues around the injury, rather than fixing the body to template. That's why most people can't regrow a hand or other complicated bits. If you do gain metahuman abilities or use magical healing, come and see me immediately afterwards."
"Was that in the waver?"
Bad idea. That fine print, kiddo.
And how will you know it's a demon? It's not like they have to walk around smelling of brimstone."Never enter into any kind of contract with a demon."
She puts down the sheet and picks up her sandwich. "Duh."
Amusing, that she's more interested in the sandwich than the legalities of contracts..."Or any kind of supernatural entity. If we had a functioning legal system I'd add 'major corporation', but I'm pretty sure we could force majeure that if it came to it."
She chews for a moment, her eyes widening in pleased surprise. "'his is goo'." She swallows. "Where'd you get it?"
Karon, you work with a guy who commutes across the galaxy in the blink of an eye...
...If he says it's from somewhere foreign-sounding, he's not joking."The predominantly Italian area of New York is called Little Italy. The island next to Italy's toe is called Sicily."
"What happened to food shortages?"
Ah. Of course the 'cheap' option of hiring backpackers and immigrants had pretty much quietened down then."Food production hasn't been as badly affected as that. Farmers had a better than average survival rate. The issue is harvesting and transportation to places that don't generate food, maintaining farm equipment and... Deliberate destruction of labour-intensive farmlands."
"Like..?"
At least, not until corporations get back on their feet. Or someone takes charge locally."Like mechanised family farms are fine, but places that relied on mass itinerant labour tended to get burned to the ground. After the Sheeda, quite a lot of European countries-. They were actually deliberately shutting their farms down as a matter of government policy before that to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Then they started having actual food shortages, and not just as a result of panic-buying, so they changed their policies. So when the Broadcast happened, there were quite a lot of small new farms ready to go. But they can't sell to anyone, because all of the parts of the economy that could do that aren't there."
...Says a lot about what Americans actually eat, doesn't it?She takes another bite of near-perfect ham sandwich. Americans usually react well to actual food, and I'm glad that Karon's no exception.
"Is the League gunna fix that?"
The hard part of taking over the world: Organising the rest of it. If some of those 'conqueror' types had to see this, they'd probably give it up."The League… Can't, really. We're a disaster management charity. We can move a few hundreds tons here and there, we can't replace the entire transportation infrastructure of Earth. Maybe if Atlantis was still connected to the rest of the world and they didn't mind just making dolmen gates." I half smile. "Britain's actually doing okay because of all of the gates they bought to replace their rail network. We just moved them to major distribution nodes, and… Got Mister Atom to calculate a schedule. Other places… We're sort of hoping that people fix their own little bits of everything so we can coordinate things."
And really, would you want Batman annoyed at you because you did talk about it? Especially these days?"I thought you were taking over the world."
"I'm not allowed to talk about the League taking over the world."
...Okay, why do I feel like he's got that set to a macro now?She raises her now-naturally-linear eyebrows. "You're actually doing that? I thought that was just you mouthing off."
"I'm not allowed to talk about the League taking over the world."
Only good ideas from talking to people. Or at least, his version of good ideas.She takes another bite, thoughtfully.
"You're not… Putting anything in our heads, are you?"
To be fair, the modern world does need a certain amount of madness to operate in it."Mild brain damage is a hazard of industrial society. I can only fix it a little."
"I meant about the Justice League taking over the world."
Only the fear of Batman. And he's very good at fear now."I'm not allowed to talk about the League taking over the world."
She frowns at me. "Did they put something in your head?"
I get the feeling he was having fun doing the 'pre-programmed response' bit there..."I'm not allowed to talk about the League taking over the world."
"O.. kay… New topic, before I get really scared. What else can you do?"
That's what actual nutrition does for you. The muscle, anyway. The rest, well, normally people would pay lots of money for the hair stuff. The trace materials? Still not easy to get out. And let's not forget that little bit about immunity to HIV."How do you mean?"
"I never need to shave my legs or armpits or pluck my eyebrows again. I've…" She looks at her right arm and flexes her muscles. "I've never been this cut before. I don't have a blind spot any more and you got rid of my heavy metal deposits."
Hopefully with self-repair elements, I would hope.She takes hold of the small plastic bauble on her necklace which contains all of the metal I removed from her body. It's not a lot, but then, what you do with it counts more.
"I could implant a quantum wafer that would give you a memory backup. I can pretty much put the sum of human knowledge on it, and you'd just sort of know it if it came up in conversation."
I suppose that answers any thoughts about Danner or Garrick formulas. He'd probably also encourage any recipients of it to sign on with law enforcement or the like."How about actual super powers?"
"Do you want to undergo the training regimen you'd need to not accidentally break everything you touch or not experience everything in the world as a film being played at one hundredth normal speed where you're stuck waiting forever for everything?"
Especially since he can make them permanent through gene-editing. Since the human body replaces a lot of that stuff progressively over the years."Oh."
"Minor changes to your skin, or eyes, or even your immune system are no problem. Radical things start to have extra risks…"
Probably very easy. A minor tweak that gives colour-changing cells or bio-luminescence through hair strands that now work like fibre-optic threads.I.. frown.
"How about hair that changes color?" She pauses mid-bite and notices my expression. "No?"
Easier to say 'Well, it's in place now, Bit late to say 'take it all back', isn't it?' than fight to get it set up while working around corporate 'concerns'."Oh, no, there are a couple of ways to do that… But I was thinking. The FDA isn't.. really functioning now, is it?"
Karon shrugs. "No? Isn't that why you're doing this?"
"So there isn't really anything stopping us just… Rolling out super-advanced medicine without bothering jumping through their hoops. I… Think I need to phone some people."
Now, what sort of advanced medical technologies might he be considering, hmm? Purple Healing Rays would be a solid first step. maybe some kryptonian-based gene-editing technology, start getting rid of inheritable diseases and conditions? I doubt anyone would argue that letting people suffer from congenital conditions is better than fixing the issue.