Distance Learning for fun and profit...

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"You are under arrest for murder with a Parahuman power, Villain!"

"No I'm not."

"What... Of course you are! By the powers granted to me by the federal government, I am placing you under arrest!"

"For what?"

"I just told you! Murder exacerbated by a Parahuman power. Kaiser is dead over there, and we have witnesses that say you did it."

"I did do it, yes."

"AHA! Condemned out of your own mouth, miscreant! You are coming with me."

"Nope."

"... you are making this far more difficult than it needs to be. We have incontrovertible proof that..."

"Hold on. Please."

"Attempting to talk yourself out of this won't work."

"Bet it will."

"What was that?"

"Nothing. OK, look. You're trying to arrest me for murdering our local Nazi leader by means of a Parahuman power, correct?"

"Yes."

"And you think that I'm a villain?"

"Yes!"

"Right. I see. Couple of minor points though."

"Which are?"

"Well, point one, it was self defence, he was attacking this entire area and killed at least five people I'm sure of, not to mention injured about another ten."

"Killing a villain with powers is unacceptable and is deemed murder in the eyes of the law regardless of circumstances."

"Which is idiotic. That aside, point two is that I didn't use any powers."

"I don't understand..."

"I used this. It's a gun. You may remember them from such crimes as the bank robbery yesterday where all your Wards got humiliated?"

"..."

"Shot him right in the eye. .45ACP hollow point to the brain seemed to do the job, even with his armor. He still needed to be able to see and he didn't duck fast enough."

"..."

"No powers. No Parahuman crime. Clear self defence case in my view, and I bet the law will say the same."

"...even if you used a gun, you being a Parahuman will still mean that..."

"Not a Parahuman either. Just a normal human."

"You're wearing a mask!"

"It's the middle of March and it's cold. This is a scarf!"

"I don't believe this."

"Sorry. Not a Parahuman, no powers involved, Kaiser was a dick, and now he's a dead dick. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go talk to the cops over there, the ones grinning at us, tell them what happened, and then my dad expects me home for dinner. Nice to meet you, Armsmaster. Later."

 

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"So, you want to know how the light switch makes the bulb work, do you?"

"I do, yes. I can't figure it out. It's something to do with electrickery, I think?"

"OK. It's pretty simple. Right, you see this switch here on the wall?"

"Yep."

"Great. Now, on the other end of the switch, inside the wall, there is a string. It runs up the wall inside a little tube, all the way across the ceiling, and down into that light over there. Got that?"

"With you so far. Seems reasonable."

"Inside the light bulb there is a little pixie."

"A pixie?"

"Yes. Only a tiny one, but it's there."

"...All right, I think I can see something that might be a pixie in there."

"They're very small and that's a frosted bulb, so you'll have to take my word for it. So, the string goes into the bulb, and ends up tied onto one of the pixie's legs. Not too tight, that would be cruel, but it's not coming off. The pixie is strapped into a teeny tiny little seat. What do you think happens when I flip the switch like this?"

"The... string pulls on the pixie?"

"Exactly! Yes, the string pulls on the pixie. And what do you think that does to the pixie?"

"Um..."

"I'll tell you. It gets really annoyed."

"Well, that seems only sensible..."

"I know. And an annoyed pixie gets very, very active. It starts flapping its wings like crazy."

"OK...?"

"It flaps its wings so hard, in fact, that they start to glow!"

"Really?"

"Yes. It's just like when you blow on a fire, right? Lots of air motion, you get a glow. A bright one."

"And that's where the light comes from!"

"That is indeed where the light comes from, yes. I do this, the string gets pulled, all the way up there, across there, down into there, and bob's your uncle, the pixie gets annoyed and light comes out. See? Perfectly logical and straightforward application of String Theory."

"Hey, I've heard of that! I was wondering what it was. I wish the people on the TV could explain things as clearly as you do!"

"Well, I am an engineer, I know how to tell non-engineers about my field."

"And why does the bulb finally stop working?"

"The pixie dies. Because it doesn't get fed."

"...Poor little thing."

"Meh, pixies breed really quickly. If we didn't put them in bulbs we'd be overrun with the damn things."

"Fair enough. While you're here, can you explain how the toaster gets hot?"

"Sure. Have you heard of glow worms...?"

 

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"Taylor, what are we going to do about the waste heat problem?"

"Do? What do you mean?"

"This process will generate a lot of heat. We need to get rid of that heat or something's going to melt. So how are we going to do that? I can't see any cooling functionality in this design, and it's too small to radiate the thermal energy."

"Ah. OK, I get it. We use one of these."

"...a bottle?"

"A heat bottle. We put the waste heat into it, and when it's full, screw the cap on and put it to one side for later use. We have to be environmentally responsible, you know, we can't just go around dumping heat anywhere we happen to be."

"A... heat bottle."

"Yeah."

"You're going to put heat into a bottle. Not even a thermally insulated container, a bottle."

"Indeed."

"It's transparent! I can see right through it!"

"Of course, that's so you can easily see visually when it's full! You always want a quick manual sanity check on this sort of thing."

"We need a sanity check, all right..."

"It'll work, honest. Look, here's a nearly full one, see?"

"Taylor, heat doesn't work like that!"

"I decided it did. Now it does."

"..."

"And I designed this thing too, you can put the bottle of heat into it and it'll keep the house warm for months! Cool, isn't it? If you'll pardon the pun."

"I think the Council is going to have a collective stroke if they meet you. Can I make the introduction? Please?"