A Star Reborn (part 17)
- Location
- Hampden Park
17th April
07:23 GMT -7
"That sounds like a total disaster."
Doctor Roquette hasn't got any friendlier since last time I saw her. This is the first time I've encountered her on her own turf, and she's a good deal more self assured. She takes a sip of her second coffee of the morning while waiting for me to explain myself.
"No. A total disaster would have been one of the Star Hunters getting away, or reactivating a Mother Star. Or mind controlling our team."
"Uh huh."
"Fewer people were mind controlled by alien Starfish at the end of the day than were at the start. The two largest, most intelligent and most telepathically capable were killed-"
"I'm not sure you get points for it if they do it to themselves."
"-and we got several important leads on Devil Jizz supply on the east coast." Which is what the rest of the team are doing at the moment.
She grimaces. "Can you not call it that?"
"We.. rather felt that.. any of the other names made it sound 'cool'… I mean, the number of people who'd be interested in injecting themselves with something called-."
She holds up her right hand to stop me. "Fine! Fine."
"So, even though we're pretty confident that all of the remaining Starro-tech wafers got turned into actual Star Conquerors-"
"Who can now use magic."
"-we'd still like to increase our production of Cure-tech a lot. There are only a few laboratories in the world capable of growing Starro-tech wafers and people will notice if anyone starts walking around with a Star Conqueror on their face."
"Unless they just did what they did with Green Lantern."
I shake my head. "Guy lives on his own, doesn't have a normal job and can fly and it was still a risk. If Martian Manhunter or Miss Martian had scanned him or he'd actually had to stay away from his Star Conqueror for a prolonged period of time, the programming would have failed. It was a desperation move."
"And the Green Lantern Corps really couldn't track them down?"
"If the Green Lantern Corps could reliably locate Star Conquerors there wouldn't have been any on Earth. They took the ones we still had in captivity and they promised to look into it, but…" I shrug. "We checked the obvious potential hiding places: Liberty River and its offshoots, Gotham Reservoir and South City Park lake. They're not there."
"Great. Did Green Lantern know I worked on the original Cure-tech?"
"Iiiiiiii'm.. not sure. It was in the files, but he's not the best at doing the required reading."
"Oh great!" She sits back hard against the back of her chair. "Great, now I've got that to worry about as well."
"If you'd like me to help you improve your security here, I'm perfectly happy to do that. I can also leave you a couple of Praexis Demons as bodyguards… Permanently." Wait a second. "Or you could use your nanofog-."
"Current generation Fog only lasts twelve minutes outside a controlled environment! And it's incredibly expensive. I'd never get the University to okay me using it like that!"
"How 'incredibly expensive' is 'incredibly expensive'?"
"About half a million dollars for a thimbleful. And that's not even taking into account all the time it takes to make!"
I frown. "The League of Shadows had you make a nanofog container for them in two weeks."
"No, the League of Shadows read my work and spied on my laboratory for years in order to replicate my work. They only kidnapped me to rewrite the programming to do what they wanted it to do."
"Do you know what happened to their equipment? If you could get hold of it-."
"Yes." She nods. "Someone shot it with a railgun." Oh. Whoops. I suppose… Some of the things they had in storage… "And yes, getting their Fog containment vessel helped a little bit, but it's still a very expensive area of science without any profitable application."
"Your Fog can rebuild things, right?"
She sighs, finishes the last of her coffee and then stands, pushing back her chair. "I'll show you."
I follow her from the robotics office down the corridor and to the nanorobotics laboratory. She scans her key card to open the door to the outer laboratory. "After I got kidnapped, the Dean made some noise about upgrading security. All we actually got before the Justice League destroyed the League of Shadows were a few new keycard readers. Then we were deemed to not have 'exceptional need' any longer."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"What were they going to do against a supervillain anyway?" She walks forwards, towards a viewing window. "The nanotech gets created through here. The temperature and pressure are tightly regulated, there are force fields to keep contaminants out and the nanotech chamber is designed to only be remote accessible but I don't think for a moment that it would keep out a dedicated saboteur."
"How does it actually get made?"
"I came up with the designs and Doctor Raymond Palmer built the first generation of nanobots. After that, each generation have built their own successors."
"So… How many are in there at the moment?"
"Billions upon billions." Her voice is a little less aggressive when she says it. "They're too small to program so all the commands have to be handled remotely."
"And what can they make?"
"Just about anything if they've got the material. They have trouble handling anything much denser than lead and since they can't work on the subatomic scale at all they can't transmute matter. And you would not believe how long it took to convince Homeland Security they can't be used to build nuclear weapons."
"You've got a working nanofabricator?"
"Technically, yes. In practice there's almost nothing it can build that can't be created more cheaply using conventional means. And last month an ass of an ex grad student let a freshman in here and they thought it would be fun to shine a laser pointer at them."
"They're that fragile?"
"Like this? Yes. They're measured in nanometers. Proportionally, it's like you getting hit by a… A fifty kilowatt laser."
"Have you considered using magic to increase their resilience?"
"What?" She blinks, frowning. "No. Why would I?"
"An enchantment designed to protect mechanical devices could be placed in the vicinity of the fabricator and work without actually touching the Fog. And that's just off the top of my head." I tap my right fist against my lips. "I can get you the charm in a few hours, and I've got a power supply I can donate that will generate as much electricity as you want."
"That would… Help."
"I can pay for the increased Cure-tech production, and… There's a meeting I'd.. like you to come to next week. A few experts in their fields… Combining their efforts."
"Um. Anyone I know?"
"Sephtian. Ted Kord?"
"The guy who built the storm control drone?"
"One of our early successes. Normally, a species wouldn't have functional nanofabricators until they're a few hundred years more advanced than we are." I smile at her. "I'd like to shave a little off that, if you're interested."
"I'll… Check my schedule."
07:23 GMT -7
"That sounds like a total disaster."
Doctor Roquette hasn't got any friendlier since last time I saw her. This is the first time I've encountered her on her own turf, and she's a good deal more self assured. She takes a sip of her second coffee of the morning while waiting for me to explain myself.
"No. A total disaster would have been one of the Star Hunters getting away, or reactivating a Mother Star. Or mind controlling our team."
"Uh huh."
"Fewer people were mind controlled by alien Starfish at the end of the day than were at the start. The two largest, most intelligent and most telepathically capable were killed-"
"I'm not sure you get points for it if they do it to themselves."
"-and we got several important leads on Devil Jizz supply on the east coast." Which is what the rest of the team are doing at the moment.
She grimaces. "Can you not call it that?"
"We.. rather felt that.. any of the other names made it sound 'cool'… I mean, the number of people who'd be interested in injecting themselves with something called-."
She holds up her right hand to stop me. "Fine! Fine."
"So, even though we're pretty confident that all of the remaining Starro-tech wafers got turned into actual Star Conquerors-"
"Who can now use magic."
"-we'd still like to increase our production of Cure-tech a lot. There are only a few laboratories in the world capable of growing Starro-tech wafers and people will notice if anyone starts walking around with a Star Conqueror on their face."
"Unless they just did what they did with Green Lantern."
I shake my head. "Guy lives on his own, doesn't have a normal job and can fly and it was still a risk. If Martian Manhunter or Miss Martian had scanned him or he'd actually had to stay away from his Star Conqueror for a prolonged period of time, the programming would have failed. It was a desperation move."
"And the Green Lantern Corps really couldn't track them down?"
"If the Green Lantern Corps could reliably locate Star Conquerors there wouldn't have been any on Earth. They took the ones we still had in captivity and they promised to look into it, but…" I shrug. "We checked the obvious potential hiding places: Liberty River and its offshoots, Gotham Reservoir and South City Park lake. They're not there."
"Great. Did Green Lantern know I worked on the original Cure-tech?"
"Iiiiiiii'm.. not sure. It was in the files, but he's not the best at doing the required reading."
"Oh great!" She sits back hard against the back of her chair. "Great, now I've got that to worry about as well."
"If you'd like me to help you improve your security here, I'm perfectly happy to do that. I can also leave you a couple of Praexis Demons as bodyguards… Permanently." Wait a second. "Or you could use your nanofog-."
"Current generation Fog only lasts twelve minutes outside a controlled environment! And it's incredibly expensive. I'd never get the University to okay me using it like that!"
"How 'incredibly expensive' is 'incredibly expensive'?"
"About half a million dollars for a thimbleful. And that's not even taking into account all the time it takes to make!"
I frown. "The League of Shadows had you make a nanofog container for them in two weeks."
"No, the League of Shadows read my work and spied on my laboratory for years in order to replicate my work. They only kidnapped me to rewrite the programming to do what they wanted it to do."
"Do you know what happened to their equipment? If you could get hold of it-."
"Yes." She nods. "Someone shot it with a railgun." Oh. Whoops. I suppose… Some of the things they had in storage… "And yes, getting their Fog containment vessel helped a little bit, but it's still a very expensive area of science without any profitable application."
"Your Fog can rebuild things, right?"
She sighs, finishes the last of her coffee and then stands, pushing back her chair. "I'll show you."
I follow her from the robotics office down the corridor and to the nanorobotics laboratory. She scans her key card to open the door to the outer laboratory. "After I got kidnapped, the Dean made some noise about upgrading security. All we actually got before the Justice League destroyed the League of Shadows were a few new keycard readers. Then we were deemed to not have 'exceptional need' any longer."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"What were they going to do against a supervillain anyway?" She walks forwards, towards a viewing window. "The nanotech gets created through here. The temperature and pressure are tightly regulated, there are force fields to keep contaminants out and the nanotech chamber is designed to only be remote accessible but I don't think for a moment that it would keep out a dedicated saboteur."
"How does it actually get made?"
"I came up with the designs and Doctor Raymond Palmer built the first generation of nanobots. After that, each generation have built their own successors."
"So… How many are in there at the moment?"
"Billions upon billions." Her voice is a little less aggressive when she says it. "They're too small to program so all the commands have to be handled remotely."
"And what can they make?"
"Just about anything if they've got the material. They have trouble handling anything much denser than lead and since they can't work on the subatomic scale at all they can't transmute matter. And you would not believe how long it took to convince Homeland Security they can't be used to build nuclear weapons."
"You've got a working nanofabricator?"
"Technically, yes. In practice there's almost nothing it can build that can't be created more cheaply using conventional means. And last month an ass of an ex grad student let a freshman in here and they thought it would be fun to shine a laser pointer at them."
"They're that fragile?"
"Like this? Yes. They're measured in nanometers. Proportionally, it's like you getting hit by a… A fifty kilowatt laser."
"Have you considered using magic to increase their resilience?"
"What?" She blinks, frowning. "No. Why would I?"
"An enchantment designed to protect mechanical devices could be placed in the vicinity of the fabricator and work without actually touching the Fog. And that's just off the top of my head." I tap my right fist against my lips. "I can get you the charm in a few hours, and I've got a power supply I can donate that will generate as much electricity as you want."
"That would… Help."
"I can pay for the increased Cure-tech production, and… There's a meeting I'd.. like you to come to next week. A few experts in their fields… Combining their efforts."
"Um. Anyone I know?"
"Sephtian. Ted Kord?"
"The guy who built the storm control drone?"
"One of our early successes. Normally, a species wouldn't have functional nanofabricators until they're a few hundred years more advanced than we are." I smile at her. "I'd like to shave a little off that, if you're interested."
"I'll… Check my schedule."
Last edited:
