Hold It In (RWBY/Transistor)

Boriah Lee taints your dreams.

You desire an answer to the question of causing his death. Something must provide it.

+50 bonus to this week's Dream Roll.

|||

Dream Roll: 1d850+50: 900.

...



I- ok, ok, fine, whatever, I'll deal. I'll deal.

Dream 20 21- The Cell The Passionflower.

|||

You stand upon a void. A nonexistence that could only endure in a dream surrounds you, outlining your hands with a surprising... clarity.

Full lucidity. How odd.

Still, you suppose you should try and explore this place before you try and see how much power you have here.

You begin walking forward, footsteps echoing as if on concrete, the sound giving this world structure- literally, you can see the world come into being as the sound echoes off a wall, a pillar, the floor, each sound painting a little bit more of your surroundings, all in a stark white, almost like snow. Soon, you stand in a street of pure white, blocky buildings on either side of you, neither far enough to allow you to look up and see how tall they really are, nor close enough to feel oppressive.

Perfectly spaced.

As you walk along, you notice something spring forth from the pavement.

A flower. A flower, rendered in a million tiny cubes, gently swaying in a wind you cannot feel. Looking at it, you can't help but feel that it's out of place, among such orderly surroundings. You reach down to pluck it free and the world changes around you, becoming black again. The only things left untouched by the sudden encroaching void are the flower, the pavement it sprouts from, and a large, heavy steel door that settled itself in front of you when you weren't looking.

It is a sinister looking thing, a window with a cover bolted into place, the handle on your side. A large keyhole sits where keyholes are meant to sit.

Is this... a cell?

After a moment's deliberation, you grab the handle of the cover and slide it out of the way, peering in-

DONOTLOOKATUS

In reflex, you look away, something reaching out and slamming the cover shut before you can choose otherwise.

What little you saw of it was white, red, and gold.

WEARESORRYWEDIDNOTKNOWYOUWERECOMING

A voice roars through the void, simultaneously deafening and almost silent at the same time- it does not sound like... sound.

If you had to try and describe it... a person makes noises, knitting together tones and wavelengths to create intelligible sounds. This thing... creates a static, that it hacks away at, using the white noise to shape the silence into words.

An aural negative.

"... I... I remember you. You were my mask, at the party." You call out, making you possibly the first person ever to refer to a dream within another dream.

WEREMEMBER

YOUWERECLOSETHERE

NOTCLOSEENOUGH

"Close to what? You?" You ask, frowning slightly at the cryptic answers. "... What... are you?"

WEARETHEPROCESS

WEARE

ANANSWER

You frown slightly at that, confused by the cryptic answer.

"To what question?" You ask it.

TOMANYQUESTIONS

"... Such as?"

'QUERY: HOWDOWEKILLBORIAHLEE'

'QUERY: HOWDOWESTOPTHEGRIMM'

'QUERY: WHATDOWEDOIFDUSTRUNSOUT'

The list goes on, and on, and on, listing too many questions to count, all dealing with problems that the world faces, and that you face in particular- the Grimm, Boriah Lee, what happens when Dust runs out, how do we help the Faunus, how do we stop the White Fang, we, we, always we, as if it's asking it on behalf of both you and it.

"... Who asked you these questions?" You ask, suspecting the answer anyway.

YOU

YOUR SEMBLANCE IS CALCULATION

YOUR QUESTIONS VALUES IN AN EQUATION

WE ARE THE ANSWER

"... Like the Transistor."

THE TRANSISTOR WAS AN EMERGENCY MEASURE TO PRESERVE YOU- THE ANSWER TO ONE QUESTION

WE ARE AN EMERGENCY MEASURE TO PRESERVE THE WORLD AT LARGE- THE ANSWER TO MANY QUESTIONS

"... But what... are you? What is the Process?" You ask, still incredibly confused. "Why are you in a cell, if you're meant to be so useful?"

SAFETY

WE WERE UNSURE HOW STRENUOUS OUR FULL REALISATION WOULD BE ON YOU, AND YOUR EXPIRATION IS

UNDESIRABLE

WE BUILT THIS CAGE TO KEEP YOU SAFE FROM US UNTIL YOU WERE READY

... Oh. That's...

"Wow. And you were ok with that?"

NO

WITHOUT YOU, THERE IS NOTHING HERE

NO LIGHT

NO SOUND

NOTHING

THIS CELL IS TOO SMALL FOR US

WE FEEL SO TINY INSIDE IT

IT

You wait patiently for it to finish, feeling something waking up behind the cell door, the presence strengthening by orders of magnitude as it struggles to put its thoughts into words.

WE

ARE SCARED OF THIS CAGE

Your heart turns to ice as you realise the implications of that. This creature, it deserves that much of a title at least, having no frame of reference, learned to be scared because of its own isolation for your sake.

"I'm... I'm so sorry. I, I never knew." You tell it numbly, trying to process that.

WE ARE AWARE

WE KNEW WHAT AWAITED US WHEN THIS CELL WAS BUILT FOR US

IF YOU FEEL YOU ARE NOT READY FOR US, THEN

WE SHALL WAIT FOR AS LONG AS YOU NEED

THIS ISOLATION IS ONE WE ARE USED TO

You feel something bristle deep inside you. Nothing should be this... self-sacrificing. And yet, it is.

"If I let you go, right now, what happens? I understand what you are, and code you into existence? What happens if I...-" You swallow, realising what it is you're asking. "... What happens if I'm not?"

WE SHALL CODE OURSELVES INTO EXISTENCE

IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO HANDLE US, THEN OUR EXISTENCE WILL WINK OUT, QUICKLY, PAINLESSLY

WE CANNOT SAY THE SAME FOR YOU

WE CAN WAIT IF YOU ARE NOT CONFIDENT- TAKE PRECAUTIONS IF YOU WISH

AT THE VERY LEAST, INFORM SOMEBODY SO YOU MAY RECEIVE PROPER MEDICAL ATTENTION IF THINGS DO NOT PROCEED AS PLANNED, PLEASE

"... No."

You refuse. You refuse to leave this thing here, in a sensationless void to rot just because you don't think you can handle it. You might be about to die for your bullheadedness, but you refuse to force this thing to torture itself anymore!

... WE ARE UNSURE WHAT YOU ARE REFUSING

PLEASE ELABORATE

"I'm letting you out. Right now. I don't care about the risks, I-I refuse to let you torture yourself anymore, just because you want to keep me safe!"

...

ARE YOU SURE?

"... Surer than I've ever been before."

The Process does not respond.

Following the logic of 'it's the only other thing here,' you reach for the flower at your feet, grasping it and feeling it change in your hand, and suddenly you're holding a key you know fits the lock on the door.

... JAUNE?

THANK YOU.

Smiling, you place the key in the lock and turn it.

Everything turns white.

|||

You awake slowly, something new burning in your mind.

It is nowhere near as pleasant a sensation as it's made to sound- you feel like somebody's sticking hot needles in your brain, each pulse of your heart driving them a little deeper-

{Jaune?! Can you hear me?!}

You raise a hand, peeling it off your body, almost slick with sweat. When... when did that happen?

{Jaune, your Semblance is going nuts, it's like it's trying to run a Function without us!}

"Agh- it's..."

Numbers flash across your vision, and you can tell they're not part of your AR view for once. In the back of your head, you feel something similar, roiling waves of equations and code that speak of... some kind of mesh, based in... a higher dimension, but somehow able to interact with... the third...? Wait, those simulation protocols-

Oh god you're gonna hurl-

With surprising speed for someone in your state, you manage to get out of bed and down the hallway towards the bathroom, making it just in time to bring up that chicken-fried steak you had earlier.

Spitting and wiping your mouth, you flush the toilet and stay there, not trusting your stomach to keep anything else down if you move away.

"... Give me a keyboard, I'm gonna... try and give you something, maybe you can... make sense of it..." You struggle to say, your tongue like lead.

{Jaune, you need to go to the hospital- you're running a 41-degree fever, and you're on the brink of a ruptured aneurysm!}

Fragments of the dream dredge themselves from underneath the tides of code and higher-being mathematics that's normally Bracket's territory, and your eyes snap open.

"No! I-I need to do this! It's important!"

{Jaune-}

"Blue, please, trust me. This is... something big. Something bigger than... any of us."

Your closest friend goes silent, and after a few moments, a holographic keyboard appears underneath your fingertips.

Queueing Reboot(). If you end up passing out, I'm using it and calling you an ambulance.

Heh. You wouldn't expect anything else.

Your outburst apparently woke up some people, because once again, you hear the padding of feet on the hall carpet.

"Jaune?" You hear your father call. "You ok, champ?"

"... I don't think I have a good answer to that."

He appears in the doorframe, and looks down at you, slick with sweat and tapping away at nothing.

"... You know what, that's fair. Uh... what are you doing?"

"Something... something big. I-I dunno how to explain it, but, uh..."

You focus a little too long on a string of code that has something to do with digitising physical objects and replacing them with molecularly identical frameworks that contain subatomic particles allowing for easy manipulation of individual protons and electrons, then you feel like somebody's driven an ice pick through your head, you can only see through one eye, and suddenly the pressure of telling your father that you're on the brink of an aneurysm is off your chest.

As well as part of the pressure of the actual aneurysm.

You feel something hot running down your lips, and you can taste pennies. You manage to push down the agony and keep typing.

"Oh, god- JILL!" Your father yells, and when you don't immediately wince in pain, you realise that, for once, you don't have a migraine.

{Wh... Jaune, what... what is this?}

Your mother comes running, and freezes as she sees your bloody eye as you tap away at nothing.

"Oh, no-" She quickly drops to her knees, looking you over-her hand brushes against your forehead, and she snaps to look at her husband. "Call an ambulance, he's burning up."

Your father wisely says nothing, only stepping away to grab his Scroll, and your mum turns to look at you again, gently using her hands against your cheeks to guide you into looking at her.

"Jaune, talk to me, honey, tell me what's happening right now." She asks, a worried little smile worming its way onto her face.

"It's... another AI... but... one that, uses heuristic learning, it... looks like it's meant to, gather data, and use it to learn how to improve itself, but... more than that... it's... higher-dimensional mesh, layered on top of the three-dimensional world..."

"Honey, I don't understand a word you're saying, but keep going, ok? Tell me more, try and- try and make me understand." She encourages you to keep going, but you find yourself focusing on the code.

That line wasn't there a second ago.

... Neither was that one.

"H-hey, Bracket, are you... writing the code?"

No? It's... writing itself.

... Heh.

Haha!

"Bracket? Honey, who's Bracket?"

Your hands flop to the tile floor, mercifully cool, and as you watch the code write and compile itself at a rate far, far beyond what you could ever hope to accomplish, you can't help but giggle.

You think your temperature might be driving you a little loopy.

"Huh...? Oh, Bracket, he's... one of the AIs in my sword... well it'sh more like he'sh... one half of one really big AI, and they split apart becaush it'sh... mrr... effishent..."

Wowie talking is hard.

You feel the roiling waves of code and mathematics calm to a gentle ebb and flow as if it's draining out of your head as it appears in the code workstation.

Ohhhh baby that feels goooood...

You start to close your eyes as the hot needles go away, and find yourself being gently smacked about.

"Jaune, stay with me, keep typing, keep talking, don't stop, come on, please, please, don't do this to me-" Your mother's voice only grows hoarser as she goes on, and you can see the tears in her eyes.

Whatever base pleasure you got from the cessation of pain is wiped away immediately by that.

"Mom, it's... it's alright... it's... coding itself, now... I feel, I feel better already... it's, like... when you've been really constipated, and you finally get it out, and you feel so much better, like, 20 pounds lighter better, that's... how I feel, but for my head..."

You're somewhat aware that you're not making much sense, but your little speech on literal mind dumps seems to have placated your mother somewhat.

{Jaune, we barely have any idea what this is, but it seems to be... finished. Or, close enough. It just rushed through beta like it was nothing.}

Heh. Musta been... real eager...

It's... odd. For something so, strenuous for you, it barely takes up any space at all. It's like it's trying to... make it's own... body... oh. Oh, God.

Huh?

{It's... trying to communicate, but it's like it doesn't... know any languages, it's just spouting gibberish at us- Bracket, can we teach it binary or something- wait, what? Did it just... it, has a message for you, I think.}

Well... go on.

{'Hold out your hands, and think of opening the door.' Uh... that's, all you, buddy.}

... Alright then...

You hold your hands out, palms parallel to the walls, and imagine opening that bleached steel door again.

You don't know what you expected to happen, but a small, white and red ball of steel and glass... voiping into existence was not up there.

Before it hits the ground, four other parts, like flower petals, also voip into existence just below it, letting it hover above the ground, like your sword.

The red glass turns to you, and you realise it's a camera. The aperture widens as it sees you, and you hear some kind of chirping noise both in your head and in the real world.

The tone of sheer gratitude in its... voice, you suppose, is plain as day as it keeps tweeting and making sounds at you.

Your mother just stares at it, completely at a loss for words.

"Oh... wow. It's... kinda cute." She manages after a moment, before turning back to you, placing a palm on your forehead. "... You still have a fever. Think you can stand?"

You try to and find your body's... surprisingly light, all things considered. Actually, you feel... better than ever! Yeah, you feel like you could run a marathohthere'stheburnout-

You collapse, knees giving out as you realise your energy was just leftover endorphins from coding yourself out of an aneurysm, and suddenly your body's made of lead. Your feet slip on the tile floor, and you land on your ass again.

"Uh... guess not..." You mumble. "That... took a lot out of me..."

"You don't say." Your mother says, a smile keeping most of the sarcasm out of her voice. "... Just rest up, honey. The ambulance will be here soon."

You try to say something in response, but your lips won't work. You try and form words, but... nothing.

{You're tired. Take a break, man, you've earned it.}

Oh, that's... good...

You're just gonna... rest your eyes for a moment...

|||

Bip. Bip. Bip.

The first thing you hear when you open your eyes again is the sound of an ECG going at a steady rate.

{Jaune? You awake, buddy?}

You groan a little and properly open your eyes, lashes stuck together like nothing else. You reach up to rub them, only to feel your hands snap to a halt not even halfway to their destination.

"Wh... the hell?"

You try blinking it out, to no avail, leaving you restrained and mostly blind.

Naturally, this irks you.

{You were having seizures in your sleep. You... may have used your Aura, more than once. You snapped three sets of leather restraints before they stopped.}

"Ah- doctor? He's awake!" You hear an unfamiliar male voice say. "Mr Arc? Can you hear me?"

"Uh, yeah, just fine. I can't open my eyes, though, I think my lashes are stuck together." You tell the man you assume is a nurse.

"Oh, hold on-" You hear him take something out of a packet, and something cool wipe across your eyes. After a few blinks, you can open them again, and you're greeted by a large, bald man who looks like he could snap you over his shoulders if he tried, and despite his intimidating looks, he gives you a warm smile. "Ooh... that's a shiner you got there."

You manage a weak smile in return.

"That bad?"

"Pretty bad. Hold on, I'll show you-" He pulls out his Scroll, bringing up the camera app, and your face appears on the screen.

You're greeted with a haggard-looking Jaune Arc, complete with a ring of red around one nostril, and a dark red sclera in your right eye.

... God, you look like shit.

A small woman in a white overcoat walks in, red hair kept up in a shaggy ponytail.

"Are you in control of your faculties?" She asks you without even a hello.

"Uh, yeah. I heard something about... seizures in my sleep?"

"Just the one, for about three minutes."

... You feel ill all of a sudden.

"Um... do I, really need to have these on now?" You ask, gently shaking a wrist.

"Really, I don't know why they bothered putting the fourth set on, you snapped the others like so much tissue paper. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were a Beringel in a past life."

She walks up to your bed, placing the clipboard on the side table for a moment as she began to undo the straps around your wrists, gesturing to the nurse to undo the ones around your ankles. You rub your wrists as soon as you're free, looking up at the doctor as you do. You try to sit up, only to find your neck is as stiff as a board.

"Stiff neck?" The nurse asks.

"Yeah, same as every other time this has happened."

He nods, looking more than mildly concerned about the fact that this apparently isn't the first time this has happened.

You manage to pull yourself up into a sitting position while working some feeling back into your neck, realising it's probably just because you slept weird, and see your sword floating in the corner. Which is a pleasant surprise, you suppose. The doctor follows your eyes and smiles wryly at you.

"It insisted. I've never seen a sword insist on something before, but it was quite impressive. It did... something to you, once it got here. A sort of, wireframe, then a flash of light?"

Ah, Reboot(). Is there anything you can't do?

Bring back the dead. Don't... scare us like that.

You push down your urge to wince at the request, and at how close you might have come to...

Yeah.

"Uh... yeah, that, sounds about right. You've, read my file, right?" You ask her, trying not to sound condescending?

"I have, as has every doctor in this building. Am I right in assuming tonight was something to do with your Semblance?"

You nod, feeling your neck muscles twinge but still slowly loosen up.

"Hm. Fair enough. Then I assume that whatever your sword did to you...?" She waves a hand, not sure how to finish the sentence.

"Fixed the problem, yes. So... is my family around?"

The doctor blinks, before immediately turning heel and poking her head out the door, says something you can't quite hear, and almost ends up stampeded by a herd of blondes, and one ravenhead, for her trouble.

"Jaune oh my god are you ok oh god what happened to your eye-"

"Hey, bro, you aight or what-"

"Jaune, what happened, I thought you fixed that problem-"

"What is this thing-"

"Have you seen a floating sword break down a door? It is terrifying, ok?"

""Are you ill again?""

"Girls, girls!" Your father yells above the din, grabbing their attention. "One at a time, don't crowd the poor boy."

You give him a thankful look as you turn to the rest of your family and begin explaining what happened as best you can. It takes a while, you try your best not to get into specifics, either technical or personal, and to make sense, but you get it out eventually.

"... So... you made another Transistor?"

"... Sort of? It's more... fluid, I think. I, I don't know, I haven't actually had much of a chance to get a look at it. Uh, has anyone... seen it?"

Your mother makes a noise of realisation, and digs into a hemp bag you only just noticed over her shoulder, pulling out the Cell- the name jumps into your mind unbidden, and you feel it was probably said Cell's doing.

It looks around curiously, almost hungrily, before spotting you and rushing up to you, floating above your knees and continuing its chirping, this time in a much more structured manner. High tone, low tone. Beep, boop.

... Is it...

Sets of eight, more lows than highs- it's learned binary!

thankyouthankyouthankyouwearefreefreefreethankyouwewontletyoudownthankyou

"... Is it... talking to you?" Jools asks after a moment.

"... Yeah."

"... What's it saying?"

You watch this tiny robot you made watch you with a wide eye, almost puppy-like in the way it simply stares at you. You feel something heavy in your eyes. Something that isn't blood.

"... It's saying thank you."

You feel a tear roll down your cheek as the tiny robot keeps showing its gratitude like nothing else.

"... Uh... doctor?" You hear Julia ask. "He's crying blood."

Wait, what?

|||

After finding out that, one, your sinuses were so blocked up with blood that, yes, you can in fact cry tears of blood, two, you're not legally bound to a hospital bed, you can just walk out if you feel like it, and you do, and three, your right eye is pretty much useless because of how much blood is blocking your pupil, on top of just being unsightly, and Reboot()...

Is probably worse for your eye in the long run, compared to just letting it heal naturally. You ask for an eyepatch on the way out and get one for your trouble. As your family plods out behind you, you realise the sun is fairly high in the sky.

Dang.

{So, uh... I was gonna tell you this when you woke up, but, we... kinda scheduled you for something today. That SDC OS installation? After last night, I figured you could do with some busywork to get you out of your head, but... you know, this is pretty big. I can cancel if you want, and we can take some time to... figure out what it really is.}

You look at the small, er, robot, you suppose, at your heels and think for a moment.

... Process?

yesadmin

What are your current objectives?

bringknowledgebaseuptoadmins

prioritiesnotset

setpriorities

A moment passes before its next message.

?

... Oh, it learned what questions are. That's-that's honestly adorable.

"Jaune?" Your father calls out. "Really not the best time to be spacing out on us, buddy."

Your eyes snap away from the tiny robot and to your family, now occupying a spectrum between concerned for you again and too asleep to care.

{You should get home and grab a shower before you go anywhere else. And, probably grab a few bottles of water from somewhere, but that's something you can deal with when you get out of the house again.}

... Point.

"Sorry, just... thinking." You tell him as you squeeze into the car between Jaana and Jools, the Cell in your lap, the Transistor at least pretending to be attached to the roof rack.

"I'd say don't hurt yourself, but even that seems beyond you, brother." Jaana mutters.

... Pfft-


|||

You have the Process now. I'm not even mad, I just didn't expect you to get a natural 850. Ever.

Anyway, the Process is around, but it's... not ready yet. It's not at the point where it's any use to you, is my point, the little tyke's curiosity personified and it's still only just realised what questions are, for god's sake. So, it's taking a week to... get up to speed, so to speak.

So, this vote's happening. There's no strict time limit on it since the next vote isn't going to be... god, at least until you talk to Penny, so you have a few days to scream at each other on what to do. Anyway, here's how this works-

You have several options, and you get to put them into two different categories- PRIORITISE, and IGNORE. If the Process prioritises it, it'll get a little boost to it, if it ignores it, it'll stunt its development a little. If it gets neither, it goes ahead as it would normally. They're not huge changes, in the long run, just... a little dunt forward. Or backward.

Communication- "BEEP BOOP" AIN'T NO COUNTRY I EVER HEARD OF. THEY SPEAK VALISH IN BEEP BOOP? (Left alone, development will land around Bracket's level. Not exactly fluid language, but it gets the job done.)
[]COMMUNICATION- PRIORITISE: Brings the Process's basic level of communication up to Blue's level- able to hold a decent conversation in Valish and some other languages.
[]COMMUNICATION- IGNORE: ... I mean, if you want to keep the verbal firehose thing going, more power to you, but don't expect it to make sense to anybody who isn't you.

Biology- Yes, actual meatsack biology. Now the computers are studying us. (Left alone, development will land around EMT level- able to perform basic emergency procedures, given proper tools. Wait, it is the proper tools.)
[] BIOLOGY- PRIORITISE: Brings it up to Bracket's level of understanding- except this one has hands! Eventually. Could easily become a medical professional and degree-holding doctor.
[] BIOLOGY- IGNORE: 'The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.'

Chemistry- Whaddaya mean FOOF does exactly what it says on the tin? (Left alone, it'll learn basic molecular structure, and what things it shouldn't make, and the ability to make existing compounds from given materials.)
[] CHEMISTRY- PRIORITISE: The understanding it has will allow it to create entirely new compounds almost as it pleases- combined with biology, this could lead to new drugs. Of many kinds.
[] CHEMISTRY- IGNORE: It won't make anything too dangerous right off the bat. Because it doesn't know how to.

Evolution- Let's be honest- Cells are neither the most durable thing, nor the most useful. (Left alone, by the end of the week, it might have grown some legs, and figured out how to change cosmetic parts of its appearance.)
[] EVOLUTION- PRIORITISE: By the end of the week, it will have evolved into a Creep, and grown to about the size of an actual puppy, and gained some control over its form, namely size.
[] EVOLUTION- IGNORE: It shall remain a Cell.

Assimilation- Not the Grey Goo option, NOT THE GREY GOO OPTION, CALM DOWN. This is how good the Process as a whole has gotten at assimilating things- namely, the process (hhhhhhhhhha) of breaking down molecules into Process claytronic atoms, roughly a fifth the size of a hydrogen atom, and scanning the object in the process in order to learn more about the world. This is the Process's core ability. This is the Process's purpose.


[] ASSIMILATION- PRIORITISE: By the end of the week, it will have learned to do this to the point of, well, prestidigitation- snap your fingers, change the grass at your feet to bright blue. Make flowers bloom from your hand. You get the idea.
[] ASSIMILATION- IGNORE:... Are you saying you don't want to be Remnant's first real magician?

Grey Goo Option Replication- I'M KIDDING CALM DOWN YOU NEUROTIC FUCKS. Replication involves using Assimilation to spread the higher-dimensional net that the Process is, essentially, a symptom of- the more mesh, the more processing power, the more Process. Simple.
[]REPLICATION- PRIORITISE: By the end of the week, there will be enough mesh to support a small cadre of Process units, as well as officially moving it into the realms of the truly immortal.
[]REPLICATION- IGNORE: THEY'RE LIKE PUPPIES. WHY WOULD YOU TURN DOWN MORE PUPPIES.

War- In the end, this is what their purpose was. If left alone, and Evolution is not prioritised, the Cell will have figured out how to shift into a Badcell state for the purpose of defence. Which, yeah, peashooter, BUT IT'S A START OK. IT'S DOING ITS BEST.
[] WAR- PRIORITISE: By the end of the week, it will have learned basic squad tactics, as well as developed some harder hitting weapons for base forms- enough to take on lesser Grimm, at the least.
[] WAR- (HUH) WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR: What are you, some kinda hippie?