A Spark of Hope (Worm/Jumpchain)

I have a simple question. Can Taylor use her new ability power toggle to toggle off her workaholic power? no offense to the creator of that perk but that workaholic perk just seems like a bitch to constantly deal with since it comes with no way to turn it off.
 
As I see it, the outlaw of life-improving tinkertech is because it is contrary to the goals of the worldwide conspiracy to improve lives. Happy and healthy people don't trigger, and we needs more of them triggers as footsoldiers cannon fodder for the planned conflict with the Golden Idiot. If all those who defected from lawfullness into the Elite and Toybox as a result of these laws had been able to keep improving lives, everyone would have been happier and less triggers would have happened.
 
while it would have been great, she already has her persona as a non cat person. so sadly not going to happen if she doesn't want to become a biotikerer with shit reputation
she doesnt have a persona as a non cat person established for selene. Just include ear and tail space in the next iteration of her armour (which is definitely coming, since reproducing some of her enchantments through science opens slots for new enchantments) and once she 'unmasks' to the guild upon joining, oh hey cat ears.
 
(British accent): The Celestial Forge is a Perfectly Balanced Power Set with No Exploits
yeah... but somehow, this version of the forge is even more crack. just the personal perks are a mayor power, Taylor is such a high tire brute mover that most tinker armor is just cosmetics at this point.

Well, this story is closer to the rules of a jump-chain, so Taylor is a lot closer to the real power of a Jumper (when compared to the other Celestial Forge story: Brockton's celestial forge). Taylor even have a clear benefactor, wheras Joe have... a nebulous something that try to pass for a Thinker power.

@Eternaly_Lost if she doesn't care about profit, then I highly doubt there's laws about donating non-classified technological advancements to foreign countries. Sure, the US laws prevent her from doing it locally, but if let's say she sells it to Australia who then publish it online for free for anyone to use or access then she should be able to get around the issue.

International laws. It's likely Tinkertech have been hammered hard in every legal systems for the reasons outlined in the story.

I have a simple question. Can Taylor use her new ability power toggle to toggle off her workaholic power?

Yes, the author even pointed it in the story itself. Heck, it's exactly because of perks such as Workaholic that Power toggle exist in the first place.

As I see it, the outlaw of life-improving tinkertech is because it is contrary to the goals of the worldwide conspiracy to improve lives. Happy and healthy people don't trigger, and we needs more of them triggers as footsoldiers cannon fodder for the planned conflict with the Golden Idiot. If all those who defected from lawfullness into the Elite and Toybox as a result of these laws had been able to keep improving lives, everyone would have been happier and less triggers would have happened.

I think you underestimate corporate greed / protectionism. You don't need a worldwide conspiracy to explain why company would want to hammer reproducible tinkertech hard.
 
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quite clear to him that if he reneged on the favors he still owned them, they would ruin him by stopping running interference.
Owned -> owed
Stopping running-> ceasing to run
Second one because those two words sound clunky together.

Like the story. Sorry she didn't want combine powers as it might have let her use Armsmaster's efficiency or mixed her stuff into Dauntless's gear.

Things in fives for self adjusting armored spandex sounds like a great gift to Panacea. It just happens to echo her healing back onto herself... flight cape as an accessory.

"Amy, have you ever seen a show called Dr. Who? This is my WORDIS, warehouse of relative dimension internal space. It doesn't move through time just yet, but I can open the door to it from any door -- and back to any door I've opened to it again. "

Sputtering, Amy replies. "It's bigger on the inside?"

Taylor smiling a Tom Baker width, "Oh, you HAVE seen it."
 
Its not even just evil companies out for profits, sure they would lobby to pass such laws but lets take for example mcs dumbed down scanner, it alone contains software that would bankrupt 50% of software companies, its materials science would bankrupt entire material supply chains and sectors of the industy, its scanning ability would obsolete a lot of medical and combat scanners, it would bankrupt a ton of medical RnD companies. Such a wide ripple effect leads to massive ecocmoic collsape, sure in the long term its better to bear that cost but in the short term it will lead to a lot of suffering because of massive layoffs and the collapse of entire fields of industries.

Now if you control the world there are ways to mitigate those costs and still uplift but those take a lot of planning and resources which Taylor does not currently possess.

Note: I was the one who added the line about the old pet being dead and at least my intent was it was not talking about TT but a random character that coil abducted and overdosed to fulfill his sick tastes plus learn the dosages to keep the addiction going and the person useful. I could probably have worded it better seeing as a ton of people are assuming its TT.
 
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The only bright thing in this mess was that she had told Armsmaster, who had reported it to the PRT and thus into his files, that she had no intention of joining the wards because she had been attacked by a Protectorate member in the past and was from out of the city.

Coil knew that to be almost completely wrong. Taylor had been attacked by a Protectorate member yes, but it was a ward, local to the city, and not as Armsmaster reported, in a sexual manner.

Oh man, I don't know if Taylor wanted Armsmaster to read that between the lines.
 
Oh man, I don't know if Taylor wanted Armsmaster to read that between the lines.

I can picture Taylor's reaction to that. "Uhh... what?"

I can understand why his mind might go there though... after all, when an adult's been hurting an underage girl it's usually got a sexual element to it. It'd be pretty unusual for an adult protectorate member to be torturing a young girl *without* it getting sexual at all.
 
Thanks for the chapter!

Will be interesting to see the potential ramifications that will follow after Taylor has built a base on Mars.

Stay safe!
 
The laws are a bit to easy to abuse for my taste. Just an accusation that a tinker was involved in the development and a big player can keep a smaller player out of the market till their patent runs out.
 
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So why doesn't Armsmaster suggest making a single part blackboxed in appearance ? Put the "factory" for that part in BB that Selene produces and make the scanners initially hideously expensive. High cost will initially put it out of range of most budgets, but with all the profit raked in Selene can then donate samples by lottery, effectively giving away hundreds of them, to poor hospitals. To prevent theft they let out that it must be 'authorized' by personnel of THAT hospital and will fail in 24 hours if not charged on a very not mobile charging station that is bolted to the wall.

It's Tinkertech, competes with MRI equivalents and is only better by being hand portable and faster.

Let someone else reverse engineer it and have them deal with the economic fallout of the adjustment in several years. In the meantime she will have funds for project II, Iii and iv and her established company and patents on the process can switch over to producing the original later with a 'better' charger Etc.

If she produces devices that are tools for medical use by doctors then she helps as intended without the economic fallout. Make a phone sized robot that has a robotic limb that can be slapped onto a wound to do field surgery but tie it into a network that requires a surgeon to 'pilot' it. Without connection it can stabilize but not fix and a queue handles putting doctors on the rota to handling the surgery --or just monitor until they get to the hospital. Give these to paramedics to slap on bullet wounds or knife wounds. (Quietly make an AI that can run many of them much later.)

Making them include people already licensed is the way to keep them from being incensed over their production.
 
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Pretty sure satellites should not be an issue, at least as long as you don't send them directly at the Simurgh. Dragon has a fleet of satellites, and she does not have Taylor's extensive anti-Simurgh cloaking. No idea how many other people or organisations have working satellites, but I imagine a few do.
 
Blank protected satellites would be a problem when spotted by the Simurgh, because she will know that there is something up, when she can detect nothing on her pregoc and something on whichever other senses she has.
 
So why doesn't Armsmaster suggest making a single part blackboxed in appearance ? Put the "factory" for that part in BB that Selene produces and make the scanners initially hideously expensive. High cost will initially put it out of range of most budgets, but with all the profit raked in Selene can then donate samples by lottery, effectively giving away hundreds of them, to poor hospitals. To prevent theft they let out that it must be 'authorized' by personnel of THAT hospital and will fail in 24 hours if not charged on a very not mobile charging station that is bolted to the wall.

It's Tinkertech, competes with MRI equivalents and is only better by being hand portable and faster.

Let someone else reverse engineer it and have them deal with the economic fallout of the adjustment in several years. In the meantime she will have funds for project II, Iii and iv and her established company and patents on the process can switch over to producing the original later with a 'better' charger Etc.

If she produces devices that are tools for medical use by doctors then she helps as intended without the economic fallout. Make a phone sized robot that has a robotic limb that can be slapped onto a wound to do field surgery but tie it into a network that requires a surgeon to 'pilot' it. Without connection it can stabilize but not fix and a queue handles putting doctors on the rota to handling the surgery --or just monitor until they get to the hospital. Give these to paramedics to slap on bullet wounds or knife wounds. (Quietly make an AI that can run many of them much later.)

Making them include people already licensed is the way to keep them from being incensed over their production.
It doesn't matter how its released or distributed the economic effects that the laws are there to prevent are the same. The laws are targeted against the fully open box tinkertech not parahumans. So if mc gave it to someone else to reverse eng the it would still be illegal and still lcause damage.

There is also the major problem that she is not a tinker and literally none of her stuff is blackboxed. She also has no good way to blackbox it currently.

In addition, any tech she releases in a non blackboxed format also goes to villains, shards and entities.

Take the medical scanner as a example, it can be assembled with mostly off the shelf parts as if mc released the design even ignoring all he major conequneses the villans could assemble the device cheaply and it would change the game and cause disasters.
Blank protected satellites would be a problem when spotted by the Simurgh, because she will know that there is something up, when she can detect nothing on her pregoc and something on whichever other senses she has.
Blank does not work like that, you cant find blanked stuff by the hole it leaves, in addition blank can send false results back to any scans so any attempts ziz made probably gave a fake result.
 
It doesn't matter how its released or distributed the economic effects that the laws are there to prevent are the same. The laws are targeted against the fully open box tinkertech not parahumans. So if mc gave it to someone else to reverse eng the it would still be illegal and still lcause damage.
The laws are there to to protect American business. Once it is out there as a "Tinkertech" device, how long until someone else reverse engineers it? In our world it would be China/India involved as their laws don't necessarily care about US business laws. NEPEA is a US law, yes? Once there are Chinese knockoffs, she can sell the originals with only a small markup for the brand name Selenetech, because the law forbids the Tinkertech damaging the industry, but once regular tech is out there she can compete. She would have Armsmaster and Dragon to back her up that she released a Tinkertech product under their rules up until the knockoffs came available. End result, she gets her scanner out and in use to save lives.

As for the satellites, Blank keeps Simurgh from projecting their paths precognitively, so as long as they are kept on the opposite side of the Earth from the Simurgh, she would never notice unless she tosses something through their paths to deliberately take out a satellite she can path. The 'miss' (she wouldn't be able to path the explosion) would cause interest perhaps. Selene was planning to also make them hard to spot through technology --perhaps invisible to the eye-- as well to avoid the Blank= missing but right there in plain sight issue.
 
You know, I think Taylor overplayed her hand a little bit with the lie about a Protectorate member assaulting her. She gave more than enough detail for them to find an incident even if it was covered up. It might have just been easier and more true to say that:

Taylor had... Issues with people having authority over her. She was recovering and getting counseling but she couldn't bring herself to be under anyone's direct authority the way a Ward would be.

It gets the same idea across but isn't a lie the way what she told them was. And... well, blank can fool Armsmaster's lie detector, sure, but I have to wonder if someone else who has the actual skills to spot a lie wouldn't call her out on it immediately. It's a painfully blatant one.

That doesn't mean I think it should be taken out though. It's the kind of lie that a teenager would come up with to obscure a truth rather than blatantly spouting falsehoods. Just that she over shared by quite a bit for anyone who didn't have impeccable trust in a fooled lie detector.

EDIT: Like for instance, Director Piggot after a review of the footage. It's something she would pick up on in a heartbeat I would imagine. Though, I don't suspect that there will be much in the way of hard feelings. Anti-thinker defenses are kinda valuable and building them into her armor in a way that can't be turned off is a regrettable but necessary measure in protecting her identity.
 
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Left unsaid was that with her workshop and Alchemiter, the only thing she needed was land. Literally everything else she could duplicate if she wanted it at this point. Money was a weird concept for her now.
Still needs money for some stuff.
Buying a new book, go to a movie, basically anything entertainment based.
Blank protected satellites would be a problem when spotted by the Simurgh, because she will know that there is something up, when she can detect nothing on her pregoc and something on whichever other senses she has.
That's the thing.
All the Endbringers senses, with the possible exception of touch, would be affected by Blank. So, as far as Ziz in concerned, unless she gets hit by one of the satellites, they don't exist. Depending on how powerful/functional Blank is, at most they would be able to tell something's going on by second or third order effects they cause.
 
That's the thing.
All the Endbringers senses, with the possible exception of touch, would be affected by Blank. So, as far as Ziz in concerned, unless she gets hit by one of the satellites, they don't exist. Depending on how powerful/functional Blank is, at most they would be able to tell something's going on by second or third order effects they cause.
You know this because you know how Ziz's senses work and what Ziz ultimately is. What does Taylor know? How much of a risk can she take on the possibility of bad information? What happens if she guesses wrong?
 
The laws are there to to protect American business. Once it is out there as a "Tinkertech" device, how long until someone else reverse engineers it? In our world it would be China/India involved as their laws don't necessarily care about US business laws. NEPEA is a US law, yes? Once there are Chinese knockoffs, she can sell the originals with only a small markup for the brand name Selenetech, because the law forbids the Tinkertech damaging the industry, but once regular tech is out there she can compete. She would have Armsmaster and Dragon to back her up that she released a Tinkertech product under their rules up until the knockoffs came available. End result, she gets her scanner out and in use to save lives.

As for the satellites, Blank keeps Simurgh from projecting their paths precognitively, so as long as they are kept on the opposite side of the Earth from the Simurgh, she would never notice unless she tosses something through their paths to deliberately take out a satellite she can path. The 'miss' (she wouldn't be able to path the explosion) would cause interest perhaps. Selene was planning to also make them hard to spot through technology --perhaps invisible to the eye-- as well to avoid the Blank= missing but right there in plain sight issue.
Sure she could do that but why would she, it causes untold economic damage, job losses and would cause her to be hunted down by corporations and the government for no gain at all. Everyone would hate her and there would be no benefits to anyone compared to the downsides.


You know, I think Taylor overplayed her hand a little bit with the lie about a Protectorate member assaulting her. She gave more than enough detail for them to find an incident even if it was covered up. It might have just been easier and more true to say that:

Taylor had... Issues with people having authority over her. She was recovering and getting counseling but she couldn't bring herself to be under anyone's direct authority the way a Ward would be.

It gets the same idea across but isn't a lie the way what she told them was. And... well, blank can fool Armsmaster's lie detector, sure, but I have to wonder if someone else who has the actual skills to spot a lie wouldn't call her out on it immediately. It's a painfully blatant one.

That doesn't mean I think it should be taken out though. It's the kind of lie that a teenager would come up with to obscure a truth rather than blatantly spouting falsehoods. Just that she over shared by quite a bit for anyone who didn't have impeccable trust in a fooled lie detector.

EDIT: Like for instance, Director Piggot after a review of the footage. It's something she would pick up on in a heartbeat I would imagine. Though, I don't suspect that there will be much in the way of hard feelings. Anti-thinker defenses are kinda valuable and building them into her armor in a way that can't be turned off is a regrettable but necessary measure in protecting her identity.
Her blank fake info feeder works both on mundane and supernatural attempts at lie detection.

She was very vague on the timeline and gave no place, it could be any city, any year, any department, any person, sealed records, purged records, etc etc etc

No one in BB PRT has access to look up this kind of stuff anyway, why would they, it breaks the unwritten rules and of mc ever finds out they tried to find out her real ID it breaks the current trust they have with an extemly strong tinker.

Its not a obvious lie anyway, not from what everyone else knows about her cape ID anyway.
 
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Her blank fake info feeder works both on mundane and supernatural attempts at lie detection.
So she can say the sky is red and nobody can see through the lie? Because I'm not talking about a polygraph or anything more than someone just calling bullshit on their own skills and knowledge.
Its not a obvious lie anyway, not from what everyone else knows about her cape ID anyway.
Telling a lie is more about the delivery than anything else. She was both too matter of fact about the explanation and provided too much information. This is supposedly her trigger event. Those are traumatic at the best of times. People do not like talking about them. She doesn't give off the feeling of being reluctant to talk about it in the detail she has when even mentioning the event should be difficult.

But like I said, even though they could call bullshit on it that doesn't mean that they would hold that against her. It's information they think directly pertains to her trigger event. There's no harm in obscuring it and they wouldn't try to pick it apart afterwards. Just make a note that technological methods of lie detection don't work on her.
 
So she can say the sky is red and nobody can see through the lie? Because I'm not talking about a polygraph or anything more than someone just calling bullshit on their own skills and knowledge.

Telling a lie is more about the delivery than anything else. She was both too matter of fact about the explanation and provided too much information. This is supposedly her trigger event. Those are traumatic at the best of times. People do not like talking about them. She doesn't give off the feeling of being reluctant to talk about it in the detail she has when even mentioning the event should be difficult.

But like I said, even though they could call bullshit on it that doesn't mean that they would hold that against her. It's information they think directly pertains to her trigger event. There's no harm in obscuring it and they wouldn't try to pick it apart afterwards. Just make a note that technological methods of lie detection don't work on her.
To them she has had years to get over any trauma, do you think some kid who got something bad happened to her years ago would not be able to handle talking about it? To them she comes from a rich family as such could afford counseling for years.

She is not a naive kid, she has deep understanding of emotions and can control her body and reactions at 20x peak human level. She can tailor her responses, micro expressions based on what emotions and thoughts she is reading on the people she is lying to.

Not even in real time but faster than that, she can dissect their emotional tones and thoughts milliseconds by millisecond with 4 different trains of thought analyzing different responses and slowly think of them under mental acceleration with her perfect knowledge of emotional response of the people she is lying to.

While it may not come across on plain text all this stuff was happening, to you the lie may seem blatant but that's because you already know everything.
 
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It doesn't matter how its released or distributed the economic effects that the laws are there to prevent are the same. The laws are targeted against the fully open box tinkertech not parahumans. So if mc gave it to someone else to reverse eng the it would still be illegal and still lcause damage.

There is also the major problem that she is not a tinker and literally none of her stuff is blackboxed. She also has no good way to blackbox it currently.

In addition, any tech she releases in a non blackboxed format also goes to villains, shards and entities.

Take the medical scanner as a example, it can be assembled with mostly off the shelf parts as if mc released the design even ignoring all he major conequneses the villans could assemble the device cheaply and it would change the game and cause disasters.

Blank does not work like that, you cant find blanked stuff by the hole it leaves, in addition blank can send false results back to any scans so any attempts ziz made probably gave a fake result.
Blank is not invisibility and Taylor does not know that ziz has only pregog.
 
Blank is not invisibility and Taylor does not know that ziz has only pregog.
Blank is invisibility against anything shard related as shards live inside another dimension and peer down with remote viewing and scans, all of which are blocked by blank.

But Taylor does not know that, that's why she was so worried about ziz and took all those precausions like clocking her sat with invis, gravity waves, particle emissions etc. So that even IF ziz had any of that mc would have a good chance of not being spotted.
 
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