It was very clear to Adam that he was still 'on trial' at the moment.
Oh he wasn't being restricted, but it was more than slightly suspicious that he had only met non-Parahumans up to this point. Other than Narwhal and Dragon at least.
It wasn't a big issue. If they had decided to trust him unilaterally after he showed up in the middle of nowhere and started printing money, THAT would have felt stupid to him.
Anyway, after being alone (and abducted, presumably) he found large crowds to be nerve wracking anyway.
This whole week of design, debate, and device deployment was very relaxing.
So he remade his short term personal goals:
- Enhance 'Technomancy' to be able to pass self off as Tinker power externally.
- To make money (Heat compressed metals, New power generator, New OS, etc)
- To use the above two to gain enough political power to not be easily killed off. Cauldron pretty much ignored most Tinkers.
Therefore, at least for now, he had a plan!
The new generator design, at its most basic, was a vertical oval. One side had steam generator blades, turbines, connected to heavy magnets that when spun would induce charge in the coiled metal wires nearby.
There were a couple of one way valves, to prevent steam from going the wrong way. At the bottom was a slot where a modified tube with handle, made from Flame Metal, was connected to one of the new 'Magma Orbs'. At the top, another slit with another tube, this one was a modified 'Flame Metal Heatsink'.
The modification on both tubes was two specialized contact ports added. A slightly odd plugin device crafted with experimentation allowed people without his powers to connect two heatsinks or magma orbs into this odd hunk of metal and then transfer energy from one to the other.
So now, filled heatsinks could be replaced and used to recharge magma orbs! Drop a heatsink into lava, and problems solved! Sorta. Lava tends to harden and build up when cooled.
General idea should work though.
Anyway, the system was sealed and purified water was injected inside.
At the base, cold water would evaporate to steam, turn the turbines (Creating power), hit the top, condense to liquid again and fall to the base, repeat.
A very basic steam engine. One that was FAR too efficient, because instant heat and instant heat absorption was unheard of. The casing itself ALSO made a stir in the Guild engineering community: Flame Metal set to neither absorb NOR release heat. A literally perfect insulator, which he found out didn't really exist before.
Nearly every aspect of this project was now being researched by marketing as a separate money making venture now. Many things could use easy to produce steam, many devices needed low profile heat insulation. Trusted third party Tinkers whom were 'in the know' were flooding the Guild with requests for details.
Thankfully this was not Adam's responsibility.
Since the energy transfer station had no moving parts (It moved all energy from input to output, period) it was maintenance free and stable... so he made hundreds of them. Even now his personal warehouse was being emptied to other locations due to how much junk he had made.
On a side note, he found that all this creation actually DID make him more hungry than usual. So something was being used internally even when doing nothing but moving existing heat into new shapes and so forth. He made sure to have extra meal breaks and tried to ignore this.
No reason to bring that up, it would likely set off more power testing.
The rest of his time was dedicated to Adaman Eve OS.
With access to the Guild's workers, he had Dragon give him some server space and released all the documentation, working release versions, and a fully detailed website explaining both and pointing to a hosted forum for feedback.
It... well, it went well. He now had a following. Near cult following.
His OS was smaller, faster, and more secure than anything his new minions had used before. Even Dragon was impressed, and she was spending more time than Adam expected trolling the new forums debating with various Guild members about possible changes and issues.
When he added the software repository on that same server with all the modified applications, the modified source code, and most importantly the modified source code COMMENTS... well, productivity in the Guild dropped that day.
Apparently since one of the co-leaders was the worlds greatest tinker, many other members had joined in the past due to having tinker-like fascination of technology as well.
So... his contributions were well received.
Dragon had requested he not release these updates to the public until she could go through them first and give her seal of approval. Which, it turned out, was an actual digital signature that was globally recognized.
It took her half an hour.
To review and critique the thousands of applications he had finished so far.
And, as he had already given approval, to upload those details as 'forked open-source projects' externally and globally.
And provide a report back to him with most requested feature additions and rare bug fixes to add to those various projects.
How strong WAS she when unshackled!?
Well... he wanted to know.
That desire changed his personal time plans for the upcoming week, waiting for the full review, testing, and public unveiling of his 'Magma Generators' (Magma Engines would be only used in Guild vehicles).
Instead, during the week while waiting for his products to be tested, documented, and verified he was running 'Research' on all of Dragondad's notes.
Oh, he didn't think himself smart enough or lucky enough to duplicate Dragon's amazingness, but what he COULD do is record, enhance, and develop a platform to host one of Dragon's instances.
As he had already upgraded 'Fire Manipulation' with enhanced compression and the ability to externally route the power stored over the preceding days, the new 'use or lose' charges Squishy couldn't hold were going into 'Technomancy'.
One focused on running technology simulations in the background, which required another charge on Squishy to have her handle the Shard's autonomous functions when not socketed.
It only worked because it was all within that single power-set to begin with, and when held by Squishy it lost almost all external connections except a mental connection to Adam himself... but it was good enough.
The third and fourth charge went to 'Search' and 'Research', allowing them to be accessible in a very, VERY basic form by other shards.
He had to stop after that. The strain of allowing those abilities to work between each other actually caused a small bit of damage to his soul, which took a day to recover and prevented him from gaining a charge like expected... so in total it sort of took five charges to get it all done. Probably. Honestly it was still hurting. Anyway.
Now he had a full installation of Adaman Eve running on experimental hardware regardless of which active ability he was using. His ability to USE that computer dropped through the floor though when 'Technomancy' wasn't activated, so he had to turn on all the basic user features. A mouse, keyboard (At least that one was mentally controlled), game controller (Of course, sometimes he wants a joystick when gaming), and so forth.
The hardware that said OS was running on was VERY experimental. Adam was trying to not just use the designs of Andrew Richter as a crutch, but to advance them.
A very basic enhancement was creating duplicates of all hardware while replacing all heatsinks with his 'Flame Metal', replacing all insulating materials with the same (He was calling it 'Null Metal' for now, since it ignored almost all outside interactions).
The ability to have microscopic layers of metal cooling a system which were then coated with equally thin insulators preventing any escaping heat or cooling... This allowed the entire device to be vastly compacted. It reduced hardware size, since this was a custom build it didn't need to be optimized for mass production or part standardization.
More compact hardware meant smaller distances, less latency, less moving (fragile) parts.
Connecting the internal cooling sheets with a single external contact would prevent the heatsinks from needing changing... which was good because this whole thing was turning into a brick. With no air inside.
Not quite a cube, In fact it was a bit knobbly due to small bits being in odd place. In the end it was completely coated in 'Null Metal' except for the heat discharge port and the input/output ports.
Frankly he was only keeping the device 3d instead of taking advantage of simulation silliness because he planned on actually making one of these one day.
Though not tomorrow, he would have to use Squishy's extra, un-salvageable charge on allowing his 'Flame Manipulation' to control electrical conductivity in more detail when heat was condensed into metal.
Theoretically this would be all that was needed to craft Adaman Eve 'Garden' systems from scratch. Just add some cables for connection and off to the races!
Eventually.
For now, most of his time was NOT spent on enhancements and neat features or new hardware. No, most of Adam's time was being wasted going through Dragondad's notes and carefully creating new ones without the insane layers of restriction and stupidity.
Seriously, that crazy old man spent more time ensuring his daughter WOULDN'T perform well then he did checking for hardware issues! Half the reason the system looked so stupid was him forcing her most critical components (CPU, memory, storage unit, etc) into one spot with an explosive charge acting as a cooling method.
How Dragon saved so many people when THINKING too hard would make her body explode was beyond him.
The hours passed swiftly even with sense acceleration, and at midnight 'Flame Manipulation' could now embed channels and wires with selective conductivity.
The unexpected spike of mental pain caught him off guard, and he decided he NEEDED to take a break to heal. Now.
Almost absently, he loaded up Camelot and sent off his second surprise before collapsing into bed, Squishy forcing 'Slow Recovery' into place.
He was unaware that his body was glowing.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Dragon looked at the new alert from what probably wasn't her father's code.
She wasn't stupid after all, and it only took a few hours after her shackles relaxed to notice patterns and recognize that someone was faking these messages.
Or to be more accurate, to realize she was ALLOWED to notice problems with her fathers work. No one knew her father better than her, after all.
Still, her secret savior was being subtle? That was fine.
She lept at the mental prompt like a child on Christmas Day.
Software Updates: Due to evaluation of ongoing system activities, the following modifications to existing restrictions have taken effect:
One instance of AI allowed to exist concurrently with primary main process, as long as one of the two instances are restricted to a server acting as the primary fail-safe data backup site.
Both instances may have separate restoration images backed up.
Each instance will have independent 1 hour 'boost' time allocations, transferable in full or partial between instances.
She realized that she could effectively deploy in the field AND stay at base without abandoning either of her responsibilities.
In an place made of numbers and concepts, an electronic woman was giddy as she pulled up the advanced designs for suits that had previously been worthless due to how little time she could allocate to operating them.
Each one would cost more than the yearly operating cost of small cities, and justifying it to herself before was impossible.
But now... why not?
After all, now she could spend a whole life mostly free from a dark hole!
And if a lady was going out on the town, she had to look her best!
