A day passed, Squishy had a new charge, and Adam decided to bite the bullet.
Leaving his room (And mentally setting up an appointment with Narwhal), he had his new escort (Named Paul it turns out) direct him to the meeting room where she could be found.
He didn't go in of course. No reason to expose himself to whomever she was video conferencing with.
So he and Paul spent some time chatting. Turned out that 'The Guild' was one of the largest Canadian employers that did not require advanced military training or parahuman powers. Well, the largest that still addressed criminal activity (Parahuman or not). Over the years Canadian military funding had been moving into 'The Guild' instead, since any threat large enough to need an army tended to require parahuman assistance anyway.
Dragon did quite a bit of military research on their behalf, unsurprisingly.
Not just weapon development, troops required armor, tools, rations, transport... the jobs were endless and varied.
So he would likely end up developing some stuff in that direction eventually as well.
Something to think about, certainly.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Hours had passed since he had met with Narwhal and she had decided far too gleefully to redo a large portion of his power testing.
Her happy leer during sample producing had been epic.
Thankfully testing was no where near as complex nor as complete as his first go around.
Narwhal leaned back. "So... will this be happening again?"
He shook his head. "No. My powers were unstable up till now, but from here on any changes will be less dangerous to my health."
Narwhal sighed. "How dangerous was it, anyway?"
Adam fell back into his chair. How much detail? Hmm. "Without 'Recovery', I would have died by day 3 even if I had been in a hospital with unlimited resources. WITH 'Recovery', I was slowly falling apart on a near fundamental level. Only by reaching a safe location and having food and water, only by taking those days of rest focusing on more simple projects... only then was I able to actually, fully heal."
He held up his right hand, the glowing health symbol pulsing. Her shock hurt a bit to watch. "This thing was starting to fail at healing me too, until you guys held me in a place with enough technology for my powers to adapt in a better direction. Without that push, it would not have gained the quality needed for a full repair."
Her look of horror faded. "Quality?"
Adam nodded. "Connectivity. Technology's default features are adaptability and connectivity, at least that is what my ability decided. As I worked more on hardware and stuff, more and more information was needed to be shared between my various power-sets. The strange method my skills came up with turned out to be usable as a path for healing. Or something like that."
She gave a huge, relieved sigh. "So we DIDN'T almost kill you by accident?"
He grinned. "If nothing else, you and Dragon are near solely responsible for saving my eternal soul!" Well basically. He wouldn't have focused on inter-connectivity NEARLY as hard, anyway. "My Heroes!"
She gave a snooty nod. "And don't forget it!"
He saluted, a bit too lazily. "Yes Mistress!"
Her spine shivered and then he was FAR too uncomfortable seeing her expression.
That... might have been too far.
Her standing was a leopard slinking through tall grass. "Mmm. Maybe. For now, more testing."
He was NOT experienced enough for this level of teasing.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
He escaped (Unfortunately?) after a dozen or so more tests.
Turned out that yes, Narwhal had not been teasing him previously.
She had, in fact, been holding back.
Damn.
In an attempt to make things easier for himself, he eventually switched to 'Flame Manipulation' and made her an oversized, micro-mesh-flame-metal-mail shirt.
His thought process had been, naively, that covering her body would allow him some breathing room, so to speak.
A tall, well defined beauty that appeared nude wearing an oversized shirt with too large a hole for the head (She had a horn! It HAD to have room!) turned out to be MORE tempting than just her damn force fields.
Worse, she loved the thing. It released a temperature like a warm blanket, but if your body got HOTTER than that it cooled you down to that same level of heat. So only warm, no stuffy feeling.
After all, there was a reason Adam kept wearing his own 'cloth'. It felt amazing.
In the end, he ended up making her a belt to go with it, so the bottom dangly part at least was sort of skirt-ish.
This stuff wasn't bullet proof, by the way. Too thin (so it would feel cloth like). But it DID prevent stabbing, electrocution, burning, and chemical damage. And according to the hip-swinging goddess, it 'breathed' and 'flowed', however one defined that.
Watching her slink around the room wearing her new 'dress' had been... well.
Technomancy allowed him to store that memory. For reasons.
If he changed Worm history by convincing the powerful force field near-nudist to wear sexy shirt-dresses... he wasn't sure how his old world would have reacted.
Both gratitude and rage, no doubt. The internet worked like that.
She had made him heat the thing up until it turned light white-blue in power though. Went well with her hair.
Honestly, testing took an extra thirty minutes or so due to how often he was distracted by her.
Based on the increased amount of 'stretching' and 'quick walk around', she was aware.
Again, if she was anyone else this would be a 1000% sign that she was interested in a relationship with Adam. As it was, it likely only meant that he got his foot in the door, so to speak.
Dang fine door though.
It took hours of programming in his lab to help him regain focus and not drift off. It didn't help that he could easily pull up those memories again at any time.
But focus he did.
Aside from standard production (Dragon had set up an electrical blast furnace for easy high temperature access for his powers) he spent most of the day (And the next three days) working on Adaman Eve OS.
It was still going strong! Tons of reviews though, and there was all kinds of inputs from the various open-source communities that had received his updates.
Turns out that many projects out there that had silently faded away due to some intractable coding issue or lack of interest were once again going strong now that such a powerful and easy to use platform had bothered to create a custom version of their program.
Having all the changes documented gave them an up-to-date code base and a secure release that in some cases had 'design wishes' instantly fulfilled. Now they could focus on what they REALLY enjoyed: New features.
No one LIKED reviewing programs for issues or fixing bugs. Or worse, rebuilding everything from scratch due to a conceptual flaw in the product. They wanted to do NEW things!
Thankfully Dragon knew something like this would happen, and had set up a special set of email accounts. One for contacting 'Variance', one for requesting Tinker-related services, and one for Adaman Eve OS issues/new applications/updated applications.
At the start of every Tinkering session, he would take time to review software for approval, patch it for security flaws, respond to the submitter with documented patch for approval, and if it all went through it was added to the Garden Repository.
Yes, his new machine and the repository had the same name.
One was a place, one was ideas, so to speak... the final 'Garden' for Adaman Eve OS would have everything it would need. Hopefully no forbidden fruit, unless one counted 'Cybernetic Warfare Suite'.
Interestingly enough, several of the larger paid-for Technology Companies had not gone the 'sue-or-kill' route he had expected.
Dragon's Seal of Approval was a MUCH bigger deal than expected.
Adam had already passed along to Narwhal the contracts and meetings were being set, but it looked like the 'Garden Market' would have both subscription options and one-time purchase choices to go with all the free stuff.
Apparently Dragon had privately told a few people that Adam had the ability to create black-box versions of locked up proprietary software legally. Which... scared some people. But fighting Dragon's organization through politics, software advancement, or lawyers was... well basically suicide.
So instead of risking all their work being freed, they had decided to license Adam as a resale agent as long as he handled the expensive 'Create versions of our stuff for your OS' part.
Adam, Narwhal, and Dragon had to agree to quite a few things. But he got allowance to create interoperability between file formats and so forth, and make some open-source file format alternatives as well.
He had to let those companies sell through 'Garden Market', almost turning all these large organizations into application sellers instead of OS producers.
On the plus side, they got to keep 90% of any purchase and 95% of any subscription service related to their own products.
It was miles better and less restrictive than other online markets currently available, and an online giant like Amazon didn't event exist here yet.
Heck, not everyone could afford a computer at this moment.
Yet.
Going back to his 'Garden' hardware, he continued working toward something producible without him around. With the power of Eve backing him, he wanted to create something that would put a fire in the hardware market.
Cheap, Small, near-disposable computers.
The smallest space needed for Xmas Eve, Min Eve, and Adaman Eve were calculated.
Swap 'Research' in. What was the least amount needed to run a web server? Processor wise, not much as long as the software was decent. Space could be added externally with hard drives.
That... was tiny.
Quick research on average small website web server usage. Huh.
Well, there were already several open-source servers he had transmigrated to Eve already, a quick purchase later let him view the abilities of the most popular paid ones.
Move to 'Technomancy', a bit of software magic, the usual security attacks and patches. Add in some features popular but not included in this code base.
There, by default an 'Eve Server' package was available in 'Garden' for others to try.
Xmas Eve was really for people to get old hardware going again, which was useful for public libraries and kids with less money.
THIS product would aim for Min Eve.
Min Eve Server ended up being custom crafted, and he didn't only design the hardware, but after working with 'Research' developed some machines to produce them.
Unfortunately he wouldn't be including his proprietary Fire Metal in this series, that was Guild only right now and sharing it literally world wide seemed foolish.
But his custom production machines COULD and DID have heavy use of both 'Flame Metal' and 'Null Metal'.
Some quick emails about the form and type of raw materials ordered currently through Dragon channels let him create a series of machines, each one taking a single form of input (One took plastics, one required dies, one needed large rolls of paper, one accepted hoppers of metal, etc). These devices would then supply a separate series of machines the correct amounts of material when requested.
The whole mess was powered by a HUGE 'Magma Generator' and controlled by an Adaman Eve system.
More input devices could be added (Increasing available processed resources), more outputs could be added (increasing resource cost but increasing output rate), and... sigh.
It took FOREVER to set up.
By the time he had the whole thing designed, crafted... Well, he had to spend a charge to more easily construct Flame Metal from schematics stored by 'Research' or 'Technomancy', another three to improve detail of compressed metal formation, modification.
He built it, it cranked out a fully made and packaged-for-market 'Small Garden: Min Eve Server' (One machine construction input only added stuff like printed instruction booklets and needed connection cables)...
And Narwhal made him move it.
Oh, Dragon had a facility prepared and overall it was far more convenient as people could more easily add the needed inputs and export the products to shipping... but NEXT time he would try and make it more portable.
Stupid, complicated parts.
The final product was more basic looking than he expected to go with, but he had a focus for corporate sales targets here. It was a box that had an included simple adapter that allowed installation into most types of computer rack, and the air flow design was VASTLY improved because he was making all the various components custom. This meant no random bits blocking the way, and all the hot stuff in easy to reach areas.
It was not designed to be repaired, ever. Just replaced. The price was damn low though, unreasonably low. No other Tinker on the market produced NON-Tinker products, besides Dragon. Their shards always butt in, trying to convince them to add just a tiny bit of extra something.
So his devices didn't need to use complicated parts built in sometimes sketchy lands. Nor did it use components from 30 design teams that would never meet each other. It was an unreasonable amount of work for one man to develop all of that alone.
His equipment had the cost of scrap and the performance of available mid-level hardware. You could find some cheaper, and lots more powerful... but not something this cheap and this strong.
His grumbling when designing the systems for 'Small Garden: Min Eve' was twenty times worse. Because THIS system needed to produce FAR MORE product and was designed for users!
This time he was smart enough to talk to his bosses first, and begin work in the workforce area from the start.
Honestly, without Dragon's more advanced production designs, this whole thing would have been horrible. She had special multi-armed extruders and so forth of all types, which she was gracious enough to share the specifications, software, and documentation of. Cut literally days from his work time.
But while the servers got away with only a cool 'Dragon Seal' logo (She loved the things, even if they were too weak for most Guild uses), Marketing ended up making him stall for a whole dang month!
The logo had been easy (A tree in a garden, it was nice looking enough for him to add it as a splash screen when Eve loaded). That had been slapped on the servers with no issue.
No, for the user version Marketing had him go through EVERYTHING. Colors, actual system shape (It cost nearly the same since he was making all the parts himself), and the marketing campaign.
In the end, it looked like a fat flower. The base had all the connections needed (Sound, Video, Keyboard, Mouse, Power, Network, usb, etc), and the top had some nice LED's (cheap) that changed color.
The very top also released the heat and had a basic speaker built in.
If one was able to actually able to open the thing, the insides were twisted like a tornado, sucking in air from the large base fan (Larger fan means less movement to move more air... thus quiet).
It was actually a weaker system than he wanted to release, but with his cheating construction methods, no need to hire workers, etc, he only really had costs due to having to purchase the construction resources and rent space from Dragon herself. Since he didn't care about profit margin too much with this thing, it would only cost the consumer $50. Another $50 would be needed to get a keyboard and mouse, plus speakers.
And while he expected shock, it had made Marketing lose their gosh darn minds!
First, the quad-core processor that he had created based on Dragon's original processor design (Seriously, Dragondad could have made better processors even BACK THEN if he hadn't been so scared of his own future daughter) was apparently a whole new market.
Thankfully advanced enough through 'Technomancy' and 'Research' to not resemble any of Dragondad's old stuff anymore, it was still blowing the minds of the technicians being called in by Marketing for reference.
After all, technology advances rapidly, it even did in his own world from what little his mind remembered. But Adam had expected that with all the alien tech superpowers out there, someone had advanced the hardware base farther along and that it just didn't sell well online.
Besides, there were research papers online in this universe even now about possible 256-core super-computers and stuff, and you could order custom machines with 16-cores or more from the Tinker Community 'Toy Box'. Like... right now.
It took Dragon a few explanations, but the reason computers in general were SO expensive for normal people (Average cost was around $800, but the high end stuff could reach $2,000 easily) was due to shipping issues (Again, Leviathan), resource gathering/manufacturing center issues, and of course, Tinker-tech.
After all, those average prices were for systems that were only dual-core. The high end stuff was for quad-core. And anything better needed Tinker-tech... which needed routine maintenance!
And the custom prices? Could cost anything, depending on where you went with it.
The idea of releasing a non-Tinker quad-core processor at all, mass produced, and at a cost cheap enough for LOW end systems!?
When he complained that he hadn't used the Eight-Core Processor to save money, Dragon took over negotiations.
Calming people down, asking (And getting) his specifications, design notes, and so forth.
She would handle the public release events and marketing and all that garbage that Adam wanted NO part in.
He agreed to having her take a percentage to handle this and all future craziness that he would likely toss onto the market.
Because that was not the end of it.
His solid state memory? Ran too cool, storage space too large. Ram? Too fast, too low temp, and also too much available. His modified wireless access radio chips? And so on and so forth.
Clearly no one had expected that the man who created all those upgraded and updated software changes could do something very similar to hardware development.
Thank goodness he held back. He had been trying to remember the tech level of his old world (what little remained memory wise), and had honestly felt dejected that even with a super shard helping he had failed to live up to his own expectations.
He KNEW the technology he had created could be enhanced much further, especially with cheating materials like his metals.
Now, all those products and the machines he made to make them were going to be a problem for someone else. Dragon, specifically.
Money well spent, in his mind.
Thus in the next few days he was tasked by her to make some documentation explaining the science behind the parts. Easy enough, since he made the documentation during 'Research' and development.
Back to 'Small Garden: Min Eve', Dragon was going to renegotiate larger amounts of raw materials first, then release parts and some redacted documentation to the general public. Adam's machines would build up stock during this, increase production, ship finished products to various distribution centers, etc.
Then after the commotion dies down, Marketing will hit everyone with his new 'Small Gardens'. He insisted on not raising the price, after all the device ran fine for a cheap end machine but the only reason the market would even notice it was due to how darn low cost it was.
Besides, the 'Garden: Adaman Eve' was going to be built with the same low profit margins with the best power he could shove into the thing. The best possible without Tinkertech materials or design.
It would have to sell at a much higher price to avoid destroying the computer market, and Dragon had already started a bit of a political campaign of sorts to calm future 'competitors' that we were not going to instantly cause all their businesses to crash and burn, firing everyone and blowing up the economy.
Then again, if the 'Small Garden' had stronger specifications, it could have destroyed the market alone!
Uh.
Adam was slightly concerned that even allowing competitors to license his OS and giving them data through Dragon, competition may crash and burn anyway.
Glancing at his mental 'Golden Garden: Adaman Eve' system, he winced.
Yeah, that one would never be publicly released.
