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Expansion 2-2
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    • (Melissa)
    I was wearing my "dress armor" when the PRT showed up; less protection, but it was lighter, more flexible, and showed more of my face. Still had a visor covering the top half of said face, but it could externally display cartoony eye and eyebrow graphics to be more expressive.

    As for the two Wards, they wouldn't be unsupervised; Miss Militia had come along to keep an eye on them. So when the three heroes showed up (Miss Militia on her motorcycle, Vista via warped space, and Kid Win on his hoverboard), I just waved.

    "Nice to meet you, I'm Ruggedizer. I take it you're Miss Militia, Vista, and Kid Win."

    Militia's eyes crinkled with a smile as she answered.

    "Yes, that's us."

    As we entered the factory building, something occurred to me.

    "How does your scarf stay up anyway? It seems like it should be prone to wardrobe malfunction."

    She answered,

    "It's taped to my cheeks. Not the most comfortable option, but I'm used to it."

    Huh.
    I wound up working with Kid Win first; Vista was nearby eating a packed lunch, but was willing to wait her turn.

    I'd brought out one of the electrolasers like we typically used on the security robots, while Kid Win brought a spare concussor pistol. The idea being we could compare how we built our stuff.

    Kid Win voiced a concern,

    "I really hope this isn't like those sessions with Armsmaster. He basically spends all the time pointing out all the stuff I'm doing wrong."

    I shook my head,

    "That's not how I roll, usually. Now let's pop open the casings and take a look."

    My electrolaser was fairly straightforward; a cluster of ultraviolet laser generators around a heat sink, all focused through their own optics and with electrical contacts impinging into the beam volumes. As long as any two of the six worked it could tase a target, and even with one the UV laser could do some serious damage if pushed to the power levels it was actually rated for.

    As for Kid Win's concussor... it was a mess. I eventually understood the principle it used; firing a gravitational pocket with a little plasma in it for added punch and visual flare. But the circuitry was a complete nightmare of dead ends and hasty modifications.

    As Kid Win looked at the inside of my Electrolaser, he couldn't help but comment,

    "If I'd built something like that, Armsmaster would be on my case about it for hours. So much wasted space and material, but I just keep putting extra parts in and needing to take them out again after!"

    I thought on that for a bit, then answered

    "I can see that; I don't tend to get along with Armsmaster. He's good at his specialty, but keeps thinking said specialty is the be-all end-all. The reason I put all those extra parts in is for redundancy; it means my tech still works after taking one hell of a beating. Meanwhile Armsmaster's kit crams a lot of performance in a tiny package, but needs obscene amounts of maintenance."

    Kid Win nodded,

    "Yeah, I was seriously impressed with that radio still working after everything it got put through. I'm not sure how that helps me, though. I tried mimicking that approach on the pistol I brought, and my brain just didn't want to cooperate."

    I quirked a virtual eyebrow,

    "Mind elaborating?"

    The teenage Tinker frowned,

    "I just can't integrate the backups well enough to make them work for proper redundancy like you do. They're always just barely connected and don't really add anything."

    I racked my synthetic brain for an idea of what that could mean, coming up with an idea after a few seconds.

    "Maybe your power thinks they're supposed to come off?"

    Kid Win blinked.

    "Huh? You mean like lego?"

    I nodded,

    "Not the worst way to think of it. I think there's a decent chance your specialty has something to do with modular technology. And I think I've got an idea for how to test that."

    Kid Win tilted his head in confusion,

    "So... collaborative Tinkering?"

    I nodded,

    "Let's make a basic plug-and-play attachment for that concussor you brought; if I'm correct, it should come really easily to you."

    As it turned out, I was correct. Within forty minutes Kid Win had a barrel extension for the concussor that increased the effective range at the expense of being strictly lethal. And it could just get plugged in or taken off at a moment's notice.

    That done, I noted,

    "Thanks for the time Kid Win. I got a lot of ideas for improving my approach from that, and I think it'll be really useful."

    Kid Win looked ecstatic,

    "Thank you so much! I finally have a solid lead on my specialty for the first time ever!"

    Vista got up from her chair, warping over to the conversation.

    "Does that mean it's my turn?"

    "Yep."
    I quickly directed Vista to the observation area I'd set up. There were a few things on a table I wanted to look at when she messed with space in and around them.

    Vista quickly asked,

    "Any particular reason for the cardboard box?"

    "I want to get good measurements of what happens when you make something bigger on the inside."

    Vista snapped her fingers,

    "Done."

    I went over and took a look at the box and... yeah it looked to be about twice as big on the inside as it should be.

    I quickly set up all sorts of measuring tools, even as Vista looked a bit bored.

    "What are you trying to do anyway?"

    "I'm trying to figure out the root cause of the spacetime distortions your power produces."

    Vista thought for a moment,

    "Maybe it would help if I made it move?"

    "Sure? An oscillating pattern would be really helpful, I think."

    Vista nodded, and quickly began growing and shrinking the inside of the box. The interferometers didn't pick up much in the way of gravity waves, but after a moment the quantum vacuum polarimeters reported a reading. It was very faint, but it seemed that Vista was messing with the energy level of the ground state.

    "Could you pause for a moment? I need to put some measurement devices closer, and one inside the box."

    Vista promptly released the warp,

    "Sure?"

    I promptly put one of the polarimeters inside the box, moved the rest of them to physical contact with the box, and motioned for Vista to continue. She began again, and the polarimeters immediately reported a reading. A much, much stronger reading than I'd been getting before.

    After about half an hour, the measurements ended.

    "So..."

    I gave Vista the short answer.

    "As far as I can tell, your power moves energy in the quantum vacuum from one place to another. The positioning of the negative energy density zones does really weird things to spacetime."

    Vista blinked,

    "Huh... I never needed to think about that part. I just decide how I want spacetime to move and it does."
    Eventually, the Wards headed back to their base. I told Emmy what I'd learned, and we both started looking into relevant scientific literature. Eventually, Emmy had to go to bed, but I kept searching.

    Finally, around midnight, I stumbled upon a hit: Energy Teleportation. In 2004 an Earth Aleph physicist had theorized a way to teleport energy from one place to another, and as a side effect it manipulated the energy levels of the quantum vacuum. I promptly began reading up on the subject, and quantum teleportation more generally.

    By morning I was absolutely certain: not only could we build a working teleporter based on these principles, but it had the potential to be exceedingly profitable.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Armsmaster is going to be really frustrated here. As the Tinker of the local protectorate, he was supposed to be mentoring Kid Win, but had actually been making little to no progress towards actually helping Chris find his specialization even after months. And along comes Ruggedizer, who helps the Ward discover his specialty within fifteen minutes of actually collaborating with him.

    Although Miss Militia can honestly say that Ruggedizer implied that it may be more a case of incompatible Tinker specialties rather than any fault on Armsmaster's part, so that might take the edge off of the blow to his ego.
     
    Tangent said:
    Armsmaster is going to be really frustrated here. As the Tinker of the local protectorate, he was supposed to be mentoring Kid Win, but had actually been making little to no progress towards actually helping Chris find his specialization even after months. And along comes Ruggedizer, who helps the Ward discover his specialty within fifteen minutes of actually collaborating with him.

    Although Miss Militia can honestly say that Ruggedizer implied that it may be more a case of incompatible Tinker specialties rather than any fault on Armsmaster's part, so that might take the edge off of the blow to his ego.
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    P: I swear we're not trying to make Armsmaster come off as incompetent. But yeah, this fic has been really rough on his ego so far.
     
    You could use AI art generator is to try and create images of ruggedisers creations. I believe that is what he's asking for and it should be a bit easier than actually drawing out anything.
     
    death & gravitas said:
    You could use AI art generator is to try and create images of ruggedisers creations. I believe that is what he's asking for and it should be a bit easier than actually drawing out anything.
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    H: We don't have the skills to be good at prompt engineering, nor the free time to spend on learning it without putting this story on hiatus.
     
    We Just Write said:
    P: I swear we're not trying to make Armsmaster come off as incompetent. But yeah, this fic has been really rough on his ego so far.
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    I don't feel that he's coming across as incompetent. This is literally a matter of his own Tinker specialty being at cross-odds with that of a Ward Tinker with an incompatible Tinker specialty that nobody had figured out yet. They might have gotten their eventually, but neither Colin nor Chris had the right Tinker mindsets to work with each other in order to do so, so it would have likely taken a lot longer. It's literally neither of their failings, just a very poor match-up.

    If anything, now that the actual problem is known about, Armsmaster can (and should) do the efficient thing and try to arrange for an allied Tinker who's specialty isn't at odds with Modularity to perhaps be a telepresence Mentor for Kid Win. Whether or not Armsmaster does so is anybody's guess, given his ego, but it would be the efficient thing to do so he might be inclined towards this solution anyway since it would resolve the problem and make it no longer his to deal with.

    Granted, now that Kid Win does know his Tinker specialty, he and Armsmaster can likely have a certain amount of success with collaborating as Tinkers just so long as they are careful about the type of end goals they are aiming for: Basically, any project that requires the Efficient use of Modularity in its design. It'd have to be a careful balancing act though, as too far one way or the other would put their specializations at odds again.
     
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    the most efficient thing he can do is stop trying to help people and do as he always does, only focus on himself. that's his thing.
     
    Eh, Colin gets better at the whole actually be a Hero than a walking set of Ego Issues later on in canon (after some forced introspection), so it's not impossible that he could come to those personal realizations on his own under different social stimuli. The man isn't actually incompitent, he just has poor social skills and a bit of performance anxiety giving him ego issues. With the apparent cause of one of his current stressors revealed, and it being the fault of neither Chris nor himself, he should be able to set those issues aside and approach the problem at a different (more efficient) angle.

    Remember, in this story, some of the major stressors that caused his fall from grace haven't happened in this fic. He hasn't stolen credit for Lung's takedown only to have it blow up in his face; he hasn't had a teenage hero completely ignore his advice against infiltrating a gang of other teenagers despite having neither the training nor appropriate back-up to do so without risking being turned; and he hasn't broken the Endbringer Truce by setting up fellow combatants to die just so he could have a chance to solo Leviathan with an untested Tinkertech weapon.

    Just because Armsmaster has the potential to fall, and actually had fallen pretty far in canon, doesn't mean that this iteration of him will also fall.
     
    OK thus is just fun, bullshit tinkering is always fun to see and I love the concept of redundant redundancies backing up the backup's backup. You know, just in case.

    Also interested in Emmy and Melissa's con game and whatever they are building together.
     
    Expansion 2-3
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    • I woke up to Melissa gently brushing my hair. I stretched out, and muttered thanks for it.

    "You're so cute when you're just waking up in the morning."

    "mrphh. Quantum?"

    "Yeah, I found some scientific papers from Earth Aleph that point towards something called Energy Teleportation as the root cause of what Vista's been doing. We can probably make a teleportation system based on that. Anyway, it's the weekend, so would you rather sleep in or get right to work?"

    "Sleep. Was up late."

    "Alright."
    By the time I eventually got out of bed, took a shower, dried my hair, and put some clothes on, Melissa had already made a wonderful breakfast for the both of us. Well, more of a brunch, since it was ten AM by now.

    As I drank the very strong coffee Melissa had brewed up for me, I read the scientific papers she'd gone through over the night. In the back of my mind, I could feel my power turning over, trying to figure out the requirements needed to build a teleportation machine that would be completely and utterly reliable.

    After a few minutes I asked,

    "So, is the teleporter business or pleasure?"

    Melissa shrugged,

    "Could be both? It's a really neat idea to build just on its own, but we also stand to make a truly obscene amount of money from it if we play our cards right."

    I thought on it for a moment.

    "How about this, we start with small-scale prototypes on our own time, and only move the teleportation project to business hours once we've proven the principle?"

    "Sounds reasonable to me."

    As it turned out, our power was remarkably unhelpful on the subject of teleportation. All the ancilliary systems and such were easy to nail down, since our power definitely knew what it was doing there. But when it came to the actual quantum shenanigans needed to teleport the mass and energy making up an object from one place to another, we were practically flying blind.

    Still, we weren't about to just give up. As Sunday rolled into Monday, we'd managed microscopic instances of teleportation, carefully following the scientific literature. Scaling it up to something useful would be somewhat troublesome, but the rewards would definitely be worth it.

    Anyway, at Nine AM sharp, the employees we'd hired came in and got to their assigned jobs. The Marketing duo came up with Reliabuilt as a convenient brand to work under, which we accepted. As for Rose, she quickly notified us of some incoming business.

    From the email Melissa and I read, what was going on was pretty clear: The eponymous Bob of Fugly Bob's had gotten fed up with his soft serve and milkshake machines breaking all the time, and the ongoing maintenance contract with their manufacturer had just expired. He was willing to pay us four times the going price for a replacement that would be much less cantankerous, and a lot easier to fix if it did break.

    My jaw dropped. That was a price of forty thousand dollars per machine. Between the two of them, those transactions would go a long way towards getting our business firmly up and rolling.

    As soon as I was done reading, I paged Rose.

    "Rose?"
    "Yes Emmy?"

    "Ruggedizer's decided to take the job for Fugly Bob's. Can you let them know we're working on it? Please also contact the FDA so we can get some pointers on meeting legal requirements for food service machinery."

    "On it."

    And with that, Melissa got to work.
    By Wednesday, we'd gotten the machines for Fugly Bob's made. Still, they needed to be inspected; both Fugly Bob himself and a small team from the FDA were coming over to take a look.

    As it so happens, both parties of interest arrived at the same time. I quickly ushered them to the space where the new confection machines were waiting. Both of them had "ReliabuiltTM" stamped into their frontal plate.

    Bob was the first to make a comment on both the machines, noting

    "Well, they're a tiny bit bigger than I would like, but I can make room for them."

    As for the FDA inspectors, they opened up the casing on both machines and took a look. They asked their questions, expressed mild incredulity at just how many redundancies got crammed in there, shined a UV light around to check for non-obvious microbial growths, the works.

    Eventually, the lead inspector was ready to deliver his verdict.

    "Ruggedizer, you've done the single most thorough job making sure microbes can't grow in there of anyone I've ever seen, even aside from all the other features designed to ensure absolute reliability of the overall system. Seriously, even if any ten different things went wrong at once, these machines would still meet food safety requirements. These milkshake and ice cream machines pass inspection."

    Bob nodded,

    "Right. I've got a rented truck waiting to bring these back to my restaurant. Good work. How would you like to be paid?"

    Melissa answered, "Quickly, please."

    Bob actually laughed.
    We got a few more orders for specialty equipment during the first half of December. Subtracting taxes, we'd just about hit a million dollars of total revenue by the eighteenth of the month. That's when we made a breakthrough in our teleportation research.

    We still couldn't quite teleport any object larger than a pea, but we'd made a major advance in Energy Teleportation: a pair of machines that could hook up to the electrical grid, and transfer large amounts of electricity with minimal losses. It had the potential to utterly revolutionize quite a bit about the world's energy infrastructure... provided we could legally patent it. Which required that it be reproducible.

    Well, we strictly speaking sent the energy teleporters in for evaluation on the eleventh. But we didn't hear back about them until the eighteenth. And much to the shock of everyone involved, some engineers working for the PRT had managed to build a vaguely worthwhile energy teleporter. It wasn't up to the standards of our unit... but it proved we were elligible for the patent.

    The instant Melissa heard the news, she came frighteningly close to cracking one of my ribs with her hug.
     
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    • Okay, I'm not a civil engineer or whatever else you'd need to be to fully comprehend the uses of an energy teleporter, but even I know that's a game changer.
     
    The fact that they managed to replicate the function, if not the sheer ruggedness, of the teleporter enough to declare it worth being patented despite being Tinkertech is a huge game changer.

    For everyone.

    Just the fact that a Tinker can build Tinkertech with exotic effects that can be reverse engineered enough to be reproduced by normal methods is going to bring a lot of attention to Brockton Bay.

    Also, if it's December now, has Taylor triggered, or was the locker incident somehow derailed?

    EDIT: Oops, forgot which order December and January came in for inexplicable reasons I don't care to speculate about...
     
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    Ruggedizer's specialization probably makes reproducing her tech easier than normal tinkertech.
    After all you only need to get one of any given redundancy functional with normal tech to reproduc that part of the device.
    Cutting out redundancies also makes room to rearrange the remaining parts in a way that doesn't give normal people headaches.
     
    lars573 said:
    Tesla's big dream was wireless electricity. It's what tesla coils were built to develop originally.
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    Wireless electricity has a few problems, including making sure that the people who use it are paying for it. An energy teleporter is awesome because you can send the power exactly where it needs to go as soon as it's generated. You wouldn't need to be close to a hydroelectric dam, solar farm, wind farm, or geothermal plant for it to power your city, and the power it generates at night can go to other places.
     
    Alex c-w said:
    Ruggedizer's specialization probably makes reproducing her tech easier than normal tinkertech.
    After all you only need to get one of any given redundancy functional with normal tech to reproduc that part of the device.
    Cutting out redundancies also makes room to rearrange the remaining parts in a way that doesn't give normal people headaches.
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    J: You are exactly 100% correct! Especially in cases where some of the subsystems doing the same job are more comprehensible than others, and you can reasonably expect the thing to still work once you rip out all the incomprehensible ones.
     
    Dragon will definitely use this technology in her suits to replace reactors and possibly as a way to directly control multiple suits, as with right design all suits are merely attachments.
     
    We Just Write said:
    L: It canonically happened after Christmas break. Which we're taking to mean "sometime in January".
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    So the Locker Incident may still happen if nothing occurs to derail the Terrible Trio's plans.

    And if they are still planning to pull off that "prank," then they will be backing off on their regular bullying of Taylor in order to lower her guard. Just like they had in canon.

    Here's hoping that, thanks to the extra work for the DWA coming in due to Ruggedizer's business, Danny is making enough now that he doesn't feel like he has to accept a settlement from the school just to get Taylor's hospital bills paid for. Because Winslow High needs to be sued for negligence at the very least, and probably other charges as well, entirely separate from the issue with letting Taylor suffer under a campaign of bullying for a year and a half. The locker prank alone should have been detected ahead of time, either during the break or even just the first morning back before all the students arrived. That's prime cleaning time for most school janitorial staff if Winslow's administration had been running things properly.

    Also, Winslow's lockers use padlocks, so the claim that Taylor locked herself in her own locker is completely ludicrous and highly suspicious considering that a janitor had to use bolt cutters to remove the lock. But I guess they didn't tell Danny that part before pressuring him into signing the settlement agreement.

    Basically, Winslow itself is criminally liable for what they allowed to happen to Taylor even if it proves to be difficult to charge the bullies themselves for whatever reason. Enough so that having the extra funding from hosting a Ward might no longer appear worth covering Sophia's actions in Blackwell's eyes if she can't make the lawsuit go away. After all, while one of the bullies might be the daughter of a lawyer, Allen Barnes is a divorce attorney, not a criminal lawyer, and thus much less of a threat than an angry father with a case appropriate lawyer backing him.

    Sorry for the mini-rant...

    kpkdktswnw2015 said:
    Dragon will definitely use this technology in her suits to replace reactors and possibly as a way to directly control multiple suits, as with right design all suits are merely attachments.
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    Ruggedizer has to build those better batteries and accessories first before Dragon can directly benefit from them herself.

    That said, I expect that Dragon may be placing some orders soon. And should a certain team of idiots decide to try to intercept Dragon's oder from the source, I'm sure that they'll end up regretting hitting Ruggedizer's workshop really damn fast.

    EDIT: I'm kind of hoping that Taylor ends up working for Ruggedizer in some fashion, rather than attempting to become a solo hero on her own. I mean, she has an in given that she and Danny know who Ruggedizer is and that she's trustworthy. And, perhaps most importantly to Taylor, not a potential source of teenage drama.
     
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    verycoolname said:
    Okay, I'm not a civil engineer or whatever else you'd need to be to fully comprehend the uses of an energy teleporter, but even I know that's a game changer.
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    'it is huge, you lose something like 8-15% of all power generated between the generator and the consumer, that could probably be dropper down to 4% if the energy teleporter is used smart
     
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