The first thing I did after determining I needed to explore my capabilities was get my most recent watch (and the self-correcting one) on, and walk to the backyard. Then, I activated the date-setting switch, and began turning the knob back in time. I barely got back a few days before the watch abruptly popped its casing open and spewed several pieces out onto the grass, several of the temporal eddies inside the mechanism spinning out of control as well. Checking the date on my self-correcting watch revealed that I was in fact on the day when I had initially built the watch in question.
Shoving the unbuilt timepiece into my pocket, I let myself back in through the back door. Both my dad and my past self were out at the moment, so as long as I locked up properly to avoid gaslighting my past self I'd be able to use the wall clock without any issues. I did so, catching a brief glimpse of my past self heading for the backyard as I marched down the stairs to the workshop.
Next, I put together a basic stopwatch; this took a couple of hours. Normally it would have needed about a weekend for me to put this together, but being able to simply omit a lot of the normal mechanical parts allowed me to put it together in a mere three hours. Soon enough, I had the stopwatch ticking nicely in my hand. Now I walked over to my testing rack, returning watches 2, 3, and 4 to it.
Turning around, I could clearly see that I had a mundane but extremely good watch on the rack along with three varying temporal-linked clocks, all neatly ticking away. The instant I hit the button to stop the stopwatch from ticking, every last watch on the rack abruptly stopped. Idly, I picked up one of my screwdrivers and let go of it in midair, seeing it suspended in unmoving stasis.
I clicked the stopwatch back on, and the screwdriver fell the couple inches I'd lifted it up by, impacting the table with a dull 'thunk'. Also, all the watches on my testing rack started up again, which was really nice; I'd hate to have broken them somehow. Actually, that brought to mind an interesting point I should check. Quickly, I retrieved Watch 4 from the rack and stopped time again.
Leaving the stopwatch floating in midair, I set watch number 4 ahead by exactly one second. The stopwatch vanished, the world around me jerking back into motion, and watch number 4 ticking along like nothing had happened. Curious, I stood in a location my past self wouldn't see and rewound back a minute, getting to see myself pick up the stopwatch and abruptly vanish.
So, apparently that stopwatch is still stuck at it's temporal position, then? Setting the clock back again, I tried to land on the exact second of the time stop. Abruptly, everything stopped ticking as I was once again confronted with the stopwatch suspended in midair. Figuring that I'd experimented with it enough, I grabbed the stopwatch and started it up again.
Actually, this brings to mind an idea for how to solve a rather significant problem with making a Tinker persona for the cape scene. Namely, while I've got my workshop, I really can't afford to have it also be the place where I make time-linked clocks. Given I tend to invite people here for various reasons, having it full of time machines was a surefire way to get labeled a Tinker. Fortunately, I think I have a solution for that now.
When Dad came home, I was waiting for him at the table with a neatly-typed two-page proposal for joining the Cape scene with a minimum of risk, along with the stopwatch I had made for testing purposes. As my father sat down, he asked "So, did you figure out why the clock is a time machine, then?"
I simply nodded, saying "Yes, yes I did. Apparently, a few weeks ago I started using time itself as a component in my clocks and didn't notice. Anyway, you're probably not going to like hearing this, but I think I want to become a hero."
Immediately, my dad just stared before saying "No, I can't... I can't risk losing you. What if you get killed by a supervillain? What if you get kidnapped and I never see you again?"
I nodded slowly and solemnly, before I slid the proposal over to where he was sitting and said "I'm aware of the risks, Dad. Those pages right there include all my ideas for minimizing them."
Silently, my Dad picked up the pages and began reading. Several minutes passed as he went over the various sections of my proposal, his worried expression softening as he did so. Eventually, he set down the pages and told me "Taylor, I'm going to go over pretty much all the points you raised in that proposal. Please let me finish before you start answering."
I nodded, and Dad said "First of all, the general idea of recruiting people to help is good in principle, but actually doing so on any large scale is easier said than done. Not only will you need a source of funding to pay them all more than what you can get from your watch sales, but from the outside you look an awful lot like a Parahuman. Groups of Parahumans with supporting unpowered personnel tend to get called gangs, even if they're engaging in heroic activities."
My father continued, noting "That said, I fully support your idea of creating a time-stopped version of the house for use as a workshop for your more exotic clocks. As you pointed out, having your normal workshop full of time machines is a recipe for disaster sooner or later. I'd be fully onboard with it even if I were going to block you from entering the Cape scene."
Dad was still talking, as he noted "In addition, I also really like your idea of making automatic safety watches that reverse or stop time if you're about to be seriously injured, immobilized, or Mastered. In fact, this is such an excellent idea that I'm going to make it a requirement: There will be absolutely no appearances from you in a cape identity until you have a working safety watch, which you will have protecting you at all times. In fact, have a redundant spare with you at all times too, just in case the first one breaks somehow and you need to escape."
I nodded enthusiastically as Dad finished by noting "Lastly, your thoughts on general methods of operating as a hero are fairly intelligent; you can dictate where and when you get involved in a situation, so there's no reason to get involved in chaotic and risky fights if you can simply neutralize a villain before they know you're there. Same goes for playing up the angle of being a mysterious operator who appears and vanishes as necessary; it's a good idea that fully leverages your ability to time travel in order to maximize your ability to dictate when and where you make an appearance."
There were a few moments of silence, before I asked "So, the sooner I get that time-stopped Workshop up and running, the more operational timeline I'll have to work with. Given that, can I pull an all-nighter to get it built?"
Dad thought for a moment, before he answered "Possibly. Given that you've been awake for about sixteen hours from your perspective, and you'll be working on a device that will perform some rather drastic time alterations, I'm going to insist that you get some sleep first." As dad spoke, he gestured to the wall clock.
This is about when I walked downstairs from my bedroom and told my past self "Dad's right. Get some sleep. I'll get the time stop up and running tonight, along with the accessor watches."
About like I remembered, my past self simply nodded to me, before she walked over to the wall clock and disappeared off into the past. Afterwards, Dad commented "You know, one of these days I'm going to get one of these time loop hand-offs to last long enough for you to play a card game against yourself."
I simply fired back "I'd lose. Anyway, I need to get on with making the time stop device."
With that, I walked downstairs into the basement and got to work. First thing's first, I needed the actual time stop clock itself. For this particular purpose, I would actually be using two separate clock faces driven by the same escapement. The first would be tied to the external time of the universe, while the second would control the elapsed perpendicular time on the Hebert property. After all, I really didn't want to be the only non-timestopped thing in the house when working; that would get really creepy, really fast. Plus, if I was going to be working on clocks, there needed to be at least some kind of time flowing in the workshop in order for me to test things, and skipping out of the timestop to do so would defeat the purpose of having it.
Building the combined clock took about four hours, aided greatly by the fact that it didn't need to be a watch, and could therefore be significantly bigger, so that I wouldn't need to be quite so precise with fitting the parts together. I also didn't decorate this particular clock at all. It was a boring sheet metal box with a timekeeping mechanism inside, and that was final. The last feature I added was an alarm that would automatically set the clock into time freezing mode at exactly 8:00 AM on November 2, right down to the second.
The clock complete, I got it ticking, and after a bit of fiddling with Watch 4, I managed to get myself into the perpendicular time to see if it worked, only to be confronted by my future self holding up a pair of what looked like basic time/date wristwatches with a few extra buttons and a nice-looking polished brass casing. The me that was to come then said "Good news, the time stop works. You still need to go back and make these watches for one-press timestop access."
Nodding, I used Watch 4 to slip back to just after I made the dual-display time stopper, and got to work putting together a pair of watches. I had a sneaking suspicion that I was starting to warp time even without the use of a clock, so I set up Watch 3 and Watch 1 where I could see them when working. After all, there was no way whatsoever I should have finished even the stopwatch in less than a weekend, and I'd put that thing together in mere hours.
Timepieces set, I got down to the business of making two identical wristwatches. The timekeeping mechanisms would be time-linked so I didn't need a Tourbillon for orientation compensation, that simplified the design immensely. The same went for most of the geartrain used to drive the date counter; completely unnecessary when I had time-linkage to work with.
Then came the... unconventional design features; this clock was going to be set an awful lot more than any conventional timepiece, so I made the controls for that a lot more accessible; there was a single button that would activate time-setting mode on the left side of the case, and two rings around the outside of the case that could be spun to change the time and date; the inner ring changed the time of day, the outer ring changed the date. However, they wouldn't take effect until the set time button was pressed again, allowing for much more precise time travel. Just in case, I also included a cancel button just below the set button; hitting that would snap the display back to its previous position without any effect.
The right side of the watch meanwhile featured another two buttons; the top right button would immediately snap the watch back to 8:00 AM on November 2nd 2010 with wearer in tow, no matter what the watch's current time was. The bottom right button was a convenience control that only did anything if the watch was currently in that specific moment, and would snap the wearer back to whatever time they were at prior to snapping to the timestop. The last control was a button I'd routed straight through the axis of rotation for the hands; this would simply stop or start time at whatever moment the watch currently occupied.
Sure enough, I finished both watches, looking at my pre-existing ones that I'd used to keep track of how long this took. My self-correcting watch was showing that I'd taken about eight hours leaving me with just half an hour before the time stop kicked in. Meanwhile my mundane watch was showing an elapsed time closer to an entire week.
Well, well, well, that's certainly interesting.
