Arc 14 Urban Decay
14.1 Tinker Based Health Services
This week had been a lot slower, thankfully. One day shy of a fortnight since the Simurgh attack, and I couldn't decide if I should feel ok with having a slow week or unnerved at not still being freaked out.
Dad and Lisa had us focusing on the refugee camps that had sprung up. Ostensibly, the Protectorate should be defending people, but outside of my lair, things had gotten worse. The city was still getting emergency supplies, and would continue to get them for the next couple of months. However, too many buildings had collapsed or were unstable. There simply wasn't enough houses for people to live in after their homes were damaged or destroyed. Worse, no grocery stores were working, and so only the camps had food.
The 8 major camps were spaced out around the city, and the Protectorate had been unable to stop 3 of them from basically ending up under gang control. The E88 had 2 camps in their territory, and according to what Lisa could find out, they were well run, safe, maintained, and prime grooming grounds for ensuring that people accepted the gang, or even joined them. The third camp was in former ABB territory. Which was sort of mostly Merchant territory now. The camp, such as it was, was a couple of reasonably well standing office buildings that had hundreds of people living in and around them. In a surprise to me, the ABB had fragmented into dozens of little gangs, and there had been reports of capes and such that was very confusing. However, the Merchants thrived on chaos, and were supplying drugs in exchange for manpower to raid other camps and supply convoys.
The unofficial PRT territory and the Boardwalk each had a camp. They were ok, and usually safe.
According to Lisa, 'some idiot' had decided that it was ok to put a camp in the northwest end of town, past Winslow. She said the Merchants had pretty much ruined it, and it wasn't that much different than a shantytown. Well, a shantytown in a intermittent war zone filled with Merchants selling drugs.
Lastly, there was my camp, and the dockworkers camp.
Dad was actually at his camp now, and was there most of the time. He said the PRT had come by, once, to ask how I was doing. He had shooed them away, and told them to mind their own business. They apparently suspected that I was doing independent hero work, which I was, but their impression was that I was doing it as a minor Brute. There were a couple rumors about Brute capes running around in the area, but they were usually older guys. Lisa said there was a chance it was a small gang that got kicked out of somewhere else, and were trying to build up enough of a reputation to start up their own protection racket.
I lived at my lair, and we stayed in touch by my comm system, talking daily, and I had links to my secondary base, to the house, and to the camp I looked after.
Well, Rachel helped too. We still didn't get along. What mostly happened was that Rachel had a warehouse near the sewage treatment plant. Very much upwind of it, of course, and she sallied forth to patrol around our camp, while I did most of the maintenance and cleaning and such. She had gotten nicer once dad arranged for her to pay a little fee for my units to clean up after her dogs.
We hadn't had much trouble, so it didn't matter much. I was also pleased to say that my camp was the clean, and it had working showers, toilets, and nearly unlimited drinking water.
Food was a problem though. My camp was unofficial. Neither Rachel or I wanted to talk to the PRT, and they weren't very keen on running supply trucks anywhere but the seven 'official' camps, even if three of those camps were obviously controlled by the gangs.
Dad had said it didn't matter, and Lisa had agreed, so I hadn't argued. The dockworkers union was basically a gang now, but dad was political enough that he had been able to make the camp one of the official ones.
Sandra had come by a couple times, and there had been rumors of Grue wandering around after dark, looking for troublemakers and beating them up. True rumors, because Grue was on the night shift for guard duty, but he kept a low profile.
Dad's camp shared food with mine. I was continuing to repair the sewers, and his camp had been a priority, which had made it a fairly popular place once the PRT camps had filled up.
There were still shortages. Not only was there just simply not quite enough, but the disaster relief supplies came in on trucks to each camp, once a week. The E88 had hit a supplies convoy headed to the former ABB camp two days ago, and made off with maybe half of the food and stuff. Before that, a 'mob' of people had swarmed a convoy headed towards PRT territory. Lisa said it had been Merchants and a smattering of the now numerous but tiny asian gangs.
On the other hand, the city would recover. It would be hard, but driving off the Simurgh had really been a success. Already there was demolition downtown removing detritus and crushed buildings.
I was also helping with that, although quietly. My units ate the iron rebar, copper wiring, and other stuff out of abandoned and collapsed buildings during the night.
It wasn't super helpful to anybody aside from me, but I was trying to save money which was enough of a reason. My heroing had turned out to be mostly waiting for Paige to update me on the list of problems for me to try to solve in my camp.
Paige, formerly Canary, was still technically a cape. She still grew feathers out of her head, at the same rate at which she grew hair. She simply plucked them now and was otherwise a normal looking woman. She was restricted to the part of the lair that Lisa rented from me, and we weren't yet comfortable revealing our civilian IDs to her, but she was much happier for having people to talk to and getting to be out and about from more than just her room.
She was going by Comma now, because I had no imagination, Regent thought it was hilariously appropriate, and Rachel didn't care about any aspect of it. The name was an abbreviation of her job, Communications Manager, but Comma was a sort of cape name. Well, it sucked as a cape name, but she had stuck with it after Regent had laughed at me because she felt bad for me.
Anyway, Comma had a comm system now, and her job was to be on call to listen to people at the camps. She was secretly in communication with dad's camp, and openly with mine. I was on call for 12 hours a day, and she took the other half in cooperation with Rachel to protect my camp and to keep in the know for anything dad's camp needed.
Not that much had happened to threaten my camp. Lisa said things had gotten political. The rebuilding would take time, but it would set the future for the city. Obviously the PRT and FEMA was supposed to make everything great, but they were spread thin. The Empire was trying to avoid being too obvious, and their goal was to destabilize the camps they didn't control. They wanted to make a situation where being white was only safe in their territory, which was also the only territory that was recovering.
Ergo they would control the city in the future, or something. It sounded kind of stupid to me. They'd only control a quarter of the city even if they were perfectly successful.
I had to admit to myself that I had sort of stopped paying attention to dad when he tried to explain this to me.
The end result was 'Empire bad', which I already knew, so it wasn't that important that I could explain the nuances of their political campaigns.
More important was figuring out how to make my xenomorph units, which were still disappointing to me, capable of operating without a tether. Now that was important. Currently, if somebody attacked my camp, all I had was a pile of ant units that each had a small battery that could deliver a couple of electrical shocks.
I needed my xenomorphs, actually, I'll call them drones; I needed my drone units to be able to operate at my command without a tether, and not do silly things. It was fine if occasional groups of turtle units wandered off into the bay and got washed away. My drones were expensive though, and I needed them to not get themselves wrecked.
Giving them bigger matrix processors didn't help, it just made them do complex stupid things. The intent programming was helpful, based on my research on corona readings of various capes, but I still had to actively direct them.
A mind made a power useful, gave it direction. My drone units were getting progressively more capable, but they had no minds to direct them unless I was tethered to them. I didn't wa-
A mental notification causes me to pause my thoughts on my master matrix processor and devote more attention to my network as I answer, "Hello Panacea, how is the hospital?"
"Hello Recluse. It's fine, full of sick people. One of the camps decided the water tank was 'clean enough' and now forty people have gratuitous amounts of diarrhea. So, yeah, life's a bucket of laughs. Anyway, the Protectorate sent their next busybody to talk to you. It's Battery this time."
Amy had been in a foul mood for pretty much the entire past week. After talking with Lisa about it, with Amy there and complaining the whole time, well, Lisa was espousing the theory that Amy was physically addicted to Vicky's aura, and was going through withdrawal. It explained some of her behaviour, and I tried to be patient with her but she was still unpleasant to be around.
The Protectorate keep trying to talk to me, sending messages through Amy initially, but they had gotten kind of pushy when I refused to meet with them. They hadn't make any actual threats, but they had sent capes and occasional PRT guys to my camp asking about me. They didn't mess with the water systems though. They also didn't check underground, so it's not like they found anything else.
The voice of whom I presume was Battery come over the handheld comm system, "Hello, is this Recluse?"
"Yes," not like I wanted to talk. The Protectorate were rather pushy about my tinkering, which was annoying. They had asked me a bunch of times, in various ways, if I was a biotinker, and it had gotten annoying. Especially since Lisa would go over these conversations, and would smirking at me for every question on if I had the ability to tinker with biology.
"How is the camp you are helping out with?"
"Not significantly different from when the PRT agents visited the other day. Still not enough food."
Battery at least sounded contrite about that, "Yeah, that sucks. There are only seven official camps though, and I'm not sure if you've heard, but we're already having trouble protecting supply trucks going to them. Sending a truck out into the trainyard is asking to have it taken or destroyed."
Nothing new there. "Any chance the non-gang camps are open to allowing more people in yet?"
"Officially, only the two camps in the southwest part of the city are still open for refugees. Yeah, we know that there is a lot of Empire activity in the area. We do have federal disaster personnel on site though, trying to keep things under control."
Yeah, I didn't care to argue things much. "Have you convinced Panacea, or Thrawn, that you are operating smart?"
Amy speaks for herself, "No, Director Tagg has been playing whack-a-mole with Skidmark, and they're still no closer to finding where Squealer keeps building those ATVs."
Squealer had stopped building giant tank-car-things, and had switched to outfitting some 10 to 15 ATVs at a time, and having armed Merchants harassing and raiding other people. She didn't drive them herself, disposable Merchant members did, but the ATVs were fast, quiet, and able to make getaways from all the PRT vehicles over rough terrain. Also, they were still getting drugs into the city.
Battery voiced a disagreement with Amy about their effectiveness.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that the drugs were still coming it, it's not like they were actually produced in the Bay, and the highways outside the city were just fine.
Battery ended with the second most common question, if I would help them find Squealer's lab.
I snorted out loud at that, though I refrained from sending the sound over to her and Amy. If I could find Squealer's lab, it wouldn't exist anymore.
Still, I stuck with the response that Xanatos and Thrawn agreed that I should say, "If the Protectorate is willing to issue a formal apology to Thrawn for lying to him, or informally complete the deal they agreed to with him, then I'd be willing to negotiate for sharing further information."
"I know, I know, I was just required to ask. Same with the usual 'are you willing to register as an affiliate hero?' question."
"Mhmm."
"Anyway, why do you care so much, I thought you worked for Xanatos?"
"I don't work for anybody."
"Fine, 'allied' with Xanatos then."
"I actually consider myself allied with Thrawn, not Xanatos. The later isn't around much. I am allied with Thrawn, because, he's generally decent enough and leaves me alone, despite his occasionally annoying behavior" Also, because dad agreed to step back and let Lisa have the spotlight, so she could be an attention hog and hopefully have fewer tantrums if she gets to be the center of social attention. It was a toss up if that had actually helped, or if she had stopped being such a pill because we thought her complaints were immature. It was pretty easy to cut the legs out from her arguments that we were jealous, since she could tell we weren't, and that our thoughts about her immaturity had no ulterior motives.
"On that topic, could you get Thrawn to stop calling random offices in the PRT on their restricted numbers and asking about making arrangements to discuss a prior deal with Director Tagg?"
"Probably not." Mostly because I agreed that the PRT was being unreasonable. If they wanted to claim the moral high ground, then they shouldn't have lied to somebody they cut a deal with for an information exchange.
I could hear Amy giggle a bit over the connection. I thought it was funny too, but I also felt pretty comfortable with the PRT getting hassled for refusing to be on the level.
Battery sighed, "Well, thank you for your time-"
I cut her off, as I suddenly recall why I had wanted to talk this time, "Oh, would the PRT be interested in trading food for water ?"
"Huh? I mean, what do you mean?"
"Well, you guys send an empty water truck out to my camp, and I'll fill it with clean water, as much as you want, and you guys send a supply truck with proportional amounts of supplies that you send to other camps."
"And this would be pure water?"
"Well, pure water tastes gross, but sure, if you like. Otherwise I could put the usual ions in it."
"I'll pass that along. I don't know if they'll agree to that."
As I detect Purity approaching, I tell Panacea to head to the roof and bid Battery goodbye.
After failing to notice the huge Breaker forms of Fenja and Menja, I've revamped my interpretation processes from my sonar systems, giving me a sort of wider awareness out of the corner of my mental eye.
Hell, I can't even describe it. I am more aware of the information flowing through my systems, especially spatial and identification information.
I monitor Purity approaching Panacea and then picking her up to head out.
I ping Lisa, and when she responds, I let her know that Panacea is on her way back from Wilson Memorial.
Oh, right, trading water for food. I ping Comma, and she signals her availability.
"Hello Comma, this is Recluse. I have news for you about the camp."
"Hello Recluse, what's up?"
"I offered to trade water for food, like I said I would. Maybe they'll go for it, maybe not, but just a heads up."
"Ok, thanks. I'll be talking to Bitch when she gets up in four or so hours for the night shift, but nobody is likely to come by at night anyway. Also, I still remember that today was Grue's last day, so I'll be keeping an eye on the dockworkers camp in case I need to wake you."
Yeah, I had been about to bring that up. Paige wasn't dumb, but I still worried about things. "Sounds good, alright, I'm signing off, so goodbye, Comma."
"Bye, Recluse."
Amy would be back from the hospital in an hour. After Kaiser had been able to find us, we had stepped up our efforts to preserve our anonymity. We didn't use the same drop off and pick up point, and I would try to seed said areas with units beforehand. Having squiggles help drag a bunch of jellies to an area and then let the jellies spread out under their own power worked ok. Kaiser had tried once more to meet up with Purity, but it hadn't worked because Purity had met our car somewhere else.
I started leisurely putting together the command I would use to stop Grue's power. After Comma had exhibited similar headache inducing symptoms in Lisa, I was able to compare the corona tissues in both of them, and worked out how the pattern could be improved. The next version was intrinsically different, but should change his power to a senescent state. I was fairly confident that should avoid causing Thinker headaches in proximity to Grue.
That's if he showed up at all. He had gotten strangely reticent about having his power removed. Given his initial enthusiasm, and the possibility he had been turned into a Ziz-bomb, well, Lisa, dad, and I were all increasingly in favor of removing his power. All the more because he couldn't seem to explain why he was no longer eager to have his power removed.
Things hadn't broken down into a full argument, but there had been a lot of tension in the room at our last discussion. Xanatos promising that Grue could retain his job with the dockworkers, and Lisa promising to support him as needed regardless had swayed him back to his original intent.
Still, if he didn't show up this evening, then I would argue with dad to consider him as potentially crazy. The Travellers had been Ziz-bombs, and they hadn't been able to grasp the concept of asking for help. Grue knew where my lair was, and I was very uncomfortable letting him be a risk to that.
I turned my attention to my sewage treatment plant. I was so happy to have built a bunch of radio lasers. Having one at the treatment plant was pretty much as good as being there.
Lisa had arranged a shell company that was in the process of purchasing the treatment plant, while dad was pushing very good contracts into place to get people he could trust into some of the positions.
The dockworkers didn't have any chemical engineers, but we had enough people with a variety of skills that we could likely fill more than 30 of the 50 or so on site jobs. I had refrained from repairing the treatment plant, and so it remained severely damaged from a train car that had gone through a processing building and broken a divider between two pools. Due to damage, the company that owned the plant would sell it cheap, and once I controlled it, I could repair it discreetly.
I had already prevented collapse of a sinkhole adjacent to one of the facility buildings, by repairing the leaking pipe that was causing it, and then reinforcing the cavity. Said cavity was currently being converted into a space for my units and some processing capability.
Between that, and the dockworkers and Lisa getting several people into City Hall, especially the infrastructure repair, I, well, Thrawn, would be able to falsify all the appropriate documents to make it look like the damage to the sewer lines was dramatically less than what it actually had been before I had started to repair things.
Lisa was still arranging the deliveries of the numerous tons of chemicals I'd need to repair the pipes fully, but stop gaps with my tinker materials would last for weeks, and odds were, I'd want the materials delivered to the treatment plant lair and that wasn't done yet anyway.
My jellies had made a full map of the treatment plant, although the employee movement patterns weren't considered complete yet. They were still too random.
========
I left my thoughts on my matrix processor as Amy came down to my lab with food. I met her at the entrance, and we ate an early dinner. We didn't talk much, mostly because Amy was grouchy, but also because I didn't really have anything to talk about aside from tinkering.
Amy had made her own chair out of some kind of fungus mushroom thing a couple days ago, and she idly made it flash through various colors while she ate.
I tinkered passively, as there was always a need for new turtles and ants. I had built myself several low maintenance shirts that had a pair of utility arms on the back that let me always stay in contact with my main matrix processor. Well, it wasn't really a shirt, more like a rather thick sweater that bonded to my skin, but it was easier to maintain than a powersuit, mostly because it was simply enough to only be able to lift the utility arms, rather than allowing me to use said arms for picking other stuff up. Maybe I should call them data arms?
Amy was picking at her food, and I didn't interrupt her. I ate my food and then sat quietly, going back to my tinkering. I also cleaned up all the dead plants she was leaving around.
As I started picking up some piles of dead leaf looking things from near her, she spoke up, "So, Battery said that Flashbang and a couple Wards would be visiting your camp tomorrow."
"Ok, that's fine." The Protectorate and PRT can visit as much as they want, as long as they don't mess with my stuff.
Amy looks directly at me as she stops changing the color of her mushroom stool.
Why am I only funny in my head?
She sighs, and then says, "I meant that I want to go visit your camp and see him."
"Oh, ok." I hesitate a moment, "Do you want me to come?"
"Yeah. Also, Vicky won't be there."
I guess that is good, but it's been awhile since Amy has been able to see her sister, "Do you want to talk about-"
"No."
Well, ok then.
Amy goes back to fussing with her plants. I use some arms to clean up the plates and such from the food, and start a bunch of maintenance cycles on the 87 different arms built into my lab. The four industrial ones are the worst to keep up, as I have to strip the outer layers to redo the internal piping mechanisms. Hmm… If I just wanted a couple of big arms for moving materials around, such that they lacked the pipes, then repairing them might be much more straightforward. I make a note to check on that later.
I leave Amy alone until Lisa lets me know that Grue will be arriving shortly.
Well, time to break somebody's powers.
I let Amy know, and we get ready. Well, I get ready, and Amy picks up dead flower things from around her chair. They look nice though. Not that I'll risk asking her about her biology manipulations. Even if she likes it enough, she still doesn't like talking about it.
When Grue gets down here with Thrawn, I lead him over to a chair and get him seated. He ended up choosing to crop his hair short, nearly to his scalp, which was a bit disappointing to me.
Still, more data on powers!
I maintained my dignity, and did not squee in excitement. Thrawn's smirking is also ignored.
I go over things one last time with him. It only takes a few minutes. Grue is nervous, I don't blame him. I'm not really his friend, and I'm going to be experimenting on his brain.
Well, not really experimenting, I've done this thrice before.
Fine, I guess I am nervous too.
I pat him on the shoulder with a spare arm, but he flinches a bit, so I try for reassuring words, "Grue, are you feeling ready? We can wait a bit if that will help, or if you've got any more questions?"
He shrugs, saying, "No, I understand as much as I can, and while on one level, I don't want to do this, I'm much more afraid of worse outcomes."
"Well, we could-"
"No, I want this done, the sooner the better."
"Alright," I look over to Thrawn, and he nods.
"Ok," and with a thought, my arms smoothly reach down from the ceiling and latch onto the back and top of his head.
The connections come online. I confirm the assembled pattern as matching the expected interactions. His corona is acting as expected. I regret not having brain scans of his corona prior to his exposure to the Simurgh. Maybe I could have seen something that would provide a target to simply counter the Simurgh's effects.
No use focussing on regrets though. "Alright everyone, and Grue in particular, I'm ready."
"At this point, Recluse, you might as well call me Brian."
"Oh! Well," I glance around, but of course it's only people I know around me. "I guess you should call me Taylor."
I smile, awkwardly, at him, then realize that I'm still wearing my mask.
"Are you ready, Brian?" It's a nice enough name.
"Yeah, do it."
I upload the signal into Brian's corona.
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========
I blink awake and find myself suspended from my arms, swaying above the floor.
I have no idea how I got down here. I'm still connected to my matrix processor. It shows that barely a second has passed.
Thrawn, and Amy, are on the ground. I use my arms to pull myself upright, and then stop myself from swaying.
Brian! Oh, he's ok, still sitting in the chair. He's awake, and looking mildly freaked.
He asks me what happened. I check over my logs, and it looks like things worked fine, no obvious issues. Except that everybody passed out.
"I don't know, Grue, I mean Brian. Let me check you out."
Well, I've already started scanning him through the arms that make up the chair, and looking at the interactions with his corona, Maybe I should have ask- Hey! His corona is gone!
"Your corona is gone!"
He's just as shocked as I am, "So, did it work better than you expected or-" Partway through his sentence, he turns into a burst of smoke.
Oh god, I broke his power and it killed him!
No, wait, somebody just appeared in the new changing room for providing super skin upgrades. Also the chair is covered in black smoke, like what Brian could make with his power.
Thrawn leverages himself up, and starts looking around.
"What the fuck was that?" Amy asked as she pushed herself up.
Right, need to- my thoughts get interrupted by Thrawn, "So, you gave Grue a second trigger or something?"
I make an annoyed noise of frustration, then call to Grue, "Grue, I mean Brian, come out here."
He pops into the middle of us, in a cloud of dark smoke that expands a couple of feet from around him. He's just standing there, looking at his hands.
No more waiting on useless questions. "Panacea, please examine Grue. I stopped getting signals from his corona. Thrawn, hold your thoughts until we've confirmed that everybody is safe."
While Amy does that, I check over my equipment. The black fog, reminiscent of his normal power, spreads out evenly from his arrival point.
Things are fine on my end.
Amy has the most useful information. "The connections are severed. I can see the plasnerves that I installed, but they've been removed at the point at which they enter Grue's skull. Additionally, it's hard to be sure, but I think his corona has changed shape slightly. I don't remember it's exact shape, but I'm pretty sure some of the nerves have moved around."
I nod to Thrawn who had started to look antsy, "Recluse, you've caused Grue to have powers as if he had a different trigger event."
There's some more debate, and more talking, but the gist of it is that Grue is now a Mover cape instead of a Shaker. He can teleport across relatively short distances. The rate and distance of his teleportation is limited by ambient light at his target location. With some effort, he can teleport into lighted places. He creates smoke at the start and end points. He can't control it, but it sticks around for a while.
He has a sort of Thinker awareness of his surroundings. He can clearly avoid obstacles at a target location, but he has trouble describing how he knows if an area has enough room. Moving things around out of sight reveals that it is pretty hit or miss that he might notice.
Still, we're tentatively pleased, at least to his face.
His power wasn't broken. Maybe, somehow, this is more Ziz manipulations.
He leaves to test his power more and to talk to Xanatos.
The remaining three of us have an impromptu group meeting.
Lisa takes off her mask and starts us off, "What the hell, Taylor? His power doesn't look broken to me." She's not overly angry, I hope, just excited.
"Yeah I noticed. No, I don't know why it changed instead of breaking."
Amy at least is curious instead of being angry, "Do you think it's connected to the removal of your plasnerves? That had to have been caused by your program, right?"
I think for a moment, "So, my best guess is that either I had the pattern slightly wrong, even if I'm getting faster at processing the data, or that I triggered some kind of reaction from the corona."
Lisa's voice is curious, as she asks, "Do you mean like a reflex or more like the corona didn't like what you were doing to it?"
Before I can respond, she adds in, almost to herself, "No, that can't be right, powers lack agency, they're a part of a person."
"Really?" I can't help myself from asking.
"Huh? Well, powers just don't have agency. You don't see, uh, Kaiser's power doing modern art sculptures, when Kaiser would rather be a Nazi asshole."
We keep talking, but we don't get anywhere. Grue might be even more of a threat now that he can teleport. The best we figure is that Grue's wasn't actually completely broken. Not to the extent that Noelle's power was by the command I gave her. New capes sometimes heal injuries, and Grue 'healing' from having plasnerves in his brain is sort of reasonable. It would be helpful if I hadn't lost that portion of the data though.
Lisa tries to be reassuring, noting that the vast majority of Simurgh victims aren't known to go nuts.
It didn't help much, since the ones that do tend to do so violently and dramatically. That had been in the news as to how the Endbringer had made her sneak attack in the first place.
We don't really reach any conclusions, which is immensely frustrating. I feel like I'm getting better at refining the command I upload in a person's corona, but the results are so inconsistent. Noelle died, and apparently her power died with her. Dinah exhibited a power change such that her power now gives nonsense answers. Paige was when I thought I really had a grip on this process. No effects, no mental twitches, just a stopping of her power, although with the same curious inducement of headaches in Lisa with exposure. Grue was supposed to be the next step of this process. He should have just stopped being able to use his power, like Paige, but without the minor Trump effect.
We eventually settle down to eat food in my lab. Lisa and Amy eat and bitch at each other, but do so politely enough to not upset me or Amy. I'm mostly distracted by going over my data.
Also, by starting to build a new and massive matrix processor at the treatment plant, but that was minor. It was basically a repeat of what I had in my downtown lair, but with some minor refinements, and it would tide me over as I really wanted to try to figure out a truly improved version to replace the one here. This one was reaching the end of its operational lifespan, and replacing it was going to be easier than continuing to maintain it, as long as I had an equivalent to transiently hold a copy of the data on it.
The things that really ate at me continued to be software. My power had just gotten frustratingly quiet the more I delved into understanding the communication by intent that drove power. I just couldn't come up with ideas on that topic. Dad and Lisa had argued that such stuff was just outside my Tinker specialty. It didn't feel like it though. I felt like the intent commands fit naturally into what I was doing, like they were a part of it, a part of how my power was supposed to work.
Near the end of dinner, Comma let me know that Rachel was taking over watching the camp. She would be doing a couple patrols around the area. Driving off anybody outside the camp making trouble, and keeping an eye out for villain capes.
I remained in a surly mood, but after dinner, I excused myself and went up to my room to talk to dad for a bit. We talked daily, but he mostly lived at his camp, and wanted me to stay safe in my lair.
Finally, the last chore of the day was updating the status of my camp with Rachel and Comma. Despite being irritable, I could understand the importance of letting them know what had been going on during my day shift. The answer being not much. A few guys had come by, but elected not to stay, and a few of my units had found stashes of drug stuff in the area, which I had destroyed.
Right before bed, I managed to remember that Amy and I were going to actually visit my camp tomorrow, and so I arranged for a bunch of extra units to travel there and set up, just in case.
