Jessica was off negotiating for some additional starting currency and purchasing neighboring property to the church on the poor side of the city while John got to work examining reality.
Within a few hours, both of them wished they had the job of the other.
For Jessica, it was less an issue of being a woman... Strangely enough, something about the Muppet reality made sexism less impactful apparently in this place when it came to financial issues. No, it was because she had no background.
Several attempts to get a decent exchange rate for local currency had to be called off when the other side of the deal attempted to offer only a fraction of the jewelry's value or attempted to claim it being stolen or 'needing to be evaluated' (AKA, to steal it themselves), etc.
Then she found out that the home being rented for the both of them had some payment issue come up? So that needed to be straightened out.
But at least she was making progress and had a good idea of what further actions needed to be taken… John was making frustrating discoveries and finding dead ends.
First of all, he didn't just require a way to imbue materials with spiritual energy (Preferably LOCAL spiritual energy, as he was unsure of what other sources of power would do to local materials), no… He ALSO needed a method to strip spiritual power from targets (Ingredients) prior to the cooking process.
Of course, trying to do this the right way also ended up requiring him to learn how to transfer spiritual energy WITHOUT tainting it with his personal psionic signature or accidentally aligning the chaotic energies into something dangerous accidentally.
All of this would be easy if he just wanted to pass them through his Pocket first….
But that would mean he would be stuck doing it himself forever and it would fall apart when they left.
His second attempt at a more permanent issue was attaching a concept to something, like how he attached the 'communication envelope' to Jane's desire to communicate. He could imbue a cauldron or pipe with the idea of transfer, and just require future cooks to use that hardware.
Jessica had actually been the one to nix THAT idea, since it created long term risks: The equipment getting damaged or stolen or 'forcibly donated to wealthier citizens', etc.
Johns next suggestion of attaching the various processes to the Faith of the local congregation and to activate the effects via audio cues, aka prayers, was uh…
Basically, she strongly suggested not messing with religion in general, and ESPECIALLY not in a world where there was so much spiritual power that random spirits and emotions could gain corporeal status and be empowered to such a degree that temporal manipulation became casual use.
Which was fair.
Also: God might not just exist here, but be VERY involved with local events. It wasn't entirely obvious one way or the other, and gods historically could be pretty horrific to everyone else unless you got REALLY lucky, so uh… Yeah, big Sis said no.
So right now John was attempting to attach the conceptual processes of 'Spiritual Collection' and 'Spiritual Injection' into the combined events of a specific procedure, one that would spread like a virus to similar future procedures as long as the initial intent was within acceptable ranges of variance.
The positive points, if it all worked as designed, was that they could hire local workers to operate the facilities… The process itself would not only require no specific equipment or locations to operate, but could be TAUGHT to future workers without Jessica or John being directly involved, and the entire procedure could be IMPROVED over time!
The downside however was significant as well:
Trying to do this was ANNOYING!
It was fiddly as hell! If attaching a concept to a person was similar to placing a rock on a table, then attaching a procedure of concepts to a series of steps (Ones that may change in the future or alter the order of steps taken and must be recognized as valid due to intent of those involved and the intent of anyone nearby tutoring the learner) felt like attempting to balance a tall pile of sand on a thousand bouncing broncos!
Thankfully there was a threshold here. When (if) he managed to stabilize this mess, it would be JUST as difficult to take it apart or modify the entire mess as it was proving to be so far to implement it all.
John sighed as he Collected the most recent failure and started again.
One pot, filled with local water and a tomato (Enough to count as ' tomato soup', theoretically), another pot with null water (Water generated via the Pocket without the local spiritual energy), and a third empty pot for transfer. Also: one more, likely unsuccessful, attempt.
Let's do this!
Pour the 'tomato soup' (A tomato in water counts, damn it!) through the strainer.
Did it detect his desire to separate out all 'non-soup', aka spiritual energy?
[[
Pocket.]]
Hmm… Sort of. Got about half the power or so, apparently either his attention wavered while pouring the stuff or he had managed to hold his hands in a position that felt more like 'serving' than 'straining'... Damn it!
Collect it all, reset, slightly alter the stupidly MASSIVE number of conditional modifiers to the conceptual process…
And pour!
What about now?
[[
Pocket.]]
Shit, it grabbed all the nutrients with the energy. Somehow.
How the hell was the tomato not suffering from cellular collapse after losing so much material?
Also: System, record this process. Being able to Collect nutrients bound on a conceptual level sounded like it could be pretty useful in the future.
[[
Confirmed, process documented and will be analyzed per protocol.]]
Sweet. Theoretically he could use this and a few other tricks to strip the nutrients out of some poisonous and toxic materials in the future and transfer it into some actually tasty but unhealthy snack and get to enjoy flavor AND not becoming unhealthy!
Maybe. Eventually.
He'd have to learn how to analyze and alter the percentages and composition of the nutrient material collected though, to ensure no annoying side effects from attempting all this, like messing up snack flavors or causing death or rectal hemorrhaging or whatever… But every advance in medical knowledge carried a tiny bit of risk, no?
John blinked at his white, nearly translucent tomato.
He had apparently forgotten to STOP straining the 'soup'.
And the ingredients, aka 'One uncut tomato', was being cleansed and 'strained' of so much conceptual and spiritual material that it was becoming see through.
Neat! Also: confusing.
Did it still have a texture? Sort of. It should turn into powder or slime or something when touched now, but instead it felt like unmoving and super flexible rubber made out of glass.
If he dropped it, would it smash, bounce, collapse into powder, or fade away?
Look at me: still talking when there's
Science to do!
With a grin John hurled the tomato at the wall!
~~~Pocket System~~~
Jessica wanted to strangle this asshole. "You said we had paid rent for the entire month."
The jerk shrugged, uncaring. "Sorry, the month ended yesterday."
Maybe punch his face. "Today is the seventeenth."
He nodded. "Yeah, I collect rent half way through to avoid lines at the money lenders and creditors."
She clenched her hand. "You didn't mention this before. It wasn't in the contract either, none of them."
The man smirked and shrugged. "Sounds like a YOU problem, if you ask me. Pay up for another month or get out, I don't care which. Someone will want the place either way."
Agents shouldn't eviscerate civilians, agents need to be calm, collected, and professional. "Then we will go… But first, return the remainder of the payment. I paid for a month's rent, not a week of it."
His smirk grew larger. "Sorry, no can do: You paid for a month, and the month is over. Our business is done, less you want to rent longer?"
She was about to see how HE liked being 'rent'... Being rent in twain! "Now you listen here, you…"
From the memory of the Pocket, a flood of notes suddenly appeared.
A sea of rapid fired comments from John: Everything's fine, Don't come home yet, I can fix this, Oh shit the rest of the wall is falling in, Do we need the entire roof, Thank goodness I was on the top floor, I can still fix this, I don't think it damaged the other buildings, your bedroom is now missing a bed but I can replace that, Oh shit that was loud, Why is cooking so hard!?
Jessica's face didn't twitch and her hand unclenched. Staring at the man, she sighed. 'Are you sure we can't come to an agreement on this? I was already paying more than market price for that property in the first place."
He chuckled. "You not knowing how to bargain and being desperate is nothing on me! Pay more or fuck off."
Very well then. "Have a good day, sir."
He laughed! "I will! Ha, foreigners fall for this shit every time."
She turned and left, heading back toward the church and that dilapidated property that she had been considered for purchase earlier in the day.
A mental flick sent a note back to John as she ignored his growing frantic efforts to repair the overpriced and dilapidated house.
That felt pretty good, actually… Now, let's buy this next property outright this time and avoid all this kind of bullshit in the future.
With a smile and some pep in her step, she moved through the streets filled with colorful and interesting people.
~~~Pocket System~~~
John blinked at the note. "Oh…"
Glancing at the patched together room (Most of the holes were filled now!) and the slightly groaning structural supports that may or may not be damaged, he sighed. "And I had just finished fixing it all up… Ah well, whatever."
With a grumble the boy left his experiments and walked out on the street.
[[
Pocket.]]
The entire building vanished.
Along with a good portion of the ground.
Meh, whatever. He had only grabbed the rock and dirt and stuff, not the sewage pipes and stuff.
It would be fine.
He wandered along the streets absentmindedly as he began sorting the Collected home and putting Jessica's stuff into her 'Memory Pocket' storage space, his stuff into his own little favorite spots, and the rest into 'generic' or 'trash' for future use or recycling.
Guess further testing and stuff would have to wait until sis found a new place for him to work. Which was fine, he needed a bit more time to analyze why extracting soul energy + conceptual stability + essence of mass + essence of existence ended up turning a tomato into a deadly explosive.
That seemed like something super useful!
Oh, and uh… He also needed to learn how to do it to avoid exploding future customers or current adoptive family members. Yeah.
But honestly, at least to himself? Explosive fruit sounded awesome!
He basically erased a third of a building with a tiny tomato! It was all BAM and ESPooooOooOGE!
And that was AFTER his System attempted to Collect as much of the dangerous explosion as possible (Both as a protective measure and a valuable source of recyclable energy), so how big would it have been if he had drained that tomato more?
Or if he had used a watermelon!
Oh, the siren call of Science! Sexy, sexy science! He just had to know!
His memory flickered back to the missing portion of the recently collected building.
Right, find a proper place to do said experiments FIRST next time. One where a minor amount of reality being damaged wouldn't get him in trouble or yelled at.
But after that? THEN all the Science! Woo!
Oh, and he should go back to fixing the conceptual 'Filtration' and 'Imbuing' techniques before someone else accidentally stumbles upon it and explodes a good chunk of London. Technically the chance of that happening was low and extremely unlikely, especially because John hadn't set it up to self deploy and propagate just yet but… uh.
Yeah, better fix that small issue first.
After all, transforming a watermelon into a portable nuke was just good clean Science… But accidentally altering all local coffee brew's being filtered into drinkable explosives was just genocidal and impolite.
John paused, having just temporarily disabled his ongoing experiments for now… Completely confused about where he was. Uh. Oops?
At least it was quieter here, some sort of park? Oh, and you could see the river from here… Oh ducks! Awesome!
No wait... Shit. You are lost John, focus! It wasn't a problem though, he'd just ask for directions!
Looking around, he noticed two people further up the hill. "Hello! Lovely day isn't it?"
The two smaller beings (Which was still strange to John, considering he was still physically a child yet taller than many adults in this world) seemed a bit set back, although the smaller of them seemed cheerful enough. "Uh… Yes?" The larger guy, probably his dad, chuckled and rubbed the boy's back. "Yes it is, lovely weather. Did you need something?"
John grinned at them both! "Yeah, I was wandering around and I am like TOTALLY lost now! Do either of you know the way to the church on the poor side of town? My sister is heading over that way to set up a new place for us and that's the only landmark I know of nearby to head towards."
The boy went wide eyed! "Oh no! You have to be careful, it can be dangerous to get lost!" His dad nodded. "Right you are Tim, though thankfully we both know the place well." He glanced upwards… "It is getting a bit late, but there's plenty of time for us to show you the way over there."
John blinked. "Wait, are you sure? You can just give me a general direction and I can probably figure it out along the way."
The guy chuckled again as he helped his boy up onto his shoulder, picking up a worn cane in one hand with the ease of practice. "My wife would be in such a tizzy if I just let a boy wander around lost in this city… And the house of faith was always something a second home for us anyway. It'd be no trouble."
Tim laughed from up on his dad's shoulder. "Yeah, and they say we have to help others and stuff too anyway!" He held his dad's head to stay stable but managed to look over at John as they began to move down the hill. "So I'm Tim, what's your name?"
Oh, crap! Had he forgotten to introduce himself!? "I'm John, John Doe! It's also my favorite name, even if other people have more of them or have had them for longer, since I share part of it with my sister now. We sort of adopted each other, so now we are BOTH Doe's, and double Doe's is best Doe's."
The older (but shorter) man looked over curious as John walked along with them, presumably towards the church. "How did you get lost in the first place? Did you get separated from your sister?"
Ah, well… "She was out looking for a place for us to set up our new business, and I was supposed to stay at home, but uh… Well, this and that happened and the house is gone now and so she told me to come meet up with her and stuff."
Tim blinked, missing the confused expression from his father beneath him. "A business? Like selling toys or something?"
John puffed out his chest! "We're going to open up a restaurant! It's going to be awesome, if I can make it so that the food is tasty without exploding and stuff."
Tim seemed confused while his father apparently decided to just keep walking along. "Huh? Why would food explode?"
No idea. "Still trying to figure that out. Anyway, my sister and I wanted to set up a place where people can
pay what they want for the food and figured that setting it up near the church would help the most people."
The father blinked. "Pay what you… I'm afraid that doesn't sound like the most sound business model."
Meh. "We are both rich and stuff, this is mostly just to keep us busy before we move on and help out a few people. The really poor can get a free meal while the richer people like us can pay a bit extra, and basically the entire community improves in the process."
Tim grinned wide! "That sounds AMAZING!"
His father chuckled. "Certainly sounds different, I'll say that much… Oh, we are nearly there! The service is quite good in fact, if you and your sister aren't too busy to attend a sermon once in a while. My family comes when we can."
John grinned at the (worn but well loved) church! "Wow, I was actually pretty close by! And I don't mind going with you guys later on, but I really got to find out why my food exploded before I do anything else."
Now, where was she… Oh, a note in his Pocket! "My sister Jessica said she bought a place called the 'Darins Housing Complex'? Is that nearby?"
Tim blinked as his father suddenly coughed. "She bought the WHAT?!"
Uh. "I did say we were rich, right?"
John was SURE he had mentioned it earlier. Right?
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