Chapter 254: Among Us

Chapter 254: Among Us

The costs are astronomical, Lightshow said.

Thats what I like to hear, Perry said. He wasnt even kidding. Spendthrift ate astronomical costs for breakfast.

Lightshow mustve thought he was being sarcastic, because she huffed and continued to explain.

Look, when I stabilize light, its primarily 2 dimensional panels fit together into a 3-d shape.

Ah. Light origami. Sort of. The total volume of stabilized light is tiny, and the insides are just trapped air.

Stabilizing an entire person must indeed have astronomical cost.

Heres what Im thinking, Perry said. MRI takes slices anyway. Is it possible to stabilize Solaris only precisely where he needs to be stabilized to take the picture, then the next, and so on?

I dont think its that easy. Lightshow responded, chewing on her lip. The woman was a brunette in her thirties, with the vibe of a friendly aunt who dabbled in science. Thats all he got, because she was wearing a full-body hardlight projection to hide her identity.

Solaris and the light-stabilizing equipment will play hell with the MRIs readings. Hes got electromagnetism up the wazoo. We would need to stabilize all of him at once to even have a shot at it.

Not to mention, Lightshow said, taking the chewed pen out of her mouth. If Solaris so much as twitches while only a small part of his body is stabilized, that could misalign parts of his brain and flat out kill him.

Lightshow was deep in the Tinker Twitch, and generally a nice woman at heart, so she didnt immediately understand that she had just described the basic concept for a weapon that stood a chance at killing the most powerful super in the cityand she was the only one who could build it.

Perry noticed it, though.

Lets not bring attention to it. We all knew that in order to cure him, wed have to invent tech that could mess him up pretty bad.

Whats your limiting factor? Perry asked. Energy?

Processing powerand Energy, I suppose. Lightshow said, before moving over to the counter where one of her Hardlight belts lay.

She opened up the belt and pulled out a rather chunky looking GPU.

This GPU is necessary to stabilize one cubic millimeter of light, She said. Now, I spread that cubic millimeter as far as itll go, but For Solaris, hes one hundred and ninety five centimeters tall, and one hundred and thirteen kilograms in mass, which puts his volume at approximately

She pulled out a calculator and punched in some numbers.

One hundred and eleven million, eight hundred and eighty-one thousand, one hundred eighty-eight cubic millimeters.

Do you have one hundred and twelve million of these? She asked, waggling the GPU at him.

Im fairly confident I can grow something that could handle that amount of processing power in a couple days, Perry said with a nod.

Reeaaaally? Where have you been all my career? She asked, cocking her head in a flirty way and biting on her chewed-up pen.

Grade School. Perry responded with a flat expression.

Thats fair. Lightshow sighed, blowing a raspberry and moved on to the next problem: The lens and the power supply.

How do you know Solariss exact height, weight and volume? Perry interrupted her explanation. She obviously hadnt consulted any stat sheets or the supers wiki.

Her projected disguise had the decency to mirror her blush.

Well, you know, you grow up with a certain expectation of what a man should Wait! This is irrelevant! Back to work, you!

She bonked him with a rolled-up newspaper. Also made of hardlight.

Yeah, back to work, Daddy! Sera shouted, battering his hip with her tiny fists.

Take it easy with the hitting, Perry said. Its rude to hit people.

Mommy hits people? She said. must be talking about Heather. Nat doesnt hit peopledirectly.

Yes, but mommy hits badguys. You dont have any bad guys to hit here. Its just us. And hitting non-bad guy personnel makes you a bad guy.

You can be the bad guy! Sera said, hitting him again. Youre the bad guy!

It was times like this that Perry was thankful for his drastically increased brainpower, as he was able to play with his daughter while simultaneously running the math on exactly how big of a generator he needed to make.

Even with Perrys spendthrift ability working full-time, the Solaris MRI machine was going to be a BEAST, guzzling power an order of magnitude more than the entire city used in a day.

He used Spendthrift on the front-end, creating a generator that would produce a frankly outrageous amount of power, then he used Spendthrift on the back-end, lowering the energy requirements of the hungry machine to a tiny fraction of its original requirements, just barely low enough to match the output of his generator.

Lowering the energy throughput was a godsend, because it made the electromagnetic interference from the Lightshow-specific parts much easier to isolate and accommodate for.

Even with the lowered energy requirements, Perry still had to personally work on all the guts to make sure every single wire was super-conducting, simply to prevent waste heat from slagging the entire machine.

While the processors were growing in his vat, Perry watched Lightshow make her proprietary tech. They were the bottleneck, since neither of them were Industrial Tinkers, they couldnt apply their benefits to each others work.

If Perry could make those parts himself, he could increase their efficiency over a thousandfold, make each lens have a drastically higher maximum capacity. Most of a cubic meter instead of a couple cubic centimeters.

Mongoose was a good choice as a door guard, because while he would most likely lose any confrontation, it wouldnt be by much, making just about any attacker nearly crippled from the close victory. Then they would have to get past the lasers, while seriously wounded and/or exhausted.

An excellent deterrent.

Mongoose looked forward to when the detail was over. He could tally up all of his 5k nightly wages with gusto and blow half of it at the strip club.

He shifted in place as he spotted someone approaching in the distance. Someone hed gotten to know coming and going lately.

Hey, boss, whats-

Mongoose reeled backwards as the figures hand flashed up, slapping against his mouth.

Confusion turned to panic as their fingers began burrowing into his face.

Mongoose opened his mouth to scream, when the palm split open and jammed a barbed tendril down his esophagus. Things faded to white pretty quick after that.

On the eighth day of collaboration with Lightshow, Perry walked into the shop hed been sharing with her and came to a halt as he found himself face-to-face with several Anchors.

Namely Guile, Freddy Steel and Chemestro.

Lightshow stood with her arms crossed, a big scowl on her faux face.

Can I help you guys? Perry asked, mentally scanning the surroundings for tricks.

Wed like you to take a look at some video, Lightshow said, gesturing him to follow her over to one of her computers.

The Anchors split around the two of them and flanked Perry all the way to the monitor, where Lightshow pressed play on a video showing the shop from above.

Perry glanced up at the security camera, then back down at the video.

On the video, Perry walked into the shop and snagged one of Lightshows lenses from one of the bowls as he passed by. The movement was so smooth that the only hint was the absence of a lens that had been there a moment ago.

Huh. Smooth, Perry said, stroking his chin.

Care to explain? Lightshow asked.

Wasnt me, Perry said with a shrug.

What? Lightshow asked.

Wasnt me. I know where all the security is in this room, and if I wanted to steal one of your lenses, you would never catch me.

Prove it. Lightshow said.

Perry turned and pointed out the security cameras, both the obvious ones as well as the hidden ones. He then pointed out the paneling that hid the scanners that took 3-D pictures of the lab on a streaming basis. He then pointed out the bio-locks on the floor that would trap unauthorized people in cages of hardlight.

Then he hacked into Lightshows security system and changed the current streaming video to show himself dancing a jig.

Then he used a spell to open a tiny portal at the bottom of one of the lens bowls, popping it up in his hand. The bowl itself didnt move, and he was nowhere near it.

Fine fine, Lightshow said, waving for Perry to stop showing off after a few minutes. A simple snatch and grab is beneath you. I get it. If youll consent to a search of your person and your hotel room, well assume it was a super with a doppleganger ability strong enough to fake your bio signature, and proceed from there.

Perry pursed his lips.

Doppleganger my ass. That was a mimic, wasnt it?One who knew what we were doing here?How did it mimic me without consuming me, though? I may have to test my own bone marrow.

That sucks.

Sure, with a couple stipulations: Perry said. One, the four of us will stay in the same room at all times, Perry said, motioning to himself, his nanny and the twins. And two: you can search where were staying to your hearts content, but afterwards, were moving to a different room of our choosing.

Lightshow seemed to believe he was trying to avoid counter-surveillance, and sure, that was kind of part of it, but if there was a mimic around, Perry would rather not give it an opportunity to lay eggs in their pillows or something equally awful.

And nobodys strip-searching my kids. Perry added.

The surrounding supers discussed it for a moment before agreeing to Perrys terms.

After stripping down to his boxers, while they were rifling through his clothes, Perry pulled out the marrow sampler.

Multi-Tool.

Perry held the drill to his arm for a moment, and decided to offer Annette an olive branch. Shed been subjected to it twice already.

Annette, would you like to do the honors?

She gave a faint smile. No, I would rather not. I can sulk, but schadenfreude just isnt in an Elysian Attendants nature. Besides, Id rather keep an eye on the twins.

I gotcha, bro, Freddy steel said, grabbing the drill and jamming it into Perrys arm.

Son of a B-