Chapter 51: Expanding horizons

Chapter 51: Expanding horizons

We were barely over the bridge connecting the Triskelion to the rest of Washington DC when Ema brought up going to see Tony Stark again.

"He is the best option for getting our hands on thrust as a concept in a small form." She insisted. "Plus who knows what else he could help us with. You did say in some comics he comes up with an energy shield."

I let out a sigh and nodded, reluctantly agreeing before looking over at her.

"Why are you so determined to see him though?" I asked. "I don't think you have ever harped on something like this before."

"... I want to meet Jarvis." Ema admitted in a small voice, catching me off guard. She looked away from me and out the window before continuing. "You said he was an AI, an artificial construct like me. I want to meet him."

"Ema! If you were interested in meeting him you should have told me." I said, shaking my head. "Alright, we will go see Stark."

We quickly found a place to covertly travel back to the quarry. I checked on the Destroyer armor, which was making steady progress. It was interesting to see the metal structure slowly growing over time, from the exact point where the original piece had been. While I was doing that Ema was retrieving a landing pad from the storage shed and flying around, testing her speed and maneuverability while she was carrying it. She landed next to me when I stepped out from under the tent.

"It's noticeable, but mostly in the acceleration." She said before pulling the stone slab into her chest, her exosuit morphing around it. "I don't think this small of a load will affect my top speed."

"Great, that;s perfect. Now being at the quarry will shave off a bunch of time, but I want you to go to Denver first, then to Las Vegas, before heading to Los Angeles." I explained. "Each time you're going to put down a pad, call me and I'll bring you another one. Not including the time it will take you to find good spots for the landing pads this is about an eleven hour trip. Around ten if you go full tilt"

"What are you going to be doing in the meantime?"

"I'm going to do something that I've put off for a while, which is take the first steps into modifying myself directly." I responded. "No actual experiments yet, but if I'm going to be experimenting on mice I need to be able to scan them for issues. I can't exactly ask them questions about their strength levels."

"So the ultimate scanner?"

"I'm going to start with a medical scanner, and then move on to something like a scouter from Dragon Ball, but more detailed. That one is going to be interesting.

"Alright, good luck Carson."

After watching Ema fly away, I traveled back to New York. I only had a few hours before stores started to close so I wanted to get shopping in my hometown done first so I could switch and gain an extra hour at Austin. My shopping trip started at Staples, before moving over to CVS, then bouncing all over the place. My first stop in Austin was the third home improvement shop I had been to during this shopping spree, once again stocking up on grounding rods. I got a comment from a clerk, absently wondering why they couldn't keep them in stock anymore.

Putting my first attempt aside I tried again, this time I went a bit more out of the box. Going paper heavy, I combined a few books on player statistics for several sports, several posters I found in the medical supply stores that were basically just cheat sheets for doctors about specific indexes. I combined that with a few scanner tablet combos, before combining in my wild card, a whole box of Dungeons and Dragons material. Blank character sheets, monster manuals, rules books and dungeon master cheat sheets filled with stats. While the game itself was about using your imagination and roleplaying, it functioned on boiling down characters, monsters, events, everything to descriptions and numbers. A magical item that makes someone stronger wouldn't just make you a bit stronger, they add plus two to strength, or added plus three to hit, or an extra four sided dice to your attack damage. While I could do without attack damage being measured in different dice sizes and amounts, numericizing abilities was exactly what I was looking for.

Unfortunately it didn't work quite so well. When I was done working in the scanners and the magic rods the concept of book information mixed with the tablet's ability to store information, which led to the tablet being filled with the actual books. Still, the concepts were all still there, the final result had just been led in the wrong direction.

Luckily, while I was brainstorming a new plan I realized I still had a bunch of leftover stuff from my medical scanner, not to mention my first attempt. I also realized I was missing something obvious. I wasn't scanning for power levels or whatever, I was testing power levels! The scanner was the easy part, but so was testing! A quick look online revealed dozens of questionnaires about determining esoteric things, like how courageous you were, and how much willpower you had. There was a fair amount of 'What kind of cake are you' and 'What Friends character are you' type questionnaires as well, but I ignored them.

I traveled home with an excited grin, quickly setting up the printer I had stolen from the chop shop oh so long ago. I hooked it up to my computer and twiddled my thumbs while the drivers were installed. Luckily, the printer still had some paper in it, which I quickly used to print out a dozen different questionnaires. I was a little worried that they wouldn't have strong concepts, but they ended up being fine. I traveled back to the quarry and worked the questionnaires into the scanners, then used the leftover medical materials to make a lesser version of the medical scanner, combining them together before finally adding my first and second attempts.

The scanner, which was an A rank interestingly enough, probably because it was almost double the amount of expensive materials as the medical scanner, had the same general shape and construction as its medical counterpart. Black metal and plastic, a hand grip with a trigger guard and with an eight by six inch screen. The difference between the two was the detailed scrolling along the screen and grip, inlaid with a copper esque metal. It looked good, and I was pretty sure it came from all of the art in the D&D books.

With a shrug I pointed it at myself and pulled the trigger, a red beam coming out and scanning over me. The scanner beeped and the screen flashed, the beam disappearing right after. Assuming it was done I turned it back around to read it.

On the screen was a clear image of myself, wearing exactly what I was wearing. Next to it was a small description of myself, with startlingly accurate information on it, though it did not include my origins. As I scrolled down the information continued, all details of how strong I was, what my intelligence, dexterity was and plenty of other data. With a touch I could change the list to base counts, what I was capable of without my gear. Further down was a list of everything I was wearing, including how effective they were. Almost all of the information could be toggled between percentages and some sort of point based system, very similar to how D&D worked.

I couldn't help but celebrate, cheering out loud in the tent and fist pumping. I was extremely happy with what I had achieved, it had completely washed away my slowly rising tiredness. Deciding that such a development deserved a reward, I ordered a pizza for a late dinner, traveling home to enjoy a cold beer as I scanned most of what I owned in the apartment and enjoyed my dinner.

It was a few hours later when Ema messaged me. She had arrived at the outskirts of Las Vegas. I traveled to her and found myself under a large bridge, the sound of cars driving overhead making me jump slightly.

"That was fast, were you still up?" She asked accusingly.

"Just celebrating. I managed to get my power scanner up and running and it is a doozy." I assured her, pulling it out and scanning myself, spending about twenty minutes going over everything that it was capable of.

"That that's impressive." She admitted, handing the scanner back, which immediately disappeared into the deck. She was quiet for a moment, looking expectantly at me before finally saying anything. "Do you have the landing pad?"

I looked at her with a blank stare for a moment before cursing, traveling back to the quarry. I stomped into the storage shed, grabbed a landing pad and traveled back to her.

"Here." I said, rolling my eyes when she laughed. "Yeah yeah yeah, laugh it up. Sorry for being focused on me creating a universal power level scanner with a tabletop game and some buzzfeed quizzes."

"Go home Carson. I'll text you tomorrow morning." She said with a smile. "And sorry about the crappy location, the city is way too lit up for me to get any closer. We will have to move it in manually."

I nodded and waved as she flew out from under the overpass. With a sigh I traveled home, asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.