brockton bay heroes, meet plant tinker

[msrewind]

Time elapses. Rewind is allowed to leave her prison- er, hospital room. She needs to go around on a wheelchair, and it'll still take at least a month for her bones to mend completely, and she needs help to move around and do stuff. But she definitely won't complain about being able to eat real food more often (she is very thankful for the bot bringing her takeout), and she can keep riding along with paramedics even when she can't really move around a lot.

And one of these days, while she's in an ambulance, something lands on it, rocking the vehicle and startling her from her thoughts. The ambulance stops, and whatever it is makes noises as if it's moving and then jumps off it. Rewind twists to see through the window, and-

"Console, a really weird leafy monkey just jumped on the ambulance and then off it," she says into her comm.

Comments

[mrglam]

"That's a good description of how I feel about it, too."

[thinkering]

Kiss.

[mrglam]

Eeee kiss!

[thinkering]

"Honestly the Protectorate is welcome to most of my actual usefulness, because most of my actual usefulness can be offloaded entirely onto a heavily parallelized bot. It could probably run a fight as well as I could now while I was programming in some expensive penthouse office. I do still want to maintain Dad's suit, and Rewind's since she'll have one soon. I just don't want to account for my time or my money to them."

[mrglam]

"Maybe they'll be reasonable around you due to just how useful you are. They do keep pretty good relations with New Wave and the Guild and such."

[thinkering]

"Yeah, that's the best case."

[mrglam]

"Also who knows what other useful things you'll invent in the next year."

[thinkering]

"Any suggestions?"

[mrglam]

"Well, I had one but you did say Armsmaster was likely to disapprove..."

[thinkering]

Snort. "I don't think the Protectorate is going to lease an automatic edging machine or whatever else I'd wind up with if I stared at an electronic sex toy long enough, Sadde."

[mrglam]

He laughs. "Well, I guess that can wait until you're independent."

[thinkering]

"I might be able to do it on a shoestring budget, I made my first Tinker thing out of a cellphone and random things I found on the ground, but it'd involve cutting corners, so I don't know that you want to put the result near any form of genital."

[mrglam]

"After you're rich, then. I'm sure we can keep coming up with more things to do that don't involve electronics."

[thinkering]

"We're very creative people."

[mrglam]

He laughs again. "That we are. Best girlfriend," he says, and kisses her.

[thinkering]

Eeee.

[mrglam]

Not getting too carried away, though, because the door's open.

[thinkering]

Of course not.

[mrglam]

"Which of your patents does the PRT have?"

[thinkering]

"I've held onto every line of my software. They've got some bot hardware, mostly earlier versions, and most of the suit hardware."

[mrglam]

"I wonder if they'll do anything about that when you tell them you're leaving."

[thinkering]

Shrug. "If they do, I redesign all the hardware and get you to conjure me tools until I have investors."

[mrglam]

"That's fair, I guess. What about the software, though? Could they say it should be theirs too since it's needed to operate the bots or something? I mean, it's tinker software so I'm pretty sure you're the only person on Earth who can deal with it but."

[thinkering]

"They don't need that exact software to operate the pieces of hardware they have the rights to. Armsmaster could write alternative programs for it. They only need my software if they want it operating autonomously and they only want it operating autonomously if I don't currently hate them."

[mrglam]

"I'm not sure they'll take very kindly to that argument."