blasto, meet official opinions on self-replicating minions

[peterxy]

The PRT catches wind of a strange increase in disappeared domestic animals in the downtown area. Given that the people who live there are the rich and powerful, this is clearly a problem that needs to be investigated and solved immediately. The PRT, of course, agrees that this is of utmost importance, and not just because of precedent about mass abductions of pets, of course not, why would you think that, they are so very worried about Fido, even Scion recognizes the merits of rescuing lost pets.

(Lorica's asked to maybe keep a few more eyes there than she has been.)

Comments

[thinkering]

Nod nod. "Bot, email her."

The helmet chirps.

[peterxy]

The reply comes pretty quickly:

How do I test that?

[thinkering]

The bot can field this one. Wear a bunch of layers of gloves, and if you can't get enough gloves to make it not work try tapping stuff with sticks of greater lengths. And are you sure you have to actually touch things to rewind them?

[peterxy]

I'll try that when I have some time, and I just tested, yes to the second question.

[thinkering]

If it turns out you can tap things with other things it'll affect suit design!

[peterxy]

How?

[thinkering]

Extensible bits that auto-aim so you don't have to close with a target.

[peterxy]

Awesome! I'll test.

[thinkering]

And when those results are in and promising Lorica brings Rewind a glove with an extensible cord that taps whatever she points to see if that works too.

[peterxy]

"How does it work? What should I do?"

[thinkering]

"Point at something! And, uh, until the suit and you have more practice together don't point at things you don't intend to boop. It'll notice if you don't boop something it taps and update. This is just to see if it works though."

[peterxy]

"Like, what, with a finger?" she asks, then looks at her shoulderbot. "Can you scoot over there so I can point at you?"

[thinkering]

The bot scoots.

"With a finger or with a whole-hand pointing gesture or whatever."

[peterxy]

She points at the bot with a finger.

[thinkering]

Zot! goes the glove, tapping the bot gently.

[peterxy]

And the bot is on Rewind again, subjectively as far back as immediately after she had asked it to scoot over there, while the stringy thing Rewind's glove shot is hanging slack there.

"Hmm," she says.

[thinkering]

The glove retracts the zotted thing. "I'm going to make that retract faster," Lorica says, "but this sufficed to make sure it'd work at all."

[peterxy]

"I'm gonna need to practice timing with this thing, I had meant to send the bot a bit before that. And I don't know if it needs to retract, 'cause-" She points at a wall.

[thinkering]

Zot.

[peterxy]

Then she "touches" the glove, aiming for it - and the zotting stringy thing attached to it - to rewind back to the coiled state.

[thinkering]

"Okay," says Lorica, "but you don't necessarily want to have to do that all the time, especially since both gloves will have zot things and you might have a lot of targets."

[peterxy]

"I might do that all the time anyway, my M.O. was booping someone else and then immediately booping myself away from them, it's not that different."

[thinkering]

"It'll be easy to make it quick-retracting anyway. Unless there's a reason it shouldn't I'll just go with the design I have."

[peterxy]

"Okay," she shrugs. "How far will it go?"

[thinkering]

"Ten feet. I can get it longer if you want but it'd involve switching to a gauntlet instead of a glove."