you'll be a leper, be a healer, be a sinner, be a saint

[ahollowman]

What we've been doing for one-fortieth of a second can't continue indefinitely.

If you compare the six days in the Book of Genesis with the four billion years of geologic time, on that scale, one day is equal to about six hundred and seventy million years. At three minutes to midnight on the sixth day, mankind appeared. At one fortieth of a second before midnight, the industrial revolution began.

And it's unsustainable.

There were a couple things I learned eight years ago in a cave with Ho Yinsin. One of them? Was that it's all unsustainable. And it needs to change.

Ultron wasn't wrong. He wasn't right, either. But he wasn't wrong, even if the execution was, even if he lacked empathy. Even if he had no appreciation for the sanctity of life. Something's got to change. We've got to evolve. There's more out there, we've seen it, I've seen it, aliens, the Asgardians, dark energy. Cosmic Cubes. If we keep doing what we're doing, there is no future.

There's just one-fortieth of a second.


Darrow still used fossil fuels. It was weird, and Tony didn't like it. Why did it work that way? What made it that way? Who the hell could say, because Tony had yet to see even a single convincing piece of evidence that Darrow wasn't just some elaborate simulation, that it wasn't thoughts thinking thoughts of their own, ten million billion calculations every second on an alien computer.

So why did his motorcycle still run on gasoline?

There was a way to fix that.

It started with Henry Cheng, a boy whose first language was thought, a boy who needed his RoboBee. It became Panoptes Solutions. Soon it would be too big for the two of them, especially because there were things they couldn't, wouldn't, or shouldn't be in charge of. A think tank of two guys was a pretty shit tank. Phil had asked Tony how he'd sift for employees, and Tony had known the answer. He'd set up shop -- he had literally set up shop, they had computers and a band saw and a screenprinter -- and began to make logic puzzles.

Little metal boxes, opened very specific, convoluted ways. Not all the same, but different, with different kinds of puzzles. Meant to target different kinds of minds. Mechanical intelligence, social intelligence, knowledge of chemistry or advanced maths. Things for tactile learners, some puzzles better suited to observers or the more auditory type.

In the end, they all contained a business card with a web address on it.

The web address took them to a website that prompted them to submit a resume.

And if Tony liked the resume, the submitter was given the address of the shop that would one day be Panoptes Solutions and an invitation for an interview.

[ any characters who might be interested in joining the think tank are free to respond here under the assumption they solved one or more puzzles they found around darrow. it's up to you how difficult it was for your character. they can meet him at his shop, which looks like a half-furnished cement-floored shop with some equipment, a refrigerator, a blaring ghetto blaster, and truck delivery bay doors in the far end of it.or chase him down somewhere else. ]

Comments

[ahollowman]

"Hi. I did not-- yeah, I did not invite you in?" Tony mumbled, following after the girl, who seemed very intent on not actually giving a shit about how doors worked. Maybe she came from a world without doors; Tony was still going to be uncomfortable about it. He was the one who decided when and when not to follow social procedure, not other people.

"Those are my puzzles," he added, stupidly. "And they were, yes, supposed to be challenging. Challenging enough. I'm not looking for the next Einstein, just sort of hoping maybe this place provides one, because they would be cool. Who are you?"

[tobereckoned]

"I don't know who that is," Rey said, dismissing the question into the pile of things to ask later. Her current course of investigation was more focused on this man who had designed several moderately entertaining (and slightly challenging) puzzles, in all their sleek, finished elegance, while he stood half-dressed and confused in front of her.

Picking up one of the logic puzzles, Rey put on her sternest face. "This works by the same logic as putting a lightspeed dampener on an impounded spacecraft. People think the only way to get rid of it is to key in the code or else risk going at lightspeed until a precise point when you can yank it off. No one ever thinks of switching currents and diverting it into emergency shutdown."

[ahollowman]

"Okay." Tony slowed down, reigned in his own dialogue, and stared at her very intently for an extended heartbeat. "That is all theory, where I come from. But I'm assuming you have, in practice, worked with lightspeed equipment? Which, makes sense. It probably exists somewhere out there in the universe. Given an infinite universe, there are infinite possibilities. So I am taking it entirely as a given that you've worked on FTL spacecraft before."

With that, his ears flushed a light pink. The day, so far, made absolutely no sense, but he wasn't hating it. He might even be enamored.

"And you're right. That was not what I had in mind when I made the thing, but you are absolutely right. At least, based on my limited and theoretical understanding of astrophysical engineering."

[tobereckoned]

Rey looked back at him, her small face even and unreadable as he spoke. Rambled, really. She was starting to think she ought to have used the website after all, if only to see if this man was more interesting when mentally collected.

"It's a thieves' trick on Jakku," she finally said. Not quite bored–Rey was always too invested in these things to sound bored–but practical. It was just the sort of thing you learned on Jakku because either you were a thief, a scavenger, or a dupe. Of that list, only the former two usually got to eat. "And people who don't know it leave their ships for junk if they're on the run."

[ahollowman]

"That your planet?" Tony asked, looking at her a little strangely. He was growing used to the idea of other planets, dimensions, alien species that looked human and ones that didn't. Used to, but not entirely comfortable. The fact of it always gave him a frisson of insecurity.

"I'm from Earth. No inter-system travel yet. So what were you? Thief? Mechanic? Pilot? Scrapyard worker? No judgment zone."

[tobereckoned]

"Scavenger," she said, short and quick. "But I'm not from Jakku. I was born somewhere else." Rey shrugged and this gesture was also short, curt, because she didn't actually know where she came from.

"So. You put out puzzles to challenge people for work. Why?" Rey shifted her weight, arms crossed over her chest, and waited for something like a satisfactory answer.

[ahollowman]

"Because I think drive and curiosity are more important than credentials," Tony told her, tossing himself casually into his kitchen chair and gesturing for her to do the same because she might as flippin' well since she'd already invaded his home.

"Please sit, you're making me nervous. What's got you so worked up about my interview methods? You interested?"

[tobereckoned]

When he asked her the question, point blank, Rey was a little stymied. What exactly about them did bother her? Rey stared at him as if he'd asked the question in binary rather than in Basic.

"But they were easy," she finally blurted.

[ahollowman]

"That says more about you than my boxes, okay. My boxes were cool and not easy. You didn't have to be a member of Mensa to solve them, but that wasn't the point." He looked at her with his dark brows lowered defensively.

"Since you're not leaving, can I get you a rink? Because I'm having a drink. I need a drink right now."

He threw his hands up in the air in defeat and headed toward the kitchen.

[tobereckoned]

Rey raised her brows in return, uncertain as well. This man, Tony, was as constantly in motion as Han Solo had been stubbornly collected and she didn't quite know what to make of it. At the offer of a drink, she shrugged and concentrated back on the puzzles.

"So if I solved five of those, does that mean I have a job?"