After making sure the black steel was just black steel and not nanobots, – or as I like to call them, no-no bots, - or covered in human-infesting cordyceps or something similarly terrible, Perry moved on to the next stage. It took a few days and a few tries to get the guts of the building right. The electrical system inside the building was much more complex than the frame, and he never got it completely right.

Instead Perry just had his swarm of sheet metal Mk. 3’s cut out any areas that didn’t work and added in a better one on the next attempt.

Finally all Perry had to do was add a few minor parts he couldn’t quite get right just by imagining them, for a few hundred dollars.

It seems like rarity and complexity are similar chokepoints.

That kind of explains why magical ingredients are off limits. Magical ingredients all come from living creatures, meaning, their interiors are more complicated than steel beams by several orders of magnitude.

And Perry hadn’t fully succeeded with the steel beams. The discoloration was a minor issue, especially given his Perk boosting its effectiveness, but Perry would bet money that the molecular composition of the black steel wasn’t quite as strong naturally as standard steel.

So it was a failure…but a meaningless one.

Magical ingredients, on the other hand….one tiny molecule out of place, and they’re totally unusable.

I will master you, Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation!

The dressing on the outside of the guts of the building was much easier, since it was just panelling. There was a bit of mottled swirling color in a few of the panels, but it looked like Natalie and Heather, so Perry didn’t mind.

Once the building was furnished and powered, Perry cast the spell one last time.

Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation.EXE

(0/1)

The seven layers of dirt he pictured for each floor of the building sprang into existence without a hint of giving him trouble.

“Oh, come on!” Perry grumbled. It seemed like the more specific he was about something, the harder it was. Dirt was a cakewalk. Despite being a complex composite, his brain was able to easily home in on the concept of ‘dirt’ and wrestle it down long enough for the spell to manifest it.

Well, whatever.

Perry had the building plant potatoes that he shoveled into the potato receiver, then funneled some of his homemade glowstone and the fifty pound bag of unicorn shit into it’s own receiver on the first floor of the building, and listened as it was activated by his spell-disc, then redistributed to sprayer in the ceiling of every floor.

Let’s see if I did the math right, Perry thought, flipping the switch.

A golden puff of shimmering dust descended from thousands of individual nozzles and descended on the lump of dirt, where the potatoes lay.

“Was something supposed to happen?” Grampa asked as the shimmering dust disappeared into the dirt.

Perry frowned and cocked his head. “Maybe the potatoes are buried too dee-There we go!”

In front of their eyes, the potatoes began shooting up, the ground underneath their stems distending as the tubers in the earth rapidly maturing.

“Damn. Starting to see why that stuff was so expensive.” Grampa muttered.

“The university of Franklin uses it to breed insect resistant cultivars the same weekend a new mutant pest is discovered.” Perry said. “Otherwise we would’ve starved a long time ago.”

“Aaah.” Grampa nodded. “I get those UF seeds all the time. At least those city boys are doing something right.”

When the computer determined that the plants were mature, the tubers were lifted out of the earth by a gently shaking grate, then separated from the stalks and washed, all automated. A small fraction of the tubers were diverted back into the ground and re-planted, while the rest tumbled gently along conveyor belts back to the storage area.

Perry and Grampa followed the conveyor belt to its destination. There, in all its splendor, was several truck-loads worth of potatoes, ready to load up.

“Tadah.” Perry did jazz hands, motioning toward the massive pile of food.

“Fancy trick.” Grampa said, picking up a couple handfuls of potatoes and holding them in his shirt. “Let’s make sure they’re edible before you sell ‘em.”

“Fair ‘nuff,” Perry shrugged.

That night, Magical Mystery Mash was the food of the day, and Perry was pleased to note that there was no tangible difference in taste or composition between his potatoes and regular ones.

The next morning, perry had half of his dump trucks come out and begin hauling the loot to grocery stores across the city.

Now I just need to get back to all my other quests, Perry thought as he watched the stream of food heading into the city

“In a perhaps, paradoxical turn of events, Paradox has begun shipping produce, specifically potatoes, to the hungry citizens of Franklin City. According many grocers, they were held at gunpoint and commanded to resell the unlicensed goods at pre-famine prices.”

The newscaster’s tone seemed to imply that was a bad thing.

“Excuse me miss, how do you feel about Paradox assaulting the grocer-“ The newscaster said, pointing her microphone toward a mutant woman hauling two bags of potatoes over her shoulders.

“I ain’t got time for your bullsh—t,” The insectoid woman said, barreling past the newscaster. “My kids are gonna eat tonight!”

Perry cackled and clapped his hands together at the newscaster’s frazzled expression as she tried to fix her hair and regain her composure.

“It seems when it comes to food, necessity trumps protocol. This is Lindsey Stirling for channel four news.”

Side-Quest Complete!

Ease food dependency on Washington city!

Reward: 1000XP, increased influence with Nexus, general reputation up.

Nice, totally worth a week mucking around at Grampa’s. Plus, the visit had done him a lot of good, soul-wise. Perry was significantly less irritable and moody than he had been immediately after the surgery, which meant it was healing up nicely.

He still wasn’t going to implant another spell for at least a month, to make sure everything was completely stabilized. Perry checked his stats.

Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)

Class: Garage Tinker

Level 8

HP: 9

Body: 8

Stability: 27

Nerve: 12

Attunement: 42

Free Points: 0

XP to next level: 3720

Spells: Light (5/5), Dragor’s Kinesis (3/3), Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation (1/1)

I’m pretty sure I got an additional 400 XP for the increased reputation as well. Almost halfway to the next level already. No guarantees the next three quests will have that extra juice.

Invisible XP trickled in now and again, a little here and there that the System didn’t alert him to. Usually it was related to minor changes in Perry’s reputation, minor actions here and there that preserved or enhanced his options. This one was a big enough swing that he got a fair amount of that extra invisible XP.

Maybe it was for going above and beyond by politely suggesting that the grocers sell the potatoes at normal prices rather than letting them continue profiteering. He didn’t point a gun at them, he was just wearing seven foot tall power armor at the time. No coercion there.

Perry felt maligned by the press.

Now, what’s next on the agenda? Perry thought, stroking his chin.

There’s upgrade the Wall and improve infrastructure, and invent new Essences. Unfortunately upgrading the wall would probably require approval from Solaris, and Perry didn’t wanna get within a light-minute of him, and inventing new essences would require him to be outside the city for weeks at a time.

So infrastructure it is.

What if…what if the infrastructure could click back together like legos?

Perry had a sudden flash of inspiration. A repeating structure that would snap apart under enough pressure, that a repair crew could snap back together? That might work…

Perry could add the shape as a part of his aggregate, making any concrete it made crumble into large pieces that could snap back together. Obviously it wouldn’t be a lego piece, but something less fussy about orientation, able to stick together in every orientation.

Then I just need to design the cement in such a way that it can gradually re-seal like a broken bone…

Perry felt the Tinker Twitch begin to bubble up. He was itching to design that.

Add that to the permits that John the Lawyer was getting filled out for him, and Perry might pass the next side-quest in less than a week. If red tape was a dragon, lawyers were the white knights that fought them…or the evil wizards that conjured them, depending on their disposition.

After that, though…level ten might be out of reach without some major Quests. Perry was running low on the low-hanging fruit, XP wise. Level ten would be in the ballpark of seven and a half thousand XP. Just the big XP tasks, or lots of time spent working out and capturing noobs. Maybe even a year or two.

Given how my areonite is dwindling, I might have to move up the trip to Chicago to level nine, rather than waiting until level ten, because level ten isn’t gonna happen without a fight, anyway. Either Locust, Solaris, or all of Manita.

Solaris was right out, because...yeah. The super could literally move at the speed of light, Perry needed some truly outrageous magictech before Solaris was no longer a death-sentence.

Perry KNEW Locust would make his life miserable if he tried to steal her territory. The old hag was wily and experienced. And Manita…that was a lifetime commitment.

Perry shook aside the distracting thoughts and put his mind into designing Para-crete ™. Just put the nose to the grindstone and deal with the things he could deal with now.

*** 38 Hours Later***

Perry was chuckling manically to himself when his phone vibrated through the fugue state of the Tinker Twitch.

You still meeting us at Burger Joint? -Natalie.

“Of course,” Perry muttered, as he typed out a quick reply. “But that’s not until Thursday.”

Check the time. -Natalie.

“ACK!” Perry ripped the goggles off his face, but removing the U.V. filter didn’t magically set the clock back by a day.

“OMW!” Perry typed, frantically hustling past the enormous pile of carbon rods and going for his wallet.

He paused for a moment and sniffed his pits.

Okay, shower first.

Perry ran past the exercise room, where Titan and Plagius were beating the crap out of each other, dove into a stall and took what was quite possibly the world’s fastest shower.

The world’s fastest shower record was set by Solaris in 1994 at 0.0031 seconds. this record was met, but not surpassed by Lightspeed, a year later. The limitation for this record is the speed at which impacting water (and air, for that matter) results in nuclear fission.

-Guiness book of World Records, Super edition.

Perry tossed on some clean clothes and sprinted past the two brawlers on the way back out.

“Where you going, Paradox?”

“Meeting! Not Late!” Perry shouted as he ran.

It was true, he wasn’t late…yet.

Perry was so close to being late he didn’t even have time to psych himself out about meeting Natalie’s parents.

He screeched to a halt in front of the MK. 5.

Wait a minute. Her parents don’t know for a fact which super I am. They only know I’m a manitian. Not…THE manitian. If I show up in a power armor, it’ll totally blow my plausible deniability, and intimidate them besides.

I need an unassuming civilian vehicle… But I don’t have one, do I?

Perry scratched his chin, idly playing with the beard that was starting to grow in.

I got it!

***Natalie***

“He’s a little late, isn’t he?” Dad asked as they sat down with their tofu burgers.

Come on, Perry, Nat thought, wiggling in her seat.

“He just gets really focused on what he’s doing.” Nat covered for him.

“Like you?” Dad asked, raising a brow, obviously probing to see if Perry was a superhero as well.

“Well…”

“He’s a manitian.” Mom stated with a scowl. “They didn’t have clocks back on their home planet. He probably looked at the sun or something. That’s why they don’t keep deadlines.”

Dad and Nat both regarded Mom with disbelieving expressions and stunned silence.

“…He was…born on Earth,” Nat said into the awkward gulf. “…With clocks.”

Mom grunted and started picking at her fries.

“Well, I’m eager to meet the boy who’s made such an impression on you!” Dad said, trying to be cheerful. Whether that was his natural instinct to de-escalate, or simply because she could fire him, Nat wasn’t sure, and it made her response slow and awkward.

“Uhuh.”

Please whoever’s listening…someone save me from this!

As if her prayer had been answered by an irony demon, A beat up, psychedelic flower-power van punched straight out of the sixties and into the parking lot at high speeds, nearly flipping over as it screeched into the parking lot, wisps of smoke emanating from the tires.

Perry jumped out of the driver’s seat and waved at them through the window as he jogged toward the entrance.

He was wearing pajama pants and a tie-dye T shirt that was several sizes too large for him. It was actually quite a pretty swirl of colors, looking somewhat like a rose…save for the bold text on the front.

Deflower Power

“Oh my god,” Natalie muttered, burying her face in her hands as it grew uncomfortably warm.