Technomancer

To make it clear: All rights to characters, setting, story and central concepts in this story remain the property of Wildbow, Worm's author. This is just me playing in the sandbox. Worm can be found at parahumans dot wordpress dot com.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us
October 17th, 1987, Friday

I jerked awake, again. I took a bleary look at the clock next to my bed and decided to get up. 7 a.m. is good enough, especially after the night I had. Every time I fell asleep for long enough that I started dreaming the dream was a nightmare. Jack Slash is a sure way to get rid of pleasant dreams.

A quick shower later I spread the map on the bed. I'd need to mark the territories and other locations of various parahuman groups on it… Or I could just take a picture of it and use my laptop. Right.

Or even better, I could actually use my Tinkering ability.

Yeah, sleepless nights aren't my thing.

I drove around the city, checking out the places I remembered from the canon. Obviously, most of it was vastly different. There was no Protectorate HQ floating on the Bay, the atmosphere of the city was far better, Boat Graveyard wasn't a thing yet and the crime was way less visible than what was described in canon. Probably because it was still early days and gentleman villains like Marquis ran things.

I also thought of interesting possible places for my base. I briefly considered the aquifer but it was a known fact, at least in the future. In canon, the settlers founded the city here because of easy access to potable water from the aquifer. I could probably still make detection extremely difficult for at least a decade.

Another interesting possibility was the municipal dump. The dump would have plenty of raw materials I could use and managing one could be a good cover story. I could probably easily build a base under it as well.

Then there was Coil's example of hiding a base in large construction projects, or E88's co-opting of a large industrial complex as headquarters. Even Accord's complicated web of businesses and properties should be possible.

On the other hand… Protectorate and PRT weren't around yet to force capes out of business, and legal restrictions didn't exist either. I could go public. Heck, it would probably be safer that way.

I drove to Docks and began looking for empty lots or industrial properties for sale. Probably easier to hire an agent. Huh. No. That's perfect. There was a large empty lot for sale right next to Dockworker's Association. The stars seemed to be right. I drove to the Association's parking lot and walked in.

"Excuse me?" I asked the receptionist. She was quite attractive, perhaps in her mid-twenties.

"Yes? How may I help you?" she asked.

"Could I use your phone to call about that lot next door? I'd like to make an offer before it's gone."

She looked up, suddenly much more interested in me than before. "Really? Please wait a moment, I'll go get Mr. Locke."

It took perhaps a minute and then she returned with a man in his fifties. He was balding and had a robust frame of a physical laborer. What wrinkles he had seemed to be from weather and laughter. I felt an instant connection with him.

He extended his hand and we shook. "I'm Jim Locke, the current head of the Association. Diana said you wanted to make an offer for the lot?"

"Tom Rue, and yes. I was asking your receptionist if I could call and instead she rushed to fetch you. I suppose the Association owns that lot?"

"Indeed we do. We have no plans to expand that way as we have more shorefront to use first, so we decided to sell it to fill our coffers a bit more."

I thought for a moment. "Would you be interested in a contract that included a buyback option in exchange for a lower price? You see, I'm a cape, or parahuman as some call us. I gained a power to design and craft extraordinary technology and am planning to use the lot to build a workshop. The location would be ideal as well since shipping the products would be easy."

"But why the buyback option?"

"The situation with us parahumans is still rather fluid and I can't honestly claim to know how the legal system or society will change in response to us. It would be a good precaution and would also allow you to buy back the property if you decide my actions are inappropriate or the property would be more valuable to you than my custom and services."

"Sounds logical enough. We'll have to check with legal, of course, but I don't see a problem. You mentioned services?"
We had been walking to his office while talking. He gestured for me to take a seat.

"Yes. Due to my power I can manufacture and maintain highly advanced technology, and could design, manufacture and service such technology to your specifications. Here, a sample."

I created a pallet seemingly floating in the air. "This pallet is cushioned on a cloud of microscopic machines. They can support heavy loads, absorb shocks and the pallet can move smoothly over any terrain. It can't fly but it can maintain any various distances from the ground depending on load. It runs on electricity but has internal energy storage so it can be charged when it's not in use."

Jim walked to the pallet and pushed down on it. It didn't move. Then he waved his hand under the pallet and it moved through without resistance.

"Fascinating. Do you mind if we try it out for a day or two?"

"Sure. That one is temporary, created with my power instead of real materials, but it will exist until I'll dismiss it. Is the size correct?"

"Let's go to the warehouses. We have some pallets there from which you can get the dimensions for. What's the load capacity?"

"This one can easily carry a load up to five tons. I can adjust that too."

Jim laughed. "Five tons is quite enough for a single pallet."

We came to an agreement and legal drew up the contracts. In them, I agreed to pay half the price when taking control of the lot, the other half in six months. In addition, I was to offer my services to the Association at a decreased rate. All in all, I was quite satisfied with the deal.

I then went to search for funding. I knew there were at least two criminal factions in the city that had enough resources to spare to fund my foray into real estate. All I had to do was to find one of their hideouts.

I donned my Technomancer suit and left my car on the lot I had just agreed to buy. I then buzzed around the city using the same method I used with the pallet.

It took almost six hours to find a decent stash of illicit cash. There was, of course, criminals guarding it. The seven men were bald, had Nazi tattoos and wielded various weapons from knives to pistols. I shrugged and walked into the warehouse from where they distributed drugs and stashed their illicit profits before transferring them to be laundered.

Nazi number one drew out his pistol and shot towards me. He missed the first time and then hit with the second. I did the Neo and picked the bullet from the air, studied it and then let it drop to the ground. Nazi number two came at me with a combat knife. I used an Aikido move to disarm him and then threw him to a wall with excessive force. He stayed down, groaning and drawing himself into a fetal position.

The remaining six Nazis looked at each other before three of them ran towards me, one more drew a gun and the last one ran upstairs.

I shot three bars on the second-floor walkway to block the way. The bars bonded with the wall on a molecular level and were composed of a titanium-tungsten alloy. Quite impervious to whatever the nazi could try to do to them.

I subdued the three melee nazis without bothering with martial arts by materializing restraints on their limbs and then attaching tungsten-plated osmium weights to them. While I was doing this my foglet cloud intercepted a dozen bullets. I walked to the gun nazis, preventing their escape with the foglets until I could put restraints on them too. Then I began climbing the stairs up to the second floor.

"You know, you must guys must be some sort of special sort of stupid. I know that we capes haven't been on the scene for long but seeing someone in a costume should ring a bell or five. I thought your boss was a cape? A villain? And you have some heroes here too, I believe? Sure, I'm new to Brockton but that shouldn't matter much."

"Most of you don't stop bullets or just pop out stuff from nowhere!"

"That's true as well. Oh well. Now, would you please show me the cash?"

"No! Screw you!"

"Fine," I said and made his restraints especially difficult to remove.

I walked into the office overlooking the warehouse floor and saw the safe. It was closed and locked. I shrugged and lifted the whole safe with my foglets. I then called anonymously the police to deal with the drug warehouse and walked out with the safe.

I went to the alley behind the warehouse, materialized some disassemblers and got the money from the safe. Then I reconfigured the safe's metal into a pram to which I materialized rubber wheels on the rims and then placed the money in it. I was now just another father out with his baby.

After walking for a couple of blocks and then ducking to another alley I materialized a small car and drove to the Association and paid the agreed sum. I dismissed both cars and then materialized both my suit and a pickup and headed to the municipal dump I had noticed earlier.

I arranged to recycle and sort the materials in return for a part of the materials. Those materials were then used to build my workshop from real materials instead of the stuff I materialized. I even got some universal assemblers crafted from the materials I got so that I could get rid of the rest of the materialized matter.

After a few days I had a workshop. I even remembered to dismiss the restraints.