Raytech Applied Physics

Participants:

richard_icon.gif warren_icon.gif

Scene Title Raytech Applied Physics
Synopsis A trip down to the R&D department to even some odds.
Date June 2, 2018

Raytech Home Office, Detroit


When Richard Ray wants to meet, it's during a time when Warren is ridiculously busy… well, Warren is always ridiculously busy, and when he isn't, he's usually with Elle. But he can manage something that resembles work-life balance, sort of!

And by that I mean, he invites Richard to his R&D room.

The room is several levels below ground, and he tends to keep people out for their safety if they aren't scheduled. When Richard enters the room, the door opens automatically. Every door has opened and unlocked automatically. There are cameras that follow and watch his every move.

Sitting in the middle of the spacious room is Warren Ray, in a large, comfortable chair with arm rests covered in buttons, knobs and switches. He's in nothing more than a white tanktop, some blue jeans and biker boots.

On his head is a massive helmet that hangs from the ceiling, attached to a ridiculous almost science fiction-like mass of wires, with flashing nodes all over it. All that's visible of his head is everything below his nose.

Those wires are attached to robotic arms of varying sizes, which are all working on dozens of projects laid across different tables. There are even wires coming from his own robotic arm, which seems to be used to control something, god knows what.

The projects all seem to start and stop every few minutes, switching between them as efficiently as possible. It's by doing this that he can get a ridiculous number of projects done in a relatively short span of time without allowing an entire engineering team in. "Don't worry, brother, I can see you just fine."

"I can actually see in 360 degrees with this on. At first it's a little disorienting, but after a while… you get used to seeing out of camera angles and a panoramic display." A ridiculously long arm lowers itself from the ceiling, apparently idle at first, and then offers a robotic handshake to Richard. "What brings you all the way down here?"

"Warren…"

Richard's head turns slowly as he looks around the lab, and then he looks back to his adoptive brother perched in the middle of this mass of wires and robotic limbs like some sort of cyberpunk arachnid, one hand coming up to rub at the nape of his neck.

"You… know we have a budget, right? I don't have the Commonwealth Institute's bottomless pockets, here, half our liquid assets right now are tied up in a farming project," he asks somewhat cautiously.

He tries to avoid the accounting department because their work is mind-numbingly dull… but maybe he should check the budgetary figures more often.

"Just please try and keep that in mind," he says, reaching out to awkwardly shake the robotic hand, "I need a few things and— well, they're right up your alley. I mean outside of the hydroponics and aeroponics projects that we've already forwarded over to you, I need some personal things."

"You forget how much I did while working underground inside of a train vault with no budget at all. I could get by if they just occasionally dumped buckets of technological waste down here." Warren explains, finally motioning his robotic limb in a gesture that causes the helmet to rise into the ceiling, and all of those plugs to pop out of his golden arm. "Besides, this saves you from having to pay a salary to an entire team of engineers."

He finally stands, walking over to Richard, looking him over as if to assess any changes. His eyes shift back to their normal hue, which causes him to blink a few times. "I have more memory of the time before my mind was… reconfigured. I occasionally hear the others, you know, the others. Mortimer, Jack, Alex. But they don't have power, not anymore power than the other things I hear in my head."

"What do you need?" he finally asks, curious.

"I'll take your word for it," Richard allows with a wry smile, "I'm pretty sure that if you went overboard the accounting department would be running around my office screaming, so I suppose you're doing just fine."

He's tired; it's clear that he hasn't been getting a lot of sleep, but there's a hint of that old keeness that hasn't been there in awhile, the sharp edge of purpose like in the old days.

"If they start to give you any trouble, let Kaylee know," he says with a hint of concern regarding Warren's old personalities, "She can help quiet them again, likely."

He clears his throat, "A few things. One, I need a cybernetic eye for an associate of mine. She's not terribly trustworthy, so a tracking implant or some sort of monitoring ability wouldn't be entirely unwelcome— I know you like your extra features."

"Sounds simple enough. And I could give her a deadly laser." Warren adds as if this is a perfectly reasonable addition to go with the tracking. "The voices don't bother me very much, I don't think I've lived a life without voices. It's nice to have company in your head. Besides, they can't remember anything that I can't remember."

"I'd love to talk to my adorable little sister, but I'd also like to talk to Kaylee." he says, laughing, because he can't help it. "Why do I feel like the eye isn't the big request?"

"No, it's not…" Richard rakes a hand back through his hair, straightening and explaining something that almost nobody but Warren would probably accept without blinking. "Our reality's been invaded by intruders from a parallel timeline. They have Horizon armor. I need a solution to deal with it if I run into it, since I still don't have my ability back."

"So what you're saying is… it's finally time to use the prototypes that we can never afford to mass produce. Hah, Horizon armor!" Warren laughs at the idea, then starts walking deeper into the R&D lab, holding up his golden arm for individual sections of the wall to flip around, because of course he dug holes in the wall to build a secret compartment.

Once the sections have entirely turned around, they reveal themselves to be square glass cases, with heavily modified versions of the armor from 2011, upgraded, more efficient, still quite thin and flexible looking on their mannequins. There's around five of them. "I keep a sixth one, but that's a pet project. The technology in these can run circles around that old Horizon armor, if only we could mass produce it."

"We don't have the resources to mass produce it," admits Richard as he looks over the cases with a wistful look on his face, "I'd hoped we wouldn't have to even consider it… I'd rather not see another arms race like the one we saw back in twenty-eleven."

Warren's inventions featured heavily there as well.

A glance back to him, "I thought as well that we might be able to lock their armor up— it uses that magnetic liquid stuff that hardens when it needs to, right? Could we somehow make it all stiffen at once, leave them helpless?"

"I don't see why not, it's still science. I could probably come up with some sort of gun. Or… something that makes the armor feel like it's constantly in danger, like a constant pulse of kinetic energy, something you could attach to their armor that will force it to either lock up or kill them." Warren's eyes shift to their chromatic form again, and he's already heading to a table of blueprints, laying one out to start drawing and designing.

"I could modify these armors I've made so that when they impact, it releases more kinetic energy than normal, like a violent vibration. Attack them on multiple fronts, multiple inventions in case one falls through." He pauses, and looks back to Richard. "Do you happen to have any Horizon armor on hand? If I could study the mechanism, I could come up with something more targetted."

"I'm afraid not," Richard admits, "My suit was destroyed in Alaska… the few remaining ones didn't survive the war. Only these other dimensional suits came through." A bit of a nod, "Some sort of projectile, maybe— the fluid's magnetic, right? Maybe like a taser, only instead of electricity, it produces… magnetism?"

He coughs, "I don't know, physics isn't my strong suit."

"The question is, what is the trigger, is the trigger kinetic energy? Does it harden when they're electrocuted? Can they control it?" Warren asks all of these questions as if they're of the utmost importance, scribbling quickly, a vast flurry of rough designs. Bullets, grabby mines, rockets…

"Hold on, hold on…" Richard pulls the tablet off his belt, flipping the cover off and chewing on his lip as he navigates to the sales catalog. "It's the same tech we use in the AEGIS suits— here's the catalog description. 'The MR fluid is comprised of metallic particles suspended in oil. The tiny particles, measuring between 3 and 10 microns, have a powerful effect on the fluid's consistency. When exposed to a magnetic field, such as that generated by the armor's battery pack, the particles line up and thicken the fluid dramatically. This in turn creates a redistribution of kinetic force across the armor. The hardening process takes around twenty thousandths of a second in response to exterior kinetic force.'"

"Oh…" Warren suddenly stops drawing, holding up a golden finger. "I need you to get me as many old MRI machines as you possibly can. At least twenty of them. I'll make the space. I need to deconstruct them and figure out how to miniaturize the technology into a weapon."

"You see, what we need to do makes perfect sense… we need bullets that are triggered by the magnetism in the HORIZON armor itself! Once the suits harden for the bullet's impact, the armor turns the bullet into a dangerous electromagnetic!" He slams his fleshy fist onto the table. "It's perfect! The bullet itself will be the magnet, and the armor's response will be the trigger for its activation!"

"I'll take your word for it," Richard chuckles, shaking his head, "You're the mechanical genius here, Warren. I'll get you what I can, and see what you can do. I…"

The tablet he's holding buzzes, and he taps something on it. A frown. "Nevermind the eye. Seems like she's discovered that she's a shapeshifter so she doesn't need it anymore."

Back up, "See what you can do on the magnetic bullet things, and run some tests on the next-gen armor prototypes to see if they're feasable. I've got a bad feeling about things and I want to be ready… also, we should have a family dinner soon."

"Sure, Elle would like that. And I need so many MRI machines because these will be used to create ammo. And this is the cheap way to do it." Warren tries to explain this in a way that Richard or perhaps accounting will understand. MRI machines have massive magnets in them. "I can destroy anything, HORIZON armor isn't an exception."

"Good," says Richard firmly, "Because I also got a message from Wolfhound recently that says - quote - 'the god damn killer robots are back', so I'm guessing that after that meeting I'm going to be sending you another email."

He rubs a hand over his face, "I don't like the feeling I'm getting lately, Warren. It feels a lot like the old days, and that worries me."

"All we have to do is shoot and blow everything up and then problem solved." Warren shrugs, leaning against the table. "You think too much. I've rarely seen a problem that couldn't be solved with a gun or a bomb.

He motions around them, to all of the random technology just sort of laying around. "It doesn't matter what bit of technology they have laying around, or what's coming from other dimensions. Everything can be blown up."

"Collateral damage is a thing, Warren," Richard replies dryly, "And we don't always have as much boom as they do… alright, I'll leave you to work, and I'll go talk to Elle about dinner. You'll be there too— "

He points at his brother even as he turns to the elevator, "Valerie'll pout otherwise."

"Of course I'll be there. And I'm still working on a project for Valerie, but that's a discussion for another day." Warren heads back to his chair, taking a seat. "We'll be fine, just keep your head in the present."


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