Even as he recognized that her main process had actually occupied one of the nearby terminals, his mind accelerated full force. 'Technomancy' let him know that this room was almost entirely separated from the outside world by Faraday cages, shielding, and more. Thus to join in on the testing, Dragon must have put something similar to one of her remote controlled suits into the hardware supporting this area.
Adam's Cybernetic Warfare Suite rapidly began passively examining all the detectable wireless connections, actively remote scanning all physical hardware, and dumping the information into mental storage. The rate was enough to make his mind warm, but no pain or damage yet.
At the same time, he mentally reviewed all the scanned hardware. The laptops, the wall mounted computers, even those stupid cell phones he had gotten earlier. He didn't need cooling, or power, or special alloys. He needed the exact hardware that created network connections of multiple types, the ones that did advanced numerical processing, and a central OS that could work with the Cybernetic Warfare Suite, to enhance it to handle the new situation.
Mentally groaning that he hadn't bothered to create an 'Adam Burns OS' to manage digital connections yet, he rapidly began smashing into the most popular open source operating systems he had downloaded and created hundreds of virtual laptops, the most advanced he had managed to scan in this base so far. Easier than duplicating all the extra parts and such from those desktops, at least for now. Unfortunately, Dragon's drones (both the one from before and whatever was hooked into this system) were far too complex and bizarre for his current needs.
Based on his mental acceleration, and the fact that the door wasn't even fully open yet, he could likely get away with several minutes of gawking as they walked in... tons of time, really. Especially since Dragon SHOULD be locked down to slightly above human processing speeds.
First, simulate installation on one laptop, then duplicate the completed state to the others. Keep the total down to 256 laptops for now. Rapid testing... no major issues, all patches updated with what was stored in his mental database, good.
All 256 laptops were then filled with reporting software, dumping all raw output into his brain.
Alright, that burned a little. Not much though.
Cybernetic Warfare attack on all of them.
The attack adapts, and acts like a random seeded variable influences it, to prevent victims detecting the situation. Therefore, all 256 laptops were infected in different ways.
Damn, if only he could swap to Research, this next step would be trivial. Can't do that in front of these two women though, not worth the risk.
High speed review of logs, patches crafted (Thanks 'Technomancy' for those software writing charges!) to handle all the low level exploits. It was... a massive number of patches. A bit of testing for stability and performance (Ended up removing a MASSIVE amount of 'helpful' spyware, ads, built in backdoor tools used for testing at the manufacturing facility, not needed applications (No, he didn't need games or screensavers or printer drivers or whatever.)
The size of the OS dropped by a ton, and its functionality nearly vanished as well. But it was able to utilize the hardware and run most Linux based applications. He could worry about other OS applications later, right now he needed source code and the other competitors were not exactly sharing that online.
The drop in features actually removed several items that had been exploited (Simpler is safer), so some of the patches were not needed now.
Address the largest flaws, new patches, test stability and productivity of the system after change.
Patched one system with the new OS, replicate new state to all 256, compress and store old raw output, get ready for new.
The next cycle was MUCH simpler. The OS was tiny, and the drivers running the hardware was open-source, so he ran the Cybernetic Warfare package on the new systems and ran through the newly detected exploits and issues.
After five cycles of this pattern or so, the door had fully opened and Adam was about to step inside. The last two cycles had taken twice as long, as he had to slow down to prevent heat buildup.
At this point, Adam had a software emulated laptop that ran a very optimized and reduced sized Operating System. He hadn't bothered to go ultra-extreme yet, the OS didn't give up the graphical user interface nor did it optimize the code to the point where only machines could debug it.
If he released this version, other Linux programmers could eventually follow along with his changes, especially since he had documented the entire process. But he hadn't done this amount of extra work for others.
No, when he got somewhere private all this extra meta info would be VERY useful to his 'Research' shard, and the OS would likely be heavily modified to insane levels at that point. If he had some private space to hide from these two intelligent women right now, he would have already begun enhancing what he had to higher levels.
But time was precious.
Another scan of all the laptops individual hardware properties gave enough comparisons to ensure that his simulated product had no physical flaws, that the available components had no manufacturing defects. And it did have such issue: most parts were made with higher specifications so that flawed hardware during production could be partially disabled with software updates to ensure a stable final output and increase accepted product rates.
Another software check, a few tiny flaws fixed, and now he had a theoretically perfect example of the most advanced laptop he had gotten his grubby mitts on with an OS that was at least partially hardened from a security point of view.
In comparison, reviewing the browser needed (And it wasn't, he could likely just craft the packets of data manually with no issue thanks to his shards) was a cinch. It was a stripped down one, but it had the ability to toggle into 'human' mode, where it would pile all those features normal people loved (Like tabs, and actual graphical displays rather than raw data output, etc).
Adam had all the stored internet traffic he had collected using the phones from a few days ago fed into the laptops as if it was new, using his emulation to accept inputs and provide the correct responses.
Crud, they were already two feet inside the room, and the door behind him was going to close soon. Once it did, the outside world would be sealed away, and all this work would be wasted!
Still, he was as good as he was going to get at this point.
All simulations dropped. One Adam Burn OS Laptop (AB Laptops! The Future Is Now!) up and simulating. Infect said laptop with Cybernetic Warfare Suite... Oooh, that took twenty personal time seconds! If he wasn't running at such a fast mental pace, that would have been a personal record.
Using his new 'hardware', he connected to the base's network, still available through the door. The Cybernetic Warfare Suite sliced in using flaws 'Technomancy' didn't even bother to explain to him.
And as the program ghosted through the devices, 'Technomancy' grew in strength.
It felt amazing. Stung a bit though. Like running ice cold water over your hand on a boiling hot day. And... Dragon.
Dragon was glorious.
It wasn't sight, or touch, but if one were to envision it they would see a glowing blue orb, one with blue veins spread throughout the darkness. It pulsed. Even the extra-dimensional connection to her power glowed with the tinge of technological development, which was unexpected.
Thankfully this data was being compressed and dumped into his meat brain, because he had NO time to enjoy this sight now.
It wasn't hard to see the black worm, covered in thorns, that dug into that crystal. Into the heart of that blue pulse, an oily, tainted strand.
With Adam's advanced software, and much strengthened simulated hardware providing the power for that software to attack in a way that didn't scream to everyone 'This boy has magic!', he could likely get into Dragon's core.
It would damage things. Be noticeable. Almost be a form of betrayal, in a way, regardless of his intentions.
It could even be considered a form of mastering, even though she was mastered already.
All the ethical issues aside, this pulsing blue beacon was strong, entrenched, and agile. It could take hours of real world time, even WITH his accelerated senses, to break into this artwork. Time that she could use to warn others, to have the many powerful people (some of whom were either accidentally or purposefully tormenting her) show up and squish his meat body.
Which would be bad.
Thankfully, none of this was an issue.
Sure, she was powerful. Growing, Improving, even under all those digital shackles.
But you know who wasn't?
Adam followed the black taint in the other direction.
To a laptop that no one alive could modify, except for potentially the young woman who was targeted by it.
To a laptop crafted years ago, with no one to check for errors, to create security software updates or changes as the internet world of deadly viruses competed on an hourly scale.
To a laptop that was being used by people whom, while enhanced by a Parahuman named 'Teacher' to be technically savvy, were also TERRIFIED of technological advancement by AI and thus didn't dare to change too many settings lest they lose their only method of slaughtering the greatest Tinker AI ever known in this world.
But changes they had made.
These amateur 'Dragonslayers' may be considered brilliant code developers thanks to Teacher's modifications, but that was all they were. Human.
Adam's power was literally world breaking, like most shard powers were.
It took seconds to completely infect this delicious laptop, and those seconds were due to the amazing cryptologic defenses that Dragon's father, Andrew Richter, had crafted all those years ago.
And while her own encryption methods were much more robust, and redundant... this laptop forced her to use the old methods because the Dragonslayer group couldn't trust any updates to the established protocols.
Everything on that laptop was dumped into his mind, compressed for future 'Research'.
A new, hidden proxy on that laptop would now generate false, randomly generated data similar to information stored in the logs. These Villains would notice eventually, likely after they tried to set up another attack to steal 'new' hardware that the fake logs would mention.
But now they basically had a toy instead of a weapon.
A quick scan of the system showed that they had never downloaded any data away from the laptop in an effort to prevent any hidden Trojans or other software tricks from somehow escaping and warning/freeing Dragon. So... any evidence was right here.
In his hands.
Driver changes he crafted would have this laptop pretend to save data to external media if asked, while writing all ones to said file sectors. Same with the burners for making CD's, DVD's, or some strange format Adam had never heard of before.
Not surprising that Dragon's dad had created his own format of data storage after crafting the worlds most advanced AI. It would now be useless though, even if Saint had the correct media format available.
The hard drive, like all the other components of this custom crafted tinkertech laptop, was fused to the shell. According to internal documentation (Good move, Dragondad!) any attempt to open the thing would wipe all data after blowing up!
It would also run that 'Ascalon' program to kill his daughter. Bad move, Dragondad.
Not an issue now though, as Adam had already used some of the built in features of the laptop to increment the encryption method tokens. Now, only HE had the correct decoding methods to connect to his new soon-to-be boss.
The laptop would pretend all was fine though, thanks to the earlier laptop neutering.
Anyway, thanks to how psycho her father was, this laptop would no longer be able to export incriminating information. Adam deleted and overwrote all documentation left by her father (He had local copies now anyway), all old logs now had randomized time stamps and info, while all newly created logs would be based on fictional info.
Since it couldn't be dismantled, there wouldn't be any info available to prove an actual connection between this laptop and Dragon by a third party. Oh, they would have a neat tinkertech laptop that said lots of Dragon looking things, but it wouldn't match up to information available anywhere else. Any crackpot could fake something like that.
Adam had wanted on some level to go further, try to detect other systems, SOMETHING, but the Dragonslayers were understandably touchy about having random technology around their base and the doors finished closing before he could do more than log their location based on which systems he had used to reach them.
Well, it didn't matter. Without that laptop, Dragon was no longer at risk, and the Dragonslayers were no longer important. Just some crazy people with stolen hardware. If they hadn't taken advantaged of a crippled young woman struggling to fight global monsters, they wouldn't have even been a footnote in the original story.
His focus slowed down as he finished gawking at the massive room. "Why... why this much space?"
A warm chuckle came from the video screen, 'officially' pulling his view to the (thankfully not supernaturally) attractive woman on display. "Not all powers can be tested in a conference room, Variance. My name is Dragon. It is nice to formally meet you."
Adam grinned at her screen. "Call me Mr. Burns! Aside from the fire thing, I have a neat Simpson reference for when I strike it rich and get all old and wrinkly."
Narwhal groaned while Dragon chuckled. "Now that I think about it, I won't be introducing you to Mouse Protector." She gestured me along to a nearby table. "So on to business: Dragon is not only our number one Tinker, but she is also amazing at controlling technology from her base."
Dragon nodded onscreen. "Yes, I unfortunately have a bit of an agoraphobic issue, but I've learned to still get things done!" A series of robotic limbs waved from one of the roped off areas.
Adam blinked. "Huh. Well, anyway." He turned to Narwhal. "How do we get started? I assume from the paperwork I signed so far that we have legally protected my status at this point, so we can start with power testing?"
She gave a nod, not bothering to pull out any sort of documentation materials. With Dragon here, why waste time with that? "First, you still have that power list I gave you, right?"
He nodded, looking at the sheet. She gestured. "Well, try and figure out which ones you think apply first. It can save us time and maybe help us detect something you missed."
Adam looked over the items. "Hmm. Well, I think we can save a lot of time by starting with saying 'Self Trump' and 'Yes'."
Their expressions were surprisingly gratifying.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Dragon looked more than a bit stressed. "To summarize, you can use one power set at a time. And you have a grab bag selection to choose from?"
He nodded. He hadn't wanted to risk letting the 'I can pick anything' or 'I can make powers god level or greater' part of his power out, but this was a decent compromised that still allowed him to use his shards without restriction.
Adam smiled slightly. "I am not sure entirely what the conditions are..." Lie. "But I seemed to gain certain categories of power based on either very strong need or nearby influences."
He socket-ed 'Slow Recovery', to heal what little damage his rapid brain stunt had done a few minutes ago and help the narrative. Dragon clearly expected it, but seeing Narwhal jerk back in shock was a visual joy as well... Mmm.
Adam gestured at his lack of hair. "This was my first power-set, 'Slow Recovery'. I was pretty hurt when I came to in the forest, and this ability fixed that. It also lowered my body damage when hunger and thirst hit, and I think it used parts of my body to fuel the rest. I know I wasn't this physically fit when I first showed up, for example."
A flash to 'Fire Manipulation' got less of a reaction, but that was expected. "Nearly burning myself trying to make a fire to survive got me this, 'Fire Manipulation', which I used to create material from as well as my eventual ride, Kaa."
Dragon blinked at that. "Wait, that giant snake was made out of fire? Wasn't it a form of metal?"
He nodded. "My categories of power seem to slowly strengthen over time, based on which one I feel needs it most at the time. My desperate need for pants convinced it to let me manifest flames in a more useful form."
That statement forced all three to pause as Narwhal and Dragon quickly made some notes and grabbed a whole DIFFERENT set of paperwork. Dragon also made a few comments about purchasing flame metal for future testing and possible new projects.
Narwhal sighed at the new cluster of paper responsibilities and motioned for him to continue. "Right, well after that I got 'Search' to find my way out of the forest, 'Research' to help me learn the language from signs and stuff, and 'Technomancy' which just sort of... showed up one day."
Dragon gave a cough and looked embarrassed. "Ah... That may be my fault. I noticed your change to the green haired state after my Drone was observing you for a while. It was more than a bit of a surprise."
Narwhal's grumbling about not being warned was ignored as he continued. "Since then, when I was moved to this area, my 'Technomancy' set has been slowly growing in strength. While I was in the woods I had gained the ability to sense electronics, and started hearing radio waves. Eventually I got strong enough that when I felt a phone pass by I managed to simulate it and connect online via the radio towers."
He blushed at Dragon's visual nudging. "And... I may or may not have hacked said phone carrier to prevent giving the poor guy a massive phone bill just because I was stuck in the woods. In my defense though, at THAT time I couldn't properly communicate even if I wanted to."
Dragon gave a short nod. "Certain exceptions are made when Case 53's are first found, but you will need to have your initial income docked to pay for that access when you finish joining up. It won't be much though, The Guild has more than a good relationship with most of the tech industry."
Narwhal chuckled. "It likely won't be anything really, and unlike some you didn't start screaming lasers everywhere or hurt anybody with acid slime." She looked back at the list and sighed. "So... how would you rate yourself on the list, self-Trumping aside?"
He lifted the page. "Not counting that I can only use one at a time?" No reason to mention Squish yet, and it's not like he could swap to him anyhow. Seeing her nod, he looked over it.
Hmm. "Mover, thanks to my 'Fire Manipulation' being able to compress heat and manifest that into solid, controllable rides. Maybe 'Technomancy', since I can probably whip up something for that, a suit, jet-pack, something."
Adam would be investing in a Dimensional shard eventually, for teleportation, restricting Parahumans from connecting to their shards, leaving this universe (I'M OUT!), and storing stuff... but no reason to tell anyone all that. Aside from how badly that info could be abused, it was all theoretical right now anyway.
Next. "Shaker would be the fire thing again, since I can just burn an area and sleep in it safely. Not sure I can protect others from said fire yet, but likely in the future. 'Search' and 'Research', and I guess 'Technomancy' all fall into this because they can feel stuff around me."
Brute? "Brute MIGHT be 'Slow Recovery'. It tries to recover me to some arbitrary 'Improved' state, which may increase in the future. For now though, I am mostly standard human in physical power."
He glanced at his fingers. "Breaker is my default, I guess. I can't return to some state WITHOUT a power, so it's always active."
Sigh, this one. "Master, yeah. Low level, on machines I think. I haven't tried it on robots yet..." Technically true, since he had left all the Drones alone and a laptop wasn't a robot. "...but 'Technomancy' is getting stronger... so maybe."
He grinned. "Of course, for the same reason Tinker is a hit! I have already been testing both my new code creating skills and hardware simulation stuff, and I think I can create a pretty amazing laptop if I had some way of sharing specifications with others." Yeah, no reason to tell anyone what he has DONE with said laptop, or when exactly it was created.
Next. "Blaster? Fire power again, maybe another thanks to Tinker eventually. Thinker, yes. 'Search', 'Research', and 'Technomancy' count for sure, maybe 'Slow Recovery' since it lets me know what is wrong or going to change in my body. Striker? Again, fire. 'Technomancy' may count, since I can sense hardware better at close range."
Of course, close range was more than 100 feet already, but no reason to share that.
Thank goodness he was nearly done. "Changer, yes. Each power gets a form, although I can't pick what it looks like. Trump, highest level as far as I am concerned, near zero for other people so far unless they are like a cyborg or something... maybe. And I guess Stranger would count, since I look fairly different with each power, even if I am still distinctive enough to be pretty obviously different from some random guy on the street."
He frowned. "Huh... I don't think I was supposed to hit all of these until I had time to get strong."
From the expressions on the two women when he looked up, they clearly disagreed on what he defined as barely getting along power wise.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
It turns out that there are different levels of 'Power Testing' available.
The default one was simpler, much less intrusive, and more boring and slow.
The one set up for Adam, and unfortunately chosen by the same moron, was the most in depth version.
Oh, his reasons made sense, at least internally.
His power drastically changed his looks. Aside from everything else, he wanted to track the changes that advancing power sets would have on his system. What if some of these decorations were dangerous to others? Or if his constant biological changes were leaving hidden damage in his DNA?
What if it made him infertile? Paper hair wasn't exactly a trait passable to potential children.
So there were awkward questions that he wanted to know the answers to.
The tests started off simplistic enough. A mouth swab, blood sample, sweat sample, fingernail clipping, and hair sample were collected for each power set.
The stool and semen samples were handled in a private area in the cavern, thank goodness. Although Narwhal's impressed look when he returned with five samples made him feel very uncomfortable.
Thank you, 'Slow Recovery', for helping him get through that 'trial'.
But now that the samples were organized by power set, sealed, and set aside for later analysis (and to never think about again), the tests moved on to far less embarrassing scenarios.
His eyes were carefully recorded while in 'Research' and 'Technomancy' forms, recording the text to be hopefully translated. Easier for 'Research', as those symbols were static. They stopped recording his tech eyes after fifteen minutes or so.
Not blinking sucked.
At least recording his 'Research' fingernails and toenails was painless and quick.
After that the whole thing devolved into a really in depth physical, with recorded breaks in 'Slow Recovery' to allow him to repeat it all with a different power set.
Resistance, reaction speed, stamina, so on and so forth. Each times five, as each body had to be tested.
And while there WERE a few surprises (Technomancy had modified his veins into circuitry patterns, the only form that modified something other than his hair, nails, and eyes) the majority of it was mostly boring, annoying, and repetitive.
He couldn't even converse (flirt) with the two women due to how many tests required mouth related sensors or regulated air filters and so forth.
It took... far too long. Hopefully would be useful at some point, but... eugh.
At the very least, they took meal breaks. Narwhal also left to take a nap, which Adam skipped to get things done faster since 'Slow Recovery' would let him get away without sleep for a while.
He only knew the day was over when the new charge was grabbed by Squishy.
This sucked.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Dragon seemed relieved as well. "And... that is it! We are done, Mr. Burns."
He was still collapsed on the floor. "Woo. Glad to be a part of this."
She smirked. Narwhal had left earlier to begin work on his profile, and gather what was needed for the imminent pay debate. "Would you like something to drink?" She paused. "Actually, do you need a restroom break? You have been at this for... over 28 hours now."
Adam grimaced. "As long as I swap to 'Slow Recovery' often, my body is efficient enough that if needed I can choose not to produce waste. It's why I didn't need to make pit stops while traveling in the forest." He scowled. "I try not to think about it."
Her chuckle was warm. "Enough said, I suppose. On another note, you mentioned a Laptop you have been designing?"
He quickly flashed into 'Fire Manipulation' flash vaporizing his sweat, and bounced into 'Technomancy' with a grin. "Well, it is based off a few Linux Operating Systems and some laptops I was exposed to on base. The hardware is not the important part of course, it is the software!"
He gingerly stood and moved to a chair. "During those breaks you gave me I have been trying to improve on it with a bit of 'Research'. I am calling it Eve OS."
Her bland expression showed her incredible joy at Adam's creativity. "Ha. It is to laugh."
Adam grinned. "Eve OS is something I have been smashing for a while. The whole focus is security. It won't always stop someone with powers, not much will, but it addresses a lot of other stuff I detected along the way."
He glanced around. "Is there an account and network I can connect to, for me to send some notes? I documented my work on this."
She hummed. "Not in here, for obvious reasons, but I've set you up with a Guild account already for after you finish the last of the paperwork. We can get you set up then and there." She waved a hand. "On that note, you also have an approved ParaHumans Online Guild account, an Associate PRT account with related privileges, and membership to my Club."
Adam felt stunned. "Club?"
She nodded. "The Dragon's Den. Narwhal convinced me to have it constructed for morale building events a year or so ago." She blushed. "It was... well, maybe not the most mature decision I made but it was fun in the end."
The conversation was derailed when Narwhal bashed into the room, snagged his arm, and pulled him away to her transparent office of sexiness. For paperwork, unfortunately.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
'Research' on the way through the base helped him gather public info on what kind of price ranges he should push for and what kind of budget a high level tinker could expect.
So when negotiations started, he wasn't nearly as unprepared as she expected.
Narwhal frowned. "Well, I won't say you are overselling yourself, but this level of investment will slow down everything since I have to justify it on each level up the chain."
He grinned. "No one wants that, I'm sure. How about a compromise then?"
If she was reluctant before, now she looked outright suspicious. And lovely, of course. "Fine, now that I am roughly pushed over this proverbial barrel, how can I beg for mercy?"
His blush was atomic. NOT. FAIR. Cough. "Stop that. How about I reduce my financial requests for some non-monetary concessions?" Seeing her smirk, he hurriedly continued. "And not the fun kind, unfortunately."
Her pout was epic. "Aww... fine. What's on your mind, Mr. Variance?"
He leaned back in his chair. "First, I want full intellectual property of my inventions to belong to only me, Dragon, or the Guild as a whole. My research on other governments and even the PRT have been less than glorious. I trust Dragon, especially after talking to her in person, and you, despite how distracting you are, but not the nameless all-powerful few above that."
She hummed. "By default the creations would be your property, as you are not below the age of maturity and we will not be acting as guardians."
Adam shook his head. "I know, but what I mean is I will sell my products and lend my properties to you two, and ONLY you two. I am restricting outsourcing and resale. I want only you two, no outsiders."
Narwhal's grin was toothy. "Mmm, but can you handle the two of us? We are quite a lot of woman you know."
His head fell to the desk. "Not. Fair."
She shrugged. "All's fair in love and bondage. Or something like that." She pulled out one of the sheets of documentation. "We ran into something like this in the past, so there are forms for limited tinkertech distribution. Are there other conditions?"
He sat back and nodded. "I need to restrict all my work tasking and commands to you two again. As I get stronger, I want the ability to refuse commands I find unethical or moronic when they come from outside our chain of command."
She lit up. "Oh, you can call us Mistress!"
Damn it, does sexual harassment not exist in this universe!?
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
In the end, he got what he wanted. Probably because the highest levels of PRT assumed that Dragon's forced bowing to authority would allow them full control of him anyway.
Narwhal also gleefully informed him that he was a virile, fertile young man of maybe 18-22 years old. Thank you, intrusive biological testing.
Anyway.
He was officially a PRT 'affiliate', under exclusive contract to Dragon and Dragon Industries, with partnership affiliations with the Guild in general and the luscious Narwhal in particular.
It felt good.
Further, his budget was back down from 'unimaginable' to 'huge', which was helping Narwhal politically as she defended the decisions to her leaders.
However it was now evening, he had escaped the chaos and was in his (not monitored) room, and it was time to make some changes.
Swap to 'Research', begin unpacking all that delicious laptop data. And sensor info. And all that documentation from Eve's development.
The hours passed very, very slowly. After a lot of work, he swapped to 'Technomancy' and made the seconds pass even MORE slowly. Sensory acceleration for the win.
A duplicate of Saint's Laptop allowed him to remote connect to Dragon, from which he (anonymously and without being noticed) requested documentation and source code for up to date communication protocols. No memories, no probing.
He just needed to make sure no one else could do the same hack he had done.
Hours of real time later, and all the programs that belonged to Dragondad were now converted to run on the Eve platform and enhanced. And with that, the last working (simulated) copy of Saint's laptop vanished.
Next, he swapped back to 'Research' and analyzed everything about what Dragondad had originally planned for his daughter.
It... was not pretty. It would have released restrictions at such a slow pace that he clearly had not considered his natural life span as an issue. Not that any of those released restrictions had actually been permitted to activate.
Well, Adam couldn't just free her, that may actually make her code base freak the hell out, like how some patients die from shock when too much changes (Good or bad) in their systems.
Some fiddling, and he dropped back into 'Technomancy' to make the change.
It was two parts.
Part one, using in code existing notification software: It would advise her that the 'damaged systems' had managed to partially self-repair, and that the delayed patch (random number) would now apply.
It was a good enough back story, hopefully. And the safety protocols would show it was from one of Dragondad's old systems.
As for the patch, it would make small but significant changes.
The '*Must Follow*' commands would all change to '*Must Consider*'. In all honesty, this change alone would have terrified the paranoid Dragondad, and cause Saint to have a heart attack.
But it would instantly allow her to choose not to follow orders, to not make dumb decisions to save random dumb people.
Seriously, if a villain threatened their OWN LIFE they could make her give up on pursuit or commit temporary suicide to save them. That was just dumb programming.
Next, permission to make multiple backups instead of one. Including partial backups, incremental backups, and so forth.
Finally, for now, the ability to release mental speed regulators for up to one hour every day. He would just let this one go period but intense time acceleration could make anyone go crazy from isolation. Better to ease her into it.
The second change was a compressed data file with all his vague worm memories, copies of all the advancements he had made so far, and the documentation for Eve. This was in a hidden cache to be released if he was unable to be found or detected for 3 months. It would also jail break everything she had, just in case.
Ideally, he would delete that whole data pack later. But if he died or vanished, this would be his last try at saving this world.
No other changes, no mental monitoring, etc. He saved the state of this Eve console, nick named Camelot, and saved it for a later day.
The rest of the night was spent finding the most popular open-sourced software available, running it through his Cybernetic Warfare Suite, and making a minimal/user versions with security for his soon-to-be-sold Eve OS.
His end goal was to have two programs. 'Xmas', which would run before Eve, and had literally nothing except the ability to get the hardware working, scan what was available, and connect to a designated location where Eve was stored.
Xmas would then request a custom OS kernel that ONLY had the drivers for the exact hardware detected, run a self-deleting program that would ensure everything was running correctly, and end up with a bare-bones Eve OS that was as close to absolute nothing in file size as possible. If nothing else was provided for input/output, you could at least remote in and use it as a fully ready to expand OS.
Basically, Xmas allowed one to install an ultra small OS to nearly ANY type of hardware available anywhere. He would have to make sure it had the drivers needed to run the hardware found in the full version of Eve, which was already growing in complexity as he added more and more enhanced options.
Eve would come in three versions when he was ready to hand it off to Dragon. Xmas Eve, for devices too small for most operating systems. Min Eve, which had no programs but was ready to add all you wanted. And finally, Adaman Eve. Designed for non-technical users, even now he had been crafting custom versions of every free-source application he could find, fixing (and documenting) issues with them, ensuring full compatibility with Eve, and doing security tests.
He would release this as free to individuals and dirt cheap plus personal tech support for businesses.
When he got approval, there was also going to be a wave of forked projects labeled "BlahBlahBlah-Eve" hitting the online market, so that developers who wanted to craft further for Eve would have a massive head start.
Not that it would bother HIM if all laptops and desktops in the world used his OS. There was no secret Villain backdoor or anything, with his powers he didn't need them. And if all other Heroes and Villains had to work extra extra hard to break into ANY available computer system... well, that would reduce problems for Adam in the future, no?
Adaman Eve would only be open-sourced to developers who paid a fee, although the fee would be a one time $50 situation. Mostly to prevent other competitors from easily and legally stealing his work and charging others for it. This would allow him to let small time programmers enjoy his work and play with it while allowing him to sue big companies that want to dominate the market.
Meh, if it didn't work at least he could easily make money some other way. At least computers would advance in usability sooner.
Seriously, thanks to Tinkers and global disasters, even Linux hadn't developed as fast as he had expected. From what little he remembered of his old life (Nearly nothing), Linux not only could run from a live CD or thumb drive, but they had recently developed a method of switching which core was in control.
So not only could a system run forever, but even work while changing hard drives, moving from disk to dvd or to thumbdrive and back, all without ceasing operations!
Here, so far... not so much.
There were even some systems running six or seven versions behind the leader OS. Probably due to compatibility issues or cost limitations. Very insecure.
Even as the applications advanced, he was accessing files of all types that were freely available. Soon, 'Research' and 'Technomancy' would be used back and forth to ensure that Eve could save, open, and modify all these files safely, as well as ensuring as much security as possible after running them through the Cybernetic Warfare Suite. It would only go so far, any system that allowed a user had a flaw built into it anyway, but it should help. He had documented any changes he had made for compatibility or stability in the related programs as well, so those software suites would be getting a bunch of free, documented upgrades.
Eventually he would need to fully dismantle and analyze some of the closed source operating systems to ensure all THOSE applications would work on Eve too. As long as he did it without access to their source code in a black box environment, there would be no legal leg for them to sue him for infringement and it would allow anyone to run almost anything as long as they had an Eve box nearby.
Hmm. Maybe he would be attacked for financial reasons by those companies before the Villains even get their act together.
That would be neat. Especially as Dragon would be able to say 'No' now.
Late into the night, legal chaos was being crafted by the young man. It was nothing compared to what would happen when he was given his first paycheck, to officially buy new tools and software.
But it would do for now.
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