(no subject)

[electro_kinetic]

It's actually been quiet in Nori's world for once; quiet is good. Quiet is no shooting at her, but quiet is also boring. So when she comes into the bar in an outfit only a blind person could find subtle, she makes a beeline for a table to continue working on her new toy.

She's got her legs tucked up under her carefully (her shoes are awesome, but they're also spiky like the wrong end of a punji pit) as she works all the little plastic pieces into faintly arachnoid legs that will eventually get connected. Luckily for her, she can read the Japanese the instruction magazine is printed in.

[ooc: Semi-recycled EP is recycled.]

Comments

[thefirststark]

Howard isn't blind. And wonders a bit about the fashions of the future, not for the first time.

"Good evening, Noriko. Long time, no see."

[electro_kinetic]

He'll probably end up wondering about an awful lot of things from the future the longer he hangs around Nori. She tends to not be one of those classicist people. In pretty much any fashion.

"Hey, Howard," she greets, for once without the added bonus feature of bruises or broken limbs. With this luck she may just beat her constitution check in the future. "Yeah, things were kind of crazy for a while. It's calmed down a bit in my world. Hence the toy."

[thefirststark]

"Crazy? In the usual way for you?" Which is always just a bit depressing. "That looks interesting."

[electro_kinetic]

"Not exactly the usual way?" she answers. Nobody was dying--that Noriko knew about, anyway--but it seemed like a lot of things needed to be done right then and piled up. "No one else has decided we make for great target practice."

She shrugs. "Yeah, it's a little walking machine. You blow on the propeller, and the legs move. It's kinda cute when you see it all done."

[thefirststark]

"Oh? Care to show me how it works?" Every machine interests him, even the simplest ones.

[electro_kinetic]

"Sure," she says, picking up a leg pair and showing Howard their motion, each sort of arachnoid and only amplifying that property when they're linked together by the spine rod.

"They're just little toys, but they're miniatures of these things that are like...twenty feet tall in Holland. This mathematician builds them to scare the crap out of tourists, presumably."

[thefirststark]

Howard immediately sees how it works. And files that away for later use.

"I would love to see that. Large scale devices that are simple...which isn't so simple."

[electro_kinetic]

She quirks up a smile. "I can show you video of them, but a plane ticket to the Netherlands is sort of harder for me to procure," she says.

"They're all wind-powered, but the guy makes dozens of them out of PVC tubing."

[thefirststark]

"Wind-powered...interesting. I've never quite figured out how to make that work for very much." How many windmills would he need to power a factory?

[electro_kinetic]

"Well, this stuff is light and they do stop when it's not windy," she says. "There's generally only a couple of places that can use wind power, but it's best supplemented by something else, like solar cells or something."

[thefirststark]

"Solar cells would make more sense for me in California, but that technology is far too pricey at this point. Maybe by your time there's been a breakthrough.

"I've looked more into atomic power, but I can't see using that on a private scale." Yet.

[electro_kinetic]

"Oh yeah, the cells have gotten small enough to put on cars and things. Some people have their roofs skinned with the if they live in sunny places. It's like free energy and you're off the grid," she says.

"What're your options for method?"

[thefirststark]

"Either staying on the local grid or building my own plant. Which would mean coal or oil either way. It's working so far, but I fully expect to triple my output in ten years, taxing the grid in LA." Not that he's worried about the supply of either energy source.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The shoes will probably be noticed eventually, but just at the moment Ellen is trying to figure out what's with all the plastic bits.

"I didn't know you made robots...."

[electro_kinetic]

The shoes are mostly because Nori loves being both taller and spikier. It gives her a great excuse to give people bland looks.

"I...uh," she says, looking over at Ellen. "I didn't invent it. It's a toy kit, it's just a little mathematical curiosity. But it's kinda cute in a really uncanny-valley way."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That's still making," Ellen says reasonably. "You're just making it from parts, not making it from your own design. Is it meant to do anything, or did they just make the kit to learn from?"

[electro_kinetic]

"It walks when you blow on it," she says. "That's all they're created to do, really...the guy that makes them sets them up on the beaches of his home country and they terrify tourists."

That's kind of the whole point. "But they look cool."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen considers this. Then she nods; she's sort of used to the idea of robots that roam the Wasteland and send people screaming into the night. "Okay," she says readily. "That actually sounds kind of neat. Have you built one of these before?"

[electro_kinetic]

"Not at all," she says, shaking her head. "I mean, I can read the instructions, luckily, but they're still sort of vague."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Okay. Do- oh dear."

She's just seen the instructions herself.

".... I don't even recognize that language," Ellen admits in a very small voice. "Wow."

[electro_kinetic]

Nori just chuckles. "This is Japanese," she says. "I grew up reading it."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Oh, okay," says Ellen. "I've seen written Chinese- I can't read it, but I've seen it- and this- I knew this wasn't it. I mean, it looks like, kinda, but-" She waves a hand vaguely. "It's not like I can read anything but English anyway. Maybe a little Latin, that's it."

[electro_kinetic]

"Can you read Pinyin?" Nori asks. It's using English letters, but it's phonetic Chinese. The same kind of thing can be done for Japanese too," she says. "I mean, if you can't, that's cool. You could help if you want."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Iiiiiii don't even know what that- oh, okay," Ellen says. "No, I can't read that either. But I'm good at putting things together, so as long as that's okay I can definitely help."

[electro_kinetic]

"Yeah, that's totally okay," she says, sliding one completed leg set over; the plastic pieces essentially form triangles connected to each other with parallelograms that allow them to move.

"We have to put together four more leg sets like this one, and then the spine goes right through to connect them. And then the rest of it. That work for you?"