Of Neuromancy and Iron Wills 10 (Patreon)

…Power Reserves Increased…

…

…Bonding 72.72% Complete…

…

…Implanting Datafeed: Murphy-Proof…

‘Murphy-Proof’? I asked my mental roommate as I tried to make sense of the documents in front of me.

…Host of CFU 2.241x10^54 possessed gift for bypassing ‘error’ in ‘trial and error’...

…

…Bribed CFU 2.241x10^54 to name the datafeed ‘Murphy-Proof’...

I could ask how the heck they managed to bribe their CFU, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know.

…CFU 2.543x10^54 wishes details of bribe could be expunged from memory banks…

Yeah, I definitely don’t want to know anymore.

“Problem, Will?” Toni’s voice pulled me from both my mental conversation as well as the documents in front of me.

“Nothing major,” I answered as I leaned back in my chair and rubbed at my eyes. “Obadiah sent me these documents to look over and sign, but I’ve been trying without luck to make heads or tails of them for the last four hours.”

Toni gave me a look that screamed, ‘Really?’ which I answered with a shrug, “I can handle the math involved in damn near any kind of engineering you can name, but put something in business legalese in front of me and it might as well be an alien language. I barely understood enough about my contract to understand the 10k a month per patent. Mind looking it over and translating it for me?”

She chuckled, a small smile on her face, “Glad to see there’s something you struggle with.”

I gave another shrug, “More we haven’t done a whole lot outside of making machines together, and I had that ability literally downloaded into my brain. How’s the construction on the new reactor coming, by the way?”

Toni flipped through the pages I’d passed to her, her response distracted as she focused on the business gibberish, “Final design’s been picked and agreed up, construction begins on the 14th. Estimates figure it’ll be done by Thanksgiving.”

So about two months? Better than I expected, considering that it was quite literally the first public project related to the arc reactor technology. The cave was a completely different beast, and the initial one made during Howard Stark’s time was an entirely in-house project. So this would be the public’s first exposure to arc reactor technology in over fourty years.

There was something else I’d been working on, unrelated to the armor or my work at Stark Industries. A couple of the drones that had been part of the search and rescue after the blackout had been refitted with solders, welders, and more specialized arms so I could use them to remotely work on this side project. Well, side projects; since depending on how you counted them there were as few as two or as many as seven.

The exoskeleton was mostly finished, it wasn’t anywhere close to the armor Toni and I had made, but it was lightyears beyond anything else in the world. The cybernetic arms and legs had the interior skeleton and “nerves” finished, with the synthetic muscles being assembled as I was talking to Toni. There was an auto-ripper being worked on, and the last two things being worked on were a pair of guns. A pistol and rifle, the former an upgraded version of the pistol I’d made back in Afghanistan while the latter combined the block ammo mechanic of weapons from the Mass Effect franchise with a high powered electromagnet hooked up to a coil surrounding the barrel.

In layman’s terms? High powered single fire fuck-off pistol along with a high tech fuck-off rifle that killed you with metal sand. They weren’t quite ready yet, but I’d hopefully have them ready by the time that we’d figured out who the hell tried to turn Toni into a popsicle. As it stood, with the multitasking I was doing, they’d all be done in roughly six weeks, and I’d be able to get the cyberlimbs installed, along with synthetic skin to cover them, assuming I could get the formula for it figured out.

“So,” Toni spoke up, having finished going through the paperwork and pulling me from my mental ramblings. “Uncle Obie wants to form some side companies under Stark Industries that specialize in the patents you’re filing that deal with more… controversial technologies.”

“How’s that make a difference?” I asked. If they were under Stark Industries, what difference did it make?

“The degree of separation makes it so that Stark Industries, as a whole, isn’t caught up in any sort of legal battles that could lock up the company responsible for a given technology. He was talking about doing the same thing for the arc reactor tech if the big one at the power station goes well.”

I tried to make sense of it, before giving it up as a bad job. My brain just wasn’t wired for business stuff. Thank goodness Toni could make sense of it for me.

“By the way,” she said as she put the paperwork on the table and pointed out the areas I needed to sign. “You had one hell of a package arrive for you. The UPS guy had to get a dolly out in order to move it. What exactly did you order?”

“Ah, that,” I muttered and rubbed the back of my neck in embarrassment. “Well, you know how I bought that antique rifle?”

“The one that had you jumping about like a toddler that had just been told they’d won infinite candy for life?” she asked, her voice teasing.

“I wasn’t that bad,” I very much did not grumble. “I think I’ve stumbled across a hobby. Because I found something even older on eBay and I had to snag it.”

Toni gave me The Look, and slowly asked, “Will, what did you buy, and how much did it cost?”

“An antique anvil, and including the cost of shipping about eight hundred bucks,” I blurted out, making Toni blink.

“That’s it? You have enough money to buy everything in a major shopping mall, and you buy an anvil? For less than a grand?”

“Everyone has to have a hobby?” I half asked, half justified. The ensuing giggles from Toni were so worth it.

[hr][/hr]

It took some finagling, and a lot of heavy lifting, but I got the anvil set up in a part of what was effectively my room. I think the look of pride on my face amused Toni just as much as the fact that my second major purchase was an anvil. So sue me, old tools and firearms like this and my M1895 are cool.

I blame the… risque dream that night involving Toni bent over said anvil on the fact that she’d mentioned going to take a shower after we got the anvil situated. What can I say? Toni’s a beautiful woman, and I’m a healthy heterosexual man.

Anyway, Toni was spending the next week or so working with Rhodes, leveraging his contacts to see if anything could be found about how those cave dwelling asshats had gotten their hands on weapons from Stark Industries. I, meanwhile, was putting some feelers out to see about getting my grubby collector mitts on some more blacksmithing and other old timey frontier tools. Just my luck, there was an auction coming up in the next couple months that was advertising. As interesting as that was, I knew I was trying to distract myself. That dream brought something full to the fore that I’d been not thinking about.

“I’ll talk to her when she gets home,” I told myself as I purchased a ticket to the auction.

We’d been dancing around slash ignoring this for a while now, but if I was going to be having dreams involving Toni with a distinct lack of clothes, I think it was high time we had a conversation about whether or not there was going to be just friendship between us, or the possibility of anything more.

To distract myself, and keep from thinking myself into becoming a panicked, nervous wreck, I went down to the garage. I needed to do something with my hands.

“JARVIS, can you let me know when Toni gets home?” I asked as I picked up a few bits and bobs.

“Certainly, Mr. Williams,” the AI answered.

Time passed, as I tinkered with the scrap bits and pieces we had in the garage. I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was making, in my head I was running through what I’d say to Toni when she got back. Trying to figure out how to tell her that I wanted to take her out on a date while not sounding like a creep or ruining what we already had.

I was more or less happy with what I’d come up with when JARVIS spoke up, making me jump and drop the doohickey in my hands, “Mr. Williams, Miss Stark has returned. She is on her way.”

“Thanks, JARVIS,” I said as I picked up the thing I’d mindlessly made, before blinking. How the hell did I make something this complex without thinking about it?

“What’s that you’ve got there?” Toni’s voice asked behind me.

“Neural Cyber Bridge Implant,” I answered without thinking. “Implant this onto the brain stem and it’ll let you do what my tags do without them peeling off.” I shook my head, setting the implant down. “That’s not important, I had something I wanted to ask you, Toni.”

Toni looked at me curiously, sitting down on one of the stools and leaning on the workbench, before gesturing for me to continue. I took a breath to steel my nerves, before forcing the words out, “Toni, we’ve been working together for nearly seven months, and in that time, I’ve been amazed time after time by your intelligence and gift for engineering. More than that, you’re a beautiful woman, one that I’m honored to call a friend. But, if you’re willing, I’d like to try something more than just friendship. Would you like to go on a date?”

Toni’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped, her cheeks gaining a dusting of red, before she shook herself and gave a smile, “I would love to, what did you have in mind?”

I blinked, a little surprised at the easy acceptance, “I’ll be honest, I hadn’t really gotten past the step of ‘hope to hell Toni doesn’t kick me out’.”

“While I certainly don’t mind the view of you walking away,” Toni said teasingly, “I have no plans on kicking you out of the house.”

That got a chuckle out of me, and I relaxed, the most nerve wracking part over, “Shall we shelve the topic of the date until tomorrow, after we’ve both had time to think about it, and discuss it over dinner?”

I freely admit, I walked into Toni’s cheeky response of, “It’s a date.”

[hr][/hr]

“So, I gave it some thought, but I’d like to hear your opinion and thoughts first,” I said as Toni and I sat down with our plates of pasta.

“Fair enough,” Toni said with a shrug. “Let’s be blunt, neither of us are really the movie theater or coffee shop type, so let’s not bother with that. I propose that when we feel like having a date, we workshop it, figure out a place or activity that we’ll both enjoy, then do that.”

I chuckled lightly, “That’s basically what I was thinking. Twenty bucks most of our dates end up being in a workshop making something.”

Toni snorted, her hand coming up to keep from losing any of her pasta, before finishing the food in her mouth and saying with a laugh, “No bet.”

The rest of the evening was more or less spent like that, spitballing ideas for possible date venues back and forth. In the end, our first ‘official’ date was going to be that weekend, doing something about as far from cliche date activity as you could get. We were going paintballing, and if my experience with the M1895 was anything to go by, I was going to get absolutely slaughtered.