Tinker of Fiction (Patreon)

An: My take on a couple of stories I saw that used fictional mad scientists or worlds to fuel their tinkering. The idea wouldn't leave me alone.


Mist blinked as he went from sitting in front of his computer to sitting in a strangely large car parked in front of a house with a yard that had seen better days. 'What the fuck?!' he thought as he noticed the chunky and rather plain looking woman sitting in the driver's seat. 'She's a giant…' his thoughts derailed when he noticed how small his hands and legs were.

"I know moving to a new city can be scary but the Heberts are good people," the woman assured him.

Mist couldn't help the shiver that went down his spine, mostly because the only Heberts he knew of lived in a fictional city in a death world. "I'll try."

"That's the spirit," the woman said cheerfully.

'Relax, there's probably a rational explanation,' Mist thought as he reached down and pushed the button to release the seat belt he was wearing. "Any last bits of advice?" he asked, hoping for more information about what was going on.

"Just be yourself," the woman suggested. "Your uncle isn't going to kick you out and your cousin should be able to show you around town."

"I'll try," Mist promised as he opened the door. 'Don't jump to conclusions, maybe there's a rational explanation. Yeah, I got fucking ROB'd,' he thought excitedly as he got out of the car and looked at the recently mowed yard. 'He probably made an effort because of the social worker.' He glanced up at the cloudy sky then carefully shut the door and headed for the sidewalk. 'This would be a lot easier if I had a cheat sheet or powers. Then again, meta knowledge should count for something.'

Mist sighed when he noticed that one of the boards on the stairs looked new and had a fresh coat of stain. 'So much for not being in Brockton Bay, he probably fixed it because of the social worker,' he mused as the door to the house opened, revealing a tall teenage girl with long curly hair wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans. "Hi."

"Hey," Taylor offered, not sure what else to say.

'You're a lying bitch Emma, she's decently attractive,' he mused as he turned to watch the social worker walk up the sidewalk with two suitcases. "Oops, I should probably help with that," he said as he ran back over to grab one of the suitcases.

"Thank you," the social worker told the kid as she handed him the lighter suitcase, glad that he was finally coming out of his shell since he'd been really quiet on the ride.

"Tell them to come in," Danny said from the kitchen.

"Dad's grabbing the cookies out of the oven, come in," Taylor told them, trying not to think about her aunt and uncle's death.

'Yeah, I can check super strength off the list of powers,' Mist mused as he hauled the heavy suitcase up the stairs and into the house. He ignored the faint scent of lemon as he glanced around the living room. 'At least they made enough of an effort that the social worker should be happy.'

The social worker set the suitcase out of the way then closed the door behind her and glanced around, wanting to make sure there weren't any obvious issues.

"Perfect timing," Danny said as he walked out of the kitchen with a plate of chocolate chip cookies. "How was the drive?"

"It could have been worse," Sandra replied with a smile, thinking of the last time she'd made the drive in the rain.

"Help yourself," Danny said as he set the cookies on the coffee table. "I'm not sure if you remember me, I haven't seen you since you were four or five."

"Sorry, I don't," Mist admitted as he grabbed a cookie, not sure what to make of the tall man with dark balding hair and glasses that was apparently his uncle or at least the uncle of the person he'd been dropped into.

"Do you have any questions?" Sandra asked Mist as she picked up a cookie.

"Where am I sleeping?" Mist asked, not sure what else to ask that wouldn't cause the social worker to wonder if he'd hit his head.

"We converted the guest room, I'll show you," Taylor said as she grabbed a cookie and the other suitcase.

"Thanks," Mist replied as he grabbed a second cookie and followed Taylor up the stairs.

Danny waited until Mist and Taylor were up the stairs then asked, "How much does he remember about the attack?"

"Nothing, which is probably a good thing considering the Nine," Sandra admitted. "Thank you for taking him in."

"He's family," Danny replied.

"I wish more people felt like that," Sandra complained, thinking about some of the people she'd talked to over the years that wanted nothing to do with their extended family. "Can I trust you to cover the gangs? He grew up in a small town."

"I'll make sure he knows what sections of the city to avoid," Danny assured her.

"Thank you," Sandra replied then took a bite of her cookie, hoping that things would work out for the kid.

0o0o0

Mist wasn't sure if he'd taken over someone's life or if someone had tweaked records and altered some memories because Mist River Haven was a weird name for a child but that was apparently what he was stuck with until he was old enough to change it. 'Could be worse,' he mused as he dropped his identification card on the wooden desk and turned his attention to his laptop as it finished booting up. He glanced at the background image of a basket full of adorable kittens then looked at the icons on the left of the screen. 'Games, artwork, readme?' he mused as he double tapped the touchpad and opened the readme file, figuring it was worth a shot.

'You're not going to remember but you made a deal for power with an alternate version of us, you get a life of adventure, they get to retire. Don't worry, the memory loss should be a one time deal, mostly because you really don't want to remember the process we used to get powers. Don't worry, we didn't kill anyone but as Charles would say, you don't walk away from playing poker with eldritch abominations without a couple of issues.'

"More like a box of issues," Mist muttered as he continued reading, wondering if he'd actually played poker with an eldritch abomination or if the person writing the note was joking. 'Don't worry about the kid you replaced, he was happy to jump ship to a world without endbringers and insane death cults. We dropped him in the clone of a Kryptonian hybrid in a version of DC. He'll be fine. I don't have a lot of time so I'll be brief.'

'Not a bad choice if you don't want to put in the work,' Mist mused, deciding that he'd sleep better at night if he took the man or creature at his word, especially since there wasn't anything he could do about it if he was lying. 'I'd call you a tinker but you don't have a shard and your technology isn't blackboxed by default. You're basically a mad scientist with the ability to replicate items and powers from fiction through technology. Now for the bad news, your powers don't come with a defense against precogs or mind control which means you're going to have to invent something if you don't want to be stuck in a cage or splattered. You're also going to have issues combining technology from different dimensions unless you can bridge the gap. Best of luck, you're going to need it.'

Mist reread the annoyingly short message to make sure he hadn't missed anything then closed the file and deleted it, not seeing a point in leaving it on his computer for someone to find. 'Let's assume they're telling the truth, at least about the tinker part, can I test it?'

'Let's start with something simple, batteries.' Mist smiled when he focused on some of the weird batteries he could remember from various movies and realized that he knew how to make them or at least had a vague idea which was better than nothing.

'I'm going to need something to design the case and write up the notes for the chemical formulas,' he mused as he searched through the collection of programs on his laptop, hoping the laptop had something better than the basic Windows drawing program. 'Huh, 3D art and a CAD program.'

Mist opened the CAD program and frowned when he saw the popup that told him that he had another thirteen days on the free trial. 'Yeah, I should probably fix that,' he mused as he closed the popup notice and looked over the options. 'Good enough,' he mused as he closed the CAD program and looked through the programs installed on the computer, finding a couple of games that he didn't recognize.

Mist glanced down at the date and time on the laptop. 'April 1st, 2011, funny. Okay, assuming the note isn't a bad joke, I should have a week and a half before Taylor picks a fight with Lung and gets recruited by Lisa. That gives me nine days to figure out a way to deal with Coil and make sure the Undersiders don't end up robbing a bank.'

'I'm going to need a cloaking device and some type of weapon which means I'm going to need supplies and a workshop. Wards? I'd get a lab and a tinkering fund but they'd want a share and they'd want to limit what I can make. If I can't come up with something better in a week, I'll see if I can use their lab for power testing and make a cloaking device. Abandoned metal shop? I'm twelve, there's no way I'll get enough time to make anything. Basement? Noise and fumes, face it, you're going to have to tell Danny or Taylor.'

Mist took a breath then let it out and tried to relax. 'Worst case, he screws me over and I end up in the wards at which point Coil grabs me. Best case, I got to use one of the Union's machine shops so I can make a proof of concept.'

"What are you working on?" Taylor asked from the doorway.

Mist turned to look at Taylor. "I'm trying to figure out how to tell Uncle Danny that I'm a tinker without ending up in the wards."

Taylor stared at her cousin, trying to figure out if he was being serious. "What can you make?"

"I have a couple of ideas floating around my head but I haven't exactly had the chance to make anything yet which means I need to figure out how to prove that the annoyingly detailed schematics floating around in my head aren't a sign of mental issues," Mist complained.

"What do you need?" Taylor asked, figuring she might as well humor him as long as he didn't do anything too dangerous.

Mist shrugged. "The usual, tools, time and electronic junk."

Taylor smiled as she thought about the boxes of old electronics that were taking up space and in the way in the basement. "We have a box of old electronics in the basement that you can probably use, let's ask."

"Cool," Mist replied as he stood up and headed for the door.

"Do you want me to ask him or do you want to?" Taylor asked as they headed down the hallway towards the stairs.

"Ask me what?" Danny asked as he walked up the stairs.

"I have a bunch of schematics in my head that I can't stop thinking about. I mentioned that I might be a tinker to Taylor and she said that you have a box of old electronics in the basement that you might be willing to part with. Can I run some tests to see if I'm a tinker or if I'm just crazy?" Mist asked hopefully.

"Have you ever done any soldering?" Danny asked thoughtfully.

"Now and then," Mist replied, hoping he wouldn't ask for details since he didn't have them.

Danny offered his nephew a smile, deciding it wouldn't hurt to check since the social worker had been worried about him triggering. "I'll grab the boxes. We can use the shed in the backyard, there's power and plenty of ventilation."

"I'll grab the boxes, I know where they are," Taylor said as she slipped past her father, wanting to make sure he didn't see her spiders since they were putting the finishing touches on her suit.

"Grab the soldering iron," Danny told her, glad that he didn't have to go down there and look at the boxes of Annette's stuff. "Let's go see what you can do."

"Sounds good," Mist agreed as he followed Danny down the stairs, wishing he had a better idea how his power worked. He followed Danny outside and frowned when he noticed the 'small' shed that was pushed against the six foot wooden fence. 'At least they have some privacy from the neighbors,' he mused as he glanced around the small yard.

"Any idea what you're going to build?" Danny asked as he pulled the mower out of the shed so there would be enough room to work.

"I'll have a better idea once I know what I'm working with," Mist told him, hoping he could make something suitably impressive with the junk.

0o0o0

"That doesn't even make sense," Taylor complained as she watched the image of the leaf that her cousin had scanned using an old scanner appear on the ancient television screen. "Shouldn't you have to actually program something or flash some chips or something?"

Mist pulled his attention away from the screen and looked at Taylor. "I just changed the input and set everything to record on a tape."

"And rewired the connectors and a half dozen things you shouldn't be able to do," Danny mused.

"Basically," Mist agreed, relieved that his first invention had worked as well as it had.

"Can I talk you into joining the wards?" Danny asked, wanting to make sure he was safe.

"They'd steal my tech or want me to go on patrols," Mist complained.

"What's wrong with patrolling?" Taylor asked.

"I don't have a death wish," Mist replied dryly. "I'm twelve and I'm squishy."

"Could you build power armor?" Taylor asked.

Mist glanced at the small set of screwdrivers and the soldering iron then shook his head. "I'd need an actual machine shop or some type of tinkertech 3D printer and a decent amount of steel and rare elements unless I want the gangs to turn my armor into swiss cheese."

Taylor glanced at Danny. "Could he use the machine shop at the Union?"

Danny shook his head. "We could probably get away with it once or twice but he's too young to use the machines, he'd have to write everything up and it would have to be paying work since he's not part of the Union."

"How much do you think people would pay to fly across the bay in a hovercraft?" Mist asked with a grin.

"At least twenty to fifty a person, just for the novelty," Danny said, knowing most of the sailors that still took people out on the water charged a lot more.

Mist nodded. "I'll have to look up the salvage rules or visit a junkyard but I can probably figure something out, the antigravity drives shouldn't be that expensive, less than an actual engine and they run on solar, if you have decent solar panels."

“If you have a flying boat out of an old sci-fi serial they’ll know you are a tinker and come for you,” Taylor warned, knowing how the gangs in the bay operated.

“That’s why you use the anti-grav to lessen the fuel costs while making it seem like the fans are doing all the work,” Mist explained. “Hovercrafts cost a lot in fuel, which is why people don’t use them when they have other choices, by using antigrav we can make it affordable.”

Danny glanced at VCR that he'd taken apart to get the parts to upgrade the television then focused on Mist. "Write everything up and we'll try to figure out how much it would cost to build and if we can charge enough to make it viable and disguise the fact that it’s tinkertech."

"Sounds good," Mist replied as headed back to the house to start writing up everything he needed for the antigravity device. 'At least there should be a couple of old warehouses to rent once I have enough money, even if I'll have to have someone rent it for me.'

0o0o0

Mist adjusted the old and heavily modified router that he'd upgraded when Danny was cooking dinner and selected the new connection, mostly because he'd tweaked it to hide where his connection was in the city so people wouldn't be able to track his online activity to his civilian identity. 'Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you,' he mused as he started running searches for solar panels, trying to get a better idea of the quality he should be trying to reproduce.

It didn't take him all that long to find a couple of websites that made some interesting claims about the quality of their panels and the research they were working on. 'Even if I boost their future claims by thirty percent, that's less than half of the cheap and dirty panels I can get from some of the Marvel companies, without even touching the stuff that Tony or Reed has access to.'

He switched his focus and checked some of the solar panels that he could make with DC tech. 'The price of shipping would kill most of these and the Kryptonian panels are too efficient, not to mention dangerous to make in an atmosphere without super tech. I don't even want to know what Scion would think of the Bleed Fusion devices, then again, I'm not sure they'd even work. Should I just skip the solar panels and jump to micro-fusion from Fallout? Nah, same problem and some lunatic would probably turn them into weapons.'

'Can I get away with thirty percent better solar panels, forty?' Mist mused as he concentrated on the various designs he could pull up from Marvel since they didn't require any exotic material. 'That's nearly perfect, I can cook it up in a lab and mass production would improve the quality and reduce the waste to almost nothing.'

He checked the Vulture's antigravity tech and smiled when he realized that the solar panels would be more than enough to cover the energy cost provided he had a reasonable amount of them. 'I might be able to find better but it's better than anything on the market and I can explain the jump in logic.' He glanced at the clock. 'I can probably write everything up for the solar panels in an hour. I'll have to build something to print the panels until I can design a factory but I can probably cobble something together to make a couple of dozen as a proof of concept with a broken 3D printer.'

'Screw it, I'll just write things up and see if I can find an email for Dragon's company, it shouldn't take her all that long to check the design and realize it's not not tinkertech. That should give me enough time to write up the auto lathe directions for the antigravity system. Hell, she might even pay for the design which would make everything else easier.'

Mist smiled as he opened a document and started writing down everything required to produce the new solar panels so he'd have something to send Dragon. 'Worst case, I'll just go with something else.'

0o0o0