The Conceptual Deck

Chapter 51: Expanding horizons

We were barely over the bridge connecting the Triskelion to the rest of Washington DC when Ema brought up going to see Tony Stark again.

"He is the best option for getting our hands on thrust as a concept in a small form." She insisted. "Plus who knows what else he could help us with. You did say in some comics he comes up with an energy shield."

I let out a sigh and nodded, reluctantly agreeing before looking over at her.

"Why are you so determined to see him though?" I asked. "I don't think you have ever harped on something like this before."

"... I want to meet Jarvis." Ema admitted in a small voice, catching me off guard. She looked away from me and out the window before continuing. "You said he was an AI, an artificial construct like me. I want to meet him."

"Ema! If you were interested in meeting him you should have told me." I said, shaking my head. "Alright, we will go see Stark."

We quickly found a place to covertly travel back to the quarry. I checked on the Destroyer armor, which was making steady progress. It was interesting to see the metal structure slowly growing over time, from the exact point where the original piece had been. While I was doing that Ema was retrieving a landing pad from the storage shed and flying around, testing her speed and maneuverability while she was carrying it. She landed next to me when I stepped out from under the tent.

"It's noticeable, but mostly in the acceleration." She said before pulling the stone slab into her chest, her exosuit morphing around it. "I don't think this small of a load will affect my top speed."

"Great, that;s perfect. Now being at the quarry will shave off a bunch of time, but I want you to go to Denver first, then to Las Vegas, before heading to Los Angeles." I explained. "Each time you're going to put down a pad, call me and I'll bring you another one. Not including the time it will take you to find good spots for the landing pads this is about an eleven hour trip. Around ten if you go full tilt"

"What are you going to be doing in the meantime?"

"I'm going to do something that I've put off for a while, which is take the first steps into modifying myself directly." I responded. "No actual experiments yet, but if I'm going to be experimenting on mice I need to be able to scan them for issues. I can't exactly ask them questions about their strength levels."

"So the ultimate scanner?"

"I'm going to start with a medical scanner, and then move on to something like a scouter from Dragon Ball, but more detailed. That one is going to be interesting.

"Alright, good luck Carson."

After watching Ema fly away, I traveled back to New York. I only had a few hours before stores started to close so I wanted to get shopping in my hometown done first so I could switch and gain an extra hour at Austin. My shopping trip started at Staples, before moving over to CVS, then bouncing all over the place. My first stop in Austin was the third home improvement shop I had been to during this shopping spree, once again stocking up on grounding rods. I got a comment from a clerk, absently wondering why they couldn't keep them in stock anymore.

After running down the clock in a bookstore in Austin I traveled back to the quarry, pushing out all of my purchases and setting them up into piles. When I was all organized I started on my medical scanner, using a base of thermal scanners that worked so well for my enhanced glasses. Unfortunately it didn't work out so well, resulting in a scanner that seemed to be attempting to visualize something on its screen, but was ultimately unrecognizable.

Taking what I had learned from my first attempt I started over again, this time using a base of barcode scanners I bought from Staples. I combined them with a Stark tech tablet, resulting in a hand held scanner with an impressive screen, shaped with smooth plastic and black metal. From there it was all about stacking medical equipment and diagnostic books. I mixed in magic rods of course, as well as the diagnostic books, some of which were books specifically for laymen, all about self diagnosing. It was a long list of items, including a glucose monitoring kit, a stethoscope, blood pressure kits, both manual and mechanical, digital thermometers, a scale, and the little oxygen monitors that go on your finger tip. I even managed to find a portable ultrasound, which cost almost five thousand dollars. I threw in a few home drug testers, a pregnancy test, a uric acid monitor and a blood type testing kit. Some of these I knew were gimmicks, making money off hypochondriacs and worry wart mothers, but the Deck showed that they all functioned, at least conceptually.

Throughout this whole process I continued to work in the barcode and cellphone combo to keep that as strong as possible. The final result was a B ranked handheld scanner that felt like it could work. To test it I had to strip off my healing amulet and shrink my undersuit. I sliced my arm before I could convince myself not to, groaning as blood dripped down my arm. I quickly scanned the wound before putting my healing amulet back on.

The amount of information on the device was staggering. Not only did it tell me my blood type was O positive, but it also read out my weight, height, blood pressure, the nature of my injury, the status of my various organs and dozens of other medical facts. Luckily Stark tech pulled through again and everything was neatly organized, with tabs and secondary pages accessible when necessary.

Unsurprisingly, other than the clearly identified my injury, which had already healed, my health was perfect. Oddly enough it was informing me I was twenty five, not twenty six. MY heart rate spiked for a moment, thinking that my amulet was de-aging me, before I realized the amulet must have put me at my own pinnacle of health, which the scanner was reading at twenty five. Unable to test the scanner any more without purposely contracting a disease, I was about to pull the scanner into a card when I frowned.

I was beginning to accrue a lot of free floating equipment that I wanted to carry with me, but did not want to clog up the space. I stood and traveled back to the apartment, heading right for my room. In one of the corners, next to my closet was another Ikea buy, a large double door armoire. I quickly pulled out my clothes, folding and stacking them into anywhere else I could fit them, before carding the cabinet. I walked back into the living room and carded the safe, before traveling back to the quarry. I spent ten minutes emptying out the guns and other stuff that was in the safe before combining it with the cabinet, as well as the two empty crates Shield had used to transport the guns for Natasha's commision.

I was very happy with the final product, a double door cabinet that was a few inches taller than I was, built like a safe and had quite a few lightly padded shelves and cubbies to store plenty of stuff. I spent the next twenty minutes storing everything I had made so far that I wanted to carry with me but couldn't. The three tracking tablets, Hydra, my items and Bucky, all stacked in a corner, while my flamethrower lighter slid into a small draw. The ring tray, my extra stamina cuffs and my improved bolt cutters all found places easily. I spent a few minutes looking for my super taser before remembering it was in one of my belt pouches, which was a much better place for it than the cabinet. The last thing I put in was the medical scanner. I closed the doors to the storage chest and carded it with a satisfied nod.

It was at this point that Ema called me. She had been gone for just over four hours and she had apparently found a place on the outskirts of Denver. I quickly grabbed a second landing pad and traveled to her, landing in an overgrown abandoned lot, with large buildings on all but one side. I looked around, nodding in approval.

"Not bad. It will be nice to be able to appear inside the city already." I said, handing her the next landing pad.

"I only felt comfortable flying over the city because it is getting dark." She said, taking the landing pad and pulling it into her chest. Her armor was no longer green, but dark blue to hide in the dark sky.

"Fair enough. Stick to the outskirts if it gets brighter out. We can always move them closer later."

"Alright." She agreed with a nod. "Are you done working?"

"No, I got the medical scanner working but I haven't started on the power scanner."

A few more bits of small talk and she took off again, almost immediately disappearing into the darkness, even with the bright streetlights. I watched the skies for a moment before traveling back to the quarry. Traveling from the lit up city to the darkness of the quarry left me disoriented for a moment. I quickly pushed out the super truck and turned the spotlights on, aiming them at the roof of the tent to keep them from blinding me.

I sat down at the workshop and started trying to puzzle out how I was going to make my power scanner work. The scanner part was already figured out as the tablet barcode scanner worked extremely well so there was no reason to change it. The problem was that this project was the most nebulous and outside the box idea I had tried to make so far. There was no such thing as a power level scanner, and while I was sure I could do it, finding the right balance between everything would mean some of trial and error.

My first attempt used half a dozen different people as a way to measure their general prowess. Force meters, hand strength gauges, a handful of eye charts and used optometrist equipment, a fitness watch, all melded down into two modified scanners and a half dozen magic rods. However, the concepts really didn't work out, resulting in a sort of multi tool for testing a few of the things I added testers for.

Putting my first attempt aside I tried again, this time I went a bit more out of the box. Going paper heavy, I combined a few books on player statistics for several sports, several posters I found in the medical supply stores that were basically just cheat sheets for doctors about specific indexes. I combined that with a few scanner tablet combos, before combining in my wild card, a whole box of Dungeons and Dragons material. Blank character sheets, monster manuals, rules books and dungeon master cheat sheets filled with stats. While the game itself was about using your imagination and roleplaying, it functioned on boiling down characters, monsters, events, everything to descriptions and numbers. A magical item that makes someone stronger wouldn't just make you a bit stronger, they add plus two to strength, or added plus three to hit, or an extra four sided dice to your attack damage. While I could do without attack damage being measured in different dice sizes and amounts, numericizing abilities was exactly what I was looking for.

Unfortunately it didn't work quite so well. When I was done working in the scanners and the magic rods the concept of book information mixed with the tablet's ability to store information, which led to the tablet being filled with the actual books. Still, the concepts were all still there, the final result had just been led in the wrong direction.

Luckily, while I was brainstorming a new plan I realized I still had a bunch of leftover stuff from my medical scanner, not to mention my first attempt. I also realized I was missing something obvious. I wasn't scanning for power levels or whatever, I was testing power levels! The scanner was the easy part, but so was testing! A quick look online revealed dozens of questionnaires about determining esoteric things, like how courageous you were, and how much willpower you had. There was a fair amount of 'What kind of cake are you' and 'What Friends character are you' type questionnaires as well, but I ignored them.

I traveled home with an excited grin, quickly setting up the printer I had stolen from the chop shop oh so long ago. I hooked it up to my computer and twiddled my thumbs while the drivers were installed. Luckily, the printer still had some paper in it, which I quickly used to print out a dozen different questionnaires. I was a little worried that they wouldn't have strong concepts, but they ended up being fine. I traveled back to the quarry and worked the questionnaires into the scanners, then used the leftover medical materials to make a lesser version of the medical scanner, combining them together before finally adding my first and second attempts.

The scanner, which was an A rank interestingly enough, probably because it was almost double the amount of expensive materials as the medical scanner, had the same general shape and construction as its medical counterpart. Black metal and plastic, a hand grip with a trigger guard and with an eight by six inch screen. The difference between the two was the detailed scrolling along the screen and grip, inlaid with a copper esque metal. It looked good, and I was pretty sure it came from all of the art in the D&D books.

With a shrug I pointed it at myself and pulled the trigger, a red beam coming out and scanning over me. The scanner beeped and the screen flashed, the beam disappearing right after. Assuming it was done I turned it back around to read it.

On the screen was a clear image of myself, wearing exactly what I was wearing. Next to it was a small description of myself, with startlingly accurate information on it, though it did not include my origins. As I scrolled down the information continued, all details of how strong I was, what my intelligence, dexterity was and plenty of other data. With a touch I could change the list to base counts, what I was capable of without my gear. Further down was a list of everything I was wearing, including how effective they were. Almost all of the information could be toggled between percentages and some sort of point based system, very similar to how D&D worked.

I couldn't help but celebrate, cheering out loud in the tent and fist pumping. I was extremely happy with what I had achieved, it had completely washed away my slowly rising tiredness. Deciding that such a development deserved a reward, I ordered a pizza for a late dinner, traveling home to enjoy a cold beer as I scanned most of what I owned in the apartment and enjoyed my dinner.

It was a few hours later when Ema messaged me. She had arrived at the outskirts of Las Vegas. I traveled to her and found myself under a large bridge, the sound of cars driving overhead making me jump slightly.

"That was fast, were you still up?" She asked accusingly.

"Just celebrating. I managed to get my power scanner up and running and it is a doozy." I assured her, pulling it out and scanning myself, spending about twenty minutes going over everything that it was capable of.

"That that's impressive." She admitted, handing the scanner back, which immediately disappeared into the deck. She was quiet for a moment, looking expectantly at me before finally saying anything. "Do you have the landing pad?"

I looked at her with a blank stare for a moment before cursing, traveling back to the quarry. I stomped into the storage shed, grabbed a landing pad and traveled back to her.

"Here." I said, rolling my eyes when she laughed. "Yeah yeah yeah, laugh it up. Sorry for being focused on me creating a universal power level scanner with a tabletop game and some buzzfeed quizzes."

"Go home Carson. I'll text you tomorrow morning." She said with a smile. "And sorry about the crappy location, the city is way too lit up for me to get any closer. We will have to move it in manually."

I nodded and waved as she flew out from under the overpass. With a sigh I traveled home, asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.