Un: TerribleTinkerer | Text

[badnewsandshitlist]

If money has no meaning here, then what do people do with themselves? Adventure for the sport of it? Build things only to watch them gather dust?

I prefer problems that bite back or explode in my hands, but it seems difficult to call that work in a place where every need is already seen to.

So. What passes for an occupation here—when merit and coin are both irrelevant?

Comments

[badnewsandshitlist]

How reassuring. A library worth defending is a library worth visiting. Very well, I will keep my chemistry confined to the outdoors. But if you find me surrounded by blackened earth and half-functional prototypes, you may congratulate yourself for preserving the books.

[levelshift]

[That, and Harold and John are secretly living there, so Accelerator is pretty invested in making sure the building stays standing.]

Good. What the hell kind of prototypes are you talking about, anyways?

[badnewsandshitlist]

Prototypes of the usual sort. Clockwork that insists on ticking in the wrong direction. A gauntlet that delivers a handshake with more voltage than charm. Devices that refuse to decide whether they are meant to light the way or set it on fire.

None of it library-safe, I assure you.

[levelshift]

[..............................]

So you build random shit poorly, on purpose?

[badnewsandshitlist]

Poorly? No. Unpredictably, yes. If I wished for perfection, I would copy blueprints like a schoolboy. The value is in courting failure until it yields something no one else thought possible. Progress is a stubborn mistress, and she rarely gives up her secrets to the cautious.

[levelshift]

Uh huh.

All of that looks like a bunch of flowery prose to hide the fact that the answer to my question is 'yes.'

[badnewsandshitlist]

If you insist on reducing invention to a yes or no question, then yes, I build things that might fail before they succeed. That is not the same as building poorly. A musket that explodes in its maker’s hand is a failure. A musket that fires for the first time in history is progress. The trick is that one cannot exist without the other.

[levelshift]

[Prototypes and versions that need improvement are one thing, devices that are inconsistent in their purpose are just built poorly, and this guy was describing the latter, as far as Accelerator is concerned.]

I know how inventing fucking works. I'm from a city whose entire purpose is R&D.