[Cruel Intentions — 18.08.1999 — Wednesday]
In my new apartment, I slept from about 5:40 PM until dawn.
After waking up, I went out onto the balcony and spent a while enjoying the view of Central Park.
"Absolutely worth it," I said after a long, relaxed sigh, feeling the surprisingly clean air and peaceful idyllic landscape for the very center of "the city that never sleeps."
Spending twelve hours of access to other universes on "just" sleeping wasn't in the plans, at all, but the same was true of the great recuperation I received.
To make up for the lost time, I returned to the Worm universe — where it was still Wednesday afternoon and ate — breakfast? dinner? — there. Reflecting on long-awaited plans for my shopping day.
"Real question is, in how many universes and how many today's days?" I joked to myself.
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My first stop was an address I'd written down the previous day, an electronics shop where I bought a mobile phone.
The absolute cutting-edge novelty of the local market.
A Nokia 3210 Nutcracker.
With immense curiosity, I spent some time researching the undying legend at the nearby bench. Next, I began using the Internet in the 1990s way - by bus travel to an internet café.
Not that the rental agent hadn't promised me wired internet, but her "probably within a week" could mean anything, from "tomorrow" to "after a month."
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Despite having numerous questions in my mind and notes, most of my time in the Internet café was dedicated to the most important task of recent days - using all my knowledge for a very thorough examination of the specifications of U.S.-minted Gold Eagle coins from two universes. The only convenient way to exchange large amounts of gold between universes without additional expertise and documents.
'They're completely identical!' I thought with enormous relief after rather tense minutes of comparisons. 'Except for the 1990 and 1991 mintings, which still use Roman numerals in the Cruel Intentions universe. But everything else? Absolutely fucking identical, including their history!'
After the revelation that would make my life so much easier, I carefully sketched a map of the nearby roads, bus routes, stores, return to the bus stop, and drove to the nearest bookstore. Where I bought another proof that I was indeed in the 1990s, a city map book.
From there, I drove to the nearest car rental agency and leased a 1993 Dodge Ramcharger SUV for a week.
Constantly using the map to avoid getting lost, I next headed to a coin shop and purchased $3,000 worth of Gold Eagles.
Brockton Bay wasn't some economic shithole of America.
Sure, the city ranked near the bottom of various statistical lists, but it was still mostly a typical American mid-sized city. Therefore, even dilapidated houses outside the Brockton Bay limits typically sold for between $70,000 and $100,000.
Something better, and what I actually required, generally fell into the $100,000–$200,000 range.
Of course, I'd many times considered the classic fanfiction solution: "Let's just take over some abandoned warehouse!" Even spent some time driving over "classic Brockton's slum."
Yet, I just didn't see how the fuck I should "just claim a warehouse" when not fully dilapidated ones obviously had legal owners, and at least some regular inspections, perhaps with gangs' involvement. And the fully dilapidated ones were placed almost entirely on Merchants' territory and were already occupied by a migrating population of bums. Happy to sell information about anything unusual to thugs. More so, even the slightest hints about the new tinker.
No, I needed to buy a decent house with a decent basement. The place from which I intended to begin my future "Diggy Diggy Hole" activities of creating a good anti-green-shrimp bunker.
For which I required roughly $150,000.
Of which, right now, I possessed only a measly $37,500.
Sigh.
Wait a minute...
$37,500?
Yesterday I'd spent nearly all my money on body armor, and recently I'd possessed little more than three thousand dollars in gold coins.
So, where had I gotten $37,500 from?
Oh, yes. It was rather simple.
In 1999, the price of gold was approximately $255 per troy ounce. I didn't know the exact price in my original reality, but in the 2011 Worm universe? $3200.
12,5 fucking times more.
Kathryn and Sebastian had promised me $50,000 within a week. At first glance, not a lot.
But by Worm gold prices? $625,000.
And every day, I could transport 1 kg of gold between worlds. $8,200 and $102,500 accordingly.
'I'm fucking rich!' I joyfully thought, banging on the steering wheel under the convenient "Offspring - All I Want" music.
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From the coin shop — constantly consulting my map — I headed to a hardware hypermarket and purchased a wide assortment of material samples. And from there, I steered home, where I immediately began experimenting with what I could and couldn't transfer between universes.
The Gates description explicitly stated that I could move: "A total of 1 kg of raw unenergized resources per day."
But before now, I had no idea what exactly the word "resources" meant. According to the context of the other help text, this should mean "chemical elements," but such an interpretation seemed far too lame to be believable.
Chemical elements? The same things that were identical in almost all universes? Really?
My first attempt at transferring a bronze fitting — a relatively complex but extremely common alloy — showed me that things were Better Than I Feared, Worse Than I Hoped.
All material transfers were handled through a confirmation window that appeared before leaving a universe.
At first glance, the interface was remarkably simple, displaying only a list of materials somewhere on me, and their weights.
But in the case of the bronze fitting — even without the help of scales — it was obvious that the weight didn't correspond to its actual mass. Many times over.
Further experimentation revealed that the less homogeneous a material's composition and shape - the harsher the transfer penalty on transferable weight.
Regarding composition, every 2% of "impurities" increased effective transfer weight by 100%, up to a maximum penalty of 500% at 10% impurities (with also limits on complexity).
Oddly enough, with exceptions for binary compounds such as ammonia and silicon carbide, which I shaved by a knife from cutting disks. That likely meant that pure tungsten carbide, one of the strongest and easily obtainable materials, was transferable by 100% rate.
The 10% impurity limit meant I wouldn't be able to transfer an enormous number of metallic alloys between worlds, including all forms of stainless steel.
Uneven inclusions in materials, even something as small as a tiny paint stain, made transfer completely impossible. Which, luckily, didn't affect powders and natural stones.
The shape penalties were even more restrictive.
Since the first day after my transmigration, one of my main plans was to invest charges in micro-mechanics knowledge, build industrial infrastructure in another universe, manufacture robots made entirely from a single material, such as nickel or titanium, and only then, using such robots, start creating production chains in Worm.
After purchasing Chemistry I, Physics I, and Electronics I, those ideas had evolved into numerous ideas about pneumatics and electromagnetic-liquid-hydraulics monomaterial robots.
Every single one of those plans was mercilessly obliterated when I discovered that transfer penalties clearly depended on geometric complexity, including on the number of 'functional edges.'
Gears I removed from a mechanical watch just refused to appear in the transfer interface, despite the same material, in the form of chipped-off fragments, or even made of them powder, still appearing in it.
Why not just process Worm universe materials in Cruel Intentions universe and then return them to Worm universe, still like the Worm ones? Because, under stupid Gates' logic, ANY substantial qualitative composition improvements to anything considered "me and mine" are also registered as the same empowerments that "do POOF!" upon return. So, no, things were without so obvious and unrivaled "Cyborgization Path" cheat.
Yet. The overall situation wasn't bad. With a small consolation in the form of a raised chance that, in the future, I might be able to transfer even such alloyed unobtainiums as adamantium.
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I glanced at the clock and realized that it had already become midday in the Cruel Intentions universe.
I immediately called Sebastian, who told me that they had arrived at his uncle's estate at 9 AM, were convinced Annette in a couple of hours, and had been waiting for me at the Valmont mansion for more than three hours.
I told him I’d be there soon, but with so many other ideas spinning through my head at that moment, I used one of the most convenient "cheats" I had: I returned to the Worm universe —still at Wednesday early evening — and froze time in the Cruel Intentions universe.
The rest of the day, making a shopping list for the next day and continuing to fulfill programming orders, from now on, were needed mainly for the legal smokescreen.
[The Worm — 13.01.2011 — Thursday]
Early in the morning, I checked chat with Madison and found great news: a photo of her a little shorter haircut she had promised and another completed assignment - her attempt to create psychological profiles of Emma and Sofia. That brought the total amount of money she received from me to $700.
At first glance, this wasn't a lot. But in Brockton Bay, tens of thousands of people, legally, received $7.25 per hour. That, with a 40-hour work week and after all taxes, made their real weekly paycheck just $260. And monthly - $1,040.
A typical Brockton Bay teacher's paycheck was much bigger, $3,000. But to start receiving such money, one should spend 5-7 years on education and an unpaid internship, and at least one month of very difficult work. For the sake of $750 per week. Which I had already paid Madison for a week of foolery with me. Just a few hours of work.
Which should soon raise a rather interesting question in her head, if not already. Especially regarding her "friends" and her social status during the last academic year before university.
Which was just one of many benefits I could potentially propose to her.
From a certain point of view, such a logic looked like simping, but it wasn't. Simping was about spending the most precious resource, time, on reciprocity. When I saved time and invested in something more important than her emotions, and another proof that I'm not in some fanfic.
Among many things, Worm's canon was also a teenage drama. And Worm fanfics... well... they were wish-fulfillment fanfics.
Therefore, both had "Worm suck, but not in friendship reliability!" flair.
But in reality, if you wanted your allies to effectively resist temptation from what your enemies potentially could offer them, you had to give them something equivalent to such potential offers. Obviously, not only through emotional attachment, but via physical convenience too.
Which I slowly provided to Madison, and she, via performing small tasks, did for me.
Of course, I required some sticks too. But for now, the best stick I could use was adjusting the intensity of my attention to her.
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Brockton Bay had eight local coin shops. And each of them — without my providing documents and completing anti-money-laundering forms — could pay me only $9,999 per month.
Since these shop owners almost certainly knew each other and some of them, for sure, at least indirectly, were connected to criminal activity, it was better for me to exchange gold coins in small batches, infrequently, and perhaps in different cities.
However, for my very first sale, I decided to take a little risk.
Early in the morning, I glued on the mustache and beard I’d bought at the theatrical supply store, applied some makeup, threw on expensive but old secondhand clothes that aged me even more, and drove to one of the coin shops.
I parked ten minutes away from it, walked to the shop, exchanged gold coins for $9,500 without any issue, and returned to the car with nine and a half plastic tubes filled with $100 coins and a stupid smile.
Next, I repeated the process with another coin shop on the opposite side of town, washed off the makeup, swapped outerwear in the car, and drove to service stores, where I bought two NEMA-17 and two NEMA-23 stepper motors.
Then I visited secondhand electronics stores, a regular electronics store, and a hardware superstore, where I bought two used printers, two scanners, two stereo amplifiers, one of the best and one of the worst smartphones on the market, and a rich assortment of electronics repair kits.
After returning home and having a quick snack, I started digging into the printers' and amplifiers' schematics.
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"Electronics I" hadn’t given me any technopathic abilities, so I spent some time googling, yet, it, with some help from "Physics I," gave me something similar to super intuition in relation to the most typical and logical combination of electronic components and logics.
So it took me no more than half an hour to transmit signals from the application running on the cheapest smartphone microprocessor to the printer's microcontroller and to non-native stepper motors powered by current drawn from one of the sound amplifiers.
Next, I disassembled one of the NEMA-17 motors. and confirmed that, if necessary, I indeed could build larger versions by myself. From bearings, wires, and printed casings from the Worm universe, and from copper wire and magnets from the Cruel Intentions universe.
With my knowledge of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, if needed, even from chemical elements. Not that I needed something so inefficient.
Having secured sufficient funds and validated my technical knowledge in practice, I decided there was no reason to delay the start of machine tool construction any longer. At least for the most important and universal ones.
Therefore, around lunchtime, I got back in the car and spent the next few hours visiting various technical stores and filling the trunk with heavy bags.
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After returning home and resting over food and a few episodes of Mouse Protector Adventures, I at last began creating tools to create tools to create tools.
I started from the creation of the basic working zone.
At first, I took 3030 T-slot aluminum profiles and assembled them into a 1.75 × 1.75-meter cube frame that I wrapped in the thickest blankets I could buy. Creating an improvised soundproof room, inside which I placed a small chair, table, and a drill stand with a regular drill.
Then, from all machine tools, I decided to start with a Filament Extruder for an FDM 3D printer. Essentially, an analog of a meat grinder that takes plastic pellets and pushes them through a hot nozzle into plastic filament.
I took a steel pipe and, using aluminum clamps for rail shafts, attached it to the 3060 T-slot aluminum profile.
Into the steel pipe I inserted a 20 mm wood auger drill. To ensure smooth rotation without scratching the walls, I placed the rear end of the auger in a bearing clamped with aluminum clamps. Which — after a lot of careful leveling — I also attached to an aluminum profile using steel corners and a stack of 1 mm aluminum sheets, strips, and aluminum foil from foil trays.
The very rear end of the auger drill I connected to a NEMA-23 motor with a gearbox.
The small open part of the auger, the place for the plastic feeder, I covered with cut aluminum cans attached together with a stapler and hot glue.
Then I began to create the last part of the filament extruder - the plastic heating zone.
Since the wood auger drill wasn’t a true auger and barely pushed the plastic forward, I tried to make the heating zone as short as possible. Which was, in part, forgivable because the filament extruder was meant to be used with the most obedient and popular type of plastic, ABS.
I took a copper hose barb fitting. From the front side, I sanded the barbs, cut threads inside, and screwed a small brass plug with a 2mm hole into it. And on the rear side, I also cut threads inside the fitting and then screwed the fitting onto the steel pipe.
Then I took an aluminum cube and drilled three holes inside it. Two of them I filled with heaters taken from soldering stations, which already had temperature sensors. And the largest hole in the very center, I coated with high-temperature thermal paste and inserted the hose fitting.
At the very end, I wrapped the heating zone with strips of ceramic fabric, originally designed to insulate small motorcycle pipes.
"Atrocious." I affectionately assessed and named the device, which almost surely would produce atrociously uneven filament. But I already knew how to compensate for it via filament laser measurement and software corrections.
Remaining time before midnight, I spent creating accessories: a motorized spool for winding the finished filament, and a pulley system to stretch the still-warm filament and slightly even out its diameter.
Before bed, I plugged in two fruit dryers and filled them with two kilograms of uncolored yellowish-white ABS plastic pellets. Even though 3D printers weren't widespread in the Worm universe, plastic molding certainly was, so I could easily purchase ten kilograms of plastic from a local supplier.
For the last time, I glanced at my first step toward the stars and went to bed.