I'm doing science and I'm still alive
He had, on occasion, been compared to Howard Hughes, but he was not turning into a crazed hermit. At least, not the hermit part; part of him still wasn't entirely convinced that ceasing to drink was an entirely sane course of action, given what it did to his brain. Or, rather, failed to do, and as a result left him even more inclined to juggle projects.
He had a few of those. Primarily, in the sense that several of them were related and branched off from this, he'd been working on salvaging anything that was in working order -- which was just about absolutely nothing -- along with everything that could potentially be put to some other use -- which was a wider category, but tough to separate out from the actual junk -- from the remains of the space station and finding a place for it in Duo's scrapyard.
Maybe he should get someone to put up a sign, make sure that nomenclature stuck.
Priorities, priorities. He was somewhat more concerned with keeping people out, at least when he wasn't there, than he was with what they saw in the way of signage when they visited. Not everything he'd pulled up was something he wanted people poking at.
The remains of portal device were a mess, of course, and who knew if he'd ever be able to restore even a measure of function, let alone adapt it to the purposes he wished; as far as he could tell, the quantum tunnelling it had performed up there was something along the order of an Einstein-Rosen bridge. There'd been some work done on those, back home, but it wasn't entirely what he was looking for. It wasn't the jump they needed to be making. But it could probably be bent to the purpose, and he didn't want people poking at the parts. The chances of an accident were exceedingly slim, negligible -- and not just by his metrics, the strictest of health and safety officials would have agreed, there was simply no function to cause one -- but nonetheless, this place didn't always play by the rules.
His real concern, though, was the other thing he'd dredged up from that central room, because he didn't trust it, even decaying underwater. No external orbs or monitors or chassis, just the clean, vaguely feminine curve of a presumably-dead AI. He'd pulled some fragments of data, though, from other remains -- he wasn't plugging a damned thing into that -- and the small portions of Aperture AI schematics he'd been able to reconstruct seemed to suggest they could run in a pinch on an absolute minimum amount of power. Someone could plug in a nine-volt battery, or, hell, you could get enough juice from a vegetable, if you knew how, and then... well, he didn't intend to find out.
So he needed a guard dog. The scrapyard had guard dogs, of course, but in Duo's absence they'd spread out to other owners and weren't there as frequently, and they were just flesh and bone besides. He'd need something else, and so, the current iteration of that project was scurrying in front of him down a boardwalk as he tested motor function.
This one was only the size of a cat, and it was essentially just a set of four legs joined at a central housing. He'd resize once he knew the thing could get around, and not run into people without meaning to, which would be a little more alarming when he got it to the size he wanted.
As it was, the little robot just bumped into the person's leg and then butted it.
"No, just... come on, go around. Pathfind. I programmed you to pathfind, even if you don't have sensors yet. There's something in the way, you can tell that much."
[Tony Stark and a lil robot on the boardwalk. If you need a visual for the robot, something along the lines of this, but a little more scraps-y.]
He had a few of those. Primarily, in the sense that several of them were related and branched off from this, he'd been working on salvaging anything that was in working order -- which was just about absolutely nothing -- along with everything that could potentially be put to some other use -- which was a wider category, but tough to separate out from the actual junk -- from the remains of the space station and finding a place for it in Duo's scrapyard.
Maybe he should get someone to put up a sign, make sure that nomenclature stuck.
Priorities, priorities. He was somewhat more concerned with keeping people out, at least when he wasn't there, than he was with what they saw in the way of signage when they visited. Not everything he'd pulled up was something he wanted people poking at.
The remains of portal device were a mess, of course, and who knew if he'd ever be able to restore even a measure of function, let alone adapt it to the purposes he wished; as far as he could tell, the quantum tunnelling it had performed up there was something along the order of an Einstein-Rosen bridge. There'd been some work done on those, back home, but it wasn't entirely what he was looking for. It wasn't the jump they needed to be making. But it could probably be bent to the purpose, and he didn't want people poking at the parts. The chances of an accident were exceedingly slim, negligible -- and not just by his metrics, the strictest of health and safety officials would have agreed, there was simply no function to cause one -- but nonetheless, this place didn't always play by the rules.
His real concern, though, was the other thing he'd dredged up from that central room, because he didn't trust it, even decaying underwater. No external orbs or monitors or chassis, just the clean, vaguely feminine curve of a presumably-dead AI. He'd pulled some fragments of data, though, from other remains -- he wasn't plugging a damned thing into that -- and the small portions of Aperture AI schematics he'd been able to reconstruct seemed to suggest they could run in a pinch on an absolute minimum amount of power. Someone could plug in a nine-volt battery, or, hell, you could get enough juice from a vegetable, if you knew how, and then... well, he didn't intend to find out.
So he needed a guard dog. The scrapyard had guard dogs, of course, but in Duo's absence they'd spread out to other owners and weren't there as frequently, and they were just flesh and bone besides. He'd need something else, and so, the current iteration of that project was scurrying in front of him down a boardwalk as he tested motor function.
This one was only the size of a cat, and it was essentially just a set of four legs joined at a central housing. He'd resize once he knew the thing could get around, and not run into people without meaning to, which would be a little more alarming when he got it to the size he wanted.
As it was, the little robot just bumped into the person's leg and then butted it.
"No, just... come on, go around. Pathfind. I programmed you to pathfind, even if you don't have sensors yet. There's something in the way, you can tell that much."
[Tony Stark and a lil robot on the boardwalk. If you need a visual for the robot, something along the lines of this, but a little more scraps-y.]