Inventions of the Exceptionally Nerdy [Open and bendytimeable!]

[morphitudinous]

After a quiet scare with a little laser in his pocket, Billy had come to an alarming conclusion: he needed a pocket protector. The little device, the one true sign of a nerd, would keep him from poking or shooting himself. But that wasn't all it could do! With Billy's mind at work, he came up with another idea: the pocket trap. With some clever signaling coding, he could trap the hand of anyone who tried to pick his pocket. It would definitely help keep his morpher safe!

He wound up stretched across a meat-couch of the Observation Deck, working on adding little strips of identifying material to what was undeniably a pocket protector. Maybe he wouldn't make it cool (nothing could do that), but he'd definitely make it useful.

As he worked, there was a certain undercurrent of excitement on his face. He smiled more often, sometimes looked far into the distance, and could be heard humming if the observer was close enough. Something good had happened to him, and maybe it wasn't entirely due to the pocket protector.

Comments

[thewunderkind]

"Interesting idea, but that could just make them move their elbow and shoulder? Or grab one arm to move the other." Lash was going to throw all the scenarios at him. She was trained for that kind of thing.

[morphitudinous]

Billy frowned. "Extending the paralysis or causing pain is one option, but I don't like it. Creating a forcefield to bounce them back? It'd require high power, but it might be worth it..."

Maybe.

[thewunderkind]

"Maybe have something scream at them?" Lash offered. "Then again that might case you to also jump, so that's useless for that reason...can you have it attach themselves to their hand? A sort of way of being caught red-handed, so to speak."

[morphitudinous]

"If I trained myself to adjust to the scream, maybe," he thought aloud, scratching that down on his datapad.

"I can, but I'd want to make it extendable to a certain distance with some sort of mechanism. They don't need to get away with the items and figure out how to free their hand later."

This was so complicated!

[thewunderkind]

"What about a small tracker that attaches themselves on the hand?" Lash offered. "It's painless and low risk."

[morphitudinous]

"True enough," Billy thought, scribbling it down. "But it still enables them to get a long distance away if they can teleport."

Teleporting. How he missed it. He might've said the word with a slightly bitter tone.

[thewunderkind]

And Lash caught that one rather fast too. "You have bad teleporting memories?" she asked him. "Someone stole stuff from you in that manner?"

[morphitudinous]

"Yes," he admitted, shuddering. "There can be glitches in the system sometime. Or it can be used to the enemy's advantage if they break the code."

And he hated that part.

[thewunderkind]

"Tee hee hee! Yeah, I used to do that a lot," she replied. "The only way to fix that is to make additional security but by that time you're just investing too much money for nothing. Looking at it this way, the only people who could get it properly REALLY have to work for it, right?"

[morphitudinous]

"Right. Point of diminishing returns." He had to admit that Lash had a point. He sighed and started on the necessary corrections, shaking his head.

"Is that all?"