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[RT][HF] Sparring Match, Part 2 (The Maker's Ark)

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u/DocFuture [+1] (2 minutes later)

And here is Part 2. Writing is still going slowly, and the story kept growing. I'm drawing the line at novelette, though--it doesn't get to be a novella 8-)

Should have the third and final part up within a few weeks.

u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (an hour later)

Hmm . . . so now we have counts on fingers 6* semi-sane self modified people.

*Counting all Stellas except Yiska as a single person, not counting AIs, and only counting one Villain as not an insane failure state.

u/DocFuture [+2] (an hour later)

Well, there is a pretty huge survivorship bias, because I don't find writing about dead people as interesting 8-)

But I'm interested in which Villain you might be thinking of: Tabula Rasa and Mechmaster never tried and Cyberlord, Brainwave, and The Nietzschean most definitely went insane. Mad Hatter, maybe? He's kind of a borderline case--he doesn't need his Thinking Cap to do his thing.

u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (2 hours later)

I assumed Mechmaster was a semi successful augmented, because he kept up with Doc on mechs and how he apparently hadn't really done anything to justify being as heavily locked up as he was, if I remember the passage correctly, that and Stelllas comment about mad scientists. Hatter was a assumed non-augment or more likely a survived failure state down the path of everything looks like a nail if you have a hammer.

u/DocFuture [+2] (2 hours later)

Mechmaster is a smart, talented, monomaniacally-focused normal. He can keep up with Doc on mechs because they were just a minor hobby for Doc--which is the original source of his jealousy: "How dare he be almost as good as me when he's just a casual dabbler at my life work!" 8-) He was only in the Box because normal jails aren't good at coping with genius-level tinkerers who are determined to keep escaping.

Mad Hatter is a magician, like Journeyman. His special talent was for making enchanted clothing and he specialized early on headgear because of personal preference. He is more benignly monomaniacal--what broke him was Brainwave mind controlling him and forcing him to make the augment helmet--which was a constant drain on his power and sanity for as long as it existed.