You find a cheap solar calculator in the trash after a while of searching, and carefully rip out the solar panel and wiring. Back at the garage, you take
2 scrap metal, some other garbage collected around with the calculator, and
2 scrap electronics and get to work on another sculpture.
The result is actually quite impressive. The Van de Graaff generator is created and implemented flawlessly. In fact, it may be your finest piece of work yet. It's beautiful by itself, and it almost feels like a waste using it for a
sculpture. Oh well. Science must march on!
The sculpture certainly isn't lacking, either. You don't really have an eye for this kind of stuff, but you feel that it represents the garbage-less plight of the modern man or something along those lines. Or something completely different. You really have no idea. Something plight something something garbage something. Bam. Museum.
You spend some time looking for people dealing in modern art, and eventually find someone. You show them the sculpture and they're fairly impressed. They buy it for
$570. You almost gasp when he said this, and immediately accepted it. He told you to contact him if you had anything else to sell. Though you're really getting tired of the sculptures.
With $570, you can do a
lot of things. You aren't planning on spending it today, however. You want to think it through first. Instead, you do some work with your data terminal. You decide that it would make your life easier if you could keep track of all the experiments you've done. So you input the ones that you can remember and make a note to input any future experiments. You also make a section to keep track of your contacts while you're at it.
You thought about keeping track of various obligations, but there aren't really any you can think of. Expiration dates are just too annoying to keep track of in their own section, and your little "tutoring sessions" aren't on a schedule - they just happen when you call them into session, basically.
Now time to do some actual science. You take the
old microwave and cannibalize it. First, you make a trigger mechanism using
2 scrap metal and
1 scrap electronic. You actually used the second piece of scrap metal for the chamber. But this all goes well and you have a rudimentary assembly to shoot something, hopefully. You gut the insides of the microwave and selectively place some parts inside your own assembly. Finishing up the casing, you examine your new creation. The
Microwave Gun.
It's honestly not
that impressive. It emits microwaves. If you felt like holding it for a couple minutes right next to a bag of rotating popcorn, you could get some popcorn! If you aim it at a bag of popcorn a couple feet away, you can get some poorly-popped popcorn! But it does have a semi-unexpected effect. It can disrupt communications between electronic devices. It's no EMP Gun, but it definitely has some possible uses.
Oh. It has one design flaw: It needs to be plugged in. A problem for another day, you suppose.
You don't have much time left in the day, unfortunately. You end up choosing between one of two choices: Hosting another "tutor session" and trying to build a robot. You end up doing a hybrid of the two. You decide that the purpose of the session was really just to ask some questions of the kids, so you do that over phone. A single 10-year-old child ends up wanting to try harvesting scorpion venom, and you can find three kids, including the two you noticed earlier, that have a genuine want to be there. The third child expressing want to be there is also the one who wanted to harvest scorpion venom. Though he's not as enthusiastic as the other two.
You know you can't build a robot in three hours, but you can definitely start gathering the required materials and doing some preliminary investigation. At the junkyard you find
3 scrap metal and
4 scrap electronics. On the way back, you do some research. To actually start on the project, you'd probably need a better idea of what the robot does. You'd also need a power source and wiring at the very least - both of which wouldn't be covered by regular scrap electronics or metal. Then there's motors, cameras, and more. And on top of all that, you'd need to spend some time on your data terminal programming the robot. And hell, your data terminal can't even do that right now.
It's definitely feasible, just not with your current resources.
Cash: $577
Housing: Trashy Garage
Holdings:
Structures- Makeshift Data Terminal
- Basic Chemistry Equipment (Flasks, Tubing, Beakers, Safety Equipment, Bunsen Burner, Measuring Equipment, etc.)
- Makeshift Terrarium [2 Deadly Scorpions]
- Roach Trap [Feeding 2/3 scorpions]
Tools- Cheap Welder
- Handheld Drill
- Shovel
Creatures -
See "Creatures" spoiler.Items and Materials- 4x 5 ml Glass Vials
- 3x Scrap Metal
- 4x Scrap Electronics
- 1x Butane Can [400 ml]
Weapons- 1x Glock 20
- 1x Broken Makeshift Gas-Powered Projectile Launcher
Ammunition- 1x 10mm Magazine - 17/17
- 1x 10mm Magazine - 11/17
- 1x 10mm Venom Bullet (Expires in: 1 days)
Makeshift TerrarriumScorpions- Nineteen (Fed by Roach Trap) [Maze Navigation]
- Eighty-four (Fed by Roach Trap) [Maze Navigation]
- Gang Kids (Via Parents)
- Gang Second-in-Command
- Modern Art Dealer
- Microwave Gun: A handheld (makeshift) gun that disrupts communications in the area it's pointed at. Can also cook food like a microwave if close enough and you really wanted to cook food. Needs to be plugged in.
- Venom Bullet: A bullet that will 'inject' scorpion venom into the victim. Venom expires after 2 days in the bullet.
- Broken Makeshift Gas-Powered Projectile Launcher: A projectile launcher designed to operate off of butane gas to shoot things such as grenades. Weak barrel creates insufficient blast force.
- Makeshift Data Terminal: A rudimentary terminal that accepts and stores data.
- Perfect Pasta: Unappetizing pasta goop.
Just a note - while I did give you an art dealer, I'm not going to be particularly nice when it comes to purely art projects. If you really want to do more art projects, feel free to; I just recommend incorporating more science into them. But regardless of that, don't expect to fund that much future research on art sales.
More data spoilers = more work for updates = more time between updates. While expanding scope is cool and all, I would appreciate it if you didn't go absolutely crazy with new spoiler requests/actions. Occasional one is fine - I just don't want to reach a point where I have to update 10 spoilers per update. And regarding action order: Usually I just do actions in the order I see them from the post reply page, but I will do some actions first if they're a dependency for other ones. Time-intensive actions also have the lowest priority if they have no support.
I forgot to update the Venom Bullet expiration date. Updated it now with 1 day left, even though it should be expired by now. Also, I'm renaming broken circuit boards to Scrap Electronics to represent a broader range of applications.
Finally, I'm going with a semi-new system for inventions and experiments: I now roll for individual parts. So you can have a death ray that works really well at vaporizing people, but has a problem with the Zero-Point Capacitor meaning it can't actually fire. That kind of stuff. Some aspects will more or less be a "yes/no" leaning towards yes, and others will have a broader range of possible results.
Poll
2 (22.2%)
Author
Topic: You are an Independent Scientist! (Nov 12, 2016) (Read 37387 times)