Fortuna Verto

29-Refinement Process

Both girls were awake again late that night, having finally been able to get enough rest. Rosa's treatment had been going very well in the process, leaving both girls feeling a lot better.

Kori was honestly feeling a bit sore, but fortunately not due to anything serious. After discussing the struggles Rosa had gone through, Kori had decided that getting to personally test her own DNTI would be a pretty smart move. While she was recovering after the operation, Rosa had run back to the underground cavern to collect some rocks. From Kori's perspective, there was a degree of smarts to it, having their cybernetics shut down from using Rosa's little trick could really cause them some problems. Rosa probably had it the worst there, but Kori knew that a lot would be really awkward with her dominant hand unavailable, it was an experience they had already undergone before. What Kori was thus left considering is the cross effect of how variables transgressed the barriers of known logic between worlds. It actually helped her a lot in considering the principles of how elementals worked in the other world, being a variance of the periodic elements with a shifting integrity of molecular energy. In that world, the process was generally safe, although void energy itself could be very dangerous. Of the two stones she had collected though, one of them was mostly fine, the molecular shift being slightly inert and having restored itself quickly. She actually found the rock to have exhibited minor magnetic properties instead, without even being ferrous. The other one however was outright isotopic.

It hadn't taken her long to figure out the cause of such distinction either, not with her own DNTI installation where they had to install the OSIDF into her arm. Both of Rosa's knees were designed to be identical, but the DNTI only needed one OSIDF, and the one that contained it was the same knee with the irradiated stone. The elemental process was thus leaving the molecular balance rather weakened, and an ionic reaction outright severed the atomic integrity. If they were going to work with both features, there was going to be some use for ionic and radioactive shielding. Meanwhile, she also knew that the cybernetic system needed to be redesigned to integrate instrumentation features, the current rough design being very difficult to work with. It didn't help that she was stuck considering all of this on her own, her nanites not being available to help with the process. She didn't blame Rosa for the loss of her nanite culture, but it really did sting sometimes. Of course, such a thing wasn't permanent, the culture would be capable of repopulating and reteaching each other from backups.. but that was neither an easy nor quick process. It also wasn't genuinely the same culture anymore either. As a result, she had no estimates on how much would need to go into the design to support the creation, but with the added shielding.. it was going to be important to make sure everything was compacted carefully. More than just being an upgrade, this was a revision to a cross-world styled cybernetics, a rather insane concept.

Being so forward thinking though, she also started considering such principles inverted. If Rosa could invert such world principles.. then what was stopping her from doing such from the other side too? The structural system would have been biologically adaptive, the usage of minerals over metals not being in whole a problem. However, unlike their cybernetics, there was a need to keep blood pumping through the cybernetic system for gift usage, such blood would stagnate in the arm without a real pump to keep the process going after the gift itself went stagnant. The cybernetics also would need it's own power supply, possibly their biggest concern. They had solved power-supply issues here with Rosa's random rock discovery, but finding a plasma core in the other world might be a lot harder. She also had to make sure that they were careful about any cross-reactions from any additions either, but it really didn't help that she didn't fully understand any potential reactive principles the elements were concerned about.

"Hey, Kori, sorry to bother you, but we got reports of someone approaching our little outpost. I expect it's Rosa's guest." "Oh, you mean her sister. Is she driving a really sleek black drifter, all too obviously looking more expensive than it actually was?" "Uh, I guess that works. Yeah, yeah, probably." "Great. I'll go meet her out front then." "Is there any problem? You sound pretty stressed all of a sudden." "You obviously don't know Sophie." Tristine followed Kori down to the main level and out to the front, still not understanding. Kori knew Tristine was the one who actually replaced the previous beacon, so there was some value having the other conduit present, but the technician better be ready for the sudden wave of intensity. Sophie had stood against a landslide that had threatened to destabilize her life's goals, but she had done so by herself being the bigger landslide. The girl's reckless ambition was much more reclusive when relaxed, but this really wasn't a normal situation. That girl was probably a time bomb ready to blow.