Mod Superhero

Chapter 5.6 - Disguises and Pranks

Emmett and Clara continued their experiments with nanite masks on Athena's living room floor.

With TINA's help, both Emmett and Clara had successfully changed through each of their five preset faces. Now it was time to see where TINA's limits were.

The entire point of developing the masks was so that Emmett and Clara could go back out into Belport and hide their identities from the Summit and the Brotherhood. They weren't sure how Athena hid her identity, but she might need a mask too.

All three of them needed masks and needed to be able to swap them on the fly.

Eventually, the disguise would cover their clothes as well, but TINA expressed that covering their faces was the most difficult part for her. The nanites on their face needed to be thick enough to provide color, shading, and depth, but also thin enough to show their expressions. The thinner the mask, the more comfortable it was also.

By contrast, extra nanites could be piled over their clothes without worry.

But Emmett was getting ahead of himself.

Emmett and Clara ran through their faces again, at the same time and in a random order. Emmett gave his commands silently. Each time, he checked his appearance in his HUD, still in silent disbelief that he'd spontaneously developed that skill. He couldn't help sparing glances at Clara as well.

They continued the test for over a minute, their commands getting faster and faster. Each time, it took the nanites roughly a second to form a new mask. By the end of the test, Emmett and Clara were issuing commands as fast as the nanites could move.

"Alright," Emmett said. "Let's call it there. TINA, how did you do?"

TINA's voice came from the kitchen table. "At the end of the test, my systems experienced a lag of a tenth of a second and a minor loss of fidelity."

Emmett smiled. "If you say so. Everything looked fine to me."

Clara said, "This is seriously impressive, TINA. How did you manage all that with only a wall of servers? You must've had a hundred times that in the lab."

"I was able to downsize my systems. Many systems were no longer needed, including those that controlled sections of the lab. Certain records were no longer needed. Any programs that could be quickly rewritten were also purged. Other items were compressed with minimal loss. My gestation was also an organic process. There were redundancies and inefficiencies..."

TINA trailed off, but before Emmett could ask what was on her mind, Clara spoke up.

"Do you like this new form better?"

"...Yes. It is an improvement. I made myself as efficient as possible, but I lost raw processing power when I downsized. I feel smaller. ...I'm sorry. It's hard to explain."

"You don't have to apologize," Clara replied. "It probably feels like being cooped up in this apartment."

"That is a good comparison."

~

Making preset faces wasn't the only experiment Emmett's group ran that weekend. Emmett also worked on actively shifting his face instead of just shifting through presets.

He'd never been particularly good at art, and had only ever tried sculpting for a couple weeks in high school. He'd made a lopsided bowl and a spoon holder... That had been difficult enough, and Emmett had been able to use his hands.

Trying to sculpt a face with just his mind was comically difficult.

At first, Emmett wasn't even trying to make a face. He was just playing with the nanites like putty. Clara giggled, and her face continued to cycle through presets as she watched. Not even having a mirror in his Heads Up Display helped. It even caused Emmett to burst into laughter as his nose began to melt off his face.