this is crazy

[from_scratch]

Cam is watching a new recording of Atriama, tail swishing in the gap in his couch, and doesn't stop to pause the show when he feels a summons go by.

Comments

[wormcan]

He gets an address, and when he lands near their White House equivalent he's met by a man surrounded by much warier-looking security guards.

"Ryutaro Reijiro, prime minister. A pleasure to meet you."

[from_scratch]

"Pleased to meet you too. My name is Campbell Swan."

[wormcan]

"No pseudonym? It might not be quite universal, but usually the powerful parahumans are even more concerned with their secrecy."

[from_scratch]

"I know, but I think I can establish as much secrecy as I need by simply not explaining my life story to everyone I meet."

[wormcan]

"If you say so. Your risk to take."

"We have most of the Cabinet assembled inside. Your offer created quite a stir." He leads the way to the collection of ministers.

[from_scratch]

Cam follows along. He has no tail and he must wag.

[wormcan]

Most of the Cabinet means, apparently, about fifteen ministers each with a few staff. Following a round of introductions, someone (Ichiro Yukari, Minister of Justice, if Cam's keeping close enough track) eventually gets around to business.

"You made an impressively open-ended offer. Did you have anything in mind that you planned to ask in return?"

[from_scratch]

"Not really. I mean, information on what could use doing is good, but I have an excellent power and I'm pretty much set for things I need personally." He makes a sushi roll and eats it. When in Tokyo. "So I don't require payment or an exchange of any kind."

[wormcan]

This of course translates to "I'm playing a longer game of some kind," but given that the first thing he did when going public was Kyushu, that almost doesn't matter.

"What exactly can you do?" the prime minister asks. "Our recovery still has a long way to go, as I'm sure you saw on the way in, but it's thankfully not a case of missing islands."

[from_scratch]

"I can make things! The things must, once made, obey the laws of physics. I can't do antimatter. Objects cannot begin in motion but may begin under tension, in midair, or on fire. It is neater but not strictly necessary for me to be looking at the place the things are going to go."

[wormcan]

"Anything at all? Land masses to sushi?"

[from_scratch]

"Or outside the range, if you need, I don't know, bucky balls or an extra planet, although I'd have to do a lot of math before I'd make a planet in this solar system."

[wormcan]

"Anything." The Minister of Land and Infrastructure is too surprised even to ask it as a question. "I was expecting to suggest some of the highest-priority repairs, but given your recent performance it might be simpler to just build a duplicate of the entire country, as it used to be plus a wish list, and import the entire population."

"Can you make populations?" another asks. "They're between buckyballs and planets, and we lost a lot of people."

[from_scratch]

"Ooh - no. I mean, I can make bodies but I can't do minds. Kyushu has no vertebrates. My bugs and snails can struggle along okay but if I'd tried to do those adorable flying squirrels they would, let's say, not fly. Also making an entire duplicate Japan would probably present sea level issues."

[wormcan]

"Perhaps. I'll have some people estimate the change. Assuming for the moment that it can't be safely done, there's subsidence on these islands that you might be able to reverse. That would have to have less impact than repairing Kyushu did.
As for what's on it, there's power generation, communication, even cultural property that could be restored."

[from_scratch]

"Sure. I can improve on what you had in some areas, power generation included, if you like. Subsidence will be easiest to fix if I have an extremely accurate map of where you want how much gravel or whatever added."

[wormcan]

"And it would just appear? We have detailed maps of how much change there has been where, but there might be people or property in some of the same space."

[from_scratch]

"I probably should not try to fix subsidence that is currently under somebody, particularly if I don't know they're there and can't accordingly go slow."

[wormcan]

"Simpler to start with other things then.

Can you fix existing things, or should we assume it's exclusively replacements?"

[from_scratch]

"Replacements are easier. I could probably get somewhere with a crumbling building or a disintegrating power plant, but it would be by far easier to just make a new one."

[wormcan]

"From scratch, then. Power and communications are easy; we already have more plans than we could possibly execute and could just relocate them so they don't overlap with anything. How detailed do you need them to be before you can copy them?"

[from_scratch]

"I can work from blueprints. That's if you don't want an upgrade. Just to make my life even more hilariously luxurious I also have tinker-like abilities. I'm not a tinker per se, most saliently in the respect that I can in fact explain what I'm making to non-parahuman professionals and let them take over from there."

[wormcan]

"Is this likely to matter on the same scale as replacing islands? What kinds of devices does your power specialize in?"

[from_scratch]

"I'm not a real tinker and do not have a specialty in the way that real tinkers do. I can do computers and generators and spaceships and medicine - actually, that should be a priority, I would like to start mass-producing and mass-distributing assorted reproducible medical stuff as quickly as possible, vaccines and a few solid cancer treatments and the like, I'm willing to mostly focus on redeveloping Japan but the medical stuff needs to go all over the place. Skim some money off the top if you like as long as it gets where it's going."

[wormcan]

"If you can make cancer treatments of the kind a tinker might produce, there's a lot of need for that. Here especially," says one of the Ministers. Health, probably. "How reproducible is it?"