when and what and why and--

[unriddling]

When was the last time he ate? Two days ago? No, yesterday, he choked down a granola bar he'd found buried beneath some paperwork. Stale, perhaps, but enough to keep him going. He hasn't slept in more than that, but the science building has copious amounts of coffee even for Gotham University standards.

The demonstration is in four days. 

Edward's done all he can. Julie too, though she's spent more time in the wheres and whens over the whys and hows. That's entirely his job. And he's done well, as always.

Nonetheless, he hasn't gone back to his room except to shower, double- and triple-checking his bio-harddrives.

That's what he's doing now, hunched over the lab table and going over the circuitry in front of him, then shutting his eyes to do it again, in his head.

They're fine. (He's fine.)



Of course they are. He's done something everyone called beyond impossible. His work is perfect, and it's performed perfectly for months. This is only the confirmation. 

It's fine. It's perfect. All of it. From function to design to size.

...He keeps telling himself this, over and over, until the litany turns into disconnected noises inside his brain. The coffee's gone cold on the counter beside him. His bio-harddrive slides to the cool table below. 

And Edward Nygma isn't awake to notice the world shifting around him.







Now there's a man in a labcoat with his face resting among the ballroom's cakes. Maybe someone should wake him before he moves his head and gets frosting in his hair?

Comments

[buttercup_eater]

This person sure is unhappy! It's a shame, Chara thinks, that they're the ones stuck with this conversation. They could try to placate him more, the way they assume Frisk would, but they don't really want to no matter how much more sensible it would be.

Speaking of which:

"You probably won't make it," they say, simply. "A demonstration for what?"

[unriddling]

The thought alone plunges a knife through his chest. But he's speaking to a child, and children have far more limits than the usual adults, let alone one as sharp as him. "Hell or high water, I'm going to make it," he says firmly.

And--ah, that's a question. He shifts into a shaky grin.



"My invention, the bio-harddrive. A disc that'll change the way people think! Can't remember a phone number? Boom!" Edward flashes his hand next to his face. "More memory. Having trouble with homework? Boom! More power to process it."

He's obviously been kidnapped for this tech, though that only mildly tempers his excitement explaining it. Even to a child.

suicide tw

[buttercup_eater]

"Neither of those are exactly the problem," Chara says. "But. You may as well hold onto your determination." They haven't really tried to leave the way others have (passive suicide attempts aren't exactly the same thing, they think) so who knows, maybe he just needs to ~try harder than everyone else!~

They listen to his explanation, with an air that's at least polite, if not especially enthusiastic. They can tell from the way he talks about it and from thinking about it logically that it's very impressive, but if they were to try and change the way people think, Chara feels like overall intelligence wouldn't be near the top of their priority list.

They're still hungry so they partly turn their attentions back to the desert table and begin pulling apart a cake with their free hand for stray jewelry, though they also resume talking as they do. "So. It's like the operation from Flowers for Algernon?" That ended rather badly, as Chara recalls. "How do you use it? Most people don't come with CD drives."

They pull a small, jeweled brooch out of the cake, brush some crumbs off, and slip it into their pants pocket.

time to bullshit some comic book science

[unriddling]

Edward's had to explain this to plenty of people (professors, fellow scientists) enough he rattles it off as if by rote.



"No, not like that--it's not an operation at all. Entirely external, the disc is a patch that's placed on the forehead. It uses electronic pulses," Edward presses a finger to his temple, tapping along with every two words, "to assist in storing and recalling information, and the majority of it stays on the drive instead of overflowing the average human brain. The only side-effect is increased perception of concepts for a few minutes after removal, which is easy enough to negate outside of extreme sources of stimulation. In other words, don't use it at your next rock concert or the circus unless you'd like a nasty headache."

Edward pauses, finger shifting from head to tapping at his lips, changing gears from excited to just on the edge of flat in an instant. "That is quite a sharp thing." It's an observation, not admitting to anything. He didn't say he didn't believe what the child told him before.

[buttercup_eater]

This person certainly gestures a lot, especially when he's excited. Chara listens to him with much more reserved body language, and imagines a CD stitched into somebody's forehead. They suspect that's not actually how it's attached. Unless this person is some sort of mad scientist. He does have a bit of that air, now that they think about it.

"It would make a lousy weapon. And an even worse snack." Unlike the cake itself which, having investigated it, Chara is now contentedly eating with their bare hands. (A bit reminiscent of a joke, isn't it?)

A thought occurs to them and in between swallows- they're at least polite enough not to talk with their mouth full- they ask, "So. Besides the overstimulation. Does the information stay on the drive after you take it off? If so, could you share a memory by attaching it to a second person?"

[unriddling]

That nets them a small chuckle, surprised and unmocking, though his forehead pinches again. "And do we know why the baker is sabotaging their work?"

...Now he's curious. One lanky-legged step back to the table to reach for a fork, as he doesn't need to get more frosting on himself, and he starts jabbing the prongs into the first cake that looks appealing. (In other words, one with mainly green frosting.)

"Very little, once it's removed. The key to it all is the individual's brain, and the smallest difference between one and another would render any potential absorption of what is left next to impossible, though a different person could use it just as well as the first for their own separate reasons. But once it's taken off, many of the facts that were there are harder to recall--stored in the subconscious. There are different levels of how much it's necessary to continue wearing--tiny details such as an address or a phone number or a shopping list would be easy for the brain to save, with the harddrive merely keeping it more prominent once removed. For a bigger example, if you decided to read, say, a particularly wordy book on baking..." Edward points oddly, three fingers on his free hand, at them, at their meal, at the surrounding cakes. "...with hundreds of recipes and thousands of ingredients, my harddrive would let you read it all in seconds and access every individual recipe and step as soon as you thought about them! But once removed, most of it would fade. It's an advanced fact filter--it would overwhelm if every detail was as easy to find as it was while wearing it. Photographic memory is supposed to be a curse, and it absolutely would be. Yet once you put it back on, you have nearly as much access to everything you absorbed before--most of it's still there, in your head, just placed where it isn't needed.

"But not every single thing. Memory is discarded easily enough for our brains to cope in general." And doesn't that gall him. He'd prefer it if his invention was absolutely perfect, but he's settled for 'utterly amazing' after much stress and peer compliments instead. "If it's being used in a scientific setting, it would be used to absorb incredibly dry details from texts with volumes and pages that go into the quintuple digits. And in that case, it would be better not to remove it at all; not until everything important has been done with your experiment or theory. It was made to be worn for hours at a time if necessary, though it shouldn't have to be."

Edward may have strayed from the subject somewhat.

[buttercup_eater]

They have to suppress the pang of gratification at that chuckle. Not enough people appreciate their sense of humor!

"For the aesthetic?" they suggest. Choking hazards in the pastries, a cage in the candy room, sweet little birds singing about murder and cannibalism- the castle seems to have a thing for the macabre. (Another example: Chara being There.)

Chara eats and half-listens as Edward goes into detail on his bio-harddrive. "So it's more of a stimulator than a storage space?" they say. "Did it take long to make?"

[unriddling]

"Something sweet hiding dangerous beauty--that doesn't sound wrong. If the baker had more sense than style, there'd be poison or needles instead. But! That still doesn't get to the root of it. Any ideas on who that baker would be? I'd like to investigate, if I have the time." He likely--hopefully--won't, but sometimes waiting is all you can do when things need to slot into place.

As he speaks, he hooks a a emerald-and-sapphire bracelet and lets it hang. Less dangerous by lack of points, yet still rather dangerous for the molars. He wipes it on the opulent tablecloth as well before tossing it from the fork to his other hand, almost absentmindedly.

Edward is silent a moment, playing with the gems (if they're real, he's playing with thousands of dollars). The answer itself is simple; the fact that they're asking more intelligent questions than the curious investors he's fended off is more worthy of attention, though he says nothing on this quite yet.

"You could say that. It functions as both, and there are upgrades already in the works." He grins at them, a little too wide and crooked to be real. "Once I had the supplies, we had a working prototype within two weeks. It took not quite a year before the current, completely functional item. Most of the delay were thanks to rules, regulations--red tape I didn't need." And that was hell. Knowing exactly what he needed and could do and being held back from doing it, not even being able to slip behind the scenes to keep from drawing suspicion. (Just because Edward knows how necessary waiting can be doesn't mean he enjoys it.)

[buttercup_eater]

"Not a clue. This is just one of the castle's functions that runs itself. Or reruns itself," they say, and without missing a beat they add, "Were you hoping to give the baker Fun Murder Tips?"

They glance at the bracelet, briefly, when Edward removes it from the cake, but don't pay it any more attention. Finder's keepers, and they're too used to this sort of thing by now. At this point, the food is still more interesting, though Chara's eating has slowed a little.

They know next to nothing about the kind of paperwork that goes into this kind of thing, but they supposes that kind of delay would make sense. "Most people don't like it when you mess with their minds," they say. "Regardless of your intentions."

[unriddling]

"Oh, no. If they're not smart enough to choose something functional, it's far from my job to assist," Edward replies. (Says the man obsessed with complex traps.) It's, of course, a joke. He doesn't want children being poisoned or the like, though it's also not quite his job to go find it out. This child's smart enough not to fall for it. Unless it's a trick fallen for before, of course. Smart enough to fish out the pieces, if not smart enough to hunt down the source.

Another flick of the wrist; another pass of the jewelry. He doesn't like this. This place, those memories, layers of stress triple the heights of the largest cake in the room.

Edward shakes his head, lip curling for a total shift to disgust. "No-one is going to be forced to wear it. Besides, I don't want people paranoid about its' functions getting their hands on my invention in the first place."