That's a lot of asbestos.
And lead.
And what novel types of mould.
Hub City architecture at its finest, eh? And all the money to deal with that no doubt went into the pockets of people
other than the ones who would get paid to clean it up...
It looks like it's getting vaporised. In reality, it's… Being held in a partially dematerialised state-. Well, most of it is. A brick is a brick and concrete is concrete, there's no sense in breaking it down that far if I can use it as-is. I can't dump it all into subspace without reducing my ring capacity to a fraction of what it is now and I can't store a physical object with this little emotional resonance in the Honden. But I can… Feel it, as the matter falls apart and slots back into place in the form I desire.
So he instead has giant glowing balls of concrete and metal and plastic floating around him? heck of a show, if nothing else.
Building something. Something useful.
Mayor Connelly-Fermin stares at it with expression somewhere between awe and fear. "Have you been doing this a lot?"
And that is a reasonable feeling to have when you see someone reshaping reality with nothing more than a little desire and a 'magic' ring.
"Which part?"
"Building new power plants?"
Eh, I doubt he'd want to build old-fashioned coal, gas or nuclear power plants.
"No, not really. I've actually been avoiding doing this."
She tears her eyes away from the sight to frown up at me. "Huh?"
I mean, he's mostly been busy trying to stop Humanity from stupiding itself out of existence, or stopping alien wars, and assorted related things...
"Did you not see my talk? Or all the news articles about KordTech's new power plant in New York?"
"No, I guess not. So you did build one."
I mean, compared to the giant cake thing, a power plant isn't exactly newsworthy... After the first couple of days, anyway.
"Exactly one. My aim was to spur on the development of new forms of electrical power generation not dependent on fossil fuels. So I gave them a bleed torsion generator. And it worked: only a few months later three different high-tech companies were attaching their own novel power plants to the grid. And… Since forcing that sort of development was the whole point, I considered the project a success and moved on to other things."
And I'll bet at least one was Knight-tech cosmic converter tech. Or maybe Vandal Savage just kept that under his ass, sitting on it out of spite.
"And we're still using coal."
"The rollout was never going to be instant. I never expected it to be. But, I did take my eye off the ball. I didn't check that the 'market disruptors' were continuing to do anything."
Especially the inevitable studies and naysayers that scream 'it's not safe!' and insist coal and nuclear are perfectly fine...
"So why aren't you making more now? Hub City can't be the only place that needs power."
"Because this technology is beyond what human civilisation can build. Or maintain. The people in KordTech's site in New York are just there to monitor the distribution grid. All they can really do to the generator is make sure that it doesn't fall over. Which… Do you know The Time Machine by H.G. Wells?"
And other than a few hypercognitives, can barely understand the scientific principles behind it, no doubt. And that's his big sticking point. He
needs people to be able to make it themselves.
"The book, the film, or the other film?"
"The book or the film, the other film wasn't quite the same. The Eloi are a fail-state; cargo cultists of the worst sort. If I start handing things out, I move our species just a little bit towards that fate. I hate that idea."
And what he hates, he cannot make happen. Not without forcing some
serious cognitive dissonance on himself...
"It's not the same thing."
"Humanity would become dependent on a machine they don't understand to power everything. Then what? I've got the Green Lantern Corps' technical database. There's basically no human function I couldn't replace with something too advanced for anyone to understand."
It'd be a golden age... Until he left and the machines started breaking down with no-one able to fix them.
"You can make..? Star Trek replicators?"
"I could make something close to them. The League's actually trying that in Greece with a nanofabricator. Fortunately, it's not very efficient, so it's not destroying their economy."
...More than the Anti-Life already has, anyway. I expect Ploutos is back in place now, stopping foolishness.
Okay, I've cleared enough of the site to start putting in the pipes and cables. No real reason not to more or less copy and paste the New York building; Helmut's the architect, not me.
"So… People can starve, so long as the economy works?"
Don't go twisting his words like that, ma'am.
"Economy: the creation and supply of goods and services. Government cheese is a fluke; a government handout to the milk industry that tried and succeeded in lobbying themselves more money after margarine was invented. And it's actually paying off now. People are eating that cheese. There's a similar thing happening in Europe, though they also had a now-abandoned policy of paying people not to farm." I shake my head.
Extreme measures sometime find themselves needed. But usually they get rescinded afterwards.
"People follow incentives. Over the last few decades that's lead to places specialising and goods being transported long distances. The Sheeda disrupted that for large areas of the world, but America made it through that without too much damage. Then… This, and it turns out that having people live far away from places which produce food is a massive disadvantage because you can't feed them.
The modern world is only three meals from total chaos, and all that. Disrupt something simple like that and things get tense.
"That… Excessive centralisation of political power results in people waiting for someone else to solve the problem. And the tools to handle it locally -where it could be handled- just aren't there anymore. It's like… Building on flood plains, on a civilisational level. Pretty great, until there's a flood."
And boy, the Anti-life was definitely
that. Hopefully humanity learns the lesson it taught them and does
things a little smarter. Of course, there are powers working
against that sensibility.
Walls rise, protomatter becoming carpets and light fittings.
Mayor Connelly-Fermin stares at me in… Oh, that's irritation.
Man, he really gets
detached sometimes when he's like this, huh?
"So you're not helping as much as you could, because it's… It's a false incentive? You think we'll just keep doing things like we did before if human civilisation doesn't suffer the consequences?"
"I know people will. Oh, they'll be one or two token changes. They might start building reserves of preserves to go with the cheese. Ship's biscuits, even."
Sadly true. Once they have a comfortable position, people won't try to disrupt it, be it a comfy chair or a civilisational-level practice...
Oh, right, a car park. Won't do much good in the short term, but… Maybe in a year?
"I mean, it's bad enough that the Justice League is having to lead the global restoration effort-."
Though to be fair, the world's governments are still trying to get their feet under them, some more than others.
"How is that a bad thing!? Mister Atom and Batman have been doing a great job organizing-! I wasn't complaining about them not prioritizing Hub City, I get that we're not a high priority, but the one thing that actually helps me get through the day is hearing about all of the places the Justice League is managing to fix up. If you think they shouldn't then what are you doing right now?"
Again, grabbing the wrong end of the stick, ma'am. What he wants, is for humanity to
not have to rely on a handful of people to handle their shit for them.
"Making you Eloi, like I said. I mean, look at that." I gesture to the power plant I just built. And then I throw the switch and the power begins flowing into the city. "Look at that."
In the buildings around us, lights brighten from 'dim' to 'luminescent'. And-. Yes, that's the air conditioning fans humming back to life.
Probably the first time some parts of the city have had that much power in
years.
"That's a good thing."
"For now, sure. But in the long run?"
As he pointed out, people are
lazy when they're content..
"Because we get to have a long run."
I rotate back to focus on the building, completing the roof and exterior walls.
Yeah, but at what price?
"People lived before air conditioning. It-. Okay, consider the Black Death. One third of Europe dead. If I'd been there I could probably have stopped it. But what else gets stopped?" She shrugs, shaking her head. "So many people dying caused the demand for labour to increase, empowering the serfs versus their landlords and leading to greater rights and freedoms to the poorest in society. Epidemic preparedness increased, reducing the effect of future outbreaks. It's possible -though unlikely- that all that death is why we have democracy and medicine today.
Certainly a contributing factor, maybe? History is just too
complex to pin that sort of thing to single events. Even he admits that in his own point...
"It certainly encouraged both. And because I can operate at that level it would be irresponsible for me not to consider the long-term consequences of my actions, because if I had cured the Black Death at the time I'd have been hailed as an angel of the Lord and things are only a little better in that regard now."
And there are people out there who would worship him at this point. There's some in the DCU who worship
Superman, after all...
That… Appears to get through.. A bit, at least. Now she's frowning thoughtfully.
"Could you do it? Let… All those people die?"
See, that's the question you
should ask. Not 'why would you
not do this thing?' But rather, 'Why
wouldn't you do this thing?'
I look at KordTech's newest generator facility.
"Given… That I just built that… No, I don't think I could."
I wonder if Ted will have to send people out here to look after it, or if he'll hire locals to do that. More likely the former while he sets up the latter...
It's in our nature, these days...
