"Is there... a helpful way to phrase things or anything that I should know?"

"If you seem annoyed or sad and it's not clear to me its not my fault I will either have to risk being inconsiderate about having offended you or risk trying to address something completely unrelated to me. I have mostly come down on the side of being inconsiderate because I kept track of what I said sorry for for a bit and I was approximately wrong 92% of the time. So uh, if you are in the 8% don't expect an apology? Also don't blame me for major world problems even jokingly, I know you probably weren't going to but it can be very bad if you do."

"Oh, no, I possibly might have, I'm very sarcastic, I'll keep a lid on it."

"Thanks. Did you have more questions about things you wanted answered?"

"Uh, what're my options for short term - food shelter internet all that good stuff?"

"I...don't actually know if you fit into any of the obvious categories of someone who could get support from the government beyond like, homeless shelters. I'd be willing to spot you a month or two of support if you are willing to trade talking about your world and powers for it?"

"That sounds more than fair to me!"

"I have a guest room if that works?" Lia can sleep in his bed or a couch when she visits. 

"Sure!"

"In the meantime uh, if you more questions I am happy to answer them or you can talk about how inventing worked as a power since that seems like it would be extremely cool."

"It waaaas, I already miss my robot. I had one main software project, its name was Rete. It handled my email, when I had my helmet on and people couldn't see me it'd even talk to them for me with my voice so I didn't have to deal with annoying PR stuff, it managed a lot of little scout drones for me in the field. Tinkers all have specialties and mine was approximately software that makes its own decisions. It made it hard to be around, like, a normal microwave."

"Because you'd want the microwave to make decisions?"

"Right, like, if it had a popcorn button I would have intrusive thoughts about how it ought to be able to figure out whether you'd put popcorn in it or not and use that information."

"What sort of things do you enable to make decisions aside from Rete?"

"Mostly just Rete, I built it a ton of peripherals and focused on the one software. I had a super-suit and so did my dad, he's also a cape."

"Was this a common sort of power?"

"Tinkers? There's plenty of Tinkers but different ones are all specialized differently, you get ones who make exotic ceramics or weird bombs or pharma stuff or whatever."

"Has that impacted the world economy a bunch?"

"Uh, less than you most think because Tinker stuff resists mass-production, it breaks down without the same Tinker or one with a closely related specialization managing it. I was planning to make oodles of money because my power lent itself really well to bending that pattern, Rete would be able to maintain a lot of simpler stuff for me including, I hoped, some of its own robots, as long as I maintained the maintainers."

"What sort of thing were you expecting to end up making money off of?"

"Procedurally generated video games, patrol drones... it's sort of hard to remember my more complicated ideas because the power's gone."

"Ah, that sounds really frustrating."

"Yeah, it's a bummer, but at least I apparently do not die when killed, that's neat even if it's awful for Nikki. I hope she's not, like, in here and just can't talk to me."

"Huh, I'm not sure how you'd tell? Which isn't great."

"If I don't have my opacity power any more, or if she's not covered by it, maybe someone with a power that can detect people would be able to tell? I don't know anyone with a power like that off the top of my head."