Maybe I can make a case that Rete should collect it and do stats, it wouldn't have to tell me.

I think it'd be worth it. Just in case there's a kind of trigger that gets more power, or something.

Supposedly trying to force triggers doesn't work.

How do they check that.

Anecdotally, I hope. Also I'd have a skew in favor of heroes, Protectorate ones specifically. Villains might be statistically different.

Yeah. By 'can't force a trigger' do they mean no one triggers under orchestrated circumstances or just that not all people do?

I think that it's dramatically less likely to work than natural trauma.

Are these circumstances where the person knew someone was trying to trigger them, or not - is it tracking something about mental state or something about other actors -

I don't know. You could come almost close to an ethical experiment with second gens - I had enough trauma to pop regardless but in theory we don't need much - but it'd be hard to set up.

Good thing there's a massive parahuman organization that totally has the capacity to do things like that.

I think you are overestimating the capacity of the Protectorate. It's more paramilitary than scientific and there are more villains than heroes.

Maybe there are just more people who resent incompetent authority than people inclined to put up with it, and people who resent incompetent authority end up often being villains.

In this town we mostly deal with racist gangs, I can see how resenting the Protectorate could get you all the way to "jewel thief" but not "murders random black prostitutes".

- yeah, okay. Doesn't seem like the sort of thing you'd grow out of, either.

Eh, you might if we had some more Scandinavian corrective system, buuuuut we don't.

Nope you just imprison people. Sometimes I help.

I'm all for prison reform - even though it's really hard with capes just to keep them in, let alone with any concern for their well-being - but if you let some people out six random bystanders pay for it inside of twenty-four hours.

No one's suggesting we let Melkor out before his sentence is up and we have a way to keep him out of trouble. But - I wouldn't be helping lock people up if I had another way to get the Tinker access.

I don't know if Toybox has anybody who'd suit. I think Rete's big enough now that it can crunch your thing while it's not doing stuff for me, without being an expenditure I have to justify separately.

Couple other people have been helpful. Got my memory necklace up to eidetic, got a chunk I needed to figure out the sleep one, made some progress on mental opacity - I don't have that one but I expect I maybe could eventually.

Yeah, I just meant you could scale it back if you don't need anybody who's only helping because their captain says so.

Yeah. Thank you.

You're welcome.

If I necklace something with a purely physical effect you'd be affected by that, right?

Presumably, unless they fundamentally work through some mental channel.