That is impossible, so he makes a note that Fortress Construction gets its plans from a Thinker, updates his designs with the brilliant insights he has gleaned from their work, and goes for whichever of the other two options strikes him, when he talks to their leaders, as more inclined to do good work on time at a decent price and less inclined to sell his secrets to the highest bidder.

(Accord, if he were aware of this, would strongly consider being flattered.)

The locals are happy to accept the contract and hope he'll have more work for them in the future.

He expects so!

Stage Four.

Stage Four is the very slightly tricky stage. Up until now, everything he's been doing has no real risk of interference by anyone. Stage Four is different. An intelligent opponent who is watching the world in general, but has not zeroed in on him in particular, may, for the first time, be aware of part of what he is planning.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is largely funded by issuance and renewal fees. These are only given to people whose patents are granted. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office therefore approves quite a lot of nonsense patents. His patents aren't nonsense! They are very logical and sensible patents, and any sensible system would grant them. But when it granted them they would not be buried in a flood of bullshit patents, one more needle in the world's largest haystack, and people would therefore notice that his verbose, long-winded patents complete with extremely complex schematics - all described as processes generally of value, that might turn out to have dozens of industrial uses, if they aren't just bullshit intended to sue people with - are for components of what is about to be this world's first non-tinker powered armor.

He has an email!

Hi!

I saw your patents for modular lightweight piston enhancement formulaics! They seemed really cool and potentially an important step towards non-tinker powered armor that the PRT and civilian law enforcement could use. If you'd like to talk shop sometime or need funding or support I'd be happy to help!

- Dragon

What the -

He thought Dragon was a tinker. Clearly insufficient research - his patents were designed to be almost impossible to distinguish from the dreck and nobody has time to read all of it - who the hell is Dragon really?

Dragon is by a significant margin the world's most famous living tinker! She is prolific, wearing a different power suit practically every time she is sighted. She also invented the containment foam sprayers that are the PRT's most useful non-lethal takedown measure, is warden of the Birdcage, member of both the Protectorate and the Guild, rumored admin of the PHO forum, manages the communications network used during Endbringer fights, is one of the very few parahuman members of the PRT, and was season three runner-up on the Masked Singer. 

Her voice is clearly (to the Tyrant) hidden behind some sort of technological obfuscation and there isn't any conclusive evidence that she's actually been in public during any of her appearances rather than just piloting her suits remotely. 

So she's either a software tinker who subdelegates all her work to constructs, a tinker/speedster, a tinker/thinker, an AI or a collective identity. No mundane has the time and energy to do all of that.

(He would be so bored in a simpler world.)

Quick scan of her history... no obvious way to distinguish these theories... possibly a collective identity, she does have something of a thumbprint but astonishingly little of one... maybe a tinker mimic, like the Smith... the remaining options are harder to tell apart, unless she's piloted multiple armors simultaneously or any of her armors wouldn't fit a normal human being.

No and no! Though she's experimented with having non-capes pilot suits she's designed, but only a few at a time and never in combat as of yet.

And this is her official address.

Risk of offense, versus risk of someone using a plausible way of spoofing emails?

He'd like to create an account on PHO, and send Dragon a message there -

Hello,

This is James Morgan,

Someone identifying herself as you recently messaged me at -

- and he will give his address.

- my apologies for disturbing you (should it not be you) or wasting your time (should it be), but I wished to ensure I was not taken in by an imposter.

May I confirm that you sent this message?

- James Morgan

Yup, it's me!

(Does this message come disturbingly quickly?)

It comes with the sort of delay one would expect from a very online friend.

And, back to email -

Thank you.

As a non-parahuman engineer, the construction of non-tinker powered armor to help preserve our shared world has long been a dream of mine, one I have high hopes of bringing to fruition in the near future. I planned to seek out venture capital as a source of funding shortly,

Because otherwise he is going to be sued into the ground by someone willing to settle out of court for all his patents and a NDA,

not having the resources to accomplish this on my own, and anything you could do would be extremely useful. Your endorsement would have a great impact on my prospects of accomplishing our shared goal, as well as earning my undying gratitude.

James Morgan

Minerva could not have caught on to him that fast and she's a very deadly hive mind! Dragon is disturbingly impressive!

(It's possible this is an evil plot to co-opt him, but he's not going to ignore it if so.)

I'd be happy to fund your creation of a prototype and introduce you to some venture capitalists who can provide further funding!

Dragon has also flagged him as mildly suspicious given the fact that he is both tech savvy and didn't have an online presence until a month ago, but nothing he's done has indicated anything besides positive intentions and who is she to judge someone for suddenly starting to exist fully formed and in need of seed capital to build revolutionary technology. Some investor, whose identity she's still unsure of, funded her in her early days and she's happy to pay it forward.

This is a fantastically complicated question. If he accepts her help, he owes her, and his long-term prospects are quite likely to bring him into conflict with almost any parahuman, hero or villain. But if he declines her help, that is being rude and standoffish, and offending a powerful ally who may well be ninety-five percent aligned with his goals while on a tim elimit.

Also, he wanted his house to be finished so he had a fortified home base with an electric fence built so the Totally Not Keep and Totally Not Bunker could both hold off a siege, before he attracted any superpowered attention. But he's done that now, Dragon or whoever is behind her, and there's no way out but forwards.

Thank you for your offer of assistance, I'd be very grateful for any help you can provide.

Dragon happily transfer him whatever starting funds he needs to cover materials and R&D to get a working prototype.

And he can spend the resources he would have spent on materials without Dragon's subsidy on building his house and the resources he would spend on building his house can be partially invested in index funds and partially allow him to work longer hours instead of needing to spend time playing internet poker to fund his inventions.

And before too long, his house will be done and he will thank the construction workers with bonuses and a party with free beer and pizza, and then he can cart his parts, many of them ordered custom-made from specialist machine shops, over to his workshop and spend a few days machining them further and hand-crafting with his own workshop's tools the few specific components nobody can make and then assembling them.

(He feels so much more comfortable, knowing that given a minute or two's warning he can be very bulletproof.)

And then he'll message Dragon.

The first prototype is operational. Would you prefer a video or would you rather to come inspect it yourself, or send a person or drone?

Well, she'd like to come and visit herself but actually really doesn't have the time to visit every promising project she gives seed funding to, unfortunately.

Video will be fine, I'm too busy to come myself sadly.

Right. Then he can get started.

He'll start the video in full armor. The pseudo-Durendal - he's just referring to it as "the armor," for now, and he's avoided some of the stylistic flourishes of the pure Durendal in case anyone from his world shows up, still gunmetal grey - is more of a wearable tank than the sleek smooth skin of tinker powered armor; it adds most of a foot to his height and the same to his width. (Part of that is the sheer thickness of the plates; he can't afford reactive armor without a tinker, and so he has no choice but to use mundane metal to make up the difference. Most of it isn't.) It has no jetpack, no build-in computers, no attached weapons; none of the flourishes. It just works.

And then he can demonstrate. Lifting very heavy weights, walking around his workshop, jogging briefly in the woods outside, loading a (perfectly legal) .44 caliber handgun in spite of the loss of dexterity in his armored fingers; he places it carefully on a table, safety on, gets out of the armor, walks to the far end of his workshop, puts on leather gloves and a safety mask, shoots it in the chest six times, and steps back to observe that although the metal was scratched the armor is not noticeably dented. (He suspects the video quality is good enough that with magnification, Dragon will be able to see that, yes, bullets did impact, it wasn't a trick.)

And then he will step back, disassemble it, and reassemble it, privately careful to swap literally identical parts himself to prove their interchangeability. (This part of the video, since he expects she may end up passing it on, is fast-forwarded; it's something that would break a large fraction of tinker constructions, in his world.) Then he'll get in it again, walk over to the weights, lift them again, and put them back down, just to prove that it still works.

This is really impressive! The way the joints use a non-newtonian fluid damping system to redistribute weight is incredibly clever and makes perfect sense once I've seen it but I've never thought of myself. I'd like to get this into the hands of the PRT and other law enforcement agencies as soon as possible  - I can put you friendly VCs, with my recommendation that they invest if you'd like?

Also, I'd be interested in licensing the underlying technology myself for use in my Dragon's Teeth squad I've been looking into setting up - this sort of non-tinker tech should let me significantly ramp up the size.

- Dragon

Thank you very much,

writes the Tyrant, who has just apparently won an extraordinary success.

I'm very grateful for introductions, and for your recommendation. There may be no one on the planet it would mean more to.

And, really, the purpose of this technology is to ensure that our species be protected from our world's threats. I don't think licensing will be a problem.

(Getting Dragon on his good side is worth far more than whatever the fees would be; he'll arrange it for one dollar, that'll look better than zero, more stylish.)

And then he can finish it and sign it and send in on.

Dragon is going to pay James Morgan a fair price and is willing to negotiate aggressively to achieve this. If James wants he can donate the money.

James is really quite certain that a fair division of the profits is that he gets one dollar! If she wants to reward him beyond that she will have to tell everyone that his technology is brilliant and innovative and the latest word in warfare. He certainly isn't going to take worse than that.

(It is a very valuable asset, to have given technology away to Dragon for free. He's not giving that up just for money.)