"Mostly I'm wondering how long your robots could reliably handle maintenance of a larger transportation system without your intervention."

"So, if the place is getting creamed by supervillains every month and robots are dying to that all the time, not long. In a hypothetical perfectly peaceful world Rete could probably do maintenance for, let's say Amtrak or the equivalent, for upwards of twenty years without me, and if it declined in capacity it'd still be able to handle hiring contractors for anything it couldn't manage alone."

"If it were possible to take out the entire system in one attack that might be a problem but generally villains actively targeting transit infrastructure are pretty rare. There are too many players with a vested interest in that not happening, on both sides of the law. Endbringers still do it obviously but we can keep anything valuable on the other earth and seal it off as needed?"

"Right, I'm not saying it's likely, I just don't have much sense of why you want robot trains at all and it could've been anticipating a train-wrecker coming through often enough to prompt tense union negotiations if you hired people to fix things. Normal trains are pretty good. Humans can maintain them."

"Mostly I'm just generally interested in finding ways to leverage powers for larger infrastructure projects - I think people gave up on trying too easily."

"My robot flock will probably be better at that in five years than it is now both in numbers and in progress on the layering thing. And maybe some vertical integration with materials suppliers."

"Hm, that's longer than we want to wait before having a Brockton to Montreal line, but if things go well there will be other lines to add."

"I reiterate that completely normal human people can and have built trains!"

"It costs billions of dollars normally."

"Well, if you were going to give me billions of dollars I too would put more work into it sooner."

"If you think you'd be able to do better than conventional tech at a similar price point we could possibly make that happen?"

"Now we're talking. You sort of led into it like you were wondering if I had the spare capacity to do it as, like, a favor."

"Oh, no, I didn't mean it like that at all. Could you scale up faster than five years if we were paying you enough to do it full time? And for whatever materials you need, of course."

"So, my full full time isn't for sale because I'm doing suit stuff for all us Loricae, but yeah, when do you want to lay track, do you already own the land, do you have a good deal on bulk metal such that Rete should order parts through you or nah."

"We already own the land, track laying I'd like to start in a few months, and the boat graveyard has a few old container ships we could have Sundancer melt down for scrap, if that works."

"It might! Rete's rearranging my to-dos as we speak."

Eeee, tinker tech infrastructure is going to happen. 

"We can sell some of the real estate we bought here now that Heartbreaker's gone and probably Brockton Bay can publicly fund it as well."

"I am so glad I have an AI to navigate dealing with funding applications for me."

"I always found filling out those sort of applications fun,"

"And a good thing, too, since you don't have an AI of your own."

"Well, the Undersides don't have nearly as much to fill out as the Wards did. I'm not saying I miss all the bureaucracy but I do wish we kept better track of things than our current set-up of 'ask Tattletale, she'll probably know where the money is'." 

"I'm going to need to be paid in advance with a clawback-proof contract, by the way."

"Would you accept real estate as collateral?"

"Might depend on the real estate."

"We own a sizable chunk of Brockton Bay and now Montreal - if you insist I think we could sell enough of it to raise the money outright."