Kaylie came back downstairs with bottles in her hands, only to see Val’s pained grimaces. “Oh, come on, guys! I’ve been gone for two minutes and you guys manage to get Val to look like someone hit him with a baseball bat!”
“I didn’t think my swing of a pillow could hit someone through the screen on the other side of the world,” Kivenaal quipped. “Also, sorry Val.”
Takaraya sighed. “Could we all please quit cracking jokes? Val is in a lot of pain, and I know some of what that’s like.”
Kaylie handed the bottles around, and soon after, it was obvious that everyone had their own way to remove the caps.
Kivenaal stuck a thumb claw up against the bottom of the cap and pushed it up, the cap flying up for a moment before he caught it with one of his other hands.
Jayde used the sturdy metal of his left knee joint to pop the cap free, then took a sip of the sweet, fizzy liquid.
Kaylie used the claws of her left hand to pry the cap loose.
Takaraya twisted the non-twist-off cap off of his bottle, which almost looked comically small in his hands.
Rukari fumbled around in his pockets for a few seconds before removing a multi-tool and taking the cap off almost properly in comparison to the others.
Kayden got a disapproving look from Kaylie as he used the oak top of the coffee table to knock the cap free.
Malavera grabbed a proper bottle opener out of his pocket instead, popping the top free with ease.
With all of their bottles opened, it became a bit more obvious as to who had more experience with soda, as Jayde took a long, deep swig of it, looked uncomfortable, and a split second later, unleashed a window-rattling belch that, thankfully, Malavera had seen coming and had muted. As the microphone came back on, Kivenaal was the first to make his displeasure heard.
“Damn it, Jayde, my ears are ringing!” Kivenaal half-shouted, shaking his head.
With everyone present in the process of cracking open a cold one, Valentin also wanted in on that. With the healthy arm, he reached out of frame, procuring a cycling specific sports bottle filled with tap water.
Being one of the few items that wasn’t totaled in the accident, said bottle is missing most of the branding due to abrasion, making it look like a generic transparent bottle instead.
Still, Valentin took a good chug out of it, with a drop or two being spilled on release.
“Goddamnit… the cap seal on these is bullshit!”, he bellowed out in anger as the bottle went out of frame again, his upper chest and blanket now not 100% dry anymore.
Despite the microphone being muted by Malavera, the belch was very obviously seen, gathering an impressed, but disapproving shaking of his head from Valentin.
“Not necessary, but oh well…”, he mumbles while rolling his eyes.
“Sorry! I’ve never had something with bubbles in it before,” Jayde said.
Kayden grimaced. “Yeah, we had a learning experience with fizzy drinks a while back, Jayde. Drink them slowly or you’ll deafen everyone in the room.”
When Valentin mentioned the cap seal on the cycling bottle was bullshit, Kaylie chuckled. “I’ve never seen one that is good, to be honest. Every single one ends up making a mess.”
“Seriously,” Kayden added, “some of our rides look like a family edition of a wet t-shirt contest. Kaylie and I have a bit of difficulty with our water bottles at the best of times. I have no idea how Jayde manages not to spill with his damn canteen.”
After a moment, Jayde asked, “Is there much of anything I can do to make my bicycle a bit faster? Sometimes, I have a difficult time keeping up with Kaylie on our trips.”
“What are you doing to those bottles if you have 50% or more leaking!?”, Valentin inquired, as the problem was way less prominent for him while still being incredibly annoying.
“In terms of speed, you either need more power or less resistance. Which means, training in case of the former or cutting down on drag for the latter. Running a wardrobe head-first into the wind hardly is aerodynamically efficient. Speaking from experience here.”, Valentin explained once Jayde inquired about getting faster on the bike.
“Not exactly sure,” Kayden said. “I know Kaylie’s squished one once.”
Kaylie chuckled. “Maybe we’re overtightening the caps.”
When the topic switched to going faster, Jayde nodded. “I’ve been trying to train, and tried to cut some drag with tighter clothing, but…”
“Honestly, I think Jayde’s run out of gearing. Low gear is good enough for him to maintain on hills, but he’s topping out at 15 miles per hour pedaling about as fast as he can. I rigged his bike up with an old bit of kit from my supplies, found out he’s pretty much at his limit with a 90 RPM cadence,” Kaylie said.
“Frontal area also is a component, which is not really fixable unless you get a new bike… Though running out of gears is a new one… Well the quick and easy method would be to get a new rear sprocket with fewer teeth. This will lengthen all the gears he has, similar to the diff in a car, so you’re giving up some torque at the low end.”, Valentin explained after having given it some thought.
“The nuclear option would be a new drivetrain altogether, though it will be substantially more pricey. Also, i know that your bike may not follow established standards here, so sourcing suitable parts to begin with might be hard…”, he admitted soon after, knowing that even on earth, careful consideration has to be made to ensure compatibility of parts between each other and the frame itself.
Jayde nodded, somewhat understanding. “There’s one hill that could be difficult with a gearing change, but we could try that,” Jayde admitted.
“Providing we can find the right gear to make that ancient three-speed hub actually functional. We could be doing a lot of part swapping to find the right gear, and it’s possible you might need to carry a couple of spare sprockets to switch between riding hills or riding flats,” Kaylie mentioned.
“What would be this “nuclear option” you’ve mentioned?” Jayde inquired. “Just in case the gears don’t work out.”
“As said, the nuclear option is what in automotive terms would be a full drivetrain swap. You’d be getting an entirely new gearbox hub, shifter and all the stuff that comes with it. The problem is, we don’t know if a commercially available hub will fit that frame of yours… After all, there’s a whole host of international standards to adhere to, else have proprietary components which customers generally don’t like.
Also, unless you mount a chain tensioner, going further than about two teeth will mess with your chain tension, creating more issues than it solves. Though it wouldn’t be entirely impossible to just train for torque and adapt to the longer gearing either. People have wildly varying preferences in terms of cadence and some of them like grinding it up hills at like 45RPM.”, Valentin replied, freeing his eyes from a stray bit of hair that has wandered into his field of view.
“So, basically, we try a few different sprockets first, if that doesn’t provide the results needed, we’ll have to try something more radical,” Kaylie said.
“Ah, the troubles of a non-standard setup,” Kayden added. “Custom frames are fun.”
Jayde, however was thinking over how best to resolve the issue. “How difficult would it be to make modifications to the frame to fit new parts?” he asked.
“The troubles of a non-earthen setup. The bike i had until three weeks ago only had non-standard lengths for all the tubes that make up the frame. Everything else was made to various ISO standards, making it really trivial to change things if needed.”, Valentin corrected when Kayden spoke about the non-standard setup.
Jayde’s inquiry about how difficult the frame modifications would be had Valentin worried.
“Truth be told, that thing is going to a professional frame builder if that’s the case. And at that point you miiiight want to N+1 the thing and get a second, speed-focused bike.”, he explained.
Kaylie and Kayden winced as they heard the comment that they might want to get a different bike for Jayde. “That’s… I suppose it’s possible but it was almost impossible to find a frame-builder who could make one for Kayden,” Kaylie admitted.
“I’ve been looking into custom frames for some of the others here, most seem to see the measurements and tell us to quit screwing around,” Malavera said. “I’ve been tempted to have the lot of us turn up at one of their shops sometime, but I’m not sure that’s exactly worth it.”
Valentin did a “quick” google search confirming his thought, which still took a few minutes, courtesy of only having one useable hand.
“The tallest human currently alive is 8 foot 3 inches. And there’s no chance in hell he’s gonna hop onto a bike with how limited his walking already is, so no wonder that frame builders there aren’t taking those values as-is. Even at my height, it was so hard to find a bike that i had it imported from your half of the sea, simply because there’s so few companies making series-production bikes for 7 footers.”, Valentin commented.
“And considering Jayde’s 8 foot, 5 inches, Kivenaal is 8 foot 6, and Malavera is 7 foot 11 inches-”
“8 feet!” Malavera said, interrupting Kaylie.
“To the top of your ears. We don’t measure that way,” Kaylie shot back. She turned to face Val again, then continued with, “there’s three people who need specialized frames that, well… No one is willing to make here on Earth.”
Jayde raised an eyebrow, then put a thought out there. “Who says we’d have to make it here on Earth?”
“You’ve got one problematic bike from Crugandr with no upgrade path, now you want to get a few more?” Kayden asked.
“No, Jayde does have a point,” Kivenaal said. “There are ways to get our hands on a better quality bicycle. Just… Takes a bit of extra effort is all.”
Jayde read between the lines, nodding. “That is true. A trip back through the Rift wouldn’t be that difficult, we’ve done it before.”
“And how do you two plan to get those to be Earth-compatible?” Malavera asked.
“Get a list of the most common standards, get frames built there to those standards,” Kivenaal replied.
“Would that even work?” Kaylie asked. “I’m starting to think showing up in person to a reputable frame shop would do the job better.”
“I can tell you that i had to work around what the steamworks people were capable of making when i had Robert the first converted to steam… It wasn’t pleasant and ended in a by todays standards very crude construction of everything. Apart from that, i cannot help you with procuring those frames and all that. Local parts and components i can help you with, but frames are your problem to solve.”, Valentin mentioned.
“That said, the biggest hurdle to speed is and always will be aerodynamics and rider efficiency.”, he added, raising a finger to mark the importance of that point.
“Well, improving Jayde’s aerodynamics means a new frame, because trying to get him into skin-tight riding gear isn’t easy, and gets very expensive fast,” Kaylie admitted. “Getting into skin-tight gear is difficult, getting out of it is way worse,” she added.
“How could I improve my efficiency?” Jayde inquired.
Val thought a bit, then let out a mild sigh.
“Probably poor wording on my part. One option is to train for higher cadences by trying to get your pedaling as smooth as possible. Smooth is fast, after all… The other is to get the bike adjusted as accurately as possible, which is free power if done right. In absolute terms, you want more power going through your legs if you cannot cut down on drag, otherwise you won’t be going any faster, obviously.”, he then corrected himself.
Jayde nodded. “So part of it is trying to figure out how to pedal faster, then. We’ve already gotten the bike adjusted as much as we can,” he said.
Kayden looked over at Valentin, then asked, “Probably seems like a stupid question right now, but… Considering you’re the first human with them, how are you handling the nanites? Not making you too hungry or wearing you out?”
“The nanites? I completely forgot about them, to be honest. It’s not like they do anything immediately noticeable at times…”, Valentin said, smiling sheepishly.
“Though that’s also about the extent of what i can say. It seems like they aren’t doing all that much in the grand scheme of things. I don’t feel any difference to before, as far as i can tell…”, he added, insecure about the effectiveness of them, even though it was proven already a month prior.
Kayden gave it a thought, then checked over his notes. “Well, you are in Normal mode, and you’re the first human with them, so we don’t know how effective they can be. This is a hell of a stress test for them, to be honest.”
Kaylie chuckled. “To be fair, from my experiences, Normal mode doesn’t do a whole lot. They’re meant to be relatively non-intrusive, not causing trouble in someone’s day-to-day life. But they’re not particularly great for rapid healing.”
Nova materialized into the room, then said, “In theory, we could give you some control over them. We’d have to, obviously, figure out a way to disguise an AI unit for you, but… There are options for that. My Class 3 chassis looks like a smartphone. I know a Class 1 is powerful enough to control nanites with some overhead to spare. If we keep things simple enough, just wireless radios and an emulation layer, it’s possible we could fit all of that into a chassis the size of a smart watch. The emulation layer is there for the purpose of looking and functioning like a smart watch.”
“Sure sounds interesting.”, Valentin commented, followed by a wave of silence as he thought about it a little more.
“Though the last time my body did the great restructuring i grew seven inches in a year. For three years straight. It was painful… Since then i’ve been the ‘massive lighthouse’ everyone sees me as.”, he added, complete with one-handed finger quotes.
“Also. What would that ‘control’ even look like? Except it being visually based on a watch of sorts…”, Valentin then inquired.
“As in the interface?” Nova asked. She looked over at Kayden, who pulled the handheld device out of his pocket and unlocked it with his code, then turned it to face the camera.
“You won’t be able to read it yet, but… There, now you should be able to,” Nova said, running translations on all of the icons.
There, in front of the camera for Val to see, was both the small, watch-sized interface area that allowed him to select modes, as well as the main interface currently showing some of Kayden’s live-tracked vitals for heartbeat and rhythm, blood pressure, oxygen concentration, and current blood toxicity.
“The part that looks…” Nova said, pausing for the briefest of moments to come up with a decent answer Val would know, “like a directional pad on a game controller, with the four icons, that would be a sub-menu in your watch. Kayden has Normal, Adaptive, Combat, and Emergency modes. You would have access to… Normal, Enhanced, and Adaptive. Enhanced is like Normal mode, plus about 10 to 25% depending on how far you ramp things up. That could be configured by you on the go. The more assistance, the more fuel you need. Adaptive mode is… As you’re using your body, the nanites try to help out more. Delivering oxygenated blood to the muscles that need it, carrying waste products away faster to be processed, that sort of thing. Combined with a minor boost to heart rate and breathing rate, it’d give you a little more performance in the moment, but you’d actually need to pay attention and eat more when in that mode. No getting away with light meals in Adaptive.”
Kaylie grabbed her wrist watch and turned it on, then flipped over to the screen, showing Val pretty much what Nova had described, though she only had one mode available, and as a result, had a pair of numbers displaying heart rate and oxygen saturation. “I don’t have further unlocked modes in mine. Basically, Kayden gave you a civilian kit, so… You have access to all the modes a civilian would get. I got my nanites courtesy of a blood transfusion from him after my accident. I’m not supposed to have soldier-grade nanites, so I don’t get access to the other modes.”
Valentin listened to Nova explaining it all and intently looked at Kayden’s variant of the interface, though had obvious difficulties understanding it all.
“Uhm… maybe we should postpone this until i am out of hospital. I feel like i am already being underfed and shoveling more coal into the firebox ain’t gonna fix that…”, Valentin muttered, nervously looking at the group in Nevada through the video feed.
“Like i think i get what these modes would so. Sorta, at least. But i don’t fancy testing that while still in hospital…”, he added.
“Not a problem. We were just letting you know it is an option in the future,” Nova said, vanishing into thin air.
Kaylie chuckled. “Yeah, I remember waking up with nanites, and not being as lucky as you. Kayden was running in Adaptive when he saved my life, so I woke up in that mode, downright starving and with a left arm I could barely control. Had to get paired up with an AI to turn that shit off so I could get some rest,” she admitted.
“To be fair,” Malavera said, “Adaptive mode is not that bad. Just not great when you’ve had a lot of blood loss and no food for several days.”
“We’ll go over it with you at some point later on, when you’re not stuck in a bed eating hospital food,” Kayden said. “However, we could prototype something for you if you’d like. Basically, if you’ve got any specific requests, we could see if that would be possible.”
“I’ll keep that in mind and tell you if i can come up with anything useful, though i gotta stay in the present for now, with that lawsuit, getting out of bed eventually and all that… And the hospital food over here isn’t half-bad, actually. Just that they tend to serve too little of it for anyone taller or heavier than average…”, Valentin replied, half-jokingly.
“If there isn’t anything else to discuss, i would probably jump ship soon for the time being. Don’t wanna hold you up at whatever work it is you’re doing right now.”, he added, reaching over for his bottle to take a sip, only to realize it being empty.
“Other than Rukari’s 6x6 Highwayman project and stopping someone from using a perfectly good police cruiser as a target,” Kaylie said, “we don’t have much to do here.”
“Hey, it’s been sitting there for what, two years, and hasn’t been driven, tuned up, or raced in all that time. So I take six shots at it and you yell at me for it,” Kivenaal grumbled. “I didn’t even know if it ran.”
“To be fair, Val probably needs some rest,” Takaraya said. “I know when I was in a bed like that, all I wanted to do was either eat, sleep, or talk to someone, and usually, I wanted sleep more than the rest.”
“Sleep is hard if both ankles are FUBAR’d and dangling off the foot end of your bed because you don’t fit even with extensions on either end… Anyway, talk to you sometime, have a nice weekend!”, Valentin said before turning the camera off and leaving the voice-chat.
With Val having signed off, the rest of the group wandered upstairs, going back to working on the 6x6 Highwayman, followed by a bit of browsing around for ideas on what to do with their Grand Warden.
