4575/Polite Palaver

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Polite Palaver
Date of Scene: 02 January 2021
Location: Penthouse - Kord Co
Synopsis: Peter has a chat with his boss about a solution to one problem while soft-pedaling a previous one.
Cast of Characters: Ted Kord, Peter Parker




Ted Kord has posed:
A good part of Ted's charitable work involves research. While Kord Co has staff to handle its charities, Ted makes it a point to allocate funds and find causes himself. Otherwise, what is the point of saying you've contributed anything. At present he's scrolling through a number of blogs and making notes on a scratch pad. Some of them he'll follow up, some will be funded on sight. Some will be investigated more stringently.

"I should just give Peter's Aunt May a few million and video her giving it to various charities. The publicity would be grand... which is why I wouldn't do it. I'd have every nut in creation bother her. I could ask her quietly for some ideas though."

Peter Parker has posed:
Peter is hard at work in the lab, puzzling out a rather thorny problem involving a way to bleed heat from the newest Beetle design. It wasn't necessary, but he was just monitoring a batch of compiling code and it was the IT equivalent of watching paint dry, so he busied his mind with other things.

He was about to wonder if the fumes from paint made watching it dry seem more enjoyable when he looked at the cooling system. He smiled, then fired a DM through his work computer to Ted.

<Think I found a good auxiliary cooling method for the Beetle. May I come up to discuss it?>

Ted Kord has posed:
Ted Kord looks at the message flag that pops up on his screen. He is not one to sit in front of a monitor too long. Man of action yadda yadda. <Sure come up. About time I went back to engineering. You coming up alone?> He ponders deleting the question. Then he hits <send>. It's his place. He can see who he wants.

Peter Parker has posed:
About five minutes later, the door opens and Peter walks in.

Peter's not the usual employee. This morning, he had come in on crutches and a broken leg in a cast (a gift from one of the Goblin's HE pumpkin bombs), along with bruises and a bandaged arm. By his first break, he had divested himself of the bandage, the bruises were gone, and he only needed one crutch.
And when he walks in, no crutch, no cast, no bandages. Apart from a haggard look, but anyone riding in from Queens on the subway looks like that anyway.

He is smiling pleasantly, but tends to be fairly polite when entering Ted's office. He may have approval to call the CEO by his first name, but Ted had earned this office, and a certain level of respect was mandatory.

"Hello, Ted. I hope things are okay...?"

Ted Kord has posed:
Ted Kord looks Peter over and wonders how much the medical plan saved on him already?

"I have a few personal things I'm dealing with. Nothing important. I rather do this. What have you got? We're supposed to start on the cooling system next week. Though I still do not like it for extended orbital work. Also the drone hives need a lot of work. I'm not letting Bobo ride in those things yet."

Peter Parker has posed:
Peter tilted his head. He had to ask once. God hates a coward.

"All right, Ted, but if you need to vent, my Uncle Ben said I was given two ears and one mouth for a reason. Just saying."

He takes out a tablet. "I was looking at the superstructure you have the coolant system running along. It's titanium-gold alloy. Very strong, very conductive. But...if you could make those more conductive, bleed off the heat faster, then it would mean a lot less worry about overheating..."

Ted Kord has posed:
Ted Kord nods. "So... use something besides gold titanium? Or gold titanium piping? I'm sorry I haven't been down there a lot the last few days." He shrugs then continues. "We cant increase the surface area over the piping: corrugate it or add spikes say... I was actually thinking of giving the new Bug wings, that are actually radiators. Flapping will cool them off."

Peter Parker has posed:
Peter smiles. "Actually...I had a different idea."

He puts the display on the table, then activated the holo-emitter, showing one beam of the alloy metal. "What say...we add superconductor?"
He taps the screen on the table, and thin holes in the beam appear as thin cylinders of metal are "cut out" of the beam, withdrawing up and out like nuclear reactor control rods.
"Now...in their place..." He taps another icon, and a thin tube of a different color appears, along with a chemical compound. "It's made of carbon, hydrogen, and sulfur, along with a stabilizing agent, here, so that it can function at lower pressures."

Ted Kord has posed:
Ted Kord considers it. Then he reaches to his computer and begins typing silently. He looks at a chart and moves a few boxes around. "Never mind me venting. This is what we're going to do. Okay, I want to move coolant system work to end of the month. I want you and your team to produce a scale model we can test to destruction: impact, gunfire, torsion, corrosion. Don't forget she's going to be able to submerge, part of the reason for the gold elements. I am also going with the spike idea. The rod of your unobtainium will extend onto the spikes. Okay. I assigned you a team and resources and authorized overtime up to 20 hours each. Also let me know who makes the superconductor? Can we acquire the patent?"

Peter Parker has posed:
Peter's face colored a little.

"Well, sir, that's the thing. I...kinda made it myself. I had been toying with the problem of a room-temp superconductor, but the one I came up with only functioned in high-pressure environments. It wasn't until six months ago I was able to solve the problem with the stabilizing agent, but I realized I didn't have anything that NEEDED a superconductor, so I...well, documented it and mothballed it. If you want, I can have the files I wrote on it sent to you in five minutes."

Ted Kord has posed:
Ted Kord listens carefully then rearranges the construction schedule again. "Then you need to take these files to a good patent lawyer. You could go into business for yourself with this. If the scale model works out. I'll call mine for you. You dd this stuff before you came to work for me. Think hard... were you working for Tony Stark when you came up with this? Because he may have a claim on this... honestly, I think I should do a webinar on this and other business concerns. I just had a young person reveal extremely personal information to me, before they signed a contract, thereby allowing me to advertise their business on the front page of the Bugle."

"The only concern I have now is how the cooler will function in vacuum or underwater... which would still make it very useful and could make you very rich."

Peter Parker has posed:
Peter sighed. "Actually, it was something I was working on to take my mind off Mr. Stark firing me. So I think it's a given that I never did any work on it while working for him..."

He pondered for a moment, then said, "I think that we can try various containers. The superconductor isn't corrosive to glass or metal, but no harm with double-checking with the materials we can use."

Ted Kord has posed:
Ted Kord nods. "We'll see just how good this is. It may require development, not going to lie. We can still use your design with existing conductors... you just might have to wait a few years to become rich and buy my company." He looks Peter over and shuts the security recorders off. "Who did this? Doc Ock, the Scorpion? Do you need a hand or some first aid, or to just crash till you go home? Because if you go home looking like this, Aunt May is going to call me and threaten to not invite me for anymore dinners. I can say you had a bug or something and I was letting you stay over and see our company doctor. Say it was a 24 hour thing."

Peter Parker has posed:
Peter smiled wryly. "I could use a couple of hours sleep. I was up most of the night tracking something and I hit paydirt a couple of hours before work. I'm all healed up, but I'm still feeling a little zonked."

Ted Kord has posed:
Ted Kord smiles. He gets up to pat Peter on the shoulder. "You're like a kid brother to me Peter. I hate to see you banged up. I bet you could barely lift a car right now. Heh. Come on, pick a room, up here or... downstairs. It's yours. Alyx went downstairs." A slight bit of rancor as he says that. He leads Peter to one of the guest rooms. "You could even keep a change of clothes and you know what here if it makes it easier for you. No one's going to bother you here. You still didn't tell me who did this?" That question is more pointed. He's not bantering or good natured now.

Peter Parker has posed:
Peter chuckles. "Tell you? If I may be so bold, the headline is trending on the Bugle's web page. I don't know who they got to make something rhyme with 'Green Goblin,' but they managed. He got away, though, but he didn't get what he had been there for...which is what's important..."

By that time, he has laid down on one of the couches, and that is all she wrote. The word "important" dissolves into a quiet snore.

Ted Kord has posed:
Ted Kord watches as Peter starts snoring, then he goes to his desk and grabs the Bugle from the bottom of a pile of papers and magazines. He reads the page belatedly. Then he goes to the desk top and pulls up Spider-Comm and JLA files, anything really on the Green Goblin and downloads them. He pushes a few more buttons. He very quietly slips out onto his patio. Twelve drones are floating there quietly and he quickly downloads his information onto them.

"Your quarry is superhuman, probably class four. Use heavy stun if he engages. But don't let him see you. Follow and report. Go!" The drones peel out silently. "They mess with the Spider, they gotta deal with the Beetle. Aunt May lost enough. She isn't losing if I can help it." Then he goes back in to read the funnies... Beetle Baily of course.

Peter Parker has posed:
The file on the Green Goblin is pretty extensive. A lot of info regarding fights, tactics, weapons, etc. Much of it from Spidey's own notes and recordings.

The file on the Green Goblin does impart a lot of information, but the entry at the bottom of the file may or may not be noticed:

ALTERNATE IDENTITY: NORMAN OSBORN, CEO OF OSCORP

Ah, well, Ted will come across it sooner or later.