Tinkertech is just regular tech

Armsmaster took over the discussion.

“Within ten minutes of discussing his work with Kid Win, she'd given him his specialization, something that we've been working with him for months on. I deliberately left pieces out of half the items that we had left for her to repair, wondering if she would ask for them or if she would flounder.”

“And did she?” Battery asked.

Armsmaster nodded to Emily and she moved the video forward.

“It looks like crap,” Assault said.

The invention wasn't the elegant piece that Kid Win had created, although Armsmaster would have likely argued the description. Instead, there were wires and objects spread out everywhere, to the extent that it wouldn't have been usable in the field.

“She recreated the items that I omitted,” Armsmaster said. “Only her recreations weren't tinkertech.”

“What do you mean?” Battery asked.

“Our scientists have been looking over what she did all night, and as far as they can tell, her reconstruction isn't tinkertech. It's fully replicable by modern science and could be mass produced.”

“Why would they want to?” Assault asked. “It looks like hell.”

“She was using inferior materials in a limited time frame,” Armsmaster said. “Once the basic principals are understood, scientists can streamline the devices. They can build on that technology and make it better, and use that technology to build other things. If she can only recreate one item out of a hundred pieces of tinkertech...well.”

Dragon and Armsmaster had been insistent about their results.

“The upside is that she can change the entire world,” she said. “Modern science could power a laser pistol using a nuclear reactor, or the turbines from a hydropower plant. Tinkertech can create batteries that hold that kind of power in the palm of your hand, but nobody knows how they work. A tinker can create an electric car with a battery that will hold enough power that it could cross the United States ten times over before needing a recharge. Imagine that could be replicated, not just for electric cars, but for houses, for tanks and planes, for applications that none of us could even imagine.”

***

Interlude: Emily