Jamie wondered momentarily how her own mental state would influence her powers.

The Doctor went on, “We have a package we call ‘Shaping’, and another we call ‘Morpheus’.  Both are intended to make the most of the two month waiting period and help a client reach an ideal mental and emotional state.

I would assume Morpheus involves sleep and dreams somehow.

It’s often purchased by our high-end customers, to refine the powers they want and help ensure there are no untoward effects. For a low-end customer such as yourself, I don’t know that it would suit your needs.  You would be buying a lower quality sample to pay for the package… perhaps if you were someone who wanted powers for recreational purposes.

Yeah, I’m not surprised the packages would be expensive in their own right.

If you wanted to help guarantee that you got the ability to fly, for example.”

Makes sense.

Jamie nodded.

“There’s the Nemesis program, but you already have an opponent in mind, and I expect you’re more interested in a fair fight than having an opponent you’re guaranteed to succeed against when it counts.”

Hmm. So does that mean Cauldron sets up an enemy for them, in order to make them look good?

Or, wait, given the context she’s bringing it up in… setting up an enemy to focus on so that the power latches on to that animosity and adjusts itself to be good against that enemy?

Jamie looked at the other lines on the graph, “And I’d be getting something like an ‘O’ of three and a ‘P’ of five.”

“Something in that neighborhood, yes.”

Sounds like a good balance.

“A power rating of five to Madcap’s seven,”  Jamie put her elbows on the edge of the desk and her head in her hands.

I think you could beat him with that. The choice of the power category itself seems more important, honestly.

“There’s a chance you could get lucky and achieve a power with a greater ‘P’ value than expected.”

Again, that misdirection.  Jamie shook her head.  “And a roughly equal chance that I could get unlucky, since it’s an average.”

Right, good catch.

“Admittedly true.”

“Is there anything else I could do?  A way to get better results?”

“We have options, but I don’t know that they apply to your case.  I mentioned the psychological testing earlier.  You should know that an individual’s personality, mental state and background do seem to have a great deal of effect on the resulting power. I would even say it’s one of the primary factors, outside of the sample itself.”

It’s probably the factor that tends to determine the specifics beyond what the reliability of the sample provides.

“I… I’m not fixated on anything particular, powerwise.  Flying would be cool, but I’ll take anything that works.”

The Doctor tapped a key, and the graph shifted so there were only three rows.  She’d removed the samples with higher uniqueness values.

Aw.

“Then the question is…” the Doctor said, “How much are you willing to gamble?  A hero can beat a superior foe with strategy, tactics and forethought, and I get the impression you’re focused enough to put your mind to the task.  Perhaps you’d want to emphasize reliability in a sample over the power it could offer you?”

That is more fitting for forethought since she could more reliably start planning before even getting the power.

“Can you zoom in?”

The Doctor did.

“So… how unreliable is a five, if we’re talking about ‘R’?”

“If you decided on a sample with an ‘R’ score of five, I would tell you I could make no promises.  There would be perhaps a three or four percent chance you would experience some unwanted physical changes.  Zero-point-five percent chance that you’d experience changes of a degree that you wouldn’t be able to go out in public without drawing notice, even with heavy clothing.

The sort of changes Newter and Gregor have to deal with.

You would, I’d venture, not be buying a particular power, but the broader category of that power.  To use our earlier example, you would not be buying acid spit, specifically, but an acid power.”

If it’s a 1-10 scale, this seems like an appropriate five.

“As you can see here, this graph shows the relationship between cost and the rising ‘P’, ‘O’ and ‘R’ values.”

It was a cube broken into a multitude of smaller cubes, with P as the X axis, O as the Y and R as the Z.  They ranged from white to sky blue to darker blue, purple, red, and finally crimson.  The key at the bottom of the graph suggested that anything beyond dark blue would cost several million dollars.

I guess you gotta settle for something in the lower reaches of each category. Or the very low reaches of two and the higher reaches of the third.

By the time it hit crimson, it was ranging into the hundreds of millions.

Damn, that’s a lot of money.

“This… is what you can afford.”  The Doctor hit a key and the graph was reduced to the white and light blue cubes.  “You could theoretically push into the seven range of ‘P’ values, to put yourself at this Madcap’s level in terms of raw power, but you would be forfeiting a great deal in the other two departments.  Your powers would be relatively simple, defaulting to the sort of abilities that countless other heroes already have… and with the low ‘R’ score, you would be risking getting something you do not want.

Honestly, high O seems more interesting. Maybe she’d get something really unusual to use cleverly against Madcap.

Physical changes, perhaps, or powers outside of the area you wanted.  Super strength when you desired telekinesis, for a crude example.”

I suppose those both fall under the theme of lifting things. Telekinesis is just remote super strength, and that’s when it’s strong.

Killed.  There was an outside possibility she could die, if she took the wrong one, or if she got especially unlucky.

Absolutely.

I wonder how often that happens with natural powers. Bonesaw talked about the power adjusting to protect its wielder, but does that always work?

“How do you test this?  You’re talking about a lot of tests, sixty for just one sample, but there’s no way people wouldn’t notice or that word wouldn’t get out if you were doing something like that.”

Good point.

“As you’ve seen, Cauldron has resources.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question.”

Evasions!

“It does.  Just not as clearly as you want it to.”

Heh, fair enough.

Something in the Doctor’s tone suggested the woman wasn’t going to elaborate further.  Jamie shut her mouth, frowning slightly.

Yeah, countermeasures or not, they can’t take too many risks.

“I don’t want a power like that.”

“No.  For one thing, the ‘R’ value of sample J-zero-zero-ninety is very low.  Note the letters on the grid.  The most important ones are the ‘O’, ‘P’ and ‘R’.  These, on their own, determine roughly ninety-percent of a sample’s cost.  O refers to a power’s uniqueness.

Interesting.

I suppose the O value would be low for things like flight, strength and invulnerability, the Standard Alexandria Package?

It’s largely subjective, and liable to change through factors entirely out of Cauldron’s control, but it is easier to stand out as a hero or villain if nobody else can do what you do.”

Yeah, that’s true.

“You’ve already mentioned the other two letters in passing.”

“The ‘P’ value is the raw effect of the granted abilities.  An estimation of the rating the PRT would assign to the powers.  Higher ‘P’, more effective and versatile abilities.”

Shatterbird’s P value must be sky high.

Jamie nodded.  “And ‘R’?”

“Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned, there are no guarantees.  A given sample does not provide the same effects every time it is tested.

So we’ve got O for… Originality, P for Power and R for Reliability?

There are admittedly some dangers involved in the use of our product.  Sometimes there are physical changes that cannot be masked.  You have seen the heroes or villains with glowing eyes or less human features.”

Ahh, I guess experiments on powers with a very low R value might be the cause of the Case 53s?

That was sobering.

“The ‘R’ value refers to how predictable a given sample is.  There are some that produce very simple, reliable results.  In sixty-three tests of sample T-six-zero-zero-one, it has only failed to grant a form of flight on two occasions.  Contrast that with sample B-zero-zero-thirty.  It has, in four tests, granted an individual the ability to make things implode, it has created a powerful vacuum in someone’s mouth, that draws everything into a portal where it is promptly annihilated.

Hah, that’s a fun one.

Sample B-zero-zero-thirty killed the other two test subjects.”

Ouch. That’s less fun.

“No sample provides the exact same powers every time.  The bullet points note examples of the powers gained when the sample was tried on a human subject or a client.

That makes sense. The powers of this setting are so individualized that it was more surprising that they’d be able to create similar powers in the first place.

There’s typically a common thread or theme connecting powers from a given sample.  One sample might have a tendency to work with the production of acids and a tendency for physical manifestation.  This might allow an individual to turn into a living pool of acid, to secrete acid from his pores or to spit streams of corrosive venom.”

This reminds me a lot of two things that both tie back to the same chapter: 9.3. We’ve had discussion about similar types of trigger events resulting in similar powers on a broader scale, and we’ve got cape families where themes rather than exact powers are hereditary. New Wave has various configurations of light and shields, Panacea has control over biology after Marquis’ control over bones, the Vasils have various forms of control over people…

It seems like on some level there’s a separation between theme and specifics, where the specifics are more individual.

The Doctor frowned at the image on the computer screen.

What’s up? Problems with the time stream? Clockroaches? Weeping angels invading the lab?

“What?”

The Doctor turned the monitor around.  It showed graphs and charts that made little sense to Jamie.  Clearing her throat, the Doctor leaned forward over the desk and extended one manicured nail to point at a series of labels on a three-dimensional graph.  “This is the ‘P’ value as related to the cost of the power, with the expected range of powers.  The amount of money you have, even assuming an additional thirty-three percent in payment made at a future date, is probably not going to provide you with the power you’d need to take on a striker-seven.”

Ahh. Then again, clever application can make a weak power work against a strong one.

Jamie’s face fell.  Shaking her head in confusion, she asked, “‘P’?  And what do you mean by probably?”

The Doctor opened a drawer and retrieved a binder.  She slid it across the desk.

I take it this is the catalog?

Every page was laminated, labeled with a serial number.  Each page had a picture of a vial with a different colored metallic liquid inside, sitting beside a list of powers.  The bottom half of the page or a second page, depending on the number of powers listed, had a grid with a number assigned to an arrangement of letters.

Yup. Let’s have a look at these costs and what Cauldron can do.

“Meaning you employ those countermeasures you talked about.”

Probably, yeah. The one about removing the power seems especially appropriate in the case of a default.

“Revoking your powers in the worst case scenario, yes.”

“Is that revoking of powers a part of the process of however you give people the powers, or is it something that one of your in-house capes does?”

Thank you, “Jamie”, for asking all the good questions and being an excellent audience surrogate. I appreciate it. 🙂

The Doctor was typing on the computer.  Without taking her eyes from the screen, she said, “The latter.  You don’t need to worry about someone using a loophole or flaw in the process to take away your abilities.”

I didn’t even consider that. But yeah, good to know.

So they’ve got someone who’s kind of like Hatchet Face, but whose power-blocking effect is permanent. It sounds like it works on any cape, too.

It’s probably a striker power, just to keep it from being too overpowered.

“We can expedite this.  Cauldron is prepared to buy the property from you for seven hundred and thirty thousand dollars, renting it out to you in the meantime if you require it.

Seems like a good plan. And then they can sell it on for a profit when “Jamie” doesn’t need to rent it anymore.

We will sell it at our leisure rather than wait for you to find a buyer.”

Yeah.

“I don’t need you to rent it to me.  No, that works,” Jamie said.  She was secretly relieved to have one of the biggest hurdles handled so easily.

It seems like Cauldron knows what they’re doing when it comes to making this go smoothly.

“Good.”

“And I have another five thousand that my relatives set aside for my school.  It’d be harder to use that without people getting curious, but it’s there.”

You should probably leave that for the school unless you absolutely need a power that costs five thousand more than you can afford.

“We’ll see.  In terms of cost, Cauldron requires that the client pay two-thirds of the total amount in advance, and pay the rest over a six year period or default.”

Seems reasonable.