Penny entered Jenny’s hospital room and helped her into the hover chair, then helped her out of the room, through the hallways and out the front exit. A lot of people stopped what they were doing along the way, just to stare at the two women and the chair, hovering half a meter above ground and effortlessly being pushed forward. One doctor even stopped them to ask about the chair.

-Why would someone make a wheelchair float, as impressive as it is, when we already have, you know, wheeled chairs? I would assume the price is times higher than normal wheelchairs?-

-Because our world isn’t built to accommodate wheels. There are too much stairs and door thresholds and not enough ramps and elevators, so I used hover technology to make sure while her legs heal, my girlfriend wouldn’t suffer discomfort-

-You made this? Excuse me for being forward, but who do you work for, if you don’t mind me asking?-

-I work at Tinker Toy Technologies, my name is Penelope Roslyn Ankster and I am the head of R&D. Nice to meet you.-

-Is it possible to apply the same technology for stretchers? I can see a lot of potential for transporting spinal and head trauma patients with something that wouldn’t shake or bounce and worsen their condition. Especially on black roads or off road terrain.-

-You should make a list with specifications for such a stretcher and contact the company to discuss it. I am sure if you order enough, they wouldn’t mind designing and manufacturing them for you. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to take this lovely lady home.-

They continued on, exiting the hospital and moving on the sidewalk on their way home. Penny glanced at the chair, her gaze going to the electric jets she had installed as last minute, or close to last minute modification. She was going to push Jenny home and leave her there to pull herself on ropes, but later came to the conclusion it was a terrible design choice. Wheelchairs could be steered with the help of the wheels, but this one needed external help to change direction and move back and forth. With four electric jets on the underside and controls installed at the armrests, Jenny could climb stairs, move over obstacles and go out alone, without needing help. She even swapped the hover board and backpack as parts of the safety system with the hover chair, at least for the time being.

The two moved for about two intersections before stopping, so Penny could buy them both ice cream cones from a truck and they entered a park to rest and talk. The cold food was an extra they could finish in the meantime.

-You went and constructed something amazing again. Could the acoustic hover technology also be used for flying cars?-

-It could, but it wouldn’t be very effective. The acoustics have a limited range of effectiveness and wouldn’t be able to lift the cars at the needed heights for two or even three lanes of traffic. The car I build for myself and submitted for testing uses the electric jet engines we developed for the hover boards to achieve lift. When it gets approved as an experimental aircraft and passes the safety inspections, I will take for a ride around town on a date. We might even fly around to see the city from the sky.-

-‘Cough’ you already made a flying car? When did you find the time? No, more importantly, how do you keep churning one invention after the other. We don’t have the time to plan all their releases and advertising campaigns.-

-What do you mean? I was already planning on buying or making a car after our third date. I was super embarrassed going to that fancy restaurant on scooters. Then I spent, what was it, 1-2 weeks to design and debug the car? I have some very good design software. Then I simulated all kinds of scenarios with a supercomputer to remove all the remaining problems. The actual construction took the most time, I think. As for how I keep making stuff, it is actually the easiest to answer. There are certain inventions that leads to advancements of technology at a rapid pace. Fire, the wheel, electricity, engine and more. You see, the superconductor I invented, made it possible to build more powerful electric motors and increase the energy efficiency of machines. That is going to lead to improvements in all fields of engineering. Also the more powerful batteries, which solved a big energy problem that most fields suffer and prevents from improving. Everything else I needed was already invented and only needed improvement.-

-A different application of the same technology. Acoustic levitator could be used for toys, hover craft, chairs and stretchers. If you combine two or more new technologies, you can have unlimited number of new inventions. But that isn’t all, is it? You don’t just reuse the same thing over and over. The improvements you made to the holographic technology, the tasting and smelling toys and don’t start me on the processing power of the console. How do you keep improving dead end technologies by leaps and bounds?-

-Do you want to hear the whole truth, partial truth or something you would believe that isn’t a complete lie? But keep in mind that you are probably not ready to hear the whole truth, it would be hard to believe the partial truth and that which you would believe is going to be so little, you may as well have not asked me.-

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Penny finished her cone and walked to a nearby water faucet to wash her hands, then got back and started pushing Jenny toward her home. Jenny stayed quiet for a while, deep in thought about the question. She probably wasn’t ready for the entire truth, as Penny said, but it didn’t sound like she wasn’t going to learn it eventually. On the other hand she didn’t want only the things she would believe, because it sounded like Penny would tell her something similar to what she had already told her, that she was bored and didn’t have anything else to do, that she was combining different components in a new way or something like it. In the end, she was left with the middle, not too much or too little.

-Let us go with the second choice. Tell me the partial truth. You can hold information back, just don’t lie to me outright, please.-

-It all started after I finished a project to develop a new product for a company. I decided to start working for myself, but I wasn’t satisfied with my degrees, so I signed for some online college classes. That led me to develop some new methods to produce graphene cheaper and also stack it, then I developed an artificial spider silk and a goo that could stop bullets. That was when I was learning chemistry. Then I had some time and learned a bunch of new codding languages and that led me to acquire a sophisticated AI and a supercomputer. I won’t tell you if I made them or bought them, but that led to a jump in my work efficiency. The AI checks my math and codding errors and the supercomputer runs tests and simulations to make sure everything I make works without problems. With the design software included, what teams of people design for months and then test for a few years, for me takes weeks at most. That is the partial truth of how I do everything and if things go according to plan, a few months from now, you would be ready to hear the whole truth.-

During the conversation, they had arrived at Jenny’s home and Penny pushed the chair to the front door, leaned over and kissed her girlfriend on the lips, then as she was parting with her, she reminded her to always wear her safety equipment when going out. Then she left and went to the company to see how everyone was doing.

When Penny arrived, everything looked normal at first glance, but as she observed everyone, she started to see the stress. The absence of someone as important as Jenny was starting to show, but fortunately she had good news for them. Gathering the chiefs and heads of teams in a meeting room, Penny announced with a smile on her face that Jenny was discharged from the hospital today.

-…and can probably get back to work in a week, or she can use a holographic projector and her glasses to work from home until she is healthy and ready.-“Actually I can hook her up with an avatar system, but instead of a robot, she could control a drone projecting her body with a hologram.”-And I also want you to start working on putting the game console on the market. Work a name that will be popular with the demographic, like Hollo Deck or Electronic Magic or something catchy. Make ads, do promotions, I think next month there is a game expo or something planned and I want to be ready to present it then.-

-How about HoloCon, the first holographic console? It is catchy, easy to remember and rolls of the tongue with ease.-

-The name and advertisements are fine and all, but what are we going to do about games? The testers were fascinated with the games at first, but once they calmed down and actually started playing, they had a lot of critiques about the games. Can we change them in time for the event? And what about other games? Can we present the console with only the ones we have now?-

-The games are going to be modified in time for the event and with plenty of extra time, so they can be tested again. I am also working on making one or two more games the company can release, but most of our games will come from other people, once we release a free developmental package with the game console. Not only professionals, but amateurs as well will be able to develop and test new games for our console. Now, tell me how the testing of the tasting and smelling toys are proceeding?-

-There were a lot of overlap with the things the testers fed the tasting toys, but there were also many unique flavors recorded. One tester, a chemistry student even had the idea to feed it all elements of the periodic table he had access to and even some poisonous substances. The toys now can even recognize tasteless and odorless poisons and chemicals. We can still input a lot of things in the database, but for now we think they are ready for the market.-

-Good work. Hire the mentioned tester to work here on more permanent basis when it is possible. If he agrees, we may even talk about other positions in the future. As for the toys, make the preparations, put them to be tested by a lab for safety hazards and put them on the market. Make some database for users that feed it the most unique new tastes and reward them with loyalty points or something that can later be exchanged for gifts, vouchers or lowered prices for our products. Someone who knows the business practices should work on that.-

There was more discussion of work, Penny received a list of critiques and complaints about the games she had created and after reviewing it, she found out that none were about bugs or anything technical. All of them were about scenarios, features and other minor things that could easily be fixed. Good thing she didn’t put any Pay-to-Win features in her games, or there would be outrage. While the meeting continued, she send A.I.C.A. the list and told her to work on some of the problems, for others she would probably have to hire a writer or a director.

When the meeting was over, everyone went back to their work and Penny went home. She had enough of meetings and work for one day and was planning to lay on the couch and binge watch some TV show or a bunch of movies that had come out while she was busy. Maybe even play a game the old fashioned way, with a TV and controller, instead of holograms and entering other worlds to play in them. The rest of the day was hers to do with as she wished and she wanted to spend it in leisure and comfort, not needing to think about work, inventing and saving or conquering the world.