For what was left of the week Penny spend her time leisurely by training, studying, playing games and she even went out once or twice without the need to buy things, but as Friday was approaching she again started planning her future ventures. Today she was on her way to visit a joke shop. It was actually really hard to find a shop with a physical location, most of them being online shops. I am not actually sure it is hard to find any, but when was the last time you visited a practical joke shop? She wanted to feel the items sold in the shop before deciding to buy or not. If she was going to be the champion of pranks and do it seriously she had to inform herself of what was out there and what needed improving. And besides she decided that her shop above her new laboratory would be a joke shop even before calling her real estate agency.
The shop had the look of a hole in the wall shop, but the inside was actually pretty roomy. On the walls were displayed all kinds of mask both monsters and Halloween creatures. There were shelves with the classic pranks seen in old movies like fake eyes, poop, vomit and bricks. There were disappearing ink in bottle to be poured in squirting flowers, pens and other contraptions. There were fake fingers you could put on your fingers, hands, ears and noses. There were joy buzzers and smells in bottles and many, many more. With her new studies in organic chemistry she could already think of several ways to improve on a few products. For now she bought 2 of each to try for her next pranks.
-Do you need help moving all your purchases to a car or something?-asked the young woman womaning the counter. She looked so out of place in this old joke shop that for a moment Penny was so surprised to see someone below 40, she didn’t know what to say. Just for a moment though.
-No thank you. I am walking home from here. How much business do you draw on average a month? I was thinking of investing in a similar business.-Penny used the start of the conversation as an ice breaker and decided to ask about the customer base of the shop. She was interested to hear from a professional opinion.
-Not many people visit the shop just a few regulars. Our main business is an online shop. Plus business picks up during some holidays with all the costume shopping. You sure you can drag all that stuff alone? You could give me an address and I can deliver them to you. That is our usual business model actually.-
-You just want to know my address, don’t you? You are not a stalker, are you?
-Maybe.-The young woman said it with a tone that allowed no argument that she was just interested. She was maybe even flirting. I am not good at flirting or general conversation for that matter.
- Actually I am in between places, or more like I expect to move in the next couple of days. But I can give you my phone number. You can call me any time.-
The two women talked for half an hour longer discussing from business to their interests and work. Jenny, as that was her name, Jenifer, was working here temporarily while her uncle was on vacation. She had a business degree, but wasn’t sure where she wanted to work, so for the moment she was exploring her options while covering the counter at her uncle’s shop. Penny in the meantime ended up with a Dunce Hat on her head courtesy of how clueless she was that the other woman was flirting.
-The shop is more of a hobby for my uncle. He has a few other shops, but this is the one he supervises himself. So what was your reason for visiting today?-
-You can call it a new hobby. I decided to finally surrender to the name and try what it was like. Penelope Roslyn Ankster, P.R.Ankster at your service.-That surprised Jenny a little. The name was unique, but so was the woman behind it. The conversation died down little by little after that and Penny paid for her purchases, Dunce Hat included, and exited the shop.
A few hours after visiting the shop, her real estate agent called her to visit him and they were on their way to visit the properties that matched her criteria. The first property turned out to be pretty good match, but it was a little torched and away from any major street traffic. If she wanted it to be a shop, and she did, it needed to be closer to human population. The second was a little smaller that she wanted it to be, but made up for it with the presence of a loft. The foot traffic was also a big improvement over the last location. The third one was ok, but you know the feeling when you fall in love with something and everything on your list is visited just for the sake of looking at it? That is how Penny felt. The second place was in her hearth and all others she visited just didn’t feel right. A few came close, but didn’t move her like the second place, so she decided to rent the building with the option to buy the building in the future. Her agent started the paperwork and at the start of the next week she could move in.
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While Penny was researching fictions with artificial intelligence in them, she ended up reading a list of computers in fictional works and became very interested in the works from which they came. She found most of the works and downloaded them that gave them a quick glance. Picking all that were not megalomaniacal or were going to kill human kind or other such things, she discarded the rest. Next she visited all fictions with computer systems that could fit in her office. No building or planet computers for this girl. When she got the cooperation of one such computer with artificial intelligence she used it to change the user settings on all the rest and was now armed with a couple super computers and twice as many AI’s. Now it was time to really start her work. All computers and AI that physics simulators were connected and fed all the data about her corner of reality. They scoured the internet and copied all the data on physics, astronomy, chemistry mechanics, robotics and many more. The game AI’s were tasked with optimizing her gameplay and gathering resources from some of her games. The assistant AI’s were going to help her with her projects and coordinated all other works, checking math, physics and optimizing her projects based on the results from the simulations. With all the AI’s help her workload was lessened and the work progressed faster by leaps and bounds. Also when so much AI’s watched one another it was harder for any single one of them to go rogue unnoticed.
-A.I.C.A. help me design a project of mine. I need you to calculate the prime time for every broadcasting station, national, cable and satellite for the whole world. List first the country followed by their television networks and then map their locations. Then start work on a hack to hijack their broadcast during the prime time for every time zone. Also ask the game AI’s to make a gameplay video of every game I own that has les that 5 million downloads. Mark every location that needs hard wiring to be hacked and I will make sure to establish a connection to them.-The hologram of the Artificial Intelligence Coordinating Assistant emulated listening to the instructions, even when she “listened” with the microphones in the room, and then got to work. Soon all the data was sitting on a holographic screen on the wall showing maps, lists and times for everything Penny asked. Now she just had to buy a few things, teleport all over the world, connect a bunch of closed systems to the internet and without getting caught, all so she could teach more than 5 million people that the games she needed exist. All so she could have access to more technology and advancements. And she was just getting started now that she had a team of the most capable research assistants one could ask for.-Now let’s see if I have a spell to enchant a hat so it’s writings can be understood by everyone.-
The next day Penny did her early morning routines and then went shopping again. And since I am not a computer hardware specialist I can’t tell you what she bought, but I can tell you that she enchanted them to all connect with a unencrypted Wi-Fi signal and use their IP address. It was all very technical and convoluted and hard to explain. Can you feel my pain when my character is smarter than me and I hardly understand what she does half the time? How am I supposed to explain to you stuff I don’t understand? Oh well, on with the story. With all the precautions she took and the abilities of her AI’s there was no chance for her to be traced. For the rest of the day she teleported all around the world by time zones so no matter where she went it was always just after noon. When she was done with her part of the plan she looked at the virtual image hovering in the corner of her vision. She had connected the primary module of her assistant A.I.C.A to her glasses and now was able to use their full range of capabilities.
-Execute the hack and play the video file on all television networks in the world. The next 24 hour will be interesting.-The next thing she did was dimension travel to the place of the Hero’s sword. It was long overdue for her to explore this so called Play World and get to know its inhabitants and also to play a few pranks to the Demon Lord.
It took her hours teleporting and flying above roads to find civilization and still a few more for her to find where the DLC was. Then there was more flying and teleporting and a lot more time wasted until one day later she found the castle. It didn’t take her much effort to infiltrate the throne room and find it empty, but let’s say for convenience that it was morning and the Demon Lord was still asleep, so she had plenty of time to prepare the prank, cast a few enchantments and then teleport home and go to sleep. It had been a couple of really long days without a wink of sleep.
The Demon Lord got up from the Demon Lord sized bed, because it wasn’t king sized, and got ready for the day. He never ate breakfast and always started the day by going to the throne room and sitting on the throne. Things proceeded like usual and he dealt with the problems and logistic his army faced just before noon. But as he was starting to stand up he found himself stuck, literally to the throne and it was a very strong adhesive to measure up to his might. After hours trying to get unstuck the demon lord smelled something and then felt it too. He was sitting on sticky poo/mucky turn and smelling liquid ass. And so were all the attendants trying to help the Demon Lord to get unstuck from the throne, and they continued doing so until a few hours later the enchantments stopped working and the glue lost its effectiveness. For the next three days the Demon Lord was lost in a fit of impotent rage.