Chapter 71 Unbearable.

Chapter 71: 71 Unbearable.

I parked the Crown in the student lot and watched as they stared at me for a brief totally worth it second.

Then I turned to Rhea. Maybe they were staring at the dog-girl anyway. But it wasn’t exactly unusual for people to have distinct features like that.

"Come on, Miles!" Rhea’s eyes were wide with awe and excitement, I could tell by the way her tail wagged underneath her skirt.

And with all the reluctance I had so dragged me into the building.

The convention was exactly what I expected.

Loud, crowded, and full of things that probably violated at least three laws of physics and half a dozen building codes.

The main hall had been divided into rows of displays, demonstration platforms, and temporary booths, with students, professors, investors, and the occasional corporate shark wandering between them.

Rhea, naturally, was in heaven.

"Oh, shit. Look at that!" she exclaimed, grabbing my sleeve and dragging me toward the first display before I even had a chance to see what she was pointing at.

It was a metallic sphere sitting inside a glass case, surrounded by a dozen smaller components and a handwritten sign explaining that it was some sort of compact energy regulator.

"What the hell am I supposed to be looking at?" I asked, squinting my eyes. "It looks like a ball."

"It’s a micro-fusion containment system," Rhea shot back, leaning over the display.

"And that is useful how exactly?"

"An important distinction." She studied the accompanying diagrams for a few seconds, her expression slowly turning sour. "The heat dispersion is inefficient."

"You got all that from looking at it?"

"No, I got that from looking at the diagrams." She tapped one of the pages with a claw. "See the third-stage capacitor array? It’s compensating for thermal instability instead of preventing the buildup in the first place. That’s stupid."

The student standing behind the booth blinked at her. "Uh... that’s what the prototype is designed to do."

Rhea looked at him for a moment. "Yes." She then pointed at the machine. "Badly."

The student’s face tensed with seething rage seeing as someone just insulted what I assumed to be months of work.

I grabbed Rhea by the shoulder before she could start explaining the engineering flaws in detail. "Come on. You’re going to get your ass kicked."

She followed but held his glare. "He should have considered that before embarrassing himself in public."

"You’re delightful." I deadpanned.

"I know." She smiled sweetly and let me drag her away.

The next few displays went about the same way.

There was a drone that could supposedly navigate on its own through dense urban environments, which Rhea immediately called "a glorified vacuum cleaner with delusions of grandeur."

There was a pair of mechanical arms designed for hazardous material handling that she spent five minutes examining before pointing out that different servo placement would make them twice as efficient.

The student running that booth actually started taking notes.

"See?" Rhea said proudly as we walked away. "I’m helping."

I rubbed my temples. "You insulted his entire design."

"I insulted his original design." She corrected me smugly. "Then I gave him a better one."

"I’m sure he’ll treasure the distinction."

She ignored me.

There was an experimental medical scanner that could supposedly identify tumors without invasive procedures, and for once Rhea actually seemed impressed.

"Finally," she muttered, folding her arms as she studied the display. "Something useful."

"You don’t like the murder machines anymore?" I asked. "Because as I recall there’s still an Octoporian floating atop my house."

"I like things that aren’t murder machines."

"You built an octopus robot."

"That’s not fair." she placed her hands on her hips and stopped to look back at me. "That was different."

"How?"

"It was cool."

Fair enough.

We moved deeper into the convention hall, weaving between crowds of students and professors while Rhea repeatedly stopped whenever something caught her attention.

Rhea stopped. "Oh, that’s fascinating."

"No." I said growing tired. This was supposed to be a short conference and somehow I feel like I’d taken her to Disneyland.

"You haven’t even looked at it."

"I did. It looks like something that escaped from a swamp." I slid my hands into my pockets. "And it’s not why we came here."

"It’s an artificial muscle."

"I do not care. Let’s go."

"Oh, come on." Rhea dropped her voice low. "Don’t tell me the great Magneron is afraid of technology."

"I’ve fought aliens, kaiju, supervillains, and one particularly unpleasant woman who could turn people inside out. I draw the line at nerd conventions. And vegans."

Rhea snorted and followed me. "Ironic given your powers require you to know a great deal of physics and chemistry."

At the far end of the convention hall was a much larger demonstration stage surrounded by a noticeably bigger crowd.

A sign hung above it.

PROFESSOR KORD — BIOLOGICAL REMEDIATION AND ADVANCED CELLULAR RESTORATION

Rhea grabbed my arm. "We’re going there." she grabbed my arm, practically giddy.

"Of course we are."

"Now."

"Yes, ma’am."

She gave me a satisfied little smile and started pulling me through the crowd.

At least we’d finally found the reason for this entire outing.

We soon reached the lecture hall after getting a pat down from a burly security guard checking to make sure we weren’t trying to smuggle in any gremlins or shrink rays.

It was an enormous room, its rows of seats dropping in tiers like a Roman theatre toward the floor below, where the podium and demonstration platform stood beneath a wall of massive screens.

Compared to the rest of the convention, where students crowded around half-finished inventions and scrambled to impress anyone wearing a corporate badge, this section carried a much more serious atmosphere.

Professors were spread throughout the audience, alongside representatives from pharmaceutical companies and several people whose suits likely cost more than my car.

Rhea practically vibrated in her seat.

I leaned back beside her, my arms resting behind my head as I surveyed the stage.

A massive metal canister occupied most of the platform, several thick cables spilling from it and disappearing into the floor like roots from some gigantic iron tree. Monitors surrounded the machine, each one filled with numbers I had no intention whatsoever of trying to understand.

Whatever Kord had created, someone had spent an absolutely stupid amount of money on it.

Rhea leaned toward me, lowering her voice as she watched the equipment being prepared. "Do you know how long I’ve wanted to see this?"

"Apparently long enough to become unbearable."

"I was already unbearable."

"Good point."

The lights dimmed before she could say anything else.

A door opened along the side of the stage, and Professor Kord finally emerged.

He was a small, mousy man with disheveled white hair and oversized glasses, his tweed suit straining awkwardly across his shoulders. Several patches had been stitched into the jacket, while his slender fingers nervously sorted through a stack of notes as he made his way toward the lectern.

"Th-thank you all for c-coming," he began, accidentally brushing his papers against the microphone.