"Is this an alien product too?" Felicity, who counted as having seen the world after her trip to the Red Room, couldn't help but think this.
Thea didn't confirm or deny the question. She needed Felicity's computer knowledge to strengthen Gideon—or rather, to restrict the artificial intelligence. Countless movies and TV shows had revealed just how much disaster an unrestricted AI could bring to humanity.
Gideon on the timeship Waverider had even evolved emotions; Thea had to guard against this.
"This... I need to study it carefully..." Thea ordered Gideon to display the source code. Felicity's eyes lit up after reading just two lines. Then, completely ignoring Thea, she began typing away furiously on several machines alone.
The former hacker lady researched for a whole day. Thea eventually had to make her stop because the girl was so absorbed she forgot to eat and sleep. If Thea didn't intervene, she might starve herself to death!
Miss Felicity was incredibly excited. The moment she saw Thea again, she poured out her research findings like spilling beans.
Thea was made dizzy by the talk of algorithms and logical structures. In short, in Felicity's mouth, Gideon was synonymous with perfection and exquisiteness.
"When do you think we can start design work on our mechanical armor?" Thea didn't care about the construction of the AI, as long as it didn't rebel.
"We can start right now..." Felicity said somewhat indistinctly, her mouth still full of food.
"Then let's begin!"
Designing the Iron Suit wasn't too difficult. They had The Atom's suit as a foundation, combined with the new type of energy source recently developed by Queen Consolidated.
After research by dozens of scientists at Queen Consolidated, a White Dwarf Star fragment the size of a cubic centimeter weighed one ton. If the output of this small fragment was designed reasonably, it could provide electricity for a city of a million people for several years. This massive energy body was completely capable of powering the Iron Suit.
In the original timeline, The Atom, Ray Palmer, only obtained the new energy technology after acquiring Queen Consolidated. His suit initially used the White Dwarf Star for energy as well. Unfortunately, this high-density, high-temperature stellar fragment was extremely unstable. A violent explosion accidentally resulted in his atomization (shrinking ability).
Thea didn't need to follow his old path. The Red Room Laboratory had the product she needed: a White Dwarf Stabilizer. The size of a small box, once installed inside the armor, it could smoothly output the energy from the White Dwarf Star. If the enemy was tricky, one could even release the stabilizer's restrictions, allowing the suit to run at 200% or even 300% power for a minute.
It could be said that aliens were more than one era ahead of Earth in energy usage.
Thea set up a mechanical processing workshop of the highest current standard in her secret base. The AI drew the blueprints, and robotic arms completed the machining work. Everything proceeded in an orderly manner.
Her life gradually got on the right track. Group affairs were handed over to the presidents. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she researched feudal superstitious magic. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, she delved into modern science to manufacture mechanical armor. In the evenings, she used her spare time to teach Damian. On weekends, she played around the world with Diana. Her days were happy and fulfilling.
While she was happy, naturally, some people were unhappy.
With the market launch of the Medical Pods, a large number of medical workers were impacted. Originally, they could leisurely pass a day with just two surgeries. Now, with the Medical Pods on the market, a surgery took ten minutes, and the patient could go home in two hours. The efficiency had increased more than tenfold compared to their past days.
The Medical Practitioners Union, the Trauma Healing Union, the Nurses Union, the Attending Physicians Union, and a whole bunch of unions Thea had never even heard of responded in force. A group of people marched, demonstrated, and launched petitions. In the end, seeing that Queen Consolidated didn't take them seriously at all, they angrily sued in Federal Court. Under the system of separation of powers, and for reasons unknown, the court actually accepted the case.
Thea, who was still developing her weapon system, could only helplessly attend the preliminary hearing.
"Miss Queen, please don't be nervous. You don't need to say a word." This was her bodyguard, Diggle, who had no idea what was really going on.
"Thea, these are small problems. Please don't get agitated..." This was Lyla Michaels from A.R.G.U.S., who thought she understood Thea's strength.
"Calm down. You must stay calm." The one saying this was the Martian Manhunter, disguised as the Director of the D.E.O. He was terrified Thea would lose her temper and unleash her full power right there; with his fear of fire, he wouldn't be able to stop her at all.
On the surface, the three of them were saying the same thing—but what they meant was worlds apart.
Thea's mindset was very transcendent right now. These guys holding signs and shouting protests posed zero threat to her. One wide-range Fear Spell, and eighty percent of this mob would wet their pants.
She glanced sideways at the Martian Manhunter. This guy was focusing all his attention on guarding against her.
"Hey, who organized the guys behind this?" Thea's question resonated in his mind.
"I don't know. Neither the D.E.O. nor A.R.G.U.S. received any news. But barring any accidents, it's Lex Luthor." The Martian Manhunter didn't hide it from her and shared his guess.
Thea pursed her lips but didn't speak. Luthor's desire for control was too strong; he would absolutely not tolerate a dissenting voice appearing in his sphere of influence. Waiting until today to start making trouble was already considered late for him. However, this move was just a probe—testing where the government and military's bottom line for supporting Thea lay. Only after knowing the baseline could he continue his subsequent activities.
I have to create some trouble for him too. Should I send Deathstroke or Poison Ivy?
Thea thought about it and decided Poison Ivy was better. Luthor was full of black technology too. Deathstroke's profile was quite high; it would be troublesome if he were discovered.
Sure enough, Thea didn't say a word during the subsequent preliminary hearing and press conference, right up until she left the venue.
That very night, supernatural events occurred at the LexCorp Tower. From time to time, employees working overtime would suddenly go berserk and beat up their supervisors. At first, it was thought to be an isolated case, but when three incidents happened within three days, even a fool knew there was a problem.
"Did you do this?" The Martian Manhunter blocked Thea early in the morning, shoving a newspaper into her hand.
Thea opened the newspaper to look. Hey?! It turned out to be the Daily Planet, which was, of course, naturally at odds with Luthor. The entire front page was news about LexCorp frantically exploiting laborers. The writer wasn't Lois Lane, but the writing style was even more scathing. Under his pen, LexCorp was practically a sweatshop.
Regarding the Martian Manhunter's accusation, she flatly denied it. "Don't talk nonsense. You're a master of mind control; this is obviously not a mind control method." As she spoke, Thea even made a disgusted expression.
Poison Ivy's methods were traceless. Who would think that some plants could be so powerful? The Martian Manhunter had naturally gone to the scene to observe. He indeed found no traces of mind control, but this puzzled him even more.
Who on earth did this?
"Maintain restraint. Don't let the situation escalate." Leaving behind two sentences, he hurried back to continue looking for clues.