-What did just happen!? We had a meeting and she just walked out before we even began? What is that she left?-

-I believe it is some kind of suit. There is a flash drive in the briefcase. Maybe it contains more information about it. For now should we check the contents?-

The army guys took the flash drive and inserted it into a computer not connected to a network or the internet and opened the files one by one. What they found in there was astonishing if it turned out to be true. What they had in the briefcase was a bulletproof suit with the capabilities of an armored exoskeleton that far surpassed every achievement reached by the T.A.L.O.S. project. They had to test the capabilities of the suit to make sure of its capabilities. If everything turned out to be true, they were for sure going to call the mysterious woman. One of the army guys looked at the business card left on the table,

Santiago Tech Innovations

CEO Valentina Santiago

On her way back from the meeting place, Valentina was walking by a skate park and her gaze was pulled to a young man doing tricks on his skateboard. The skateboard was invented in the 1950 and in 70 years there hasn’t been a major improvement to the design. Sure there were material improvements and one or two diversions with electric skateboards, but didn’t science fiction promise them hover boards by now? ”It looks like I will have to innovate these ancient equipment. Might as well try it with skates as well. But I better register them through the toy company. They are sport and hobby equipment after all.”

Back at Penny’s loft, she was standing in the DTR and thinking deeply about the feasibility of her newest project. There were a couple of ways to achieve or fake levitation and build a hover board. There was magnetic and electromagnetic levitation, but you needed a metal ground to levitate over and it wasn’t possible over normal concrete. Then there was the ion wind effect that could be used to fake levitation. Next was air-cushion that could be used and technically be called hovering. Then there were electric and fuel jet engines that could produce the lift needed for hovering. And finally there was the acoustic levitation principle, but that hasn’t been studied for massive undertakings. For now Penny decided to scan a hover board from the movie back to the future II and see if that could work in the real world and if she could reverse engineer the principle. If not, she would just make a working variant of every type of hover technology and just market that.

-A.I.C.A. while I am away, please research with the AI’s media with room temperature superconductors. Also collect all theories about superconductors and test them with all real and theoretical materials with the simulation AIs and the quantum computer.-

-Penny, most sci-fi media is in the possession of said superconductors. Otherwise there is no ways to achieve the needed energy to power some of their devises.-

-Then wish me luck in acquiring them with my next scan. Do the simulations though. Maybe we will be lucky and won’t need to find it elsewhere.-

Penny paused the movie when Marty McFly was running out of the shop and then activated select invisibility on herself and her scanner. She dimension traveled into the movie and waited beside the car of the bullies. In the car she found 3 hover boards that she scanned one by one so she could compare their different makes and models. Next she waited a few minutes a little to the side until the chase was almost over and then teleported to the edge of the pond and scanned the jet powered hoover board after which she dimension traveled back to the DTR.

As she suspected, it turned out that the blueprints of the hover boards could not be used to learn how to construct a working one. They worked on some kind of gravity technology that didn’t work in this dimension, so Penny turned to her other stolen blueprints. There were the schematics about a sound devise that could bear the weight of a person and make them levitate, so she started by converting it to work on her newer project. Even though the levitators on the hover boards didn’t work, the rest of the systems were actually very good. There was a strong power supply, energy lines made from superconductor, as A.I.C.A. had said it could be found in a lot of devices, and if she integrated the sound levitator and tweaked the design a little, she could have a prototype by tomorrow morning.

-A.I.C.A. transfer the design to be tested for issues and optimize it. Then test every skate trick that has been thought of and every variation and combination of them. I want to know the differences between wheels and levitation. After that report the issues you encountered during testing. I will be working on the charging and analysis devise.-

-Right away, Penny. Also the simulation of the super conductors has finished. There were a couple of positive results. With current technology levels it would be difficult, but not impossible to synthesize them.-

-Thank you, you did a good job. Please convey my thanks to the other AIs as well.-

-You are welcome, Penny.-

During the next couple of hours the group worked diligently on the project and every time a problem was reported it was quickly taken care of. After a couple more iterations of the design, they were left with a beautiful hover board design and a wireless charging station with remote access to the programing of the board.

-A board 1 centimeter thick and 2 where the 2 acoustic levitators are mounted with the bends of a regular skateboard. It has proximity censors and accelerometer. The censors can increase the power of the levitators to compensate for a fall instead of shock absorbers and from the charging station you can run diagnostics and set the distance from the ground you want to levitate at. Some tricks are impossible with the hover board due to the removal of the wheels, but others are made easier because there is less friction and there is more control with handling it. A.I.C.A. start fabricating 10 of them and the charging stations. Tomorrow morning we go to a skate park to test them out.-

-Penny, I strongly advise against it. You are viable to break something.-

-Don’t be silly. I won’t be testing them. There will be skateboarders at the park. We will give one to the 10 most capable. On second thought, fabricate s few more and send them to the 20 best professional skateboard athletes in the country. Ask them to beta test the boards and send back feedback. After thet, we will have to again go to the patent office. I am starting to think we need to employ a private patent employee to file all the things I come up with. And there are all the other variants that I will come up with and have to patent. So much work. Good night A.I.C.A.-

-Good night, Penny.-

The next day Penny changed her mind and went to the patent office first, then did some more project tinkering for magnetic and air jet engine variations on her hover board and in the afternoon she went to the closest skate park. As it turned out she was right to postpone her visit to now, because the skaters were just getting assembled around the different obstacles. Penny took a deep breath and then put one of the boards on the ground then whistles as hard as she could. Heads turned to look at her and she slid the board to one of them.

-Give that one a try.-

The teenager looked at the board that slid to him and put his foot on it before it could hit him. The feeling was strange, as if he was stepping on a spring. He bend down and lifted the board for a better look. As soon as he saw the bottom of the board a huge smile materialized on his face and he mounted the new board. It felt familiar and different at the same time, but not bad. He tried a few beginner tricks like a ollie, a tic-tac, board slide on a rail, manual and nose manual. The first difference was felt when he tried to do a primo and the board just rotated all the way. There were no wheels to support him. The next few minutes he tried and found the difference between a normal skateboard and the hover board, but he wasn’t a professional and couldn’t immediately think of ways to take advantage of them to come up with new tricks. The experience was otherwise very exciting. When he turned around to return the hover board he couldn’t find the strange woman anywhere. There was just a briefcase looking box where she had been with a sticky note on it.

Read the manual. Experiment with the settings and call me in a week with feedback.

PS. You can keep the board. P.R.Ankster.

Then there was a number where he could call her. The teen didn’t know if he was lucky or unlucky to meet such a strange woman, but in the years to come, he was glad he did.

Penny visited a few more skate parks and did almost the same thing in all of them. She wanted to accumulate data to see if it was easier for newbies or professionals to learn to operate her hover board. There would be discrepancies in the data with this shallow test pool, but it was a start. She was happy and for some reason she had the urge to prank someone.

-A.I.C.A. look at the data of the NSA agents in the database we hacked. I want someone that reads a lot of game literature. Someone young. I need an address and schedule. Also fabricate a pair of AR contact lenses and construct a game graphic interface please. Also fabricate a set of pen tester equipment and most used keys.-

When Penny got home everything was ready and she could pull her prank immediately. She put her costume on and teleported to the neighborhood where her target was, but this time she didn’t cast select invisibility on herself. She did cast disintegration spell with a delay on the contact lenses for when their battery ran out or when they were found, but otherwise she wanted to do everything without magic. Everything was starting to feel a little too easy for her with just that one spell in her arsenal.

Penny was in front of the apartment building of her target and was looking at the front door. There was no intercom buzzer, so she implemented one of the lessons from physical pen testing. What followed was actually a very shoddy security for an apartment building, but Penny couldn’t always hope to come up against shoddy security. She had to come up with new tools of infiltration. For now she continued her work and opened the door to her target’s apartment. The man was asleep and Penny tiptoed to his bed trying to not make any noise. Now was time for the hard part, putting the contact lenses on his eyeballs. She carefully took out a breathing apparatus with a mixture of anesthetic gasses and put it over his mouth and nose. When her glasses showed her he was deeply asleep, she opened his eyes and carefully put the contacts on. Now Penny just needed to exit the building and teleport home. The rest was up to her AIs to pull the prank successfully.

The next morning the NSA agent woke up feeling a little sluggish and it took a long time for him to orient himself. He got out of bed, brushed his teeth and started making breakfast when a blue screen appeared in his vision.

Welcome, user, to the Alpha test of the System. You have been chosen as one of the Alpha testers of the System before it becomes integrated with Earth. Let us begin the tutorial.