The following days saw the continuation of their daily training. Thea had entered the fourth stage of sensory learning, the final stage named by Lady Shiva as "Listening to Earth."
This stage was quite vague. It required sensing the movements of insects in the soil, which Thea found genuinely difficult. Some of the insects were barely the size of sesame seeds, so what could she possibly sense?
Lady Shiva didn't have any better solutions. According to her, she could barely achieve it herself, but teaching others was a challenge.
Her method involved finding a cliff, hanging off it with one hand gripping the rocks, suspending her entire body in mid-air, and practicing meditation while completely disregarding life and death..
Thea considered this method somewhat insane and decided to stick to a healthier approach. Heart-pounding activities didn't suit her. Sitting on the ground was just fine, and if one day wasn't enough, she would take ten days. She was still young and not in a rush.
Meanwhile, Moira acted swiftly. Only a day after her discussion with Thea, a freshly baked announcement made its way to the desks of various media outlets and radio stations.
She had already contacted the municipal governments of Central City and Midway City, hinting at plans to build a high-speed railway between the cities. She subtly indicated that she had reached out to some "enthusiastic businessmen" who were willing to contribute generously. The two city governments only needed to show nominal support.
This proposition was too good for the governments to reject. They both expressed support for Moira's strong sense of social responsibility. The underlying message was clear: as long as it brought in dollars, we support your candidacy.
Linking the election campaign and employment wasn't a new tactic. Many had tried it before, with varying degrees of success. However, the successful ones had one thing in common: they had money!
During Tommy's leisure time, Malcolm took some interest in this matter. He hadn't expected his former lover to show such enthusiasm. While he wasn't pleased about increasing the income of the poor, it also provided him with an opportunity to infiltrate Central City and Midway City.
Overall, he expressed his support because his vast underground organization had nothing to do and was getting restless.
Not sure what he had initially envisioned, but he had established a massive organization with members from various walks of life, ranging from business stars like Moira, politicians, and police commissioners, to boat runners, drug dealers, and even street vendors like Leo Miller who sold submachine guns.
After its establishment, they did nothing and waited for five years. Malcolm's reason was to wait until the seismic device developed by Unidac Industries was ready, and then they would act. Now, with Moira's enthusiastic participation, Malcolm calculated to send a few henchmen to explore the situation. If everything went smoothly, they could take over both cities. If not, they could eliminate the unstable elements among his subordinates.
With Moira's strong candidacy and Malcolm's covert assistance, within four hours of her announcement, one of the three candidates had already announced their withdrawal, urging their supporters to fully support Mrs. Queen!
At this moment, Thea was at Felicity's house watching TV. She observed her mother passionately describing various hazards of transportation modes other than high-speed rail.
Airplanes? So many hijackings crashing into buildings, male and female superheroes flying by from time to time, how dangerous! Ferries? Moira presented facts and reasoning, combined with her own experiences, passionately discussing the 108 unsafe factors of maritime transportation. It was as if Robert and Oliver were not sailing on their cruise ship but on a raft.
In conclusion, if you want safety and employment, just vote for me.
A few seemingly arranged people in the audience immediately erupted into enthusiastic applause after Moira's speech, as if they had heard celestial music and profound words, creating an atmosphere as lively as the New Year.
The camera focused on a few burly men, tears streaming down their faces, looking excited beyond words.
Perhaps they dared not speak or had nothing to say? Thea found these guys somewhat familiar, especially one with a face full of tough muscles, the owner of the bar she often visited, wasn't he?
Felicity has always been indifferent to Moira. Watching her speak on stage, Felicity kept a disdainful expression, squinting her eyes and pursing her lips.
Thea couldn't understand why these two seemed so incompatible. In the original plot, Felicity was already Oliver's girlfriend and even made a sarcastic remark at Moira's funeral, not giving her boyfriend any face. Perhaps it could only be attributed to their incompatible personalities.
"Your anti-G suit has arrived," Felicity lazily said, putting down the phone.
Thank God! Finally! They promised to have it ready in three days, but it took them a whole ten days.
They really didn't take her seriously! Thea silently noted down those few people in her little black book. When she gained power, she would send these guys to experience life in the Siberian coal mines.
Although these guys had questionable characters, their craftsmanship was still good. To increase breathability, they modified the suit with an inner and outer layer, with the inner layer divided into upper and lower parts, connected in the middle. The outer layer retained the previous overall style but was made looser.
Unlike the previous tight-fitting suit that left nothing to the imagination, it could now confuse one's gender to some extent, which was good.
The brain-computer interface (BCI) had undergone a complete transformation. Both women felt that the previous bulky helmet was too ridiculous and ugly. After disassembling it, they redesigned it into its current form.
The new design looks somewhat like the headpiece of the Elven Queen Galadriel from "The Lord of the Rings," except theirs is the sci-fi version while Galadriel's is the fantasy version. Instead of a mithril chain with five gems, theirs uses polymer composites with several action modules, both shining brightly from a distance.
These action modules consumed a lot of Felicity's energy. She even destroyed two keyboards while writing the code, claiming it made her lose three pounds, as she put it.
The action modules primarily collected Thea's brainwaves, utilizing sensors placed on her scalp to detect and record the electrical activity generated by her neurons. These brainwaves were then processed by the device, which translated them into commands for controlling the entire Glider. These commands were transmitted through the white matter in her brain cells, facilitating direct communication between her thoughts and the Glider's systems.
However, despite the seamless integration of Thea's brainwaves with the Glider's control mechanisms, the speed of neural transmission and processing proved to be slower than the system transmission. This discrepancy in speed created a delay between Thea's thoughts and the execution of commands by the device, placing significant pressure on her cognitive abilities. The prolonged exposure to this cognitive strain resulted in Thea experiencing a persistent headache for two days, akin to the sensation of a wooden stick lodged in her head. Furthermore, she endured feelings of daze and confusion during this period. It was only after two days of rest and recovery that Thea began to feel relief from her symptoms.
The two tried many methods and finally concluded that the machine was indeed smarter than humans. Even Thea 2.0 couldn't handle it. They had to manually reduce the output frequency on the system side to match the level of the human brain.
One downside of reducing the frequency was that the overall response speed of the entire Glider control system slowed down. Various maneuvers that could be completed with just a thought, such as evasions and high jumps, now required manual adjustment between Thea and the machine. Although Felicity added a fuzzy algorithm module, the overall performance inevitably decreased by 30%.
If the original Green Goblin Glider was considered version 1.0, Thea's makeshift version could only be considered as version 0.7 beta.
Fortunately, she only saw this as a training exercise and didn't plan to use it to practice any fancy flying techniques. With its current performance, it's more than enough to rob a few gangs or engage in some Robin Hood-style activities.