Fandom High School

The Danger Shop was set to the workshop again, but with a space cleared out at the front of class.

"It's the last week, kids," Aphra said cheerfully, with a pile of foil wrapped chocolate in her lap. "Which means that it's presentation time! You get to show off your projects to the rest of the class. If they work, tell us about what they can do, if they don't, sell us on the broken piece of junk anyway, because take it from me, there is always someone who'll buy what you're selling if you're willing to put in the legwork." And that went for more than just artifacts.

Aphra's class weren't in the Danger Shop this week. There were also a number of large boxes at the front of the room.

"Because you were all so great last week." By which Aphra meant quiet. "I got you something!"

It was Lego. "Look you can make all sorts of things with it, like a proper ship!" Expensive Lego.

Online sales were not good for someone with Aphra's impulse control.

The Danger Shop was back to the workshop, though somewhat less junky than usual.

"Here's the thing," Aphra began. "Depending on what kind of universe you're from, when you start restoring and reactivating artifacts, sooner or later you're going to fix something up that can think, which means you need to start thinking about what you're going to do if that happens now, because if it can think, it can get cranky."

She paused. "And I don't mean that in an ethical sense. Ethics are great, sure, but they're not necessarily beneficial to a prolonged existence. So think practical here.

"Now, depending on what you've woken, you've got options." Aphra held up a small cylindrical object. "This here's a restraining bolt. If you attach it to a droid you can keep it from doing a whole bunch of nasty things, there's also reprogramming, removing power sources, that kind of thing. But then you've gotta consider what happens if that fails. Restraining bolts fail, there's a back-up battery, some slicer undid you harder work. Redundancy is your friend." Redundancy and not being a dick to murder-droids.

"So, class discussion time, how do you deal with disturbing a cranky AI's naptime?"

The Danger Shop looked pretty much like normal, though with certain changes to account for Aphra’s...difficulties.

"The thing with restoring artifacts, is that sometimes you don't want them restored," she explained. "The mechanism to bring about the waking of the Great Old Ones, or the tome to put them back to sleep. There are a lot of things the mortal mind was not meant to know, or even search out, kids." Except it was totally cool for her. She was a professional. Also the other thing.

"So your job today is to figure out ways to *stop* artifacts being restored. Without actually destroying them beyond repair or dropping anything into stars or black holes. That's cheating. Also dangerous."

Aphra looked at lot like someone who wished she was reclining on a stunning beach somewhere instead of teaching class. Largely because the Danger Shop was set up to look like a stunning beach and Aphra was reclining in a very comfortable looking chair. The students' workbenches were also on the beach.

"Firstly, despite what judgemental individuals might insinuate with their choice of class topics, I am an excellent roommate." Aphra, they didn't care, and also, you weren't. "Secondly, environmental hazards. You gotta learn how to deal with them, since you're not always going to be able to work in a nice clean-room type situation."

The Danger Shop did not resemble the workshop today, instead looking like some kind of large games room, and Aphra was lounging casually in a way that implied that she certainly hadn't been beating on the controls not thirty seconds before.

"Metaphor time!" Aphra said, far, far, too cheerfully. "Sometime fixing an artifact you've found is more like putting together a puzzle where you not only don't have a picture on the box, but you have no box, and you're not sure you have all the pieces, and there are pieces of something else there too, and halfway through you realise you've been putting it together wrong because it's actually a completely different kind of puzzle. Then it explodes."

She gestured to the table in the middle of the room, which was indeed piled high with a giant heap of puzzle pieces. "So you'll be doing that today. Without that exploding part." Probably.

The Danger Shop had a holoprojector set up today, because why wait longer than a fortnight before starting with movie classes.

"You all did great last week," Aphra told them. "But I really need to emphasise why it's a kriffing awful idea to poke at things when you either don't know what they are, or if all your context clues imply poking's a really dumb idea. So educational holo, and to make it interactive, every time you think they're being idiots take a drink, take two if you can think of more sensible choices!"

"Don't worry, yours aren't booze, your livers couldn't take it if they were."

The Danger Shop looked like a cave of wonders today. A cave of battered, broken wonders, often with very suspicious burn marks along with a number of work-benches.

"So I've already taught those of you I recognise about actually finding artifacts," Aphra said clapping her hands together. "But it turns out they're much more valuable when they're not all kinds of broken. Now, when we're talking about artwork and pottery, fixing that is a specialised field that takes years of study, skill, and something resembling talent. Trust me, the results aren't pretty when amateurs try it. Tech, on the other hand, you still need skill for the real tricky stuff, but the bar for entry level fixes is a lot lower."

She waved a hand around the room. "But we'll get to all that later, for now, pick something you think is interesting from the pile. You don't even need to know what it is, but take your time because it's gonna be a project over the semester. Then introduce yourself to the class and explained why you picked it."