"Well, the first thing I tried," Leonard proclaimed, "came about because I realized the RAM was going to be drawing a lot of power." He waved in the general direction of the assemblage that stretched along one full wall of the basement. "I didn't want my parents to get a huge bill next month, so that was my first tweak."
Jon was confused. "Bill for what? For the parts?"
"Ah, no, sorry," said Leonard. "I meant an electric bill."
Jon remembered, years ago, noticing some discolored bricks on the side of their house, and his father telling him it was probably where a meter measuring electricity had once been attached, then explaining what that was. "But -- but that hasn't been a thing since our parents were kids."
"Right, because they figured out how to easily and safely create energy from fusion," Leonard agreed.
"Right." Jon nodded toward the corner of the basement where there stood both a metal cylinder that was instantly recognizable as a water heater and a smaller metal obelisk that was instantly recognizable as a fusion generator.
"Every building in the world has a fusion generator installed," said Leonard. "Every vehicle uses one as a power source. They're completely reliable and completely clean. No one's burned fossil fuels for anything since about 1985."
"Right," Jon said again, more hesitantly and with a sinking feeling in his stomach.
"It was a discovery that truly changed the world! Or, if you haven't guessed as such already, that changed a 5-kilometer radius around this house. And all I did was program the RAM so there wouldn't be an electric bill." Leonard smiled and smugly crossed his arms.
"Is that all you told it to do?" asked Jon. "What if it had changed things so electricity hadn't been discovered?"
A brief flicker of doubt seemed to cross Leonard's face, but then he said, "No, the RAM shouldn't do anything that would cause itself to cease to exist, or even cause itself to stop working. That's Reality Alteration Science 101."
Jon was skeptical there was enough actual reality alteration science for a college introductory course, but he just sighed and asked, "Okay, what was the second thing you tried?"
