Unreviewed Variasteel

[John Locke]

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Variasteel is not so much a pure material as it is a system within itself, made up of cells of durasteel and electronics.
• Each cell is a block of metal that is able to control it's connections to the other cells and other materials surrounding it through the process of electro-adhesion.
• The same bonds that hold the cells together also allow the cells to "move" by tightening a bond while releasing others, allowing them to slide over one another.
• This ability to move and selectively control what they're bonded to allows commands to be spread across the structure of cells, reacting to these commands the Variasteel cells to move and reshape themselves.

STRENGTHS

• Exists as a matrix of metallic cells each of which is a 2mm octahedron.
• Each surface of the "cell" contains the electro-adhesive material, electrical and data connections.
• By releasing and contracting the electro-adhesive connections the "cells" are able to move across surfaces.
  • This movement isn't only limited to across other Variasteel "cells" but across any solid surface the electro-adhesive can connect to.
  • The Variasteel "cells" can connect and flow over one another to construct any shape required.
    • The Variasteel responds to coded messages which can either provide it a premade design or active direction.

WEAKNESSES

• The Variasteel has a specific mass and has to operate within those bounds, it can not increase or reduce it's mass, just move it around.
• If an EMP is used against Variasteel it will disable the "cells" ability to adjust their bonds and adjust it's shape. The Variasteel will be locked into shape until the excess ion energy can be drained from the metal resetting it's ability.

DESCRIPTION

The dream of a metal that could change its shape was hardly a new one. Engineers had chased it through memory alloys, smart materials and increasingly elaborate mechanical systems for centuries, invariably running into the same problem: the stronger a material became, the less willing it was to move.

Variasteel approached the problem from the opposite direction.

Rather than attempting to make metal itself malleable, its designers accepted its stubborn refusal to change and simply stopped asking it to. The metal remained exactly as strong and rigid as it had always been; it was instead divided into millions of tiny cells and given the ability to decide what it was attached to.

The result was something that behaved rather unlike metal at all.

Under direction, apparently solid Variasteel could creep across a surface, draw itself into new shapes or seemingly flow around machinery before becoming still once again. A sheet could pull itself apart and reform as a framework; a framework could collapse into a compact block; damaged structures could redistribute surviving material around a breach. To an observer unfamiliar with the technology, the effect was often mistaken for some exotic form of liquid metal.

It was nothing of the sort. Every tiny piece remained solid throughout the process.

This distinction proved to be the technology's greatest virtue. Variasteel required neither the extreme temperatures associated with reshaping conventional metals nor the exotic properties of many advanced alloys. Instead, complexity was moved away from the material and into the network controlling it. Give that network a shape and enough Variasteel to build it, and the material would steadily arrange itself to match.

Early demonstrations naturally produced simple things: tools that changed their heads, containers that resized themselves around their contents and structural supports capable of adapting to their surroundings. It was only as increasingly sophisticated control systems were connected to the material that the implications became apparent.

A sufficiently intelligent machine no longer needed to be built for a particular shape.

It merely needed enough Variasteel to decide what shape it wanted to be.