EDP Step One:  Problem Definition

	
	It was bullshit.  It was all bullshit to Travis Dalton.  For a little more than a year, he’d lived in Thalland City and attended the University of Thalland City studying Materials Science, and all he had to think about was the bullshit in front of him.  It was a little scrap of paper that read ‘11 Research and Development of Materials Synthesis’.  He’d been through the arduous first year of Materials Science and Engineering; he knew the subtle nuances of writing midterms and preparing pre-labs.  In three years, it would culminate to a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Science and a promising career making six figure salaries, but at that moment, all that was on his mind were the six words and two digits on a folded scrap of paper in front of him.  He sighed deeply.
	
“Crap,” he muttered to himself in his thick Australian accent.  His silver coloured tail slumped to the floor behind his chair as he sulked.  It still had flecks of purple on it, as did the rest of his dark fur and dirty brown hair.  The great engineering tradition he took part in every year.  Strip down to your undergarments, jump in a garbage bin full of purple dye for a few moments and parade around like that for a few days.  The year before, he was forced.  But now he was a F!rosh leader, and he did it of his own volition.  He loved being in 2nd year.  He wore his coveralls with pride, a badge of honour that signified he wasn’t a lowly freshman, but that he had proven himself worthy of the field of engineering.  But even the carefully sewn patches that adorned his heavy coveralls couldn’t distract him from the dreadful bore and sour feeling of getting a new assignment.  He folded the scrap again and put the tape over it, restoring it to its former state before he pulled it out of his professor’s white hardhat.  He opened it again, vainly hoping the topic would be different.  He sighed again and rested his head in his hands.

	“Yo, Trav, whatcha got?” the student seated beside him asked.

	“Eh, number eleven,” Travis said, reluctantly sitting up straight.  “What you got, Mike?”

	“Nine,” Mike replied.  “What is eleven, anyway?”

	“R and D of Materials shit,” Travis said, staring up at the ceiling of the barren tutorial room.  The room was ugly to Travis, as all the tutorial rooms were on campus.  It was probably why he would only plow girls in nice living rooms.  All about the aesthetics.

	“Hey, that sounds kinda cool, Trav,” Mike said.

	“Yeah, could be,” Travis said, half heartedly as he looked at his watch.  He prayed for it to end so he could leave.  He hated the ugly yellow walls so much.

	“Remember,” the professor said, calling the class once again to order.  “You have until 2 tomorrow to switch topics with somebody.  See you next week.”

	“Thank God,” Travis muttered, rolling his eyes as the excited chatter once again filled the tutorial room.  The cliques were forming again, debating their topics and deciding what the evening would hold.  He and Mike joined with the rest of theirs.

	“So where ya goin’ now, man?” Mike asked Travis as he left the yellow tutorial room into the yellow hallway of the Curlock Building.  “Headin’ to the SF basement?”

	“Nah, I gotta look into a job prospect,” Travis said, only half listening to Mike.  The rest of his conscious thought lingered on what the hell this job prospect was.  He only knew that a friend of his colleague Michelle needed somebody to help him out with a design problem.  He was weary of the idea; Travis had very limited knowledge and experience with design problems.  But he needed the money; tuition didn’t pay itself off.  Michelle promised a good pay and while he didn’t completely trust her, he was willing to try it.

	“Oh well then,” Mike offered.  “See you tomorrow.”  With that sentiment, Mike turned down a corridor and waved to Travis.

	“See you tomorrow, mate,” Travis replied, waving meekly.  He tossed back his lightly purple hair and began the walk towards the subway station.  He fished into his pocket and pulled out his wallet to double check the address that Michelle had given him.  Keeping the address in mind, he tugged on the sleeves of the coveralls dangling at his waist and walked onwards to Queen’s Park station, which was only a block from the engineering buildings.	  It was routine to Travis getting on, but this time his destination would be different.  As he looked out the window of the train and saw the dark tunnels rushing past, Travis’ mind was left to its own devices.  He liked thinking about Michelle.  Her lovely chestnut hair, her silky white fur, the way her eyes matched her hair.  But what he liked about her most is that she enjoyed their line of work.  It struck him that she saw it more of a choice than a last option, as it was to Travis.  He was always taught by his mother and father to take advantage of his gifts, and in that respect, he did.  Oh, what’s the point, Travis thought.  She probably has a hot boyfriend with chiseled features.  There was no chance for him to win her over.

	He snapped out of his daydream just in to time to get off the train at the station indicated on the slip of paper.  Slinging his backpack over his shoulders, he emerged from the underground terminal to the setting sun of Thalland City.  He checked his watch.  I hate my damn schedule, he thought to himself.   He looked about at his surroundings as he followed the directions Michelle gave him.  The neighbourhood struck him as pretty run-down.  Several of the buildings were boarded up.  Kids played games in the streets, an elderly man wearing fishnet stockings moseyed across the street.  A cyclist drove through a red light and seemed completely oblivious to the danger and the subsequent horn honks from the cars halted by the illegal action.  “Only in Thalland City…,” muttered Travis as he found his bearings and turned right on the sidewalk.

	Travis checked the numbers along the buildings as he passed.  He knew he was close, so he let his steps slow gradually until he stopped at his supposed destination.  He quickly checked the address one more time, and then took in the sight of the building.  It certainly fit in with the rest of the neighbourhood.  The building looked like it dated back to the 20s, if not the turn of the century, and it looked like it hadn’t had much work done on it since that time.  It was a huge structure, a rustic hulk amongst rustic hulks.  But he noticed the windows looked new and figured somebody had to live here.  He walked up to the door and gave a strong rap with his knuckles.  After waiting a few moments, he wondered whether he had the right place, but a click of the lock broke that moment of wonderment and he turned his attention back to the door.

	It was a large bat-earred fox that answered the door.  His appearance made Travis nervous.  He had several piercings on his face and ears, as well as two sharp scars over his glassy grey right eye.  “Yeah?”  The stranger spoke in a gruff, Spanish accent.  Seeing that glassy eye made Travis even more uneasy; he wasn’t sure if it still if the eye still had sight and that question disturbed the young engineer.

	“Um, I’m uh… I’m looking for Michelle, if that means anything to you,” Travis managed to say.

	“No Michelles here, mate,” the fox replied, mocking Travis’ accent.

	“Oh, Travis is that you?”  Travis breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of the familiar voice.  The young woman he knew as Metal Michelle came up to the door and let Travis in.  The glassy-eyed fox yielded to Travis as he came in the door and set down his backpack.  “How are you, Travis?” she asked and embraced the tall engineer, who in turn gave her a light kiss on the cheek.

	“I’m alright,” Travis said, still feeling that unwelcoming glare from the bat-earred stranger.  “Um, Michelle, who’s this?”

	“Sanchez,” the stranger said sharply.  “Hector Sanchez.”

	“Pleased to meet you, Hector,” Travis said politely, but meekly.  “I’m Travis Dalton.”

	“Charmed,” Hector replied in a very condescending voice and promptly wandered elsewhere in the building.

	“Who is that guy, M?” Travis whispered inquisitively.

	“It’s a long story, Trav,” the girl replied and Travis knew he wouldn’t get any more information on the mysterious Spaniard.  “Now is good a time as ever to tell you that my name isn’t actually Michelle.”

	“It isn’t?” Travis asked, visibly surprised
	
	“No, it’s actually Ute.”  Ute straightened a loose strand of her hair and looked up to Travis’ eyes.  “Michelle is just my ‘stage name’ I suppose you could say.”

	“Oh, I see, well that’s a nice name,” Travis said, grinning at his colleague.  Ute grinned back.  Travis wanted to ask a question of Ute, but hesitated for a moment, thinking the question was completely out of place.  However his thoughts nagged him like an itch that just had to be scratched and he blurted the question out.  “So was that guy your boyfriend… or something?”

	“Hector?  Oh, fuck no,” Ute replied, taking Travis into the living room.  He was so struck by how lavishly the room was furnished that he nearly missed the details Ute offered.  “Morgan’s my lover.”  Ute gave a sultry wink that almost left Travis feeling insulted.  “I’ll go let Bors you’re here.”

	Bors, Hector, Ute, Travis thought, shuffling the names around in his head.  How many people lived here?  Then Ute’s wink caught his mind and he couldn’t stop thinking about what Morgan looked like.  He pictured that same man with chiseled features he pictured back on the subway, but before his jealousy could overtake him, the green monster was slain by Bors’ commanding voice.

	“Hey there!” he called out to Travis as he came up from the basement.  “You must be Ute’s coworker.”  Travis slowly rose from his seat to shake hands with the man.  He was considerably shorter than Travis, but he was built very well.  He was human, dark brown hair with eyes as piercing as Hector’s.  His muscular form rivaled Travis’ and although he was several inches shorter, still had a commanding presence in the room.

	“Yes, my name is Travis Dalton.”  Travis nodded respectfully at the human.

	“Bors Fortinbras,” the human introduced himself.  “Thanks for helping me out with this thing here.  Follow me.”  Bors started down the stairs with Travis in tow, but he didn’t waste any time getting right to the point.  “Travis, how much do you know about the demon war?”

	“Just what we got taught in history class,” Travis replied.

	“Throw all that garbage away,” Bors said and proceeded to let his own lecture roll off his tongue.  “In 1978, five people in this very house killed the demon lord Azmodan and ended the massacre once and for all.  Now that Jared’s taken up his father’s crusade, it’s fallen upon us to take him down.”

	Travis was momentarily stunned by this rush of new information.  “Did you say… five people in THIS house?”

	“I did Travis, I did,” Bors said, gesturing him into a side room in the basement.  “Ute was one of them.”

	“What?  That’s impossible!”  Travis exclaimed.  “Ute wouldn’t have been born at that point.”

	“Ute Blasendorf was born on Dominion Day of 1962,” Bors replied, leading Travis into a laboratory of sorts.  Papers, metal slabs and other equipment littered the room, as well as several other pieces of heavy equipment and a high speed computer.  But Travis didn’t notice any of this; his mind was focused on this startling revelation.  “Don’t let it rattle you, Travis.  There’s more to us than meets the eye, but I called you here to work on something very important and I’m willing to pay you well for it.”

	“How much will I earn for this?” Travis asked confidently.  Bors reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wad of bills.  He casually tossed it to Travis and flatly stated the amount:  “Five thousand dollars up front.  Another five grand once you’ve finished conceptual design.”

	Travis’ eyes widened.  “Five thousand?”  The mystery of Ute’s age and the demon war left Travis’ head and a curiosity about this project arose.  He looked around the room for the first time and what he saw astonished him further.  The first things he noticed were several pornographic magazines strewn about the room, but he quickly turned his attention away from those. To his left stood a large machine connected to a computer.  “That’s… that’s a scanning electron microscope!”

	“Quite astute, Travis,” Bors said, lighting a cigarette.  “Want one?”

	“No thanks, don’t smoke,” Travis said quickly.  “And this is a Rockwell Hardness tester!  You even have a transmission electron microscope!  Where did you get all this equipment?”  Bors remained silent as he took a drag from his cigarette.  “Did you rip these off?”

	“Of course,” Bors replied, calmly taking another drag.  “I stole them from right under the nose of a corrupt empire.  Oh they’ll pay someday…. But for now, we have a problem on our hands we do.”  Bors passed Travis a notepad and a pencil.  “Here’s what I need.  I need a cyborg.”

	“Okay, let’s just back up here Bors,” Travis said.  “You say you need a cyborg, but what you really want is a combat unit impervious to small arms fire and capable of killing a small army quickly and efficiently.  Is that right?”

	“Yes, that’s exactly right,” Bors said, grinning.  “What do you think can do all that?”

	“Well, we have several possibilities,” Travis said.  “A mecha might work…a box with guns could do it too.  Although…”  Travis paused and looked down at his notepad.  “A mech is quite possibly the most illogical idea I can come up with.  We’ll want to minimize cost in this, and it goes way too far beyond the scope of this problem.  Not to mention it looks really stupid.”

	“My thoughts exactly, Travis,” Bors said, sitting down.  “I have a list of secondary functions I’d like the device to fulfill as well.”  Bors pulled up a spreadsheet on the computer and Travis gave the list a quick scan.

	“My my… you really are intent on a cyborg here,” Travis said, reading the long list to himself.  “’Must be able to sing like Christine McVie’?”    

Bors chuckled. “This thing will be used for far more than combat you know,” Bors stated.  “I want this thing to be as lifelike as possible.  I want it to be a hardened combat-ready warrior, but also a regular Fur just like everybody else.”

	“Fuck Bors….,” Travis trailed off.  “I have no idea how you plan to accomplish this.  I might be able to design it, but finding the components is next to impossible.”

	“Don’t worry, Travis, I’m not as stupid as I look,” Bors said with a smirk and walked over to a slab of metal on the table.  “Catch.”  He tossed the slab to Travis.

	“Wow,” he said, tossing the slab in the air.  “It’s light.”  He scratched the surface, but hardly put a mark in the shiny metal.  “Impressive.  What is it?”

	“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Bors said, a bright grin from ear to ear.

	“No, really, what is this stuff?” Travis asked, excitement growing within him.

	“Mithril,” Bors said, chuckling.  “It’s mithril, Travis.  The toughest alloy in the realms of fantasy.  But it’s a fantasy no more, my friend.”

	“Mithril?!” Travis asked, astonished.  “How on earth did you create it?”

	“I didn’t,” Bors said.  “I bought it from a supplier I know back in the old country.”  Travis knew it wasn’t his place to ask questions.  “Here, just take a look at this SEM image.”  Bors typed a few keys on the keyboard and brought up an image for Travis to see.

	“Holy shit,” Travis said.  “Look at the size of these grains!  There on the order of only a few Angstroms!  And the boundaries are….”

	“Completely filled with eutectoid composite, yes,” Bors finished Travis’ sentence.  “The elements that make up the compounds of this material are far beyond anything on the periodic table, however, I was able to make some distinctions between the various phases.  Check it out.”  Bors brought up a crude phase diagram.  “Does this look familiar?”

	“This looks like the one for Fe-C!”  Travis marveled.  “It’s like steel.”

	“Exactly!” Bors exclaimed.  “From what I can see, mithril can be formed as hypoeutectoid and hypereutectoid.  It doesn’t matter really, either case yields one of the strongest materials known to man.  Now, I think we can make it stronger.”

	“Hmm,” Travis stroked the fur on his chin and thought.  “Of course, we can precipitation harden it.”
	
	“Travis, my boy, you’re worth every penny,” Bors said, patting Travis’ back.  “Cold working is clearly out of the picture because I don’t know of a single process that can stand up to the hardness of this material.”

	“Speaking of hardness, have you tested it with the Rockwell tester yet?”  Travis asked.

	“Yeah, I did,” Bors said.  “More than 1000 on the Rockwell Hardness Scale.”

	“Then the question arises...” Travis began.  “How are you going to forge it into the combat chasis?”

	“Well, that is a bit problematic,” Bors said.  “I’ll have to do a little more digging with that one.  But what I want you to concern yourself with is the design of the chasis and write me up a conceptual design of the cyborg as a whole.”

	“Got it,” Travis said, writing this all down on his notepad.

	“Can you have this done in the next few weeks?” Bors asked.

	“I’ll give it my best, Bors,” Travis said with an assurance in his voice.

	“Excellent,” Bors exclaimed.  “I’ve chosen the right man for the job.”

	“Thanks, Bors,” Travis said, smiling.

	“Excuse-moi, Bors,” a young mouse girl with a French accent said coming into the laboratory.  “Did you want your bust of Tony Danza back?”

	“Oh yeah, just put the Boss on the table there,” Bors said.  “Travis, I don’t believe you’ve met.  Morgan Frontenac, this is Travis Dalton.”

	“You’re Morgan?” Travis asked, once again astonished.

	“Mais oui,” the shy girl said quietly.  She was a brunette like Ute, although her hair was much darker and her blue eyes shone in the fluorescent light like twin sapphires.  All along, Travis had pictured a man, but he had forgotten the possibility that Ute had a same-sex lover.  It seemed very interesting to Travis, the distinction between Morgan and Ute.  Morgan seemed so tense being in Travis’ presence.  Her tail hardly moved, she barely made eye contact and her legs were tight together.  How the flamboyant and outgoing Ute came to love Morgan was a huge mystery to Travis, as much of the day shaped up to be.

	“Well, I’d better be going home,” Travis said.  “Oh, Bors, your mithril.”

	“Keep it,” Bors said.  “I’m sure you’ll find it an interesting study.”

	“I’m sure I will,” Travis said, looking back to the lovely Morgan.  “What time is it?”  He took a quick glance at his watch.  “Oh crap, it’s after dark.”

	“Well, I can give you a ride,” Morgan said, smiling.

	“Oooh, can I come too?” asked Ute excitedly, rushing into the laboratory.

	“Sure,” Morgan said, giving Ute a light kiss on her mouth.

	Twenty minutes later, Travis was sitting alongside Morgan in the passenger seat of Morgan’s blue Pontiac coupe.  None of them had spoken a word so far during the trip.  Travis tried desperately to think of something to say.  He had so many questions for the pair that they all got muddled up in his head until he finally worked up the courage to say something.

	“So Morgan, you’re a lesbian?”  Travis shut his eyes and heard the word ‘Dammit’ echo in his head.

	“Not quite, Travis,” Morgan replied.  “I’m bisexual, although I tend to like girls more than I like guys.”   The response was so calm and frank that it took Travis a moment to realize it.

	“How long have you two been together?”  Travis enquired further, realizing he was not walking on as touchy ground as he originally suspected.

	“26 years,” Ute replied from the backseat.  Travis could smell liquor on her breath.  Ute’s drinking habits were nothing new to Travis; during their playful work activities, Travis could recall many times when Ute was slightly inebriated.  Travis thought that it was a factor in Ute’s chosen line of work, although with the amount of new information he had accumulated that night, anything was possible.  He didn’t know what to make of his coworker now.  26 years, that would be 1978 when they first met.  The year of the demon war.  It was so confusing to Travis.  How was this possible?  He’d always seen the world through the blinders of science.  Every process, every occurrence had a rational, straightforward explanation.  But this day challenged all that Travis had come to know in his life.

	“Is this the place?” Morgan asked, snapping him back into reality.

	“Yes, that’s my dorm,” Travis said, softly.  His heart was racing.  “Well, thank you ladies for the lift.  Tell Bors that I’ll contact him when I’ve finished with my conceptual design.”

	“Can’t we come up and see your room?” Ute asked from the back seat.

	“Sure.”  The response from Travis was sharp, an automatic response, but he was unsure if it was the right one.  In any case, he had agreed, and led the two girls up to his room.

	“Wow, this place is spiffy,” Ute remarked, her speech slightly slurred.

	“Yeah, it’s alright,” Travis said, trying not to draw too much attention to himself.  He stood back near the front door, waiting for them to make their way home.  “It’s just the common area.”

	“Where’s your living space?”  Morgan asked.  Her once timid voice had changed considerably, sounding much more confident, even bordering on forceful.

	“Oh, it’s just in here,” Travis said, her voice forcing him from the front door to the door to his room.  He reluctantly unlocked the door and opened it, stepping inside and allowing the girls to enter.  As Ute entered behind Morgan, she calmly shut the door behind her….

	Travis awoke in the night.  He stared straight ahead and saw Morgan’s cute face, darkened by the lack of light in the room, sleeping soundly.  He heard breathing behind him.  He didn’t have to turn to know who it was.  He let himself roll onto his back and stared at the ceiling.  He had no idea what he was getting himself into.  He realized it at that moment, he had been seduced.  He turned to see Ute’s nude body turned away from him and beyond her, the slab of mithril was perched on his desk, alongside his prized coveralls.  Even in the darkness, he could see his reflection, turned grotesque by the roughly cut edges.  It was all bullshit, as usual, but this time, the problem definition would take every bit of his intellect to solve.