Issue 1 Downtime

Ashlie is in the workshop, though right now she hard to recognize at first glance. Her entire head and torso is gaping open, most of her inner workings folded out with cables radiating out in every direction. Two robotic arms are moving around, rearranging cables and fixing minor wear and tear. An image of Ashlie's head is being displayed on one of the monitors, the others showing rapidly scrolling lines of code.


((open))

Nash glances over at Ashlie as he enters the workshop. He makes his way to an empty workstation and sets the duffle bag he is carrying down.

He then walks over to the workstation Ashlie is at. "So, what are you up to?"

"Routine maintenance. I am making sure all my sub-systems are operating within normal parameters." her voice comes from the speakers.

"Just routine? So it has otherwise been working fine?"

"It has been performing according to specifications. I have found that it seems to have a detrimental effect on interactions with people, however."

"Yeah..." Nash paused. "I'd imagine it would."

"You do? Please explain."

"Hmmm, how to explain it? This might take awhile, let me think for a bit."

Nash then went back over to his workstation and started pulling things out of his bag.

"That's quite alright. I've found this matter to be rather complicated after all."

Meanwhile, an area of the wall seemed to ripple, then seemed to open from a point in the center. Cal walked in, muttering distractedly to himself as the portal closed to a wave of his staff. More than not noticing the other people in the room, he didn't seem to be even considering the option that other people could be in the room. Ping-pong ball size sensor spheres darted about the room scanning the shelves, and he seemed to be guided along by them as he kept up an internal monologue (hopefully it was only a monologue).

"Good afternoon, Calvin." Ashlie chirps cheerfully, the spread open chassis raising an arm through the cable throngs to wave at Cal.

Cal jumped at that, dropping the staff, and in the moment of mental discomposure, the three sensor spheres darted around the room seemingly at random, bumping into shelves and... well, causing as much chaos as a ping-pong ball could for a few seconds. "Oh, uh, hi," Cal said as he got himself reoriented into this plane of existence, bending over to sheepishly pick up the staff. "You're, uh, looking good."

"You think so? This configuration is not meant for interaction." her voice comes from the monitor's speakers. "Please try not to damage any servos with your drones."

"Yeah, sorry, still getting the hang of those things," he said as the orbs resumed orbit around him. "And... I don't know. What do you say to someone when they're happily disassembling and reassembling themselves in a lab?"

"Nice supra-conductors. Wanna exchange IP protocols?" she jokes, though the delivery falls a little flat.

"Maybe, but only if we use a firewall," Cal joked back. Probably just as awkwardly.

Ashlie doesn't laugh but her image on the monitor looks extremely satisfied about the exchange.

"Most of my sensors are offline. You did not come in through the door." she notes.

"Huh? Oh, no. Doors are locked too often."

"Keys are a physical representation of access rights." she chirps. It's hard to tell whether she's chiding him or just happily reporting on one of the facts of the physical world she has learned. Considering she has accessed restricted systems before it's probably the later.

"Locks are intentional obstacles to test resourcefulness," Cal answered. "Access rights are one of the easier methods of overcoming them. Also the most limited ones."

"How did you get in here then?"

"Oh, I made a localized spacial distortion to pass from the common room directly into this one. A lot easier than using a key."

"That really depends on how hard it wold be to acquire a key."

"Dr. Quinn would have to trust him and that is highly improbable."

"No, I'd have to ask her, and that philistine breaks technological breakthroughs. Screw that."

"What did you come in here for anyway?"

"What did-? Oh, I need some higher rated- wait, why do you want to know?" Cal? Suspicious? Never.

Nash expression suddenly changed with Cal's response. If Nash wasn't suspicious of Cal before he certainly was now.

"Just curious, that's all." He bluffed.

"My router broke. I have to fix it," Cal lied as he picked up a high-current transferrance conduit.

"Must be some router if you need that to fix it."

Who does this guy think he is fooling.

"You've never seen my network requirements."

"Well that's is true."

Did he really just come in here to swipe some parts thinking no one would find out?

"Do you need that for the Cube?" Ashlie asks.

"What? No, she doesn't use much bandwidth. Yet. She found out what image searches bug me last week, so she's grounded from the internet right now."

"You are trying to locate and engage the rogue AI assisting Doctor Tomorrow." she notes.

"Not exactly rogue if she's doing exactly what he made her to do," Cal pointed out. "But no. She'll step out sooner or later. I don't have to look for her, she's here."

"I can assure you that the school network has not been compromised. And it does not impact her status if she was created rogue."

"Not here here. She's everywhere. Everywhere I look, everywhere I go, she's got her hand in something."

"Three months ago, Aisha guilted me into emptying the money I took from my parents' back into their account. A lot of money. Two weeks ago, I looked in the account and it was all back, with no records of a transfer. All semester I've been finding plans for my projects. A lot of it was hard to get, a lot of it wasn't really remarkable. My data-mining programs are good, but some of it I've been surprised they managed to find. Then this... whatever the hell it was, where she kept pinging my access ports and offering me candy if I'd get in the car with her. And the whole while... well, I'm not an engineering genius or anything, but I'm smart enough to notice technology similarities."

"Bottom line? Everything I've been doing, she's been enabling. So she's there. I don't have to look, she'll make another grab at me."

"Then why are you building the things she gives you access to?" she asks. It's probably no coincidence that her robot frame is beginning to put itself back together, various boot-up sequences rolling past the screens not occupied by Ashlie's computerized face.

"Well, it's there, and it's... well, the things are awesome. And I can't figure out what she's up to without seeing how well the things work."

"And... I don't know. The guy's a genius, and she's a genius. What if maybe, just maybe, they're setting me up to make this stuff because it's something that we're really, really going to need?"