2020-11-29 You have 20 seconds to seek
You have 20 seconds to seek
Participants: Haruka Ines Rachel
Location: Glendale Tool Company
Date and Time: November 29, 2020 7:00 pm
Summary: A triumph.
Mood Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb1_38445vA
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Haruka was in the shop all night, all day, and now it's turning night again. There is a ROW of coke bottles on the ground. All empty. A couple melted into the floor, a couple half-melted. She's in her pilot suit, lab coat draped over it. on her hands and knees over her power armor, wich is laid out on the floor, severla pieces of its armor removed and resting on the workbench above.
She's glistening with sweat after 36 hours of work, and who knows how long she's been up before that. Tools strewn all around her. Wires, perfboards, a welding torch. Her hair a frazzled mess, her eyes bloodshot.
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It's late enough that a yawning Ines emerges from one of those quieter offices, a giant leather bound book better described as a //tome// tucked under her arm. She nearly trips over on of the last coke bottles in that row before she peers at some of the melted and half melted ones and then to Haruka and the power armor. "Please don't tell me you drank all those today? There is actually a lethal dose for caffeine you know..."
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When she comes into the shop, Rachel is still shivering: it's /cold/ out there and she was not expecting that when she left home this morning, so she's stuck with bare arms and lightweight clothes and the combination has /not/ been a happy one. At least now she's starting to get a little warmed up, but as soon as she's safe inside she just ... stops. She eyes Haruka with a mixture of concern and uncertainty, and is about to speak up when -- wait, are those /melted/?
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Haruka is clearly tired. Breathing a little weirdly. Through her mouth. She grips the arm of her suit beneath her. Hanging on tightly as she kneels over the thing. "I can't stop until I know." she rasps, her voice dry, hoarse. Not even looking up, she then crawls over to her beach cooler, which crudely has a large antenna duct taped onto it, and several circuit boards bolted on all around it. She puts the lid on almost all the way, slips her hand in, and presses a big red button with the other hand. Averting her eyes, there's a flash inside the cooler, and she pulls out... a coke. It's opened with a bottle opener ALSO bolted to the cooler, and she crawls back.
"I can't stop until I know." she croaks, like a certain raven perched and haunting someone. In her head the Forever Machine churns, demanding to know if she's coming, or if she's just playing with robots? Does she seek eternity, or does she live for herself? Does she work for perfection, or dabble for a thrill? "I can't stop until I know."
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"What the lethal dose of caffeine is? It's something like three hundred and fifty cokes. And while your stomach might explode before you hit that, pretty sure you'll feel severe side effects long before..." Ines safely tucks that massive book on a nearby workbench before she joins Rachel in staring at the power-armor tinkerer and over to Rachel. "Does she uhhh... do this often?"
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Rachel is looking back at Ines in blinking, wide-eyed confusion. "Um, I was going to ask you if you'd seen anything like this before, Dr. Barre. I, um, I don't really -- I haven't been here for -- I, um --" She crosses over toward a spot that's just out of arms' reach of Haruka. Safety first. "I, um, I sort of feel like we should try to help? But I also sort of think she'd be really peeved if we did."
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Haruka of course does this. Everyone does this. It's the way of the future. The bottle she opens, tilting her head back, and jus tdrinking. Gulp, Gulp, Gulp. Gulp, Gulp, Gulp. Until it's gone. That leaves her breathing heavily, as she crawls over to the line of bottles, and adds this one to it. At that, on her hands and knees, she looks up toward Rachel and Ines. Circles around her eyes, she blinks, and says with simple earnestness "I can't stop until I know."
At that, she crawls back over to the cooler machine, and repeats the process, again averting her eyes, and again pulling out a coke. This time, there's something weird that happens. If you're an Etherite, it's a sort of Etheric resonance hum. In the form of an audible noise. The whine of a coil, or metal scraping against metal. Plainly distinct as the flash occurs.
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Ines' eyes widen as Haruka goes for yet another bottle, the alchemist's own hands itching as if debating if she should do something about the soda, but she doesn't get in the way of that earnestness. "There wasn't any like... weird artefacts or anything in El Cajon when you were negotiating with the Verditius? Cause if she's not talking with an outside force... she might be talking with something inside?"
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"I didn't see any!" Rachel quickly avers, but then honesty compels her to admit: "She did almost all the talking, though, and she was in the compound where I couldn't see her for a while -- I guess something /could/ have happened? But she seemed like she was fine when she got back!"
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Haruka opens this one up, looking to Ines, and to Rachel again, and starts to sip. But this time not ALL AT ONCE. She looks, and looks. But she's not really looking. Her mind is pretty obviously not on them at all, or anything in the universe around them in any way. She's staring blankly. For a good minute.
Then finally she stands. Holding the bottle, gesturing with it. To the suit. To herself. She begins to speak, but this time in a quiet monotone. "I've been in a waking, lucid dream for the last 50 hours. And I don't know. The hypergeometric nature of the spatial universe contains the capability of sustaining quintillions of machines that guarantee life and perfection. By implementing appropriate forecasting, the civilizational course is predicted to be unable to reach no close approximation of that favorable result."
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Ines ohs, and nods. "Well, that was my third guess. Or maybe related to my second guess." the second part is more of a loud whisper to Rachel. "So with all that calculating... did you find where you thought civilization was going off course from favorable results?" Her own tone is calm, almost as if she doesn't want to spook Haruka in her current state.
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The redhead's eyes go wide when Haruka explains further, and she leans a little closer to Ines to murmur, sotto-voce, "That sounds horrifying." What she says audibly enough to be heard is, "Um -- maybe we aren't supposed to know? Maybe, like, it's /why/ it happens or doesn't happen that's important, not whether or not it happens or how it happens?"
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Haruka doesn't even flinch. First Rachel she responds to, since that is easy. "The preponderance of evience indicates the survival of the species requires nothing inferior. Any solar entity has an end. Any pocket of energetic flux ends in entropic decay. Only by the steadfast consumption can humanity endure."
Then to Ines, she nods, and points to herself with the open mouth of her coke bottle. "The critical locus of deviation from the indicated societal trajectory has a nontrivial probability of being Haruka Watanabe. Haruka Watanabe has prodigious, historically unprecedented resource at her sole disposal, requisitioned from the highest potency gatherings of human intelligence in the totality of the historical record.
She then takes the bottle, throws it up in the air away from all three of them, toward a far corner of the lab, and draws her weapon to fire at it, dropping it to the floor as a glob of melted glass. "Am I playing with robots, or am I Saving the universe? I can't stop until I know."
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Ines blinks as addressed by the Haruka-that-might-be-more-than-Haruka at the moment, before she loudly whispers to Rachel. "So either she's having a bit of a Eureka-moment or a mental break. Or both. Or possessed but hoped you might be able to pick on the possession angle if that were it..." And then the energy beams come out and she jumps back with an eep of surprise even if she wasn't in the line of fire.
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"I guess if's the survival of humanity and all that," Rachel says, turning away slightly and dropping her gaze to the floor, "then we'd probably better get rid of the inferiors, whether the inferiors like the idea or not." She sounds notably unhappy about the idea, and given her well-documented self-esteem issues it's probably not all that surprising. But it /does/ mean that she's not looking right at Haruka when the weapon comes out, and so its firing takes her by surprise and makes her dive for the nearest bit of cover, only peering up from behind something solid when the weapons fire has died down. "If I check for possession can you um help make sure she doesn't melt me?"
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Haruka tosses the raygun to her suit, and it lands with a clang inside the open compartment. "Rachel Lopez-Faraday cannot be spared. Rachel Lopez-Faraday's talents suprpass 99 percent of humanity's capacity for systemic alterations of societal trajectory." She then walks back to her suit, and kneels at it again. A soldering iron she picks up, and turns on, a blue LED in the associated stand beginning to glow.
"Ichiro Watanabe, alive or dead, possessed same capabilities, but failed to secure access to totality of resources. He was consumed by unimaginative comfort and his talents were dissipated into entropy. Haruka Watanabe possesses the responsibility."
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It's a good thing Ines just happen to have a piece of chalk tucked in her pocket because as soon as the robot armor starts talking about Rachel and not being spared, she reaches out for the younger woman's arm and pulls her over. "You should come over here. Now. And stay inside this circle...." While she draws quickly given the scenario they find herself in, a few hermetic symbols work there way in as she mutters a few phrases in Latin and a bit of wind picks up. "Please start checking... I'm really hoping that isn't an angry space robot."
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Rachel exclaims in surprise when Inex grabs her arm, and she ends up hitting the floor flat on her backside -- luckily she was pretty low to the ground already, so, no real damage done there. "Um -- are you sure this is going to ---" she starts to ask, before realizing that it doesn't much matter whether it's going to work or not because /the list of alternatives is pretty much empty/.
So instead she shrugs the beat-up old leather backpack off her shoulder and starts to dig inside it -- there! Out comes what looks like two halves of a small hula hoop hinged in the middle, made out of what look like twisted stands of bronze. She brings it up to her neck and swings both halves forward to encircle her neck as a sort of postmodern Celtic torc -- and then yelps when she accidentally pinches the skin on the back of her neck in the hinge. If it were any quieter, the high-pitched whine of /tiny/ fans kicking on might be audible, but she's unlikely to notice regardless: her eyes are already going hazy.
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Haruka is not possessed in any way. That much will be clear if Rachel pulls off her thing. She's just neatly kneeled over her power armor again, soldering some wires. She keeps on speaking, her voice dropping back into that dream-like trance. "Imperative: Augmented survival of the species. Necessity: Technological development assuring sustenance. Path: Sustained societal change in unforeseen direction. Inflection point: Individualized resistive action Requirements: Material funding, social amplification, individual survival."
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"Her dad's suit taking her over or something? Should we call Wolfe? Make a run for it?" Ines' voice might just be a little panic-y as she watches both Rachel and her hazy-eyed scanning and Haruka doing... whatever Haruka is doing over there with the creepy survival talk. That list of options is getting very low indeed as she's running through the list in her head. "Or try to convince Skynet we are necessary for survival?"
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"Her mind's normal!" Rachel says, as her eyes snap back into focus again. "I mean, it's -- you know what I mean!" Now that she's more or less focused on this level of reality again, she's making a spirited effort to find a spot that's both within the protective circle *and* gets something large and solid, like a workbench, between her and Haruka. "I don't think she's being taken over by anything, I think she's just -- trying to figure something out!"
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Haruka keeps on talking, as she finishes soldering, and puts the iron back into its stand. "Requirements: Improved dedication to core competencies. Eschewing of nonessential distractions." She slowly stands, starts grabbing pieces of the armor to secure it back into place. Putting the suit back together.
With the suit together, her voice starts getting back to normal, though with a grunt as she physically grabs the suit and starts trying to pull it upright, step by step. "Distractions: Personal resistance to exposure. Strengths: Economic success. Inventive success. Institutional success. Superior firepower."
She suit on its feet, she hits a button, and it springs open. She pulls her lab coat off, leaving just the spandex beneath, though she's rapidly sliding into the suit, which then locks shut.
Now her voice is amplified from within the suit. "Conclusion. I know I'm not doing it. But I can, and I know how."
At that, she lifts her hands in the suit, her fingers moving ast hough typing, and then the suit lifts off of the ground, slowly rising, and then coming into a hover over where Ines and Rachel are shielded. "I'm fine. But I'm tired." And so she lowers the suit again, and an audible, deep sigh comes out of the helmet.
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"So like, her normal, normal?" Ines glances back at Haruka slipping into the power-armor and doesn't seem //completely// sold on the fact. As the suit takes off, she does look like she's trying to figure out a way to get that shield into more of a spherical shape but... turns out it's not needed, even though Ines doesn't lower the winds even as Haruka sets down and signs. "Like... you're not gonna go all Terminator on us? That was just a... something?"
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When the suit goes up, Rachel throws her hands up in a sort of last-ditch please-don't-vaporize-me sort of gesture, and, when it turns out to be (temporarily?) unneeded, her hands only come down a little bit at a time so she can peek over the them at Haruka. "You must /really/ need sleep," she says, with, of course, absolutely no sense of irony whatsoever. "But ... I think we're okay now?" The latter bit, presumably, for Ines' benefit.
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