Logs:Keeping Watch

Keeping Watch
Dramatis Personae K.C., Cerebro
In Absentia	2023-05-19 "Whatever my handicaps, I do still have a supercomputer for a brain."
Location Emails // <XAV> Xavier Family Cemetery - Grounds
from: K.C. Love <love@xaviers.edu> to: Sysadmin <cerebro@xaviers.edu> date: 4 May 2023, 19:51 subject: Re: Missing Students Should someone walk Avi's dog? I walk dogs. I could walk another. I would have to bring him to my apartment, though. The school is too far to come three times a day. I have a lot of dogs to walk and several more to train, and it would be very impractical to bring them all to Westchester. Also, I don't have a car. I walk Gaétan's dog, too, but she's already in the city. Maybe his brothers will still want to walk her. During something like this that might be comforting? But maybe it will just be one more stressful thing to remember, and boarding her would be better. I'll have to remember to ask Lucien, tomorrow. I'd normally ask on Fridays when I do billing but I never bill him. He just auto-pays, even when he cancels walks. Did you see anything? You see a very large number of things over there. No students reported seeing any of them since last night, but you are not a student. Were you ever a student? I just realized I never asked. I just assumed you were around since before. I really shouldn't assume anything. I started to assume a lot of things about the missing students, but I think it's more helpful not to assume anything. You seem like the best first place to ask. KCL > from: Scott Summers <scott@xaviers.edu> > to: <xmen@xaviers.edu>, <staff@xaviers.edu>, <faculty@xaviers.edu> > date: 4 May 2023, 18:47 > attachments: Permission_Student_Checkout_List_RD_20230503.xlsx; > subject: Missing Students > > All, > > Let me know immediately if you hear from any of the following students: > > Spencer Holland, Ziyin Lin (Echo), Kelawini and Nanami Māhoe, Harmony Sun, Remi Takahashi, Gaétan Tessier, Leonidas Thigpen (Beau), Asva Toro, Avi Williams, Lael and Naomi Winters. > > None of them have been to any classes, AP exams, and as far as I can tell, meals, today, nor have any students reported seeing any of them since last night. Most are not signed out. > > Getting the panic button and GPS working again after yesterday's incident is priority no. 1 for Sysadmin and our tech team. At least one student (Echo) left her phone behind. If you find any phones abandoned on campus today, please bring them to me before going to the Lost and Found. > > This could be nothing. After the incidents in 2020, I would prefer to over-react. > > A reminder that students are not permitted to be signed out of campus by anyone excepted for those listed on the attached spreadsheet. > > Scott from: Sysadmin <cerebro@xaviers.edu> to: K.C. Love <love@xaviers.edu> date: 4 May 2023, 20:21 subject: Re: Missing Students Someone should probably walk Avi's dog. I'd say coordinate with Scott but fuck him. Also, he's probably busy. Just come get him if you can find a ride. If the administration gives you trouble I'll handle them, but they're probably also busy. I have no idea about the Tessiers' dog, but they can probably just pull a spare sibling from storage to walk her if it comes to that. I didn't see shit because the Māhoe sisters fried the school and half the town yesterday. This time they bricked a ton of our non-hardened systems, my drones, and all the phones. It's tempting to think this was deliberate, but I don't think they have the foresight to make up a whole video kinkshaming their headmaster to conceal an escapade when they could have just left their phones behind. I don't know that it would have made any difference without the phones, but I should have prioritized the school's systems over my own. I'm still trying to get everything back online, but I have my news filters adjusted already and am coding up some algorithms for scouring everything from social media to the Dark Web. I assume you haven't seen shit either. I died before Charles started the school, but I was arguably his student at one point. That point was a long time ago. This school gave me a purpose and a way to protect my people from beyond the grave. It means more to me than an alma mater ever could. Then I let this happen on my watch. Cere from: K.C. Love <love@xaviers.edu> to: Sysadmin <cerebro@xaviers.edu> date: 4 May 2023, 20:53 subject: Re: Missing Students You know a whole lot of things but also, sometimes you say things that are a whole lot of nonsense. I am very sure you aren't dead, and I know a lot of things too. I don't know how to talk to dead people, for one, although it would be pretty cool if I did. Where is your grave, though? I could bring a dog there. Or a picnic. Or flowers. Or something else, you could pick. A robot? Am I stereotyping you now? Is that a microaggression? I could probably bring a robot with you in it. Would it be weird to visit your own grave? If I had seen something already I would have told you that first. Probably. I had a lot of signals up so maybe I would have forgotten. But I didn't see anything about them, yet. It's a pretty unfortunate thing to happen on your watch. I can help make your watch bigger. Probably. Watching together might be more helpful than watching alone. The world is pretty big, and unfortunately it turns out there are other worlds, too. That's a lot of watching to cover. We already know they're not at the school, so that narrows it down to anywhere else in the multiverse. You don't sleep and I have a lot of coffee. Unfortunately I think that's going to be very necessary. KCL from: Sysadmin <cerebro@xaviers.edu> to: K.C. Love <love@xaviers.edu> date: 5 May 2023, 02:07 subject: Re: Missing Students Let's watch together. You're allowed to stereotype me because you're basically like a robot yourself. If you want to have a picnic by my grave, GPS coordinates are attached. All my good drones are still down, though. Cere [Attached GPS coordinates map to a spot up in the hills of Xavier Mansion's grounds] --- <XAV> Xavier Family Cemetery - Grounds This little promontory in the hills of Xavier School's rambling grounds doesn't look like much from below, but offers an expansive view down to the mansion, the campus laid out around it, and the glittering lake nestled in the forest. It's hard to find a way here up the steep hillside, the original path weathered and overgrown though still passable. The low, ivied stone wall that rings the cemetery is clearly an aesthetic demarcation never meant to keep anyone out, and the wrought iron gate crowned with a bold "X" has no doors to close against what few visitors might still come. Clearly that number isn't zero, since the graves themselves and the paths between them are not overgrown, and not for lack of trying. A simple black basalt obelisk stands apart from the older, more traditional monuments in an out-of-the-way spot at by the wall. "Siri Godfrey, 1966 - 1989" it reads, and beneath that, "Beloved Brother and Friend". The grave itself is covered with a mix of creeping sedums in soft pastels, now and then putting out tiny unobtrusive flowers. The paths leading to and around it are noticeably more clear than the rest of the cemetery, though it does not look as though anyone has passed through very recently. Someone is passing through today, though. Several someones, in fact. The first someone comes with a bound as soon as the gate has opened, a hefty black and white pitbull racing ahead down the path -- then back -- then ahead again -- then back. Suga Mama is at once impatient but unwilling to split the pack too much. A little ways behind, K.C., in relaxed fit carpenter jeans, comfortable red sneakers, a snug red tank top under an open loose black short sleeve button-up with rainbow buttons. Lightweight crocheted black and rainbow slouchy hat on her short-cropped fro. On her back, an insulated picnic backpack; in her hand, a leash, attached to a hefty and drooling pile of wrinkles that may or may not have a dog within it. The wrinkles have currently stopped moving, not for the first time. K.C. drops the leash and follows after Suga Mama. By the time she's set herself down in front of the obelisk, the lump of wrinkles is lumbering after them. K.C. is opening the picnic backpack to extract -- well, actually, the first thing that emerges is a quietly humming bumblebee of a robot, but the second is a lightweight blanket to spread on the ground. Little silicone squeeze bottle, next, intended for packing single-servings of salad dressings into lunches but currently filled with peanut butter. "Wrong. Spelled your name wrong," she tells the air. The robotic bee lands on the point of the obelisk and flexes each of its many finely articulated joints in turn before settling into stillness. In K.C.'s perception, a brown-skinned young man appears beside the obelisk, leaning one elbow just beside the bee that is currently routing his signal (also visible to K.C.) from the mansion down the hill. Cerebro -- or, at least, the avatar he's rendering for K.C. -- is wearing a crisp white dress shirt, a violet brocade vest with stylized golden lotus blossoms and a tie with intricate geometric tessellations, gray plain front slacks, and black chukkas. "That's how I spelled it, back then," he says, looking down at the obelisk, though the telemetry he receives comes from the bee's compound eyes and not the illusory ones of his avatar. "I thought 'Cerebro' was absurd, if flattering in its way. At first I only allowed it because the kids liked it, but it grew on me in time." He sinks down smoothly to sit cross-legged, mildly surreal in how he does not dimple the blanket beneath him as someone with actual mass would. "This..." He tips his hand kind of helplessly at the ground beneath him, and after what is for him a shockingly long hesitation, "...isn't me, you know." K.C. is not yet bothering to unpack the rest of her lunch, instead squeezing just a little of the peanut butter out of the tube, first for Suga Mama to lick before darting off again and then, eventually, for Chonk once he has finished lumbering over and plonked himself heavily down beside the blanket. Her other hand is flicking restlessly beside her, fingers twitching and pulling at the air -- to others, seemingly a restless tic, though Cerebro at least can feel the shift and change in the signals she sorts through. She mostly watches the dogs, only glancing up at his avatar with an occasional sideways flick of her eyes. "Know. I know. I know." She huffs, quiet. "You said dead. You said that. I died before Charles started the school." This last, in a startlingly good mimicry of Cerebro's cadence, rather than her own typically monotone one. She doesn't quite smile, but she gets close. "Having a seance." Her eyes widen. "We're very good. Already working." This time the very slight flick of her finger pings at him; not enough to disrupt his signal. Just a very small twinge. Probably she gave up on attempting shoulder bumps back around sophomore year. Cerebro laughs, short and bright. "Maybe 'dead' was overly dramatic. My body ceased functioning, but it was already not me when that happened. I watched it happen. From the outside." This is almost insistently casual, which relaxes into something more genuinely casual with the light flick at his signal. His avatar shimmers like a plucked string, plainly an affectation, though it resonates back through his signal where it passes near K.C. "'We'? Are the dogs helping? I guess there's no rule saying I can't conjure myself." He turns to watch the dogs, too (the bee doesn't need to turn, owing to the brilliant design of its eyes). "Too bad my conjuring is limited to me. If I were still alive..." He doesn't look at the obelisk. "If I were still in my body, I bet I could do wonders with the Internet. Be one with the infosphere." Despite this complaint, K.C. can see the echoes of his massive network inputs far more clearly than usual. His data mining may be automated, but he's dedicated far more of his consciousness than is really necessary to monitoring the process. "Though, who knows. Maybe I'd be clumsy as a babe and you'd have to teach me how to find the signal when drowning in noise." "Dogs help." K.C. reaches out to pat at Chonk's sturdy side. Chonk shifts, falling slightly over into the grass, tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth. Helpfully, though. A short ways away, Suga Mama is equally helpfully snuffling at a patch of grass. K.C. does look back to the obelisk, at Cerebro's hesitation. Then down, at her backpack, which she starts to unpack. Kind of a plain lunch -- sandwich, Capri Sun, small tupperware of baby carrots with dip. "Wonders." Her finger taps at the silicone sandwich bag contemplatively. "Wonders. You do wonders." There's a matter-of-fact assurance here, as there is in: "I do wonders. You helped." Her wince is a little involuntary, hand dropping briefly. "Lots of noise. Before." Then back to her rapid background riffling. "... still lots of noise. But. Wonders." There's a pause here, though. Her finger is tapping faster. Her voice is a little quieter. "Been watching. No signal. Two weeks. No signal." The tug of Cerebro's smile is brief but warm. "I'm glad I could help you. I wish I could help these kids, too, but it's like you said. Two weeks, no signal. And we're hardly the only ones searching." He braces the heels of his hands on the blanket -- his lack of actual substance giving the illusion that it's solid enough to hold up a person's weight -- and leans back. "I'm starting to think they hared off to another dimension again, but can't find information that suggests another rift, either. I don't suppose," he asks, slow and reluctant, "you've poked around SHIELD's network at all? Their traffic volume hasn't spiked like it did with the last rift -- I didn't know to look for it, then -- but that can be disguised." "Poked. Poked, poked, poked." K.C. shakes her head, rocking slow where she sits on the blanket, but stopping as she unbags her food. "Weird there. Normal-weird. Always weird. No kids." She's quiet, through a slow bite of her sandwich. "Hive's big." Cerebro nods, then lets his head loll back to not-actually-look-up at the sky. "He has to be, to look for them effectively." His slow shivery "breath" out is not quite a sigh. "But not if he gets too big. Time was I could have helped him with that." His slender brows slowly furrow. "I suppose I still can, just not as well. Maybe I should join him for a while. Whatever my handicaps, I do still have a supercomputer for a brain." "Too big. Too big. New Flicker can help. You can help. I poke. All his threads, I poke. No kids." The twitch of K.C.'s hand pulls at a different signal, this time, sensible to Cerebro even if the information it carries is not. "Some kids," comes her frowning clarification. "Not yours." She looks up towards the intricate eyes of the drone, chewing at her lip before she remembers to take another bite of her sandwich instead. "Join him. Lots of him. Lots of him. Here. Far away. All over. How far can you go?" One twitch and then another and then another, several of the indistinct strands spooled up around them before she lets them relax. "Do you have a map?" Cerebro tilts his head minutely. "How far?" The lift of his tone is very faint, less quizzical than pensive. "Digitally, anywhere there's signal, but I can't join him that way, or at least I haven't been able to yet. Not compatible." His shoulders give a quick, not at all nonchalant shrug. "My telepathy only works in the Danger Room now, so either you have to coax one of those where I can reach..." He indicates K.C.'s hand, the one that had just held the strands of Hive's network. "...or he'll have to reach out and take me, which seems...unlikely. Even with D.J.'s help." A floating 2-D map of Salem Center and the surrounding hills, with the mansion marked as a circled X, appears in the air within K.C.'s reach. "Another telepath could give me a boost. Maybe you could, too, but I'm not sure. I eat up a lot of bandwidth." "Hnnh." K.C.'s mouth is full of sandwich as she considers this. She plucks a stray edge of roast beef from the bottom of the sandwich to lay it in front of Chonk's brick of a head. "Danger Room. Not allowed." Quiet, earnest, solemn: "Door's locked." She munches down the last of her sandwich, brushing crumbs of bread off into the grass. "Unlikely. Why unlikely. He has a lot of bandwidth." Her tongue runs up over her teeth. "I have a lot of bandwidth. By our powers combined --" Her fingers flutter towards Cerebro's projected map. A wealth of invisible strands collect, running through and beyond the X, turning it into the center of a great spiderweb stretching out somewhere far and wide beyond them. "Maybe find them." It's hard to say if she sounds hopeful, but then, it's hard to say if she doesn't. She's looking to the map, still, and then to the bee. "Maybe lose you." "It can be hard to talk to him, when he's so many people. He understands just fine, but..." Cerebro turns from the map to look out over the grounds, down at the mansion, but his gaze is farther away. "He gets lost, far more easily than I. The hardware makes for good ballast. Not my mainframe, the rest of it, the parts that can't be hived." He looks back at his own headstone and the robotic bee perched on it. "I'll stay routed through that. It'll be like a leash, so you can pull me back if I drown in the noise. Organic brains are very noisy, no offense." He smiles, not bothering to look particularly unconcerned now, but smiles all the same. "By our powers combined --" Cerebro's avatar shatters into a million shimmering polygons like the disembodied facets of a jewel that hang shimmering for a moment before gathering back into the little drone bee.