ArchivedLogs:Chip's Challenge

Chip's Challenge
Dramatis Personae B, Kisha	2014-06-10 Part of future past and Prometheus TPs.
Location <NYC> Stark Tower - Midtown East
A gleaming beacon of modern architecture shining bright amidst the industry of Midtown, Stark Tower serves as headquarters to one of the largest tech corporations in the world. The offices and boardrooms of Stark Industries and any number of satellite companies, subsidiaries, and nonprofits are homed here. To the public what draws most visitors is not the business but the science -- the first two floors of the building hold an extensive museum dedicated to technological innovation. As well, guided tours three days a week are open to the public, to be shown through both the museum and, more notably, through (select parts of) the dozen floors dedicated solely to R&D.The building itself is as eye-catching inside as outside. The soaring lobby atrium extends upwards, bright and glass-walled with perpetually bustling balconies ringing each floor. All visitors must pass through the lobby security checkpoints to be signed in. The technology integrated into the building, from the interactive holographic displays that help guide visitors to their destination to the quiet AI that remembers visitors' preferences upon repeat visits to the basement arc reactor that powers the entire building, are quiet reminders of the company's dedication to innovation. Stark's R&D floors are, generally, quite bustling; daytime on a weekday means a whooole lot of nerds sequestered away with their various projects. B's team has its own little section to itself, full of holographic workstations and testing space and equipment -- but at the moment B isn't /at/ hir usual workspace, instead leading Kisha past the bulk of the bustle off to an actually /empty/ corner in back. It is, evidently, an excessively /casual/ workplace -- even here on the clock ze's dressed like it's, well, summer break. knee-length pale purple denim shorts and a purple tank top studded with silver, green Keen sandals and a wealth of bracelets on each wrist. Ze flops down into a chair, setting hir /own/ small plastic wire-laden chip on the table before turning on hir tablet, opening up a model of the chip in holo-projection above the workspace. "Please tell me," ze says hopefully, "that you've had more luck than I have with these because I'm getting nowhere useful." "Well, I think something may have been done to the chip I was studying after it was built," Kisha eventually responds, forcing her attention away from the wonders of the R&D department. "The trouble is I can't tell if they were changed before hand to suit the recipient, during the removal process or sometime after. Hell for all I know what I'm picking up is the integration of the chip and the brain. They're a little outside my usual area of interest if I'm brutally honest." "You've gotta figure these things are crazy-customized, right? I mean, I can't imagine there's like a. One-size-fits-all -- /brain/ control method. But." B scowls, flicking at the projected imagery to send it spinning in place. "I don't know nearly enough about neurology to --" Hir cheeks puff out, and she expels a breath sharply. "But maybe if we could just make like. A remote control that'll interface with them correctly. Something that could shut them down or -- block other signals from getting through. That might be enough for what they need?" Not that B sounds /exceptionally/ certain of this point. Kisha hmmmmmmmmmmmmmms thoughtfully. "Maybe? But... Well, if I was an evil research group building one of these things I'd set them to burn out if they got jammed. So that might just make things worse. Silly question but have you managed to power any bits of the chip up? I was just thinking if we isolate each part and turn them on we could see which bit transmits a signal and try study it." "What we really need," B laments, head tipping back to look up at the ceiling, "is people with these things still /in/ who we can look at too. I -- don't imagine any of the labrats from the /next/ rescue are, uh, going to be too thrilled to let us experiment with remote controls and their heads though." Hir gills flutter quickly along the sides of hir neck, and ze presses hir teeth down against hir lip. "No. I mean, yes. But no. /I/ haven't managed to get it to /respond/ to much of anything but it's definitely still -- /active/? I mean, there's signal coming from it. Only every so often. Like maybe it's still. I don't know. Trying to ping something." "I'm not sure Jackson will allow us to experiment on live test subjects," Kisha laments. "And even if we could I'm not convinced that would help. My knowledge of brain chips in situ is as lacking as my knowledge of brain chips which have been removed. Although I suppose it would be easier to tell at what stages any alterations were made." "He does get kind of finicky about that," B agrees wryly. "But I mean he doesn't even like experimenting on /actual/ rats. He's not exactly the most --" B trails off, here, claws drumming against the tabletop. "If they're altered per-person though it might still not -- mmngh. I mean /in/ the labs? They cut people's heads open like every other month to tune these things up so any given chip /could/ have been subjected to alterations at a /lot/ of different stages. An actual live one in someone could maybe help figure out if and when we make a proper control for it that's not going to kill anyone though." Though this elicits a small frown and the guilty addendum, "... which I guess we might accidentally find out by killing people /first/ in development stages." Kisha starts to tap her foot, then frowns. "Honestly I think the /best/ thing we could do to help these people is find the place which is making the chips. Whichever site they are making the chips at should have more information we could use to understand how they work and which bits of the chip do what. But for that we'd need some way of tracking down a probably quite small discreet research site." "That --" For a moment B lights, a quick smile flashing across hir face. "-- would be excellent but is probably beyond my skills? I don't know, I just do nerd stuff I'm not like a. /Sleuth/. Do know a bunch of PIs though. Sadly these things --" Ze's turning the chip over slowly in a hand, now, "don't really come with manufacturer's stamps on." "Well.. there are a couple of ways we could look into it I mean we can work out exactly what materials they are made from and see if anything rare or controlled is used. Mister Stark could perhaps assist with that? We then send your PI contacts looking down the chain until they find something weird that could indicate a covert lab. Or we could potentially work from the nerd side and try work out which nerds could have invented them and run their financials to see if any of them have shady banking details," Kisha suggests, taking a step closer to the holo-projection. "Neither of them are exactly easy but I figure they beat killing a portion of the people they save on the next successful raid until we get to grips with how they work." "Would have to be someone who knows a heck of a lot about neurology." B sets the chip carefully back down on the table, claws drumming around it again. "The materials I'm sure we can -- I'll ask Mister Stark. He's been -- really helpful before, I'm sure he'd --" Hir gills flutter again, and ze rocks back in hir chair. "Desiree's brother's in there. And these strange dreams keep --" For a moment a small crooked smile twists at hir lips. "... sometimes you should be glad you don't sleep." Kisha tilts her head. "I'm /always/ glad I don't sleep," she points out. "Sleep is simply time wasted. I don't really know the specifics of this whole dream thing, unless you count the wild rumours around school and lets face it many people at our school do not have an amazing grip on reality." This draws a small laugh from B, head shaking briefly. "S'not crazy rumors. I mean, it /is/ crazy but it's actually happening. People keep sharing identical dreams and -- okay, /that/ happened before when there was /chocolate rain/ and everything turning rainbow and stuff but this time it's different. It's like people are having dreams about stuff that's /happening/ in the future. And even people who aren't sharing the same dreams, their dreams match /up/ like. One night Shane had a dream and in it he said our dads were at a play and the same night /they/ had a dream about going to that play. But it might actually be telling the future. We dreamed about features of our new housing development before they were ever designed and Shane dreamed about his new violin /before/ Lucien gave it to him and. All kinds of strange details like that." Hir shoulder lifts in a small shrug. "And the dreams say that these chips explode and kill everyone. It's kind of odd, isn't it? Doing all this work because someone had a dream about something that might never even happen." "If that's the case then anything we do might be the reason the chips explode," Kisha points out. "I've read enough time travel science fiction to know that if the future has been decided then any attempts to change it are likely to backfire. If we had more information about the dreams in which the chips explode we could perhaps plan around it. For example if we knew a specific person set them off we could locate that person and deal with them." B shakes hir head uncertainly. "The labs set them off. In response to the invasion. No idea if they were programmed to go off automatically with the alarms or if a guard had to detonate them manually when there was a security breach. But they won't even go on the raid anymore now because of --" Another small shrug. "Wasn't /us/ though. But." Hir dark eyes focus on the chips. "But if we screw this up it might be." Kisha facepalms. "If we know where the raid was due to take place then that means we know where a lab is, yes?" she says with a groan. "We get them to discreetly monitor incoming deliveries and trace /those/ back to see where they get supplies from. Then they raid that place and pick up unused brain chips and as much research info as possible." "Nope. Right now all we know is that the lab is in Vermont. /Somewhere/ in Vermont. But they already have the --" B waves a hand vaguely. "-- PI type people working on tracking /that/ down. Like an actual address. So they /can/ stake it out for more information." "Well. That's close enough I guess," Kisha says with a shrug. "If we go with all three of those routes should be able to come up with some kind of hints as to where they build these things. Then we get some unused chips and as much info on the production process and schematics as they hold. Once we have that I'd be a lot happier about building a device to shut them down." B reaches up, fingers crumpling around the holographic chip-schematics to collapse it down into just a palm-sized image before he squashes even that into nothingness. "I guess it's back to the waiting game, then." Hir claws rake through hir spiky black hair, and ze stands abruptly. "Do you want some caffeine? I need some caffeine. I can give you the proper tour after." Kisha nods. "Coffee would be good," she agrees. "So long as it's not the drinks machine stuff. Oh next time you see Shane let him know I have finished his birthday gift. It's rather later than I had intended but I wasted too much time trying to replicate a stradivarius." "Naw it's good stuff. Though I'm getting even more spoiled since Shane opened Evolve back up he brings home excellent coffee all the time now." B's brows raise at Kisha's request, lips twitching slightly. "I'll tell him. Really late isn't so bad it just means the present's like. A /surprise/." Scooping both the chip and hir tablet back up off the table, B pushes hir chair back in to lead the way to Caffeine.