ArchivedLogs:Gauging Temperature

Gauging Temperature
Dramatis Personae B, Jack, Kisha, Sugar
In Absentia	2014-12-20 '
Location <XS> School Grounds
Xavier's School is situated on grounds as luxurious as the mansion itself. The tree-lined drive brings you up to the lush green sweep of front lawn and the wide front porch with its bench swing, often frequented by students studying in pleasant weather. The large oak tree in the front yard is home to a tire swing, installed long ago beneath the sturdy old treehouse. The lawn rolls out all the way down to the thin rocky pier at the edge of the glittering lake. The water stretches huge and wide off into the distance, the boathouse a small blip at its shore. Along its bank, forest stretches dense and shady to one side; to the other cliffs start to rise, high and rocky, providing trails for hiking or climbing, for the adventurous. It's gotten cold again, biting and crisp outside, a frost in the air that feels a whole lot more like winter than the more recent warmer spell had done. Grey and chill and icy and one tiny shark making her way across the lawn is bundled up warm against it. /Very/ stompy silver boots, tall and buckly, worn over black skinny jeans (which themselves are over two pairs of leggings), a blue and silver jacket, blue scarf, mittens, hat. A trio of small metal dragonflies, one cobalt-blue, one blood red, one yellow, hum around her, hovering a short way overhead. These small metal insects are far dwarfed by the very very /large/ huge blue dragonfly that walks along beside her. Not metal, though she's colored metallic-blue. Huge multifaceted eyes, rounded head butting up against B's side. "Yeah, I /know/," B is saying with a small giggle. "Just a /second/." Ze rummages in the inside of her jacket, pulling out a folded plastic bag of jerky to pull out a strip and feed the huger non-robotic dragonfly. It seems today is the day for being outside with your pets! At least if your pet is a robot that is. For today sees Kisha, bundled up in a replica Soviet style Russian military coat rather than her lab coat, taking Bob the robot for a walk (or should that be drive?). The bulky tracked machine pauses, it's owner perched on top, as it crosses the lawn leaving a trail of devastation in it's wake. Jack's the odd man out today, not having a robot following him around as he makes his way across the grounds. He's actually wearing a coat and gloves today thanks to the school, hood up and looking more like haunted clothing than usual. His plan for the day was to head down to the stables and take a peek inside to see if the giant dragonfly he'd been told about was actually there but that plan has been interrupted...by seeing that the dragonfly is on the grounds and walking along with someone. "Huh..." he trails off, starting to approach B and the dragonflies. He stops in his tracks when he spots Kisha driving around and leaving that swath of destruction. "What the heck is that?" he asks no one in particular. B scratches underneath the dragonfly's enormous head sort of absently-unthinkingly positioning herself between Sugar and the others as Kisha and Jack (and Bob) approach. "That," she says with a small amused lilt to her tone, "is Bob. Hi." Her head tips back upwards so that she can look up towards her roommate. "You know, we could probably -- fix. Um. Improve? Um... help?" Her nose crinkles up and she waves a mittened hand towards the tracks in the lawn. "That." Kisha glances down from her perch, then kills Bobs engine with a thought. "What's wrong with him?" she asks unusually cheerfull. "It's not like the lawn doesn't get ruined on a regular basis. Besides the extra traction you get with tracks is very helpful if you need to break a door down!" She spares a moment to stare at the floating outfit, then hmmms. "I need to start carrying an infrared camera. Or build one into my goggles.. I presume you are a new student? Or has Faelan perhaps taken up practical jokes?" "Bob?" Jack repeats, head tilting to the side. After a moment of staring, he shrugs. "Okay, uh...hi," he greets the robot first and then looks up at Kisha. "Nice uh...mini tank," he says awkwardly. He chuckles though at the questions. "I don't think I'm hot enough for an infrared camera," a bad attempt at a joke. "I'm new here. Faelan did think he made me invisible accidentally when we first met though," he remarks. "I'm Jack." "Does your body temperature run colder than average?" B's head tips to one side curiously. Her dragonflies are not thought-controlled; a gesture from her hand sends the blue one over towards Jack, humming quietly in orbit nearby the invisible boy. "And nothing's /wrong/ with him but there are some times it's more useful to fly than to crawl. If you put repulsors in his tracks he wouldn't even always /need/ to use them." B isn't /hovering/, exactly, but there's something very much akin to her dragonfly in the way she orbits the bot, much like her bug is currently circling Jack. Kisha laughs. "Jack, Bob isn't alive. You don't need to talk to him," she notes. "At least not yet. I guess eventually I will at least make him able to pass a Turing test." She hmmmms thoughtfully. "If he is invisible then presumably light passes through, which would mean he doesn't pick up additional warmth from the sun. So perhaps a metabolism adapted to colder temperatures is a survival mechanism?" Her eyes flick back down to Bob. "I guess I could look into it, but I would imagine the power requirements for lifting his weight would be significant and it would add a lot of complexity to his systems. Especially for use under direct mind control." Finally, as an afterthought, she adds "Oh I'm Kisha. A pleasure and suchlike." "Err, maybe. I don't know. But I meant...err...the other meaning of hot," Jack chuckles. "Just a joke," he adds on, rubbing the back of his neck. Of course he has no idea that he doesn't register on infrared cameras either, having never encountered one before. He blinks as the dragonfly hovers near him, resisting the urge to reach out and poke it. He nods when Kisha clears up Bob not being alive but ends up shrugging as his physiology is discussed. "I've got no idea. I just know the invisible doesn't turn off," he replies. He falls quiet, imaging the Bob-bot flying about like the dragonflies are. "Nice meeting you too," he chimes to Kisha. "You don't -- know? I mean, how do you not -- know whether your own body is, I don't -- mean like a couple -- degrees, I mean --" B shakes her head, a faintly puzzled tone to her voice. "Nevermind. Um --" A small pull of hand draws the dragonfly back towards herself. "Hovering more than flying. Power requirements I'm good at figuring out, I've had to --" She cuts herself off with a small blush. "We could look into it anyway." Her teeth scrape slowly against her lower lip. "... if light passes through -- I mean, my pa controls light, he could. Would you /want/ to turn the invisible off?" It's a sudden thoughtful curiosity. "I don't want to presume, you know. What you'd want to experiment with. But invisibility is just so much light bending and if you were going to bend it /back/ --" Her hand drums slowly against her leg, head turning back towards the sky. Kisha drums her fingers against the mechanical arm poking up from the top of Bob. "Is it certain we're talking about light bending? In theory he could be perfectly transparent. Which I guess we could test by injecting a harmless dye. If I keep going down this train of thought I will get in trouble for trying to perform experiments on other students." There seems to be an unspoken again. "I had been thinking about redesigning Bob but I keep getting distracted by more pressing projects. Like using those repulsors I have kicking around to provide the shot velocity for some form of coil gun." "I'm not like...cold blooded or anything like that if that's what you mean. Still feel pretty warm I just haven't touched a thermometer in a long time so I don't know if I'm not uh...ninety-eight point six..." Jack trails off, rubbing the back of his neck again. He glances back at B in surprise though. "I knew he could turn himself...but...you think it's possible? I wouldn't be against trying and at least finding out..." he trails off. When Kisha mentions an injection, Jack chuckles nervously. "Uh, I don't know about that but I do know that people can't see when I like...bleed either. So the stuff inside me is invisible too," he says, also looking towards the sky. "What's a coil gun?" "Ninety-eight point six is an /average/. Most people aren't going to be /exactly/ ninety-eight point six, you should still know if you're, like, a hundred fifty or -- seventy. When you touch /most/ other people do they feel like /they're/ incredibly cold or incredibly warm, to you? -- I tend to run closer to between sixty or seventy, though it fluctuates kind of a whole lot more than humans tend to. You'd think you'd notice /that/. ... I don't think the administration's going to be okay with a coil gun." B doesn't say this like a /reproach/, just a pensive consideration. Her head shakes, also, after this. "He's not transparent. When he eats food the food disappears. You can't see /through/ him. So, it's bending light. Which means a skilled photokinetic could probably undo it. At the very least see what's going on." The dragonfly behind her is nosing at her packet of jerky again. She chuckles, taking out another scrap to feed it to Sugar, then tucks the plastic bag away into her jacket, moving to climb up onto Sugar -- the dragonfly has a modified saddle on, the word 'Sugar' embroidered into it. There's a helmet strapped onto the saddle that she takes off to put on her own head. "I should probably get back to the city before it gets dark. Flying's /even/ colder then." "It's like a rail gun," Kisha explains earnestly. "I suppose I'll just /design/ it then. Save building it for a graduation gift to myself. You never know with powers. There could be a solution he is producing which makes other objects transparent, although yes you are likely right on balance of probability. Occam's razor and all. It /is/ interesting that tissue beneath his skin is bending light too. Usually you would expect the body to take the easy route and just make the outside do it." "Naw, most people feel pretty ugh, normal temperatue," Jack answers, nodding as he thinks about it. "I just didn't think about that kind of stuff a lot," he adds with a shrug. He leans back to get a better look at Sugar when the dragonfly catches his attention and smiles. "Man...so it is real. That is pretty cool," he murmurs. "Have a good flight," he offers to B before looking back to Kisha. "Huh, that sounds cool and like something I don't think any administration would want students building," he chuckles. B's nose wrinkles up, her head shaking. "Bodies are /dumb/, trust me, I know. Mine didn't take the easy route on anything. It doesn't even know how to /breathe/ right and you'd think breathing is pretty much the easiest of things. Nooope." One, two, three, she calls her miniature dragonfly-bots into line behind the living dragonfly. "Have a good holiday. See you later." With a small scritch to the dragonfly's head, a thrum of huge veined wings, she takes off, lifting into the air and soon vanishing into the distance.