ArchivedLogs:Larger Scale

Larger Scale
Dramatis Personae Doug, Keith
In Absentia	2014-04-28 '
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. There is no set meal time, at Stark. Employees generally eat when their team leaders call for such a break, or if they've reached a natural pausing place. Some choose to go off-site to grab their food, while others take advantage of the stocked breakroom to save a few bucks. So, at any given time, there are usually a few employees in here. Which doesn't explain why Doug is in here currently alone. Dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved blue henley shirt, the blonde sits at one of the round tables; one of the holographic computers in front of him. Currently, the light-screen seems to be showing several frames of video at once, none of which seem to be really /interesting/. Just feed of a city street, and alleys. The teenager has a smaller window open on the screen, running his fingers along it to scroll through the lines of code. He frowns as, one by one, each video screen goes dead in a flash of static snow, and leans forward to tap out some notations in the smaller window. "Run those again, Warlock," he says to the empty room. "At about a quarter of the speed." There's a pause, and then a tinny, cheerful voice responds. "Affirmative, creatorfriend Doug!" Then the videos start again, the images crawling along as Doug studies them intently. "Huh." Wearing a stark industries access badge from a labcoat pocket, Keith makes his way towards the source of life, or at least the source of consciousness. Taking his glasses off to rub at his eyes a moment, he lets out a yawn before ruffling a hand over already mussed up hair. Beneath the lab coat he has on anti static approved cotton shirt in black with a stark logo on it, the conductive webbing in the shirt making it more of a ribbed look, and his pants in a similar material, the little static straps connecting to his shoes and wrist bands. It seems that they've let the lab crew out for a small break, and as he makes his way into the break room, he pokes at the coffee machine until sustenance comes from it, the ambrosia of the gods wafting through the air. Sipping from the cup after doctoring it, Keith finally notices the fellow sitting at a computer at one of the desks. "Hrm? Whats that over there? Optical search routines on video?" Doug glances up at the yawn, studying the older man for a long moment before he turns back to his computer screen. He makes a couple more notations, glancing back up when the man speaks to him. "Hmm?" he asks, buying time while his brain catches up. "Oh. Sort of?" he says, offering a sheepish sort of smile. "I'm definitely looking for something. I'm just not sure what, yet." He wrinkles his nose as he looks back at the screen, and presses his lips together. "Warlock, note cameras one and seven," he instructs the computer, and there's a flicker of light as the program responds. Then the teenager looks back up. "Something took out these cameras, and I'm trying to determine what it was." He glances at the clean-room tells, and lifts his chin. "I'm Doug," he says, holding out his hand. "Intern in robotics." Nodding as he finishes the first coffee and immediately starts making a second, Keith glances at the holograms a moment. "Keith. Keith Green. Circuitry and chip design" he says pointing at the badge, then taking Dougs hand with a loose grip handshake. "Well, just relying on the footage, you'd be dependent on the frames per second of the camera. Unless its really good you wouldn't really note much that way, unless you get really lucky. You'd need to frame by frame it, but on the plus side, easy for the optical recognition to do still shots." He offers a shrug, and redoctors the new cup. "Honestly, you'd be better taking the cameras apart to do forensics on them than going through video footage. EMP taking out a camera would fry it. Paint ball you'd still have footage, just all black. Pellet gun, you'd just have a destroyed optics. Large caliber you're looking at a pretty smashed up camera." Doug nods at the introduction, and offers a smile. "Nice to meet you," he says, and waves a hand at the screen. "I've been trying to slow it down in increments," he says. "In case it's not /that/ fast. But the angle of the camera...if something knocked it out from above, it's probably not going to show up." He sounds a bit annoyed at that; like whoever has thwarted the cameras has made it /personal/. "Examing the cameras is no good," he says, sighing heavily. "They got blown up, then buried in a bunch of rubble." He lifts his eyebrows, and leans back to rub at his eyes. "So, this is my best bet, slim as it is." He strokes his fingers along the screen, activating a hold screen featuring a spiky-haired yellow-and-black robot creature. "Circuitry and chip design, huh?" he says, lacing his fingers behind his head and looking at Keith with a tipped half-smile. "Without whom, my department would just be building big toasters. How long have you worked there?" "Certainly makes it harder I'd wager. Good luck on the digital forensics, never really liked it. The screen resolution is never as good as I would like it to be," Keith says with a shake of his head, then adjusts his glasses. "Only a few months. Just finished up my masters and my last internship at the Lawrence Berkeley Energy lab." Chuckling at the toasters comment, he grins though. "Well, they have said you can install a stripped down linux kernel on a toaster, so maybe with enough of em and a network card you could distribute it." "It's not as bad as it could be," Doug says, loosening one hand to gesture at the screen. "The cameras were pretty good-quality, and Warlock's pretty good at extrapolation of fuzzy images, so maybe I'll find something." He offers a weary-looking thumbs-up, and nods at Keith answer to his question. "I've only been here a few months, myself," he says. "I was working on the car project, but they moved me over to one of the industrial projects. So, maybe sentient toasters are in my future." He grins, and shifts forward to rest his elbows on the table. "Or at least toasters you could add to a network like Warlock or JARVIS." He spreads his hands, barely lifting them free of the table top. "'The home of tomorrow -- today!'" Nodding a bit with slow sips of the coffee, Keith hrms. "Well, that was the point of the eye pee vee six expansion. They said there would be enough addresses to give one to every piece of hardware around, so network toasters and fridges would be viable." Shaking his head though, he lets out a small sigh. "Artificial intelligence though, that stuff requires some specialized hardware. Least we have the power to run what we'd need, coolant systems though, need to find better options. I don't want to run a fish tank of nonconductives just to prevent meltdown." Doug grins. "I am totally going to have an automated house one day," he declares. "LIke the one in that cartoon, with the two dogs." He hums a bit of music -- possibly from said cartoon, and nods. "That would definitely be sweet." He wrinkles his nose at the idea of the specialized hardware, and rolls a shoulder. "Warlock's pretty good at running my little network," he says, indicating the robot creature. "But, I don't require as much from him as running a house or a car would. He's good with up to about four functions before he starts to lose coherence." He chuckles. "I haven't figured out how to overcome heating issues," he confesses. "It would be cool if there was a chip that converted the generated heat back into energy. Think about how long you'd extend the battery life?" "There are a few things for doing that, but then you're adding in additional size for the conversion, and mostly the electricity is caused by heat differentials or changing temperature back and forth." Gesturing to the tablet, Keith tilts his head. "Do you mind? There was a paper published a few years ago on this alloy that changes its magnetic properties based on heat that is another option, but that would be far better as the heat sink than the chip itself. I could bring up the paper if you're interested." Looking a bit bad sciencey a moment between the grin, ruffled hair and glasses, he chuckles. "Honestly, a lot of it is waiting on metamaterials, weird geometry, or less power intensive transistors." Doug waves at the table. "Please," he says, pushing the tablet in Keith's direction. "It might come in handy, when I build my army of sleeper-agent appliances." He grins, and stands, moving to the fridges. "I'm super interested in anything that improves computer efficiency and effectiveness," he says. "Mostly building networks and stuff, but the hardware's pretty interesting." Opening one of the fridges, he liberates a can of Monster and wanders back to the table. "I'm pretty good at assembling, but building components from scratch, not so much." He takes his seat, popping the can open and sipping at it. "Most of that stuff sounds like stuff /we/ should be inventing," he notes. "Or maybe we are." Gesturing into the holographic interface for a moment, Keith frowns till he gets used to a custom UI not his own. Finally shifting it to what he was looking for he pulls down a pdf to load up and points to the labels. "See Multiferroic materials, both magnetic and electric during various heating phases. They were wanting to use it on exhausts and such, but heat sinks for computers would work too. Would be crap In a chip itself, i mean look at the formula. See Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10? I wouldn't let half of those into a chip, you'd get waay too much interference, especially at the ten nano range. We're already trying to avoid the electron jump." The spiky-haired robot reacts to the unfamiliar hand, skipping aside before he falls into the regular 'desktop' screen, making an audible 'pop' as he goes. A moment later, a tiny box comes up indicating that this computer has been removed from the network. Doug leans forward to examine the document when it's brought up, and wrinkles his nose. "Seems like that would have all kinds of practical uses," he notes. "You could almost use it to build self-sufficient buildings. With the right mechanics." He bounces a bit in his chair -- either from excitement or the energy drink or maybe even a combination of the two. It's hard to tell. "You couldn't use it for the chips, but what about the shell?" he suggests. "If you lined the shell around the processor with it, isn't it feasible something could be rigged to the shell to tap into that heat sink? Something that isn't right up against the board?" "Oh yeah, far more feasible, but if you're doing that you can use something far less expensive than a custom alloy. Hell, you can buy a camping pot with a decent thermionic generator. Line the case of a tablet with that and you'd be probably at least increasing your battery life by a good fifty percent, assuming you aren't using it in the middle of the summer in a desert." Keith chuckles and slides the tablet back. "It would be nice to use a different geometry for the chips though. If you weren't worrying about something Flat, you could probably provide more surface area to dump heat. But you'd be avoiding the tablet and desktop entirely at that point. But say a geodesic dome shape chip, surround with a laser coolant system, you could be running a superconductor at that temperature. But your power requirements would be through the roof if you are relying on that coolant rig." Doug looks deeply thoughtful when Keith offers more affordable alternatives, and his eyes narrow as he considers this information. "Man," he says with a laugh when Keith pauses for breath. "I am so not the engineer type. I understood all of those words, but I wouldn't have the first idea about how to do any of that." He grins, and takes another swig from his can. "You could probably get away with a sphere for the actual computer," he notes, lifting his eyebrows. "If you were doing a holographic interface like this one, I mean. Although, I've found you can hook an analog keyboard to just about anything, given enough time and materials." "Oh, spheres are more a bother for stacking for server space than anything. Anything not rectangular makes figuring out the spacing a problem, you've seen the spacing plans right?" Keith heads over to the fridge, pulling out a blue can that says Focus on it. "But yeah, you could probably use it pretty well if you were going for an anthropomorphic robot too. Brains are kinda ball shape after all, and you get people happy to have a face to look at." Popping the can he takes a swig. "Holographic interfaces have made things pretty fun though, I bet they could market it for gaming before office work though." "You should suggest that to B," Doug says, waving a hand at the break room door and the little sharkbrain beyond. "If anyone around here was going to build a high-end robot, it's going to be him. You've seen his dragonfly, right?" He leans forward, stroking his fingers through the hologram and pulling open a window to make notes. "Oh, it'll definitely hit the gamers before anyone," he says confidently. "We've been /salivating/ for something like this. Imagine Skyrim in total 3D." He closes his eyes at this suggestion, enjoying that image of the future. "But yeah," he says, when he opens them again. "I'm definitely a fan of all their applications." He leans back in his seat, and lifts his chin. "You game much?" "Hrm, maybe? Oh that one, yeah I think I remember that now." Keith says with a nod. "Oh I'm more a Civilization and Minecraft guy than Skyrim. I don't think Anyone cares about Mincecraft in three dee though." Shaking his head he frowns, "I had been playing that one plague game, but well... it was a bit awkward trying to kill humanity with a virus when that plague hit." Ruffling his hair again to get the thought out of his head, he leans back in the chair. "I kinda prefer to dork out and build things to just going around stabbing stuff." "Engineer," Doug says with a grin when Keith confesses his gaming preference. "I haven't met one yet who wasn't about the building games." He lifts a shoulder. "I can do all right in Civilization, and SimCity, but I fail at Minecraft. It's too...linear for me." He takes another swig from his can, and swallows audibly. "There's something cathartic about going out and stabbing stuff, though. You can really get out aggression. Although, that might not be the best idea with holograms. Could lead to a bunch of broken limbs." "Mm hmm. Bet you can guess what I play in team fortress two," Keith says with a smirk. "Minecraft amuses me, they actually made the rules engine of the world such that you can build a computer in the game using the stuff to build gates from scratch. Makes you appreciate the lithography method sometimes, but it definitely is satisfying being able to know exactly how your logic path will flow." He waggles his fingers abit, but has a smile. "Oh yeah, especially if they figure out the feedback stuff and put it to closer to realistic levels. Someones going to try to overclock it, or homebrew it and end up with people breaking their ribs when someone hits them with a rocket launcher in game." Doug laughs at Keith's response, and he raises his eyebrows. "Well, 'engineer' seems a bit on-the-nose, so I'm going to say 'Pyro'," he says, adopting a too-innocent expression. He can only maintain it a few moments, though, breaking back into a grin. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" he asks of the Minecraft mechanics. "I mean, if I was making a game with real money involved, I would totally make computers a thing that needed more effort." He lifts a shoulder, and his grin turns a bit wicked. "I could fix it for you, if you like. Can't be more than a couple of lines of code that need changing." "Spy actually," Keith nods severely with his response. "Oh its a good thing. And its amusing, just the redstone and such really. Not much different than building a chip atom by atom honestly. If it wasn't so expensive or time consuming, that's how all chips would be built, rather than relying on the mass production methods. You can't do it cheap enough to make a profit on the chips after all. But if you only needed one, and you didn't want people to be able to reverse engineer it easily, that would be the best way." "Not one of those processes you could speed up, huh?" Doug says, wrinkling his nose. "That's too bad. Seems like if you expedited the process, that's the only real obstacle to the cost. Faster production would mean more supply, right? And if those are the best-designed chips...." he lifts a hand, and rolls his shoulder. "Ugh. I am so not an engineer," he says playfully. "I'm probaby way off base. Give me a bit of code, and a program to steer her by, and that's where I'm most comfortable." "You kinda have to do it one at a time, unless you have a couple hundred atom deposition 'printers'," Keith says with finger quotes at printer. "And even then, the costs would be extravagent. Multimillion dollar desktops aren't exactly what people are looking for. Still one off chips can still be beneficial. Design a chip that can power an AI strong enough to hit singularity and then have the AI figure it out for example." He chuckles and shakes his head at that, but shrugs. "It's kinda like how you play the games. You build the infrastructure, to unlock the upgrades, to unlock better infrastructure, lather rinse repeat, beat the game." "Well, yeah. Okay." Doug grins as Keith explains the cost-prohibitiveness of the endeavor. "That makes a big difference." He closes one eye in a solemn wink. "But I could /totally/ build that A.I.," he says, puffing out his chest a bit. "With one of those chips, and unlimited power...yeah." He shows some teeth in his smile at this thought. There's a snicker from the teenager at the comparison to games. "I'm a terrible cheat," he confesses. "At least on PC games. I'm always changing the parameters of the game." "Hrmm, if you promise you can, perhaps I can see if the lab has one to spare," Keith smiles at that, perhaps not quite believing it, but at least accepting of the confidence. "Everyone plays the game differently, and some people have better starting stats for their build. You don't run a rogue with low dex and high int after all." Finishing off the can of Focus, he tosses it towards the recycle bin, it wobbling a few times, looking like its about to fall out of the bin before it tips in. "So it's not a cheat if you had the bonuses already there. You just get people complaining if they think you had an unfair advantage." "It would take some time," Doug says, lifting his shoulder. "Working by myself, I could probably do it in about a year, if that was my only focus. Warlock's only limited by my systems, honestly." He wrinkles his nose. "And if I was going to do something like that, it seems like Mister Stark would probably want JARVIS upgraded first." He grins, and lifts his eyebrows. "I'm just an intern, after all. I don't think I warrant fancy chips for playing around with." He, too, drains his can, tossing it at the recycling bin with far less impressive results. The can clatters to the floor, prompting Doug to rise and retrieve it. "But you should totally tell me when he asks, because I would be interested in seeing the results." "I think I've only met Mr. Stark once, and even then it was in a room with a dozen other people. But we still aren't using atomic deposition in the lab. You have to design the entire process from scratch at that point, since you're not just dealing with the standard concepts of cmos there." Letting out a sigh, Keith eyes the clock, and the coffee maker as if thinking. "Mainly we're just making things smaller and jockeying with Moore's law with better lasers for now. Cheaper than swapping the entire process, since you can't just use standard ISO 1 clean rooms for it. You'd probably want a vacuum chamber." Drumming fingers on the table, he hrms. "That would be pretty nice though. Small scale vacuum chamber you could get all sorts of testing done for it. Maybe I'll ask for one, and then maybe the Boss will be asking for fancier chips." "Good lord," Doug says, wrinkling his nose. "The hardware side is more complicated than I thought." He tips his head, looking at Keith with a certain amount of respect for his expansive knowledge. "And Mister Stark is pretty nice," he says. "I only met him once, with B, but he was pretty nice." He wrinkles his nose. "Not too much different from the way he appears in interviews." He leans forward as he comes to the table, flicking a button on the tablet and closing the hologram. "Still, he likes new and fancy stuff. I bet if you told him what you wanted to do, and its applications, he would totally be on board." "Nobody appreciates hardware until they have to figure out how to build it. Most people would be even unhappier if they knew the percent of chips that are dead on production just due to the process having inconsistencies." Keith makes a face, but chuckles. "I think I'll come up with the design and run simulations first. Though I may need to have one of you software folk upgrade the chip design program to work in that manner. There are a few physics matters that the program just isn't build to handle. I mean, the programs are set so that you can lay out your positive and negative deposits, where you want your channels to be and helping with the standard layer built approach. You don't want Any of that to be that way if we're going to consider building it Literally from scratch." "I appreciate the guys who /make/ the hardware, if that counts," Doug says flashing a coy sort of smile at the older man as he tidies up where he's been sitting. "Without you guys, I'd be using a slide rule, and not having nearly as much fun." He chuckles, and nods at Keith's plan. "Just tell me what changes you need, and get me a copy, and I'll do it," he says, jerking his chin towards his chest. "I have a talent for coding, if you haven't figured it out yet," he says, wrinkling his nose. "There's not much I /can't/ get a program to do." He lifts his eyebrows. "Plus, it couldn't hurt, if it's going to make faster, better computers, right?" "See, it's like I said. Upgrades, infrastructure, repeat ad nauseum." Keith nods at the offer. "We'll see how it goes. You know how things can be in a company, I wouldn't want it to detract from your actual projects, and they may want to farm it to others. But I'll put your name in as a possible developer for the upgrades. They like things in house to keep it all secret." He smiles at the confidence either way. "Now I guess I have to make these chips with all the offer of help to get it done." Doug chuckles. "Usually, I have four or five projects going, in addition to my work load. And with my semester ending early, I have a crap ton of free time." He snaps his fingers. "If they want me, I'm totally willing to help you out." He blinks, and smiles slyly. "For the good of the company, of course." Which looks more earnest than it sounds. "And not because I am totally twigging on the possibilities." He nods at Keith's surmisal, and wags a finger in his direction. "You totally do," he agrees. "It's criminal to waste good assets." Standing and stretching, Keith readjusts the straps going to the static dispersal parts. "Well, its time for me to get back to playing with electricity. It was nice to meet you Doug." Taking his glasses off and cleaning them before he heads back, he does seem more alert from all the additional chemicals. "To a world where things smaller than a hair can make such a huge difference to those who focus on the larger scale."