ArchivedLogs:Testing

Testing
Dramatis Personae B, Bruce	2015-10-10 "Let's just say I've some health...concerns."
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. One of the many dedicated R&D testing floors, this roughly cubical room would rival many a high school gymnasium for size. Extensive rail and hardpoint systems travel across the ceiling and floor as well as the walls, between panoramic blast-resistant windows to control rooms and observation balconies. Though resilient and meticulously cleaned, the gleaming alloy walls and floor still show faint marks from projects past--scrapes, dents, and star-shaped blasts. As evidenced by the many layers of additional security (not to mention dire warnings ranging from actual red lights to holographic projections to locked doors), this floor is currently in use. Those with the appropriate access privileges can see that the testing underway does not have direct affiliation with any Stark project, and that the facilities have been reserved for personal use by one Bruce Banner and a very short list of approved personnel. Bruce himself is on the test floor now, hunched over the holographic keyboard of a wheeling workstation, scrubbing the stubble on his chin with the backs of his knuckles. He wears a white lab coat over a cobalt blue dress shirt (top button undone, no tie) and brown plainfront slacks. His glasses sit rather low on his nose, and he occasionally glances up over their thick black frames at the elaborate testing contraption sitting a dozen feet away behind clear but thick blast shields. There's a buzzing from the door -- well, there's been a buzzing from a couple doors, but finally B has cleared hir way through to the last of them. Ze is dressed much brighter than Bruce -- purple galaxy-printed leggings underneath a crushed-velvet black skirt, a tight purple crop top over an even tighter silver long-sleeved shirt, chunky black spiked wristcuffs, huge heavy platform boots. A small blue dragonfly perched on hir shoulder, a canvas bag slung over one arm, a black messenger bag draped over the other. Her steps are oddly quiet for the stompy boots she wears, only /small/ amount of clomp as she trails in towards Bruce, black eyes looking curiously through the blast windows. "Oh, I am so glad you made it!" Bruce stands up to his full height, stretching his shoulders, and waves B over. "I know you've probably got a lot of people to visit this weekend but this--" He gestures in frank exasperation at his machinery. "--has me at wit's end. I'm no engineer, but everything was fabricated to exacting specifications and I've checked the /math/ about twenty times, so..." Sucking in a deep breath, he makes a visible effort to stop. "Sor--ah, my apologies." His smile, when it comes, is thin and embarassed. "How've you been?" "Well, you know, when duty calls --" B's smile is quick and small, a shy closed-lipped thing that vanishes soon. Once she's actually drawn near it's easier to see the hints of bruising lingering on her face, not quite so stark as in someone with a different complexion, a slightly puffier darker purple-blue against her gleaming skin. "Half my family's gotta work tonight and /anyway/ I might explode if I get hugged any more so a break was -- welcome." She sets her bags down, nose crinkling up with the admission, "... I left my little brother loose in my old lab, you don't think Mr. Stark will /mind/?" Her eyes shift back out to the testing floor. "College is --" There's only a small hitch of pause, a rapid flutter of gills. "Busy. This isn't for /work/, right?" "I'm glad you consider this a break, but still, feel free to bail out any time." Bruce chuckles, pushing a few messy black curls from his forehead. "Tony? Are you kidding, he's been messing around in labs like these since he's been--well, I have no idea how little your brother is, but no, I cannot imagine that he would care in the least. /This/--" He flails an arm at the series of roughly cylindrical metal edifices and the two blocks of reinforced concrete bracketing them on the other side of the blast shield. "--is /supposed/ to be a high-energy particle accelerator, but right now it's really bad abstract art." Then, after another deep breath. "Not for work. Just a personal project." "He just turned ten. He's only built a /couple/ robots so far." B is quietly slipping in past Bruce to nudge her way in front of the workstation. Her fingers dancing lightly over the keyboard at first but soon dispense with it in favor of a number of larger 3-D models of the machinery on the other side of the shield. "Unfortunately my pa's the artist," she murmurs, absently. "What are you going to do with a particle accelerator -- uh, /personally/?" "Ten's plenty old enough for playing with robots." Bruce steps aside, watching the display over B's shoulder--or head, really. "And he's got a good mentor." He glances over at the actual machinery, still inert despite lit indicator lights. "Do research, hopefully. Eventually I hope to study elementary particles without needing to rent time on the large colliders. This is just a prototype, of course, not going to show us any Higgs bosons." "That's what I say! Sometimes my pa freaks out though." B shakes hir head a little skeptically. Her eyes are narrowing on the holographs in front of her, clawed fingers expanding one section, twisting it over in her hands as nearby in smaller output a window scrolls diagnostics. Here and there some of the holographic machine parts start to glow red as she brings the keyboard back up, taps at it to tweak some parameters. "Mmmnh --" Her tone is also kind of skeptical, eyes skittering back up towards Bruce. Then back to the diagram. "A break from the squishier science." "Probably comes with the parenting territory." Bruce crosses his arms, the motion of his shrug small and tight. "My aunt would freak out if I stayed too late at the /library/ when I was ten. Can't imagine the magnitude of her fretting if I'd had access to a robotics lab." He pushes his glasses up and resettles them on the bridge of his nose with perhaps excessive care. "Exactly. Though I'm still tied up with some squishy science, after all. How about you? Have you had any time for pet projects?" "That seems so bizarre, though. Aren't parents supposed to fret about kids -- doing drugs and -- uhh -- falling in with a -- /bad crowd/?" B looks up at Bruce with exaggeratedly wide eyes (... in her face this is /veeery/ wide, enormous pools of deep-set black that take up a disproportionate amount of her very narrow face.) "Oh gosh." Hir hand lifts from the keys to press fingertips to her lips in feigned shock. "Are /we/ the bad crowd? Parents warning their kids to stay away from strange men in labcoats who might expose them to -- /science/." With a giggle, she turns back to her work. "Actually, in Texas they probably /do/. -- This is going to take a minute." There /are/ robots, now, long arms, at least, tracking across the ceiling to make adjustments that B has just been entering. "Is that what they have you doing here, then? I mean, that they /pay/ you for? Biochem? I've --" Her gills flutter for a moment. "I don't know. Not really. School's kind of eaten most of my brain up. My extracurricular life has been -- sort of nonexistent." "I don't think my aunt ever had any reason to fear I'd fall in with a bad crowd, and in fairness I probably was more likely to get by a bus walking home from the library." Bruce almost takes an step backwards at the spectacle of B's exceptionally wide eyes. Though he masters himself enough to stand still, his pupils dilate, his breathing speeds up, and sweat sheens his forehead. "I'm sure that view is not confined to Texas." The quaver in his voice /might/ pass for amusement, but sounds rather a lot like nerves. "Oh, yes. I'm on an implant biocompatibility project, as far as actually getting paid goes." This distractedly, as he takes off his glasses and produces a lens cloth to clean them. "Though that's not what I meant when I said--well, let's just say I've some health...concerns." Returning the glasses to his face, he turns to watch the robotic arms work, though not without a glance back at B, lips pressed thin together. "That is a thing school does sometimes. Though, as brilliant as you are, you probably don't need to push yourself quite so hard to stay on top of schoolwork..." Suddenly, he shakes his head. "Apologies, I didn't mean to make assumptions about your life or what you need to be doing. I'm not going to be that old guy who hands out advice on everything unasked-for." "I mean. You fell in with Tony Stark. /Sooo/." B's smile is quick and amused and comes /very/ close, this time, to showing a bit of teeth. Only the tiniest tiniest sliver before she catches herself and presses her lips closed, head bowing slightly as she looks at Bruce's face and then quickly turns her head away. There's another small quiver of gills alongside her neck. "Oh..." Her voice is softer, now. The robots continue their work as /she/ continues her fine-tuning. "The /schoolwork/ hasn't been the hard part. Is that weird? That's probably weird. It's just been hard to..." She trails off, eyes snapping up with a sudden brightness. "Waitwaitwait. Wait. Wait did you say implant biocompatibility?" She's practically bouncing on hir toes, now. "I've been working on a sensor that can process impulses faster than the /current/ myoelectric prostheses can -- but /I'm/ no good at the -- the /squishy/ stuff, but maybe you could check out -- figure out how to fit to him. /His/ needs have been a little -- specialized." "It's not weird." Bruce crosses his arms and clasps his hands over the opposing triceps. "There's a lot more to campus life than schoolwork, and you haven't had time to seek out a support network there yet." He looks down at the toes of his brown oxfords, back up at B after she has turned away, then down again with a very faint sigh. "Oh, the existing processors haven't tended to optimize for speed, by which I mean they're heinously slow." This with a disapproving shake of his head. "I'm not a prosthetist, but if you think he may have some enzyme inhibitor issues or other biocompatibility problems, I can definitely take a look." He leans forward slightly, intrigued. "How specialized?" "Heinously slow has been part of the problem, so far." B's sigh is silent, no breath but a slow flap of gills that interrupts her words. She turns her attention back to the work, frowning slightly at the display before her fingers move rapidly against the holo-keyboard again. "I think /neural/ compatibility has been the problem. The person in question -- he lost his arm but his mutation -- his /mind/ reacts just -- exponentially faster than normal humans are built for. He's gotten nowhere in rehab -- I don't think regular myoelectric prostheses were built for someone whose impulses are like his." She rocks back, looking back up through the glass. "Alright. Let's try this again." "Hm..." Bruce strokes his chin absently. "Neural compatibility, huh? I'd really have to take a look at his neurotransmitter levels and the benchmarking for his existing prosthesis, at the very least. But yes, I'd be happy to take a look, if he's not opposed--mind you, I'm not an MD." Looking down at the display, he nods. "Here goes."