Logs:Eye of the Sentinel

Eye of the Sentinel
Dramatis Personae Gaétan, Kelawini, Nanami
In Absentia	2020-11-28 "Anyone else we go find while we turning some killer robot into our own personal Siri?" (followed by seeking help.)
Location <NYC> Across the Rift - Riverdale - Bronx
It's considerably warmer here than it was in Maine. Thank God for small blessings. Nanami has pared down her northern layers to just warm hiking boots, jeans, thin grey hoodie with the hood pulled up under a lined denim jacket. She's currently munching on a french fry, eyes squeezed shut in some level of contentment before she opens them wider. "Not far. Just that next block, huh? You think from here we can do?" 'Here' is quiet, right now, a bus stop outside a strip of small shops outside which few cars and a small trickle of pedestrians have been drifting. Kelawini is looking as nondescript as her sister, though the hood pulled up over her head is that of her lip-length jacket in pink and gray, left unzipped over her layers of red and black, heavy comfortable jeans and hiking boots. She polished off her own food some time ago and has just been slumped quietly beside her sister, subdued as she has been for much of their long journey down, and ever since. She rouses herself at Nanami's words, though. "One block?" Her head nods, slow. "We try, ya?" Her hand stretches out without hesitation, her power reaching eagerly for her sister's before they've even made contact. Gaétan has fetched up against the side of the bus stop, frowning up at the optimistic assessment on when the next bus is due. His arms are crossed over his chest, his green and grey zip-up hoodie a few sizes too big though his jeans and boots at least fit fine. One hand is shoved into his pocket; the other lifts to his mouth, teeth worrying at the corner of his pinky nail in silence. Nanami reaches to clasp Kelawini's hand. The world around them crackles, alive and roaring of electrical sound; among the crashing waves she is trying to steer them towards one in particular, the familiar busy communal mind of a Sentinel, vigilant at a nearby subway station. Her thoughts sync to her sisters as they sync to the bot's, felt more than heard -- what are they looking for? Something out of place in Staten Island? Something out of place among the police in Staten Island? Trying to fight the battering tide of information and focus on what they need like fighting one hold-down and then another while searching for something you lost under the water and you not-quite-sure what. Nanami grips Kelawini's hand tighter. Keeps looking. Through the dizzy-swirling waves and the headache that's coming slower each time they do this but coming all the same, the sisters push on through the hive mind of thee Sentinels. It's sort of sideways, at first, that they find Staten Island at all. Some distributed GIS dataset that the Sentinel hive-mind uses to generate arrest statistics and the like. Down through the data, they find New York, and then Staten Island, and there! The single most noticeable thing about the entire borough is the hundreds of units concentrated in one small point in the northern reaches. It takes a few false starts--their head pounding now as if the waves of data were physical blows--before they are able to access the local data exchanges for those Sentinels deployed at the 121st Precinct, their mission parameters, their records, their patrol patterns... The crush of the elegant, alien chatter between the Sentinels starts to suck them down, the already precarious balance of their power tipping dangerously toward Kelawini's as they get drawn down deeper into the single nearby that's been their ride this entire time--and into all the myriad devices all around them they've been desperately trying to ignore. It's with one will that they pull their hands apart, the synergy of their powers unraveling, leaving them both smarting but the Sentinel that had been their ride un-fried and none the wiser. "970 Richmond Ave, Staten Island, New York 10314." The address tumbles from Kelawini's lips fluidly, and she makes a face after, rubbing her head slowly. "Right place fo' sho but." She glances sideways at Nanami. "It stay--it's crawling with those things." Gaétan is still chewing -- new fingernail, now, though -- by the time the girls resurface. The bus schedule has changed its mind -- pushed the time estimate back by five minutes, now. "Crawling like -- how crawling?" "Crawling like no way we get in there. Crawling like they got some kine bot we not even seen. Crawling like we try that we fo sho die. Crawling like I'm pretty sure this world they know about that hole too and they stay ready." Nanami shakes her head fiercely, her eyes wide. Her arms curl tight around her chest. "All this way we come. Now what? Maybe we should have gone to Canada." Kelawini is still rubbing her temples, her eyes shutting for a moment as she nods along to her sister's explanation. "Get too much dem fakkas spread out too far. Can't fry um all, one time." She slumps back into the bench, even the adrenaline of their recent search deserting her now. Gaétan lowers his hand. Lifts it back. Lowers it again. Lifts it back, gnawing once more on the edge of his nail. "What if we had help. Like. Someone who knows this world. Or has -- resources that could -- I don't know. We can't do it alone but what if we weren't alone. Can you look someone up in there? See if --" He hesitates, brows pulling together. "See if there's a Lucien Tessier. On Waverly Place. Or -- anywhere in the city." The look Nanami gives Gaétan is deeply skeptical. "What, your brother he gonna sing so good the Sentinels all get charm to sleep?" Her mouth twists to the side, and she looks at her sister uncertainly. "Guess knowing someone here, better than nobody." She grinds her knuckles against her temple. Takes a deep breath before she holds her hand out to Kelawini again. "kay den. Anyone else we go find while we turning some killer robot into our own personal Siri?" Not like Gaétan is going to have a lot of window for answering. Kelawini drops her hands from her head, takes a deep breath, and grips Nanami's hand tight. They find the Sentinel easily this time, its hardened electrical system and intricate central processor and orderly ripples of signals at least superficially familiar to the sisters now. Still, it's another grueling round of struggling through the Sentinel network while the wired city pumps out more and more information all around them. But shortly they find the Sentinel's portal to a joint law enforcement information sharing portal and query the name. While they wait for results to return, their awareness slips into the portal utility itself, unbalancing their previously stable hold on the Sentinel for just a fraction of a second--an eternity at the clock speed of the bot, especially networked into the Māhoes as it is. The rolling waves of data suddenly pile up into a tsunami, crushing them beneath it just as their query turns up. The Sentinel's CPU overclocks spectacularly as it tries and fails to function like a massively parallel human nervous system, destroying itself ejecting the sisters in a rush of splitting agony. Kelawini gasps, jerking upright and then onto her feet--pulls her sister along with her, though she's swaying unsteadily, her eyes refusing to focus quite right. "200 Waverly Place," she tells Gaétan. "But we wen break da kine. Hele, we go right now." "What?" Gaétan looks from one sister to the other with a blank expression, at first, until his eyes open wider. "Oh, fuck. Oh - shit. Right." His first thought, still, is to check the time on the Next Bus arrival -- before he scrunches his eyes, pats at his jacket and steps off the curb, one hand lifting at one familiar thing in this uncomfortable stress-world: "Yo. Taxi!"