Logs:New Template

New Template
Dramatis Personae Cerebro, Scott
In Absentia Charles, Erik, Halim	2024-07-16 "Fuck me, that sounds bloody insane."
Location <XAV> Scott's phone & computer, Scott's room - Xs Third Floor
Scott's room, unlike most of the students' dorms right now, is spacious and comfortable; it retains much of the old-fashioned furniture it came with, and only a few elements of the decor have been updated to reflect its occupant -- a framed vintage military recruitment poster on one wall; a neatly alphabetized bookshelf doubling as storage for several model airplanes; a small TV on the dresser; a minifridge under the desk, covered in magnets from National and State Parks; a tiny Alaska state flag and a tiny American flag side-by-side on the desk, along with a wireless radio and a soldering iron. The windows look out at the lake, but usually the sheer curtains are drawn. All the lights are switched off, leaving the room in a kind of artificial dusk; the only other light source is Scott's laptop, where he has been lazily clicking around in the dormitory keycard software, brow slightly furrowed over his opaque red glasses -- but maybe this is because he didn't turn down the brightness. His calloused finger is a little more clumsy on the laptop's trackpad than it would be with a mouse (his mouse, alas, is sitting on his desk in half-melted pieces; there was an incident) and he definitely didn't intend to do whatever he just did. He leans in to frown at the computer, then blows out a breath. It's well past the peak of midday, but still summery and hot in Scott's room even with the windows open, the lightweight curtains rustling slightly with the slight breeze outside, the much more powerful wind emanating from a burly floor fan in the corner. In spite of the heat Scott is dressed like he would be in the shop -- a dark blue work shirt and jeans, his boots swapped out for slippers -- when he sits back in his chair, running his hair through his hair, his hair sticks up with sweat, operating his phone with his other hand, putting it on speakerphone. "Hey, this is Scott," he says, then, after a brief pause, more sheepishly, "...I don't know if you saw what I just did, 'cause I sure don't know." Per usual, the call with the sysadmin is crystal clear, with no background noise. "You know I can tell who's calling, right?" The sysadmin is, also per usual, sounding annoyed. "Everyone can tell who's calling these days. Anyway, yeah, you archived all of the filters. And here I thought you'd be overjoyed with the ability to narrow down which rooms are housing pyrokinetics, age 15 to 16." There's no typing on the other end of the line. "I'll put them back where they belong, but what were you trying to do? If you want a template, I can give you a template so you can do a 'show me only the troublemakers' or whatever." Scott may be slouching in his chair but something about his posture or the tilt of his head or his straight-backed chair is still very upright. "I know," he says, though he doesn't go so far as to explain or defend his greeting. "What's the difference between archiving and deleting them? Hope I did whatever's easier to fix." He leans a little closer to the screen, as if expecting to see his display morph back into the previous view, drumming his fingertips on the table. His chuckle is very quickly bitten back, though not quite quick enough -- "Don't think I'm planning to sort anyone by their 'troublemaker' status, but I -- sure, I could probably do with a template. I was trying to sort the kids by graduation credits needed." "Archiving I can pretty much just hit undo and we're good," Cerebro says breezily, and Scott's display does in fact morph into the previous view, more or less. "Deleting is a bit more annoying, I have to --" He sighs dramatically. "-- reconnect all the lines. That's what you say if it's a car part, right? But yeah, you did the less annoying fuck-up, which I appreciate. There's a way to delete stuff forever, but you don't get nuking privileges." He doesn't bother trying to suppress his laughter. "Whatever you say, but don't try to act like you don't want to. I'll get you a template. What you do with it is out of my quote-hands-unquote." "Undo," mutters Scott as the display shifts back. "Swear I've hit 'undo' after deleting stuff before and that worked," as he scrolls quickly up-back-down, using the arrow keys rather than the trackpad, then, "Thanks. And -- yeah, I would rather not have nuking powers, good call." He drags his cursor off to one side, to hover over the sliver of his desktop showing behind the window, maybe just to avoid a repeat of his first mistake, then rubs his chin with one hand. "I don't want to," he says, a little more firmly, and maybe he intended to go on in this vein, but instead his attention has pulled distractedly toward -- "quote-unquote?" "It does work, in some interfaces." Cerebro manages to sound minimally condescending here. And he sounds even less condescending when he replies, "Oh, I kind of don't have hands." In fact, he sounds extremely uncertain. "Like, physically. So it's out of my figurative hands only." A full beat of silence. "Fuck me, that sounds bloody insane. I thought...maybe you already knew. Maybe Charles told you long ago and you've been politely not forcing me to get into it." He's kind of babbling by this point. "Or you haven't wanted to get into it because it sounds bloody insane." Scott has propped the phone up next to his laptop screen and gotten back to poking around, with renewed confidence that this time Cerebro is watching him and will catch any mistakes. "Okay," he says, like people not having physical hands is kind of routine for him (it might be.) "I did know that, you have the --" the vague wave of his hand does not actually indicate the, "drones. You're just the only supercomputer I know who has a sense of humor about it." "I'm not a --" Cerebro stops bristling as quickly as he started. "Okay, I am a supercomputer. Only, I'm not an AI." A small animation swirls into existence at the lower right corner of Scott's screen in the style of Clippy, except this one is a smartly dressed chibi rendition Cerebro's Danger Room avatar. It waves, then shoves its entire arm into a file folder icon, rooting around for a moment before producing a document icon, which it tosses up and expands into a window rich with radio buttons, check boxes, and empty fields. "Template," says Cerebro's voice from the phone. "Any time you want one, just go to the File menu, then 'New', then 'Filter'." That he doesn't bother animating that process is probably a significant vote of confidence in Scott's computer literacy. "Anyway I used to be a person. A human person. Well, a mutant person." Scott leans in closer, giving Chibi Cerebro a rare, slim smile -- as soon as the template blooms on the screen he clicks somewhat randomly around the radio buttons and checkboxes, like this page is his own, digital, not-very-satisfying fidget cube, before he chills out and gets to work -- "Loud and clear. File, New, Filter," he echoes, nodding, dragging the cursor up to the toolbar and through this process, though he doesn't click open a new file, just moved back into the text box he's filling in. His brows pinch together over his glasses. "You used to be?" A moment later, he follows up, "What are you now?" Chibi Cerebro scratches his head and gives an exaggerated shrug. "I guess I'm still a person, of sorts?" He's quiet a moment, and his cartoon avatar sits down cross-legged on the taskbar, fiddling idly with the folder icon. "But I haven't got a body anymore. I'm not a person legally, and socially..." He shrugs again. "I have got a social life, online. Out here it's harder. And more dangerous. I probably should have told you a long time ago. I almost did, after Liberty Island." Probably Scott is not totally sure whether he should be speaking to his phone or the Cerebro animation -- his head tilts in a vaguely blue-screening pause before he hazards, "So your mutation, you... became one with the supercomputer?" His idle tapping at the trackpad, with one index finger, is making his cursor jump around the word he was typing, though his first move when he resumes his work is to click the 'end' key, like he does that all the time. His voice, too, has dropped into a familiar (perhaps comfortable) teacherly cadence -- "I bet that's been hard, I'm sorry. I'm sure if you --" he catches himself here, and cuts himself off with a snort of amusement. Another moment goes by before his curiosity wins out enough to let him ask, "Why didn't you?" Chibi Cerebro vanishes in a swirl of sparkles to reappear on the screen of Scott's phone. "I was a technopath. Among other things. But a really powerful technopath. Like I made Halim look like a script kiddie." The avatar puts on a pair of wraparound sunglasses and dabs. "Unfortunately, my powers were kind of killing me. So I built a supercomputer and uploaded my brain into it. Okay, Charles helped." He takes the sunglasses off and tosses them over his shoulder. They vanish in a puff of sparkles. "And fucking Magneto, too. Which was kind of why I didn't tell you, I guess." The avatar sits down again, though it's more of a slump, this time. "I was a part of their whole little cabal back in the day. And I was so furious at them both. And I didn't want to have to get into it." Scott is quiet for a moment, head still tilted unnervingly at his phone; one corner of his mouth tugs to one side in an oblique expression of mingled sympathy and amusement, quirks a little more at the pixelly explosion of glitter. "I'll pretend I know what a script kiddie is. That --" his nostrils flare with this heavy exhale of a sigh, his head tilting only enough to signal that his eyes have shifted away. "I won't pretend I understand any of that history. You don't have to get into it. Sorry your mutation killed you." Cerebro's avatar looks up. "Thanks." He sounds a little surprised. "It sucked. And I don't want to get into it, but there's some stuff you should really know." He scrubs his face with both hands. "I told you if the feds ever found out what I was, they would come after me. Just the part where I'm a sapient supercomputer would be enough for them to raid the school. But I also still have my powers." The cartoon figure levitates, still sitting cross-legged. "Kind of. Only inside the Danger Room." He's trying to summon up some of his usual bluster with, "You're welcome." "I bet." This is in sympathetic-adult cadence again, and this time Scott doesn't catch it, meditatively tapping at the trackpad to click a radio button on and off and back on again. "Can you defend yourself in any way? What can we do to keep you safe? Only inside the --" he frowns down at Chibi Cerebro again, with sudden disquiet. He doesn't have any follow-up questions, though he is quiet for a moment as he thinks through this, before, "Jesus, was I annoying? Have I been annoying you in there for three decades?" This isn't quite an apology -- it's not even very apologetic -- but it's not far off. Chibi Cerebro produces a sword and strikes a pose. "I am an immense badass at cyberwarfare, which is not nothing these days. But other than that, the drones are pretty much all I have." He also tosses the sword over his shoulder to explode into sparkles. "The only way to physically access my mainframe is through the Danger Room, where I am basically a god. But if an attacker were determined, and had time, they could just jackhammer through the floor outside, dig their way down where I couldn't reach them." The avatar slumps back down to sit cross-legged, head hanging. Then suddenly he looks up again, blinking large and startled eyes at Scott. "You are pretty annoying, but that hasn't got anything to do with the Danger Room. I like the simulations. It's not about feeling useful, which obviously I am. I also have just absurd amounts of processing power that go mostly unused, and it's nice to flex those cycles, creatively. It's not like I have to pay attention to the tedious stuff like rendering textures, I have subsystems for a reason. Besides..." The avatar sits up a little straighter. "One of the things I miss is going places, physically. Sims...aren't the same, but they're all I've got." There's a sudden burst of fierce confidence in his voice, now. "Luckily for all of us, I'm really fucking good at simulations." As as quickly, the bluster is gone. "Especially since I've been training to protect me, too." "Hm." Scott tabs out of the keycard software, pulling up maps of the school grounds. "And you can't leave? We could probably fortify that better. For the edge-case scenario we're not around to defend you." He scrolls down, back up; now his meditative tapping is zooming the blueprint in and out with a slightly dizzying effect, but he's not looking at it, shaking his head with a short but gruntled laugh. It trails into a light sigh. "I like the simulations too," he says. "And you are good at it." His fingers pause on the trackpad, the blueprint zoomed in around the schematics of the Danger Room; his mouth tugs with sudden, wry humor into a very thin line. "Well. You know I'm always around to help people train."