Club Lofts, Windsor, ON, Canada
December 27, 2016
10:36 PM
"Thanks for helping me with this, Konori-san." Washuu was using one of her tools to open a passage through the wall struts. By no means was she cutting a channel - that would have been far too primitive. She was displacing molecules in a straight line in order to have a place to run a datalink line.
"You've done a lot of everyone else, Washuu-chan. This is the least I could do to repay -- STOP!" Washuu froze. "You almost cut through a support beam."
As she pulled some support braces out of a subspace pocket and set them up around the girder that she was about to molecularly separate, Washuu said, "Don't want to bring the building down on us, do we? Good thing you can see through the walls."
From the stairs, Ami asked, "How much longer do you expect to be?"
Washuu laughed. "In a building this size? We're working all night, Mizuno-san. Or should I say 'Mercury-dono'?"
Ami sighed. "Please don't." Then smiled and added, "Call me Ami-chan!" They all laughed at that. Turning to Mii, she continued, "I guess we're having our conversation tomorrow."
Mii nodded. "Sorry."
As Washuu and Mii continued installing the Good Neighbor System, Ami returned to her guest room to look over the scans that she had taken earlier that day. The people running cables and installing sensors wouldn't be the only ones spending a sleepless night.
Three hours later, Ami regretted swearing like a sailor earlier in the day - that left her with nothing stronger to use when she realized what she was looking at.
Blossom Apartments, Ottawa, ON, Canada
December 28, 2016
7:20 AM
The Good Neighbor System beeped once, then went back to showing the normal status display. "I thought we had voice reports on that now."
"We do," Kazari replied to Mamoru. "That must be a new condition." She put her chopsticks on the rest beside her rice bowl, stood up, looked at the system display, and continued, "It's a new condition and a new node on the VPN. And it looks like it's a default install, too, so there's probably almost no hardening on that node."
"Is this new node in Windsor?" asked Rob.
Kazari double-checked the display. "According to the readout, yes."
Rob nodded. "Mii and Ami just installed it, then. Can you upgrade it remotely?"
"Not without sudo credentials, and I'm not going to set that up over the VPN."
Rob nodded again, this time in agreement. "Of course not." Then he sighed. "I wanted to give them time on their own, but this is more important than something that affects only us. Kazari-chan, if you want to secure that new node, be packed and ready to go in half an hour." Rob swallowed the last of his coffee and continued, "I'll call Norgarth and let him know we're coming. By car, this time." Turning to the other people at the table, he finished, "If you'll excuse us, we have to pack our overnight bags." He and Kazari headed out of the common room.
After they left, Minako asked, "Can anybody translate what those two just said into English? Or Japanese?"
Club Lofts, Windsor, ON, Canada
December 28, 2016
7:24 AM
Mii stumbled into the apartment that she was sharing with Ami. "I need sleep. I'm sorry, Ami; we'll have to have our talk later."
Ami looked over at Mii, held back the annoyed response she was about to make, and instead said "Are you all right? You look terrible."
"I'm just tired," Mii replied as she dropped herself into a chair -- and immediately fell asleep.
Ami sighed. "You can't sleep here, Mii. Please wake up... You're not waking up. How hard did Washuu-chan work you?"
"Only as hard as I worked myself," replied the scientific genius in question from the apartment's doorway. "I forgot that she hasn't had even the stamina boost that I gave Donaldson-san, let alone the broader-spectrum boost that I gave myself millennia ago. Do you want my help getting her to a bed?"
Ami motioned Washuu to come in. "I'd appreciate that, thanks. But I also want - no, need to show you some scans I took ... yesterday, now."
"First things first." Washuu walked over to the left of the chair Mii had collapsed into, and Ami moved to the right of the same chair. As she helped Ami pick up Mii, Washuu asked, "What's so important that you need to show it to me instead of getting some sleep yourself? Not scans of 55C Boomers, I hope."
Ami looked to make sure the apartment door was closed before answering. "No. Scans of the other participants in the battle. Which do you want to see first; the bad one or the horrific one?"
Washuu stopped in surprise. "Horrific?"
"Let's get Mii into - no, onto the bed first. We shouldn't waste time with non-essentials like getting her under the covers. And I shouldn't have said 'horrific' because now you have an expectation about what you're going to see."
A few minutes later, the two awake women were back at the dining room table and Washuu had connected the Mercury Computer to her virtual terminal's display. "Show me what you think is so horrific first."
Ami did so.
Washuu stared at the screen. "What exactly am I looking at, other than a deep ultrasound scan of somebody who has had cyborg parts fused to her bones and muscles?"
Ami steeled her emotions and spoke clinically. "It's worse than that. This girl is a young teenager. She's still growing."
"Not with those cyborg parts fused to the way they are, she isn't... but she is, isn't she?" Ami nodded, careful not to show her own emotions. Washuu's scientific curiosity turned to revulsion. "Oh, dear sweet Tsunami, how could somebody do that to her? That must be causing the poor girl pain every moment of her life. She'll die slowly and painfully from multiple internal injuries - torn muscles, broken bones, ruptured arteries - before she's your age if we don't do something right now." Washuu turned from her display and looked Ami directly in the eyes. "Which one?"
Ami steeled herself to answer. "Minawa. And we can't help her right now, we have a more..." At this point, Ami's mask of clinical detachment broke and she started crying. "A... a more urgent patient." With shaking hands, she called up another set of scans. "This is Mahoro."
Washuu looked at the scans in silence for a long moment. "She's a very well built artificial human. What's the problem here?"
Ami dried her eyes and pointed at a digital display. "Her power supply. It won't last another six months; it needs to be replaced. And I don't know how to carry out the android equivalent of open-heart surgery."
Washuu looked at the readings a second time, then a third time. Finally, she replied, "No, Ami-chan, open-heart surgery would be simple compared to what needs to be done here."
"Can you help her? Them?"
Washuu decided that boasting about, or even mentioning, her scientific genius wouldn't help Ami just then. Softly, she replied, "I did give Mikoto-kun's clones normal lifespans, remember? I can definitely help Minawa-chan. And I'll do my best for Mahoro-kun." Then she let her behaviour shift back to what for her was normal. "But I'll need your scans to do anything, young lady! Copy them over. All of them."
"Oh! Oh, right." Slightly flustered from experiencing Washuu's sudden mood change, Ami uploaded her scans to Washuu's computer cluster, finishing the process just before there was a knock at the door. "Breakfast is ready!" said Minawa from the hallway.
Ami and Washuu looked at each other quickly. Then Washuu handed Ami a dry handkerchief while saying, "We'll be there in a few minutes!"
December 27, 2016
10:36 PM
"Thanks for helping me with this, Konori-san." Washuu was using one of her tools to open a passage through the wall struts. By no means was she cutting a channel - that would have been far too primitive. She was displacing molecules in a straight line in order to have a place to run a datalink line.
"You've done a lot of everyone else, Washuu-chan. This is the least I could do to repay -- STOP!" Washuu froze. "You almost cut through a support beam."
As she pulled some support braces out of a subspace pocket and set them up around the girder that she was about to molecularly separate, Washuu said, "Don't want to bring the building down on us, do we? Good thing you can see through the walls."
From the stairs, Ami asked, "How much longer do you expect to be?"
Washuu laughed. "In a building this size? We're working all night, Mizuno-san. Or should I say 'Mercury-dono'?"
Ami sighed. "Please don't." Then smiled and added, "Call me Ami-chan!" They all laughed at that. Turning to Mii, she continued, "I guess we're having our conversation tomorrow."
Mii nodded. "Sorry."
As Washuu and Mii continued installing the Good Neighbor System, Ami returned to her guest room to look over the scans that she had taken earlier that day. The people running cables and installing sensors wouldn't be the only ones spending a sleepless night.
Three hours later, Ami regretted swearing like a sailor earlier in the day - that left her with nothing stronger to use when she realized what she was looking at.
Blossom Apartments, Ottawa, ON, Canada
December 28, 2016
7:20 AM
The Good Neighbor System beeped once, then went back to showing the normal status display. "I thought we had voice reports on that now."
"We do," Kazari replied to Mamoru. "That must be a new condition." She put her chopsticks on the rest beside her rice bowl, stood up, looked at the system display, and continued, "It's a new condition and a new node on the VPN. And it looks like it's a default install, too, so there's probably almost no hardening on that node."
"Is this new node in Windsor?" asked Rob.
Kazari double-checked the display. "According to the readout, yes."
Rob nodded. "Mii and Ami just installed it, then. Can you upgrade it remotely?"
"Not without sudo credentials, and I'm not going to set that up over the VPN."
Rob nodded again, this time in agreement. "Of course not." Then he sighed. "I wanted to give them time on their own, but this is more important than something that affects only us. Kazari-chan, if you want to secure that new node, be packed and ready to go in half an hour." Rob swallowed the last of his coffee and continued, "I'll call Norgarth and let him know we're coming. By car, this time." Turning to the other people at the table, he finished, "If you'll excuse us, we have to pack our overnight bags." He and Kazari headed out of the common room.
After they left, Minako asked, "Can anybody translate what those two just said into English? Or Japanese?"
Club Lofts, Windsor, ON, Canada
December 28, 2016
7:24 AM
Mii stumbled into the apartment that she was sharing with Ami. "I need sleep. I'm sorry, Ami; we'll have to have our talk later."
Ami looked over at Mii, held back the annoyed response she was about to make, and instead said "Are you all right? You look terrible."
"I'm just tired," Mii replied as she dropped herself into a chair -- and immediately fell asleep.
Ami sighed. "You can't sleep here, Mii. Please wake up... You're not waking up. How hard did Washuu-chan work you?"
"Only as hard as I worked myself," replied the scientific genius in question from the apartment's doorway. "I forgot that she hasn't had even the stamina boost that I gave Donaldson-san, let alone the broader-spectrum boost that I gave myself millennia ago. Do you want my help getting her to a bed?"
Ami motioned Washuu to come in. "I'd appreciate that, thanks. But I also want - no, need to show you some scans I took ... yesterday, now."
"First things first." Washuu walked over to the left of the chair Mii had collapsed into, and Ami moved to the right of the same chair. As she helped Ami pick up Mii, Washuu asked, "What's so important that you need to show it to me instead of getting some sleep yourself? Not scans of 55C Boomers, I hope."
Ami looked to make sure the apartment door was closed before answering. "No. Scans of the other participants in the battle. Which do you want to see first; the bad one or the horrific one?"
Washuu stopped in surprise. "Horrific?"
"Let's get Mii into - no, onto the bed first. We shouldn't waste time with non-essentials like getting her under the covers. And I shouldn't have said 'horrific' because now you have an expectation about what you're going to see."
A few minutes later, the two awake women were back at the dining room table and Washuu had connected the Mercury Computer to her virtual terminal's display. "Show me what you think is so horrific first."
Ami did so.
Washuu stared at the screen. "What exactly am I looking at, other than a deep ultrasound scan of somebody who has had cyborg parts fused to her bones and muscles?"
Ami steeled her emotions and spoke clinically. "It's worse than that. This girl is a young teenager. She's still growing."
"Not with those cyborg parts fused to the way they are, she isn't... but she is, isn't she?" Ami nodded, careful not to show her own emotions. Washuu's scientific curiosity turned to revulsion. "Oh, dear sweet Tsunami, how could somebody do that to her? That must be causing the poor girl pain every moment of her life. She'll die slowly and painfully from multiple internal injuries - torn muscles, broken bones, ruptured arteries - before she's your age if we don't do something right now." Washuu turned from her display and looked Ami directly in the eyes. "Which one?"
Ami steeled herself to answer. "Minawa. And we can't help her right now, we have a more..." At this point, Ami's mask of clinical detachment broke and she started crying. "A... a more urgent patient." With shaking hands, she called up another set of scans. "This is Mahoro."
Washuu looked at the scans in silence for a long moment. "She's a very well built artificial human. What's the problem here?"
Ami dried her eyes and pointed at a digital display. "Her power supply. It won't last another six months; it needs to be replaced. And I don't know how to carry out the android equivalent of open-heart surgery."
Washuu looked at the readings a second time, then a third time. Finally, she replied, "No, Ami-chan, open-heart surgery would be simple compared to what needs to be done here."
"Can you help her? Them?"
Washuu decided that boasting about, or even mentioning, her scientific genius wouldn't help Ami just then. Softly, she replied, "I did give Mikoto-kun's clones normal lifespans, remember? I can definitely help Minawa-chan. And I'll do my best for Mahoro-kun." Then she let her behaviour shift back to what for her was normal. "But I'll need your scans to do anything, young lady! Copy them over. All of them."
"Oh! Oh, right." Slightly flustered from experiencing Washuu's sudden mood change, Ami uploaded her scans to Washuu's computer cluster, finishing the process just before there was a knock at the door. "Breakfast is ready!" said Minawa from the hallway.
Ami and Washuu looked at each other quickly. Then Washuu handed Ami a dry handkerchief while saying, "We'll be there in a few minutes!"
--
Rob Kelk
Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
Rob Kelk
Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown