[Relationship] The Root of the Logistics

[Lisette Allaire]

Lisette has made the greatest of mistakes - turn up to the first day of work hungover. She woke up in a strange bed, clothed and completely alone, at around eight in the morning. Blearily, she dragged herself out of bed, forced a glass of water down herself, and made her way outside to try and see if she could remember the way to the canteen. The summer sun pounded on her temples, and her wide, round sunglasses did little to drive it away. Ultimately, she forced herself to go through her ritual - a big, unhealthy breakfast, followed by a great deal of time spent in a single-person bathroom. Eventually, she emerged, and made her way to the arches, and back into London.

Which brings her to her office, a clean, fresh building renovated from the shell of an old market-warehouse. Ashlie did a very tasteful, if somewhat over-the-top, job of it. There's a lot of areas where instead of tearing up the foundations to build new floors, the crews simply put down steel piles and built glass floors on the rubble. The load-bearing outside walls are untouched red brick, but not a single one of them actually reaches the roof - instead, clean, white stone, cut so finely one can barely see the seams, rises up to a sheet-glass roof, simply steepled at the same angle the now-removed corrugated asbestos would have been.

In the middle of the lobby, a pit opens, yawning, into black, made again of ancient red brick. It's part excavation, part office - and the degree to which the entire thing is tastefully layered over the old is impressive, if only because the planning permission must have been hell to acquire. Not for Ashlie, though, Lisette thinks. The building is altogether too much for just Lisette - who has turned up at half past nine, just about walking upright without difficulty. Every joint in her body aches, and her temples pulse viscerally.

The building is partitioned by walls of two kinds; some rooms, obviously offices and boardrooms, have walls that are made of glass, though Lisette learns quickly that a flick of a switch in most of them can render it opaque for privacy. The more private spaces - bathrooms, the one shower, a non-denominational 'meditation room' that someone had apparently worked into the plans - were steel and wood, solid, insulated, and soundproof by means Lisette can't tell. There's an upstairs, and an even-more-upstairs, though there's only space for a single boardroom and a unisex bathroom, sitting on top of a column of plumbing which is held in a clean, steel cylinder stretching up the entire back of the space. The breakroom and all the toilets seem to feed into this unknown thing - far too wide to be just a pipe on its own, probably containing multiple pipes. The scale of the operation that Ashlie expects Lisette to develop becomes clear; or maybe she only expected it of herself, before she allowed someone else to take over. Still, even hungover, Lisette sees the opportunity of their position. She's been afforded a lot of resources.

The space is ambitious, efficient, able to fit maybe two or three hundred people. It turns out that less than half that many people actually work here, yet. Most of them are student volunteers, but a very few of them are paid, local staff, and it's those people that Lisette speaks to first, gathered not in a boardroom but in the staffroom; Lisette forces herself not to wear sunglasses.

She rattles off her facts and figures, makes it clear what she knows, and is given a swift reality check. Much of what she assumed is correct; though she immediately likes Ashlie, the general consensus is that she's out of touch, and much of the problem is that she's the face of the hand that feeds Mutant Town. "People don't really think she's human," offers one volunteer, "some metaphorically, some literally. And that isn't a great look for the human face of a pro-mutant movement, when a lot of people don't think we're human anyway." The volunteer has deep red skin - and Lisette doesn't fail to notice that he doesn't speak much to the local Londoners, nor they to him, but always to her, even when responding to each other. The rifts in the world live at home, too, it would seem.

Still, the meeting is fruitful. Lisette lacks anecdotal information, which is in itself useful - when it comes to PR, it can be more useful than having perfect knowledge of the statistics. She notes everything down by paper, listening more than speaking. "I know I haven't given you much to go on," she admits at the close of the meeting, "and I won't lie to you - I don't have much of a plan. But you've all given me things to think about and work with, and I think I can see some key areas to improve on, and big overhauls to make. We've got a lot of space - and big shoes - to fill. Carry on with your day-to-day, and we'll have smaller, more focused meetings going forward. Thank you."

She doesn't miss Ashlie coming in and politely standing back towards the latter part of the meeting. She smiles, but furrows her brow, tilts her head a little, a sign of confusion - one of her last sober memories of last night was Ashlie saying she'd be in her workshop all day today, and it's only barely eleven o'clock. Maybe she was having a tough time with her own, very first, hangover. She stands up, and approaches her boss, wearing a simple, clean suit - not expensive, not flashy, but clearly fitted to Lisette's correct sizing. She cleans up quite nicely, though she does put the sunglasses back on as the staff file out of the room to return to the small block of the building they still occupy. Natural sunlight, after all, filters through the whole building. "I didn't really register how incredible this whole place is, though my staff is quite small compared to the size of the building," Lisette observes, by way of greeting. "Is this some kind of futureproofing, or do you expect me to start hiring aggressively?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie is perfectly content just listening. She's genuinely curious to learn how Lisette approaches this problem and in the process learn some of the obvious things she's doing wrong. Of course to half the people there it probably looks like her checking in and supervising but the alternative is rarely being present and that seems worse to her. She's been up since 4 am and spend most of her time processing her hangover while in fact in her workshop. She was going to design a self-defense mechanism but with her head still swimming strangely and generally producing head-aches and desynched static signals between meat and machine she'd settled on just the panic button and transponder. Rearranging an existing design didn't require nearly as much of her full attention. Much of it she could automate while nursing a large bottle of water and assembly was almost more meditative than work for her. We are, after all, talking about a woman who once took apart a jet engine to run maintenance on it out of boredom.

As a result, she probably looks a lot better than Lisette feels. Nanites actively intercepting ethanol and it's metabolic derivatives in a liver that has become what is essentially an enzyme-powered catalytic converter doesn't hurt either. Cheater. She waits until the bulk of people has filed out to approach Lisette. "Good to see you jumping right in. And it's a bit of both. I future-proofed it so you could higher aggressively, but don't feel like you have to rush to fill it up. It's also a little bit of a beach-head for an infrastructure project, but the permissions and rights on that have bogged down even me. But nevermind that for now. I just came by to see how you were doing and to drop of this." she says and produces a simple, perhaps marginally thicker than normal phone case. I did not quite feel up to tackling a personal defense system with a hangover so it's only the emergency signal and transponder for now. Completely inactive unless you push the back hard enough to crack the seal on the button, in which case it activates an emergency signal. Push it in further and hold it for 3 seconds and the translocator beacon will automatically activate. The range is limited and susceptible to EM interference but if it can establish a loss-free connection it will transport the closest biological signature to my workshop."

She pauses, then decides she probably over-explained again. "Push the button on the back until it clicks in once, it'll set off a silent alarm. Push it in further and if possible to do so safely it will teleport you." she says and casually hands the high-tech device to her, suddenly glad she went against her first instinct of making it a bracelet. This suddenly feels like too much already. No one had warned her a crush would involve so much second-guessing. The blatant flirting somehow had been easier, maybe because it had more obviously been in good fun and not that serious.

[Lisette Allaire]

Lisette takes in her boss, and raises an eyebrow. "You just don't stop, do you? Even through your first ever hangover, you're working and working. When I woke up after my first night out, I just assumed death was coming for me." She takes the phone case, and touches Ashlie's elbow as a way of shepherding her out of the staff room, where some people were taking their breaks, and away up to the first floor where she has her own office. Entering, she takes a moment to figure out the panel on the glass wall, turning off the glass to give them a little privacy. "Well, I might not be as godawfully determined as you, but I figured turning up late to my first day on the job would be a problem, even if you personally seem to like me. And as I can see, we've got a lot of work to do."

Lisette sits on her couch, raises another eyebrow at Ashlie. "Did you think for more than five minutes about how it would look to build on top of this derelict? I'm fighting upstream against the tone you've set here. I think I've got to start with the office culture, though - the non-mutants don't talk to the mutants, and most of our workforce is students working for class credit. This... isn't a professional workplace. Yet. But - okay, look, I know what I'm doing. I'll have a more detailed report when it's relevant.

"About last night - I'm so sorry." She stands up, crossing to Ashlie, while she takes her phone out of its old, shitty, pleather sheath and puts it in the new, hand-machined work of art she's suddenly found herself with, tossing the case without a second thought into a wastebasket. "I dumped a lot on you, and that's not the kind of person I want to be, like, it's not the way I think anyone should treat another person. You don't need my worries, right? You've got your own. And I, uh, I teased a bit too much, probably, which, I can be that way, but I think it wasn't the best thing to do in a... a professional setting. Basically, I just don't want you to think I'm gonna be anything other than professional. Going forward. As, you know, your direct report." It's an assurance more than it is a rejection, but it could come off either way. Lisette just hopes she isn't about to break a heart here.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I did feel a little sluggish this morning." she brags just a tiny little bit. "But there's no need to apologize. I understand this weighs heavily on you and if that's what it took to be comfortable sharing it I'm not going to judge. Appearances or what is or isn't appropriate does not particularly matter to me when the only reasoning is 'that's just not how it's done'. You had something you felt you needed to share and I appreciate that. You showed a lot of yourself, made yourself vulnerable last night and that's only unprofessional if it made me uncomfortable, which it didn't. I do understand wanting to make sure I did not take it the wrong way though." she adds with a bit of a laugh to try and not come across as completely above it all without betraying the fact that she's at least a little disappointed. "Which... I could see how you might think that considering I was not exactly innocent in that regard but I certainly did not come away with any expectations.

"And I thought quite a bit about this building, actually." she suddenly shifts topics. "I'll fully admit it may not come across that way, but I tried to blend the two styles without bulldozing over the old. Add to it rather than overwrite and showcase a kind of merging or symbiosis. And I'm not going to make people work in an inconvenient place for the sake of appearances. Just like I'm not going to change the way I dress unless practicality demands it. I'm not an idiot, I realize how I look walking around here, but wearing what would essentially be a costume can't be much better in the long run. I don't want to compromise on myself or my goals. That might make it a bit rougher to start but I feel like it'll work out better in the long-term than blatant pandering. I've been trying to make a point of actively engaging with people and projects, but... well it is hard to shake the impression of vanity welfare and misery tourism."

"As for the mutant and human gap..." she shrugs a bit helplessly. "I thought it was a good sign to get any humans at all on board, but... I'm a planner, organizer, builder. I'm not a very good leader. In disregarding a need for 'professionalism' I probably ignore a number of unspoken rules and agreed-upon shorthand. I just want people to see what's important, not what old white men in golf clubs decide are hallmarks of things being done 'right'. And I know I just sound like every other head of a tech company that thinks they're being oh so much smarter than everyone else. Disrupt the paradigm. Solution-oriented approach. Redefine work!" she sighs but stops short of throwing her arms up in frustration.

"I just want people to see what I'm seeing." she goes on, a little less exasperated. "The potential of it all. That things can be better. Should be better for everyone. That we don't have to step on and over each other to get anywhere so people can stop being afraid of being stomped down. How many people here, humans and mutants alike, could do incredible things if given the chance? That's all I want. To build that environment for as many people as I can. I don't want anybody to follow my exact plan for the future or even lead the charge. That's why I can't be 'The Boss' here. Why I don't even want you to think of it as reporting to me. I want people to tell me what needs to be fixed so I can... build them a panic-button teleporter for their problems too!" she ends in kind of a metaphorical exaggeration. "Because that's what I'm good at. Right now I can't even convince people of letting me fix the blatantly obvious things."

[Lisette Allaire]

Lisette lets the former part of the conversation hang, unaddressed, brushing past it to other things. She gets up and walks to Ashlie, face soft, empathetic. "I'm sorry," she says, unsure of exactly what she's done, but clearly touching on a nerve somewhere in Ashlie's personal ethos. "I don't hate the building. It's just that it's perhaps the most comprehensive kind of... whatever this is, you know, the glass-on-ruins thing, that I've ever seen. It's impressive, and I'm honestly working only on my gut reaction, I don't have stats to back it up. And... I don't think you're an idiot."

She takes Ashlie's hand in both of her own, a familiar gesture, one that Lisette apparently does with anyone she's trying to reach. "But you do miss a real, deep reality of getting people on-side; sometimes people aren't ever going to see what you see. They just don't believe it. So you need to find something else for them to believe in, something that makes them act in such a way that it doesn't matter if they believe you, or whatever. I mean, I'm sure you've thought of this. That's why you're trying to feed the economy around here, right? People don't need to agree with you, if they just like the world your ideals are creating anyway.

"What I mean, more, is that we need to tackle the divisions at home, first. That's my problem, though, not yours. And if I'm the boss of this operation, and you'd rather I don't answer to you, que Dieu nous aide tous, I have ideas for how you could help the city. I don't know how extensive you're planning to get, but... Well, do you think you could build something for me? A... conversational intelligence? Not necessarily self-aware, but able to talk to someone, understand their expressed problems, and collate them. And do that with an arbitrarily large amount of people, say, over the phone. Something like that, I think, could be the foundation for a teleport-button for Mutant Town's problems." Her face is earnest, and terribly close to Ashlie's. Partly, she knows what she's doing - but she's also just speaking earnestly, because the idea seems like a good one to her. A way to channel Ashlie's desire to pick up a soldering iron and solve a problem by hand into a tool that Lisette can use to inflict change upon the stats.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"See, this is exactly the kind of idea I was hoping for. That's brilliant. It can train itself on how well the conversation went, identify key characteristics and adjust it's approach. I could take the very basics of my own language model, just to get a foundation of language parsing. Beyond that it'd probably be better to let it train itself. I have some preliminary designs on evolutionary algorithms that'd be perfect for this." she says, excited enough to even briefly forget Lisette is very close and still holding her hands. It's a weirdly intimate moment, excitedly making plans while so physically close but she's oblivious to it in the moment.

"I might give it a couple passes talking to you just so it can generate a solid foundation and identify any potential problematic approaches but that could work. An adaptive collector of requests and concerns and if we move fast enough on the first couple things it could really cement the idea of tangible solutions being provided. Definitely not sentient. Aside from being more difficult than you might think, I would feel uncomfortable creating something to be exclusively subservient. Actually... I need to talk to Will. We might be able to achieve some truly incredible response times if he's up for it. Absolutely brilliant!" she says again and now she notices at some point she's closed her fingers around Lisette's because she suddenly finds herself raising their hands up between them in excitement.

She clears her throat and awkwardly let's go of Lisette's hands and, unsure what to do with her hands straightens her top that is really in no need of it. "Uhm... yes. I like it." she reigns herself back in a little. "I will get a simple conversational data gathering model set up first, elaborate on it's capabilities and potential integrations later." she says, realizing she was definitely getting ahead of herself. "If you think you can get even a handful of people to engage with it I really think this could be a huge help. Would you be up to review it's early interactions? Even just a couple dozen would be huge in training the model to discern how honest people are being with it or when they're downplaying a problem?"

[Lisette Allaire]

Lisette's smile widens, and she flutters her fingers, a wizard casting a spell. "I've never seen someone who's hurting for an idea guy like you. You have all these cool ideas, but you're going through the motions of developing a project like this. And then as soon as I give you something to do, it all falls into place." She giggles, and places her hands on Ashlie's shoulders, facing them opposite each other like ballroom dancers next to Lisette's little bureau. "You really are a wonder." For a moment, that admission makes Lisette's heart flutter - too real. She hasn't seen what Ashlie will build yet, but she knows it will be wondrous.

She also doesn't know who Will is - it's a name she's heard fluttering around, but she hasn't been sure of a face to put to it yet. "I'll get people together to test it. Believe me, for all that's been built, we're swimming in underutilised manpower here. How soon do you think you can have it online?" She clears her throat, allowing them to break away from each other. She's not going to kiss her boss. So she tells herself.

"Of course, while you're working on that, I'll get IT to set up a switchboard for it to work on. I mean, it seems like the most sensible thing to do, make the speaker a phonecall away."

[Ashlie Minamida]

Lisette is too capable to not be aware of what she's doing, putting the both of them into a strangely intimate position that leaves Ashlie uncertain what to do with her hands. A feeling that is becoming much too familiar as of late. This feels at odds with what Lisette said earlier and combined with her exuberant compliments is confusing to say the least. She puts her hands over Lisette's and gently guides them off of her shoulders. This briefly ends up with her holding Lisette's hands between them and that is certainly worse and she awkwardly let's go. She turns as she steps away and falls into a bit of a pace as she talks. It's smooth enough but she still feels painfully aware of her movements. Even proprioception is betraying her now.

"With a switchboard backend set up it shouldn't take... let's say four to five days for a first prototype. It seems strange to call it outside me wheelhouse but the closer I hew to my own architecture as a basis the higher the risk of emergent behavior. A large language model might be safer. It doesn't have to problem solve, only communicate and that is a safer way of introducing additional information as needed than a genetic learning algorithm. Anything that can self-observe and dynamically adjust itself and incorporate new information on it's own has... too much potential."

"As for making it personable... I'll do my best but the first iteration will probably be a little stilted. Nothing that letting it communicate with some volunteers won't fix in the long run though." Do not suggest scanning her brain to deduce a better social-interaction matrix. That will definitely make it weird for no good reason.