No Heaven

The site of the recently restored Braddock Lighthouse. Aircraft hangars and other X-Men facilities, including a Cerebra unit and the Danger Room have been constructed around the foundations of the lighthouse.

No Heaven

Postby Natalie Denisov » Wed Dec 12, 2018 8:17 pm

Her body was heavy, but with a Bruce along, transport back hadn't been an issue. Now, Natalie's body, still encased in armor minus the gloves is laid out on one of the work tables. The two jettisoned gloves, recovered from the hospital, are on a side table, one of them with visibly overloaded and damaged internal components and the other with its internal wiring shot to hell from being intentionally overloaded. The body doesn't ping the network at all and it's eerily quiet in a way that Natalie's presence often isn't.

((Open for the mechanically minded))
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Natalie Denisov
Student
 
High Concept: Ghost In The Machine
Aspect: More Comfortable With Things
Aspect: Quad-Core Mind
Aspect: Lighthouse Keeper
Aspect: Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Re: No Heaven

Postby Ashlie Minamida » Fri Dec 14, 2018 5:07 pm

As soon as her armored body is laid onto the workbench the robotic arms unfold from the ceiling and carefully lift Natalie up with two of them. The other robotic arms work at gently removing the armor pieces to get to the charging port on the back of her neck. All the while Ashlie is watching with growing concern from all of the monitors in the room, trying to establish a connection with the dormant body at regular intervals.
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Ashlie Minamida
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Re: No Heaven

Postby Natalie Denisov » Fri Dec 14, 2018 5:13 pm

Getting the armor off isn't terribly difficult. Natalie seems to have planned for a suit power failure and left some mechanical releases in the spec to at least loosen the pieces enough to remove them. She does have to disconnect the suit from the charging port. The body seems to be intact, but completely drained of power and in some sort of emergency mode. Some probing shows that all non-essential connections to the body's core processing have been severed, possibly not to risk an errant power draw. The definition of 'non-essential' seems to have been rather all-encompassing though.
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Natalie Denisov
Student
 
High Concept: Ghost In The Machine
Aspect: More Comfortable With Things
Aspect: Quad-Core Mind
Aspect: Lighthouse Keeper
Aspect: Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Re: No Heaven

Postby Ashlie Minamida » Fri Dec 14, 2018 5:43 pm

As soon as the charging cable is plugged into the charging port Ashlie begins pinging individual systems to check for damage and tries to boot them up. She's uncertain what precisely is happening. The body was originally designed to re-initiate a connection to the mainframe in case of a full system shutdown, but Natalie resides entirely within the body's systems, as far as she can tell. Just in case she checks the video feed from the room in the med center where Natalie's comatose body is lieing. Even if it had been in range of her power it's unlikely she would have managed to improvise a transfer. The most likely scenario is reducing power consumption and isolating a secure core loop within the body's core to maintain herself. But if the system was completely drained then there's the very real possibility that Natalie's consciousness ceased to exist.

She tries to bring up the diagnostics sub-system to check for any amount of residual charge.
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Ashlie Minamida
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Re: No Heaven

Postby Natalie Denisov » Fri Dec 14, 2018 5:52 pm

There is some charge in the system. One of the body's processing units seems to have isolated itself along with just enough power to keep it running in a sort of maintenance mode. The rest of the body is completely out of charge, though that's starting to change now that the charging port is connected. Overall, the body's systems seem to be in decent shape. There's some electrical damage, especially around the forearms, and there's the kind of structural kinks that occur from getting through into a wall in a suit of armor, but nothing appears to be irreparably damaged.
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Natalie Denisov
Student
 
High Concept: Ghost In The Machine
Aspect: More Comfortable With Things
Aspect: Quad-Core Mind
Aspect: Lighthouse Keeper
Aspect: Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Re: No Heaven

Postby Ashlie Minamida » Mon Dec 17, 2018 7:28 pm

Ashlie isolates the damaged systems in the arms and then tries to ping the isolated system with a bit of repurposed network code from her own protocols to try and force a connection.

If this was planned and Natalie isolated herself in order to conserve power maybe all that is required is to give the dormant system a signal to indicate power is being restored to the body.
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Re: No Heaven

Postby Natalie Denisov » Mon Dec 17, 2018 7:49 pm

The dormant system pings just fine, but returns a series of nonsensical error codes at first. Then, whatever is in that processor grabs another processor and another, rapidly beginning to chew up the processors in the body as it tries to contact the memory banks of the body and tries to sync them to Natalie's external storage.
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Natalie Denisov
Student
 
High Concept: Ghost In The Machine
Aspect: More Comfortable With Things
Aspect: Quad-Core Mind
Aspect: Lighthouse Keeper
Aspect: Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Re: No Heaven

Postby Ashlie Minamida » Tue Dec 18, 2018 5:07 pm

Ashlie keeps a close eye (or rather, a monitoring algorithm) on the synching to make sure this is in fact Natalie and not some Brotherhood trick.
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Re: No Heaven

Postby Natalie Denisov » Tue Dec 18, 2018 5:15 pm

After a bit, the processor grab ends and the data syncs. Monitoring space consumption, it appears that several new memories have been synced to Natalie's external storage, obviously encrypted to Natalie's usual standard. Then the processors wind back down into their idle state, having obviously done whatever they were intended to do. At the same time, an e-mail pings Ashlie's inbox. It looks like it's coming from one of Natalie's e-mail addresses with the subject line: "Y#@'ll pr!#@$ly n3$d th%@#". The e-mail appears to have some attachments.
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Natalie Denisov
Student
 
High Concept: Ghost In The Machine
Aspect: More Comfortable With Things
Aspect: Quad-Core Mind
Aspect: Lighthouse Keeper
Aspect: Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Re: No Heaven

Postby Ashlie Minamida » Tue Dec 18, 2018 5:19 pm

You'll probably need these? Ashlie transfers the attachments to one of the workstations to look through them. It seems like this is part of whatever contingency Natalie put in place, but she'd still rather put them somewhere she can isolate them if needed.
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Re: No Heaven

Postby Natalie Denisov » Tue Dec 18, 2018 5:26 pm

The attachments seem to be specific instructions on how Ashlie can access a protected subsection of Natalie's personal storage. The instructions are impossibly precise. Only someone with a technopath's powers or Ashlie's computer brain would even be able to execute them.
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Natalie Denisov
Student
 
High Concept: Ghost In The Machine
Aspect: More Comfortable With Things
Aspect: Quad-Core Mind
Aspect: Lighthouse Keeper
Aspect: Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Re: No Heaven

Postby Ashlie Minamida » Tue Dec 18, 2018 5:33 pm

Ashlie loads up the sequence of instructions and begins accessing Natalie's storage, wondering when she put this into place and hoping that this isn't a last will and testament kind of situation.
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Re: No Heaven

Postby Natalie Denisov » Tue Dec 18, 2018 5:39 pm

She only finds a couple of files in there, with their dates seeming to be around the time that Natalie developed her external memory storage. It takes Ashlie a moment to figure out what they are. They're encryption keys, but not for a standard encryption scheme. They seem to line up with whatever weird technopath-brained encryption scheme that Natalie uses for her memories.
User avatar
Natalie Denisov
Student
 
High Concept: Ghost In The Machine
Aspect: More Comfortable With Things
Aspect: Quad-Core Mind
Aspect: Lighthouse Keeper
Aspect: Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Re: No Heaven

Postby Ashlie Minamida » Tue Dec 18, 2018 6:30 pm

With growing concern Ashlie isolates the latest set of memories that were synched to the storage and begins decrypting them.
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Re: No Heaven

Postby Natalie Denisov » Tue Dec 18, 2018 6:44 pm

The first few are what could be considered 'cool moments', if one were interested in using such a designation. The battle with Void, such as it was, and watching her sail off into space. Jumping in to help drag Archaea out. All the while, in the upper right corner, of Natalie's vision is the precipitously dropping power indicator. As she jumps in after Bruce, the memory ends as she clamps her hand on his. That just leaves one file.

Playing it, it's immediately obvious to Ashlie that this is rendered and not a true memory. Natalie's face smiles at her from the video. "Hey, Ashlie. If you're seeing this, then my body must have made it back to you intact. Power calculations are telling me the body doesn't have enough energy to continue functioning with me inside it, or at the very least I don't think I can power enough of it to hold onto. So it's time to improvise. If you're watching this, then the code I left in the body to spin up and render this message survived the power down, which is good. I've had to life pod myself into another system. I don't have time to be choosy and I'm not 100% sure it'll work, but it beats the alternative. You've got a rough estimate my power's range and the range of the transmitter in the suit. Hopefully I don't have to system hop, but I'm not sure how well the power system in the hospital will hold up, so I may have to bounce... assuming this works at all. If it does, I hope you can find me. If it doesn't, well, it was awesome working with you." At that point, the message freezes.
User avatar
Natalie Denisov
Student
 
High Concept: Ghost In The Machine
Aspect: More Comfortable With Things
Aspect: Quad-Core Mind
Aspect: Lighthouse Keeper
Aspect: Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Re: No Heaven

Postby Ashlie Minamida » Fri Dec 28, 2018 7:39 pm

For a moment Ashlie's worry spikes, but there's still a chance. But rescuing Natalie before she's forced god knows where or runs out of sufficiently powered systems still poses a problem. One that Natalie seemed all too aware of. When asked, most people would probably say that Ashlie doesn't have any emotions, but the persistent worry and outright fear emanating from one of her more complex sub-systems says differently. And she is dimly aware of the fact that there are people locked in the holding cells at their own discretion and that Stephanie is still waiting for an interface that might allow Archaea to fix her. Then there's the fact that the potentially murderous Will seems to have overpowered his counterpart that was supposed to keep him in check.

Too many fires to put out and she's stuck in her mainframe, forced to manually load into one peripheral system at a time.

The proprietary interface node they removed from Natalie is sitting at the edge of her awareness, ready to boot at her discretion, integrated into the work-in-progress that is her replacement body. She might not have another option if she wants to help Natalie though. And in the process risk her true nature being exposed to the world at large.

Code: Select all
>> Initiating Boot-Sequence
>> Interface Node found
>> Up-Link re-established
>> System transfer in progress.....


The robotic frame slowly comes to life. The camera feed flickers on as artificial eyes whir with the sound of irises focusing. Audio-feed functional. Haptic feedback unavailable. Speech modulator loaded. A vaguely skeletal foot made of metal takes a step forward. The body is composed of the bare minimum. The essentials. Energy supply, mainframe-uplink, processing core and heat-exchange in the torso, protected only by the structural components of the torso itself. Limbs are functional, equipped with balancing sensors but not much else. Exposed wires and actuators leave little doubt as to the artificial nature of this body.
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Ashlie Minamida
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Re: No Heaven

Postby Natalie Denisov » Tue Jan 08, 2019 5:11 pm

As Natalie works to get back into her body, she has a hard part laying a good hold on it. Systems she'd previously molded to her liking seem to just be slipping through her digital fingers as she tries to grasp them. She circles the body's connection a little, summoning her will together to push again. She shoves against the connections, throwing her shoulder against the door they represent. Suddenly the door gives way and she slams back into the body which sits bolt upright, and taking a sudden deep, though partially unnecessary, breath. She looks at her extremities and frowns. She can tell her grip here is tenuous and she swings her legs off the table, looking around for some device she can use.
User avatar
Natalie Denisov
Student
 
High Concept: Ghost In The Machine
Aspect: More Comfortable With Things
Aspect: Quad-Core Mind
Aspect: Lighthouse Keeper
Aspect: Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Re: No Heaven

Postby Natalie Denisov » Wed Jan 09, 2019 6:27 pm

Her fingers, frustratingly clumsy, pick up her smartphone that she'd left in the workshop after suiting up. She thumbs through the code, having to take a moment to remember it as she's so used to just technopathing her way through it. She feels a little blind at the moment, having to focus on holding onto the robot body's systems with a mental death grip.

She looks back and forth through her contact list. Ashlie... probably busy. Tosh... probably worn out after the hospital. Professor Terrance... can't sense her in this body and talking to the counselor isn't going to help at the moment... probably. A finger twitches of its own accord and she almost accidentally calls Shari. That certainly won't help, no matter Professor Terrance has said in the sessions Natalie's been going to.

Deep breath, Natalie. She puts the phone down and closes her eyes, looking inward. The body hasn't changed that much. A little structural damage, but the systems seem to be intact. Just like she left them even. Her mental claws are wrapped around several different systems holding on. She can tell a part of the right arm subsystem isn't too happy about it and is starting to make threatening warning messages with the error code equivalent of four-letter words.

Then it catches her attention. A stray bit of information, not much of anything really, attached to her metaphysical person. She exams it more closely, finding what looks like a fragment of some program from that she thinks was probably running on one of the servers she commandeered at the hospital. She tries to flick it off mentally, but it remains stuck. This won't do. She slowly and clumsily moves back over to the table, laying back down. As she continues to do an assessment, she finds more bits of digital detritus stuck all over her. Apparently she really cannonballed into that server cluster, but she hadn't had time to think about that then. She calls to mind her self-containment code, but all that does is make it easier to identify just how 'dirty' she is right now. She tries to figure out a good way to scrub the fragments off of her, but they're too embedded to do easily. She can clean it a piece at a time, but that'll just consume a lot of time. Wait... consume. It's not ideal, but maybe...

She takes another unnecessarily deep breath and focuses inward. That sinking feeling returns and she can almost feel the bits of detritus being pulled inside of her personal bubble and consumed, integrated after a fashion. Then that tugging feeling starts at her as well and she briefly panics. Thankfully the panic disrupts her flow and the sinking feeling disappears. She swears she has bad taste in her mouth, but as the body has no taste buds, she doesn't know how that can be. Her presence fits better in the body now, feeling more like the glove she expected. She sits up again, making an assessment. Everything seems okay. For now.
User avatar
Natalie Denisov
Student
 
High Concept: Ghost In The Machine
Aspect: More Comfortable With Things
Aspect: Quad-Core Mind
Aspect: Lighthouse Keeper
Aspect: Sufficiently Advanced Technology



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