I2DT - Error Aggregation

[Ashlie Minamida]

It's early morning and the sun just begins to creep across the horizon, it's first rays shining into the open hangar door and on the lone figure standing near the edge. Behind her the Blackbird Jet makes her white hair and beige clothes stand out in the sunrise. There are a couple of smudges and stains on her usually immaculate clothes and her hands give away the maintenance work she'd finished on the plane's engine some time during the night. It was efficient to take care of some of these things herself during the nights when she didn't have to shut down to run maintenance cycles herself. Her memory banks inform her that at one point she hated spending nights in her sparse apartment, but now she can't seem to make sense of the data. Irrelevant. Extraneous information. Code that no longer properly emulates in her program. No sense dwelling on it.

But now her self-monitoring cycles are indicating glitches. She should have changed into more practical clothes. She can find instances of failing to do so before. She can't understand why, but that previous behavior is probably the source of the glitch. A failed attempt to emulate the extraneous information? Possibly. Not a significant problem. Afterwards she had entered an idle state for a while. Lacking a need for sleep this had been a necessity to maintain her emotional matrix. It seemed to accumulate a lot of data during periods of inactivity and isolation. Now idling was still preferable in order to reduce energy usage and extent maintenance cycles. 4 hours, 28 minutes, 49 seconds of inactivity. She has 1 hours, 42 minutes and 33 seconds left until she needs to be in her office. Not that she has to be in order to fulfill her function, but it's the default unless other priorities emerge. She will require 16 minutes and 11 seconds to make it across campus, 5 minutes and 4 seconds to change into clean clothes and 3 minutes and 52 seconds to get to her office. She has ended her idling 1 hour, 17 minutes and 26 seconds too soon.

She runs a quick scan of all her ports that gather data even when she's not active. News, filtered automatically by importance and proximity. Nothing that would have warranted ending her idle cycle. Campus security shows no issues either. Dimensional readings are stable ever since the weakness in the barrier has been sealed. The equipment is not as accurate and reliable as it should be. A quick job that she will have to improve on now that there is no emergency. No news about Mr. West's activities either, nor regarding Ms. West or their daughters. After their attempt to be proactive about Robert's family she has adopted a purely reactionary approach. So far nothing that would require any action had manifested. She'd picked up the occasional signal that matches Heather's technopathic signature that suggested the girl had been moving. Her family possibly decided to move her after the incident. After a while she had stopped pinging on the proverbial radar, which would seem to confirm the theory that she had been moved into hiding, probably by her mother. Protecting her most valuable asset. But nothing new that would have warranted ending her idle cycle prematurely. More glitches. Still not serious enough to be cause for concern.

A loud *chunk* echoes through the hangar as the big bay doors begin to slide close again and Ashlie turns around, walking towards the exit.


((open))

[Aaron Davis]

As she walked towards the door, Aaron came through the door, looking around the hangar. Spotting the Headmistress in her rather formal maintenance outfit, he tilted his head. "Everything okay, Headmistress?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Good morning, Mister Davis. Yes, the jet is fully functional, though it's use is reserved for emergencies." she says as she approaches the door, stopping a couple feet away from Aaron.

[Aaron Davis]

"There must have been some emergency if you came down here to work on the jet in a business suit," he said motioning to her hands.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Recent events warranted a thorough inspection. Clothes are replaceable." she says. It's not technically a lie. She is concealing the existence of the glitches. Why? Not a question she is capable of answering without the parts of her program she lost.

[Aaron Davis]

Strange answer. "Would you mind showing me what you did?" He smiled, "I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to tech."

[Ashlie Minamida]

Teaching is part of her duties. It's outside class hours, but she has time to fill regardless.

"How much do you know about the principles of jet engines?" she asks, walking over towards the wing of the plane and the curve of metal where the huge turbine is built into it.

[Aaron Davis]

"Some. We talked a little about it in regards to the jets that the Institute had."

[Ashlie Minamida]

She nods mechanically. "At speeds below Mach 2 the J58 engine functions like a standard jet engine." she says and begins to open up panels on the underside of the nacelle. "Airflow is directed into the multistage axial compressor, mixed with the fuel which is then ignited to engage the turbine. The exhaust is then injected with additional fuel to burn off excess oxygen. At higher speeds bypass tubes open up that siphon compressed air into the afterburner, creating a ramjet engine with the fuel efficiency of a turbojet. At sufficient velocities the engine reaches an equilibrium and most air compression is automatic."

"This means the inlet has to be within certain specifications to the airflow is sufficient and the forces involved don't tear the nacelle from it's manifold. The bypass valves are potential weakpoints as well, though in this design a lot of the welding has been replaced with molecular bonding, enabling higher top-speeds, but the tubes themselves have a tendency to deform after extended use, which causes air-turbulences in the ignition chamber. The fuel-injectors are controlled by magnetic valves and the fuselage is shielded beneath a layer of ablative plating. I disassembled most of it to inspect the fuel-lines to make sure they hadn't been tampered with by the intruders." she says, pointing at parts of the engine that are hidden beneath dull grey metal."

"The exhaust helps direct the thrust to assist with steering and I had to check if it responds to signals correctly, same with the air inlet's central spike since the engine depends on being able to retract it to shape the geometry inside the axial compressor. Most of that is done electronically while I work on the rest of the engine." She stops for a moment and looks up at Aaron. "I would not reccomend doing that unless you are very familiar with the design as you would risk injuring yourself when the interior engine components move." As if to demonstrate parts of the engine begin to shift as the exhaust nozzle moves around.

[Aaron Davis]

He'd caught about 75-percent of that, but he nodded. "Makes sense. The demonstration is impressive. How'd you manage that?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Remotely controlling the on-board computer. It helps with checking all the different air-intakes as well. I can check their control systems at the same time as physically inspecting them for damage or obstructions."

[Aaron Davis]

"Abilities like that must be nice. I can only interact with systems with these." He held up his hands.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Most things are designed to be interacted with that way. And all physical inspections I do manually. It simply allows me to multitask."

[Aaron Davis]

"Yeah, but you're a a cyberkinetic, right? That was the rumor I heard anyways."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Technopathic. That's the official term. Robert West is the cyberkinetic. You're a lycomorph, correct?"

[Aaron Davis]

"That's one of the terms, yeah," he said, stepping forward for a closer look at the engine. "Never as cool as people think it is. What's it' like? Being a technopath I mean."

[Ashlie Minamida]

She takes a moment to contemplate that question. What are the biggest differences between her lived experience and that of a human?

"Cold." she finally says in an answer that's surprisingly on point for a machine. "Ordered. Boring."

[Aaron Davis]

"Code. Code never changes," he said with a smile. "Why boring?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Because machines are built to do certain things. If they function properly that is all they do. Any input is processed predictably."

[Aaron Davis]

"To a certain extent. Though it would be theoretically possible to create a system complex enough to obfuscate that predictability."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"That is correct. It's one of the strange dichotomies about being human. Fearing the unknown but craving the unpredictable."

[Aaron Davis]

"I find there's more than enough to fear in the known. You never know when you'll find something nice in the unknown."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"More importantly, without exploring the unknown things would stagnate."

[Aaron Davis]

"So what have you found in the unknown lately?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"A non-mutant with the ability to manipulate dimensional barriers and distort the local physical properties. He claims it is magic."

[Aaron Davis]

"And you don't think that's possible?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I have seen that it's possible. I don't accept his explanation."

[Aaron Davis]

"Why not, if you don't mind me asking? You said he's not a mutant, so that can't be the explanation. Has he exhibited any sort of technology in what does?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Not as far as I can tell, but that doesn't mean it has to be magic. He could be exhibiting a different kind of meta-human abilities."

[Aaron Davis]

"Such as? Gamma radiation seems to have relatively predictable side effects and seems to cause physically obvious changes, so unless he turns green when he uses his abilities, it's probably not that."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"There are other examples. Cosmic radiation has been known to induce meta-human abilities, as have non-X-gene related genetic mutations."

[Aaron Davis]

"What about Doctor Strange?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Just another example of yet unexplained abilities."