Maintenance Required

[Ashlie Minamida]

While the costume party is going on Ashlie makes her way to the workshops. On the way there she's busy reconnecting to her main system and begins sorting through the million administrative things that have piled up in her absence as well as starting numerous processes to gather information on Finn McCool and his claims. Her to-do list is beginning to look ridiculous but at least she can take care of some of these things while she's getting some much needed repairs.

The robot arms suspended from the ceiling spring to life and converge on her, beginning to work even as she's still moving. Every movement is perfectly mapped out by default, so the arms have no trouble detaching the damaged eye and clearing out the damaged pieces while Ashlie moves through the room. Another arm uncurls and brings down a proper charging cable that slots into the base of her neck and simultaneously grabs her around the torso, lifting her into the air. Disengaging her servos she goes slack as the robot arms go to work. Sparks fly as one begins carefully blowtorching out the section of her head that's still deformed from Will's blow while another arm carefully detaches the arm built by Tosh and sets it aside.

Meanwhile part of her attention is diverted to check on a number of things. Will seems to have recovered in the sense that he didn't attack anybody else in her absence and she makes a note to contact him as soon as she's done here to talk. She also checks on the satellite presumably still hanging above their heads, eluding her commands.

[Narrator]

The satellite was, indeed, still there, though it'd behavior had changed some since Ashlie had left. It was still transmitting signals back to Antarctica, but it's orbit had widened out some, and it had spent a few days traveling north and south up and down the UK

[Ashlie Minamida]

Looking for me or Will disappeared for a while as well. I should ask him about that if I get the chance.

She pulls up her logs to see if the telemetry of the Point had remained on the satellite in her absence and if so, whether it had managed to intercept any transmissions to the eye in the sky. With enough of them she might be able to begin piecing together the right frequencies to hook into the satellite directly.

[Narrator]

The point had been recording signals, alright--and specifically, it had noted that some signals had been sent TOWARDS it from the school proper.

The decryption protocols and whatnot had been running, and were definitely making progress. She might be able to attempt to communicate directly at this point, but she wouldn't be able to guarantee avoiding alerting whoever was listening from the other end.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Somebody had communicated with the satellite from here? She runs a quick scan of the Point facilities to make sure no one has compromised the system and then tries to determine where the signal had been send from. Without additional data it'd be hard to pinpoint exactly but she might be able to narrow it down a little at least based on the satellite's position at the time.

[Narrator]

It actually wasn't that difficult to determine! The signal had been sent from the central area just a few days prior.

The entry and exit logs showed that Nailah Weaver had been in the room at the time.

[Ashlie Minamida]

The frown doesn't make it all the way to Ashlie's face (she's disconnected all auto-somatic subroutines while she's repairing herself) but it's there in the digital world as she pulls up Nailah's file and her mutation. Enhanced physical reflexes, stamina and strength, flight. Nothing that suggests she'd be able to do something like this. Which means she probably had help from somebody, Will being the most likely culprit. Why she did this is another question altogether. She hadn't punished Sam for accessing Cerebra and is considering letting this slide as well, though it's beginning to strain the work-arounds Rob put in place to allow her to disregard the rules. She's pondering where to draw the line and how much she should encourage the students to do what they think is right versus making sure they don't disobey all the rules. She'd probably have to have a chat with Miss Weaver.

In the meantime she turns her attention to the satellite itself. If it's there unsanctioned or under black-ops protocols she doesn't have to fear any official reprieve and the Major is unlikely to launch an attack. She could always claim to be investigating potential threats to the school should she get caught, which has the advantage of technically being correct. After a minute of deliberating she attempts to connect to the expensive piece of military hardware floating thousands of miles above her head.

[Narrator]

The military firewall was fairly intense, but ASHLIE was a fairly powerful computational machine herself. The encryption fell, and she suddenly had access to a high-powered secret military spy satellite.

So, she had that going for her, which was nice.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Working quickly, Ashlie digs through the satellite's previous commands and triggers what, hopefully, will look like a glitch that sends it back to it's observation post above Antarctica. While the satellite is moving she tries to see if she can find anything else noteworthy in it's memory banks. Previous locations, recorded images, authorization protocols, the works.

[Narrator]

The satellite briefly tried to resist the unfamiliar command, but slowly began moving off from it's orbit over the UK.

The satellite's previous location had been over Southeast Asia--whether or not that was relevant was hard to gauge at this point, but that's where it was. Perhaps more significant was the fact that it had been moved to the UK specifically; there were closer satellites to the UK that they could have used instead. There didn't immediately seem to be anything special about this particular satellite, but perhaps it just wasn't apparent from an initial survey.

As for authorization protocols, it seemed clear that the satellite would normally only accept commands from a specific Antarctic research station--at least, until ASHLIE had hacked it. It didn't seem like the satellite would normally accept commands from the Pentagon or from Washington or anything like that--fairly autonomous, all things considered.

As for record images....THAT seemed to be protected with ANOTHER level of lockout codes. There was certainly SOMETHING up there they were taking great pains to hide.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie tries to see if she can initiate a data transmission from the satellite to the base in Antarctica to intercept the data stream and pull a copy into her own system. Trying to decode it that way would be much simpler than over a remote connection like this.

[Narrator]

She would be able to do that, but there's almost no way that wouldn't be detected. She would have to decide if that was worth it or not.

[Ashlie Minamida]

This satellite could be anybody's and she has to assume it poses a potential threat. You never know with the Russians. It could be theirs after all. That's the reasoning she uses to force her programming to accept the potentially illegal move of intercepting the transmission as well as the excuse she's likely to present the Major should he come complaining about this.

[Narrator]

ASHLIE violated several US laws and regulations, and intercepted the transmission from the military satellite.

Most of what it had was, indeed, high-resolution satellite photos--VERY high-res, with the campus mapped out nearly entirely, as well as the surrounding area.

What might be more interesting were the pics of Antarctica it had previously taken. It showed some sort of large-scale archaeological dig in process; one that wasn't on any charts, maps or records. Presumably, it had something to do with why the base was collecting so many experts and scientists.

[Ashlie Minamida]

As disconcerting as the detailed shots of campus are, she focuses her attention on the dig to see if she can make out any details about what they might be digging for, aside from, as she suspects, this being the site they found Will in.

[Narrator]

While the specifics were difficult to make out from these photos, there were some things that ASHLIE could make out which definitely did not belong in a hole in Antarctica.

Like, for example, what appeared to be a good chunk of a ruined skyscraper. That was a good first tip.

[Ashlie Minamida]

This causes the robotic arms working on Ashlie to stop briefly as calculations and numbers come up, showing various temperatures, humidity thresholds and the like, determining what environmental conditions she could withstand while a lot of red indicators pop up over a diagram of her body and she decides against upgrading herself. On a different workstation a new diagram pops up, various blueprints taking shape alongside a list of components such as locomotion, arms, cameras and other crucial functions of a robot chassis.

Meanwhile she tries to see if she can determine any architectural details to possibly try and match the structure with anything. Is it man-made or alien, what time-period does it appear to have been designed in, does it match any existing structures and so on.

[Narrator]

It most certainly did not match any existing structures. The ruins were in quite bad shape but there was enough to make out that the building's height to length ratio didn't match anything currently built, and in fact, could not--no material ASHLIE was aware of could build a structure that large without it toppling, excluding the extraordinarily rare ones.

It didn't look alien, so far as ASHLIE could judge aesthetics from a satellite shot of a decaying building.

[Ashlie Minamida]

The already busy workshop suddenly got much more busy as the robot arms working on repairing Ashlie are joined by the remaining ones cannibalizing the destroyed combat-drone in the back. Already stripped of it's power core they now begin pulling out the processing core and for the next couple hours the room is filled with holographic design specs, welding sparks and components being constructed and spread out across the room, waiting to be assembled around the processing unit. At some point Ashlie herself is lowered to the floor again, arm and head repaired though still lacking synthetic skin. She joins the robotic arms in their work, moving around them unflinchingly, often only inches from wildly swinging equipment without even looking.

As the hours pass slowly a frame takes shape around the CPU core. Six limbs, four of which have treads and can fold in to provide the whole thing with a large footprint to safely move across snow while they can also unfold into regular limbs to walk. The front two limbs have more delicate manipulators almost reminiscent of hands. Front facing cameras are hidden behind thick thermo-glass and a small column carrying a sensor suit capable of sliding into the robot's frame when not in use sits on top. Most of the chassis is designed to be sleek to offer very little wind resistance or places for ice and snow to accumulate.