Xaviers!

Natalie didn't leave the workshop after she'd seen to it that Ashlie's body was moved there. She tinkers with her own small computer, booting it up to check things, then powering it back down and messing with the parts some more. Every so often, she stops and just stares into space, not making any contact at all with the myriad of devices and signals around her. Then shakes her head or inhales deeply or closes her eyes tight and swallows hard before digging back into her work.

((Open))

Pretty much immediately when her body is brought in Ashlie's presence begins to saturate the systems in the workshop. Robot arms unfold from the ceiling and swivel down. One of them opens up it's end into what looks like a clamp or mold of some sort with a thick cable connector sticking out the middle. It closes around the back of the neck of the robot body and lifts it into the air to dangle like a ragdoll while the connector sinks into the base of the skull.

Code: Select all

Attempting to access memory unit...
>> System partially damaged
>> 96% data integrity
>> Reconstructing missing blocks...
>> 99% data integrity, sufficient for integration
>> Memory Retrieval in progress...

Meanwhile one of the arms swings down to where Natalie is and looks over her shoulder. She might notice that it's the one with all the more delicate tools folded into it's head along with a small camera lens. Ashlie's voice however comes from one of the consoles. "I've looked into the design files you asked me to."

"Oh?" Natalie seems to be just kind of wandering. There are way more efficient ways to accomplish improving her tiny computer and she's undoing almost as much work as she's actually doing.

"You seem to be distracted..."

"I'm sorry," she says, looking at the camera. "Just... dealing with things. Death... life... it's complicated..." She actually distracted enough that her Facebook relationship status updates to "It's Complicated."

The robot arm swivels around so it's no longer looking over her shoulder.

"So I hear. I will admit I have a hard time conceptualizing something like that. I cease to exist when I shut down, but from my point of view it's merely a sudden shift in timecodes when I'm brought back online. Sometimes I can even close the gap in perception if I have the memory files to do so. Do you remember what happened?"

"Sort of?" She says, turning back to look at her work. "I remember pain... and bright light... After that, it gets hazier. I can't... I'm not a religious person."

"You were being affected by a time distortion field. It might not seem that way because minds, even mine, are intended to run on a linear progression of events, but it's to be expected that your perception would be... unusual. But a time distortion is likely to create countless quantum interlinks and as long as those exist between physical versions of you that are capable of processing the unique neural signature that is you, your existence doesn't truly end. Imagine... a lightbulb and pretend for a moment that when it is turned off the glow-filament will snap. Your body is the bulb and what you experience as yourself is the light. If I could produce another, identical lightbulb and connect it to the first and divert the flow of electricity then the light never stop, even as the first bulb breaks."

"The second lightbulb is a quantum snapshot of your body and the wires are moments in space-time folded in on itself. And what is hazy is what happened to your electricity as it is transferred. Trying to process sensory information you were never meant to experience."

To a certain extent, Natalie appreciates Ashlie's attempts to help, but she sighs, "So you're suggesting this is a forked copy of my body and not the original?"

"No. It's just hard to find a mundane example that properly describes reverting a physical object to it's original, unbroken state. You are, molecule for molecule, that same physical entity you were before. Your consciousness was merely quantum-linked between yourself and trying to draw a straight line from one to the other takes your mind through curves it isn't equipped to understand."

She pushes her computer away from her, setting the tools aside. "But I can't help but try to draw straight lines. Every time I close my eyes, I see the light. It sucks. Why does meatspace have to be so complicated?"

"Would it help if you thought of the light as the quantum links connecting you back to yourself? Remember, while you might think that chronologically you were 'dead' before that happened, that is not necessarily the case in a time distortion event. In fact by definition the events had to overlap to produce this result."

"It doesn't really help, no," Natalie says after a moment's contemplation. She gives a resigned sigh, "You said you'd looked into those files?"

"I apologize I could not be of more help. My thoughts on the matter of consciousness are rather pragmatic by nature, I'm afraid. And yes, I looked them over and I cannot tell you exactly how they came to be. They seemed to have been created in the same manner as those your power pushes into the system it's interacting with."

She moves over to another machine, pulling up the files in question. She looks at them for a long moment, "So you're telling me these are something I created?"

"it certainly seems that way. They're fairly impressive too. They need some work but it's a remarkable starting point."

"You think so?" She seems surprised. "I'd toyed with putting together a suit of some sort. I'm not exactly suited to the typical things the X-Teams get up to, but that's doesn't mean I don't want to be."

"Don't get me wrong, you can't push this to production as it is. Some of it is a little more wishful thinking and a little less material science and you would have to decide on a workable control scheme. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have a lot of programs for making a robot move, but making something augment your movements is something else entirely."

"To some extent, a control system that could interface with my powers would be nice and would prevent someone else from using it, but we're back to wishful thinking," she says, having the design program start dissecting things into some discrete subsystems.

"While it makes sense to lock some functions behind a total lack of an interface, you would want a suit to react naturally to your movement. Even I wrote myself sub-routines for controlling basic movements. I can only imagine how claustrophobic it would feel having to consciously work in tandem with every subconscious movement your body makes. You would be along for the ride inside a drone you essentially remote control. There is a reason I transfer my program into my body instead."

"Does this system interface with the Danger Room? That seems like it'd be ideal for testing out prototypes before committing to physical fabrication that may not be ideal." Another application opens up, beginning to break things down into an actual project outline.

"It does and it's a good idea to test your theories at least. Translating it into actual materials brings it's own challenges, but making sure it theoretically works is a good first step."

"Curse you material physics and your rules," Natalie says with a chuckle. Having a project to focus on seems to be cheering her up a bit.

"If everything always behaved according to blueprints then Engineering would not nearly be as interesting." she says, sounding vaguely amused. In the background the robot arms are working on extracting things from Ashlie's 'skull' and laying out the various components on a workbench.

She glances over, "Doesn't look like that shutdown was kind to your body."

"Some parts are missing. I'm assuming they were used to facilitate the temporal displacement. Nothing I can't repair in time."

"I can go try to find the parts if that would help."

"I appreciate it, but a significant part of me is proprietary and while I do keep some parts on hand, I will have to fabricate a number of these. And you have better things to do than babysit the 3D Printer."

"Better things?" She says with a half smirk. "It's all wishful thinking personal projects at the moment."

"You're free to call it what you want." she chuckles. "But I'll put myself back together. This is not as big an inconvenience for me as it would be for other people anyway. I can do most of my work from here."

"If you're certain," she says, turning back to the computer which is still planning out her project, studying the subsystems that have been broken out. "I think it would be best to start with the leg systems. Their required movement is less complicated than arms and hands. But that raises the question of whether their functionality is dependent on the torso, which may house the core processing. Damn, this is complicated."

"While you'll need a core processor, you should try to incorporate as much of the movement systems into hardcoded chips. It lowers the chance for someone to hack your leg and make it bend backwards at the knee and it saves tremendous amounts of processing power you'd otherwise need to dynamically calculate something very repetitive. And you can connect a prototype to a temporary computer via cables to test it."

"I suppose we start with the extremities and work out way in then," she says, adjusting the project to put the legs up first.

"It's a good starting point. And will let you determine what is needed from the torso to support it and the helmet to display."

The computer starts making all sorts of information requests, pulling in various information on possible chip designs for Natalie to process. "Power is likely to be of a problem to," she says. Another task gets added to the project.

"It'll be interesting to see what you come up with to solve that problem."

"I may need some help when I get to that, but I'll need to figure out the power requirements first."

"Be as efficient as you can. You might have to resort to a battery instead of a generator. Those take up a lot of space if you aren't Tony Stark."

"And there's only one Tony Stark," she says a little ruefully. "Have to research the power output of those thin flexible batteries. Something like that would be ideal. Not a lot of space taken up and they can be distributed so there's not one central place to depower the suit."

"That's one option. Send me your first revision when you're done and I'll look it over. Oh and you might want to think about what precisely you wan it to do. Even combat applications have many different approaches."