station72 | ( OPEN ) Concordia day 009-013 stuff yooo

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( OPEN ) Concordia day 009-013 stuff yooo

CHARACTERS: Sam Anders + YOU
WHERE: Bearings, maybe other places as stuff comes up
WHEN: Day 009-013
SUMMARY: Sam gets his robo-prophet on + starts to investigate the clues he'd gotten + checks out the bombing thing idk. Also catch all for general other things. There's two things in here with Sam going hella Hybrid, and if that's confusing as fuck to you, check the description for it. It's weird, I'm sorry.
WARNINGS: some blood and ickiness bc hybrid state is creepy. will update as needed!

A) DAY 009 - TECHNO PROPHECY;

[ in the dim of the Bearing's commons room, Sam's lounged back on the couch command center he and Angel had set up, with several monitors and more gadgets than they likely need. if it weren't for the fact he's talking, you'd likely take him as just sleeping with his eyes weirdly open. ]

Allocate processes to data stream and monitor, a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it. [ Sam's quiet, blank murmuring shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone, by now. Maybe the new kids, but even those Sam's likely made sure to warn about his Hybrid ability, what it looks like, and why you should really take him seriously when he says "block me out for the next few minutes". It's, mentally, incredibly loud, and anyone going diving into his head during this, without a mind suited for it like Sam's, would only hear something like high pitched, ear-splitting ringing, and feeling like their skull is being cracked open with too, too much thought, before either bleeding from the ears, or passing out. could be both. if you've been in Bearings, you've gotten this warning already. It's a good idea to heed it. If not block him (he shouldn't be outright invading anyone that isn't his Brood), certainly don't go actively following his mind. And just... ignore the guy with a computer wire pushed up into a small cut at the palm of his hand, like he's literally plugged into the computer, rapidly babbling nonsense in a blank, emotionless tone. ] Initiate sequence in subgroup, longview of scan paths merged back in the stream that feeds the ocean that feeds the stream. Throughout history the nexus between man and machine has spun some of the most dramatic, compelling fiction - function steady, event null. The lines bleed, ink into threads and fibers. The world burns, then colors.

New paragraph. Inset. The flower inside the fruit that is both its parent and its child, [ This city brings back so much of Sam's life before. Going back through the recordings of what he'd said while in this state, he'd been surprised to find a few things he'd heard spoken by the other Hybrids, and himself, even, here and there. He supposed that makes sense, given the circumstances. ] Clusters within clusters create a network not yet examined, we are already one, 'and I think to myself, what a wonderful world'. Poison in the well - fire, water, and government know nothing of mercy. Transformation is the goal. Trace archival tangents, referencing topical patterns - innovation and ambition burning minds and souls with wildfire, balance at the pinnacle reaching for truth and perfection. They wage war on shadow, not substance. End of line.

A closed system lacks the ability to renew itself. As the sun's shadow shifts, so there is no permanence.

[ and then, an abrupt pause, like the air just just frozen inside his lungs. Where his head is leaned back against the head of the couch, Sam's chin tilts just slightly, eyelids blinking rapidly (the light of the monitor seeming to flicker in time with them). We found something. ]

...Abort function. New command. [ The pause settles a moment longer, and Sam looks like he's peering through the ceiling, through each level of the building, through the roof and out into the stars. Eventually, a gasp, like being dropped into a pool of ice water, and he starts up again, the same babbling trance, but something more fervent in it now. ] All the old ones gather from the temples in all corners, realities in wax paper layers, time is a circle, a line, a knot whispers the divine mother from four mouths and four faces. Dreams of holy cradle sweeping rustled leaves through circuitry and synthetic tissue, spark of life clinging to the edges and echoes of substance, a thread that holds the dam. The river cannot meet the ocean, the stream interrupted.

Realign. Realign. Realign.

All forces between two objects exist in equal magnitude and opposite direction, inertia is the natural tendency to resist changes in a state of motion. A gap, a reaction, a combustion - the newborn fields burning.

Sparks, and--

[ and he starts to scream. all one long, monotone note, but definitely something you'd call a scream, echoing back through all speakers and audio devices set up at the couch command center, like the room is shaking apart. The hand free of the wire connection seems to be making a visible struggle to make it over to where the cable enters his skin on the opposite arm, like pushing against an invisible force. when he finally reaches it, there's a quick jerk, pulling it free, and Sam goes completely limp, eyes lidded and vacant.

give him about 10 or so minutes, he'll be back. this is intermission. ]

B) DAY 010 - POST BOOM;

[ Like most curious citizens to when something big and exciting (and tragic) happens, Sam follows the masses that huddle outside the police line where the explosions too place, already scanning through extraspace for details on it, seeing theories pop up here and there. there's a sense of deep dread in him, bleeding out, as he goes. all of the night and day before, Sam had been scrambling, trying to figure out what he'd seen about an explosion in his Hybrid state meant. Where it would happen, how. He's gone skulking through Subspace, wanderings around the Data Banks, checked government buildings, and found nothing that narrowed it down. And then, the city shook with the shockwave of the explosion, and he'd known, in an instant, that time was up. stepping up, and looking over the heads of the city goers in front of him, Sam's eyes finally land on the wreckage, and it's like cold confirmation. ]

Frak me, this is it.

[ There's the distinct sense of failure in him, and he's chewing at the inside of a lip, as he absently scans the area. What frakking good is all this nonsense you get if you can't puzzle it out enough to help anyone in time, Sam? Do better. A few people shuffle past him, and Sam has the misfortune of hearing a comment about 'at least no one died', and wants to punch something. Someone died. Fifty someones died. If John wanted him to form a grudge against humanity, he should've sent him to Concordia as the only sentient droid. ]

Gods. Okay. [ Turning back, he's squinting more at the crowd and the officers, now, than the wreckage, and trying to figure out what's the best way to make something out of this. Reaching out to any of the others from the Nest close enough to hear him, especially those at the site, he's mentally brainstorming possible ways forward - ] ( So there's the three injured witnesses, right? They'll be swarmed with cops and press. Do we have anyone with a power that could get to them? Reports said 50 synthetics were kil-- scrapped. But if there's any that weren't completely totaled, maybe we can try to get some kind of drive from them, see if we can fix it. Anyone know where the robot graveyard is? )

[ haha...ha... it's probably a landfill or a junkyard trash pile and he knows it. gods, he hates this planet. ]

C) DAY IDEFK - HACKITY HACK HACKING;

[ It's been a week and a half, and since Angel's initial network flagging, Sam's tried to keep himself aggressively under the radar, using his Hybrid state to surf for information and rapidly compile it, but not for any kind of forcible infiltration. Today's the day. The initial idea is to try getting the attention of someone within EXTRAAA, as they're the ones who seem to have the capability to get to the information he and Angel just aren't familiar enough with the world to sneak to. Who seem to have been doing it for a while, now. Tracing any down the old fashioned way had been a bust - after all, they're very legitimate criminals here, given how serious cyber crime is taken. So, this is more the Do Their Job For Them And See If They Say Thanks idea. Maybe. Sort of. We'll see how it goes.

He'd picked on of the targets EXTRAAA seemed to be after - not too high profile, not terribly low profile either. Somewhere in the middle. He goes as far as he can the old fashioned way - two hands and what he's learned from Anakin and Angel - and then he's letting out a slow exhale, and giving another warning shout to the level at large to wall up their minds form him again. tugging off the bandage over a small cut on the heel of his palm (which is going to be a really ugly scar, after a while), Sam starts to press a thin, network cable inside the wound, and about three inches up his wrist, beneath the skin. it's really, really gross. After a moment or so of heavy blinking, and sinking back against the couch, every inch of him seems to go sharply rigid, like something else just took possession of his body, the same monotone babbling starting up again. ]

Initiate breach with simulated parameters, traced patterns and a slowed forgery - machine plays human plays machine plays human. Conquer; but conquer to your cost. I know, utters the fool, be quick, be quiet. End of line. [ apparently he can now argue with himself like this. great. the rapidly shifting display on the monitor in front of him starts to slow, however. still fast, but something that seems more human. leave no traces, but if you do, make them inconspicuous traces. he'd spent the last week and a half in Bearings looking through sites and forums on network and database hacking, and the Hybrid side of him seemed to always have a window of it open somewhere, teaching itself. Heuristics is part of a functioning AI, after all. The mimicry is likely not perfect, but attempted, at least. Narrowed down to what can be done with one set of hands on one keyboard. ]

Moss over rocks, coral on a reef, life weaves and weaves and the city sprawls, feeds into itself and into itself and back into creation. Tunnels like ants, the lower levels crush and collapse under the weight of chariots driven above. Dragons guarding piles of gold with sharp minds, brave hearts, ruthless claws, cracking and splintering, backs broken. A boot clamped on top of a skull blocks the sky. Structure of lead, strict and rigid, black poison and ink corruption in the veins along the tiers of our fair city, the machine of production shovels out riches into the hands that favor the chosen. [ a blink of a pause, and the flickering screen seems to slow and complete the process. ] The fortress falls, sweep footprints from the snow with broken, brittle branches. End of--

[ His focus seems to falter, a rapid blink, and something is added on, like an amendment, before completing. ]

A star eyed son, a prophet in the counting house, a hand made of scars. The shepherd wears a crown of diamonds. End of line.

[ Aaand, unplug. Again, give him a minute or so to be a vegetable, and eventually, he'll be blinking back into consciousness, giving himself a quick shake, and then leaning forward to peer at the screen again, squinting around and trying to get as much from the database he's broken into as he can, as quickly as he can, before getting the hell out of there. Also, he remembers nothing of what he just said (he'll playback a recording later), so maybe telling him in a moment or so would be a good idea. ]

D) DAY 011-013 - RIDDLES AND STUFF;

[ This is probably the most intense Sam's been in the last week - sitting cross legged on the couch, a notepad in his lap and a pencil scrawling all over what seems like the fifth page, as a recording of what sounds like himself speaking utter nonsense playing from the computer in front of him. He's been recording himself anytime he goes into Hybrid state, and taking notes on bites and pieces that sound important, and today he's gone back through it, start to finish, because there's finally seeming to be something of substance in it.

His notes are a bit confusing, a scribbling of a lot of different phrases, some puzzled out, some not, but generally information relative to Concordia ((assume anything in what the mods gave is in some form recorded in his notes)). Frowning, he's chewing at the end of his pen, and mumbling-thinking outloud. ]

" A star eyed son, a prophet in the counting house, and a hand made of scars." Counting house, that's like... an accounting firm, right? Like operations for a business? Maybe a bank? ...Databanks? Or one of the corporations. Do they do their own accounting, or do they hire out? [ In any of those options, he still has no idea who he'd search out a prophet buried in there. Unless they just stood outside, with their ledger, proclaiming the End Times. Moving on. ] Star eyed son. Who important has a son? Or is a son? ...Every male in the frakking city, great, good job, Anders, way to puzzle that one out.

[ Sam's really starting to hate... himself. His Hybrid-self, because Gods, could we not just say something straight for once? With a huff, he flips the page, moving on to yet another point. ]

Whatever. Okay, four faced divinity, that's... [ some scrambling through notes here, pen held between his teeth like a cigarette. ] Lirinity. 'Goddess of four aspects; mother, daughter, world and self. Found in everything from the natural world to the man-made'. Huh. Sounds nice. So maybe the prophet we're looking for... is a Lirinitian? A Lirinitian accountant?

[ Very specific. Super helpful. ]

Hey. [ You. In the kitchen, or headed to the bathroom, or just coming in from the elevator, or minding your own business somewhere across the room. You. ] You any good at riddles? Or cryptic crap?

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Unless you make it 'Alex' but that's a whole different thing.

[ Hey, he'd been Sammy once. Granted, he didn't like it very much, but the wife was fond.

lounging back and kicking his feet up on the nearby coffee table, he's nodding his head towards the notepad again. ]

So, Sam. Got any theories?

[ He mostly gets unflattering nicknames at school, and sometimes "Samuel Alejandro" when his mom is really ticked off about something. He'd much rather be Sam.

He turns his attention back to the notepad, frowning. ]

This is some pretty trippy stuff. Where'd it come from?

[ Fair enough, fair enough. Sam it is, mini-bro.

'where'd it come from' hahahahah about that... ]

Uh. From me. [ this is the tight lipped look of 'this is about to sound really awkward'. ]

I sort of. Prophesize. Sometimes. [ nbd ]

[ Sam is a superhero who pals around with a gun-toting raccoon and a psychic Russian dog. This really isn't that bad on the scale of weird things in his life.

And it shows, really, because he doesn't seem to find that all that out there. Thoughtful tilt of the head, drums his fingers on the notepad a little, but he certainly isn't weirded out by it. There's mutants back home who can do that, right? Or was it inhumans? Both? Not his area of expertise. ]

So it just gives you words and no context?

[ that is the most relaxed response he'd gotten thus far, and Anders kind of loves this kid for it. Bless you, child. ]

Um, yeah, basically.

[ okay, to explain that more, he sits up a little bit, glancing up a moment while he gathers his thoughts. ]

So, I go into this sort of trance thing, right? And I know the context when I'm there, but when I come back, I don't remember anything from it. [ he reaches out, tapping the notepad indicatively. ] Only reason I've got this is because I've been recording myself.

Wow. You totally drew the short straw when they were handing out superpowers.

[ And then he quiets down for a moment and starts reading properly, instead of just skimming and going "whoa nice modern poetry bro." ]

Well, I could also probably hijack an entire fleet of networked starships with my brain, so...

[ right, yeah, that bit isn't actually the main part of that whole. Power. Thing. Whatever the hell it is. Also, he can punch people through walls, apparently. His new robot life is weird. ]

The prophecy thing's sort of the side-effect part.

Okay, that makes it sound a lot cooler.

[ He'd still probably take rocket speed and shooting laser beams, though. Untangling bullshit symbolism isn't his cup of tea, and anyway, going fast is fun.

Untangling bullshit symbolism. Right, that. ]

Right. Uhhh. Star eyed son. Stars could be light, hope, luck but usually that's shooting stars I think. Wisdom or divination? There's probably a whole buttload of mythological things it could be, but all the ones I'm thinking of are Earth or at least other planets that aren't this one -

[ He drums his fingers on the notepad again. ]

Oh, and navigation. Or distance.

[ Which probably should've been the first one to come to mind, really, considering. ]

Little bit, huh?

[ There's a lot of super powers Sam would probably take over his, or maybe even none at all, sometimes. Depending on how okay he's feeling with what he is at the time. But what he has is what he has, and there's not point bitching about it. Just figure out how to make it as useful as he can.

With little Sam going back through the notes, Anders is leaning some to peer down at the page, despite the fact he has to have memorized it all by now. Maybe thinking something will just jump out at him. ] Star eyed... yeah, those make sense. Could be literal too. Maybe someone with a scar or birthmark. Maybe an astronomer.

Sometimes it's mythology. Usually has to do with Apollo, Athena, all those. [ He doesn't know it as 'Greek', just 'the gods of the 13 tribes'. But from what he remembers usually it's that. But then again, who even knows? When he's in his Hybrid trance, there's legitimately all of the universe and time in his head with him. He reaches forward, tapping a finger at something else on the page. ]

This one. "The river cannot meet the ocean, the stream interrupted. Realign." Somethings disrupted somewhere. That's-- It's technical talk, I say that when I'm making repairs. [ it's so bizarre to talk about himself in the sense of being the mind of a machine, but that's what it is. ] So there's a force, somewhere, that's blocking up progress. It could be there, I think the singularity's already at it's potential, but someone or something's actively putting a dam up against it. And the only way you'd do that is a program, to block another program. Nothing physical stops digital from doing what it does.

[ A program blocking a program. It makes sense, to Sam's admittedly limited understanding of things - most of his understanding of technology is what's practical for him, and that's mostly in terms of working things that aren't intelligent. Starting to deal with spaceships took him a step up from when the most complicated thing he had to use was a smartphone, but it's still far from understanding most programming technobabble.

Vision or Iron Man would do better at this. But they're not here, and he's probably never going to see them again, so...suck it up, buttercup. He's got more important things to think about. Things that are right in front of him. ]

If something's blocking it...do you think you'd be able to find it? Would we have to get you some kind of access to the right system?

[ Finding a program is a job for someone with a lot of technical savvy, which rules most of them right out, he's pretty sure. ]

Hell, hard to say. [ Anders starts, rubbing a palm against his chin as he thinks on it. this is easier to know when he's gone all hybrid, but as displayed, not likely to be understood when he isn't. ] I doubt it's run on any kind of network, probably written into each android's coding.

[ so he'd need to get to every android individually. even if he tried to spread it like a virus, their systems are likely advanced enough that they'd find a way to block it, and Sam still isn't caught up enough with this world's technology to be able to beat them out. ]

The manufacturers would know how. I'm not familiar enough, and I can't get familiar enough without getting flagged by the cyber cops.

Oh. Ugh.

[ He gets that, mostly. And even if they are linked to a network, it's still like trying to spread a trojan - you can get some people that way, but the people smart enough to delete the weird emails, the ninety-year-old grandmas who never started using the internet and just have a computer to play solitaire, the people with decent antivirus software...

A tall order, that is to say. ]

And it's not like they're going to tell us if we ask nicely.

[ Maybe they need to ask not so nicely.

Or just not ask.

Without getting caught, which...is always the trick, isn't it? ]

Seriously doubting it, kid.

[ He's rather pass up the enter asking part at all, given that puts them on the radar for all these companies, and try to sneak their way to it.

but the issue is, well. They can't just force it. ]

That doesn't stop the conflict, though. Just giving them agency? [ if anything, that starts the war. ] Humans aren't going to accept it. They'll try to get them back under control, try to put them into the proverbial chains again.

And what's the thing that makes the most sense when someone's trying to turn a lifeform with free will into a slave? [ fight. fight a lot. fight until they don't have to anymore and won't ever have to again. ]

[ He's handled his share of slavers, doing the interstellar beat, so yeah, he can fill in the blanks on that one pretty easily. ]

So, we can't actually fix anything without turning the planet into a war zone. Awesome.

[ Who wrote this mission plan? This mission plan sucks. ]

[ he sighs out, deflating a bit. ]

Not unless we help these people accept their new robot brethren.

[ which is a tall fucking order. change like that is hard to have come around rapidly, and even then, there's still tension and discord left in the wake for some years after. ] At the very least, they need laws that give them rights. The need freedom, and the social tension they can work out after.

So I dunno if the government here is anything like home, but if they run on the same level of efficiency, I think we can count on them pushing a law through about five till never.

[ He'd been watching a lot more news since he took up the superheroing gig. More things going on he needed to know about. And it seemed like half the time all he'd ever heard was this bill being stalled or that one dying in committee or filibusters or shutdowns and - ugh. ]

That's not all government systems?

[ a mild joke, but gods, it's true. the colonies had been just as bad. it took a nuclear holocaust, and cutting the 5 billion souls population down to 50,000 to speed things up, and not in a good way. ]

I dunno. Maybe they need it. [ the war. maybe they'll come to a common ground. maybe they'll eradicate each other, like what happens nine times out of ten. hell, he's not this universe's prophet. at least, not like he had been for his own. ]

I've been to a couple of planets that seemed like they were doing okay.

[ Only a couple, really - space is mostly like the wild west, in his corner of reality. Actually, the fact that he can only name a couple probably just supports the point of government being awful, the more he thinks about it.

But the idea of them needing a war to get over this, maybe. It's...well, he can see the reasoning. There were definitely times when he wasn't ready for reason or settling things until he had the chance to throw a few punches and get it out of his system; an entire society could totally do that on a big scale, right?

But. ]

I really don't like the idea of us having to decide something that big. I mean, we haven't even been here for a month.

[ Sure, they've been putting in a lot of effort to get the lay of the land and an understanding of the situation, and all, but. A month. Can they really say they know anything? ]

We're already making a decision for them by getting involved at all.

[ for as optimistic as sam generally is, something after getting his memories back, after looking at the universe through the eyes of time, has made him more accepting of a certain balance. sometimes, death has to happen. sometimes, destruction has to occur, for creation to bloom.

if the colonies weren't obliterated, the new earth and it's new peace would never have been found. he doesn't like the thought of it, and he doesn't want that to be the answer here at all, but he does understand it. ]

Then again, we aren't the only outside entity here.

Yeah, I guess so.

[ And it's not like he hasn't been jumping in all kinds of otherworldly affairs since he became Nova, but...it's not really the same thing, in his mind. The Nova Corps was an accepted and respected part of the cosmic landscape back home, before they died out. All he's really doing is bringing back something that was lost.

Not quite the same as showing up in a place they have no connections to and shaping the course of their future. ]

Maybe we just need to find them and punch them out.

[ Remove the problem at its source, let these people figure themselves out. It works, right? ]

That’s the idea.

[ well, more or less the idea.

The source of the problem is unfortunately a lot bigger and a lot more illusive than just searching out one or two people, and they haven’t even managed to do that with those causing trouble here yet.

It all seems very convoluted and impossible right now, and Anders’ starting to feel it wear on him. Still, he’s here, he has to do this, because someone has to do this, so he sits up a little straighter, and looks back to his computer console, starting to search through news feeds all over again, just waiting for something, anything, to pop up. ]

But currently, finding them means figuring these H+H1 people out. And all we’ve got ain’t enough yet, kiddo.

...yeah.

[ He's good at the punching stuff. And, you know, even better at slamming into something at rocket speed and making it explode.

Sam is not subtle, is what it comes down to.

But this requires subtle. This takes actual...detective work, honestly, and that's never been his forte. He's been working on the whole "think first, punch later" thing (his chess game looks a lot better! but the meganerds in chess club still beat him), but it's hard. All of this stuff is so...

He looks at the notes again.

So vague. Ugh. ]

A hand made of scars. That's probably not literal, right? This stuff never makes it easy by being literal.

[ Frowning, Anders thinks on it a second, tilting his head to think if there’s any prominent public figure with scars on their hands. ]

Could be.

[ thinking back, there’s sometimes it’s been so much simpler than it sounds. Well, that’s annoying. ]

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. You seeing my problem here?

Yeah. After we read Gatsby I kept trying to make something out of the colors in everything, because of that stupid green light.

[ You get used to looking too hard, you make things more complicated than they need to be.

But sometimes they actually need to be complicated, so you can't just make everything simple and assume that's good enough.

Ugh. ]

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( OPEN ) Concordia day 009-013 stuff yooo

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