2010-09-01: Hi Technopath I'm Technopath

Players:

Theo_icon.jpg Kisha_icon.jpg

Summary: Kisha and Theo meet for the first time, and talk about nerdy stuff!

Date: September 1, 2010. 4:15pm

Log Title: Hi Technopath, I'm Technopath

Rating: G


Xavier Mansion - Garage

Home to various cars of teachers and X-men, the garage can house at least twenty vehicles. There is also an area that has a auto body shop set up so students and teachers and work on their cars. Almost any tool a mechanic needs can be found in this garage.


Some kids come to the Garage to borrow tools and take advantage of the facilities, Kisha on the other hand only visits when her roomie is complaining about arc welding in the dorm room. And thus she's taken over a large table, cleared it of the mundane tools and set up her own kit complete with the sleek backpack sized chrome carry case and a stand to place her touchscreen computer on. "Eight broken Wii motion sensors? Check. Assorted wires and cables? Check. Sack filled with as many broken projectors as will fit… Check," she mutters to herself, dumping each item out infront of her as she goes. "I think that's everything. Record project note three, all items shortlisted have been collected. Progressing to first assembly stage. End recording."

It has been made clear that Theo can't keep his car in the garage, much to his dismay. However, nobody said he can't work on it in the garage. As Kisha goes through her list, the door to the garage opens. However, this is no clunker that Theo rolls into the garage with. It's a ferrari. A very small one, like a smart car. The engine is quiet, it doesn't sound like a normal car. There's no smell of exhaust, either. He pulls it up to mechanic pit, and turns off the engine. The lights go out, and he opens the door. Not alone, though, as he's followed by a four legged robot with two arms on its back. About the girth of a medium sized dog, Proto lands on the floor.
Theo nods to Kisha, his attention caught by the resources she's surrounded herself with. "Hey," he greets. A snakelike camera on the front of the robot follows Theo as he moves to the front of the car, and releases the hood latch.

Of course some students don't need to hear a car like that to feel it coming and before Theo has even finished parking Kisha is prowling around, giving it a hungry look. She doesn't spare a glance for the little robot and appears to not even hear the greeting at first, then after a full circuit is done she twitches. "Hi… Ah. That explains it," she murmurs. "Do you mind if I..?" She finally glances up at Theo, pupils worryingly dilated, and mimes putting her hand against the car.

Theo gives a momentarily confused look, but it only lasts a second as he realizes that she's rather excited about the car, and a grin crosses his face. "Sure. This is my project for work," he says, not missing the opportunity to subtley boast about himself. He lifts the hood with his left hand only, given that his right hand seems to be in a cast. The glow of the arc reactor illuminates the car's engine inside. "Proto, grab the bag from the trunk," he tells the little robot.
Proto responds, though there is no AI inside of it, and pops the trunk from the front seat, then hops back out of the car and clambers its way to the back, opening the trunk and climbing inside. A bag with several thin metal beams, and a few laptop batteries is produced, and is brought to the boy. "I'm Theo," he introduces himself, though he's not sure whether the girl will be able to hear him, given her seeming fascination with the car.

Kisha seems to sway when the Arc reactor is revealed and mutters something in Russian. Once the initial shock wears off she begins idly poking and prodding bits, without any real logic behind the process, and then declares "I'd have used a Bugatti Veyron as a base or maybe an Acabion GTBO if speed rather than passenger capacity was the intention." With an effort she pulls away, getting a good few meters distance between herself and the car. "You can't imagine the things I could do with that angelic machine."

Theo laughs, "Well, I'm working on giving this thing a little more kick right now," he says. "The arc reactor powers this thing, it won't ever need gas and will run for fifty years, but it's missing torque for a real speed machine." He pulls some of the metal beams out. I'm going to use a principle that's used in freight trains to improve the torque, while keeping the same energy source. I've never heard of it being used in a car, but I don't see why it can't be done." He pulls the a battery out. "If I give it a few fusion batteries, the rest of the car can be powered by the batteries while the arc reactor is then dedicated to the drive train during acceleration, and then we'll just reprogram the computer to redistribute the power allocation." He stops. "Sorry, that was really nerdy. What's your name?"

"In theory it's definately viable. I'd give you a ballpark variable for how many ways you could do it but… I'm already struggling to keep my mind on my own work and not on taking up carjacking," Kisha replies cheerfully, turning and tapping a few glyph style buttons on her touchscreen computer. "Kisha. And you are…? Sorry if you already said but my head was filled with… stuff. It's complicated, hence being here."

Theo laughs, "It's Theo, and I think Tony would kill me if I let somebody carjack this thing." he says and nods to the pile of things. "What are you building? Or are you building?"He disconnects a few of the cables on the car, and removes the arc reactor. He places it on a small workbench, and then takes one of the fusion batteries, and begins to attach them.

"Considering you're in the room a succesfull carjacking might make him killing you a moot point," Kisha points out with an amused grin. "This? Oh it's nothing really. Not compared with an arc reactor anyway… Basically it's a system of projectors and motion capture devices, linked into a plug in box, that'll allow me to project my computer screen onto a wall and then manipulate things via gestures." She pouts. "Mostly because direct neural plug-ins are on the prescribed technology list."

Theo nods, "That's actually a really cool idea. You don't want neural plug-ins anyway. Trust me." He takes the second fusion battery, and begins to attach it. "But maybe you could place the sensors into a set of gloves, that could make it more convenient." Proto hands up the third battery. "Now all I gotta figure out is how to keep the torque up without getting these beams too close to the road."

Kisha shakes her head. "I discounted gloves because I want to be able to use my machine while I'm working on a project," she explains. "Motion detection lets me multitask without excessive laundry bills. And I /do/ want brain chips providing they have the appropriate safety features included. Like the mutant power nulling devices I suspect the mansion security system included has only smaller."

"They don't. They are only in the holding cells. I'd know about it. See, what you want to have implanted, is what I have for a 'power'," he says, the word said as if it was only being acknowledged as such because it's a familiar term. "There's not a machine I can't hear in this place. Whether I want to or not. Sometimes I go ask to hang out in the holding cells so I can get some peace and quiet." He illustrates by turning on the staff cars one at a time throughout the garage, and then turning them off again.

Kisha raises an eyebrow at Theo. "I don't mean nullification of every power, just the ones which control machines. But now I know someone here actually has a machine control power I'll probably need to build one for my desk top machine. That and I suppose it'll be time to enhance my computer security in general… Not that I suspect you'll do anything but simply because it'll be easier to test if it works with you around."

Theo gives Kisha a look, one of those looks that indicates he isn't certain how to receive that comment. "Right. Since you'll need one of those around a lot of other people," he chews the words as he speaks, sounding slightly offended. "I'm not gonna do anything to your computer." This is what he gets for telling someone his power.
"From conversations with other students and checking New York media records I consider technopathic influence of my inventions to be a reasonably likely occurance," Kisha explains patiently, picking out some tools from her toolkit which look distinctly unlike anything you'd find in a store. "Especially if I later decide to market the devices for military or corporate use. Consider it a type of future proofing, given the rate at which mutant and metahuman levels are rising."

Theo still doesn't look remarkably impressed with the idea of being a guinea pig, but doesn't continue the conversation. He grabs a power drill, and a few screws from the tools that are more conventional, and watches Kisha with her tools. "What are those anyway?" he asks. He pulls one of the metal beams up, and slides it down into the mechanic's put.

Kisha frowns, then swaps her current tool for another slightly more recognizable one. "My tools, why what do they look like? I needed a way to fit all the tools a college-ish grade machine shop /and/ have space for electrical engineering stuff. So I had to hand build some more practical devices. For the same reasons I needed to link my beowulf cluster with a more portable sized computer."

"Ah, okay," the technopath answers, hopping down into the mechanics pit. "It's good to see that there's someone else here that thinks about more than just what movies are coming out," he comments before the drill is heard. "I gotta warn you, most of the people here just think about where they wanna hang out and play video games on the weekend. Makes it really easy to be top of the class. Maybe with you around I'll get a little competition."

"I'm not sure about that. Because of my 'condition' I don't really feel the need to expend effort in classes which don't teach me anything," Kisha replies seriously, tapping a few more glyphs and causing the machine to pull some extremely complex data sets apparently out of thin air. Certainly nothing it appears to have the muscle to process itself. "At my last school they couldn't decide if I should be skipping grades or expelled. Although the latter might have been partly due to my brother and his… friends."

"Well, all classes teach something," Theo answers, putting the rod in place under the frame of the car. "It's just whether you can make use out of what they teach. I just like knowing that I'm the best. They wanted to expel me a couple of times back at home, too. Guess they don't have to worry about that anymore." He stops as Kisha's computer processes the information. "How much ram does that thing have in it?" he asks suddenly, changing the question. He puts down the drill, and looks out at her from beneath the car.

Kisha grins. "About four gigabytes. I can't remember off hand if I made the chips myself like I did with the graphics cards," she says proudly. "My memory is a little fuzzy for everything before and after my accident." At which she holds out both her arms for inspection, showing off the extensive burn scars which go from wrist up to shoulder on each. Along with a few deeper looking scars. "Science fair project gone wrong."

"What happened?" Theo asks, pulling himself back out of the pit, and taking a closer look at her burn scars. "It looks like you dragged a hot iron across yourself." He grabs an old rag from the workbench, and wipes some of the grease off of his hands.

"My science fair project exploded. Took out a chunk of my ear too," Kisha says with bland indifference. Her hands seem to start working away without her even being aware of it, breaking the cases off one of the wii motion sensors. "Set me on fire and… knocked out all the eletronics within a block."

"Wow," Theo says. "That's pretty intense." His phone buzzes, and checks it. It appears to be an alarm that was set. He places it back in his pocket. "Can't say I've ever had that happen," he tells her. "I'll make sure to be careful around any of your inventions." He walks over and grabs the bag of equipment, and takes it to the trunk of the car. "I gotta go. If Scott comes by, tell him I'm not leaving the car here, I'll be right back." He won't be, but that's what he wants Scott to think. "It was really good to meet you Kisha, maybe we can get into some of the same science classes."

Kisha scratches her head. "I'll try and restrain the urge to dismantle the arc reactor while you're gone," she promises. "But don't bet too much money on it if you're gone for more than half an hour. If I do see any staff I'll pass on the message. Oh and for the record nothing I've built has exploded since I learnt I was a mutant. And for all I know the science fair project did /exactly/ what it was designed to do… I just have no clue what that actually was. Which is a shame really the schematics would have sold especially well."

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