Players:
Summary: Theo catches Kisha hacking her own computer. After talking a while, Kisha bruises Theo's ego.
Date: September 17, 2010. 9:31pm
Log Title: No Offense
Rating: PG-13
Xavier's Mansion - Cafeteria
There is a large cafeteria for the students. Blue and white tiled floor lines the floor and there are large windows that let in a lot of light. Six sturdy blue plastic chairs sit around each white table. There are a few snack and soda machines along with a few microwaves and refrigerators sit along one wall.
Most students have already begun the process of playing with the new school bought phones and laptops. Of course some take this much further than others, especially Kisha. Why? Because she's busy using her school issue phone to route a connection from her supercomputer via a satellite and perform a brute force hack against her own laptop. To this end she's holed up in the cafeteria with a pizza box and a huge jug of cold coffee thick enough that it could be mistaken for engine oil. Every now and again she mutters in Russian and scribbles some notes (also in Russian) on scraps of paper.
Theo wasn't planning on coming into the cafeteria. He was planning on going on going to the lake to study. His own phone is in his pocket, but no laptop is with him right now. Just a pad of paper and his Ancient Civilization book. He stops, though, as he exits the elevator in the lobby, picking up…what is that? He changes direction, and moves over toward the cafeteria. He pokes his head into the door. "What are you doing with that phone?" he asks. He can't see all of the ends of the operation, only the ones that are here. "I think you picked up a virus on your computer. You gotta be careful which websites you go to." He looks a little bit surprised that he has to tell Kisha, of all people, about such things.
Kisha glances up and tilts her head at Theo. "A virus which had caused my machine to hack into my own machine, while I'm sitting here watching and making notes?" she asks innocently. "And my phone is… lets see… ah yes. It's hooked into a Brazilian pirate broadcasting group who are masking the origin of my signal. It's all a big race really, which will win. My tracer program and my firewall or the codebreaking programs and my routing precautions."
Theo arches his brow. "So…are you planning on taking over something soon?" he asks, finding it interesting, but not sure of the purpose. "Or is this just one of those things to do because you're bored?" He walks over to the table where Kisha sits, and plops down in the seat across without asking to be invited. "I hope you remembered to disable the communication between the phone and the service provider, or else the school probably won't be very happy when they find out."
"Give me some credit please. I have done this sort of thing before," Kisha says, laughing. "But thanks for the concern. The whole point of the test is to see if my school phone can be used as in squad sessions. To route my main machine from and use it for whatever nefarious purposes are required to win the scenarios. It also serves as a 'proving ground' for my software. Whichever loses gets improved until it wins again, then I swap to the other."
Theo grins. "I like how you think," he says. "But I don't suggest wasting your time trying to hack the danger room. The Shi'ar technology is advanced enough that even I can't even crack it." He says that as if he's the standard on hacking. "I can tell what it's doing, but it seems to be able to respond to my attempts to control it. It's kinda creepy, almost as if the technology itself were somehow alive and could think for itself." He focuses on the phone. "That's a pretty impressive program. If you can upgrade the transfer speed on the phone, you should be able to give the tracer a leg up."
Kisha shakes her head. "Not going to do that and for a very good reason. There is a reasonable chance of the phone being captured or taken as evidence. At which point my technology gets into the hands of someone it shouldn't. I'm unsure why you think I would hack the danger room? I'm simply going to let my ability soak it up until I understand it," she explains, popping the pizza box open and offering Theo a slice of cold pizza. "The phone will be set to interact with whichever danger room constructs Forge decides to include. For the record anything able to process the variables for something like the danger room /must/ be an RI at the least. Probably more likely an SI."
Theo tries to think of what RI and SI would refer to, but with all of his technology training, he comes up a blank. As he considers it, he takes the offered pizza. "Thanks." He takes a bite off of the crust first, and asks, "Are you making up terms to try to sound impressive?" he asks, suspicious of her statement. "I don't think I've ever heard of RI and SI."
"Restricted Intelligence and Sentient Intelligence. They're from fiction books but considering the technology is almost definitely real while still being considered fiction it seemed appropriate to use the terminology," Kisha replies as she pours herself some more coffee. "Ideas are as important to me than plodding through theory. Which makes plausible fiction a godsend."
Theo's eyes go a little wide. "Wait, wait, he says, sitting up and leaning forward with both hands resting on the pizza. "You mean you watch sci-fi? Like, movies and novels? And here you like to pretend that you are just a robot." He tears off the rest of the crust, and stuffs it in his mouth, a large grin across his face.
Kisha blinks a few times. "You're talking shit you know," she points out blandly. "I don't pretend to be a robot at all. I'm not good with people, but that doesn't mean I'm totally inhuman. Plus fiction gives me ideas, which translate into power applications and that makes my ability happy. Hold on a second…" She pulls her touch screen computer out, then opens up a file. "Designs for a potentially functional terminator robot. Created while watching the made for TV series they did recently. I also have some for Cylons too somewhere, probably on a backup drive."
Theo's gaze shifts to the screen, and he studies it for a few seconds. "So, you aren't planning on building these, right?" he asks. He's seen that one. "Because, in the movie, that robot killed a bunch of people. I don't want to be killed by a terminator." He starts on the tastier end of the pizza now. "I gotta introduce you to Tony Stark," he says.
"If I created killer robots they wouldn't run amok," Kisha declares with far more confidence than she has any right to given her inventions usual reliability. "Say… Is it true Magneto has been digging bits of giant robot up from around school grounds?"
Theo shrugs. "I know there are parts of sentinels around the school," he says. "I found a couple of little parts around in the woods." He finishes off the slice of pizza, and gets up and walks toward the drink machine. "I wouldn't be surprised. He probably wants to create something to blow up all the humans. Want something to drink?" he asks.
Kisha shakes her head. "I have plenty of coffee still," she replies. "That doesn't seem like a very good idea. After all they're outdated robots and have been kept in the mud for a long time. Besides killing large numbers of people would create an impractical degree of mess, leading to rat and stray dog problems. Oh and diseases."
Theo laughs, "Yeah, and there's the whole 'you just killed a lot of people' element to it as well," Theo adds. He sticks his cup underneath the machine, and gets himself some nice healthy Mountain Dew. "If he is getting them, he probably has an idea of what he wants to do with them. You gotta remember, just because something is out of date, doesn't mean it's useless. Though, I agree, they won't be in very good shape after sitting in the mud."
"Note how I used outdated instead of useless?" Kisha points out, sipping her coffee and then grabbing a slice of the pizza. "From a technical point of view I'm actually quite curious as to what he might be doing with them. Setting aside the likelihood of mass murder of course." She pauses and then adds "I never understood why people always make /giant/ robots. In terms of cost to killing capability you get a lot more bang for your buck with UAV style drones. Fast, mobile and cheap compared to a house sized robot."
"Intimidation," Theo answers. "Size isn't always all that effective, but it is terrifying. Think about it," Theo says, listening to the activities of the machines as he speaks, "if you saw some little robot the size of a cat coming after you, you might know in your head that it can kill you, or even know it's designed to kill you, and you'll be on your guard. But if you see a hulking monstrosity like those sentinels, you'll want to go hide in a cave and hope they don't find you." He returns to his seat, and pulls over another chair to put his feet up on.
Kisha pffs. "Intimidation is over-rated. People would be far more afraid of the smaller robots because no-one would ever see them! One minute you're walking to the store and the next a laser guided bomb turns your lawn into a bit of a pit with some icky bits in it. You want to know the real reason? Because all the evil giant robots have been designed either by men or by robots created by men. They're basically just an engineers way of overcompensating."
The boy laughs, "Well, to each their own. I'm not the one who needs to compensate. Proto's just a little guy." He's not with him at the moment, though. "I hope to finish the programming of his AI soon. I don't want to install it until I know that it's solid."
"Proto?" Kisha repeats, frowning. "If it's something you expect me to know from the time I saw your car…. Well to be honest I don't remember it. My mind was too busy trying to retroengineer an arc reactor. I'd narrowed it down to roughly a million possible configurations and at that stage it's still a little distracting."
Theo knits his brow. "You noticed the car, but you didn't notice the robot walking around and helping me work on it?" He looks a little offended. He lets out a sigh, and continues, "Hold on." He closes his eyes for a moment, and holds a hand loosely in front of him, as if he's holding some invisible ball. As if manipulating said invisible ball, he concentrates for a moment, moving his fingers in different positions slowly and carefully. No robot, though, not yet.
Kisha shrugs. "I noticed the reactor," she corrects. "The rest of the car is window dressing. An arc reactor however is an elegant refined device worthy of my attention. Things like that crowd out lesser devices and to be fair the more you say the less impressive 'Proto' becomes. If you're just walking it here with your mind it's not much more than a sculpture by itself. Uhm no offense…"
Theo opens one eye. "Well, some of us have to actually work for our knowledge," he says with an edge. "See, I don't have some power that lets me super-analyze anything in front of me and figure out how it works. I have to actually learn what I'm doing before I do it. And I think I'm doing pretty well, considering I didn't know anything about technology before April." Clearly, offense taken.
"It might be a very nice sculpture," Kisha concedes, her attention drifting back to her computer programs. "But can you honestly blame me for not swooning over it when it's compared with work by Tony Stark, Forge and whoever the aliens are you said made the danger room? As for working for knowledge do you actually know what my power even is? Because if you did you're understand that it requires far more effort than simply reading a book."
"I didn't ask you to swoon over it. I'm not that vain," Theo barks back. He puts his feet down and stands to his feet, leaning over the table. "But I don't need you or anyone else telling me that my accomplishments are worthless, either. And no, I don't have a clue how your power works, and that's your business, I don't really care." He's already angry at himself for bringing it up. "So I'm not Forge, and I'm not an alien, but I'll best everybody one day, because I'm smarter, and I work harder than anybody else here. So if you excuse me, I'm going to go finish that AI." He turns on his heels, and storms toward the door.
Kisha smiles as she scribbles some more notes in Russian. "Strange how the hardest working person in school has time to plan trips to Coney Island," she says to Theo's back. "And for the record I never used the term worthless. You're allowing your emotions to pollute your perception of events. Enjoy your coding, I look forward to seeing it when you're done."
