{VOICE OTA}

[rootandbranch]

[Today you feel a few strange pulses in your signets before you hear anything over Qri's network. It's fairly pleasant, exactly as the signet communications tend to be, and fortunately doesn't at all resemble the strange fluctuations that plagued everyone back on days 103-105. It's more like someone poking at the network to be sure it's stable and not going to do any more of that before they speak. They seem to conclude it's safe after all.]

Hello? Oh, hi-- hi, everybody. It's Geir. If you don't know me, I'm the dragon.

[He's very matter of fact about it. He's the dragon. You're probably aware, his tone seems to say.]

Listen, I don't actually care if you know me, you should just help me and Nines out! He knows all kinds of technology things, so I asked him what we could find out about the Hub with them. But the question is really, what does everyone want to find out? There's been a lot of weird to chew on!

Chew...on? [9S echoes this thought quizzically, for an instant quite distracted. But right, right, the matter at hand—] Er, anyway, like Geir said we’re lacking data on our surroundings. And to know what we’re dealing with, gathering more would be best, so I was thinking I can probably scrape enough parts together to build a pod for that job, once we know what kind of information it should collect. I mean, unless we want everything...

[Geir's tone is still bright and interested. he loves hearing about this, even if part of him is still skeptical.]

Nines isn't even the only person who knows how to build... robots. I know a bunch of you build stuff. Who wants to help?

[9S clears his throat, quietly tacking a little disclaimer on:]

...Not that pods should be mistaken for machines or anything.

[When your kind’s fought machines for millennia certain lines get drawn. Thin, confusing grey lines. (Geir doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just lets it stand.)]


((both 9S and Geir may reply to your toplevels, and also feel free to jump each other! this is the start of a player plot to get a little more technology on the island. ♥ more details here!))

Comments

[deem]

I'll send the information then.

[It's getting less unusual for 9S, being able to transmit information like schematic data. More so that he's sending it to humans with a thought, but he concentrates in relaying the data rather than sending anything else along with it.

Scanner minds wander a little too easily.

What he sends is extremely detailed, every part and component and how they're assembled together to complete a Tactical Support Unit, or in short, a pod]

[reckoner]

[ Despite the nanomachines in his neck, despite the roughly eighteen months of tinkering with the connection to Kimaris Vidar, it really is a markedly different sort of processing. Different information related, too, a fundamentally different type.

Easier if with a photo, an actual screen, something to look at or hold in his mind for longer than the moment of transmission. He tries to imagine and thus illusion blueprints, spread out in front of him, but he's sure he's missing details. There had simply been too much to keep track of.

But, he thinks it isn't a bad approximation. And if so... ]

Thanks. I recognize some of it, not everything. The gist.

[deem]

That's better off than some others here. I've been told my level of technology's so far beyond what some are used to that it might as well be magic.

[Which, in itself, is notionally absurd. But to 9S, what he is and what he works with is grounded in technical reality. Magic on the other hand seems to lack any solid structure or even have uniform, logical rules.

The way Waver has described the magic he's accustomed to, there seems to be some structure to it, but what Qri has given them lacks unifying principles in his eyes]

[reckoner]

It's pretty far beyond what I know, as well, but I can at least...

[ How to put it? ]

...get a sense of how you got there.

[ The component parts, how they connect. He'd do better still if he could look at it for longer than the fleeting moment it was sent to his mind. Though hardly a talent or natural, he's had enough exposure.

As for magic, he's on the same page. ]

Magic challenges more. If it is energy, then designing the unit to gauge that as well would be useful.

[ Needless to say... ]

[deem]

The way it's explained to us, if you want to call it an explanation... the kind Qri's after is energy at least.

[So it stands to reason there must be a way to detect it]

Probably just need someone more familiar with it than I am.

[reckoner]

I don't suppose Genette would help?

[ Mustn't she be the most familiar? Maybe they'd need both familiarity and an understanding of machinery. ]

[deem]

It's possible, although I haven't really gotten a hold of her.

[Though it's true she ought to be the most well-informed of the lot of them]

[reckoner]

That might be the next step. Unless someone with familiarity with magic generally could do it.

[ knowing nothing about magic, he's not sure how that would work, but some had already possessed it before coming here, so... ]

In any case, let me know when I'm needed.

[deem]

I'll do that. The sooner we get to work, the better, since we don't know how long we'll have here.

[And that's always the situation they face, under their current circumstances]

[reckoner]

Right. Talk to you soon, then.

[ Data collected while away, too, would be interesting... but that might be a topic for another time. ]