Not with a Bang Start and Ongoing

[voidtreckermods]

"Good Morning passengers. Today is day seven of the month of Imagination." The voice echoes through the train as passengers wake up in their beds. Not long afterwards their SCA’s glow with the colour of the void and a holographic image will appear.

Preperation

They have about an hour to prepare, a little less than usual but perhaps expected, given the urgency of the task.

The cupboards in the dressing room are open to reveal rows of tents, in all four team colours as well as some basic camp cooking equipment. They are in bags that should be easy enough to carry.

"Shortly arriving on System #6416. All passengers get ready to disembark. Next stop world 6416. Exit from void in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one." The train rocks and lurches, bright colours of the void filling the space and then fading as they fly downwards towards a very green landscape.

Arrival and Initial Task

The train lands in a clearing, curving round in an attempt to fit. Once everyone who wishes to disembark has done it flies back into the air, vanishing from sight.

The air is heavy and humid, though it is not currently raining. The clearing is open to the sky and looking up will reveal a worrying sight. The sky is an angry red colour, colours shifting as if the clouds themselves were on fire. It's an unnerving sight.

Their SCA's show three points, one Orange, One purple and one that is half blue and half red. The three control centres. Each are a few hours treck through the jungle and it certainly feels like there is no time to waste.

Those that don't want to treck through the forest can start setting up camp, though the darkening sky might be a little distracting. As time goes on flecks of fire drift down, though they extinguish before hitting the forest floor.

Orange are to travel to the north, Purple to the south and Blue and Red must travel together to the west. Each route takes them through thick and unrelenting jungle. Flying is difficult here unless you can get up past the canopy layer, which means vision of the ground is severely hampered.

The control stations themselves are half buried in vines and require cutting into. If voidtreckers are unlucky they will meet their first security robots here, firing on the intruders. They might even meet their first giant Armadillos, the creatures are curious and may wish to investigate. They are not helpful or constructive to trying to power up the stations and prevent the destruction of the planet.

The control stations are simple enough to operate, but there's quite a lot that needs to be done in way of repairs and clearing. It will take a team effort to get it in working enough order to activate the shield.

The shield itself, when it is activated, is mostly invisible but there is a loud humming sound. The meteor, which has gotten more visible throughout the five hours, hits the shield and splinters, fire enveloping the whole sky. It is visibly terrifying, but no fire falls to earth, no rocks get through, the planet is safe.

Ongoing

Once the planet is safe the voidtreckers deserve a rest. But once the next morning dawns it is time to start with their next tasks, to make sure that this planet stays safe from future threats.

Red

The robots at the control stations are not the only malfunctioning security robots around. They roam the jungle, or are more often stranded in the jungle, powering up only when faced with a new threat.

Some are benign, terraforming machines whose only crime is using up precious power. These need to be dismantled so that power can be saved for the shield system. Others are security robots that will attack the intruders to the planet.

Though the machines are scattered they are often obvious, emitting warning alarms or flashing lights. Their SCA's will show some areas where there are larger clusters but machines can be found anywhere.

Purple

Their SCA's are filled with hundreds of purple dots, each a solar stations that needs cleared and brought back online. It's not the most glamourous job, the stations are deep in the jungle, the treck is difficult and most of the work needed is weed clearing.

But once the weeds have been cut away they will need to patch up the station, doing basic maintenance to get it back online. In some cases wires need to be patched back together but it shouldn't take any great feats of engineering to get the stations up and running.

They may run into some of the security automatons, needing to fight their way into the stations before they can begin the clean up operations.

Orange

Like the red team their SCA will show areas where there are clusters of the small insectoid automatons that need to be rescued and restored. However they can be found anywhere throughout the jungle, they are not too suited for the terrain outside of the stations and so they have gotten tangled in vines. They can be found powered down, stranded and in dire need of maintenance.

Tools and spare parts can be found in many of the solar stations that purple team have been locating. Actually repairing the robots takes some engineering knowledge but once they are restored they will go about their tasks in the stations. They will need help getting to the further flung stations as well as the main control centres.

They are very basic in design and follow pre programmed instructions rather than being able to hear and listen to orders. But once in the correct place they are very effective at their job.

Blue

Once the shield is up there is a faint humming that can be heard throughout the jungle if they listen closely and find it among the sound of rain and insects. But once they hear it, it is obvious where it is louder and more prominent.

Their SCA will pin point some of the larger control boxes but there are truthfully too many to show on a map. Not all of them have attracted Violet Pandas, but many of them have.

They are curious creatures, both of the power boxes and the voidtreckers. They are protective of each other but not so much of territory and therefore it is not difficult to move them on. Keeping them away is another matter, the power humming is interesting and they will unearth wires and chew through them. It doesn't seem to do them much harm, there is clearly safety stops in the system for such eventualities. It does however cut power off to entire solar stations and require a lot of patch work.

Good luck voidtreckers!

Comments

[iamnotgod]

"Perhaps the secret is only revealed when they're within their updating stations?"

They've been here long enough to see the things - but not so much to get to know how they work.

Surely they can break one open to clean it...?

[gundamofthedesert]

"Hmm... that's a possibility? Maybe it is something where we could add the code to an updating station and then when they come to it as prt of normal procedure, they get the update?"

If only it worked that easily.

"Should we try to take one apart a little more to see if we can discover how it works?"

[iamnotgod]

"Given our exploits on the planet Terra, that may be easier said than done - but I would rather that we tried."

Webmind affected an additional pause between his answers before nodding.

"I'll break this one down further, if you don't mind fixing that one in its stead."

There were going to be many more robots to fix, no doubt.

[gundamofthedesert]

"That is true. The code may not be something that we can figure out and tell the robots what to do, but it is worth it. Though we'd want to try and save a back up of the code if possible so that way if it doesn't work we can restore it."

Quatre nodded his head. "Of course. I am curious about how they work, but it's better to limit the number of them we take offline."

Since they had an important job to do here, even if they weren't quite equipped to deal with the jungle.

[iamnotgod]

With that, Webmind let himself zoom back in on his droid's innards - it wasn't one of those with rust, which was a plus - and found, eventually, a small motherboard-like area that must have been for memory

While there was no direct way to tell what it did, perhaps one of those electricity-monitoring clamps could tell them something...

"Tell me what you think of this, Quatre. What sort of stimuli do you believe this will react to?"

He tilted the frame so Quatre could see inside.

[gundamofthedesert]

Quatre continued to work on the one in his hand, periodically glancing up to see how Webmind was coming with his. Since one of them was repairing and one of the taking apart, it was certainly good to share the info that they got. Quatre looked up again when he was directly questioned about the robot's inner workings. He studied it carefully, humming faintly to himself as he looked at it.

"Huh, that very interesting. I'd guess probably some sort of input from another device, possibly a central machine... maybe sharing with each other. I'd guess they might not learn much from seeing what is in front of them since they didn't figure out how to deal with the vines in the first place."

He set the one he was working on down, putting his hand to his chin.

"Very interesting."

[iamnotgod]

"Perhaps each station has its own attuned service droids - or they all run fundamentally the same programming, with some modifications."

Without any way of reading up on the mindset of the people who lived here, the only methods available to them were variants of trial-and-error.

"But, if we were to install this memory chip into another computer - perhaps that would be of some use?"

He's not suggesting running it himself; he's no droid, and he knows it! But it's something to consider all the same.

[gundamofthedesert]

"It's certainly possible. It would keep the droids from going too far away from their post so to speak. It would also prevent a surge of them needlessly in one service area because something happened. Or if nothing else, having some dedicated to one location and some that can go to multiples if the need arises."

This would be something that Quatre would do if he were the one designing this setup. But he is not the person who did design this so his opinions might be completely moot.

"Oh, that would be something interesting to try. I'd say we should definitely try that, see what we can come up with."

Either for programming the chips or for learning more about this place and its set up.

Hmm - how much of the discovery process did you want to play out vs handwave?

[iamnotgod]

"As long as we can find someone with sufficient hardware support around, that seems a place to start indeed."

So, find a person, hopefully with a computer, and see what the updating process looks like in action!

we can certainly handwave stuff and move onto them look at the shields

[gundamofthedesert]

Quatre thought about that for a moment, pausing in what he was doing as he thought about it. "Yeah, that might be the problem here, but we can certainly give it a try. Should we take a look now? Or finish up a few more of these?"

Sounds like a plan to me! It's okay if you decide the luck they have on their endeavor. ;)

[iamnotgod]

"Given how few of us there are to do this repair work, I suspect it can wait a few hours more."

Though Webmind would not want to put this off more than a day. He'd offer to do it at night, but Quatre deserved a chance for normal human sleep!

maybe mildly lucky, but they have to do a lot of work for it?

[gundamofthedesert]

"Yeah, probably a good idea. Let's work on this a bit longer and see how far we get."

Normal human sleep? What's that? Quatre would certainly appreciate that, but for the sake of the mission, he'd definitely push himself... and probably sleep for a while once they were back on the train. But he was used to putting other things first rather than himself.

/thumbs up/ Yee!

[iamnotgod]

It would be over two hours before Webmind gave another reminder to Quatre - both of the young man's limits, and the multifaceted nature of the problem they had chosen to pursue.

Seeking people out would take some time; some had ventured into the jungle, alone or together, to find more robots or aid the other teams; others were taking well-earned breaks.

But, eventually, through sheer determination and tireless effort, they made some headway - and after that, came the matter of shields.

"Now, what specifically did you have in mind for this, Quatre?" Webmind asked, wanting to make sure nothing had been left out of the planning earlier.

Or, if it had, that it wouldn't be forgotten.

:3

[gundamofthedesert]

After two hours, Quatre was definitely ready for a well-deserved break from repairing the robots as well. It was rewarding, but his eyes needed a break. He went with Webmind, seeking out those who would have additional information so that they could work on what they had been planning on working on.

It wasn't easy and it took quite some time, but they finally did get the information that they needed. It really did just take two people who were so determined to get things done.

It was later when they were finally settling down to look at what they had. Quatre pushed back any feeling of being tired because they had an assignment to do. He could sleep later.

"For the robots? It would be good if we could program them to be more self-sufficient."

(He's thinking of Dairine, here - was going to ask on plurk if this could become a combined thread?)

[iamnotgod]

Webmind held his gaze on Quatre for a pointed... three milliseconds, before proceeding to speak.

"By increasing their databank of actions to choose from, or by giving them a greater degree of autonomy?"

If the latter, there was one wizard in particular he might want to point Quatre toward...

We certainly could. I'd be up for that.

[gundamofthedesert]

Quatre thought about that for a long few moments. Longer than three milliseconds. He brought his hand to his chin as he considered it.

"Increasing databank of actions would be good but may not be effective in the long term given how this planet is changing. Increasing autonomy would allow them to learn and adapt..."

There were upsides and downsides to both.

Word sent! o/ Will wait for her to respond before doing next step, probably.

[iamnotgod]

Webmind just nodded, this time.

"And while some worlds have encountered trouble managing artificial intelligence with autonomy, I do know someone who has experience with independent, animate digital life, in a positive way. She is also on Orange Team, as it happens."

He'll wait for Quatre to ask the (obvious?) next question.

Woo!

[gundamofthedesert]

"Really, our world has had an issue with autonomous robots, but they were mobile dolls programmed to do what they did." And all the harm that they had done after everything that had happened...

No, no! Don't think about that.

"Oh? Who is that person?"

Re: Woo!

[iamnotgod]

"I'd have wonders-"

Worries.

"About those programmers, then. But that is beside the point, I suppose. No, I was thinking of one Dairine Regan Callahan."

Who does not go by her full name, alas. It's actually pretty cool.

"She is also responsible for bringing on the - nonsentient - computer in the Standard Carriage."

[gundamofthedesert]

"Yeah, we were worried about those programmers as well. Even one of our enemies sided with us on the idea of the mobile dolls." Too easy to take out the human mind's conscience to question the orders being given.

"Oh really? I don't know that I have met her. I would like to at some point."

Yeah, a shame that she didn't go by her full name. It was nice. Quatre at least makes up for by insisting on introducing himself with his middle name.

Ping me on plurk if you want me to make the comms post! Backdated as it'd be by this point.

[iamnotgod]

"Well, we can certainly see about finding her today."

Possibly with use of the SCA, possibly by foot.

will do

[gundamofthedesert]

"That would be great. I think that would be helpful to move forward."

Either way would work for him.