4232/Spooky Action at a Distance

Spooky Action at a Distance
Date of Scene:	19 June 2016
Location:	The Great Ruin
Synopsis:	Rory geeks out. Will watches. It's a little awkward, but science gets done, so it's a net win.
Cast of Characters:	William Pauwel, 673

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William Pauwel has posed:
    In William Pauwel's world, it's no lie that the wonders of the Ancients are all around. Once-great, now-decrepit husks rise from the landscape no matter where you look, standing as lingering testament to the prowess of their fallen civilization. People LIVE near these ruins; those that remain- barely- active often performing some useful function to their new residents.

    The town of Gale is no exception. The ruin at its heart is a simple one; all it really does is purify water and enrich the surrounding soil, but that makes it perfect for allowing a small farming community to grow and prosper. Will's home is set amidst rolling fields of golden wheat and vividly green corn. A pasture nourishes beasts that look like a bizarre mixture of bovine and whale. Right next to that field is a bright red barn with clean, white accents; an archetypical barn, in fact. This one isn't used for animals, though, but rather to keep machines... And so very many piles of treasure.

That is where Will is now, munching on what remains of a fresh turkey steak, and waiting for a guest to arrive.

Rory White (673) has posed:
In the Upper atmosphere...

    "Remember, geosynchronous orbit!" Rory White says to... another Rory White as she steps into her ship's teleporter. The COGNIZANT ODYSSEY is high, high above Will's humble farming community... and its teleporter glows to life, powers up...

    FLASH!

    In one blink-and-you'll-miss-it brilliant instant Rory White's human-like Synth materializes a half-minute's walk from the barn, except...

    Right at the edge of the creature enclosure. On the inside. A good ten feet off the actual path... and near some of the creatures. The nearest few, somewhat spooked, plod away, but two stay near.... and she's brave enough to reach out and pat the remaining one's side as if to reassure it.

    Then she carefully takes a few steps backward and effortlessly leaps over the fencing, marching towards the barn.

    This isn't the Rory White he remembers from the encounters in Boston. For one, she's human. Well, she looks human enough... that fantastic casual leap aside. Long blue hair, whcih may or may not be normal for the locale... white robes, fair-skinned and pleasant-looking face, a faint but warm smile on her lips and sky-blue eyes turning back and forth to see things from the ground. She's garbed in white robes - a strange getup rather like an ornate, formal... lab coat, mixed in with the kind of flowery, flowing cascades of fabric oft-associated with mages, healers, scholars, priests...

    "Good afternoon! Hope I didn't disturb the animals... the teleporter's calibration is off again."

William Pauwel has posed:
Being a double bluenette isn't exactly common around this neck of the woods-- but it's not unheard of, either. The Ancients performed a great many genetic engineering projects, and 'fiddling with hair color' was evidently relatively popular as a vanity mod in the Old Times- strange hair colors still turn up here and there.

Of course, basically nobody is a super-advanced synthetic machine-lifeform. Those generally want to kill you on sight, not chill out at your grandparents' farm.

    Will looks up from his workbench at the SUDDEN LIGHT FROM ON HIGH. It looks like he's tinkering with that gun he carries around wherever he goes. He needs to lean over a rather large capsule- and the RobCo Protectron on standby within- to get a decent look, though. What he sees is... unfamiliar, and his expression turns to one of worry until the mysterious, pretty, blue-haired waif from the sky opens her mouth to speak.

"Uh... Miss Rory?" Will asks, squinting his eyes tightly, "Issat you?"

Rory White (673) has posed:
"Yes, yes... who else would it be?" Answers the robed woman, all bubbly-toned and merry. She's feeling upbeat right now! And she's quick to shuffle over to Will's lunch spot... and pause briefly to examine the RobCo Protectron he did indeed put to use. "I think... the phrase is... you have a heart for machines, isn't it?" She seems to, in hindsight, approve of Will's obsession with the old 'bot!

    "...." But she turns about again to peer at Will uncertainly.... it takes about five seconds for realization to dawn in her eyes. "Oh! Oh, my apologies. I keep forgetting Mesh identification isn't ubiqitous... and people aren't used to... right. Yes, it's me. Transferred to a different body, that's all! There's no reason to bring a scary-looking robot into a farming town... right?"

William Pauwel has posed:
    Will does kind of have a... soft spot for machines. Especially considering his track record with repairing ones that probably shouldn't be put back together. His tinkering is an extension for how much he loves to crack open a robot and fix its broken bits. But having a heart for machines means that heart can be broken every so often, too! And it was, not long ago. But he seems to be doing alright today, at least.

    "Oh, uh, is it?" Will blinks, just a little uncertain about having a machine-girl drop out of the sky in a very visible beam of light. "Well, I guess that's true! It's probably best that you came like that, too; though the folks 'round here did catch-eye of your... other form that time with the turkeys. Still, better safer n' sorrier."

    Will sweeps something off his desk and into his hands before hopping down from his stool. He flips it like a coin- though it's considerably larger, in fact. Still relatively flat and round, but it looks like it's just large enough to fit comfortably in the palm of the hand. "Well, welcome to the homestead," Will says with a smile. "I'd offer some pie and sweet tea, but I'm uh, not sure if you can do that."

"Anyway," he gestures with the strange, disk-shaped thing, "This is the thing I told you about. The one that had that crystal in it."

Rory White (673) has posed:
Rory bows her head apologetically. "No, afraid I cannot eat or drink... not in a robot body. And biology and I... it's... not very comfortable for me. Hm?" She rises again to her full height, and steps closer... peering caaaaarefully at the disk-gadget.

    "And the crystal itself? Let me transport in the mobile lab..."

    NOW the teleporter works properly. The insta-beam flashes and down comes a... a... container on legs. And the legs have wheels. It's the size of a horse and its color scheme is black and silver with blue trimming. As it nears the barn... it unfolds into a large table and deploys more legs for stability. Inside... there's all kinds of odd gadgets, though only one holographic display. "... Oh right, everything's Mesh controlled..." She did, at least, account for that. Rory reaches into her pockets and pulls out a pair of gloves and what might look like an extremely thin smartphone. "An Ecto and haptic gloves. Not as convenient as full Augmented Reality and integrated mental controls but... so this is a mobile lab!"

    And the laboratory table has a number of tools. The center of it has what looks like a large, clear, wireframe box. "Nanofabrication.." Rory gestures at it, then begins pointing out other sections. "Material analysis, structural analysis..." Varying enclosures with access hatches... "Workbench..." It doesn't look like it, there's only two tools and they look like giant arms over a few clamps... "And since you mentioned that these things are related to computers or power systems..."

    She points at the far end of the table.

    There's another workbench-like assembly there with a number of jacks and ports and wires plugged into all of them near what look like sensor panels...

William Pauwel has posed:
    Will has seen a lot of stuff in his day. Giant robots, giant turkeys, horrible coral monsters that wanted to grow into his brain. You know, Weird Shit (tm). What he has not seen is... This. The little spindly drone-thing that unfolds into a wholly unfamiliar set of tools and gadgets and flashy, glowy, whizz-bang-y stuff.

Sure, Will kind of imagines that the Ancients had stuff like this, too. But he's never actually SEEN it.

    Will blinks and sort of... stares at the phone and gloves. He does put the latter on, but the fact remains that this shit is just so far out of his wheelhouse that he can barely reason out what Rory is describing.

M-maybe he better let her do the tinkering this time. "Uh, y-yeah, the crystal is actually... Hold on," he takes the disk-like thing in both hands and sort of pries the top half off. It looks like there used to be some kind of fasteners keeping it shut, but those have since been pried open and replaced with a simple screw-and-nut lock. They're both absent right now, of course, or else Will wouldn't ever be able to get this thing open!

    The inside is a maze of strange, crystalline circuitry and black boxes that may or may not be microprocessors. One bit looks like it could be a projector. Another looks like some kind of off-white ceramic plate wired up to what is probably an inactive power supply. But at the core of the device is a strange set of cocentric rings, and a perfectly spherical, deep, blue gem right at its heart. Will carefully reaches in, and plucks it from the electronics. "I couldn't figure out how to get this one to work, so I'm not sure exactly what it does. Looked like some kind've holoprojector, but..." He offers the gem over, "Here, the crystal."

Rory White (673) has posed:
"Let's have a look at it?" She blinks a few times, but Rory leans over at the analysis station and starts doing material and structural analysis. The hologram projector brings up a high-resolution, giant display of the innards and the circuitry, an AI process doing its best to map and analayze and guess at some of the components as Rory plugs in some of her own thoughts more slowly to help guide it. But what she ends up with is... "This is... hmmmmmmmmm. It's very intricate engineering, but what is it? A single component of a much larger machine? Maybe if we provide power, just a little. But I don't know what voltage... for now let's see... very pretty gem!"

    But what kind of gem? For now she lets the machine continue to analyze it. Materials, and also... she's examinig the gem for tiny etchings or circuit-like pathways, unusual lattices or anything to suggest it's being used to store data...

William Pauwel has posed:
    "Well like I said," Will helpfully suggests, "Looks to me like some of the holographic thingamajigs we've dug up before, just from lookin' and pushin' a few buttons, but I can't get any more n' that out of it." A cursory probe into its circuitry does seem to suggest that it has some kind of built-in motion control sensors and 3D display capability. The strange ceramic plate actually appears to be a solid-state drive-- an ultra-high capacity shape-memory memristor, in fact.

    The gemstone is... strange, though. As are the cocentric rings that surrounded it. Those appear to be some kind of... detector. The material is very clearly conductive, and seems to be generating a localized magnetic field- though somehow one that's contained only to the space where the gem would sit.

    The gem itself appears to be a pure, nearly /perfect/ sapphire crystal. There are no defects in its lattice, no substitutions in its matrix, and except for a thin layer of some form of highly complex metamaterial on the outside surface, is almost entirely comprised of aluminum and oxygen atoms.

There is only one aberration in the crystal-- a small, nanoscale dot, right at the very geometric center of the gemstone.

Rory White (673) has posed:
"Starting to see familiar structures... yes, memristor technology! There's the power supply and the power grid circuitry... let's see. The gem's meant to... hover in these rings... and there's projectors... what I don't understand is what the crystal's for..."

    Thankfully, the holographic projector SHE brought is naming each component as she deduces what they are and how they connect. She's moving with rapid speed, as if.. behind those focused blue eyes, she's hcarrying on a half-dozen trains of thought at once, all coordinated.

    That's probably the case, too.

    Finally the display turns towards the center of the gem, zooming in to the very center of the gem... "still analyzing the surface layer, but there's something odd... nothing in the main structure to suggest it's being used for data storage, instead it seems.... everything's focused on a... tiny..."

    She frowns. "... A tiny, extremely well-protected, heavily shielded spot in the center... I wonder... anything that small means quantum mechanics..."

    She pauses her efforts for now and instead turns to Will. "So. You found this where and doing what, again?"

William Pauwel has posed:
    Fundamentally, Will is very much a practical guy. The theories of why and how the things he plays with do what they do goes way over his head. While there's little doubt that he could LEARN such things, his speciality is more in engineering rather than the pure sciences-- and even then, it's somewhat... crude engineering, at that.

    "Y-yeah? Well, I kind of figured that this bit here was the power source and this one was the projector," he says, pointing out bits and pieces on the holographic projector. "Y'know, just by trying things to see what changed." Or in other words, taking bits out and putting bits back in to see what broke.

    'Quantum mechanics' is something that Will definitely has no earthly clue about. He looks awed, confused, and definitely just a bit excited at the prospect of finally figuring out what the heck those things do. "Oh, uh. We find crystals like that really, really rarely. Usually it's only in the ruins with the worst kinds of security, or ones that're so big they still tell stories about them. But that one in particular was... Underneath a desert, way to the west of here. Found it in an old underground town, after we beat up this... big, black, metal *fog* thing. It wasn't really doing anything down there, but it looked interesting so I brought it home, and found that gem inside."

    The outer layer of the crystal is interesting as well. It's surprisingly robust, and looks like it's specifically built to prevent *anything* from adhering to the surface. It's somehow managing to be both hydrophobic and organophobic simultaneously, while also focusing certain bands of electromagnetic waves into the center of the gem, while deflecting all others.

Rory White (673) has posed:
"So this device has... a holographic projector, a microprocessor, solid-state storage... all impressively tiny. Given the crystal is not FIXED IN PLACE but instead held fast by... what looks like superconductor emitter rings that hold it in place with a magnetic field... there's no good reason to build it like this unless physical contact would INTERFERE with whatever the crystal does... you agree? And you say these are quite rare, only found in the most dangerous and well-guarded places? Which means they're expensive to produce, or they're possible security risks, or only need to be in important places. Perhaps for use by leaders and other important figures or systems..."

    She frowns as the diagnosis continues... and the materials analysis tries to get a ping on the properties of that. "Okay. Still no idea WHAT the crystal casing's made of, but it's clearly a transceiver. Only signals pass through, look. Not sure what frequency or protocol it expects... alright..."

    She steps back from the displays. Somehow she'd been controlling the entire thing using nothing more than mental decisions, which means she's been mostly still apart from her shifting expression.

    "This... the housing is a fully-functional computer system, so we can rule out the crystal being either a power source or data storage. All that goes in or out are electromagnetic signals, to a tiny point in the center. The device's only peripheral equipment being a holographic projector... my INTUITION tells me this is some kind of quantum communicator. At the center's probably quantum bits and the like. Though I'm not sure yet how it's CONTROLLED... this device may have been used to talk to people anywhere across the universe in real-time, or access information from far away instantly..."

William Pauwel has posed:
    Will continues to listen as Rory thinks aloud, quietly nodding his head when his opinion is required. Though there are times where he actually interjects to answer one of Rory's more rhetorical questions. "Yeah, well, gems that fancy can't be too common, can they? Don't exactly look like the kind of thing you'd just... build a few hundred, or a few thousand of."

    Nevermind that it's apparently also coated in some kind of bizarre metamaterial, contains a tiny mote of what is almost certainly some manner of confined subatomic particles, and may in fact be able to communicate with something literally across known time and space.

    "Talk... instantly?" Will blinks, canting his head to one side. "But that sounds like it's just like the radio I've got, inn't it? But, you know..." He scrubs mildly at his chin, making a contemplative noise. "I've always kind've wondered what the Ancients used to talk to each other... And they say that some've the stuff in the sky is theirs, too. So maybe it talks to something up there? Or maybe to somewhere, or something... else?"

Will grins, "Well, first thing's to try and get it working again, right?"

Rory White (673) has posed:
"Yes! Instantly... there's a similar device aboard my ship. Though it's only meant for emergencies. Oh... quantum mechanics is the study of physics for things that are small. Very, very, VERY small. Tinier than a grain of sand. They're... the building blocks of matter? Like iron, if you break it down into the tiniest pieces that could still be called iron, that tiniest piece is made up of even smaller components... and the field I'm talking about studies what's even smaller than that. Quantum mechanics is a very quirky science! There's a trick where you can link two... let's say two grains of sand, you can link them so that whatever happens to one can be seen in the other, no matter WHERE you take them. Even across the universe. So this property makes them perfect for sending signals long distances! But it's VERY tricky to do..."

    She explains, hoping that's a good enough explanation.

    "As for this black fog you mentioned fighting might have been a nanite swarm! Let me demonstrate..."

    She gestures to the center of the table, the 'open box' that's the nanofabricator. Lights on it come on - warning lights.

    The bottom of the box floods with a fine mist or dust that swarms around. And a thin, barely-visible outline of what looks like a wrench appears on the bottom. Slowly, slowly, the layers add up...

    The timer on it says '20 minutes left' and is counting down.

    "Nanites here... are incredibly tiny robots, so small that you can only see them when they're gathered by the millions. Like grains of sand but even smaller. What this machine does is... takes raw materials like metals and assembles objects. The nanites put it together piece by piece. THIS is probably the KIND of technology the Ancients used to MAKE the more common parts of their technology... and I -think- it'll be enough to repair it. This... this housing for the crystal, I think if we can restore its power circuitry and any other breaks... we can turn it on!"

    But a moment later she frowns. "... But there's no telling WHAT it might do, who it will talk to. These ancients you've mentioned... what do you know about them? Do you have pictures of them? Surely these ruins would have pictures if they lived there!"

William Pauwel has posed:
    "Uh...huh." Will continues to nod along wth the explanation as best as he can. But he's just a country bumpkin-slash-unusually skilled repairman from out in the middle of a backwater town! Comprehending science as advanced as quantum mechanics is still a bit beyond his present capabilities. Still, he does his best!

The nanite exhibition elicits a somewhat more vigorous reaction.

    "Oh, yeah! That's the stuff we saw," Will says, watching the swarm slowly build into a nano-wrench. "'Course, this stuff seemed a lot more... hostile. It weren't easy, taking it down, but we managed somehow.

Or rather, Nozomi and the others managed. Will just kind of shot it with his gun.

    "...But if this stuff'll be able to repair this thing," he continues as the nanite swarm slowly builds the device up. Bit by nanoscopic piece. "I think it's worth a try. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?"

    The question about the nature of the Ancients gets another shrug. "They were like us, mostly. We've got... some pictures of how people and things looked back then, passed down family, you know? I guess calling them 'Ancients' like they weren't what we all came from ain't exactly right. But they're our ancestors, y'see?"

Rory White (673) has posed:
"... Nanite swarms for defenses. Very dangerous..." Rory winces upon the confirmation being so clear. "Exploring those ruins... bad enough that the security systems are malfunctioning where they're still active, but UNSEEN hazards like nanites are..." She makes a disgusted, vehement noise.

    "So... there was, at some point, a regression? Humans here HAD this technology, but something.. TERRIBLE must have happened. A complete societal collapse... the only good part of this is that the technology will be designed for human senses and hands! ...I've heard that one advanced species we found the ruins of saw infrared and ultraviolet and had six arms and could crawl on walls, so their buildings are NOT easily navigated by humans."

    The blue-haired girl's starting to smile. "I'm excited... but at the same time... this is worrying! The worst that could happen? The worst... the worst is that we accidentally activate some kind of automated defense system hovering in orbit that thinks we're intruders and sends an automated robot squad to capture us, hold us in a prison, and wait for further action from people who are long gone but the system doesn't realize that..."

William Pauwel has posed:
That...

Is a distressingly specific worst case scenario. Will's expression curdles into a brief grimace. "Uh. Well, let's just hope that that doesn't happen. Hopefully it just goes to... some computer somewhere, or a friend in space, or something like that!"

Or maybe it'll activate a terrible death-laser to kill everything within a few kilometers.

Either or.

    Will shakes his head at the talk of a... regression. A backsliding. That's not quite right. "There was a cataclysm," Will explains, tapping at the little disk-device. "Some say it took years. Others think it was just a day. One day, the Ancients unleashed their most powerful weapons on the world, and we're all that's left."

He shrugs a bit, then. "But they also say that, back then, it wasn't humans that they were fighting. It was the whole world against... something else. But nothing we've found can tell *what.*"

Rory White (673) has posed:
"So they were fighting ALIENS?" Rory White's expression goes starkly freaked. But only for a bit. "Oh... wait, there are 'aliens' all over the Multiverse... why does that surprise me. Ah..."

    She's back to frowning in a hurry though.

    "The responsible thing to do would be to check orbit and try mapping whatever's in space around the planet, make sure we're aware of any possibly functional weapon systems still up there first. Also, to activate it with backup plans in mind, and preferably using a drone from some distance away..."

    She sighs then. And reaches out to put a hand on Will's shoulder. "The good news is, with enough time and effort, we MIGHT be able to restore some more of the Ancient infrastructure and improve quality of life here. More power, water, communications, maybe manufacturing... unless most of it's as archaic as these odd crystals. I don't know WHAT kind of technological wizardry's going on at the center, or what the casing's made of... but the interface housing's straightforward. If they used THIS then I have to assume most of the rest of their standard technology uses similar materials and structuring!"

William Pauwel has posed:
    "Wh- aliens? Space aliens?" Will blinks like Rory's grown a second head. "Uh. N-no, I don't think that's a... thing. Or at least, you'd've think that we'd've found sign of aliens around. Unless the Ancients' weapons wiped them out completely, or something..."

    "I think we should probably be safe," he says, picking the device up. "Activatin' it from down here, I mean. T' be safe, maybe we go out into the desert n' do it there? I mean, a lot of the stuff we've found with these crystals're workin' and active when we find them. Just... They're usually not portable like this one is, is all."

    He nods at Rory, then, and goes into one of his nearby Piles-O'-Scrap to retrieve... what looks like a big chunk of jet black material. It seems to swallow light like a sponge soaks up water. "Here. This is some of the more common stuff we've pulled from the ruins. Use some of that in my armor, anymore! Absorbs energy real good. Iff'n you want more ideas of what they used to build with, I mean."

Rory White (673) has posed:
"IIiinteresting! more meta-materials." Her eyes go wide with delight and she's quick to lay the piece down on the table for examination too!

    In the nanofab, minutes have passed, and the wrench shape is firmly defined. it's constructed out of... a wireframe-like shape? It's very thin and has an ergonomic grip, fine engineering that would be incredibly inefficient through milling and grinding or casting...

    Doesn't look like it's made of metal, either.

    "So these are probably only for a few special people.. the crystals." She turns her gaze back towards that display, though it's a fairly meaningless thing - she can see all of the displays and readouts in her mind after all!