trans_9 | Better Living Through Reckless Experimentation [Open]

Entry tags:

Better Living Through Reckless Experimentation [Open]

Brainiac 5 hasn't been outside of his area of the labs much of late, preferring to keep working if at all possible and finding it easier than most others since he doesn't need to break for food or rest nearly as often as organic crew members do. Not to mention that the last few times he'd ventured outside, he'd gotten caught up in an altercation and, earlier, run into a particularly irritating girl who'd compared him to a vegetable of all things.

Therefore he's determined to stay in here where the company is infinitely better and continue working on his experiments in power sources. He's not, despite what others might think, sulking. He's simply working on something that requires a lot of concentration and--

His sensors beep faintly. Apparently his work requires slightly more attention than he's been giving it, because it's about to overload.

"Oh," he says. He has just enough time to throw up a forcefield around the device, his work station, and, by proxy, himself, so that nothing else in the area is going to get damaged. And then it explodes.

He thinks that the forcefield contained the worst of it before it gave out, but he's not entirely sure because he's busy describing a near perfect arc through the area before colliding heavily with the door. Which promptly opens and dumps him out in the hallway.

"Ow," he mutters. This really isn't turning out to be his day. Or week.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wyn gives him a tiny shake of her head. "It's not important."

"And no one's going to think you're less capable for needing a pair of organic hands to help out with an experiment." she continues with a shrug. "It's not a big deal, and I won't mention it if you don't want me to."

"It's not that I'm worried about what people will assume from my asking for help," he answers, "it's more that I'm... not used to trusting others with tasks like this." He thinks back to when Shrinking Violet aided him with surgery or Bouncing Boy's insistence on flying without the guidance systems he'd invented, and winces.

"I may be a little--" There's a definite pause as he struggles with what he's about to admit. "--overbearing."

"Oh, the 'if I don't do it it won't be done right, so I might as well just do it by myself' syndrome?" Wyn nods. "Yeah, I know how that can be. People will surprise you sometimes, though, if you give them the chance."

"You can't possibly be worse than some of the people I've worked with." Wyn says with a slightly lopsided smile. "I'm fairly certain you know what you're doing, at least." She's trying to be reassuring and isn't entirely sure it's working, but hopefully she'll get points for effort. Or something.

"I- Hey! I'm not that bad!" At least, he didn't think so.

...well she didn't need to be so blunt about it at any rate. He folds his arms and ~~pouts~~ stares at his project. "I can work with others just fine. And of course I know what I'm doing!"

"Um... you could be worse, that's certainly true." He could be more like his organic counterpart.

Tact isn't one of Wyn's strong suits. "I believe you." she says, raising her hands in surrender. "Now, c'mon, let's move on to science." Trying to be reassuring didn't work; maybe science will.

He wants to ask what she means by 'he could be worse', since it's not exactly reassuring, but on second thought, decides it might be better just to leave things be for the time being.

"Yes, we should," he sighs. "I'll just finish repairing the damaged components from the last explosion and then you can take over." As he speaks, he gets back to work putting things back to how they should be or reorganising them into a new arrangement that will hopefully prove a little more explosion-proof.

"Alright-- don't even think about touching that." The last outburst is directed not at B5, but at a small floating robot hovering very, very near the project. "I don't know how you turned yourself on, but I would back away slowly if I were you."

Brainy looks up in surprise at the outburst, then identifies the target and turns his attention onto it curiously. "Interesting. What is it?" he asks.

Wyn gives the smaller robot an exasperated look. "His name is VV. He's a scoutbot -- get. over. here. -- and he's far too curious for his own good." VV obediently zooms away from the experiment, circling Wyn's head at a dizzying speed.

"Stop that. Just because you don't get to poke the shiny thing doesn't mean you get to annoy me to death either." she mutters.

Brainy smiles as he watches the little robot circle Wyn's head. "I'd rather it didn't try to interfere with the experiment, yes. You built it?"

Wyn sighs. "I'm starting to regret it, but yeah, I built him." His point thoroughly made, VV floats over to B5 and hovers near his face. The little robot has tilted over on one side in a fair approximation of a headtilt, seeming very interested in this new person.

He watches the little robot with a mix of interest and amusement. "He seems understandably curious about things; I imagine his programming is relatively complex in order to reproduce that?"

Wyn noticed that switch from 'it' to 'he'. "N-- well, not especially. I had to compensate for some of the components I was missing with magic-- and before you say 'I told you so' I know what I did wrong-- and it had a... slightly unexpected result." she says quickly.

"And he's still technically in beta, although field testing's going better than I expected. He didn't get shot, which was nice."

"What kind of unexpected result?" he asks, dividing his attention between keeping and eye on VV and continuing to finish his repairs. "And what are you planning on doing with him if the field testing doesn't work out?"

"... well, the personality, for one. It turns out that using a programming language and an array that're almost identical is a good way to have things hybridize and to have the array shift the programming into something way more complicated than it was before." She had to get the magic and the tech to work together somehow; the only problem was that no one had ever really done anything like it before, so she had no idea of what would actually happen when she put her theory into practice.

Wyn shrugs. "If all else fails, he's the engineering department's mascot. I've got no intention of scrapping him, although I might try to make him a partner eventually."

"A partner?" He asks curiously. "You mean, a friend?" He's actually pleased that Wyn doesn't seem intent on destroying VV, though he doesn't show it. He's gotten used to keeping his own feelings on the treatment of androids, sentient or otherwise, to himself after all.

A moment later and the system is up and ready. "Are you sure you're ready to try this?"

Destroying VV would be kind of like killing a kitten to Wyn. (She gets a bit attached to things she builds.) "I was thinking more in the sense of someone to work with, but yeah. A friend."

"Absolutely." Wyn says enthusiastically. "VV, you're filming this, right?" The little robot floats farther away from the experiment, reorienting himself as he hovers farther away from the ground (and the experiment).

"Better make sure he keeps a distance," Brainy says, stepping back a little way from the complicated device. A slot opens in his chest and he removes a small disc from inside and hands it to Wyn.

"One of my shield generators," he explains. "I'll activate it remotely if something goes wrong, so you won't be hurt while I contain the blast. Just to be safe."

"Back up, please?" Wyn asks, looking at VV over her shoulder. The little robot immediately zooms forward, somehow managing to convey an air of being both ready to help and perfectly innocent at the same time. Wyn is not impressed. "Other direction."

"Right, thanks." she says absently, flipping the shield generator over in her hands in fascination. (She has a rather worrying case of Attention Deficit-- Ooh Shiny...)

"The whole point of the experiment is to keep those of us with inorganic components at a distance," Brainiac 5 tells the little robot. He's not entirely sure how well it understands him, but it's worth a shot. "In case that's what's causing the instabilities."

...of course things would work out so much better if he his assistant didn't get distracted quite so easily. "Just attach it to your suit," he says, suppressing an exasperated sigh. "Then when you're ready, I need you to place the ecto - in the containment unit to your left - into the device, seal it, and then activate it. And hopefully that won't result in an overload."

"Sorry." Wyn says guiltily, hastily affixing the generator to her suit. "All right, here goes." She picks up the containment unit-- which is a lot lighter than she thought it'd be-- and delicately places it into the gadget.

"The big red button is 'activate', right?" ... it never hurts to check when there's a possibility that things might explode in front of you.

"Yes," Brainy answers tersely. His eyes don't shift from the device, and they're glowing faintly as he monitors it closely. With Wyn right next to it, he wants to know the nanosecond something starts to go wrong.

"Well, big red buttons are usually either activate or self-destruct, and it might end up being both in this case, but anyway." Wyn says, slightly faster than normal. She gingerly pushes the aforementioned big red button-- and waits.

Brainy doesn't answer. He'd like that it only be for activate, but Wyn's right that it's been functioning as both lately. Hopefully things will change soon. He's not sure how many more explosions the equipment - or his own body - can take after all.

The device hums slightly when activated and... nothing happens. At least, nothing that can be seen unless you have specialised sensors in your eyes that are monitoring it. But Brainy can see the energy start to build slowly, and for a moment he thinks that maybe it was simply a problem to do with his own inorganic nature, but then...

A light flashes bright red in warning and Brainy snaps out a warning, "Get down!" as he activates the forcefield around Wyn and slams another around the device just in time to catch the explosion.

And then he's on his back on the floor again, but at least this time he's still inside the lab.

"Wyn? Are you alright?"

"Oh f--" Wyn hits the floor as soon as she hears B5's warning, covering her head with her hands protectively (and she should really be a little bit more disturbed that she's gotten so good at dodging explosions, but there isn't time right now.)

"I should be asking you, you're the one who got thrown across the room again." she says, sitting up slowly. VV (who had enough sense to get as far away from the explosion as he could) hovers protectively over B5, managing to look very concerned for a small floating disk.

Better Living Through Reckless Experimentation [Open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)