trans_9 | I wonder what THIS button does; open

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I wonder what THIS button does; open

The recent discussion on the comms had reignited Jaime's boundless curiosity and a desire to learn more about the ship that he and so many others found themselves riding across the multiverse. And what better way to find out more about the ship than to look at the hallowed command deck? There had to be something useful here, right?

Jaime seated himself at one of the various stations and peered intently at the panel. The chirruping buzz of Khaji's voice vibrated against the back of his mind.

Suggestio|\|: Frie|\|d Jaime: press butto|\|s.

"Yeah. Right. Good idea. Let's just push buttons on the bridge of the super powerful meatship." Despite his sarcastic rejoinder, the young man reached out and slowly pressed a switch.

Nothing happened.

"Not that one, then." He pressed another. Toggled a switch. This might go on for a while.

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"Are you seriously...?"

Jaime is.

"Dude, I have way too many violations to help out." And by that Howard means zero. He likes his squeaky clean record, which he's managed to keep miraculously blank despite theft and other good stuff.

Howard walks around the deck and watches Jaime, because even if he can't participate he definitely wants to see what happens. He shifts weight from foot to foot, ready to bolt if Stacy decides to send her tentacles down or fry Jaime from orbit or anything.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I don't have any violations yet, so I'm just gonna see what happens." He flicks a few more switches. Pokes at an interface.

"Besides, the worst I'll get is a slap on the wrist."

"You sure about that? What if you accidentally shut off the ship or something? The Daligig could come back and break your legs."

"If I accidently shut off the ship, we have bigger problems than the Daligig wanting to go all Godfather on my legs." Jaime pushed a few buttons, typed some ineffective commands into a keyboard.

"I want to find out how to control this thing. Could be useful, you know?" He shrugs.

"Plus, the Daligig aren't stupid--they're jerks, but not stupid. They have to have some way of shutting off the AI in case it goes nuts."

"Yeah. Like, I don't know. Breathing." Why yes, that is the scent of disapproval on Howard's breath. Please to not be accidentally killing everyone, Jaime.

"They're pretty stupid at public relations, at least."

"Well, my suit can keep me alive in space, so it'd probably be you who'd have the trouble," Jaime teases, grinning at Howard before he grows serious.

"But yeah. Not planning on doing anything like that. Mostly just trying to find out what I can about the ship's functions. And the Daligig are strange. We're both too weak to fight them but necessary for the war. They want our help, but treat us like dirt. I wish we knew more about them."

"I'll just stick a fishbowl on my head and I'll be fine."

As flip as Howard's being, he's also listening very closely to what Jaime's saying. "Me, I think we're bait. They think they're too good to do the dirty, dangerous suicide mission we're probably on, so they'll let the lab rats do it instead."

"There you go. You're a resourceful guy." Jaime laughs quietly.

"Yeah, I get that feeling, too. I hate that feeling."

"Oh, good, so it's not just me. We're like their...canaries, or something. You know, the birds you send down mines to check for gas?"

Howard absentmindedly flicks a switch too - hey, Stacy ain't stopping Jaime none. "Then again, some people on the ship are scared of being refugees."

"Are we not refugees already? I mean, our universes went poof and we live on an old prison ship." Jaime rolled his eyes.

"We need to do something. Sitting around twiddling our thumbs is not that thing."

"That's what I say. I guess there's just some gut reaction against being on the lam. Or, my view..." Howard bites his fingertip. "People are cowards. Even moreso than I am. Which is just sad."

"It's a very large ship," Zouichi said. "The effects of any one switch may not be immediately observable. Or you could be switching the headlights on and off."

"That's true! I wish these read outs made more sense. Maybe I should just try to plug Khaji Da into her, see what happens?" He looks back at Zouichi. He looked familiar, vaguely.

"I've seen you around, don't think I know you, though."

Ildraniath stepped through the door behind Zouichi, eyes narrowed as she took in the command center. She hadn't been up here, before but she'd figured it was worth looking into. Especially if she had Zouichi along. She nodded at Jaime and then turned her attention to a control panel, examining it curiously. "Odd technology," she commented to no one in particular.

"Khaji Da?" Zouichi frowned at the alien-looking instrumentation. "That might give the Daligig some excitement."

He hadn't asked Fuyu to try and jack into any of the systems here, but maybe he should. After all, when was the last they'd heard from Neuropathy?

"A friend of mine. Long story." He flexed his wrist and a blue and black exo-skeleton like gauntlet spread across his hand, one finger elongating into some sort of bio-mechanical looking interface.

"If I knew where to plug in that, is. . ." He bent his head, examining the panel in front of him.

"Can't really see an access panel."

"There must be some sort of interface somewhere," Ildraniath interjected again as she stalked over to eye Jaime's efforts.

"There must be some way to access complete system control from here. This is the command center isn't it...? Unless they're simply telling us that it is and the real one is somewhere else."

"Interesting." Not quite like Sho's bio-armor, but similar in some respects. "Maybe if you sat in the pilot's chair." That should allow some interface with the ship, right?

"It wouldn't surprise me," he said to Ildraniath. "Supposedly, they're in some sort of restricted area, doing who knows what." Leon had been... vague about the details. "Wherever they are, I'm willing to bet that the truly important control functions lie there."

". . .Which one is that? I haven't been up here before." Jaime stands, moving around the control room as he tries to figure out which chair Zouichi is talking about.

"It's not like the mysterious alien overlords would want their pet soldiers to know anything right?" Jaime quipped.

"Ah, I'm Jaime by the way."

"Ildraniath," Ildraniath replied absently as she examined another control panel, "I think this one is for communications, but... as far as I know we have had crew up here before, but we've never truly had control of anything. So it could simply be a front. Of course, this is also where the pirates attempted to seize control, from what I understand..."

"Probably that one in the center," Zouichi said. Well, either it was that or the captain's chair, right? Either way, only way to find out for sure was to try it.

"Zouichi. Kanoe Zouichi." He looked a little grim at the mention of the Daligig. "Of course not. And why bother telling us anything? It's not like we need to know. Anyway, according to the captain, the pirates mostly scavenged the ship. Which isn't what everyone else has told me, but there you are..."

Jaime nodded.

"Nice to meet you guys." He looked between the pilot's station and the captain's chair, then activated his armor. The carpace spread over the boy in a quick fluid motion, and he slumped down into the piloting station. Carefully, he eased his hands into the gel and waited as the helmet descended.

"Now let's see what we can do from here. . ."

Ildraniath settled next to the pilot's chair, watching Jaime closely. "We'll have to see. I wish you luck."

Well, this should be interesting, at the very least. Although Zouichi was sort of wondering if Jaime wasn't going to end up driving them into the Bleed's equivalent of a garage door.

...nah, the ship was so ridiculously geared toward preventing them from hurting themselves (or the ship. Especially the ship) that it would most likely correct its own course.

Sakura was in search of Howard, if she hadn't managed to run across him yet. She was surprised given his tendency to haunt MedBay as much as she did, but absolutely determined that this time she'd finally put on a better showing and win at a game of Simon Says, or whatever it was called in this rhythmic pattern game of lights and beep-booping sounds.

She hadn't spent time near command center before, disliking the feeling of being surrounded by so much evidence of incomprehensible press-button technology. Like the world's largest game of Simon, without the benefit of displaying patterns you need to replicate beforehand.

Though she didn't think the guy she saw here was trying to, based on how he moved. None of the assuredness of someone preforming what they'd done before, none of the bored familiarity of someone doing a repetitive task.

She cleared her throat politely. "So," she said, tone kept fairly conversational, "Anything exciting happening by random button press yet?"

Jaime glanced over at Sakura and shrugged helplessly.

"I'm afraid not. So far it's been a bust. I did manage to open and close the view port a couple times if you have a burning desire to look at the stars, though." He smiled at the pink-haired girl and raised a hand in greeting.

"I'm Jaime. Just though I'd poke around the ship, see what I could find out. Starting here, because hey."

"Mmm, stars. I always love Bleed-gazing," she said mildly, looking over his shoulder at the panel he was 'working' on. "I'll pass for now."

She took a step to the side, sticking the Simon Says game up under her arm. "I'm Sakura. Nice to meet you," she finished, a near automatic verbal gesture followed by a fairly genuine smile. Sakura did like meeting people by name, even if she'd seen them around in glimpses and flashes before.

You need to be better connected. And so she would be.

"That the only panel you've been pushing buttons on?" Sakura looked to another near-by. "This is probably a ridiculously stupid idea," she added. Just because she needed to point out the obvious.

"No worries." Jaime fiddled with a dial and tapped a finger against a readout that merely gave off numbers he didn't really understand. He sighed and leaned against the console he was working with, giving a smile that indicated a mild exhaustion.

"Nice to meet you, Sakura. I was at your memory-thing in the Sensoriums." He glanced down at his panel.

"I've looked at a couple others, and yeah, it's pretty dumb. But I have to start somewhere. And this place is the most obvious. . ." He looked around the mostly empty command center.

"Though it might be too obvious."

"Ah, yes. What Barbara and I ran into in the other section of the ship."

She looked around the room, considering what she was seeing. "Think the interface is really hidden elsewhere?" If that had her wondering where, exactly, they were standing.

"Where was it the crew had to break into in order to wrest control from the pirates?"

"That's this place. The pirates were supposedly controlling the ship from here. So supposedly we should be able to as well. Why haven't we? I'm not sure." He flicks another switch.

"So maybe it's not hidden, but the Daligig rerouted it."

"Or Sta'c did it herself. On her own initiative... or Daligig orders," Sakura continued, if inwardly begrudging. "Have you tried pulling any of the paneling up? I'm not sure how you can tell if wiring's live, but is there a way to test and see if it's feeding back into anything?"

"I'm open to any possibility right now. . .there's any number of reasons this stuff could go down." Jaime shrugged, then looked sheepish.

"I haven't yet. She's letting me push buttons, but there might be a freakout if I start pulling things open. Thought about it, though."

"What's the worst she can do?" Sakura said it calmly, examining the area with a critical eye of her own. "Lock us in an unending cycle of our own inescapable torture? Please."

She moved toward one of the panels, setting Simon down in order to feel along the edge of the paneling. "If that's the fear we're living under from Mother, Dearest, then she's already being resource stupid by making any of the tortures public or literally physical. Or maybe smart, if that's the grand punishment we're most afraid of."

Not that Sakura wasn't. She'd forced herself to watch Punishment more than once, to stomach the torture Stacy had tossed around under her Warden persona. (It was all personas to Sakura.) She wanted nothing to do with it, but...

But...

"I think that might not be something you should actually be doing," noted a voice. It was one of those weird grey alien kids that had showed up recently.

"Or at least that's what somebody told me," he added.

"I do a lot of stuff I shouldn't be doing." Jaime grinned at the alien kid.

"You have to be willing take risks to find stuff out."

He couldn't keep up the pretense. Volanz grinned. "Well, yeah. That's what I thought? You pretty much can't know what things do unless you try them."

He looked at the switches.

"I found some buttons in hydroponics? But they just kind of made funny sounds sometimes and otherwise did basically nothing."

"Yeah, the ship is pretty much a crap shoot. Sometimes you get something, sometimes you don't." He shrugged, grinned as Volanz joined him in the button pushing.

"Thanks for the help."

"Sure thing. I think I'm pretty good at pressing buttons?"

It certainly wasn't difficult. Volanz nudged a slider along, watching as the trail of lights beside it flared up.

"If they do things I'll write it down," he went on. "So that we know from now on. Cause I think there are lots of things that we don't know all that much about for the most part, and not doing things because you don't understand them is not going to make the understanding part come that much easier?"

Now that he'd encountered people telling him not to mess with things he didn't understand, he was starting to develop a theory about this.

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I wonder what THIS button does; open

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