Rust in Peace [Open]

[zouichi]

Zouichi, for once, wasn't in the City on patrol. Instead, he was making a systematic search of the city's streets, looking for telltale stray robot parts that might lead him to what he was looking for. Unfortunately, during SHODAN's attack, not all of the crew (except him! okay not really) had been terribly judicious about the property damage they were inflicting on the nearby buildings.

So there was rubble everywhere. Oops.

But it had been in the middle of a robot attack, right? Sometimes you needed to break a few eggs to make an omelet, right? RIGHT.

[This is the log for searching for robot parts and a SUPER SECRET ENGINEERING PROJECT okay it's not that secret but IT SORT OF IS. Feel free to have someone try and peek in on the Engineering thread and have Lash furtively cover her test paper.]

Comments

Re: ..we'll get back to you on that AKA shhhh we're still threading :P

[zouichi]

"Well, when you do know, I'd be interested to find out. If you're talking about access to her systems, anyway. I'm the newest addition to Neuropathy. Or rather, my partner is." Although for all intents and purposes, they might as well be talking about Zouichi and Fuyu.

"Or maybe it's not something so simple. Maybe it's the ship itself contacting them at intervals. That's not really my part of the plan, though." Besides, being part of a team meant that he had to trust its other members to do their jobs. He had to worry about his own.

Zouichi dusted off what looked like a slightly warped hub connection, frowned, and tossed it back into the pile. "I guess I should have been a little less enthusiastic about destroying some of these."

[youmissed]

"Sure. We'll poke around and I'll get back to you once I know what's up." John had to say, he didn't take Zouichi for a science geek. In retrospect, it seems stupid not to - if he can be engineered to be a badass with guns and a motorcycle, he doesn't see why they can't just toss in a healthy curiosity about science in while they're at it.

"At least you've got plenty to pick from," John said, nodding at the junk. Zouichi might've blown away a lot of the droids, but there'd been so many overall that there had to be something. "Personally, I'm more worried about the Ohm than the Daligig at this point. I mean, where did they even come from?"

He didn't expect Zouichi to have an answer to that. He was just thinking aloud, but the fact was it had been bothering him. John thought he'd seen enough to aliens to realize there had to be a reason why they were gunning after all this planets now instead of earlier.

[zouichi]

"I'd appreciate it. I don't particularly like the idea of leaving my fate in the hands of a mindreading ship that thinks we're its children." Science and being able to create neural links with computers weren't quite the same thing... but good enough, in this case.

"We heard a few things about the Ohm from the people of Agrestic, but I don't think they knew, either. Anyway, I have the opposite opinion: one front at a time. First we deal with the Daligig on the ship, then on figuring out what's going on with the Ohm." He frowned a little, thinking. "Considering what we know of them so far, though, I'm starting to think the Ohm are more like a natural disaster than a hostile species as we think of it."

Perhaps because of Zouichi's upbringing, thinking of the Ohm in that way made them seem less menacing. You didn't get angry at a flood or shout at a mudslide. If one destroyed your house, you dealt with it and moved on.

[youmissed]

John wasn't too comforted by that thought. Hell, you could say the same thing about wormholes - didn't mean they couldn't do a number on you whether it was planned or not. Still, he was probably right about trying to deal with this one step at a time. John was leery at the idea of getting possibly hunted by a big force like the Ohm, though. Call it personal experience. And knowing that little things like losing your tracking beacons or whatever might not stop the Daligig from taking it personal.

"Are there any records of the Ohm going for uninhabited planets?" John had a sudden thought. "Y'know, barren stuff like Jupiter. Any places like that. Or places where there's life, but not sentient life."

That would be one way to check if the Ohm were being aimed or they really were nothing more than a huge version of an avalanche or a locust swarm. It seemed like they'd been so busy trying to survive and deal with all their words lost that he hadn't thought to ask any questions like that until now.

[zouichi]

Zouichi gave him a wry smile. "I'm sure that even if they did, we wouldn't be likely to hear about it. They'd be uninhabited, after all. But even if the Ohm only go after inhabited planets, it wouldn't mean they were malicious in intent. Unless you consider ants or bees malicious."

Unfortunately, there was just no knowing for sure at this point.

[youmissed]

"Good point." John fell silent for a bit as he went about his business collecting whatever scraps he could carry. He had to make a guess as to what could be used as weapons, seeing as they hadn't exactly mastered death bots back on Earth where (when, he had to remind himself) he came from. "Think this is enough?"

He wandered back over to Zouichi to show him his haul. He trusted the artificial human to have a better idea about this than he did.

[zouichi]

Zouichi raised an eyebrow at John's haul, giving it a cursory inspection. "I'm not an expert on robot parts, of course... but this should be a good start."

Half of this job was picking out the pieces that hadn't been flash-burned, smashed, or exploded, anyway. He plucked a small, black component up out of the pile. "In fact, I think you might have part of a power dampening device here. Just from what I remember of them, of course. Lash will be lasers thrilled."

It cool if I wrap up the thread?

[youmissed]

"Cool." John was glad he'd managed to pick up what amounted to a "good start". "Lash's the girl with the hair, right?"

He didn't think he needed to elaborate on what The Hair meant - it stuck out, even in a ship full of aliens and slimy membrane walls. Tended to make an impression, even if he didn't know the girl personally.