Programming Needs You!

[vision_ya]

[OOC: Bendytimed to shortly after Podpop, before Survivalist ends and before Mother Knows Best begins]

Jonas finished typing on his omnicom and published the invitation to the channel, then switched to a new window and resumed fiddling with the program he had been working on.

It was an open-ended invitation, but should something come up that needed his undivided attention (like an attack, Brainiac 5 making contact again, or Cassie wanting to do something with him) he could always edit the post with the new information.

Some of the people coming in might be surprised to discover that the head of Programming looked as though he had been programmed himself in the past. Jonas had considered giving them a heads up on that subject in the invitation, but had ultimately decided against it. If they could not cope the surprise of a synthetic person, they would likely have problems coping during a fight; and he would like to know that ahead of time so he could place them most effectively.

So he sat at his workstation and waited for his first arrival.

Comments

[vision_ya]

"[Ms. Fuu it is then,]" Jonas said. It sounded a little awkward in English, but his Japanese still sounded like he had eaten a textbook and code-switching seemed to cause several moments' confusion between his language programming and Stacy's own.

He sat again and folded his hands in his lap, interlacing his fingers.

"[Approximately what level of technology are you familiar with?]" he asked. This part was a little difficult, since what he wanted to ask was "what year are you from?"; but alternate realities made that question near-useless. A member of the crew could be from the B.C.E. era and a time-traveler, or they could be from a post-technology forty-first. "[Are personal computers common when you are from, for example, or cellular phones?]"

[monster_san]

"Hm..." Fuu lapsed into silence. It was hard to remember--not hard because she couldn't, but to think back to a life that had been obliterated. Her parents' computer collection had been wiped from existence... she tried to put the thought out of her mind and just think of what it had been. The Powerbook 140. That came out this--this summer. It was primitive compared to the paper-thin notebooks of the 2000s, as she had discovered in her research. She kept her mind firmly on that point.

"They're becoming more and more common," she said. "Programming is being taught in schools; that's where I began learning it. Cellphones are as well, but they're more of a novelty right now. They haven't yet become ubiquitous. Most people who need one still use a pager."

As much as she tried to sound matter-of-fact about it, Fuu couldn't shake the alien feeling of talking about the future of a place that had been destroyed.

[vision_ya]

Jonas nodded once. "[It sounds as though you are not particularly far off the technology commonly available in the era I was taken from,]" he said. Well, not too far in the sense that a decade and a half was not much when the mind Jonas' brain patterns originated had traveled a thousand years into the past. "[Good starting point. Have you looked into programming at all since you woke up on board?]"

[monster_san]

"Really? Oh, that is a relief," said Fuu, cupping her cheek in one hand as her face heated slightly. "I've been feeling quite behind the times with all the talk of Internet and the like, on top of the ship's own systems."

She nodded quickly at the question. "I've been doing my best to catch up, so I have been studying quite a lot about programming since pod release," she said. "I haven't been sure if my skill level was enough for the department, or I would have asked to join earlier."

[vision_ya]

"[Technology moves very quickly in that era,]" Jonas said. At least, it had in his reality. It was hard to say how other realities had fared without the likes of Tony Stark, Reed Richards, and Hank Pym running around. For better or for worse. "[But most users of the technology do not understand it very well either.]"

He smiled wryly and shrugged his shoulders. "[I suppose that is my fault, at least somewhat,]" he said. "[I should have made an earlier announcement about our willingness to take on people no matter what level of familiarity they have with technology. I will make more of a habit of it in the future. We are certainly glad to have you now, and I will be happy to teach you what you need to know if you do not know it already.]"