Of Good Intentions and Mechanical Men

[snarkingscribe]

_{[This is backdated to shortly after the Fauxbellion, and ties into this channel post.]}

[Hidden Valley Bunker - Dummy Entrance]

Inside the false entrance to the bunker installation, Veronica's set up what looks like an office of sorts for herself. A desk and chair, a few boxes of broken parts she'd gathered up sometime after her arrival, and a few tools. Stuff to make her look busy, if someone came prying. Should someone enter, though, she's poking at her Omnicomm. Rex is lying on the floor nearby. The door to the outside is open, letting some of the natural light from the city in.

[Lucky 38 - Casino Floor]

Entering here, one will see a potentially spooky sight - a casino and bars, devoid of life. Some of the machines are running, and the lights are on, but it's still a place that's oddly quiet. There's an elevator in the middle of the room, and a few robots lying on the floor, or propped against tables or railings. They're roughly seven feet high, and have enough weight to strain someone a bit, even if they're dragging them on their wheel. Veronica's currently hauling one out of the elevator, and is clad in her power armor, sans helmet.

[Hidden Valley Bunker - Laboratory]

Some time after getting the few Securitrons moved to the bunker, Veronica's gotten down to work - be it on devising just how to make a reader for the Platinum Chip, tinkering with the programming Mr. House left on it, or testing out said tinkered programming, she's a busy bee.

The Securitrons are propped against the wall in a row, and a few crates are nearby, loaded with ammunition confiscated from them. After all, if the programming turns out bad, it's better for them to not be able to shoot the place up.

Comments

[anwei]

Anwei stepped closer but did not touch the chip. It was unlikely that she could carry much of a static charge in this humid atmosphere, and any properly made equipment would be shielded against a shock, but better safe than sorry.

"Probably the easiest way to unravel it - without risking damage to the coin itself - would be to find out what sort of reader is used to get the data off it. Contact-current, radio frequency, optical - although if there's a lens into the interior, it's very small." She leaned closer, and squinted. "And does it need a power source to be read, or is it pure passive-read data?"

[snarkingscribe]

"If I had to wager a guess," Veronica says, turning the chip over in her hands. "Since it doesn't seem to open in any manner I can see, is that the whole surface is a contact area." She frowns. "And going by the rumors about the guy who had it made, making it like that certainly fits him. Way more than enough obnoxious little crevices one would have to replicate to read the damn thing."

[anwei]

"Errr," she said through her teeth, staring at the chip. "You could ask if someone in Engineering has some conductive powder that can be cast from this and then sintered; that might be a first step towards a reader. Personally, I'd try scanning it with the lowest possible power settings first, just in case it's more delicate than it looks. I went optical-to-USB for my storage devices - they didn't have these on the Earth I visited."

She considered. "How secretive was the person who made this? I was wondering - if it's a passively powered device that charges itself from radio waves, it might need power from a specific frequency before it started transmitting its data. Even a passcode - depending on how sophisticated the security is inside this."