nexus_crossings | Some Reassembly Required

Some Reassembly Required

There’s an open, grassy area on the edge of the Wilds, some distance from the most popular Nexus parks where people are enjoying their picnics and centaur polo and so forth. It’s a good place to go if you want slightly more peace and quiet - or in Blaze’s case, a good open space in which to make a lot of noise. The robot soldier has a few small crates out on the grass. One of them she’s sitting on; the others are being used as tables which hold a small array of tools and components and blocks of metal. She’s working on modifying a pair of heavy armored boots much like the pair she’s wearing, refitting the soles and reinforcing their structure. Her Ghost hovers beside her, inspecting a blueprint spread out atop one of the boxes. The little bot is spinning his pointy shell back and forth as if concerned, but Blaze pays him no heed.

“So,” she says, speaking up while she works. “People change. Some of us change more than others. Sometimes we don’t notice how it happens. Sometimes,” she yanks out a component and chucks it down beside her, “we don’t get a say. So what part of yourself would you want make sure you held on to? What’s the part you’d want to be remembered?” She pauses, then looks up at the nearest people. “And, hey, anyone got some spare explosives?"

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A small price to pay. It's funny, Blaze said it first, and yet hearing the sentiment echoed back to her in this woman's calm voice makes it come across rather differently. Maybe she's just working through a lot of stuff right now. Maybe it's the momentary sense of recognition, like a tune she thinks she's heard before. Well, but she's met plenty of driven people.

"A sense of purpose. I respect that. What kind of advancements are we talking? I'm, uh, not all that up on biological research but it sounds like your work is important." And she's pretty sure her discussing human evolution is some kind of irony, but hell, she's invested in the subject too.

"I am a geneticist, which means my work is on the very foundations of human life." Not knowing the various characters in a place such as this, it seems it would be wise to stay coy about her work. After all, it had been received so poorly on her world... But then that might in turn hamper her efforts to find like-minded people, or new avenues of research...

"Currently I'm drawing up a paper on Repairing Degenerative Genetic Structures. The applications of my findings could be extremely valuable to mankind... You don't do any research of your own, I take it?"

Blaze makes an impressed sound, and Ghost looks up curiously from the blueprints.That does sound incredibly valuable, like the kind of Golden Age medicine that once shot human lifespan past the two-century mark. Plus, it sounds distinctly unlike anything Khan and his friends would have been into, and that's their most recent benchmark for genetic research gone bad.

"Sure I do." She lifts up the half-assembled boot in her hand for emphasis. "Modification and testing of field equipment. And we run a lot of sample and data collection, although the analysis isn't my problem. I'm more, uh-"

"'Applied xeno-anatomy'?" Ghost suggests.

She laughs. "That's it! I hit aliens 'til they break."

Aliens? A soft sound somewhere between amusement and interest supports the gentle tug of her lips.

"Testing field equipment is a vital contribution. I'm sure dealing with aliens as you do is just as important." Her eyes slide to the variety of spare parts at the omnic's disposal. "Apart from encounters here I haven't come across aliens before. Your technology must be fascinating." She gestures to the blueprint beside Blaze. "May I?"

"Go ahead. You can tell me what you think. Not a lot of alien tech there, though. That's good old human ingenuity and some ideas I had on my own." The schematics are for boots - the ones she's holding, in fact - with dark lines showing the intended modifications. Extra supports, inertial dampers, some controlling electronics, a lot of reinforcement... and cavities for unspecified explosives. She's still working out the details.

Brilliant, she gets to have a snoop at the foreign tech. Without any further ado she walks over to peer at the blueprints, bending over to get a good look without touching them. After a while she straightens a little more, nodding, but keeping her attention on the intriguing information in front of her.

"Impressive." There's no irony in her tone, she genuinely is impressed. "The adaptation to endure such a wide variety of environments must be useful in encountering alien races. Do you find yourself on many planets, or just Earth?"

"We've been to a few in the system." Blaze is not a little pleased at the praise, and willing to chat. Ghost is watching a little more closely as he backs away to give the scientist a look at the schematics. "Mars, Luna, Venus. Mercury. Conditions there probably aren't quite the same as in your system, though. Not unless you've got the hang of some serious terraforming."

Or an infestation of alien horrors carving out the moon. The multiverse is full of variety.

"You're packing some interesting gear yourself. What's the function?" Ask about her specs, she'll ask about yours. It's not fair to be the only one who gets to show off.

"Not on a planetary scale…" Although she is certain Dr. Al-Shahrani would be eager to get her hands on planetary terraforming work. Perhaps she'll ask after the research at a later stage. "Humanity has always been driven to reach for the stars, but the last attempt to colonise the moon was an unmitigated failure."

Moira straightens, turning her attention to the bracers keeping the experimental technology close to hand. She faces Blaze properly, folding her right arm behind her back and offering her left up for inspection. "It's primary function is as emergency medical assistance utilising biotic energy and nanobiology."

Unlike Lord Saladin, Blaze doesn't yet know that nanites are the enemy. She leans over to look, although not as close as Ghost, who swoops in to get a good look. It distracts them from asking what happened to the lunar colony, although that sounds terrible, to get so close to space travel and be knocked back down to Earth. Well, they have an idea what it's like themselves.

"So someone gets injured, you fire up your nanites, and you can patch them right up?" Blaze translates with interest. "That's some amazing technology. I don't even think we had anything that good back in the Golden Age, and they were big on nanites then." And honestly, given that this woman's working without the benefit of a friendly uplifting Traveler, it's kind of more impressive that she does.

"There is a slight delay, but yes, the vast majority of combat injuries can be repaired on the field in a matter of moments." It's true, she's proud of her creation, but even more than that, she's excited about it. With one breakthrough, others follow.

"Your world may be fully capable of creating something similar to my own designs. It would seem at a glance that the technology you are constructed from is superior to that of my own world. I haven't seen an omnic with your level of fine detail before."

"Omnics?" They were both looking impressed at her tech's capabilities - Guardians might not need it, but imagine if the City's civilians had such gear - but that remark catches Blaze's curiosity in a whole different way. "You have sapient mechanoids on your Earth? What's the situation with them?"

"Relations between omnics and humans are… delicate. Omnics were made by automated factories that improved continuously, and this somehow led to the omnics becoming self aware… The factories were shut down for apparently unrelated reasons. But thirty years ago the automated factories that made omnics began manufacturing military-grade omnibus which attacked humans."

There's not so much as a hint of anger of trauma as she explains. If anything, she shares Blaze's curiosity. It is an intensely fascinating topic. One she would happily sink her claws into, even though it isn't her area of expertise.

"The Omnic Crisis ended, but tensions remain high. There are few places where omnics and humans live in peace. But then change has never been an easy process." She tilts her head at Blaze and Ghost. "What is the situation in your universe?"

Moira may be calm, but both bots look a little downcast as she tells her story: the points of Ghost's shell droop and Blaze's gaze dims. They've heard a story like this too many times already. Blaze folds her arms as she looks up and explains.

"Humanity created Exos as soldiers, centuries ago. We've been fighting and living side by side ever since. Never had a conflict between us. Honestly don't think we could have survived one. We've all got bigger threats on our hands."

Their reactions are telling. Moira doesn't regret sharing this information. On the contrary, it's curious to see reactions that are so empathic from mechanical beings.

"Humans and omnics have no common enemy to unite them. We still have no explanation for why the omnics gained sentience. It may have been unexpected, but the uncertainty and fear it caused was a standard human response. The war that followed paved the way for a tense future."

Her eyes fall back onto the schematics. "You fight against the extraterrestrial threats together then? Do you share technology with each other?"

"Seems like we're far too good at making that mistake," Blaze grumbles. She pokes irritably at her handiwork before Moira's words get her to look up again. "Share it? Of course we do. We're one people, not separate factions. Most of us, anyway." Hmph. "Even if that wasn't the case, we don't have the resources to get by without pooling them."

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Some Reassembly Required

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