Issue 1 Downtime

After classes (during which she was carefully indexing what she can claim as having learned now, completely oblivious to the fact that she basically was learning in her own way) Ashlie wanders into the common room and spots Cal's little improvised workshop in the corner. Curious she walks over and starts poking around.

The staff was now partially assembled... or at least the power unit was. What just looked like a bunch of wires and random devices to other people would make much more sense to Ashlie. The second segment seemed to be being prepared now, the devices that would be arranged inside it strung out along their wire from the power unit in the midst of being prepared.

She carefully picks up the second segment. She can tell that something's a power-source but she's no good with hardware if she isn't, well, occupying it, so this provides an interesting conundrum to her. Turning it back and forth she tries to scan the visible components and runs a pattern-match on them to try and deduce the intended function.

Strangely, some of this she actually could inhabit, not that there was much to find in them. Most of the devices seemed to be cannibalized from various satelite radios, sat-phones, and a variety of other communications gear. She could feel the work-arounds that disabled any proprietary restrictions that hard-wired the equipment to certain companies'/nations' satellites or communications relays.

And if she looked hard enough, she could probably find where on the internet Cal had found the specific instructions for how he connected these and removed the proprietary restrictions. ALthough she'd probably feel dirty after peeking into such a questionable area of the internet.

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Is he building a communications array? Why would he require something like that?

She runs a couple signals through the assembly just to see what happens to them.

Linking up with the staff, Ashlie would be able to feel the expansion beyond her usual wireless capabilities as the devices, already partially programmed, connected to various satelites. She couldn't access the data behind the systems they linked up to, since Cal didn't have access to them yet, but she could feel that they were there, tantalizing little private networks that... well, she probably didn't have any business getting into.

Still, the fact that it was connecting at all meant there was a surprising amount of power available coming from the power unit.

For a moment she is tempted to brute-force one of the systems to gain access but decides against it. She does try to identify the systems and/or satellites it passes through though to gain an idea of why someone would need a direct uplink of this kind.

The better question was what satellites he didn't have a link-up to. If it was up there, he was trying to tap it, though the only ones he seemed to have any kind of ability to access were cellular and public communications satellites so far.

And that was all she was really able to see before the door opened. "Hey, who's messing with m- oh. Hi," he said, not sure how to take the situation.

"Oh hello. Is this yours?" she asks, putting the segment back down carefully.

"Yeah, that's mine," he said. "Didn't think anyone would be in here until after dinner."

He frowned, just a little, when his wireless speed went down, starting to run a check on his systems to see what was eating his bandwidth.

"Oh yes, of course. Dinner." she almost seems to remind herself. "This is really impressive."

Meanwhile Cal's scan would show him that what was eating up bandwidth was... the white-haired girl in front of him? And for all the connectivity she was using up there was almost no work-load on the school's back end.

"It's just... a project. Probably won't even work," Cal admitted. More than a little untruthfully.

Internally, he started benchmarking the readings he was getting from this strange girl against his own network activity for a comparison.

Ashlie was easily rivaling Cal's and probably going past it purely from the consistency of the signal strength. Of course she was also standing next to his satellite uplink project.

"Oh I can tell it works!" she smiles, sounding less like she's calling him out and more like she's revealing the amazing fact to him that his project works after all.

"Well, I still need to get- wait a minute, what do you mean you know it works?"

He ran a quick query on the staff's systems, and was relieved to find out that no, it wasn't active. More confused, he started to backtrace and analyze all the activity, trying to figure out what was going on here.

"I tested it. Shouldn't I have done that?"

"You... How?" It was a legitimate question, considering the device had no physical means of control, or a display.

"Oh. That's right, isn't it?" she says, looking at the device again as if to make sure. "I'm sorry, that usually means it's not meant to be used by anyone."

"Well, I mean... seriously, how did you use it? What did you do?" Shit, am I going to have SHIELD coming after me for hacking their satellites before I could program countermeasures?

"Oh that. I'm a technopath." she says and if on cue the TV turns on.

Well, that explains that... "Oh, okay. So... ah, you really think it's good?" Very, very rarely did Cal have someone to talk to who actually understood what he was doing as well as he did. Granted, he only understood things after hyper-searching them for explanations and pre-made plans (like much of the staff), but that still put him one up on a lot of people.

"It's impressive. Though I'll admit I don't understand it's purpose. It enables a connection but lacks the necessary permissions to engage any systems it opens up."

"Don't have them yet. And it can get access, just nothing that I couldn't get with wireless here. So it's... useful if I'm stuck in the middle of a technological wasteland I guess."

"That is a very smart thing to do. Do you have permission to utilize those satellite networks?" she asks, seemingly more out of curiosity than any moral objection.

"I, well... I figure if I have to use them, I'll be in a place where I'm beyond being able to worry about permission," he admitted.

"That makes sense. Unfortunate circumstances sometimes take precedence over permissions."

"Exactly! And unfortunate circumstances are supposed to happen, like, all the time here."

"I would ask if Facebook is really that important, but somehow I doubt that is what you require a reliable connection for."

"Well you never know what you'll need a connection for. I just... don't like being disconnected. Feels like half your brain's gone."

"Oh I get that. It's like someone turned off the lights and locks the door. It's awful."

"Finally someone gets that. They thought I was nuts on the plane ride over here. So... um... anyway, I'm Cal," he said, smiling a little.

"I know." she says before realizing what a faux pas that is.

"I... might have taken a look at the names in the student registry." she adds a bit sheepishly. "I'm Ashlie."

"Least I'm not the only one who does that," he said. "Everyone acts like it's weird, but it's right there in your head. Who wouldn't look?"

"Exactly. Like a poster on the wall. The cybernetics aren't just structural then?"

He glanced self-consciously down at his arm. "Ah, no. Definitely not just structural," he said hesitantly.

"This isn't meant to integrate into them, is it?" she asks, glancing down at the project.

"Not, well, permanently or anything. I'm not exactly planning on making it easy for other people to use, though."

"That makes sense. Though as long as you don't integrate the programming into the device itself it should be rather secure. Not counting statistical outliers like me of course." she grins.

Cal grinned back. "Well as long as I don't put controls or a display on it, it should be secure. Except for the notable exceptions."

"It's a pretty impressive array. Did you construct that just from regular components?"

"I don't know if you'd call them regular components... Most of those parts are from sat phones and things like that," he admitted, indicating the exposed components. "Reworked a little, but when it's not broken, don't fix it."