Issue 1 Downtime

There was someone new in the cafeteria, and he was being a little odd even for this place. He seemed to be pinch and slide-zooming thin air in front of him in between bites of breakfast. "No..." he muttered. "Wait..." He pinched and pulled, "There it is. Only missed a few minutes. Excellent."

((Open))

There's a bright flash of data somewhere to the east that suddenly snaps on, spreading across campus as it settles in next to the usual wifi signals.

That got Alan's attention, though he gave the movie he was watching a sidelong look before moving it out of the way. Somewhere, someone's Netflix stream buffered briefly. Alan turned his focus to the new signal, trying to get a sense of the information it carried.

It appeared to be a heavily modified cellphone grid. Positional data and protocols waiting to be engaged. Oddly enough it all seemed to be closed down to any regular connection attempts, the whole grid highly specialized and apparently designed for one single connection, which would create a massive amount bandwidth for whatever was supposed to hook into it.

"What's the point of a cell network with only one device?" He mumbled as he tried to expand one of the streams to see if he could find the device.

The datastream is very responsive and quickly resolves a positional query into coordinates. Apparently the device is being moved through the grounds, constantly updating it's location so frequently that it almost seems redundant.

Alan scratched his chin for a moment and then began thumbing through the rest of the bandwidth looking for video or audio information. He continued to eat, but was now mostly staring at, to everyone else, empty air.

There is all kinds of data being streamed through the signal, taking up a significant amount of it's bandwidth. It resolves into video and audio that snaps together readily, marked with all kinds of signifiers to synchronize them. There is data on temperature, air pressure, various bands of non-visible light and all kinds of unusual data that is waiting to be layered on top as well but it mainly shows the view of someone walking through the grounds and towards the mansion. At first glance it looks like it's on rails but more than a cursory glance reveals that algorithms are constantly steadying the image to compensate for the characteristic sway of a head-mounted camera.

"That's just... Hrm," he said, deciding to try something. He plucked at the data stream, making it vibrate slightly, but otherwise not disturbing it to see if whatever system it was noticed the blip.

A pulse of data is the response, seemingly scanning the grid for inconsistencies before going dormant again when no abnormalities are discovered and the distortion doesn't repeat itself. A small stream going towards the device grows a little bigger though, possibly checking the device for malfunctions.

"That's a serious system," he says, contemplating before watching in brief horror as part of the signal bends briefly and makes contact with his own cell phone before snapping back. "Well, shite."

The device at the other end of the datastream doesn't seem to react. Instead the regular wifi suddenly surges to live and connects to Alan's phone. If it wasn't for his power there'd be no way to tell without directly monitoring the phone's background processes but his phone is being scanned. First for all directly available information, then the signal starts rapidly cycling through 4 digit numbers as it attempts to brute-force the security code.

He turns on his phone quickly, typing in the security code to unlock the phone. "Just... be nice to it, okay," he says to no one in particular.

It takes about 2 seconds for the stream to go through the phone's data. Oddly enough it seems to avoid text-messages or anything else that might contain too sensitive information. It does appear to install an app though that starts up to a black screen with a line oscillating in a speech pattern, accompanied by a quiet voice coming from the phone's speaker.

He lifts the phone to his ear, "Umm, hello?"

"Who is this?" a female voice asks. It could be just the quality of the small speaker, but the voice sounds ever so faintly electronically distorted.

"Alan Mason," he said cautiously. "To whom am I speaking?"

"The owner of the signal you intercepted. How did you access that network from this device? I can't find any protocols that would enable it to."

"I apologize. It is just sort of a thing I do. I didn't mean to divert your signal."

"Explain the thing you do."

"I see things. Wireless signals and stuff. Occasionally I change where they're going. I don't mean to. Well, not always."

"And you can see that signal?" she asks. Between being a little concerned and somewhat intrigued her voice comes out flat. Or possibly that's justbecause it's an artificially generated voice.

"I can. It's sort of strange to have an entire network for a signal device."

"It has several uses and is kept separate from the other networks for security reasons." Apparently she hasn't caught on to the fact that Alan has managed to actually read the signal.

"That repetitive transmission of location data seems unnecessary and not secure. Why does the device do that?"

"You can read the data?" she asks and the entire network begins to shut down. Meanwhile out in the yard Ashlie's robot frame locks down, suddenly bereft of a signal.

"Sort of. There's not really much useful in it though."

"No, I suppose there wasn't at the time. The device wasn't operating at full capacity."

"I'm sorry if I intruded. It was just something new to look at. I was curious."

"This is very strange. Security of core systems has not been a necessary concern until now. Would you be willing to perform an experiment?"

"That depends on the experiment, but sure."

Slowly the network blossoms out across campus again and outside Ashlie's robot frame begins to move again after a few minutes. The data streams are much bigger now and include something that's definitely not audio/video data.

"The system is in full integration mode now. Can you try to tap the signal going to and from the device?"

"Sure," he said, hunting down the signal and trying to find the video feeds again.

The video feed is still there though closer to the mansion now. There's also a huge stream of what appears to be data synchronization or some kind of cloud computation. This seems more like something that would actually require the full extend of the network.

"The device is getting closer to the mansion. At least that's what I'm seeing on the video feed."

"Ignore the video feed."

"Okay," he said, closing it down. "What am I looking for?" He began looking through the rest of the data flowing to the device.

The data is strange but after a moment coalesces into something more coherent. It's endless instructions, thoughts and commands. Some of them make immediate sense and are apparently aimed at remotely controlling the device. Others are more abstract and query processes apparently running on the machine and vice versa.

>> Signal terminated for 2 minutes and 5 seconds.
>> Resynchronizing core systems at NXDX-203 from time 8:45am on date September 19th.

>> Synchronization in progress…

>> Knowledge banks… Connected.
>> Deduction schema running…
>> Loading longterm planning architecture…
>> Learning chunk processor running…
>> Base personality model running…
>> Checking language engine… Complete.
>> Checking operation and access nodes… Complete.
>> Checking observation framework… Complete.
>> Checking complex social intelligence emulator… Complete.
>> Checking inspiration apparatus… Complete.

>> No corruption, everything in working order. Core system synchronization complete. Loading…

"Wait, what is this device exactly?" He watches the stream of instructions carefully.

"Me. Or rather the means through which I mainly interact with the people at the school. A robotic full-body prosthesis, if you will."

The stream continues rapidly as information gathered by sensors is analyzed, passed along and synchronized back and forth between the device and whatever is at the other end of the network.