Issue 1 Downtime

It was rather late at night and the Danger Room doors were locked. This wouldn't be seen as all that odd beyond the fact someone was using it at these hours. Someone who looked a little closer would notice other things that seemed off. Nash was the only one inside and he had enabled the advanced controls, kind of the Danger Room's equivalent to a debug menu. A few days ago while it was still being repaired this wouldn't have been at all unusual, however, with the room repaired and working well within specifications this certainly was.

((open))

"All systems are nominal. What are you doing?" a computerized female voice asks.

"Wha?"

Nash looked startled and glanced around the room

"Who are you?"

Ashlie would of course have access to the logs and the video feeds of the room, this might be a far quicker way to figure out what he was doing.

"I am the Almighty Oz." she chuckles, her voice starting to sound more like Ashlie's. "What are you doing?"

"So, you are a short old guy hiding behind a curtain?"

Nash laughed.

"I'm working on a project of mine."

He could have been more specific.

"And it's so super secret so you override the controls and lock the room?" she asks and there's the sound of someone knocking on the shutters on the observation deck.

"I locked the room to try and keep peope from bothering me, guess that didn't work."

Nash unlocked the shutters as well as entry from the observation deck.

"I'm overriding the normal controls because I need to in order to properly test my project."

Nash had small device in his hand, which had wires running down into a messenger bag he had over
his shoulder. In the rest of the room were several objects, the objects were arranged in pairs with each
particular object next to its identical looking twin.

"I can leave if you want to be left alone." she says, looking around at the stuff Nash has set up.

"No, come on in. I just didn't want to have to explain every last little thing. I won't need to do that with you. You might even be able to help me out."

The items Nash had set up were ordinary everyday items. There were bottles of water, a short pieces of iron bar, and many other seemingly mundane things. There was nothing much in common between the items, in fact they seemed to be a variety of different materials.

Ashlie makes her way into the actual room.

"Okay, explain."

"I'm working on something to help deal with our thief that was here last week. How much do you know about hard light projection?"

"A little bit." she says carefully.

"If you hit a hard light projection with electromagnetic radiation it will produce a slight disturbance in the area being effected. Now it would take quite a lot for that disturbance to be visable to the naked eye, but with the right sensors you should be able to detect it at far lower levels. That is what I'm working on now."

"Have you been talking to Calvin?"

"No, why?"

Nash looks a little confused.

"Just wondering. He has been working on something similar."

"He has? Wait, that thing Ms. Weaver took away from him? Where he thought Regan was a projection of the mansion defense system?"

"Yes."

"I heard about that, but mostly just rumors. I have no idea what it actually did."

"I didn't examine it so I don't know the specifics either." she shrugs.

Then how does she know it is similar?

"What I'm doing shouldn't have the same effect Cal's device did. What I'm making only puts out a few IR and radio pulses. Its the array of sensors that make it work."

"And that would reliably identify hard-light constructs?"

"In theory... I'm still working on it. It partially works now, it just isn't one hundred percent accurate. Right now I'm working on dealing with different modulation frequencies and phasing. Thats why I opened the advanced controls."

"And what do you need help with?"

"I'm collecting lots of data from these sensors. I have been scanning a few things then stopping to look over the graphs. If you could do one while I do the other this would go faster."

"Sure."

Nash took out a small laptop from the bag and turned it so they both could see it.

"Lets try this. The data is being recorded in log files, but I've been looking at them as graphs through this program. I've annotated the older ones which should help to show you what I'm looking for."

She nods and pretends to study the graphs while she just downloads the data.

With Ashlie's abilities she can easily scan all the old data, compare it to the incoming new data, and still have plenty of time left over.

"Not sure how your powers work, do you need to have the computer at hand or can you do it remotely?"

"I can just read it from here no problem."

"Okay, lets get started"

Nash proceeded to scan one of the objects. The data would show that is was not hard light projection.

"Did you bring that in here?"

"Yes, I brought in one of each of these things as a control."

Nash now scanned its twin. The readings would show with high confidence that it was a projection.

"That looks promising." she notes, running calculations on her own projection's properties and whether she could fool the scanner. Just in case.

Nash went on to scan several more objects. Though they all weren't as clear as the first pair, noticable differences still existed between the items he had brought in and their projected twins.

Ashlie would find that she would be detected by the scanner in her current state. She would be able to fool the scanner, but with a few complications. The scanner has blind spots in which the detection would fail, however these change as the device sweeps through multiple short scans. If she could predict when the scanning starts, and know the pattern of the scans, then she could hide from the scanner.

"They all register as distinct from the control. Looks like you're on to something."

"It does seems to be working fairly welll. I guess now I just have to get it all together in a single unit, having to carry around and look at a laptop isn't exactly ideal."

"A small monitor mounting should be relatively easy to do."

"It doesn't need much processing power either, I can probably add that in as well and have a single handheld device."