Data Should Behave As Such
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Date: 11/26/2018 |
55 Winder Street, Ground Floor -- Lower Midtown The front door of the house opens into a sitting room that takes up most of the floor space. What were two or three rooms have merged into one wide expanse of hard wood floor. All of the furniture is modern, in contrast with the old house. Black mesh chairs and glass tables are spread out on one side, along with a coffee station containing a French press and a single serving coffee machine. At the other side is a long meeting table surrounded by chairs, with a large LCD screen set up for presentations. Discreet passages lead to the back to a bathroom and a kitchen, as well as a doorway to a down stairwell marked PRIVATE - Laboratory. |
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Cast: | |
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Aster has been by a few times now, and so knows the way into 55 Winder Street well enough that she slips into the building without looking away from her phone. Her brow's creased as she heads inside, mouth working silently as she focuses on what she's reading. She glances up long enough to find a chair, sitting herself down at one of the glass tables. Arthur has sent the interns home. Most of them for Thanks giving, but for Max, Thanksgiving was last month, so he just got a four day weekend off to relax. Regardless, the place is fairly empty. Arthur is seated at the conference table, the big TV showing Steve Martin and John Candy huddled in a burned-out rental car. In front of Arthur is a ham sandwich. He looks up. "Oh, hello, Welcome." "Hm?" Aster lifts her head. She blinks a couple of times, vision clearing. "Oh. Hey. Felt uncharacteristically /not/ like being cooped up at home, so I figured I'd come out for a bit. You can read anywhere, you know?" Arthur grabs a remote, and hits a button to stop the movie just after John Candy starts apologizing to the a cop for speeding. He stands, and gestures. "Coffee and tea. Dont' have much else, since I haven't felt like going out myself, and the interns aren't back until tomorrow. Four day weekend is always nice, even if I always work a little bit in my off time." Aster smiles wryly. "Freelancing, you're either working like crazy, or not at all. Been thinking of what I could do for a change, but I've been thinking about a /lot/. Hell, I've been thinking /about thinking/, so it's getting a bit loopy up in here." She looks at the coffee, but leaves it; she's comfortable where she's sitting. Arthur laughs, and walks on over to Aster to join her, carrying his bue mug. "Freelancing. I've never quite done that. All the pressure, all the deadlines, none of the stability. I've been collecting a salary since I got my doctorate, and I can't say I'd want it any other way." Aster whines. "Well, I never exactly /finished studying/, so no doctorate for me. Been wondering about going back, or studying here, or online courses. Something to expand on myself. May not be MIT, but it might not be engineering anyway." Arthur smiles. "Well, a doctorate isn't for everyone." Sip. "It's a lot of effort in a fairly impractical environment. I'm lucky I was able to get good advice to stay practical, and get into the real world as soon as possible." Aster nods. "And start building rayguns of fireball." Yes, she remembers it. "Though my thing..." She glances back to her phone with its ebooks. "Wouldn't exactly be hard science, if I go in the direction I'm thinking." Arthur looks, and nearly chokes, but he gathers himself, and swallows. "It's physics," he mutters with a smile. "So what would you study? CS?" Aster raises an eyebrow almost to her hairline when he starts choking. "Physics which explodes and deals many d6s in fire damage in a 20-foot radius, yes. And actually, I don't think there's any university which can teach me more about computers. No, I'm thinking psychology." Arthur hums, and shakes his head. "You can say that all you want, ASter, but it doesn't make it true. I've written many papers on this, and I can send them to you, if you like. Why psychology?" Aster grins. "Aw, so you're saying it /doesn't/ deal lots of fire damage? That's unfortunate." But the question sobers her up. "In part, because there's a lot to unpack there, a lot to learn. But also... we need it. We have all sorts of medics and healers for if people get hurt, we can refill HP like crazy. But this whole life is a strain on the mind, and I don't think we have /anyone/ equipped for that. Mundane therapists sure aren't, they'd just prescribe a whole bunch of antipsychotics. There's nobody equipped to really /understand/ us." Arthur reaches into his coat, and pulls out the glue gun, setting it on the table. "I'll have you know this thing does plenty of fire damage, in the right circumstances. But you won't find one of these in the keep of the lich king." Listening to her explanaion, he nods. "So when you say we you mean humanity, or.. this gropu we have here?" "This group," Aster says. "Humankind in general, people with mundane problems... they can go to mundane therapists. But the world needs people who can understand -- hell, who can even /believe in/ problems beyond the mundane. If someone's being bullied by spirits, they need someone who can deal with the spirits, not just tell them it's all in their head." Arthur nods approvingly, sticking out his lips a moment. "Very practical. I like. Quite a commiment though. You in Detroit for the long haul then?" Aster nods. "At least as long as my master is. Though, I don't know if I'm studying at WSU -- there are a lot of distance options, and the internet is... /kind of my thing/?" Arthur laughs. "Fair enough. I know there are plenty of students doing distance programs these days." Including one of Alma's own interns... "MIT did a ton of it. I can't say I'm committed to Detroit. I'm probably here a few years, tops." Aster gives Arthur an odd look. "You know, to a lot of people, 'a few years' /is/ a commitment. Not necessarily a lifelong thing, but it's not something to sneeze at." That's the difference between a twentysomething and one more... mature, like Arthur. Arthur tilts his head, and smiles. Spreading his arms, he shrugs. "Good point. I'm determined to be here until it's safe to go back to my old life. When the world is ready for my technology. Politically." Not that that's something a mad scientist would say. "Well you have my support if you need any on that project." Aster raises an eyebrow. "Politically ready? What, did they call you mad, say you're too busy asking if you /can/ to question whether you /should/, say you're going to doom us all?" Arthur sits back, and smiles as he sips. "I think the wording was, you were so busy seeing if you could, that you didnt' ask if you should. But that Georgian drought was going to be a thing of the past. And after that, California." Aster tilts her head. "So... weather control? Or just making an awful lot of water happen?" Arthur sits up, pointing to his gun. "Well, I take my research in energetics, and put it on a larger scale. So you see.." Now gesturing in a circular motion with his hands. "go out into the ocean, create a heat pump, get a pressure differential going, and boom, a good sized rain storm where we need it. But you start talking about tropical cyclones and people think you mean hurricanes. But not that large." Aster hmms, hand running over her chin. "And you've done the calculations for how it would affect weather patterns moving forwards? A single big rain storm doesn't end a drought, after all -- and there's the risk of ripple effects too, isn't there? Even if it's not the danger of catastrophic weather events, there are still risks to manage." Arthur shrugs. "Weather is chaotic. I don't really worry about that. And as for one not being enough, so you send a few. But then people think I'm talking about hammering the atlantic coast with hurricanes, and people get panicked, and it's bad PR... and now I'm in Detroit. Laying low." Aster wrinkles her nose. "Weather isn't /pure/ chaos. There are patterns, distinctive patterns. That's a lot of what climate /is/, isn't it? Manmade climate change hasn't been a good thing so far. I mean, yes drought is bad and it's good to resolve it, but I think you still need to run the numbers and be sure of exactly when, where, and how much." Arthur nods. "Well it's chaotic in the mathemtical sense. There's order to it, and process, and systems, but they're really beyond our ability to predict the deltas. Hopefully in a few years things settle down and I can get back to that work. California could really use it." Aster nods. "And in the meantime, maybe look into carbon scrubbing. With, I dunno, flying tree islands or whatever. That would be good too." Arthur chuckles. "I could see working onthat, if we need it. But MIT was talking about solar dimming. That could be easier." Aster grins. "Or pushing the earth farther away from the sun so it receives less of the heat. Bonus, we'd get a long year." Arthur points with his mug. "That may be harder. I like the idea of dimming the sun, becuase then we can turn it up and down as we need it." Aster nods. "That whole thing is way beyond me. I mean, unless they find the sun's API, see where it got set with, like... 'double surfaceTemp equals 5778'." Arthur smiles and snickers. "Data should behave as such," he says in a mock-grandiose voice. "But see, it always comes back to work. I guess when you're this committed to it, you never quite get away from it." Aster shakes her head. "It's not just because I'm a programmer that I see things that way. That's... how I do things. Being so much into computers, that's /how/ I was able to see past all this gunk and into the truth, into how... /flexible/ this world is. If you know the right way to push it." Arthur nods. "I figured. I'm just picturing you as a Symbologist now." Time to see if she knows her Star Ocean. "Better not be real though, because I won't recognize quantization without a fight." Aster tilts her head. "Symbologist?" No, apparently she does not know her Star Ocean. Arthur snickers. "Star Oceaion: Til the End of Time. Major plot spoilers." He then looks to see if she wants them. Aster bahs, waving a hand. "I don't care about spoilers. But the basics is, what? People doing magic by drawing symbols in the air, like in so many anime and some Hermetics?" Arthur grins. "Ship from a Star Trek type civilzation crashes on a primitive world. Turns out they have Symbology, which is yes, that. Turns out they're hacking the machine code of their 3D simulation created by a 4D civilization. The lead programmer in the final fight says Data should behave as such." Aster aahs, nodding her head. "Bet you it was one of my people who made that game, trying to get the seed into more people's minds. Though, I don't think /we/ are just data. If we were, I wouldn't be able to glimpse beyond like this. No, there's a seed of something else. It just doesn't take root in everyone." Arthur does smile at that as well. "Good. Teach kids there may be rules, and systems, beyond our entire system of knowledge. A great unknown." Aster smiles. "And all rule systems have loopholes. Every limitation can be subverted." She shivers, excitement gleaming in her eyes. "But... minds are rather /complex/ bits of programming, so I should probably get a bit more attention on those studies, too." | |
