Aster Reports on Daugherty

Aster tells Rei what she has learned about Thomas Daugherty.

Date: 09/14/2018	Packard Plant, Concealed Sub-Level
Cast: Aster Rei
Rei is not in her lab for a change but in a more residential area that is far more hospital to humans in the area above it, though still in the depths below the Packard ruins. Aster would know the place from previous visits, accessed through the same void one needs to pass through to reach the lab. Rei herself seems to be looking a bit better than your last encounter laying on the floor of her lab. This time she is sitting cross-legged, seemingly meditating in the open training area in the center of the room, though when Aster enters her eyes snap open. "Knock knock," Aster calls as she comes through the void. That announces her presence before she's even in the residential area -- always good to let protective types know who you are and that they don't need to respond to your presence with violence. She squints into the dim light, adjusting her glasses with one hand. There's something off about the look in her eyes, a tired and slightly dazed look. "Hey. This investigation has been... quite a doozy." Rei's eyes track Aster from where she sits in a meditative posture as the other woman enters the space, "Welcome, please make yourself comfortable. I thought you might find this space more accomodating than the lab. You said you had new information?" she gestures around for Aster to find a place to sit and watches her expectantly. Aster gives the furniture a cautious look, and sits down, testing it with her weight. "Not exactly," she says. "We're not any closer to finding Daugherty. But we know /why/ he's been so tough to find. You won't like it. The short of it is, it's an active Union cover-up." Rei was not seem surprised by this, not even a little, in fact judging by her reaction she was expecting it. "That was what I suspected. From what I have been able to piece together it was the Union that did the experiments on me there, Daugherty had to have been an Awakened Union agent to have created the Gleipnir worm. That is where things get strange though, he violated his orders and created fake orders for the lab to be mothballed instead of destroyed along with all of the research subjects, then he died in a mysterious car accident three months later that nobody can access information on and the global internet seems to actively thwart searches related to. I am not sure I believe he is dead, the timing is convenient enough that he likely staged his own death, perhaps in order to defect. If it had been otherwise, the Union likely would have discovered his deception and returned to the lab to finish what he did not, but that hasn't happened. Though I am still left with the question of why he left everything mothballed." Aster gives a wry smile. "'The global internet' is right. Any search on Thomas Daugherty triggers some hypertech the Union set on the subject, and it eats the trail, little by little -- getting farther each time someone looks for it. No conventional bit of hacking would get past it. We don't know what /else/ it's covering up, but that's what we're working on next. Figuring out what other queries trigger it, and from there... well. We'll have one big, risky shot at knocking it temporarily offline. While it's down, we'll grab all the information we can, and then probably run like hell because the Union would be... pretty damn quick to respond." She sighs, shaking her head. "From what I understand, you got Shadi looking into this, though specifically Daugherty?" Rei listens, nodding her head here and there as Aster continues, "I have encountered the phenomenon before. When I was attempting to research the symbols on one of the artifacts that were left in the lab, I had never seen their like before and the global internet started giving me deliberate garbage results, I sensed the hypertech procedure you mention as if the Internet itself was actively working against me. My current theory, which I shared with Shadi, is that the common factor in the searches is the Lab and things related to the lab. It's not just Daugherty I am interested in, there was another man in that picture from the lab, Yonatan Spitzer, who is possibly still alive, though he practically seems to have ceased to exist in terms of internet presence a long time ago. There is what limited information on him I have in the files I gave you." Aster blinks... and then her eyes narrow, and she gives Rei a hard look. "You know, our investigation would probably have gone a lot more smoothly and been a lot less taxing and risky on our end if we'd known that kind of thing going into it. As it stands, most of what we uncovered was information about what that hypertech is, how it works, and how we could subvert it. So it sounds pretty much like we busted our asses for things you already knew." She sighs, and her hands slip under her glasses to rub her eyes. "Not everything about the lab triggers it. Spitzer, and Adrien Veitz, that consultant? They don't trigger it. But given how nothing's coming up for Spitzer, he could /have been/ on the system, but it already eradicated everything to do with him." Rei shakes her head, "I believe you misunderstand, I did not know there was active HyperTech until you revealed it, only that the internet was working against my search and that Shadi encountered a similar phenomena. Since she brought you into the investigation, I thought she communicated the difficulties with the searches to you. That search difficulties existed was the extent of knowledge. That it would likely be the Technocratic Union was conjecture based on their involvement with the lab, that involvement was described in the files I sent you. Your uncovering what the phenomenon is, how it works, and how to subvert it is definitely valuable." her tone is even as she relays all of this in a very logical fashion. Aster shakes her head. "...right. Sorry. Just... tired and grumpy here." She sighs, rubbing her eyes some more. "I'll be back to myself. Just gimme a week and maybe some orgasms." Now, is that a direct proposition, or is that just in a general sense? "Shadi didn't mention anything like that to me, and I wasn't the first person she looped into it. That was my mentor. I should introduce you, though given my mentor's proclivities, it won't be in person. But... all I heard was my mentor was trying to find things about him, and /she/ was getting dead ends. That's when we investigated the cause, and found all that hypertech nonsense. We're working on the parameters now, so anything and everything else you can tell us about what triggers this thing, we'll want to know it." Rei tilts her head to on side, unsure how to parse what Aster just said, "I do not believe that I am properly equipped to provide you with the gratification you are looking for. I" A pause, "I can show you the device that I took pictures of and tried to image search when it triggered the phenomena? Would that be helpful?" Aster blinks a few times, squinting at Rei. "Er, gratification? What?" Ah, but there are other subjects to focus on. "Sure. And... I've been assuming you don't want people knowing about, you know, the heart of this investigation. I only fed my master those other two names so we could search them too, and didn't tell her anything about what they worked on together or how it relates to you. I do think I should introduce you, though -- she can do some things that are way beyond me. Her holistic psycho-interpretation skills and higher-level understanding of personality matrices would be pret-ty handy for getting a grip on your code structure, which is just... well beyond me." "It sounds like your mentor prefers to operate from a position of tactical advantage when meeting others." Rei observes, "I am of a similar disposition but I prefer to meet people face to face, giving information to those who hide at a distance is a breach of threat protocal. If you wish to arrange such a meeting, a neutral location to both parties is recommended." That said she pushes herself to her feet and walks towards the door, "Come with me, it's down in the lab." Aster pushes back up to her feet. She's unsteady for a second, but holds up a 'don't help me' finger and soon recovers. "That'd be a hard sell for her. She values her privacy. Hell, /I/ didn't meet her in person until I came and found her in Detroit. And before then, I thought she was a /he/. That should clue you in how private she is. Besides, meeting her in person would..." She makes some face-height gestures while she follows Rei down to the lab. "You know. You've still got that, uh, plasticky look going on, and she's bright enough to figure that out." Rei stops in the doorway before going out, turning and looking back to Aster she says, "I am very private, too. That is precisely why I control the flow of information about myself and why I do not give it out to those who I have not met in person, who I have not assessed the threat of and can find again should I need to." Aster nods, sighing. "Alright. I'll float the idea to her, of meeting the woman behind all these investigations. Keeping that information away from her would just hamstring the investigation too much, but I can see how your mutual privacy could end up clashing." Rei leads Aster through the Void before unlocking the heavy reinforced steel security door that leads to the lab, "It is a complicated thing, I have had trust betrayed in the past. A neutral venue seems to be a fair compromise. If they wish to know about me, why shouldn't I know about them? Greater knowledge confers tactical and strategic advantage, that is not something to be given away lightly." She kicks a small portable generator to life so at least the lights can turn on as she leads Aster through the largely restored previously abandoned underground structure. "This is it," she says lifting up a device in one of the lab spaces and holding it out for Aster to see. The object's ergonomics definitely evoke a rifle or other small arm, though there is no hollow barrel or obvious chamber for any kind of reaction that would produce impulse or force of any kind. There is a repeating pattern of symbols arrayed throughout the length of the device. There are observable similarities in the arrangement of this gold inlay as structurally reminiscent to that of a particle accelerator. Though a cavity through which a particle might be accelerated is conspicuously absent. Aster hmms. "It's a fair point, but consider: you need this knowledge of and relating to yourself to keep a virus from taking you over and turning you into the Union's killbot. The more we share and know right from the start, the less we have to chase our tails coming up with what's already known, and the better chance of uncovering something /useful/ for you before it's too late. The more you conceal of yourself, the less we'll be able to help you. But I do understand wanting the reciprocation, and like I said, I'll float it to her." She peers back and forth along the device's structure, a hand on her chin. "Huh. Looks like a gun, but it could be an overengineered hypertechnological toothpick for all I know. The outer ergonomics mean approximately jack. Do you know what it does? Or did?" Rei shaes her head, "I do not. I was in the process of trying to figure that out when I tried to search the symbols and it became complicated. I believe they may be important and was working on an alternate search method, but became stymied while attempting to power the lab to a greater extent than just turning on the lights. And then MDCI attacked, and things also began accelerating with Gleipnir and analyzing the artififacts sort of fell by the wayside." Aster nods her head, peering more at the device. "Do all the artefacts have this same symbol on them? Man, even finding out what that symbol refers to would be handy -- which is why the Union's suppressing it. Gives us something else to grab when we go for our mad dash for it. Have you tried just, like, pointing it at something and pulling the trigger?" Well that's reckless. "It seems to be burned out and non-functional, I repaired the internal damage but it is missing any sort of power supply to make it operable It would seem to tap divine energy in a similar manner to my power core, but it is not Aeon Wave Technology." Rei replies, "The other artefacts were very different, one was an old iPhone, nothing like this and with no special marks. These markings are unique to this device among the objects left behind." Aster ahs, wrinkling her nose. "Too bad. Having a Union raygun could be handy." She perks up. "An iPhone? Have you been able to get into it, get any data from it? I mean, I doubt they'd be /that/ careless, but just in case..." Rei shakes her head again, "It's definitely not a Union Raygun, they described it as primitive. And there's no data left on the old iPhone. That was the first thing that I checked. That reminds me though, most of the artifacts were supposedly recovered from Palmer Park, the place where that cube was placed. I did recover somethiing from there as well, some sort of Union Hypertech based monitoring device that also had communications features. I was thinking recently I wonder if that could be adapted and repaired to eavesdrop on them somehow." Aster hms. "The scrap cube, you mean? I remember seeing something in the area, a perception filter, but that kind of fell to the side with the body that got found." She sighs. "Of course, iPhone's blank. But still worth a shot." She rubs her eye while she thinks. "Mmn. Think you could get it to work? I mean, you're not worried it'd be like an Etherite trying to use a Hermetic's wand or something like that?" Rei stops to consider that for a moment, while setting the 'particule accelerator' back where she originally took it from, "Even mystical principals can be analyzed with Science, that's what the Scientific method is. Whether I can understand or not should be a matter of time, but given theirs is the science which shapes the conscensus as a baseline, it will hopefully not be too difficult to decipher." Whether she is being overly optimistic remains to be seen. Aster seems unconvinced, but... "It's worth a shot either way," she says. "And even if we can't get the device itself working... it's been a while since it was in the possession of the Technocrats, yes, but it's a connection I've worked before. That link into the MDC's drone network? I got myself into that through sympathetic linkage with an MDC radio. I don't know if that old device would still link back to them after so long out of their possession now, but it could be worth a shot." "Yes, we will need to figure out a place to try it, definitely not here, probably a motel or something out of town like last time." Rei seems in agreement on this, "If you could access them through it, that would be a great information advantage for us." Aster purses her lips, nodding. "It sure is with MDC. Difference being... they're MDC. They aren't like us. They /can't/ detect something like that. But the Union? They'd have alerts for any 'reality deviants' making... I dunno what they'd call them, 'unauthorised connections across polydimensional quantum frequencies' or something like that?" She ughs. "Trying to word it like them is making my head hurt. I'll leave that up to the Etherites... and I should get back home. Just wanted to drop the info I already knew for you. If my master's up for meeting you, I'll be in touch." "Thank you Aster, I appreciate it." Rei says walking her back to the lab doors, "You are always welcome to visit. It's nice.. to have company." Rei smiles a bit, though perhaps it is just emotion fascimile programming she has been working on, "Take care." she waves watching Aster go, to make sure nothing happens to her while she crosses the Void and returns to the surface Packard Ruins from whence she came.