That's Impossible, Even for a Computer

[Geneviève Lasedri]

It seemed as if Geneviève was procuring friends in low places these days. Time was running short, and she knew it. If the Republic was going to roll over, she would kick them out of the way and plant her own flag. Someone needed to take a stand.

But what was most interesting was the places she had traveled in her string-pulling and project coordination. It was the first time she had visited Nar Shaddaa, a moon where various activities could be carried out without the government so much as batting an eye. It was a lovely place that the Republic had done largely nothing with. But it was a good location to find the kind of talent she was searching for.

With a couple of hidden Rebel snipers overlooking the appointed meeting spot, Lasedri strode out onto the balcony of the famous Promenade and awaited the arrival of her slicing contacts. One of them had worked for her organization on a little venture before, so the odds of getting screwed over were ever so slightly diminished. But she did have money.

[member="Kage"], [member="Mouse"]

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Kage walked up onto the Promenade to meet [member="Geneviève Lasedri"] , a long lost contact to himself. The Rebel Alliance. Heh, it wasn't that long ago he was apart of it. But.. He had left, not because he didn't believe in their goals, but because of the fact that he was.. Going through some things. Things that didn't work out with a group.

Smiling however, he'd step up beside the female, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Sup?"

 

[Geneviève Lasedri]

Gen raised an eyebrow, not exactly used to being greeted in such casual fashion. However, it was perfectly acceptable in such a situation. The more 'layman' they sounded, the less anyone would note about them. Attention was the last thing she desired.

"It's been a while," she commented, avoiding complete eye contact. This one had been a squadron leader for the Rebellion in its earlier days, and it was almost magical that his name should reappear while searching for a slicer to handle a completely unrelated matter. Someone with expertise in both programming and flying machines--it was incredibly ideal. "I'm not here long, but I have hired an associate for you who is also in the slicing field."

She held up a credit chit. "Buy whatever you want or need with this. I'm sure 400,000 credits will do? But make sure you finish this project, no matter. I haven't been in a particularly good mood in recent months." And with that, she began to walk away, allowing their little meeting to conclude just as a drug deal might go down. It was Nar Shaddaa. Such things happened all the time.


(Will be bringing my own slicer character in next post. Just set us up however you want, and I'll play along.)

[member="Kage"]

 

[Beowoof]

The slinky slicer sneaked out from the shadows upon Lasedri's departure, heading for the little coop she had been living in for the past few weeks, stashing drives, circuitry, and all sorts of computer equipment that she had either procured herself or been provided with by the woman who had just left. Yellow bag slung over her shoulders as usual, the Nar Shaddaa immigrant waved over her shoulder, bidding the other hire follow. "I have a safe place figured out. Don't worry."

Whether he followed or not was up to him. It was quite possible that Nozomi could do this by herself, given enough time. She had all the resources at her disposal, after all. But time was of the essence, so hopefully he would not just stand there and lose his pay. Sucks for you if you don't want to cash in on this opportunity.

[member="Kage"]

 

[Beowoof]

The development coop Nozomi had claimed was a little ventilation maintenance room--though it felt more like a boiler room at night. It was amazing to note the rapid change in temperature at dawn and dusk. Such is the natural weather pattern for a moon that might be barren were it not for the towering city that utterly covered the surface. But it was that strange, vast, durasteel jungle that had drawn Tsukikaneko here in the first place.

Sliding down a stair railing and hopping through the vent she had 'fixed' a few weeks back, the athletic computer technician entered her temporary realm, electronic machinery stacked against the walls and datapads lying about the floor, all in-sync to run through random scenarios and error-test whatever programs she would be developing.

A large, cubic chunk of circuitry and sensors was situated atop a dehumidifier, the physical base of her work that would produce this targeting device. "How you doing?" she asked, treating it as if it were animate. Sometimes she had no one better to talk to. "It can't be that bad down here. You've got all these friends." Nozomi swept her hand about to gesture towards all the computer components.

Do machines talk to machines? Nozomi glanced at her datapads, thinking strange thoughts.

 

[Beowoof]

Dropping to the floor (It was a rather hard floor, but she had kind of done this before.) and picking up one of the datapads, "Zomi" began to logically run through how to arrange the coding in order to utilize the sensory facets best, glancing frequently up at her Companion Cube. "At the altitude you're going to be, we're talking about lots of curving and lots of degrees, I guess."

The final product was supposed to be able to predict future locations of a moving object, which would be tracked by infrared and laser sensors, as well as data from received imagery feeds broadcast by satellites or orbiting vessels, all wired into the cubic driver that currently resided on the dehumidifier. This was going to be difficult, considering the fact that both the targeted object and the vehicle with the targeting system would be simultaneously in motion, and not necessarily in the same direction. And, from what she had been told, the vehicle would be multiple kilometers above the surface.

These 'challenges' she accepted often seemed on the verge of the impossible. "I don't know about you, but I hope your hardware is what it's supposed to be." Sometimes she wondered if she was crazy. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy."

 

[Beowoof]

Since the hardware was assumed to be what it needed to be (It had been received in a state that was ready to be programmed, though Nozomi had cannibalized most of the other computers in the room in order to allow for the extra sensors inputs--and a bit of virus protection.), the slicer could practically spit some code out and make it what it needed to be in a matter of hours. Except no one could do that--not on their own, at least. Super programmers were not as super as people made them out to be these days. Sure, they were super, but the definition had become quite skewed by popular media. No, this project would take a few more days and a lot of bubblegum and Jawa Juice, even as it was mostly completed by this point.

The dark-haired programmer set the datapad in her lap and then flexed her biceps a bit to wind before stretching, preparing for the long haul. "I'm up all night, I'm up all night..." she sang, quoting some generic pop song that sounded like a thousand others from last year. Her fingers then moved down to the screen surface of her GamersWin97 pad, tips tapping on the virtual keys while she also spoke in verbal code commands to be added. It was multitasking at its finest. If only she could lift weights while doing it.

 

[Beowoof]

A lot of people like to type out random words and commands that sound cool, but, really, have no function and are either used to throw ignorant newbs off or are used by said newbs. But here was some real stuff:

System.yeah.thatsright().getMyMilkshake(summerEvent897);

Object ofMyDesire(long cookies,long cream,String allINeed)
{

if(IDoThis)
YouDoThat(cookies);
else if(!IDoThis)
HaveFunBud(cream);

System.naw.youreNotSerious(cookies : cream, allINeed);

}

System.soFarOut.tellEm(iDoWhatIWant);

That was some expert programming, right there. And that was only a sample of what "Zomi" was putting in. You can imagine the genius of the rest of the code.

Every now and then, Tsukikaneko would grab that can of condensed Jawa Juice and pour a whole spoonful in her cup, then dump the water collected from the dehumidifier and add it to stir. It tasted a little weird, but after fifteen hours of programming, you might not mind it either. "I think I'm finally getting somewhere in life, you know?" she announced to the cube. She would be sad when it was gone.

 

[Beowoof]

What she had realized in the midst of her programming was that the device needed not one, but two infrared sensors. Since the targeting computer would have to deal with three moving objects--the target, the bomber, and the rotating world below--a 'three-dimensional' topographical read would be necessary in order to gauge how, exactly, everything was moving. It left her scratching her head for a while, but eventually Nozomi had scrapped a few more computers and shoved them into the cube's circuitry somehow. It was like playing doctor?

This whole development project had taken four days so far, and she had acquired about as many hours of sleep in total. It was strange how her initial coding was not the slightest bit impaired, but when it came to fixing errors, her blurry eyes could not trace what was going on, and it took several sessions of chattering with the backup datapads to figure out what she had missed.

But the predictive targeting was finally coming to be within her eight thousand four hundred seventy-six little command lines. The velocity and angle bits had been the hardest, but there were known formulas for that. The Holonet could be a beautiful place--especially at 03.00. Feeling dehydrated, Nozomi dumped another gulp of Jawa Juice down her throat. Of course, the sodium content of Jawa Juice was through the roof, so that just made things worse.

"How long have you been up?" she demanded, glaring at the cube of circuitry. "Don't look at me that way."

 

[Beowoof]

Seven days. Ouch.

To be fair, that was partly due to her absolutely collapsing on the sixth day from exhaustion. She had missed the couple of maintenance guys stop by and then scramble when they thought they had stumbled upon some Republic secret agent operation headquarters. Yeah, maybe it did look like that.

Anyway, what Tsukikaneko had discovered was that, while she could develop the program, she could not make it work for whatever practical use it had without the right numbers--numbers that only her employer likely had. But the essential coding had been established, that was certain. Her datapads were still running physics simulators to optimize things in various scenarios, but she was done as far as she was concerned. It was just too much as it was.

What the predictive computing did was track the speed of the targeted object and calculate the correct angle to fire whatever projectiles were being utilized. Then the projectile launchers would reactively angle their weapons and fire at the predicted position of the target by the time of critical impact with whatever was on the surface. Knowing that moving objects can often alter their courses, she had allowed for the sensors to continue running computations and direct the projectiles to alter their descent trajectory within the first thirty seconds of launch.

So it was all done. And she was mad at that stupid, stoic, demeaning cube over there. They could have that guy. She was done with him.

missViola i have your thing ready its crazy and i want it out of here please take it away i dont like him everything was fine before and then he started talking back to me and now i dont know what to do im scared missViola please return i hate it its finished you can have it please dont ask me to do this again im not interested hes out to get meeeeee i made war