Mid-semester lab takeover

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less forwent his original plan when the gun broke up without his help. Instead he settled for standing over Michelle for a few seconds and growling. He then casually walked over to a corner of the room, tugged a cushion off of a nearby chair, and curled up on it to recover from the strain of shifting so often. He did not, however, fall asleep. He was going to keep an eye on the two military girls from now on.

[Michelle Wilcox]

Michelle got to her feet and approached Aurora, deciding Less was no longer an immediate threat. "What the hell was that for?" yelled Michelle in Aurora's face, "wolfman over there was getting out of line and you just decided to screw with me?" Michelle expected an attack from both less and Aurora, but this time she was ready for them. Her gun lay disassembled on the floor, but she didn't expect she would be needing it.

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Don't mind the soft growling coming from the corner. Really, it's nothing. Possibly.

[Ada Turing]

Ada typed a command, and every speaker in the lab shrieked a headache-inducing squeal.

"Stand the hell down!" she yelled moments after the noise stopped. "This is my project, and you pack of military scavengers can all go to hell."

[Rena Thompson]

Rena was now getting distinctly annoyed at the lack of control over this situation, and the fact that everyone wanted to get in the way of her job. "If you want something done right..." she muttered, standing up from the terminal. She thought about knocking Aurora out as an uncooperative civilian, but it wasn't worth it and it was petty at best.

"There's nothing left for it." She said, making for the exit. "I'm going to ask the teacher to shut the school network off. If he doesn't cooperate, I'll just get the higher ups to do it from city centre. Thank you all for your cooperation."

[Ada Turing]

"Byte me," was Ada's retort. "You're in over your head and you know it."

[Aurora Lumina Robinson]

Aurora checked to make sure her ears weren't bleeding, even though the pitch wasn't loud or high enough to cause that. This entire encounter had put her in a bad mood, and she was now exceptionally irritable. She watches Rena leave, giving a dirty look, but saying nothing.

[Michelle Wilcox]

Damn, thought Michelle as she gathered the pieces of her weapon and left. Rena had gotten the higher-ups involved, meaning that Michelle would have to get the Navy involved in order to avoid being sidelined altogether. She had wanted to avoid contacting her superiors, which would have likely resulted in desk-bound Captain from taking all the credit, but now it looked like she had no choice but to play kingmaker for the Naval brass.

[Ada Turing]

Ada slumped down in her chair.

"Well, that went well..." she said. "Aurora, would you mind if I asked Tumult to move out of the lab? I don't exactly want either of them to get their hands on her."

[Aurora Lumina Robinson]

Aurora was still a bit mad at Ada for the techno-scream, but Tumult was the reason she had stuck around, so she tried to stow her impishnish.

"She'd kind of hard to talk to about specific things like that..."

Ada pulls up a prompt that inexplicably starts dictating the 'conversation' between Aurora and Tumult.

> Tumult, do you think you can try to move somewhere else?
> I am multiple places.
> No, I mean move from these computers to somewhere else?

Aurora's interactions couldn't be distilled into text very well, so Ada couldn't see the more elaborate visual concepts being sent to Tumult, explaining what 'these computers' were, and 'somewhere else' being some other computer in the school. After a search through the school's network, it responded.

> Moving will necessitate a significant scaling down of my capabilities.
> If you don't, some mean people are coming after you.
> What are the consequences of this?

Aurora looks up at Ada, confused, and a bit worried. "What'll happen to Tumult if they get him?"

[Ada Turing]

"I don't know," Ada said, guessing that Tumult had probably discovered the microphones connected to all the PCs. "I can make a guess, though. They'll take Tumult apart, one byte at a time, and try to work out what makes her tick. Regardless of what they find or don't find, I can tell you this much: There's no way that Tumult will ever be allowed to continue running. In fact, they would probably try to hard-code her to work for them. It's the worst fate I can imagine for an AI, and there's no way I'll let it happen."

[Aurora Lumina Robinson]

"Where do you think she should move to?"

[Ada Turing]

"Well, therein lies the problem..." Ada said, thinking. "My computer is probably the safest spot, but there's no way it's up to running her at full speed."

Ada was struck by an idea.

"Your dress is nanotech, right? Can you use it to make things? Like a CPU or fifty?"

[Aurora Lumina Robinson]

"Oh," she looked down at herself. "My dress is actually only a minor part of it..." She lifted up her arm and the liquid split around it forming various shapes, revealing the skeletal prosthetic underneath.

"And I can make a computer work when I concentrate..." she demonstrated by reconstructing a PDA in her arm, complete with silvery buttons and a screen. "But these run on batteries that I insert - I would need to plug into the wall to power something bigger. Plus, I think these computers have heating issues, right? I wouldn't be able to run even one of these on me."

[Ada Turing]

"Hum..." Ada said, still thinking. "Okay, new direction. Can you have them make raw materials into things? Preferably very small things? Give me a few weeks, and I could design the CPUs that Tumult would need to run on, if you could fabricate them..."

[Michelle Wilcox]

Michelle had left the lab and was walking down the hallway. When she was sure that no one, especially Rena, was listening, she pulled out a cel-phone. After 15 minutes of waiting, she was able to get in contact with an intelligence analyst she had met 6 moths prior. "Sir," she began, "I've discovered a working artificial intelligence..."

[Aurora Lumina Robinson]

"Hmm... I can probably do it if you give me some direction. But while we're doing that, are we gonna leave tumult here in the lab?"

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

From listening in, Less could tell that the unusual amount of magic was probably just from the computers coming alive. Idly he wondered if this new life-form could actually use any of the magic surrounding it. If it could, he could possibly talk it through a spell or two. The not-threat girl with the silver dress had mentioned heating issues. Could a wind-direction spell help with that? And animexternalism could help keep it stable if they had to move it somewhere...

He let out a soft whine and thumped his tail on the floor, hoping to get their attention.

[Ada Turing]

"We can't, Aurora," Ada said. "I think until we can get the new CPUs up and running, our best option would be for Tumult to move to my computer. I don't know if it's powerful enough to run Tumult at all, let alone at any appreciable speed, but it'd only be temporary. Designing the new CPUs will be the only thing I work on until they're running, I promise."

[Aurora Lumina Robinson]

Aurora was distracted by Less. She makes a passing comment to Ada, "Can you tell her that? I think you'd say it better than me," then proceeded to approach Less.

"Is your foot alright? I never thanked you for helping out back there." She reached out a hand to pet him.

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less nodded in a very human-like fashion and extended the mentioned foot to show that the wound had become scar tissue. The scar was still tender, so he would have some trouble walking on that foot for a little while. This was especially so because the bullet had gone all the way through his foot and burrowed into the floor.

He allowed Aurora a few pets before sitting up. He held up a forepaw and tried to make a gesture like typing. He didn't want to shift again for a while, and was trying to ask about getting to a computer with a word processing program.

[Alaine Kensington]

Alaine ran down the corridor, first spotting Michelle trying to make a phonecall. "Wilcox, come with me. Now." Her tone let no room for excuses. Rena, a bit further down the hallway was also called to the lab. With a glare that could almost kill she overlooked the situation in the lab.

"And here I was, thinking I could leave you lot alone for a minute to get Galontauré-Jones to have a look at this setup. WHAT IN BLAZES ARE YOU DOING?! I just heard a gunsoht, there's two students apparently fleeing the scene or trying to get word out, and somehow you also got East Tundra involved in this. I want an explanation for this, NOW."

[Ada Turing]

Ada left the keyboard behind for a moment, and turned to face prof. Kensington.

"I didn't do it! Michelle and Rena went crazy, tried to boss everyone around, and then hurt Less when he tried to defend us!"

[Aurora Lumina Robinson]

Aurora thought she got the gyst of Less's request and gestures at a nearby console, opening up Notepad.

[Rena Thompson]

Rena sighed again and put her hand on her head. "I try to get work done. I'm just doing my job... Look, I really didn't want to cause any trouble. It doesn't benefit me any if this happens messily. Just... wanna... do my job." The situation was now completely FUBAR. It was all a bit much. Nobody said it would be easy, but at least civilians usually stayed out of the way of people with guns and power.

"I... really, I'm just doing my job. This is a matter of national security. That's my department, in a way. I wanted it shut down. It's a threat. Threats must be dealt with."

[Michelle Wilcox]

"I can explain, Professor," said Michelle, in the calmest, most reasonable voice she could muster given the circumstances "Rena had orders to confiscate the computer setup, but Less tried to bite her head off. If I hadn't shot him things would've gotten really messy." Michelle, of course, knew perfectly well that Less had done no such thing, but she expected that Less had a reputation after that fight with Verin on the way to school.

[Ada Turing]

"Typical military," Ada muttered. "You just want to murder Tumult and dissect her. Nothing personal."

[Aurora Lumina Robinson]

"Nuh uh!" Aurora's spectacular demonstration of maturity would help her case tremendously. "Liar liar! Less didn't do anything 'till you shot him!"

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less snorted and bristled his fur at Michell's accusations, but still tried to work the keyboard. Even in human form, Less tended to have awful typing abilities. As a wolf it was even harder to understand. Make of it what you will, but this is what Less typed after a lot of fumbling: "get as oeicfe of strinmg, tid a fdocus rock top it. have comoputeer hjold it,. maybe bnetywerernm monitweer andds dewsdk. snkow wouldm helpo, buht therews none heer. compouterr nereds tto use it. think on nit. helpsd."

[Alaine Kensington]

"STOP THIS RIGHT NOW. Miss Thompson, you are a student of this school, not a soldier. You will do as I say, and you have no rights to remove any of these computers, as they are school property. Neither have you the right to call upon outside forces to deal with this unless approved ny the headmistress.

"Miss Wilcox. You have shot a fellow student. Now, it seems East Tundra has no signs of lasting harm, so I will let you off with a heavy detention instead of simply expelling you. Be warned for the future, if I ever hear you assaulting a fellow student again I will make sure that you are expelled.

"East Tundra, I advise you to follow me to my classroom once I sort this mess out, so I can check up on your foot. If Miss Robinson is correct in saying you merely acted in defense, I will keep this at a more reasonable level. Miss Robinson, please try to maintain at least a bit of dignity. I know you're still young, but arguing this way isn't very helpful.

"Miss Turing, I have called professor Galontauré-Jones to look at your construct, and you will remain here to assist him. I think Miss Robinson would als do well to stay. The rest of you are following me to the headmistress' office and I will sort out your detentions."

The glare this time was deadly, and any argument against Alaine's orders would be instantly quelled. They'd passed a line, and she made sure they knew it.