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Post by Dr. Kamala Lakshmi on Jul 16, 2010 1:54:46 GMT -5
Dr. Kamala Lakshmi would never know what it was like to be pregnant, but she suspected that this was quite a lot like it.
"Come oooonnnn..." she said, looking out the window of her office onto the street. "Come oooonnn..." She drummed the end of a pen against the desk. After some flipping that was a little too vigorous, the pen flew right out of her hand. Annoyed, she picked up her coffee mug (a Star Trek one) and drank from it. She made a face. Cold. Why was the coffee always cold? Maybe because she was too easily distracted by work...
A blur of white caught her attention. She focused on the faraway truck - orange and purple on the sides. FedEx. FedEx!!!
She was downstairs to meet the truck in a trice, even stepping outside to meet the truck. Her toes tapped as she waited, impatient as all hell. Patience had never been one of her virtues.
The driver stepped out of the truck, and was a little surprised to be confronted with a brightly, almost-scarily-smiling woman. "Hi!" she said, with a manic edge to her cheerfulness that was just enough to make him worry. "Got anything for me today?"
"Uh..." The college-age boy flipped to the second page on his clipboard. "You Dr. Lakshmi?"
"Yeeeessss," the scientist said, tugging unobtrusively on her labcoat.
"Sign here, please." She scribbled her signature onto the electronic datapad. "Big delivery, this."
"Yes, could you help me take it up to the second floor?" she asked. She was practically shaking. If those idiots had damaged it in transit...!
"Sure," he said.
The big crate was heavier than it looked, but they finally managed to get it up the stairs. Dr. Lakshmi considered mentioning to Cutty that they really needed elevators.
She finally managed to shoo off the delivery man, who was quite curious to see what was in the crate, and sank down in the manner of someone who was finally done waiting next to the crate on the floor.
"Box," she said, hugging its side. Now, to find a crowbar...
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Post by Kahlen Jeanne Nox on Jul 16, 2010 14:36:27 GMT -5
Kahlen had been wandering the second floor with Mikhail on her head. She checked to see if the supplies she ordered for Mikhail had come in the post office. They hadn't, so she was about to go downstairs when se saw a couple of men hauling a crate, followed by one of the professors. She couldn't remember the woman's name...
She followed the group and waved at the men as they went past her. She peered into the doorway of the room they had left, finding the same woman leaning against the box.
"Hullo," she said. "I was passing by and noticed the box being brought here."
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Post by Dr. Kamala Lakshmi on Jul 21, 2010 20:28:44 GMT -5
"Hm?" Dr. Lakshmi looked up at the door and adjusted her glasses. "Yes! This is something I've been waiting for. Surprised it took so long, actually."
She hummed a little as she walked around the crate, checking it again for breaks or dents. "You got a crowbar, kid?"
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Post by Kahlen Jeanne Nox on Jul 22, 2010 11:52:32 GMT -5
"Ooh. What's in there?" Kahlen asked. She could be a bit nosy sometimes, but she figured that the professor wouldn't mind telling her what was in the box. Kahlen wondered what was in there that was so heavy.
"Uh," Kahlen responded to the request for a crowbar. "I don't have one with me right now. I be there might be one somewhere. Perhaps there might be one in a janitor's closet. I can go look if you want me to."
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Post by Joshua Quasar on Aug 1, 2010 17:32:35 GMT -5
Joshua was idly walking through the school, exploring and orienting himself, when he heard some commotion about a crowbar.
He noticed that it was coming from something labelled the Robotics Lab. This might be interesting...
Joshua poked his head through the doorway. "Umm... Hello. Do you need help with that?"
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Post by Tumult on Aug 20, 2010 23:26:01 GMT -5
A robotics lab? Perfect. Hope there's nobody there...
Tumult was in something of a pickle. She'd lost an arm - a signal demultiplexer and serializer board in her shoulder had died, leaving her right arm lifeless and dangling at an awkward angle. This was compounded by the fact that the board was only accessible from the back, and Ada's phone was off. Hopefully, the lab would have a few borrowable arms and nobody around to ask questions. She rounded the corner and stepped inside before noticing that there were people already there.
((OOC - her shoulder looks like it's been dislocated really nastily, and possibly separated as well.))
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Post by Dr. Kamala Lakshmi on Aug 28, 2010 20:13:48 GMT -5
"New student," Lakshmi said bluntly to the girl's question, and wandered over to a storage closet within the room and began rummaging about in it. "If you could get me a crowbar, that'd be --a-ha, gotcha," she said, emerging with a slightly bent crowbar.
She glanced up at the other student who had popped in. "Oh, hello. Yeah, sure. We'll make a party of it. Just, uh...just don't touch anything."
And then the girl with the bad shoulder entered, causing the robotics expert to eye her critically. "You need directions to the nurse's office? 'Cause that don't look like a picnic." There was something off about it, though. The way she was holding the dislocated arm looked ever so slightly wrong...aside from the general nausea-inducing wrongness of a joint out of place.
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Post by Joshua Quasar on Aug 28, 2010 20:34:41 GMT -5
I won't be able to help much if I can't touch anything, Joshua thought exasperatedly. Stupid young body and people treating you like a kid again. It was pretty awful the first time.
His attention was more focused on the fact that it was... "A new student?" They deliver people in boxes now? What kind of planet is this?!
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Post by Dr. Kamala Lakshmi on Aug 28, 2010 20:53:24 GMT -5
"Yah. New student." She wedged the end of the crowbar under the top of the crate, then did something which to someone unfamiliar with her would look rather strange. Rather than using her arms to lever the top off, she climbed on top of a nearby plastic chair, bent one knee high up, and kicked down on the free end of the crowbar.
Crack! The nanobots in her system had done a good job of strengthening her legs. Before, she couldn't even walk. Now, she could kick a wooden crate open. "Ah, technology," she muttered, climbing down from the chair, and went to remove the box's top properly. Sure enough, the contents were just as she had left them - a plain, white capsule-like box with the word LoTUS written on it in bright blue.
And there was something else. "Oh good, they printed the user's manual, save me a lot of work," she said, and tossed the heavy tome over her shoulder. Why would she need it? She'd written the damn thing.
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Post by Joshua Quasar on Aug 28, 2010 21:02:04 GMT -5
Joshua dodged the flying book as it flapped trough the air and thudded into the floor. He raised an eyebrow at the spectacle and knelt down to pick up the book and read it.
This is a manual, he realized, for a machine of some kind. This "student" was a machine! An android! He had seen one in the bus, but he hadn't realized they were actually widespread. How very interesting.
"Do you mind if I have a look at this?" he asked the professor, indicating the manual.
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Post by Tumult on Aug 28, 2010 21:04:45 GMT -5
"It's a... prosthetics issue," Tumult said. "I just need to borrow a pair of hands, as the control board is only accessible from behind."
She stepped into the room, eyeing LoTUS's box carefully. Another robot? Here? What were the odds of that? (She'd estimated at them earlier, of course - given the relative sparsity of self-aware systems on the internet, the odds were vanishingly small.)
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Post by Dr. Kamala Lakshmi on Aug 28, 2010 21:17:02 GMT -5
"Yeah, go on ahead," Lakshmi said absently, more interested in the case than anything. Her attention was diverted, however, when the injured girl mentioned prosthetics.
"Want me to take a look at it? Artificial limbs are, heh, an area of expertise for me." Considering she'd designed and built an android, after all. And more than once she'd thought seriously about just making new legs.
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Post by Tumult on Aug 28, 2010 21:20:57 GMT -5
Tumult's estimate of the chances of things going Seriously Wrong incremented repeatedly. An expert in robotics would probably be able to work out that more of her was artificial than a simple prosthetic - and she had no clue how Dr. Lakshmi would react to nanotechnology. Unfortunately, there were really no other options if she wanted a fix any time soon.
"Would you?" she asked, a little tentatively.
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Post by Joshua Quasar on Aug 28, 2010 21:23:08 GMT -5
Joshua was about to open the manual when he realized that the girl who had entered the room and was being doted on by Lakshmi, talking about prosthetics and whatnot, was actually the android he had seen in the bus on the way to the Academy.
They really are everywhere! He opened the manual and stared at the table of contents. Where to start? The power source, probably, that would be most useful for his- oh but what about the electronic brain? And how does it cool itself? Choices, choices. He furrowed his brow. The professor didn't seem to be very focused on him nor the manual, so he decided to put it in his bag for later reading. Better observe what is going on here and now...
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Post by Dr. Kamala Lakshmi on Aug 28, 2010 21:35:02 GMT -5
"Yah. Sure. He'll wait -" She thumped the white box - "and you need some help." She rolled up the sleeves of her labcoat and walked over to Tumult. "Right, now where's the access point again? Round the back of the shoulder?"
She wondered what could have happened to make someone this young need such a prosthetic. Probably nothing good.
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Post by Tumult on Aug 28, 2010 21:39:41 GMT -5
Tumult struggled with her T-shirt for a moment before accepting the inevitable truth that it was going to be spectacularly hard to remove.
"Yes," she said. "The seam runs right along the outer edge of the shoulder blade, and the control board is located under that."
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Post by Dr. Kamala Lakshmi on Aug 28, 2010 21:45:10 GMT -5
Ah-huh. So it was under the t-shirt. Spectacular. "I can just lift the shirt up in the back, if you're okay with that. Better than taking it off, especially with that arm. Plus, it saves the shirt."
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Post by Tumult on Aug 28, 2010 21:57:38 GMT -5
"I'd appreciate that," Tumult said. She turned to present her back to Dr. Lakshmi. "There's nothing functionally wrong with the arm, it's just the control board that went out. No harm in moving it around."
((Under her shirt, Tumult wears a sports bra - it could, hypothetically, obscure the line between prosthetic and flesh. If one existed.))
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Post by Joshua Quasar on Aug 28, 2010 22:41:07 GMT -5
Joshua blushed. They seemed oblivious to his presence, and were taking her shirt off? He went to study the box with keen interest.
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Post by Kahlen Jeanne Nox on Aug 28, 2010 23:09:57 GMT -5
Kahlen, knowing nothing about robotics, watched from the sidelines. She was shocked when Tumult came in with a dislocated shoulder, but could only offer an "Oh! I hope that doesn't hurt!"
'A new student?' Kahlen thought, staring at the box. She'd noticed the room was a robotics lab, so the new student must be a robot. 'Like Tumult, I guess.'
She sat on a stool that she found in the corning, watching as Lakshmi helped Tumult.
(Wow, this thread blew up...)
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Post by Dr. Kamala Lakshmi on Aug 28, 2010 23:43:26 GMT -5
"Right on," Lakshmi said, and gently rolled up the back of the t-shirt. She squinted, trying to find the seam. It was nigh invisible. Now that was quite the technology. Lakshmi was impressed. "The-e-ere it is," she said, finally locating it and opening the access. Wow, but that skin was complex. She gave the control board a quick once-over with her expert eyes. "Yep, there's your problem. Looks like it burnt out. Well, we can fix that in a jiffy, just, uh...gimme a second."
She took a small tool kit out of her labcoat's pocket with her free hand. A few moments of poking around in the tiny tool kit yielded exactly what she needed to replace the part. Now all she needed was a replica of the part that needed replacement. Placing the tool's handle in her mouth (they were her own tools and she did sterilize them regularly), she pulled open a nearby drawer to look for the replacement.
"Good thing I'm so organized," she muttered, which came out more as "Muh fhing aho horha'ih." The scientist picked up the replacement board with her free hand and transferred it to the hand holding the shirt up. This allowed her to switch the little tool to her hand and replace the part.
Hm. Come to think of it, the skin of the prosthesis didn't really feel different from the girl's skin proper. She felt a sort of tingling in her fingers, the nanobots alerting her to the presence of electrical energy - more so than was in a normal human. Either she'd had a lot of Gatorade recently, or she was more than she seemed.
Time to test a theory. She sent a message through the nanobots, in binary. Just to check.
"You doin' okay, kid?" she asked nonchalantly.
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Post by Tumult on Aug 28, 2010 23:58:20 GMT -5
"I've been worse," she said.
In binary, wrapped in a proper IP frame, she elaborated.
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Post by Dr. Kamala Lakshmi on Aug 29, 2010 1:04:55 GMT -5
"Huh." [So you are an AI. You won't go through that again, not if it's up to me you won't.] Dr. Lakshmi was a staunch advocate of sentience-based rights - once something could think for itself, it wasn't 'just a computer' anymore.
She reapplied the skin. "There, give that a try. The replacement should be compatible."
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Post by Tumult on Aug 29, 2010 1:17:24 GMT -5
Tumult's shoulder clicked and popped as servos came back online, and the entire joint returned to a more human-looking configuration. She moved her arm (carefully) to the various limits of its motion, and nodded.
"So much for floating platform joints being better design options," she said finally. "Thank you."
Via wireless, she added more. [It was a complicated situation - I was occupying the entire computer lab, and doing bad things to the rest of the network. That and the computer professor was rather... irate about my existence. It was the best of a bad set of options.]
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Post by Dr. Kamala Lakshmi on Aug 29, 2010 1:49:08 GMT -5
"Think nothing of it," Lakshmi said, replacing the tool in the mini-kit, which disappeared back into her pocket. "Glad to see it's working now. Anytime you need a tune-up, feel free to stop by." [Oh. Yes, that would be a complicated situation. Who's the computer professor? Galontauré-Jones?] Lakshmi frowned, just slightly. The two of them might need to have Words at some point. [Are you an organic AI - that is, did you come about on your own, or did someone make you?] She secretly hoped for organic. That would be more fun. That taken care of, she returned her attention to the crate and its contents. "Okay, kids, it's time to meet your new friend," she said, rubbing her hands together. She located a fingerprint scanner at one end of the smooth white box and put her hand on it. Blue light flickered under her hand, and they could hear the sound of a catch releasing. "Wish I'd at least designed the box better, but that can't be helped. Unlike some of the toys we got as kids, the box is not going to end up being more fun than the contents." So saying, she picked up one corner of the box's lid and managed to move it aside. If picked up, the lid would seem to be plastic. Closer inspection by someone who could tell the difference would reveal it as carbon fiber-reinforced polymer. But Lakshmi was not interested in the box anymore - instead she was looking into the box. "Hello, beautiful," she murmured, staring at the curled-up android with tears glistening in her eyes. He really was remarkable. "Hello..." She'd activated him for test runs in the lab, sure. But this was the real world. This would have consequences. And damned if she was going to reset his memory if something bad should happen. You wouldn't do it to a human. "Oh, honey. We shipped you in your helmet." Now she wasn't making sense and she knew it. The scientist reached behind the android's head and found the power port. "Time for baby's first day of school," she said, and activated it. |
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Post by Kahlen Jeanne Nox on Aug 29, 2010 12:41:14 GMT -5
Kahlen had a confused look on her face as Lakshmi began talking to whatever was in the box. She put Mikhail on her shoulder and got up from her stool so that she could get a closer look at what was in the box.
She figured that the box held some sort of robot, considering it was shipped to a robotics lab. Not to mention, Lakshmi kept talking about a 'new friend.'
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Post by Joshua Quasar on Aug 29, 2010 13:38:41 GMT -5
Joshua stood back a little as Lakshmi started bustling around the box, virtually oblivious to his presence. He watched as she opened the box with a finger press and shifted the lid away to reveal something. He got on his toes to peek in and was surprised to see that the android in the box was actually rather inferior to the one already standing - and was that breathing? He wasn't sure - in the room. It was obviously a machine, whereas the girl was a very convincing facsimile of a human being, even if you could spot it if you were paying attention.
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Post by LoTUS on Aug 31, 2010 0:32:51 GMT -5
> PadmaOS v1.02b - version LoTUS
> Reactivation sequence initiated.
> Systems check...
> Systems check...10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%...
> Systems check...all systems go!
> Initializing...
> Initializing...
> Initializing...
The android opened its eyes. They were bright blue - unnaturally so, and lacking pupils. It untucked its head from its chest and gradually moved out of the fetal position by extending its arms and legs. The action was roughly analogous to stretching. It looked around at the students, and at its creator.
And then it blinked. Sleepily.
"Good morning," he said - for the voice was clearly male, albeit with a slight tinny quality that marked it as synthesized.
"Honey, it's two in the afternoon," the robotics professor said gently.
The android frowned. "I must still be on California time. Why didn't it reset?"
"Because I haven't activated your GPS checker yet." The professor cleared her throat. "Everyone, this is the, heh, Lifeform of Total Unequivocal Sentience. Lotus for short. Lotus, this is...er..." She looked at the students as if seeing them for the first time. "Um, who are you people?"
"Hello," Lotus said, smiling and waving at the others. He was especially focused on Tumult.
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Post by Tumult on Aug 31, 2010 3:06:22 GMT -5
"TRON, muchly?" Tumult muttered to Joshua as LoTUS booted.
(Taken from Tumult's twitter: [Babbage's beard, does /everyone/ here have an Arecibo that they casually wave around?])
"Hi," Tumult said, wondering slightly about the seeming redundancy in "total unequivocal".
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Post by Kahlen Jeanne Nox on Aug 31, 2010 12:55:16 GMT -5
Kahlen's eyes widened as she watched the android stand up. She hadn't seen anything like it before and was mesmerized by it's blue eyes.
"Er... Hullo. I'm Kahlen," she stammered after the android was introduced. "Nice to.. er, meet you."
Her Canadian politeness (tm) won over her shock, so she extended her hand to Lotus.
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