Current Timeline
"Well, Doug, welcome to the security room!" Lorna let the door fling open, revealing quite a nice little setup of monitors and whatnot throughout the room. One of the desks had been cleared off for a new computer and headset however, with a mass of wires and blinky things Lorna decided she shoudln't play with.
"We've got a special job for you if you're willing."
"Oooooo... niiiiiice." He said as he looked around. His fingers were already twitching and wanting to touch things. "What am I to do?" He did remember to finally ask. Despite his descent into geeky electronic heaven, he realized there was a good reason for him to be here.
"Well...I'm not quite sure about the legal status of things, I'll warn you." Lorna started, claiming one of the seats by the desk. "After the whole fangy mutant ultimatum deal we all got to watch on the television you know we're...for lack of a better word 'mobilizing'."
"Ahhh, well..." he sighed. "When you consider that the Patriot Act is still an iffy consideration in and of itself, and considering the severity of the situation, I think I can completely excuse and get down with the whole 'not quite legal' aspect of trying to figure out what the heck is going on." He sat down and looked at the set more closely
"Excellent!" Lorna clapped her hands, then thought better of it. "Well, maybe not excellent but I guess you know what I mean, right?"
"So are we doing a hack, tap, hack and tap, or are we to a point where we want to develop an attack on a system?" He asked, rubbing his hands together as he picked up the headset and put it on. "Am I just listening in, or am I looking for information on a cure? Do we have an addy yet?"
"Don't worry, kiddo, getting to it." She laughed, glad that he was definitely excited about having a job. "We're all ready all jacked in apparently but we need you to be our ears, yeah. Unfortunately we don't have anything for you to attack yet at the moment."
"You're listening for everything, cure talk, location talk, any information you can get on them or what they're about to to do."
"Can do. I take it we already have recording devices as back up too?" He asked as he started to tap on the keyboard to check out the set up more indepth. "How sensitive is the system? Can it pick up background noise too?" He asked. "If we were to hear for example the sound of a siren or bells or something, that might give us a way of narrowing down locations." He suggested too.
"You've got control over most of the settings, not had the recording set up just yet but it's down here by my foot." She gave the shell of it a little kick. "If you want anything louder or more sensitive and can't get it yourself just bully one of our techies into doing it for you."
"think you'll need anything else? We've got things laying around more than likely. It's possible you might have to be set up as a communications hub for us as well."
He was nodding and smiled as she explained. "Makes sense really. It's also the safest thing to do, to have a communication center. And, it might be a good idea to encourage everyone to carry some kind of communicator, especially with the perchance we've developed for sneaking around and getting into trouble." He rolled his eyes to himself. "There's been at least one occasion where I wanted to yell for a teacher to come save me." He admitted.
"Oh, believe me, when we're out in the field we've got our communication all up and running." She assured him with a smile. "Important thing, that, can save your ass and all sorts of things." Lorna couldn't help but tilt her head to the side. "Hope that's not been recent."
"I mean more like we should be having one in general at this point, us students, yeah." He nodded. He scratched his chin and shrugged. "We went into the sewers a while back, and we met patient zero. I kind of um... got grabbed and held upside down at the time." He coughed into his fist.
"Oh, sweetie, you'll get used to that." She grinned, not clear on if she was joking or not. "And it's been discussed but considering we're not the only people who can jack communications we thought it not really all that safe for day to day."
He shrugged a shoulder and decided it wasn't worth arguing about. "Might consider creating a program to look for certain words in a system, like specimen, weapon, cure, etc." He pointed out. "Might help locate certain information within their system once it is located."
"Definitely." She nodded, quite pleased with it. "You're good to handle that or get a recruit to help you with it? We've probably got a fair bit of people for you to choose from."
"I know how." He assured. "It'll give me something to do during the times when there is nothing to listen to." He admitted. "I doubt that they'll spend a lot of time talking where I can hear it after all. So I might as well have something constructive to do with my time." He smiled.
She had to admit he was right, there. "A lot of it will be face to face for them, yeah."
"Oh, hey, you know what else you could do?" She smiled as it just dawned on her. "Review their broadcast, perhaps you can pick things up on that...though they apparenlty have their own techie but they didn't seem the type to assume mutants would be working against them as well."
He nodded. "This is true. They don't seem to get the ramifications of what they are doing. You know, I still feel sorry for the guy they used for this. He was doing his damnedest to get away from us all and hide. I don't think deep down he wanted to hurt us, he didn't want to go back to the lab either. Not that I can blame him. Have you guys figured out what to do about him yet?" He asked.
"Us no, but the fact that he set himself to go into the water? He intended to hurt people still." She sighed, shaking her head. "No location on him either, I imagine he went back to them since they seem to feel confident they'll be able to do what they did here in Washington as well."
"We didn't exactly give him much choice either, we were sort of in the middle of fighting at the time." He grumbled to himself with a sigh. "He'll have to be contained either way though. I just want it clear when he is contained that it is for the actions he did and not because of what he was forced to become. For ethical reasons and to put out the fire of 'publicity'. People could use it as a flag for 'hey they have a point' if done wrong." He shook
*his head. "I also wonder if he knows the 'cure' or could give us a clue. But you're right, he had to have returned to them."
"As far as publicity goes I think we're all ready going to be neckdeep in absolute shit after the idiots on the television." She shook her head, slumping back into her chair. "Nobody would blame whoever he was for being what he is, at least among us anyway."
"Hopefully finding the cure will be as simple as that. We'll get through it though."
"Is it bad that I really want to get inside his head and understand his motivations though?" He wondered aloud. "I want to know how they talked to him, what they told him, I want to know how much was his idea and how much was them convincing him. I also want to know precisely what was done to him too." He admitted to Lorna. "It's driving me insane not to know." he gently rapped his knuckles against the desk. "I want to understand and... know!" Maybe
*it was due to his innate skill with languages. Language was about 'understanding'. Conveying information. It was driving him nuts not to understand or know these things.
"Sometimes you never understand." Lorna said honestly, thinking back to her time with Essex.
"True, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to." He sighed to himself, propping up his chin in one hand. "Mom says I oughta become a social worker instead of going into software and computers." He snorted ruefully. "Actually, I want to work with languages and programs in general recently. Make something more accurate and more intuitive than the current translation programs. It's a hell of a challenge really." He nodded to himself. There was so much th
*that was conveyed by body and facial expression when conversing after all.
"Of course not, would always want to." Though there were some things that Lorna was sure she personally would never want to find out about. "And I suppose you should do whatever you want to do anyway."
"Does this include avoiding P.E. class?" His lips twitched into a smile that he was trying to hide. He suppressed the giggles that threatened to erupt too as he finished setting his 'call center' up.
"Oh it never means that. Even if you're our phone operator you still need to be able to defend yourself, yeah?"
"Damn." He laughed. "Acutally that is something I definitely need to work on. I can't quite hit the bag thingy and make it move like the others." He told her. "It just stays there, hanging there, mocking me like a mocking mocker. And I'm totally your AT&T guy... I'd say sprint but sprint pisses me off." He admitted. "Can you hear me now? The reason they ask that is because duh... you can't!" He stuck out his tongue. "Someone needs to slap that guy."
"Well hey, if you want I can schedule in training as well." Lorna grinned at that, though to be honest she was probably way too into scheduling training since the 'announcement'. "Even if you can't get that much force we can teach you all the places to hit to get what you have to have some effect."
"And I'll get you ready to slap the piss out of him."
He laughed. "I'd appreciate that. There were a couple of guys that were going to teach me some stuff, but... got kind of busy and it fell to the wayside. You know how it goes." He nodded to himself. "No worries though about it... training it is. Just so someday I can slap the Sprint guy." He grinned. No so he could keep from getting killed. But that was beside the point.
