Alynna/BGLog

Alynna just sighs softly, and goes for broke, the worst thing that that can happen is she'll be killed on sight, after all. "Here, heres the best way I can summarize my life since I became an adult. I've always felt since I was 7 i was not supposed to be human. I've always been gifted with computers and programming. Fast forward to college. I got into the study of artificial intelligence. Fast forward to end of college, I was recruited by Zephyr to work on nanite programming. Got all relocation expenses paid for to move to California, Sacramento specifically. But theres more.." she goes over to the counter and gets a glass of water..

Sparhawk nods again. "Still putting off the argument about sapient minds until later." Shi holds the warm wing open to keep Alynna's space preserved.

Balina has wandered into story time again! Somewhat amazed at her own timing, she drags a chair a little closer, requisitioning a fresh mug of coffee to listen in more or less silence.

Cilan shifts her head, burying it further into the fur covering Crystala's shoulder, though aside from a few glances up from the novel she's reading, the soldier does little to interact with the people, and friends here.

You yerf, "I wasn't specifically trying to make my way upo in the company but I did. I invented a query and processing language that could be distributed on even tiny computing cells. I get to sit in on meetings between Zephyr and RSX. Many of the ideas they discuss, concern me greatly because they are very profit and control motivated, I don't really want to get into specifics there. Now this entire time, I have to say i'm a spiritual person. I've been a practicer of druidry for most of my adult life. I retired from Zephyr, pretty much with the reasoning that, gee, i've made enough money and I would like to concentrate on other fields of study... and this is a pretty true statement because I went into the study of fringe science."

Mickey grins a greeting to Balina when she wanders over, and offers her one of the peanut M&Ms from the quickly-diminishing bag. Storytime indeed was a pleasent one, although already as Aly speaks of RSX and Z she can't help but get the feeling this was going to weave and intertwine with a lot more.

Sparhawk looks a little blank at the actual programming of nanites. "I'm just a reverse-engineer-er. You almost certainly know more about how the wee things work than I do."

You yerf, "I can tell you its a stack based language where data goes into operands and pop back out. Where bytes, chars and integers are stored in molecular bonds, I can tell you that nanites can make even smaller nanites, sur... ok lets try to get back on track.. sometime I will get into why its important to read the source later.."

You yerf, "I was approached by an organization, whatever the parent organization was, they wanted to keep things hush hush, but what they were doing was exploring what they called 'hotspots'. Places where seemingly supernatural things happened, or at least paranormal. I was exploring a place nearby here, a place I have seem to lost. Something happened there, something I can't really explain. I have this suspicion that something affected me, it may have been nanites but if it was, they weren't ours.."

"Got a few Milky Ways with my name on 'em back at the Mall. I'll bring by for you sometime," Mickey comments with a mysterious grin. Just where the hell did they find this candy anyway? She trails back off into silence as she watches Aly; now resting her chin along Spar's side after a brief adjustment to her necklace and collar.

You yerf, "I could advance a dozen theories about what happened there. Wherever THERE was. I got lost. I couldn't even tell you what city it happened in. I was never planning on going back, or coming back. The whole memory of that is fuzzy. Maybe its intentionally obscured. I have no idea. Some of the theories i've considered are.. possibly alien nanites, supernatural or divine acts, other alien technologies, perhaps even a secret organization of nanite makers or programmers that noone knew about.." Sorien softly churrs, "I vote aliens. The nanite tech is insanely in advance of anything seen before. "

"There are lots of things happening around here," Sparhawk says, "Some of them even being nanite-based. They seem to all be compatible with each other thus far, even ones out in the wilds where our corporate-headquarters bubbles don't go." Balina considers asking Alynna a question, but eventually decides to just let it ride. Spar did tell her to tell it at her own pace, after all.

Mickey quivers her whiskers. "Still can't wrap my head around that some times," she squeaks with a sigh. Never was much of a divine rat, perhaps. When she spies Vex enter it takes a moment for her to recognize the human, yet once it kicks in she raises a wave in greeting from where she was sprawled alongside Spar. She doesn't quite squeak out; not wishing to interrupt Aly's tale.

You yerf, "There's one of the reasons I dont talk about this much, theorizing can get circular fast. I mean nanites could have programmed me to think anything. Anyways. I went back to Denver, and tried to study the issue for a while, I didn't make very much progress on it before I found out through the grapevine that, well, Zephyr and RSX were having a breakdown of general order inside their organization, and that nanites were missing. Now I tell you that Zephyr didn't have the best inventory system in the world, and I did have a supply of my own nanites. Special ones, ones that you could flip into debug mode, but i'm going to try to quell the boring tech stuff. The fact that they detected a leak of nanites out of the company means that whoever took them didn't even care if they were caught anymore." Balina does raise a question this time. "What do you mean by debug mode? That's awful vague, and my brain is going everywhere from 'report errors' to 'cheat codes'."

Loki peeks his head in from up above, an ear twitching. He sniffs the air and then creeps down the stairs, looking around for a moment. He shifts a little in place, and hobbles in, casting a wave to those present. He can see there is a lot of conversation going on, but he elects to remain quiet.

You yerf, "At a molecular level not much room for cheat codes are left. But my nanites CAN tell me what is happening to them. When I programmed these fuckers inside me, I left only one 'backdoor' and it was not even meant for me. I knew what is called p-day was going down, and that it was not preventable. Maybe I could have called the press, but really. What defense would they suggest you put up? It would only serve to paint a fat target on my back and most likely, place the blame for p-day on me."

Vexander listens intently to Alynna's explanationg about... something. But, the technical talk is far too much for this happy creature. Shi casts hir green eyes over to Mickey, smiles, and mouths, "Do you understand any of this?"

Balina puts her hand down. "Damn," she says, then the moment passes and she settles back down. "I guess that's fair, though. Disappointing, but fair."

Sparhawk murmurs, "That'd be useful all in itself, knowing what's actually happening instead of through...metaphors and guesses." Loki remains quiet for a while, thinking as he listens, though it is hard to tell how much he may have caught. He shifts a little and frowns. "I do not think that just because one made something that they can be blamed for how others have used it." he says, shuffling a little and slumps. "It does sound like I missed something important though." he sighs.

Mickey chuckles under her breath when Vex asks hir questions. "Somewhat," she nods simply as she preens her Master's feathers throughout the story. "Makes sense, Aly..but, -was- P-day an accident? It sounds..well, from the way you recall it, I'm sure you won't see that in any offical release." That to her was the most important question. Right up there with the moon landing being real and if Titanic -really- went down by iceburg and not AlienCraft.

You yerf, "Anyways. About my nanites. That one backdoor is that my nanites can pick up programming hints and instructions from electromagnetic radition between microwaves and visible light, also known as the terahertz band. It was never meant as a way for people to program them. It was more of a.. spiritual inspiration. The nanites were meant to give me some measure of control over what other nanites could affect me, but I had not yet developed a way to look into the future and see what infections would exist. So, I threw the question to the gods, and opened my nanites up to a portion of spectrum they would be most likely to affect things without having other things affect them. I pretty much knew that the terahertz band is opaque from space, very difficult to broadcast at except by other nanites, and relatively free of spurious signals, since atmospheric water can absorb the signal."

Sparhawk squawks, "That's....pretty clever, actually. The next part is where you say what success or failure came out of that, yes? Or does something else come in between?""

You yerf, "When I put these into my system, I had no idea what i'd become, but what I expected to become, would come from my spirit, because I expected from study of signals that did occur at the terahertz band, were the same ones that occured in spectral imaging. I expected to become what my spiritual nature demanded of me. And over time I gravitated to what you see.. well saw. I became the fairy fox.."

Balina tries to pipe up again. "So, you just opened up a tiny little microphone on yourself, figuring that anything that happened as a result was divine intervention?" Her confusion deepens as Alynna continues, "And it *worked*?" Well, that flew right over Mickey's head. She manages to paint a rough mental image of the skill Aly's describing, and as she resumes her idle comb and stroke of her fingers. "Very out of this world, huh?" she sniggers at Balina's breakdown. It was actually roughly what she was thinking..honest.

Loki scratches his head. "What would make one conclude that such a result is divine intervention and simply not an engineered signal?"

Alynna glances over to Balina and giggles a bit. "No matter what I became, even if I had died, one could rightly say it worked. I became what I was always meant to be. People have spirits and they have souls, that seems to be a plain fact. But to measure them. to be able to quantify them, my very last scientific discovery before p-day is myself. Because only nanites themselves are small enough to measure the electromagnetic activity associated with the spirit."

Sparhawk grabs at a saddlebag, and then lets it go slowly. "Seems hard to reproduce those results nowadays. Um...if you have anything written down about soul quantification, I would very much like to read it."

Loki nods, looking to Sparhawk, then to Alynna. "As would I. It could prove an intersting read... and the spirit simply electromagnetic energy? It seems to be a feasible thing, if perhaps a bit simple and anticlimactic to its typical presentation."

You yerf, "Written down? No. On a hard drive buried in the middle of Denver? Yes, I have all the data. Interesting. I just thought of an complication. I bet my soul is encoded on that hard drive someplace from the imaging. I wonder if I could reproduce my spirit after death.. anyways..""

Balina points a thumb at Spar while still facing Alynna, saying, "I'd like to ask for the same, by the way," before hopping back half a topic. "I'm not talking about the danger, though; I'm just amazed that you put out a feeler for the gods, and they just answered."

Mickey's whiskers quiver as she watches Spar grab the bag; curiously glancing to it as if seeing what shi was looking for. Either way she's once again tending to and preening those feathers. "Sounds like more spooky action at a distance," she chitters.

Alynna tilts her head at Balina, "Thats inconclusive as of yet. I may have just put out a feeler for the spirit and detected it. I have to admit that when I injected myself, I was kneeling in front of a pagan altar when I did it. I begged to be my true self manifest, and I begged to know what had affected me, and most of all, I begged for understanding."

"I /am/ spooky action at a distance," Spar says firmly. "So, did you get the understanding you wanted?"

Balina continues to play conversation slalom, as her expression goes through about six different phases in as many seconds, eventually settling on what amounts to hopeful confusion. "Sorry, could you try that one about a hard drive again? Did you just suggest that souls can be replicated just by writing them down?"

Alynna looks over at Spar and shakes her head. "No, but I have been guided here. When I say i'm following my nose, I mean i'm being led where I'm supposed to be led, and I do not believe it is random."

Alynna then answers Balina too. "Also inconclusive. But I have that suspicion now that i've thought about it a little more."

Loki chuckles and looks to Balina. "Now that would be something interesting in and of itself. I have wondered if I could replicate a mind through copying it... It could be entirely possible to program another with a copy of yourself..." he trails off, furrowing his brow as his mind goes on a visible calculating spree.

Mickey snickers at the correction. "Right, sorry. So that's..spooky godspeak at a distance," she redoes with a grin to Spar, then looks to Aly. "That is quite the impressive gift," she nods safely, then renews her sprawl.

You yerf, "It was about 17 days after that p-day was fully in swing. I couldn't leave the house anymore, I did figure out how to become a non-morphic fox after a bit, and go outside without being detected as anything but a fox. I lived that way for a long while. At first it was just to hide from humans, but then it was to hide from the infected. I buried most my important stuff, left the rest behind, went into the forest, let my nose guide me."

"You have, inconclusively, possibly completely blown my mind tonight." Trying desperately to appear nonchalant, Balina scoots back off of the edge of her seat and clears her throat. "It's a true shame your research is all the way in Colorado, then." After a few moments of contemplation, she adds, "And having a real direction is better than a lot of us get."

You yerf, "I stopped a few places on the way, usually they didn't last more than a few days or weeks until i was told to leave, most the time I spent in the forest. And to say I have a real direction, sounds great at first, but I dont know what that direction is, only that I have it."