the_isle | Daycare Attendant intro

Open/locked?: Open!
Who: Whoever wants to investigate
What: The daycare attendant's inglorious intro
Where: Inside the building
Why: Because his player is terrible?
Warnings: Moon being Moon. Yep. (More seriously, nothing just yet past possible violence. Let's see if anyone can get Sun to spill to them, first.)
Extra info: this bot is kinda tall. And if anyone wants to know what they sound like... :D

In one of the lower levels -- not so low as to still be flooded, but unused enough for no one to have turned the lights on lately... there was a crash, and a screech.

It wasn't the biggest crash; someone had just dropped a box of something. But the screeching... that sounded like genuine distress. It was a higher-pitched voice, probably not one anyone would have found all that immediately familiar. "No" could be made out clearly enough at first, repeated, louder and more frantically, until after a few seconds, it sounded strangled... and then it was quiet.

Dare someone investigate?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There was only a short moment's hesitation, and then he turned around a little, uncertain, to let her see the back of his head. "Look here, you mean...?" Where else could she mean?

He wanted Moon fixed. He needed Moon fixed... and if the Fazbear workers hadn't done it yet, and like the staff had been saying, might scrap him if it was too bad... why wouldn't it be worth the risk to let her have a try? This lady was odd, sure, but if she could do it...! She'd already clearly enough faced Moon... but he was standing here now, and didn't have further damage, as far as he could tell... maybe this could work out? He hoped it could work out....

There, the circuit boards affixed to the back of his head -- affixed to the inside of a round custom case for his computer, to reframe this odd setup -- weren't even remotely hiding. A few wires ran from one to another, connecting this part to that one... and there was what looked like a custom interface off to the left of it all, mounted by itself. It even had a sort of ring around it, with two little holes for... whatever reason.

"I'm pretty sure the thing I saw them use goes here," he said, bringing a long finger up to touch the spot near that round thing. "Some kind of hand-held... whatever-it-is... with a cord on it...."

Clearly, then, it was an interface -- a display and input? Judging by the look of the boards' components and the QC stamp's date on one of the chips -- 2030 -- and the number of wires that fed into that port, it wasn't likely to have HDMI output capabilities, exactly, but was more likely a custom USB end. If someone wanted to keep their bots' programming away from the usual sort of merely casual and passively opportunistic interloper, that was certainly one way to do it....

"Since my sonic isn't working the way it should here, I'm going to have to kludge something together," she said, looking where he indicated. "That port alone isn't standard Earth kit, but I think I saw something like that in the Sycorax systems. Part of the Pandorica collective if memory serves. I'll have to build it custom. I'll have to build the rest of the interface as well. There should be the parts I need around here, the bigger question is how to get them to work. Well, that and the lack of tools. Nothing we can't do, just something we probably can't do tonight. Is there anything I need to know to be careful of specifically when I'm working. I don't want to hurt you." Right now.

"Ummmm...." She was asking him the hard questions here, apparently. "....Like what? And... what's Sycorax? Is that like... Windows, or something?"

"Sycorax. Humanoid aliens who look like someone ripped off all their skin, then they put on partial bone masks. Not much fun, sadly. A little too into the whole blood marionette thing for my taste. But they do have some decent technology worth stealing."

"Sounds like something in a horror movie," he said, tilting his head a bit. "I don't think we have those where I'm from. Just a whole lot of humans, for the most part."

"Planet name and year?" she asked, still examining without touching, brain still ticking over on possibilities.

"Um... Earth? 2031." So with something marked as 2030 on his board, either he wasn't that old, or that particular part of him wasn't.

"Different Earth then. Unless one of your creators happens to be named Adam Mitchell. Then again, given him, he could even be the hacker who hurt you. If that's the case I shall have to have words with someone about how lightly he was let off for his crimes."

"....I don't think I know that name? I... I can't access the servers to check, either...."

"Better for everyone if you don't," she said. "On the one hand it means we're dealing with just regular human maliciousness. Of course that does mean another alternate Earth, which happens surprisingly often for something so theoretically impossible."

"Another... what? What are you talking about?"

"Hmmm? Oh. There are parallel universes. It is supposed to be impossible to reach them, of course. For example, there is someone here named Chell. He's from Earth. But I've been to the time period of Earth he's from. Nothing like what he describes. And I'm reasonably certain he's not lying. So his Earth isn't the same Earth I've spent so much time on. And your Earth isn't it either. So there alone we're dealing with at least three different alternate Earths. I know of at least one other, though I haven't been there myself. Each one has humans. Each one has some different source at it's center. Some axis upon which it spins. Magic. Science. War. Something key to that version. My guess is yours is technology, but so far I've only seen you."

"..Time travel? Now see, that sounds like fiction to me. I know magic's real, but it's not what a lot of people think... not these days. Someone could probably warm their coffee back up without a microwave, though, if they can even do any in the first place." He finally peeked back at her... she wasn't still inspecting his circuit boards, was she? He didn't want to interrupt that....

She still was. She was being careful, which meant going slow given the lack of diagnostic tools.

"Reality is often stranger than fiction," River said, almost absently. "And my truth would curl your toes." She stopped looking in back to glance to one side, looking at his feet, then back to the back of his head. "More."

All right, fine, he could stay fairly still a while longer. He could be patient! Especially if this was going to end up with Moon getting fixed, somehow.... "What do you mean? ...Are children even more sticky, where you're from?"

"I wouldn't know. I was only a child three times, and that was a very long time ago. I'm not exactly cut out to be a mother, so no one leaves me alone with their kids."

"Wh- ....Y--....." Congrats, River, you've stumped him!

The boards he used looked to be based on relatively mundane computers in a general sense. The CPU and GPU, the RAM... the onboard storage, connectors that hinted that more storage was probably hiding under that little cover there... assuming she popped it off, yeah, it was just as whistle-worthy as the other components; someone had almost certainly spent some serious money on making this bot, given what year it was on an Earth. But given that she was dealing with a sapient AI... maybe that was already a given? He wasn't made of junk, he just hadn't been being taken care of.

...Which probably raised a few other questions; why would someone go through the trouble and spend the money and resources on a bot like this... only to not give them basic upkeep? His moving parts creaked; when was the last time he'd had any oil? His shell had all those scuffs and nicks and other damage to its finish, some even a bit deeper than that; it couldn't all have been simple wear and tear from daily life....

But Sun hadn't been wrong about his port. For all that he himself apparently wasn't much of a tech, the traces on the circuit board and the parts they wound to and through pointed to it containing at least two probably-standard USB connections. And without knowing the pinout for the odd custom port itself, two possibilities seemed likely: either she could play trial and error and check with Sun, about if he noticed a signal when she made contact with this or that pin within the custom port, once she found some tools to work with properly... or she could use tools with finer tips to their pins, and make contact within the circuitry's traces and skip the ports altogether, which would be a lot less guesswork, but also probably more delicate.

Third possibility -- figuring things out from the second, and then using something to confirm if the pin she was touching inside the port connected to the trace she was eyeing. Also simple enough, and would lead to making a custom plug for this a whole lot easier than not, thus cutting out a lot of the need for high precision work with pins and wires later.

The real question was, did she have anything with which to pull it off? Did her screwdriver still work as a simple multimeter, to at least get the port figured out?

Yeah, sadly no. When it worked properly, a sonic screwdriver was a marvel of future technology in the field of plot connivence. However that was not the case here, even for River. The only one who might have been able to figure out how to make it work was the one who developed the technology himself.

Still, she was making mental notes as she went, and as for delicate work she knew what she could use for tools at least. Pens could work, so long as it wasn't a powered wire that she was checking. Well even if it was, she could handle a small shock. The bigger concern would be what would happen to Sun. She'd need better diagnostic tools to be sure not to hurt the bot more than it already was. That was going to be the difficult part. This would be so much easier if it was a cyberman, frankly. Because then not only would she not care f she hurt it, that would be a bonus. Being careful was always harder.

"Well, the way I see it, we have a few options," she said. "Option one, I work with what I have, quick and dirty. Wont be able to fix everything, but should fix some of it. But it will probably hurt and there is absolutely some measure of risk in it."

She rolled her shoulders back. "Option two. We're overdue for a visit from Auradon. When they come I smuggle you and me aboard their ship back. There are better diagnostic and repair tools there, and a few people who might actually be useful. They won't be thrilled we escaped, but they'll probably help us anyway before sending us back."

In a pinch, a sewing needle or thumbtack might actually be ideal, for getting to some of those traces... it shouldn't be too difficult, to find even just a few short lengths of conducive wires, either. Scraps are really all they'd need, at least for that part.

But then there was the question of actually accessing the programming in question... and that would take a computer. Unless she wanted to try something else? But what else was there, really, to try? If Moon was part of Sun's programming....

"What's... the 'some of it'? ...What... kind of risk?"

"The what risk is the bigger part. I might accidentally short you out. Or trigger a swap. I need to run a diagnostic, but my sonic's not working properly and we don't have all the tools we'd need here to do it more safely."

"We can just keep the lights on! That works too, right?" He was at least doing well to not sound disappointed at the moment. Dismissive, back to being cheerful... she probably saw right through the act, but whatever. He was fiiiiine! Really!

"Probably. Well, I say probably, but not really. Power isn't the most reliable here. So we can try, but we can't expect to succeed. And then of course there are people here who would turn off the lights intentionally if they understood."

"What? There are?" Well, that sure was a cause for alarm! "Why would they do that?"

"A few of the teachers here seem to think evil for evil's sake is a worthy goal. Frankly, I have nothing against using actions some people might consider evil if it serves a purpose, if there is a good reason. But evil just for its own sake? A waste."

Sun made a little sound, not quite a groan or a whine. Really? He had to deal with that? "Sounds like someone needs a snack and a nap." Hangry and overtired was the theory he was suggesting, yes.