fandomtownies | Stark Industries, Wednesday, 06/10

About ten minutes before six, Ringo came in, a large backpack dangling loosely from one shoulder. "Hello?" she called, eyes sweeping for Cosima. She hoped she wasn't too early. Or too late.

"Hey there," Cosima said cheerfully, turning away from the computer she was shutting down for the night. "I hoped you wouldn't forget or anything. Are my shoes in there?"

So no, not too early or too late.

"They are!" Ringo's usual smile blossomed at the reassurance. "I hope they fit right. So far the sizing converter I have has been pretty good, but," well, who could be sure?

Ringo swung the bag from her shoulder and set it down, unzipping it so that she could pull out the rather boring grey AirTrek boots with slightly darker grey hardware attached to the bottom.

"Guess we'll find out?" Cosima offered, reaching for the ATs. "Should I put them on here, or wait until we get outside?"

She didn't mind that they were boring. Flying made up for boring shoes anytime.

"Here's fine. They won't do anything until you switch them on, so you can take a chance to get your balance." Ringo seemed pretty comfortable on her own pair, but balancing on two narrow wheels for each foot could take a bit of practice.

"Okey dokey then," Cosima said, not sounding totally comfortable about the whole idea, but she was game to give it a go. She found a chair to sit down on and unlaced her sneakers. "So, how long have you been riding these again? LIke, all your life?"

"Pretty much," Ringo answered with a grin. Being genetically modified to ride ATs tended to have that effect.

"But we can totally take things slow. I mean, no need to rush, right?"

"Not unless we're running up against the sunset, anyhow," Cosima agreed. "But it's summer, so we have a couple hours."

She finished strapping one skate into place, looked at it critically, and raised her foot to Ringo. "This is okay, right? Not too loose or anything? It feels fine."

"Looks good!" Ringo declared after taking a moment to examine the boot. "It's not pinching your toes or anything, right?"

She grinned. "Because if it's a good fit, then I think we can go have some fun!" The best part!

Cosima tied the other skate and rose onto her feet like a short, wobbly baby gazelle. "Nope," she smiled, and took her first step forward. "Seems to fit just fine."

"Yay!"

Ringo beamed, moving carefully in an attempt to stay close enough to Cosima to offer a supporting hand if the other girl needed it. "Then let's get outside where we can actually move around."

"Excellent idea," Cosima said, and giggled as she grabbed Ringo's arm for the walk outside. "So how should I start?"

She was torn: On the one hand,she was itching to fly, but, on the other, she'd prefer not to fall on her face or her ass along the way.

"One step at a time," Ringo suggested with a smile. "Well, actually, I suppose you should decide. Want to get right to it? At least the easy parts? Or should I show you some of what you can do once you get used to things?"

"Let's get right to it," Cosima decided. "I'd rather learn than watch, you know? And then when I need a break you can show off."

Ringo grinned, teeth flashing in a way that suggested she thought Cosima was making the right decision. "In that case, you'll need to turn on the motors." Ringo bent at the knees, balancing as she lowered herself to the point where she could reach back with one hand to the heel of one of her ATs. "There's a little switch to click forward."

The high-pitched whine of charging capacitors filled the air for a moment before fading away. She then reached over and switched her other one on, too.

Cosima nodded and copied what Ringo had done, fumbling just a bit to find the switches. Her ATs made the same noise, so she figured she was doing it right.

"Wow," she said, laughing a little. "I feel like there's some serious mojo to these things."

Ringo giggled. "There is!" she exclaimed, then paused. "Well, if 'mojo' means what I think it does, anyway."

She shook her head. "AirTrek represented a huge leap forward in half a dozen fields when the first prototypes were built."

"Anyway, be careful when you stand back up. Now that they're on, they'll read enough forward pressure as a command to accelerate. The more you lean, the harder the acceleration." Ringo was definitely ready in case something went wrong.

"Lean forward is accelerate," Cosima repeated thoughtfully, not moving yet. "And ...I'm going to guess lean back is brake? And steering is just leaning the way you want to go?"

"Yep!" Exactly. Ringo grinned. "As long as you keep your speed down, you shouldn't have any problems controlling your direction, and if you bump anything it shouldn't hurt. The wheels also can't get much traction on soft surfaces, so if you really need to you can try to get onto some grass or something to slow down in a hurry."

"And take it slow for the moment. If your wheels leave the ground you won't be able to steer. At least until you learn some of the more advanced techniques for riding."

"I think I understand," Cosima said, and leaned forward carefully to glide along the sidewalk. She was surprised how quickly the skates went at first, and she let out a little huff as she leaned back to slow down again.

Once she was at the right speed, it felt like slightly awkward roller blades.

Ringo kept easy pace with Cosima, and grinned over in approval. "Hey, not bad. You're starting to get the hang of it."

"How does it feel?"

"Like flying," Cosima grinned back. "Um ... very slow flying on the ground where I might trip and fall into a mailbox, but flying."

"That's how it's supposed to feel." Ringo's giggle was full of approval. "Now imagine going ten times as fast and then launching yourself off a railing."

Baby steps, Ringo. Baby steps.

"I'm trying," Cosima said thoughtfully. "The next thing I imagine is accidentally tilting forward and ending up with smashed glasses and a mouthful of bloody teeth."

"Well, I'd catch you before you got too out of control." Ringo was trying to be reassuring, but honesty compelled her to add, "But I don't think anyone gets really good with AirTrek without at least a couple of pretty bad spills. I've got a pretty nasty scar on my elbow." And a few others, too.

"Next time we do this I'll wear safety stuff," Cosima decided, smiling at the unexpected honesty. "But for now ... okay, what do I do if I feel ready to leave the ground?"

"Hmm. Maybe I should keep that around if I'm going to keep introducing people to AirTrek."

But that was for later! "If you want to get some air, you'll want to find a good place to launch from. That means not only a good place to take off, but a pretty clear area to land, too." She grinned sheepishly. "That was something I forgot a lot when I first started off." It led to a lot of falling down when trying to land.

"Like, the park?" Cosima suggested, turning to face Ringo. "It's not far, and I'd feel better about falling down i fI was over something soft."

"I haven't been to the park yet. Are there enough spots that are solid that you can build up some speed?" Grass was great for landing, but not so much for accelerating.

If she were any place other than Fandom, Tali wouldn't even have bothered trying to find any geth artifacts or data caches. What would they even be doing on a pre-spaceflight Earth, 120 years after the geth had retreated behind the Perseus Veil?

But she'd come to Fandom on a hypothesis that a place like this, that was some kind of multiversal nexus, defied that kind of logical reasoning; by now she felt she'd proven that hypothesis. Also that Fandom possibly defied any kind of logical reasoning whatsoever. Anyway, the point was that she thought she had a decent shot here at finding some kind of useful data to give the Fleet an edge.

That wasn't why she was here today, though. Without the prospect of daily ship maintenance (or, say, having to help fix the Mako because Shepard drove it straight down a mountain again) she needed something to tinker with, or she was afraid she'd lose her touch. She had a project underway with some pieces of machinery salvaged (of course) from the junkyard, but there were some components she still needed, so . . . here she was, pushing the door open and peering inside. "Hello?"

"Hi there," Cosima said amiably, turning away from her computer. "Need help with anything, Tali?"

"Well, I have a few things I need," Tali said, and held out a datapad with a list on it: nothing significant, mostly basic capacitors, cable assemblies, and a few other standard electronic components. "It's for a project I'm working on -- I didn't realize you worked here, somehow."

"Yeah, usually I'm more into biology?" Cosima said, shrugging. "But Tony's cool, this place is cool, and if I only have classes three days a week I need to do something sciencey so I don't go crazy. So this is my something sciencey."

She accepted the list, scanning down it. "I think we have all this stuff. What're you building? Or is that a nosy question?"

Tali laughed. "It's more repairing than building, but that's why I'm doing this, too. I don't quite know what to do with myself if I don't have something mechanical to work on, and it's been a while since I've really been able to take the rusted-out shell of some drive core, or a broken terminal, and get it running again. And I don't want to get rusty. So I took a little trip to the junkyard, and now I have a few projects to keep me busy."

"Engineer?" Cosima said, sounding impressed. "Nice. You sound like you know what you'r talking about in class, but class isn't exactly a realistic situation."

At least, not until the apocalypse came.

Cosima squinted at the list again. "We have most of this. I'm gonna need to check with Jarvis about one of the cable sizes you're asking for."

"It might be a little bit exaggerated," Tali said, just a touch dryly, "but yes. My people wouldn't survive if we didn't know how to keep ancient ships in working order, so we sort of have to be good at it."

Okay, maybe that was a little bit of a humble brag.

Tali tilted her head. "Jarvis --your boss, I take it?"

"Remind me to ask why you're floating around in ancient ships sometime," Cosima said. "And he probably thinks he is, but he's just the shop's AI. Like sarcastic British Siri."

A portentous sigh came from the speakers. Honestly, he had asked Cosima to stop comparing him to Siri at least three times now.

<<Nice to make your acquaintance, Miss Tali>>, JARVIS said, once he'd expressed his displeasure. <<What are the specifications of the cable we're looking for?>>

Tali, unfortunately, didn't seem to think it was that nice; she stiffened a bit, one hand twitching toward her belt for a moment before she appeared to think better of it.

"You have an AI," she said in a more guarded, even outright suspicious, tone.

So, uh, hi, Jarvis?

"He's great. Probably not as sophisticated as what you have in space," Cosima guessed, frowning because she thought Jarvis was pretty cool. "Is there a problem?"

It seemed to take Tali a few seconds to relax, but when most of the tension eased out of her posture and she spoke again, her voice was still strained.

"Quarians don't exactly have a very good history with AIs," she said, understating just a bit. (Though the understatement was probably evident from her initial reaction.)

"Oh," Cosima said, wincing a little. "Sorry. Want me to mute JARVIS while you're here?"

"No," Tali said -- a bit reluctantly, but it was probably a good idea to not antagonize an AI who hadn't yet shown any signs of hostility. (Besides, if she couldn't hear it, she'd have less warning if it did show signs of hostility.) "It's okay. You don't need to do that. I don't want to make your job any harder."

"Okay," Cosima said again, not quite sure what to do but willing to take Tali at her word as a default. "Then, Jarvis, do we have this cable in stock? Specs are --"

Almost as soon as she'd read them off, Jarvis responded with a bin number. There was no sigh this time, no additional commentary, only the facts. Cosima thanked him and went off to get the device.

"Here you go," she said to Tali, sounded muted as she slid the cable and other equipment across the counter. "Do you want to tell me the story about Quarians and AIs? Have to admit I'm curious."

"Sure," Tali replied, somewhat suprised to realize that she was less reluctant to agree than she thought she might be, but then that was probably easier when quarians didn't carry the same stigma they did at home.

. . . not that this meant her account would be entirely objective.

"Generations ago the quarians decided to build a mechanical labor force," she began. "They were VIs -- virtual intelligences, extremely advanced, but without being sentient. Individually, that is. But it was thought that networking them would make them more efficient, which it did."

She traced a spiral pattern on the countertop with one finger and took a breath.

"It also, over time, let them evolve into fully sentient AIs. They revolted, eventually. There was a war, and drove us off our homeworld. Now Rannoch and our colony worlds are occupied by the geth, and we've been living on our ships, wandering the galaxy ever since."

"Wow," Cosima said, blinking at that account. "Okay, I see why you're ... not totally sanguine about talking computers. Do you think you'll ever get home?"

"I hope so." There was a touch of wistfulness in Tali's voice that hinted at what her expression might have been. "That's part of why I'm here, to see if I can find something new, technology or information or anything, that might help us. It's been three hundred years, so it isn't exactly going to be a simple operation."

Stark Industries, Wednesday, 06/10

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