Re: Petty Squabble [ROUND 2] [Acidity City]
01-19-2012, 01:58 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Godbot.
Professor Gene Parker, Head of the Sub-Divisions Division, sighed and drummed his fingers on the video feed being displayed on the surface of the Master Control Table. A group of robed acolytes stood around Envoy in state-of-the-art high-definition darkness, clasping their hands and bowing their heads so that their hoods obscured their faces.
The natives had stuck Envoy on a shrine as soon as they found it, and although the Linguistics Division was still working out what it was they were chanting, it didn’t take a committee to tell that the natives were worshipping their shiny new metal man from the sky. So that was pretty cool, right? COFCA had just left Envoy on standby for the moment and focused on more interesting things, like the connection to Fort Ayers, which had held out through the round transition. R&D was having a field day with all the advanced technology available for them to test, reverse-engineer and generally screw around with, and the newly appointed Director of Fort Ayers Affairs was trying to use the robot army’s network to get in touch with the human resistance base, with mixed results.
On the screen at the professor’s fingertips, a supposed acolyte broke off from the group and dove for Envoy, crying something about death to the heretics while repeatedly trying to stick a curved knife where the robot’s jugular would have been. Envoy automatically raised an arm and fired its photon accelerator in the man’s face, dissolving everything above his chest in a flash of blue-green light. As the closest acolyte quietly dragged the body away and tossed it in a corner, more than a few of the others visibly put their knives away.
Professor Parker sighed again, this time a bit louder just in case other people couldn’t hear him. Just as he was starting to nod off, there was a shriek of feedback, and the entire surface of the table blanked out or burst into patches of static, along with all the screens lining the walls and the overhead display. They clicked off in rapid succession along with the lights, leaving the room in darkness – except for a large area of static reflected on the surface of the table. The professor looked over his shoulder at the wall of screens behind him. Being an expert in sub-divisions, he instantly recognized that the wall was divided into large areas of static and non-static, and that the static was further divided – subdivided, if you will – into six towering block capitals that just so happened to spell
All eyes turned to the technician sitting front and center who visibly gulped in the glow of his still-perfectly functioning screen.
“I can fix that,” he offered.
---
Rutherford B. Wimbledon leaned across the Master Control Table and lit a few more candles.
“You’re trying to see my cards,” announced Nita █████, Head of Intelligence, as if it were fact.
“I am not,” said Wimbledon. “Besides, I couldn’t see your cards in this dark even if I wanted to.”
“That proves it,” she retorted, snuffing out the nearest candle and holding her cards to her chest.
“Cut that out!” Wimbledon complained, reaching across the table to take back the candle.
“Don’t any of you have anything better to do?” asked Kelly Trudeau, Chronologist-in-Chief, as she looked over Wimbledon’s shoulder.
“Nothing but paperwork, man,” sighed Cooper Wilding, dealing her a hand onto the table, “and nothing we do is really going to matter if we don’t have up-to-date information on what Envoy’s doing.”
That brought a grin to Kelly’s face. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she asked, taking a seat. “But I’ve been talking to R&D, and there’s something that all of us can still do, even if we’ve lost all contact with the entire battle.”
“Is it paperwork?” Cooper started to ask, but Kelly dismissed him with a wave of her hand.
“You all remember that time capsule from Fort Ayers, right?” she asked, setting her cards down and leaning forward in her chair. The small group nodded, except for Nita, who was craning her neck and trying to make out what Kelly’s cards were in the darkness.
“Do any of you know what exactly was inside of it?”
“Well, no,” admitted Wimbledon. “Working on the robot itself isn’t really my job.”
“Well, it would contain whatever we put inside of it, right?”
“Sure, but we haven’t planted the time capsule yet,” Cooper pointed out. “We just know that we’re going to, and that there’ll be a suit, a laser cannon, and a satchel inside of it.”
“That’s exactly right,” agreed Kelly. “But, when did we plant it? Are we going to bury it today? A week from now?”
“What are you getting at?” demanded Nita.
“Fine, I’ll explain,” conceded Kelly, clearly enjoying herself. “We know that the time capsule is going to be underground at some point, and we know three things that are going to be inside of it – but the rest is all up in the air.
“Let’s say, purely hypothetically, that I decided Envoy needed a pair of nail clippers. I put the pair of nail clippers into the time capsule before we plant it, and fifty years later, when Envoy opens it up, it’s got the nail clippers inside.”
“That’s pretty much the concept of a time capsule, man,” agreed Cooper.
“What if I put the nail clippers in tomorrow?”
“You mean, after we’ve already seen Envoy open the capsule?”
“Exactly. There’s nothing stopping me from doing that, right? Envoy opening the time capsule happens in the future, and so to Envoy, there was always a pair of nail clippers inside.
“Seeing Envoy open a time capsule with something we didn’t put inside of it would cause an ontological paradox – we’d put the clippers inside because they were there in the future, which is why when Envoy opens the capsule in the future there are going to be nail clippers inside – but if we didn’t see any nail clippers in the time capsule, then the causality of it all still works perfectly. We just wait until we have the idea to add them.
“In short, if we could get Envoy to hide our own equipment from us, then as soon as we have the idea to give Envoy a pair of nail clippers, Envoy can take the nail clippers from their hiding place – and we have as much time as we like to find exactly the right pair and put them into the time capsule.”
“All we need,” she concluded with a wicked grin, “is a place to hide our upgrades.” It took the others a moment to notice the gleam of the flag pin from Envoy’s suit in her hand.
“Wait, wait - ” said Wimbledon, putting up his hands, “that’s why we gave Envoy a suit? So that you could stash secret upgrades inside of it until we have the idea to add them?”
“Exactly.”
“I was wondering why a secret organization had a Parents’ Committee,” muttered Wimbledon.
“And the beauty of it is, we’re not limited to things we’ve already invented! As long as we can invent it before we plant the time capsule – which we have as much time as we like to do – we can retroactively send it to the future in Envoy’s past, thereby bringing it to the present!”
Kelly realized she’d sprung from her seat and started pointing dramatically at some point, so she quietly sat down and folded her hands in front of her. “Just as long as it’s small enough to conceal in Envoy’s suit, of course.”
“You absolute bastard,” Nita stammered in something that might have been admiration. Wimbledon appeared to be counting on his fingers, trying to sort out what she had just said, and Cooper just stared blankly.
“I have to go tell Eva and the Megasenator,” Kelly said, practically springing from her seat. “Start thinking of things we can give to Envoy!”
The three shareholders watched as she hurried off.
“What the hell is a chronologist?” Cooper wondered aloud.
Wimbledon shrugged. “Got any threes?”
“That’s classified,” snapped Nita.
Professor Gene Parker, Head of the Sub-Divisions Division, sighed and drummed his fingers on the video feed being displayed on the surface of the Master Control Table. A group of robed acolytes stood around Envoy in state-of-the-art high-definition darkness, clasping their hands and bowing their heads so that their hoods obscured their faces.
The natives had stuck Envoy on a shrine as soon as they found it, and although the Linguistics Division was still working out what it was they were chanting, it didn’t take a committee to tell that the natives were worshipping their shiny new metal man from the sky. So that was pretty cool, right? COFCA had just left Envoy on standby for the moment and focused on more interesting things, like the connection to Fort Ayers, which had held out through the round transition. R&D was having a field day with all the advanced technology available for them to test, reverse-engineer and generally screw around with, and the newly appointed Director of Fort Ayers Affairs was trying to use the robot army’s network to get in touch with the human resistance base, with mixed results.
On the screen at the professor’s fingertips, a supposed acolyte broke off from the group and dove for Envoy, crying something about death to the heretics while repeatedly trying to stick a curved knife where the robot’s jugular would have been. Envoy automatically raised an arm and fired its photon accelerator in the man’s face, dissolving everything above his chest in a flash of blue-green light. As the closest acolyte quietly dragged the body away and tossed it in a corner, more than a few of the others visibly put their knives away.
Professor Parker sighed again, this time a bit louder just in case other people couldn’t hear him. Just as he was starting to nod off, there was a shriek of feedback, and the entire surface of the table blanked out or burst into patches of static, along with all the screens lining the walls and the overhead display. They clicked off in rapid succession along with the lights, leaving the room in darkness – except for a large area of static reflected on the surface of the table. The professor looked over his shoulder at the wall of screens behind him. Being an expert in sub-divisions, he instantly recognized that the wall was divided into large areas of static and non-static, and that the static was further divided – subdivided, if you will – into six towering block capitals that just so happened to spell
GEF OUT.
All eyes turned to the technician sitting front and center who visibly gulped in the glow of his still-perfectly functioning screen.
“I can fix that,” he offered.
---
Rutherford B. Wimbledon leaned across the Master Control Table and lit a few more candles.
“You’re trying to see my cards,” announced Nita █████, Head of Intelligence, as if it were fact.
“I am not,” said Wimbledon. “Besides, I couldn’t see your cards in this dark even if I wanted to.”
“That proves it,” she retorted, snuffing out the nearest candle and holding her cards to her chest.
“Cut that out!” Wimbledon complained, reaching across the table to take back the candle.
“Don’t any of you have anything better to do?” asked Kelly Trudeau, Chronologist-in-Chief, as she looked over Wimbledon’s shoulder.
“Nothing but paperwork, man,” sighed Cooper Wilding, dealing her a hand onto the table, “and nothing we do is really going to matter if we don’t have up-to-date information on what Envoy’s doing.”
That brought a grin to Kelly’s face. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she asked, taking a seat. “But I’ve been talking to R&D, and there’s something that all of us can still do, even if we’ve lost all contact with the entire battle.”
“Is it paperwork?” Cooper started to ask, but Kelly dismissed him with a wave of her hand.
“You all remember that time capsule from Fort Ayers, right?” she asked, setting her cards down and leaning forward in her chair. The small group nodded, except for Nita, who was craning her neck and trying to make out what Kelly’s cards were in the darkness.
“Do any of you know what exactly was inside of it?”
“Well, no,” admitted Wimbledon. “Working on the robot itself isn’t really my job.”
“Well, it would contain whatever we put inside of it, right?”
“Sure, but we haven’t planted the time capsule yet,” Cooper pointed out. “We just know that we’re going to, and that there’ll be a suit, a laser cannon, and a satchel inside of it.”
“That’s exactly right,” agreed Kelly. “But, when did we plant it? Are we going to bury it today? A week from now?”
“What are you getting at?” demanded Nita.
“Fine, I’ll explain,” conceded Kelly, clearly enjoying herself. “We know that the time capsule is going to be underground at some point, and we know three things that are going to be inside of it – but the rest is all up in the air.
“Let’s say, purely hypothetically, that I decided Envoy needed a pair of nail clippers. I put the pair of nail clippers into the time capsule before we plant it, and fifty years later, when Envoy opens it up, it’s got the nail clippers inside.”
“That’s pretty much the concept of a time capsule, man,” agreed Cooper.
“What if I put the nail clippers in tomorrow?”
“You mean, after we’ve already seen Envoy open the capsule?”
“Exactly. There’s nothing stopping me from doing that, right? Envoy opening the time capsule happens in the future, and so to Envoy, there was always a pair of nail clippers inside.
“Seeing Envoy open a time capsule with something we didn’t put inside of it would cause an ontological paradox – we’d put the clippers inside because they were there in the future, which is why when Envoy opens the capsule in the future there are going to be nail clippers inside – but if we didn’t see any nail clippers in the time capsule, then the causality of it all still works perfectly. We just wait until we have the idea to add them.
“In short, if we could get Envoy to hide our own equipment from us, then as soon as we have the idea to give Envoy a pair of nail clippers, Envoy can take the nail clippers from their hiding place – and we have as much time as we like to find exactly the right pair and put them into the time capsule.”
“All we need,” she concluded with a wicked grin, “is a place to hide our upgrades.” It took the others a moment to notice the gleam of the flag pin from Envoy’s suit in her hand.
“Wait, wait - ” said Wimbledon, putting up his hands, “that’s why we gave Envoy a suit? So that you could stash secret upgrades inside of it until we have the idea to add them?”
“Exactly.”
“I was wondering why a secret organization had a Parents’ Committee,” muttered Wimbledon.
“And the beauty of it is, we’re not limited to things we’ve already invented! As long as we can invent it before we plant the time capsule – which we have as much time as we like to do – we can retroactively send it to the future in Envoy’s past, thereby bringing it to the present!”
Kelly realized she’d sprung from her seat and started pointing dramatically at some point, so she quietly sat down and folded her hands in front of her. “Just as long as it’s small enough to conceal in Envoy’s suit, of course.”
“You absolute bastard,” Nita stammered in something that might have been admiration. Wimbledon appeared to be counting on his fingers, trying to sort out what she had just said, and Cooper just stared blankly.
“I have to go tell Eva and the Megasenator,” Kelly said, practically springing from her seat. “Start thinking of things we can give to Envoy!”
The three shareholders watched as she hurried off.
“What the hell is a chronologist?” Cooper wondered aloud.
Wimbledon shrugged. “Got any threes?”
“That’s classified,” snapped Nita.