The Rot Sets In

[Chuck Carmichael] There'd been a wall of text squeeing about figuring something out, and Chuck had smirked where he leaned at the Geek Squad desk in his untucked white shirt, loosened black tie, black slacks and (today) pulp comic Chucks. In response, he'd questioned where she wanted to meet him so that they could communicate with more than just their thumbs, and that had come down to her place in Bronzeville, where Chuck finds himself now ringing the doorbell.

He's still in his slacker version of Geek Squad chic and his hair - getting a little long and curly, though still far from 'fro territory - is mussed, as if he's come here from work. Which, of course, he has. When she opens the door to his ring, she's greeted with a smile and a little kiss.

"Hey. I didn't stop anywhere because you seemed excited. What's up?"

[Molly Quincannon] Molly, in something that could best be described as 'the Amazing Technicolour Labcoat' (it might have been a standard lab coat once, but it's had so many burns, rips and other associated bits of damage that it's now all one big conglomeration of multi-colour patches that resembles nothing more than Joseph's Dreamcoat, or maybe Molly's ceiling) and goggles along with jeans and T-shirt ("Just pour the coffee and back away slowly"), is at first incapable of speech. There is POUNCE-hug-*gleesqueak*-kiss-*gleesqueak*-feetonfloor-bounce-bounce-*gleesqueak*-kiss-bounce-bounce-bounce for a little while. Yes, on the doorstep. Then she hauls him inside, still bouncing. "That's okay; you still have that change of clothes and I put them through the wash for laundry day and there's food - I made pizza from scratch and it looks like Pollack but tastes nice enough last I checked and it's veggie so no kosher issues and shiny new toy!"

Then she manages to settle herself down a little, bites her lower lip all sheepish and clasps her hands behind her back, looking like a little kid (and probably more than a little adorable with it). "Um ... hi. Sorry. There's also Dew or coffee. As you can probably tell. How's your day been?"

[Chuck Carmichael] "Mmm, veggie pizza. Sounds good to me." He's drawn in easily enough and then smirks when she stops to offer drink choices and how his day's been; cute, yes, though he doesn't mind waiting for that to see what the aforementioned shiny new toy is. "I just finished a sugar free Monster, so I'm good for a bit. Maybe some water, but I'm more interested in this toy. What is it? A new game, a new remote . . . what'd you make, missy?"

The last is teasing, though he's certainly interested in what she's done; it never hurts to know these things. Whether it's magical or mundane, ideas spawn ideas spawn ideas, and free sharing's a good thing.

[Molly Quincannon] "Water! Right!" Molly vooms for the kitchen, and comes back with a glass of water and a plate covered with pizza slices that do indeed look lopsided but smell nice enough. She's pushed her goggles up onto the top of her head, where they sit like an Alice band and show her eyes now - her contact lenses are bright, unnatural purple. "There you go! Mushrooms, green peppers, onions, tomatoes and zuccini. You wouldn't think zuccini would go that well on pizzas but it really works! Anyway. Ahem. Shiny new toy. You know I've been working on those Prime basics you sent me and I could never make your code work? Well, I figured out what the problem was. And now? Now I have. Behold!"

She shakes back the sleeve of her lab coat and shows off a wide brown leather band strapped to her left wrist. Chuck's seen Torchwood and thus will recognise the design as being based on Cap'n Jack's vortex manipulator. She pops the snaps and unfolds the leather cover to show a small screen and keypad apparently liberated from a Blackberry (though given that she doesn't like the things, it's likely that those are the only bits of the 'berry she's used). "I call it the Prime-piece; like a timepiece, since it's where I'd wear a watch if I needed a watch but I don't so ... yeah. Now, the key to the whole thing is actually in the inner lining, so if you want to move into the workshop ... I don't like taking this thing off where there may be Random Acts of Ferret."

There is, in fact, a second ferret, this one far more active than the first, judging by the fact that it is skittering in the tubes overhead at great speed, squeaking merrily.

[Chuck Carmichael] Oh, yes, the ferret (no plural!) - which Chuck still largely avoids - and their skittering and . . . well. Off to the workshop it is, as he nods his agreement about not leaving anything delicate out where something small and of a rodent-ish persuasion might get hold of it. "It's really cool looking! I'm glad you could get it to work for you, or that it at least inspired something. Collaboration's a good thing. You've been working on this since I gave you that code?"

He's curious, of course - it's always interesting to see how one person employs another's foci and paradigm, if they can at all. It's important to be able to, Chuck thinks, otherwise people get to stuck in their own boxes and never go anywhere. Stagnation's a terrible thing, and the thing that Chuck can tolerate the least.

"I want to know all about it."

[Molly Quincannon] "Hee; you think the outside's cool? You should see the inner lining. And so you shall," she says as she leads the way into the next room. Molly's workbenches are a little bit cluttered, as they tend to be when she has a habit of working on perhaps a half a dozen different projects at once. On the far end nearest the garage doors that make up her 'bedroom's front wall sit several chunks of pipe and sheet metal and valves; the coffee-on-tap boiler is still in progress, apparently. There's something else being assembled a little further in, and that one's anybody's guess - more sheet metal, but also gears and wires and pistons. It's going to be of a goodly size, whatever it is. And closest to the door, across from the lifted-from-department-store clothes rails that help mark out her bedroom area (along with the police tape), there's a litter of discarded black plastic, a few discarded computer chips, shards of what used to be the plastic shell of a wireless dongle and some snippets of metal - silver and gold as well as the copper.

It's at that workbench that she sits (she has more chairs now, all of them office desk chairs but none of them matching) and unstraps the Prime-piece to show the inner lining. She's woven gold, silver and copper wire into intricate patterns reminiscent of circuitry into the inner lining of the leather strap. These likely connect to the input/output device on her outer wrist, but there are wider patches of the metals she's used in spots corresponding to places on her inner wrist, where they probably touch blood vessels and nerves. When she offers a magnifying glass for a closer look, Chuck can see symbols - some of those odd wingding-looking things that she sometimes uses in the code that logic still tells him should fry her rig - etched into those little contact points. "It's specifically keyed to me," she says, "though the code could probably be ripped apart and converted into something useful for someone else, like I did with yours. Basically ... I got to thinking about Prime as, like, the platonic ideal of all energy; like we're all made up of charged particles and it's all energy when you get down to it, everything is also made of Prime, in patterns like molecular diagrams. Prime's just ... the purest form of it. We ... seem to give it off, like something radioactive. Just ... less harmfully than radioactive isotope stuff tends to be. So this links to the Prime and Quint that is ... well, me, and uses it as a launch point to compare, contrast, analyse and direct that Platonic-ideal energy. Mostly the compare, contrast and analysis bits, to be completely honest. I can channel some in, and there's a nifty thing where I can draw Quint from my own pattern but it hurts like a bitch, but that connection turns the whole thing into something I can ... y'know, understand. Read more easily. It connects to me, I connect to the Patterns and ... booya!"

Then she looks at him, a little sheepish. "Did that make any sense at all?"

[Chuck Carmichael] "Kinda, yeah. It's more connecting than I usually do, but . . . well. Different strokes for different folks and all that. I'm glad it worked out for you! And it'll only get better as you learn more and refine and upgrade it. I hope you keep letting me check it out as you do! I like seeing other people's work."

As stated, Chuck believes firmly in collaboration; it just doesn't make sense to him, not to use all the resources one has at hand. And people can be some of the most valuable resources out there. That he's proud of what she's done is obvious, even if the more chaotic nature of it confuses the heck out of him - his code is very neat and clean, she'll have noticed by now, and properly commented and documented at all points.

"And this? It's awesome work. Good on you, Molly."

[Molly Quincannon] Molly looks up at him with that nose-wrinkling Grin of Cute and says, "Why, thank you. And as to letting you keep checking it out as I do? I can go you one better than that." With that, she rummages around in her lab coat pocket and draws out a flash drive, which she hands over to him. "Schematics. It probably does a better job of documenting my thought processes and code than I can when in full happy auto-babble. Some of the components are expensive as hell - I needed really conductive metals, so there's a lot of copper and gold and pure silver - not the sterling stuff, either, but straight molecular silver - in this thing."

Then she looks around the workshop area and gives a sigh - there's satisfaction in there, but there's also a note of somehow cheerful frustration in it. "So I finally worked that out and I've been wanting to get to grips with Prime for ages, so that's a really big confetti-inducing glee thing. But now I've got a decision to make and you know what I'm like with stuff like that. I'm supposed to be a Time mage, but I can't actually give myself more hours in a day yet, and I still have to do things linearly. One day I'll be able to be in two places at once and that will be glorious, but until then I actually have to prioritise the learning curve. Help? While eating pizza in the other room? The ferrets are contained, I promise, but no food comes in here. Dew, yes. Food, no."

[Chuck Carmichael] "Of course. What are you thinking?"

This is asked as he follows her out of the workshop and back into the main part of the garage that's becoming more of a home every time he's here - it's interesting to see the progress, in fact, and a thing he appreciates more than he says to anyone ever; it does him good to see things moving ever forward. However it may seem it from the outside looking in, nothing is ever stagnant with the VDept.

"I know what I'm working on now that I finally figured out the basics behind the Forces code, and I'll need your help with that too, if you don't mind." There's a grin in his voice as he says so, and he leans forward to nuzzle lightly at her hair; displays of affection are few and far between even in private (though he's fairly tactile, and never holds back from a hug, things like this are different), so it's a thing to be noticed for what it is. "But your choices first! Inquiring minds want to know."

[Molly Quincannon] Ellie's Nook, the bedroom space at the far corner of the living area near to the bathroom door, is actually the bit that's developed more as a home as things have gone on. There are pretty silk screens making it nearly a room in its own right, that spot with the girl's bed and chest of drawers, and there's a desk and bookshelf nearby. Either Ellie's made this place more home-like or (more likely, as she's the one with the income) Molly has.

"Hey, any time you need a hand, let me know," she tells him about the Forces. "I was going to revisit my code anyway, as I was thinking of setting up a voice-print eye-dee activation and command sequence for ForceFeed. Sometimes a touch screen is just unfeasible, y'know? Anyway, so going over stuff with you there just means that I can revisit the basics when I code in the voice commands." And of course, the nuzzle of her hair gets a beam and a bit of a blush.

Then, once he's settled down with pizza and drink of choice, she launches into her options. "Well, on the one hand, I've been working on Prime and I'm kind of on a roll? Maybe? I think? But then there's my birthday present and I can't do any of that at my current apprentice-level Mind and the curiosity is driving me bugnuts. Plus Israel keeps talking about how useful masking your resonance could be. But all the same, I could pack a lot more oomph into some of my pyrotechnics if I got more handy with Prime, and there are some things I was thinking of building that I need to be able to handle and more to the point find Tass before I can build. So ... it's whether I keep working on Prime or go back to Mind. I can't deciiide!"

[Chuck Carmichael] "Those are tough choices! I have a specific project I've been working on for ages that requires certain things, so I kind of know where I'm headed at all times." All these options at once seem to boggle him, in fact; his eyes are a bit wide, and he doesn't seem particularly sure of what to say. "I guess it depends on how you prioritize your project list, which it sounds like . . . you're not really sure how to do yet. And how important other, more mundane skills are to said project - I mean, if there's a new programming language you need to learn or whatever. That stuff takes time and effort too, at least for most people."

He shrugs, sips his diet Dew, and watches her - studies her, almost. For all their skill sets may be similar, Chuck and Molly are two very, very different creatures.

"So, what's most important to you? Pyrotechnics, resonance masking, Tass finding and handling, or the ability to understand any language, spoken or written? They all have other benefits, of course - we both know that. It's just a matter of what applies best to the project at hand. Or to the one closest to done, maybe, as you seem to be running way more projects than I generally do."

[Molly Quincannon] "I work on what appeals to me, I guess," is her reply. "Prioritising is hard. There's all this ... everything to learn, y'know? I'd like to learn it all at once, but that's not an option yet." Heaven help the world when it is, one supposes. "Still ... I admit that your babelfish translator programme thing can't just ... sit there without my knowing how to use it until I push my limits on Prime. And I only just figured out the basics on the Prime-piece, and should get some use out of the basics before I push it? Maybe? Anyway, I can't say what's most important to me because everything is."

Then, of course, the curiosity comes up. "What's the specific project? I mean, must be big if it needs so much. Anything I can help with?"

[Chuck Carmichael] "Yeah, in fact," he says with a grin that holds just a hint of shy. "I mean, not most of it - I've been working on it since before I Awakened, really, so there's a lot that's gone through my process for years. But I've come to realize that, for it to be most effective to the Awakened community, I need to learn some Time. More Entropy as well, but starting with Time - that I don't even have a basic understanding of outside of reading clocks the way we were all taught in Kindergarten - seems like the better place to press for now. If you wouldn't mind helping me with some code, that'd be awesome."

There's another shrug, though, and an answer before he lets the rest go. "I'd say yeah, practice of the foundation's a good way to go before moving forward with a new Sphere. But that's me."

[Molly Quincannon] Molly's grin is also a little shy, but there's a tiny touch of mischief to it, too. "I ... can help with Time, but the code you're going to have to write yourself. I don't use it. Especially not for the basics. I just ... look. Even before you could read a clock, you probably had at least some idea what time it was, right? Day or night? Mealtime? You knew time was passing. You have a clock of sorts with you all the time. Here." She takes his hand and places it over her heart, to let him feel it beating. It's not a sexual thing but it is quite intimate. She holds his hand there as she continues. "Your pulse is the most primal way of being aware of time. Yes, it changes, but it's in proportion to the events around you. When you sleep, when you're relaxed, time seems slower; there's less urgency to spur your heartbeat. The reverse is true. There may be code for it, but ... it starts with the beat - the one that's linked to the 'verse."

[Chuck Carmichael] "That's . . . it seems way too simple," he says with a frown, though there's no thought of moving his hand away from where she's placed it. "I mean, when we went camping when I was a kid, my dad taught me to tell time by the sun's positioning and shadow direction and length. Maybe . . ."

Slowly, he moves his hand - not off of her, but to cup between just under and behind her ear with his fingers to the hollow of her throat with his palm, where he can feel her pulse at two points and focus on it. (And still, he can't make it into a series of zeroes and ones.)

"I think there must be something I'm not getting."

[Molly Quincannon] After a moment of consideration (and taking the time to enjoy the sensation of his hand in its new position), Molly says, "It's really not that simple. It's ... kind of like trinary. I mean, ones and zeroes are one thing, but the difference between the mundane bunch and us is that we've got the extra option. We know how flexible these things can be. You can read time by the motion of planetary bodies like everyone else ... or you can use the mutable things, to remind you that it is mutable. That while there's the zero for no and the one for yes, there's the 'maybe' option for us. Hence ... pulse. It's part of you, and it's you who wants to read it, and affect it. So if you tap into it, however you want to do it, with a piece of yourself ... then it's your will guiding things, rather than some arbitrary numbers system that anyone with any serious torque could just change on you anyway. Am I making sense?"

[Chuck Carmichael] ".....a little, I guess," comes his answer - skeptically, though. He feels as if there still has to be something he's just not getting. Sure, he knows his average beats per minute, but then there's still that 'minute' which is an arbitrary numbers system, like any calendar (Gregorian, Mayan, Aztec, whatever) or time measurement system out there. All there is that signifies any of it is the movement of planetary bodies, of the tide, and sure that's not one or zero (on or off, yes or no), but it's something.

But then, he knows academically that his own body has very similar patterns to that of the tides and similar, so . . . "Well. Pulse is just measuring blood flow, right?" This is not a thread of thought he's likely to stay with for long, given his general aversion to fluids, but it starts putting it back towards things he understands. Where her interests and talents are spread far and wide, Chuck is - for the most part - fairly specialized. Which isn't to say that he won't try other things, hasn't tried other things, but is to say that most things come back to that specialization eventually, for him. "So . . . yeah, that makes sense. Alright."

There's cessation of speech then, and closing of his eyes as his hand falls away from her; a part of himself, indeed. An awful lot of him follows timed cycles, after all.

[Hey, why not? Let's try . . . Time 1 sensing, +2 for various modifiers including being a Time virgin.]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Molly Quincannon] [[Awareness - can she tell that he's doing something?]]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4 (Failure at target 6)

[Molly Quincannon] [[No, really. +1]]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Molly Quincannon] Molly doesn't need to use that particular Sphere for sensing time. It's innate in her; she can feel the seconds passing by, time them perfectly. She's better than that so-called 'perfect clock' in Switzerland, in point of fact. She watches him for a moment - it's fairly easy to tell that he's doing something from the expression on his face, but it takes her a moment to feel it. Perhaps because it's a struggle for him, because it's new, and he's working from a whole new set of principles, and...

Ah.

"What time is it?" This when she feels it catch, the spike in resonance, the hint of the use of a Sphere that she's more in tune with than any other. Of course his life works in timed cycles; he's diabetic. He has at least a generalised time at which he needs to eat, test glucose, take insulin... For all it makes him squeamish, a lot of his life revolves around his blood.

[Chuck Carmichael] "Five thirty and forty-five seconds," he says easily, and then opens his eyes as if he's surprised at calling that up without looking at one clock or another - usually his phone, or the bottom right corner of whatever monitor he's working from. "Remind me to check my glucose after dinner, won't you?"

He's conscious of his limitations on that front, but he's no saint - his diabetes was caught early, but not before he developed a taste for Reese's cups. He's had way more than he should have since Halloween, but now the one bag of them he allows himself a year (yes, his diabetes is that bad) is gone and things are slowly normalizing.

"That's . . . maybe it's not as easy as I was anticipating, or as impossible either."

[Molly Quincannon] "Nothing ever is," she tells him, after beaming at the calling up the time so easily. "As easy or as impossible. The middle ground is where we live. It's an awesome place to be. Keeps us humble even as we're reminded how awesome we are. Hey, never forget that we're miraculous, hmm?"

Then she ruffles his shaggied-up hair a little and adds, "And yes, I will remind you. Would've done anyway, even if it was just a meaningful look in your direction. So ... hey, at least you've got the basics down, a little. And it proves my ideas aren't totally full of crap! Go, me!" Then she gives a thoughtful sort of nose-wrinkle and adds, "Though I guess they couldn't be, anyway, as those basics have served me well for eight years. Hopefully you can figure a way to make them work easier for you. But you will. I have faith. So ... you still never told me what this huge on-running project actually is; just how I can help with it."

Never try to distract someone with a perfect memory by turning to other parts of the topic. It might seem to work but they will remember and ask about it later, if they're curious. And Molly's more than curious; she's Curious.

[Chuck Carmichael] "Oh! It's . . . well. What it is now is different than what it was when I originally started - it's become a lot more than I really imagined then. I told you about some of where I worked; there was a project that I was front runner on, a way compressed manner of holding data and getting it straight to people who needed to know without a whole lot of time spent in briefing. That bit's done - the data collecting and storage, and the way of transferring it though the latter needs way more testing before it can feasibly be used on any normal person, or even most mages - it takes a certain kind of brain, or it tends to short out circuits. Anyway, I got to thinking about . . . add-ons in a way, I suppose, for less mundane usage. Giving the receiver not just the files, but real past knowledge of the thing or person he or she's learning about, and likely future courses of action. So, Time for essentially scrying, and Entropy for connecting it all in the most likely manner. Plus Mind and Corr, of course."

He says this all matter of factly, but she can see his fingers move as he does so - as if he's plotting out likely courses of action (or results) himself and ticking them off subconsciously.

"The mundane coding's pretty much done - it gets tweaked and updated as technology advances - or rather, as my understanding does. They're not always the same." She knows he's damn good with computers and technology, partially because she is as well. She also likely knows he's not terribly far from a breakthrough on that front, if he keeps going the way he is. All of this to say, sometimes his understanding advances faster than technology in general does.

[Molly Quincannon] Molly listens, interested ... and then grins when she realises what he's talking about. "I can do some of that already! I mean, mind-to-data-storage-medium and back again; I got that when I first got to grips with Mind. I ... never thought about the whole Matrix-style download, though. I guess because ... well, aren't you just erasing actual experience that way? I mean, that's very comprehensive and I get some of its applications, but ... how far would you take it? I mean, 'future courses of action'? You're Time-scrying for logical outcomes and ... where does living come into any of this? I mean, you know how it was, and everything about it, and how it'll probably turn out, without leaving a room. That's..."

She's gone from grin to bewildered, vaguely distressed frown. Clearly this is starting to worry her on some fundamental level. "I ... think ... it sounds like a very ... efficient thing to do. And I ... feel ... like ... I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. Because it takes away ... the experience of it. It'd be good, for some, I guess. Safe. Sure. ...Sterile. I..."

She literally can't say any more. Clearly the core reaons behind the idea, as she sees them at least, unsettle her on levels she had never even touched on in her head before. Such is being a Cultist; ecstasy is not always about pleasure.

[Chuck Carmichael] "You're taking out a lot of wasted time and effort in the middle so that what needs to happen can in a timely manner. Ideally, this could be used to safe a lot of lives. I mean, if I'd had it before my house . . ."

This is one of those places where he clams up; when he talks about his past, it's mostly in generalities that could apply to just about anyone in the world, other than a few details that he shares with those closest to him. (The reason that the biggest fire he'll ever have is the one necessary to grill hot dogs, for instance, even camping.) He doesn't offer intimate details, or at least not many.

"Anyway, no, it's not erasing experience - or won't be when I get it to where I want it, and to real testing. It's saving time for those who can't save it for themselves, and making sure that what needs to happen, does."

[Molly Quincannon] A part of her wants to recant in the face of this, but she can't. Even when she has something of her own that could have been prevented with such a technology, she can't. Because...

"How is it not erasing experience? You never have to go out in the field except to do what your neat and tidy little game plan says you should. It makes learning by doing obsolete! Yes, if you'd had it before ... that, maybe it wouldn't have happened, and then you probably wouldn't be here. If I'd had that before I went out and tried to learn what I could in the field from that Riveira fuck, I'd not have the physical and emotional scars I've got now. I wouldn't still have nightmares two nights out of seven. But I would rather have that than be told what I can and cannot do - should and should not do, more to the point - by a piece of software! Particularly not one that is notoriously unreliable on the grounds that the minute someone else throws Entropy into the works when you actually have to go into the field to do it, you have to shift to contingency plan B anyway! And then! Then how do you ever learn quick lateral thinking? A cool head under fire? You don't, that's how! You never have to! That's so controlled! So cut and dried! It's ... just ... it sounds like..."

She can't say it to him, what she's thinking. She loves him, she really does, and cannot hurt him that way. She tries, with everything she has, to hide the fact that what she wants to say is, You sound like a fucking Mirrorshade and it scares the hell out of me because I love you and I don't think you're like that but when you talk like this...

"...I just don't understand," she finishes, plaintive.

[[Manip + Subterfuge, WP because she really wants to hide this]]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6) [WP]

[Chuck Carmichael] [Ah, dude, right here listening to your voice and watching your face. Per + Aware.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Chuck Carmichael] "You still have to train, to hone the skills you need to do your job. You still have to be prepared for that monkey wrench Eris or whoever, whatever, throws into the gears. It doesn't take away who you are, or how you'll react to any given situation - it just makes sure you have all the facts of the matter, and presents you with the most likely courses of action and determines the best ways to achieve your outcome based on that."

He knows what she's not saying, or at least the general idea thereof - it's written all over the surprise and hurt in his eyes, though he also knows more or less how hard she was trying to not even think what's displayed in her own expression.

"I'm not . . . it's . . . I want to protect my family," comes out finally. "And not just by staying away from them. I want to pick up the nephew my sister named after me and hug him instead of just anonymously depositing money into his educational trust. And before that, I wanted to not have to see people I worked with, rowed with, hung out with die. Not to mention all the people in countless situations that could have been helped. I don't want to go back and change any of that - I mean, that's a whole shit ton of butterfly effect - but it could do a whole lot of good, I think."

[Molly Quincannon] Molly sighs and curls up on her end of the sofa. "It's not that I don't get that part; I do. I mean, academically, I get it. But you never have all the facts of the matter. What if they're obfuscating? What if the other party is twisting what they want you to see? What if you're going in with entirely the wrong data and you're trusting the stuff you got long-range too much? It just seems really narrow for a viewpoint, and that's looking at it just on the ... the fundamental intellectual application side."

She doesn't entirely want to keep going with this - not with the hurt on his face - but she wants to understand, and this is the only way she knows how. "It could do good, yes. It could make the world work exactly how you want it to work, because that's how you'd code it to work. And I'm sure you'd work hard to make sure everyone was safe. I just ... what if some of us don't want to be 'kept safe'? Do you factor in other people's behaviour as a variable, or do you try to make them act in accordance with what your game plan says they ought to be doing? Because that latter really doesn't sound ... um, very big on that whole 'free will' thing I'm so keen on. And then what happens when - because you've got to figure it's a 'when' - someone else comes up with exactly the same thing and uses it against you? What happens if they actually reverse engineer your technology, which you're desigining to brief people and keep people safe, to hurt everyone you've been trying to save?" She sighs. "We all want the world to be how we think it ought to be. It just feels like ... this is trying to turn your entire world into ones and zeroes. The world I love isn't just reduced to a set of numbers. Free will can't be quantified, I don't think. Bent, yes, but no one should be able to do that, and they sure as hell shouldn't be able to be entirely omnicognisant. I still don't understand."

[Chuck Carmichael] "It's not like that, first of all - I just said, it doesn't take away what and who you are, or what and who anyone is. Though I can say with authority that even the mundane powers that be have been trying to do that for centuries through one means or another - did you know that flouride is basically the same thing as Pax is in Serenity? That's hugely exaggerated, sure. But it's meant to pacify and make people suggestible, controllable. They use a lot more of it on, like, military folk to make sure soldiers take orders and that, but it's the same thing. Some people, it throws into frenzy. Anyway - this does nothing with behaviors, I'll admit. There are chance circumstances that, you're right, can't be put into an algorithm, regardless of if I'm using binary or trinary. What it does is make sure that you - or we - are as prepared as it's possible to be for any threat, and to take care of said threat. It's not . . ."

He frowns, and is trying hard to put his knee jerk hurt aside.

"It's not a sheep pen, or whatever. I suppose it could be, if I wanted to add that functionality, but that's really not something I'd considered."

[Molly Quincannon] Molly nods at the bit about the fluoride, looking miserable. "I did a research paper for my chemistry class. I got an A for the actual research and six months in detention. The rest of it ... I'm just worried about what happens when someone does what you wouldn't consider. I don't think you would, but half of what you're talking about is extrapolating and trying to identify and eliminate the worst-case scenario, and for what you're talking about, that is the worst-case scenario. The mitigating factor is that it's you doing that, and I don't think you would. But you can't blame me for worrying about what happens when someone else uses that against us. When they're ready for us. It's not you, though I admit that your enthusiasm for an idea that's got such malign applications disturbs the hell out of me." She remembers, perhaps, his response to her rhetorical question about Riveira; even without an eidetic memory, she'd still never forget that. "It's just ... the idea. Its applications. Its drawbacks. Its efficacy as a weapon."

Then she shakes her head, draws herself in closer on herself. "I ... think I get it. I ... it just scares me, too, to think that I could learn without ... feeling. Without any kind of tangible kick to it. The idea of data without tactility - without the feel of sight and sound - it takes something away. Something I was taught we shouldn't be without. The first ... 'download', I guess? That'd be an experience. But then what happens to the experience when it becomes routine? I'd rather take the time to hear about it, and take the risk in seeing it than risk having every data bit dumped into my head with no cost but maybe a Paradox smack. I ... try not to take anything you are from you. Experience, sensation, feeling ... that's what I am. This makes me ... what I am at the core, with my need to see and hear and touch ... obsolete fleshware."

[[Fade on mistrust, hurt and suspicion.]]