crux_fleet | 0004: NOODLEBOTS, HO!

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0004: NOODLEBOTS, HO!

Anyone with a drone gets a deedlit-deedlit-deedlit alert on their comm devices. It's a video post with a rather harried-looking Ensign Navarro. His eyebrows are missing and his hair is much more closely cropped than before. The area behind him is swarming with activity as a flaming figure does battle with a muck-covered monster.

"Ensign Navarro here. So, we were going to do this a while ago, but discovered a flaw that needed hammering out. The good news is this: We finally upgraded our drone technology. The bad news: The upgrades we were going to use melted right off. And caught fire. And it turns out the rest of the upgrades were just as flammable if you added the right chemicals to the mix." He coughs. "But, like I said, we've managed some improved functionality. If you'll pardon the projection..."

He taps a few things on his end and a complex display and readout appear. "We've increased the battery span on the drones. We're making strides for kinetic charging, something we'd tried for on the old Tyr mobile armors but which, unfortunately, turned out to be too expensive. We phased those out for the Teslated microgenerators we now use, but I was always a fan of the idea of someone powering their equipment by moving. So we're working on miniaturizing it. It might be ready in a model or two. In any case, with the battery improvements, we've enhanced recharge time and allowed for more power output. So now you shouldn't be so, ah. Noodly." Yes. "We've also added some actual connection points, so you guys can start designing outer shells if you want. Make them look a bit like you."

He flicks a dial and various armored plates skitter over the display surface. "You might want to keep in mind that, when making these things, they're still not 100% designed for an outer layer. So if you're making an outer shell of some kind, make sure you've got joint room. We'll be fixing this in future models."

"Finally, we've managed to fix the paper plate problem. Some of us wanted to use a vid-screen to allow you guys to get your faces across, but. Well. Honestly, after watching how some of you interact with each other, I'm not sure that those vid screens would remain intact for long. So we built in some holo displays!" He reaches offscreen and plonks a drone's head onto the table in front of him. Wiping off some flame retardant foam, the Ensign smacked it on top of the head with a fist and the blank face began to project another human face, this one contorted in pain. "Um. Ignore that. We were trying for some haptic feedback and, well. Let's just say it's going back to the drawing board. But in any case, the holos are pretty primitive. We can't quite make it replicate your current expressions, it draws on too many resources to translate your impulses into expressions, but you can manually take a 'snapshot' and update it whenever you want an expression change. Like, uh." He waves a hand over the face and it goes of one contorted to pain to a default blank. He waves it the other way and it goes back into a different pained expression. "They're not solid holograms, they don't provide instant 'updates', but we can get the lips to move when they talk! And we think we're pretty close to a breakthrough on the whole 'Entire face moves just like yours does' gig."

He shoves the drone's head off the table and drums his hands on its surface. "So, there you have it! Not our proudest production, I'll admit, but we're finally back on track with getting you guys the comfort and versatility you deserve. Maybe in a week or two we'll have something more substantial to give you, but for now we'll need you guys to help us out and provide feedback so future drones will be superior. If you've got any questions, ask now." Navarro grins expectantly, only flinching a little at the sound of the flaming body in the background pulling the arms off of the slimy one and beating the body with them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Give Deadlock a minute here. His face doesn't do 'sincere' very well even on the rare moments when he's feeling it. But noodlebots that burst into flames? This gives him IDEAS. Assassination style ideas. ]

What happens if you're in one of those things when it bursts into flames?

Just, you know, asking for a friend.

Well, this batch shouldn't burst into flame unless you were doing something really risky, like overcharging the battery or something. The flammable ones are probably going to get bumped back a model or two until we can figure out a way to extinguish them.

But, theoretically, if you were in one of them... Depends. If you've got your haptic feedback on, which we're enhancing the sensitivity of, we're probably talking a rather painful overload. From what I can guess of Cybertronian physiology, that probably means you're going to pass out or something. Worse if you had your sensitivity way up.

[He pauses and frowns, considering.]

...Amend that. I don't know if it'd make you pass out or just trap you in that sensory feedback loop until someone fixed you.

It'd probably be worse if your spark were in there. Of course, if you put your spark in your drone and it caught fire, you're probably looking at a case of being dead, so you might not care so much about the pain.

[He waves his hand dismissively.]

In any case, we've only got two explodo prototypes right now and we're picking one apart to figure out if there's a quick way to fix it without starting over from scratch. We've got about a dozen Model 2s available.

[This is the sound of Deadlock taking notes. Hmm. Overcharging a battery. sensitivity up. Got it. ]

That would be a really, you know, unfortunate accident.

[CHORTLE, no wait, you didn't hear that.]

You know, I think you should save the explody ones for the really brave Autobots.

Uh-huh.

[He'll pretend they didn't.]

Autobots are the whiny ones who can't wait to tell everyone how incompetent they are, right?

They're the big ones with the shiny armor, but basically.

They'd be glad to safety test the noodlebots for you. You know, to be all helpful and slag.

We'll keep that in mind.

[Just another idea to file away into the trash compactor.]

[He's kind of onto your lack of enthusiasm here.]

Listen, they do all this talk about being all magnanimmoomoo, magnetisiz--

[Manha manha? Whatever. Magnificent.]

You know, big and important and generous.

How you know their big sparks are gonna even fit in one of them unless you try?

We've already tested it, of course.

[Well, all of those 'sleeping' sparks were just sitting there and being useless...]

It's a tight fit, but it works.

This fix your no holoform problem?

It's not a problem. I just don't want any of those gross fraggin Autubots touching me.

It's a problem if you want to get into smaller establishments. [You know, like his?]

Do those things need special seats? [He's not sure how they even sit.]

Fraggin' noodlebot, if I care.

Besides, places should be bigger.

[So there.]

You try affording the extra rental space for giant robots that take up maybe 1% of the population here!

[Quark massages the bridge of his nose, grumbling something under his breath.]

Look, I'm trying to be accommodating. If you'd rather sit around the hanger they gave you all day then I guess that's your business.

They make you pay rent? After dragging us here against our will?

[That would make you a chump, in Deadlock's book.]

Shows what you know. I don't live in the hangar anymore.

Well, they did give us room and board for free. I wouldn't have even done that much.

Oh really? So where else is big enough to house a war machine your size?

They stuffed us in noodlebots, told me I had to get a job, and gave me a hangar with substandard rations.

[They didn't exactly break a sweat exerting hospitality is all he's saying.]

Better question is why everything's vermin-small sized.

[PERSPECTIVE! ? Maybe?]

[Oh hello there, new noodlebots? Yes please. Also, she's sorry (mostly) about all that, uh, language and what not when she first arrived here, Navarro. Don't take it personally, she was one extremely torqued bad-touched robot at the time.]

Well. It's a definite improvement. Uh. The fire and all the screaming though? That's not so encouraging.

Oh, hey, don't worry about that. We simplified these. Much less on the face-melting horror.

Hopefully the fire and screaming will be fixed in the next version's testing.

Oh good. I honestly need less fire in my diet, thanks. I mean I know the paint scheme kinda begs for it but I'll pass just the same.

So you say we can attach stuff to them? They any level of combat ready?

[She's thinking weapons and armor of course, typical Cybertronian.]

You're a giant robot and you want your drone to have weapons? Isn't that like giving a doll a BB gun?

[Navarro laughs a little and waves his hand.]

They wouldn't last long in combat, sorry. The plating we're making now is largely cosmetic and the skeleton still won't take any major weight. It's stronger than the first model, but anything over two hundred pounds and you're talking some issues with the motors.

...Keeping that in mind, you could theoretically outfit it with some handheld weapons and some lightweight armor, but I wouldn't advise linking any sorts of energy shields or weapons to the drone's power cores. The cores could take it, but the relays might end up blowing out on you. The next version will be a bit more durable, but we didn't think we needed to up things to that level with this one.

There's a few reasons for this. One is ease of construction: you guys are getting numerous enough that we're having to put in over a week full-time just to build enough for everyone, plus spares. Second, they're designed for you all to fit in with human-sized dwellings, not fight. Third, well. There's still a lot of people nervous about you robots wandering around. Armed robots wandering around...

[He trails off and shrugs.]

Finally, we're not really getting a whole hell of a lot of feedback on the Model Is other than "They suck" and "You're all incompetent". And the one white and gold guy who keeps breathing heavily and not-too-subtly implying that he'd like to kill someone's drone to see if it zaps the Autobot on the other side. It's honestly a little creepy at this point.

If you guys wanted this to go quicker and get more options you like, I'd suggest giving us some actual feedback and telling us what you'd want to see. We're basically working on making it so you all can interact with people more easily, that's our goal. Anything else, we're just guessing on.

What? You want me to put pretty dresses on it instead?

[Because she has a few. But they're for Deadlock's noodlebot, not hers. And she fully intends to find a way for him to get caught in public like that too. Somehow.]

Hnnn...

[Flashpoint's thinking, mostly about who the creepy white-and-gold guy might be, but that's why she doesn't interrupt for once. She grunts at the power rely thing though. She may have, uh, found that out the hard way.]

So these have better range than our holos yeah? We can go off ship with 'em?

We figured that anyone sane would want to have the biggest boomstick possible. And the drones aren't exactly boomsticky side of things.

[He totally means Deadlock.]

Yeah. Your holomatter disguises have a range of, what, a few feet? Few meters? Ours should be good for a few dozen miles, depending on how you're linked up. With a strong enough signal in place, not hard to do with subspace radio, you could have them running errands while you're in orbit on the other side of the planet.

Well YEAH. S'why I'm asking. Definitely can't get around everywhere and usually the times when you really NEED to are the times you kinda wanna be armed, ya know?

[She means emergencies of course! Mainly. There might be other relevant reasons but none that she'll admit to publicly. They are all totally legal though, of course.]

More than that, but not to the tune of multiple miles! [She sounds impressed.] So the system uses something ship or fleet-wide to support that strong a signal? Hmm...how's the security?

[Because the last thing she wants is some happy hacker hijacking her noodlebot and doing Primus knows what with it. Or worse, piggy-backing to listen in and maybe getting access to her native systems.]

It's a point. We'll work on it, how's that?

[Never let it be said that Engineering will turn down a chance to arm anything.]

Yeah, we've got a fleet-wide system, but when we give you a control device, that's what's generating the signal. Each one works with a quad-core quantum computer with... Well, I won't bore you with the actual number, but it's over a centillion possible qubit keys. And those change randomly every few hours.

We put a lot of work into that.

[It is not easy for the Victorian butler to follow what the Ensign is saying, particularly with the rather distracting spectacle on the background. The overall gist of it, he believes, is that the later incidents are being dealt with and the Fleet is doing their best to take care of clueless outsiders like him. The "primitive" hologram fascinates him. Moving lips, who would guess! He is about to ask for further details when the flaming versus slimy battle intensifies.]

Thank you so much for providing for us, sir. However, you look terribly exhausted. Would you and your staff care for some tea? Perhaps sandwiches as well?

Edited 2014-04-15 12:44 (UTC)

Appreciate the concern, but we've got a ton of work to do. Repairs to our defenses, fixing up these drones, working on some starfighter mods someone wanted to try out...

[He shrugs a bit.]

Still, you'd have to be mad to turn down tea and sandwiches. Especially if it's fresh and not the fabbed stuff. Science Captain McEngineer dropped off some bread the other day, but. Uh.

[Wait, is this guy a new arrival?]

Some advice: If a dwarf ever gives you a slice of bread, don't eat it. You'll loose a tooth.

[Dropped off some bread the other day... My, my, the working conditions of the masses have not improved over the years, have they? Kevin tilts his head and holds his chin as in deep thought. At the local market, he can buy those crying purple flowers that taste almost like cucumber. And one can always trust in the universality of chicken. He is about to add bread to his shopping list when his trail of thought is interrupted by the Ensign, who seems to have read his mind. If his misplaced accent and garments have not divulged his new arrival status yet, his most startled expression certainly does.]

Oh dear, do they keep their bread for that long?

[The angel's mind is crowded with hypotheses of sociological and economic nature. Are dwarves just too poor? Miserly? Bent on a space dwarf vendetta?]

When a culture has a section in their museum marked 'war pastries', it's best not to ask.

[Good Lord.]

...I shall take your advice to heart, sir.

May I ask your address, though?

Sure, gimme a sec and I'll send your map some directions.

Use the blue door, not the red one. You wouldn't like what happens when you touch the red one.

[In spite of using a floating cube to communicate, he takes his time to write down the directions on a completely normal notebook.]

...Forgive me, sir, but is that another question I should not ask?

Probably better if you didn't. Plausible deniability and all that.

T-the blue door then.

[After some epic shopping and even more epic tea brewing, he is finally standing in front of the supposedly safer blue door with a wicker basket, very much like Little Red Riding Hood about to call in on her poor grandmother.

Knocking is, of course, the polite thing to do.]

[It's a very good thing he didn't touch the red door. As it is, there's a brief line of light that runs over him, and then the door slides open without comment.

Inside, the room is vast. Workstations are set up all over the place, with quite a few of them liberally littered with cables heading everywhere or mechanical parts. Some of them look clean enough to eat off of. That, of course, means it's a trap.

There's about seven people there, of various races. Two dorfs argue with a four-armed blue alien about something in colorful language, pointing at a smoking crater in one of the work stations while the blue-armed alien jabs its finger at a holographic display.

The other four, including Ensign Navarro, are busy tinkering with various devices. He looks up and notes Kevin's entrance with a grin, whistling to catch everyone's attention.]

The peasants have offered a sacrifice to us! We'll have to spare the rabble our godly wrath for another day.

[He ducks, laughing, as one of the others moves to cuff him upside the head, but even the tense atmosphere in the corner drains out as everyone turns to look at Kevin.]

[The whole environment reminds Kevin of an extremely disorganized factory specialized on the manufacturing of...things. Fortunately, one of the most valuable lessons Kevin has learned in his relatively short time spent with humans was to have a sense of humor. Navarro's comment brings a smile to his face, which is immediately interrupted by the sudden realization that everybody is staring at him.

He tilts his head in a short salute and takes a couple of tentative steps into that realm of things that don't make any lick of sense. Do dorfs eat chicken? Are blue-armed aliens allergic to tea? Is this poor peasant offering someone's relative for lunch between two slices of delicious multigrain bread? If only he had asked himself those weighty questions before! With so many multiculturalist pitfalls, it is no wonder that he almost misses the Spanish Inquisition.]

I-I hope everything is to your satisfaction, sir.

[The wicker basket is presented with no small trepidation.]

Edited 2014-04-22 12:08 (UTC)

Not one thing in this video inspired confidence in your abilities or the new... noodle-bots.

[is the facepalm audible? hopefully it's audible.]

Oh, c'mon! It's not like THESE guys are the ones that catch fire!

We think we've got it figured out, anyway. Soon you big guys will be able to marvel at the feel of grass under your toes.

...If you have toes. I mean, given you're robots, it might be a dumb design.

You think?

Are your engineers trying to prove their incompetence or is this an isolated incident?

I don't know. I mean, I only managed to patch you up when you popped in, despite you being an unknown robotic life form and all.

Didn't get the license plate on the truck that hit you, though.

Yes, not being able to walk for the last few weeks has really done wonders.

[you guys obviously didn't try hard enough, that's the problem here.]

I do not think Cybertronian issues are something you want to get into.

Next time we'll follow the Grand Cybertronian Tradition of apparently throwing you out of the airlock so you don't bleed all over our floors. Seriously, that sucked to clean up. And then I had to examine, invent, and fabricate an all-new kind of energy-conducting fluid to keep you alive.

I'm beginning to wonder if the problem is just that you didn't get hugged enough as a child.

[what is a child. what are hugs. stop saying nonsense words.]

I'm sure such an opportunity was despised by your scientific community.

[it's ok you don't have to tell him how awed your tiny minds were by superior cybertronian biology.]

Actually, a naturally developed machine race that bleeds the same thing that it consumes to survive? It did make us wonder just how common vampirism was in your species.

Practically non-existent.

[what the hell is vampirism]

Well, there goes that theory.

[Seriously, crack open a book you neanderthal.]

[flatly:] How unfortunate.

[HE READS PLENTY, OK.]

Anyway, if you don't have any more questions, I think we're done here...?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

0004: NOODLEBOTS, HO!

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