Noblesse Oblige [Chs. I & II -- Recreation Room]

[AmusingSN]

The Recreation Room

(Reply here with In-Character posts taking place in the Recreation Room)

Recreation Room
http://www.reactorr.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/google-fun.jpg

A recreation room, near to the conference room, is available for snacking, video gaming, television watching, and/or napping.

The television here is currently playing the local news, which has interrupted the regular programming to report on a "great ape" sighting in the Boston Metropolitan area.

". . . reported that the silver-haired gorilla had been spotted by morning commuters in the harvard yard underground parking facility. City workers later spotted the ape stowed away on a public works truck heading along the Charles River on Storrow Drive, in the Back Bay neighborhood. He startled several drivers as he leaped off the truck, and vanished into the back alleys of the neighborhood, where he is thought to have found a hiding place. Gorillas are wild animals, and are unpredictable and extremely dangerous, if you spot a gorilla, please do not approach it, instead keep a safe distance and call 911 immediately . . . ."

(Storyteller's Note: The Pax Scientia Boston facility is located in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston.)

Synopsis Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=177504)
OOC Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176320)

[ZombieLordDemus]

Dr.Watts' Beholden, Sarah, enters. After going to the tv to TiVo the news (The good Doctor like the weather forecasts), she goes to the mini kitchen to start preparing a high protein fruit salad for the group.

[Fishy]

Talia (and possibly Cora) enter an indeterminate length of time afterwards. "When you think about it, we're really very lucky that he's as lazy as he is," she notes, before plopping into a beanbag chair and booting her PDA into its nightmarish fractal-cuneiform startup screen.

Talia is going to take a moment to check in with her Contacts- do any of her hacker associates know anything about AmeriTechnology Solutions? Have any of her ex-business partners worked with them before?

Did they notice any giant shapeshifting lizards?

[ninja_penguin]

Cara

Cara nodded her assent to Talia's comments. "His inattentiveness is rapidly become a survival trait. Records indicate that if he applied his own initiative to examining the networks he would be insane or beholden ten times over."

Cara remained standing across from Talis, arms folded. "Our files indicate that you have a higher level of experience with this kind of work." she said. "If was are able to detect and trace an intrusion, I would like to assist and observe."

[Fishy]

"I don't know if we'll be able to get anything out of it. If they're using decent anonymity technology, it will be mathematically impossible to find them." Talia looks distant for a moment, with the distracted smile of an intellectual considering an interesting problem- that slowly spreads into a deranged predatory grin. "Unless we run a parallel synchronized backtrace on the decompiled network bandwidth imbalance, reverse-engineering the... "

She forces herself to an abrupt stop, and changes the subject. "That's another thing- this security audit. None of us are qualified to do a proper screening: We'll spend months patching holes that don't exist with firewalls that fail under the light of the full moon. But if we get a Gilligan in to do it, they'll need to have access to everything to do it properly. That just doesn't end well," she adds, with a somewhat self-conscious wave at Sarah by the fridge.

[AmusingSN]

Patrick Sullivan
http://static.tvfanatic.com/images/gallery/jack-donaghy.jpg

Overkill
http://www.bodyguard-training.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/bodyguards-training.jpg

Patrick Sullivan walks by the Recreation Room. He is accompanied by "Overkill" his loyal bodyguard. Patrick pauses for a moment and observes the live news story on the television, before looking to the two Geniuses who are apparently involved in some pre-recreational conversation.

"Kean, you must be working on the K-mart contract; I see they loaned you an outfit from their Sadly Single (tm) collection."

After dropping his verbal ordinance, he continues on to the Conference Room (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=177507), exiting this scene.

[ninja_penguin]

Cara

"It would appear that one of the easier methods to solve the paradox would be to successfully determine the point of origin of the breaches and remove it from the list of variables." Cara said smoothly, giving a blithe look to Patrick Sullivan as he passes by. "It would allow us to limit a mundane security solution without worrying about later intrusion attempts."

[Fishy]

Talia scowls at Patrick's back, vaguely wondering how much trouble she'd get into for frying his brain.

"That would certainly help, once Shane has that monitoring workstation set up..."

She glances up at the TV. "What do you think? Can we go find a gorilla and be back after lunch?"

[AmusingSN]

The television reveals an artist's rendering from various eye-witness reports.

http://drivenet.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/angry_gorilla_small.jpg

[ninja_penguin]

Cara

Cara swiveled around to take a dispassionate glance at the TV before swiveling her gaze back to Talia. "This would probably coincide with 'observe and assist'"she said. "Did you have a suggested point of origin for a search?"

[feeddannow]

Patrick stormed into the rec room, apparently in one of his moods, finishing a phone call.

"...No you can't borrow my army."
"Because its MINE that's why!"
"It's not my fault you picked the Catachans! It's an Ice Planet!"
"Ugh. Whatever." Click.

He looked momentarily caught offguard when he noticed the immense inbalance of testosterone to estrogen (even synthetic estrogen) in the room and he fumbled with the phone. In a desperate attempt to appear casual he smiled, which was a mistake because he had so little practice with casually smiling, it looked more like a grimace.

"So.. uh.. girls. Yeah. Just wrapping up that brain-pow-wow with P2. He loves my ideas, it's a lock. Yep. Probably just as well that you didn't go in there now, since it's all locked down. Oh, but he did mention he wanted you in there, Kean - I donno, he wanted advice about color schemes or something, probably not important." He rocked on his heels a moment, forgetting that MAYUKO was behind him and bumping her - though she made no notice of it.

[AmusingSN]

A helpful news reporter again reports that people spotting the rogue gorilla should not approach, that they should keep a safe distance and report the sighting to the authorities. The news reporter reiterates that gorillas are very unpredictable, and very dangerous.

Perhaps even more dangerous than dinosaurs? It is left unsaid, but the question weighs heavy on your minds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tt9P2qWfWg&feature=related

[feeddannow]

Patrick unstuck his attention on the girls for a moment to glance at the screen, the words 'dangerous' and 'gorilla' making his ears perk up. His short attention span seemed - at the moment - to be enraptured by the TV screen.

"Hooooly ****. That is awesome! Did you see that Ape? Where's Jane-****ing-Goodall now? Huh!" He laughed a little too loudly, too awkwardly then. And looking at MAYUKO he snapped his fingers.

"Oh! I got it... I got it! Just the thing for this... And they said all those years of playing Donkey Kong were wasted! " He tugged on MAYUKO's functionless arm and started dragging her out of the room. All the while saying...

"... Renowned Scientist and Robotics Genius rewarded with key to the city after he put an end to the primate-problem..." and laughing gleefully.

[AmusingSN]

# Storyteller Note #

(Time has advanced in the scene, and this scene has reset. See the Synopsis Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=177504) for more details)

# End Storyteller Note #

The recreation room has been cleaned by the staff. The live news report of the renegade Gorilla continues on the television, but the news reporters are definitely repeating themselves, as no new sightings have been reported in the last hour.

Sarah Yankovich, Doctor Watt's beholden assistant, currently holds the high score record on the company Galaga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaga)machine.

[ZombieLordDemus]

After an hour of failure trying to beat the high score. Dr.Watts makes himself a "Shaggy" Manwich with a HIGH protein fruit smoothy (huge pitcher if anyone wants some, "Banana Republic") and retires to the Conference Room.

[Daimbert]

While Karen had been offered the chance to go after the escaped simian, she declined. That was the job of the police, she reasoned, not a young university professor. She politely declined to go along, leaving the others to their task with a "Be careful, and don't hurt the poor ape!" as they left.

She hung around in the conference room until Shane showed up and started setting up the workstation. Since she didn't know all that much about computers and wasn't all that interested in them, she moved along.

She briefly considered hanging out in the lab, but they weren't far enough along in the project for her to really do anything there, so she headed into the conference room. She arrived just as Dr. Watts was leaving, and so ended up with the recreation room to herself, at least to start. She grabbed the salad she'd prepared that morning from the fridge, and sat down with a notepad, running through her memory with a list of all the papers she thought might be useful for determining the best metals or metal combinations for their undersea colony. As she did so, she idly noted that this might make a great reading list, and thought that this would make a great fourth year/grad seminar for her next term.

[AmusingSN]

One of the office staffers drops off some snail mail in the recreation room for Karen. There's a letter from one of her ex-classmates who is currently doing sleep disorder research with Massachusetts General Psychiatric Hospital. He's requested her assistance with a consultation.

[Daimbert]

Karen checks the letter, and remembers the classmate well ... and fondly. So of course she'd be happy to help. She doesn't really know what help she can be, but it might be interesting, and she might learn something new. And a day where you learn something new is never a wasted day.

She checks the letter for the contact instructions and sets off to make contact with her former classmate.

[AmusingSN]

Karen reaches her classmate on the phone, Robby Wright. There's apparently some patient there who claims to be fighting a war on Mars while he sleeps, and there's something about him that reminds him of some of the crazy stuff Karen started to do at school.

[Daimbert]

While Karen doesn't recall doing anything all that crazy in school, she's certainly willing to help, and since her time is pretty flexible simply asks him when he'd like her to come and take a look.