<> <> (Ew!) <> <<(Go!)>> * Threnody sits there looking mightily distressed and thoughtful at intervals. * Katherine chews the inside of her cheek, and glances around to make sure Leo's 'talk in a less populated place' idea is held up, before saying. "We have to find that Bug, soon. Damn soon." Yeah. Who knows what it's leaked. * Vera goes for a drink. * Threnody frowns. "Maybe, but something doesn't feel right about it, unless that..." He breaks a second. "...thing it was wearing is way more advanced than it seemed." * Rochelle comes walking in and has a seat on the couch, picking up the remote. She's been gone a while. A long while. * Katherine clcoses her eyes for a second. "I didn't want to touch it and find out, but 25 years is a damn long time." She opens her eyes. "Makes sense they'd have a new trick--" * Katherine stops talking when Roch walks in, before she realizes it _is_ Roch. <> (... Nice.) * Threnody is typically oblivious. "25 years... that's how long they've been under this mountain?" (^_^_v) I think that's how long it's been since, where we're from, since we last really encountered them. If memory serves properly. Nah. Probably more like 20. They'd have needed time to wipe out the rest of the human race. * Ian walks in and leans against the wall, rubbing his wrists. "Geez. I had no idea that decent cooking is outlawed by treaty, or something. Have I missed anything?" You and me both. * Katherine mutters, and looks up at Ian, then over at Roch. * Rochelle changes the channel. Good. Everyone's here. Maybe now we can _do_ something about the bug spy disguised as a human. ...I did miss something, didn't I. Crap. Don't you feel lucky? * Rochelle blinks suddenly, then looks around. "Wait, bug disguised as a human? What?" * Leopoldo nods. "Found one of the antennas it used to transmit information. Remember the Kenny G I was messin' with earlier?" * Threnody looks up and nods at Rochelle. "Something to that effect, anyway." mmm, well.. We only found the skin, but yeah.. And the antenna it made. Oh, yeah, the skin. That too. How can you forget the skin? Ugh. Ugly site it is. * Threnody shifts in his seat. "Well, Bugs are capable of making communications equipment organically, so to speak, but... I didn't think they could make actual independent transmitters." * Rochelle thinks that over. "Huh. Maybe they have human help." * Ian winces. "Nastier and nastier." Wouldn't surprise me. I talked to a general. He said the bugs are reacting the moment they act. * Threnody turns and *blinks* at Rochelle. * Rochelle shifts. "Like they know ahead of time." Well... ("Roch _talked_? To a _person_?") * Rochelle brings one foot onto the couch. That would... explain a bit. (Yeah, I figured that's what the reaction was about. ;P) * Threnody tilts his head. "How did you run into a general?" Some bastard was gonna rape me, so I kicked him in the nuts and went for a five mile walk. * Rochelle shrugs. "And the general was at the end." ... * Katherine frowns. "It's just confirmation--" she suddenly snickers and gives Roch a grin. "Good job." * Rochelle grins. Just a little. * Leopoldo blinks at Rochelle. (Expression!) ... * Vera drinks. ...are you okay, Roch? I'm fine. It happens. Oh, of course. * Threnody snaps out of his blank expression. "So the general said that the Bugs are moving coordinated to troop movements..." He eyes the antenna. "That must be it." * Rochelle looks at Leo. "What's that s'posed ta mean?" Nothing. * Rochelle eyes Leo for a moment, then goes back to watching the 'net. <> * Katherine glances over at Leo, then at Thren. "Yeah. Which is why we need to find it before it invites the Bugs in for a stroll." Then she leans back. "Oh, we are so screwed." We could turn the antenna into lost and found and wait for whoever picks it up. * Vera watches the 'net * Fitzroy chuckles at Leo's idea. * Leopoldo managed to say that with a straight face. * Katherine laughs slightly. "Nice. Or we could try to track down who it is. Only a few million or billion people. Piece of cake." Or... We could send the bugs messages of our own. * Threnody suddenly laughs, a little nervously. "This sounds hauntingly familiar to me." We don't know their language, yet, unless Roy's been making progress when I wwasn't looking. * Fitzroy shrugs, "Not much" Okay, so much for that then. * Fitzroy paces a little, then says "What if we set up a watch on the area where we found this thing." * Threnody frowns, looking at his hands a bit. "I'm trying to remember something my mother said about Sleythin... they modified their sensors to detect Bugs, but I don't remember how." Then, we break this one. Maybe the bug will come to investigate? * Ian nods. "I like the idea of figuring out the language..." * Leopoldo mmms... We might not even need to figure the language. If we send false signals, the bug would probably go to investigate of its own accord. * Katherine frowns. "Or it might panic." * Threnody shakes his head. "It depends on which type it is... is it a Spider, a Cricket..." Send a false message, and all you'll do is get them to realize we found out. That won't do much. Whatever shape it is, it's gotta fit in a human suit. * Threnody sits back. "But..." He frowns. "Something's not right about this setup, but I don't know what. My memory's good, but it's not perfect, and all I have are stories..." Maybe it's a human in a human suit. How 'bout we go back to the firing range and ask those guys if they saw anything? (Ping?) (Pong.) (I'm trying to balance all the talking I'm doing with letting other people talk. ^_^) * Katherine frowns for a second, then says. "Okay. That's two groups? Three? One to work on the language, one to go ask questions... one to walk around and wait for the next broadcast? Shit, how much time until our next shift?" * Threnody looks at Katherine, then at Rochelle. "Maybe we should go on another walk. I might be able to, ah... learn something more from the general, if only a little bit." * Rochelle turns to Thren, then nods. "Sure, if he's still there." (Good question. How much time do we have 'till shift?) <> * Ian nods. "I call language." * Katherine looks at a clock! And finds out the time! "Ugh. Okay. Thren, Roch, good freaking luck. Leo, do you want to stick with the language people, or Vera?" She looks over at Vera with a smirk. "If you're sober enough to walk, that is." * Leopoldo chuckles. "I can work on the language until the next signal." * Rochelle gets to her feet. "Yeah. C'mon, Thren. We're gonna have to leave now." * Threnody blinks, then nods and stands up. "Alright." (Thren and Roch, #atc2branch) * Rochelle tosses the controller back where she found it and walks out. * Threnody walks off after Roch! * Fitzroy walks over to the screen. "Don't need it." * Fitzroy plugs his TSM machine into the screen and brings it up there. * Katherine stands up. "Don't need the help, or you're done?" * Vera lolls her head over to Kat. "Huh?... I gotta do stuff?" Don't need the remote. Oh. * Katherine looks down at Vera. "Jesus christ. You didn't drink this much before, girl." She offers Vera her hand. "Your idea, your work." * Vera mumbles. "Aw, fuck," and staggers towards the door. I can show you guys what little I have so far. (Kat and Vera, #atc2branchbranch) * Katherine lets Vera walk on her own once she gets to her feet, and says back at Roy, "It won't help us. Good luck. See you in a little less than an hour, here, or on the line." Let's see it. * Katherine follows Vera out. (If she _makes_ it.) (You three talk on here.) (Okay, now we need to BS linguistics.) * Leopoldo moves in to take a closer look at the laptop. (I am confident in Calc's ability to BS linguistics.) (BA, actually. ^_~) * Ian moves closer, too. "What samples do we have?" (Ha ha ha ha ha. *shoots Ian again.) ( Ba-da-rum-*ching*!) (Cham claims the wallscreen is like a widescreen plasma TV.) (Ah, you were putting it on the widescreen? Okay. My bad. ^^;) (yeah, it's up.) * Leopoldo looks over at the widescreen. "Where are the repeating patterns?" * Fitzroy brings up the clip he saved. "Here's the first one." * Ian peers at it. (What are we looking at, here? RF waves, acoustic data?) * Leopoldo glances over it as well. (Yeah, what exactly it is is pretty important.) It just looks like a bunch of binary data. I don't really know how it's encrypted. It might not even be. It could just be bug plain language. Well, if there's a repeating pattern, it's not likely to be a form of encryption we know. How much data does this pattern represent? A short burst, or a long section? I've run a pattern and syntax program on it. Net anything? I've got a few patterns so far. * Ian nods. * Fitzroy brings up the program. It has some highligted patters and looks like it's still working on it. * Leopoldo nods. "Now, taking out those repeating patterns, or shifting them into something notable..." * Fitzroy 's program also shows a few highlighted syntax items. * Ian hmms, and peers at the areas around the patterns. * Fitzroy makes a clone of the first process, then trys cutting out a few of the patterns. (Haha! Done with Legal Writing assignment.) (Then make with the babble.) * Leopoldo thinks for a few seconds. "Can you highlight each individual repeating segment a different color?" * Ian points at the sections just after each of the repeating patterns. "Is it just me, or does the very first part right after each pattern look a little similar, then change clearly after a short time?" I was thinking about that, actually. * Fitzroy 's highlights change to a more rainbow color scheme. It also displays a name above or below with lines pointing to each repeat. (names like Pattern1 and Pattern2) * Ian grins. "Then, this is acting like human language! At least some segments are affecting the start of the segments that follow." Normally, that's due to the physics of speech...which means that there's something almost organic about the way bugs encode this kind of data. That's good intel. * Leopoldo hmmms... "Perhaps." There are these couple of syntax notes. Do they help much? * Fitzroy points them out. ( I'm surprised nobody ever asked me my last name. ) ( Didn't anyone want to know I'm the great Vera Helsing? ) * Leopoldo nods. "Did you get any recording from the second transmission?" Hmm... (Nobody asked mine either, I don't think.) (Penguin needs nap soon. z_z) Not from the time when we were chasing it around. I don't have a reciever in this thing. (How many signals did we notice? Just the 2?) (There've been several but you've only had the chance to record the one.) So, I really only have the one. (Happy birthday Calc.) * Leopoldo nods and looks over the syntax notes. "Assuming that's organic... Mmm, assuming that syntax is correct..." (Thanks. ^_^) Unfotunately, I didn't get the first half either. What do you think? Make a few seperations here, here, and here, and that should divide the sections into easier to digest statements. * Ian nods. "We can separate out the patterns as being individual segments, for sure." * Fitzroy splits it as suggested. Can we try re-running this to automatically split everything out? Accounting for the slight changes in patterns caused by other patterns should help a lot. Yeah, the computer could do a better job at that than me eyeballing it. (*eyes the other channel* Dun dun dun.) (Heh.) I could try to rig something up. How do you want it split? By pattern? * Ian nods. Preferrably. * Fitzroy causes quite a few menus to fly by. There's even a bit of program code that appears, is changed, and dissapears fairly quickly. It's pretty hard to follow. * Fitzroy announces after a few minutes and a few attempts, "This should be it." and the patterns are in-fact split. When a new one comes up, it splits off. Related pattern windows are linked. The best thing would be if we knew the meaning of just one set of patterns. <> (Go sleep, Calc.) (Thanks. ^_^) (Unmoo!) Yeah, but we don't have that luxury. <<... Ian walks out! >_< >> (We're about done in here, guys, it's going to take a while to crank it out.) (Alright. ^_^) Well, this may take a while. How much time do we have? (on our shift?) (30 min till shift.) * Fitzroy looks at a clock. "Half an hour, about. I'll just let this thing work. We can see what it comes up with after our shift." Alright. Let's hope it turns out something useful. I think I'm gonna take a cue from Ian and get a little shuteye before my shift. Come bug me when our shift comes if I'm not here already. * Leopoldo gets up and heads to his quarters. * Fitzroy nods "Ok." * Fitzroy changes the screen to TV, disconnects, and has a seat on the couch. * Fitzroy watches 'till either shift-time or the others come back. * Leopoldo comes walking back, rubbing his head. "Can't sleep... it'd be a moot point now anyways." He takes a seat on the couch and looks at the ceiling. "So, back home, what were you up to before this whole business started?" (stupid thing..) Mmm.. Just livin' it up. I tried to catch all the big events like Sangria-Beltane. No occupation? (It's about worktime.) Well, programming, in a way. * Fitzroy looks up at the clock again. "'Bout time for our shift." * Leopoldo sighs. "Then let's get to work." <>