Technical difficulties (Closed)

[earthandpine]

Who: Rosethorn, Bruce, and Peridot; later, Elsa
When: the afternoon of 1/19, and early morning 1/20
Where: anywhere on the ship for the first part; Mero 14 for the second
What: Plant mages aren't so great with technology.
Warnings: None! (for now)

[For Bruce and Peridot]
Rosethorn got the message telling her to go down to the cargo bay and pick something up, and of course her first thought was what got taken from her in the Ingress on the way here. The thought is a cheering one, especially after the unrest on the planet, and so she hurries there... only to find two utterly baffling things waiting for her.

She hasn't the slightest idea what the device with the big ring is, but she'll figure it out later. That one, she leaves in her room. The other, however, she takes in search of anyone with the slightest idea what to do with it. She'll stop and ask questions of the first person who shows interest in what she's carrying.

Robots are not her field of expertise.

[For Elsa]
She's going to find out what that other device was, like it or not. So will her roommate and probably half of Mero Deck.

Rosethorn's new alarm clock goes off absurdly early the next morning, blaring at top volume and jolting Rosethorn out of sound sleep. Temple bells at home were one thing. Those, at least, were a familiar sound to wake up to. "What in Mila's name!?"

Comments

The first one~

[peridork]

Fortunately, right up the hall there's an entire hab suite full of nerds who can help.

Well. Two nerds who can help. Starflight is elsewhere at the moment, not that (in Peridot's opinion) he'd be of much help in this situation anyway.

It's Peridot that's standing in the entrance of Mero 011, in what she probably considers a stealthy manner, squinting through the narrow space that she has opened in the door as she tries to catch a glimpse of what Rosethorn is carrying as she goes by. She has a 6 pack of shorts with aliens on them, all in assorted colors, tucked under her arm for some reason.

plops in here

[hyperkinesia]

Bruce, unlike Peridot, isn't a sneaky, prying little thing, so he's not actually standing next to the door and snooping around for whomever happens to walk by. In fact, he doesn't even notice that Peridot's doing it at first, though when he does, he stands up, rolling his eyes and sighing quietly as he makes his way over.

"Peridot, could you try not to--" His thought gets cut short as he reaches for the door and tugs it open a little more, seeing who's walking past. "Rosethorn. Hi."

His eyes immediately fall to the object in her hands, interest visibly piqued. "A robot?"

[earthandpine]

Peridot is anything but subtle, and Rosethorn was about to tell her off when Bruce does it for her (if more gently than she probably would have.) "Hello, Bruce. Yes. There was a message asking me to go down to the cargo bay and pick it up, but what am I going to do with a robot? In case you were wondering, my world has no advanced technology."

They do some pretty amazing things with a combination of magic and simple mechanical devices, but that's neither here nor there. It certainly does nothing to help her with what she's carrying.

[peridork]

Having skittered off to the side a few inches with a soft hiss and a resentful glare when Bruce walked over and totally blew her cover, Peridot quietly pokes her head back into everyone's business again, frowning at the device under Rosethorn's arm. She doesn't say anything just yet? She's just kind of staring at it suspiciously. Observing it.

[hyperkinesia]

Yes Peridot, very intimidating, that glare totally works on Bruce. Except not, and he ignores it just like he ignores that quiet little hiss with all too practiced ease and nonchalance, looking from the robot to Rosethorn when she answers.

"It probably just needs to be programmed. It should be advanced enough that you can use it without a lot of technological knowledge yourself." He opens the door a little more, and steps onto the threshold, gesturing at the robot. "Can I?"

[earthandpine]

Peridot blew her own cover. No subtlety at all. Rosethorn makes a valiant attempt to suppress a small snort of laughter at that hiss. Sorry, Peridot. "I only recognize the word at all because Hiro mentioned them to me." And then had to give her a full and very enthusiastic definition of the term.

"Please, take it," she agrees, passing the robot over to Bruce with the air of someone handling something that might explode. Though Rosethorn doesn't know what it's about to ask for, the robot will expect a name and personality parameters as well as some basic uses laid out for it.

[peridork]

She speaks, finally: "Were you given any kind of information about what kind of function it's supposed to serve?" It doesn't look like much from the outside, but then again she supposes her robonoids don't really look very indicative of their function either.

[hyperkinesia]

He fishes his glasses from his shirt pocket and puts them on, turning the robot in his hands and examining it carefully, then glancing at Peridot when she talks. "We might be able to program it to perform a number of tasks," he says to both Peridot and Rosethorn, his gaze then shifting to the latter. "If you want us to. It could help you in a different number of things. And it's asking for a name and personality features, so I assume it's based on vocal interaction. You should be able to just talk to it, whenever you want it to do something."

[earthandpine]

"No information about its uses, no," she tells Peridot. Supposedly it will help her somehow, but Rosethorn has a hard time imagining what she'd ask of a robot.

"It needs to be given a name and a personality?" she asks, raising her eyebrows. Somehow she never quite grasped the concept of robots and their complexity as compared to simpler machines. "You'd better program it, if you're offering. All my scientific knowledge is tied to plants or disease. couldn't even tell where it wanted me to start."

[peridork]

Peridot lets out a bout of exceedingly obnoxious, nasally laughter, which she has to stifle in one hand for a second. When she looks up between the both of them, she's still looking exceedingly amused.

"I'm sorry, it's just... A personality? Why would a robot need a personality? It's a machine, a tool meant to serve and assist it's owner!" The little gem snorts and holds her hand out distractedly towards Bruce, shaking her head. "Just give it to me, Banner. I can program it to behave efficiently, without the need for such a pointless feature."

[hyperkinesia]

And here goes another eyeroll, Bruce looking a little exasperated for about half a second there as he glances away. It comes almost too naturally at this point, his response to her reaction and attitude.

"No, Peridot. I'm not handing you the robot. If it's asking for a personality, then it must be capable of some level of artificial intelligence, and that's how we're going to go about it," he says matter-of-factly. "This robot isn't for you, so don't go around deciding what's a pointless feature or not."

He turns his attention to Rosethorn then, as if in tone of asking her what she prefers. "I've met an artificial intelligence back home, and it can be very useful, as well as good company. You can even teach it some things, over time. For instance, about plants and how to tend to them. We can take care of the basic programming, but if it has a gentle, kind and curious personality, it will be more open to learning about how you tend to them, and what each of them are for. It could help you in your work, store information, search for anything you might need... Whatever you can think of."

[earthandpine]

Rosethorn would perhaps be inclined to agree with Peridot about creating an artificial personality. The way she says it, though, brings to mind the dismissive way people talk about plants, or other elements associated with ambient magic. That sets Rosethorn on edge enough that she'll go ahead and side with Bruce here.

"You're going to give the robot a better personality than most people I've met," she scoffs at Bruce, but she isn't objecting. She looks at the orange robot again, then adds, "Calendula works as a name, for a start. And..."

She doesn't like admitting to weaknesses, especially in front of people she's just met. "I have some physical disabilities. Weakness and poor night vision, among other things. Anything that could mitigate those would be helpful." Admittedly, she pushes herself to do most of the work in the garden herself, because she loves it. But sometimes it just tires her so much more than it would have a few years ago. Asking for help from a robot might be easier than asking another person.

She doesn't mention her breathing, because it doesn't occur to Rosethorn that there's anything to be done about that. Bringing up her physical weaknesses may also call attention to the fact that her speech is always slow and careful, regardless of emotion.

[peridork]

Peridot, perhaps having the good sense (for once) to realize that she's out-numbered here, looks sullen and doesn't chime in with much more than a irked sounding grunt at first. The last time she dared to voice her reactions upon hearing about various human health defects, it got her trolled by an angry space Russian.

"Night vision should be simple enough to account for," she says finally. "It appears to have a light source built into it already. It should just be a matter of providing it with certain protocols to allow it to activate that on command."

[hyperkinesia]

Bruce is relieved that she doesn't insist, honestly. He knows where Peridot's coming from, even understands her view to a degree, but she does tend to have a very analytical and somewhat cold approach to certain things. If it were meant to be just a simple machine, that would be great, but clearly this particular piece of technology is capable of much more.

He nods at the name and some of Rosethorn's requests, not asking nor even looking surprised at her admission about having some disabilities. He listens to Peridot too, as he gently pries one of the panels aside and looks into what's seemingly the control panel. "It should all be easy enough to manage. Should we go to the Mess Hall? We'd have more space to work on it there."

I know this is ridiculously late! I won't be upset if you guys want to drop it.

[earthandpine]

A light will help anytime she's not trying to be stealthy, and it'll be a blessing seeing as she doesn't have any of Evvy's rocks with her. She may only have had the girl in her custody a few months, but she's already gotten used to both Evvy's presence and her magic. She nods acknowledgement of Peridot's contribution.

"We can go wherever you'd like. I'm not going to complain, when you're going out of your way to help me." She adds as she turns to go, "I prefer to do most of the work in my garden by hand, but if it's intelligent enough to properly identify plants, I wouldn't say no to an occasional assistant."

At least less weeding is required in a closed environment than there always was in her own garden.