longestnight | Let's do this One Last Time [video]

Let's do this One Last Time [video]

All right, people. I’m going through the archives of this place to convert all the parchment confetti into indexable data sheets.

You can thank me later for saving you all the headache.

[ The vibe of this is an 8 AM Stand-Up Meeting rather than a gathering of guardians. The video's pov is from his lab, which in addition to the completed gigacomputer, was beginning to have half-finished little magitech doohickeys scattered in sparse nooks of free space. The amount of spiderbots seems to have been left at one (1) so far.]

First item: Mission debriefs. If you've fought any dark forces recently and have extra concerning details to share, we should write it down instead of keeping it in our heads.

Second: Current Projects. Anyone who's a friend to reindeer - you ought to talk to Phil and do him a solid for all the holiday prep. For the science nerds lurking around, I’d like to borrow your brains over here.

[ He'd normally have Lyla take care of this, but he's stuck with non-sentient computers. He hates it! ]

Last: Introductions for the new kids. And universe number, if your world has one of those - the chalkboard maps are getting digitized. I'll start.

My name is Miguel O'Hara, Spider-Man of Nueva York. No, they aren't vampire fangs. [ tired hand wave, as if recapping for the millionth time. ] I‘ve been mopping up messes in my neck of the multiverse until getting picked for fairy-tale duty with the rest of you.

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[ His hackles lower fairly quickly once the staredown breaks and Elle starts to explain. Miguel could be stern on topics of authority - but really, what mattered was getting the question answered. And his expression slowly loses more and more of its harshness as she recites the events.

He listens evenly, all too familiar with the difficulties of being tasked with harsh calls. It was understandable, even if she shouldn't have been forced to do that in the first place. But it sat wrong with him, it was no less horrifying. Making sacrifices was never fair. And it was worse that she was among the younger members of their crew choosing to take it on. ]

No. You explained it well enough.

[ He isn't really interested in asking her for gruesome detail. ]

Jack needs to understand that he can't just throw himself into things with no plan, or this is going to repeat itself.

[ it was the softest way he could express his disappointment with the way events played out. no blame, not really. just frustration with the disorganization of everything. ]

I've already spoken with him about preventing situations like this from happening in the future. He is in no way responsible for the actual injury, just the situation.

[It was a private conversation so Miguel's not going to get anything else right now.

Elle pivots topics, silently closing that line of conversation.]

Alright, you said you want a scan? What exactly are you going to scan me for, and what are you going to do with it?

[Informed consent is important!]

Right...

[ he pivots to his wrist-gadget, bringing up a small holoscreen projection of what looks to be an elaborate, tree-like diagram of dots. The spider section of it was in there somewhere, but it was too zoomed out to see. ]

It would be for registering your dimensional signature on my map. The scan was for detecting anomalies, so it registers a snapshot of your vitals, molecular stability, and a few other signs of glitching.

[ the data he mentioned earlier. ]

It's used as an access key back at HQ, as well. If I can find a way to make a lock tied to our signatures, that should cover security for the database.

[She cocks her head as she listens and processes to what Miguel says.]

Okay. That all sounds alright with me. I'd like to know if you come up with something else to do with it, if it's possible.

[A pause.]

Should I... stand in a certain way?

You're free to strike a pose if you want.

[ a very dry joke...

He lifts up the gadget so that the cone of orange light flashes over her from the goober - the scan only needs a few seconds of blinking before a holoscreen pops up red in contrast to the cozy night-reader orange.*- Anomaly Detected -* ]

That's normal. We're technically all in the wrong universe...

[ he swipes past it, glancing over the readings unperturbed. given that elle seemed to have some extra questions, he decides to talk through it. miguel has overseen a clinical trial or two in his past life, and talking tended to make being analyzed a little less unnerving. ]

Vitals look good, despite your injury. Molecules are stable. You have traces of other dimensions on you, but messy travel in the multiverse seems to be a common sticking point here.

[ he continues to scroll down up until one particular matrix of numbers seems to catch his attention. ]

...Huh.

[Elle absolutely takes that as an invitation.

She grins, kicks up her right foot, puts up a peace sign, and winks like she's trying to get likes on Instagram.

She settles into standing properly as Miguel lists his readings.]

'Huh'? Is that a good 'huh', or a bad 'huh'? Or perhaps the elusive neutral 'huh'?

[Elle isn't actually that worried. Let her inject some drama into her life!]

I’m not sure.

[ he keeps scrolling, reading through a fairly incomprehensible brick of numbers and overly long technical phrases. ]

I need to investigate first.

[ he leaves out the detail that it seemed temporal in nature. Something was definitely extra odd about her timeflow, and he didn’t want to broach that just yet. ]

[She raises an eyebrow, unimpressed with the lack of explanation.]

What, your science-machine doesn't tell you anything about what's weird with me? Who knows, maybe I can tell you why it's weird. I've been involved with all sorts of magical bullshit that could be setting off alarms.

[Come on, Miguel, she wants to know!]

This isn’t debate club, raw data like this can take time to draw the right conclusion from.

[ Don’t rush him!! His eyes flick up to her. ]

You’ll get a faster answer if you share relevant context. [ beat ]

So, care to elaborate on “magic bullshit”?

[ he remembered the stupid question rule. ]

[The eyebrow of judgement gets raised higher.]

You want to start with "the moon gives me supernatural Rage" and go from there?

[Ask stupid questions, etc.]

We should do an overview of powers at some point, for joint exercises.

[ said as a matter of fact, because obviously it makes sense for them to practice when they won't have the intuitive sync that spiders do. But he gets the point... ]

Well, this is all preliminary - [ he's careful to emphasize that. ]

Each dimension has a unique current of time tied to the way its fabric is built. Spacetime, and all that. But your readings are off. It's like finding oil that loves water, or - I don't know, a rock that falls up. It's not behaving like it's supposed to.

[ he's not sure if he should be annoyed at this, or if it's just a product of something in within Elle's dimension. his inclination is to dislike disruptions to his neat models and order of things. but it's inconclusive. ]

[Miguel's creeping out of "I'm offering to organize a database to make things easier" territory and into "I'm organizing everything for everyone", but he's only musing so Elle lets it go. For now.

She bobs her head and bites her lip as she takes a moment to fully process and understand what he's saying about spacetime.]

Okay. I'm going to paraphrase what you said, just to make sure I got it:

There's something about me that's fundamentally contradictory to the way my universe is supposed to flow. I'm going to assume that it's something that didn't show up for Stacia, so it's unlikely to be something inherent to our universe.

[Her brow furrows as she follows the thread of logic.]

I imagine she would also have at least a little bit of a fucked up timeline. If you're basing your readings off of the physical plane of our dimension, you may not be picking up stuff from the Spirit World. Some parts of that place experience something similar to time dilation, so there's a possibility for some discrepancies in both of our personal linear timelines compared to the material world's.

Could it be that?

[She has a feeling it isn't, but it's always good to start from the most basic of possibilities.]

Spirit worlds generally aren’t covered by this, no, but this is different from the hiccups in Stacia’s reading.

[ he says the words before mulling over the implications entirely, and then stops.

It felt cruel to tell her that it was like being a walking paradox that shouldn’t exist. Even with Miles, he had to be possessed by a particular vicious rage to tell him the way he did. ]

Like I said, it’s preliminary. It’s inconclusive. I can’t make assumptions about how your dimension works based off two readings - one I haven’t even looked at properly.

[ that part was true. he can couch it in simply wanting to do some due diligence. ]

[If that's the case, there's a few things it could be, or the combination of them.

The fact that he can even read it on his science-doohickey makes her feel- something. She'll have to figure out exactly what later.]

Well, considering this is my second time getting whisked away, and none of the dimensions I've been in have collapsed, I can't be all that dangerous.

[She rocks back and forth from toe to heel, channeling out some of her impatience physically so she doesn't become her most annoying self.]

How long do you think analyzation will take? Is there anything I can do to help?

Being frank here, Elle: I have about a dozen other things with higher priority that need my attention. I can't give you a deadline.

[ he closes the holoscreen. it's rude, but he was often rude to his own bosses. ]

You're fine. If you haven't experienced any signs of glitching, or haven't seen it out in the wild at all, then it's nothing you need to worry about.

[That takes the wind out of her sails, a bit. Miguel's being rude, but he's also not wrong.]

Can you at least send me the raw data? I know I can't actually read it, but I would feel better if I have access to it.

[Who knows, maybe she can get Tim or one of the other Spiders to look at it. Cammie's more of a programming and engineering genius, temporal physics aren't exactly her wheelhouse, but there has to be somebody she can ask to interpret it sooner rather than later. They're her molecules! She has a right to know!]

...Okay, you say "glitching" as if that's a term is applicable to this situation and I should know how. I'm sorry to ask more of you, I know you're busy, but if it's not too much trouble, could you tell me what I should be looking out for?

[Is she weaponizing her long-perfected guileless expression and politeness to get what she wants? A little, but she doubts it's actually going to take that much time out of Miguel's day to explain it. It's not like some extra manners hurt.]

Rifts in spacetime.

[ the way he said it sounds... bad. ]

It's hard to miss. Scrambles the matter all wrong, intersecting with nearby dimensions. Sometimes it fuses the objects back together incorrectly. It's always a lightshow as it happens - visible light isn't a fan, neither is air. You'll probably hear the boom if it happens near you.

Obviously, this will be painful if you're the one experiencing it, but not lethal right away. It's what happens to anomalies with no stabilizing device in the worlds I've traveled to. But it seems like we're protected here.

Well, that's not as bad as it could be?

[She guesses?]

I mean, in the sense that it hasn't happened. The glitching itself sounds very bad.

[She chooses to change gears before getting lost in the weeds on that one.]

So. You have a dozen other things you need to do. How can I help? Most of my references are in another universe, but I do make a half-decent admin assistant.

[ he considers following up on the first question, but then decides against it. elle already felt it necessary to show off her sparky teenage rebellion when he hadn't even set any particularly hard rules, yet.

and... he wonders if it would be better if she let things lie rather than get too curious about this line of inquiry. ]

You said you were familiar with interface? I would be interested in your thoughts on the user end of what I have been drafting. There's the mission reports, the data entry for training the sorting goober, converters and readers for books... Take your pick.

Edited 2023-12-22 17:15 (UTC)

I mean, when I said I was an interface person, I meant more in the people sense, but I'm happy to do UX and accessibility assessments.

I'll start with converters, because those seem like the most immediately helpful.

[She pauses, as if just remembering something. It's an act, albeit a good one. She never forgot.]

Could you send me the data you got from the scan?

[ his shoulders lower a bit with a sigh, anticipating complaints. ]

This data needs to be kept on one device, for now.

[ he really wasn’t trying to be difficult or controlling here - it was just a matter of being cautious. Personal feelings aside, he is treating their data the same as any proper secret at Alchemax or the Spider Society. ]

Like I said earlier, this reading has your signature on it. It would be a bad idea to make duplicate keys for a lock I haven’t even finished building yet.

[ to use Elle’s choice of words regarding the safe. ]

You’re welcome to see it here in the lab when you like. At least until I meet with Cammie and the others to agree on a security protocol.

[How dare his explanation make sense! She can't justify pushing further, at least not right now.

She perks up when a Miguel mentions a familiar name.]

Cammie's working on this? That's great, she'll do great.

[Elle feels a bit better about the whole project knowing her friend's also in on the project.]

Where are the converters? I can get started on that now.

The intent here is to get us all working together, believe it or not.

[ Being mildly snarky, but he’s glad that she agreed to it. He’ll accept one less instance of needing to bicker with teenagers. ]

Right then, follow me and I’ll show you where to get started.

Edited (Fixed html) 2024-01-11 20:37 (UTC)

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Let's do this One Last Time [video]

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