blytech (blytech) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-02-18 16:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | ratchet, viola |
Who: Preston and Bly
What: Handing over the hacky thing Omnikey Doorbreaker v. 2.0
Where: A lab
When: The ninth
Warnings: Bly tries out some big boy words.
Preston had thought long and hard about how to approach this meeting with Anton’s “intern.” His first impulse was to conceal who he was, just like he had done compulsively with everyone Rescue had spoken to, but the problem was that even if this particular gadget didn’t work out, he’d need to see others, and he’d need to be able to examine them by hand. That made virtual attendance impossible. Next he considered using his ability to conceal his appearance, but after considering, he realized that instead of revealing his identity, such an approach would reveal what he could do, which would be just as dangerous, if not more.
Finally he just decided to show up as himself, as usual, and blackmail the kid into silence if he had to. He doubted it would be necessary, but at least it was possible. Everything was a risk these days, but for some reason, even after the mess with Eli and Blake, Preston felt more stable. Probably his conversation with Shiloh the evening before.
So, having made his decision and subsided into worrying over it, Preston made coffee in the metal riot of parts and surfaces that was one of Anton’s private labs, and waited for Bly to show up.
As usual, Bly biked to Anton’s offices. He was getting used to the ride, making it faster, which was great. It meant he was getting stronger. Also awesome. Because he needed to get stronger, he supposed, if he was going to keep fighting crime. Which he intended to do. Because someone had to protect the city, even if there wasn’t a lot of Creation crime going on right now. That made him a little nervous. In movies, when things got quiet, it was because the bad guys were about to do something epic.
Hopping off his bike, he chained it up and, hands in pockets, backpack snug against his back, he entered the building. He got into the lab using the new and improved Extreme Hack-O-Matic. No, wait. Shit. That wasn’t what he was calling it. Oh well.
The door to the lab clicked open, and he slid inside. There was a guy already there, who Bly assumed was probably Rescue. There was something familiar about the back of his head, which was weird, since the backs of most heads were all really similar to the next. Unless it was a girl’s head. They had more options with their hair. “Uh, Rescue?” he asked, craning his neck to the side until it hurt, trying to get a better view of him.
Preston turned into (a decidedly Gallic) profile and then around completely. He was sitting on a stool, elbows against one of Anton’s counters, sipping coffee and punching emails into a business smartphone issued by the company. The sober suit and uninteresting tie made him look even more serious than he was.
“Preston Rawlings,” he said, introducing himself in the slight correction and having the grace to look faintly embarrassed about it. Once Bly got close enough, Preston offered him a hand in a businessman’s greeting and the indicated the stool across from him. “There’s coffee if you want it. I notice you didn’t even set off the alarms,” he said, raising both eyebrows.
He hesitated, suddenly not sure if this guy was the same guy as Rescue. That would be a problem. Because it wasn’t like he was just going to give the hacky toy to just anyone. Shuffling forward slowly, he pulled his hands from his pockets to pour himself some coffee. He didn’t really like it. It was gross and bitter and kind of tasted like dirt. But he poured himself a glass because it seemed like it was what he was supposed to do.
“Nope.” He licked his lips, pouring a liberal amount of cream and sugar into the mug before adding a smidge of coffee. Just enough to make the liquid slight brown. He sniffed it tentatively and took a tiny sip. Eugh, gross. Tasted like ass. Or what he imagined ass tasted like. It was nasty. But he sipped at it again. “And if you’re the guy I want to meet you’ll know why.” Right, because baiting some random person was exactly what he needed to do.
Preston slid the phone into a pocket. “Yes, that’s me. I’m Sparke’s executive assistant. I’ve been working for him a very long time, and you’re the first one that hasn’t set off the alarms. I can’t remember how many times I’ve set them off on accident even with entry permissions.” He put out a hand over the counter, pretending not to notice Bly’s reaction to the coffee. (God, this kid was young. Why did everyone seem young the more he looked around?) “Let me see it.”
Scowling, because that’s what you did to people you didn’t know who may or may not be threatening, Bly shrugged his backpack off. It hit the floor with a thunk, followed by some rattling, metal scraping against metal. Bly had a (admittedly bad) habit of trucking around his pet projects with him. Usually in lieu of text books and notebooks. He hated taking notes in class anyway, so he supposed it panned out okay.
He unzipped his bag and stuck his hand in. The bag swallowed his arm up to his shoulder. He felt like he was sticking it into the belly of a robot or something weird like that. Groping around, he located the hacky thing and pulled it out. He set the body of the device, about the size of a netbook, on the table with a thunk. “That’s the Omnikey Doorbreaker v 2.0,” he said, dropping a small pouch next to it. “And those are all the attachments. For, you know, breaking into government mainframes and stuff.” He shifted nervously. “Which, you know, I don’t recommend. Because the FBI is nuts.”
Preston put his coffee cup down when he heard the bag hit the floor, and stared down at it. “What do you have in there, a bomb?” He wasn’t entirely joking. While Anton had the money and the space for his little experiments, they were often extremely dangerous and resulted in catastrophic damage, especially if the man decided to test things on whatever was nearest. Preston was used to coming in to perfectly ordinary labs and seeing scorch marks on the remaining walls.
Bly jumped, startled, then shook his head, eyes wide. Bombs. Why would he make bombs? It wasn’t like he couldn’t, but that was totally asking for trouble he didn’t need. Like he said: FBI. Psycho. He didn’t want to piss off the FBI. “No bombs,” he said quickly, “don’t make bombs.” Not that he couldn’t. He could. It wasn’t hard to make a pipe bomb or anything, and other bombs. Well, when you knew how to link circuits and had access to stuff about chemicals and elements, you could really do anything you wanted to do.
Preston said nothing to this, but he was obviously pleased, and it showed in his expression. He nodded a little. So the boy made weapons, but not explosives. Small mercies. He looked down at the hard-drive like thing. “It’s bigger than I imagined.” He turned it over to look at all the ports. It seemed dreadfully haphazard compared to Anton’s streamlined products. “So if I’m on a system--plugged in, with one or the other of these--it bypasses security and allows me to see. I mean, get in. Right?” He glanced back up at Bly. Preston didn’t sound at all like the voice in the suit, his accent being very American and slightly Boston, as opposed to British.
Scratching the back of his head, and then his nose, Bly nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. It’ll get you into the computer, access to files. Might get you into stuff for the FBI and CIA, but not the DOD, you know? And, I mean, if you try for some bigger stuff, be careful about it. Like, as quick as possible, then get out, shut down your computer. Oh, and using public ones, you know, that’s a better idea. Because they can’t get you then, just where you were.” He chewed the inside of his lip, still wondering if this was a bad idea. This guy didn’t sound anything like the computer voice, but... yeah, the guy’s face was kinda familiar. He thought he might have seen him before. Maybe. He wasn’t sure. Man, being a hero sucked.
Preston upturned the bag that held the attachments so they spilled out over the counter, and as he turned and examined each, he nodded slowly. “Actually, the FBI files I want to see, I have access to already. Criminal profiles, that kind of thing. I don’t want to see the things they have buried any more than they want me to see them. I have field agent access.” Anton Sparke made interesting friends, and people were willing to do him a lot of favors. “I don’t need access to the CIA or DOD from the outside. I sincerely hope I won’t need to.” He fit one attachment, a USB, into the machine experimentally, and then opened a laptop to test it.
Fidgeting, clearly a little nervous, Bly nodded. “Right, that’s good,” he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he watched Preston work. “Yeah, I’m not good enough for the CIA or the DOD, man, no way. Breaking their codes is seriously hard work, you know?” He paused. “Not that I’ve tried,” he added quickly. Because he hadn’t. But he’d poked his nose around. They just didn’t have the kind of information he was interested in. NASA, on the other hand. They had space ships, and he really wanted to make one. A lot. Totally out of the question, since they were expensive, but still.
“So, uh. You think I could play with one of the suits later?” That was the real reason he was giving the Omni Doorbreaker v. 2.0 away. He wanted to get his hands on one of those suits again. He missed tinkering with them. A lot. Almost as much as he missed orange soda when he got up in the morning. Some people drank coffee with their breakfast. Bly drank orange soda. Because hot damn. Orange soda.
Of course Bly wanted to make spaceships. Because Anton tinkering with little satellites that he could shoot up into the atmosphere on rockets was a common occurrence, that wouldn’t have surprised Preston at all. It still might have taken a few years off his life if he actually walked in on either of them about to launch, though.
Preston was tapping at keys. It was obvious he was no programmer, but he knew what he was doing on a computer, and quite a few alterations had been made to the software that allowed him to do things that he technically shouldn’t have been able to do. “‘Play’?” Preston echoed, looking up from what he was doing with an eyebrow and sounding, for the first time, very much like Rescue. “You can work on the prototype here, but you’re not getting in one again until you’ve had some decent flight simulation training, common procedures so you don’t get flattened by a jet, and a few hours indoors where people won’t think you’re an alien spaceship come to take us away.” Preston tipped his head to indicate the direction of the suit’s storage. “Your money is in the drawer here,” he added.
He punched the air above his head, a grin splitting his face. “Yes!” The word came out as an excited hiss instead of a shout. He did a little dance of delight in place, turning in a small circle as he waved his hands over his head. Then he went to the drawer, got his money, and made a beeline for the suit. Pleased? As punch. Though he didn’t quite get why punches were pleasing, but whatever. Life happened. People said stupid stuff.
As he started tinkering with the suit, peering into all its little places and checking out the important circuitry, he glanced back at Preston. “Dude, people totally didn’t think I was an alien. There was something about Iron Man on the news.” He grinned. “And flight simulation stuff would be awesome.” Oh yeah, he was stoked.
“Let’s hope Anton didn’t give the news any credit,” Preston muttered, just loud enough to be heard over the tinkering and the clicking of mouse as he concentrated on the screen. Then he sat back and looked at the ceiling. “What am I talking about? Of course he didn’t. He’s not in it.”
Preston glanced over at Bly. He was very surface, if the little victory dance was any indication, and that put Preston very much at ease. If he was going to be this obvious in their dealings, Preston wasn’t going to have to guess what he’d do. “I’d prefer if our association was kept quiet,” he said, raising his voice a little to be heard in case Bly had his head stuck inside the armor.
“Naw, it was awesome,” Bly said casually as he did, in fact, stick his head inside the suit. He vanished up to his torso as he poked around the bottom half of it, looking at how the hip joints were put together. Because ball and socket joints could be a bitch to emulate. He knew. He’d tried. Hinge joints, whatever. But stuff that had to rotate and open and close were a pain. Shoulders were a pain.
Falling out of the suit, he grabbed his phone out of his pocket. Then he dove back in. “Dude, this thing is friggen amazing,” he muttered to himself, his voice echoing dully inside of the metal. He took a series of quick pictures so that he’d be able to work with the hip gizmos on his own later, trying to recreate them. Then he pulled himself out of the suit entirely, sticking his phone back in his pocket. “And sure,” he added, going back to his backpack and the table. “S’all good, it’s not like I can tell many people. And, hey, you seem like you’re pretty okay, you know?” He grinned. “Was nice to meet you, man, you’ll probably see me around. Poking at stuff.” He paused, chewing the inside of his lip as he thought. “Do you have, uh, any idea when Mr. Sparke is gonna be back from... wherever?”
Preston shook his head. “He keeps his own schedule.” When Preston allowed it, really, and didn’t pester him into cooperating. They were nearing the point where Preston would have to either make a field trip to haul him back or do some masquerading of his own, just so that people still knew the man existed. Such things were ridiculously important in business.
Preston’s eyes dropped to where the phone had gone significantly and back up. He pointed a pencil at Bly’s face and his voice became very stern. “If those end up on the internet, I hope you know you’re going to end up in a lot of trouble.” In front of a jury of his peers, no doubt. Not that Preston actually thought that would happen but... Spark Industries was his first priority.
His eyes went wide and he shook his head. “No, dude, really, why would I put this on the internet? That’s just dumb. No, man, I’m just trying to figure out how he does all the stuff at the hip because that joint’s just a bitch.” He shot a nervous glance at Preston’s face to gauge how the other man would react to him swearing. He was still used to people wanting to wash his mouth out with soap if he dropped a “damn.”
“Um, so... anything else?” he asked, scratching the side of his neck. “Or can I peace out?”
Funny, Preston’s expression didn’t change when Bly said ‘bitch.’ Ah, childhood. To not have to change your financial profile entirely so that you can put cash aside for elicit electronics acquisitions. “Alright.” Then, with a completely bland expression, as he turned again to his computer: “Peace out.”