Three Blind Mice - Closed (Mirage, Rook, ZZ, ???)
Jul 19, 2014 12:39:30 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2014 12:39:30 GMT -5
(EDIT: End of Week 3, directly before Shut Up and Drive)
You know you've hit rock bottom when you can't figure out if you're being punished or just rotated into weird shifts. Or being rotated into weird shifts so your recharge cycle gets so slagged up your usual sneak-and-drive routine (such as it was) gets thrown all out of shape.
Rook couldn't sleep. He'd been pulling graveyard shifts, and while normally that didn't trouble him, when nothing happened for the whole long shift and he got bored out of his processor it was a whole different matter. It had left him sleeping when he was usually ghosting out of the base to go flying down some empty road or another; it left him awake in the middle of the graveyard shift even when he wasn't on the roster for it.
Primus dammit.
The base was mostly dark; Rook's dark gray armor was reflecting nothing but distorted neon gleams from the screens he was staring at. His pedes were up next to the keyboards, and he was leaning back as far as the chair would take him. Even as he looked, the screens told him the same thing as they'd been telling him for the past few hours: nothing. He threw his head back and groaned, every vent sighing almost soundlessly.
Rook appreciated the autonomy Earth-based 'Bots got, he really did. What he didn't like was the sorta kinda absolute utter kinda lack of a support tac/intel network. He was used to being told what to do and where to do it by someone else who'd chewed up lots of data and spit out a knowledgeable gist. He didn't do gists; he was honest enough to admit that he didn't know the first thing about data-gisting and all the (surely abundant) work that ended up with him, or any intel, shot at a target somewhere. He just didn't know what else to do in the middle of insomniac idleness other than try to randomly find something, anything to do out there in the whole wide world. Anything. Anything at all.
When one of the screens beeped at him, his head shot up so abruptly he damn near sent the chair falling backwards. "... What, seriously?"
One of his (entirely random) search filters had actually returned with something: heavy data and radio readings out in the middle of Nowhere, Utah. It could be human, obviously - but what little Rook knew of human usage it would have taken a visible population to reach the numbers his search was reading, and none was showing up.
It could be nothing. Or... it could be MECH. Or the 'Cons. Or or or or -- "Didn't think it through this far," Rook admitted to himself, staring somewhat owlishly at the screen as he typed in commands to refine his search. "... Huh."
Well, he could report it. Or he could check it over. It was probably nothing, even though he'd been trained, brainwashed and taught that it was always something until proven otherwise. Not to mention there were standing orders not to go places alone. He drummed his fingers on the console thoughtfully; he really hadn't thought he'd find anything...
He needed a second opinion.
Rook packed the coordinates and data density into a single data packet, and fired it off on a short-range comm. targeting an old intel-only frequency; even though the signal shouldn't be able to get out of the base, it never hurt to be careful. There were other spooks in base, after all. Appended to the comm. he added his own message. Impromptu snooping, anyone?
You know you've hit rock bottom when you can't figure out if you're being punished or just rotated into weird shifts. Or being rotated into weird shifts so your recharge cycle gets so slagged up your usual sneak-and-drive routine (such as it was) gets thrown all out of shape.
Rook couldn't sleep. He'd been pulling graveyard shifts, and while normally that didn't trouble him, when nothing happened for the whole long shift and he got bored out of his processor it was a whole different matter. It had left him sleeping when he was usually ghosting out of the base to go flying down some empty road or another; it left him awake in the middle of the graveyard shift even when he wasn't on the roster for it.
Primus dammit.
The base was mostly dark; Rook's dark gray armor was reflecting nothing but distorted neon gleams from the screens he was staring at. His pedes were up next to the keyboards, and he was leaning back as far as the chair would take him. Even as he looked, the screens told him the same thing as they'd been telling him for the past few hours: nothing. He threw his head back and groaned, every vent sighing almost soundlessly.
Rook appreciated the autonomy Earth-based 'Bots got, he really did. What he didn't like was the sorta kinda absolute utter kinda lack of a support tac/intel network. He was used to being told what to do and where to do it by someone else who'd chewed up lots of data and spit out a knowledgeable gist. He didn't do gists; he was honest enough to admit that he didn't know the first thing about data-gisting and all the (surely abundant) work that ended up with him, or any intel, shot at a target somewhere. He just didn't know what else to do in the middle of insomniac idleness other than try to randomly find something, anything to do out there in the whole wide world. Anything. Anything at all.
When one of the screens beeped at him, his head shot up so abruptly he damn near sent the chair falling backwards. "... What, seriously?"
One of his (entirely random) search filters had actually returned with something: heavy data and radio readings out in the middle of Nowhere, Utah. It could be human, obviously - but what little Rook knew of human usage it would have taken a visible population to reach the numbers his search was reading, and none was showing up.
It could be nothing. Or... it could be MECH. Or the 'Cons. Or or or or -- "Didn't think it through this far," Rook admitted to himself, staring somewhat owlishly at the screen as he typed in commands to refine his search. "... Huh."
Well, he could report it. Or he could check it over. It was probably nothing, even though he'd been trained, brainwashed and taught that it was always something until proven otherwise. Not to mention there were standing orders not to go places alone. He drummed his fingers on the console thoughtfully; he really hadn't thought he'd find anything...
He needed a second opinion.
Rook packed the coordinates and data density into a single data packet, and fired it off on a short-range comm. targeting an old intel-only frequency; even though the signal shouldn't be able to get out of the base, it never hurt to be careful. There were other spooks in base, after all. Appended to the comm. he added his own message. Impromptu snooping, anyone?