As Ola finally found her room, her ears perked up. She was ecstatic to see her things all lined up along one wall, and even more exited to see a small blue lamp looking abject in the corner…
“Look, someone installed a personal node! I can access the Hive in here!”
“OK,” Sha’la muttered as she noted down the details, “I’ll report it to the campus police and see if they can find it.”
As Sha’la filled in other sections of the form, there was another knock on the door.
“Yeah?” Sha’la shouted. A paramedic peeped their head from the door.
“We were told there was a patient here?”
“Ah yes. She’s the girl on the couch. Nee’la, how is she looking?”
Nee’la checked Sah’mahn’th’s pulse.
“She still rather pale and her pulse is weak, but steady. I’d say get her to the hospital ASAP.”
As the paramedics brought in a stretcher to take Sah’mahn’th away, Nee’la started briefing them on Sah’mahn’th’s condition. After several nods, the paramedics wheeled the stretcher away. Nee’la bid farewell to Sha’la and Lena before leaving.
“Sorry I can’t stay. Got other incidents to attend to. I’ll see you guys later.”
Sha’la returned her attention to Roland.
“OK, Roland, I’ll check out the CCTV as well. Is there any other details you can give me before I contact the police on site?”[hr]Luh’ciia was amused at both Ola’s seemingly airheadedness and her sudden bout of happiness.
“Hmm, I wonder if this ‘access node’ means you have another Pax as a room mate…”[hr]“…I don’t care what Noi thinks. That administrator and the campus dean are both assholes. And that psionic transmitter wasn’t meant to make dogs go insane. It was meant to be an attempt at curing neural illnesses in organics!”
Jehn’ah Falkes, to the outside eye, seems to be talking to herself. In actuality she was using a comms link back to the hive jury rigged from a primitive cellphone. Reception was patchy, and speaking to a supervisory authority. Eventually she just sighed at the response unheard to the outside.
“…fine! Tell Noi and the city overlord that I regret what has happened, but not what I was doing. OK?”
Cutting off the link, Jehn’ah sighed. She really did not like the xenophobia she encountered at every turn in the FPS and the recent problems with her last experiment was the last straw. The moment she could request a transfer back to the Hive, she would take it. Jehn’ah stomped her way back to her room in the dorms, hoping to get some rest. Entering the room she found what looked like a fellow drone standing with a Dannistrian nekomimi.
“Errm…who are you guys and what is going on? The Hive sent another supervisor over to watch my behaviour again?” she snarled.
Lena nodded. She then glanced at the clock. "Oh snap! I need to get to my next class! Bye Sha’la! I hope everything turns out alright!’ Lena hurried to her next class, with four minutes to spare. “That was close,” she thought. The next thirty minutes were spent on the explanation of cybernetic organic chemistry, a fascinating study, but the professor made her uneasy for some reason…
Roland Wei: "Oh yeah, Johnny Si’mohns is dealing pot again. Wasn’t he suspended already for giving Li Chan Wook a joint? It must be his 5th suspension so far…’
Ola stared for a moment.
“I think I live here…”
She thrust the map forward.
“At least this is what this helpful person has shown me.”
Ola’s ears perked up.
“I didn’t know any other drones were here! What city are you from? What year are you? Is that node active?”
Ola’s tail was wagging furiously.
OOC: Apologies Pax if I got these details wrong. I’m just guessing since I don’t have much info on the Hive to go on. I’ll leave you to fill in some of the relevant details.
“Whoa! Calm down there! I’ve never had to deal with a drone with emotion inhibitor issues since. Well, since the great malfunction of Alpha-Sigma 147…”
Jehn’ah then beamed over her Drone ID/Origin signal to the newcomer using her internal communication transceiver. She then turned to Luh’ciia.
“Another Dannistrian? Never seen any of you in a while. And your designation, organic?”
Luh’ciia gulped.
“Urm…”
Jehn’ah smirked.
“You name, Miss.”
“Oh. I’m Luh’ciia”
“I’d give you my Pax designation, but you probably couldn’t pronounce it, much less remember it. I’m Jehn’ah.”
Jehn’ah offered a hand.
“Well, I must admit I’m glad to see another Drone here other than the few support staff and lecturers gathered around the place. So, what did you do to offend your Overlord to get sent to this backwater dump?” Jehn’ah asked Ola.[hr]“Can’t do anything about the Pot dealing” Sha’la said as she continued writing, “That would be a police matter. But I’ll note that on file anyway. Was there anything else?”
Roland brought out his smartphone to show evidence.
Roland Wei: “I’m not sure if this constitutes entrapment, ma’am. I have taken a few shots of Johnny Si’mohns. It’s definitely him. He’s 6’5” and sports a buzzcut hairstyle and wears that 420 tattoo on his right arm. That’s him passing three bits of joints to his customers. This next one has him departing with the money. All of the actions took place outside the shower room.
Ma’am, how on earth did this guy get away with dealing drugs? He’s already suspended 5 times. I don’t think he should be allowed to stay in Shiro after the sixth. Other than that evidence, I’m done here.’
Lena had just left her class when she ran into her roommate and Sha’la. “Oh hi guys! How are you two doing?”
“What did I do? Like, I don’t know. I was waiting for my work assignment after finishing prep school. I SOOO didn’t want to be a miner, so I sent the overlord messages everyday telling him I wanted adventure! After about a month, he sent me a reply telling me he had just the place for me. He smiled a lot when he told me that…”
Jehn’ah sighed and put an obviously cybernetically enhanced hand on Ola’s shoulder in sympathy.
“Oh dear…I feel sorry for you. I really do. This is probably the worst place they can send you if you are looking for adventure. This backwater the organics live in. It’s boring. Really boring. I hate it. There is no adventure to be had here. Not unless you join the organics in their so-called ‘partaying’. Which, as far as I can tell, appears to be a ritual of alcohol intoxication, poisoning of their bodies with illegal pharmaceuticals and recreational procreation with no particular aim. Except perhaps to cause emotional distress and physical short and long term damage to themselves and others around them.”
Jehn’ah rolled her eyes in disdain.
“To summarise, I hate this place. I really want to head back to the hive. And I suggest you do the same. Any mine would be preferable to this backwater hellhole. I am lucky my emotional suppression unit is still functional. Otherwise I probably would’ve done something highly regrettable that would’ve bring the Hive into disrepute.”
Jehn’ah paused.
“Well, if you still want to stay here, I’ll would call you illogical but I won’t stop you. So do you need any help to unpack?”[hr]“Very little,” Sha’la replied, “I’m still dealing with the paperwork from last time. And no, Roland, that does not count as evidence that I could use in it’s present form. However I’ll copy the video from your smartphone onto the campus network and store it as secondary evidence if you don’t mind.”
OOC: Vulshain which room mate are you referring to here?
OOC: I guess that would be Ella, I think.
OOC: Ah OK. Just wondering as I’ve not mentioned Ella yet. I’ll mention her next IC post.
Some idiotic pranksters threw a stink bomb into the office of Sha’la, causing alarm to her and the occupiers.
Random student ‘STINK BOMB ATTACK! HAHAHAHA!!!’
Sha’la got up and opened a window in the far corner of the office. She then went out of the office and swore a few times at the pranksters before calling on the radio for back up to detain them. She then returned into the office.
“Lovely. That smell is going to be in here all day! Morons…well,” she turned back to Lena, “Very little is going on in here. I’ve been trying to deal with this case and well, that’s it. Being security is a boring job. But someone has to do it.”
Ella Ra’hn, Lena’s room mate, wafted her nose in front of her face to try to clear away as much as the vapour as possible. She shrugged at Lena.
“No idea what that was about. I was just in to say hello to Sha’la.”
Ola smiled.
“I am actually looking forward to the adventure, and yes, I would like some help if you are offering.”
Ola motioned to a stack of sacks in the corner.
“I just couldn’t live without my stuffies!” She said giggling.
“By the way, does that have enough bandwidth for me to connect as well? I was under the assumption I would be in the dark here…”
Jehn’ah sighed as she helped unpack Ola’s personal effects into the various storage spaces in the room.
“As my old countrymen would use to say, ‘Bloody Hell!’. How much stuff did you bring with you? And did you receive extreme physical damage to your main neural CPU before you got here?”
When Ola blinked in confusion, Jehn’ah slapped her head in exasperation.
“Never mind. I’ll do a full level zero diagnostic on you later. Might even do you some good.”
Jehn’ah sat down at the desk infront of the access node.
“To answer you question regarding the node, unfortunately not. It is a very limited node I managed to get clearance for. Anything else would make the FPS authorities very, very nervous. As such, the bandwidth is also extremely low and isn’t helped by the low bandwidth connections in this stupid institution. I’ve had to juryrig a connector that would convert a human Cat5 network socket to a standard Pax node input port. However you are more than free to use it when I’m not. I can’t get anything more than basic binary streams on it, so expect only important news updates and if you do want to communicate back home, it will have to be a very heavily compressed short bit stream message. Maybe in rudimentary hexadecimal, possible binary to make it legible.”
Jehn’ah sighed again as she connected herself to the node for a few seconds and then unplugged herself from it.
“If you want to send a message back to the Hive to say hello to any friends and family, feel free to do so now. I won’t need another neural wetware update for the next 8.64e13 nanoseconds.”
“Huh?” Luh’ciia looked on confused.
“Oh, you are still here, fellow organic?” Jehn’ah joked, “24 hours in other words.”
Lena coughed and gagged. “Jerks!” She yelled at the stink bombers. “Back home, security would chase them down and drag them back here. Then they would have to clean up the entire place.”
“But anyhow, I was wondering what you guys are doing tonight? I was thinking we could go to this great Chinese restaurant I heard some of my classmates in Advanced Computer Mathematics were talking about?”
Ella Rah’nh shrugged as she looked at Sha’la. Having been brought in from Dannistaan to Shiro to help out with several remote computer systems, Ella was one of the few Dannistrians not to have any official Government or Military link on the campus. She looked at the diary on her cellphone before sighing.
“Sorry Lena, I can’t go tonight. I have to help do a remote site backup. Then after that I have to make a start on my second project of the year. The fellow students I’m meant to be working with seem to be procrastinating and won’t do anything unless I’m there to push them along and nag at them.”
Lena looked at Sha’la who shook her head.
“I would love to go, but not tonight as well. I’m going to go deal with an essay I have to submit pretty soon before I get a bit of sleep before early morning guard duty tomorrow.”
Lena’s dropped in sadness. “Well, okay. But just let me know when you two can come. That way we can all go.” She smiled a bit.
“I’ll see what I can do about putting aside from free time,” Ella said, “It’s been a while since I’ve been out for the evening. What about you Sha’la?”
“Same here. I think that next weekend would be best,” Sha’la answered as she wrote down several things into a log book.
Suddenly she slammed down the pen on the desk.
“Godammit…one of my colleagues forgot to file a report. I’m going to have to chase him up for it.”
Sha’la used her radio to contact the errant colleague.
“Sierra Alpha One to Sierra Alpha Five. Over.”
“Sierra Alpha Five, go ahead over.”
“Could you confirm if you have completed that report on the emergency incident earlier when someone complained of an unauthorised intrusion that turned out to be just another Pax drone student, over?”
“Negative. Sorry about that. Been a bit too busy. I’ll send the report to your office ASAP over.”
“Thank you then. Please get it done for today. Sierra Alpha One out.”
Sha’la sighed and shrugged.
“Red tape. Gotta love it.”