Bringing In The Expert
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Date: 11/28/2018 |
1337 Temple Street, Corktown
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Cast: | |
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Aster had a fascinating dive into the Digital Web recently, saying something about a message from a dead person -- only in vague terms as of yet. The greater bragging was about how she broke through AT&T's security and pulled information straight from their email server. Since then, she's been picking at it here and there. That's what she's up to this evening, sitting at her desk with her feet folded up on the chair with her, brow furrowed as she tries to work through the scrambling in the data. This... is not her realm of expertise. "...That algorithm is recursive. Your variables aren't accounting for the extended length of the table on every variable," Jae murmurs. She's standing not too far behind Aster now, having wandered up silently and proceeded to peer intensely over her lover's shoulder without introducing herself. She has been working on her own for most of the day, choosing to remain in seclusion, joined to Aster more by her digital presence than anything physical. "What are you working on now? It looks like a mess." Back when they had first moved in together, Aster would yelp and flail at these stealthy encounters. Now, though she still can't hear Jae approaching, she's learned to roll with it. She smiles and scoots her chair back, far enough that she can lean her head against a convenient part of Jae. "Hey. This is that ghost email I mentioned -- one of Shadi's classmates was killed in the shooting, and then she got an email from him /after/. I pulled everything I could from the server, but it's corrupted to hell and back." Beat. "Literally, given the email came from a temporary breach between the Digital Web and the Lower near-universe." "Okay. Hit me. I think I can see a pattern among the entries here. The corruption is following these variables..." Jae doesn't object to being leaned upon. She reachesu p with her left hand and uses it to drag long tresses away from Aster's face, leaning forward slightly so that she can better see the scren and indicate the lines of code she's referring to. "I'm not completely sure, but I bet we can put most of this back together tonight and tomorrow, if we want to spend that long on it." She purses her lips slightly. "Ghost email... I mean, normally I would figure it just got lost in the server for awhile. Happens sometimes. Always kind of a shock for people when a loved one's texts and emails appear months late.r But---- this came from one of the virtual realms adjacent to the Digital Web? Coincidences like that don't just 'happen'." Aster makes a low sound in the back of her throat, almost a feline mew, as her cheek gets touched. She blinks at some of Jae's pattern-matching. "Um... wait, how does that variable have anything to do with that section there? I--" She sighs, grinning as she leans back again. "...and that's why /you're/ the mentor, Jae Zero. Help me out with this?" She shakes her head. "Even the text of the email sounds like something a ghost would send. 'Is anyone there, can anyone hear me'. And going by the server logs, it hadn't even been /sent/ until well after, let alone received." She slips from the chair, offering the space to Jae. "Getting trapped in the Digital Web or one of the Astral planes isn't exactly unheard of," Jae responds fixedly. She's busy stariing at the code, however, her voice just barely more than a whiisper while she runs through what is written in front of her. "They're not related, but the degree in variance here and here is the same, so if we extrapolate that to all of our derived values..." Jae will animatedly discuss her mathematical theories and conclusions on what they are looking at. Not all of them pan out, of course, but she's a wealth of programming knowledge and esotera. Not everything coming out of the DIgital Web will remain logical, after all. Getting Jae on a tangent tends to have these sorts of results, of course. "Do we have any idea if this is a fluke? Did the shooting have something to do with the Digital Web or...?" Jae adjusts her glasses briefly. SHe's studying a line of code, as before, while she speaks in a slightly stilted tone. Aster shakes her head. "I honestly have no idea about the shooting. We'd have to talk with Shadi about that -- she was there. And there's Alma, a former Euthanatos, who's going to try summoning the ghost himself soon. My personal guess would just be that the violent death led to the haunting, as sometimes happens, and then tunneling into the Digital Web is just... a fluke. Shadi hasn't told me about any other weird technological or digital happenings to make this seem like a more continuous ghost-in-the-machine kind of haunting." "That's..." There's a pause while the girl considers this for a moment. A deep breath is taken and then held for several long seconds. "Well." There's a pause. " If it's just a haunting the Euthanatos might be better at finding this out than I am, to be honest. But we'll at least learn everything we can so we can make it easier for them tgo find this person. ...Right? I---- could possibly deal with a ghost. If it stays here or in the Digital Web. But I'm... Not completely sure." Aster takes Jae's hand, giving it a squeeze. "The ghost itself is more her ballpark. But calling it a fluke is just a guess; we need more information before we can determine that, and I can't clean up this data on my own. I just don't have your understanding of how that kind of data corruption /works/. And the more information we have, the better-informed Alma will be when dealing with this thing." "Sounds good," Jae affirms in a slightly distant tone. She isn't dismissing Aster; it's just her way. There's a puzzle in front of her, after all. "In that case, let's get back to processing this data. We're going to need to go over it line by line. It's a good thing I've got my reading glasses on. Okay." Aster smiles warmly. Aah, Jae's getting /focused/ now, and it's always lovely to watch. She steps in close, hugging her from behind and with her chin resting atop the other girl's head. "Sounds good. We can make it educational, too, see how much I can learn from this." | |
