ChasNicollette
Allons-y Means Let's Go.
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2007
- Posts
- 16,135
"Our Last Hope," by Two Steps From Hell. (Rose)
Rose and Robby scrambled to follow Chris, but he didn't speak again or even relax until the door on the stairwell clonked closed and Chris had verified that the one little window had been painted shut and boarded up. (Hardly a happy state of affairs, fire-safety-inspection-wise, a long-ignored vestige of all the blown-out windows from The Flashpoint Incident that were still getting fixed ten damn years later.)
Visibly relieved, Chris continued as he led them down the stairs: "If your brain's up to the snuff I think it is, Dr. Reed, I think you already know what I'm getting at."
"I think I do," Robby frowned. "You want Halo's H.A.L.O."
(Felicity would have a word or two to say about acronyms, here, if she were aware of this.)
Part of Robby's internship at The Halo Corporation involved working on a network of satellites orbiting geosynchronously around Earth's equator-- he was in charge of developing computerized guidance protocols and payload adjustment as higher-level scientists developed the satellite tech itself.
Standing for High-energy Array in Low-Earth Orbit, The H.A.L.O. was meant to try and continue the genius work begun by the now-dubious Harrison Wells in 2013. To try and expand the boundaries of particle science... but at a safe distance from a populated area. No-one wanted a particle accelerator anywhere on the surface of Earth anymore, it was a wonder they let CERN keep running, not after The Darkmatter Breach had vented extradimensional energies all over Central City and eventually the world.
Halo's scientists had calculated that if a similar event occurred in an orbital pipeline, the radius of energies unleashed would not reach Earth's upper atmosphere, and thus would not endanger human life. This logic wasn't perfect, but it was enough to get the project funded to the point that it was basically complete ahead of the scheduled activation gala a month from now. As it stood now, Robby was just helping Virgil Hawkins to fine-tune the annular confinement beam that allowed the particle stream to run rings, ahaha, around the Earth without getting contaminated by space junk or interstellar radiation, in addition to his regular work of automating orbital navigation adjustments.
"There are plenty of fish in the sea," Chris agreed, as he strode down the stairs ahead of them. "Dozens of satellites in the sky, both corporate and governmental. But time is of the essence, and you've got such direct access to The H.A.L.O.'s program matrix."
"You want," Rose puzzled this through, "to send a signal through the satellites that'll activate all the Dials on Earth at once?"
"Exactly," Chris grinned at her over his shoulder. "Penny for the smart daughter. But not just activate-- I'll need to reprogram some of them, make sure they create Dialers for our side, not our enemies, remember that both factions have seeded this world. I have a program that can do it, I'll just have to upload it, but it has to be done from on-site so the opposing faction can't jam it."
Rose considered this. What a world that would make-- so many new Dialers at once, so many new Heroes from each Dial-- but she saw one problem. "It's going to be rough work getting into Halo tonight, uh, Dad. There was a supercriminal throwdown there a few hours ago, security's gonna be tight as a drum. Maybe you can Dial something on your phone that can get us in?"
Chris looked crestfallen. "That-- that's problematic. No, I can't access my ectypes right now. That's what we call the dialed templates, 'ectypes.' Earlier generations of Dial, from the time of the first war, they were easily damaged-- you could break one just by shooting it with bullets. More recent models include firmware that makes the host technology more robust just by having Dialware inside it-- but fighting in this new war has put me up against great and terrible forces. My phone's onboard memory is significantly reduced, it can only remember seven numbers in its call log, seven ectypes, and I can't even Dial those right now. Even if I could, my '7' key is jammed-- I can't type anything that doesn't start with 's.'"
He smiled faintly, woundedly. "I could only even get in touch with you two by forwarding messages to you that my ally Floyd had typed for me on his own Dial and then sent to me-- already saved to my contact list. I called you the same way, Rose, but your phone couldn't ring because you were Dialed out and went straight to voicemail."
As he stopped at the ground floor of the stairwell and put his hand on the door-handle, he smiled a little less faintly, a little less woundedly.
"But the Dial came to you for a reason, Rose, it can't be a coincidence that that phone found you in time to light my darkest hour. And you two-- I've been able to observe this flatland from the higher-dimensional space of The Exchange, and you two make quite a team. We can get into Halo, access The H.A.L.O., I know we can."
"We can summon The Armies of Man."
Rose and Robby shared a look, and then they both looked at Chris.
"We won't be able to do this from my usual lab," Robby cautioned. "Major operating system updates can only be installed from the primary control center in the observation dome on the roof."
"'Observation dome,'" Chris frowned, "sounds an awful lot like 'big-ass window.' ...does it open?"
Robby found himself puzzled all over again by that. "...no."
Chris brightened considerably. "Oh, well, in that case-- allons-y!"
Rose and Robby scrambled to follow Chris, but he didn't speak again or even relax until the door on the stairwell clonked closed and Chris had verified that the one little window had been painted shut and boarded up. (Hardly a happy state of affairs, fire-safety-inspection-wise, a long-ignored vestige of all the blown-out windows from The Flashpoint Incident that were still getting fixed ten damn years later.)
Visibly relieved, Chris continued as he led them down the stairs: "If your brain's up to the snuff I think it is, Dr. Reed, I think you already know what I'm getting at."
"I think I do," Robby frowned. "You want Halo's H.A.L.O."
(Felicity would have a word or two to say about acronyms, here, if she were aware of this.)
Part of Robby's internship at The Halo Corporation involved working on a network of satellites orbiting geosynchronously around Earth's equator-- he was in charge of developing computerized guidance protocols and payload adjustment as higher-level scientists developed the satellite tech itself.
Standing for High-energy Array in Low-Earth Orbit, The H.A.L.O. was meant to try and continue the genius work begun by the now-dubious Harrison Wells in 2013. To try and expand the boundaries of particle science... but at a safe distance from a populated area. No-one wanted a particle accelerator anywhere on the surface of Earth anymore, it was a wonder they let CERN keep running, not after The Darkmatter Breach had vented extradimensional energies all over Central City and eventually the world.
Halo's scientists had calculated that if a similar event occurred in an orbital pipeline, the radius of energies unleashed would not reach Earth's upper atmosphere, and thus would not endanger human life. This logic wasn't perfect, but it was enough to get the project funded to the point that it was basically complete ahead of the scheduled activation gala a month from now. As it stood now, Robby was just helping Virgil Hawkins to fine-tune the annular confinement beam that allowed the particle stream to run rings, ahaha, around the Earth without getting contaminated by space junk or interstellar radiation, in addition to his regular work of automating orbital navigation adjustments.
"There are plenty of fish in the sea," Chris agreed, as he strode down the stairs ahead of them. "Dozens of satellites in the sky, both corporate and governmental. But time is of the essence, and you've got such direct access to The H.A.L.O.'s program matrix."
"You want," Rose puzzled this through, "to send a signal through the satellites that'll activate all the Dials on Earth at once?"
"Exactly," Chris grinned at her over his shoulder. "Penny for the smart daughter. But not just activate-- I'll need to reprogram some of them, make sure they create Dialers for our side, not our enemies, remember that both factions have seeded this world. I have a program that can do it, I'll just have to upload it, but it has to be done from on-site so the opposing faction can't jam it."
Rose considered this. What a world that would make-- so many new Dialers at once, so many new Heroes from each Dial-- but she saw one problem. "It's going to be rough work getting into Halo tonight, uh, Dad. There was a supercriminal throwdown there a few hours ago, security's gonna be tight as a drum. Maybe you can Dial something on your phone that can get us in?"
Chris looked crestfallen. "That-- that's problematic. No, I can't access my ectypes right now. That's what we call the dialed templates, 'ectypes.' Earlier generations of Dial, from the time of the first war, they were easily damaged-- you could break one just by shooting it with bullets. More recent models include firmware that makes the host technology more robust just by having Dialware inside it-- but fighting in this new war has put me up against great and terrible forces. My phone's onboard memory is significantly reduced, it can only remember seven numbers in its call log, seven ectypes, and I can't even Dial those right now. Even if I could, my '7' key is jammed-- I can't type anything that doesn't start with 's.'"
He smiled faintly, woundedly. "I could only even get in touch with you two by forwarding messages to you that my ally Floyd had typed for me on his own Dial and then sent to me-- already saved to my contact list. I called you the same way, Rose, but your phone couldn't ring because you were Dialed out and went straight to voicemail."
As he stopped at the ground floor of the stairwell and put his hand on the door-handle, he smiled a little less faintly, a little less woundedly.
"But the Dial came to you for a reason, Rose, it can't be a coincidence that that phone found you in time to light my darkest hour. And you two-- I've been able to observe this flatland from the higher-dimensional space of The Exchange, and you two make quite a team. We can get into Halo, access The H.A.L.O., I know we can."
"We can summon The Armies of Man."
Rose and Robby shared a look, and then they both looked at Chris.
"We won't be able to do this from my usual lab," Robby cautioned. "Major operating system updates can only be installed from the primary control center in the observation dome on the roof."
"'Observation dome,'" Chris frowned, "sounds an awful lot like 'big-ass window.' ...does it open?"
Robby found himself puzzled all over again by that. "...no."
Chris brightened considerably. "Oh, well, in that case-- allons-y!"
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