A trail of aching derrières- next time they'll be more thoughtful

[gone_byebye]

The door opens onto an expanse of asphalt, steel, and glass. Nearby a sign reads:

WELCOME TO WHITE FLINT MALL
BEST PRICES IN THE DC AREA

4708 BETHESDA AVENUE
CHEVY CHASE, MD

It's a big parking lot, with the mall itself only visible off in the distance. Ray gives it the squint-eye before turning to the others. "Okay, people," he says. "This is it. Johnny says it's underground. Egon's best estimates indicate three miles down. Are we good?"

Comments

[md_donighal]

Last decision before the Big Reveal: would it be simpler to convince the lock that his voice and thumbprint are in the system, or to convince it it's hearing a voice and seeing a thumbprint that are in the system?

[gone_byebye]

There's a couple of extra security measures that have to be jiggered to activate the response to a thumbprint and voice that aren't physically there. Much simpler, really, to fiddle with the response to what's presented.

The guard's expression becomes extremely puzzled for a moment before he answers, "Nah. Wouldn't wanna spoil the surprise. You guys go on and inspect in there, okay?"

[masterofsoresu]

"Thank you, friend." Obi-Wan bows, then turns to his gray-suited colleague. "Doctor?"

[md_donighal]

"Ready and willing, my good man," Michael replies. A phrase he occasionally heard from Alex "Synapse" Doan, the Teragen's hacker supremo, leaps almost unbidden to his lips as he places his thumb on the print-reader. "My voice is my passport. Identify me." Even as he speaks, his node is reaching out to tweak the readings the lock receives into something it'll accept as authorization.

[gone_byebye]

There's a few moments of hesitation, and then-

Click
click
click

-the magnetic locks holding the door shut release, and the door swings open as neatly as if Kitt himself had persuaded the computers that he was a long lost cousin coming home to visit.

[masterofsoresu]

Ben nods, then turns to Michael again. "After you, sir."

[md_donighal]

Michael does a fancy bow. "Why, thank you." He then leads the way into the power room, Ben and (presumably) Kitt trailing behind.

[steadfastknight]

He followed - and was glad to see that someone besides him could fix the system. It would've been awkward to present himself as a car in the middle of the hallway.

Even Obi-Wan might've been hard-pressed to negate that.

"Thank you indeed," he said, and followed.

[gone_byebye]

The power room's controls are incredibly complex and varied, but they have a particular advantage: they're all labeled. The Foliage Census people have their own version of ISO 9000 certification. If you can't figure out what it's supposed to do just by looking at it, you'll get told what to do with it- one way or another. There's just so damnably many of them.

[md_donighal]

"Not like the last time you were shutting down power to something, eh, Ben?" Michael says, gently mocking, as he starts tracking all the electric flows in the room, then finding which particular panel seems associated with the most of them.

[masterofsoresu]

"Oh, I don't know," Obi-Wan replies. "Getting out was the hard part that time as well." Relying on his ongoing sense of dejys visti, he heads for the panel that looks most like the controls for the Death Star's tractor beam.

[steadfastknight]

"Remember, leave the environmental controls and life support up - after all, we are three miles underground. Also, let me offload the computer data before anyone catches on--"

And he looked around. The room appeared unpopulated besides them, but the question was if there was room for him.

[gone_byebye]

The room is too cramped in most areas- save one. A space big enough for two golf carts end to end, and wide enough for a cart and a half, punctuates one side of the control panels. There is a wide door marked MAINTENANCE ACCESS leading into that space. Scans will indicate that the opposite side of that door is a freight elevator shaft, with the elevator currently present. Hey, the computer consoles had to get there somehow.

(OOC: Kitt-mun, I had an idea for how you guys would wind up getting out eventually. Ping me or email me so I can get your opinion on it...?)

[md_donighal]

"Right, right, three miles underground and baselines need oxygen. Important safety tip; thanks, Kitt." He rubs his hands together with an odd glee. "Now go to town on those databanks, please."

[steadfastknight]

He nodded once, and then there, in that rather cramped area - well, it was a good thing he wouldn't be required to do any fancy manoeuvers - he transformed. It was a blur more than anything else, and then there was a car where a young man had once stood. And with the whisper of a scanner sweeping back and forth across the car's prow, the network load of the Foliage Census suddenly thickened.

[masterofsoresu]

Step right up, ladies and gentlebeings! Kitt Knight has managed to gobsmack a Jedi, a feat last achieved by Obi-Wan's own Padawan!

It takes Ben a moment to regain control of his jaw. "...Well. That's something one doesn't see every day."

[md_donighal]

Michael is similarly croggled. "And, once again, my definition of 'normal' gets dragged out into a back alley and pounded on with a recoilless basketball bat."

[steadfastknight]

Kitt's voice was the same though perhaps the faintest bit more digital. "My apologies," he said, "but this is the easiest way for me to make the required datacopies. I should have warned you."

The network wasn't exactly being friendly. But computers were his forte, for reasons that might be obvious.

[masterofsoresu]

Ben thinks about it for a moment. "It might've been nice to have some advance notice, but it's quite all right. It hadn't come up before, after all. And you are what you are."

[md_donighal]

Michael nods. "It could come in handy if we all need to get away from here at speed." Then he sighs. "Still and all... nothing personal, but only two words fit something like this, and they rhyme with 'trucking silly-ways'."

[gone_byebye]

The network wasn't being friendly, no. It was the network of a federal agency, and those by their very nature are designed to make life harder for their users. The thinking is generally that anything the users really, really struggle for must be worthwile, and everything else is just a waste of bandwidth. Having the channels of information blasted this far open is a new experience for them, and it's causing drain on every machine in the complex.

Which has its own uses, considering how much of security relies on those machines to begin with.

[steadfastknight]

"I believe I've heard those words before," said Kitt. And then he noted, "I'm also going to shut down all of the audio and video security systems, and erase the evidence of all of our presences if I can at all manage it. I'm having a bit of trouble with the network. You can begin to shut down other electronic systems, however. I will have a complete copy soon."

[md_donighal]

"Shut down systems? Oh yes, I can do that." His eyes begin to glow, and his feet to leave the ground, as one by one, all non-essential systems grind to a halt. (He briefly considered exploding them, but decided that might damage something important such as the environmentals. As it is, he leaves up life support, and anything Kitt's working on, and anything needed to sustain those bits.)

Does it count as godding if they're both your pups?

[masterofsoresu]

Obi-Wan looks a little bemused and chagrin'd. "You hardly need me here at all, do you?"

"On the contrary," Michael assures him. "You can stand watch, for whenever our run of luck runs dry."

"In my experience," Ben replies with that same sense of dejys visti, "there's no such thing as luck. Still, it never hurts to be ready for one's opponents." He takes up a position near the door, ready to meet any intruders.

Re: Does it count as godding if they're both your pups?

[gone_byebye]

Alarms would be going off about now if they were capable, but there's remarkably few of those left functioning. As it stands, the rest of the complex has far too much else to worry over anyway.

And there are still those who have a sense of duty to rely on. Kitt will notice in his download of the network data that the last squad of security forces left standing is a small knot of ex-Marines who've taken up a position at the top entrance to a maintenance elevator shaft- specifically, the elevator that feeds down into this very room. It's a damned fast elevator, and probably represents the quickest way out, but it would be wise indeed to be bulletproof upon exiting the upper doors.