![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Just FYI, Phil isn't having trouble breathing. I specifically said he is indeed breathing and his heart is beating. It's just his conscious functions that are out to lunch.
> Nanette: Try to set up an experiment with quantum communication devices to see if the instant communication between the nanites could help intercept messages without being noticed. Also, find someone who knows how to use medical nanotechnology for brain surgery or something, in case it's needed for Phil.
Post 205
>(Lucie): Get Ruby to help you. Do what you can to keep Phil alive.With Nanette's assistance and telling what she learned, Lucie and Ruby determine that Phil isn't in immediate physical danger and make him comfortable. Ruby still feels very guilty about this happening, of course. "I should have been more careful. Maybe anticipated that extended exposure to the nanites might have unintended consequences if it was suddenly reversed…"
She asks Nanette to keep monitoring Phil for any change. Ruby knows some molecules that increase neural plasticity in humans, and searches the database and Bintanni net for Bintanni foods high in these. This includes certain eggs and fruits, so she makes up some breakfast with these. They're able to get him to reflexively eat. If needed, maybe she can extract or make the molecules for a higher dose.
Nanette does notice some positive change to his neural pathways in a bit, but not enough to bring him conscious again yet.
>(Nanette): Dedicate some proccessing clusters to helping Waverton and Aaron.
Nanette dedicates some processing clusters to helping Waverton and Aaron in their endeavors…
> Nanette: Try to set up an experiment with quantum communication devices to see if the instant communication between the nanites could help intercept messages without being noticed. Also, find someone who knows how to use medical nanotechnology for brain surgery or something, in case it's needed for Phil.
After looking up the names and locations of a few Bintanni medical and nanotech brain specialists for Phil if needed, Nanette sets up a few nanites to be quantum-entangled with each other. (Is this a normal state of affairs and how she usually works? Er… she's not one of the engineers who designed herself. Maybe she'll look it up in her specifications later.) Then she quickly cuts them off from her 'net before they get entangled with the rest of her again… and the rest of the world… which, considering she basically runs on Brownian motion, has to be pretty difficult. She's sent a few nanites far away. Now she tries to entangle them, somehow, with the already quantum-entangled nanites. And try to intercept information going between the two entangled nanites using that, which… should be impossible. She re-absorbs the nanites back into her swarm to understand what they were trying to communicate and whether they could tell another nanite was also entangled with them. At least, before all the message was sent.
This… shouldn't really work. Should it? But then, they said FTL was impossible, too.
Roll: 6 (Went Horribly Right); You confirm that this can work. You also seem to have trapped the several nanites involved in a time loop and paradox. That has created a microscopic wormhole in time and space. Luckily, as it only involves a few nanites and is tiny, it quickly goes unstable, degenerating into a couple microscopic black holes that quickly radiate energy before they evaporate completely. There's a wash of radiation and a pop. A cubic centimeter or so of nanites are damaged.
Feer pokes their head out of their office. They say they'll be ready to discuss the interviews and Top Secret F.f.E.C. clearance soon.
So That Happened. What do you do, or do you just need to learn to be patient and wait?
The World's Least Powerful Man
>(General) Keep plugging away at your respective problems until Feer wants to talk to us.
Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!
> Internal: (Huh. I meant that Nanette should work with some F.f.E.C. scientists, using whatever quantum communication devices they already have, testing to see if a nanite at each end of that connection could intercept without them noticing, not that she would set up everything by herself. I guess I'll have to be more specific in future, but that is... interesting?)
> Nanette: Look up the specifications of your nanite swarm, then consider whether it would be safer to test your ability using quantum communication set up by someone else, and if so, whether it's a good time to approach the scientists about it. Either way, first use the nanite production machines to replace the damaged nanites. (Maybe you can recycle the material from them?)
Post 206
> Nanette: Look up the specifications of your nanite swarm, then consider whether it would be safer to test your ability using quantum communication set up by someone else, and if so, whether it's a good time to approach the scientists about it. Either way, first use the nanite production machines to replace the damaged nanites. (Maybe you can recycle the material from them?)Nanette looks up her own specifications. Her nanites communicate through an extra-dimensional link, not quantum entanglement. That does make more sense for an entity that gets energy the way she does and interacts with the environment. Given the issue she just had trying to set up the experiment herself, maybe she should consult an expert. She should tell Aaron anyway. At least he's familiar with her and won't freak out or leak information on what she's doing to the Bintanni government.
She quietly uses the nanite production machines to recycle and replace the damaged nanites. Much better that she learned to do that herself, isn't it?
>(General) Keep plugging away at your respective problems until Feer wants to talk to us.
According to Nanette's watch on Phil (she is doing a lot of multitasking, isn't she?), Phil is doing somewhat better. His natural consciousness pathways are starting to find each other again. He might wake up soon.
Nanette talks to Aaron and Waverton about her experiment. Aaron is intrigued, but a bit alarmed at the result. He'll need to do some calculations to figure out a safer experiment, perhaps. But it does suggest it can be done…
Feer promises they'll talk with you all in one moment. Seriously.
Does Nanette and/or Aaron bring in anyone else? Anything else?
> Nanette: "Actually, if Feer wants to have a meeting about all the top secret stuff soon, maybe we can leave this idea just for now and try to set up the experiment later when we get the chance? Maybe you could bring it up the next time you're with those scientists working on the mini FTL ship or something?" (Keeping track of where the swarm is, leave a small amount near the nanite production machines, at all times, in case you ever need to use them suddenly. Of the rest, leave half watching Phil and half with the humans in the meeting once it starts. But if you have to wait more than another minute before the meeting starts, send in an unnoticeable amount to see how busy Feer is and try to estimate how long they actually have to wait, in case there's a delay long enough to do something else in the mean time after all.)
> Aaron: Consider who it would be best to bring in on the idea. Probably at least one F.f.E.C. scientist, maybe? Someone who can set up the quantum communication tech, anyway.
Edited by EloquentOrNot on Feb 26th 2021 at 4:42:35 PM
The World's Least Powerful Man
>(Aaron and Waverton) Compare notes. Maybe one will see something the other missed.
Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!
Post 207
> Nanette: "Actually, if Feer wants to have a meeting about all the top secret stuff soon, maybe we can leave this idea just for now and try to set up the experiment later when we get the chance? Maybe you could bring it up the next time you're with those scientists working on the mini FTL ship or something?" (Keeping track of where the swarm is, leave a small amount near the nanite production machines, at all times, in case you ever need to use them suddenly. Of the rest, leave half watching Phil and half with the humans in the meeting once it starts. But if you have to wait more than another minute before the meeting starts, send in an unnoticeable amount to see how busy Feer is and try to estimate how long they actually have to wait, in case there's a delay long enough to do something else in the mean time after all.)> Aaron: Consider who it would be best to bring in on the idea. Probably at least one F.f.E.C. scientist, maybe? Someone who can set up the quantum communication tech, anyway.
Aaron agrees, he'll bring it up with the other engineers/physicists that are already in the F.f.E.C. circle at an appropriate time, probably the one who he was working with on the mini ship project. He should keep in contact with them anyway. Nanette continues to keep track of things.
>(Aaron and Waverton) Compare notes. Maybe one will see something the other missed.
Aaron talks out his and Nanette's plan to maybe circumvent quantum encryption with FTL or something like it, since in principle it should allow 'spying' on events that happened in the 'past'. Relatively speaking. He mentions Nanette's little experiment. Waverton agrees that something appears to have went right there, but it was… really dangerous. If indeed Aaron can devise something safer, though, it could be worth pursuing. Unfortunately, since Waverton isn't a physicist he doesn't have a lot to add there. He is familiar with the concept of quantum cryptography as practiced by humans, though. Maybe if they get something to work with but it's still encrypted somehow… he did have some training in cryptography while in military school.
Meanwhile, Feer says they're ready to talk, and bring the group into their office. They've okayed F.f.E.C. clearance for the four: not Top Secret clearance (at least not yet), but at least Secret clearance. (Yes, this is marginally higher than what they've been trusted with before. Never mind that they've already been trusted with secrets about F.f.E.C. personnel, rescue missions, and a program that aims to spy on the Bintanni government.).
They are very enthusiastic about the mini communication ship, and it's definitely high priority. However, there is indeed another initiative they think you might be able to help with. It's making contact with certain higher-up members of the Bintanni ruling political establishment that they suspect of not being ideological xenophobes and determine whether that's true and they're honest about it or not. While it's risky, you have disguise nanites and there may ultimately be no better way of determining their honesty than confronting them with the question of what they do when they meet actual humans.
Especially since Waverton and Ruby's talents are less useful in building the communication ship, you could divide your team...
What do you all think of this? Do you have something you'd like to say to Feer?
The World's Least Powerful Man
>(general) Schpy Spy on the government official to determine wether or not he might be persuaded to our team.
^ Use public transportation such as busses to help out with said spying. Via moving around quicker. (Yes that makes the looking for busses a Brick Joke now.)
Try out my new forum game! Man this formating is hard.
> Internal: (What determines the limit on how much multi-tasking Nanette can do? Is it purely based on the number of nanites available, or is there some limit (and have we reached it yet?) where generating more nanites is no longer helpful? Also, does Feer know about Phil's current situation? At least some of the Bintanni allies must have noticed by now, right? Or have the humans just been keeping to themselves? Come to think of it, how many people are in the building?)
> Nanette, to Feer: "Just out of curiosity, what's the plan for if they're not friendly to humans?"
Post 208
>(general)^ Use public transportation such as busses to help out with said spying. Via moving around quicker. (Yes that makes the looking for busses a Brick Joke now.)
Ruby and Waverton take half a day attempting to spy on the government official while taking public transportation to the area where they're working. That doesn't get them very close to the official, who drives their own vehicle, and only comes out of their office to get lunch (there's no plan to get close to the official at the office, or to reveal themselves). They don't say much while waiting in line to get lunch, just getting a salad. Ruby and Waverton do have some close calls on public transportation given that if a person gets close the disguises are far from perfect, and it's unlikely they got there faster than if they were using Feer's vehicle they added the ship AI to so it could be self-driving.
> Internal: (What determines the limit on how much multi-tasking Nanette can do? Is it purely based on the number of nanites available, or is there some limit (and have we reached it yet?) where generating more nanites is no longer helpful? Also, does Feer know about Phil's current situation? At least some of the Bintanni allies must have noticed by now, right? Or have the humans just been keeping to themselves? Come to think of it, how many people are in the building?)
Part of it is determined by the number of nanites she can split off to process different things, but the information does eventually have to get integrated. Eventually she would reach a limit to how much her consciousness could integrate.
It appears the humans have not told Feer about Phil's, ah, medical situation. At the moment, at Feer's residence, it's just Feer, plus the humans (and Nanette).
> Nanette, to Feer: "Just out of curiosity, what's the plan for if they're not friendly to humans?"
"I suppose we try a different plan. Continuing to try to advance our ideas to the common person. Or see whether there are other potential friends in high places. We'll take any ideas you have, though."
Do you have a plan B? What next?
The World's Least Powerful Man
>(General) Tell Feer what happened with Phil. Also, check up on Phil.
>(Lucie) See about continuing work on Ruby's anti-neutralizer.
Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!
> Aaron: Keep working on the mini FTL and maybe the quantum experiment with Nanette.
> Nanette: Search the internet to see what you can learn about the person Feer wants to recruit. (Could reaching out to them online/anonymously be a good alternative to in-person conversation, at least at first?)
Post 209
>(General) Tell Feer what happened with Phil. Also, check up on Phil.When Ruby and Waverton get back, they check on Phil. According to Nanette's monitoring, he was in REM sleep and should be close to waking up. When they've done that, they fess up to Feer. Ruby with a bit of prodding from Waverton – she was nervous. She knew it was impossible to test as well as it should have been tested, but it did work – it just had side effects she couldn't predict, probably from his having been symbiotic with the nanites for so long.
Feer says they understand, but they are a bit curt about it. They've been rather lenient but you get the sense you may be trying their patience.
>(Lucie) See about continuing work on Ruby's anti-neutralizer.
Unfortunately, Ruby's notes are in a shorthand, and besides, Lucie knows she's not a biochemist. She doesn't have the right skillset for this.
> Aaron: Keep working on the mini FTL and maybe the quantum experiment with Nanette.
Aaron does a few more calculations regarding the FTL fusion engine and how it will fit with the rest of the plan. It's definitely bigger than they were going for at first, but it should hopefully work. He sends the work off to Blu and sends a copy to Lucie.
He also brings up the quantum encryption experiment with Blu. The result is intriguing, but it's just one result and maybe it was chance that Nanette seemed to get a successful result? Plus, the safety. Could a mini FTL ship be used in place of Nanette's nanites? He's not sure if it would be significantly safer but he thinks it would be easier to stop problematic decoherence...
> Nanette: Search the internet to see what you can learn about the person Feer wants to recruit. (Could reaching out to them online/anonymously be a good alternative to in-person conversation, at least at first?)
Nanette finds relatively little on the Bintanni internet about the person Feer wants to recruit, as if they were intentionally trying to limit public knowledge about themself. They do find that they're a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Infrastructure, and were formerly a bureaucrat for the Ministry of Propaganda. As such, they do have public contact information.
Again – What next?
> Internal: (What's the infrastructure bureaucrat's name?)
> Aaron: (Would a mini ship be able to go unnoticed, though? Surely the advantage of Nanette's idea would be that, with just one nanite at each end of a connection, multiple messages could potentially be intercepted without being noticed?)
> Nanette: (What if you just sneak a single nanite into a piece of technology and have it read the bits as they're generated? Can the nanites do that? If you can intercept a message before encryption even begins, maybe the only issue would be getting a piece of Nanette into that location? No need to even think about quantum stuff?) Discuss this with Aaron and maybe Feer.
The World's Least Powerful Man
>(General) Look up the beureaucrat online. Also, someone get Ruby to update the log, and run updating the blog by Feer before updating it. As a matter of fact, Feer can be the blog's editor so he'll be in the loop about it.
Edited by dvorak on Mar 2nd 2021 at 1:47:20 PM
Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!
Post 210
> Internal: (What's the infrastructure bureaucrat's name?)Ta'gen'tekiro. They generally go by Tag.
>(General) Look up the bureaucrat online. Also, someone get Ruby to update the log, and run updating the blog by Feer before updating it. As a matter of fact, Feer can be the blog's editor so he'll be in the loop about it.
Waverton looks up Tag on the Bintanni 'net. Except for their work history, which you already knew, there isn't much there except that they have a mate that's a teacher, two five year old children (well, the equivalent of five for a human – the AI has helped you translate that, given differences in the length of the local year and Bintanni child development), and they play on an amateur Bimbalilball team.
Ruby updates the log. Adapting it for the blog, she redacts all of the classified stuff, of course, but that leaves her with a lot of phrases like "We met a new friend – wish we could tell you who they are!" Feer approves it, noting that it's not especially likely to inspire a lot of people with all of the redactions, but it probably can't be helped, can it? Hopefully something more inspiring for the next edition, though.
> Aaron: (Would a mini ship be able to go unnoticed, though? Surely the advantage of Nanette's idea would be that, with just one nanite at each end of a connection, multiple messages could potentially be intercepted without being noticed?)
Aaron explains that his idea wasn't to drive a ship into the Bintanni office where encryption is being done. It was to entangle a particle with the quantum encryption and have that particle entagled with one on an FTL mini-ship. Could he use the FTL to get the information before they realized their line was being tapped? He's still not 100% sure. Normally, they would be able to tell if another device was entangled and listening in; it's one thing that makes quantum encryption so powerful, and has been theorized since the 20th century on Earth. And it would still require getting that particle entangled with the quantum encryption device somehow...
> Nanette: (What if you just sneak a single nanite into a piece of technology and have it read the bits as they're generated? Can the nanites do that? If you can intercept a message before encryption even begins, maybe the only issue would be getting a piece of Nanette into that location? No need to even think about quantum stuff?) Discuss this with Aaron and maybe Feer.
Hmmm… if you can read it before it gets encrypted, that would bypass the quantum encryption protection. Nanette discusses this with Feer and Aaron. Feer agrees Nanette is correct about that, but that the encryption device is likely to have anti-nanite protection. It is the product of a society that uses a lot of nanites, and you've seen the security doors which kept out unauthorized nanites like Nanette at the ski resort.
What to do next about seeing if this Tag person can be recruited? Is there anything you can tell Ruby she can post on the blog that would be inspiring? Further thoughts bypassing the quantum encryption?
Nanette: (Wait, how did he find more information online than...?) Research Tag online for a third time, in case the information available about them keeps changing somehow. (Or was the search accidentally limited last time somehow, by focusing too much on potential communication attempts?) Also try to find out if there's a way to modify the nanites so they can bypass any shield - the shields must allow some nanite types through for maintenance or something, right?
Someone: Could post recipes on the blog - combinations of local foods that only humans would think of could be a great way to show everyone the benefits of other cultures.
Wait, did they already put recipes on the blog yet, or am I just getting deja vu?
Edited by EloquentOrNot on Mar 3rd 2021 at 10:55:58 AM
Post 211
> Nanette: (Wait, how did he find more information online than...?) Research Tag online for a third time, in case the information available about them keeps changing somehow. (Or was the search accidentally limited last time somehow, by focusing too much on potential communication attempts?) Also try to find out if there's a way to modify the nanites so they can bypass any shield - the shields must allow some nanite types through for maintenance or something, right?Nanette checks out Tag again. The information doesn't change – she finds the same information as Waverton just did. She probably just did a more focused search. Waverton's search still didn't turn up a lot, it's still like they're not putting out a lot about themself.
You might be able to bypass the shield by fooling the sensors. But you'd need the specifications for what they let through (and how the protections sense them) to figure out whether you can replicate it.
> Someone: Could post recipes on the blog - combinations of local foods that only humans would think of could be a great way to show everyone the benefits of other cultures.
Lucie takes the reins this time on the blog, and puts together Ruby's bread-making attempt with local ingredients, a fruit smoothie, and the ever popular nut-butter and fruit spread sandwich. Which can be made with the bread. Interplanetary diplomacy through peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! She passes it by Feer before she posts it, and he commends her for her excellent thinking. A way to engage their readers and show off human culture without risking exposure of secrets! At least someone is thinking.
What's next on the agenda?
[FYI: I thought I might have remembered something like this, but I searched the text document where I keep my writing for the game, and I couldn't come up with a previous mention of recipe(s). I could have been searching wrong. I do remember Ruby deciding to pose as a baker when they needed cover stories and trying out a bread recipe with native ingredients, though]
The World's Least Powerful Man
>(Waverton) Put "Hack the Pentagon" on the backburner for now. All we've found is ways to get caught.
>(Nanette) Devote some more proccessors to helping Aaron.
>(Lucie) How's Phil doing?
Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!
> Internal: (Just wondering, what are all of those processors doing? If you don't want Aaron to be helping hack the quantum communication anymore, then he'll just be working on the FTL mini ship for sending to Earth, and I think they're developing that using F.f.E.C. resources anyway?)
> Nanette: Review how busy the swarm is with multitasking, estimate how much more busy you could become, and consider if generating any more nanites would be helpful. (Perhaps not with complexity of tasks, but for any potential event where a larger and/or denser swarm could be useful? Or as a backup in case any more are ever damaged?)
The World's Least Powerful Man
>(Internal) Computers are good for multitasking, and fast calculations. They can delegate some of the broad spectrum stuff to the proccessors while they focus on things that require imagination. Nanette can use a proccessor cluster each to run a thousand successive simulations on each part Aaron needs to determine the best iteration (I remember a Popular Science article a few years back on something called an "evolution simulator," IIRC, that did something similar), then run a few sims with the best version of everything. With Waverton, she could do a DDOS on a hundred servers vs their one.
Edited by dvorak on Mar 5th 2021 at 9:36:14 AM
Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!
>(Lucie): Get Ruby to help you. Do what you can to keep Phil alive.
>(Nanette): Dedicate some proccessing clusters to helping Waverton and Aaron.
Edited by dvorak on Feb 24th 2021 at 12:42:52 PM
Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!