User visit: Claudia Donovan

[a1enzo]

Enzo unlocks one of the upstairs doors and gestures Claudia inside. "Here it is. The digimat."

Comments

[claudiometer]

"Nice setup." Any other time, Claudia might be tempted to poke at all the monitors and buttons, but... well.
"So I'm guessing I go where the target is?"

[a1enzo]

"Yup. When you're in, push the button."

[claudiometer]

"All right. Let's do this like Leeroy Jenkins."
So she pushes the button, and it feels... weird, is the best way she can describe it. (And it looks kinda like Tron, but then... digitizing laser.) There's another button there - she vaguely notices as she reaches for it that her hand is very light blue, now, but that's hardly the first thing on her mind, even when she reappears in Milliways.
"Dude," she says, "how do you manage with this running through your head all the time?"
(Because of course she'd notice that she has a format now.)

[a1enzo]

"How do you manage without it?" he retorts.

[claudiometer]

"Point taken," she says, and--
Well, she's used to the odd flashes of color on the right side of her field of vision, has been ever since she started dyeing that stripe a different color than the rest. But on the left? That's new. And awesome.
"So. Now what?"

[a1enzo]

"Now we do this thing."

They head back downstairs and out of the bar. Enzo's Door leads into a utility tunnel which looks like any other but has far less texture of any kind.

[claudiometer]

She's inside a computer. This is going to bear a lot of repeating, really - and anyone else they bump into might note that she's got a good tourist gawk going.
(Inside a computer. SO COOL.)

[a1enzo]

There's not much of anyone to run into down here... no, wait, the mun tells a lie. Utility tunnels do occasionally contain facilities staff, and here comes one now. (Enzo no longer has to pretend he's not coming down here, that's one advantage of going public.)

The sprite they have just startled is not nearly so humanoid as the two of them. In fact, most of him is three stacked cubes. His eye flicks between Enzo and Claudia as though to ask the former Is that one of them, then?

[claudiometer]

Claudia tries not to tourist-gawk at the poor guy (...she's assuming 'guy,' anyway, what does gender mean to sprites, that's a question for another time), and manages what she hopes isn't too manic of a smile. And a wave, for good measure.
It'll probably be good for the kids to see someone as starstruck to be on their home turf as they are to see her.

[a1enzo]

The binome waves back nervously before scurrying off down the corridor.

"Having fun?"

[claudiometer]

"Well, I did say 'best field trip ever' before it even happened. So hell yes I'm having fun."
And they haven't even gotten to the best part yet!

[a1enzo]

Heck, they haven't even gotten out of the tunnel yet.

But lo, here is a ladder, and a trapdoor at the top. Enzo climbs up and bangs on it.

"Password?" calls a voice from the other side.

"Reindeer flotilla."

[claudiometer]

Claudia snorts at the password. "Good one."

[a1enzo]

Enzo grins and shrugs a little. "Guardians are allowed to be Tron fanboys."

The door is hauled open by a male sprite, older than Enzo but not as tall, with slightly shiny, dark blue skin and seafoam green hair in a duck tail 'do.

"Yeah, it's hard to get away from around here," he agrees as he gives Enzo a hand out and offers one to Claudia. "This here's Yori Hall, f'rinstance."

[claudiometer]

Claudia grins (okay, more like hasn't stopped grinning) as she takes the hand out. "I like the way you guys think."

[a1enzo]

She should enjoy this, then: "The administrative building's Academy CRTL, but everyone calls it Master Control. Bob said they did when he was here, too."

[claudiometer]

"Well, really, what else would you call it?"
Meanwhile, Claudia is eyeing the various vehicles with no small amount of interest. Not really from a trying-to-steer-one perspective, but... inside a computer.

[a1enzo]

And yet, despite the range of designs (from spaceships to something like a small frigate) and the bar codes for license plates, they all have prominent STUDENT DRIVER signs on them.

"Anyway, this is Balun. He's part of our backstage crew since he's my roommate and the drummer's boyfriend. Balun, this is Claudia. She's a Programmer."

"No spam?" Balun looks beyond impressed.

[claudiometer]

"None whatsoever. Computers are my thing. Well, my main thing."
Have we mentioned that she's inside a computer?

[a1enzo]

"You're not gonna overheat, are you?"

[claudiometer]

"No, no, I'm good. The novelty just hasn't worn off, that's all."
Nor is it likely to any time soon, really.

[a1enzo]

"Okay. Balun, how's setup?"

"They're just tuning."

"Alphanumeric." He turns to Claudia. "Ready to be a rock star?"

[claudiometer]

"Absolutely."
(It does help that someone else will be doing the actual rocking.)

[a1enzo]

"Laydeeees and gentlemen," declaims Value, "coming to you from South Dakota, USA, which likely means nothing whatsoever, Miiiiiiss Claudia Donovan!"

[claudiometer]

And Claudia walks onstage, still grinning her fool head off, and waves at the crowd. It should be pretty clear, to anyone in the audience paying attention, that she's every bit as psyched to be here as they are to be having a Q&A session with a User.
(Because, for the millionth time: inside a computer. It hasn't stopped being awesome yet.)

[a1enzo]

A window pops up as a backdrop, displaying her human appearance.

"Claudia," Enzo says, "you want to tell them about yourself before we get started?"

[claudiometer]

"Okay," she says. "I live in South Dakota, where there's not much to do other than my job, but that's okay since my job is awesome. We collect dangerous objects."
It says everything and nothing about the Warehouse all at once; she figures that'll do.
"Otherwise... I finished school early by human standards, and I love working with mechanical stuff and computers. And--" She glances back at the picture, for a point of reference. "No, the purple stripe is not natural." All things considered, she thought that was worth pointing out.

[a1enzo]

In case the 'working with computers' part didn't make it clear, Enzo adds, "If you've got any questions for a Programmer, now's the time." An excited murmur rises from the audience.

It takes a moment before anyone asks a question; probably they're not sure themselves what to ask first. Finally someone pipes up, "What kinds of things do you program?"

[claudiometer]

"Whatever needs doing. I've been working on the database that keeps track of what we have, we needed a program to help track somebody down, one of these days I'll get the translator database under control, but I'm gonna need someone with more language-fu for that - just about anything."
And there's how she found the Warehouse in the first place, but that is perhaps not a story she should tell here.

[a1enzo]

A somewhat pointed voice asks, "Do you program viruses?"

[claudiometer]

"God no. I can find what I need without getting into that."
Besides, viruses leave way too many traces of one's presence behind, if you know what to look for.

[a1enzo]

The attitude of the audience becomes rather more positive.

"What's it like, programming?"

[claudiometer]

"Totally awesome. And, okay, kinda frustrating sometimes, because you really have to watch what you're doing and staring at lines and lines of letters and numbers can get tiring after a while. But it's a lot of fun, especially when you get things to cooperate."
She'd phrase it differently, but since her stuff's been certified sprite-free...

[a1enzo]

A younger boy asks, "What's a 'dangerous object', to a User?"

[claudiometer]

"Welllll..." Claudia thinks about that for a few moments; it's one thing, in her eyes, to tell people at Milliways about the Warehouse. People in Milliways have already accepted a hell of a lot, if they're there. But this is a bigger crowd.
"There's stuff that's dangerous if you handle it badly," she finally says, "but to one extent or another it's still part of people's daily lives. Like, the stuff I use to put the purple stripe in my hair, or whatever color I feel like when I change it - if I swallowed it, I'd have some major problems, but it doesn't do anything bad if I put it in my hair.
"That's not the kind of stuff we collect. The stuff we collect... some of it could reach world-ending proportions, in the wrong hands. Some of it's just stuff that no one really understands well enough to use right."

[a1enzo]

Enzo steps in. "The details are classified," he announces. There are a number of "awwww"s from the audience, but young as they are, these are Guardians, and this whole User business is itself classified, so they can't really dispute the point.

[claudiometer]

"Otherwise, I'd cheerfully get into stories. ...If I could work 'em around the cultural barrier."
She would imagine magnetizing yourself to the ceiling doesn't have quite the same ring to digital life forms as it does to her (you know, where it's funny now that it's not actively happening).

[a1enzo]

It would have more the ring of INSTANT DEATH. (Magnets != happy fun times.)

"Any stories you can tell us?" Enzo asks. "About less classified stuff?"

[claudiometer]

"Well," she says, "not talking about work doesn't mean I can't talk about the people I work with..."
Pete would probably kill her if he knew she was telling some of these stories (especially the one where Leena made him help bake because he ate ALL THE PIE before anyone else could). But really, she's got just as many about her own shenanigans. She figures it evens out.