thecapitol | Questions of science, science and progress [Closed]

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Questions of science, science and progress [Closed]

Who| Jet, Albert, and Carlos
What| Making sure the cyborgs' new cybernetics aren't bugged.
Where| A rare blind spot in the Capitol with no cameras or microphones
When| A few days after the wedding
Warnings/Notes| Technological body horror, science

After the Capitol's oh so gracious (read: unwanted) and stylish (read: unnecessary) wedding gift of cybernetic arm and leg replacements for both Albert and Jet, the newlyweds have been guarded. After all, they don't know what else the Capitol scientists may have added to the metallic constructs now grafted to them, if they've been unwittingly turned into Peacekeeper spies. So, while it may be dangerous, and moreover incredibly unpleasant, they've sought out someone they feel they can trust to take a closer look.

It took some debate and some lamentation over Professor Gilmore not being present to set them right, but ultimately they whittled it down to one person whom they both knew would be both thorough and ethical: Carlos the Scientist. It's mostly through Albert's recommendation and while Jet isn't sure at first, having only spoken to Carlos once, he trusts his husband's judgement so the German's vouching for Carlos is good enough for him.

They sent him an innocuous voice message, something about wanting to take him out to a bar since they hardly had the chance to talk at the wedding, but the bar in question is on top of one of the better blind spots; a sprawling basement once used as part of the nightclub and then a morphling den, but now piled high with storage crates and lacking both cameras and microphones.

Hoping the scientist shows up, Albert and Jet loiter outside Club Cognomen to wait, attempting to project ease and nonchalance.

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Carlos arrives right on time, shuffling quickly down the street with his hands shoved into the pockets of a heavier, cold-weather lab coat he's acquired for the winter months. (It looks exactly the same as all the others.) He walks up to the pair of newlyweds, breaking into a small but friendly smile.

"I hope I didn't keep you waiting," he says.

Carlos doesn't know what this is about, and of course it's not impossible that it could just be friendly drinks, but considering how many times he's asked people to bars for less than social reasons? He doesn't think it's very likely.

"Barely been here that long ourselves."

Jet offered a smile and turned to lead them into the bar. It was noisy and crowded and not that great for 'sitting around with a friend to talk' but it was perfect for being seen out. A miracle granted them three seats together at the bar to settle at so they could get their drinks and talk. Jet started the 'conversation' but everything about it was light and meaningless and likely easy for Carlos to see through as just a purposeful waste of time. They just had to stick around long enough for anyone asked to say 'they were there and all they did was drink and talk about nothing.'

Once he'd finished his drink, Jet excused himself and left, making sure prying eyes just thought he was going to the bathroom before he turned and headed down to the blind-spot that was the basement. They couldn't all three go down there at once, that'd just be begging for suspicion.

Albert stays with Carlos another few minutes, long enough that it would make sense for them to wonder what was taking Jet so long. With a pointed joke about his husband not being able to hold is alcohol, Albert leads Carlos towards the hallway where the men's room is located. Instead of stopping there, though, he takes a quick glance around and heads for the door marked 'employees only' at the end of the hall.

Passed the door is a short metal staircase without railing that leads down into a dimply lit concrete basement warehouse. Crates of liquor line the walls, but the center is still wide open space with a few empty metal tables in a U shape at its center under a pair of florescent lights. It's cavernous and mildly creepy, especially with the bump of the bass from upstairs occasionally making the light fixtures swing mildly, but it's not under surveillance, which is the main thing.

"We can speak freely here, to an extent." Albert closes the door behind Carlos and locks it so they won't be walking in on. "I'm sure you've figured we didn't just invite you out for drinks."

"I kind of suspected, yeah," Carlos admits. It wasn't that he thought that Jet and Albert didn't like him enough to ask him out for drinks for purely social reasons. It was just, well, they were newlyweds, and they were going to be pretty wrapped up in each other for at least another week or two. The only reason they'd ask a third man out with them would be to propose a threesome, but considering what Jet and Albert knew about Cecil, Carlos was pretty confident that was not the case.

The point is, Carlos knew they brought him here for a reason.

"What's this really about?"

His tone isn't unfriendly, far from it: he's just interested in cutting to the chase. Why did they go to the trouble of bringing him here? Carlos wants to know what's going on.

Jet actually preferred the whole cutting to the chase thing, it made this easier. He trusted Carlos well enough, but it took something else to let a scientist near even this second-rate replacement of his cybernetics. Too many occasions of Black Ghost and White House-paid scientists poking around without Jet's permission made him a little gun-shy about anyone but Doctor Gilmore near enough to look. But the Doc wasn't here and on top of Jet's opinions of Carlos came Albert's recommendation which held most of the weight. Albert felt the same as Jet did when it came to scientists, so if he said Carlos was good for this, Jet wasn't going to argue.

He held one of his arms out and pushed the sleeve up to answer Carlos's question. "It's about this. 'presents' from the Capitol rarely come without strings attached, but we're not exactly qualified to find those strings. We need your help."

Albert nods in agreement, rolling up his own sleeves. "If you're willing to look us over. We're hoping being where we are will scramble any signals we might be unwittingly transmitting."

He's careful not to say where they are. It's potentially likely the Capitol could find them, or that they installed some kind of tracking chips with the cybernetics, but every little layer of security helps even if it's just to make them feel better. But being underground, under a club with all its myriad of electronics and noise, will hopefully grant them that second layer of defense.

"I'm sorry for not being upfront with you from the start, though I'm sure you can figure out why." He meets Carlos' eyes with his own white gaze. "You're the only one we trust to do this."

"...oh," he says, and suddenly feels very small, and very self-conscious.

Wow. Give him a second.

"No, I -- I understand. Of course I'll take a look. Uh...which one of you wants to go first?"

Jet felt a little bad for just throwing this on the guy when it was kinda a tall order 'please find any government spyware that might or might not be buried in this advanced tech wired to our bodies' with a side helping of 'if you don't find everything we could be screwed and so could anyone he talk to who doesn't agree with the government so don't mess up.' It was a little mean...but Albert was right, they didn't have anyone else to go to.

Jet shrugged and jokingly raised his hand. "I guess I will. Arms are where I'd stick spyware, so maybe there first? Or maybe this thing?" He pointed to the metal fixture below his left eye that didn't seem to serve a purpose besides aesthetics...maybe spyware was it's purpose.

"Or whatever this bullshit is on our spines." It's rare that Albert swears, or at least swears in a way that isn't some folksy odd translation from German, but there is definitely irritation bubbling just under his calm waters where the cybernetics are concerned. He knows what it feels like to have a metal spine and this? These pieces of metal that run in a line from the back of his neck to the small of his back? They barely go below the flesh and serve no purpose that he can tell, other than make him seem more 'future-y' as his stylist had put it.

He loathes her.

"Honestly it's probably best to be as thorough as possible." He has no doubt Carlos will be. He's got a professional pride in him that reminds Albert of Doctor Gilmore, and moreover he knows Carlos to be trustworthy and ethical where science is concerned. His ethics are the main reason Albert is so confident about Carlos. He understood when Albert explained, he'd condemned the acts that had originally modified them against their wills. He's trustworthy.

Though that doesn't mean the entire idea of someone poking around their synthetic parts isn't stressful. He lights a cigarette, seating himself on the other metal table to watch while Jet gets his check-up.

"I'll check it all," Carlos promises. Normally, it would probably be difficult for a scientist who had expected an evening at a bar with friends to check advanced cybernetics, because he would have left all of his tools at home.

Not Carlos.

Carlos never leaves his scientific devices home. Albert and Jet might notice that it's odd that Carlos pulls a toolkit and a small machine that's clearly some kind of sensor out of his lab coat pockets. He fiddles with its components for a minute -- it's clearly homemade, with uneven casing and some exposed wiring -- and finally turns a dial until the device makes a crackling noise. Carlos, seemingly satisfied, makes a pass with the device over the metal under Jet's eye.

Beep beep.

"Got one," he says triumphantly, peering closely at Jet's face. At any other time, Carlos might feel awkward getting in close to someone's face, but this isn't personal, this is science. He barely even registers the proximity. "You were right -- this one's a camera. Hold still, I'll see if I can disable it." He takes out what is basically a futuristic screwdriver and, taking hold of Jet's face to keep it still, sets to work. "Maybe I can even get it out."

'Married to his work' runs through Jet's mind, but he can't really afford to think twice about it when it meant they could just get checked out here and now and not have to plan any further.

The proximity really doesn't bother Jet, it's not like he thought the guy was gonna kiss him or anything, it just felt like when Gilmore would inspect them and he was always getting in their personal space: it was just what scientists did in his experience. However, any spare thought his mind had instantly shifted to the words 'this one's a camera' and stayed there. There was a camera under his eye...it wasn't like he was surprised, this was the very thing he'd feared from potentially getting replacement eyes from the Capitol, no it had more to do with the fact he had to spend several seconds combing through what he'd done over the last few days.

Like...had he and Albert had sex since after their wedding night? No, it wasn't the most important thing the Capitol could have seen, but still. He let out a sigh that was so subtle it could easily be missed once he'd determined that they had not had sex, luckily, over the last few days. In fact, they hadn't done much of anything that the Capitol would find noteworthy, lucky for them.

Even if this was the only camera on him -maybe them both, they'd have to see- then there might very well be trackers and who knew what else on them. It made him a bit concerned for Carlos, if the Capitol saw him taking apart their tech, wouldn't that pose a danger for him?

"Can you tell if it's transmitting somewhere or just recording?"

Like Jet, Albert has a similar immediate fear, though his runs through anything potentially seditious. He'd spoken with Initiate, but with how noisy the place was, it couldn't have picked anything up. He's spoken with Terezi and Felicity, but those conversations had been in the open anyway and held nothing of note regarding the Rebellion. As far as he knows, he hasn't given anything away.

But he still hopes it's recording and not transmitting, for both their sakes. Giving Carlos away isn't on their to do list. He remains quiet so Carlos can determine the answer to Jet's question.

"Just a minute," Carlos mutters, pulling a pair of near-comical magnifying lenses out of his pocket and affixing them to his glasses. They make his eyes look enormous; of course they do, they wouldn't be proper magnifying lenses if they didn't. Once he's done that, he pulls out a pair of tiny, tiny pliers, and sets to work on the device. After a few seconds of fiddling, he gives a definitive nod.

"Not transmitting. Just recording. It's storing its data the same way a cell phone does, on a little drive, right here," he says, though of course neither of them are close enough to see it. "I can take it out, but I don't know the proper procedure for removing it. I might damage the hardware."

Carlos doesn't think either of them will have a problem with that. He's just checking.

Jet did give a small sigh of relief at hearing that. Good, that was good. Of course, there could be something else that might be transmitting...but, after thinking of it a moment, it made more sense for it to all be recorded. It wasn't like they didn't have access to them and could extract the information in their sleep or after an arena. It would take less man power and get the same result as someone sitting there watching a screen and getting nothing done.

"Please, damage away. I doubt you messing with that thing's gonna mess with how I function. I'd only be cautious about removing crap that looks like it might trip something in the process." For obvious reasons.

"It'd be interesting to see if we could counter with false information of our own, but if it breaks, it breaks." He shrugs, unconcerned about the fate of spy devices buried in their cybernetics. There's little they can do to set up the Capitol even with false information given that they don't have a reliable way to communicate with District 13 or a way to confront the Capitol themselves. The best they could do is confuse them and that serves little purpose.

A minute or so of silence, as Carlos worked away with pliers. And then--

"I've got it!" Proudly, Carlos held up the tiny chip, plucked out with the delicate little pliers. "I'll just set it down here, and then check all the other sections for cameras and listening devices. Okay?"

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Questions of science, science and progress [Closed]

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moving this to the meat of the thread since that's more fun

hell yeah

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assuming I have permission to make up technobabble?

Absolutely

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