Joe Verona
HANGAR, NEW ANCHORAGE
Directly after lunch, Joe Verona quickly returned to the hangar – last time he looked, almost all the speakers had been mounted, and chances were high the four hours were enough time for Katarina Poux to finish mounting the rest.
When he arrived at Unit 01, Joe saw what he had expected, the speakers were mounted, and the engineer was working on the wiring.
He remarked,
”I see you did a great job so far, what a sight.”“It’s still just a prototype!” Katarina Poux turned, hands at her neck, as she stretched out while she looked to Joe’s arrival to check on Swarm— and more specifically the modifications they had been working on for the bulk of a week. All and all, it was pretty impressive what the tenacity of one upbeat, proactive, and determined engineer could do in the span of a few days. But then again Kat wasn’t just a girl who was good with a few wires and a wrench; she had said herself that she had been learning about internal NC parts since she was
seven and designing part modifications since she was
fifteen. An impressive measure no matter who you were, for sure.
“But we’ve still got, like, twenty or something days to get plenty of tests done to make sure it’s in ship shape when you get assigned a mission from the top brass.””I’d still like to make a benchmark of its raw output before we reinstall the armor, simply because parts of the armor will be in the way of some soundwaves, and I’d like to know how much of an effect that has.” Most likely having parts of the armor in the way is a worthwhile tradeoff for protection, but even so, knowing what the speakers were capable of without armor was important knowledge. After all, the armor could be removed again, should the traded volume be required.
Joe decided to lend the engineer a hand.
“Well if you want to do actual field tests you’ll have to get clearance to go off-base. We can’t exactly test the output in the hangar.”“Hrm, doesn’t this base have some area on the surface, that can be used as a shooting range for NC-weapons?”“Yes, but you’d need clearance. Like I said. Are you sure you want to mess with a sonic weapon if you’re that short of hearing?” The female engineer teased.
“Heh, the less I can hear the less a sonic weapon can hurt my ears. Also, you were talking about clearance to go ‘off-base’, which as far as I know means leaving the area of the base.”“You, like, know that none of these NC’s are cleared to leave the hangar without permission, right?”“Of course.”“Yeah, because I don’t have mechanical equipment to remove it. Get the clearance. Talk to me when you got it. I’ll prepare to remove the armor while you go do that.”“Well, I’ll be off then, I don’t expect getting clearance will take too long, but you never know.” Joe had barely arrived on the height on which the engineer was operating, but he started moving back the way he came, having reverted his decision to help the engineer in favor of acquiring the clearance.
““Unless you want to do some tune-ups on the finishing touches before that. I mean it’s just me up here; I mean the sound of grinding gears, industrial drills, and mechanical rumbling is awesome company.”Joe once again reversed the direction in which he was moving, remarking jokingly, although what he was saying had some truth in it:
“I thought you wanted me to get the clearance before I give you company and a helping hand.”“Hmph! Joe-it-all.” She shot back.
Joe ignored the use of his nickname, instead focussing on being productive, now that he didn’t think something could offset his immediate course of action.
“So, what is there left to adjust right now? Most of what I can think of should be adjustable mid-battle, as it influences direction and accuracy of the sonic weapon.”“Well, it’s always useful to have a second eye go over something you meticulously worked on for an entire week. Unless you think I’m perfect, which is flattering and all but c’mon I am so not a robot.”“Well, let’s start with the physical mounts then, after all, if a speaker moves out of place over time, it could upset the entire weapon.” Joe checked if there was enough space between the outer hull of the cockpit and the armor to squeeze in between, in order to check the mounts with his own eyes. There was enough space, after all the NC should need to be taken apart almost completely just to install a few small custom components.
While squeezing inside, he noticed that crawling spaces like this pretty much went across most of the NC below the armor, which possibly were one of the safer ways to climb around an NC, so long as you didn’t get stuck in them.
This knowledge should be useful later, but right now it was not, so Joe turned his attention towards the bolts and welds that held the speakers in place. He tested the bolts by testing how easily he could remove them with a wrench, and the metal could easily be tested for faults by the sound it made when hit by the wrench. Joe’s ears may not have been the best at detecting faults in the steel this way, but it was the best he could do at the moment. He could only find a single faulty screw, which had partially cracked while it had been screwed in.
The wiring itself was rather easy to test, as each wire was color-coded. Because of that, there wires were all plugged and soldered correctly.
Kat plopped down on the metal grating, her legs dangling off the ledge.
“So, you don’t really talk all too much. Like Liz. Why?”“Well, what is there to talk about? Apart from that broken screw.” Joe wasn’t sure himself, but he thought a conversation would improve the situation a bit, but he didn’t like pointless small talk.
The woman rolled her eyes.
“Yes, because I’m talking about the NC! I like to know whose bolts I’m screwing, duh. We’ve know each other for over a week and all I know about you is that you’re pale and kind of intelligent. Then again, that’s probably a little more than I know about Liz.” “Heh, well I am always open to questions. The thing is I don’t know exactly what you want to know, so I can’t just, you know, compile a list, spreadsheet, or graph and show you.”Kat laughed,
“A spreadsheet? What, have you never had an actual conversation before? Do you see things in binary? Wow. Life’s not a spreadsheet, Joe.”“I know that, but a spreadsheet is one of the closest things my mind has to represent it.”“No no no no, I’m going to stop you right there. You cannot seriously think a spreadsheet is the best way to have a conversation! That’s so…. boring! Like, there are emotions and stories! Personal understanding. You cannot just go ‘beep bloop I comply with affirmative consent to that answer boop boop’! That’s insane.”Joe laughed at that exaggeration.
“Having emotions is good and all, I even admit to having some, but what do they help you with? Apart from indicating a problem or lack thereof. All my emotions ever did was get me into this mess I cannot get out of.”“Well not being a boring living calculator is one.” Kat said as she smiled widely.
“It builds trust, friendships, understanding, camaraderie, and all of the things that really matter in life. We live in such a bleak world so if we act so detached all it does is continue the misery— there’s no love in binary.”“Well, if a boring calculator is more likely to survive than a person defined by its emotion, I’d rather choose the calculator. Besides, being a calculator does not mean having no friends, as friends do have numerically expressible benefits.”Kat went into another laugh at the comment.
“You cannot possibly think that. Friendship is not beneficial statistics you can code or quantify! That’s such a robotic way to looking at things! Beep bloop boop boop is not sane. You’ll make no personal connection and people will as a byproduct just treat you as a statistic.” She frowned, her mood visibly darkening.
“...you aren’t a statistic. Nobody is a statistic. That’s… how the corporations see us.”Joe sighed, apparently the engineer could not understand him using the explanations he gave.
“Well, perhaps you should know the nature of my issues with my emotions. — You see, I am not here, on this base, of my own will. I was sentenced to military service for losing control in a fit of rage and punching my father so bad he suffered permanent brain damage.”“…oh. I’m sorry about that— but I don’t think that means you should stop feeling. Bad things happen but we shouldn’t let that like define us. You have to refuse to let it define you. But that’s just my opinion.”“Well, am I not doing that by refusing to let my emotions get the better of me? My emotions do not define me, my ability to reason and my body of knowledge do.”“You are still letting them control you, in a different way. You’re letting them force you to be completely detached from holding them.”“I am curious, how is being detached bad, so long as you don’t violate a moral code?”There was a silence for a moment before she looked at him.
“Because you are barely alive.”“Measure my heartbeat, metabolism, brainwaves, —”“No!” Kat interrupted his matter-of-fact retort,
“This isn’t funny. You can measure a synthetic rhythm, you can measure the rotation of a mechanical gear, you can measure a lot of things but that isn’t really being alive; I won’t take an answer like that. I won’t. Go get your clearance. I’ll get back to work. I’m sorry I even asked.” Seeing how this backfired, Joe’s mood darkened slightly.
“Oh, okay.” He left the maintenance spaces. Comparatively silent he mumbled, audibly for the engineer:
“I wonder how you objectively define life.”He then left to speak about that clearance.
On the way, he reasoned with himself about what Katarina had said, but his conclusion was a simple train of thought:
Logical arguments are by definition correct, so long as one did not make a mistake while reasoning, and factored in all of one’s knowledge. As such, logical decisions are objectively superior to emotional decisions, that would contradict the logical decision. Thus it is logical to listen to reason before listening to emotions.