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Daycycle 115 [ November 6 - November 12 ]

daycycle 115

[Nov 6 - Nov 12]

[OOC Plotting for this Daycycle can be found here.]
[The latest from the Alpha Interwebs can be found here.]

Early, Early Morning [0500 - 0800]
Rooms 1101, 1103 and 1202 will be woken up at 0500 when two squadrons of Internal Security Gray Ops come to arrest Oliver Queen, Peggy Carter, Parker and Julianne Holtzmann for treason. All but Parker will be led away at gun point and their roommates, Bucky Barnes, Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch, Felicity Smoak, Isabelle Lightwood, Zatanna Zatara and Jack Harkness will be immediately taken into IntSec for questioning. They will be questioned separately about the activities of their former roommates, suspicious activity concerning their remaining roommates and their own loyalties. (The intensity of the questioning is up to the player.) They will not be released until the Early Morning briefing. A complex wide manhunt for Parker will be initiated.

Early Morning [0800 - 0900] — All Troubleshooters Report for Duty

Special Troubleshooters, Emma Swan and Jack Harkness have been selected for the following mission.

Survey Citizens using simple word-association interviews. Flag anyone that uses the following words, "terrorist, secret, anarchy, moist..."

Morning & Afternoon [0900 - 1600] — Service Firm Positions
All Troubleshooters not assigned a mission should report to their Service Firm for their daily duties, unless specifically assigned a different shift.

All Troubleshooters not assigned a mission should report to their Service Firm for their daily duties, unless specifically assigned a different shift.

Evening [1600 - 2200] — Citizen Improvement
All Alpha citizens are encouraged to better themselves through Alpha’s wide variety of educational, entertainment and cultural opportunities offered each evening. Attending these sanctioned events are not mandatory, but is highly encouraged by The Computer. Citizens choosing not to take advantage of these opportunities, have a growing number of other options available to them in how to spend their hard earned credits and free time.

Tonight’s event will be at 1900 in the Commissary and will be hosted by The Teela O'Malley Fan Club. Join us as we gather to celebrate Alpha Complex's #1 cebrity!

Alpha Curfew Restrictions
All Alpha citizens should be in their quarters within the Wagon Wheel by 2200, unless they’ve been given permission from a GREEN or higher clearance level citizen. Sleeping Aid gas is dispelled each night in the Wagon Wheel at 2200 to assist citizens in getting a productive sleeping period.

Confession Booths
There are hundreds of confession booths available around Alpha Complex if a citizen would like to communicate directly with the computer. Please use these confession booths to report mission statuses, report treason or terrorist acts, unregistered mutants, confess your trespasses against Alpha Complex, request propaganda or speak with Your Friend, The Computer, at any time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Cisco shakes his head and rolls his eyes at himself. "Of course they were," he sighs, moving forward to reach for them. "I haven't been down here as much the past several days," he admits. Because first there was the explosion that nearly killed him. Then there was the hospital. Dealing with Caitlin being gone before he even got a chance to see her...Barry disappearing to the surface for a mission he can't even remember taking... It's been a long week.

He nods to the mess — which, for all Cisco knows, is of the organized variety — and then looks back at Stiles. "What are you working on?" he wonders aloud. Maybe he can help, he thinks. He liked Stiles. They worked well together, Cisco thinks, so why not try again if it happens to be something that Cisco could possibly have some useful input toward.

Cisco's eyes move over the memory wall and it looks like a jumbled mess to him, but he's seen something similar. Usually they're on clearboards and it's formulas and little doodles that are more than doodles, with lines drawn between one thing and another with dry-erase markers, but the general idea tends to be the same as what he's seeing right now. He just can't really figure out what Stiles is trying to work out because all of it is pretty unfamiliar to Cisco. "You want some help?"

"They probably got moved around." Especially if Cisco hadn't been around for a while; when space is an issue, anything goes. Not like there's a pause button to make life stop happening everywhere else; sometimes, Stiles wishes there were though, if only to get a chance to breathe before something else hit the fan. Or the wall if he wants to be literal, that was admittedly rather carthartic even with the reprimands over damages.

Once, there might have been an attempt at organization but he gave that up as a lost cause relatively quick; the mess spiraled out as books slid out, and things fell over. It was easier to just let it pile up than rearrange it each time, but it does mean he has to search through everything to find what he's after. (He really needs to find those three books.)

But that doesn't apply to the wall - different knots mean different things, the straight line of amateurish crochet splitting the web into two parts: Before, and After. The after section is understandably smaller. "You could help with anything after that thick line, I've been using this to keep track of the days, without writing or typing out anything," he says. "I don't keep track of the citizen events though."

So far, it's just events, no people. It'll be too much otherwise. "Bunny ears are things I was directly involved with, one loop for when I'm not, and granny knots are for when nothing too crazy happens."

"Yeah, that's what I get for leaving my junk around, I guess," he replies with a shrug. It's not the worst thing in the world nearly losing one of his tools. Not now that he's a "maintenance guy" for Lydia. Now he can just order whatever parts or tools he wants and no one thinks anything of it because they just assume it's so that he can fix her machinery. It's really the ideal position to be in and he's kind of jealous he didn't think of it before she did. Not that he would've thought about trying to do it for a poor man's Bath and Body Works, but all the same.

Cisco moves closer to the board and looks it over thoughtfully. He's not really sure what Stiles is going for here, but he can wager a general guess. It's not a bad idea, especially if Stiles is one of those people who struggles to buy into the glitch theory but hasn't quite settled on memories. He looks over at the other boy with a brow creased slightly with curiosity.

"Why not?" he asks. "I'm just curious if there's a specific reason you're not keeping track of those beyond 'I didn't feel like it' or 'too much insignificant crap when my focus is needed elsewhere,' or whatever. Because if those are the only reasons, I could get on that part of it for you, man, that's no problem..." he offers, a little shrug of his shoulders following his words.

Until it turns up again and you end up with multiple copies of them, though that's not really a problem. Most likely, it'll make things easier in the long run to have them lying around all over the place; there's always a need for emergency screwdrivers.

Stiles remembers a lot, though the worst of the gaps isn't so much a gap, but a riot of emotion. Panic, mostly; that too familiar aftertaste at the back of his throat, but there was uncertainty, and the nagging sense of everything going wrong, wrong, wrong.
Reality hadn't lined up too well during the weeks he'd been possessed, and there's no way to check if what he does recall are nightmare, or things that actually happened since the other people involved aren't here, and it's unlikely he'd talked about it. (Does it count, if it's all just in his head?) That entire segment is just left empty of knots and other strings.

"I didn't want to put in the effort of remembering them," he admits. They're essentially daily events that changed. Sometimes he hadn't paid attention beyond figuring out that he's not interested. "But if you want to add more in, or fill in things I'd missed, that's cool too."

"There needs to be a better to tell things apart though; there are only so many colors, or knots."

Cisco gives a facial shrug at that. Seems legit. If he was trying to sort through his own memories — he doesn't pry by asking Stiles why he's having trouble with his; none of Cisco's business — then it makes sense that the younger man wouldn't want to bother dedicating time to the stuff that's going on here. Especially, Cisco thinks, since so much is going on all the time. It seems like every day something is going down.

"I can do that. What if you put your stuff from this side of the thing," he says, indicating the stuff Stiles has asked Cisco not to touch in not so many words, "on its own separate board and then you can kind of repeat stuff. I'm guessing that's stuff from before, right? Glitch-memory stuff? So it wouldn't really have much of a connection with the stuff on this side, would it?

He could be wrong, of course, and he could be totally reading the whole thing with misunderstanding driving him, but it's worth bringing up in case he is on the right track, isn't it?

Cisco isn't wrong.

Stiles hums an affirmative, gaze tracing over the lines currently taped to the wall. "I can shrink it down for now, I left more space than I needed for everything." And with the memories, not everything needs to be up there, he's already decided which to keep. Of course, taking a snapshot would be the easier option, if he wants to keep everything at the same scale, but that's not a choice.

"I'll get things started," Stiles says, nodding decisively. "And this works just as well as cue cards; though you can't say what happened before doesn't have any influence." But that's different, that's not something that can be immediately connected physically to the here and now. Bounding up to the wall, he loosens some of the strings, letting the free ends dangle. Some of them will need to be replaced, when the knots won't come undone; but others he can use again, possibly multiple times, if he cuts them right.

Anyway, he focuses on edging out more space for Cisco's contributions. "Where are you planning to start with?"

Cisco looks over the board and the way Stiles has laid everything out, considering for a moment. "I don't think you necessarily need to shrink it, though, man, I think you need to separate them and build out each side before trying to connect the dots between before and now," he replies, looking back at Stiles. "You know?"

Because Stiles does make a good point and Cisco isn't going to argue against it; he's already considered it. "I'm not saying it doesn't have influence, but I'm saying there probably isn't a direct connection or, if there is, it's going to be maybe one or two things here and there and it probably isn't going to hinder your progress to separate before marrying it back together, yeah?"

But ultimately, it's Stiles's board and Cisco is willing to go with the flow. Whatever Stiles wants it to look like, Cisco is going to follow that model, because if anyone understands what it's like to design an outline to something laid out exactly the way he needs it only to have some asshole who thinks he knows better come along and fuck it all up, making it completely useless to him, it's Cisco. By the way, screw Hartley. Seriously, what a dick. So, so many levels of being a dick.

Cisco stays back to let Stiles deconstruct what he wants to while keeping what he doesn't. "I thought maybe start with the exploding PDCs and work my way back to the mutant registration debacle with Gabi and everything. That was my second day here. Then maybe Barry can help us fill in the blanks from there if you want to go back further. He's been here way longer than me," Cisco replies.

"I can change this again later," Stiles says, and he likely will. With the possibility of more people working with this, the 'glitches" aren't relevant for most others. "Since most of those connections are going to be personal."

"Make it so that you can just line everything up one board to another? That's not a bad idea." He was still thinking about keeping everything in one piece, partly because he really does have a tendency to spread out over any and all available space while in 'research' mode - more things would amplify that habit, and also because he recalls the pain of things falling off and having to be fixed up all the time.

"Because even this wall's not going to be enough eventually, a couple weeks is fine, but more than that," he shrugs. It really had just been two weeks from that mission to yesterday.

"It let's this-" he points to the wall, "-go as far as it needs to, if days get transferred over after a certain amount of time, or locations. And I guess if they're numbered, mixing things up won't be as much of a problem..." Stiles trails off, that's getting too far ahead of themselves.

"But yeah, the things from that time span would be good to include," he finishes. "Whoever contributes, I guess it'll be a mass diary?"

That does mean having to explain how everything is laid out along the timeline. Each segment along the horizontal line is a day, branching off towards a section of the wall. The top forth being buildings north of the wagon wheel, the second - east, then south and west respectively.

Reorganizing could be necessary.

Flexible and focused, Cisco thinks as he looks back at Stiles. The younger man may not have the kind of skill set yet that would've been needed and valued in the heyday of STAR Labs but Cisco can't help thinking that Stiles reminds him of himself at that age. He's not a lot older than Stiles — Cisco is guessing maybe he's got ten years, give or take a year on the guy — but he's old enough to see his past self reflected in Stiles in a way he's never really seen before. It doesn't seem to Cisco like Stiles knows yet exactly what he's reaching for with this project, but he knows that there's something to be reached and he's doing what he can to get there one way or the other. Maybe this is why they got along so well.

"Yeah, like I mean, yeah. We're going to run out of room if we keep going but if there's a connection to be had so far, we'll probably find it more easily if we have more space to spread out; separate before from after and then find the link once all of that is laid out." He isn't sure how effective either approach is going to be, because Cisco's not entirely convinced that this isn't just a big cosmic hiccup. Like maybe the Specials weren't actually intentionally chosen to be here and they're just unfortunate byproducts of this place fucking up as badly as STAR Labs had with the Particle Accelerator: there's a clear and good intention, but something, somewhere along the way, went wrong and now here they are. He doesn't say that out loud, though.

He looks thoughtful at Stiles's point, which given the way he trails off, Cisco thinks maybe is more thinking aloud than responding. All the same, "that's not a bad idea, either. Numbering things. That way when things get moved around for potential connections between two or more puzzle pieces, you don't end up losing track of where they originated all the same. You know?"

Cisco lifts his eyebrows. "I don't want to step on toes or anything, though, man. If you've got a system and my help is gonna fuck that up, trust me, I'm the last person to want to step in on that. Nothing drove me more nuts back home then when I'd have something going on a dry erase board and a coworker who thought they knew better than me would come in and start erasing and adding shit they thought more relevant. I'm not tryin' to be that guy."

Science is a calling. For Stiles, he's always found it interesting, but his own goals had lain elsewhere, closer to his father's career path. That, and he had practically lived at the station for a while. But there are similarities in both professions - the process of finding evidence to put together what actually happened is a lot like testing a hypothesis through experimentation. Do the pieces fit? Can it hold up the story you're trying to tell? What even is the story here? Who decided that only having a computer overlord would be a good idea? (Was it a committee? It was probably a committee. Group projects never go well.) He finds the whole laying out your thoughts as a picture to be soothing in it's familiarity.

He has wondered a lot about the programming in the Computer lately, there's nearly a knot each day along the central line, where the Wagonwheel is supposed to be. The threat elimination response is sensitive, and doesn't make the most sense: summer camp logic also seems to be in session. You throw a bunch of kids in a room together and they have to know each other best.

Anyway, he’s done with fiddling around with the wall, he hunt down a pair of scissors in a bit to cut the extra bits off. Stepping back, he indicates that Cisco can go ahead if he wants to. “Given the chance, I would be rearranging my room at least once a month. Getting things moved around isn't a huge problem for me, what is though, is if you lost anything." He bites his lip, looking over towards Cisco. He feels the same about getting his work erased, but he'll tolerate other people cramming in their own thoughts. Sometimes another angle is just what's needed to get unstuck, bouncing different ideas around has always helped too, for him. "That's always a pain and a half - I wouldn't have left something up if I didn't need to it to be there."

Numbering is going to happen, he can feel it. And eventually, adding people to the timeline would be good too. If there was some way to sort out where strings would overlap too much to make sense of.

"And yeah, exactly. You won't have to keep everything together on a day to day basis, you can leave out whatever's irrelevant and just compare, say every three days or so against one another." He's talking a lot faster by the end of that sentence. "But that does mean keeping how much time pasts of each board consistent." Something that isn't always possible.

To the sentiment, Cisco gives a nod of solidarity. He knows the feeling. "No, dude, I totally get it. Don't worry, I'm the last person to fuck up someone else's system like that." And he is. He'll go out of his way to avoid messing up someone else's work to integrate his own because it used to annoy him to no end when Hartley would do it to him in the early days at STAR Labs. The last thing Cisco wants is to inflict that sort of frustration on another person, especially a person he genuinely likes.

Beyond communicating that understanding, with Stiles's blessing, Cisco moves up to the board and starts to dig right in, shifting things around to make more space for more information. For the moment, he's largely keeping the same patterns in place that Stiles had originally put there, only he's condensing the space between the pinned items, so to speak. Basically, keeping exactly what Stiles has in tact while also sort of smushing it together. That will probably change, but for now, he's just trying to make new space.

"Yeah, but you can do that, with a very general and basic timeline, no?" Cisco asks, pointing to the space above all of Stiles's work. "You know just, lay out the general timeline here and expand it in either direction if necessary. Things might not necessarily always line up with it as far as spacing goes, but it'll give guidelines."

A nod. Good, then this should go pretty smoothly. Because Stiles is the kind of person who would passive-aggressively move things back, and he'll enjoy it, despite initial frustration. Spite can be a powerful motivator, even when it isn't productive.

He takes the chance to find a pair of scissors off one of the tables, and cut away the extra string, toeing the pieces into a pile. He's been keeping this updated, so he doesn't have a lot to add. Seeing Cisco's additions might spark something that he hadn't included before, and two weeks shouldn't be too much that parts of the timeline need to be moved right away.

"The main thing is that you can follow what's happening without confusing ourselves," Stiles muses. He tilts his head. "Numbers on a main timeline, and possibly a day count on the matching pieces? That should be enough to start."

"Yeah, exactly," Cisco replies when it seems Stiles knows exactly what he'd been getting at with the mention of a main timeline without Cisco having to actually explain it in detail. Another reason to like the kid — they communicate well without actually communicating.

Cisco waits while Stiles finishes cutting away extra string and then cocks his eyebrows a little, moving the rest of the way forward. "All right, let's do this."

[ ooc: fade to black end there? ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Daycycle 115 [ November 6 - November 12 ]

daycycle 115

[Nov 6 - Nov 12]

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