milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Huh?" Ray looks up. "Oh- hi, Naraht. Yeah, you could say that. There's an AI out back in a twenty-first century airplane and he's asked me to fix an injury to one of his wings. The material his body panels are made from doesn't exist in my time, but I can get some fabbed up here, I think. I just need to figure out how to work it. I can get his interior lines and stuff fixed up without much trouble, but the body's going to be a pain in the tuchus."

"Twenty-first century, you say?" Naraht puts the cube on the table for a moment. "Do you have a sample of the material? If I'm familiar with it, I might be able to help you in that regard."

"I managed to snag an extremely small sample the other night for purposes of fabber matching," Ray says. "Hang on a minute."

He digs through his pockets and comes up with a plastic bag containing a quarter-sized bit of aeroelastic compound, bronze in color.

"The machine involved is from 2008, so this was probably developed sometime around 2006 or 2007, knowing the development cycle of the US military."

Naraht takes the bag and pulls out the fragment. He looks it over carefully.

"Hmmm...I suppose since this is your only sample it wouldn't be a good idea for me to analyze it by taste."

((OOC: I don't think so. I don't believe the universe of the movie Stealth really flows into the Star Trek timeline, from what I understand.))

Ray nods. "Unfortunately, yeah. I don't want to take anything more or larger, because it'll hurt him- this is as much as I could get in order to get him a patch, kind of like taking a sample of skin cells from a human to grow them a new patch to cover burn tissue."

"Hmmm...not primarily metallic, but I detect some hint of titainium in the smell...other than that, it's completely new to me."

He snickers. "Better take it back before I'm too tempted to steal it and run it back home to our engineering department."

Ray smiles. "If you did that I'd have to ask you to bring back one of the engineers. It's a little daunting having an AI from the future ask you to do repairs on its physical body. I've never seen stuff like that before. I'll have to ask Bar or Seamus to help me out with the supplies to fix him."

"Needless to say, you have access to my help if you wish it...although my expertise runs more to debugging circuitry. But I get by with structural repairs. Though, not knowing how to maniuplate this material effecively will certainly make things challenging."

"He needs some help with his AI programming, but I don't think he'd be willing to let you do it," Ray says. "No offense to you, but he's military hardware. I think you technically count as foreign hands, although you don't actually have hands and you're from a time after national lines don't mean nearly as much." He sighs. "I'll see what I can do with the composite information, at least."

Naraht chuckles. "I suppose you can't get more foreign than that, actually," he says. "I should go meet this individual. Even in my time, our scientists are working the kinks out of AI...with some rather tragic consequences in some cases. I would be very interested in finding out how Earth scientists managed this all the way back in teh twenty-first century. Since I've not heard of this, I suppose we're on tangent tracks as the multiverse goes."

"Probably, yeah," Ray says. "Considering that it's turned out there's at least two functioning AIs in my universe in my time, although they're in run-silent-run-deep mode. But then again I'm pretty sure my continuum's taken a sharp turn-off from a lot of the rest of the ones I've met patrons from- we're something of a statistical outlier on a number of fronts. I do know that at least one Federation scientist will be achieving workable artificial intelligence within the next hundred years, though. I don't mind telling you that because said intelligence came into the Bar the other night and might be coming back again."

That catches Naraht's interest. "Indeed! Hmmm...I certainly hope I can meet him without endangering the timeline. Though things do not seem to be collapsing from me talking to a Dr. McCoy from several years prior to my arrival on the Enterprise."

Ray nods. "Lieutenant Commander Data serves on a future version of the Enterprise. By his time, Dr. McCoy is over a hundred and thirty standard years old and holds the rank of Admiral. Nice guy. Can't miss him- he's built to physically resemble a human, but nobody human has body kinesics that precise, or uses so few contractions in his speech. Positronic brain, which is a hell of an accomplishment."

"I'll definately be on the look-out for him, then," he says...then remembers that he might not have a chance if things go the way he fears they will.

"I do hope our paths cross soon," he says a little more quietly.

"That... didn't sound like an anticipatory hoping."

"I only fear that we may not have a chance to meet if it is not soon," Naraht says with a sigh. "I'm spoken with you of my 'issues' with this place before, Ray. And I have come to the conclusion that, if there is not a satisfactory resolution of them, I cannot continue to frequent this place."

"Ah."

There wasn't much to be said to that. Ray picked up his coffee, looked into the mug for an answer, found none, and so got a dose of caffeine instead.

"I'll miss you," he said eventually.

Naraht's "stomachs" have a brief spasm. He writes this off to the combination of the hangover and his distress in addressing this issue.

"I'll miss you, too, Ray," he says. "I've narrowed things down to one factor. If that proves to be acceptable, I can probably tolerate the rest." He chuckles weakly. "Mother knows, there are a miriad of different cultures and rule structures in the Federation and our allies that we must accomodate ourselves to. I know that many of the problems here have people trying to address them and they are trying. But one thing I must know beyond a doubt before I can stay here."

Ray's lack of experience with silicon-based lifeforms means that he hasn't got the slightest idea of the gastric trouble going on.

Well, silicon-based lifeforms outside the Machine Order of Life, anyway.

"I'm almost afraid to ask what that one thing is."

Naraht turns slightly. "I must know the character of the man who possesses almost absolute power here," he says. "Few and loose rules, I have no problem with. In a place like this, I know that it's likely impossible to have any form of democratic government and probably foolish to try. But the Barman here, by what I know of the rules and no one has yet been able to show me otherwise, used his authority to imprison a person who had not broken any of the rules of this place. What Tim did, I agree, was dispicable. And, yes, Bernard was understandibly and justifiably furious and fearful.

"But he overstepped his bounds in imprisoning Tim for over a month. I must know if he is aware of this. If he is not aware of this, I must see how he reacts when he is made aware of it."

The Horta sighs and makes a subtle wince as his stomachs spasm again. "My race has a rather extreme way of reacting to people in power. Instinctively, we want to trust such a person. But, if we see that person abusing that power...we don't respond well."

"Ah," says Ray. "Didn't know that about Hortas. I guess that explains a few things. The rest, though... couldn't tell you. You'll have to ask him when he gets back from his honeymoon, though preferably at some point when the whole incipient baby thing isn't distracting him as much as being newly married."

"And just how long are we to put this off?" Naraht asks a little irritably. "From what I see, the longer we do wait, the harder it will be to conclude."

Ray pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closing. He lets out a long sigh.

"First of all, the man's not even in the Bar at the moment, to my knowledge. Second of all, this is a bar, okay? You don't have to be Martin Luther King. This isn't a case of 'justice delayed is justice denied'. This is a case of 'sound the guy out when he gets back'. Ask Eddie when he's due back, I guess. I don't know when that'll be."

Ray is not very good at poker faces. Perhaps the Horta will not recognize his current expression. It's composed of equal parts 'this is getting on my nerves', 'I haven't had enough coffee yet this morning', 'Dear Dad, I know you're dead but I thought you should know that today your son got into an argument with a rock', and 'I still have no idea if the letter I left was ever picked up or not and it's playing merry hell with my stomach acids to think about'.

Naraht's expression would be one of repressed frustration along with increasing physical discomfort.

"Forgive me for being unclear, Ray," he says tightly. "I know he's out of the bar. I was talking about when he gets back. I was simply taking issue with the implication that you seemed to be making that we should wait until after his child is born. I fail to see how waiting another eight to nine months would be helpful."

"Huh? Heck, no," Ray says. "First of all, I'm pretty sure she's a good several months into the pregnancy. And second, I just meant to wait until we were sure that he wasn't distracted by something to do with the pregnancy, like something going medically wrong or something. Guys get pretty uptight about that kind of thing."

He runs a hand over his face again. "Sorry. You deserve better than this- I'm sorry, Naraht, I've been on edge ever since we got back from my world and you don't deserve to catch it in the grinders. I mean, yeah, the whole thing doesn't seem nearly as pressing an issue to me as it obviously is to you, but that's kind of irrelevant. You helped me with something enormously important and I ought to be a little more willing to reciprocate."