redshiftlogs | Let's partyyyyyyy! [open]

Who: EVERYONE.
What: A meet-and-greet party for everybody in Anchor!
When: early October
Where: the VR room lobby
Warnings: none yet
Format: go wild!

[ The day before, a wild network post appears, from the username @aa : ]

hi everyone!
i just wanted to let you all know
the meet and greet party previously discussed in this space
will be held tomorrow afternoon!

it will take place in the vr room lobby
and of course everyone is invited
refreshments and games will be provided
but if you would like a little extra challenge
please feel free to bring something to share!

attendance is mandatory!
(lol just kidding)
seriously though i do hope to see all of you there ;)

[ She's also posted handwritten signs to that effect in the mess hall and several of the staircases. Just in case! ]

The day of, a party appears in the VR Room lobby area, as promised!

Though it's not brightly lit, the lights there are are brightly colored, creating a chilled-out evening atmosphere like you'd find at a club. Plush chairs and couches are interspersed throughout the room, and there's been a solid attempt to clean the place up, or at least do something about all the dust.

A shortage of conventional party supplies has forced Ami and Cho to get creative, so the tables and parts of the wall are decorated with paper flowers, and the buffet table is presided over by a number of ... weird, pink, glitter-covered, vaguely animal-shaped sculptures made out of spare plastic pipes and stuff. With googly eyes. If nothing else they're a conversation piece.

FOOD: The main offering is barbecue! There's a pretty wide assortment of meats, all of which Cho has certified safe for human consumption, and also certified delicious. Chips, dried fruit, and a few different desserts are available, including homemade chocolate chip cookies that Ami made herself (wich Cho's help). All the trays are helpfully labeled, including allergy information.

Any and all potluck submissions are welcome as well! Just set it down over here and make a little card of your own.

DRINKS: Sadly, the coffee machine is still out of order. But there is a cooler stocked with ice and a few different choices of juice and soda. Alcoholic selections are limited to two types of pre-mixed drinks, which are intentionally weak on the alcohol, but at least they're not tequila sunrises. If guests want anything stronger, they'll need to bring it themselves.

ENTERTAINMENT: In fiddling with the controls, Ami got the overhead speakers to play some music, but couldn't figure out how to modify the playlist, so it's just one song on loop. Maybe if she keeps the volume kind of low, no one will notice. No live music is scheduled, but if anyone wants to bring a guitar and jam for a while, they will be more than welcome to.

And most of the arcade games are online! Anyone for Fruit Ninja? Air hockey? Dance Dance Retribution? Virtual Billiards? Or perhaps you'd like to try out a full-simulation game in the VR Rooms proper? Now's as good a time as any!

Oh, and don't forget to enter the raffle! The winner will be chosen randomly and announced a few hours into the party.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Smiling, Qubit holds up a hand in the universal gesture for "chill." Between the iPod, the control panel, and the fact that she's one of the party organizers, he's already connected the dots.

"No, nothing like that. Though they're excellent ribs, by the way." (And as an interdimensional foodie, he does not say that lightly.) "I just wanted to see what you were doing. Trying to change the music?"

There's a hopeful intonation to that question. Because if she is, he will gladly lend a hand.

Cho smiles when Qubit compliments the food. "Thank you. Having a Whole Foods out there helped a lot. Molasses to the rescue."

Then he's on the music, and she forgets entirely about the food, because maybe he can help, and she won't actually lose her mind? "Yes." She lets out a frustrated breath and crouches by the cables again. "I don't even mind if Ami wants house music. I have some on here." She takes her iPod out of her pocket again. "But this isn't one of those super long playlists where all the songs run together and sound the same because they've been mixed that way. This is actually the same song. Exactly the same song. Over and over again. It's starting to drive me a little crazy."

Ah, of course! Gotta have molasses for scratch barbecue sauce. It kind of makes Qubit want to get his hand back in the cooking game, if he should ever come across some of that mythical "free time" stuff. He did a lot of cooking on Earth-β, but only because he had too much free time. There wasn't the same demand for his skills, the same need that he's found in Anchor.

Speaking of said skills, let's see what's going on with the stereo. He crouches alongside Cho, and wastes no time poking through the menus on the little touchscreen. It doesn't take long to identify the issue. "Well, there's your problem. There is a whole playlist, and it is set to Repeat All, but this is the only file queued that it can actually find." An easy fix, for once. All they have to do is plug Cho's iPod into the aux input, and -

- oh. There is no aux input. There's a little drawer built into the panel where you can plug in your device and leave it, but none of the half-dozen cables available are what he's looking for. Qubit frowns and mutters to himself as he sifts through them. "Hm. USB, USB Mini, iPod charger -" he glances over at hers "- but for an older iPod... and I'm not even sure what this one is," he says, examining a connector shaped like a "Z".

"Right?" Cho lets a little of her frustration bleed into her voice as she crouches next to Qubit an examines the cables with him, as though she hasn't already seen all of this. "And the fact that I have a charging cable doesn't do any good, because at the other end..." She jams the tip of a nail file along the edge of the panel, finding the exact spot for the release catch far too quickly for this to be the first time she's done this. She reaches in and unplugs one of the cables from its input port, and shows Qubit the strange figure-eight looking layout for things on this end. "We get this."

She lets out one very quiet and pathetic sounding whimper. "And I don't see any other-- I'm not even sure what I'm looking for, in this thing. I mean, you'd think an arcade would have access ports that you didn't have to go crawling around down here to get to, or a microphone. Or... I don't know. Something."

Qubit nods, sympathetic. "You'd think so, wouldn't you? But that's a legacy system for you." He shrugs, with a little more flourish than strictly necessary, and adds sardonically, "Ours is not to question why, only to keep it running or die."

It's an aphorism true of most things in Anchor. Fortunately, the stakes are a good bit lower in this case. He gently takes the cable from her, spinning it briefly between his fingers. "Well, we've got both ends of the cable we need," he muses aloud. "Just not on the same line."

So why not just snap his fingers and make a cable that works? Because, although he doesn't publicize the fact, his power does have a lower bound. A cable by itself isn't complex enough for him to work with, either as material or as finished product. But hey, there's more than one way to skin a cat. (Or to strip a cable, if you prefer your maxims cruelty-free.)

"Do you have your charger on you?" he says, getting to his feet. "I can splice it with this one. My lab's just upstairs, won't take five minutes."

He may have forgotten to consider that this would require Cho to charge her iPod out of a rare figure-eight plug for the foreseeable future.

"I have it in my bag!" Qubit might not be thinking about the fact that it'll ruin her cable, but it occurs to Cho, and she pauses half way to rising to her feet. "I don't suppose-- do you have any quick disconnect male and female connectors in your lab? Maybe a bullet disconnect? I saw some of those in a few of the broken door access keypads. Something so that I can swap out the USB half with the... infinity half?" That's what she's calling it now. That's its new name, as far as she's concerned. "Would that be too much extra work?"

Cho has spliced things herself, but she also isn't really sure what is available to Qubit, or how much of his time he's willing to give to this.

Briefly, Qubit's surprised to hear her switch over into shop talk so readily. He read her raffle entry, of course - I'm a biologist, and had an education in engineering and robotics cut very short - but despite her education, he somehow didn't connect the dots that she might actually know the first thing about electronics. He corrects that initial assumption quickly enough, but doesn't stop to examine why he made it in the first place.

Where were they? Right, a bullet disconnect. "No, I can do that," he says, nodding. "Good idea. It'll take a few extra minutes, but I've got the connectors handy."

The first thing, and the second thing, but not much past the third thing. She's still motivated to learn, but other things have been far more important in this place so far. The area of her knowledge that's already very advanced is of more use to the community than her student level of understanding of robotics, especially when there are actual experts in the field available.

"That's great!" Cho finishes standing up, and scurries over to her bag only to return with a nylon braided heavy duty charging cable. "Are you set up down in the Research and Development area with Peter?"

Qubit accepts the cord and nods. "Not with him, per se, but next door. Thanks - I'll be right back."

And he starts to head out, but pauses by the exit to take a quick glance over the party first, just out of habit, making sure everything's still going all right. It is, though, so off he goes.

He returns about twenty minutes later (though a good half of that was walking), and finds Cho to hand her the cables back, neatly spliced with disconnects, as requested. "There you have it."

"Yes." Cho takes it with a smile on her face like he just handed her a gold bar. Bigger, actually. She would not care much about a gold bar right now. She would not care much about a gold bar in most situations. Getting rid of this music, though? Oh, she cares very much.

She plugs in her iPod quickly, hits shuffle, and begins looking for the control to switch the audio input source for the speakers. "I think... maybe this?" She points at the little control dial and the random symbols around it. "Does this look kind of like the Z shape to you?" She holds up the extra un-needed cable half to compare. Looks pretty close to her.

Let's partyyyyyyy! [open]

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