voice test (canon is pacific rim)

[lightcap]

You're talking about questionable life choices to the wrong person, I'm afraid.

[ She looks around, shrugs and smiles hesitantly. ]

You don't have to commit if you don't want to.

But I have to confess, I am well, flattered.

Comments

[highaboveyou]

Well.

This is interesting.

[lightcap]

Interesting?

[ A beat. ] How so?

...Okay, icon mirroring is cracking me up.

[highaboveyou]

Let's just say your situation's pretty familiar.

i couldn't resist heh

[lightcap]

Ah [ slow nod ] ...did your, uh, mun? pick you up reluctantly as well?

[ She's genuinely curious about the way this whole thing works. She's done considerable research on the pons system and the neural bridge, but being one resident in a person's headspace is a completely different animal altogether. ]

It's beautiful. XD

[highaboveyou]

Yes and no. More like I ended up here by accident. Started as an NPC, ended up moving in. Now...

[He chuckled and motioned to her.] Now it's kind of your fault that I'm around again. I mean, it can circle around to you if you take a kind of weird and meandering route, which I'm... pretty good at doing.

[lightcap]

[ Oh. That's certainly...

Well. ]

I'm... sorry? [ She's not entirely sure what she's apologizing for, just that it felt right that she did. ]

[highaboveyou]

Oh, don't worry about it. [He waved it off.] Kind of nice to be out and about.

See, in an AU my mun's got me in, I worked on the jaeger AI. 'Course, it's a little different from the one you're used to, but I take my AIs very seriously.

[gipsy_danger]

What is considered a 'questionable life choice' to some is brilliance to others.

[tangos]

This hardly looks like a questionable life choice, Doc.

s c r e a m i n g internally

[lightcap]

[ Oh my. Oh wow.

She adjusts her glasses, a smile growing on her face as she marvels at the mech. Brawler Yukon will always have a special place in her heart, but she readily admits that this jaeger is awe-inspiring. ]

That is one beautiful machine. You pilots alright in there?

[lightcap]

[ Oh hello there. ]

You would say something like that.

How are you, Tamsin?

[tangos]

Absolutely spiffing. How about you?

[lightcap]

Not too bad.

[tangos]

Glad to hear it.

But I have to say, you don't sound too enthused about the whole existing bit.

[lightcap]

It's not that I'm unenthusiastic, more of I'm surprised I was picked up at all?

It's nice though, this. [ She gestures to the general area. ]

[tangos]

You shouldn't be; you're brilliant.

It is nice, isn't it? [ tamsin quite enjoys being alive. sort of. ]

[lightcap]

[ working with sergio in the drift gave her confidence, but sometimes, caitlin still finds herself blushing at compliments. ] Thank you, Tamsin. I try.

It is, yeah. Definitely.

hello there 8]

[gipsy_danger]

[ Gipsy refrains from any sort of 'laughter'. ]

No pilots. Not today, Doctor.

[tangos]

Might be a bit better if Sergio were around though, am I right?

[lightcap]

Really. [ Interesting. ]

Would it be alright to ask you about the differences in the AI? I'm genuinely curious.

[lightcap]

[ No pilots. Not today.

Caitlin lets that sink in for a bit. ]

Wait— [ her eyes widen a fraction ] —then you are— [ hands clap over her mouth ] oh my God.

[lightcap]

[ She looks away at that, her cheeks might be a little bit pink. ]

Well, he's not here. So... [ This is a look that says: Thanks for that, Tamsin. Really. You are a champ.]

[highaboveyou]

Well, we started with the basic AI. [Now he's in his element. He's not going to shut up.] But I thought it was too... basic. I mean, there are a million things that AI could be doing rather than just interfacing between the pilots and the jaeger. There was a whole sensor suite that it could've been running and monitoring, and I didn't see a reason not to add that, especially with limited optical input.

So there's sonar, [Ticking things off on his fingers, he went down the list.] radar, infrared, temperature, all on the HUD-- Oh, tactile sensors, that was the big thing. Ability to sense and anticipate kaiju movements to compensate and lessen pilot injury in the pod on impact.

I'm about three steps away from incorporating quantum processing which will be able to handle even more sensors. I'm intending on working with proprioception. That's next on the list.

[lightcap]

[ She nods, taking all of this in. The cogs in her head turning as she reconciles her own knowledge with the one offered up to her now.

When she does speak, it's a simple (and yet loaded) question: ]

How did you solve the neural feedback for the pilots?

[ It's always been her area of concern, the jaeger is a beautiful machine but it's ability to function as a protector of the human race is hugely dependent on it's integration with the pilots who man it.

Their biggest problem at the very inception of the project was how to compensate for the neural load - because you melded the man and machine. A thirty-storey mech had been too much for just one pilot, what with the brain unable to grasp the massiveness of the endeavor (drivesuits had been modified to provide sensory feedback to the pilots, because this sped up reaction time nearly tenfold, because then the jaeger was not just another vehicle, not just another car but a titan that you had to interface with, something closer to a suit or armor - protection, yes, for when you faced the Lovecraftian creatures rising from the depths - but still just a buffer for when you went out and fought for your lives).

When the governments of the world started demanding more and more upgrades, one of the most overused examples Caitlin presented them was the fact that visuals alone could overload the pilot's brains. After all, human beings weren't built for sight in 5D - which was how the younger techs had jokingly referred to 'seeing through the eyes of the jaeger' on top of your own natural functions.

In the end, gentlemen she remembers saying during one conference call, her partner's fingers threaded through her own underneath the desk and away from prying eyes, upgrading machines is easy, but we're not working with robots here. We're working with people. Because it's as much about the pilots as it is about the mechs and we all know that I am speaking from experience. ]

[highaboveyou]

Currently? [He shrugged.] Currently, we're still doing it the old way. Two pilots. But I'm working on fashioning the AI as a preprocessor once we hit the quantum processing stage. Filtering extraneous data to keep from overloading the pilot's brain. It'll be fantastic.

[He was very nearly beaming saying this.]

Quantum processing offers more than anybody could imagine. Proprioception, like I mentioned, active analysis of kaiju movements and probable counters, a full personality matrix - we could make a jaeger pilot itself with what I'm planning to try.

Somebody's working on cybernetic augmentation for the human brain, but I can't see that being necessary. Not when I can get the AI to do what their surgeries would do.