xp_logs | Log: Forge and Haroun, in the mech lab.

Haroun goes in for a checkup for the mechanical parts. Forge's bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired. Thankfully he's an engineer, not a doctor.

Haroun had finally tracked down Forge in his lab, puttering about on
who-knows-what. "Forge? Got a minute?" he asked, and then leaned
against the wall to take some of the strain off his lower spine. It
had _not_ been a good mobility day, and with Alison off on a mission
so soon after coming back mangled from the Hellfire Club, his good
cheer was being severely strained.

Forge looked up from the oscilloscope, pushing his safety goggles up
onto his forehead. "Mr. al-Rashid!" he said with a degree of pride,
"Walking tall, coming down here into my lab! How's the 'ware holding
up?"

"Badly." Haroun said flatly. "Good days and bad days, and today's a bad
day. Got some time to run a non-invasive diagnostic?" he asked.

"Do I?" Forge's voice had that kid-on-Christmas tone as he slid along
his workbench, picking up leads, multimeters, and scanning devices
along the way. "Step into my office," he indicated a nearby chair with
a tilt of his head, "and we'll run a quick scan. Go ahead and just
pull up your pant leg a little, all I need is some bare metal to
contact."

Haroun did as requested, and sank into the chair with a barely-stifled
groan of relief. "I've been having good mobility days over the last
week or two. But now, it's agony to move." he said. "And I'm still
pissed about that MP3 stunt you pulled."

Forge nodded, the wide grin not leaving his face. "Excellent. I mean,
that you're having good days. It's because your brain wants to try and
send one set of signals, and the ware's telling you no, it's going to
need a new set. The docs say you're doing excellent, and from what I
can tell," he perused the readouts on the nearest monitor, "your
neurokinetics are meshing almost perfectly. And I see you found the
easter egg. About two weeks ahead of schedule, actually. You shouldn't
have had audio on the flight recorder data until you actually GOT your
flight systems online."

With deft fingers, Forge reached up to Haroun's waist near the edge of
the 'ware, probing around. "Ah, here's the buffer access." A small
shock from a handheld unit, and he smiled. "There. Buffer's clear and
ready to receive data. No more Rocket From The Crypt when you try and
access it." He grinned despite Haroun's grim expression. "I thought it
appropriate."

Haroun grimaced. "I was _dreaming_ that song. I could hear it in the
back of my head constantly." he said. "It was good enough the first
few hundred times I heard it, but after that ... you're lucky I'm a
stubborn sonofabitch - men have broken at less." he grumbled. "And my
power's completely offline."

"Not my ballpark," Forge responded dryly. "I built the perfect
machine, the meat's not covered in the warranty." He adjusted the
sensor leads, watching a new series of numbers flash across the
screen. "That's odd."

"Yeah, well, if the "perfect" machine won't talk to the meat then it's
far from perfect, now, isn't it?" he snapped back, not having the
patience to tolerate much by the way of witticism. Not with Alison
going out so soon after coming back banged-up, and his own persistent
damned helplessness. "And what's odd?"

Forge ignored the slight on his design abilities, paying attention to
the readouts. "Shut up and keep your damn blood pressure down," he
said unemotionally, "The part of the MMI that handles the fractal
memory system's expanding faster than expected. In layman's terms, not
that you're a layman, it's the equivalent of a toddler suddenly being
able to comprehend calculus."

Spinning around, Forge reached up to poke at one of the access points
hidden behind a small layer of synthetic skin at Haroun's waist with a
probe. "No wonder you're having good days and bad days. The AI's
learning faster than you are."

Haroun ignored the slight to _his_ determination and learning
abilities. "While I am an engineer and do play one on TV, this isn't
exactly my field. Slow down and use small words. Explain why this is a
bad thing?" he said. "I'm working like a _dog_ just to get back basic
mobility, and you're telling me that the MMI is ... what? Getting too
big for its electronic britches?"

"Think of your body like a car. Not just the cybernetics, all of it,"
Forge began. "You're a finely tuned road machine. Perfectly balanced
torque, gear ratio as mathematically perfect as it can be. But you've
been driving an automatic all your life, and this is a stick."

He leaned back, grabbing a can of Mountain Dew and chugging back a few
swallows. "I'm telling you that you're doing the neuromuscular
equivalent of riding the clutch. And since the cyberware won't stop
you from hurting yourself, your biologicals are taking the feedback.
Let me guess, cramps? Headache? Minor nausea and vertigo?"

"Nightmares. Cold sweats. Muscle cramps, but those are nothing new.
Pain, but again, that's just a part of life. Nothing I can't handle.
It's the good-day bad-day shit that's driving me up a wall." he
explained. "So you're saying that I need to back off while your
perfect machine calibrates itself some more? That's great, Forge, but
we've got people being fed to a log-chipper out there and there is
_nothing_ I can do about it when I can manage a walk at best!"

"So?" Forge looked at him dispassionately. "I'm not saying back off.
I'm saying do it right. For christ's sake, dude. You got torn
literally limb from limb, overloaded your power, spent a month in a
big tub of thermal jello - one of my more brilliant schemes of the
past year, I have to admit - and then went through chemo. And you're
pissed because you're not bouncing back like a superball?" Forge threw
his hands up in the air. "Jesus, I'm *still* doing physio for my arm,
and it's been MONTHS. Unless you've got some healing factor no one
briefed me on, suck it up."

"I am in far better shape than you will ever be in." he pointed out.
"In short, I can expect to be offline for, what? Months? Years? Maybe
never come back online at all?" he said. "Unacceptable. I was
better-off under the old system. Yeah, it wasn't fancy and yeah, in a
lot of ways it sucked total ass. But it _worked_." he said stiffly as
a whole set of muscles in his back spasmed simultaneously. The pain
was exquisite, but Haroun and pain were old friends.

"I can run a full lap," Forge shot right back. "And your old system
was crap. It was killing you by inches. Trust me on this, I'm a
fucking supergenius." He spun a monitor around, zooming in on a
wireframe construction of where the cyberware interfaced with Haroun's
spine. "You see these neural connections here? That's where your
body's made new interface paths with the 'ware. When you push it," he
hit a series of keys, and a number of pathways lit up on the screen,
displaying a bottleneck of transmissions. "You push it, you get pain.
Now, think networking. Lower your speed, increase your bandwidth."

Another series of commands, and the screen displayed a smoother flow
of data. "I can only make sure the 'ware's running to spec, and it is.
It's your balls to the wall rehab style that's holding you back. It's
like Kylun keeps telling me during gym time - quit trying to do
it and just do it."

"And before all of this I could run for miles." he countered. But
getting into a dicksize war with the guy who literally built your dick
was just dumb, so he tried to put it aside. "All right. So what you're
saying is to stop actually working at it and make like Nike." he said.
"That's great, but I have no idea how to "just do it". I've been
forced to think every motion through for _years_. Visualize, then
actualize."

Forge nodded. "You've had the 'ware for what, almost twelve years?
This time, it's going to behave like a real body, not like some crude
machine tacked onto you. You've got to unlearn what you've learned,
and get your brain to start working instinctively. The closer your
mind's self-image starts aligning with the signals your physical
body's sending, the quicker you heal. That's basic homeopathic theory,
Doctor Bartlet explained it to me." Forge stroked his chin, then
pressed his hands together in a steeple. "No more silly analogies. No
platitudes. You have to stop thinking of yourself as man plus machine
and start thinking of yourself as a whole entity. This isn't some
machine bolted onto your body - this IS your body. Head to toe, one
unit. Think like it, and you'll be like it."

Haroun snorted at that. "Easy for you to say." he said, but he looked
thoughtful while he said it. "So, bottom line, the problem isn't the
machine. The machine is five-by-five. The problem here is me."

"This is what I'm saying, yes." Forge shrugged, rolling up the sleeve
of his shirt to show where metal met flesh on his left shoulder. "Same
principle I had to get used to, working my arm. But I didn't have a
decade of dealing with cyberware designed by the lowest bidder and
installed by a team of highly trained chimpanzees on amphetamines. I
mean, man, Doctor Hawksmoor said they chopped you up ALL to shit when
they put the original 'ware in. Probably did more damage to you saving
your life than they had to."

"I had already crashed and burned when they wheeled me in. Multiple
fractures - you've probably seen the X-Rays. They excised about 40% of
my biological mass right then and there to save the rest." he said.
"Given how it turned out, I still think alpha-testing that shit was
worth it. Now I'm alpha-testing a whole new pile of shit. I outta just
get Nate or Charles to go in and fucking fix the problem already. I'm
tired of screwing around here, and I've got responsibilities. I'm
nowhere close to pulling my own weight."

Forge shrugged. "I honestly don't know how that'd work. Not my area of
expertise. But if it'd help, go for it. Get fixed, get flying, do what
you've got to do. If not, hey, you make do."

"Yeah, the question is how many other people pay the butcher's bill
while I'm sitting here making do." he said, then hopped up out of the
chair. "That's the really bitchy thing. Pain comes and goes. I could
be fine all morning, and by lunch I'm a crippled mass of pain, and
then be fine by dinnertime. It's damnedably inconsistent." he said.
"Well, at least now I know the machine's running at spec." he said.
"It's a start. Thanks, kid."

Forge raised an eyebrow. "Hey," he said as Haroun levered himself over
towards the door. "Honest question. Say you can't go back to the X-Men
stuff. What do you do?"

Haroun paused to think about that for a long moment. "I have
absolutely no idea." he said honestly. "Get a haircut and get a real
job?" he quoted mirthlessly, and then walked out.