Monday morning, Nathan and Jamie in the Situation Room

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

Nathan introduces Jamie to the shiny, shiny simulation table and the concept of the tactical review.  After a few false starts, Jamie manages to display some decent insights for a beginner.



Nathan looked up as the Situation Room door opened, and couldn't help a smile at the intent way Jamie was sizing up his surroundings. "Hey," he said, not rising from his seat at the table. "Precisely on time. Now I will bore you with my poor lecturing skills."

"Downside to being able to be everywhere I want to be at the same time," Jamie said, returning Nathan's smile.  "I have a really hard time coming up with reasonable explanations for being late."  He took another look around the room as he sat down opposite Nathan.  "Do I get bonus points if I sit through the lecture without being too obviously distracted by all the shiny, shiny gadgets?"

Nathan chuckled. "Possibly. Or cookies. I remember I was terribly impressed by my first glimpse of the Situation Room, too. Although that was more about appreciating the design of it, rather than never having seen the gadgets before." He waved a hand around. "It's just remarkably efficient. Fills several purposes, with enough space that you're not tripping over each other, but allowing effective communication between people working on different things at the same time. The only way they could improve it would have been to have the comms suite in here too, but that was probably asking too much."

Jamie chuckled.  "I'll take your word for it, since I've only seen rooms like this on TV."  He looked around again, more thoughtfully. "Although speaking of that, it actually kinda reminds me of a scaled-down version of the CTU set from 24.  A little.  More the, um," he waved a hand vaguely, "the atmosphere of it, the, the, purposefulness, than necessarily the actual design."

Nathan leaned back in his chair. "24. Fun show. Utterly unrealistic, but fun. And the comparison's apt - counterterrorism is certainly one of our functions."

"Heh. Well, you don't watch the show for the realism."  Jamie shifted slightly in his chair, getting comfortable.  "And from reading the mission reports, I'm getting the impression it'd be easier and shorter to make a list of the things that aren't our functions."

"I enjoy the hell out of that aspect of what we do, to be perfectly honest," Nathan said with a barely perceptible glimmer of mischief in his gray eyes. "Not knowing what to expect anytime the call to the hangar comes... it can be very exciting."

"I'm thinking I'm probably not gonna hate that part either," Jamie replied.  "I mean, not to come across as some kind of adrenaline junkie here, but the one constant thing I'm coming across in all these mission reports I'm reading is that they're almost never boring.  I hate being bored."

"I hope you're getting a sense of your COs-to-be, reading those reports," Nathan said idly, his hands moving over the keyboard in front of him, programming the basic demonstration he'd had in mind. "Cyclops, Storm, and Dazzler are more or less Scott, Ororo, and Alison, but in other ways..."

"I've actually seen Alison turn into Dazzler.  Although it's not exactly--I mean, she's the same person.  But she . . . refocuses. Like a flashlight channeling into a laser, if that makes sense." Jamie thought for a moment.  "Mr. Summers doesn't seem all that different in the reports than he does the rest of the time, but he's more . . . I don't want to say 'relaxed,' but it's like he's exactly where he's supposed to be doing exactly what he's supposed to do.  I'm still trying to get a feel for Ms. Munroe, but I never really got to know her so I don't have much of a baseline to work from."

"Wait'll you see Scott out in the field," Nathan said, still typing. "He would have fit right in with my old crowd in some ways. Only the good ways, mind you. The bad guys du jour does not want to be standing between Scott and the objective, because Scott will plow right through them. Not in any kind of haphazard way. Just because he's planned better and prepared better and wants it more." He paused thoughtfully. "Ororo has a different kind of focus. More relaxed in a literal sense - she's meticulous, but always open to the thousand different little factors that can influence a situation." He couldn't help a smile. "And Alison is frighteningly and brilliantly unorthodox. Non-linear thinking."

Jamie snickered.  "I think I already knew that about her.  Corkscrew in a twister.  Really looking forward to learning from her--well, all three of them."  He looked around the room again.  "So this is where it all happens, huh?"

"Well, this is where the planning's done," Nathan said amiably. "Briefings and debriefings... you'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't, at how much talking we have to do." He inclined his head at the table as it reproduced a scale model of the mansion and the grounds. "Like the nifty visual aid?"

"That is nifty."  Jamie started to say something else, then stopped, shaking his head bemusedly.  "Bunch of familiar design elements, though.  That'll be a little weird, getting used to.  Not that the hallways weren't a hint."

Nathan looked wry. "Ask Scott sometime about who designed the subbasement. The answer will be illuminating." He went on smoothly, tapping in a few new commands to the table. "But you're here so that I can introduce you to the concept of the tactical review. You're going to be doing a lot of them as you get into your training, and I got nominated for telling you about them because I've been creating more and more of them. All of those years of small-unit mutant tactics at Mistra were good for something."

"You're kidding," Jamie replied with a quick grin, the pensive moment broken.  "You mean years of small-unit tactics comes in handy when it comes time to discuss tactics for small units?"  He gave Nathan a wide-eyed look.  "I think you just blew my mind.  Seriously."

Nathan snorted, amused. "Funny man. What I meant is that the specific tactics turned out to be more applicable than I thought. Mistra was primary combat operations, obviously. The X-Men do a lot more than that. But when you stop to think of it, the basic similarities are there." His fingers kept moving over the keyboard. "Tactical reviews, basically, are Danger Room scenarios on 'paper'. Or on the computer screen, to be precise."

"Huh."  Jamie cocked his head, staring through the metallic display. "That'd be a lot more . . . what's the word I want here?  Not academic, wrong connotation--clinical maybe?  More clinical than running it through in the actual Danger Room, wouldn't it?  You could sort of get above the action instead of being in the middle of it with explosions distracting you, and it'd be easier to look at different angles on things.  Like Warcraft instead of Quake, only for real."  He looked back over at Nathan.  "I mean, you'd want to train with the explosions and stuff anyway, because you're not going to run into a lot of high-tech display tables in the field, but I think it'd be a lot easier to get a handle on things in here."  He coughed, ducking his head.  "Sorry.  You were saying?"

Nathan very carefully repressed a smile. "The ideal," he said, without answering Jamie's question just yet, "is of course for you eventually to be able to make the right tactical choice without having to think about it. Needless to say, to do that, you need to understand a wide range of tactical possibilities at a glance. The reviews make you stop and think about it, learn what to look for."

"I can see that," Jamie said judiciously.  "But it's gonna take a while for me to get to that point, I think."  He shook his head.  "So is there a, a curriculum for these, or something?  Like, standard tactical problems that all the trainees get to run through?"

"There are..." Nathan stopped to think. "Forty-six basic programs for review. Now, you can combine any of them, add variations, and the real number is probably somewhere closer to... well, infinity. It helps you to identify certain key tactical fundamentals. There is of course the downside," he pointed out dryly, "in that you can't really duplicate all the variables that you might have in a real-world situation. We do try and program in random elements."

"But it's hard to program random."  Jamie snickered.  "I've picked that much up from Kitty and Doug and their incomprehensible computerese, at least.  Am I going to be working on them in here with the shiny table?"

Nathan nodded briskly. "Tactical reviews are done in here, so you can make use of the shiny table," he said, "and consult the database if it's not a timed exercise. I'd say it's about half and half, in the end, timed and untimed. Although you'll be starting with the basic programs, untimed." He cracked another smile. "We don't want to be discouraging you right from the get-go."

"Ah, the good old rope-a-dope strategy, I see how it is."  Jamie grinned.  "The first hit's free, but once I've been sucked in my ass is yours, or words to that effect.  So how do I work the table?"  He glanced down at the control console nearest his chair.  "I mean, there's a couple more buttons here than on your average arcade game."

"Ah, see, but we make it simple. We set up the program for you," Nathan said, calling up the infamous scenario 18. "We call this one 'Assault On The Mansion'," he said wryly. "Clearly there has been some opportunity to practice. Here," he said, and the table shifted a little, creating vans on the road outside the perimeter. "Ground assault, this time. That's your Opfor," he said as little figures appeared and started to make their way across the perimeter. "Your opposing force."

Jamie laughed.  "Which one are we talking about, here?  Or is this the, um, made-for-futuristic-display-table movie based on real-life events?"  He touched a few controls tentatively, panning the camera angle around.  "Do I get to assume that the scenario starts at the point the intruders are detected by the security system, or will it let me know when I can start reacting?"

"It will tell you." And it did, even as he said it, informing Jamie of the perimeter breach, in Lee's voice no less. "You're sitting down here in-scenario as well," Nathan said, sending profiles of available team members to the screen on Jamie's side of the table. "Keep in mind that you have two major concerns - evacuation and deployment."

"Panicky kids on top of hostiles, gee.  I didn't give you guys enough credit the last, um, several times."  Jamie scratched his jaw.  "Well, okay, everybody's pretty well drilled on evacuation procedure . . . hostiles aren't in the building yet, so I ought to be able to get away with making sure the older students keep track of the little kids and the panic-prone ones . . . and let's see what the telepaths make of the hostiles, to start with."  He grinned at Nathan.  "Note the lack of brain-breaking jokes."

"Much appreciated," Nathan said dryly, "especially since with you trainees, I get the option of beating the crap out of you on the mats if you make brain-breaking jokes." He eyed the table. "You're right, though, about a greater degree of ease in evacuation procedure. Especially with the new shelters."

"New ones are comfier, too," Jamie opined, moving a second wave of X-Men into position in case the telepathic assault failed.  "I mean, all credit to the Professor for figuring we might need 'em, but those first ones were not exactly furnished to promote a calm frame of mind."  He frowned at the display.  "So when does your virtual self report in to say whether or not their brains got broken?"

"My virtual self does not," Nathan said with a little smile, "because neither my virtual self nor my real self tends to use telepathy on the offensive level. And in this simulation, the Professor is off at a conference, since generally we only have mansion invasions when he's off-campus... you'd think they know, or something..."

"And here we see the major problem with falling for the resemblance to a video game.  I knew that, really, it's in the file . . ."  Jamie shook his head, ordering the team forward.  "Plan B, then, hit them until they go away."

"One of my favorites, much to the despair of the far, far too many people in my life with a better grasp of strategy than me." Nathan watched Jamie issue a few more commands. "My problem as a strategist," he said, "and to some extent as a tactician as well, was that I always had far too much projectable power to command. Scott and Alison and Ororo could have fallen into the same trap with the X-Men, but they choose not to. Any thoughts on why that's such a good thing?" he asked, his gaze measuring as it lingered on the young man.

"Well, I guess . . . if you have a big enough hammer, it's easy to start seeing everything as a nail.  Some things you can't--or shouldn't--solve just by throwing force at it."  Jamie thought for a moment, watching the scenario unfold in the display.  "And I guess . . . if you get used to just powering through everything, you could wind up just seeing people in terms of the power they can project.  Which is bad just from a human perspective, but it's not good as far as the team goes, either--morale, and also, if you're relying on your high-power types all the time they'll burn out fast.  Right?"  He shot Nathan a questioning look.

Nathan's response was a smile. "You have good practical instincts," he complimented Jamie, "even without having any tactical or strategic training yet. That's it, in a nutshell. Oh, watch out, your perimeter's being breached at the other side of the lake..."

Jamie's eyes snapped back to the simulation.  "Crap, it is.  Well, let's see what we can do about that."