xp_logs | Log: Remy/Doug (Reply)

Remy goes to get more information, and it turns out that his suspicions might be right.

"Doug, tell me dat you're at least almost sober." Remy said, letting himself into Doug's apartment. Over the last few days, locking doors had fallen to the wayside a little. He had a thick stack of print-outs under his arm, and a grim expression. LeBeau had actually seemed to relax a bit over the break earlier. He'd been somber since returning from France, but considering the beating that he'd taken over the previous month, no one seemed too surprised. But one look said that any relaxation was now gone.

Doug looked up from his laptop, where he'd been fiddling around in the World of Warcraft expansion beta. After all, what good was being a hacker if you couldn't get yourself a beta key? At the serious look on Remy's face, he quickly logged his character out of the game and turned to the Cajun.

"Haven't had a drink yet today," he replied. "What's the what, boss?"

Remy sat down and put the pile of papers in front of Doug. Most of them were printouts from on-line newspapers, documenting weather issues. More than a few were from African sources, the jumble of languages clear as day to him.

"Look, I need a way into de secure satelitte feeds dat de US meterological society uses." While most of the information was for the open and public off of public or private satallites, some of the core signels were still filtered by US military elements prior to being released, since many of the satelittes themselves were military based, and they wanted to keep numbers and routes as obscured as possible. "Any of de ones over Africa right now."

"The...okay," Doug replied dubiously as he turned back to the keyboard. Remy was the boss. After a few minutes of coaxing, Doug straightened up. "USMS secure satellite feeds up," he said. "I might have...um...guessed the password," he continued with a slightly mischievous smile. "What are you looking for?" he asked in a more businesslike fashion.

"Odd microclimates." Remy spread out the papers, detailing the range of stories he'd dug up over the past few hours. "Dere are bizarre weather patterns all over East Africa, and I need you to match dem up and see if you can find a constant reason, like a loci point or some reason to interconnect dem other den just a random anomoly."

"I'm assuming you have an operating theory, or you wouldn't have come to me, right?" Doug asked in a sort of question that wasn't really a question. He had an operating theory, and it worried him. Because he only came up with one answer when he added bizarre weather patterns and Africa.

"I think dat something in Africa is effecting de weather, oui, and it's starting to get out of control." Remy said, a little tightlipped. He didn't want to mouth his suspicions yet. "If you can locate a possible point which could be de root of it, we can get people to check it out."

Weather patterns were chaotic things, wildly unpredictable and quick to change. A meteorologist with a forty percent success rate in predicting weather was almost unheard of. Hurricanes had been known to turn on a dime from their path, freak blizzards to dump a foot of snow out of skies that had been crystal clear hours before... Still, Doug bent himself to the task. Remy's body language spoke of impatience, and this was obviously important.

Remy unfortunately could only watch. While Doug's power was focused on language, he had a strange spillover into pattern recognition, which combined with his computer abilities made him perfect for the choatic fractual nature of weather patterns.

A large flatscreen monitor displaying East Africa began to sprout dots as Doug correlated the microclimates to locations. After several long minutes, Doug tapped a few keys, and a blue circle popped onto the screen, covering portions of Kenya, Somalia, and Tanzania. He leaned back and pointed at the screen with a pen. "All of your incidents seem to be contained within about a five hundred mile radius, within the circle." Timestamps appeared next to the dots. "Best guess, it looks like whatever's happening started around...here," he said, tracing out a smaller area within the circle. "But it's just a guess. Best I can do."

Damn.

Remy rubbed his eyes tiredly and nodded. "Merci Doug. Dat's what I was afraid it was going to be." He collected up the files, and set Doug's computer to print out the information it had collected.

At the risk of using a cliche, Doug knew that Remy played cards close to the vest. And now his curiosity had been piqued. Still, Remy would tell him what he thought he needed to know, and no more. Not much use in pushing. "Anything else I can do for you?" Doug asked neutrally.

"Find me a cheap flight to Africa." was all Remy said as he headed out the door.