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xp_logsClint shows Forge to the Chapel - along the way, they discuss eXcalibur's particular security requirements. (Backdated)
Forge had been looking forward to this since he'd been told about the existence of the mysterious Basement Portal. He brought his toolkit - just in case - and a little tablet for taking notes and sketching out potential ideas. The portal had started off life as an iPad but the guts of the machine would boggle and astonish any Genius Bar support personnel who might have cracked the case.
Whistling, he knocked on Clint's door.
Clint opened up his suite and blinked slowly for a moment before raising his overlarge cup of coffee to his lips and scalding his mouth as he chugged the rest of what it held. "Right," he said, nodding just as slowly as he'd blinked a moment ago. "I'm totally ready to show you all the things. The science things. Mornings are great. I love mornings. No. Nope. That's a lie. But I am ready."
As if from the ether, another massive cup of coffee appeared, handle held by fingers that gave away none of their deadliness. "Oh, coffee," Clint crooned, exchanging his empty for the new one. "Thanks, Tasha," he muttered, not waiting for her to boot him out before closing the door to the hall. "Now I'm ready. Hie ho and all that jazz."
Forge took it all in stride - he had his own chemical demons to deal with, and one did _not_ want to consider Uncle Naze before his first coffee and smoke of the morning. Besides, he'd made sure to get cleaned up and slam a tallboy Red Bull before coming over for this meeting. "Nice to meet another devotee of the Morning Caffeination." he said with a half-grin. "Be nice to me and I'll unfold the bike and we'll go get shitty gas station coffee and horrendously bad-for-you snacks," he added. "Maybe for lunch."
"Yeah, okay," Clint said, turning to head down the hallway. "Nothing beats gas station hot dogs, man, I don't care what anybody says. And a slushie. The blue ones." Just thinking about it made his mouth water a little. It'd been a really, really long time since Clint had partaken in anything even remotely like that.
It didn't take them long to exit the mansion and Clint made sure to keep his stride to something that wouldn't have Forge half-jogging to keep up with. "The path and everything was here already, we just renovated basically the whole thing, then the first basement and we added in the subbasement area, which is where the wormhole portal is located. You know all that already, though. Sorry, just getting my brain up to speed. Usually takes a few coffees to get there."
"Don't sweat it. This is all I blocked out time for today, figuring that once I get started I'm not gonna want to stop," he said, and then smirked. "The ladies love that about me," he said teasingly, then switched back over to a more serious mode. "You said you jury-rigged the monitoring setup you have - how bad is it, really?"
Humming, Clint took a moment and then flattened his hand palm down in the air and waggled it side to side. "It's not ideal. A bunch of equipment is stuff I just straight up stole from other places in the mansion. I'm no programmer, though, so I had Doug come in and write the majority of the software. Once April fell through, we put in alarms and there's a wireless alert that goes straight to the mansion's main switchboard, where someone will see it whatever the time of day it is. Which is assuming someone from eXcal or another one of the teams isn't already down there keeping an eye on things.
"The ability to track and monitor what's going on inside the wormhole was brought in second to making sure the thing was stable on our end. It's actually stuff from the Danger Room. From what I understand, halfway predictive but also real time tracking of like, patterns or movements and the like so when something anomalous pops up, it sends an alert, too. That's the part where a team has to go through -- we figured out the other end of the wormhole is just sort of... out there. Whipping around through time and space, sometimes connecting long enough with another reality to fuck it up somehow.
"We send an away team," Clint continued, "And try to figure out what needs to happen to repair the timeline there so that reality doesn't completely collapse." He trailed off for a long second, cradling his mug in both hands before he finished, "Honestly, I think streamlining the power usage would be the first thing to do, since I was never able to really focus on that and, obviously, an electrical engineer I am not. Upgrading the monitors and the sensitivity might be good, but could also be shelved for the time being in the interest of setting up an actual room with actual security protocols. There's separation between the control room and the portal itself, but I'd like something that we can use to protect ourselves if we wind up coming back from a reality hot."
Forge hrmmed as his brain whirled with ideas and he took notes on his tablet as they walked. "All right. First up is power draw and stability. Harden everything, make sure we get some beefy independent power, then we can look at monitoring and alarming, sensor sensitivity, all that good stuff. Third up, we harden and lock it all down. Sound fair?" he said. "Once I get a look at the portal itself I'll be able to come up with more but that sounds like a good place to start."
"Yeah," Clint nodded his agreement. "Before we harden everything, I want you to take a look at what we've got in the subbasement room-wise because, like I said, I want something better for personnel security and it'd be clunky for you to fix everything up as-is, get it all hard-set, and then we decide to rearrange things."
"When you say security, are you thinking "Don't let unauthorized people use the portal from our side" or are you thinking "Don't let beings from Out There get a foothold in our dimension", or are you thinking both? And how lethal do you want these countermeasures to be?" he asked. "Because I can see non-lethal takedowns and sleepytime juice for the former, and in a pine box six feet under for the latter. What're your thoughts?" he asked, poised ready to take notes. "But yes, the schematic is not the ground and taking a look-see is probably a really good idea before we go way down in the weeds with planning."
"Mostly the latter. If somebody from this universe makes it to the Chapel's subbasement to try to use the portal itself, we've got bigger problems. Mansion security is tight, not to mention all the various vigilante superheroes and spies running around here. We don't have much in the way of keeping beings from other realities and universes from getting out if they come through the portal, though. I mean, technically, the same protective measures apply so far as the people here who are capable of taking on intruders, but the mansion's mostly built to keep things out -- not so much for keeping things in," Clint said. "And honestly, I think a range from non-lethal to lethal would be for the best with an emphasis on containment and lethal as a last resort.
"We wouldn't have April with us, for instance, if we'd just shot her when she came out of the portal. And that'd be a shame, cause April's great. But situations and our knowledge of others beyond our own universe are going to evolve and I'd like some room to adapt in case we meet unfriendlies who pop up more than once."
Forge blushed a little at that. "Yeah, a range of possibilities would probably be good." he said, making some notes on his pad. "Good point on security but we do NOT want to be the weak point that someone exploits to give us a negative space wedgie or eat our souls or anything." he mused with a sour grin. "Yeah. Let's go take a look at what kind of volume we have to deal with here and that'll determine how nasty we can get - from the gentle reminder that the portal is a no-no place to a permanent reminder in the afterlife." he said. "Shall we?"
"Exactly," Clint agreed. "And right now, we are the weakest link in security." He grinned at the other man's enthusiasm. They reached the Chapel a moment later and Clint opened the front door, gesturing for Forge to precede him. "Our gadgets, let me show you them."
Forge had been looking forward to this since he'd been told about the existence of the mysterious Basement Portal. He brought his toolkit - just in case - and a little tablet for taking notes and sketching out potential ideas. The portal had started off life as an iPad but the guts of the machine would boggle and astonish any Genius Bar support personnel who might have cracked the case.
Whistling, he knocked on Clint's door.
Clint opened up his suite and blinked slowly for a moment before raising his overlarge cup of coffee to his lips and scalding his mouth as he chugged the rest of what it held. "Right," he said, nodding just as slowly as he'd blinked a moment ago. "I'm totally ready to show you all the things. The science things. Mornings are great. I love mornings. No. Nope. That's a lie. But I am ready."
As if from the ether, another massive cup of coffee appeared, handle held by fingers that gave away none of their deadliness. "Oh, coffee," Clint crooned, exchanging his empty for the new one. "Thanks, Tasha," he muttered, not waiting for her to boot him out before closing the door to the hall. "Now I'm ready. Hie ho and all that jazz."
Forge took it all in stride - he had his own chemical demons to deal with, and one did _not_ want to consider Uncle Naze before his first coffee and smoke of the morning. Besides, he'd made sure to get cleaned up and slam a tallboy Red Bull before coming over for this meeting. "Nice to meet another devotee of the Morning Caffeination." he said with a half-grin. "Be nice to me and I'll unfold the bike and we'll go get shitty gas station coffee and horrendously bad-for-you snacks," he added. "Maybe for lunch."
"Yeah, okay," Clint said, turning to head down the hallway. "Nothing beats gas station hot dogs, man, I don't care what anybody says. And a slushie. The blue ones." Just thinking about it made his mouth water a little. It'd been a really, really long time since Clint had partaken in anything even remotely like that.
It didn't take them long to exit the mansion and Clint made sure to keep his stride to something that wouldn't have Forge half-jogging to keep up with. "The path and everything was here already, we just renovated basically the whole thing, then the first basement and we added in the subbasement area, which is where the wormhole portal is located. You know all that already, though. Sorry, just getting my brain up to speed. Usually takes a few coffees to get there."
"Don't sweat it. This is all I blocked out time for today, figuring that once I get started I'm not gonna want to stop," he said, and then smirked. "The ladies love that about me," he said teasingly, then switched back over to a more serious mode. "You said you jury-rigged the monitoring setup you have - how bad is it, really?"
Humming, Clint took a moment and then flattened his hand palm down in the air and waggled it side to side. "It's not ideal. A bunch of equipment is stuff I just straight up stole from other places in the mansion. I'm no programmer, though, so I had Doug come in and write the majority of the software. Once April fell through, we put in alarms and there's a wireless alert that goes straight to the mansion's main switchboard, where someone will see it whatever the time of day it is. Which is assuming someone from eXcal or another one of the teams isn't already down there keeping an eye on things.
"The ability to track and monitor what's going on inside the wormhole was brought in second to making sure the thing was stable on our end. It's actually stuff from the Danger Room. From what I understand, halfway predictive but also real time tracking of like, patterns or movements and the like so when something anomalous pops up, it sends an alert, too. That's the part where a team has to go through -- we figured out the other end of the wormhole is just sort of... out there. Whipping around through time and space, sometimes connecting long enough with another reality to fuck it up somehow.
"We send an away team," Clint continued, "And try to figure out what needs to happen to repair the timeline there so that reality doesn't completely collapse." He trailed off for a long second, cradling his mug in both hands before he finished, "Honestly, I think streamlining the power usage would be the first thing to do, since I was never able to really focus on that and, obviously, an electrical engineer I am not. Upgrading the monitors and the sensitivity might be good, but could also be shelved for the time being in the interest of setting up an actual room with actual security protocols. There's separation between the control room and the portal itself, but I'd like something that we can use to protect ourselves if we wind up coming back from a reality hot."
Forge hrmmed as his brain whirled with ideas and he took notes on his tablet as they walked. "All right. First up is power draw and stability. Harden everything, make sure we get some beefy independent power, then we can look at monitoring and alarming, sensor sensitivity, all that good stuff. Third up, we harden and lock it all down. Sound fair?" he said. "Once I get a look at the portal itself I'll be able to come up with more but that sounds like a good place to start."
"Yeah," Clint nodded his agreement. "Before we harden everything, I want you to take a look at what we've got in the subbasement room-wise because, like I said, I want something better for personnel security and it'd be clunky for you to fix everything up as-is, get it all hard-set, and then we decide to rearrange things."
"When you say security, are you thinking "Don't let unauthorized people use the portal from our side" or are you thinking "Don't let beings from Out There get a foothold in our dimension", or are you thinking both? And how lethal do you want these countermeasures to be?" he asked. "Because I can see non-lethal takedowns and sleepytime juice for the former, and in a pine box six feet under for the latter. What're your thoughts?" he asked, poised ready to take notes. "But yes, the schematic is not the ground and taking a look-see is probably a really good idea before we go way down in the weeds with planning."
"Mostly the latter. If somebody from this universe makes it to the Chapel's subbasement to try to use the portal itself, we've got bigger problems. Mansion security is tight, not to mention all the various vigilante superheroes and spies running around here. We don't have much in the way of keeping beings from other realities and universes from getting out if they come through the portal, though. I mean, technically, the same protective measures apply so far as the people here who are capable of taking on intruders, but the mansion's mostly built to keep things out -- not so much for keeping things in," Clint said. "And honestly, I think a range from non-lethal to lethal would be for the best with an emphasis on containment and lethal as a last resort.
"We wouldn't have April with us, for instance, if we'd just shot her when she came out of the portal. And that'd be a shame, cause April's great. But situations and our knowledge of others beyond our own universe are going to evolve and I'd like some room to adapt in case we meet unfriendlies who pop up more than once."
Forge blushed a little at that. "Yeah, a range of possibilities would probably be good." he said, making some notes on his pad. "Good point on security but we do NOT want to be the weak point that someone exploits to give us a negative space wedgie or eat our souls or anything." he mused with a sour grin. "Yeah. Let's go take a look at what kind of volume we have to deal with here and that'll determine how nasty we can get - from the gentle reminder that the portal is a no-no place to a permanent reminder in the afterlife." he said. "Shall we?"
"Exactly," Clint agreed. "And right now, we are the weakest link in security." He grinned at the other man's enthusiasm. They reached the Chapel a moment later and Clint opened the front door, gesturing for Forge to precede him. "Our gadgets, let me show you them."
