It's been seven weeks since the Machine first detected the anomaly. Strange bits of footage in the late hours of the night in all corners of New York, very little of it clear. Snatches of conversation that felt a little too alien to her heuristics, idle background-process queries that turned up little on the internet or otherwise. But none of it flagged any of her priority processes; there were no threats, no premeditated crimes that she could detect, no indication that these anomalies took more pressing concern over the steady stream of "irrelevant" numbers her surveillance generated. When someone needed saving, or stopping, or something more complicated, then she sent her assets a Social Security Number. But there was no SSN to spit out here, no target. Just something her processes identified as unusual, something to investigate when there was a little bit of breathing room.
So when there was, she did. She sent Shaw and Fusco both to investigate the places she'd spotted vehicles moving by themselves, overheard talking when there was no logically identifiable source, but they turned up nothing. Both of her assets had felt it had been a massive waste of their time, given New York's crime statistics, and need Fusco remind her that hey, he had an actual job to do, and his new captain was really gonna tear him a new asshole if he went missing from desk duty for too long, so call him when there was a real goddamn emergency, alright? And Shaw was bored and just wanted something to shoot, and she thought that maybe the Machine was glitching, but the Machine knew better. And when the numbers started coming again, she sent her human assets off as usual and investigated this anomaly on her own.
She used her shell company to hire an imaging company to drive around a few choice locations with a very expensive thermal imager just to get a little more data. (They were very easy to work with. She made sure to give them 4 stars on Yelp.) And that gave her what she needed: a confirmation that things were out of the ordinary, however slightly. There was something out there in her city, hiding from her, and she was uneasy. More than that, she was curious.
After that, she began to send out a carefully curated and staggered flood of pings across a variety of different frequencies and signal types, none of them from the same location, curious to see what pings back but just as ready to defend herself. After Samaritan, she's learned. She can't even begin to run a probability scenario on what might come next: she has shockingly little data to go on, to the point where it almost takes on a dangerous kind of novelty. So she sends her probes out, directs her assets as usual, and waits.
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sunchime2018-01-05 05:27 pm
megatron
So when there was, she did. She sent Shaw and Fusco both to investigate the places she'd spotted vehicles moving by themselves, overheard talking when there was no logically identifiable source, but they turned up nothing. Both of her assets had felt it had been a massive waste of their time, given New York's crime statistics, and need Fusco remind her that hey, he had an actual job to do, and his new captain was really gonna tear him a new asshole if he went missing from desk duty for too long, so call him when there was a real goddamn emergency, alright? And Shaw was bored and just wanted something to shoot, and she thought that maybe the Machine was glitching, but the Machine knew better. And when the numbers started coming again, she sent her human assets off as usual and investigated this anomaly on her own.
She used her shell company to hire an imaging company to drive around a few choice locations with a very expensive thermal imager just to get a little more data. (They were very easy to work with. She made sure to give them 4 stars on Yelp.) And that gave her what she needed: a confirmation that things were out of the ordinary, however slightly. There was something out there in her city, hiding from her, and she was uneasy. More than that, she was curious.
After that, she began to send out a carefully curated and staggered flood of pings across a variety of different frequencies and signal types, none of them from the same location, curious to see what pings back but just as ready to defend herself. After Samaritan, she's learned. She can't even begin to run a probability scenario on what might come next: she has shockingly little data to go on, to the point where it almost takes on a dangerous kind of novelty. So she sends her probes out, directs her assets as usual, and waits.