Westbrook Academy for Metahumans: Forums

"Brooklyn, they are requesting your presence in the ready room mechanic bay nine"

Intuition was in a great mood today and its voice was bouncy. Brooklyn was napping and the quiet happy voice was enough to wake her. She twitched in space.. her dream was fading what was it.. she was.. who was there?
It was gone now replaced by the soft voice repeating kindly and with urgency.

"ok ok ok, lemme wakeup.. a little.." She opened her eyes to darkness and waited for the hookup to a presence in the Vanguard Base. It was like falling asleep.. when your brain stem sort of detaches from your brain.. that falling feeling some people felt right before they fell asleep.

The room was impossibly bright and surprisingly clean for a mechanic bay. They were talking but why were they so far away and below her..several feet below her vantage point. Had they put her into a security camera? Oh this wouldn't do!

"WHOOA!! hey hey!!!" A man was waving at her. She focused on him and he was beautiful, with dark eyes and a smart in control look about him, his voice was rich and smokey and his hair was all messed up cutely on his head. "oh my" she thought.. but it came out anyway she heard a deep digital voice mimic her own thoughts.. "ooh myyy" it said. She almost squeaked what had just happened..?

"Brooklyn your subvocalizing, try to relax a little, they routed you into the MVAS your in the machine now, just take some deep breaths, there you go. I see your heart rate is beginning to normalize. That man is Lieutenant Ganas he is very nice and will be going with you on your orientation assignment" Intuition was perfect in distracting her from the Lieutenants beaming smile that surely would have made a nine foot tall robot act bashful. "The computer you were to run the orientation simulation with is in need of repair they did not tell me until after the hookup started so you went right into the robot"

This was not the way it was supposed to work, orientation could take several hours and sometimes more then one attempt had to be made. It was supposed to gradually introduce the major parts of the machine to the pilot. This was a shock, as her brain began to process stimulus points that were supposed to make her aware of her new body. It was disorienting to say the least as her brain went from the perception that she was a sixteen year old girl in a tank asleep, to a giant robot towering over several Vanguard soldiers standing around her.

"Hows it going in there soldier?" Ganas flashed that smile again and before she could even point out she wasn't military, Intuition shushed her quietly. "He doesn't have a high enough clearance to know you. He will refer to you as Operator Two" Then Intuition was gone and it was just her and these soldiers. Was this some kind of test?

"So lets get going huh O2? Im Ganas this is Terna, Max and Carl. I heard you didn't get the prep course but you have more time hooked up then anyone I've ever heard of. I'm sure you will do fine.. I will take it easy on you" He said the last part like a used car salesman and it really worried her.

The MVAS information was flooding her H.U.D. height weight and all the statistics that she did not care about. Then it flashed on the screen a section of the display that was not present in her two drones back at school.

.............................WEAPONS SYSTEMS ONLINE.....................................

She briefly froze in place seeing those words hovering in the air above all those little peoples heads. Ganas was putting on his helmet and besides very minor differences she could not tell any of the solders apart and then suddenly her H.U.D. finished a testing process and roughly in the center of each of the solder a green dot appeared, when she focused on the dot the soldiers name flashed into existence on the display. "ok then" she thought, her apprehension was melting, this was going to be exciting...

or terrible

Two Months Later

"Brooklyn you are wanted for debriefing in ready room nine" Intuition stated in its mostly flat tone.

"ok.. ok.. let me save this homework. Ready when you are" She sounded tired and distracted.

Her vision was suddenly filled with a small steel and concrete room with a simple table and one uniformed man sitting at the other end. It was a man she has seen before but she couldn't remember his name and neglected to ask Intuition what it was.

"Hello there, this will be an informal debrief on operation and interaction with the MVAS unit" He did not pause to let her even get a responsive hello into the one sided conversation. He just flipped open a manila file and kept talking. "You have piloted the MVAS sixty three times averaging two hours twenty minutes per exercise. We have given a close look to your reports and a closer look at the information gathered by Intuition. The data you have helped collect is priceless to the program. With the tweaks you have helped bring about, the MVAS platform is ready for deployment. As of O'900 tomorrow it will be in full use by the Vanguard Swords." With that he closed the file and sat back with a bit of a smile. Her mind was still soaking up the hasted words when it began to dawn on her what he was actually saying. "Your specific skillset is no longer required by the MVAS project. As of right now access to the machine will be terminated. I have put in a recommendation that you be considered in the first string of any further remote drone programs as a civilian contractor. We will also be downgrading your Intuition to below contractor level access." She suddenly remembered who this man was.. and why Intuition had been silent.. it was already downgraded. This man was the one that had first gone to her parents to get her on board his pet project. He knew everything about her situation having negotiated the terms of her use in Vanguard Research.

"Brooklyn, we talked about this a while back remember?"

"Yes Sir, I was to beta the MVAS until it was brought up to standards or it was junked"

"You did a great job of it, rooting out all those bugs, the programmers almost couldn't keep up with the changes. The data you brought to the table couldn't have been found in a thousand simulations. I credit you with a big part of why it was approved to move to the next stage."

"thanks, it was fun to drive it and work with soldiers all over the place"

"unfortunately the upgrades to Intuition have to go with it, not like you will be needing that sort of information at um.. Westbrook right? Not like that stuff could help you pass a history test." Now he was patronizing her and she knew it. He had taken her and let her move up a little and now he was putting her right back in her place. "you still have the praetorian conversion and a service contract as far out as you want it to go, with basic system support. That is quite a deal for you I even heard that they have made some real progress with your dna probably will have something solid in a few years. You will get to help real people Brooklyn real soldiers." He stood up and pulled at his uniform to straiten it even though it didn't need it. "If you need anything just let me know" With that and a practiced smile he was out of the room. She knew that even if she did need something the best she would get is one of his underlings. He was the kind of man that only appeared when he needed something from you. Even the debrief would be put in his file, very by the book and cut off before he actually started talking to her. The H.U.D. counted down the bounce back to her home and within a few moments she was swimming in the inky blackness again.

She didn't know how to feel at first about losing access to the big robot. It was surely fun and made her feel invincible but the exercises she had been going on had started to get more and more violent. That had not set well with her, she did not like to see anyone get hurt not even the Rikti. Maybe that's why they stopped letting her pilot because she had let slip a few times to Intuition those exact thoughts. She glanced through the remaining commands that her computer would still respond to and right away she noticed the list was less then a third of what it used to be. It was back to its original configuration not much more then a well made personalized PDA with emergency life support built in.

She flicked the homework back into the display and smiled just a little to herself. She was doing homework.. and she was not in a hospital or mental ward. Their were no more black outs or seizures or migraines. Whats the loss of a robot compared to that.

She had her whole life ahead of her.