lab log first edition

[ninjavampire]

Who: Miggy and YOU
What: Constructing a lab out of rubber bands and paper clips
Where: A hidden away upper corner of the Pole
When: Post Branch, Later in the month
Warnings/Notes: spider robots

A little over a month has passed, and if Miguel appears to be sparse, it is because he's been hard at work building up another lofty and hard-to-reach cave to hide in. The lab itself was designed by someone who can scale walls and hang from the ceiling without much effort, so the layout is a bit obtuse and taller than it is long.

He has made use of the entirety of the wall from ceiling to floor, with some vertical pathways pocked with holes where his claws had punctured through - he simply re-used them as handholds.

There is a notable lack of ladders or light sources - the guy apparently adores a dimly-lit workspace. And it remains.. a work in progress! For now, it is only closed off by an unlocked door. But he'll be lurking around inside.

a. The Information Explainy Thing


full size

To your left, a chalkboard mounted high up the wall, visualizing some of the data he's gathered from his scans and interactions insofar. If you have talked to him at some point your universe is probably marked up here!

b. Computer Wife In Progress

Much of the room is taken up by around a dozen improvised server racks half-packed full of hardware he must have swiped from a visit off the Pole. The cabinetry is wooden and filigreed, from the stockpiles in the workroom, but the drawers meant to hold computer parts were metal and modern.

It's a bit of disorganized chaos - a lot of long cables were still being routed around to be placed in neat groups, and he needed to find more meat to fill the empty bones of his machine.

It was also missing a proper screen. The laptop at the center of it all looked a little out of place surrounded by the growing electronic behemoth.

c. A Small Friend

Linger around for too long and a click-click may interrupt your perusing! An octoped-like wood-and-brass spiderbot is crawling around, able to maneuver freely on its lifelike legs. It is another half-finished project with loosely arranged wires and exposed joints.

On its body is mounted a kitbashed digital camera with which it took that photo of you! And, seeming to be proud of its work, it flips the camera around to let you see.

Sharp eyes may spot an area dedicated to being a workbench, scattered with several aborted attempts to make something magitech function as intended. It appears this spider is the one that lived!

d. Wildcard!

Comments

combo

[changechild]

The lab is actually darker than Nyara finds ideal, but not by so much that she has any trouble with it. It's restful after the rest of the Pole. She touches a wall and hooks one of her own claws into one of the holes, considering - and then kicks off the footwear Need insists she wear in the cold where she's spending most of her time, and starts up.

She is not a Spider-person and is much slower and less confident scaling this surface than any of them would be, having to notice irregularities and fit the claws of her hands and feet into them as she goes, but that's a particular standard of comparison. By human standards, she's booking it, moving about as quickly as someone climbing a ladder, with pauses here and there as she changes paths. Some of the tension leaves her as she puzzles a way up - this isn't like climbing the cracked side of her tower, but it's an engaging and mostly familiar challenge. Nyara had liked that part of her day, even if it was also the most exposed time.

Then she hits ceiling and stops. The holes continue, but she can't. Balked, Nyara looks around and down, suddenly uncertain and awkward again, realizing that she'd just gone up a wall with no plan or intention beyond that it was there. Need does not, mercifully, comment.

[ninjavampire]

"Having fun?"

In a role-reversal, it is actually Miguel who is at the bottom of the floor this time around, having emerged from a forest of partially completed server racks to see who was scurrying around the room like a squirrel.

It was just Nyara.

"You can stay here if the outside is still overwhelming. I picked the location because it was quiet."

He is no stranger to having his senses bombarded to painful levels. Never a fun experience. The girl seemed like she was having a rough one after they arrived.

[changechild]

Nyara had heard Miguel breathing but his existence had slipped her by when she'd decided to clamber up the wall for no particular reason. She'd come in very quietly. Now she cranes her neck awkwardly to look at him, visibly anxious. Another not a Spider-person feature: she can't just turn around and hang out however on a wall, she has to have at least two limbs secured.

"Thank you. I... this Pole is not a place I would choose to go," she says unhappily. Right. Climbing down. That's slower, for her, than climbing up, since it's harder to see where to fit her claws. She hopes he isn't going to watch her the whole way and have a critique. The thought makes her pads start to sweat.

Need, attached at her belt, has an acerbic, unrelated comment, having caught a glimpse of the board. :You shouldn't call it 'psychic sword earth'. It's not an 'earth' and anyone can just come in and see that thing! Don't tell people about me, boy, I don't need the publicity.:

[ninjavampire]

Miguel does stare, deadpan, as she slooo-o-wly makes her way down. He's not going to judge her by spiderperson standards, though, unless she expressed interest in taking up the Spider-Cat mantle. He just waits.

And then the sword radios in, sounding upset. Well then!

"You never gave me a name for your world." he says to them both (mostly Need). "So you should let me know, unless you want this to be logged in to more permanent files."

Not entirely true... he would be assigning 8 digit codes to all these universes once he's not working on pen and paper. But they should give it to him anyway.

a. The Information Explainy Thingy

[composinghistory]

Jaskier waltzes into the dimly lit room, humming to himself, without much care or consideration of what's happening inside. He doesn't know what most of the technology is, he is interested in finding out, and the man working inside gets noted but glossed over. Something else catches his eye first.

Jaskier may not be an expert in the subject, but he recognizes a map of the Spheres when he sees one. This particular map is a bit more... haphazard than he's used to, but he can't blame the man. He's clearly working with what resources he has.

Clearly Jaskier has stumbled into the study of a scholar. As a fellow scholar himself, he makes himself at home.

"There doesn't seem to be much pattern in the placement of these spheres. And I can say for certain that you are missing more than a few. Placing our current one at the center seems a bit presumptuous, don't you think? And what do the lines represent-- are those the pathways by which we traveled here?"

Obviously there's nothing more an academic likes than someone coming in and nitpicking their work, especially in such preliminary stages.

His hands are reaching for the chalk and eraser.

[ninjavampire]

"It's in the center because that's our most recent location. I'm mapping outwards." The voice comes from about fifteen feet above his head.

Jaskier is treated to the mildly horrifying image of the man working inside having (at some point) scaled the vertical sides of the room with barely a sound to show for it. He is frog crouched on the wall with no apparent care for gravity, as long as he is in the right position to glare at his visitor. He then drops down to ground level.

He is a lot taller up close, it turns out. The light was low, but a well-placed lamp here or there catches the peculiar red eyeshine at the right angles. A very strange variety of human being, if that.

"I hope what you were planning on doing is adding your dimension."

What's with the eraser, Jaskier? Hm??

[composinghistory]

Jaskier does not see the very dramatic view behind him because he does not turn around. Sorry, Miguel, intimidation doesn't work when he's oblivious!

"Hmm? Oh, of course. It's just-- this is a Conjuction of sorts, correct? All of these people from different Spheres coming together. But some people have been through more than one, and multiple people come from the same Sphere. Perhaps you shouldn't even be sorting this by universe, but by individual, because not everyone from the same Sphere took the same path to get here. Hmmmm-- I'm not sure about that one, I wouldn't commit to it quite yet. Have you put any thought into the organization of this at all?"

Yup, that's the eraser moving up toward the chalkboard.

[ninjavampire]

He just... ignored his entire dramatic entrance? How dare he?

Miguel isn't disregarding the feedback, but he also doesn't want this strange man to get his grubby little hands all over his map. Sorry Jaskier, he's going to have to make yet another executive decision here and hold your wrist at bay. Additions. No subtractions.

"Yes. It's a work in progress."

He allows the chalk hand to continue.

"Your universe of origin is of most interest. Have you made several jumps yourself?"

a

[thismaskismybadge]

Gwen slinks into the space as quietly as, well, a spider. She's not even wearing shoes with her casual clothes, so her footsteps are even quieter than usual. It's not that she's under any illusion that Miguel won't notice her come in, sooner or later, but she wants to take a look at what he's set-up before she draws attention to herself. She's already a little irritated that she has to come and ask for his help with something in the first place.

It's about what she expected. Not as sleek as HQ, but it couldn't be, here. Not when he's clearly having to learn to make do with the older, more limited technology of this world compared to his.

And, of course. The blackboard. Gwen has an pretty clear idea of what it is even before she climbs up to get a better look at it.

"Already charting out the new additions, huh? Unsurprising."

[ninjavampire]

He hasn't quite gotten the slowly lowering theater stage of computer monitors going, but he's working on it. Making people wait like that filters out the annoying requests.

Miguel settles for standing on a foothold near the ceiling to glower from up above in the dark heavens, arms crossed.

"What do you want, Gwen?"

Not friendly... but he's not telling her to leave.

[thismaskismybadge]

Face still turned towards the blackboard, not him, Gwen's purses her lips and breathes out through her nose. Only then, sure she's not going to say something that's going to get her instantly kicked out, does she turn around to look up at him.

"I need to make more web-fluid. I only have a little left."

The theatre used up a lot more of her supply than she'd hoped it had. It hasn't been an issue so far, since she hasn't gone back out much, but it'll quickly become an issue if she doesn't make more.

Which wouldn't be an issue at HQ or at home, where she had her notes and materials, but she's not as science-minded as a lot of other Spiders. Smart enough to figure it out in the first place (with a little help that, in hindsight, might have something to do with how Peter knew...), not enough that she can remember it all off the top of her head.

And Miguel's the one with the head-start on a lab set-up.

[ninjavampire]

Oh. That's not what he was expecting.

"We should be able to fabricate more. I will have to ask for some extra materials."

His expression manages to loosen up, the angry creases smoothing over. He's felt a lot of frustration, even spite towards her, but the new threat and the displacement since his arrival gave Miguel some time to cool off and redirect his focus. And, well, when this own feelings towards the multiverse didn't get in the way, he really couldn't leave another Spider out in the cold like that.

They were on the same team again, despite the messy gnarl of a situation waiting for them back home. Sooner than he would have predicted.

He plops down from his gargoyle perch to be more at eye level. Web fluid wasn't really a thing he had to worry about once he figured out solid light, but if he had a sample... they could figure something out.

"Can I see them? Your webshooters?"

[gooddoggoddog]

When he turns around, even if he was looking right at the entrance, there's a wolf behind him.

(Veil of Mist is good for that. Dodging around someone's sightlines is child's play when you can slow down time.)

"So," she barks, "what's all this for?"

[ninjavampire]

Miguel, fully involved in mounting something on the wall, is so startled by the surprise wolf that he loses his foothold and plummets to the floor in incredibly goofy fashion. Catching himself on all fours is more catlike than it is spiderlike, but there it was.

His eyes dart up to see... dog? a talking white dog? How did she even get up there..?

"Diablos - Please knock on the door next time...!"

A

[mostdangerousbird]

At some point, Tim will wander through, just because he regularly does a full circuit of the workshop to see what’s going on that day. He won’t seem to pay the chart any attention.

He will come back, wearing a green body armour gauntlet. He’ll flip open a panel and throw up a holo display that he fusses with, then plug a datastick into the gauntlet and suddenly a much larger, technomagical hologram fills the room with a phantasmagoria of multiverses in brilliant colors.

The full DC multiverse and dark multiverse, another set of multiple numbered universes that may have familiar callsigns to Miguel, and many singular universes in the voids between.

Tim taps at a few, and notes show up. In some cases, he double-checks and adds more. Sometimes, he creates a whole new world and copies the board’s notation in.

[ninjavampire]

Unfortunately, Miguel's phantasmogoria of the multiverse is with Lyla. So he will have to ask for Tim's instead of offering a trade. He does enjoy the view from his corner of the room, though. For all that trying to keep things together wore on him, it was a beautiful thing, too. Once of the few subjects of study ripe for new discoveries in 2099.

"I wouldn't commit this to anything yet, Tim. I'll have a better chart once I get a proper machine up and running." he adds, approaching him from deeper within the computer monstrosity slowly taking up more and more of the opposite wall.

As for the chalkboard - he hadn't even finished going through and adding everyone in, yet. The work was a rough draft. Too rough to enjoy the thought of someone else borrowing from it just yet.

"It will be easier to swap once it's all digital."

[mostdangerousbird]

“I coded it as theoretical when I didn’t have a matching world logged.” Tim pulls up one of the new entries, as well as the legend. “Orange is for uncertainties. Magenta is for flavor text.”

Branch’s world is minimized, and another world is pulled up. Earth-616. From the minuscule sizer of the slider compared to the bar, there’s a ton of text. “Do I need to know where to get the best Korean barbecue on this earth? No. But the information was available, and you never know what might come in handy. I’d rather log the maybes in case another Confluence hits and I get thrown back into the omniverse.”

the spider juice (a few weeks ago)

[ninjavampire]

[ The one corner of the lab that he secured as soon as he put it together was the equipment for mixing the serum. The situation wasn't ideal. Miguel was assured that the substitute would be enough, but from his point of view, he was figuring out how to ensure whatever magic it was worked for certain by glorified guesswork.

He'd tried to perfect it as much as he could, delaying longer than he should have. By that day, he was feeling the telltale increase in apetite and prickling in his forearms signaling something internal was starting to change and demand more energy of him. When he reached out to Peter, he was hiding a lot of the desperation and fear that he was feeling inside. ]

Did anything look terribly off?

[ He looks particularly worried today when Peter enters, fingers tapping nervously near the glass and steel syringe that would have make do in lieu of his needle gun. Taking care of this would be one more weight of his shoulders. ]

Re: the spider juice (a few weeks ago)

[hobospider]

[Peter is alone. Mayday is currently playing with the Yeti due to bringing a baby into a Lab with volatile chemicals not being a smart idea.]

If the magic works the way they say it will, nothing I could see. You might end up with some muscle soreness, but that's part of the gig anyways.

[ninjavampire]

[ Tiredly rubbing his forehead. Yes. The Magic. He was still getting used to that. Well, if it looks good to Peter on paper... ]

Let's just get this over with, then.

[ All the equipment had a rather antiquated look to it: brass, wood and glass. But they were clean. So he had pre-mixed some ingredients that could be left to sit under a low flame. The burner is twisted off, and the fluid seeps down a tube into a flask. ]

I did manage to find a microscope. A very basic one.

[ A few drops of The Magic hissed on contact and seemed to give the liquid a chilled quality when it was swirled in, despite the warmth of the base. Miguel stares at it for a good second, before he moves to finally fill up the syringe. ]

b

[branchifer]

[If the whole nonsense situation has made nothing else clear it's that Branch is stellar at stealth. Kind of a life-necessity when you have to hide from people.]

[So Miguel won't necessarily notice him at first.]

[He notice things go missing though. Small components that are important but not vitally important. Easy to misplace. After Miguel looks for them for a while, they mysteriously turn up again, usually in just slightly a different place.]

[(Branch is enough of a stickler about his workspaces that he knows how infuriating it can be to have something disappear and reappear just slightly out of place.)]

[Or he'll notice them jammed somewhere, like in a crevice in the floor boards where they're unharmed but have to be dug out with a screwdriver.]

[But then plugs start getting pulled. Again, there's no permanent damage. Usually a quick scan of all the plugs makes it easy to see where one has come unplugged and it can be plugged back in. While it's possible to accidentally knock something off a table with your elbow, or forget putting something down somewhere, plugs don't unplug themselves.]

[It's starting to get pretty obvious sabotage is at work.]

[Branch has decided to stop tormenting everyone at the Pole. With ooooone teeny tiny exception.]

it begins

[ninjavampire]

[ Miguel is not the first one to spot the little menace frustrating the process of building his computer wife! Once plugs start getting pulled out of place, he suspects sabotage, or more likely, shenanigans are afoot.

One day, while Branch was scurrying about the expanse of his lab to continue his devilish work, something small and eight-legged plops down closer to him.

Click-Click... It is the spiderbot! Taking photographic evidence of the only other thing moving in the space. Miguel had adjusted it to behave a little more like a spy-camera once he suspected sabotage!

The bot itself was smaller than a cat, about Bird-Eater size, and the digital camera it was using was still kitbashed from what Miguel found on the Pole. Theoretically, someone could use the camera buttons and go through the photos. But it wasn't sticking around to find out. It scurries away to who-knows-where with its evidence in tow! ]

a/c

[credit_not_blame]

The spider surveillance camera catches Stacia doodling an angry werewolf face underneath the dot on the chalkboard labeled "werewolves". The doodle has a speech bubble reading RAWR! for good measure. She looks down at the clicking noise and laughs.

"Oh, buddy, that is a deeply unflattering angle."

She crouches down and holds her hands out, palms flat, to see if the little spiderbot will let her pick it up.

"C'mere, let's try it again."

[ninjavampire]

The little spiderbot's legs skitter with trepidation. It wasn't programmed with too much human (?) interaction in mind so it is on the shy side.

But since some exploratory pokes at Stacia's palms do not make it explode, it eventually decides to be daring... and climb up on her hands. It is decently sized, about the size of a large tarantula. The digital camera turns to take a photo of her drawing, and then show it back to her.

The werewolf face looks a little goofy and distorted from the low angle.

[credit_not_blame]

Stacia is in your spidercave, subverting your spiderbots. She doesn't know how fragile it is, but it looks kind of naked with all those wires showing, so she's careful to keep her hands steady as she lifts it up.

The werewolf face looks pretty goofy from straight on too, so she just laughs appreciatively at the photo the spiderbot shows her.

"Good job!" she says. She doesn't know if it's programmed to receive praise, but she's going to err on the side of being nice. She starts looking around for other things to let the spider photograph from it's new angle.