WELCOME TO THE DARK WEB.

[ashaya]

Who: Spock and anyone interested in the aforementioned technology plot.
Where: Mostly around the port, because you have to really lean into the Gothic Romance of it.
What: Local nerds build a computer and a system of their own to exercise privacy online for everyone with mixed results.
Warnings: TBD. None so far, unless you want to count Spock veering into poeticisms inevitably in metatext.




[ chances are, if you're curious, you've been seeing a handful of ciphers cropping up around aldrip.

they start in places most chosen would frequent, spiral out to areas more remote in the coming days. but, no matter which ones you encounter, they all seem to written in the same hand. the words, if you can call them that, are jumbled in such a way that it looks impossible to unknot at first. but, there's a odd weight across some of these... messages? the letters look strange and, comparing them over time, you'll find a key.

curious, indeed. someone likes vigenère ciphers.

what it shakes out to is a set of coordinates that will lead you squarely to an abandoned warehouse by the pier, a date, and a time. if you're compelled to go on your own, you might find some of your fellows waiting around with you. if you're not? well, maybe you can take a friend just in case.

either way, you'll get your answers one way or another. ]

( ooc: HELLO FRIENDS. first and foremost, please see the comments and the sub-comments below for week blocking and organizational efforts. if you would like to summon me into your comment, just put spock in the subject line or ping me directly on plurk at askefise or on discord! i'm usually around in some capacity or another.

other than that: have fun! if you need me to help you brainstorm why your blorbo would show up or how, i'm here for you. time for totally fun and normal times that will not end in any abnormal way whatsoever on the 19th. )

Comments

[starguy]

[ Peter watches Jim finish with all the patience in the world. He knows better than to interrupt somebody when they're working, never mind welding, so he's quick to shoot the guy a smile once the goggles come off.

He doesn't see a lot of blond space terrans, but then Peter didn't used to see a lot of terrans in general before arriving here. Probably weird to say something, right? Yeah, he'll keep that thought to himself. ]

Sweet. Just point me at something -- I'll be honest with ya, I'm great at fixing things, but not so good at building 'em from scratch, so...

[ Peter takes a seat on the stool, watching and smirking to himself as Jim smears a line of grease on his face. Somebody should say something about that, maybe. Won't be Peter, though. ]

Peter Quill! [ He holds out his hand to shake. Hey, I never said he was smart. ] Nice to meet you, Jim.

[finalfrontiersman]

[ Bones likes to call him the 'inbred miracle' - blond, of course, being a recessive trait and far less common naturally in the gene pool by the 24th century - and the blue eyes certainly aren't helping. They're a product of the circumstances of his birth, and unprotected exposure to space radiation, given that he was born on a shuttle and not a fully-shielded ship. It's caused a host of other problems too - a ridiculous number of allergies, for one - but sometimes Jim wonders if his eyes were meant to be a different color, or if they still would have turned out blue, like his father's. ]

Well, hey, if you know your way around power tools, you're already a step ahead of most of the class. [ Not that Jim or Spock had been expecting recruits to - he'd been more than prepared to teach so long as people had an appetite to learn. ] I'm building the circuitry for the system, but I haven't gotten around to the cooling conduit yet, if you want a crack at it.

[ Jim takes the proffered hand with a firm grip and a widening smile, still not realizing about the soot, shifting the welding tool into his other hand. His handshake has been plenty honed by years of meetings with admiralty. ] And you, Peter.

[starguy]

[ Don't you worry about that alternate universe stuff, Jim, your big blue eyes are beautiful just as they are. Peter won't tell. Peter meanwhile gives him a loose shake -- handshakes are more about trades when you're a space pirate, but he knows how to give a solid one. ]

Good to know! I'll keep any dangerous, firey tools away from anybody who looks lost.

[ He grins, subtly wiping his hand on his pants before turning his attention back to Jim's workbench. Boy, does he know his way around power tools. He had to fix his own ship back in his days with the Ravagers, so he's pretty sure he can make this work.

Peter claps his hands and rubs them together, then shoots a look back at Jim. Okay, maybe the guy doesn't deserve a smear of grease on his face. He seems cool, actually. ]

What're we using for cooling? Liquid nitrogen? [ He gestures at his own face, drawing his thumb over his cheek, where Jim's is marked. ] I know the tech's kind of oldschool in this place, but they gotta have something like that, right?

[ What kind of place doesn't just have liquid nitrogen, right? ]

[finalfrontiersman]

Please, we're all about safety here at Camp Dark Web. [ Hosted in the shadiest warehouse Spock could find, apparently. Not that Jim was complaining about the digs, but all the cloak-and-dagger secrecy had been kind of amusing. Jim reaches over into a bin on his left, very nearly almost immediately making bad on his safety promise when the welding tool dips too close to the table on his lean - but he sits back up, victorious, and tosses Peter a pair of safety goggles he'd retrieved. ]

I wish, man. [ He would have even settled for Cyrofuel, but alas. Jim points to the jugs of distilled water sitting on the adjacent workbench. ] Living in the dark ages, apparently. We could probably synthesize some if we had more time.

[ An invitation to try, if Peter has the inclination. ]

[starguy]

That right? We should get shirts!

[ Peter chuckles, only half-joking. (He loves branding stuff, I'm sorry.) Though honestly the sketchy digs make him feel more at home than anything -- he's sure that if Rocket were here he would approve immensely. And hey, they've got plumbing, right? That's a step up from a lot of planets. They're already doing great.

Peter accepts the goggles and shakes his head, tossing them back. ]

Thanks, dude. I'm good on that front.

[ He tilts his head a bit, and his full-faced visor forms up, protecting his face behind a layer of shining black glass with holographic "eyes" that project where his eyes were a moment ago. His voice comes through a bit muffled, a bit tinny through a speaker. ]

Nnnot totally sure I can do that without causing some kinda crazy chain reaction, but we'll see.

[ Peter Quill does not know how to synthesize Nitrogen. Cryofuel, maybe. His blasters can make ice, so he can figure something out, right? Eh, he turns his attention back on his workstation and starts cataloguing each of the items. It's all so... old. ]

Glad I'm not the only guy who's used to better tech, though. Like, seriously, people live like this?

[finalfrontiersman]

Actually - that's a great idea. [ If only Jim had a replicator, the fun he could have. Hm. How did one make a t-shirt without a replicator? Now he's got a whole other line of questions. He's sure the kids at the STEM club would be down for the project.

Jim slides his own goggles back down, tilting his head as he watches the visor form - not unlike some of the regulation space jump suits, the latest model, anyway. Interesting. ] I can see that, impressive. Your own design?

[ His attention returns briefly to the components he was working on, checking that the weld is holding everything in the correct place. He can probably swap it out for the next one, and then circle back to wire both of them. ] Let's try to avoid that if we can. I kinda like being unsupervised.

[ They'll definitely attract a Vulcan-shaped shadow if things go amiss, and while Jim finds that fun, he knows Eyebrow Raise Number Thirty-Eight, "What The Fuck Are You Doing" is a doozy for the uninitiated. ]

This place pulls people in from all over, seems like. [ That gets a laugh out of Jim, and he swaps in the next board for his welding project. ] Does kind of feel like the dark ages, doesn't it? Where are you from?

[starguy]

[ Screen-printing, Jim. Peter's gonna teach you about screen-printing one day. ]

Nah, I stole it from some... [ He tapers off. How much detail should he give here? How cool is Jim with stealing? Guess this is one way to test the waters. ] I mean, the guys I stole it from were using it to smuggle stolen minerals from this colony that was supposed to be off-limits, and they were using the locals to mind and stuff. So they had it coming!

[ He nods to himself, clearly believing that that makes it Okay. He probably doesn't need to introduce himself by explaining he was a space pirate, so he'll leave it at that and start taking stock of each of the components at this work bench. He'll try to avoid causing any explosions or nuclear reactions. And hey, at least the scanner really does highlight items that might be useful. Video game logic at its finest. ]

Sure does! [ He picks up a mechanical component, turning it over his ins hands while he turns his attention back to Jim. ] Me, I'm from all over. I mean, technically Terra, but I haven't been back in like twenty years. How about you?

[ He asks because he assumes Jim is from space, not the future. Humans and space travel? Nah. That's usually a fluke to him. ]

Me and my crew, we travel a lot. Though my dad was from Spartax, if that rings a bell.

[finalfrontiersman]

[ At that, Jim's expression slides into an amused smirk, eyebrows rising slightly at Peter's explanation. He can't say he disapproves of the reasoning there...unconventional though it may be. ] In that case, I wouldn't say you stole it. You...repurposed it.

[ Jim's met the type before. Hell, he may or may not have spent a week as a mechanic aboard a short-distance freighter - not the point, pre-Starfleet era. Jim leans over his task again, carefully soldering the pieces together - a line here, another neat curve there, setting each one into place. As busy as he is usually, in Command, there is something to be said for the beauty of working with your hands down in Engineering. Whenever he got too antsy, too keyed up, someone would usually find a reason for him to head down to the Warp Core for a shift - and honestly, it did the trick. ]

Terra, too, for me. Former United States. [ Interesting, though not surprising, that Peter refers to Earth as 'Terra', despite most natives referring to it as Earth - given that he didn't grow up planetside, it wasn't too incongruous. It does make him wonder if Peter might actually be from Jim's world, or adjacent enough - if he might know the Federation? He'll have to be covert - walking the prime directive cat 2 could be a pain in the ass, sometimes. ] Twenty, damn, were you at a colony?

I was on a deep space mission, two years out of five, when I wound up here. [ Jim pauses the welding to blow some of the small debris away from the welded points. ] Hm, I don't think I know it.

[ A question he files away for Spock; Jim's got a decent number of starcharts memorized, but not as many as his first officer. ]

[starguy]

[ Peter exhales with relief. OK, yeah, just because they're all here with rap sheets doesn't mean they're all cool with crime, justified or not. Peter would certainly argue he only commits justified crimes now. ]

Yeah, repurposed. I like that.

[ He grins. Thanks to his visor, he can kind of get a read on how these things work, so he starts to set things down in the right order, visualizing it in his head. Rocket would have a way easier time than he is, but Peter didn't survive in the Ravagers without figuring things out on his own. ]

Hey, me too! I'm from Missouri. [ He doesn't usually meet people who might know where that is, so he sounds excited. ] I don't think Terra has any colonies yet, where I'm from. Kinda wish I was though, that sounds awesome.

[ Having met someone who knew him from a different dimension, Peter is already totally okay with the idea of Jim simply being from an alternate dimension. He skirts the subject of where he was with that, though. Dropping the old "teenage alien abduction because my dad was a space king" backstory is a little much for a first conversation. ]

You guys exploring uncharted space or something? Dude, you're living the dream.

[finalfrontiersman]

[ Jim hasn't been placing too much stock in the so-called crimes they've been accused with; he hasn't had a chance to ask many people, exactly, but a lot of the Chosen he's come across have been teenagers, and he's hard-pressed to believe any of them have done something so terrible as to warrant whatever the hell this place is. Plus, his own crime is...well, he privately worries it could hold merit, though Spock assures him it doesn't. Still, Jim's not looking to judge a book by its cover.

The component he's working on takes another minute of careful soldering, hands keeping the tool steady as he draws it down the line. ] Oh hey! Iowa, for me. Howdy, neighbor.

[ What are the odds of that? Jim echoes Peter's smile, holding his work up to the light to examine it. ] You guys have endless cornfields too?

They can be. [ Jim doesn't offer up his own colony experience - it wasn't the typical, and it wasn't pleasant. ] Earth's not half bad, though.

[ Alternate dimensions are one thing, but so far Jim and Spock have been doing a decent job of avoiding the hello we're from the future conversation. Depending on how long they're here, though, they might not be able to avoid it forever. ]

Someone's gotta do it. [ Jim grins, pushing his goggles up to the top of his head, successful with his component. He lines the two of them up on the table and turns off the soldering iron, settling down for the less hazardous work of wiring the two pieces together. ] Yeah, don't have any room to complain there. Exploring new places, finding new civilizations - with the best crew in the 'fleet, in my totally unbiased opinion, of course.

[ Okay, biased or not it was still accurate. The Enterprise had an officer crew of superstars and Command knew it. ]

[starguy]

[ Peter grins. Well, it's impossible to see from behind his visor, but he does smile. ]

Dude, what are the chances? [ He laughs. ] Yeah, I even lived on a farm and everything. My grandparents -- I think it was corn or something? I don't even remember.

[ It was a long time ago, and the farm wasn't really important in the scheme of things. He can still picture that house, though. Perfectly. Those were the days. Peter takes his time finishing up his work, his mind a little distracted as he thinks back on all the things left behind on Earth. He maybe ends up shocking himself a little bit, but that's fine. ]

Ow, flark.

[ He shakes the tremor out of his hand and puts the thing down to focus on Jim. It's ok, if you're from the future, Jim. Peter won't bat an eye. ]

Sounds pretty sweet.

[ A little too "establishment" for Peter, considering that exploratory missions usually happen on behalf of governments and big planets, but he can see from the way Jim talks about it that it isn't about expansion for him. That's good. Explorers deserve to be out there, too. ]

Freedom like that's the best thing there is. And with the right crew? Can't imagine anything better.

[finalfrontiersman]

Gotta love the farm life. Where I grew up, they had corn as far as the eye could see, and then some.

[ It was one of the best crops for sustainable biomatter, in his time - used en masse for replicators, and to re-seed and fertilize the soil. Jim has as many happy memories there as there are dark ones, but the cornfields - well, it's where he ran to for escape. That, and the apple tree on the hill at the neighboring farm - they never minded if he sat there to read. One fruit he wasn't allergic to, as a bonus. ]

You okay? Don't tell me we need the first aide kit already.

[ His fingers move dexterously over the wires, winding them together, or splitting them off from each other, to feed through the delicate holes and framework he'd built. That was fair enough - hell, Jim remembers his days of bawdy spaceport bars and flipping the bird at the Cadets as they trooped by, and honestly? He wasn't wrong for it. Starfleet had more broken within it than Jim had known at the time, but it was the good parts, the whole parts, that had conquered the day.

At no easy cost, but they'd done it. Sometimes the hardest thing to do was to stick with it, and get your hands dirty in the hopes that you build something better than you had yesterday.

Jim glances up at Quill with a smile; like recognizes like. ] What do you and yours typically run? Freighter, transport, science vessel?