9925/A mysterious transmission, part 1

A mysterious transmission, part 1
Date of Scene:	05 November 2019
Location:	X-mansion, Front Foyer
Synopsis:	A mysterious broadcast asking for help, from a place that, a week prior, didn't exist, from thirty years in the past. Shannon, Alek, Samuel, and Triage investigate at the X-mansion, while Caliber picks it up on her own.
Cast of Characters:	Dragonfly (Armenteros), Nightingale, Triage, Samuel Morgan, Smart Alek, Caliber

---

Dragonfly (Armenteros) has posed:
     Fall evenings in New York are magical, with cool air promising snow in the next few days and clear nights that make one think they can see forever. Tonight, though, is different. A solar storm is taking place and, with them, auroras not seen in a decade are making their way below the arctic circle and where they can be easily viewed. And with them, a message.

     The old stand radio in the foyer of the X-mansion was there for decoration. IT was a bit of old technology that looked good and could act as a conversation piece at parties, but more often than not it was just a place to put keys, books, or mail to be claimed by whoever lost it. Tonight, though? It's something else entirely.

     Plugged in and tuned to a station that only played static, the radio sat, undisturbed, until somone bumped the volume knob in passing, and even then, the static went mostly ignored. When it started saying something....well...that got attention.

     Through the static, a greeing could be heard. A name. A lot more static and then a plea for help....

Nightingale has posed:
     Shannon rifles through sheets of music on her way to the music room, dressed in her long blue jeans, knee-length caramel suede boots, and cream color tunic sweater with the cable knit pattern. It had been a very good day, one that made her positively beam with pride. Nothing could go wrong, for once. Right? Right!

     Wrong.

     She stops dead in her tracks right near the radio, canting her head slightly to one side, and swearing softly in a few different languages. Slipping her phone from her pocket, she taps out a text message to Chris. <<You better come out to the foyer, something's not right>>

Triage has posed:
Chris emerges from the Wellness Office, already aware of the odd sound drifting through the foyer. "What's that?" he asks. He heads toward Shannon. "I haven't heard static like that bad since I was a kid and my granddad rebuilt a tube radio he bought from an antique store."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    Aurora Borealis, better known as the Northern Lights. It's a spectacle rarely seen this far south, and something that's worth observing even if only for half an hour. And that's exactly what Bean is doing, sat outside in his warm hoodie, gazing up at the sky in the backyard. It's so peaceful...

    Except for that ... itch. Somewhere in the back of his brain.

    Crawling around. That familiar feeling of the old radio. A signature nearly impossible to miss, and one of those odd mysteries to the technopath. It's positively ancient, there's nothing else like it in the mansion, and it hadn't spoken to him the way all the other devices did. It was... polite. Courteous. Like an old gentleman watching the youth of today with a benevolent smile.

    It's not supposed to be talking to him. And yet that's exactly what it's doing. A message goes out, in that peculiar way he shares with only one other mutant in the Mansion. <<Alek, is that you in the foyer?>>. Standing up and dusting himself off, the teenager walks inside, to join the growing crowd around the old radio. "Guess it's not just me then."

Smart Alek has posed:
Alek is laying on his back in his dorm, he's watching the aurora through the ceiling. For him it's a multi-sensory experience, the lights do not simply dance across his eyes but also his ears and even a bit of almost buzzing sensation.

    He sighs a bit as he relaxes and then suddenly a wavefront of static washes over him... the natural lightshow mixed in with the transmission from long ago. Bean or Samuel gives him the text message via their technopath method, he blinks <No. But I'm guessing it deals with these waves.. someone talking to us?>

    He gets up from his bed and makes his way towards the entranceway.

Dragonfly (Armenteros) has posed:
     The message from the radio is still broken up in static, the greeting and the plea for help the only clear thing that can be heard. And, as people gather, a few more words filter in on the disused channel.

     "Hello. My name is...*static*....Temporal Studies...*static*...catastrophic event...*static* Help....

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon frowns as she listens to the static, and the few words that come through. "I thought this thing was just for decoration. But... well, I can't think of any other way to phrase it other than a distress call." She glances over at Bean and Alek, gesturing towards the antique radio. "Can either of you make sense of this?"

Triage has posed:
Chris frowns when he hears sketchy bits of almost inaudible speech. He looks to Shannon. "Do you know when this started?" he wonders. Then he looks to Bean when the student returns from outside. "It might be slightly off frequency. If the tuning knob still works, we might be able to adjust that." He steps toward the radio, reaching for the large knob so that he can give it a slight nudge for a clearer signal.

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    "It does sound like a distress call. And radio waves tend to bounce a lot further when the atmosphere is disturbed." Fount of knowledge, is Bean. And he also nods to Triage, but winces when he reaches for the tuning knob. "You might as well try to do complex surgery with a hacksaw. I'll see what I can do."

    Carefully, he reaches out, to directly tune the receiver rather then use the crude rotary adjustment device, sometimes known as a knob. But there is likely going to be a better solution, even as he starts to adjust the frequency receiver by very small increments to see where better results might be found, looking over to Alek. "Any chance you can hear this better than we can?"

Caliber has posed:
    Elsewhere, in GeniSet Labs, someone else had taken note of the odd transmission and had alerted the primary doctors, Lock and Sheen, to it. The two of them, along with Caliber, were listening to the same radio, trying to make sense of the broken up transmission as it came in.

    "Do we have anyone trying to find the source?" Lock barks.

    "One of the interns is hard at work trying to triangulate with the satellites we have access to. Rest assured, it is being worked on, Lock," Sheen insists.

    Caliber, sitting near by, sighs, as she scrolls along in her phone. "Just tell me what you want me to do, when you want me to do it. I'll be over here, bored, since this is 'your time' and I can't go anywhere."

    "Patience, dear. We'll have something for you to do in a moment," Sheen offers sympathetically before going back to the transmission.

Smart Alek has posed:
Alek doesn't need the radio.. his senses overlap their boundaries as vibrating purple blob speaks to him from someplace far away or far time ago. "It's a wierd signal alright. Not normal. Wierd colors." he nods, his eyes are glowing their familiar blue color whenever he's actively using his abilities.

Dragonfly (Armenteros) has posed:
     The knob might have worked in tuning the broadcast in, but getting to the precise wavelength required to pick up the data being broadcast would have taken a jeweler's touch and not more than a little luck. Thanks to Bean, though, the broadcast starts to come in a little clearer and then, finally, as clear as if the person broadcasting it was sitting just next door. The old paper speaker does vibrate and buzz, but for all intents and purposes, the broadcast is clear.

     Message Repeats.

     Begin Transmission

Hello,

My name is Doctor Mohammad Scott, and I am a researcher within the AIM Site-13 Temporal Studies division. The date is 13 November, 1989.

Myself and my team were abandoned within Site-13 during a recent catastrophic event, the full details of which we do not know.

We are currently surrounded by hostile entities and other hazardous anomalies. Of the original thirty members of my team, only twelve remain.

To any AIM operatives listening on this channel, we are asking for assistance. Our supplies are dangerously low, as is our ammunition. Without aid, it is unlikely that we will last more than another month.

Dragonfly (Armenteros) has posed:

Following this message will be an encrypted, adjusted VMS transmission, decipherable by standard 1980's AIM technology. The information within that transmission will contain our location, as well as we can describe it.

The transmission is wired by dead man's switch to myself, and will be played on a continuous loop until such time that I die.

Please help us. Thank you."

This is followed by a burst of static that has order to it - almost like a puzzle that's been put together wrong. That must be the encrypted information he spoke of. This is followed by a simple "Transmission repeats." and then the broadcast starts again...

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon frowns, and has her phone on to record the odd sight and sound of the old radio going active, capturing the message as it is coming from the positively ancient set. "I'm tempted to say we find one of the teachers ASAP and bring this to them. They may have resources we don't to figure out of this thing is for real or not." But, by the way her wings are ruffling, and the tension in her whole stance, the whole thing is worrying her considerably.

"Sam? Alek? Is there any way you can record that static, too? Merde!!!" She glances over at Chris, shaking her head. "This is going to be a long night."

Caliber has posed:
    
        At GeniSet..

    "Fascinating! It isn't even from this time! Hopefully we can at least find the geological source, but going to the same temporal location is clearly going to be impossible," Sheen states aloud, shocked to hear what's coming from the radio.

    "Feh. Just make sure we get to the coordinates first. This is a waste of time, otherwise..." Lock seems less than pleased as he wanders off. "I'm going back to my other projects. Good luck with your wild goose chase." Door opens, door closes, and he's gone.

    That gives Caliber a place to sit closer to the radio and to Sheen. "Kinda weird, a transmission traveling through time. I wonder if it's anything like that thing that goes on around Gettysburg?"

    "I'm not sure, Jessica. If we can find the coordinates you'll be on your way," Sheen offers as he wheels on his chair to another monitor, trying to help the intern with triangulations. "Lets see what we can find.."

    At about this time, the transmission sends out the data, the burst of static, which catches Sheen entirely by surprise. "Send that through the array, Jason, see if we can get it decrypted!" The intern gives a nod, sending the burst of data through the computer array the lab uses for various other purposes. "Lock won't like it, but," Sheen just smirks over at Caliber, shrugging, "This is more important than whatever he's doing."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    The data comes in, crisp and clear, in a way that Bean can only experience when linked to the radio. It has a beauty to it, a clarity and a vibrance that is quite at odds with what he normally experience through the crude medium of his ears.

    It is sublime.

    And, at the same time, utterly worrying. AIM is a familiar TLA, and sets of warning bells for the former HYDRA agent. The data is dumped, raw, to his phone, the only storage device he has to hand, taking care to record the exact modulation of the frequency as well. His own eyes are a bit more unnaturally blue than usual, although they don't glow like Alek's. "Working... on it..." Yeah, some focus required.

Triage has posed:
As soon as Bean intervenes, Chris nods to him and steps back. He glances from Bean to Alek. Soon, they have their answer in the form of a much clearer signal. He cocks his head and listens. His brows knit. "If that's real, it's from almost 40 years ago. And what's AIM Site-13 Temporal Studies division? I've never heard of that. Temporaal suggests that it has something to do with time ..." He turns to Shannon and nods. "Probably long and full of mysteries, and we're at the low end. We might not learn more about it than this unless they decide that they need to debrief us and remind us to keep this under cover."

Smart Alek has posed:
Alek has close at hand a cell phone as well which he uses to make a copy of the stream of electrons that seem to be in english. The last bit of the transmission has him intrigued, "You notice that bit at the end of the transmission? I think we have a puzzle to solve." He looks over the group, "Do you know who these AIM guys are?"

Dragonfly (Armenteros) has posed:
     The burst of static at the end is encrypted data - more than likely the location where this data came from is in there somewhere. Still, even 1980's technology will take a little time to crunch down to something that can be readable, even with brute force methods. And listening to the voice, the man's under a /lot/ of stress. Catastrophic failure at the site would do that.

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon crosses her arms and shakes her head. "Oh HAIL NO... this is our home, too, and we're not completely helpless. But we'd also be stupid to try and work alone on this. Especially if it's messing around with time, like you said. 'Temporal'... Latin root, 'temp'. Yeah, we're dealing with something having to do with time here." She frowns to herself, hearing the stress in the man's voice. "The longer we sit on this, the less time this person has. Suggestions, anyone?"

Caliber has posed:
    Still scrolling through her phone, Caliber glances up at Dr. Sheen, Jason, and the work they're doing. "So... anything?"

    "I'm sorry, Jessica, but even with data from decades ago, it still takes a lot of work to decrypt anything. The array is pretty powerful, but it still will need time to get the data we need," Sheen explains, much to Caliber's disappointment.

    "Fine.. fine.. I have my phone, I'm going to get a snack. Message me if something happens."

Triage has posed:
"I agree about bringing a teacher or one of the X-Men into this. They might recognize that group," Chris agrees with Shannon. Then he looks at Bean and then Alek. "If either of you can search on line for information about that group, it might help, although I suspect that the juicy bits are encrypted and out of normal reach. But then, we're not entirely normal people, are we?"

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    When the transmission repeats, Bean stands by the radio, hands clenching, looking around at the gathered crowd. Well... crap. He really, really doesn't like talking about things he only knows because of a certain organisation. But people seem to want to know. Dammit, no, people need to know. So he keeps his eyes fixed on the radio.

    "Guys... this is a problem. AIM is... it stands for Advanced Idea Mechanics. They're bad news. As in, bad guy news, okay? If they've been messing around with time..." He lets the rest of the statement hang.

    And then, he looks purposefully at Alek, and nods towards the computer lab. "Let's work some of our magic."

Dragonfly (Armenteros) has posed:
     Through fate, good luck, or just blind chance, the decryption of the data at the end of the transmission, in both locations, ends at about the same time. All the static was distilled down to simple latitutde and longitude coordinates in the American Southwest, along with access codes, levels, and room numbers. "29.1275° N, 103.2425° W Level C, Rooms c-124, 126. 32941 main gate. Back2dFutur3 secondary lock. Do NOT look at the walls."

Research shows that AIM was an old company that specialized in typewriters but, with the advance of the personal computer, went bankrupt in the early 1970's, but a bit more digging on the internet brings up conspiracy theories that quickly move into 'flat earth lizard people' territory. If even a quarter of the rumored stuff that is on the internet was true, then this could be very, very bad.

     Satellite images from as recently as a week ago show nothing, but the live images? that shows a complex in the middle of the desert that wasn't there a week before. Brutal, blocky 1980's style buildings - two of them - jut out of the desert like broken teeth with what appears to be a small nuclar power plant nearby, providing power.

     None of that was there a /week/ ago. And now it is.

     Something very wrong is going on.

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon nods in agreement with Chris. "The sooner we bring this to the teachers or one of the X-men, the better. If Bean's calling this bad news, I believe him. He'd know what he's talking about." Running her fingers through her hair, she takes a deep breath, letting it out in a heavy sigh. "And I just saw Cannonball outside earlier this afternoon, too. I'll get a message to him, and Mr. McCoy. I can almost hear Logan grumbling about this, he doesn't seem overly fond of texting..." A wry, mildly amused smile curls the corners of her mouth upwards for a moment. "...but maybe it couldn't hurt to loop him in, too. Between those three, they'd know who to send it up to. What do you think?"

Caliber has posed:
    Hours pass, people go about their business. There was nothing to truly do while the GeniSet computer array worked on brute-force-decrypting the data that was received from the transmission. Hours later, Sheen is alerted, coordinates are found, and all of the information is sent to Caliber to check out. "At your leasure, Jessica. Be careful! I did some research and the structures there were not there just a week ago."

        "Finally, something to do!"

Triage has posed:
"I say alert them. Give them a summary and a transcript of the message. Tell them that Bean is working on decrypting a dtaa packet." Chris answers, glancing to Bean and Alek. "Do you two have an estimate on how long that will take? We should include that estimate in our report as well."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    What do you get when you leave two technopaths in a computer lab, filled with the best workstations that money can buy? The answer is, of course, an improvised supercomputer, although all the data in this case is being synchronised and even partially routed through Bean's head. So, roasted Bean would also have been accept as an answer. Now his eyes do glow as bright as Alek's, and that's a pretty rare sight. Is he coordinating computers, or using the computers to enhance his own intellect and brute force the data that way? That's for him to know, but not to tell because while the data is being crunched, he simply sits there, staring vacantly into the distance with glowing blue eyes.

    At long last, the data starts to show up, decrypting character by character on all screens simultaneously... appended with a single message at the end

<Evaluation of risk: High

Attendance of supplementary team advised

Current resources inadequate

-Techno>>

Smart Alek has posed:
Alek lets Sam do his thing, he contributes a little bit of his own brain power to endeavor as they crack the encypted messages at the end of the broadcast. "I do hope they let us investigate, course this feels like something right out of those science fiction movies that end badly."

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon nods and taps out a message to all three. <<Sticky situation. Need advice and assistance ASAP. Triage, Techno, Alek, and myself all need to talk to you. Further info available. --Nightingale>> With that, the message is sent, and she lets out a little sigh. "Well, looks like we've got the ball rolling. I probably don't need to tell anyone here to keep this one under wraps."

Triage has posed:
Chris nods to Shannon. "Thanks!" Then he mimes zipping his lips and looks to the other two. "We should hear something soon. Be ready for a summons from one or all of them. Bean? Please copy that data to a flash drive or something that we can give to them when the time comes. We should be ready to answer all of their questions. Also, make note of the time, and the presence of that aurora outside. That might be important."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    "Time stamp, data copy, prepare briefing. Wilco."

    The glow in Bean's eyes is slowly starting to dim, as the sound of dozens of fans spooling down echoes through the room. He'd really pushed those CPU and GPU cores to their very limit, the room must have shot up six to ten degrees just from the cooling stacks dumping the waste heat into the atmosphere. There's one more thing he can do... it might be unwise, but it's something that needs to be done while the solar storm lasts. Now now but... soon... The data is copied onto a USB drive, along with a short assessment and the decryption protocol used for the data itself. The raw information? He'll keep that, as well as a copy of the decryption key. He's going to need it soon...