2014.03.30 - Welcome to Tesladyne

Tesladyne Industries.

Outwardly, it looks like the fire station they used in the Ghostbusters movie. Inside, it's sleek, done up in old art deco, with pictures of Tesladyne projects along with other famous scientific achievements crowding the walls. When Fern Fiddlehead first steps in, she has to walk through what appears to be a metal detector, though much larger and more intimidating -- the security guard behind it hands her an ID card. It says 'GUEST' on it.

Deeper in, she's met by 'Atomic Robo', aka 'Robo' -- a squat metal man with a rounded head and bright, circular luminescent eyes. He's currently clad in a short-sleeve blue collar shirt with tie -- his metal hand extending out to grip hers. If accepted, she'll find his metal grasp is surprisingly warm. "Thanks for agreeing to come see us on such short notice, ma'am. I'm hoping that we might be able to interest Mr. Hammer in a side project of ours."

If Fern Fiddlehead's done any research for this meeting, she'll know the basics when it comes to Robo and Tesladyne: The former was built by Nikola Tesla in the 20s; the company was formed to protect Nikola's inventions, and circumnavigate the fact that Robo isn't actually a sovereign citizen (he's actually an asset of the company, which he also owns). Tesladyne specializes in -- fringe science. High-risk, high-reward; they've got a history of not always being profitable, but always being... very interesting. Robo himself specializes in hyperdimensional mathematics and temporal mechanics; he's notorious for having discovered the fifth cardinal direction, otherwise known as 'zorth'. Notorious, because in the opinion of most scientists, Robo's theories are a bunch of hooey.

He's also notorious for refusing to use his company to sell or produce weapons. Which makes this meeting... somewhat unusual.

It's clear from first sighting that Fern isn't a Pepper Potts caliber assistant. Her attired nods toward business but shows much of her personality with brightly colored accents. Many find it strange and sometimes even unsettling to deal with the obviously not technologically inclined redhead, but she's a whiz with smoothing over things that Hammer ruffles and has proven invaluable to him in unexpected ways. If a metal man is any surprise to her it doesn't show on her face once she's through security with her badge clipped onto her jacket, oddly graceful as she moves nearly silently despite the low black boots on her feet. Her hand slips into his easily, not missing a beat as she responds cheerily. "Jus... Mr. Hammer deeply regrets being unable to come himself and didn't want you to think that translated into you being put off from lack of interest in your call." Fern plays the part of PA well when she has to, but still has to sometimes catch herself from falling into bad habits that come from having been Hammer's friend before taking the job with his company. Her eyes drift around as she notes, "It's not what I was expecting from the outside." She actually looks delighted by the surprise.

"Oh, don't worry. I'm not going to take it personally if I never even meet the guy," Robo responds, and there's a hint of humor in his synthesized tone as he squeezes Fern's palm. When he releases, he's already walking -- surprisingly light on his feet despite being a half-ton robot. "Tesladyne's a small player in the business world. We're not exactly Stark Industries, over here. That being said..."

"...oh, yeah, we get that a lot," Robo responds to her last comment. "How much do you know about Tesladyne, ma'am? Oh, I forgot to introduce myself -- Atomic Robo, but just Robo's fine." They're heading toward what appears to be a very large elevator.

"Robo," Fern says amiably. "And please, just call me Fern." She falls into step easily. "I'm sure I don't know nearly as much as my boss, but I did brush up some. Admittedly, much of what I'd known about Mr. Tesla previously was the result of a favorite author of mine taking some liberties in a novel. In a good way," she hurries to reassure. A musing note takes her tone as she says, "Maybe you'd like to read it and see how the fiction compares to reality. It's called Odd Apocalypse, by Dean Koontz." Her manner is relaxed, as if she deals with metal men every day.

The elevator hisses open; pneumatics kick in as they step inside. It's big enough to fit a large car. No sooner have they stepped inside then do the doors slide shut, and it begins to descend -- into the bowels of Tesladyne. "Koontz -- I've read a few of his books," Robo admits. "Didn't know he wrote anything about Tesla." The doors hiss open; here is the heart of Tesladyne. A narrow corridor flanked on either side by glass walls, exposing the interior of several laboratories -- within them, men and women in labcoats are taking notes, working upon a variety of machines -- sleek, plastic designs. Robotic appendages -- arms, hands, feet, legs...

"Never really liked him," Robo admits, as he steps out of the elevator door. "His villains were always so..." There's a commotion down the hall; Robo pauses, quietly (and perhaps rather subtly) placing himself between Fern and the hub-bub. What appears to be... some manner of vampire -- pointy ears, long fangs, yellowish, crinkled skin -- charges across the hall. He is clad in a hospital gown. Several seconds later, several men armed with stake-loaded crossbows garbed in military uniforms follow him, vanishing through another passage.

"...two dimensional. Pardon, sorry, things get a little -- hectic during the day."

A slave to her curious nature, Fern leans a bit, enough to see part of the hall past Robo. She doesn't get a very good look at the ... patient? she'll go with that, sure... that runs through the passageway. There's a better look at the uniformed men, being more than one making the dash, and her brows lift slightly. "Oh, it's alright," she says as she straightens, looking a little sheepish at having been craning around. "I hope it's nothing serious?" She's calm where some wouldn't be, having learned that panicking usually makes things worse.

"--no, yeah, they'll catch him. If not, Jenkins'll take care of it," Robo replies. "Actually, I did like Watchers -- the one with the hyper-intelligent golden retriever? I think that was him. Koontz, I mean," Robo adds, beginning to trudge down the hallway -- not in the direction that the nosferatu went in, notably. As they go, the sight behind the glass becomes more obvious; the engineers are building skeletal, near-gaunt robots -- sleek, plastic white, each approximately seven feet tall -- their faces nothing more than LED screens lit up with friendly smiley faces.

"I figure I should shoot straight with you, Fern -- I'm coming to Mr. Hammer with this because his PR stinks right now, and I think he might be one of the few major tech companies desperate enough to fund it. Tesladyne was working with DARPA on their PETMAN project a while ago; bipedal drones. We wanted to use them to supply emergency medical care in situations where sending an EMT would be too dangerous -- metahuman conflicts, for example, or on a battlefield. Basically, these things are autonomous medics, programmed to save lives. Some big-wig in DARPA realized if you armed them with guns, they could double as mobile soldiers -- so Tesladyne pulled out."

Fern moves on from the odd moment as quickly as Robo does, her smile brightening, "That's my favorite book he's written. But, I think it's kinda hard to not love a story about a super smart dog." She looks in on the work being done as they pass, falling silent to listen as they walk. Her lips press into a wry twist as Robo hits on an obvious shortcoming of Hammer Industries; it's reputation and image. Thoughtfulness draws her brows, her study of the robots a bit more pointed as their purpose is revealed. She knows that Justin is a weapons guy, first and foremost, but a lot of people are getting into the mechanical military biz lately. How many are going for the opposite? Maybe she could try and make Hammer see that it would be excellent for the company to change the focus in the public eye for something like this. There's a pause while this all rattles through her head quickly, before her brow eases. "I think it's something well worth Hammer Industries getting involved in. And I'll shoot straight with you, too. I can't guarantee that Mr. Hammer wouldn't try and realize an armed version. I respect that you're committed to it's intended purpose and won't compromise that."

"Yeah," Robo admits, his synthesized tone managing to come off as a little sardonic, "I've been told going to a weapons manufacturer with a reputation for boondoggles in regards to robots and explosions might not be the wisest direction for me to take this company in, but... frankly, I don't think I'd be able to sell this to Stark -- and even if I could, I don't think I'd be able to do it and have enough leverage to make the project go in the direction I want to go. But Hammer's got a PR problem; this could be a solution to it -- which gives me a little more muscle to work with. Part of the deal would be that while Hammer has the rights to the patents, those patents can't be used as military tech for at least a decade."

One of the robots is now waltzing across one of the laboratories, carrying what appears to be a 'medical box', intent on administering medicine to a dummy. Another bot is -- performing CPR. As it works, the robot pushes a little too hard, crushing the chest of the dummy. Robo's left metal eyelid twitches. "--still working on some of the kinks."

Fern remains oblivious of Hammer's more unsavory dealings, but she's no stranger to the public problems. If it wasn't for some quick thinking and the cooperation of Thor, the demo at the Stark Expo would have been enough ammunition to use against the company for years. "I think that's a perfectly fair position." Of course, she's a lot less militaristic than Hammer and sometimes much more level-headed. She winces as the CPR robot gets a little over enthusiastic, but nods understandingly. "That's what testing and tweaks are for."

"There are no failures in science," Robo agrees, "only opportunities for greater understanding." The robot responsible for the failed CPR attempt steps back; engineers slip in to make their tiny adjustments. Robo, meanwhile, pauses in front of a display case where one of the robots are standing. "I can have the basic project details forwarded to you, so you can present them to Mr. Hammer -- I'd love to have ambulances equipped with these things. They can help save lives during some of these metahuman incidents. I've been watching a lot of these new kids -- they don't seem to realize the collateral damage they're doing when they get into high-powered fist-fights on the streets. People get hurt, killed..."

"And the bad guys just don't care," Fern chimes in on a low note. She crosses her arms, looking at the displayed robot, studying it more thoroughly in it's stillness. "They don't look threatening. I like that." Her head tilts and she asks, "Do they have personalities?"

"We've been debating that," Robo admits. "We're worried if we make them too personable, EMTs will feel bad about sending them into dangerous situations. On the other hand, the more personable they are, the more comfortable they'll make the people they're helping -- an important aspect of the project is trust. These are the sort of machines you could send in to patch up a super-villain during a police stand-off; their goal is to save any and all lives. One of the engineers," Robo continues, "suggested a sort of 'cloud-based' personality; make it so they're all part of the same 'intelligence', so EMTs don't get bothered when one of them dies, because -- it essentially is just a piece of the same whole. Kind of like losing a finger, rather than a brain."

One arm bends, her hand coming up, finger tapping lightly at her chin as Fern listens. She nods, "I hadn't considered the people they work with, but I think it would be very reassuring for a lot of the people they help if they were more than just mechanics." Her head turns, eyes settling on Robo, a half smile on her lips. "And people get attached to things without personalities all the time. Just look at the whole cult of cars." The cloud personality is given consideration as she looks back to the display. "Would a replacement have the same knowledge? Like, of it's co-workers? If it didn't, it would be more like getting a new brain and not just the same brain in a new body."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't put yourself in jeopardy for the sake of your car. At least, I hope you wouldn't," Robo adds, slight amusement curling up in his tone. "Same knowledge, yeah -- they'd basically all be the same entity -- kind of like -- a hive mind is the closest approximation I can think of, really. One brain, multiple bodies."

Surprisingly, Fern actually has some experience with the hive mind thing, by virtue of a couple of the super-powered people she knows. "And, if the storage capacity isn't an issue, it would be very helpful if there were a case of having to team up multiples. It wouldn't be like having a stranger there to help, for the EMTs. They wouldn't have any question as to the capabilities or knowledge base." It's undoubtedly all things that the Tesladyne brains have already considered, but that doesn't stop Fern from thinking out loud.

"Pretty much. There are some issues with HIPAA compliance; patient confidentiality is a big issue, but we think we've come up with some interesting solutions. In a lot of ways, the Medic-Bots might even be capable of protecting your confidentiality more thoroughly than EMTs or doctors," Robo notes, folding his arms over his chest with a slight metallic 'clank'! "Imagine you're a mutant with acidic blood. Well, that's relevant information to any EMT working on you, but you don't necessarily want everyone around you to know you're a mutant. So, you just request a Medic Bot instead of an EMT, and tell them instead... they treat you in private, then, at your request, scrub the memory of who you are and what your status was. Bam; medical care without any risk of being outed." Robo seems particularly fond of this idea.

As expressive as she is, it's not hard to see that this line of thought impresses Fern, eyes wider in understanding. "That's brilliant. Same if someone was keeping who they are behind a mask. But," she goes on, thoughtful again, "It's a shame there wouldn't be some way to preserve the information. I mean, what if the person that needed help were unable to inform the Medic Bot? Still, you can never really guarantee the information would stay secure if it were saved, with people who manage to hack into anything out there. I guess the only real way to provide that would be to erase it."

"Yeah, and there's just the legal issues, too -- if you don't delete that information immediately, you need to comply with HIPAA regulations, which adds a whole new level of complexity to algorithms that are already going to be very complex," Robo admits. "There's also, as you said, the issue of security -- I really don't want to put anyone's record medicals at risk for discovery. It's a shame we can't keep the information secure, but until we find a foolproof mechanism to prevent a violation of a patient's privacy, I wouldn't want the drones to remember it. Still, they can have access to publically known information -- registered superhumans, for example. Knowledge of powers and medical conditions that would be relevant to EMTs, so on -- it could be a powerful tool to save lives and protect patient privacy." Robo turns to Fern, now. "You think you'll be able to present this to your employer? We're hoping to have a working prototype up within a week or two, though obviously -- it's going to be tricky building up enough trust to get the city onboard with this."

"Oh, you bet I'll present this to him," Fern says, no question of it in her voice. "And if he's not prepared to just snatch it up, I have an idea of another possible avenue." Her loyalty is to Hammer first, as a friend and her employer, but if he can't see the benefits, she's willing to try and pull some other strings. This project is important.