2022-05-12: Illumination is a fundamental notion which our brains must interpret
- Log: Illumination is a fundamental notion which our brains must interpret
- Cast: Yuliana Dispersal, Koji Kabuto
- Where: Tengger Desert Solar Park (China)
- Date: 2022-05-12
- Summary: A solar power plant in China calls for Federation help after some suspicious activity, and Koji and Yuliana respond. But was it really ZAFT, behind it?
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Tengger Desert Solar has a long history -- it's been established and re-established as a solar park many times, over the centuries. It's not so far from the Yellow River, where it cuts through Zhongwei, in China; deep inland, there's little help which could come from neighbouring countries so quickly.
The company has put out a distress call to the Federation, though, after some suspicious activity in the plant which has caused it to need to shut down in a hurry. Of course, they suspect foul play, and they've blamed ZAFT for it. Whether ZAFT is actually responsible...
Part of the response which came to Tengger is martial support -- the REA sent a special operations team to sweep through the park and make sure there are no enemy forces present. A Laiying 1 and an RK-96 Savage II are the mobile suits physically moving through the park to check for intruders; on foot, Lieutenant Parminder Chaudhri and Captain Yuliana Dispersal sweep the main building.
But all reports come back: "Clear," Yuliana reports, coming back to the office where they've collected all their supports. "If they were here, they're long gone. Lieutenant, stay back here and run a scan on the network, would you?" She asides, to Parminder, as he opens up a laptop and sits down at the desk. He hums vague affirmation, as he begins to type.
"Tragically," the green-haired captain says, tucking her gun back into her holster and resting her hand on her hip instead, "I'm not this type of engineer, so I couldn't tell you if anything's been tampered with. But that's why they sent you, isn't that right, Dr. Kabuto?" With a loose, easy grin, she gestures out of the office.
"I hope you won't object to company, though -- it's always so interesting to see how the other fields conduct their work." Is that a polite fiction to keep a guard with him, just in case they missed something..? If it is, she manages to make her interest awfully convincing.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
The REA machines aren't the only mobile units on the field, but they're definitely the most-armed; for its part, the Photon Power Institute dispatched two Ichinana units in labourer yellow-and-brown. Koji was operating one earlier, scoping out the plant to see if there were obvious signs of sabotage or fallen pylons that might need to be repositioned.
Already in the office when Yuliana and Lt. Parminder arrive, he is looking out of the window, though at what he couldn't tell you, turning to face the others as they come in. When he's addressed he smiles slightly. "That's what I'm here for, yes. Stay here by all means, I'd only be handling classified materials back home." He gives that answer easily, but there is still something... unnerving about the REA's command here. Perhaps it's just that she seems so carefree for a soldier on-duty, almost like she revels in it. "Nothing of interest out there?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
There is something a touch casual, about Yuliana; maybe that's just the habit of the special operative, given teams like these are a little to the left of the rest of the military structure.
But hey, given her service record, she's earned it.
"An awful lot of solar arrays out back," Yuliana says, "and a really impressive amount of machines in here. But if you're talking hidden explosives, deliberately weakened cross-beams, rigged electronics -- no, no, nothing as exciting as that." She waves a hand, loosely.
"Not to worry, Doctor, it seems you'll have an utterly uneventful time inspecting this facility. Which just means you can really focus, wouldn't you say? Well, not that appraising systems under fire isn't incredibly motivating, but I always find I miss a loose spigot or lose a washer under pressure like that." She's also terribly chatty, but she's entirely personable, at least. Maybe she's just... friendly..? ... but describing it as 'exciting' is a little...
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Solar is hard to mess around with in a desert, so there's not going to be any problems with uptake if the panels themselves haven't been tampered with." He ticks things off on his hands, seemingly voicing aloud his current thought process. "So we'd be looking at transmission, and the pylons pass an overhead inspection. We might have to excavate and look at the cables underneath, but I don't know if that's going to be a lead either. Let's see."
He pulls up the data from the plant's activity pre-shutdown. "Sure would be great if they specified where this 'suspicious activity' was, but I have a hunch we're looking at something on the management firmware." He taps his tablet thoughtfully, forcing that vague uneasiness to one side. It's just like hanging with an oddly cheery Tetsuya. So like an ordinary day, now he comes to think of it.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"I suppose there isn't much aside from sun out here," Yuliana remarks, casually. This is patently false -- there are all sorts of things in a desert. Like cacti. And scorpions. And very pointy cats. And Yuliana, right now!
(Personally, Yuliana can't stand the desert. Wet and hot, sure. Cold and dry, okay. HOT and dry? There's sand in her boots! Terrible.)
She leans -- more around Koji's shoulder than over it, given she's a few inches shorter than him, because Yuliana is the sort of person who sounds like she's taller than she is -- to peek on the data he's referencing. "It is a little vague, isn't it?" Yuliana supposes, sympathetically. "It's entirely possible they saw someone sniffing around and overreacted! But then, who can blame them?" She straightens up, with a shrug which spreads her palms towards the sky. "No one wants to be the next foothold in a guerilla war. Ever since ZAFT made Earthfall, there's been trouble all over."
... mostly in Africa, recently, but Yuliana is diplomatic enough not to remark on their luck with regards to ZAFT focusing the majority of their efforts in their other terran bases.
"But tell me -- what kind of firmware tricks does a solar plant need, anyway?" Yuliana asks, arms folding in thought. "Isn't this technology old enough to have all that sorted, by now? I'm surprised it would be complicated enough for be able to slip an attack in." The electronic side, admittedly, isn't something Yuliana bothers with quite as much; her Manual machines tend to be relatively sparse on electronics, compared to some other mobile suits she's dug through.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Yeah that's another angle to the mystery, that these aren't very sophisticated machines at all and that in and of itself is its own kind of cyber-security. We might not even be looking at a 'conventional' sabotage or fault at all or they'd surely have just fixed it themselves. Speaking of, did anyone stick around on the plant or was it abandoned by the time your team got here?" Koji and the work crew, very sensibly, were only permitted access to the site once it was given the preliminary clear.
He doesn't seem to be much bothered by Yuliana leaning around him, in fact turning the tablet more towards her accomodatingly. "It really does seem like everything was working normally, throughput was steady - or at least, steady within expected tolerances for variance."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Totally abandoned," Yuliana confirms, reaching up to brush at the hair over one side of her face. There's a scar briefly visible, underneath, before the teal strands settle back down.
"If you want my professional opinion -- I doubt they did anything, today, short of accessing the systems to download a copy or two. ZAFT operates guerilla-style -- on Earth, at least," she adds, given she has little interaction with the spacenoids on their home turf. It's the sort of comment which might have been breezy, if not for the way she's focused in quite intently on the idea of what her enemy might have done. "They just don't have the capacity manpower for conventional assault. In a situation like that, I would want to know maps, schematics, personnel rosters..." Her tongue darts out over her lower lip, in a gesture of subtle nervousness, as she glances away. "Sending a skeleton team in to get information makes much more sense than attacking blindly."
Her attention orients back on the tablet, after having been, perhaps, a little too honest. "I'll have to take your word on these readings being normal," she concludes, tone lightening up as she shrugs and smiles to him. "But it looks like they shut the plant down for safety's sake -- is that going to cause any problems, Dr. Kabuto? You know, spinning the whole system back up again... machines can get so fussy about it."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Yeah, all of that follows logically. I'm not particularly versed in counter-insurgency strategies." He's more of the 'stop a giant robot monster' mind, personally. It's not a set of doctrines that nominally overlap. Koji notices Yuliana's scar but doesn't make comment on it - he has his own share of scrapes from piloting Mazinger Z back in the day, after all. "So you think this might be a prelude to a second operation to actually take over the plant, or at least get what they want from it?"
As for starting it back up... He taps his chin thoughtfully. "I don't foresee any specific problems with the machinery from what I've seen so far. If you want to start her back up again, as long as someone who knows this stuff is supervising there shouldn't be any difficulties."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana has also stopped giant robot monsters, of course. Does Devil Gundam count? Devil Gundam probably counts. It just so happens that most of her experience is...
Classified! Anyway.
"That would be my guess," Yuliana says, a hand coming up to grasp the back of her neck as it goes crik-crack back and forth. "Or maybe they're just hoping to scare the plant into discontinuing operations for a while. That would put the problem at right now," she points out, hand lifting in a loose gesture. "But no one's radioed in for support, so I think it's fair to say there's nothing particularly explosive going on in the region."
Which doesn't rule out any number of other, more subtle things they could be doing. Yuliana will have to pull on those threads later. Or delegate them! She's a Captain, she has that kind of power.
"But so long as you don't foresee any problems, I don't see any reason not to authorise the start-up sequence," Yuliana comes back to his last point, with cheer. "You are one of the foremost experts on power, after all! How fortunate we were that Londo Bell could spare you for an hour or two. Though... I suppose the great Dr. Kabuto is entirely wrapped up in matters of energy production these days, no? I'm sure solar power must pale in comparison to your Photon Power."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Yeah, if everything's quiet and nothing's visibly wrong with any of the equipment then it's looking increasingly likely that it... might not be sabotage?" Koji shrugs. "A mystery we can't solve with what we know so far."
He chuckles awkwardly as Yuliana pivots to his work. "Well, yes, work at the lab does keep me pretty busy. All of the OCU benefits from Photon Power in some way, after all. The principles, though, are pretty similar to Solar, since ultimately it's about converting light to electricity." He refrains from delving into the details, mostly because there are peculiarities to those details he has yet to fully unearth. Standing up, he starts to head down to the main generator. "Why don't we try and get this thing started, then?"
Maybe it'll yield another clue, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Ah, yes, throwing levers -- the most essential part of science," Yuliana agrees, following after Koji. Levers feature in all levels of the scientific construct, after all! Even medical science! Don't ask her how she knows that.
"Still, it's all about converting light to electricity, huh..?" She wonders, as she walks, genuinely thoughtful. "Light seems like a terribly versatile medium... I wonder what else you could convert with it." It's one of those idle little curiosities which doesn't go anywhere, surely, but -- the trip down to the main generator is a lot of catwalks and metal grating, so it's hardly a scenic tour.
Or maybe it is, for a generator-head. Maybe these big boxy machines are a candy store! And Yuliana is just walking by, not appreciating them at all! That's the real crime.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Light doesn't seem to play by the same rules as everything else in the world," Koji agrees with a chuckle. "You can even transmit information with it - assuming you can get through minovsky interference at any rate." Light definitely diffuses through that particle cloud, after all.
Yuliana might not be appreciating these 'candy-store' generators they're passing by, but that's fine, Koji isn't either, he's doing another inspection. Once or twice he stops to lean in curiously at one of the capacitor banks but only ends up shaking his head and carrying on. "Yeah, everything seems fine." With that, he leads Yuliana into the main generator chamber, where the other tech from the PPL is monitoring the instruments. "I'll take over, Mizugi. Head up back to the Ichis and make sure their data sets correlate."
With a nod, 'Mizugi' leaves the two of them to it, and Koji confronts: The Lever. "Well. Would you care to do the honours, Captain, or should I?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Minovsky's Woman laughs, when Koji brings the interference up. "Oh, I know all about interference," Yuliana agrees, breezily. "But my -- I'm struck by the poetic incisiveness of our forebearers! 'Enlightenment', 'illumination', 'elucidation'... no wonder we can transmit information through light, with language like that." It's kind of a strange thought to have off hand, but then -- maybe Yuliana is just a quirky sort of person.
That's one explanation, certainly.
She doesn't stop Koji from pausing to check those capacitors, though, with easy agreement when he finds them all in working order. "Thanks for your hard work," she tells Mizugi, as the tech heads out, before she leans aside to Koji: "That is how you say it in Japan, isn't it? I admit, sometimes the nuances of workplace culture are lost on me." That... might not be a cultural thing...
She leans back, and gestures to Koji, grandly. "But far be it from me to strip from you the joys of throwing big levers, Dr. Kabuto," she cedes the ground to the apex engineer in the room, graciously.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
He chuckles. "Language is a funny thing, huh? It makes sense that we'd develop those metaphors in that way - after all, light is fundamental to so many of us even being able to experience the world. Received by rods and cones in our eyes, transmitted as electricity to our brains, and then our brains interpret that signal. One of those wonders of life, you know?"
He nods as Mizugi leaves. "That's the right expression, yes." He peers over the instruments the tech had been monitoring, double-checking carefully, before turning back to the lever. "Alright then..."
"Here goes." He throws the switch.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Yes, it's very direct, isn't it?" Yuliana agrees, on the topic of light. "And all a matter of interpretation... fascinating, really."
Just because she's an operative doesn't mean Yuliana can't have an interest in the scientific arts, apparently. Then again -- one doesn't become a captain without skills beyond shooting things, in or out of a suit.
And so: "It lives!" Yuliana declares, when the switch is thrown, because SOMEONE HAD TO. The machine grinds to life, lights flicking on in sequence along the metal --
Nothing explodes. The machine grinds into a hum, the typical start-up chug fading into a normal rhythm. "Huh," Yuliana remarks, tapping a finger to her chin. "You know, all preparation aside, I really was half expecting that to blow up in our face."
She should probably sound much more concerned by that idea than she actually does.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
Koji lets out a breath he didn't realise he was holding as Nothing Unusual Transpires. "Despite how ordinary everything seems, I can't help but agree with you on that one."
He walks back over to the terminals. "Still, starting the plant up is only one part of the puzzle, there could have been inexplicable deviations in... something over long-term operation. Might have to post an Ichi here to monitor those kinds of readings."
He digs out a small headset, hooking it over his right ear and flipping a visor down over the corresponding eye, squinting at the readings. One wonders: What does the scouter say about this power level?
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Oh, certainly," Yuliana agrees. "If you're willing to divert the attention of an Ichinana, I can get the details cleared for you quite easily. Paperwork is a tragic hazard of our occupation!" There's way too much paperwork in her fun. Really, the most entertaining things also generate the most paperwork. Yuliana is trapped in a hell of her own making.
The power level is...! ... kind of below optimal output, actually. It's the kind of thing which would be difficult to notice off-hand, but Tengger is a large enough solar park that they should really be putting out more energy than this, even accounting for the system just starting up again. How strange.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"It'll be one of the labourer models, should be easy enough to requisition, at least. The blessings of simple paperwork, right?" Dangerous, for sure, but dangerous in the way that a manned forklift truck is dangerous, as opposed to a manned forklift truck someone has mounted an RPG to the front of.
Then Koji frowns and leans forward, tapping the device he's wearing on his head. "That's interesting. The main generator is operating slightly below optimal output. Not a noticeable deviation unless you're looking for a problem, but very curious."
He taps his chin again. "And the patrol around the base was an all-clear." It's not a question so much as repeating the fact to himself. "So it's a fall-off in power that can't be explained by conventional equipment failure or by sabotage. I wonder..." He turns back to the terminal, trying to pull up anything that might point to where that loss of power is going.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"True, it could be worse!" Yuliana agrees, with cheer. It's a little forced. There are a lot of things which are technically worse than paperwork, but she'd still rather be dealing with any of them than sitting at a desk.
(Which is probably why she hasn't pursued a promotion, over the last few years.)
She frowns, though, when Koji talks about what he's seeing. Her arms fold, across her chest. "Hmm...?" Yuliana grunts, as she goes over the information, in her head. "The station ought to be calibrated correctly... but you're right, it's not failure or sabotage. The solar park's totally fine. Wait --"
Yuliana reaches a hand up, to the veiled side of her face -- opens up a radio earpiece, settled there. "Yuan, Canary, I need you two to leave the plant and follow the main line -- yeah, yeah, cable hooking, that's it. Clear the idiots up before they set themselves on fire, if you can -- yes, tell the Ichis, I'll handle it." She hits a button on the clip, and drops her hand, with a broad shrug.
"If I'm right," she explains, looking back to Koji, "the output disturbance comes down to electricity theft. We don't usually see that here -- we don't ration electricity for our citizens, so there's less motivation -- but if you were trying to get electricity for an illicit project, you'd certainly want to shut things down a while so you could tap the line. We wouldn't notice anything wrong at the power plant, because that's not where they connect to it, but..."
She sighs, rolling her shoulders back. "If you hadn't thought to look into the exact numbers, we might not have noticed until enough fires broke out. Looks like you really pulled our asses out of it, Dr. Kabuto."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"I had had... well, a similar thought. There's definitely a loss in total output that can't be explained by the machinery, so that energy has to be going somewhere."
He stands up again. "Could be theft, or could be something weirder, but either way the problem is definitely not the plant." He removes his monitoring device, tucking it into his breast pocket. "The way the numbers are only a little bit under optimal output definitely suggests someone is being careful about how much they pull so they avoid notice - in the short-term, at least."
He relaxes a little. "So I guess that leaves this in your department now, Captain."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana salutes -- loosely, but it's evidence enough that's she's capable of it. "Someone's certainly minding their manners," she agrees, lightly, "but we'll get to the bottom of it, don't you worry! The good news is that we're aware, now; we might be able to stop a few electrocutions this way."
She's... cheating, a little, phrasing it like this. Yuliana ripped Londo Bell's current thesis out of them with her teeth, but those pearly whites aren't flashing now. Instead, Yuliana looks concerned. "Of course, ZAFT are our enemies, but it would be cruel and unusual to let them shock themselves with some makeshift cables. We'd rather take them in without those kinds of drastic injuries, you know? And that's leaving aside the possibilities of fire..."
(She is genuinely concerned about that last one, being fair -- Ningxia isn't the richest autonomous region of China by far, but it is one of the more arid ones, and those things together make electrical fire a threatening proposition.)
"So, then -- thanks for your hard work, Dr. Kabuto," Yuliana says, with a small, appreciative smile.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
A nod at that dismissal. "A pleasure to be of service, Captain Dispersal." He goes for a handshake, then, taking one last glance at the generator room, he starts to head back up to the surface. Problem solved, perhaps, and less violently than he usually solves problems, but even so...
The unease returns, just a little. Did he... want things to become dramatic? Oh well. Questions to be handled another day.