Secure:Nebula Computer Rods
From Megaman Mush Wiki
The Nebula Rods are a set of eight supercomputers discovered in the North Pole Dimensional Monitoring Facility after the disaster that resulted in Nebula storming the facility to remove Gospel's presence and avert a world-destroying crisis.
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Initial Discovery
AAR: North Pole Revisited
< Magma Dragoon, lookin' sharp, video >
"Steel Massimo and I went back to the North Pole. We confirmed Dr. Cossack's suspicion that Nebula has removed the portal machine. There were no personel there. We did find eight self-powered rods around the hole where the portal machine was. They're being kept in secure holding in Siberia for the techs to examine. Massimo also left a bug behind. Saw no indication of where the machine might have been moved to, but at least it looks safe for the techs to examine. Dragoon out."
Mysterious Rods
Results of Dr. Light's initial examination:
Dr. Light marvels at the strange pillars recovered from the North Pole. They are sealed transparisteel chambers capped with what seems to be iridium at either end. They weigh 90 kilograms and are about 5 meters long. The internals of the chambers can be accessed after a while by manipulating either "cap" magnetically -- there's a complex latch system which is not accessible by conventional tools that Light discovers during his scans.
The cylinders all contain an identical mixture of noble gases and several long, wide lengths of circuitry running from one end of the tube to the other. Just from counting processors, any given pillar has the computational power of a supercomputer, but neither has an obvious power source nor any external connections. The circuits run, and it's clear that the pillars are /doing/ something -- they generate a steady blue glow and a low hum.
Dr. Light accesses the pillars by manually connecting a computer to them. The operating environment is completely foreign to him. It's not only in a different kind of programming language but appears to have been based off of a design that has never been encountered before. It almost seems like someone used Earth technology to duplicate a design created by aliens. There is no help file.
The pillars are giving off energy. The energy is harmless to organic matter and appears to have no effect on mechanical or electronic systems. However, neither Blink fields nor subspace portals can be opened within five feet of the tube, making them impossible to teleport or store in Fliptop. Tinkering with the circuitry long enough allows Light to generate a 'flare' of an effect that acts to shut down Blink or subspace systems in a 10 meter square area for about 30 seconds. Perhaps these pillars are some sort of auxillary control system for the portal proper.
The pillars do not seem to run out of power. So long as the mixture of gases is maintained around the circuitry, they continue to operate. They may be being powered from some extradimensional source, but how they are accessing this is unclear.
Further Investigations
Hardware
Request: Hot Rods
Summary: Cinnamon's going to spend some time studying one of the pillars recovered from the North Pole facility, concentrating on the way it is powered, as opposed to any of the data within. What kind of energy is it giving off and how much? Is it similar to any particular element or type of generator? What is the composition of gases within the pillars, and since they're noble, are they just serving as a buffer to prevent contamination, or are they actually doing something in there? Do the iridium caps have anything to do with it? Do lesser metals corrode? What happens with the circuitry when the gases are removed or taken out of balance?
Inquiring minds demand to know!
Results: A Series Of Tubes
Much of this request is similar to Dr. Light's findings. Other information is as follows:
1. The iridium seems to be there mostly because it is strong and can take a lot of punishment.
2. The cylinders all contain an identical mixture of noble gases. It's unclear what the gases are doing, but they do appear to be keeping the circuitry in some sort of purified environment. The circuits won't work if the gases are removed, and will only limp along if the gases are out of balance.
3. The pillars are giving off energy, but what kind is unclear. There's no good way of quantifying how much energy is there because our equipment isn't designed to detect it. The energy is harmless to organic matter and appears to have no effect on mechanical or electronic systems. It's powering the systems but doesn't behave like electricity.
4. It seems they may be used in closing portals, but we haven't figured out how to make them 'flare' enough to do something like that consistently.
5. The portal tech packet sent from the other universe incorporates similar design features to these pillars. They're not involved in the building process at all, though. The portal equipment seems to be something that science evolved into naturally over there, instead of looking like alien technology -- like these rods are.
Software
Request: Investigating Rods of Power
Summary: Dr. Light asks Alloy to 'look into the programming' of the weird supercomputer rods. Challenge accepted.
He hooks up the rods and starts logging everything that comes out of them for analysis. He hits the data with pattern searches, looking for repetitive structures to give him a leverage point. It's not that different from cracking an encryption, really. Alloy does some comparison with the plans the Hunters received from their Mysterious Contact - run the programs on an emulator, see what comes out. This stuff is passed out to the other Gospel techs as well to see what they can come up with.
Alloy's expecting it to be general status information, but they could possibly be spitting out data on the various disturbances happening, so he sends some logs to Auto as well. He'd probably know what to look for, if that's the case.
Results: Rods Of Power +5
You reflect, as you stare at the seemingly random blasts of jibberish that come out of the dimensional pillars, that Dr. Light gives really poor instructions.
You're starting from square one. None of this computer code is in a language you know. It's like breaking a raw code, which means you have to try to infer by context how something which operates in a fundamentally different way than anything else you've ever encountered functions, or make a good enough guess at how it functions, to even start to write an interface program for this. There are no help files. You have to go chip by chip, line by line, and try to learn a new programming language for a computer system that operates in ways that you can only start to guess at.
But it isn't entirely hopeless. The Mysterious Contact From Beyond gives you some things that make absolutely no sense to you but seem to give Auto an idea. He and his counterpart work with you via telepresence for a while, letting you talk them through both sets of programs. After hours and hours of constant work, they finally discern what they /think/ the pillars do.
Apparently the pillars aren't intended to open portals at all. They're boosters for an apparatus that should theoretically /close/ them. The problem then becomes making that closing machine, which the Autos haven't figured out. They vow to get on the case using the Mysterious Contact's information as well as their own past experiences.
Conclusions
- The rods' primary purpose appears to be assisting in closing down dimensional portals. This fits with the circumstances in which they were discovered. Nebula most likely used them to close the damaged portal.
- The rods were left there afterwards. Nebula seems to want us to have them.
- Alloy's conjecture: Nebula wants us to act as their agents in this situation. They avoid overt action unless there's no other choice - with enough time and work, we can construct a full device to do what they did with the rods. If any of the portals opening up turn out to be harmful, or the dimensions they open into are more than we can handle, we can shut them down without waiting for them to 'expire'. Unfortunately, I don't see that we have any choice but to play along.
