2020-01-30 - RESCUE Comes to Io

Summary:

Toni has met someone she thinks can be a lot of help with RESCUE. She brings her partner Roni to meet.

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Thu Jan 30 00:00:00 2020
Location: Io's Apartment - NYC

Related Logs

None

Theme Song

None

toni-hoio-nivenveronica-kelsey

Moving through the winter weather, a fairly new looking van makes its way into the neighborhood of Queens, moving at a sedate pace, as if someone is looking for someplace in particular. Having found it (thank you GPS), the van slows, then finds a parking spot nearby that seems open. Or at leat, not like the tires are going to get taken if they leave it in place for a bit. It does stand out a little, being newer than most vehicles in the area.

Parking, Toni mms. "This is it then…"


"Alright." Veronica offers, and she releases the brakes and braces keeping her wheelchair in place. Then she rolls backwards into the main compartment and initiates the opening of the rear doors and the wheelchair lift. She'll be about four minutes getting herself out and down and the van buttoned back up, the alarm armed as well as priming the auto-launch feature for emergency deployment of the armors inside.

These two have been doing this long enough that a little preparedness goes a long way. They can hope not to need it, but better to have it.

Then Veronica comes rolling around to join her partner. "Which way?" she asks.


The apartment building is - well, ordinary enough, and Io's name had been on the front of the building in clear enough letters so Toni could be buzzed in. And that means when they get to the third floor apartment overlooking an alleyway in the non-descript, and mostly clean but more functional than ornamental building, the apartment door is open as some measture of invitation.

Inside the apartment, music is playing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jc0ib5Rh5s) at a pretty decent volume and can be heard down the hall before approaching. Io is nowhere to be seen, at least, at first. That, likely, is due to the fact the apartment looks like some kind of Christmas Carolized electronics pawn shop - ghosts of technological pasts, presents, and even futures (though much less of the latter) are strewn in mostly organized enough fashion to make it seem more pack-rattish than mentally ill hoarder. If anything, faint smells of soddering, oil, and other shop-like smells linger in the air, less present and more having permeated the walls, and the fabric of the one couch that can be barely seen over the piles of old bakerlight telephones, walkmans (Both tape and CD), and even some 8-track players. Most of these are in boxes, but there is defintely over-spillage.

From the couch, "Hey. Be with you in a second."


"No rush." Toni says as she follows Roni in. Mind, she doesn't need to, but she generally lets her lead. And if she rolls back she can catch the chair until Roni recovers, for that matter. She looks around at all of the gear with interest. "Wow…you've salvaged a lot of stuff…."


Letting Veronica lead lets her find the elevator and its controls, and get them to where they are going; accessibility is key for her. Roni eyes the somewhat organized chaos of the place and keeps on going. Toni said she met this woman and wanted her to meet her as well. So, Roni is here. But she's curious and apparently lacking some background. Maybe it's Toni's way of seeing if Veronica will be as impressed as she was, by not 'priming the pump'. "You left your apartment door open. Did you want it to stay that way?" she calls out.


"Nah. You can close it." Io stands up, then, her bright blue hair, cut short and unkempt presently is likely the first thing anyone would notice about her. The punk girl is dressing down, today, wearing just a pair of comfortable shorts and a tank top. "I'm Io. You already knew that, though," she tells Veronica. "Take it your her bodyguard?" Io looks half-amused, "Don't trust me?"


"Nope. This is my co-CEO, Dr. Veronica Kelsey. I told her a little bit about you, but not everything. I wanted her to get her own opinions and questions out of the way." Toni says simply.


Roni waves a little, regarding the blue-haired woman curiously. "Io, right? Are you Greek?" she questions. The other alternative is that the woman changed her name to go with her hobbies. That can happen, apparently. Roni rolls further into the room and examines each station or project with an air of curiosity, but her main focus is on Io herself. 'interesting talent' doesn't tell her what to be looking for. Yet.


"Co-CEO? What - you're bigwigs or something?" Apparently Io doesn't keep up much on whose-who of the financial or corporate world. Then again, she doesn't really look the type, either. She makes her way around a stacked pile of boxes, all labeled 'laptops' and into the kitchen, "Want anything to drink?" She opens the fridge, pulls out a can of 'Peace' Lemonade Iced Tea, and pops the can on it.

"Greek? Dunno. Might be. Why?" She looks aside to Roni, before glancing over to Toni. "Did you want to go over everything? Or, you one of those 'You have to prove it to me first' types?" Her tone suggests she's fine with either answer, as if she's used to it.


"Yup." Toni says laconically, watching as Roni roams. "Iced tea would be great, actually." she admits, then says. "Because your name is Io…mythological. Did you pick it or were you named that by your parents?" she says curiously. "And mostly, I didn't want to set any expectations for Roni here, so if you can show it to her, I'd appreciate it."


Veronica glances up over her shoulder towards Toni and then back to the girl. She lets Toi field this for a bit just to see what comes out before she steps - or rolls - in verbally. She nods to Toni's answer. "Io is a name from ancient Greek myths and stories. In one, the name of a princess who was a lover of Zeus. In another, a name given to an Amazon. Also the name of one of Jupiter's moons. But I was wondering, with all of the computer stuff, whether you might have renamed yourself for I slash O, input/output."

The woman in the wheelchair waits and watches, curious to see what else it is Toni wants her to see. "My name is Veronica. Most of my closest associates call me Roni."


And, what does Io have to say in regards to getting an education on her namesake? "Gross." At least, in regards to being a lover of Zeus. "Isn't he the guy who was all into bestaility?" Io wrinkles her nose, then hands Toni a new can of the same lemonade and iced tea mix that she's drinking. "Nope. Was the name on my birth certificate." She shrugs. "Anyways, good to see you Veronica." She hands another can over to the woman she's speaking to.

She shrugs. "Alright. I'll give you an example of what I can do, if you want."

Veronica's phone suddenly gives a text message buzz, or makes it's selected sound. When Veronica looks, the text message are several links - each of which has information - some easy to get, some that might require a bit more digging - but nothing that isn't overall accessible to the overall public in one way shape or form without breeching privacy laws.

Interesting enough, the text message header says that the message /came/ from 'Io', even though she had never been programmed into Veronica's phone.


Toni accepts the drink, smiling faintly as she sips from it as she watches to see Roni's reaction. "Well, he was more into turning into the beasts or a golden shower…of light, I mean. But yeah. Poor Io. The mythic one." She shrugs slightly. "The Amazon was pretty cool though, so there's that?"


"The issue was more that many of his lovers got turned into animals and other horrible things done to them by his understandably jealous wife." Veronica offers. But she nods. She gets it.

Then her phone dings softly in her ear, carried by a tiny speaker in the temple of her glasses. And she reads the message, a flicker of light across the lens of the glasses. "Interesting." Dr. Veronica Kelsey, Co-CEO and co-founder of RESCUE. Medical doctor. Surgeon. Inventor. Sitting here, now. "So, a technopath of some variety?" she inquires.


"Something like that," agrees Io, with a shrug of her shoulders, almost indifferent. She gestures to the gathered technology piles of disused, broken, and repaired parts and equipment in the living room where there is no 'entertainment' section, nothing really, save a couch, and a couple wireless speakers in the corners up by the ceiling and the plethora of collected materials. "I fix things. I repurpose things. I code. Keep busy. Make enough to live decently. Told Toni I could help her. Guess she brought you to get your opinion."

Again, Io shrugs. "I like to keep busy."


"Basically, yes. A talent like yours is rare and incredibly useful for what we do. I wanted her thoughts on it. And I wanted her here when we discussed things, because she's the other person whose opinion I trust most on stuff like this." Toni says bluntly. "So…here's the thing. We're the CEOs of RESCUE. I'm guessing you've not heard of us, but basically we're a disaster response and civilian equipment vendor. Roni here is a genius with cybernetics, I'm more robotics. We built tech stuff designed to help people. No weapons though. Well…we make nonlethal ones that are safer than most, but that's it.":


Yeah. 'No weapons' would not be honest, and Veronica tenses until Toni corrects herself. Then she nods. "But, we build a lot of technology. A lot of electronics. So, meeting someone who can manipulate those electronics in ways they were perhaps not precisely calibrated to do is helpful. At least, it could be, if we can convince you to work with us." Rather than against them. "You could be invaluable for us in penetration testing and mitigation. As well as operational guidance and coordination during incident response." Yeah. She really talks like that.


Io looks between the two, and her face twists in an unreadable expression. She exhales some, looks back behind herself at all her salvaged gear. By her expression, though, others, perhaps, have attempted to spearhead her before and get her to work for them in one way or another. "What's it pay?" She asks, first and foremost. "And, what sort of workload are you expecting?"


"You've got a unique gift. So, let's say high. 50k to start for a trial period, and we bump it up after depending what you need? That's with full insurance, dental, cafeteria access, all of that. We do a lot of that on the campus, honestly. If you want, we also offer dorm suites on site for you to stay in, but you can take a look around the campus first, see what you think before you decide on that." She considers. "40 hour week, with overtime if an emergency comes up, but there's mandated days off to avoid crunch or overwork in such case. Ah…let's see…" She glances to Roni to see how she's doing…s.he's generally got more of a head for the business side of things. "Is that good? Or more to start?"


Veronica considers Io, and Toni very carefully before she speaks up. Please pardon the dead air before she does so. "I think Io here values her independence. I think she would want more of her own time. Why don't we adjust this accordingly. We guarantee her that she'll have her own lab and storage space for her projects. Start with twenty hours a week, thirty-five K annual, so that would come down to thirty-five an hour. Time spent on emergency projects counts against your twenty total for the week; overtime for anything over twenty. Full benefits, regardless of half-time hourly status." She's willing to go higher, but only if this offer is deemed unacceptable. She's hoping the lesser time committment, freedom to do her own thing more, will be attractive.


It would seem Roni got the thing right, after a bit of consideration, Io says something under her breath that is likely a curse word, then shakes her head, "Fine. I'll give it a try for a month. We'll see after that. I'd better not get bored, though. And you'd better treat the gear right," she warns, with a curious undertone to the statement that's more than just someone proud of their creations, or has a budget to keep, or doesn't want more work. Toni knows a little about this little facet of Io's mind, and might be able to clue Roni in later.

"But I suppose it will get Goliath out of the house more."


"We don't abuse our gear lightly." Toni promises. "I can't guarantee that some might be stressed…there are a lot of prototypes we're working with that are stress tested to see where they need to be improved. Though with you around, I'm hoping we don't have to do that as much, because you can tell us what's failing faster without having to wait until something starts to break."


Veronica eyes Io curiously, wondering at some of what might be going on here. She doesn't have the helmet on, so she can't just augment her hearing and reprocess to figure out what the other woman muttered. It'll have to wait. "We don't mistreat our gear. But we may ask much of it - even too much - in the service of saving lives." And the medical doctor will never apologize for that. Period. There's no give in her tone whatsoever. "But Toni is right. With your talents, you may be able to spot those failures before they happen and we can work around them."


"ANd what about the lives of the machines?" Io asks back, with a mildly near disapproving frown. Still, she leaves it at that for now, agreeing, "I'll give it a go. See if we like each other. What the hell." She lifts her can as if in toast. "And if it works out, then cool." She at least seems interested enough to give it a try, but it's probably not the reaction most people see when offered a job like the one Io just got offered. She nods, while in the background her laptop begins to do it's due diligence at her unspoken mental request and begins burrowing on the web for all the information available on RESCUE.


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