1953/Mahounet: Design Concept

Mahounet: Design Concept
Date of Scene:	17 September 2024
Location:	Club Building
Synopsis:	Rashmi calls Koji into a Barrier'd Shop Club room, to discuss the possibilities of Mid-Childan technology, magic in general, and a means by which all mahou may call on each other without needing to risk their phones. The dream of a Mahounet is born, and so much work needs doing before it can be realized.
Cast of Characters:	Rashmi Terios, Koji Silvia

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Rashmi Terios has posed:
Early one Sunday evening, *Hanzo* gets a message to give to Koji, via Nicomachea:

    << Hi Koji-kun! So I had this idea for a project for a long while now, but it's not until just recently that I had a clear shot at actually doing it. And I gave it some thought, and I realized it probably won't work at all without your help. So! Wanna put those A/V fixit skills to good use for a Shed project? Meet me at the Shop Club room after hours if you do, I'll have a Barrier right on the other side of the door. >>

And, indeed, the first thing Koji sees upon opening the Shop Club door is... the wall of a Barrier less than a millimeter away from the door. Rashmi was *not kidding.*

And stepping beyond the Barrier, one can see Rashmi, with Nicomachea set up and floating over her head, seated crosslegged in the middle of the floor, surrounded by an empty box and an absolute mess of parts that could only have been sourced from the Arthras.

Even in bits, it just looks ridiculously high-tech.

Koji Silvia has posed:
With a toolbox from the 'Computer Club' in one hand, and a box marked 'Cables' in the other, Koji has to fumble the door open, only to see that Barrier right in front of him.

    "Okay..."

As he passes through and quite literally into Rashmi's personal space, he stops and sees all of these things, the floating book, and the girl just sort of sitting there, and says with a faintly amused grin, "So... to be clear... you told me everything without telling me anything, got me to come to a room nowhere close to your's and Usagi's Shed... and now we're inside a Time Space Barrier..."

There's a sigh.

"I thought you just wanted me to like... rewire some monitors or set up a TV corner for people who need to take breaks. This looks a bit more..."

And he glances down at the piles...

    "Serious."

Rashmi Terios has posed:
"I mean, it is serious," Rashmi says, getting to her feet with a grin. "But I'm also serious when I say I'm pretty sure it won't work without you. The last time a chunk of the Arthras fell... well I mean, a *lot* happened, but..." Gesturing around at her feet, she steps gingerly over the ring of parts, and moves to a workbench. Out come two melon-flavored Ramunes, one wiggled as an offer/bribe for Koji.

"Currently relevant is, Usa-chan grabbed a whole bunch of parts. And Mercury took a look at some of them, called them communications gear, so Usa-chan got them to me. Which reminded me."

Setting one soda down, she unwraps and pushes the bead down on hers. "One thing we need for the Shed more than anything right now, is centralized communications. And it seems to me like Mid-Childan technology is probably the best fit for that. But we need Earth stuff at the user end, which is why I called you. Basically I want to set up a comms station in the Shed, but all the *workshops* are here, and I don't even have a *design* yet."

Looking up, the redhead beams at Koji. "Wanna help fix that?"

Koji Silvia has posed:
Have you ever wondered what BSOD-face looks like?

Koji has this flat expression on him, one of sort of shock and then unfiltered 'huh?' energy as he tilts his head in a cat-like fashion. It's about 5 seconds of this before he puts his toolboxes down and slaps the sides of his face, squishing his cheeks together and making his eyes go wince. After that, a long breath is taken and then he slides them down and pats them on his school slacks.

    "Oh... Kay..."

As he slowly moves forwards and takes one of the Ramune, he starts to remove the plastic topper and snaps it free, and as he expertly cracks the pressure seal, the young man licks his lips, "I forsee a problem... and it has to do with our Magic and all of this. But to get there I think I need to explain something first. And it's just because... I want you to know where my understanding of all of..."

Waving his bottle at the pile of gear.

    "Everything we go through... and Earth tech..."

But he shakes it off and just takes a sip of his drink, "So... do you know how radio works?"

Rashmi Terios has posed:
"A very little," Rashmi says without hesitation. There's no feigned confidence or exaggerated knowledge, Rashmi is the sort of person to casually accept that there are limits to her knowledge. And while boundaries might get pushed, and knowledge expanded, the boundaries are still there. "I know that radio waves are basically like light waves, just at different frequencies. It's all just energy, but it needs stuff capable of dependably emitting that energy on one side, and stuff capable of catching and translating it on the other."

Pulling a chair over, she sits, slowly sipping her soda and assuming her very best listening posture. Because a good student is also a good listener.

Koji Silvia has posed:
Rubbing the back of his neck a few times, Koji paces back and forth as he tries to figure out where to really start as he mumbles to himself, "But that... no... wait..."

He stops, and just says "Set Up."

It's a disappointing Henshin. No flippy moves, no cool montage, no piece by piece. Just some light and then suddenly he's in his Hanzo barrier jacket.

    "So, Radio moves faster than sound and slower than light, and it's a wave-form that travels in all directions at once... and just keeps going. Everything we've ever said on radio is just going to keep going along out into space and everywhere forever. But no one is going to know what it is unless they know what the carrier wave is. Like..."

He motions with a hand and suddenly a virtual whiteboard appears behind him and on it is a Sine Wave from math classes, "This is a carrier wave. It's what pushes the things you hear on radio, your cellphone, and even internet wifi out to the world. There's things called sidebands, and that's where all the voices, music, data... all of it gets sort of grabbed and pulled along, until it gets to their destination. You've got a device that can send the transmission with the wave...

Behind him the whiteboard changes to a generic radio tower with wiggly-waves coming off of it going all over the place, "And one that receives it."

Now there is an even chibi-er Chrono on the view holding a cartoony cellphone that the wave hits and it suddenly shows a ringer icon.

    "The main problem is this."

He motions down over his Henshin and back.

    "When we all change to our magical personas, anything we have on us tends to just... go away... stored where-ever. And then you've got the fact that we all are working from... different carriers. Cures are different from Sailors, who are different from Puella, who are different from us. We have it easy. Our Devices listen to our thoughts, transmit them to another Devices who passes it through to their user."

Rashmi Terios has posed:
"I see your point," Rashmi says, nodding slowly. "But a Telepathy spell that I cast doesn't care *what* receiver it's using. And that's probably a function of the magic, but like... Half of my spells work just as well on a Puella or a Cure as on you or me. And Usagi managed to find a Mid-childan food synthesizer, She's working out from scratch how to make it dispense more than exactly sixteen blueberries."

This is accompanied with a flat look at Koji, as if she expects him to take 'I made an alien device make food that looked like Earth food so I ated it' exactly the same way she did.

"Also, Nicomachea links with Earth tech just fine. *All* of my texting is telepathic, ever since you told me I *could* talk to him in my brain." ...Which would explain how her texting has been simultaneously quick and verbose, entire paragraphs replied in a fraction of the time it would take the most terminally-online otaku to type out that much.

"There's another advantage, though... Mid-Childan and Belkan stuff is *extradimensional.* Like, I helped Molly-chan install one of her Device's missing memory modules, and it turns out our Devices are a *whole lot bigger* than they look. Also also it's weird and kinda neat to rotate them through four and five dimensions, and see how they change."

Koji Silvia has posed:
First thing Koji does in response to all of that is gulp his Ramune.

Then he speaks, "It's pretty much on brand for Usagi to turn to alien tech to feed her rampaging snack habit. After all, she did get me to rebuild her gaming controller after she got sniped by some mid-tier Call of Duty scrub she swears was running a bot."

Eyes flick to Rashmi, "Don't ask. Usagi's gaming habits are a dark place to go."

Another drink.

Waving his hand, suddenly there are several different small screens in the air, each with it's own little energy pattern.

Sailor Moon.

Tuxedo Kamen.

Rashmi.

Guardian Daifuku.

Puella Amy.

Pulp Noir.

Sugata Shindo

Cure Wukong.

Mermaid Princess Coco.

Bow.

    "So these are all the different major scans that Hanzo has on different magical types. The trick is figuring out a way to give them something that... despite being in Henshin, still connects to them, and lets them listen in and contact back. Almost like... we'd need one central Device that makes littler sub-Devices we can give to everyone like a big network of bluetooth headphones at a silent DJ dance."

Rashmi Terios has posed:
What might throw Koji for a loop is, Rashmi is nodding to herself as she looks over every discrete screen. As if the patterns are familiar enough to her that she can understand them. ...Or Nicomachea is coaching her along. Probably a bit of both, really.

"I thought about that," she says after a moment's study, "but... That would require a *lot more* Arthras bits than what we have access to. And specialized ones. But, hear me out... As far as I've been able to figure out, Mid-Childan communications is *also* based on folding space. They literally have faster than light comms, when it was whole the Arthras would be able to talk to a Device on Earth just about wherever it was. You're right about finding a way to tune all the receivers to be magic-neutral... But it's really only the *receiver* that needs that, isn't it? What if we could make a Device-to-Bluetooth adapter, and glue it onto some earbuds?"

Nicomachea's pages flutter, and a quartet of screens blip to life above her head.

A radio tower, with a chibi-Naru going :V :V :V as waves pulse from the top of the tower.

An illustration of the waves washing over an undifferentiated cube.

A more zoomed-out picture, of the cube glued to half of a pair of Raycons.

Zoom out further, and it's a chibi Amy wearing the earbud, nodding in understanding.

Koji Silvia has posed:
Koji puts down his drink, or rather he tries to, but there's no bench there, until a Shield suddenly appears and it rests before it can spill.

    "Oh, thanks Hanzo."

Walking back over to Rashmi, he says, "I think we need to rope one more person into your project. Someone who's been working on something close to this, but might be the bridge that we need to figure out the prototype you've got in mind."

He takes a breath, and then says, "And before you give me a weird look... It's that Hino-chan girl you had me keeping tabs on while you were all in Paris."

Stepping back, he virtually pushes all his screens to the side and brings up a picture of a monster-weird device that's half recording booth and half crystals throwing a miniature lightshow, "She was working on this with Coco. It was to record soundwaves to detect the magical energy that hides within them. Basically trying to figure out how Coco uses music as her carrier wave for her magic. I'm not sure WHY, but we had to do a lot to make sure that the power from the Earth tech wasn't overloaded by the magic stuff and vice-versa. It was a lot of replacing and reinsulting wiring... not entirely fun... BUT... it means she's got some first-hand experience on putting together a receiver that connects to a different type of magic.

Letting that hang there a moment, he steps back, sits down, and begins sorting through the stuff that Rashmi has here, "I don't disagree with anything you're saying. Our magic is weird, partly because it's got all these rules to define it, and it seems to love math and order, but still decides to break them on the regular. But all magic is a Baskin and Robbins of Capital W Weird. But if Device-brand communication is faster than light because it doesn't work on this dimension... like the Millennium Falcon doing the Kessel Run in a shorter amount of DISTANCE than any ship in the galaxy... we just need to figure out where we can shortcut this whole... Mahou-net you want to create."

Rashmi Terios has posed:
"Oh *awesome,*" Rashmi says with real delight. "I knew she was *doing* something like that, I just didn't know she was so far along! Okay yes we *need* to bring her in, then, I know *I* don't have a prayer of making the math math out even half right. But I do know that getting to the point where we link the receivers to the emitter shouldn't be *super* hard. So like..."

The four screens are replaced with one, of a line. "So this is one dimension from a 3-d perspective; it's just a line. You can only ever go two directions."

The line becomes a square. "Two dimensions: Now you can go *four* directions."

The square becomes a cube. "Three dimensions; how you have six directions. But here's where it gets weird."

The cube warps and twists, revealing a raised edge, growing wide, then shrinking, in a way similar to a cat-schan applied to reality. "That's what happens when you rotate a hollow, 4-dimensional analong to a cube through three dimensions. It's like taking 2-d slices of something and layering them to build a 3-d picture. It gets even loopier in five dimensions, and it still hurts my brain to try and comprehend."

Shaking her head as the screen wipes clear, she sips at her soda. "The point is, all we really have to do to link them so we can be assured good reception anywhere in Tokyo, is make sure that the transmitter and receiver are linked when they're practically touching in three, four, and five dimensions. That way, no matter where they are, the shortest path between them will be a straight line, and that line will practically be less than a meter long."

Koji Silvia has posed:
Koji just blurts out, "Microphones!"

Then, he finishes off his drink and grins at Rashmi.

"Okay," He goes on, "I'm half-lost on the dimensional stuff... this stuff punches way above my weight class right now, but I was remembering something cool about microphones while you were showing this off and we were talking about... well... magic as sound."

Taking a breath he puts his hands together and in front of his face like he's praying, "So... history class last year this British scientist named Faraday came up. Mostly we know him in media because of the Faraday Cage, which blocks all signals because it's a giant electromagnetic net that catches everything before it can pass thr-."

He stops himself, "Babbling. A moment."

With a breath taken he goes on, "So anyways... inside a lot of modern microphones is a coil of wire near a magnet. Sound hits the coil and it react with the magnet and actually creates power. There's microphones out there that are self-sustaining."

Opening his hands back up, he motions to the talky-Naru and the Naruhodo-Amy images still hanging there, "What if what we need isn't a thing. It's a Spell. One we can put on something that everyone carries, and uses their own magic to keep it going, one that goes through the barriers of magic and all of that, and connects A to B to C."

All of this being helped by Hanzo throwing up wiki-links and articles with pictures and little tech demos as it's User runs through his thoughts, "We will need Hinoiri's help because until we have the whole signal math down, we can't create the spell, but you already said it. Your magic works with other magical types... so why doesn't it stand that we can make something that does just that?"

Rashmi Terios has posed:
"...*Yes,*" Rashmi says, after a brief glance to Nicomachea. "Yes yes *yes* this is exactly why I knew you'd be the perfect person to ask. And you're right; we just *can't* really go forward until we have her help, but once we do the rest should be... Okay not *easy,* but, straightforward at least. Once Nicomachea helps me with the spell math, he and Hanzo can run sims, and we can probably get to prototype with just regular spare parts!"

Throwing up her hands in victory, the redhead's glasses shine under the attenuated light of the Barrier-workshop. "We have a design concept! And Nicomachea isn't shooting it down on its core principles!"

Koji Silvia has posed:
Koji nods and then turns around to the literal internet's Wall of stuff that Hanzo is displaying, and he has to blink a few times before swipes at the air and makes it all go away, followed by a quick de-Henshining back to his normal self.

"Honestly," He says after adjusting his glasses in reply, "You had everything you needed, I was just here to fill in the little gaps for Nicomachea-san."

He gives a polite half-bow to the Device.

But then he sighs deeply, "There's one more thing you're going to need. And something every transmitter needs. An antenna. Taller antennas have more output. I literally have no idea how to make an antenna that'll go send signals into another dimension to be picked back up... but I think YOU know someone who might."

His eyes go a little sly, "Chrono."

Rashmi Terios has posed:
Rashmi laughs as Koji drops Chrono's name. "I mean I'll ask, but, likely he'll just be impressed that I could have this idea and get the three of us to make it work," she says, shaking her head. "I love my little goober, but he's an Enforcer, not an engineer. Or even a repairman. It's just not his specialty, y'know?"

Stooping, she starts to gather up the parts -- that, now, Koji can see come with little colored tags tied on them, assigning them to some part in an arcane organizing system -- and carefully placing them back in the open box. Then, the box itself just gets shove into Nicomachea's gem, and somehow fits. "I actually think Hinoiri-chan'll be useful there. It's not just sound that she knows, and I'm pretty sure all her studying of magic has at least a section on conductivity."

Turning, she claps her hands together, and bows deeply. "Also nu-uh, Koji-kun. You don't get to be instrumental in figuring out *how* all this is possible, then turn around and shove all the credit on me. I'm still gonna need you when we hit the prototype and beyond, cos if we're melding all this magic nonsense with Earthstuff then we're gonna need someone who can handle the Earthstuff side."

Koji Silvia has posed:
Koji pushes his hands into his pockets and then grins, "You just wait... you've never experienced my level of skill when it comes to hiding in plain sight. By the time I'm done, I'll just be a background character to your shining moment. The girl who as shyly reading a book in a coffee shop, who had to be dragged into a conversation... hitting the finale of her plot arc by creating a way for all magical persons to talk with each other. Not only is it epic, but it's just the kind of thing that'll get Usagi all gleamy-eyed at how cool you are."

He then leans down and picks up his two toolboxes and turns to leave, "When it comes time to flip the switch, or whatever... I bet you a good ramen dinner that it'll be you in that chair, saying for the first time... Welcome to Mahou-net."

And with a grin on his face, he heads off.