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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Audrik" data-source="post: 7517337" data-attributes="member: 73653">Observer Effect - Session 1eThe agents decided to let Dr. Takagawa rest for now, and Evan suggested passing through the lab before heading out to the Array itself.The lab consisted of seven computer workstations. Only one workstation was currently in use. Jingfei Tsang, as Evan introduced her, was a Chinese-American woman in her thirties, and she seemed so intent on watching the data flowing across her screen that she failed to even acknowledge anyone else was in the lab.Evan explained that Ms. Tsang loved the computer, Dee, like a junkie loved drugs. He gestured to indicate a well-ventilated cabinet near the woman. It certainly seemed unremarkable; a typical rack of processors and motherboards connected to several workstations.Again, as Hua was the experienced DOE Inspector, the other agents let her start. Ms. Tsang answered questions without looking away from the monitor. She told them several interesting things. During the hours it was operational, the lasers of the Array didn’t jitter with purely random movement which would be represented by white noise when plotted as data on a graph and converted to sound, but with strange, unexpected pulses. She indicated the data streaming across her monitor as if that would clarify, but she seemed to be the only one who could make any sense of it.Ms. Tsang continued to volunteer information, consciously or not. She had had Dee generate an audio feed from the data, and she gladly played the result. It was a strange and eerie series of atonal whistles of various high frequencies. It was the same pattern as the tones Evan hummed unconsciously, but the tones were much higher. These tones were also punctuated by very low-frequency pulses that were barely audible to human ears but rattled the computer’s speakers. Clark and de Jaager, who were watching the graphed patterns while listening to the audio, instinctively felt a connection between the two, and they felt a connection to an unseen and unknowable aspect of reality.There was more. While the Array was offline, Dee was powered by the backup generator. The computer showed anomalous readings. The tones were gone, but the pulses were still there. They were much weaker, but they shouldn’t have been there at all. Ms. Tsang explained it meant either there were unexpected energy sources leaking into the carefully isolated sensors, or else the sensors were damaged and reading phantom signals – a point Evan strongly discounted.Whatever the case, when graphed visually, each pulse looked like an energy signature that began slowly, in low frequencies, and rose in speed and frequency over the course of about one second, until it vanished. An audio representation, which Ms. Tsang was all-too-happy to play, sounded like a drumbeat that rose to a thin whistle.De Jaager asked if the Array was still picking up the signals after its reactivation, and Ms. Tsang indicated it was. Oddly enough, they were coming more rapidly now than they were in the morning, and they had more energy.While listening to the exchange, Clark tried to see inside the vents of the computer casing. It looked pretty standard – well, except for the obelisk. It was hard to see it through the vents, but in the center of all the computer parts was what looked like a deep black obelisk, about two feet tall and maybe six inches around. It was run through with veins of softer black where computer cables plugged in.Clark gave de Jaager and Dempsey a directional bro-nod to tell them to take a look inside the machine while he took over questioning. He asked Ms. Tsang to tell him about Dee, and she was quite happy to do so. Olympian Advances had custom-built Dee to present data from elaborate physics experiments in a more-easily comprehensible form. Dee was a crystal-matrix quantum supercomputer. Data was stored in a crystal framework and retrieved by lasers. It was several decades ahead of state-of-the-art. In a way, Dee wasn’t just processing data; it was thinking. It was constantly updating and rewriting itself to adapt the Array to environmental factors and improve its precision and sensitivity. It was also a good thing it wasn’t connected to the internet, because if any computer could start World War III, Dee would be the one.It all sounded like technobabble to Dempsey and Hua, but it made even less sense to Clark and de Jaager. They knew computers, and what Ms. Tsang was describing shouldn’t be possible. It just shouldn’t work. But Ms. Tsang was happy to demonstrate. She spoke into a microphone and asked Dee to explain several difficult things from engine tuning to baking a soufflé at high altitude.The answers Dee gave were detailed and very clear, but it wasn’t enough to convince Clark. He asked if he could direct a question to Dee. Evan tensed up, and Ms. Tsang hesitated, but she was so proud to show off the computer that she allowed it. Clark’s question was interesting: Where was Dr. Klinger right now? Dee’s response sent a chill through the agents.“Dr. Helen Klinger has decohered out of this reality.”Right. Not dead. Not abducted by aliens. Didn’t step out for coffee. Decohered out of this reality. Pretty much any other response would have been preferable.If Evan and Ms. Tsang had heard the response, they didn’t show it. Evan simply gestured to the door leading outside and to the Array while he hummed the same atonal notes as always.</blockquote>

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