Jack nodded, entirely forgetting - as he usually did - that the driver couldn't see his face. He loaded up a couple of preset still sims. He'd entirely forgotten Vala wasn't a pro who'd been doing this for years, as this was a pretty common request. The simulated squid were clustered into more dense little gatherings, not unlike they actually traveled as a group at times, but behind those clusters remained a few scattered squid dotted around, and he included several clusters floating at various heights in the air. Each set was assembled just a little bit differently, some more loose groups, some with a larger squid, indicative of a boss somewhere mixed in. "They'll start moving a bit." He added, "Melee weapons seem easier to test when the Calamar are moving a bit."
Jack continued to adjust the sim, as she tried different weapons, loading up the new weapons as she got through the ones she was already testing. When she'd made her way through all of the weapons with the squid either completely stationary or moving slightly for effect, he loaded up a full simulation. An automated bioengineer was assigned, which would keep the squid force off of her, respond to basic commands to shift the Calamar slightly, and notify her if any of the squid were getting close to the city. Otherwise, a sensor with red dots would tell her where the larger squid were. Despite all the work that had gone into simulating real Calamar biology, very little had gone into coding automated bioengineers, and for the most part they lacked not only the personal touch and style of a real bioengineer, but also the ability to do anything especially complex. Jack supposed this made sense, since it was better for mech drivers to be trained on hard mode rather than having it easier, but he rather suspected the practice was in part because the people smart enough to try that kind of coding were more concerned with other things. Like him with his actual mech designs.
Besides the shield, he gave Vala only three weapons, based on her feedback and the way she seemed to feel about them, and they just barely managed not to overlap on one another because of their configuration. He was sort of looking forward to watching her full fight.
~~~
Aemer had spent most of her time in the back practice room for what felt like a month now. She half-wished Jack had been a Calamar researcher instead of a stupid mech designer, so that he would've been able to modify her bioengineer sim to try different things, or even discuss theories with. Instead, she'd been forced to go into her books. Old textbooks and autobiographies on Calamar she hadn't touched in years had been dragged out of her old workshelf and were strewn haphazardly around the room, open and covered in notes, though those were mostly old ones, but she'd also printed articles from actual scientific journals from her personal device, and spent some of her significant savings from being a reserve on newer Calamar theory books as well. Those too, had been heavily marked up with red pen. The white board from the other practice room had been dragged in, so that there were two in the room. One had the word "Squid Frenzy" in giant letters circled several times over. A number of other words were scattered across both boards, ideas circled and with arrows pointing to one concept or another.
The word "blacked out" was written multiple times, as well as "syncing" modified with various other words and question marks. Aemer was on the floor, reading through another article, muttering to herself. The contents of her research and her multiple attempts at different things in the sim had proven less than useful so far. The additional little tidbit Vala had let slip about the Calamar having frenzies much more commonly, and simply organizing after they were done and flying away, suggested there was something necessary about them. Necessary enough at least, that squid didn't mind doing them at intervals, which they'd never learnt before because groups that went into frenzies in the middle of battles were typically wiped out easily by the end. But then add to that, the fact that the connection between bioengineers blacked out when the frenzies happened, that mech drivers were left completely alone, but bioengineers were attacked, and that they couldn't seem to stop the frenzies in a fight, but that happened infrequently... there had to be some time period that it worked in. While Calamar were absolutely murderous towards anything that moved, no one had ever seen a Calamar feed, and the textbook she'd grown up with had said that baby Calamar attacked and ate each other when put together. It was why they'd had to be isolated for proper study. Calamar were notoriously difficult to keep alive. Trapping one was difficult enough, and years of research had finally led to the development of a sedative gas that would only work if a Calamar were completely submerged in it, but for whatever reason, both children and adult Calamar died within months of captivity. The longest anyone had ever been able to keep an adult alive was 3 months, and the longest a baby, 2 years, without it ever reaching adulthood. They'd attempted to feed the babies to the adults, as feeding babies to one another seemed necessary for their survival at all, but both had utterly ignored each other.
Since she wasn't sure about it yet, (and also because Calamar researchers terrified Aemer for many reasons she was never ever admitting to herself) Aemer had kept her theory to herself, but she was now certain squid frenzies were part of the Calamar life cycle. It was a theory that had been proposed before, but there'd never been enough information about frenzies for anyone to go past that vague thought. But if it was not only a part of the Calamar life cycle, but a regular occurrence necessary to their survival, maybe that explained why they'd never been able to keep one alive before. In the past month or so, she'd tried to shutter her connection with the Calamar several times to see if she could induce this "sync black out" that seemed to accompany squid frenzies, but that had never once worked, though that could have been a part of the limitations of the simulation. She'd carefully pored through autobiographical accounts to see if there seemed to be some kind of trigger, but all she'd gotten was a certain "feeling" most bioengineers seemed to describe right before that was entirely undefinable. That, of course, made perfect sense considering most interactions with the Calamar were difficult to describe as more than "feelings" if they weren't precise thoughts, but if she could just understand where the feeling came from... how it worked, but no, nothing. All she could find was that the frenzy seemed to start from one member, and ripple out in waves, connection going dark before a member would be attacked. Which particular squid it started from, no one had had the presence of mind to apparently try to keep track of, as frenzies were such rare events in battles. If she could get a simulated black out that would work well for her study, but the point was that black outs weren't well characterized enough to code into sims. It was a nightmare of information she felt like she was one step away from understanding. The best she'd gotten was an approximate timeline of possible frenzies, and even that was a guess that had taken her HOURS, by carefully looking up and writing down the timeline of all records of Calamar attacks (with the frenzies starred) that had ever occurred, and that had been a nightmare to get, as there wasn't a single simple record of it.
She'd mostly muted her personal device, as even the slightest communiques had been distracting her thoughts, but there'd been a few people (outside of major government and military announcements) who were put on her exception list. Only three people, actually, and while Jack was one of them, he never bothered her when he knew she was on a research spree, like the one she'd been on to develop that fancy new trick she'd debuted with Vala the other day. The other consisted of one person who never ever contacted her though she wished he would more often, and one person who only called her when something was terribly wrong. That being the case, when her personal device pinged loudly, Aemer scrambled out of her thoughts, and reached for it in a panic. "Myra?! What's wrong?" She shrieked, before checking who it was that had messaged her.
There was a grim silence on the other end, and she could feel her heart smashing in her chest, as she looked this way and that, trying to orient herself to the real world after hours in her research hole, and praying that no one had died, considering Myra usually came out and spoke quickly. "Myra?" She asked again, anxiously.
"Aemer. Check your screen." Said a quiet, toneless male voice. Aemer started and actually looked at the name glowing on her screen. She stared at it, entirely uncertain how to respond to the person who had never once voluntarily messaged her before. She continued to stare at it, opening her mouth to try and say something, then finding it utterly impossible to squeak out a word. "Aemer?" Jensen said.
"Yes!" She finally squeaked. "Uhm- uh- why are you- did somebody die?"
There was an awkward silence for half a second, before Jensen asked, "Why was that your first conclusion?"
"Well you've never called me before."
"This was definitely a mistake." She heard him mutter.
"No it wasn't!" She said, hastily. "I mean, well, what do you want?" Aemer could feel her spirits rising, her disbelief being replaced with an almost disturbing giddiness mixed with confusion. It was not a set of emotions she experienced often, but Jensen Miles was a special case to her.
There was another long silence, and Aemer giggled awkwardly, heart thumping in her chest for an entirely different reason than it had when she'd thought it was Myra. The sound seemed to signal to Jensen that he'd best finally say something, and with the deepest resignation she'd ever heard someone ask her this question (and that was saying quite a lot), he managed to sigh out, "Can we meet?"
She jolted upright, and bolted for the door. "Yes. When? Right now? If righ-"
"Tomorrow. I need to get my notes organized." His voice cut through her scrambling. She knew, of course, that his statement meant this was about work. That didn't bother her. Well, it wasn't that it didn't bother her, but she was very used to Jensen only contacting her for work, and he hadn't done so in over three years - not since he'd gotten on the battlefield and gained some real experience. The only times she'd seen him since they'd stopped having regular practice sessions together when he turned 17 had been when they'd had to attend meetings or training exercises together. She'd been disturbed to find that time never seemed to change her opinion of him, not that she'd really expected it to. Aemer had always known when she wanted something, and that her mind wasn't easily changed about it. She'd kept a keen eye on his career since then, as keen as she could without raising any eyebrows. Though that one time she'd heard that ass Sally Pritchard call him a robot, she'd punched her in the nose, but she'd been talking shit about bioengineers in general, so most people had just assumed it was Aemer being her regular old crazy Aemer self about it.
"Home?"
He sighed. "If you wish."
"What would you prefer?" She asked with bated breath, half-imagining them at a cafe, or- no way in hell he was ever letting her into his home, but a girl could dream.
After another moment's pause, he said, "I'll arrive tomorrow at 8am. We just need to talk." And hung up. He always had preferred morning meetings. Get the most nerve-wracking things out of the way first. He'd accidentally said so directly once (and then proceeded to turn bright red). But Aemer didn't mind. She'd rather he find her slightly unnerving for very different reasons than most people did, than have no opinion of her at all. Jensen saw most people in a cool way, and as far as she figured, had many many people he felt nothing at all about, and at least she'd never been in that category.
Still standing near the door, she snapped out of her haze and looked back at the room. He'd said he was just coming for a talk, but she'd gotten so used to him coming by for dual sims, it was hard to imagine him not popping in during his visit. This was the room with the dual bioengineer sim in it. The books and papers thrown willy-nilly around the room, white boards covered in her incomprehensible scrawl surrounding conspiracy-theory type strings of ideas. She was covered in ink of various colors, wasn't quite certain when she'd last taken a shower, and hadn't slept properly in weeks.
"Shit."