Chapter 11 – System Integration and Test
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Research assistant Droll recorded the data from his observation targets.  It was his usual thing.  He ran the tests, collected the data and presented the findings to his boss professor Quant.  It would have been a boring job if it was not for his professor’s unusual habits.   She loved to create and investigate odd contraptions and things.  

Droll had been with professor Quant for close to a hundred cycles now.  She was quirky for a valerite, a race that liked to build things, all kinds of things, even crazy things that could take nearly a million cycles to complete just to prove a point.  However, they usually stuck to non-living things that were unique and sometimes massive, like Dyson spheres.  

Quant on the other hand researched and created biologically based things and contraptions.  She loved to make them.  But unlike many of her fellow inventors, her creations usually died.  Dealing with biology was hard and expensive.  It was a wet science and data was hard to reproduce cleanly.  Most of the time there were just too many random variables.  Nonetheless Quant continued to investigate and create.  Though she worked for University B4BB as a researcher, she was really nothing more than a tinkerer in the eyes of her peers.  Her last publication was over a hundred cycles ago.  It was a foundational theory that Droll knew well, a seminal work that would keep her employed indefinitely.  It was the main reason why he was here and what drove him to join her as a research assistant.

And yet, this time around her creation was an unexpected pain in the ass.  It should have died, but it did not.  It should have instinctively feared him, but it laughed aloud instead.  Quant’s usual monstrosities had only basic animal instincts or primitive intelligence and usually treated their creators like a god.  This one however, had none of those traits.  It even had the audacity to consider him an equal. 

Droll equal to a random thing created from a primordial soup?  What a blasphemous suggestion!  

The specimen even called him a lowly lab technician one time!  He was a proud research assistant for a foundational genius and not some ordinary lab personnel.  It even had the nerve to tell him stories of other research assistants who rode on the coattails of their professors or stole the work of their colleagues and hoped that he was not like them.  It was one of the few times that Droll was truly angered, but when he tried to dispose of the specimen Quant got mad and threatened him with graduation.  And that was something he definitely wanted to avoid.  He was in the doctorate program that was fully paid for by the university and he got to wear shorts and flip-flops to work everyday.  He had no bills, no wife, no kids and no other responsibilities in life beyond the lab, so he could do what he wanted most of the time, like play floor hockey.  Graduation required him to grow up and take on real responsibilities.  So he planned to delay it as long as possible.  

In his current role Droll lived life on easy street, so he had to put up with the primitive lifeform for now.  A lifeform that was created out of a vat of waste product that he bought from an unknown discount reseller in the Darkzone of the IPN.  The reseller even claimed that the product was residual from band 3 players from The Game.   He knew it was a lie, but the price was too good to pass up so he made the deal.  Maybe it was punishment for attempting to be too thrifty with Quant’s research funds.

“Hey specimen #9577-33, I know you can hear me.  I have already collected the necessary information for this test.  Can you stop doing that and proceed to the next test station?”

“No way!  It took me a while to get my rhythm back.  Getting used to this body is not the easiest thing in the world to do.  So I’m playing this until I finish the track list.  I am going to get Expert this time!”

The specimen continued to jump up and down, left and right and move side to side while swinging his arms in the air.  Sometimes the specimen would strike a pose, grab the hand bar or shout out unfamiliar words.  Droll’s translator had yet to fully incorporate the specimen’s language so he could not understand random words unless they were directed at him.  

At first, using this contraption to evaluate the specimen produced good data, but after a while it was just repetitive. Droll had no idea how the specimen could keep from boredom after it kept on doing the same things for hours on end.

“Yeah!” yelled the specimen as it completed a routine.  A subtle clapping sound could be heard from the blue haired female standing next to the cardiovascular test platform the specimen was using.  She was another strange creation, a quasi-bio lifeform created from piconites.

“You did much better this time.”

“Obviously!  My skills are coming back, I might be able to achieve Double Expert on Super Driver by the end of the day.”  shouted the specimen as it strutted around the testing platform.

“Yuni, I am still amazed that you could recreate this machine from memories.  It looks, feels and plays great.”

Though the level of technology that was commonly found throughout the lab was far beyond what the specimen could comprehend, what surprised him the most was what Yuni could build.

“Actually, I used more than your memories to create it.  Your data contained a video of you and your friends using this and similar contraptions.  Also a few training videos were found in the video cache recovered from your YouTube playlist history.  The video from Crazy Japanese Guy Perfects DDR in Osaka provided the most significant data.”

The specimen’s eyes swirled.  That was supposed to be a secret.  He had watched videos and trained for weeks to keep up with his friends.  He was very competitive by nature, so he trained.  He told his friends that he was naturally gifted, so he would feel a little embarrassed if they knew the truth.  And now Yuni just casually blurted out the truth without care, luckily nobody he knew was here.

“I can’t believe you built this DDR machine, it’s even more amazing than the original.”  

The machine was an almost perfect clone of the two player arcade version of Dance Dance Revolution by Konami.  In 1998, Dance Dance Revolution arcade machines launched the worldwide DDR craze that successfully combined video games with dance.  And once the gaming consoles released their version of the arcade game, it became ubiquitous and DDR proliferated to nearly every home that owned a gaming system.

If Konami, the creator of DDR, had seen Yuni’s work they likely would have been very proud of her achievement.  Not only did she recreate the original, but she improved it.  She added custom songs from the specimen’s home world and even a few random rhythm appropriate songs from the IPN’s music stream.  More importantly, due to the specimen’s insistence Yuni added a second mode, a second secret mode.

Initially, the specimen had used the lab’s cardiovascular machine to take performance tests.  However, it complained to Droll and even Quant that their state of the art equipment would fail to draw out the edge case conditions needed to properly evaluate the true limits of the specimen’s capabilities.  Droll soon realized that the crafty specimen was just bored of the tedious routines used to measure it and was just looking for an excuse to have some fun. Regardless it requested a Dance Dance Revolution machine.  Quant and Droll had no idea what that was, so they just gave the requested material to the specimen and its henchman, Yuni, when the specimen said they could build it.  And they did.  

However, Quant found the specimen’s habit of renaming long names into shorter ones odd as he kept on calling the new test equipment a DDR machine instead of by its full name, Dance Dance Revolution Cardiovascular Test Equipment.  She always preferred concise and exact names for the things that she or her lab created instead of using names that could lead others to a misunderstanding of their purpose.

Surprisingly to Droll, the specimen was right.  Once it started to use the DDR test equipment, its reflexes and bodily control improved dramatically.  

Perhaps primitive lifeforms need music to synchronize their biological functions to an audible rhythm in order to improve the rate at which they successfully complete tasks.

He started to plan for a future research paper.

For the specimen, the DDR machine was a necessity for it in order to master its new body.  Plus it knew using it was a really fun way to do it.  Using music, step guides, floor arrows and hand bars it began to improve day by day.  Even better, was the fact that the new test equipment provided a score at the end of the track.  And a score was a metric.  And metrics were paramount to System Integration and Test teams.  With metrics they could evaluate the performance of any unit under test.

Done with its current track the specimen called out to Yuni.

“Yuni let’s play.  You won’t get any better unless you practice.  And no creating algorithms or inference matrices ahead of time just to predict the moves, no cheating allowed.”

Yuni did not respond to the false allegations and walked over and got into position on the DDR machine.

“Yuni it’s your turn to pick the song this time, but no Vogue.

The specimen was tired of dancing like a robot.  But still, Yuni often picked it.  Perhaps she liked Madonna’s Vogue since her initial rigid body movements more closely matched the dance style associated with the song.  However, she was now fluid, so that song was no longer needed.  Well, at least that’s what the specimen thought.

“Then you pick.” replied Yuni as if unphased by anything.

“OK, Let’s go with VORACITY by Myth & Roid, I love that OP.  Plus it’s high energy.”

The specimen paused for a moment and then shouted, “On second thought...  It’s Party Jumpin’ time!”

Yuni gave the specimen a puzzled look.

“Ahem, Yuni mode 2 please.”

Yuni nodded and the DDR machine began its transformation.  The hand bars and the floor arrow buttons disappeared and were replaced with two floor mats filled with colorful LEDs.  The form factor, display screen and signage changed as well.  In the end the sign read DanceRush Stardom.  The specimen claimed to have found this game in his grandpa’s garage one day and played it to no end.  The reason it played DDR games was due to this machine.

The creation of the DDR machine foreshadowed the onslaught of strange arcade game machines that would soon mushroom throughout the lab.  If a passing Japanese tourist did not know any better and visited the lab, they would think that this state of the art research laboratory at one of the most prestigious universities in the Modus was actually just a clone of a multi-story arcade building commonly found in Akihabara, Japan.

One purpose of the lab was to perform Integration and Test services.  They would test, measure and validate the system level performance of a specimen, which was done earnestly.  But somehow the specimen turned the lab into something else, the specimen’s fun cave.

Party Jumpin’  selected, are you ready?” inquired Yuni.

“Let’s do this! I’m going for a Perfect Full Combo!  I’m going to beat your score of 99.558 this time.” 

“Ready….Go!” announced the machine.

The music started to thump and both players began to move seamlessly.  They stepped in unison and danced to the beat, yet each player added their own exotic interpretation to the performance.  They transitioned into sly shuffle steps, jumped, spun, posed and continued to synchronize their fast movements with the thunderous pace of KO3’s Party Jumpin' song.  

While no facial expression was seen on Yuni, a broad smile was found on the specimen.  They synchronized well and had fun.

Droll walked away shaking his head in defeat.  He had given up long ago on trying to convince the pair that test subjects should be following orders and not ignoring them, so he knew it was pointless.  However for him, there was an unexpected bonus.  This break would give him some time to run off and play floor hockey before Quant found out he was free.  He grasped the moment and quickly ran off in delight.

 

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