Mel and Fran left the mall and walked the 10 minutes to the College main building. They passed some workmen erecting a new sign out front. Only the bottom part was visible, it read “Home to Minerva - 3D augmented reality investigation environment" over an idealised mystical temple fading from photo realistic to wire frame “sponsored by VRlife and Institute of Forensic studies” the sub text read. Mel whistled “It looks like they got the sponsorship” . “What’s that all about? “ Fran asked. “It’s a multidisciplinary approach to evidence collection for crime scenes with spin offs into environment mapping and exploration. The forensics lot wants rapid scene mapping, the Computer bods are helping with the 3D mapping etc, and a bunch from the engineering departments are working on a dozen different drones. You have got to see the underwater cave mapping demos on youtube by MIT I think, So cool! Literally just like the video game mapping”. Fran sighed knowingly "Yes of course" and hurried to keep up.
Being Saturday there are a trickle of people entering and leaving the main entrance as Mel shouldered open one of the doors to enter the entrance hall. Fran rushed in to catch the door before it closed, struggling with her bag, and hurrying to follow Mel to the back desk manned (literally) by a big guard reading a newspaper.
“HI Shawn!” greeted Mel in an overly loud chipper tone with a big cheeky grin.
The Guard looks up momentarily, something like a brief annoyance and then a smile flickers before returning to neutral expression passes over his face. One eyebrow rises questioning for a second before he returns to read the paper stubbornly ignoring the greeting.
“My friend and I have an appointment with Minerva Scanning in 10 minutes” in a little innocent girl voice and a stereotypical little girl toe twisting action, hamming it up bigtime.
Fran laughs in disbelief for a moment at this adorable speech, obviously meant to play with the big guy sympathies.
“Ask me properly “ he rumbles, eyes still determinedly riveted to the paper.
“Aww Woosley , you're no fun!” Mel grinned exaggeratedly.
“Cut the ‘Shawn’ stuff will you please” Woosley pleaded “You know what the guys are like if they get it in their heads, I’ll never hear the end of it”
“Hey ‘Shawn the sheep’ is a hero of mine!” Mel grinned evilly.
“I’m not letting you in!” Woosley stated and went back to reading his paper.
“Ok , sorry, I won't mention it ever again …. Promise!. Besides you pulled my ass out of those vines strangling embrace last week. I do owe you. ”
Fran looked at Mel questioningly , Mel leaned over to Fran conspitorily, “We were dealing with some evil gnomes last week as a joint operation with Woosley’s pack” Mel said quietly.
“The boys were impressed with you and Diane's ninja style moves” Woosley agreed. “You gotta have a lot of respect for not throwing the magic around near that bloody crystal, Your team is not known for its restraint ”. “We can do it the hard way if needed,” Mel replied with a smile.
Woosley grunted in agreement and actually smiled.
"Any way you can go through, but you can’t cut through the Quad, The Engineering group are racing drones through an obstacle course. Those are bloody menaces!” Woosley grumbled as he buzzed them through the small waist height gate.
A few moments later together they pushed open the double door to the main corridor. To the left were a few windows and doors to the administration offices, to the right was a wall of glass, with sunlight streaming in, looking out into the Quad. In the far corner 3 people with various VR headsets and controllers were gesticulating as 3 heavily repaired drones sped around the impromptu obstacles of 3 large diameter plastic pipes, piled up cardboard boxes, office furniture and other assorted stuff…
Faint swearing could be heard from the 2nd person just before a drone barreled into the window. The thud startled both Fran and Mel. Looking up just in time to see the bits of drone thud and clatter to the ground.
Mel chottled "looks like someone has got their work cut out putting that back together."
“Hey, It’s Kim!” exclaimed Fran with a smile.
“Oh I have an idea!” whispered Mel … digging out some striking dark glasses out of her bag as she ran down the corridor and round the corner with Fran mildly cursing to catch up.
Mel put the glasses on and opened the door to the Quad near the pilots and a pouting Kim.
“So how are the Spy drones going Q?” asked in her faux posh British spy accent.
“Oh very low key spy attire! How are you doing Mel?” Kim said half laughing at Mel.
“We are good thank you” continued the charade looking around , “ We are here to see …” air quoting “The Caretaker” in a solemn voice looking down her nose at the obstacle course . Then giggled breaking character , “What are you all doing here?” Mel exclaimed. Kim smiled. “We are training Minervers AI-pilot to fly the drones … although at the moment it's only learning how to crash, not fly, by me … it’s sooo fun tho! Flying at breakneck speed with a roaring beast! … It’s almost as if you're a fairy!”. In a more serious tone Kim continued as she said “Hi” to the amused Fan who had just caught the end of those remarks, Kim continued “ Poppi just got a Government grant confirmed and permission to map the latest tombs in Egypt with drones. All the departments are just so excited! Only issue is the drones have to be ready to fly in Egypt in 12 weeks!. They have decided that no one is to go inside the tombs except drones. That way they don’t have to let people inside unless there is a very good reason, too much looting for the Egyptians Department of Antiquities liking in the past. It’s a proof of concept at the moment but it should allow recording and exploration without people messing up the archeology … although they will probably shoot the drones down if they keep crashing the way I fly.”
“Practice makes perfect! Or at the very least your ass attached to your body” Mel intoned imitating her combat instructor. “Oh I know him.. short guy with steel abs I’d like to ….” “Yes Kim , Jared is a great combat teacher. I can say he’s saved my butt so many times with his training” Mel ended with a whisper “He’s also spoken for. She is Scary with a capital S, Kim, I met her once, I feel she’s some kind of government black ops specialist “ somberly. “She doesn't appear to be with any of our ‘Clubs’. So I stopped asking anyone about anything”
“OK, On that downer let me take you to ‘The Caretaker’ he’s supervising the IT and Engineering peeps with an upgrade to ‘The Scanner’ “ Kim smiled and winked at Fran.
As Kim led the way back to the corridor and along to the Minerva Suite double doors. Fran whispered to Mel “ The Scanner? ”. “Yep, it’s going to be interesting … “ Mel smiled and gently shoulder bumped her friend.
They passed the small auditorium set up with rows of staggered seats, in an amphitheatre style, a big projection screen and then the “Control Room” that looked like it had 6 stations for people, each with keyboard, mouse and multiple screens surrounding them . “Looks like a very generic SciFi Control Center “ Fran remarked , “It’s a very multifunction Control room “ Kim smiled and agreed as they continued following her.
They approached a door marked “3D Scanner” and it was propped open by a large bright red fire extinguisher. Kim tuted disapprovingly. She leaned into the room and raised her voice “Is there a reason the door is propped open, The fire marshall disapproves you know!“.
Half way down a row of equipment cabinets on the far wall 4 people were trying to look over the shoulder of a 5th person in a cabinet, with wires dangling out of it and a few wisps of smoke drifting up as they worked. They pulled back and started closing the doors.
“Yeah I know, The resident geniuses managed to swap the polarity on the new 3D Imager module and fried one of the scanner's power supplies. On a plus note we know the transient detectors work and protect everything else for real!” the older guy said. “We had the doors open so we could get rid of the small amount of magic smoke the PSU let out. You were right to get a local override on the smoke detectors or we would have had the Fire service knocking on our door. “
“So John, are we good to go?” Kim asked the older guy, wandering over to a small locked panel. “Yes, the detectors are clear here now.” he replied. Kim punched in a code and the door opened. “Looks good from here too, Can I clear the alarms and overrides ?” “Go ahead, you got great timing, I was just going to call you.” “Right now we have the repair in place give it a test”
Everyone stepped back behind a waist height railing. The floor was marked with a square pattern of dots each an inch across. A couple of red lights started flashing and a low chime sounded followed by an announcement “Scan area is being checked for obstructions”. In the centre of the area was a small round pedestal about 6 inches (15cm) tall, on the pedestal was a weird looking piece of sculpture about 2 feet (60cm) tall and 1 foot in diameter (30cm). It had various textures and bands of colour all over it in no discernible pattern. A pair of arms with  sensors on descended from the ceiling very slowly, then with a small jolt they started to rotate painfully slowly around the pedal stool, illuminating the sculpture and the room with alternating lines of coloured light . After completing 1 revolution the lights changed to a pale yellow and a higher chime sounded followed by a vocal announcement “Scan area has been confirmed Clear, data acquisition will start in 5 seconds”. The countdown continued and upon reaching zero the arms started rotating about the sculpture slowly and then accelerated to a very high speed, With every revolution the light being projected by the arms changed colour.
“Errr…. John, that's a lot faster than last time!” Mel raised her voice in worry above the whooshing noise the arms made. “Don’t worry, this is the calibration and self test run! “John shouted above the noise ”We have had every department contribute to the scanning sensor heads but it all needs testing so they made the test Sculpture. It’s shaped to provide reference measurements and embedded with various materials etc” He stepped closer to Fran and Mel “Some body decided that scanner teams needed a challenge and buried a 555 timer chip and an eprom in there somewhere, The first scanner team to identify the locations of the chips wins a keg of beer or equivalent. And! The Dean then said whoever can read the contents of the eprom will have bragging rights forever - and a plaque. The thing is the Dean didn’t know that the new deputy head of IT also has a phd in physics from MIT and is helping one of the physics teams. I give them 4 months and the Dean will have to announce the winning team.”
After a minute the scanner turned off the colored lights and slowly wound down. Another announcement proclaimed “All results are within parameters, Consult Log 235712 for calibration values”
When the arms finally stopped they folded back up to the ceiling.
John then announced in a loud clear voice “Ok thank you for your help everyone, now please clear the room, I have a very ordinary 3d measurement scan to get done… no spectators please!”