Fandom High School

Today was gonna be...

...Today was gonna be interesting. Sure, the Alliance was making it pretty clear they didn't want Kaidan talking about the Reapers, and he was... well, he wasn't happy with that. But right now there was little he could do about it. On the other hand? He was also the only Systems Alliance representative on the island.

And people did need to be told. Maybe even moreso here, when they still had a couple of centuries to prepare, if anything.

"I'm going to show you a movie today," he started. "Next week you'll get to finish and show-off your drones, but this week... we're looking a little deeper into synthetic lifeforms where I'm from. This is a short documentary covering everything we know about the geth and the recent geth war. Afterwards... we're going to talk for a bit."

He'd picked this movie for a reason-- after the initial discussions about the geth and what they were, it was going into the war with Saren, which meant it was going to talk about Sovereign. Which was important.

It also meant Kaidan was forced to listen as the narrator talked about Shepard in the present tense, like he wasn't-- gone. By the end of it, he was rubbing at his arm, feeling like something was missing-- something he hadn't felt this strong, this powerfully, for... at least a couple of weeks now.

He coughed.

"Okay," he said, once it was done. "So, I'm not supposed to be talking to you about this - my superiors would rather I don't, anyway. They just don't happen to be your superiors. But I want to talk about it. You see this ship here?" He rewound the tape until they got to that giant, disturbing image of Sovereign approaching the Citadel. "Sovereign? Yeah, we found out it's not just a ship. It was actually one big synthetic lifeform... and it wasn't too happy about the idea of any of us living past the day."

He sat back. "We've been talking a lot about making these things like it's... like it's something we've invented, like we were the first people to do it. We're not. This thing was living proof that synthetics existed well before humanity did. Not only that, but there might be synthetics out there that can reprogram organic people like ourselves the same way we can reprogram them."

He rubbed at his forehead. "And I don't know if your galaxy is going to wind up anything like my own," he said, "but just take it from me, this is worth looking into. This is worth studying. This is worth discovering. Go out and figure out how things work, and how they used to work, and, hell, how we can make them work in a way that's friendly instead of hostile, because one of these days it might be our lives on the line and we'll be caught with our pants down."

His eyes darted briefly to Victor, but he didn't say anything.

"Okay," he said instead. "That's it. You can stick around and work on your drone or get out of here."

"Last week, we gauged your, uh, experiences with technology," Kaidan began. "Obviously I'll be working from examples from my world, so I thought... maybe a lesson on mass effect physics might be useful. I'll talk about that for a bit, then we'll talk about some simplistic mechs, and you can use the last fifteen minutes to start work on your drone."

The classroom had been appropriately outfitted with the materials and gadgets required. He figured most of these kids knew their way around. "You're allowed to help each other out," he added.

Then he took a breath, and dove right in. "We discovered mass effect physics... just a couple of decades ago. Until that point, we thought FTL - faster than light - travel was completely impossible, never mind a lot of the tricks in space craft maneuvering and biotics that we know today. In fact, my people are using mass effect fields in a wide range of ways these days."

He smiled briefly. "Essentially, we rely on a substance called element zero. Eezo's rare, but it's worth getting, because it has an interesting quirk: if exposed to a current, it can change mass. A positive current increases mass, a negative current decreases it. Basically, we can make things heavier or lighter... and that way, we affect gravity, because gravity is the force exerted by any body dependent on its mass. So you can see why it's very useful."

He activated his omni-tool by running his hand over his other arm. "One area in which we employ mass effect fields is production," he said, "creating alloys, for example. Which brings me to the topic of mechs - some of you would know 'em as plain robots. We use mechs for a variety of jobs, like running security or helping us doing the heavy lifting."

A few presses of the button, and an image appeared. "This is a LOKI mech. It's designed to resemble humans - though not too closely. You might've heard about the uncanny valley effect, which inspired designers to stay away from trying to build too human-like bots. Anyway, LOKI mechs are there to run guard duty or security."

"They're simple, easy to build, and they can handle a whole variety of tasks. Not just that, but they're easy to network, and maybe even easier to program - so they're ideal for new colonies that need a defense force fast." He paused. "Of course, because their programming is so simple, they're easy to fool and easy to take down, too."

He waved the image away.

"Another example. The FENRIS mech. They're equipped with extra sensory equipment--" One wave of his omni-tool, and the image displayed some details on that equipment. "They are supposed to replace the class drug-sniffing dog, but they're also equipped with defensive measures just in case. Again, though, their simplistic programming means they're not always as effective as they could be, and they're easy to hack into."

If you were Kaidan, anyway, or a quarian.

"That's just a few ways mechs can be designed and used to be effective support tools," Kaidan continued. "These are relatively simple. No AI, and only rudimentary VI. Imagine a computer on legs with a set of hands and a short script plugged into its processor." Beat. "Actually, a lot of the programs used in mechs like this evolved from the discipline of programming behavior for characters in computer games."

He waved the schematic away.

"But that's all for today," he said. "If you want, you can come over and check some of the construction schematics--" They'd been censored to keep the kids from building anything quite like a LOKI, though, "--and otherwise you're free to start working on your drone. If you need any help, you know where to find me."