13496/The Lessons of Insects

The Lessons of Insects
Date of Scene:	04 December 2022
Location:	Rockefeller State Park Preserve
Synopsis:	Nadia and Janet go for a little walk in the woods to discuss insects and how to build a thriving company.
Cast of Characters:	Janet van Dyne, Nadia Pym-van Dyne

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Janet van Dyne has posed:
"God I hate nature," Janet mutters. She stops to wipe some dust from her boots-- designer hiking boots which are at least notionally designed for heavy use-- and flicks more of the same from her shirt. Designer jeans, flannel shirt, it's a look that Eddie Bauer will probably steal the second someone spots Janet coming back into New York from an excursion upstate.

She and Nadia are relatively deep into Rockefeller Park. Well, the part of the park that's accessible to people of sufficient means and interest. No scrubby campsites, no hourly cabins. For five thousand dollars a week there is luxury to be had in them thar hills, and Janet and Nadia are no more than fifteen minutes away from a world-class pedicure and gourmet food.

"The only reaosn we're out here is safety. There are as many bugs per square foot in New York, trust me, but you don't want to piss off a bunch of 'em while you're uptown near the Metro," she advises NAdia

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia has no such hang ups about the great outdoors or dirt, SCIENCE! can often get dirty after all and when you grow up in a secret bunker wide open spaces take on new meaning. Even two years later she has a deep appreciation for just how expansive the world beyond those cold suffocating walls can be.

    Nadia's usual borderline punk-ish slightly gothy attire has been replaced for something a bit more practical for this excursion. One should always use the right tool for the job Bobbi says and Nadia tries to, even if she often likes to wear her lab coat like a cape instead of an actual protective garment. Today she's dressed in a warm red and black plaid flannel shirt, over a pair of comfy black jeans, and sturdy hiking boots. Even if she's given up her usual attire, she's still in her usual colors.

    "Safety first!" Nadia agrees trudging after Janet, no doubt some of her friends might give her odd looks at that statement, given her track record with common sense, but she tries. "New York bugs are also usually cockroaches." She makes a face. Nadia genuinely likes most bugs in a way few girls do, but roaches are still kind of icky, even if they are amazingly adapted for survival and fascinating study in evolution.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"I have never found a good use for cockroaches," Janet agrees. "I'm sure they provide some kind of ...essential biological service, but I could be fucked if I care about it. Kill 'em all, let God sort them out," she quips. Like most New Yorkers, cockroaches are just one of those unmitigable facts of life one has to adapt to.

Still, for her dislike of nature, Janet starts to relax as they head deeper into the woods. With an unerring skill she leads Nadia to a nest of honeybees, staring up at the hive with an expression of some deep sympathy and contentment. Even in winter, the hive radiates a sense of... completeness? Home?

"Your dad always thought the ant thing was a very unproductive sidetrack," Janet says finally, and looks over at Nadia. "Not that he didn't use it. God knows the ant colonies have saved our asses more than once. The receiver he designed, it is meant to provide interface with any member of the order Hymenoptera." Janet's more reminding Nadia of things she already knows, than providing new information. "Your dad found ants easier to work with. But I like wasps and bees."

She holds a hand out and bees start emerging from the hive. Grumbling, slugging, but reactive-- the bees bumble over to Janet's hand, sniffing and buzzing. Once sure she's not in danger they retreat to the hive again, to resume their hibernation.

"The shrinking is a handy thing to have but talking to bugs is even better. Bugs can tell you so much about the world around you. They have no individual fear. No self-preservation. You can't take on a hardened underground bunker with a whole army of soldiers, but send a few hundred thousand insects into the air vents and you can flush terrorists out like vermin."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Talking to the order Hymenoptera is notably not a capability Nadia has innately, never having been subject to his genetic experiments. What the Red Room did to her in infancy with the Widow serum is another story. It is in fact a capability she only acquired within the last year or so when Hank gifted her with a modernized and improved version of his own insect communications technology, a simple hair band from which extend a pair of retractable deely bopper antennae. A hair band which Nadia is naturally wearing today.

    As if on cue when Janet begins calling the bees, the adorable looking antennae begin to extend from the hair band as Nadia tries to listen to what is going on the conversation. "I've managed to call a few swarms to harass opponents when I've been outnumbered." Nadia offers, her uses of insect communication to date being nowhere near the scale Janet is describing. She's clearly taking mental notes and extrapolating further possibilities. "Oh! I also managed to communicate with my teammate Gar telepathically when he turned into a swarm of bees!"

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"It's not talking to them that's the hard part," Janet advises Nadia with a warning tone. "The challenge is getting them to do what you want. 'Attack everyone' is terribly unhelpful if you're rolling deep with the whole squad online. Unless you're in a sealed suit it's hard to deal with a wasp climbnig up your nose."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia looks up at the hive nodding slowly, "Yeah, getting them to do complex actions is hard. The best I've been able to do is get them to swarm specific targets and not my friends." She looks between Janet and the hive watching the sluggish winter bees still obeying the commands and treating Janet is if she were their queen.

    "I definitely do not want a wasp to climb up my nose!" Nadia agrees. And she's not sure she'd want that for anyone else's nose either. That seems extremely unpleasant to the less lethally inclined Waspette. "Sooo... how /do/ you get them to do more precise tasks like that?"

Janet van Dyne has posed:
There is a little careful concern for the last bees as they sneak up into the hive. Janet touches the tree with her fingertips in an oddly affectionate gesture and catches Nadia looking at her during the little gesture. The socialite rolls her eyes and snatches her hand back a little too quickly. "Don't look at me like that, bees are cuddly," she mumbles under her breath.

"Anyway." She takes a beat to push her hair back with her fingertips, accomplishing little more than rearranging it the exact same way it was before. "One thing that helps a lot is pheremones. How you smell. It's why I made you switch shirts with me at the facility. It-- well, for me, anyway." She taps her index fingers together, eyes narrowing in thought as she frames her words.

"I'm not just sending commands. I'm touching the hive... awareness? Brain?" Janet hedges, and taps the base of her skull under her ear where the implant was installed. "For your dad, ants are like... legos. No, um, they're like little constructon workers," she amends. "Y'know-- highly regimented, give them architectural plans, eins vie eins vie," she says with a German accent, and chops the edge of one hand against her palm. "And they're great for that. Ants can do a lot more than wasps can. But I've always felt like I got better mileage out of them by trying to appeal to the collective than just inject like, straight-up orders into it. Y'know?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    "They definitely are." Nadia agrees about the bees. It's not something most people can appreciate due to the size difference, but when you get right up and personal they're like fuzzy buzzy balls of fluff, that can also sting the shit out of anything they don't like. And in that light Janet's affinity for them makes perfect sense.

    "Pheromones." Nadia absently touches the shirt. "I don't think my antennae can do that." And yet she is already considering how she might accomplish it, something to consult with Caitlin and Gwen about later. "It sounds like people really. Most people don't like being ordered around, but if you actually take the time to convince them they're far more likely to do something for you." A beat. "And many also seem to be motivated primarily by pheromones." Dating still remains one of those things Nadia hasn't quite wrapped her head around.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"No, mine can't, either," Janet tells Nadia. "It's practice. Early on I used to cheat with scent canisters, but you can control how your skin and sweat smells with the right diet and mindsight and some light chemical modifiers. Fear sweat is different than exercise or, uh, other kinds of sweating," she remarks.

"So if you want them to do something constructive, you need to figure out what combination of thoughts and pheremones do the trick and put them into a building mode. If you want them to fuck up someone's day, you need to experiment a little so your anger is being expressed as a scent as well as an imperative."

She looks around, shivers and hugs her stomach. "I don't want to wake up a hive right now though, the winter will kill 'em. We can go to one of the ant ranches at a college for entomology and test it out a bit there. Start with black ants, they're pretty harmless and if they bit you it's just a little pinprick instead of a full on sting.'

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Careful mental notes are taken about everything Janet says. She hadn't thought about just controlling the natural human pheromones in that way. Nadia had definitely been thinking more along the line of scent cannisters or possibly modifying her genetic code, you never know with her.

    "Yeah, let them sleep." Nadia agrees, she can sympathize with the bees. Even if she has made progress in trying to achieve a more healthy lifestyle, she still hates being woken up. "I actually have had a little bit of practice with ants already. When Dad gave me the headband, he also asked one of his winged ants to go with me and help me out. The giant ant wandering around my lab was definitely an adjustment for some of the other GIRLs at first, but Foss is adorable, so they all warmed up to him eventually. Sometimes I also try to talking to the bugs in the Insect House at the zoo! An entire ranch of Ants sounds pretty cool though!" How did she not know these were a thing? These colleges have clearly been holding out on her! Orrrr possibly because she didn't go through the formal education system. One of those things.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet nods encouragingly and tilts her head back up the trailhead to where the car is parked. She loops her arm around Nadia's elbow, partly for companionship and partly for stability.

"Pym Industries donates a pretty good chunk of the funding for the entomology department at Columbia," she clarifies. "And we do grants, also, for interesting projects. I haven't really come up with anything that's like, *commercially* viable, but it helps refine the function of the transmitters and adapting our nervous systems to them. Maybe that's why I've always felt more comfortable with them than Hank does; I was a lot more into the 'whatever works' camp rather than just being, like, academically interested. It's a little more of a PITA to do software updates to this," she says, touching her skull again, "but I feel like the direct nerve integration gives me better..." she chews her lip, thinking. "Feedback, I guess. Or a better interface with the colony.'

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia makes a mental note to dig more into both cool university projects and the various side projects of Pym Industries. At some point, when she's not off exploring other planets or ducking the agents of shadowy international espionage networks.

    The arm looping is embraced wholeheartedly and Nadia leans against Janet as they walk. "A direct internal organic interface is always going to be more efficient than an external hardware based one." Nadia agrees very scientifically. "And there is definitely something to be said for whatever works. A lot of cool stuff isn't really 'commercially viable'." She really doesn't like thinking in those terms. Just getting her to do the book keeping for GIRL was a feat, and one that still often gets pawned off on poor Vivian.

    "I kind of straddle that line with my approach to Science, some people are very quick to tell you what is possible and what isn't, but there's always a way even if that way sometimes looks nothing like anything we're accustomed to. I don't believe anything is truly impossible."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
Janet smiles ruefully and pats Nadia's wrist. "God, you sound like Hank," she mutters, and laughs breezily. "Look-- money makes the world go 'round, and it definitely pays for grants and research costs," she says. "In an ideal world we'd be able to throw billions into any and all research anyone does. But we live in the world we live in," she says philosophically. "We have to pick and choose our battles. Some of the projects that bored Hank the most literally prop up the annual budget at PymTech. You can *often* pursue what looks interesting, but you've seen yourself what happens when you give scientists carte blanch. You do it once and you get inundated with research requests for budget-breaking purchases that have no real ROI."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    "It's almost like we're related or something." Nadia grins at Janet, apparently she has picked up sarcasm. "Then, I guess we just need to change the world we live in." There is a pause. "I mean shake up society, not go live on another planet." She clarifies. "Though that could be neat, too."

    She thinks, "So, all I need to do is make something that everyone wants to buy, and then I can do whatever I want?" That is apparently her takeaway from boring projects propping up PymTech's annual budget. "You know, we could always just go grab some asteroids, those are full of minerals that are rare on Earth."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Right, then you devalue the gold standard and ruin the global economy," Janet remarks breezily. "Plus, you need an extrasolar craft that can make sublight runs on a budget, mining equipment, personnel, smelting gear, and everything else that goes into making metals. Not to sound like a broken record, but--" she gives Nadia a mischevious smile. "Your dad looked into this. Hell if all you do is read his journals and look for 'Not Financially Viable', you'll save yourself *years* of blown budgets," she advises the younger woman.

"The best inventions are about quality of life improvement. Entertainment and media are a close second. I mean, people used to use these analog things called 'cassette decks' to listen to portable music. The players were bigger than a good-size book. Now we all store it on our phones or in the cloud and we can download it anywhere we want."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia kind of just shrugs her shoulders a bit at the idea of breaking the global economy. "Oopsie. Honestly the more I learn about how the global economy works the more I think we could probably do better."

    She seems to be enjoying this walk and talk through the woods back to the car at least as much as the lesson about talking to insects itself. "True full immersion virtual reality? A lot of my Titan friends like playing this World of Warcraft game. What if they could actually enter a world like that and really feel like they were there?" The first thought in the back of her head was undoubtedly Zeta Beams. But remains unvoiced due to lingering concerns about the technology. Still its hard to overstate how big a quality of life improvement those could create.

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"Now, -that's- an interesting idea," Janet encourages. "I mean, I don't *get* gaming, because you and I actually live in real life, but it's a moneymaking industry. VR has come a long way though. Immersive entertainment is all the rage in the mediasphere these days."

She exhales happily, forging through the plume of breath she exhales ahead of her. "Honey, I'm not trying to squash your dreams. I'm saying that everything I am-- everything *you* have-- is built off the back of capitalism. PymTech would have been an LLC in Hank's house with two under-utilized interns and a whopping utilities bill if I hadn't stepped in. Capitalism paid for our ancestor van Dynes to come here on the Mayflower. It helped us build the family capital and the investments that keep us going. I think I still have the lease on a docking slip that doesn't even exist anymore," she muses. "If you want to fix the world, I've got no problem with philanthropy. I just don't want to see you turn up with empty pockets when the perfect idea *does* come along."