4765/GIRLs Gather!

GIRLs Gather!
Date of Scene:	17 January 2021
Location:	GIRL HQ, Pym Technologies Campus
Synopsis:	The Mori case is discussed.
Cast of Characters:	Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Mori Merritt, Janet van Dyne, Vivian Vision, Bobbi Morse

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Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
At the best of times GIRL is not the most organized of groups. Herding young female geniuses tends to make herd cats seem simple by comparison. Often they are content to dive into their own projects, though the occasional cross-pollination close proximity allows has assisted in some startling breakthroughs at times. Also sleepovers, there's plenty of those too. One of GIRLs greatest successes more than the SCIENCE! may be the socialization of at times otherwise isolated minds with relatable peers.

Today, however, is one of those less common times a general project meeting of all hands has been called to focus on a singular task. Even then however, getting everyone in one place can be extremely challenging. Valeria is still off on a 'family trip' to who knows what dimension knowing Reed, and Shuri has been called away on Wakandan state business. The remaining members, however, have all gathered around a large round table, emblazoned with the pink and purple GIRL logo, in the state of the art GIRL HQ on the Pym Technologies campus.

"Okay! Thanks for coming everyone!" Nadia begins, "Or well almost everyone. Seriously, scheduling everyone is almost impossible." Lately Nadia has been learning the frustrations of leadership first hand. "Anyway, I want to introduce everyone to Mori! SHIELD has asked us to help her. I was doing some initial investigation with my friend Cait in the Titans, but this is looking more and more like an all hands problem. I'll explain what I've uncovered in a moment though. First Mori, why don't you introduce yourself to everyone and tell them what you've told me."

Mori Merritt has posed:
Despite the circumstances, Mori seems pretty cheerful, if not a touch on the nervous side. After all, the whole thing is centered around her. "Uh.. okay, hi, I'm Mori." She raises a hand up slightly in a wave, glancing around the table a bit before clearing her throat. "It's kind of weird just spilling everything like it's ordinary every stuff, so bear with me for a moment."

She takes in a deep breath. "Okay, so first of all for a while I've been seeing things that aren't there. Not in a hallucination way, in I feel like I'm there way. I sort of zone out in person. I've got a photographic memory, so I make a lot of sketches of what it looks like. So that's weird and all, but you combine it with the fact that I can't really figure out how or why I'm getting different abilities, it's kind of problematic. Especially because I can't control them."

She ticks off on her fingers. "Telekinesis, creating fire, and growing or shrinking. They didn't all come at once, I've just woken up one day and suddenly had them. It's probably tied together, but it's all just... weird. Also the zoning out is pretty bad because it happens at any time. So I've literally had it happen crossing the street. I never cook on a stove anymore cause I can't guarantee I won't set my dinner on fire."

Janet van Dyne has posed:
"I don't cook on a stove anyway," Janet chimes in. She flashes a reassuring smile at Mori. "So don't beat yourself up over that one. Postmates is your friend." Janet's dressed smartly in a skirt and suit jacket, both in a delicate shade of lavender and matched with a seafoam green blouse. It'd look almost conservative save for how closely the pencil skirt fits her hips and the four-inch designer heels in white she's sporting. Sapphires dangle from her wrist and earlobes.

"Just lay it all out for us, at your own pace," she bids Mori, and continues typing notes into her cell phone as Mori speaks.

Vivian Vision has posed:
"Do not worry Great Aunt Nadia," Vivian replies once Mori has finished introducing herself. "I shall compile notes on the meeting, including video recordings of all important points, and make them available for those who were unable to attend." She tilts her head. "Would it be helpful if I projected some of Mori's drawings for those who have yet to see them?"

The synthezoid teenager smiles when Janet mentions not cooking on a stove. "That is because you hire people to cook for you Janet."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi puts down her tablet and looks up and smiles to Mori. She remembers her from when they met at the Triskelion. "So I've been pondering environmental factors. Instead of assuming these powers are some sort of sequential unlock, it's possible something in the environment has goaded them in to becoming present. Sort of like an immune response."

    She taps a button and brings up a timeline with not much data in it - a few pertinent points such as when she first shrunk down. "I'd like you to fill in some blanks. As many as possible. When you got these different abilities and where you were traveling, who you were talking to, what your stress levels were like.. it's a long time frame I know and a lot to remember, but anything that comes to mind at all..."

    Create a timeline, it's always helpful. Right up there with 'follow the money'. She nods to Nadia. This is their first actual 'doing work' GIRL meeting ever, which is nice to see happen. Good to know the grant money from SHIELD for helping Mori is actually being spent.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"And their food is delicious Viv! It sure beats Russian gruel and frozen dinners, though I think Cait would give them a run for their money." The easily distracted Nadia chimes in on the topic of Janet's hired help and their cooking.

"Thank you Mori!" She smiles reassuringly at her, simultaneously willing herself to focus and get back on track.

Her attention is then occupied by Bobbi's timeline. The table is state of the art and equipped with holographic displays as well as individual touchscreen network access terminals linked into the central GIRL mainframe. "It could be a coincidence, but I agree it does seem a bit strange that she developed shrinking powers after meeting me." She looks over towards Mori, "If you can fill in as much of that as possible we can probably glean a lot of data and new hypotheses from it."

"Okay, now for me." Nadia continues, bringing up her own images of Mori's drawings. "So, I had a hypothesis for awhile, that Mori's missing time story sounded an awful lot like some things I saw on TV about aliens, and after two major invasions we'd be kind of silly not to take the possibility of aliens seriously. What's more the stars in Mori's drawings are far too accurate between pictures in the ones that are clearly of Earth, accurately tracking different points of planetary rotation." She hits another button and star charts of Milky Way constellations appear and then super-impose over the drawings matching perfectly. "So, there's these other pictures of alien looking landscapes, but the starts show the same sort of consistency. Only they're not like any constellations observable from Earth. Because they're not. I went an talked to Captain Marvel," she hits another button and some more alien looking star charts appear and begin super-imposing over the alien drawings. "And she checked some space databases she has access to for me. As you can see," She gestures towards the perfectly super imposed star charts, "They're real stars from real alien worlds. Unexplored alien worlds, because apparently every probe that gets sent there even by super advanced empires like the Kree just vanishes without a trace."

Nadia then sits back down giving everyone a few moments to digest all of that.

Mori Merritt has posed:
"The pizza guy knows me by name and my usual order," Mori points out, looking amused. "Kind of hard to eat out with the amount I eat though. Never seems to be enough." Her attention turns to Vivian, offering her a bright smile. "That'd be super helpful to project them, probably easier than passing my sketchbook around." For Bobbi's timeline, she certainly looks impressed. "Man, you all actually know what you're doing. Not that I didn't think that, but it's nice to be taken seriously for once."

She turns her head to listen to Nadia before bothering to focus fully on the timeline. "They're /real/? See, I knew they were real! Every time I'm seeing stuff, it's all so realistic that it would be strange if it wasn't. I can't just make it up or hallucinate it: photographic memory is visuals so I can literally /see/ it somehow. That's the only way I've been able to prove it so far." She chews on her bottom lip for a moment. "So... space then."

It's a little hard to tell what Mori thinks about all that, especially when she focuses on timelines again. "In June of 2019, I collapsed in the woods. I don't know why, I don't really super remember a lot of it, but the doctors that checked me out didn't have an answer. Seeing stuff happened all the time, it was hard to figure out when I was awake and when I wasn't and what was real. Took me a good six months before I could really manage to be on my own, it was a /lot/ of adjusting. Telekinesis was the first one, I don't entirely know when that started because it was kind of in the middle of all of that."

She seems to be thinking. "The fire was, er... you can figure out the date of that because it was on the news. I sort of set the dorm on fire. That's when Nadia came and helped. And obviously the shrinking." She gestures at the timeline. "Both the fire and the shrinking happened in New York, the initial onset of all of this happened on the West Coast. I lived near the mountains in Washington. I came to New York in sort of an attempt to try and live a life and maybe figure out what was going on."

Vivian Vision has posed:
Vivian nods and projects the sketches up on an otherwise empty section of the lab wall. Each marked with tags indicating which of Nadia's star charts it shows, known information about the date/time of creation and other helpful bits of data off the GIRL Network. Including stills from the news report about the fire.

"It could be an attempt at communication from within that space?" she muses. "Say quantum entangling photons with those entering Mori's eyes. So she receives images of alien worlds without actually going to them." She frowns. "Quite why they would need to use such a complex method to make first contact I can't say. We can't really assume that aliens follow even a remotely Human-understandable thought process or value system. But it seems logical that /something/ within that space is intelligent and has some very advanced technology or psionic abilities."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    "We could always ask Captain Marvel to go check it out. It's doubtful they'd have anything that can stop her," she ponders. "The shrinking really is an interesting data point," she taps her stylus to her lips and says. "I was imagining something environmental might trigger a defensive response. But what it's mimicry? -- if you imagine for a moment that Mori is successfully mimicking regular humanity, please excuse the clinical style of talk Mori.. then anything non-regular would jump right out. Such as fire and visions and shrinking."

    "What if your power, Mori, is learning off the world around you. Not so much a copycat, but a young thing copying its parents. A sentient super power?" Her face scrunches up a bit thinking this theory sounds more crazy than her usual ones. "Never mind, we should stick with things we can measure and gather evidence for.."

    "Aliens you say. You say that Viv but Earth still struggles to get out of our solar system. If we could communicate with a distant world through entangled photons we absolutely would. Have you met Reed Richards?," she says and then glances at the door as if saying his name would summon the man.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia listens to the discussion and nods to Mori. "Yes, they're real, and more than a little mysterious. Three planets in their own system that have resisted all attempts to map or explore them."

"Quantum communication via entanglement over vast distances is theoretically possible," She nods in agreement with Vivian, "Unfortunately it is also next to impossible to intercept and shielding against that form of communication would be challenging in the extreme."

Nadia seems to get lost in thought for a bit as she listens to Bobbi, "It's as good a theory as any." She finally offers, "I mean everything about this is already pretty outlandish, so maybe our theories need to be, too. About the communication though, Dad and I actually made something to communicate with Deep Space, modified from technology that Janet's father developed. Though it teleported us to Alpha Centauri the first time we tried to use it, but it can definitely communicate with Deep Space if we can finish getting the bugs out. Beyond that though," Nadia has that look in her eyes some around the table might recognize where she is about to suggest something outlandish that she has every intention of actually accomplishing. "I think she could build our own long distance extra-solar FTL spacecraft and investigate ourselves!"

Mori Merritt has posed:
"I mean, that makes sense. I like that theory but I can't say I've seen all of these abilities used. I never saw anyone use telekinesis before it happened, nor fire, but Nadia did shrink me before! I've definitely not met anyone who claimed to be able to see the things." Mori notes before glancing back to Vivian. "So if it's sending a message, how do we interpret it? How do we send something back? I've /heard/ things before but I don't really have any way to sketch it, obviously, and I don't have any way of remembering what it sounds like. Don't think I have whatever photographic hearing would be..."

But then Nadia's talking and Mori tilts her head a bit to study her. "Wait you really think we could go to space and look? Is that even possible? I know we're throwing out theories and all but I didn't know you guys had anything that could realistically make that happen..."

Vivian Vision has posed:
"If advanced alien races have failed to contact the region then sending Captain Marvel does not seem wise," Vivian points out with a shake of her head. "While she might be powerful if they have resisted contact by species with more complex technology than ours for extended periods it suggests some significant degree of peril will be encountered by anyone who visits."

She glances at Bobbi and blinks. "I did not mean to suggest we could use the same communication method. And no, I have yet to meet Doctor Fantastic. But I have met his daughter."

"Actually flying somewhere seems safer than translocating ourselves there. We have a better chance of actually being able to go back afterwards."