9056/Look at What The Bird Brought In

Look at What The Bird Brought In
Date of Scene:	12 December 2021
Location:	R and D Labs: Triskelion -- Westchester County
Synopsis:	Jemma inspects an alien corpse while Jessica, Jane, and Michael speculate over what they might find out. Some questions need to be raised with da Vinci's ghost...
Cast of Characters:	Michael Erickson, Jane Foster, Jemma Simmons, Jessica Drew

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Michael Erickson has posed:
    He's bringing dead things in from Jupiter.

    Like a cat, or a hunting-bird from which his people are descended, the Shi'ar has delivered unto Jane - and, by extension, SHIELD - a parcel found supposedly while exploring an ancient and malfunctioning fuel refinery in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant. Brought frozen solid, thanks to a trip to the void with a stopover in Michael's freezer chest, wrapped up in trash bags and tarpaulins and secured with electrical tape. Let's not even ask /why/ the Shi'ar knows how to wrap and store a body; let us, instead, concern ourselves with what's inside the parcel.

    And there, unwrapped upon a slab, is the truth of things. What it was, at some point, was human. Pale with death, an unhealthy, faintly greenish tint to the skin, a formerly human man lies with his legs, right arm, and the majority of his face and torso replaced with various simulacra of bronze-colored metal. The limb replaced by a mangled prosthesis covered in jointed tools that, one imagines, once waved like fronds from a complex central strut; their nature can be guessed at, but they are largely crunched by external forces.

    The eye sockets are filled with probes of various sizes, the jaw open and tongue and throat removed in favor of a mechanical device of some sort or another. The torso, half covered with the same bronze metal, has had a hole punched clean through the center by what looks suspiciously like a fist; inside, the organs are gone and replaced with devices of various manufacture. Helpfully, the thing that was plucked from the hole has been set down next to the body, a spherical affair from which a number of torn leads and cables sprout.

    It's a horror. A cyborg horror. Or, in reality, a robot with a human corpse as its base platform. And there's Michael in lab togs, looking down at it from a near distance, gloved hands folded behind his back as he stares at the abomination thoughtfully in wait for the Doctors J.

Jane Foster has posed:
SHIELD already has plenty of dirt on most of its agents. It's no doubt how the higher ups keep their mid-levels in line, and they draw in their agents through the escalating posts in a conspiracy to maintain safety among the intelligence community. Without fail, someone or another in SHIELD knows Jane Foster and Jessica Drew transported a body from the Chelsea docks to the Triskelion. They likewise were responsible for a lengthy quarantine behind various technologies meant to keep unwanted potential alien or xeno-modified contamination from reaching any population centres. At least with the Spider, they can be sure her biology is already weird.

Jane? You hang around with Asgardians, you already suffer contamination. Six degrees of Loki separation do no one good.

It's fortunate that hanging from Yggdrasil for a lifetime will inure a person to vomiting into a bucket several times. Even fine surgeons fail to feel their innards revolt at certain moments. Nurses and doctors can dry heave. The brunette closes her eyes, gloved fingers curled at her side rather than allowing whatever traces of gorge rise beyond a point. For why is she even sick? It's not as if the biological function serves //her// any purpose. Her silent companion refuses to comment, and she then can focus on taking digital scans to create a three-dimensional apparatus that might be of some use to reconstruct what the body is, what it might have been, and how it might work in a functional setting.

Lucky girl, she gets to hold the tablet.

"I'm inclined to be cross with whomever did this," she asides as she enters, following Jemma.

Which doesn't bode well if her other half is raging.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
With SHIELD, there are plenty of medical personnel. Certainly any one of them could just as easily be tapped to do a general autopsy on whatever is brought in.

However, with this one, there are two things going on with it. Well...three, if one wants to get technical. One, the corpse came from space. Two, it is a cyborg. And three, the delivery came on behalf of the Shi'ar. And, at least in SHIELD, whenever you add up points one, two and three together, the answer is invariably 'Weird Alien Autopsy'.

And...there really is only one person in SHIELD that qualifies for the weird alien autopsy angle.

"Well, part of why we are here is to determine if there is truly a reason to be cross at someone. For all we know, this was intended." The accent is certainly there...a pleasant British one as Jemma steps into the room. But...then she turns and sees the task at hand....and her tone shifts.

"Or...yes, I see what you mean. I do not imagine that was wished for, in any stretch of the imagination." Yes...Jemma isn't exactly thrilled by the appearance. But at least she is not reacting physically.

And...that is why Jemma was tapped. A look over to Michael. "Can you tell me anything about this before I start?"

Jessica Drew has posed:
The body doesn't revolt Jessica; she has seen many deaths in her short life. HYDRA made sure that she could stomach gore as part of desensitizing her to the role of an assassin spy. She stands with hands behind her back, in scrubs, covering her office clothes, giving the scientists room to do their work. Eyebrows knit, she stares at what is left of the face, wondering how he lived out his days, whether they had removed all sense of self and reduced him to an automaton incapable of feeling any existential dread. That revolts her, the idea of being manipulated and stripped of the freedom of thought.

It hits much too close to home.

"Nobody volunteered for that. That's for sure."

Michael Erickson has posed:
    It is perhaps fitting that the alien in the room is not nearly so affected as the humans standing over what was once a member of their kin - indeed, Michael is so used to death that this seems more of a curiosity to him than the abomination it probably should be. "Well," he says as Jemma makes her inquiry, "It wasn't long ago that I was scouting the upper atmosphere of Jupiter when I found an old and malfunctioning gas processor apparently belonging to the Badoon, a race that exists elsewhere in your galaxy. It was extremely old, of course, to the point that its reactor was about to go critical from structural failure. That thing..." He gestures to the body on the slab. "...is one of a number that were in what appeared to be stasis pods, and were activated when I arrived on the platform to start poking about. They were too easily destroyed to be security drones, and from the structure here I must assume that they are for maintenance."

    He looks up to Jemma, then. "Necroplatforms aren't unheard of. Several species that the Empire conquered used their dead as a base structure from which to build robots. Imperial law forbids the practice, though, so we haven't that much experience with it. Oh." Michael nods to the device on the slab. "That's its power cell. As you can see, I forcibly extracted it."

Jessica Drew has posed:
Necroplatforms earns a grunt of disgust from Drew as she edges forward to get a look at the power pack.

"Is the attitude behind building platforms like that prevalent in the Galaxy, Michael?"

Oh, the agent is full of questions today and at ease enough with Jane and Michael to ask them.

"Is that usual to not have a robust security perimeter?"

Jane Foster has posed:
She could say sorry, but the apologies would be meaningless. She could forewarn Jemma of how the wrongness lies, but a doctor of Jemma's calibre needs no warning for what comes ahead.

"Alien corpse" probably ought to be enough. Jane is here for varied reasons, foremost presumably being a vouchsafe against 'person found in the solar system.' The other half watching the autopsy isn't public knowledge or even personal. Besides, unpleasant truths would best be discovered by someone other than the astrophysicist.

"Regardless of whether it was intended, one probably doesn't consent to being transformed into a hybrid manning a Jovian power station that, by rights, may have come operational before Victoria or Dickens." The mute, flat smirk from Jane concedes this isn't likely a joke and affords the opportunity for Michael to correct them all on its antiquity. "A strange kind of longevity if that was promised. Their work is neat, I can give them that." Before she might put a fist through them.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
"Right."

It is that single word that speaks so much. For Jane, it isn't the word...but the tone that it was given. The switch has been flipped. It is now clinical Jemma mode. It is a necessary flip, to remain objective enough to do the jump at hand. She turns to Jane, nodding. "We should do the scanning now, to assemble the model before I start to dismantle the subject." Subject. Yes...Jemma is all business now.

"I am going to want to test the tissue, to see how long necrosis has been. I might have to carbon date to get a clear idea as to how old the subject is."

Michael Erickson has posed:
    "Well, I don't know much about the details, but they were there for a specific task. Certainly weren't doing well about maintenance; it's possible their control system migh have already failed." This said to Jane, Michael looks to Jessica. "The attitude in the greater galaxy - certainly /my/ home galaxy - is that this sort of thing is absolutely abhorrent. When I was younger I was tasked with hunting down and putting to question members of a cult called the Children of the Triple Night whom, using mystical components with existing technology, created similar creatures - though this looks entirely technological. It was very strange that the industral rig was just...left there, though. Perhaps abandoned."

    To Jemma, he offers: 'They were absolutely in stasis. I found another pod that had been breached, but its inhabitant had been picked clean by time and the elements."

Jessica Drew has posed:
Shaking her head slowly, the field agent presses her lips into a flat line of denial. "If it was a choice between life or death? Maybe. They were dead to the world, I hope. Somehow I don't think whoever did this were inclined to give a choice."

She directs her frown at Michael though he is not her target, "They deserve to be hunted. Is it naive to ask what keeps them from invading Earth?"

Jane Foster has posed:
"Charming," Jane replies, certainly given to setting up the devices as needed. SHIELD's scanning technology is plentiful and built into a computerized backbone that requires some fairly accurate placement of cameras. This she knows like the back of her hand, having performed fieldwork equivalent to it practically since she was 14. Making adjustments for a finite target twelve to twenty inches away is infinitely better than trying triangulate on a star that might be, say, 1,500 light years away and potentially blocked from the last time it was photographed in 1959 by stellar dust. Boo dust!

She maneuvers around Jemma, obliging by checking first on the tablet and then tapping dots over the back of the larger array to awaken them to a functional diagnostic process. Her circling around gives a wide berth to the slab where Jemma's work takes place, also not knocking into Jessica or Michael. "This will take a few minutes to completely come online once we get it configured. The calibrations shall be quick, but we need to compensate for the metal content, though we should be able to achieve that with a few pulse bursts in IR and UV range before getting too exciting."

Her explanation is for their benefit more than Jemma's; the system shouldn't be a surprise. They have variations to set up. "I don't think they have invaded Earth or come close all that recently."

Jessica Drew has posed:
Perhaps in another life Jessica would have gone into medicine or science. Interested in the results, she enjoys hanging on the periphery of the investigation, curious about who these people had been and what threat they might still pose. Her paper scrubs crackle slightly as she moves to get a view of Jane's screen.

"How do you keep dead flesh from rotting? Were they fully dead, then? I had imagined them being alive, flensed of anything unneeded, robotics added on and then put to work."

Michael Erickson has posed:
    "I don't know anything about them." Michael looks betweeen Jane and Jessica. "Jane? Did you say you know something about these fellows? I was going to ask and see if I could head out of the system and see if I could dig something up, assuning Agent Drew and the Chief don't object." See, handler lady He's a good boy! "I need to test the interstellar capacity of my armor as it is."

    Of couse, this is where the modeling begins - and the scans demonstrate peculiarities. The musculature, visible, appears...plastic, in its way. Clsoer examination later will reveal that the muscles have all been converted to a form of hyperelastic material through an unknown proces; power converters and auto-repair systems are housed within the torso, along with a number of containers of substances that will eventually be identified as some form of programmable nanopaste and lubricant. It's just...well, whatever methods have been employed to transform the corpse, it demonstrates an industrial level of perfection. These are not specialty items. They're likely mass-produced.

    As for the synthetic components, the eyes are multispectrum scanners of a fashion, thanks to the probes that fill the empty sockets; the vocal replacement appears to be some kind of vocalizing device with long-expired biocircuitry. The arm is essentially one big repair device, filled with tools and a powerful gripper claw. It's a horrific, necro-robotic repairman. Ah well.

    Whilst the women work, and Jessica watches, Michael steps back a bit, hands tucking again behind his back. "I haven't found anything else like it," he observes. "But I'm doing a survey of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. We'll see what it yields."

Jane Foster has posed:
"My knowledge of the Badoon isn't extensive. Our records at my level don't give much information, though the Asgardians may be able to provide me with a better degree of information. Thor responds quite openly and quickly to text messages from me," Jane says. She has to stand on a platform to get the highest of the sensors into place, those which rebound narrow broadcasts, and there are times being much taller and possibly able to jump to the ceiling would be helpful. She gives Jess a sidelong grin. "Would you be willing? This..." She holds out a diode entrapped in a magnetized plastic housing, treated to be clear as glass but much harder. "Just out of my reach. If it's no trouble."

She is the dextrous one, is their Agent Drew, and it's playing to her strength. "The Badoon function as a dimorphic society; the men and the women take totally different roles. Nor are they known for being positively disposed toward one another. I have not heard of them functioning inside the Sol system, but obviously that can be proven wrong by the Jovian evidence. Granted, that may be a function of not being in the right place or time -- or asking about them. It may have been assumed to be in a certain timeframe and not the whole span of history. Let me guess, you're planning on kicking it back into your imperial territory? Or is there a neutral space that would allow for a marketplace?"

Her gaze flickers upwards to the ceiling, not paying heed at all to its existence or the people above them that might vaguely be detectable. A part of her wayward soul lives in muted correspondence with the cosmos. /Ideas/. A celestial emporium? Coffeeshops? Victor von Doom is /not/ the person to talk to about this.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jessica holds out her hand for the sensor then points to the spot that she thinks it is intended to go. It's a matter of a small leap and slap, tantamount to swishing the basket for a professional basket baller used to such leaps.

"There then?" She asks points again, then after a glance to make sure no sensitive equipment is at issue, she bends her knees and spider springs to tap the sensor into place. "

YOu need rolling ladders for this," she comments, knowing that if she had not been in the room, Jane would have managed.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
"Well, that's interesting..."

Jemma has started with her own examination. And...already she has noticed the conversion of the muscles into the hyperelastic material. "There really isn't a lot of actual native tissue present. Most of the actual biological components have been converted in what is most assuredly an industrialized process. This might have been alive at one point...but certainly not by the time the conversion occurred." It becomes apparent that Jemma is searching through the subject on the table for at least one little snippet of original biological material. Something...anything...so she can identify the body. "As far as the mechanical...again, looks to be rather standardized. The components look sound, but also mass-produced. I would wager that, apart from some modular aspects for general maintenance, these were produced as quickly and efficiently as possible."

Michael Erickson has posed:
    Michael makes a faint face at Jane's query. "I'm not going back to the Empire," he says, "That would be a death sentence. But there are plenty of inhabited systems in this galaxy, as well you know, and at least several around this one. I'm sure I could find information on the Badoon there." He gestures at himself. "Spy, remember?"

    To Jemma, then, he nods. "Yeah, well," Michael offers, "As I said, I'm used to seeing it as an aberration, not mass production. Think you'll be able to work something out with what you have, Doctor? As I said, I might be able to fnd more data in other systems, but that might take a while."

Jane Foster has posed:
Jane nods as their most elegant of spiders proves she is definitely the first person to pick for a team after Cap. Because, well, Cap. "Exactly what we needed." She breaks into a brief smile, but only that. "We should have them, but they are called antiquated. I tried to get them to invest in a freestanding unfolding magnetic ladder, but was shot down for being too much."

The beancounters never think of how many agents it takes to screw in a lightbulb, now do they?

"Do you think they were developed offsite? I can't see having a factory ship or something set up on Europa or Ganymede. Callisto's too exposed for even that. Not many other choices close by." Even suggesting this is a bit troublesome. She gives the body a sidelong look as the sensors come up. "Carbon dating, then?"

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jess returns the smile which sobers into something wry at the talk of budgets. "Project writing for money is an art for the government. Sell them on the security benefits. I imagine you have that experience already, Michael," she proposes from the sidelines.

"I have some work to catch up on. Buzz me in my office when you're finished Michael. We're going to meet Underwood today, aren't we?"

Jemma Simmons has posed:
There is an affirmative nod from Jemma towards Michael's question. "Oh, I feel rather confident I will be able to at least determine what this poor soul used to be. More so once I can find a shred of original tissue." She....doesn't look up to Michael as she says this.

Instead, she is slowly separating the robotic bits from the other bits...and still looking for that tell-tale bit of DNA for Jemma to do her magic. At this point, everyone else might as well be talking to themselves. She is fully engaged...

Michael Erickson has posed:
    "We are," Michael says, squinting at the idea of SHIELD having a concept of 'too expensive'. "Right, so let's go ahead and do that. Doctors? I leave you to get into nonsense." He steps away entirely from the two, and heads toward the exit, assuming Jessica will follow. Meanwhile, Jemma separates a logic strand to find that the roots are still biological tissue - thank goodness for cold storage. Carbon-dating will, eventually, reveal that the poor man lived over four hundred years ago. So there's that.

    Badoon? Here, the 17th century? Now that, too, is something...