Meetings will continue until productivity improves

[dontseefeel]

The Day Job Meme

"Eh. It's a living."- Anonymous prehistoric bird, The Flintstones

Everyone has to pay their way in life. Put bread on the table and take care of the dependents. The ol' 9-5, what a way to make a livin' etc. But what about you?

How to play-
Post to the meme with your character and any preferences as usual. Include what your character does to make ends meet, whether everyday or extraordinary.

Reply to others, using their job to set a scene. For example, a bounty hunter could be hired by or hunting your character.

Alternatively, discuss the job. How does one get into bounty hunting, anyway?

Comments

david meyer | original character | ota

[desenzano]

CEO of a small import company.

[ He says, so tiredly. ]

Xemnu the Living Titan 🧸 Marvel 616

[titanicallycuddly]

Info. Short version- Xemnu is an intergalactic mad scientist, last of his race. He’s always scheming to conquer worlds, restore his species and/or become a TV star.

As far as jobs go, he's been known to make deals with people for access to his psychic powers and would probably quite happily sell his mad science skills too. I'd also love so showbiz stuff, as he's been a famous children's entertainer.

Also, he would love to hire people for his world-conquering schemes!

Yvain Crows-Son || fantasy OC

[bastard_crow]

{{The captain of a rag-tag but ruthless pack of mercenaries known as the Rakehells for their hard partying when they're off the battlefield. When their cash gets short, both the Rakehells and their captain have no qualms about turning their trade to common highway robbery.}}

Reeve Tuesti | FF7R | OTA

[middle_meownager]

The Head of the Urban Planning Division of an electric power company with its own private military that couldn’t care less about urban planning.

[middle_meownager]

Their last “urban plan” was to drop a huge metallic plate holding up a full eighth of the largest city in the world onto the slums under the plate.

That’s right! There were people living on top of and under it!

[The next two words are punctuated by Reeve slamming his fist on his desk.]

Urban! Planning!

[middle_meownager]

Guess how much they pay me.

Go on.

Guess.

Nick Valentine / Fallout 4 / OTA

[robotdick]

Nick Valentine, Former Detective and current Private Eye.

I find people, whether they want to be found or not.

Soji Asha | Star Trek (Picard) | OTA

[soji_asha]

[Wait, oh my god, is someone actually asking about her scientific specialty and not just her Dad? This has never happened before. Let her get her notes!!!]

Oh! Hi, Doctor Soji Asha. I'm a Doctor of Anthropological Study with sub-specialties in Medical Cybernetics and Virology.

Being an anthropologist is very interesting--[Do you want to see the slide presentation? She would really like to show you the slide presentation. The look on your face says...No? O-Okay, that's fine.]--but most people find it a little dry when you're just talking theory. Where it really gets interesting is when you factor in the society that the study is about!

I'm kind of a unique case on that front. You see, my specialization is the Borg. The unique nature of them as a technobiological species, and how the shared consciousness permeates through a multitude to create a eusocial higher society is a very hot topic.

There's a lot of heated academic argument about how the Borg should even be classed, whether placement with multicellular life is appropriate or if putting them in the viral kingdom would be more accurate. Actually, I co-authored a paper--oh, right, I shoudl stay on topic.

Because of my particular professional skills, I joined the Borg Reclaimation project, which is a wonderful non-profit foundation that connects experts, like me, through government channels for access to the Borg. All of us working for the project provide services, medical and otherwise, with the goal of extracting people who have been integrated into the Collective.

At my stage of involvement, extraction is quite literal, requiring both surgical and psychological intervention. It can be a very intense process for everyone involved, but each person restored to a whole, individual state is someone whose life is returned to them. Every extraction also provides us with another facet of the lens required to truly understand a consumptive alien entity like the Borg.

[Are you SURE you don't want to see the slide presentation? It's got extensive footnotes. Everyone loves extensive footnotes.]

[machinegobrrr]

[Pythius doesn't want to see the presentation, but he will gladly take the chance to download it. It's just quicker that way. And he is a sucker for extensive footnotes.]

You are able to cure them of the xenos pathogen? Is this the most efficient way to gather intelligence about the xenos in question?

[soji_asha]

[Hello suspiciously authoritarian looking, catholic-inspired, human-cyborg person. Soji's absolutely delighted to meet you! Please have this USB stick with every paper she's ever written (or referenced) and that slide presentation. No, she doesn't need it back. Yes, she does carry several with her. Yes, it is shaped like a little Borg Cube. It lights up when you plug it in.]

Well, one of the problems with trying to study the Borg in particular is that, as far as we know, they don't engage in biological replication. That is, all new members of the Borg are people who are forcibly assimilated into the larger collective.

That means they are usually either totally disinterested in a species or deadset on systematically, forcibly assimilating every living individual and all related technology. A knock on effect of this is the fact that the Borg are extremely advanced and dangerous, so they're something of a challenge to...observe. Even from a fairly great distance.

[And people have tried. They are now Borg.]

The Reclaimation Project was formalized after the submatrix collapse of the Borg Cube in the Romulan De-Militarized-Zone. The whole cube--that is: the standard issue Borg ship--was severed from the greater collective and, luckily, did not possess a Queen to re-establish control of the...hundred thousand or so individuals aboard.

Usually these ships are either detonated or retrieved but, luckily, this was a scouting vessel and the Borg onboard were neutralized too suddenly to engage the self destruct.

Really, it's an unprecedented opportunity and quite a large percentage of the Borg Drones aboard were either in stasis or remained intact after the ship was isolated.

So we just systematically grid off the Cube--this is very important for security, and to track power use. It was be catastrophic if a connection was reestablished--and go sector by sector reclaiming any viable candidates. The corpses of those who perished are studied, their cybernetics extracted, and then are released to their homeworlds if there is one on record. The nonviable candidates, well, that is rather varied. Mostly we just...secure them.

[The Romulan Government insists that they take them to a farm upstate.]

The reclaimed Ex-Borg are invaluable because they shared in the full knowledge of the Collective. Due to the sheer scope of it, that information degrades quite swiftly but, while intensive as a process, retrieval is currently the most effective and safest way to study the Borg as a species.

[Do you have questions? Please have questions.]

[machinegobrrr]

[How quaintly archaic! He'd want to keep it anyway. As a kind of curio. He's going to have fun picking through all those papers...

And don't worry, Soji. He's Mechanicus, he has questions. He'll be good, though, and go down one route of questioning at a time.]

Are you unable to adequately study the nonviable candidates? Logic would suggest they have the potential to contain the most valuable data.

Are you able to reconnect them to the collective? This would allow a gateway into the inner workings of the xenos. In a properly controlled environment this would allow for a thorough exploration of their behaviours.

[soji_asha]

[Oh my god, follow up questions. She is on cloud nine.

But she will be appropriately and respectfully unenthused while speaking about this particular topic.]

There are very few non-viable candidates, actually. Most of the ones we can't reclaim are simply dead. There are a few rare instances where a drone will come online and they cannot be reclaimed. These drones are usually extremely violent, have compromised greater nervous systems, or are too imbedded with cybernetics to extract them. They generally have to be...destroyed.

There are a few other scenarios that render them non-viable but those are equally rare--say, if a drone is not yet sentient or capable of movement, or if they are afflicted with an unknown pathogen.

Reconnecting them to the Collective is...something that several researchers have tried before. Those researchers...are either dead or Borg now.

The Borg, you see, are fundamentally eusocial--or, eusocial is the closest similar societal structure. Each Drone is an individual assimilated into the greater Collective , but there is a heirarchy in place. They have a Queen that functions as a sort of...systems' administrator, who appears to retain most if not all of their autonomy.

The Queen or Queens--we really aren't sure on how many there are, but we do know their Borg species code designation--are the ones who structure and...command the Collective? Sorry, command isn't really the right word.

[The curse of all subject matter experts: inexact language.]

It's more like...say the Borg, the whole species, are a person:

The individual drones are cells assigned a specific designation, task, and location. They operate collectively and in concert to achieve their purpose, but they also serve the greater purpose of the body. They aren't in control of their own operations and can't act independently, but they can be reassigned. The brain, or the Queen in this case, controls them but is also a part of and integrated into the Collective.

From what we can tell, the part that makes them Borg, the non-living technological component, has a some driving purpose that it's chasing. It's not really sentient, but it makes up the data that ties the whole unit together. It dictates the make and method for new drones...sort of analogous to DNA.

Individual Borg, with the exception of the Queen, don't really have behaviors so much as...functional priorities. The reclaimed Ex-Borg have been invaluable in helping us understand that. The dead drones have helped us plot and calculate how the actual cybernetics are spontaneously generated. It's a group effort.

[You now know enough about the Borg (baring specific battle or incursion dates) to pass a 101 and 201 Starfleet Academy course. Congratulations, The Emperor would be proud. And then you would probably be burned as a heretic for talking to Soji about them.]

It's a risky suggestion, but I would be interested in hearing how you would set up a controlled environment for observation?

[machinegobrrr]

[Pythius would probably be labelled a heretic simply for hailing from Stygies VIII. Though he would zealously deny it, he is very familiar with heresy as the Inquisition would define it. What does it matter when there is information to be gained?

It's very tempting to usher Soji on past an explanation of what is essentially a remote procedure call. Instead, however, he's distracted in pondering the horror that is xenos flesh fused with a corrupted Machine Spirit. How did it come to be? How can it be purged? Getting to the source would be the most efficient way. A thought which lines up nicely with Soji's question, allowing him to return his attention swiftly to the topic at hand.]

Additional information would need to be gathered regarding the capabilities of the xenos and the extent of its pathogen. Would a simulation be able to deceive the Collective if a connection were to be re-established? Would a partial reawakening of the chosen unit suffice while providing a stable connection?

Can the unit being experimented upon be deceived into accepting a program or a person as their Queen? Could this be used to allow the unit to act as a gateway to the Collective? Even a false connection could allow for testing on how to sever connections to the Collective, or on how their communication works.

[Barrage of hypotheticals and questions paused, he cocks his head at Soji.]

However, I am an Explorator, not a Magos Biologis. There are units with skills in this area which far exceed my own.