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phillipcole · 4 years

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Post-AGT Appearance 1122: Real time with Bill Maher February 5

With the interviews going badly my agent would cancel all interviews for the next week except Bill Maher. He would be willing to give me a couple of minutes after going quickly through the latest radical statements. Social Distance would hit number 81 and You’re moving out Today would hit 96.

The House of Representatives would have only 2 pending election results, plus the 2 Louisiana vacancies. Because the rioters would have penetrated the Capitol less so the Texas Congressman who died would be alive and fairly healthy on February 5. So they would be preparing to take a vote about impeachment on February 11 in the House. The Democratic lead of 218-213 would leave the results in doubt.

Maher: Our next guest is a friend of the show and-full disclosure-a colleague. He got me a nice little acting part a few years ago and that’s why I’m nominated for 2 Golden Globes, 3 Emmys, a Tony and...4 Grammys this year. Ha ha, some of you aren’t sure. When did I miss an album? No, only this show is going to win as usual ha ha. Anyway, welcome back to the show, virtually from his home, a working farm in California, Phil Cole and maybe some of his team: Phillip and Cole’s Variety Team. Phil, how are you?

PBC: Much better, thanks Bill.

Maher: You were down for a while with smoke inhalation. Has covid 19 impacted you?

PBC: A lot of friends but no relatives, thank God.

Maher: Now Phil, you’ve been scheduled to be on our show approximately now since the election. We thought you might be changing things with regard to your team and presentation and maybe use our show to announce it.

PBC: We also hoped the quarantine would let up so I could announce a big tour.

Maher: That is a problem. So we’ll start with quick statements. Do you support the effort to recall Governor Newsom?

PBC: If there’s a form, I’ll sign it.

Maher: Do you think President Biden won legitimately?

PBC: I wasn’t there except to cast my vote for Jo Jorgensen.

Maher: Should Biden or Trump be President now?

PBC: Neither one should have been on the ballot, but the Electoral Vote is all that matters, and that’s the way it goes.

Maher: Do you think President Trump incited the riots?

PBC: I don’t think so, but if he was, please arrest him.

Maher: You’re against impeachment?

PBC: Yes, because it doesn’t change anything. I’m not against arrests, trials, appeals. I’d be very happy if Trump spends the rest of his life in prison for any real crime, but the Constitution might not survive this ordeal.

Maher: Of course you have a personal reason to celebrate the end of the Trump administration. Will your colleague Phillip be coming out of the coma soon?

PBC: Let me say this once and for all. The best way to get Phillip out of the coma is to stop saying that name

Maher: Trump. What if we call him by his initials D.T.

PBC: A lot of us have had the dts the last 4 years.

Maher: Ha ha ha ha ha.

PBC: You know it well, don’t you?

Maher: I do, that I do. So how will we know when his condition changes?

PBC: Well, there was a bidding war and you lost. You’re too cheap.

Maher: Ha ha ha.

PBC: Another talk show has the exclusive rights to make any announcements regarding Phillip and also other members of the team. That could include a pull the plug countdown.

Maher: Thank you. Now there is much speculation, and I understand a few high stakes bets about the last name on Phillip’s sick list. Recently you removed the names of some suspects.

PBC: Yes.

Maher: Including our new President and first ever female Vice President.

PBC: Yes.

Maher: And the late Larry King and Cloris Leachman.

PBC: Yes, if a person dies and we don’t make an announcement, he or she is off the list of suspects.

Maher: Ok, now are you planning to get the covid vaccine?

PBC: I’m in no hurry. Most of my family is rejecting it.

Maher: But a member of the team took it, right, the 105 year-old man.

106-Year-Old: 106.

Maher: He’s with you tonight! How are you?

106-Year-Old: Last week I could only groan. Now I can moan and groan arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Maher: Is anyone else on your team getting the shot soon?

PBC: As a judge in Tennessee, and a senior citizen, Ford could have taken the shot, but he’s in Washington lobbying for a federal judgeship.

Maher: That’s great. Let us know how that turns out, and come back in a few months.

PBC: As soon as I have an announcement. Goodnight, Bill.

#impeachment #bill Maher #covidー19

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duskwalkertfp · 7 years

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Procedure

“So,” Duskwalker ended her explanation, “you’ll be in shut-down mode with this,” she gestured at the droid, “making sure that your systems continue to run without your processor.”

“Alright, though I’m still uncertain why you need to use an automaton, would not the life support systems function better?”

“They would, but unfortunately I don’t have the equipment to properly support you that way, so it’s easier to run your programs through a proxy,” it was a half-truth. Duskwalker did have some of the equipment necessary, but not all of it. Spark support, for example, was a machine that Duskwalker did not yet have in her possession and looked forward to the day she could begin building it, once she had the space. “The damage in your processor is pretty deep, it won’t affect your memory or any of your other functions, but to protect you it’s better to have everything suspended while I work. I’ll be doing your system flush at the same time, which isn’t something anyone enjoys to be awake for.” That was certainly true. Duskwalker had experienced one a long time ago when Renegade first found her. It had been too dangerous for her to shut down so they had flushed her systems while she was still online. It didn’t hurt, but it was an uncomfortable feeling to have energon being sucked out while new energon was flushed in.

“No, I’d think not,” DT commented, turning his head to look up at the ceiling. “How long do you think the repair will take?”

“Until I get in there and see what’s needed I’m afraid I won’t know,” Duskwalker said which was partially true. Until she had a better idea how to purge his system of the Termination Protocol she wouldn’t be able to bring him back online. “The system flush and cleaning takes a couple of hours, but repair on the processor can’t be rushed. The slower the better so your system will recover faster.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” DT mentioned, “working slower so the outcome can be faster?”

“Medicine often works that way,” Duskwalker said, laughing a little, “there’s very little logic when it comes to recovery, but generally the less ‘collateral’ damage the faster the healing process. If I can pinpoint the area causing the issue I can work on that alone rather then a larger area that includes the effected circuit, chip, or wire. The problem is pinpointing it, which is why it could take longer.”

“Survey twice and dig once,” he said, “we’d often do two surveys to make sure we were digging down to the right vein, rather then dig down, find out we’d missed, and start over.”

“Exactly,” Duskwalker agreed, “now this is going to all be happening at the same time, so it’ll be a bit sudden, but everything will be just fine. Naomi is going to engage your shut-down the moment I plug you into the droid.”

“Understood,” he told her, settling back and shutting his optics.

“Naomi, initiate program countdown,” Duskwalker said, plugging in the end of the cable into the port on the back of the medical table; she’d altered it so it would not activate it until it was tightened. That way she’d have less of a chance messing up the timing.

“Program primed and ready,” Naomi reported, “beginning countdown… in ten, nine, eight...” Naomi’s voice buzzed in Duskwalker’s ears as she focused on nothing else. She and Naomi had to be nearly perfectly timed in order for this to work. The program would come from the droid which Naomi was partially in control of in order to monitor their patient while Duskwalker went on her fact finding mission. Naomi would only be able to send out a single drone while she was monitoring DT, making it a little more dangerous if since she couldn’t have all of them out on the search.

Sharing an uplink with Naomi allowed Duskwalker to twist her wrist at just the right moment as Naomi brought up the program, and shut DT down, to trick the Termination Protocol to unravel the wrong codes. For a moment, as Duskwalker had been working on the cable, she had wondered if there was a way to completely dump the Termination protocol into a fake processor, but she’d momentarily discarded the idea. They had to figure out what original programming it had been inserted into first and to do that they needed the whole, original, code along with the method used to install it, but Duskwalker wouldn’t be overly picky.

DT’s systems powered down, his frame relaxing with his remaining hand over his chest plating. Duskwalker watched through Naomi as their program ‘inquired’ the Termination Protocol for assistance. It was designed to sight the temporary shut down and ‘suspension’ of systems as a medical necessity for repair in the processor and all maintenance protocols needed to assist in the transference.

Lines of code moved back and forth as the pair of programs communicated, Duskwalker’s spark felt like it was cramping in fear as she watched, until the Termination Protocol sent an acknowledgement and took up its ‘work’ on the same line it had been on, but inside of the false processor, using the cable as a bridge, but much to Duskwalker’s disappointment the Protocol remained embedded inside of DT’s processor despite the ‘suspension’ of the function it was currently dismantling.

“Slag it all to…” she cut herself off with a heavy vent, “I was hoping, by some chance, it would just completely migrate, but obviously there must be some form of subroutine designed to keep it anchored, maybe in the same programming, or files, that it would end with to cause final spark failure.”

“And there are untold ways to manage that,” she groused, “from alternating energy frequencies, poisoning his energon, cutting the power to the spark chamber in a few key places, to changing the spark’s wavelength to create a feed-back loop and collapse the core.” Duskwalker leaned back against another berth. There were two in this small medical bay on board Naomi, there wasn’t enough room for more, though Duskwalker had once managed to fit a third patient in here when fleeing a planet was necessary. Thankfully they’d been a minibot not that much smaller than she was.

“What about a transference procedure?” Naomi asked.

“You mean transplanting his spark in a new frame?” Duskwalker returned her question, completely surprised. “I’m not trained enough to preform such a complex, delicate, surgery, also we can’t be sure that this protocol wouldn’t terminate the moment the spark chamber was open…” Duskwalker vented again, rubbing her face. “At least with it working away in this fake processor I can properly do a systems flush without it noticing the poisoning its started adding to his energon has been cleaned out.”

Duskwalker looked down at DT's face plate and felt a pang creep through her spark; she knew there was a chance she wouldn't be able to do what was needed to save his life. There was a chance, a good chance, that he could still deactivate due to whatever the Quintessons had done to him. Duskwalker couldn't stand when she lost a patient, but it was something she had accepted quite some time ago. She wasn't always in-time when reaching a battle field. Sometimes she could only sit there with a mech as their spark guttered out.

There was no getting around it, and there were things needing to be taken care of, so with a slight shake of her head to get her mind back to where it was needed Duskwalker began hooking up two lines to DT's frame. One was for suction, to pull the contaminated energon out of DT's frame and purify it once again so that there was no rust flakes or debris left inside of it. It would also balance out the energon so it was no longer poisoning DT's spark. The other line was designed to cycle the clean energon back into his system.

It would take several hours for the entire cycle to completely clean his energon, and even then Duskwalker might have to remove certain lines to replace them completely, but for now this would be enough to keep DT online while she went to find the information necessary to keep the Termination Protocol from deactivating him the moment she started working more in-depth with his repairs.

“You have it handled from here, Naomi?” Duskwalker asked, starting the machine and listening as it ran. It hummed along, working perfectly despite how rarely Duskwalker used it; she took pride in maintaining all of her machinery.

“Yes,” Naomi said, “but I must admit I'm still concerned, Duskwalker. I know we agreed that we should keep this situation quiet, but for you to travel, alone, to Hive City? It is a dangerous venture and it is plausible that you will not find what you need to in order to help this mech.”

“I know that,” Duskwalker answered, “but I can't sit here and do nothing.”

“I do not think it is possible for you to even contemplate the idea of 'doing nothing',” Naomi told her, her voice slightly sarcastic, “but you can still consider the option of contacting the Autobots. Perhaps their medic is capable of a transference...”

“He might be, but what little I know about it requires that information be taken from the mech's processor as well as his spark, along with inner most energon to properly 'bed' the spark, and there's no telling what all this protocol is primed for. It's the most paranoid conglomerate of 'what ifs' I've ever seen in coding. It doesn't make any sense. It's like they expected a revolt and...”

Her ears flicked, maybe?

“Anyway,” she dismissed the thought, answers could be found in Hive City, she was certain of it. “I have to try and do this without causing trauma to his spark and transference doesn't always work out like it needs to. I don't exactly have a frame, or protoform, sitting around for us to use.”

This time Naomi remained quiet and Duskwalker suspected she was running through various simulations. Leaving the AI to do so, knowing that Naomi was simply concerned for her, Duskwalker prepared two of the containers of energon to bring with her, along with a specially designed sledge that she could pull with her alt mode. It had a harness made out of a pliable material that she could step into so she might be able to pull large mechs along with her off the battlefield; it worked just as well for salvaging materials.

“Please keep me informed of his condition, Naomi,” Duskwalker said, transforming into her feline frame and stepping into the harness on the front of the sledge. “If something happens, or he goes critical...” her tail lashed. It was dangerous to leave DT here alone without supervision, or rather medical supervision, but how else could Duskwalker help him?

“I will, of course.”

“Then I had better get going, hopefully I can find something... It's not like Cybertronians have been slouches, our tech has definitely improved in the time since the Quintessons, right?”

Duskwalker trotted over towards the lift that would take her to the surface of the planet, her tail swishing back and forth behind her. It was going to be a long treck and if it weren't for needing Naomi to act as a nurse she would have taken the ship, but too much of her processing power was being utilized to keep DT from deteriorating more.

As the lift moved, carrying Duskwalker up towards the surface, Naomi reflected on her core programming and found that she could not ignore this situation. Renegade had altered her programming so that her first priority was to keep Duskwalker safe and leaving the safety of the workshop for the dangers of Hive City was not something she could handle.

The question was, then, who could she call for assistance?

#Duskwalker Entry #Duskwalkertfp #Had a hard time writing this one #because of my brain being foggy #wheee Naomi is being vury bad #at least Dusk thinks so

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