tampered | Log; Ongoing

Log; Ongoing

When; February 3rd, mid morning.
Rating; PG-13
Characters; Romana

morethanasuit
Summary; Tony gives Romana a tour of the facilities.
Log;Tony always enjoyed showing people around City Solutions. It was his pride and joy project in the City and it seemed like Romana was the type of woman that could appreciate what he was doing here. What everyone who worked there was doing.

Plus, she was a beautiful, intelligent woman and just because Tony was with someone didn't mean he still couldn't admire something wonderful. If he was the type he would have dressed in his sharpest suit and looked his best, but fortunately for him looking his best was his natural state.

Instead of having Romana escorted to his office he decided to meet her personally at the entrance so that he could talk the place up from the ground up.

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Romana waited in the lobby and aside from the occasional nervous tap of her foot, she was perfectly still. She was curious about Tony Stark and his company, but hesitant to make any lasting working commitments.

...But still she had to get out. Living in the TARDIS, while physically comfortable, was becoming an emotional cocoon. Perhaps in this place she could find a new way to define herself.

She hears footsteps behind her and she turns.

"Good morning, Mr. Stark."

Edited 2009-02-04 04:21 (UTC)

"Please, just call me Tony," he said, beaming her a smile as he offered her his hand.

The woman had an air of sophistication and beauty that Tony didn't see often. Of course, with the list of subjects she studied at her academy he already guessed she would be an exceptional woman.

"And it's nice to meet you in person, Romana. I hope you haven't been waiting long."

"No, not very long. This is a very beautiful building you have, Tony. The architecture is very elegant."

She took his hand and returned his smile. He was confident, this human, very at ease, very in control of his surroundings. It was easy to see how he could muster the support for an endeavor such as this. He was probably at least as persuasive as the Doctor, if not more so since he apparently lacked the streak of absolute madness that the Doctor could never quite hide.

She wondered if that made him dangerous. It wouldn't be the first time she'd blindly trusted unwisely.

"Thank you, a lot of us worked hard on building it," he said as he turned and started to walk through the building. "We wanted this to be a place that people felt proud working at. For some of the people here this is their first chance at working in a lab as state of the art as this. Pet projects at home that had to be completed on the side can now take primary focus here. We have several full service restaurants, a gym, a day care, and even temporary living quarters for those who get too caught up in their work and need some rest but don't want to go home."

"That must be very convenient, I was always loathe to tear myself away from my studies."

Romana followed him closely, easily matching her pace to his. She was curious as to the exact nature of what was worked on here, but for the time being, was content to allow Tony to lead her further into the building.

One thing had occurred to her though, "What about security? I understand that there are a number of unsavory citizens here in the city, and I assume some measures have been taken to protect the work here?"

"It is. No one benefits if someone is worked to death," Tony explained. And he liked the sound of the fact that she hated to tear herself away from her studies. That was the kind of person he wanted here.

"We have the most state of the art and the most thorough security system in the City," he said. "We combine both technology and magic to protect the work done here."

She tripped a bit.

"...I'm sorry, did you say magic?"

Tony gave a small smile. He knew it was unusual for someone with such a scientific mind to believe in magic, let alone have it used, but if you were teammates with Thor and Doctor Strange it was hard to deny the existence of magic.

"Yes, magic," he said with a nod. "Quite a few of the people here use it so I wanted to ensure we took every precaution we could."

It made a certain kind of logic she supposed. But even with the calm assurance on Tony's face it set her a bit off. It wasn't that she didn't believe in magic per se, but without any demonstrable evidence...it wasn't her facility, to comment further would be rude to her host.

"I suppose that certainly seems to be a very reasonable thing to do, then. Something else I'll make myself more familiar with in the near future, I'm sure."

She continued walking, curious as to where Tony was taking her. "How many people to you employ, this facility seems quite large."

"If you're interested, we have several people here working on integrating magic and technology," he said as he stepped into one of the elevators.

"In the meantime I'd like to show you my personal lab," he said. "I've got several pet projects going on there that you might be interested. As for staff, it fluxuates. New scientists and doctors are constantly coming and going but we usually have several hundred scientists and about 5 support staff for every one of those."

As she entered the elevator it was hard not to be somewhat taken aback by the scope he was describing. Even in the short time she'd been in the City, she'd seen the constant arrivals and departures - to maintain such a facility, even with support staff, was a testament to both the talent as well as the sheer force of will of the man standing next to her. Even a seasoned Time Lord would be impressed, especially coming from a human.

...Of course, if she said it that way it would likely be taken as an insult.

"I commend you, Tony. What a marvel it is to keep something like this going in an environment such as the City.

What sort of "pet projects" are you working on?"

Edited 2009-02-16 00:39 (UTC)

"I have a lot of experience running very complex businesses," Tony explained. Running a business in one city, even one as strange as the City, was much easier than running the global corporation he did back home. Adjusting to the peculiarities of the situation had taken some creative thinking, but he had a lot of brilliant people working for him.

"I have two," he told her. "One is something I can't show you unless you're hired and get a certain security clearance but the other is nanotechnology, specifically with an application to curing cancer."

The elevator doors closed as Romana thought to herself. The fact that she would need security clearance for one of Tony's projects was hardly surprising, but something as complex and high-profile as cancer research being discussed openly was. Humans considered medical research to be highly secretive, and they were quite possessive of their results. Something about patents and money if she was remembering correctly. Such a casual offer meant he was either a true humanitarian and open to all assistance, or he was using feigned openness to get her attention.

The fact that the only other research more secretive was military in nature, did not make his earlier admission of secrecy seem as innocent as she initially thought.

She began tapping her foot absently, lost in her conflicted thoughts.

The doors opened and Tony gestured for her to go first. This particular section of the building was his garage. It didn't matter if it was at his home or a building like this he always considered the place he did his work his garage.

Machines and robotics of various sorts hummed quietly and occasionally traversed the length of the large room. Some had their own SI but the vast majority were currently being controlled by Tony, on way or another. Entire sections of the lab though were behind energy shields, obscuring whatever was beyond them from sight.

"The nanomachines are over this way," he said, gesturing again.

Taking Tony's suggestion she began to walk through the lab.

There was a sort of controlled chaos in the way things were bustling about. The Doctor, no doubt would love it. A few glances here and there showed machines of various functions, some were obviously for fabrication, others for design, and quite a few seemed dedicated to computations of various sorts.

Some even seemed to be operating independently, and Romana recalled an earlier conversation with Tony about giving limited AI to his technology.

"The nanomachines, have you designed them to work independently, or under human control?"

"They're capable of minor independent action," Tony explained while he lead her over to a large screen on the side of one of the walls. It light up with the image of what looked like a blue colored sphere with lots of little tiny arms waving off of it.

"Individually they're not big or complex enough to do much of anything. But, they all link to each other, transmitting and sharing information in a network that allows them to function like a much more advanced computer. With so many nanomachines, you can have very complex commands."

"And of course the network would be very well encrypted against outside influences."

The screen danced and Romana watched the nanomachine. At the moment it didn't seem to have a specific task, so she took the time to study its construction. A fascinating design, spherical to avoid sharp edges that could damage tissues, yet with what appeared to be fully articulated appendages for navigation and work.

"Are they designed to be absorbed by the host body after finishing their work, or are they extracted?"

"Yes, in addition, for security purposes the network has a very short range," Tony explained. "You would have to be very close to the person to give them commands."

The screen zoomed out and showed more of the nanites, navigating their way through the bloodstream and past white and red blood cells.

"This image is actually coming from several of the nanites. These particular ones are in a pig that has acute leukemia," he said. "The nanites are charged with finding the malformed blood cells and destroying them. Right now the nanites will be extracted once they're done. They're a bit expensive to leave in. We're working towards them to eventually be left in so they could repair any damage as quickly as possible."

"They're fascinating creations, Tony. I assume they can be programmed to deliver medicine as well? Not to mention possible applications outside the body. Have you considered using them to clean pollution, or improve agriculture by controlling pests or soil conditions?"

She leaned in for a closer look, reaching to adjust the magnification factors and belatedly realized her presumption. She turned back and nonchalantly laced her fingers behind her back.

"Of course, this being your project the final product is what you make of it."

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Log; Ongoing

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