Coding (Tag: Jackson)

Xion was almost finished with Wall-E's coding. She smiled almost adoringly at the computer screen. She wanted to give the robot a bit of a personality and if she were to be honest, her little bot was going to remind her of a puppy. That's okay. Her mom always said she could never have a pet. Leave it to her to go and make her own. At least Wall-E wouldn't poop on the floor or need walking. She was so caught up in her work and the music she was listening to she didn't realize someone was looking over her shoulder and staring at her computer screen.

Jackson was really such a nosy person. The irony of it was, he was always the one making the cat curiosity idiom. Oh well, sue him. Hmm, she was doing pretty good. But she would need a few tweaks for it to move a bit smoother. Probably not as smooth as the EVEs running the place but still. Jackson didn't even bother to speak to her, he just sent his hands on top of hers, moving them aside swiftly and overwriting her last line, inserting a small thing of his won in a few of the lines before withdrawing his hands. Much better.

"Hey!" Xion cried. She quickly drew back her laptop from her nosy interloper and glared up at them after yanking her head phones from her ears. She did not like having other people just touch her laptop and mess with her coding without her say so. Especially without her say so. She quickly shut the lid so he couldn't see any more of her project. Luckily she had created a quick save feature that would save her work and it wouldn't be lost if she did that.

Jackson scoffed, rolling his eyes at her. Ironically, that's what he did whenever people started snooping at what he was doing all the time. It was definitely a relatable reaction but she did it with lots of dramatics, so it was more of an observation. "What? It needed fixing. So I fixed it. You're welcome." He said.

"I didn't ask you to fix him," Xion said. "I was doing just fine on my own." She knew he was one of the kids in the class who was smarter than she was. She didn't need it pointed out. Besides, Wall-E was her project. She didn't need anyone else mucking him up and making him something he wasn't. She would go through later, find this person's code and eliminate it. She could always tell her coding apart from everyone else's because it was as distinct as hand writing.

"Now, how come when you say it, it sounds like a bad thing? We're all in the same division for a reason right? At least be all antisocial to someone from another division...or the professor. Those are the people you close up to. How is our division supposed to dominate if we don't help each other out?" He was only partially telling the truth. Yeah it was true, but it didn't really matter to him. "The others have actual powers. we have intellect which is power in itself, right?" Jackson adjusted his frames, "If it means that much to you sweetheart, then don't call it fixing. Call it modifying. And at least see what my changes did before you write it off."

"Yeah well asking is polite!" Xion retorted. "You don't just do something to someone else's project without permission! And I'm already working with someone else! You can't just but in because you feel like it!" Xion shoved her headphones into her bag. With this run in, she was fully prepared to stay in her room unless it was time for 'training'. "You don't even know what he does!"

"I'm not ever referred to as polite." Jackson commented, "I don't see why not considering I just did it. So? They're not here right now." He shrugged, "I normally do what I want if I feel like it." Jackson had to admit he was getting really annoyed with her and her exclamations. She was worse than Cleo...well, probably not, but at least she didn't yell all the time...actually she did. "Fuck, girls are annoying." He stared at the girl with a bored expression. "Sure I do. Judging from the coding, he's like a pet."

"No. That's just his personality coding." Xion said. She hugged her laptop close to her chest. She had left his programming at her dorm. "I was... I want him to learn. I want to make an AI." Which was why she was going so slowly and she would have gone through her coding a hundred times over to make sure everything was right. "I want him to be special."

Jackson squinted at her, not in disgust, but it was something along those lines. Why did she look like she was about to start crying? He didn't feel guilty about it, naturally, that typically didn't happen. He'd made lots of girls cry before, she wouldn't be the first...or last. "Well, if you want him to be special I'd have to say that he shouldn't follow a basic coding regimen. You should lay him out in grids. It's more difficult, but it's still coding. Kind of like putting a bunch of stuff in boxes and using less space. Or folding your clothes rather than shoving them into a drawer."

"I was building on it." Xion insisted. "I just started the personality core today." She wanted to believe she had done well for one day of work in formatting a personality for a robot of all things. "I just... I don't know how to incorporate that to his body... I don't know how to make it." Robotics weren't her strongest suit. Coding was at least something she had gone to college for. She remembered everything she had been taught there and everything she had taught herself. She didn't like the look he was giving her, like she was dirt or something as equally gross. It made her feel small and insignificant.

"Personality?" Jackson snickered to himself. Giving an AI emotions was never a good thing. They always began to feel things they shouldn't and start acting on them as if they were real humans. The problem with it is the fact that most robots are structured for specific things, combat and so on. "I've only tampered with robotics once or twice." He admitted, "But I think I could help you out...if you aren't going to throw another tantrum that is." She was giving him a headache secretly.

"Why would you want to help though?" Xion asked. "What's in it for you?" She didn't even know why he bothered messing with her coding in the first place. Particularly since he already showed such a keen disinterest in her as a person. It couldn't have been because he thought that the divisions were 'supposed to pull together' and be friendly. He wasn't friendly.

Jackson sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair. Geez, she did she really have to be so difficult? Was it that hard? "Look, if you don't want it, I won't give it to you. I'm not really all that interested in your pet, and I'm definitely not going to beg you to let me help you. I don't do the 'helping' thing in the first place." Jackson really was prepared to just walk away at this point. This is why he was never nice to people, or at least his degree of nice. It was a lot of work and everyone were conspiracy theorists...he was one of those theorists, though.

Xion looked up at him, rather grudgingly. She couldn't pass up a chance to actually learn about the mechanics of building a robot, even if the 'teacher' was a bit of a jerk. At least she would be able to remember and re-use his 'lessons'. "Fine..." she muttered. "We should probably start with names though... I'm Xion Fair. And my project is Waste Allocation Load Lifting Engine. Or Wall-E for short."

Jackson huffed, Finally. He would never offer help to anyone, ever, again. It was way too taxing on his body, and it was annoying. That was the real issue here. "Jackson. Jekyll. Like Jekyll and Hyde. And before you ask, I don't transform. At least no physically." He gave her a wink.

He still went through the mood swings if anyone asked her for her opinion on the matter. He was worse than girls on their monthlies, but she was going to keep her mouth shut on that matter. She couldn't really risk offending him, if he was willing to teach her how to work on robotics. "Thank you, Jackson," she replied.

Jackson snorted, "Yeah, no problem, kid." He scratched his eyebrow, avoiding the piercing as he looked around. "Do you have the bot with you or should i start from scratch with something small and unrelated?" He asked her, pulling his slacks up before he squatted down to search through the supplies offered to them.

"We should probably start from scratch..." Xion said. "I don't know the first thing about building a robot... But I brought a few pieces from home." She fished a few parts out of her bag that she had thought would help, a few old cameras that could be changed into optic lenses, blue prints for a compactor that she wanted to miniaturize in her small robot, a few gears and other miscellaneous bits and pieces.

Jackson started picking up the pieces as she put them down, observing them all before putting them back down carelessly. Booooring. "You should definitely look into getting some more high end parts." Not that there was anything wrong with hers...in her opinion probably. Jackson yanked out a drawer and withdrew a pencil as he examined her blueprints. "Well, you're going to want to sketch the whole thing first." He opened a fresh page of a graphing notebook and slid it to her. "Do you know what you want it to look like?"

"It's... It's all I could afford," Xion said with a dark blush. Before she had come to the island, she and her family were just scraping by. She had to make do with her parts from junk yards and sale items that were already broken in the first place. She pulled out her own note book. She had at least managed to do that. She opened it and showed Jackson the drawings she had in mind for Wall-E's design.

Jackson pushed his glasses up onto his head and rubbed his eyes. "Well, we can make them in house now. Don't worry about it." He pulled a stool under himself and sat down. He turned on the desktop computer occupying the workspace and opened up an engineering software. He then looked at her designs. "Any dimensions in mind?" He went on, pointing the pencil to the places she was missing them and returning his glasses to his eyes.

"Small," Xion responded. "No bigger than... a foot and a half all around. And he's going to be square." Square things were easier to transport and if he could condense his size then it would be easier. Xion quietly peered over his shoulder in interest. It wasn't often someone had something to show her and she was going to take Jackson's lessons and run with it.

"A foot and a half?" Jackson smirked and put his face in his hand as he looked at Xion. "He's gonna be a squirt like you, squirt?" He chuckled to himself before filling in the needed dimensions for each and every part. Why were there so many parts to this thing anyway? Jackson began to design it on the computer, making a rough 3D version of "it." "What did you call this thing anyway?" He asked, "We should re-sketch it too."

"He's not supposed to be big." Xion defended of her little bot, despite not even being made yet. "Not yet at least. He's supposed to make bricks for houses by up-cycling trash." She had been working on this little guy since she started college and well after her graduation. "I told you already. He's Wall-E." But never the less, just as he instructed she flipped her notebook to a clean page, already going through the motions of keeping the same body type. Collapsible, she told herself.