Paradise Science Fair

(This scene was long enough that I felt it warranted it's own thread. I don't think I'll have a followup, but feel free to comment as a reply.)

The display at the Paradise Island science fair fit with its neighbors. A tri-fold cardboard display announced the subject matter in bold letters across the top. Below were a marked up map, several charts, and a short description of the experiment. Propped on the table was a tablet playing a looping video. Next to the tablet was a pet harness, sized for a large cat. Below the table was a reinforced pet carrier.

Standing in front of the table were two Animen youth, a mare and an otteress. Both were dressed island formal in sundresses. Working their way down the row of displays were a pair of drow women dressed in business suits. Each clasped a folio in her arm. As they finished their interview at the neighboring display, both the mare and the otteress straightened up.

The mare was the first to speak. “Hi! I’m Melody Brennan.” The otteress spoke next. “And I’m Linda Hofsteed.” Handshakes were exchanged as the drow introduced themselves as Mrs. Diggins and Mrs. Sharpe. Mrs. Diggins was the next to speak. “Normally, we’d be introducing ourselves as judges for your experiment. However, if this is the project I think it is, I’m afraid we must recuse ourselves due to a conflict of interest.” Mrs. Sharpe nodded before adding, “Even so, we’d like to hear your presentation. Our employer will be quite interested to learn what the outcome was.”

Melody and Linda exchange a glance, before Linda speaks up. “Ok then. Our experiment is entitled ‘Iterations on RFC 1149’. RFC eleven forty-nine was introduced on April 1st, 1990. The full title of the RFC is A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers.”

Melody took over the explanation from her partner. “As you might guess from the April first introduction date, the standard was intended to be something of a joke. However, just over a decade later, a group of enthusiasts assembled a prototype implementation. Other published improvements on this standard include RFC twenty-five forty-nine, adding quality of service functionality and RFC sixty-two fourteen, which added support for IPv6.”

Linda picked up where the mare left off. “Normally, this would have been the end of the story, except Kardonia’s Funniest Home Videos had a segment featuring the antics of splintercats. The initial idea of replacing carrier pigeons with splintercats was a joke, but Melody convinced me that there could be real world uses. On a lark, we petitioned Her Royal Highness and she surprised us both by granting us the use of two splintercat kittens, Matchstick and Kindling, for our experiment.”

The otteress spoke next. “The first step was training the kittens to go from one place to another on command. Once they had this down, the next evolution was for them to go between moving points. As it turns out, they are surprisingly good trackers.”

The normally dark-skinned Mrs. Diggins looked slightly pale at the statement, before commenting. “You don’t have to remind me of that.” The unexpected statement raised eyebrows on the part of the youth.

After a moment, Melody lifted the pet harness off of the table. “This is the harness that Matchstick wore for the experiments. One advantage of a splintercat over their avian brethren is that they can carry heavier loads. In our case, the majority of the load would be considered test equipment. The footage playing on the tablet is a highlight reel of the footage from the forward facing camera. This camera and the GPS tracker allowed us to review the path taken by the packet after it was received. The GPS tracker also allowed for cleanup in the event of packet loss. The packet itself was transported on the RFID card attached to the top of the harness.” She set the harness back on the table and picked up the carrier. Opening the carrier, she showed the antenna mounted in the roof of the crate. She then resumed speaking. “The RFID card was read from and written to using the antenna mounted in the carrier. This antenna was hooked to a laptop, running a custom network driver. This driver leveraged proxmark to perform the read/write operations.”

Linda picked up the explanation from there. “For each packet transmitted, we would wait for an audible ping to indicate the packet had been written. We would then open the crate and instruct the splintercat to find our counterpart. When they reached our counterpart, they would enter the open carrier on the opposite end, triggering the read operation by the card reader. In the end, we found that the average latency of a packet when transmitted by IP over Splintercat was roughly one hundred seventeen thousand milliseconds per kilometer between stationary stations, and one hundred eighty three thousand milliseconds per kilometer between moving stations. Any questions?”

Mrs. Sharpe was apparently familiar with the technical details, as she was nodding along with the explanation. It was Mrs. Diggins who asked the first question. “Can you describe the training methods employed?”

The otteress nodded at the question. “As it turns out, splintercats are highly food motivated. We started simple, telling them to cross the living room. Once they seemed to understand our commands, we graduated to the back yard, before moving on to the park. By the end of the experiment, they were actually taking off on their own the minute their carrier opened, taking their cue from the audible ping.”

Mrs. Sharpe asked the next question. “What real-world uses did you see for the implementation?”

The mare handled this question. “Consider the situation where a scout patrol needs to relay information back to their headquarters without breaking radio silence. While an autonomous drone might be a suitable transport, the reliability of GPS may be considered suspect and the presence of such a drone could tip off anyone watching to their presence. In contrast, trained wildlife, such as a splintercat, would be less obvious. They would also lack the metadata that could be extracted from a captured drone.”

The drow quirked an eyebrow at the explanation. “And what gave you the idea?”

Melody blushed slightly. “I’m part of a squad at New Worlds Simulation, and there’s been a time or two I wished I had something like a splintercat to send a message back to headquarters.”

After a few more questions, the brace of drow thanked the young scientists for their time and continued working their way down the row. When they reached the end, Mrs. Diggins asked, “What’d you think of the Empress’ pet project?”

Mrs. Sharpe responded with a chuckle. “Something tells me she’ll try to classify the report. Don’t know how easy it’ll be to do that, but the availability of splintercats is quite limited.”