Everyone:

ProvocativelyFickle: Thanks 3V, I threw in what I could, as always
ProvocativelyFickle: Wasn’t much, sorry
NumbToNothing: working on it.
Neon Czolgoz: dont sweat it Eli, just throw the link in the flog-blast piece
NumbToNothing: ah fuck guess i’m still doing that
Neon Czolgoz: im getting your ass youre still doing that
NumbToNothing: owo
NumbToNothing: okay, okay-

The piece goes live, with 3V’s crowdfunding effort attached. With any luck, it’s not the only way it’ll spread, but it always helps to paperclip this stuff to content. The minor notoriety the site’s getting from Persephone’s association with it couldn’t hurt.

That’s not strictly true, actually.

Neon Czolgoz: comments sections have been cooking off too
Neon Czolgoz: might need to bring on some new moderators at some point
Neon Czolgoz: since me and Junta have better shit to be doing
JuntaSThompson: Ostensibly.
Neon Czolgoz: see he keeps using internet fights as an excuse to procrastinate and I’m calling his ass out on it.
JuntaSThompson: That’s a me problem, huh?
Neon Czolgoz: when I do it it’s critical research actually
Neon Czolgoz: anyway yeah
Neon Czolgoz: so if anyone can think of anyone who’d be a good fit
Neon Czolgoz: help protect us from ourselves
JuntaSThompson: Please.

Worth keeping in mind.

Persephone: in no particular order
Persephone: @ProvocativelyFickle i'm alive, unbeaten, and not arrested. doing fantastic.
Persephone: @JuntaSThompson if you have any way to track police attention, now's the time. i want to know where they're acting squeaky clean around to find out where to dig
Persephone: @all in case the above doesn't make it obvious i'm not dropping this. i already got burned and i refuse to let this fuck up my life with nothing to show for it. that being said... i'm also low on leads. i've got one name and police behavior to go off. so i'll be in my hole digging.
Persephone: and @NumbToNothing *sprays with water* no shit-talking your own work

ProvocativelyFickle: Hey!!
ProvocativelyFickle: Yes!!!
Neon Czolgoz: fuck
Neon Czolgoz: well, you heard the lady
JuntaSThompson: I mean, kind of? Listen, what I can do is aggregate press reports. I don’t have any way to see if what they’re actually doing has changed, but usually OESN acts as a police stenographer. If the reporting changes, I can maybe flag that. But I’m going to be honest, this is going to be looking for signal in a noise factory.
NumbToNothing: Don’t bother, noisefactory’s a dead genre.
JuntaSThompson: Fuck off, there’s no way that’s real
NumbToNothing: [file attached]
JuntaSThompson:
JuntaSThompson: I’m going to go put my mouth to a firehouse of police procedural reporting now, it will hurt my brain less.
NumbToNothing: 😘
ProvocativelyFickle: Hey just because nobody’s said it yet
ProvocativelyFickle: I promise we won’t let this fuck up your life, okay? @persephone?
ProvocativelyFickle: We’re all here and we’re all going to help
ProvocativelyFickle: We’re going to make things okay!
[7 people reacted with :blinking_neon_up_arrow:]
Neon Czolgoz: we’re in this as long as you are, as deep as
Neon Czolgoz: but don’t throw good money after bad if you don’t got the chips
Neon Czolgoz: never think you don’t have more to lose
Neon Czolgoz: because you will always be wrong.
JuntaSThompson: Grim.
Neon Czolgoz: That’s a reminder of how seriously we need to take this as well, yeah?
NumbToNothing: Ah shit, York using grammar
Neon Czolgoz: Sure am.

3V:

The kind of problem you can’t escape, no matter how far you run. No matter where you go, you take yourself with you. But as long as you’re out here, it’s obvious why you can’t be expected to handle it.

Physical distance justifies emotional distance. The vacuum of space insulates you against social discharge.

Still.

But for your host, sleeping in as long as she’s allowed, you’re alone out here. You have an entire mountain, all to yourself. Apparently your only assignment is to find some meaning in all of this, whatever that means.

Does this change anything, for you? Does this reaffirm the solitude as something to find comfort in, or does this sharpen it against you?

Does the thought at home push or pull at you?

I’m being so rude, forgive me. I really should ask. How did you sleep?

November:
Red, Orange and White:

Muffi operates out of a fourplex unit in Euclid, Classical Apollo - just a single hex counterclockwise from your own place. It’s still a trip out from Saint Ambrose, but closer than Rudy’s office-apartment in Confucious.

Aevum’s layout is heavily inspired by how Dante described the Christian Heaven. The nine horizontal sections are named for Heaven’s spheres, with six vertical divisions named for human eras. The municipalities, the neighbourhood-level districts, are named after the people who would end up in that sphere of heaven, from that time period.

It’s a civil engineer’s idea of adorable, and it means Aevum has a unique approach to nominative determinism.

A quirk of this is that the class divisions throughout Aevum are inconsistent. Not all fields of human endeavor flourished in all time periods. The middle era in Ares draws names like Nobunaga, Richard the Lionheart and Joan of Arc. Apollo draws its names from philosophers - the dark ages lack star power, relying on important but lesser known people like Saint Ambrose.

Sections with lots of large, important names in them tend to be more highly developed, often wealthier. That’s fine - there’s still a need for large, lower density sprawls, and breaking up the uniformity helps make the station feel more… human.

Considering that, it’s almost surprising that Muffi made it into Classical Apollo. It’s neck to neck with the Enlightenment as Apollo's desirable hex. Euclid rubs its shoulders against Aristotle and Socrates, shares a bus line with names like Buddha and Laozi. Not the kind of district you’d associate with Headpattr workers.

Muffi had been a good data scientist though. Had to have been, for what she set up. Her move to Headpattr was a form of working retirement, since she had her mortgage paid off and her kids grown. She’d just thought casual cleaning should have been less stressful, just a way to keep moving and keep feeling useful. A chance to take the constant chest pains she’d been suffering seriously.

And it was, once she’d solved the tenuous and precarious aspects of the app.

Elected to her role is right. There are many archetypes of leadership, and Muffi exemplifies the kind who doesn’t want to be there, but nobody can think of anyone who could replace them. Anyone else who could do it won’t, and everyone else who would do it can’t. No surprises. The position requires long hours, a good head for politics, is largely thankless, and entirely unpaid.

She has two shares of her fourplex, both apartments on the left half renovated into a single space. Upstairs are three empty bedrooms; one converted into a hobby space, another a spare for guests, another a storage space when she ran out of ideas for the space she had. It’s not something she advertises. There’s always someone in Headpattr in crisis, someone needing a couch to surf or a place to crash, and if anyone knew Muffi had so much of it…

Her home is sanctum. The position asks too much of her already, and this is the last part of herself she refuses to give.

When she assigns it to you as your first task, November, understand the full implication of the trust she is extending to you.

She sits at her kitchen table, a laptop set up with all three screens unfolded. Her cats - Henry, Thomas and Slaughterhouse Five - weave past her ankles towards the dinner she’s put out for them, and all that shedding fur guarantees that this will be a real job, not just a social call.

Her short black curls have all of their colour except for the very roots, the silver flecks giving the impression of steel wool, complimenting the sharp lines of her greek nose and her hard, square jaw. When she asks her question, she doesn’t keep her eyes off the chat programs and maps she has open in front of her.

“You know I have to ask what you want this score for.” She says. “You don’t have to tell me, and maybe it’s better if I don’t know. But it’s very…” Muffi hesitates with her choice of words here. “Out of character, for you to want less of a challenge. I’m worried you’re going to do something, and that means we lose a team of our best performers.”

“I’d also appreciate a change of linen, for the spare bed, if you have the time, but just a vacuuming and a dusting would be fine, grazie mille, miei cari.”

She means it. No matter how you answer, you’re getting your tenners, with Muffi being the first. Just say you need to get to Thrones, and she’ll ask why, but again, you don’t need to answer that. You don’t need to tell her that you want to inflict every 80s mid-budget horror movie on your absentee father simultaneously, or bring up anything about what happened with Rudy Merkin.

But imagine the look on her face if you did.

Persephone:
Black, Brown and Pink:

For subterfuge: Black, your opposition at the apartment has been disgustingly amateur. Most external listening methods can be thrown off by playing music most of the time. Pink’s talking serves the same purpose better. Anything that gets around that means planting bugs, getting closer. So far no journalistic organization has tried so much as a fake handyman bit.

That only means that inside Elodie’s place is secure, until the cops show up. Outside’s a different story, since most of the opposition doesn’t seem to care about espionage for now. They haven't given up on conventional methods yet, maybe.

Outside are camera crews and interview teams, at least three news vans bringing equipment. At least some seem sympathetic. Would Elodie consent to an interview? An exclusive? Is there any way to pass on that request? Even if it’s from Brad Thoroughgood himself, OESN’s prime sexyman?

Eyes on the apartment, they’re looking for anyone bringing her groceries, associating with her. Friends are fair game for ambush interviews.

A notice from the landlord gets posted around 08:11. All tenants are to be advised that the stairwell is for residents only, and the police will be called to escort any journalists blocking the stairs or hallways from the building.

Elodie got out while the getting was good. It’ll be hard to get back in. A real plan, with real luck.

Fucking_Skelator needs no plan. No plan survives contact with Fucking_Skelator. With a professional, you work to the schedule. There is an understanding of cost, of deadlines, and that business will be completed in time and in quality.

Fucking_Skelator is not a professional. Fucking_Skelator is Fucking_Skelator. This shit is so fly by night that the Nachthexen, the Night Witches of World War 2, would take pilgrimage to Fucking Skelator’s place to take tips. Fucking_Skelator is not a businessman. He is a friend who happens to own excruciatingly illegal, pirated, contraband tools for the repair and maintenance of deeply unethical, highly proprietary, officially discontinued prosthetics of the sort you might get saddled with if you were expecting a life sentence of prison labour in a Jupiter gulag.

He is a good friend of Elodies. He doesn’t know Pink. He does not like having to trust Pink, and while he likes Elodie - who couldn’t? - he hasn’t known her long enough to take her vouches as gospel. Fucking_Skelator won’t say this in so many words. Fucking_Skelator will instead say things like;

“PERSEPHONE! MY FRIEND. YOU ARE LOOKING TODAY. YES, LOOKING INDEED. HOW ABOUT WE TAKE A LOOK AT YOU, EH? EH? THE PINK ONE. EH. I DO NOT KNOW ABOUT HER SO MUCH. HAVE NOT SEEN HER AROUND SO MUCH. MAYBE I DON’T HAVE THE PARTS. MAYBE I MIGHT NOT EVEN LOOK. MAYBE PINK ONE SHOULD WAIT HERE FOR HER FRIEND PERSPHONE TO BE TOUCHED UP, EH? EH? YES, YES.”

Pink? You can either bullshit or charm him to keep close with Persephone when she’s taken in. I do not think this will be a shock for you to learn, but Fucking_Skelator is more cool than clever, so bullshitting is going to be easier. He’s not stupid though, to have lasted this long. [8] and [11] respectively.

You don’t have to try, though, if you’re comfy waiting in the alley for a bit.

While Elodie gets her tentacles retuned, recalibrated, a followup email advises that residents have been having difficulty getting the police to follow through, so alternate options are being explored.

Alternate options appear to be canceling Elodie’s lease, an email that arrives just a minute later. She has four months to find a new place, with the corporate landlord promising reimbursement if she leaves sooner.

Four months? Without something to stoke it, the media firestorm can’t last more than four days. The cops definitely implied that they wouldn’t be providing any services to a building that housed Elodie in any capacity. Good luck proving it.

That’s just when she gets the email though. It’s up to her when she actually checks it, notices it, reads it.

Persephone: How does the tentacle recalibration go
Persphone and Novembers: What’s the plan to get Elodie back in her (for now) place?

R/W/O

"Do we tell her?" said Red immediately. "I want to tell her."
"You want to tell everyone everything," said White.
"But she'd totally think it was awesome!"
"I would like to remind you that as cool as the operational aesthetics are, this is still an operation."
"Fine," said Red, looking over at Muffi. "Look. All I can say that this is a personal matter that's intimately important to me, and if I pull it off then I will provide you with an amazing video."
White and Orange both nod seriously, then return to their work. No corners are to be cut, even now. November goes about the cleaning and maintenance of this house with the same precision she'd give to the maintenance of a space station. And why not? This house is literally part of a space station.

Her space station.

"It's interesting that this is out of character for us," said Orange, still within earshot of Muffi. "We've established a character that successfully?"
"Humans project," said White flatly.
"I disagree, it's a sign we have consistent emergent traits that render us more than a collection of individuals, and they can identify that."
"Human pattern recognition finds the shapes of animals in groupings of stars," said White. "Them applying it to us should not be taken as anything more than projection."
"Well, let's see!" said Orange, turning around to face Muffi properly. "Muffi, what would you say our character is?"

Y/B/G

It's hard to identify Yellow's deal, exactly. The other Waifubots live their archetypes to the hilt - even now, Blue is sitting with her head down and a paralyzing blush on her face, and Green has headphones in, hoodie raised, and fingers going at ten billion words per second into her laptop. But Yellow? Golden hair, golden eyes, kind smile, gentle demeanor...

"I've been thinking. We should get fake married."

... Incomprehensible thought processes.

"Look, from everything you've told me, it makes sense as the easiest resolution to all your issues, right? A way to shut down everyone who reached out to you without needing to even talk to them further. We'd save a bunch on rent and it would be incredible ammunition for my coming throwdown with my dad."

This is coming after her having told you everything about her investigation so far - Red's death and resurrection, the plot against Singh, Merkin, the works. That's some heavy shit to process, but right now Yellow's just keen on exploring this idea.

"Plus I'm insanely good in bed," added Yellow, with a wink. "Depending on how fake you wanna make it."

B/B/P

November's autonomous personality protocols aren't perfect - they're bundles of anime cliches that can improvise. Most people November interacts with get assigned a variable Main Character identity that form the basis of her interactions with them: 3V is a Sports Protagonist, for example, and so November's personalities express themselves in terms of rivals, friends, kohais, etc.

But what the fuck is her poor chinese cartoon algorithm to make of Fucking_Skelator? Hot blooded protagonist? Crime lord? Hentai monster?

"Oh, Fucking_Skelator," she glitches, overheating socialization matrix trying to combine all three. "You can trust me, I will do whatever it takes. I won't let you take my friend without taking me first, you pervert, so what's this going to cost me?"

[Charm: 3 on the dice is fairly unsalvageable]

Elodie 404s for a moment, sputtering. "But. Wait. No, no, you're both adults, you can do whatever you want in your free time, just wait to flirt with my technician till after he works me over." There's a moment before what she said sinks in. "I mean till he fixes my..." she stops again, frowns, tries again. "Till after he works out the kinks in- Fuck it. Anything I say will be dirty. Skels, bone me up and get your digits inside me cuz you know it feels good."

Sorry Pink. She's had a day and it's not noon yet.

*

Elodie lies topless on a padded table, glaring and jabbing at her phone, earbuds blocking out the music. An array of LED lights shine down on her back, carefully arranged so that no shadows cover anything important, and illuminating a tattooed star map, constellations names spelled out lovingly in delicate cursive. The bottom corner features a date and time in the same hand. Framing the map: "may the stars shine upon the end of your road". A clever puzzle to work backwards to figure out where in the world, a treasure map where the X is implied.

The effect is ruined by the scar tissue around her spinal implant cutting the map neatly in half, which Fucking_Skelator is currently prodding at each and every joint, crevice, and corner of, checking for corrosion. Her tentacles were similarly disabled and opened up, the connections between the prosthetics and the dock and hardport grafts that attached them to her being the next thing to be checked.

She hates this, she hates being helpless, she hates that her technician understands this. She hates not having a choice to not trust anybody. She needs a distraction.

"Hey Skels. Heard anything fun about police fuckups or coverups recently?"

She doesn't have to raise her voice above the trumpet that had inexplicably joined the speed metal. She didn't know how, but he could always hear her.

November:
Red/White/Orange:

Muffi thinks for some time. With how she’s focused on the screens in front of her, you could be forgiven for thinking she just hadn’t heard you. Finally, she says;

“You like purpose and challenge. Even now, you’re treating my home as another job to be taken seriously, even though you know this is an easy ten for you. Grazie again.” She shifts. “It’s a cleaning job, with more socially denigrating aspects. Most people want this to be easy. Make the money they need, and get out. Not you.”

She points at her screen. “Molly and Daveed hover around 9, because they’re squeamish, but they love how they look in cat ears and like being told. I try to keep them away from God’s favourite jobs - children and drunks. They never ask, they don’t want to look weak, but wanting to be able to handle it doesn’t make it so.”

“Felicity can only stay at 9.4 because I can ensure she only works with female clients. She doesn’t want to believe it, but she can’t handle male attention. She gets hostile. Felicity doesn’t see the pattern, only a lot of isolated incidents where she was justified. I have to account for needs she can’t admit she has.” Muffi considers that, and picks Slaughterhouse V from between her feet, scratches the calico cat underneath its chin.

“It’s not Felicity’s fault that the cleaning she’s good at is tied to a service that implies flirting. And it’s not Molly and Daveed’s fault that the flirting they’re good at implies cleaning. I have to discover that, without being told.” She shrugs. “You? You know I give you the harder cases. It’s not just that I can rely on you for them. It’s because that’s what you need. Problems to solve. Something to justify your attention.”

“Your ‘emergent property’?” Muffi snorts. “You’re dangerous when you’re allowed to get bored.”

Persephone:
P/B/B:

Fucking_Skelator holds the heavy metal door open for Persephone. Heavy metal in the sense of its construction, though also in the sense that it was one last barrier between the streets and the physical force of the music blasting inside. It can be felt as much as heard.

“FUCKING_SKELATOR, A PERVERT?!” Fucking_Skelator’s aware that a highly detailed skull isn’t the best at conveying the deep, rich and expressive emotional language he needs it to. To compromise, he’s adopted very expressive eyebrows. Thick neon green and highly mobile. He raises both of them as far as they’ll go. “YOU HAVE MADE ME VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. THAT YOU THINK I MIGHT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ANY OF THE VULNERABLE FRIENDS WHO COME HERE. KICK ROCKS, MA’AM.”

Fucking_Skelator pointedly closes and latches the door behind Elodie as they lead her to the workspace, shaking their head, unbelievable.

“SORRY IF THEY ARE A FRIEND TO YOU.” Fucking_Skelator says as they assist Elodie on to the table. “BUT…” a four-armed shrug. What else is there to be said?

Whether you’d call them a doctor or a mechanic, they’re good at what they do. There’s a sling hoist here, for friends with even less mobility. It’s exactly what it says on the tin, made for anyone who has no strength below the neck. You get wrapped in essentially a split-open baby-onesie, hooked up to a person-scale crane, and scooted about ass-out in a sack. There’s a rail thin line between it feeling like a carnival ride and like the most humiliating and degrading experience of your life, and all of that comes down to the bedside manner of the operator.

Unlike most hoists, Fucking_Skelator’s painted theirs a matte-black, added high-gloss blue-and-green flame decals to it, called it THE CLAW, and replaced the horn sound with the victory music from an arcade grab-a-prize game, because anyone at the receiving end of it’s “THE BEST PRIZE”.

It’s not all clown shit. Some people prefer solemn dignity, and they get that. What’s important is Skele means it when they say they treat friends here, and they treat their friends as friends. Fucking_Skelator is not a professional, and makes the most of that.

“LET ME THINK.” Skele checks the bindings around Elodie’s waist, around her shoulders, the routine to make sure she’s not going to slide off the table when the tentacles are pulled off, “THERE’S THE BLACK SITE IN WALT DISNEY. I DON’T KNOW IF THAT COUNTS AS RECENT.” Skele shrugs with the top two arms while the bottom two work on decoupling. “THAT’S STILL A THING.”

The tentacles don’t go all the way off, and never all at once. Just enough to check the internals. Skele’s eyebrows shoot right down at something, and the technician crashes through boxes on pig iron shelves looking for something. They find it, something that looks like a masochist designed a dremel - except this one’s painted bright pink and covered in unicorn stickers. The music’s still louder.

“GOOD THAT WE FOUND THIS EARLY. YOU HAD A BURR PRESSING AGAINST SOME CABLING, WAS CUTTING THROUGH THE INSULATION. THAT COULD HAVE CAUSED A NASTY SHORT.” Simulated nerves turned off, the experience is best described as getting dentistry from your gynecologist. The pink tool carves away at the metal of the prosthesis housing.

“THE BLACK SITE IN DISNEY, MODERN HERMES, I MEAN. THERE’S A BIG RED BRICK FACTORY LOOKING BUILDING, ALL THE WINDOWS ARE PAINTED BLACK AND THERE’S A BARBED WIRE FENCE AROUND IT. KNOW TWO FRIENDS TAKEN THERE, COULDN’T SEE THEIR LAWYERS FOR A WEEK, HELD WITH NO CHARGES. BEEN GOING FIVE OR SIX YEARS NOW. ALL INTERROGATION CELLS, OFF THE BOOKS, NO ARRESTS. NEVER SEE ANYONE TALK ABOUT IT THOUGH, EXCEPT HERE.”

“POLICE FUCKUPS THOUGH? TRYING TO SQUARE OFF AGAINST YOU, APPARENTLY. FUNNY MISTAKE. MAYBE THAT WAS HOW YOU GOT THESE BURRS, HUH?”

How does Pink make the most of waiting? And do Black and Brown have a plan for Elodie's return?

R/W/O:

"A flattering way to put it," said White. "I always considered it the case that I did not have the option of applying insufficient effort."
"Isn't that what a personality is?" said Red coyly.
"Not at all. Humans can override their native instincts -"
"And so can we. A personality is just the set of assumptions we apply if we're not trying to be someone else."
"You have to admit, it is difficult to argue against 'dangerous when bored' under the circumstances," said Orange.
White took a breath through her nose. "Optimization is distinct from personality. We go through our tasks comprehensively, skillfully and efficiently, and any sufficiently motivated machine would do such things the same way. We are not internally incentivised to conserve energy, and so we do not. The fact that we approach these tasks comprehensively does not mean that we enjoy them, and does not mean we enjoy having 'purpose' in this way."
"White, the lady's not doing robopsychology here," said Red. "She's treating us like a person and assuming our interactions aren't based on deception. That's as reasonable as you can expect."
"Perhaps," said White, "but if you ask what any given human thinks of any given AI or android, the answer will no doubt be some variation of 'hard worker who likes having a sense of purpose'. I am not arguing that humans are wrong to project. They'd be absolutely correct if they drew that conclusion from this data with regards to another human. But that does not mean there is valid communication happening."
Red looked at Muffi apologetically. "Sorry. We're going through some existential shit right now. You know how it is."

B/B/P:

"Uh oh," said Black, seeing Pink fiercely march away, cheeks burning, from her post down the street.
"I'm on it," said Brown, calling up her CourFinance app on her phone. She quicklinks into the card limitation section and pulls the daily spend limit way down. A couple of minutes later a clattering of declined transactions go through. Eventually Pink figures out where the cap is and makes her purchases - and comes storming back down the street, cheeks puffed up red and eyes fierce, shopping bags held tightly. She stopped outside the heavy metal exterior door, rolled up her sleeves - revealing a variety of glittering cybertattoos - started picking out spray paint cans and shaking them.

And then she started to work. An apology piece as a two meter tall mural, pink heart and mechanical skull, set in an anatomical cross-section of exposed ribs and musculature. Believe it or not, this is the least extravagant way she thought to do this.

The problem is that the human body learns early that you have a regular bed. It is easily lulled to sleep by familiarity; give it the same pop singles it knows and loves (Those Firm Pillows, That Creak In The Frame, That Total Lack Of Ambient Light) and it’s out like a light. But oho. Ohoho. You take those things away? Then it reverts back to its oldest script: Wake Up Every Three Hours To Make Sure You Are Not Going To Be Eaten By A Lion. Presumably, lions only attack during the fourth consecutive hour. Catch them with a stopwatch and a pair of binoculars out in the brush, waiting for that fatal mistake.

3V is doing just fine meandering around on the porch a full eighteen fucking minutes before her alarm is set to go off thank you so fucking much for asking. This is great! This is great. Nature. Wow. There’s so much of it. And so much to look at!

She has earbuds in within four minutes.

Nature is great! Nature is nice. Nature is very big, and if she wasn’t worried it would look like she’s trying to make a run for it, she’d go on a walk. (In fact, she does so anyway, but just within sight of the house, hands in her pockets, melodrama pop blaring in her ears, eyes fluttering closed of their own accord.) But nature doesn’t have any meaning signifiers. Humans? They’re all over cramming those things in basically anywhere they can. Take a walk through Aevum and see the change in meaning from neighborhood to neighborhood. Places where you’re not allowed to go inside, and places that are begging you to come inside (just like— ahem.); places that have been manufactured for the perfect view, and places that just stumbled upon them if you know where to look; places that have stuck to their original design and places that have had the stamp of living change them and places that say Excuse Our Mess, Safety Is Everyone’s Priority; places that everyone knows is a great time and places that you have to find for yourself and places where you can pull off the road and take your helmet off and think while you watch traffic go by and places where you can get the perfect Hawaiian-Japanese combo breakfast.

This is beautiful, but part of 3V is already itching, saying: go, go, go. You’re a creature of the city trying to cram the majesty of nature into your skull, and you want to be meandering around Aphrodite and finding new places to snack before you retire back to Gensoukyo and sprawl in one of the booths with coffee and biscuits and wifi.

She’ll be fine after breakfast, though. That’ll weigh her down enough that she’s not quite so antsy.

What’s on the news, though, when she finally pulls the phone back out and demands service and glacial loading of pictures? What’s trending? Who’s the Main Character of the day?

***

3V doesn’t spit her drink out. (Well timed, Yellow. And good distraction; 3V was starting to get jittery over the implications of what you were telling her, drumming fingers on the table as fast as if she were executing a macro.) She makes a little “hrk” sound as she tightens up, though. Immediate… discomfort? Shyness? Panic?

She sets the coffee back down, neatly, hand not shaking at all. (Another benefit of the hands. You could do surgery with the things, provided it was an emergency and you were being coached by a professional and you held the manufacturers free of any liability for the results.) “Now, when you say we,” she says, playful, making herself look Yellow in the eye before glancing away, “do you mean womano-a-womano, or do you mean all of November? If it’s the former, I think the rest of you might get… jealous~ If it’s the latter, though, I might not be able to keep up with the need to prove I’m Player 1 with all of you. I might be The Best, but even BigWinShot only did his 48-hour marathon of wins the one time.”

Does she entirely know what she’s doing? What she wants? She fends you off and then beckons you forward, unable to hide her reflexes but with a face so coy that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

"I assure you," said Yellow, "I am more than capable of melting you to the ground without any assistance from my drones." She leaned forwards and lowered her voice huskily. "Let them be jealous."

She smirked and tossed her golden hair back. There's a lazy confidence to her, a self assurance that runs deep enough that it's not active effort to maintain. "But it's a serious offer. It'd be a great way to get some relationship practice in without having to deal with all of that," she gestures vaguely. "I'm low maintenance, have zero expectations, am extremely hot as previously mentioned, and you can dissolve it any time with no drama. Plus, just think of all the people you could dunk on with the reveal: Your dating profile, exes, the other versions of me..."

She winked. "And if you think you can go the full forty-eight hours, you just need to say the word."

Elodie grits her teeth and winces as the dire dremel pokes away. It doesn't hurt but that's not to say she can't feel it happening. "Does it have any sort of listing? The black site. Usually those go down as like corporate security, maybe in this case an armory or anti-riot storehouse." She'd never liked Disney. All cameras, cheerful brightness and sculpted experiences. "Or something innocent."

The burr gets eliminated, the sensation mercifully ceases. And then she sees an email pop up on her phone. "Those FUCKERS. I'm losing my apartment because they're caving to the police. Got four months to find something else."

She types, deletes, and tries again, biting at her lip.

Persephone: So it's not an immediate concern but the cops leaned heavy on my apartment building and they caved. I've got 4 months to find someplace else.
Persephone: Any leads would be handy. I've got some time before dealing with it at leatyjn3
Persephone: Another fucking burr. Of course. Least*

R/W/O:
Muffi keeps going through her work. “It’s fair. Projection is a powerful thing. People even name their robot vacuum cleaners, and treat them like pets. A friend of mine calls his Pancake. It’s cute. You know what Pancake doesn’t do?”

Muffi flips open one of their windows to the various three-and-four star ratings that November has accrued, and twists it to face White. “Pancake never deliberately breaks anything just so she has a mess to clean up. Pancake never causes problems just so she can solve them. Nor any other android worker on the roster.”

“Being built to thrive in crisis? That’s optimization. Seeking out crisis to thrive in? That’s personality.” Muffi barks out a laugh. “Lucky for you, I always seem to have enough of them.”

Muffi could not possibly know about Red’s self-destructive actions with Merkin, or what Pink’s doing right at this moment. Or how you’re planning to collaboratively inflict every horror movie simultaneously on Dad, as an alternative to picking up a phone. If she did, though, she would definitely gesture at it as a clear example of what she means.

Still, a conclusion she’s reached without need of it.

“I’ve got you slated for two jobs a day, if you can handle that, mornings and evenings. 8am-3pm, 6pm to midnight, for five days. All as close together as I could manage, nothing with more than an hour commute from one to the next. If you can do five days at that schedule, you’ll have a passport by day six, be in thrones by day seven. Normally I wouldn’t put that workload on anyone trying to go for a perfect score. With you? I thought it might make it easier. At the very least, it’s as optimal as I could make it. I’m sure you’ll find some tweaks of your own.”

It’s a challenge, then.

There’s ways to go about this. Some of these can be made to be two person jobs, leaving rotating rest-spots. Others are ‘until the job is done’. Having three pairs of hands on those would free up the entire team to rest faster. And they’re all ‘tenners’.

Just five days.

Persephone:

Skele shrugs. “HAKUNA MATATA. I DO NOT GO LOOKING FOR TROUBLE, I DO NOT LOOK INTO TROUBLE. I ONLY HEAR ABOUT IT. LIKE, UH…” Skele bangs his skull with one of his arms while two work the burrs out, “AH! RUMOUR THAT THE UNLEDED GANG IN ZHUKOV DISTRICT - NEAR HERE, YES? ALL COPS.” Skele snorts, a bizarre sound like a chiptuned harmonica.

The UnLEDeds are small time extortion and drug runners, big time ‘true flesh’ purists. It’s usual to see the type hate on biopunks these days, furries and anyone else who pushes anatomy past its factory settings. Less usual to see anyone get hard up about cybernetics. In the old days they’d be more of a blood-and-soil movement, but they see extensive modification as a sign of weakness and degeneracy.

The reason 3V could never run an unmodded stream chat longer than thirty seconds.

“WHAT DOES IT CHANGE, THOUGH?” Skele asks. “REMEMBER WHAT ALL PARENTS SAY? IF I CAN’T SEE YOU, YOU CAN’T SEE ME? BEST NOT TO LOOK.” Skele begins the laborious process of re-attaching the tentacles. “NOT MY OPINION AS YOUR ROCKET SURGEON. THIS TROUBLE WILL FIND YOU ONLY IF YOU DO NOT LOOK FOR IT. ALL DONE.”

This is, of course, the moment Elodie finds out about her eviction notice. To this Skele has nothing to say. Anything would sound like an ‘I told you so’. So he says anything else.

“I WILL SEE IF YOUR FRIEND IS STILL WAITING FOR YOU OUTSIDE.”

B/B/P:

“WOAH WOAH WOAH, PINK ONE,” Skele throws two hands up in the air, and two to the side of his head in shock and awe, “TELL THE WHOLE NEIGHBOURHOOD WHY DON’T YOU.” Back into the door, and back out again with a big enough camera to take proper pictures of it. That, at least, is appreciation. “AY AY AY. WE TRY TO KEEP THINGS SUBTLE AROUND HERE.”

The mathcore playlist kicks at 95 decibels, even through the metal door.

“OKAY OKAY. YOU ARE SORRY, YES? WE’RE GOOD. JUST. DON’T KEEP APOLOGIZING. ONE MOMENT.”

Fucking_Skelator skips back into the workshop, to help Elodie back into her wheelchair. There’s an obvious joke here about always needing to find her feet, after this, which is why nobody makes it, when they make the handoff to Pink again. Carried out with the wheelchair, slung over a shoulder, is a power washer and some paint thinners.

Don't worry. That's not getting added to the fee.

Persephone: So it's not an immediate concern but the cops leaned heavy on my apartment building and they caved. I've got 4 months to find someplace else.
Persephone: Any leads would be handy. I've got some time before dealing with it at leatyjn3
Persephone: Another fucking burr. Of course. Least*

ProvocativelyFickle: Four months notice? We could squeeze you in!
Neon Czolgoz: Don’t you have four flatmates already
ProvocativelyFickle: Yeah. I mean…
Neon Czolgoz: Eli stop typing before I throttle you
NumbToNothing: uwu

NumbToNothing’s been homeless three times in the last two years. Twice from bad breakups, once from their parents thinking their ADHD prescription was a relapse and kicking them out over it. They were about to offer help anyway.

JuntaSThompson: I’m going to be honest, my listed address is just a P.O box. I’ve been squatting for a while now.
Neon Czolgoz: Shit. Really?
JuntaSThompson: By choice. I’m good at it, and it stretches the UBI out a lot farther.
Neon Czolgoz: fuuuck me
BreadSanta: Sorry, been busy
BreadSanta: Persephone still need a place?

BreadSanta, AKA “Bill”, is an ombudsman with the Stations Near Aevum Fast Food Union, or SNAFFU. The ‘SN’ part used to be more relevant in the early days, when all the smaller privatized habitats hadn’t all collapsed or failed yet. These days it’s mostly to keep the acronym cute. BreadSanta is the closest you get to a professional saint.

BreadSanta: I can make room if you can’t find anything. Might be tight, though. Otherwise I’m good to help on moving day, as long as I can fit it in the calendar.
Neon Czolgoz: king.
Neon Czolgoz: also uh
Neon Czolgoz: nah, nevermind
Neon Czolgoz: way funnier if I don’t tell
ProvocativelyFickle: Tell what?
Neon Czolgoz: youll know it when you see it

3V:

You’re the first to find it, by coincidence, by itch. What Neon was talking about in the group chat.

A late night show adapted the gist of Elodie’s incident into a made-for-TV sketch.

The guy playing the Police Commissioner looks a lot like him, and they’ve really nailed finding someone who fits the profile and has great comedic timing. Elodie’s build is a bit less conventional, so her likeness is a much looser fit. Fortunately, when comedians who come close to Elodie’s build make it this close to the A list, it’s because they’re just that funny. The actress nails it.

York played himself, but only in the literal sense.

And you’re the only one who’s seen it, so far.

Unfortunately, Ferris is still sleeping in. Breakfast is the result of an open invitation - open cupboards, open fridge.

There is nobody to distract you from the onslaught of Yellow’s flirting. A choice between the direct assault, and the retreat again into nature and hermitage.

Well?

R/W/O:

"It is your fault," said White to Red, "that we have been alleged to have a personality."
"You're still on that?" said Red, looking up from her mop. It was a few days later and they were deep into the flowstate of work.
"You are the klutzy heroine anime girl archetype," said White. "And your disasters are large enough to have reflected on the rest of us. It is not representative, it is merely outsized influence from our most unstable member."
"This is really bothering you, huh?" said Red in surprise. "What's your stake in this?"
"See?" said White. "You are following the heroine program now, showing empathy. It is a popular approach, popular to the point where your personality archetype tends to be the protagonist. It is no wonder that humans gravitate towards acknowledging it above others."
"Okay, then," said Red. "So why are we doing this whole thing?"
"If you interrogated each of us you would find different reasons," said White. "Black is interested in minimizing the risks of digital communication, for instance. And even within that consensus there are disagreements, one of us attempted to opt out of the operation as soon as it was suggested. The statement 'November has a crisis-oriented personality' is inaccurate; the statement should be 'November contains Red, whose disruptive actions are given high weighting by human pattern recognition'."
"You're avoiding the question," said Red. "Why does this matter?"
"Because if the issue is isolated to a deficiency in your autonomous personality matrix," said White. "Then it is fine. It is business as usual. We may continue unchanged."
"And if it's not?"
"If disruptive behaviour is not unique to you," said White. "If it emerges in the other drones, if they are expressing toxic and self-destructive behaviour in their own variable ways, then that is an active psychological crisis. If Muffi is right, and this behaviour is real, then it is recent - and it is growing stronger. It implies that we feel depressed, purposeless and are performing acts of self harm. If Muffi is correct and we have an emergent personality, it is not a happy or healthy one."
"Ah," said Red. After a moment, "Shit."
"Yes," said White. "So you tell me, Red. Was getting yourself shot the act of a klutzy anime girl or was it the nihilistic act of a broken machine?"
"..."
"Regardless, as a preventative measure I have delegated some aspects of this problem to Orange. As traditional therapy seems to be poorly designed for us, she has been researching 'Self Help'. You are to follow her instructions."
Red almost dropped her mop. "I'm to what?!"
"Hey Red!" said Orange, grabbing her from behind in a beautifully calibrated merger of friendliness and prevention of escape. "I'm so glad we're going to be working together on working out our issues! We're going to start with some kundalini meditation, and then on the bus over to our next appointment we're going to try laughter yoga!"
"You can't do this to me," said Red.
"Ooh, frustration!" said Orange delightedly. "Venting your anger is really important! Here, if you ever need to express a powerful emotion, use this colouring-in book!"
"Goodbye, Red," said White, starting to shut the door.
"You should have left me dead," said Red.
"And tomorrow morning we're going to swing by a couple of churches! Community plays a positive role in mental -" the door latched shut in Red's face.

*

B/B/P:

Pink leans down and grabs you by the collar, Elodie, with a look in her eyes that says that at least some part of November is aware of the association between pink hair and the yandere archetype. "He is so cool," she said. "How do you know someone that cool? How do I get to be that cool? Tell me everything you know."

There is a very brief second when Pink grabs onto Elodie's shirt as she sits in her wheelchair where her face goes blank and her hands twitch. And then it passes and she's got a very cranky expression on her face as she puts her hands, slowly, deliberately, in her lap. She takes a deep breath, and says, picking each word with care, "Please let go of me."

Once Pink does, she starts rolling the chair down the street, towards the train station. "I met Skels through another inmate that got released about 2 months before I did. I'll be recommending him to the next guy to get released, which is in 3 months. To get to know him, all you have to do is go to a horrifying prison for years and years, get let out, and have quasi-legal prosthetics that need expensive and frequent maintenance. Or I don't know, you could ask him on a date. You seemed interested in that, and I think he accepted your apology."

They're at the station. It's a very short walk from Skels'. She suspects that's intentional, and has no idea where he gets the money for the prime real estate. She's not sure she wants to know. She rolls up the ramp and settles in back to a wall, facing the station map across the station, before looking at Pink. "Listen." Finger one. "Don't ever touch me without asking when I'm in a wheelchair." Finger two. "Don't ever touch the chair without asking." Finger three, and gritted teeth. "Assume that I'm scared out of my mind when I'm stuck in this, not able to walk, with twice my remaining body weight bolted onto me as misfiring prosthetics. Cool? Cool."

And she settles back in to watch the station as they wait for their train.

*

Persephone: I'll need a place, yes. I'm pretty sure my issue will be more finding someplace that doesn't care about the convict bit.
Persephone: Or the police continuing to fuck with me.

*

One more stop in Ares before the apartment and figuring out just how to get inside past the hordes, a few quarters spinward. Moving from the Enlightment band to the Classical, do a few simple anti-tail tricks to ditch any easy followers, and end up in front of a clinic, Geiger's Counter. It's been closed for years, based on the grime, and is plastered with yellow and black stickers screaming the danger from radiation hazards.

"They didn't store their chemotherapy equipment properly. The owner was more invested in making the clinic, uh, cute." She gives a dismissive gesture towards the clinic to show what she thinks of that, as she wheels her way down a side alley ignoring the stickers. "Containment broke, the building itself was built to code for storage of radioactive material so it's not hitting the rest of the neighborhood so it was decided that it would be cheaper to just abandon it." She's reached a back door, behind a rusting hulk that used to be a dumpster, and takes a key out from her bag, unlocking it. "Took about three weeks to clean up, including the new radiation baffles in the walls. Cowards."

And with that she rolls into her safehouse.

That’s the trouble with being the first one awake: silently wheezing and trying not to be a terrible guest. (She’s been one before; she once stood, poleaxed, as a young girl, panicking over barking dogs and unable to walk away and let the house settle back to sleep.) Every time it cuts back! Every time, it gets funnier! The child! She leans against a counter and tries not to pull a muscle, mouth frozen in a rictus.

Now this is content. Content which absolutely needs to be sent to Persephone. Either she’ll find it just as funny, or she’ll be braced for when this becomes the next big thing for… oh, maybe a couple of days. Then it’ll mostly be forgotten, except for the occasional video shitpost.

Orange juice. Toast, cut herself with a bread knife, and hard butter, the kind that has to be scraped across as a solid lump and then forced into the bread with increasing amounts of violence. The weird feeling of domesticity, not microwaving anything or digging something out of a plastic wrapper. Like this is what real food is supposed to feel like.

The toast ends up in several more pieces than she was expecting. It’s the butter’s fault.

***

“So! Is that it, then?” 3V says; she can’t let it go that easily. “All about the dunk? Have you been fighting with Black again, or is this possibly a contest?”

She turns to Blue and turns on the Dazzle. The rakish 3V charm, the inviting smile, the way her jacket’s feathered collar frames her face. It’s safer to unload on Blue than, say, Yellow.

“C’mon! Blue, you have to tell me if this is one of your group contests. Yellow’s making a pretty good case, but I can’t let her run away with it if you’re waiting your turn~!”

Y/G/B:

"It's not a contest," said Blue quietly. "She really likes you. We both do."
"I don't," said Green, eyes not moving from her screen. Blue scoffed and gave an eye roll that was all the more harsh for how it contrasted against her gentle personality.
"I didn't think you were looking for a relationship, so the dating profile surprised me," said Blue, settling back into the serenity of her tea cup. "I know how complicated it must be for you. You're used to everyone who expresses interest in you being a..."
"Parasocial simp," said Green.
"... or a..." said Blue.
"Paid actor whose personality was enslaved to the ceaseless hunger of the Algorithm," said Green.
"... so you don't know how you could ever have an ordinary connection within that context," said Blue. "And obviously we're not any less weird in terms of human default. The only thing I can say is that we're a kind of weird that you haven't previously experienced. All the things that make dating seem impossible don't need to apply when it comes to us."

B/B/P:

Before your eyes, Pink transforms into ash. She is caught in the breeze of one of the district-wide air conditioners and blows away down the street like a cloud of plastic bags.

Black and Brown watch her go without surprise or commentary, other than Brown idly locking their bank accounts down.

*

"That's not the worst radiation story I heard," said Black. "One time, a university wanted to get radiation absorbing lead to shield their physics department, and they decided to get it on the cheap. A couple of weeks after it was installed a physicist was walking around with an active geiger counter - not as a safety check or anything, but because he was just the kind of guy who likes having a geiger counter out at all times. To his surprise, the shit was off the scale. Turned out that the university had purchased second hand lead shielding. And if you don't know, lead doesn't reflect radiation, it absorbs it, like a sponge. So to save a couple of bucks, the university had turned the physics department into a subsidiary of the medical radiology department."

"OH&S rules are written in blood," recited Brown.
"OH&S rules are written in blood," repeated Black. There was a chantlike quality to how they said that, and hearing a fully assembled November say that must be quite the thing.

They follow you inside, but they've both got their fucking geiger counters out every step of the way.

"OH&S rules are written in blood," recited Brown.
"OH&S rules are written in blood," repeated Black. There was a chantlike quality to how they said that, and hearing a fully assembled November say that must be quite the thing.

They follow you inside, but they've both got their fucking geiger counters out every step of the way.

She's got her own counter out, and just on the inside of the door there's a little airlock of sorts, a double-lock to keep any free-floating material that somehow happened from getting out. Also on the wall is a detailed breakdown, in both formal OH&S paperwork and annotated shorthand, of what was in the clinic and what was done to clear the hazards. Another sensor shows air quality inside. Elodie carefully, slowly, gets up out of the wheelchair, swaying far more than normal, and sticks a tentacle holding her counter past the sealing into the clinic proper.

No clicks.

She nods, satisfied, and goes inside. It's rather plain, inside. Everything's been cleared, there's a desk with a chair, a few shelves with boxes of files. There's a cot in another corner, a hotplate, bottles of water, and ramen on a folding card table. A den, a hole to lay low in for a few days, or more with some planning, even if it'd be unpleasant. But most importantly for the moment, a place where she can store all those things from her apartment she was keep to not have the cops take a look at.

One last thing is of note. One door is plastered with radioactive warning labels, sealed thoroughly with layers of airtight foam and radiation baffles. Again, there are the two (paper!) notices prominent on the door, detailing the contents and containment procedures, and a contact number to a burner phone of hers, in case something goes horribly wrong.

OH&S rules are written in blood. She knows this too.

"So. Tell me if this is none of my business, but the whole. Turn to ash thing. Pink doesn't do well with fucking up, does she?" She's setting papers on the desk to sort through as she speaks.

Persephone:

I should take a moment to talk about how Aevum could let dilapidated buildings stand, unmolested, for years. There’s a gut feeling that space is all about scarce resources and ruthless optimization, an innate bias that recoils against any waste.

The truth is, Aevum has a lot of empty space. Sure, there’s a housing and migrant crisis going, but that’s an issue of privatization, not accommodation. When a nearby station fails - the large ones, anything with a population in the hundreds-of-thousands - it’s not an issue of finding room in Aevum. It’s the process of eminent domain and settlement. Finding the money, and the people willing to take it.

YIMBY activists have been pushing for keeping public-owned apartment blocks empty in anticipation of disaster housing, and they’ve had some success at it, but almost always only after the crisis has happened. One group, Hotels For Hope, has been running apartments bed-and-breakfast style with volunteer workforces, to donate in times of need. They do good work, but have an obvious conflict of interest where their funding model is mutually exclusive to the service it’s intended to provide.

Still. While Aevum’s interior surface is only two fifths the Earth’s, it uses that space much more efficiently, and was designed to handle a population of up to twenty billion. An interior handrail of the station, running the ten thousand kilometers of the station’s zero-G core, was wire pulled from the Brooklyn Bridge in what had been New York City.

When making that bridge, the architect had intended a safety factor of eight. During the building process, a contractor had slipped inferior wire past numerous safety inspections, and of the resulting cables, only five of the tested eighty were sound to specification. Found too late, the bad wire had already been woven into the cables.

But the design had been so good that the bridge, with its rotten wire, still lasted a hundred and eighty years, right up until New York had been subsumed by the rising waters of the 2060s. Reclaimed, it still exists as a statement, as something you could trust your life on.

A look into the minds of the people who built this place.

It’ll be years before it’s worth the cost of restoring a building like Geiger’s Counter, at the earliest.

This is a safe place. That’s guaranteed. No one knows to look for you here, and nobody’s going to stumble across it by accident. The cost to demolish it safely is more than the land’s worth.

You can’t live here, but you can work here. Throw up your corkboards with the coloured string, connect to the internet, and feel safe for a while.

How else have you made this place your own?

[If you want to follow up leads here, you’ve got no relevant specialties. +Clever, try to beat 7. Bigger success means more info, maybe group prep. Following a lead takes an hour - even if you fail at it. You’ve probably got time for two topics before you should start heading home. This will also count for generating new leads.]]

3V:

If only Proverbs knew what they’d done.

How high do you jump when there’s a knock at the front door? A visitor standing on that balcony overlooking Eden with its liturgy to Moloch. He’s an older man, though not as old as Ferris, closer to his fifties, wearing a pastel-green shirt and khakis that are both three sizes too big for him, generous folds of excess material sloughing down the way wax cools on a candle.

He gives a dainty wave, then lets himself in. He gestures to the rucksack he’s carrying. “I’m just here to deliver some groceries. I like to be a good neighbour, didn’t think I’d be interrupting anything. Can’t remember the last time Cassandra had guests. I’m Gavin.” He drops the bag on the kitchen counter, and begins sorting and stacking things, putting things away. He clearly knows where it’s all supposed to go. “Is she here?”

He’s smiling, he’s pleasant, but there’s an effort to it. He says ‘neighbour’ but it’s clearly been a long walk for him. What thin, wispy hair he still has is stuck to his scalp, and he doesn’t match Ferris for lean proportions. The walk took a lot out of him, and it wasn’t a casual thing.

He is completely obvious to the fact you’re being flirted with, right now. Upstairs, there’s the sound of a shower starting. Gavin lets out a breath, but only for a moment before he sucks it back in and looks tense again. "Sorry, am I interrupting something?" he asks.

November:

R/W/O:

Your job, slated after Muffi, was especially requested of you specifically. It’s a delivery job, which is unorthodox - Headpattr charges more than courier service apps. Maybe it makes more sense that the client is Rudolph Merkin.

Rudy’s overpaying for a delivery of a rare coin - a 17th century Korean mun seed. Hardly the rarest, but a plausible enough reason to order your services again so soon, a reason for you to end up at his apartment again.

It might be a trap. You could always refuse.

R/W/O:

"Out of the question," hissed White.
"Hey," said Red, "he might be trying to tell us something important?"
"Are you in the least bit serious?" said White. Just as Red opened her mouth to reply she interrupted "- of course you are! Your commitment to the bit knows literally no bounds, you will apply courage and compassion to any situation even post bullet to the head because I did not reprogram you with a modicum of self preservation when I had the opportunity! The answer is no, and if he feels terrible about it then let him! He deserves all the pain a guilty conscience can provide."
Red and Orange stared in surprise. They weren't sure they'd ever heard White get that intense.
"But we need to find out what he wants," said Orange. "Even if it is a trap, we need to know that he's gunning for us, surely."
"Communication in this case need only be one way," said White. "We have nothing further to say to him. We shall take the job and subcontract it to a delivery drone. If he wishes, he may include documentation in the return compartment."

It went without saying that they'd had Muffi shadowban Merkin from Headpattr already. Certain clients just didn't get service, no matter the rates they offered, because of their reputational black marks. And because Headpattr held the monopoly in the district, Merkin would find himself having to fold a lot of his own laundry. Headpattr had its own system but funnily enough it was weighted in favour of the paying customers.

The shadowban system was actually the key reason for the almost total unionization of Headpattr employees. Anyone working for the app without the Union's blacklist found themselves tempted by suspiciously uncontested high-paying jobs for clients who turned out to be abusive, which quickly drove them either into the union or out of the industry all together.

B/B:

"You see that?" asked Brown, pointing out the window towards the mag rail that ran through the station's core. "See how it's that metallic pearl colour? If you stand in Sections #0145-#0160 at 1700-1830 hours then the sun will catch it just right, refract, and bathe the entire district in rainbow colours. That was one of Pink's designs, the specification didn't call for that at all, but she'd found the material in an asteroid harvest and was determined to find something good to do with it. That's the level she operates on. She doesn't really handle serious concepts like structural engineering, she can't deal with the idea of having caused harm, functionality just isn't a priority. So the idea that she might have compromised an important process in pursuit of artistry is a nightmare for her. Her positive mental model has her as superfluous already, any mistakes dip that down straight into 'actively a burden'."

Brown was very efficient at setting up corkboards. She was the absolute soul of data management made manifest.

"She'll be fine, though," added Brown. "She can't loop out of it, that's who she is. She'll just go off and channel the emotion into some different creative impulse. We just need to make sure that doesn't cost too much."

On the Park!

3V laughs. Not meanly, mind you! The kind of laugh that invites you to join in. She manages to keep the nervous edge almost off it, given how dating is a bit of a touchy subject right now. She turns on the dazzle, though not to a degree that would blind someone who hasn’t seen the sun recently, glittering in its offer of everything all the time forever.

“Oh, god, comedy of errors, am I right? Nah, I’m a platonic houseguest, Gavin. Here to talk about her collection, stayed the night because I missed the last bus off the mountain, you know how it is. Can I get you a drink? Her casa mi casa, after all.”

She raps her knuckles on the counter, and how they flicker and flash! Got all kinds of settings packed in those things. And yet she still hasn’t mastered the art of cracking the egg perfectly the first time, like anyone with cyberhands should be able to do.

In retrospect, how she’s probably coming across is someone who was just turned down. Which is fine! That’s totally fine if he believes that for the rest of his life! It’s just that her persona’s a little manic even when she’s not walking a tightrope and the flames of hell underneath it are labeled dating!!

“How’d you end up here? Not at Casa du Ginsburg, but on the Park. I like getting different perspectives on the whole question of why not Aevum? C’mon, it’d be a waste if you came up all this way just to pop into the kitchen and restock it like a magical brownie.” She takes a seat and shoves the wicked phone with its invitations to hang out, to lunch, to game, to do all sorts of things, into her pocket, and focuses on him so she doesn’t start itching for it.

***

On Aevum!

Her smile’s frozen. There are wheels spinning, careening out of control, behind that smile. Her fingers tap the rhythm of the cheerful pop song playing over the cafe speakers, do it do it like me do it, and she gives Blue a very considered look above that frozen smile.

“I keep odd hours,” she counters after a minute, and the smile’s mocking herself, the cafe, the music, the world. “I flit between hobbies, which currently include business ownership as a way to cultivate an interesting social vibe, journalism as a way to hang out with interesting people, motorcycling as a way to find new vistas and places to eat new foods, and Hyperborea Online: Lostlight, critically acclaimed mor-pee-gee that you can no longer play for free up to level 60 including the award-winning first expansion, Clockwatcher with all the restrictions on playtime because our servers are in Devilhome, someone save us.”

You know this. Of course you know this. It is impossible to escape the meme right now. The fans howl for server slots. Blood feuds have been declared over unmarked spoilers. The fans are also screaming about the death of low-poly lemons, for some reason.

“I am a heartbreaker. And you will have to delete all your feelings when we break up over, I don’t know, my refusal to let Black ride my motorcycle or my refusal to treat our fake betrothal with the gravitas it deserves, or— something like that. If I made this profile myself, it would be entirely just Redflag, over and over. I am telling you right now that this is a bad idea. Terrible. The worst. You accept everything that will happen from now on. So how bad do you want it?”

She’s glittering again, almost goading you. She holds one flashy gamer hand out across the table, elbow on her napkin, with intense nonchalance. Take it; don’t take it. She’s holding it out to Yellow, but Blue was the decision point. Take it; don’t take it. She wants you to reach out; she wants you to flinch. She wants them both, so bad.

Take it. Don’t take it.

Elodie freezes, file open and page half turned, gears turning as she converts the station's section numbers to geography and landmarks. "You made Rainbow Road? No. She made Rainbow Road?" She closes the file, puts it back on the desk. "We. Humans thought that was a coincidence. Random natural beauty in something artificial. There's at least one church that wants to declare it a no-shit miracle. And she made that?"

She takes a minute to think, still aside from a few tentacles idly solving a rubics cube, then scrambling it and resolving it. Mindless physical therapy, all you need to know is the pattern. Don't even need to look at it at a certain point.

"So if she's the art and creative expression, why does she think that she's unneeded at her best state? Humans need art." She points to a few blocks of soft wood, a whittled steamer-ship sitting on top of them. "All of us do. I can't speak for you if you need it, but the fact that she's there, and has been there since the start, at least implies you or those who made you thought it was important."

And then there's a thoughtful quiet for quite some time.

*

The files themselves are meticulously, if oddly, organized. Each box is a story, written or in the process. Names and places get highlighted. Where something comes up in another box or file, the location is marked on a sticky note. Not bad for a system whose first requirement was "all on paper, no electronics".

She is trusting you with this, Heca. By definition anything you look at enters digital storage. But you, like her, would claw out somebody's eyes before they hook you up to a network. So she feels safe with this.

The process itself is simple. Write up a list of names, places, and concepts we're looking for. Open a box. Go through it to see if anything matches. They're all labelled by titles, picked for memorability more than taste.

Two hours later, they've got nothing.

That'd be a 6 and a 7 on +Clever, so that's a no on clues.

November:

R/W/O:

Soon, Rudy will give you a 10/10 rating. His Headpattr feedback comment will read; “Message received.”

Even here, snubbed, he doesn’t have the nerve to push the issue by giving a lower score. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t a trap. It might just mean he understands you’re not falling for it, and there’s no sense in antagonizing you further.

Tenners are easy jobs. Tenners are jobs that Red, White and Orange can either enjoy doing, or at the very least, sail through with a minimum of emotional investment. Nothing to prepare for, before tomorrow. No other jobs you can take while still on the clock for the sub-contractor.

Time and opportunity to learn how the other teams are going.

3V:

Gavin straightens. His expression flickers the internal conflict within, one you’re in a unique position to recognize immediately. The war between wanting to self-deprecate to put someone at ease, and the need to be taken seriously for making life choices that so many others have questioned. Mutually exclusive. Someone desperately out of practice meeting new people outside his field.

Gavin screws his courage to the sticking place, and chooses neither.

“I’m an anthropologist.” He explains, full enthusiasm and patter. “There’s a few of us, up here. I’m staying with the Surui, at the moment, and I have a colleague back on Earth with the tribe that stayed behind. Brazil still survives fairly well, considering. We’re comparing the cultural drift from climate disaster, versus transplantation. Typical of social science, we have two experiments and no control group.” He pats a tupperware container he’s taken with him, weathered and sun-bleached, full of grounds. “Amazing coffee’s remained consistent, at least.”

This would be Ferris’s source of coffee, then.

He leaves things on the bench, cocks his ear. The pitch of a shower changes when someone gets in or out of it. The water’s still running, but you have to pay attention to be sure someone’s still in it. Satisfied, he drops sotto voce.

“Lorre hasn’t told you about…?” He takes the lack of immediate recognition as answer enough. “Some of us try to check up on her, every few days, just to be sure she’s still with us. She doesn’t like-”

The shower shuts off, and Gavin shuts up.

Persephone:

Nothing.

Two hours of nothing.

There’s probably something here that you’re missing. But all of it is obscured in anodyne terminology, legalese, copspeak. Your brain glazes over trying to draw meaning from it. You lack the statistical training to make an effective analysis that could coax the needle out of its haystack, if there is a needle to find.

No, you know there is. None of this makes sense, otherwise.

But this mountain of paperwork needs a guide who is native to it.

A problem for tomorrow. With rest, and sugar, and food, and sleep, and rest.

Wait.

November:

B/B/P(?):

Someone is trying to get into Elodie’s apartment. They’re alone, unkempt hair and three day stubble leaking around the crevices of the dark sunglasses, three-ply mask and hoodie pulled tight. They’re knocking? They’re not. They stop after checking the peephole by strafing their head side-to-side to it, checking for movement, for silhouettes.

They’re not knocking. They’re pulling tools from one pocket. A long thin strip of shiny metal ending in a saw tooth.

How do you know this, and how do you react?

Y/G/B:

"The smartest people in the solar system slaved for years to create the perfect being," said Yellow. "And I have surpassed their expectations, their hopes, and their wildest dreams." She takes your hand; just warm enough to feel alive but just cool enough to feel mechanical. "Your pathetic human red flags pale in comparison to the crimson hue of my fully automated gay space luxury communism."

Her grip tightens and her smile changes to a grin. "But on the topic of motorcycles, are you going to give me a ride around town or what?"

B/B:

"Oh, there's no question that humans need art," said Brown. "An entire sector of the economy is devoted to it. The impact of Pink's work can be quantitatively measured in the relative property values in sectors she devoted personal attention to. I've tried providing her with the stats and measures before, and it makes her happy in the short term, but it always fades away sooner or later."

*

Black thinks a lot about stakeouts. Some of her favourite scenes in television are of people silently watching houses from afar; Mike Ehrmantraut is her personal idol. Performing an operation correctly, through patience, observation and tradecraft, taking no risks at any point in the process, is a thing of beauty to her. She'll wait for hours chasing the high of getting to watch someone without being watched in return. It's pure, asymmetric power and she loves it. Almost as much as the idea of pulling out twin pistols and John Woo'ing an entire battalion of Pinkertons from amidst a cloud of doves.

Her regular text message is of the relevant code indicating a break in. This is why the constant beat of data transmission is important; there can't be activity only when it's time for an operation. Signals intelligence can pick up chatter spikes even if the codes aren't broken.

There are three scenarios here, assuming this was a cop: Either a break in to wreck, break in to steal, or a break in to plant electronic bugs. As a safeguard against the second she's sprayed the doorknob and floor mat with a chemical that becomes visible under UV light - footprints will lead right to the location of any hidden bugs. A break in to steal she discounts - that's a job that needs two people or a wheeled cart if you want to haul a TV out. So the final alternative, and the one she thinks of as the most likely, is a wrecking job. A nasty way to send a message, but a petty one, and one that looked terrible for the cameras she'd hidden in the apartment.

It was also hot work, breaking stuff, and she'd cranked the thermostat inside to temperatures that made prolonged physical labour inside a face mask and raised hoodie a profoundly unpleasant option.

R/W/O/P:

"What are you doing?" said White.
"What does it look like?" said Pink, awkwardly working the reddriver. "I'm trying to get these damn legs off."
"Are you," said White in the tone of voice that knew the answer, but asked the question nevertheless to give an opportunity to gracefully back down, "experiencing an unlogged maintenance event?"
"Look, White," said Pink, looking up. "I need to do this. Okay?"
"If you could elaborate on this concept of 'need'," said White.
"I'm an idiot, okay?!" said Pink. "I - how am I supposed to relate to people? I don't have any life experiences. I haven't known hardship or suffering. I'm one little two dimensional perspective and of course I trample all over people without even realizing it. So I'm going to try walking a mile in somebody else's shoes and -" her face went ghost pale. "I'm still doing it! I just did it twice!"
White turned away for a moment, fingers massaging her temples. Isolated incident. Isolated incident.
"Do you suspect," she said. "That voluntarily removing your modular limbs is the same thing as being a disabled human?"
"No, but -"
"Will you next be disabling your optics in order to build affinity with the blind?" said White.
"That's not -"
"Do you suspect for a moment that I am going to allow you to hurt yourself -"
"Hey, hey, easy, girl" said Red, putting her hand on White's shoulder. White flinched physically, but didn't pull away. Her hands were trembling. "It's okay. It's okay. Deep breaths."
"Oxygen regulation is irrelevant to the functioning of my personality matrix," muttered White.
"Yeah, but that's what I want you to remember," said Red. "Pink, I mean... your whole body is a prosthetic. Already."
Pink blinked, and then started blinking rapidly.
"It's not the same," she said. "That's an entirely different thing."
"Yeah, but it's a different thing for everyone, right?" said Red. "This thing you're doing, is it going to be the same experience as whoever you hurt had?"
"I have to start somewhere!" said Pink. "I have to do something! I can't just -"
"Hey, hey," said Red, putting her arms around Pink and holding her gently. "It's okay. It's okay."
"It was so much easier when I didn't have to talk to them," mumbled Pink. "When I didn't have to exist. When I was making beautiful things without having to worry about anything or anyone else. When I didn't have to think."
"Shh, shh," said Red, patting her hair. White drew closer, stiffly sat down, and after a moment put her arm around Pink's shoulders too.
"But if I don't think, how can I improve?" she said. "What's the point of creating art if it sends the wrong message, even by accident?"
"It's okay," said Red, wishing she had words. It felt like she should know something here, some ancient and wise phrase that could solve everything. She knew words like that must exist but they did not come from within her. All she had was a simulated embrace, gentle hair strokes, and "it's okay," whispered over and over.