[b]Black and Orange[/b] Rudy smiles. “This is a weight off my chest. It means I got played by a player, not just a maid.” He considers his words. “That sounded more elitist than I meant it to. All I mean is that the world has more maids than players. I'm scared enough as it is.” He unbuttons his shirt slightly. His necklace is a shard of meteorite, carved into a Japanese ‘mon’. It’s worn around the edges, and he squeezes it with a thumb, worries at it. “No. The police don’t represent a conflict of interest to me or my clients, I can say that much. What else?” He takes a business card from his pocket and a pen, and begins to write on it. “I don’t want to give you a wrong impression. I am very good at one thing, and that is money. Moving it, hiding it, keeping it, tracking it - but not earning it or spending it.” He finishes the first card and puts it writing-side-down on the desk, then works on another. “I am a man of responsibility without power. Think of me like a chauffeur who needs to know where his clients live.” Another card. “I’m not holding back on you when I can’t get you past the front door.” Another card. Another card. Another card. He finishes writing, and puts the pen down on the booth table with a harsh click of metal on wood. The pen must be real silver. “Here are your doors.” He hands you a card with a list of names. [i]Lazarus Adams - OESN Producer[/i] [i]Apt. 36, 14 Seines St, Jacques Brissot - Enl. Zeus[/i] [i]The[/i][i]LazAdams@harbingermail.av[/i] [i]06-4881-9951-625[/i] [i]Synthia Herb - NBN Editorial[/i] [i]Unit 2, 185 Scotland Rd, Winston Churchill - Modern Zeus[/i] [i]SynthiaHerb2038@blackbox.av[/i] [i]06-6578-8920-333[/i] [i]Castile Louis - Spider[/i] [i]Lafayette - Enl. Zeus - appt. only.[/i] [i]Dial 06-2856-8888-794 during business hours. [/i] [i]Follow instructions.[/i] [i]“Manic” - Fixer[/i] [i]A Lionheart with serial numbers scraped[/i] [i]10-1423-1221-004[/i] [i]Brittinette Everest - Social Hitman[/i] [i]14 Donne Rd, Shakespeare, Renn. Aph.[/i] [i]03-8492-2222-682[/i] “Adams and Herb are spikes. Usually they kill stories, but they might have something to say on protecting them. “Manic” is an artisan blackmailer who subcontracts. Tell him I sent you.” There’s a morbid humour to that one. Rudy rubs the coin around his neck again. “Miss Everest I only know by reputation. I’m not allowed to know what I have sent her payments for, only that it has been extraordinary sums of money. Sir Castile is probably a better option for you.” “Sir Louis Castile trades in the priceless - he already has everything money can buy. Tell the secretary that you would like to schedule an appointment to arrange an acquisition, in exchange for his services.” He pronounces Louis the old French way, with the silent ‘s’. “Don’t waste his time. Tell him what you need, and he’ll name his price - a job. If you can’t do it, apologize and leave. He’ll respect that, and allow you future appointments. You can negotiate, but you must not haggle.” “Beyond that, I’d suggest trying to find a contact at the Anthropozine. They’re small, but they’re impenetrable. If your reasons for targeting a police commissioner are all above-board, I’m sure they’d do it for free. They might even pay you.” Reassuring he thinks he needs to tell you that. The addresses are a nice touch. How many use Headpattr, do you think? [b]Persephone and Pink:[/b] Marco rolls over in his sleep. It’ll be a few hours before he wakes up - probably around the time York is going to show up. Then it’ll be time to make a plan, and talk him into it. Not much you can do until then. Elodie’s phone dings with a bunch of messages from Sasha. It starts with a link that thumbnails to her WatchMe channel, showing her wearing what looks like an EEG rig over her hands, a full-immersion headset, and a big goofy grin. The video, title [i]Modeling and Modeling[/i], has about 180 views right now. Then comes a bunch of renders, sent individually, all around a common theme. It’s a high-def 3D capture of herself, but each update is modeling a different kind of cyberware. Not any you recognize - it’s concept art. Detailed concept art, too. It’s a 3D image, so you can zoom and twirl the renders to see them from all angles - a lot of care was made into making sure these look just as good from all sides. Sasha’s new to this. She hasn’t figured out to compress her exports, yet, so she’s sending these at max res, even though the equipment she’s using doesn’t nearly justify the settings. Think taking a blurry camera photo, but sending it at 4K quality. Still, she’s got real talent. It’s all explained in the video. Her robotics club got a ‘Rough’ - what that mesh of electrodes on her hands are. It’s an abbreviation of a sculpting term, ‘roughing out’, when you start by making the basic shapes of the piece. When the term stuck, that was all the tech was good for, and the fine detail still had to be done by mouse and math. That was a few software generations ago, though. Now with better UI, entry-level tools, and a few good tutorials, someone like Sasha can make all kinds of things using just a Rough. She starts the video doing all sorts of poses, standing in the club’s 3D scanner. Action poses, power poses, flexing, anything goes as long as she can keep still a full ten seconds doing it. Her friends stay off the camera, but they’re a constant presence. It’s all very highschool - everyone laughing too hard at jokes that don’t make sense, acting like mild observations are devastating bon mots. She’s having fun. After that, the friends show up less and less. The sculpting gets more and more detailed. A few minutes of the video show the whole process of her replacing her hand with the kind of sword that’d show up in a first-generation Playstation game, start-to-finish. The next one is a few clips, where she forgets to talk-to-camera. After that? She just starts showing off end products. When’s the last time she got so focused on the work she forgot to make it content? Here’s one where her spine is stegosaurus plates, all gleaming solar panels. Here’s one where her arm is carbon fiber, with a wrist-mounted grapple hook. The bicep on that one is a very detailed winch system. Here’s the last one she sent as its own message, one where her hair is replaced by a thick weave of RGB lit Medusa snakes. And here, at the very end, is what that was a practice for. Her own take of the cyberware you’d recognize in the mirror. In the video, she calls it the “ass kicking outfit”. An export of that one isn’t in the phone messages. Maybe she was hoping you wouldn’t watch the video the whole way through, and wouldn’t notice. She had to share the rest, though. She’s too proud not to. [b]3V:[/b] You have your story. You have time to write in on the flight home. You have one last chance to talk to Gavin, alone, if you want to take it. That’s all there’s left to do. Write the story. After that you can take a break, date some androids, and do something else. Something [i]fun.[/i] And maybe get the word out to some other archivists, about what Ferris has here.