[b]Anthropozine: [/b] Okay, so there’s a bit of a story behind York’s new username. 2048 was a wild year, the space fountain is going up but Aevum isn’t complete until 2060. This is still in the early years when the Fountain was mainly just for industrial purposes of getting robot factories and launch facilities up into space, and a few years before people are moving into the absolute wild-west international waters of unregulated, no-laws space colonies. It’s at the point of space colonization that people are taking Indentured servitude contracts into a railway baron’s wettest dream of cosmic company towns - and you know those freaks had unholy kinks - because for a lot of people that still seemed like a better option than the failing Earth, where ambient carbon dioxide levels were reaching levels that used to be found only on the cheapest domestic airplane flights. Anyway, back then there was a vulture capital guy named Zach Monte who thought that his best play was to buy commodities on Earth cheap, hoard it on the moon, and then rebuild after space was developed enough there was something worth buying. He figured all the most value-dense stuff on Earth was manufactured goods, but if robots were going to be doing all the manufacturing, then he was best off taking the most value-dense raw material he could. So anyway, Zach Monte, billionaire brain genius, started forgiving trillions of dollars of African, Asian and Pacific Island debt he bought in exchange for all the gold and precious metals in their federal reserves, and shooting it all up the space fountain as fast as he could to the vault he’d had built near his palatial habitat on Chiarascuro. Most of the 1,120 tonnes of gold still sits in a crater on the moon because it’s so worthless it’s not been worth the effort to get it, except the black-site tourists who bring bars back to Aevum as souvenirs. Meanwhile the debt relief played a major factor in Africa being able to get most of its people onto Aevum when it was built in 2060. York just learned about this guy, and it’s his new favourite guy. To him it’s like the chicken soup for the soul version of selling Manhattan island for beads. [b]Private Message - November[/b] [b]TheFullMonte:[/b] ive been thinking about things [b]TheFullMonte: [/b]the best way to prepare people for stuff thats going to happen [b]TheFullMonte:[/b] and i was thinking how they used to do it in the army was veteran mixing, you made sure to mix your fresh trainees with your veterans [b]TheFullMonte: [/b]3V and HartlyDworkin have too much baggage for trenchwork and Persephones busy right now and IAmWhatIAm wants to tell you himself [b]TheFullMonte: [/b]Junta has medical leave [b]TheFullMonte: [/b]Fickle needs some frontlining though and Numb wants it but i need them for regular articles right now [b]TheFullMonte:[/b] Beside them there’s the irregular contributors, the people who post a few articles but dont come in enough to get the irc invite [b]TheFullMonte:[/b] im thinking we could promote some people to the circle of trust now before we need to do it and that would free up Fickle and Numb more too [b]TheFullMonte:[/b] you want to meet up and talk shit [b]TheFullMonte:[/b] theres a place in ares i could buy you a coffee you dont got to drink and show you what i need here [b]TheFullMonte:[/b] otherwise we can do this by email lmao im not your fucking boss [b]TheFullMonte: [/b]actually though [b]TheFullMonte:[/b] this goes both ways [b]TheFullMonte:[/b] i told IAmWhatIAm you need writing lessons so take that on the chin champ [b]TheFullMonte:[/b] your sorry and im welcome [b]Green:[/b] Juan loves this. “You’re not like any journalists I’ve met. The ones that talk to my Mum, they’re professional friends who write things down for you.” He looks at Green, and he looks at the notepad, and back at Green. “Okay, maybe you’re a little like that. But you don’t care if she gets mad about the stuff you write down, do you?” [quote=@Thanqol] "I wouldn't call those people journalists. More like... you know how kings in ancient times would get artists to paint pictures of them? That's what they are. I'm after the truth." [/quote] Juan’s nods so hard he has to wipe his nose after, the sheer energy of agreeing shakes things loose inside his head both poetically and literally. “That’s what it’s like! And that’s kind of what my Mum is. My Mum is super paranoid about hiding this stuff, but she’s basically the Queen of Law. Who’s going to do anything about it? Who’d even arrest her? They can’t even fire her. Maybe when my mum finds out it’s not the end of the world people know about this stuff, she can stop acting so crazy about it.” This is the kid that’s closer to the family’s head of security than either of his parents - there is no more ardent an atheist than the son of a preacher, and in the Cathedral of Justice his mother is Cardinal. The Truth, though? He lights up like a firework for that. The scribble of Green’s pen focuses him, reminds him of the questions she’s asked. “Harley is a friend of my Mum and Dad, but she always takes them out. She never visits here. I hear some stuff on the phone but, I already said. Oh!” Juan pulls a random box from the stacks and rifles through it. He takes a page off the top immediately, but has to dig through until he finds another. “See this? How this one’s yellower and got this mark on it, and this doesn’t? That’s because this one’s a copy, and this one’s original. Because all of these are the originals. And it’s almost all property stuff, but none of it’s the properties my Mum owns. I only checked twenty boxes, and there are way more boxes here than keys… but none out of twenty? I took the boxes from all different places, too.” He looks at you for a second opinion. “I think this is the real bad thing she’s done, and the keys are just how she got paid for it.” He’s smug. Like he’s written a novel and never had a reader before. [i]So? What do you think?[/i] Several options here - for all of them, Juan wants to play lookout for you while you work, he really wants to know what you find out. 1: Study the documents here, in Costa-Silva’s study, and solve this case. 2: Photograph documents to solve them later 3: Steal some documents 4: Cut and run 1: Suggests three spends a: A law spend is minimal to speed-reading these and internalizing any of the meanings b: A research spend will cut your time down c: 2 data recovery points will allow you to use what you know of information theory to drastically cut down what you need to skim. 2: Suggests two spends a: Photography will give you the proficiency to video files passing in front of your camera lens instead of needing to individually photograph them. You’ll need to use the light in the study to do it. b: Law [i]and[/i] Notice will be enough to glean something from skimming the documents you’re scanning - otherwise you don’t have time to read. 3: No spends needed, it’s the fastest but good luck getting out with it. 4: No spends, the safest, Juan will be disappointed. What does Green pick, and how does she start on it? [b]Upstairs:[/b] Sir Barrera pokes his head into the security room on his way back out to the party. “Seal the ducts. I don’t want the smell to go room to room if we get another stink bomb, it’ll just make the next one harder to find.” All around the house, there’s the sound of squeaking metal - like rusted shower taps turning - as airtight domed caps rotate flush into place between rooms. Green might not have noticed it yet, but she can’t go out the way she came in.