[b]York and Zhang:[/b] “I’m just telling you what I was told,” Cheadle says, “The supervisor’s off-site, but I can get the files for you on your way out.” It’s clear he’s not going to do it. Nobody is, nobody’s coming. The point is just to promise something agreeable you can’t argue with. What paperwork does exist probably exists in a circular filing system. No matter how you follow up on this, his answer will always be; “Of course you’ll get that later, I already promised that.” Zhang’s happy though. “Total bullshit,” she grins. Everyone’s eyes close a bit when they get this happy, but a thin scar on her left eyelid keeps it open a bit wider. It makes her smile a little more one-sided on her face, makes her look she’d have been a dashing pirate born in the wrong era. “Don’t worry about it tea-lady. They won’t even leave a mark on us here, I can wait the two hours.” You know where the real origins of the term ‘throwing the book at someone’ comes from? If you punch a restrained person through a heavy, soft covered book the force is spread out so much it doesn’t leave bruises. This is grim on the face of it, but there’s an important caveat to it - shit like that only gets done because [i]someone[/i] cares about the bruises, and there’s accountability at some level. It matters that this place shouldn’t exist. York looks around, though. “How many of these people have been here longer than you?” “A lot of them.” Zhang admits. “Mind if I talk to them?” York asks Cheadle. “You stay right here.” “Hey!” York calls out without moving. “Stomp a foot or something if any of you have been here since yesterday.” A few foot stomps, and someone barks a laugh. Cheadle grabs York’s shoulder with wide, furious eyes. “Stamp your foot if you’ve been charged with anything- Ah, fuck. Ow, ow, ow.” York swears and way fewer feet stomp. “Nobody’s talking here! Can’t quote that, it’s off the record.” Cheadle’s still pissed, but it does surprise him that York’s been a smartass [i]on his behalf[/i] here. Because it wasn’t for his recording, he was proving a point for Brown and Zhang - Zhang’s 2 hour release exists because you showed up. Brown might have already suspected it, but Zhang didn’t. Brown, you have a chance to influence what Cheadle does here. What York just did actually likely broke a law, but this place is obviously a Calvinball zone. What Cheadle does here is probably entirely down to what you can make him feel is the smart play. [b]Pope:[/b] “Smart. So we don’t go through the Anthropozine for it, we write for something more up-market.” He looks up with a self-deprecating smile. “Something like Stańczyk is probably a good bet. I think [i]Olympia[/i] might be better, which means I write this like an [i]Olympia[/i] article.” [i]Olympia[/i] could be considered a kind of synthesis between The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, also under the OECN arm, headquartered in Zeus. It’s a lot more liberal-conservative than Stańczyk, but it’s widely read in Zeus and very receptive to longer think pieces and investigative articles, as long as you can write engagingly. If Michael Lewis was still writing in 2080, this is who he’d be writing for. The Olympics don’t happen on Aevum, by the way. The nationalist and internationalist aspects of the events just didn’t really translate, and without that you’re just left with a bunch of sports that people wouldn’t normally watch. “That gets you the lawyers, their friends, and Zeus.” Pope nods his head and types a note on his phone. “I’ll pitch the article to them now, so they’ll be ready for it by the time I’m finished writing it. Actually, speaking of that, speaking of the collective.” He laughs. “York showed me the last time you submitted something, and asked me if there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I think he described it as watching a clown car crash. My first advice is going to be to pick who has the best vision for what you want to achieve. Any time you describe something, you betray your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything. Contradict that too much, and you can’t describe anything.” He looks between Blue and Orange seriously. “I’d say representational democracy might be the best solution here. Who would you pick to be your writing voices? One writer and a partner, maybe, just as long as it’s only one pair of hands on the keyboard.” He takes a significant look at Blue’s. “One voice telling the story might be more appropriate, and a sounding board.” “You decide on who that's going to be, and we’ll go over writing this piece together for practice, the Carmen Costa-Silva one. I'll write it, and you tell me what you'd do different, and I'll tell you why I did it how I did. I think that'd be the best place to start.” He says. “We’ll make a writer of you yet - some of you anyway. Otherwise you’re going to have to trust someone else to tell your story, November, and I don’t think anyone else is going to understand you unless you’re the one that makes them.” It’s clear he means this as very high praise. Though, didn’t Fiona say she wanted to try? She might be worth asking for a second opinion, if you want to get a second opinion. [b]Crystal and Fiona:[/b] Crystal massages her temples with both hands while she holds a phone against her ear with a shoulder. “Odysseus, I already have the fire coverage, but it’s only rated for 600 celsius. If you wanted to get a 1200 degree forge you should have - yes, I know nothing good melts at 600 degrees, that’s probably why - No, I know your act. Can’t you - You have personal coverage for it? Excellent, that’s all I ask then. No, I’m sorry for bothering you, I’ll let you get back to - Yes, send pictures. I’m glad you’re excited. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Yes, it will. Thank you, okay, goodbye.” She gasps for air and throws the phone away from her, collapsing on a cushion. Fiona looks up from her decryption work. “Which was that one?” “Odysseus is the self-made one.” Crystal turns her head slightly so that her mouth isn’t muffled by the couch cushion. “The one with all the exposed gears and such.” “Him!” Fiona lights up. “The steampunk guy! I love him.” “The ‘steampunk guy’, yes. He plans to have a blacksmithing workshop set up and make his components live. Which means organizing a live blacksmithing demonstration in the middle of an exhibition hall. The hammers. The safety cordone. The fire, obviously, as you heard. The safe transportation and installation of an anvil.” Crystal shudders at that last one. The OSHA of the homemade anvil was actually worse than the fire. “I mean, fair enough, right?” Fiona got up to check for any leftover ‘sandwich’ in the fridge, but Crystal had beat her to the last of it. She grabbed a premade protein shake instead. “It’s one thing to know he made all his own parts, it’s another thing to watch him do it. You just tell someone they did blacksmithing and they’ll assume they cheated with a fabricator or something, or used modern tools to do it. Seeing him work is-” “He already has an agent, dear, he doesn’t need another one.” Crystal growled, and Fiona waited for her to feel bad about that on her own, which didn’t take long. “Sorry for being snippy. That wasn’t fair.” “Coffee help?” “God, yes, please.” Fiona put the machine on for them both. “I figured out how to make a new account on the system that’ll guarantee it’s stored in the right part of the physical server infrastructure. I spent the last of our savings on renting a DDoS attack on Orochi Bank that’ll add a few zeroes to the dummy bank account when the voltage spikes, then immediately dump that all into buying your art, which will just look like it’s trying to exchange for physical assets with high resale value as fast as possible. Best case scenario, because it’s a hardware glitch, they don’t see what we’ve done. Absolute worst case scenario, I just made your listed art worth $2 million because that’s what someone already paid for it, and we flip what we can. I think the account gets flagged, but the law says the bank has to eat you keeping the money.” “You spent our savings on-” Crystal panicked. “When does this happen? When do you know?” Fiona checked her watch. “Thirty minutes ago. Mr 436f2d6f7264696e617465732035312e35303 732c2b0204e2c20302e31323736c2b02057 should have put the money in your account.” Crystal scrolled through her phone notifications. There, in the 172 notifications she’d been ignoring from the day she found it. They were millionaires. “Heavens.” “It won’t work twice.” Fiona chewed her bracelet and brought their coffees back ot the table. “Just, you have enough stuff to worry about without having to worry about laundering it. I handled everything with the listings earlier, so it just looked like you were desperate to raise money.” Crystal sips her coffee. Then she downs it, burning hot. It scalds her throat the whole way but she desperately needs it inside her in that second. “What do we even do with the rest of it?” Fiona looks awkward. “I [i]kind of[/i] had an idea about that, but I’d [i]kind of[/i] need most of it.” “Of course. It’s your money, as far as I’m concerned.” “It’s just, I mean if you add up all the times you’ve shouted RoofDash and stuff, and the mortgage-” “It would come to a number far less than the $600,000 you’re giving me, yes.” “Don’t you mean-” Fiona blinked, and Crystal gave a significant look. “Right, [i]$600,000[/i], got it.” Fiona texts Green, and Pink. [b]TalesFromDecrypt:[/b] So I’m going to lease a workshop near our place, because I think being able to make and fix our own tools is going to be really important. [b]TalesFromDecrypt:[/b] But I’m really way more of a software expert, so I was hoping Green would help me out with that a lot? I need to know what machines are the best value to buy with our budget. I figure hand tools will be a drop in the bucket after that. [b]TalesFromDecrypt:[/b] Soooooo I was thiiiinkiiiiiiing thoooough [b]TalesFromDecrypt: [/b]Since I’m leasing this place that’s much closer to ours to do it [b]TalesFromDecrypt: [/b]And it’s going to have all these maintenance tools there anyyywaaaaay [b]TalesFromDecrypt: [/b]You want to move in? :3 [b]TalesFromDecrypt: [/b](Making it somewhere you’d want to live is Pink’s job right? I’m asking the right one?) “[i]Fiona Diane Weiss[/i], I do not like the tone of your giggling one bit. What have you done?” Fiona tosses Crystal her phone, and Crystal reads the messages before tossing it back. “Nine is simply too many to live with, but she’s too much to live without, isn’t she?” “I just wanna build her a little backyard where she can run around, and play, and make me illegal heist-crime catsuits."