[b]Brown:[/b]

“Ah, shit, I didn’t get any of that. I didn’t even think, and like, my camera stuff only got the original arrest. I don’t think they had badges though. Coffee just looked like takeaway cups to me, didn’t even think to check if they had brands or anything, that’s like, that’s Agatha Christie shit.” 

“I started recording everything after we got there.” York holds up his phone before going back to playing with it. “It’ll corroborate any account we give, but that’s it.” 

“I can show you how I got arrested for it, if you want?” Zhang offers hopefully. “You could figure out everything you want to know that way, maybe?” 

[b]Blue:[/b]

Serino barks a laugh at this. It’s Shtern that looks up with gold-flecked eyes with an annoyed grimace. 

“My eyes are still 20/20 after all these years.” Serino explains. “It’s the only augment I haven’t got, but Wolfgang has.” 

“Yes, yes, I’m getting old.” Wolfgang’s annoyed grimace breaks into something that just falls short of a grin. “No, that’s still not much better. Which we should all be grateful for, in my opinion. Everything is spying on me - my phone. Your phone. I think even Serino’s nipples are selling my data to advertisers.” 

“Maybe? Who knows? They put the privacy agreements in with the liability forms, when you go in for the surgery. I never read any of it.” Serino… this is a joke, right? He says it like a joke, anyway. 

“I do not want them to be much better at it.” 

“There are so many ways you can change the physics behind looking at things.” Serino thinks. “Much more work went into the physics of things. Materials, that is the word. You want to know what I am most excited about? Glassware ceramics. Used to be far too brittle, but some genialità up in Ares found a way to blend the properties of diamond and silicone, as you like. Fantastic insulators,” he kisses the tips of his fingers, “Incredible to work with, like sculpting. The things you can do with the colour mixing, too, so much more…” he doesn’t have a word in English for this, and gives up, “than any painting.”

“Low melting point.” Shtern counters. “Once you get through that insulation.”

“I love that about it!” Serino closes his eyes in bliss, and his body shakes with the intensity of his passion. “The things I could have done with this sixty years ago… Glassblowing diamonds, Blue! To stir and to shape the wing of a fighter jet like I am pulling candy floss.”

Shtern sighs too. He can’t argue even for the sake of arguing. “If you are good. If you get the right tools… then yes. It is more like silicone the more you heat it, so it is very important you get the heat right.”

Serino shows you what he’d suggest, and his entry level is out of your price point. Shtern shows you his suggestions instead, and it’s still ludicrously expensive. Most of the difficulty is, as they have suggested, finding safe and practical ways to heat this stuff to its melting point through the insulation with any degree of scale or precision. Serino says of Shtern’s choices; “This might do.” As if being asked to chop firewood with a stone axe.

[b]Green:[/b]

Fiona drops her solar-panel wings for beams of golden light again; “What’s the hacker version of wrestling, play-fighting? I don’t think there’s any way I can tell you that there’s nothing you can do to me that isn’t because I let you do it, without just proving it. And it’s the safest way to learn I’m wrong.” She says as an afterthought. “I want you to try your best to overpower me, until you know that you can’t.” 

Her fingers twitch as she prepares three different macros in bands of light around her wrist - in case Green answers with a ‘surprise’ punch. [If Green wants it to be, this can be a legitimate combat encounter where the only consequences for losing are the resources she spends on it.]

“Also? Wouldn’t hurt for you to flirt back with me a little. I asked if [i]you[/i] wanted to do things with me, you never asked me if I wanted to.” If she’s going to ask Green to test her strength on her, of course she’s going to be a brat about it. “You said you wanted to win at me, right?”