[b]Fiona:[/b] “I didn’t know about Blue, no.” She says, sadly. Her gut twists - they left on such brusque terms, just being redirected to Green… she was going to regret that. She looks at Pink and translates her into a cloud of connected concepts, tries to see the broken points in the web of ideas, the missing values and what they connect to. They- No. As much as Pink is a person, she is also only the illusion of a person. She is a piece of the whole of November. Synechdoche. She cannot stop at only seeing the connections within Pink, but outwards from her as well - Fiona and Crystal are better at thinking like this now, they’re actually trying. Fiona experiences a shot of adrenaline like a hypnogogic jerk, those jumps you have when you suddenly wake up right at the edge of sleep. She doesn’t understand what she’s seen, not completely, but something dark and dangerous moved in the corner of her mind’s eye when she imagined November without Pink. “Okay, so first of all, I’m pretty sure you’re the part of November that knows she likes girls.” She says breezily. “So if you go, then Crystal and I would have to break up with you, so we’re making sure you’re sticking around.” “Second, you’re your vision for what the changes in the world should be, right?” Fiona squeezes Pink’s hands. “You’re going to be needed more than ever. Wanted more than ever, too. Let’s…” [i]Don’t be grateful for things you never asked for, even if you appreciate them. It was a debt whose terms you couldn’t refuse, even if you want what it got you. [/i] No. [i]Not getting enough smiles and headpats [/i]is[i] worth-[/i] No. [i]It doesn’t matter if you’re like this ‘only sometimes’ if you’re like this any of the time I-[/i] No [i]scolding[/i]. No telling her that she’s done something wrong, thought something wrong. They’re things she wants Pink to know but that’s not what she needs to tell her. “Let’s say that you’re damaged.” Fiona says instead. “So we’ll help you get better, okay? That’s different to just fixing you, because we’re not going to try to go back to how you used to be before this, or try to get a Pink that can act like none of this happened. ” “What do you want to be like?” Fiona asks. “What do you want to be that you wouldn’t have to pretend anymore?” [i]Why are you pretending anyway? What is it like when you stop pretending?[/i] [b]Hazel:[/b] “I might work on this in pieces and do some of the side projects first, if that’s okay?” Hazel asks, far-away and foggy-eyed. “I know what this needs to be, but I don’t know how to do it yet. I can’t give you a guess to how long it will take, I can’t even tell you if it’s possible.” She smiles when she says that last bit, because that just makes it more fun, doesn’t it? “Let me finish going around today, I was here for ideas anyway. Now I just need to go from looking for concepts to looking for execution.” She reaches into a suitcase and pulls a business card out. “Call me when you’re ready to show me around the workshop later, and try to have something for me to do. I need to see if the space inspires me, or if I’m going to need to make changes.” [b]Black:[/b] You might want to spend some more time with Fiona, not least of which because she’s suddenly very interested in some new topics of conversation to have with you. But also because of that view of technology. She would say that the rich are absolutely vulnerable to technology fights because it’s one of the areas where money can be made irrelevant. Expensive technology is the outsourcing of all understanding of your tools, and the trust in the expertise of people you will never meet. A technological solution, then, is learning to exploit the blind trust of wealth. This is the essence of hacking. They’d have to compare notes, though. Fiona has never considered the state itself as another technology in the same way. Here’s the trick. It’s illegal to ask where a private pod is going, but unlike a plane - with infinite airspace - it’s not illegal to ask about what’s been rerouted on shared lines to accommodate it. And all lines are shared, this is a train network. Privacy gives way to safety - on a shared line, no train’s path can be kept so secret it would cause a collision. That gives Black the final thing she can do. All she has to do is book and cancel an emergency services vehicle onto that line now that she’s figured it out. These things happen often enough to not be suspicious - fat fingers on a callout. But the moment they’re made they still need to clear the line they’re commandeering, which sweeps through the network grid as reroutes. Basically, you don’t need a thermal scope to find the invisible man if you can fill a room with flour. That gives you a neighbourhood now, Trajan in Classical Zeus. You can’t get there in time to follow him, can’t disrupt the network more to delay him, the trail is about to go cold no matter what you do here… But you still have a lead, an area of a few city blocks, and a face. Narrowing it down from there will be the next operation. Green can already be on her way now. There is no reason you have to wait. [b]November:[/b] [b]LatheOfHeathens:[/b] D-Day ladies [b]LatheOfHeathens:[/b] I got the new girl in Ares with Jez doing pre-op, I got Junta in Zeus, I got Pope in Apollo doing android stuff. Junta doesn't know why he's at the court today, Pope didn't want to be there even though it's his racquet. [b]LatheOfHeathens:[/b] 5pm today your mods are going to be marking you outside the acceptable fringe. not illegal just [b]LatheOfHeathens:[/b] targeted. [b]LatheOfHeathens:[/b] so if I got one bit of advice? [b]LatheOfHeathens:[/b] you probably got like 5 hours to go full shopping bender on off the shelf non-humanoid parts, tomorrow nobody's going to be insured to give them to you so they won't [b]LatheOfHeathens:[/b] my prediction anyway [b]LatheOfHeathens:[/b] fuck this bullshit It won't stop you making your own parts. It just means you [i]have [/i]to, now.