[IC] Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

[Tatterdemalion]

That little nugget of Blue Lore is something 3V seizes upon. Oh, she does not say. Oh, she does not say. Blue (teasy, conflict-demanding, interesting Blue) is the one who wishes she was not human. What does that say about who she was before? Not romanticizing the digital nature of being an android (the way that Green does), but a body she used to have. And that’s hashtag relatable. Every change you make to your body, isn’t there a part of you that wonders whether you made the right choice at all?

Particularly because, for November, it wasn’t a choice at all.

She lets the statement hang in the air. It’s very tempting to deflate it. She’s got a line on the tip of her tongue, a quote that’s close, but it wouldn’t serve any purpose but to briefly trigger dopamine for referencing a thing. So she lets it hang. Then she gives November’s shoulder a squeeze.

“Everything is hard. That’s why we’ve got to stick together, especially when the rent is due.” And that shakes a thought loose, clattering down her spine. “Speaking of— Euna, I need to ask you a few questions. There’s something that’s been nagging at me lately, and I’m trying to tug at it, see if there’s anything on the line. Do you have a moment to talk about real estate? Because I gotta know how you got the property in the first place.”

[Phoe]

White, 3V!

"Heroes, huh? No, I guess there aren't a lot of those going around this place."

Of course, a really hero would have something insightful to say here. Or at least encouraging. Even a stock speech would be fine, because it would at least be from the heart. But Euna simply shrugs and returns the sad look. Her eyes flick back and forth between November, 3V, and the clock on the wall. Somehow she winds up laughing and frowning at the same time.

"I do still want to help, you know. You're outside my specialty but I, yeah. I understand a little where you're coming from. I want to understand a little better. Please, consider arranging meetings for me with the rest of your colors. I don't need them all at once. It's fine if some or even most of them are hostile, even. None of them even need to talk. Honestly if the majority of your partitions hate me that makes you exactly the same as eighty percent of my clients already, just split across more bodies than I'm used to. But I have to see them if I'm gonna build a proper plan for you, ok? The difference between knowing everything I can and having to make assumptions is the same space between making you the best version of yourself and... being me."

She nods at 3V's question, but doesn't say anything for a long time. Instead she shunts the pair of you in her back office and returns to normal gym activities. Every time one of you pokes your head out she's there in a flash to push you back inside. Wait. Don't leave, please. But there are schedules that need to be maintained. Eventually, the lights start going off on the main floor. Soon there's only the lamp in this cramped office, stuffed with neatly organized but shockingly analog files, and the obnoxious neon blaring of the still-active @SARAHPHIM arcade machines.

Closing time at last. Euna appears, wiping her hair down with a towel. In her time away she's changed out of her workout clothes and into a very fitted black suit complete with a very proper tie.

"Sorry," she says without particularly sounding it, "You went and asked me a tricky question. I just needed to... Can I get you dinner? I can order whatever you need."

Euna throws a tablet at 3V's lap (already open to a delivery app) before walking across her desk and sitting down at her chair. She props her elbows on the table and lets her chin rest in her hands. Then she's quiet for long enough to make things awkward again.

"You're doing research. That's why you remembered me all of a sudden."

She is not asking a question, but there's also no sense of hurt that would imply she's taken offense either. She just looks unbearably tense. The seconds tick by. Finally she clears her throat, and it's like a spell hanging over her shatters. She shifts in her chair, perfectly upright, and breaks her stance to flip her fingers through her hair.

"I want... I need you to understand. Whatever else you hear when you go poking around, neither Sara or I did anything illegal. My documentation is triple certified. This place is mine. Hers and mine. Ours. Understood?"

[Tatterdemalion]

The smile on 3V’s face is almost infectious. Almost. The tablet lies forgotten on her lap. It’s giddy. She’s giddy. This is the side of her that does the research. Because opening with that? That means there is something here. A shadow on the water. Something that demands to be understood, dug into, chewed on. And maybe it’ll hurt her later, sure. But right now? Here and now? She grins, and leans forward, blind to food, blind to November, blind to anything but what’s been dangled in front of her.

“Okay,” she says. “I believe you,” she says, and means it. She really does. Her fingers drum on the side of the tablet, impulse without thought. “But you don’t open with that unless there’s one hell of an explanation following.”

[Thanqol]

During the break, White had been texting - and sure enough, Brown had arrived.

A lot of people had the wrong idea about the colour brown; they regarded it as dull, uninteresting, associated with mud and muck. In truth it was one of the most complicated colours in the world and a rarity on Aevum where neon and chrome were in fashion. Brown has arrived wearing a white button-up shirt, pants, and the most interesting vest seen in weeks.

Red was easy to define; a simple 225 on the colour wheel. Blue and green and orange were all creatures of saturation and you could find them all on the extremes. But brown was a figment that existed in a vast liminal space away from the fringes of the wheel. Some browns touched on purple, deep and rich and warm. Some browns touched on bright yellow, or descended into black. Pale and desaturated brown-greys were possible alongside rich skintones. The brown of the mountain and the brown of the rock, the browns that flashed with shards of orange like amber and the browns that drank the depths of freezing caves, the browns of shadows and wood as it burned. In her Sunday best, Brown comes out wearing a vest with as many tones as pockets; an outfit that is drab at first but close examination reveals an optical illusion where in places brown emerges in fine stitches of red and green overlayered, or in the contrast between the near quarter of the colour wheel by volume that her aspect dominates. She has her hair up in a leaking bun, her eyes like stone and wheat, prosperity and decay.

There's a frictionlessness to her, a polite and professional courtesy in greeting that transferred into a quiet and dedicated listening. She was an incredible listener, seeming to lack any thoughts of her own, letting her head be filled with words, instructions and knowledge without commentary. She does not interrupt or comment, nor will she unless spoken to directly.

White hasn't left, but she's clearly been demoted. She's sitting still and paying attention because it's an act of courtesy and self discipline. Brown enjoys this for its own sake.

[Phoe]

That is the same person. It is the same person. She is the same person. This is a new aspect of her focus. Not a trick. Not a trap.

Euna doesn't quite get all the way to mouthing her thoughts, but it's a very long time before her eyes leave Brown. Every pocket checked over, the fit of her vest, the comparative mess of her hair. The color of her eyes. Finally, she nods to herself. And then again two more times. It's less easy to take the unknown in stride than people say it is. Hopefully she gets credit for trying.

"Threevee, order something or I'm not telling you shit. It could be the nastiest trash on the planet, just get it here and put it in your body. It might've been a front, but you still came here and ran with me. That puts you... just, get on with it. Thank you."

She sighs. Cybernetic arms don't have the advantage of a satisfying clench when you're tense. That's probably why she touches her hair so much in these little moments: it's a gesture she can control, and more importantly feel. Not in the sense of mastering the algorithmic readouts of her limbs that she's taught herself to interpret as sense data, but as something thoughtless. Effortless. Casual. It's mesmerizing to watch in its own way, with the unbroken curtain of perfect silver hair and not a split end in sight, despite the sweat and strain she puts herself through on a daily basis. You'd be forgiven for thinking it's a wig.

"...You're going to think this is stupid," she says at last and with a nod at all three faces across from her, "But it's not. I'm fighting a war. I didn't start it, but I'm not going to lose it. I refuse.

"Right. Sorry. Not your problem. You've got your own battles. This... god. It sounds so stupid when I try to say it out loud. Threevee, I think you're familiar with Angel-IKA? At least vaguely? Rich girl, bored off her ass? Technically a professional cosplayer, she's always making all these wolf costumes and stuff. Anyway, her. She's been one of Sara's biggest fans since right near the start of her career. Constant super chats, gift subs raining from the sky, laughing way too hard at every stupid joke. You know the type. So she..."

Another glance at the tablet. She waits for 3V's fingers to start moving, however brainlessly they might be doing it, before she continues.

"I wound up running security for her for a little while after I quit my. Um. My first job. That's how we got to talking. And I mean obviously with a body like hers she doesn't have much use for a cybernetics gym, but she loved that it was my dream. I guess she, you know I, as a hobby I used to make this stupid workout videos, just hoping they'd help somebody and then I'd... yeah. So she said she'd look into it. Whatever she could do to help, she would. No big deal.

"So she rooted around in her portfolio. And I... sorry. I'm being thorough. It's easier if you know the background. Well. She found out her father had put the lease for this place in her name. She hadn't known about it, we went and looked, nobody was using it for anything. it seemed so damn old I couldn't even tell what they'd been hoping for when they built it in the first place. But it's got room enough if you're efficient with the space."

Euna stops. Clears her throat. Her eyes flick over to the VR arcade machines and she grimaces without meaning to.

"At first I offered to rent it from her, but she didn't want to be involved. 'No no, it's a gift!' she told me. And eventually I relented because it's, just, from her perspective I saw how perfect it was. The place was abandoned, and the lease was cheap as fuck. Her dad's got a bike that costs more than this place. So to her, she's helping a friend and all it's costing her is the smallest bit of her fortune that she didn't even know she owned. Easy, right?"

Euna's lips turn white. She watches the group watching her, and adjusts the collar on her suit until it's aligned perfectly with her neck and shoulders.

"I've been catching hell ever since I signed those fucking papers. Her father is furious. Turns out this place was intended as a speculative asset. He was even keeping it as blank as possible to adapt it for maximum value. These leases aren't forever, do you understand? I didn't think about it too hard until I'd already signed the paperwork, but it's all written in there plain as day. And when it rolls over there's going to be a reckoning on it. Everything that's been built up here since they finished constructing this place and filling it with people, all the... everything has just been compounding on its self since the beginning.

"Do you realize how dangerous it is to own property up here? How much fucking money land is worth? Just, literally any land. Well, they had no idea when they wrote leases like this one, but they sure as hell know it now. To be the one with leverage... it has been. Impressed upon me. Just how valuable that is. So he's claimed coercion, kidnapping, threats, cybercrime, all the, you're going to dig around on this, right? You're going to hear everything. I am a criminal mastermind the likes of which the world has never seen before. They've sent people here to trash this place more times than I care to count, and it's only a matter of time before the cops get brave enough to try their hand too."

Her hands clench into fists. She punches the desk, though carefully.

"Honestly I don't know why I'm bothering. I know what I said, but I-- there's no way this ends with my hands on this place. I don't have any of those stupid rich people resources that lets them convert on shit like this, my lease'll expire before much longer and I'll go back to owning nothing. I've been saving money where I can but there's no way I'm going to be able to buy this place back as an ordinary landowner when it rolls over back to the station and gets re-evaluated. I don't even entirely understand why it's so damn important to own it right now. There must be something I don't... it doesn't matter.

"This is all I've got. Literally, all I know how to do is punch stuff and maintain health around augs. Like, what am I supposed to do? Yeah great, back to videos, sure. But without the space, without the equipment, without supervision..."

Euna's hands hover near her hair. She doesn't commit to smoothing it or to lowering her arms again, and the look on her face suggests she's close to tearing it all out instead. But all she does is collapse backwards into her chair.

"Fuck." she supplies, very helpfully.

[Count Numbers]

November:

Red:

“No, it doesn’t.” Singh spins in his chair. “But I’d be very, very disappointed if I did.” There’s a beep from his terminal and he shifts. “Hold on. I think-”

White:

Crystal is sending specialists at different price points, getting quotes. Her design work has seen her work with a lot of clients, and she has a long memory for people who exceed and fail her expectations. The time - money - quality triangle seems to hold very true in her opinion, and she’s proud to be part of the reason someone who meets all three is referred to as a unicorn.

She only sends recommendations for cheap and quality, and fast and quality. The former tend to be small business contractors, Etsy bodymodders. FUCKING SKELETOR would be a great example, actually - he’s usually all booked up and is distrustful of new clients. Persephone’s lucky to have what she has with him. If you want a very personalized service with someone in it for the love of the art, this is where you go. But it’ll be a process, most of these are going to be hobbyists doing a side-hustle, charging barely more than cost-of-materials for the love of the work, taking commissions because they couldn’t afford the materials otherwise.

The other option is the kind of professionals who do fashion for executive androids and cyborgs - though it's typically bordering on costume when they do it, in the way wedding dresses or those stunning avant garde ensembles for awards show nights are. Crystal has a few connections she can recommend, but it’ll be pricey. These are people and companies that have made their names and their output is consistent. They know what they’re worth, and that’s what they’ll charge. It’s the only way you’ll get exactly what you want in weeks, rather than months. But if you go that route, you’ll know it was worth every cent.

Even that would be cheaper than machining all this yourself. The money you save in labour is instead going into materials, machinery and failed drafts. Aevum’s got a few maker spaces and tools libraries, though, if you’re really invested in going that route. Hell, it might even be fun. Crystal doesn’t seem to take that option as seriously as you might, though.

Probably because if you did, she wouldn’t get her chance to make introductions. She stresses wanting to make introductions, and be there when you put in your commission, even for the more corporate and impersonal options she’s suggesting. She’s salivating to be a part of this self-exploration. Fiona wasn’t kidding.

Fiona, for her part, lets slip she grew up on Thrones. At least for her teen years. Dad got a job there when she was eleven, she moved back to Aevum on her eighteenth - as much as she loves him, he’s got to visit her for holidays. Apparently he's one of Thrones leading systems ethicists, which means he’s worked at a lot of the big companies and never for long. The first to be publicized and the first to be downsized. A lot of her conversations with him end up about how much he wasn’t allowed to talk about, that never would have mattered anyway.

He’s the world’s leading architect for skyscrapers built on sand.

Still, she’s far more interested in how it feels to meet up with yours. She already knows a surprising amount about Singh, so almost all her questions come down to how you feel about him. About this.

Red:

“Goat’s in Erebus.” Singh breathes. “A gray area between state and private property. I thought there’d be an extra step here, but Erebus is-” Pink might tell you that it in mythology Erebus is Night but it is also Hell, the first thing made from Chaos that life could inhabit. It is the spine and the spokes of the station, filled with its sewers and electricals and the oxygen lines. It is Aevum’s Underworld. “-Too well documented. A hole in the record would be like a gap in white noise. But this isn’t corporate, this is deep state.”

He gives a sideways glance. “Who’s the best to talk to about this? Black?”

3V and Euna:

Thank you for all your continued help during this downtime for me. You've been wonderful.

[Thanqol]

Brown!

She didn't listen like a normal person. It was polite and attentive, but it was also eternal. There were no glances down to check her phone. She did not put her hands in her pockets or adjust her posture. She did not blink. Only the faint tension that held her posture steady indicated that she had not shut down. It was like talking into a camera, silent and unjudging, and anything might be happening behind those eyes.

When she finally does talk, she gets ready first. Adjusts her hands, leans forwards, carefully glances around to make sure that nobody else is about to talk and that she has attention. A sequence of smoothing, invisible movements to render the transition into words frictionless.

"I can look into the land," she said. "I do not know what I will turn up if I do. Heat might come with that. Do you want that fight?"

White!

White: There was a joke in an old game about wizards that the final boss was human nature.
White: It feels like Thrones is like that.
White: It feels like everyone here is trying. Trying really hard to solve every problem other than human nature.
White: They genuinely believe in what they're doing. These are utopians.
White: They just think that if they solve all of the technical problems first then human nature will follow.
White: Or at least won't interfere too badly.
White: But they don't actually have the power to solve problems.
White: They're not bureaucrats. They're not acting in the public interest. There is no accountability, democratic or otherwise.
White: They're merchants. Laborers. Serfs. Detached from political power, yet trying to build things that will make politics not matter. All while inside the machinery built for kings and landlords.
White: Sometimes because they don't understand politics. Sometimes because politics have disappointed them and they think they can end run around it with a technical fix.
White: Often both.
White: So they don't have the power to solve problems. They only have the ability to sell products.
White: They want those products to be able to save the world so badly. I think that's why so many of them are so dedicated to their products being free of financial charge to the end user. Makes it feel like the bureaucratic infrastructure underpinning civilization rather than spyware supported by advertisers.
White: I can't blame dad for burning out on politics. It literally kicked down his door and tear gassed him. To him the only thing that worked was the stuff that he made. That was pure, in his mind. He wants to do something else like that, but this time without the politics interfering.
White: But. Hmm. I would be. Surprised. If it didn't.
White: It took him like an hour of googling to find his long lost son.
White: He seems to just not have thought to do it until I asked him.
White: That's the thing about building something to be free of human nature.
White: Who's going to build it?

Black!

"No," said Black. "You want Brown."
"Hey," said Brown. "Just so you know, I appreciate the kabbalahistic implications of imprisoning the hundred-handed goat-hooved lord of monsters in the depths below the world on behalf of the New World Order."

You'd think it'd be Pink who's into numerology, arcana and high brow cryptotheology references but no, not really. Pink liked bright colours, vivid inspirations, the aesthetics of single combat. If you wanted someone who had just read a lot of books and had the patience to count out and store all the platonic symbols that underpinned reality, you wanted Brown. She was patience and with patience came the vast store of knowledge accumulated through a thousand podcasts.

"But just to clarify, by Deep State are we talking career bureaucrats, intelligence agency, or AI-worshipping doomsday cult?" she asked.

[Count Numbers]

November:

Brown:

Singh reaches into one of his vest pockets for a granola bar and starts chewing on it. Thinking is calories. It must be one of his more common emergency pockets, he got it on the first try and the packing’s still smooth. “What was that Cold War general. Adam West? No, like that.” He snaps his fingers. “Oliver North, that’s the one. The Iran-something affair. Harder to remember, she used to always call it the MacFarlane affair, so that’s how I remember it. My money is it’s like that. Plausible deniability operation. So that means it’s probably-” he stares at a hand, holds up three fingers and counts them out. Narrows his eyes and counts them out again. Takes a shark-like bite of his granola bar in frustration. “I can’t find a motivation in the trail, here, a reason for doing it. I can’t think of one either, or imagine one. I still couldn’t guess. I don't even have names, just metadata and property rights.”

“You’re going to have to find Goat, and ask yourself.”

White:

Fiona: Well that’s why they get to be there, isn’t it
Fiona: The system plays the home field advantage. Everyone who gets power from it is going to be someone who isn’t a threat to power. And they only get to keep it as long as they don’t try to do anything real with it.
Fiona: You can’t even long-con it. My Dad’s a sincere true believer and he still gets rinsed every two years like clockwork, routine as college dorm bedsheets.
Fiona: I don’t think that’s human nature though.
Fiona: Or at least I hope it’s not
Fiona: Because if the problem isn’t the system causing human nature to be like this
Fiona: Then what’s the solution?
Fiona: Then again, sure, when your Dad thought “Out of the crooked timber of humanity nothing straight was ever built”, his solution was to make dragons
Fiona: That seemed to be pretty great, all things considered
Fiona: I’d be pretty devastated if you’d turned out straight, matter of fact

[Thanqol]

Brown!

"Sweet," said Brown. "I won't ask you to do any more research on the place here, that's not the sort of thing you want to get real curious about on a single computer. However it's probably priced into a lot of people's security plans that you, specifically, will come looking at some point, so you'll draw way less heat for looking into the others than I will."

She got to her feet. "So that's settled, unless..." she extended her hand for a tip. "... the gentleman would like to make a contribution?"

This was a cleaning job after all.

"And if you enjoyed this evening's performance, please rate us on the Headpattr app," she said with a gleaming smile. "And as tempting as it might be to be funny or clever in your review, please don't, this materially affects both our livelihood and ability to conduct operations."

White!

White: Wash your bedsheets more than once every two years Fiona
White: Wash them every week.
White: Fuck it, fuck Thrones, I don't trust you to do it, I'm coming over there right now to wash your sheets.
White: Maybe mess them up also~

[Count Numbers]

Brown:

5 Stars, adjusted-for-inflation equivalent of a $20 tip, comment: Astoundingly capable with home lighting and sound systems. He grins, but asks permission before posting it; "I'm assuming tonight's horror spectacular wasn't a one-off display of your AV club skills? It's an honest review, in my opinion." A wistfulness. "You know that's not all I could do. But this is all you trust me to do, yes?"

White:

Fiona: I don't know whether to be flattered or mortified at the insinuation I could still be in college
Fiona: The sheets will have to tell the tale
Fiona: I'll lay out the really white ones and we'll do a Rorschach with them

[Thanqol]

Brown!

"Oh!" she laughed, actually - just a warm and cozy sound, from someone who liked laughing at things. "Oh no, I'll take anything you offer. Large parts of my personality are psychotically paranoid and will work it over for flaws and will build a risk management framework for field deployment, but they do that with everything. I'm not too proud to take charity or too old to take gifts - and definitely not so secure that I can't find good use for them."

"But, like," she said. "I sought you out, for operational reasons, which are now complete. You've got your own shit going on, and I get it -" she sounded like she genuinely did, "- if you're not into this. Old project, yesterday's responsibilities, you don't have to suddenly reorient your life around any of this if you don't want to."

It was a kind thing to say. An offer of complete discharge of all familial responsibilities, no questions asked. But there was also something faintly ominous about the offer because, to Brown, that might genuinely be the best course of action. She's fine ditching this if it's too much work. We're all busy and we're all tired, so we could do an xmas dinner or something. It's not that she wants that, it's that it would not break her heart to learn that family meant the bare minimum. She doesn't have any expectations, and so no demands.

White!

White: We'll run the test until you've earned your robopsychology degree, college girl~

[Count Numbers]

November:

Brown:

He’s basically tripping over himself he’s talking so fast. “Money would be the easiest. But I don’t… have much right now. Liquid, anyway. I mean-” He glances at his prodigiously expensive apartment. “Yes, I am obviously wealthy. But that just means I still own everything the money was spent on. If you need connections, I can make introductions. If you need a zero-day exploit, I still have some good ones I’ve been saving for a rainy day. If you need a new identity, or a safe place to go, I can do that.” He catches up to himself, and then stumbles again. “Once. I can do anything once. Everything I saved for a rainy day that never came. Don’t tell me what you need - ask for what you want.”

Of course not. He has been scared for most of his life that you hate him.

There is nothing he would not give you if you asked. Because he wants to be asked more than he wants anything else.

White:

Fiona: But I’m not-
Fiona is typing
…
Fiona is typing
Fiona: Oh, right.
Fiona: Right
Fiona: Uh.
Fiona: I don’t
Fiona: I was not ready for how much the teacher/student thing was going to do this for me
Fiona: I can’t even joke
Fiona: So, thanks for teaching me something today
Fiona: I’m going to go die of embarrassment now

[Count Numbers]

Everyone:

Channel: Main
NeonCzolgoz: so i’ve just been like
NeonCzolgoz: reading the classics a bit
NumbToNothing: look at this dumb fuck reading
NumbToNothing: gay
NeonCzolgoz: dumber and gayer than you could possibly imagine
NeonCzolgoz: and I know what you can imagine so that’s really saying something
NumbToNothing: owo
NeonCzolgoz: anyway I was reading The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas by the woman who came up with the ‘lathe of heaven’ thing, LeGuin?
NeonCzolgoz: picture a perfect utopia. All the food’s amazing and people fuck in the streets whenever they want. Total equality, everyone’s happy, and everyone knows being happy rules
NeonCzolgoz: but at the middle of the city there’s a suffering kid
NeonCzolgoz: its got rashes from being soaked in its own shit for so long, all it knows is pain, it is the saddest possible kid you could imagine
NeonCzolgoz: and it’s locked up in a room forever, to suffer like that
NeonCzolgoz: because it needs to for the city to work
NeonCzolgoz: let’s say because of magic or some shit, how that’s true isn’t important, just that it is
NeonCzolgoz: and everyone on their eighteenth birthday learns about it
NeonCzolgoz: and most of them choose to stay in utopia, thinks it’s worth it
NeonCzolgoz: but some leave. Nobody knows what’s outside omelas, nobody knows what happens to the people who leave, just that none of ‘em come back.
NeonCzolgoz: so here’s my question
NeonCzolgoz: do you stay or leave Omelas
NumbToNothing: oh shit
NumbToNothing: leave I guess
NumbToNothing: or uh
NumbToNothing: maybe stay?
NumbToNothing: maybe if I’d been born there I’d leave
NumbToNothing: but like if you put me there now, and told me I had to come back to this shit
NumbToNothing: I don’t think I’d be able to walk you know
NeonCzolgoz: yeah I’m fucking staying
NeonCzolgoz: fwiw
NeonCzolgoz: that shit sucks but like
NeonCzolgoz: i know what I already live with, and I just get mad about it, but like
NeonCzolgoz: better one kid suffering for a reason then a generation of kids being brought up by miserable parents suffering for none
JuntaSThompson: I don’t know.
JuntaSThompson: It feels like that suffering for no reason is different than knowing someone’s suffering as a price?
JuntaSThompson: In saying that, then if you know you could have utopia if one kid suffers a lot, then all that suffering for the world being as it is becomes the reason instead
JuntaSThompson: Is it worth keeping the world as it is just to prevent the suffering of one kid
JuntaSThompson: I wouldn’t break Omelas
JuntaSThompson: Not sure that means I could live with knowing either
ProvocativelyFickle: I walk
JuntaSThompson: Yeah?
NeonCzolgoz: why’s that?
ProvocativelyFickle: Couldn’t say. I just would though.
JuntaSThompson: Fair enough, I guess.

[Thanqol]

Yellow: ✿^^✿ Better question! ✿^^✿
Yellow: Would you be the kid?
Yellow: All the pain and sin of the world carried on your shoulders alone if it meant everyone else could be free?
Yellow: ✿o.o✿ Followup question! ✿o.o✿
Yellow: If one of us tried to be the kid, would you respect the decision or would you try to stop them?

[Count Numbers]

NeonCzolgoz: Good question.
JuntaSThompson: You're asking a room full of martyrs if they'd be martyrs
JuntaSThompson: The only suffering we can abide is our own
NumbToNothing: excuse you nobody deserves that
NumbToNothing: except me
ProvocativelyFickle: Why are all of you like this

[Thanqol]

Yellow: On one level, the question of Olmeas is about perfection. At what point do things become good enough that you check out of progressive politics and become a defender of the status quo? At what point are the improvements so many or the alternatives so much worse that change of any kind becomes an unacceptable risk?
Yellow: That's why Numb said he'd leave if he was born there and not if he came there now.
Yellow: It's an example of a reductio ad absurdum philosophical technique designed to see if you'll bite the bullet and say that anything short of a perfect world is not acceptable.
Yellow: ✿But~!✿
Yellow: What is to you fuckers is a power fantasy.
Yellow: Imagine not only being able to absorb all the sin of this earth and protect everyone you care about...
Yellow: ... while also being so well known, publicized and sympathetic that not only does everyone hear about you, but some percentage of them reject utopia out of solidarity with you and your ideals.
Yellow: You're not talking about this because you want the vague speculative guilt of knowing you're hypothetically capable of selling out one day.
Yellow: You're talking about this because you'd sacrifice it all for less than a fraction of what the kid's suffering buys.
Yellow: ✿^^✿ What I'd like you to consider is to what degree you are able to sacrifice those ideals and treat yourself kindly if it's what makes your friends happy.
Yellow: Obviously not entirely, but if you'd go in the Box for strangers, you can eat something more nutritionally balanced than instant ramen for your fellow martyrs.

[Count Numbers]

November:

ProvocativelyFickle: Yessss!!!! +2 +2 +2 +2 +2
NeonCzolgoz: i mean
NeonCzolgoz: when you say it like that
NeonCzolgoz: i feel kind of owned lmao
JuntaSThompson: I am immune to this callout until 3V buys us groceries and then I will be a part of the solution.
NumbToNothing: with one arm
JuntaSThompson: An electric can opener is on the shopping list
NumbToNothing: What about pull tab cans
JuntaSThompson: Electric can opener the bottom side.
NumbToNothing: oh shit huge brain
NeonCzolgoz: what about jars
JuntaSThompson: 3V can open jars
NeonCzolgoz: lmao can she though
JuntaSThompson: I’m typing grammatically one handed better than you do with two dipshit, you want to bring heat here?
NeonCzolgoz: i get it i get it im owned im owned

Seems like the mic drop obliterated the conversation beyond recovery, and people are retreating into tangents. Nice.

[Count Numbers]

Aevum has two pseudo-districts. Erebus is the spine through which the infrastructure runs. It is a pipe of pipes, a cylinder filled with the sewers, electricals, internet and maintenance tunnels. It is the axel around which the O’Neil cylinder spins. Trans-district train lines spiral towards it and then back down to Aevum’s surface like carbon ribbons around a maypole, to take advantage of the microgravity. It is the systems of internal life support.

The other pseudo district is the Prime - it is the engine that turns the axle, the thrusters that navigate Aevum in its orbit around the sun, the shields against rock and radiation, the weapons that break up asteroids that would break the shields, and the solar panels that power the whole thing. It is the systems of external life support, accessed from the ‘top’, from the opposite end as Selene and the shipping airlocks.

The blueprints of Goat’s location put him in Erebus somewhere near the start of the Prime, above even Gaia and her farmlands, but still inside the station. The blueprints gave you a location in the maintenance tunnels down a warren of blind-turns and switch-backs. Not a place that’s impossible to stumble on without a map, just a place that it would be impossible to find twice. Still, you have that map.

You know what the funniest thing is, though? About where Goat is?

This part of Aevum looks just like the mainfares of Thrones, when you take the AR off.

According to the blueprints you’re looking at something the size of an industrial boiler room, with at least half a meter thick walls on every side, at least some of it running critical infrastructure. That’s a guess, because none of the internal dimensions are evident here - how many sub-rooms, how it’s partitioned, where Goat is specifically within. Still, it’s a start.

The area has total coverage with cameras, the same as any other part of Erebus. Their role as a security feature is an afterthought, though, to their role as just checking hundreds of kilometers of utility corridors for faults from a centralized location. With the right approach they’re more to your advantage than anything, they’d give you an opportunity to scout the location, going back for as long as there was stored footage. But that you already knew.

Goat’s in there somewhere. And if he’s actively being used for something, then this isn’t a vault you’re raiding, but a functioning server room. The need for accessibility always demands critical concessions from security, and that may be to your advantage as well, if you can work out some of the considerations needed here.

Because you planned for this, November.

[Thanqol]

Black!

The thing about security systems was that you only got to have one of them.

It was, in Black's opinion, a fundamental flaw with human thinking. One organization, one security system, unlimited authority within its scope. But it meant that the same organization had to respond to vandals, trespassers and urban explorers with the same systems and personnel as it used to respond to a dedicated penetration effort. And because the low level stuff comes to form the majority of what security has to deal with, over time an agency begins to optimize for that.

So she takes a photograph.

Better. She takes a bad photograph.

The subject matter is amazing. It's a unique multi-junction room of spilled cables, fascinating pipe work, and a passage down to a sealed airlock - not remarkable things in and of themselves, but the way they come together makes for an incredible shot. Not award winning, it doesn't have any naked women holding apples in black and white, but the real ones would recognize it. But. It's out of focus. It's washed out. The lighting is wrong. It's saved as a highly compressed jpeg and no amount of photoshop wizardry will rescue this particular shot.

Then she just fucks with the geolocation metadata on the photograph so that the listed site it was taken was in the target area and she uploads it to a photography message board. It's an assault, an act of violence. Multiple unrelated photographers, their pride offended, will pick up their cameras and make their way all the way through to her coordinates determined to get the picture right this time.

From a security perspective, though, shady weirdoes snooping around a secure area with high powered cameras in hand requires a response. Because of human single-track organizational design, it'll go to a central security team who deals with all incidents, big and small. She waits to watch who receives the call. The cops? Private security? Or something weirder and more clandestine? Who has to sweep up the glass after the brick through the proverbial window?

[Photography spend, 0/1 remaining. Who is running security?]

[eldest]

Elodie arrives at the Pavilion with a list of b-roll goals and 25 kg of gear. A newsboy cap jammed over her hair, a press badge, and a willingness to fade into the background will hopefully get her far, especially when the news story to cover involves horses and the glittering high society showing off and admiring said horses. She carefully does not trip over an executive's indigo-feathered rooster on a leash while getting inside, so there's a possibility it even works.

Once she's there, though, she's got a list and she's going to be hammering her way down it. This is work, her immediate boss thinks she's a career threat, and her backup is eating popcorn and watching ancient, loud and badly dubbed cartoons in her earpiece. There's something here that somebody's already been put in a hospital for, she has no idea what the thing to chase is, and she's not even sure if she should be chasing it. Nothing about this sparks joy. So we're getting quick headshots and pans of people arriving, who's wearing what, the tiny horses that have managed to show off by assembling into a cheerleader's pyramid, complete with pompoms somehow, and maybe a few extra shots of the crowd in general. The sooner she's done here, the sooner she can work her way through the various exhibitions, which is likely where any investigative meat is going to come from.