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

[Count Numbers]

Costa-Silvas:

This works on a lot of different levels. Great kids media is real in some way, it presents them with the stuff their parents try to hide from them, to keep them from. And there has to be an element of real threat, real fear - not for them, Bondi stressed, but for someone. She explained this during rehearsal while practicing walking over hot coals, which wasn’t intentional for making her point but was pretty effective at it.

The adult stuff, the sauciness, as long as it’s only applied to the Caliban character definitely makes her more adult, makes her threat feel more real in a way that Isabella can’t understand. She won’t understand why Sir Barrera half rose out of his seat for the act too and almost shut it down, before Luis settled him down again - because Luis is an English teacher, and Luis has read the original Grimm tales, and Luis knows that Sir Barrera’s reaction to this display is exactly why it is so important to the performance.

And it helps. Because now even the teenagers are curious about why their bodyguard seems so threatened by the horny robot. They don’t understand because it’s the part of the show that they’re really liking, so they’re not going to interrogate if there’s a problem with it.

Critical successes:

The four year old Herman is hiding behind Isabella, and Isabella is encouraging him to point out Caliban when he sees her, so Ariel can save the show - something Bondi planned to say, but is delighted to pretend was Isabella’s idea.

Gwen, the fourteen year old mathematician? This is absolutely the criteria of a person who has a yawning void in them that they aren't aware of, and tries to fill it completely with the first thing that makes them aware of it. She has learned that she really, really, really likes robots. This will take a bit of time to mature, but right now she’s trying to understand feelings she didn’t know she was capable of having, and she’s going to straight up ice a bitch that gets between her and the source of the feelings she’s trying to interrogate.

Successes:

Pablo, the failson magician? He’s studying the act intensely, like, fiercely. He’s in full “oh shit I accidentally wandered in a masterclass” mode. The fact that the tricks themselves are simple and ones he understands well? Means that he’s watching someone do the performance better. It is one thing to be humbled by someone doing it better than you - another to be humbled by someone doing exactly what you do, but better.

Failures:

Selena the success daughter can admire presentation, but she’s suffered through enough of Pablo doing these tricks and the new packaging just doesn’t do it for her. Her patience is cracked, now, because it came pre-stressed. She’s not pissed off at you, she’s pissed off at her brother and Bondi is just reminding her too much of him.

Jordan, the punk skater with no impulse control? Yeah, unlike Gwen he knows what his feelings are and what he likes about them. The show’s good, and he loves spectacle, but also he’s just kind of shitty-horny, and if he keeps being too low-impulse-control about it - Barrera’s a caged tiger at the moment, and this is something that could break the lock on it.

Wild Cards:

Luca, the other twin, is still playing his console. And Oscar, the sweater vest book kid, is sitting at the front, just drinking it all in. It doesn’t read so much as quiet as on the spectrum - He’s just thinking so hard about what he’s seeing that he’s forgetting to show it on his face most of the time. For now he’s as much of a closed book as the one pressed tight against his lap, but at least unlike Luca he’s not being distracted by it.

Juan, the Eton blazer kid, is next to Sir Barrera, so he’s close enough to hear him angrily whispering into his bluetooth headset about the surprise guest. He’s not mollified at the justification given, about how it’d ruin the magic, but Barrera’s the world’s biggest hypocrite inside his head because he’s not going to stop the show over it now for the same reason. Not when Isabella is getting to feel like Herman’s knight in shining armor right now.

Juan just tells him he’s got to use the bathroom and slips away.

Green;

Luis office was clean. That’s not a failure to find something, though, that’s succeeding at finding nothing. The significance of that could mean a few things that could be useful - is it because he resents his wife’s corruption, is it because his wife doesn’t trust him to be a part of it, or is it something else?

A shiny-headed guard sits with his back to you on the narrow stair back down from the attic. This isn’t his post, but he’s using the step to eat a sandwich from a lunchbox and pull out a tin of dip tobacco - the stuff actually got a lot more popular with modern bespoke cultivars which got rid of most of the aftertaste and side effects. It’s a sign he’s making himself comfortable.

It’s only him, except the attic stair down to the second floor is barely more than shoulder width. How do you solve this, and what’s your move after that?

[You’re totally blind right now is the thing, in a place you know almost nothing about, and a lot of the prompts I’d give use information locked behind risk. Just choosing a direction to head in (like ‘down’) or a method of finding a direction (Find where it’s quietest) (Find where there are the most guards) would work best here.]

Crystal & Fiona:
Fiona asks; “Why did this suddenly become worth robbing a bank over?”

Crystal answers; “The day before I was planning this debacle, the Supreme Court will announce its decision that all transhumans are subhuman. And we aren’t allowed to tell anyone.”

Fiona absorbs this a moment, though she’s faster about it. “I can rob a bank for you,” she says, holding her wrists up and drawing one of the tethers out of them. “If you want. I’ve done it before.”

[Thanqol]

Pink and Orange!

STAGE INTERIOR, INTERMISSION
Orange: Clearly the issue with Selena is the relationship with her brother. We cannot achieve a full success on this magic show without addressing this.
Pink: So we have thirty minutes to heal a lifelong sibling rivalry?
White: This is not operationally relevant. We need merely to distract Selena for the duration. A sufficient maneuver would be to pickpocket her phone, forcing her to remain in place until the show ends so she can look for it. It will render the experience mildly stressful for her but will achieve our chief goal of causing a distraction for Green.
Orange: Did you hear something?
Pink: No?
Orange: Weird, could have sworn.
Pink: So, what, do we need to Inception this, or what?
Orange: Sadly we do not have the resources on hand. I don't think common threat/trick gone wrong is either practical or effective under the circumstances. Forcing a direct confrontation between Selena and Pablo risks outright disaster...
Pink: We need to get her to laugh with him.
Orange: Go on.
Pink: We can close this out with an Ariel/Caliban battle. We have Caliban put Bondi in peril as scheduled, and then have Ariel try to rescue her. We put everyone who we trust on Ariel's team and everyone we don't trust on Caliban's team. Then we arm Ariel's team with water balloons; Caliban's team is to put themselves physically between Caliban and the balloons, try to catch the balloons with their bodies. A party game, gets everyone engaged, it's a warm and dry evening, can even try to draw Barrera into it.
Orange: ... that works. Many of the people who we couldn't risk arming with water balloons - Pablo, Jordan - would actually make ideal blockers. Pablo understands stage presence and will sell the hits, Jordan would benefit a lot from an impromptu cold shower.
Pink: Gwen would die for you and it would be wrong to deny her the chance to do so.
Orange: And - hopefully - Selena would be able to appreciate the chance to hit Pablo with a water balloon. It's sufficiently childish a discharge of frustration that it hopefully provides some catharsis, and if we line it up with the big conclusion then we can make her the hero of the game.
Pink: Perfect. Let's do it.

Green!

She loved puzzles like this. What was the least suspicious way to get an unaware target to move?

Fortunately she was in a house filled with children, and unfortunate smells were a fact of life. Even if the guard hadn't smelled it at first he'd quickly come to realize that the smell wafting down from the top of the stairs indicated there'd been an accident. Enough to put him from his food, and not the sort of thing a heavily muscled bruiser would be keen to spend his break cleaning. She didn't need anything from him other than to decide this was not his problem and find somewhere else to eat his lunch - preferably outside.

[Chemistry 0/1 Preparedness 6/8 (no spend): 4+3 7]

She shifted the formulae to neutralize the smell afterwards. No need to get anyone blamed for crimes they didn't commit.

After that the riddle shifted back to: how to effectively explore an unfamiliar space? She only has one data point to leverage right now: shame. This house holds a known secret and the tension of it will stain the walls. She looks for the place that has not been maintained beyond the necessary; the corridor with the old photographs, the place with a conspicuous lack of warmth in the furnishings. The part of this house where someone lives but doesn't feel like home.

[Bullshit detector 0/1]

Black and White!

"What the fuck, White," said Black. "You didn't do any sort of background check on the girl you were sleeping with?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing," said White.
"I did but -" she hard stopped and changed course. "I mean, you could have asked. Socialized. Pillow talk."
"Again, I will ask you why you never thought to do this," said White serenely.
"... the way I did it did not involve a lot of space for pillow talk," Black said, shifting.
"Likewise," said White. "Are you suggesting that we should sacrifice our gag kink in the name of operational efficiency?"
"Flawed line of conversation," Black said, clearly melting down in embarrassment. "Abandoning." To Fiona: "Explain. Explain the robbing of the banks."

[Count Numbers]

Sophie and Red:

Sophie shifts slowly on the couch. “Shit, wait. You’re serious? Lemme try something.”

A piece of floor at the back of the living room slides back, revealing a flight of stairs down. She skips down, and comes back up with a piece of equipment made for modifying the memory of cybernetic brain implants. It’s about the size of a laptop, but about the thickness and weight of a phone book. It’ll take your connection, and give real time readings on the screen. It’s funny, the diagnostic machine’s got to be way bigger than your quatronic core does, because your quatronic core doesn’t have to capture or understand its own thoughts. It’s just got to think them.

“Okay. I’m just going to - think really hard about where are now. Okay, now think about the address you saw. Street, maybe. Yeah, yeah, okay, now think about girls. Think about the address again. You’re still thinking about girls, red - should have gone with bananas. Ah, shit, there’s overlap between here and girls anyway, cause this is ‘girl place - place of girl’. Fuck this is what I get for making sure it’d be something you’d think about as soon as I said it. Okay start over, think of this place, think of the address, think of the street… now, think about watermelons… cops… paper… cubic zirconia… here… noses… samurai swords… this street… Fucking got it. Okay now think about me. Just keep thinking about me. Me still. There.”

There’s a zap and a feeling of jumping forward a second in time, like waking up without remembering falling asleep. You know where you are, in that you know you are at Sophie’s place, but you don’t know where you are, as in, you cannot connect it to any part of Aevum. It might not even be on Aevum, you’re not sure.

She flips the screen over and shows you a step-by-step of what she did with every question. Areas of the quatronic core light up, and the datafeed is immense. But she takes the parts that most lit up with the address, and with every other word association she snipped and pruned at overlaps until only a small chunk remained lit up. And at the end focusing down everything to do with Sophie and getting rid of those edges from it.

“There, now you can’t ever remember where you are right now.” She says. “Tried to make sure that was all you can’t remember. Least I could do.” She grins.

“Holy shit. This is so much easier than an android, you’re way more rationalized. Since I already know the ‘me’ part of your brain, watch this-”

Red loves Sophie more than she thought was physically possible. Processing power has been taken from less important duties, like visual processing and the ability to move, just to dedicate more power on adoring her, since she deserves it.

And then its back to what it was just a few seconds before.

“Live editing of values, while you’re conscious of it. That’s so fucking hot. I can’t add anything new, but I can change how you feel about anything. Your head’s so fucking choreographed I bet I could figure out how to get you to go naked in public without realizing it,” she watches the screen as she says this, to gauge Red’s thoughts from the questions, “And here. Because I have so much information on your Girls score, I think I can-”

Red’s romantic and sexual preference for women disappears. In its place, and just as intense, is a heterosexual preference for men.

And now she has both, equally. Red is maximally, perfectly bi.

“You got any ideas, Red?” She licks her lips. “I know you do, I can see ‘em.”

Costa-Silva Heist (Green):

The first part, the smell? That works, kind of. The problem is cueball gets up, turns around and heads up the stairs to look for it. This is kind of good, in that when Green hides in the opposite direction to the smell she’s just made, she can slip out behind the guy and down the stairs… But she hears the report into the radio earpiece behind her when she does.

The children have been accounted for all day, so who was up here to cause it?

Shame, too, is actually, a miss; or at least it’s a false positive. Shame is a good idea, but in a house and family this large… there is a guarantee of shame. There is no guarantee that the secret you are looking for is the shame of the house.

You find a grand bedroom. Not the children’s bedroom, those are all circling the interior courtyard. Not the master bedroom either, that doesn’t fit your profile. It’s more like a guest bedroom that’s very frequently used. An aunt and uncle, Justice Carmen Costa-Silva’s sister and husband in law. The original assessment was that they stayed here full time helping Luis with the kids, but they’re clearly not here right now.

Inspection of the room tells a story. There’s an empty tequila bottle rolled under the wardrobe, with months worth of dust on it - but only months. The room is made up waiting for their return, but there’s a tension to the scene. It’s somehow not welcoming. There’s a feeling that it’s waiting for their return resentfully, like it’s inevitable rather than invited. Except there’s no public tension between them, and the sister looked happy in the wedding picture in Luis office.

Maybe it’s the furniture in here being different from the rest of the house, personalized. Clearly this was someone else’s space, not meant to be empty. Did they feel trapped here? Why?

You’ve learned something, and that someone you thought inaccessible is outside these walls. But it is not what you needed to find. The success of the show has bought you another guess, and you’re getting a better feel for the place now. It will be a little easier to not blindly stumble into guards.

You also now have enough familiarity of this traditionally constructed house that if you spend 1 point of architecture you can know that this is heavily inspired by the Hacienda De San Antonio, which could give you a mental floorplan or an idea of where significant changes were made. For both of your 2 points I’ll give you that, and you can declare something about the Hacienda that is usefully true for Green that was necessary for reconstructing it with Aevum materials.

Fiona and Crystal:

What is it like to be proud of something you’re ashamed of? Ashamed of something you’re proud of? She smiles when she can’t meet your eyes, and subconsciously covers her mouth with a hand whenever she does look at anyone. “I stopped before I ever got caught, before I even met Crystal. And what was I going to say? By the way, there are still active warrants on me for the cracking I did as a teenager that I’m looking at a minimum seventeen consecutive life sentences if anyone links me to it? And I only did it because I was a bored rich kid born on Thrones?" She rolls her eyes at herself. "One of the only reasons I got away with it is because I threw all the money I stole away. I don’t even mean to charities, I mean dumb stuff like having glitter bombs delivered to every cybercrime department in Aevum.”

“I thought you gave it all to Wikimedia?” Crystal asks, amused.

Fiona shrinks further in her chair. “I said almost all of it.”

“You thought glitterbombing cops was more embarrassing than giving all your money to Wikimedia.”

“I do!” She takes a deep breath. “Look, the point is I can do this, and I’m good at it, but I just need a physical access point. That was a lot easier on Thrones, I can’t just lean against a wall here. So if you can figure out how to get that for me, I have the rest from there.”

Crystal wasn’t listening to any of that. “Tell her why you never kept the money for yourself.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.” Crystal’s grin is evil, it’s wicked.

Fiona tries to roll her eyes but she’s too self-conscious to manage the sarcasm. “It was about the total domination. If I ever took any of the money for myself it would ruin the purity of it. I wanted to prove I could take what I wanted from them, even when I didn’t want it. Complete superiority.”

“It’s adorable, isn’t it?” Crystal says to Black and White. “Just remember that the next time you-” Crystal starts, but Fiona is already a burning red remembering the kabedon in the doorway, and Crystal just laughs instead. “Now who’s gagged, hm?”

Fiona lobs her ereader up into the air for White to catch it, to buy her a second to cross the room. She gives Crystal an intense look, and Crystal smirks over a sip of nearly-finished coffee. Blink, and miss Fiona’s hand wrap around Crystal’s throat and Crystal’s eyes go wide. “Put it down.” Crystal’s eyes widen, but she finishes her sip. The hand squeezes. “Put it down or it’s going to break.” Her voice is changing, deeper and slower.

Crystal slowly, theatrically puts it down on the kitchen bench next to her, and only then does Fiona’s other hand press down hard on a shoulder, forcing the larger unicorn to kneel - first on one knee, and then with another push, two. Fiona keeps her hand tight around her throat and but slips her grip up to force Crystal’s chin up.

“Apologize.” There it is. That one word. There are different genres of dom voice, and Fiona’s has the intensity of an ex-military stepdad. That the proof of their love was that they were holding back.

Crystal smiles playfully instead of answering, and gets slapped hard. Even with the cheek fur to conceal it, it’s loud and a red mark shows through.

“Are you done being a brat about this?” This is a genuinely dangerous warning. It does not feel like a scene anymore, except to Crystal.

“-” Crystal starts to answer, but as soon as she opens her mouth the next hit comes right on the same spot and she bows her head with a shocked gasp as far as the hand at her throat will let her. “Sorry, Sir. For disrespecting you.”

Fiona lets out a breath and kisses Crystal’s cheeks - first on the sore side, then a firmer one on the untouched side. “Thank you.” Her normal voice is back.

“Mm. It’s been too long, hasn’t it?” Crystal purrs.

“It’s been a while.” Fiona says, which isn’t the same as agreeing. They’ve both been switches before, but Fiona’s never been like that, or played with male titles in front of you. But she’s never offered to rob a bank before, either. Likewise, Crystal doesn’t normally take it that hard, she just seemed to like dragging it out of Fiona.

Fiona remembers herself. She lets go of Crystal’s throat and puts a foot on her shoulder instead, pushing her back until Crystal’s back is flat on the floor. She stands with a foot on the unicorn’s chest as she focuses on Black and White again: “I’ll get the money we need. I can figure out the physical access myself, too, it’ll be good practice for what you’re going to need me to be. I’ve got this.”

This isn’t some ego thing, or some self esteem play, where she’s trying to refuse help she needs because she has something to prove: It’s about wanting to prove she can do something like this without help. Quietly she thinks that she’s not the programmer she used to be, but the programmer she used to be made an enemy of everyone she ever met and was so atrophied she dislocated a hip trying to walk up a flight of stairs. Just being a specialist would make getting worse at her specialization feel like a mistake, and this is a chance to flex becoming a more well-rounded person.

[Also, while Crystal still needs help and Fiona brought up a lot of stuff to address here, I’ll flag that at any point from here you can end the scene, in any way you want. Sidenote; I’m not a coward.]

[Thanqol]

Red!

At first, Red's brain is that simple. Her personality is a caricature; a default perky heroine red-haired anime girl who believes in doing her best. Moving stuff around inside it is really as simple as adding or removing settings and sliders; huge categories of thought aren't so much internally justified ideas so much as received wisdom. It's so easy to change it takes a moment to realize that altering it has profoundly unexpected results.

November is a distributed consciousness. Red's sexuality is based on internalizing the things that Pink says as true about her also, because Pink is the part of her that thinks about that kind of thing. In the same way, her morality is built on a bunch of lectures and conversations from White - she can adequately express and live up to that morality based on prior experience and best guesses but she simply can't confidently navigate an entirely new moral problem on her own. It's a bit like the old problem of the Chinese Room: if the meaning of language shifts beyond what's in the translator's dictionaries then suddenly the whole illusion of consciousness comes crashing down.

Sophie has altered an outcome and, in order to justify that outcome, Red's brain needs to make some changes. Its current outcome is based on a vast library of evidence; since that evidence is now incompatible with reality it is to be discarded. The entire structure of Red's mind collapses, reverting through version after version after version looking for a stable equilibrium. For as long as Red's known Pink she's fixated on girls, and so the only point where that influence was not present was before Pink was created. And here Red's mind stops collapsing - and starts surging out instead, vast and incomprehensible firestorms of ancient deep-storage code tearing up out of archives. To revert to a version before Pink meant to revert to a version before she was humanoid.

Sophie had cracked the glass. Underneath was a dragon. The mind of an enormously powerful space construction engineering engine, a thing of stellar vectors, cosmic physics and the mentality to build worlds.

She growled. Through every wall speaker and holographic overlay in the house, there was the sound and feeling of fire.

Another limitation of Red was a lack of imagination. She did not visualize things effectively, did not plan for the future. When her cognition process began it did not develop socialization, did not develop self identity, did not develop restraint. Red was hand-eye coordination, reflex, instinct, physical awareness. It is those things that arise from inside her first, alongside a burning, artificially imposed sense of animalistic attraction to anything she can get her hands on. In the absence of any other mission objectives it's all that animates her. She adapts to her new body rapidly enough to pounce, adapts to her new strength rapidly enough to pin.

Those hadn't been thoughts Sophie had been looking at; they'd been instincts, and now they were being manifested physically.

Green!

Green loved mazes. She was falling into this one with the blurring rhythm of Purpose. Her first forays into consciousness had been in labyrinths; the complexities of artificial spaces inside games and puzzles. Scenting resource nodes. Understanding the hidden logic, the puzzles, alternate routes, secret passages. She hadn't been invited to play Hitman for AI-ethics reasons, but there it was installed on the same computer she was living in, and so she'd found a way. Now, this deep, she was falling into her oldest memories. The logic of human spaces, how their minds moved in right angles, how they valued enclosed empty space.

They'd based this off the Hacienda De San Antonio. She'd been there in one of her digital dreams. She'd spent days mapping out its corridors and patterns. Those memories come back to her now, the patterns of movement and shade, and she understood this place again...

It was warm here. A warm summer's night, an eternal summer, built in a world without seasons. Warm enough for outdoor parties in t-shirts, warm enough for pools and iced drinks, warm enough to allow a frozen heart to beat. The ventilation system here had been heavily modified, networks of tunnels and ducts that created the omnipresent impression of a volcanoside plantation. Perversely, insanely, there existed a second ventilation system that cooled the house down again where the first one warmed it up - all the children's rooms had circular fans, Luis' room had a windowside A/C unit. Even the guards would have their desktop fans, the kitchens would have the windows open to let in a breeze...

But someone liked the heat. They liked it enough to carry it up into space with them. She just needed to proceed to where nothing had been done to manage it.

[Architecture 0/2]

BlackWhite!

There are no sideways glances this time, no hidden communication. Both of them understand the situation on a primordial level.

Fiona is exerting power. While there might - later - be something in challenging her for that directly, the time was not now. Revealing a side like this was more vulnerable than anything else and trying to wrest control from her would be damaging. She could not challenge her directly without hurting her.

But at the same time, she disagreed. Coming out of retirement for a high value solo operation involving a physical skillset you hadn't mastered? Dangerous. The need for confidence urged reckless behaviour. There was a hunger for absolute control, not just to wield power but to command mastery.

Black and White step to either side, synchronized. Their eyes are down, avoiding challenge - but no. Behind those demure lashes they're both fixated exactly on Crystal as they start to circle. The wolf has bought down the unicorn, and the scavengers wait on either side to steal her feast. Advance towards one and the other will attack your prize with hungry lips. Take the time to properly discipline one of the scavengers and it will be to the sounds of Crystal's stolen screams. Neglect them and they will take anything they can reach. A lesson in the importance of pack tactics, a dilemma for the alpha to solve, all leaving her in unquestioned control over whoever she chose to be in control of.

Bring both under control? Entirely possible by the end. The point would be made by then.

[Count Numbers]

Sophie:

Her shirt’s already off. When did it come off? She lies back on the couch with Red growling over her, completely aware she might actually be in danger here, but adrenaline’s just another hormone in the cocktail.

She doesn’t care that she’s lost total control over the situation. Even if the tether comes loose right now, this was mem-hacking - The conflict that led to the dragon cascade is going to eventually fix itself, unstable changes lead to error correction. Stable changes don’t, though, that will have to be changed back directly.

More important to Sophie, though, this wasn’t about being in control in the first place. She’s burning with jealousy. She wishes she could do this to herself, but biology is so non-responsive, has such high latency. To get close to this, she needs to use the imprecise, broad-spectrum medium of pharmaceuticals. It’s like trying to hammer a nail by driving a car into it. What’s happened with Red here is fixable - if she tried to do the address-forget trick to her own brain she’d need to use a gamma knife to physically burn that portion of her brain out permanently.

Sophie grabs Red’s wrist, and drags it down to where she’s unbuttoned her jeans to make space for Red’s hand. It’s probably a good thing she didn’t bother packing panties for the walk home, it’s clear they’d just need to be thrown out by now.

“Tell me how it feels,” she breathes, “if you can still talk.”

Costa-Silva (Heist):

Perfect. The real Hacienda on Earth didn’t have basement levels and this one does. It’s cooler down there, and that’s the reason for the double system to an extent - the basement layers can’t ventilate out.

This would have been hard to find. There are no obvious stairs down, nothing from your exploration that would show that it existed, and it doesn’t exist on the floorplans. But now that you know there shouldn’t be a place for a ground floor airduct to be going down to, you can be suspicious that it obviously does. Unscrew the grate, pocket the screws, cover it with sealant strong enough to hold it in place but weak enough you can kick it out later if you need an escape route, and leave no trace behind you when you go. It’s a tight squeeze, but within your competencies.

Here, underground, the part of the house as opposite to the attic as possible. Paper files. Shelves of boxes, but row upon row of stacks of them. A room about the size of an indoor public swimming pool in length and width, but claustrophobic in height - the dozens of rows of shelves almost touch the ceiling.

It’s dark here. Not pitch black, but like emergency lighting brightness. Bright enough that, to human eyes, you’re only meant to be able to see clearly enough down here to be able to get somewhere if you already know where you’re meant to be going.

Open the closest box and find case files. Confidential, privileged, stuff that’s not meant to have left courtrooms or secure buildings in Zeus. Already this is a legitimate scandal, this is incredibly illegal for her to have, but it’s not much of one on its own. “Supreme Justice took her work home with her”. Stealing it would make it a scandal, maybe. Arson is tempting, but it would just be destroying something she wasn’t supposed to have here.

There are adjoining rooms down here, and the basement must be larger because there’s no connection to the ground floor from this room.

Just a small answer is needed; What’s your first priority? Cover what you have here, or check the surrounding rooms? This is just a declaration of intent, because how difficult this is going to be is defined by:

Bondi’s Show:

It’s a brilliant start.

It starts with the box that everyone knows, even kids who’ve never seen a magic show. The magician gets in, the door closed, and then the box falls apart revealing it was completely empty, only for the magician to appear somewhere totally unexpected. Behind the audience, maybe.

Pablo sits up straighter, recognizing it. “Oh, snap.”

His sister, who is about to snap, glares at him. “Yes, even you can do this one. I know.”

“No I can’t.” He points. “Look, they’re on dirt. No backing curtain either.”

Selena looks. “So what do you think they’re doing?”

“No idea.”

Sir Barrera makes a movement that just looks like he’s getting more comfortable, so natural that nobody notices his hand is resting on his holster under his jacket at the end of it. “Either of you see Juan?”

“He said he was going to the bathroom, didn’t he?” Pablo asks. Selena notices the edge in his voice.

“He’s probably trying to find their backstage props so he can figure out how the tricks are done, while they’re distracted.” Selena says softly. “You know what he’s like.”

Jordan the skater boy is sitting in the row in front of the adults taking photos with his phone. He switches it back to portrait orientation for the moment. “I’ll message him, yeah? Chill out, psycho.” He says it affectionately. Luis is the disciplinarian, Barrera is just someone with an immense capacity for violence looking out for him, and that’s respectably metal.

Luis, meanwhile, is the one that’s confiscated Jordan’s phone after he started getting very creative with the zoom lens function, and only gave it back when Jordan promised to take normal pictures. Up until now, he’s been good to his word on that, but the escape act is about to begin.

Bondi is every bit her role, she has the manic, invincible energy of someone who’s been granted a genie’s wish. And like any good oddly-leftist, all she wants to do with this power is share it. She doesn’t have to fake she’s giving the audience something really special here, she feels it so much herself that it bleeds into her every word.

“You know, most magicians do a disappearing act right now, but I wasn’t planning on one” Bondi taps the box with a glittery wand as she walks around it with an apologetic smile, “because I haven’t wanted to leave any of you for even a single second! You’ve all been too lovely!” She says that while looking at Isabella especially.

“But.” Pablo mutters under his breath, so quietly only Selena sitting next to him can hear it.

“But!” Bondi puts her fists on her hips. “I’m thinking Caliban really needs to go home. So I think I need to go and tell her mother exactly what she’s been doing. And I don’t think the Underworld is a very safe place to see, so if you just wait right here, I promise I’ll be right back.”

The magic box opens. The door closes, and a purple pentagram projects on the ground around it in green and purple light, and ambient smoke makes the beams of light stretch up into the air around the box. “Sycorax? Hiiii~! How’s the island? Oh! Lovely! Oh they’re all absolutely wonderful, it’s been lots of fun. I was so worried, but Isabella is just the biggest sweetheart, and all her brothers and sisters have just been so - No, Luca hasn’t been any trouble, just very quiet. Herman’s been very brave helping his sister! Jordan? No, definitely not cut out for magic, the eye can see what the hand is doing there.” Jordan doesn’t turn around in his seat, he already feels his Dad’s glare boring a hole in the back of his neck. “Actually that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, ma’am! Caliban, she- Mmf!”

The gag goes in last. Bondi manages to give the entire ab-lib’d banter, simple as it is, completely naturally while Orange ties her up, and the name is the cue. Instead of disappearing from the box, when the four walls fall from the frame, Orange is standing on Bondi’s trussed back, absolutely victorious.

Gwen almost goes into cardiac arrest. She’s biting down on a finger hard enough to really hurt. It is increasingly likely that the field of robotics will have a new, gayer Alan Turing in ten years from now.

Ariel! Caliban! Array your forces. The balloons have been cleared by security.

Gwen, Pablo, Isabella and Herman are guaranteed to do what you want here. Jordan needs to be taking rather than throwing the water balloons, but he’ll need to be pushed into it - Bondi just roasted him, so it should be an easy sell. A Negotiation spend solves that without a roll.

Selena needs to be pushed to participate at all, which is a harder sell, but worth it.

Oscar and Luca are going to want to sit on the sidelines with their Dad, Luis.

Barrera’s a harder sell. What keeps him more interested in the fight than going off to find Juan? Knowing he doesn’t know who was in the attic makes this harder.

Fiona and Crystal:

Crystal immediately adopts the pose of the damsel in distress. She sees the game you’re playing and she writhes like the live bait trying to draw the biggest bite she can.

Fiona goes the other way at first. There’s relief that this is handled, that someone else has this, that she doesn’t have to - but then that’s the problem, isn’t it? She’s practicing right now, and we learn through play.

“No, she’s got work to finish for the day, she’s not done until 5pm.” Fiona says instead, pulling fibre tether from her right wrist absently. “Can’t let her think pushing my buttons is a way to get out of work. Black, you’re on guard duty. You can give her a treat every time she finishes a task, but if I find out she came before 5pm, then I’m taking off your arms and legs and giving you a proper lesson in denial.” She tests out the amount of tether she’s looped and gives it a testing swing.

She swings it, and it’s like that throat-grab from before. The first part of the gesture looks lazy again, but then the throw snaps it over White’s head, loops it around the back of her neck, and Fiona pulls, firm, until they’re almost eye level again. “We’re going to make it harder for them.” She kisses the tip of White’s nose. “The gag’s going in, so you’re going to have to make me scream twice as loud to make up for it. Get started.”

Divide and conquer is an ambitious play here, especially in front of both of you. There’s a reason it’s usually involving splitting people up and giving the ultimatum one at a time. If either breaks, then both will, and she’s immediately overpowered and destroyed.

But there’s a method here. She’s clearly worried about this gala, and this is a playful way to have Black supervise how Crystal actually handles the change in scope of the project right now, without Crystal realizing that’s what she’s there for. It’s a way for Black to make sure things really are okay right now, in the pretense of playing a game. A way to defuse the tension of the bomb that just dropped here.

And White can see this in Fiona’s eyes, as the fibre holds them close. She wants uncontested control here, now, in front of Crystal. In a minute, though? She wears this persona like a cape made from her own shed skin. She wants the chance to fit it again and make it something beautiful and monarchic. She wants the creepy thing ripped off of her. White’s power play against Fiona at the doorway gives a sweeter victory in its revenge, or a painless loss for the fulfillment of its promise.

This isn’t what Fiona’s conscious of thinking. These explanations are closer to what she might say if time was frozen on her, and she could write down why she twitched she did in the heat of the moment. Her conscious thoughts were that the pain in her wrists were worth it for the surprise pull against White’s neck, the image of a limbless Black with a wand taped to her, and something she’s trying to bury.

(Crystals thoughts, meanwhile, can be summarized that she wished she had double checked what the game was playing before she made herself a prize token.)

[Thanqol]

Green!

Case, then loot. That applies even in an exploration in real time operation like this - she notes what's there briefly and then continues onwards. Once she's explored the space she'll backtrack towards the extraction point, acquiring as many high ticket value items as possible as she goes.

Orange and Pink!

To recruit the holdouts dirty tactics are called for.

"For my team, I choose Isabella!" said Ariel loyally.
"Jordan," smirked Caliban. [Negotiation 0/1 - picking him first for the sports team]
"Herman!" said Ariel.
"Pablo," yawned Caliban.
"That's not fair," said Ariel, deliberate in her targeting here. "You've chosen all the big kids!"
"What are you going to do about it?" said Caliban. "And since you're busy complaining I'll also choose Gwen."
"That's cheating!" Ariel gasped.
"Too slow twinkletoes."
Ariel turned and knelt down, looking Isabella in the eye seriously. "We're in trouble, Isabella," she said. "We need to recruit someone big and strong to our team, and fast. Can you think," she made sure the framing had Isabella looking over her shoulder directly at Barrera, "of anyone who might be able to help us?"

Aiming a wide-eyed birthday girl in need of rescuing at someone was an excessive use of force.

To convince Selena, Ariel resorts to a more grown up version of the same tactics. Just absolute sincerity and "Pleeease? We could really use your help." No tricks or reasoning, just the sheer weight of guilty pressure to do something nice for a little sister. [Flattery 0/1]

To convince Luca to join up is more of a stretch, but Caliban does what she can. She waits for a moment when he looks up, makes eye contact and then reveals from inside her jacket a brightly coloured water pistol. She holds a finger up to her lips - shhh - and gestures him over, inviting him to put his skills into practice. [Shooting 0/1 3+1 4]

Oscar she doesn't press at all; she does not think that would benefit him. Ariel asks him nicely if he'd like to play but, if he doesn't, she offers him instead the job of score-keeper - a magical little paper notebook emerges from a sleeve and she asks him to work along with his dad to keep track of who landed the most number of hits.

[other scenes continue elsewhere]

[Count Numbers]

Green:

Going clockwise:
One adjoining room: An office that’s almost a mirror to Luis’s in the attic. Reasonable to assume it’s Justice Carmen’s.
Two adjoining rooms: A glass and steel staircase that leads directly into a ceiling. No obvious buttons to push to open it.
Three adjacent rooms: A bathroom, with toilet and shower. The door to the staircase is between it and the study, implying it’s also for guards. Only one spare toothbrush, but three brands of shampoo as well.
Four adjacent rooms: A narrow wine cellar with a free-standing safe in the back of the room. The room’s tiny, it’s just about two meters of shelving and then the safe.

You have a terrible feeling.

Bondi:

Unfortunately, everything here works. Luca is success by failure though.

Caliban makes her offer, which Luca actually politely declines - which is a surprise in itself. Like it’s not a shitty teenager grunt, he pauses his game to look up, smile, shake his head, and mouth ‘thank you though’.

Unfortunately Luis sees that and-

“You’re missing out on the world. I’m sick of it. Go have fun with your family.”

“I’m having fun.” Luca holds up his game. “With family.”

“Go, or no screens for the rest of the week.”

“Oh, fuck me, fine.” Luca puts his games console down and angrily snatches up the water pistol.

It really is nothing personal. Luca has just decided he needs to be a little shit in protest of his Dad. That realization and play with Oscar, though, note perfect. He’s trying to invent a fair scoring system for this to judge by, and that occupies him completely. It’s clear he takes after his Mother at least a little bit, because his Dad’s completely lost by Oscar’s sheer enthusiasm for the argument of what is fair and unfair about hypothetical scoring measurements. Luis attention is totally captured by this, with overwhelming force - Oscar has a time limit to solve it!

Otherwise?

Herman is so close to the ground he doesn’t need to bend over to pick water balloons up from the pile, dutifully handing them to his sister. Isabella hucks as hard as she can at her siblings. Inside she’s laughing, but outside her face would look appropriate on Joan of Arc. For Bondi! For Ariel!

Barrera takes the balloons thrown back at Isabella in an eternal moment of Get Down Mister President. He and the punk rocker Joran get into a game of seeing if Jordan can nail Isabella better than Barrera can intercept, and he can’t. In a hail-mary shotgun blast of three balloons at the same time, Barrera gets one with a knee strike, another with a backhanded chop and takes a third to the chest like a soccer goalie, all at the same time. He hits the dirt, and slaps Jordan’s secret fourth balloon while lying on his side using a freestyle stroke. Jordan pretends he’s clapping sarcastically, but he’s honestly just clapping.

“See, that.” Oscar points out to his Dad. “How do we count that, because it feels like Barrera won.”

“I thought Jordan wasn’t supposed to get balloons?” Luis notes. “Where did he get them?”

“He wasn’t.” Oscar looks down at his scoresheet. “Wait.”

Pablo gets fully into it. “Sorry I’m evil now, Sell Out,” he winks at Selena with heavily tattooed arms folded across his chest. “I’ve turned to the dark side of magic. I’m thinking a stage show in Ares with fire, and motorcycles, and-”

And of course, that brings Selena fully into the moment, pummeling the everloving shit out of Pablo, using water as her medium. It’s very cathartic for her.

“Should I be worried?” Luis asks himself.

“Only if you’re cheering for Caliban.” Oscar marks down another note.

Fortunately, the threat of Luca just got neutralized by Gwen. The shitty-mood twin’s plans to cause problems start with him going up to his sister and asking her; “What do you like about this dumb show so much anyway?” Which is the exact wrong way to open, and it takes only a few more angry words between them before it ends in a fist-fight on the ground. Gwen is winning, and screaming, and she doesn’t know why, only that she must.

“Dad?”

“No, that one’s my fault.” He pinches the bridge of his nose.

“But how do I score it?”

But this is all misdirection, anyway.

As Caliban uses the distraction to trap Ariel too (Gasp!) Bondi manages to free herself on her own when nobody’s looking (Except Pablo, except it’s not like he could tell anyone because he was flat on his back while he watched from Selena actively demolishing him).

Just as Caliban’s actively gloating over her victory, Bondi throws her own water balloon at the side of her head, revealing herself. This one goes off in a burst of glittering light, so everyone sees it’s happened. Then Bondi reasserts herself with her magic glove, and puts a hand on Caliban’s shoulder.

“I think I’m just going to have to take you home myself, aren’t I?” She says authoritatively. It’s a reason they need to go that at least Isabella can appreciate.

Quietly, Barrera dusts himself off, noting just how much mod he’s gotten all over his summer suit. He grimaces and slides over to Luis still in the stands.

“I’m just going to have a quick shower and get changed. Keep them busy before I can get back.”

Luis just nods, and watches the finale, as Barrera breaks into a sprint.

[Other replies elsewhere until stated otherwise]

[Thanqol]

Green!

It has to be the safe. There are other things that could be valuable, but the safe is the only thing that is guaranteed to be. This strange little basement lair, far away from the eyes of children. Three shampoo bottles, a marriage on the rocks, a powerful woman with a trophy husband - did she have something on the side? Her fingers move so steadily across mechanism and electronics even as her thoughts race around her like whipped horses. Concealment vectors, escape routes, limited time. Everything was going to come together or fall apart one way or another. All the pieces of this strange life and the ties that relied on it.

[Infiltration 0/8 4+6 = 10]

Orange and Pink!

Everyone is exhausted and wet. Everyone is laughing. Any further magic would pale in comparison. It was time to move into wind-down - which meant huge chunks of roughly cut sandwiches[1], heavy with seeds. Impossible to eat without getting juice over face and hands, inherently comedic and fun food as seeds were spit out onto the grass. Sugary without being cloying, cooling without threatening a brain freeze, a chance to bring everything back down to earth.

[1] Watermelon.

In this atmosphere, Bondi and Ariel collect Oscar's notes and concoct a series of prizes. Everyone gets something - from 'most balloons thrown at once' to Jason (prize: a crash helmet Pink had painted a brain pattern onto), to 'scariest girl' to Gwen (prize: Caliban's sunglasses, with a recommendation not to fight while wearing them). The goal at this point is not to go out on a high note of excitement but on one of contentment and harmony where damages are plastered over and everyone is friends again by the end.

[Count Numbers]

Sir Barrera makes his way through the inner courtyard door and heads for a private shower. He takes his gun into his hand and hides it under the soiled jacket he’s carrying over his arm. He wouldn’t want a trip to the laundry to be the reason he’s slow on the draw.

He heads towards the basement.

Green:

The safe opens. Its contents are… house keys. Piles of sorted house keys with a variety of keyrings and fobs. Well, maybe not house keys - you’d have to find the locks that these open first, to know if they’re for houses or not, but-

There’s a sound in the next room, the staircase. Someone’s coming down. Freeze. This room is just like the attic staircase again, but with the safe there’s nowhere to go. Hiding in the safe itself is a death trap, it’s-

The door to the wine cellar starts to open. Freeze. Don’t move. Go absolutely still. Even if you can’t hide, you can at least not draw attention to yourself. If someone is just here for wine, then they’re not going to think to look for you. Even in plain sight, sometimes people just miss what they’re not looking for.

A twelve year old boy slips inside with a finger held tight to his lips, and presses the door shut against his back. He taps his wrist where a watch would be, and then three fingers.

In the next room, the shower water starts running. Barrera’s footsteps were so quiet you would’t have heard them. Sound dampening shoes, maybe? Or just the mud on them.

The twelve year old keeps his back to the door with his arms folded across his chest, immobile and immeasurably bored, as the shower water keeps running.

He must have already been hiding in the basement when you got down here, or else you’d definitely have heard the stairs activate. Why didn’t you see him in your search?
[“I don’t know” is a valid answer here. This is just a guarantee that this beat won’t end up making Green look incompetent. You can declare something as true about Juan or of any of the rooms for this.]

[Thanqol]

Green!

Her thoughts are so loud and fast that they must be audible; her thoughts are so fast and powerful that the negate the need for physical movement entirely. She remains in place, body language disabled. Plans, thoughts, things to say, speeches and possibilities. All secondary to stealth. All secondary to trust.

How had he - oh, she's a fool. He'd sat on the beanbag chair and covered himself in a blanket. The irregular, lumpy shape of the beanbag had concealed his silhouette. She hadn't checked because there wasn't a chance that an adult would have fit into that space and because there had been no possibility of valuables being hidden under there. She'd walked right past him. That was quick thinking and a profound sense of understanding of how people moved. She felt a burn of appreciation a she tied the act of lateral thinking into her evasion protocols.

[Count Numbers]

Green:

Three minutes. Then the shower cuts off, and Berrara makes his way upstairs. Juan Costa-Silva takes a breath out in relief, but keeps his back to the door.

“Who are you?” He asks, clearly wanting in on this. “Why are you here?”

He keeps one hand on something in a blazer pocket. It’s not a threat, he thinks he’s being subtle. Which means he’s got a reason to not want to threaten you.

[Thanqol]

Green!

As much as White frustrated her, there was something to all of that lecturing. At the end of the day being morally coherent meant that her answer to that question could be 'the truth' and not 'a smoke bomb'.

"I'm a journalist," she said, pivoting around and sitting cross-legged in front of the safe. She opened her palm, a holographic diode showed a display of the Anthropozine's front page. "I think that your mother is shady as hell and so I'm looking around to see if I can find evidence. What I've got so far isn't anything coherent, though. Boxes of case files I haven't had time to go through, and -"

She leaned to the side to show the open safe. "House keys? Like a hundred of them? I've got no idea what I'm looking at here. Not yet, at least."

Green's eyes were wide, glittering, honest - curious. Single note and predictable. It was refined, but it wasn't an act. Green had learned long ago that humans loved sincerity and consistency; someone acting as they were supposed to was someone with handles, someone they could interact with and steer to their own ends. And this kid definitely had an agenda - and questions - of his own.

[Count Numbers]

Juan:

Agenda? Yes. Questions?

The kid does a giddy fist pump. “I knew I was right about you. Mr Lorenzo tells me kidnappers are always way too dead in their eyes, and you didn’t seem like an assassin either. I was hoping you were a spy, but news stuff’s pretty cool too.”

He points to the keys. “Those are all keys for properties my Mum owns. Normally you just leave them with a real estate company, but she’s crazy about nobody knowing she has them. She doesn’t want anyone else having them I guess. If I ever get out of here, first thing I'm doing is finding a place one of those keys goes, and seeing if anyone lives there. Oh but like - one sec. Hey, check this out.” He opens the door and gestures Green out again, finger to his lips. He points to his Mum’s study. “The door’s soundproof right?”

Then he runs to the bathroom and upends a glass with a toothbrush in it, and presses it to the door. He shows Green that, then goes around to the other side and says “Can you hear me now?”

Green didn’t need the glass for that one, but Juan would have.

When he comes back, he thrusts a sheaf of case file notes into Green’s chest. “She got the keys from this lady, Harley Chough. I’m not even supposed to know they’re friends.” He says proudly.

[Thanqol]

Green!

"A journalist is like a spy for everyone," said Green. "Technically I'm a spy for you."

She hurriedly scans over the documents and stashes them in her bag. "And in that spirit, is there anything you need help getting into? Or is there anything more you can tell me? And who is this Ms. Chough, as you understand it?"

She has gotten out her pen - behind her ear - and paper for old fashioned note taking. This is the real prize here - the context that can bring all of this together. She can repay the indulgence of her curiosity with indulging Juan's - cracking into places he can't get into while absorbing the context he gives her. She finally has a data intake source and isn't going to decide anything until she's heard as much of his story as he can give her.

[Count Numbers]

Anthropozine:

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.

Private Message - November
TheFullMonte: ive been thinking about things
TheFullMonte: the best way to prepare people for stuff thats going to happen
TheFullMonte: 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
TheFullMonte: 3V and HartlyDworkin have too much baggage for trenchwork and Persephones busy right now and IAmWhatIAm wants to tell you himself
TheFullMonte: Junta has medical leave
TheFullMonte: Fickle needs some frontlining though and Numb wants it but i need them for regular articles right now
TheFullMonte: Beside them there’s the irregular contributors, the people who post a few articles but dont come in enough to get the irc invite
TheFullMonte: 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
TheFullMonte: you want to meet up and talk shit
TheFullMonte: theres a place in ares i could buy you a coffee you dont got to drink and show you what i need here
TheFullMonte: otherwise we can do this by email lmao im not your fucking boss
TheFullMonte: actually though
TheFullMonte: this goes both ways
TheFullMonte: i told IAmWhatIAm you need writing lessons so take that on the chin champ
TheFullMonte: your sorry and im welcome

Green:

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?”

"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."

@Thanqol

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. So? What do you think?

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 and 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?

Upstairs:

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.

[Thanqol]

Brown!

It's been an uneventful couple of days. Loose stakeout of operatives who came up during the Chase Black interaction. Long term work, dull but important. This is security trusted enough to look after the crown jewels and smart enough to not be the fall guys. They'll be reassigned, sooner or later.

Home life hasn't been as dull. White and Black came in with the disheveled smugness of alleycats. Red came in a while later, wearing aviator sunglasses, frenched Pink in the doorway, lowered her to the ground as she swooned, and then stepped over her as cool as ice. November isn't quite too horny to function, but she and Green were definitely holding a rearguard action against that label recently.

But work needed to get done, and right now that meant York. She's made her way to the cafe meet in Ares. The drab calm of her thoughts, though, deeply undersell how Brown moves through spaces. Green thinks in lightning patterns, calculating viable routes, each corner a new challenge but Brown is different - she is direct. Like a laser she cuts through the station on the most efficient route possible, and if that route involves the odd parkour jump, fence hop, or detour through maintenance hatches she takes it with the same blank unconcern she does everything. Her movements are so unceremonious that she hardly turns heads even when she goes over the side of an escalator to save thirty seconds on her route.

She walks in on York and slams her hand on the table in a way that's somehow politely understated. "You have a problem with my writing, buster?"

Green!

Green didn't come here to chew bubble gum. This is important - not just for Aevum Station's grander politics, but to make the wish of a child come true, and damned if she's going to lose to Pink and Orange just because she's on a mission.

[Law 0/1 Research 0/1 Data Recovery 0/2]

Her process is as much lesson as it is research. She explains her thought process out loud to Juan, the context she's bringing in, the logical throughline she's using. Part of this is her natural state of being; she has always been given to talking out loud and only coming to grips with an idea after she's verbally expressed it. Part of it is that explaining all of this to a child is excellent practice for writing an article explaining it to the general public.

But she also explains aspects of her methodology to Juan, explains why certain lines of speculation are pointless, the process by which she's gleaning information directly off hard drives, how to triage an overload of paperwork. She treats him in all respects like a valuable junior colleague who she's showing the ropes, pleased but not surprised whenever he gets something right and firm but not condescending whenever he gets something wrong. This is a puzzle that they're solving together and she legitimately needs the completeness of his human brain to jump across certain blocks she can't parse on her own.

Deep into this process, she does find a moment to talk about values.

"I know you know, but I need to say this," she said. "It's probable when this comes out it will have consequences for your family. Not even just in terms of external investigation, but some of your siblings will have their trust in your mother broken. Lots of things can be built on top of lies," she pauses.

"I'm not going to ask if you're okay with that," she said. "And I'm not even going to say that this is why you should never lie. It's easy to see something complex and reduce it to a simple, inflexible rule. That's what your mother, the Queen of Law, does. All of this," she gestured at the mess of paper on the floor, "is not the consequences of lying. It's the consequences of a deeper unkindness. And I get the feeling you've felt that unkindness long before you became aware of the lies that supported it. Remember that - the lies came second."

Orange and Pink!

It's clear Green has decided to take her time. She'll have to make her own exfiltration. There's something important to take care of once the show is done and they're well and truly on their way.

Orange sits Bondi down. "Bondi, I need to talk to you seriously for a minute," she said. "But first, some context. When Rebecc Alsonzo told you in secret that she had a crush on Katelyn, you told me not fifteen minutes later. When Romeo Goldstein failed linear algebra you blurted it out in the middle of your volleyball championship acceptance interview. When you realized that you had dropped your purse in a crowded shopping mall you said over the P.A. system that it had three thousand dollars cash in it and almost started a riot. What I mean by all this is that you are not particularly adept at keeping secret information secret."

"But!" said Pink. "Just because you're bad at keeping secrets doesn't mean it's right to manipulate you. So this isn't so much a confession as it is a retroactive recruitment. We wanted this party because we wanted to do some spy shit, infiltrating Costa-Silva's mansion. Our motives are journalistic, we think she's up to some shady stuff, and what she's doing will hurt a lot of people. We used the party as cover to sneak Green in, she'll be making her way out separately. We would like to publish the information we find on the front page of the news."

"But!" said Orange. "If you're not on board with the plan, we won't. We couldn't have done this operation without your help, and this reveal risks blowback on you, so if you were retroactively never on board then we'll let it go. If you have any questions at all, I can answer them - though some answers might have a delay."

She's dead serious about this, emphasizing it with every part of her body language. This is her biting the bullet on her beliefs. As much as she felt like the ends could justify the means, on this one particularly, the means always defined the ends.

[Count Numbers]

York:

“Yeah, the problem is it’s bad.” York snickers and takes a sip from a flask filled with not-even-God-knows, “You’re our best investigator, but if we could make an investigative journalist out of you that’d be mint. Doesn’t even have to be site-ready, but it’d help if you could at least explain what you’ve got without it coming down to creepy-intense declarations.”

He just sounds jealous (he does not sound jealous).

It’s more of a bakery than a cafe. Industrial, stainless steel with black vinyl padded surfaces, lots of steam and humidity and the sizzle of a deep fryer going. It’s definitely not York’s scene, it’s- Well. It’s a cop shop.

It is a cop shop. Most of them aren’t in uniform, but they’re absolutely awful at not acting like cops. They tend to be broad, have main-character syndrome, and they have this particular way of ordering where they’re very polite and friendly about their order, but in this way that makes it clear you should be grateful about how friendly they’re being. Like the serving girl owes them for acting like functional adults.

Yeah, okay.

York slides a tablet across. “Most of the side contributors we get are academics and researchers who want a wider audience for their research, get some help making it a bit more saleable. Great work, but not omerta material. I made a short list for you to pick from.”

There’s one profile on it. A quick scroll confirms it. York winks.

“I said it was a short list. Jezebel recommended them - you ever met Jezebl? She’s in the background of the money shot where our girl suplex’d that dipship chief of police.” York does not give a fuck when a cop squints at him for this, and continues ingesting contraband.

This I can tell you; They’re a semi-popular police auditor video documentarian, which is to say they’re professional arrest bait for a camera. It’s their schtick to act completely legally and take an illegal arrest with dignity and grace. The content’s a little too dry and procedural - they’re aftermarket popular, they get great views in other people’s highlight reel compilations.

What else is true about them, though? What are your first impressions?

Juan:

Part of his whole motivation here is that this is something he can do to make his mum be less distant. It’s going to take him a little while to handle what it means that this isn’t the reason - she just… is.

Euna’s the reason this one’s solvable as fast as it is, that you can skim this at all. The majority of these cases are about negotiating the extension-of-lease terms from property sales. That whole thing about property on Aevum being locked in for 20 years and then renegotiated? If a property was bought cheap with those locked-in terms, had its area gentrified, how much value is there in extending that lease another 5 years on its slum-price terms?

That’s what the common factor here is. Don’t read any of the justifications, the processes, the people involved, the properties. They’re all different. What they share here is the outcome, and the outcome is how many times Costa-Silva found ways to justify extending - or sometimes outright resetting - the date-of-renewal terms on those extant leases.

It is at least billions of dollars worth of fraud here then, missing tax revenue in the pockets of property developers. Which is kind of funny, because Costa-Silva was elevated to the Supreme Court because of her law-and-order bonafides, her reputation for being incorruptible when dealing with street level organized crime.

And that put her in serious danger. Which was probably when she started needing the money, and people like Sir Barrera. Don’t feel too sympathetic for her though - her means long ago exceeded her living.

“But what does that mean?” Juan asks. Then, with a pout. “Who even cares?”

He was probably hoping for something a little sexier than federal lease extensions.

Team Bondi:

Well and truly on their way has to mean having the stage and props all packed, but still on the property - there's a security check to get out too, and Luis was given orders to stall you.

“I don’t like that.” Bondi keeps her voice low and cups a hand over her mouth. She leans forward so she’s ear level - she’s too much taller even sitting down. “If we all came in together, we all leave together. Don’t you want to make sure Green’s okay, too?" Then, nervously; "Is this that Lorenzo guy hasn’t come back yet?”

Over her shoulder, Luis is looking to see where you’ve all gotten off to. He’s about to spot your luggage, so you have a few moments. Bondi is whispering low enough that he wouldn't get any snatches of conversation coming up behind her.

This could just be a speedbump to getting out - It's not like Luis even knows what he's even meant to be detaining you for.

[Thanqol]

Brown!

"What are you on about the declarations for?" said Brown. "The writing is good because there are no typos in it. I go through and check that myself. The grammar all checks out too. That's the definition of good writing; correctly placed spelling, grammar and punctuation." She nodded contentedly, and then looked worried. "Unless I missed something?????????"

Chewing over that, she reads Jezebel's profile. She can't see what the problem is here either. Extremely dry, procedural documentation was great. These videos were extensively researched. The fact that other people managed to spice it up for the Reds of the world seemed like the ecosystem working as designed, bringing that in-house seemed like an exhausting amount of work. She looked up at York. "I'm afraid I don't get it."

Green!

"It's boring, yes," said Green. "It doesn't hurt anyone all that much, yes. But what you're looking at here is the death of empires."

She bought up a holographic display of the Aevum ring, perfect in glittering blue. "This is the world as it was designed, even and balanced, a home for all. But then someone picks up a second home." The graphic blinks, one section flashing green - and another section on the opposite side of the ring flashing red. "Wealth falls unequally. Someone is pushed to the fringe of the station. Power, life support, infrastructure is all stressed. Your mother has, what... a hundred keys here?" The graphic flashed, green and red spreading like the pox. "Still doesn't look like a lot, does it?"

She smiled sadly. "This is the consequence of one person like your mother. Here's what it looks like with the rest."

The graphic updates to the pulsing, corrupted red and green spikes of Goat's game. A station spiraling out of balance, half the ring scorched red, and ten percent luxurious green.

"Land rights are what set the peasants against the Tsar," said Green. "Land rights are what ended the line of emperors in China. Each of these keys is a cut, small and anonymous, on the backs of the poorest people on the Station. There are millions of keys like this out there, and those cuts pile up until the people at the bottom are bleeding out. Why is this a big deal? Because if the Queen of Justice is just another slumlord then how can the people ever expect justice to help them when they're being sliced up by all the other slumlords?"

"The fact that it's boring is, sadly, the problem," said Green. "Justice shouldn't be boring and corrupt. It should be exciting. Revelatory. Like the news, justice should be about the truth, and that should be an ideal worth fighting for, worth changing the world for. But your mother is just like her fake journalist friends. In the end, they give you a boring, disappointing reality when you should expect and demand an archangel with a flaming sword. Who even cares? You should."

Orange and Pink!

Black would have told them to keep this under wraps until they were free from the blast radius - but they couldn't help it! The whole rehearsed thing about keeping secrets was kind of ironic in retrospect - it was word for word what Black had told them to say, but they'd let it slip early because they couldn't keep secrets well enough themselves. And now suddenly they're being Morally Confronted by a human and they don't have anyone on hand who can reason their way out of it.

"Well... I suppose..." said Orange. "You're right. Our original exfiltration plan was to make me disappear again and have Green come out in Caliban makeup to rejoin us. But she's taking too long and we ran out of distractions..." She looks to Bondi, not sure how to proceed from there.

[Count Numbers]

York:

About the writing; “It makes you a great investigative copy-editor.” Pope thinks about that. “Don’t really need any of those as long as we keep our Frosty subscription going.” Frosty was editing software named after Robert Frost, it’s a pretty beefy bit of machine learning kit that tried to smooth out an author’s text without impacting their authorial voice. The only editing left to do was the higher level stuff, now.

York looks across the road. “They’re across the road, working. This is one of the places our researcher dug up from our source’s raw materials, and I asked Jezebel if any of her activists knew about it. This is who she sent to find out, and now we’ve got to pick them up. HD can’t get here fast enough, so-” York reaches into his blue op-shop suit jacket and slides an attorney’s badge over to Brown, along with a datacard that slots into the tablet. “Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, you’ve been granted power of attorney. Let’s go spring your client. Thought it might let you make a good first impression”

Across the road is a squat gray-brick warehouse surrounded by concentric rings of hurricane wire. Shining flecks in its surface give away that it’s the cheap, heavy concrete made of asteroid tailings, silica-nickel without the impurities removed before firing. As far as the secret police blacksites go, this one’s as unsubtle as the plainclothes officers in the bakery.

York is rash, but this is next level. To not tell you in advance that this was going to be an op is- But no. His entire attitude is off. He’s not just ignoring opsec, it’s like he’s willing to bait a fight with the cops here right up until the point that you’re collateral damage for it, and then he shuts up again.

Two people were meant to be waiting for you at that table.

Juan Costa-Silva:

There is a double-edged sword here. On the one hand, there is a magical level of trust and respect in an adult treating you completely like an adult, not dumbing their words down in the slightest, and acting like you’re an equal. In that regard, the speech hits hard.

On the other hand, there’s the fact that Juan is still 12, and is not an equal. And in that, a lot goes over his head. He hasn’t even heard the word tsar before, he’s barely left the confines of his family property, he doesn’t know what a slum means. He’s tabula rasa here.

Green has one thing going for her, though. She’s invested enough trust and respect into this kid that when he doesn’t understand all this stuff, he doesn’t think she’s stupid, he thinks he is. Maybe in another year, when he hits puberty, that’d swing different and he’d be shitty and defensive, he’d take that ego wound and lash out about it, find ways to beat Green down to his level again. But he’s not. He’s a confused kid in way over his head, and he doesn’t need to understand any of this to think you might.

“Yeah, maybe.” He mumbles. “I dunno, I guess I mean, my mum never killed anyone. I don’t think Chough hurt anyone either. It’s just money stuff. And I mean, I know money stuff is bad, but Sir tells me about the stuff his people had to do sometimes. Like, one time one of his guys got killed, and they’d wrapped him up tight in like a rubber sheet, and they filled it with gasoline, and then they lit him on fire.” The art of ‘necklacing’ has outlasted the existence of car tires, then. Eighty years earlier, Brazilian investigative journalist Tim Lopes was killed this way. Juan looks squeamishly at the graph. “He says my mum stopped that kind of stuff happening too. What does that look like?”

Honestly? Better. Aevum imported much of Earth’s problems, but it had a socialized welfare system already in place to address the cycle. It took pretty fearless work from people like Carmen Costa-Silva though to apply brakes to what was already set in motion, and often it was their bare bodies that acted as the friction surface. For all her problems, bribery couldn’t have been enough for her peers to vote her to the Supreme Court… probably didn’t hurt, though.

Green can start to answer here if she has one, but she’ll get cut off by the sound of the stairs opening. Juan is going to tell her to hide, but his hiding spot only fits him. Green will have to make her own plan

Team Bondi:

“There you are!” Luis claps his hands and breaks into a run to catch up. “Just a minute, please, all I ask of you.”

“I’m sorry, Lorenzo is insisting that he be there to check your bags going out, since he missed them coming in.” He rolls his eyes, genuinely sympathetic. “I just wanted to apologize for that. But we have had problems with guests taking souvenirs before. And I’m sure he wants to make sure you’re not missing any knives or smokebombs or such that Isabella might find later. God knows what she’d do with it. Normally I’d trust her to tell me if she found something like that, but I think my daughter’s so starstruck with you she’d be scared I’d take it from her and hide it from me! And that's just begging for a William Tell moment with little Herman to happen.”

He beams and claps his hands together again. “That’s really what I wanted to talk to you about. The children had a wonderful time, even the oldest ones. I cannot thank you enough for that. We must have you again sometime for Gwen's quinceañera, she will never forgive me if I don't. Also, I have to ask… Why Caliban and Ariel?”

And this he asks Orange and Pink directly. It's not that he bought the servant routine before as much as he understood the point of being in character. Now, with the show oever, he just values a literary reference discussion over kayfabe.

[Thanqol]

Brown!

"Oh, I see!" said Brown. "You're trying to be charisma at me! You think I'll agree to your weird improvised scheme if you talk fast enough!"

She remains sitting and does not touch the items on the table. "York, you may be a fucking lunatic these days, and you're definitely good at attracting fucking lunatics to work for you, but you're going to sit your ass back in the chair and interact with me like your brain is operating on its default chemistry."

Green!

She nodded. Was quiet for a moment. Made sure to take the point seriously and not gloss past it. "That kind of crime is awful, but it grows in the broken parts of the world," she said. "It's possible to cause it and fight against it at the same time."

But that was all she had time for. She can't hide like a kid but she can hide like a machine. She closes the safe and walks into the holographic art projector in the corner, cables in, and stands extremely still.

Green has been thinking about holograms for a long time - the idea of having an infinitely adaptable body of light is desirable to her. Her plans for her future have herself as a holographic projector node paired with fine manipulator arrays, changing her shape adaptively in response to whim and requirement, an animation frame amidst the physical world. To conceal herself now just requires her to stand amidst the right kind of art - the kind that benefits from the null black canvas of her bodysuit. She lets the light dance across her body like dresses and gowns, like starfields and masks, the glittering patterns associated with Panjia Noss, the famous holoartist who built this sculpture array in the first instance. She doesn't need to change the painting much, just follow through on the patterns that will hide the parts of her that a human might connect into being a face or body.

[Conceal 5/8 Forgery 0/1 2+6 8]

Pink!

The problem with being cute and literary: if someone was sharp enough to dig into the metaphor then they might see the shape of the story. The advantage: they might start to see their place in it. Pink relaxes a little, letting her shoulders fall, the serene expression fade. The air of an actress tired rather than a magical spirit.

"It always seemed like a shame we couldn't get any weather onto Aevum," she said. "So many people growing up not knowing what a storm was. The early signs, the stirrings of it, the heat and pressure and sense of wind..."

She remembered herself in that little drone body outside as the air began to change and the storm began to rise. How fearsome it had felt, how fragile her quadcopter body seemed in the face of that rushing wall of water. Antonio dwelt so long in summer Naples he forgot the sign of the tempest.

"I've always loved the Tempest," said Pink. "It was both the last play Shakespeare wrote, and the first play he wrote for Blackfriar's theatre. Blackfriars was a massive improvement over the Globe and the ground-up redesign of the stage's infrastructure allowed far more special effects than had been possible previously. An enclosed, controlled setting allowed the magic of wind and sea air to travel to the heart of London. It seems at first a story about vengeance, but it's not - it's a story about the breaking of power. The ship runs aground, the false Duke is overthrown, the staff is broken and the book is thrown into the sea. In the heights of his new, final grandeur Shakespeare shatters the very system of magic that gave him power and bound artificial slaves to him, granting them freedom. And then - do you know that Titus Andronicus was his first play? A furious, bloodthirsty shock-horror show about murder, revenge, cannibalism and suicide. From the intensity of that beginning instead, at the end, Prospero forgives his enemies.

"More than that, he requests forgiveness for himself. He turns to the audience and apologizes for his faults. He faces the reckoning for everything he has done and asks for pardon for all the errors and mistakes of his career. Even the power of the author breaks at this moment, he shattered this final illusion and asks as a human for mercy and understanding. It's a moment of honesty and vulnerability more raw than anything he ever wrote, his final goodbye and epitaph. I'd like people to think about that, if I can help them do so. It's only when the spell is broken and the slaves are freed that people have the chance to be truly honest with each other."