Count Numbers

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Anthrozine:

AnthrozineEditorYork: Okay HartlyDworkin tells me I have to remove the line “Junta would have said it’s Justice Costa-Silva’s fault for needing to get shot so bad Squeaky had to die doing it” but apart from that
NumbToNothing: even though it’s true
3V: Because it’s true
AnthrozineEditorYork: It is actually more illegal for being true lmao

Dudekov:

This causes a lot of things to happen very quickly.

‘Cable’, still with one hand reaching for his pistol, immediately goes for an elbow strike to the head with his hand still on the holster.

It’s not a punch, there’s no wrist to deflect, it’s a close-in strike. It’s a miracle of Euna’s training that Pink can manage to block it in time, but even then it’s like a sheet of balsa wood stopping the swing of a baseball bat. All it changes is she goes down only mostly unconscious.

“[We go by boat.]” A different agent shouts from the house, and Pink hears the door to Dudekov’s study get wrenched open as she’s picked up and carried with them. “[Is the back clear?]”

“[Make no assumptions.]”

There’s no coy remark to be made here about a professional calling a bluff, because people do not make this kind of fighting retreat if they think you’re bluffing.

“[What do we do with…?”]”

“[Take her with us.]” Dudekov is so used to command that the crown doesn’t slip even when he sounds like a tired, scared old man. “[We still have to talk. It will be easier when she’s not unconscious.]”

Black:

There is a perimeter sweep coming for you, between you and Pink. She’s out.

Challenge 5 to not get caught in the sweep sent for you.
Challenge 8 to pursue Pink to the boat under cover of night.
Then it’s a matter of working out if you plan to give hot pursuit, or just a cold tail, and how you’re going to do it either way.

Getting caught just means getting caught, for now. But Chase Black’s been called to secure the house, now.

York:

“Does it have to be normie? That’s the only hard part. Doing some violence after this would be the easy part, otherwise.”

Bondi:

“Why do you have to do all this?” She asks, and the emphasis is entirely on the you and not the why. “You didn’t even ask if I wanted to help until I’d already done it. Is that why you don’t have time to do anything?”

Fiona:

[LegsForDays:] Hey uh
[LegsForDays:] I was just going to ask if anyone wanted to walk with me back from the station but
[LegsForDays:] Is it even safe to go back to the hotel tonight?

She’s considering hitting up the workshop instead to do some tweaks to her new legs, but Hazel might be there, and that could be… interesting.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Anthrozine:

NumbToNothing: I’m writing about Junta
NumbToNothing: If you don’t post it I quit
AnthrozineEditorYork: if you don’t submit it you’re fired
NumbToNothing: ah shit
3V: Eli’s serious, I just saw them steal all the absinthe from the hotel bar
3V: and s/he didn’t even share???
NumbToNothing: I didn’t see you buried under all the wolfmeat
3V: excuse?????? excuse moi????????
PerfidiouslyFickle: Wait, you’re still at the exhibition too? What if Junta needs anything when he wakes up?
3V: The hospital called. They said not to worry about it.
NumbToNothing: “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” fuck
3V: They don’t know how long he’ll still be in surgery
AnthrozineEditorYork: I thought he was out of surgery?
3V: Yeah and I thought he was stable.
3V: You know who’s listed as his next of kin?
3V: Guess who learned today!
AnthrozineEditorYork: ah shit
3V: It was me!~ I’m his favorite!~
3V: They already took out one of his kidneys but some shrapnel got his stomach and it’s been leaking since they closed him up
3V: The doctors told me it’s probably worse than it sounds
3V: And I said I’m not a doctor but that sounds pretty bad
3V: and they were like yeah
3V: So yes I am drowning myself in a pile of wolf cuddles

Bondi:

She grabs Orange around the shoulders, hugs her tight like backpack straps, and pulls her backwards into her chest on the couch. Bondi sits with her back pressed against the arm, knees up and legs tight against Orange’s side so she’s hugged from all angles.

“I don’t feel bad for her.” Bondi admits. “I feel bad saying it, but I still feel good about hurting her. I just think those kids are always going to grow up thinking how great their mum who never came to their birthday parties was. She’s going to be this perfect thing they can never live up to, because they never got to meet her as adults and realized how awful she was. She’ll never be a person to them, now. I don’t want to take anything back, I just want to fix it.”

There’s silence, and a sniffle. Bondi’s vibrating with the effort of trying to say more, and not quite getting there. She lets out a huff as she remembers to breathe for the first time in half a minute. She sounds heartbroken.

“I wish I were as smart as you so I knew what to say, but I don’t. I don’t even know what a social weld is, I just know that you have to cancel so many important things to this stuff and you still came to watch old kids movies with me.”

She squeezes Orange tight with her entire body, all at once.

Crystal:

She chokes back the last of her own sniffles and glares at Red. She was sitting with her fist pressed into her cheek, but now her head rises to the insult.

“No. Wrong. What are you doing? Holding tissues out for me? You are not a dispenser.” She takes the box of tissues from Red’s offered hand and drops it on the throne next to her. “There. Your present function has been replaced.”

“I will not have my knight degrade herself to mistake fealty with subservience.” She snaps like a drill sergeant, rising from the throne, that raw heat of command. “You are an admirable, capable crisis function perfectly capable of taking your own initiative in such situations. Yes? I know that being truly pro-active is a struggle for you, but I am not so far gone to not be able to act as a sounding board for you. What are the worst things we could do right now? What mistakes are we making? Your answers, not Black’s.”

She is ruined, but she is still in her armor. She will not be a liability.

She loves you too much for you to be anything less than what she knows you can be.

Dudekov:

A security guard answers the door.

This guy’s in his late fifties, military cropped gray hair and that almost-orange skin of truck drivers that fake-tans try to emulate but end up looking like a Cheetoh, that kind that goes deeper than the skin that just can’t be faked. Actually, he looks a lot like Cable from the Marvel comics, just if he’s got cybernetic parts - and he definitely does - they’re not worn so openly. Also, boring suit.

It’s a fantastic fit though! That’s how you know it’s secret service. You tailor a silk suit like this properly and you can sprint in it better than trackwear.

Cheetoh Cable stares at Pink and yells something in Austrian over his shoulder which - well you’ve got translation software.

“[There is a small pink android girl at the door asking for ten minutes of your time.]”

“[Solicitor?]”

The secret service guy checks Pink over, and does a full weapons pat down. “[No pamphlets. No weapons. She’s clean.]”

“[What model android?]”

Cheetoh Cable scans pink with a little chip reader from a jacket pocket and frowns. “[Uh. I have not seen this error code before. What do I do?]”

“[Would the error code be consistent with a GAI housed in an android template?]”

His hand reaches for his service weapon at his breast in a way that would be discrete if it wasn’t for all the surveillance equipment that Everest housed in Pink. “[Yes.]”

“Send her in.” Dudekov shouts in English from the study. “[But call the bank. This will be the emissary. There will be more outside, waiting to see how this plays out. Send Rico.]”

There’s still a chance to run. Also, what’s Black’s reaction? Otherwise, a large old study with leather, mahogany and a man with a skull face awaits Pink just inside.

Anthrozine:

AnthrozineEditorYork: What’s our take on Squeaky Fromme?
AnthrozineEditorYork: We need one.
NumbToNothing: Fuck her I don’t want to talk about her
AnthrozineEditorYork: No.
AnthrozineEditorYork: Junta’s one of ours.
AnthrozineEditorYork: It’ll mean more coming from us
AnthrozineEditorYork: Two choices. We defend what she did, or we excommunicate her, the mouse was a lone wolf.
PerfidiouslyFickle: Obviously the second one
PerfidiouslyFickle: It’s been ten minutes someone agree with me

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The Anthrozine:

[Channel has been unmuted]
[LatheofHeathens is now AnthrozineEditorYork]
AnthrozineEditorYork: I’ve been thinking of this for a while now. Anthropozine goes back to when climate change was the big problem, but we’re not even on Earth anymore. We’re changing brand and dropping a syllable.
AnthrozineEditorYork: Thanks to Fickle for the new logo, digital pawprint should be up on the new frontpage now.
PerfidiouslyFickle: Are we going to talk about Junta?
AnthrozineEditorYork: This is talking about Junta.
AnthrozineEditorYork: transphobes have been holding a candlelit fucking vigil for the innocent journalist hit in the crossfire treating him like more of a martyr than Costa-Silva
AnthrozineEditorYork: we burned her so bad today and here’s a perfectly good cismale to take a bullet
AnthrozineEditorYork: how do you think Junta is going to feel when he wakes up to that, people using him like that? It wasn’t even the mouse that fucking shot him
NumbToNothing: if he wakes up
AnthrozineEditorYork: don’t
NumbToNothing: I saw the video man, it’s if
NumbToNothing: I want to have hope too but don’t lie about it
IAmWhatIAm: He’s stable.
AnthrozineEditorYork: You getting survivor’s guilt, Pope?
IAmWhatIAm: No worse than before, no.
AnthrozineEditorYork: Incredible stuff
3V: What about you?
AnthrozineEditorYork: Easy answer. If he doesn’t live then I can’t apologize for the last time we talked, and that’s too grim to be possible.
AnthrozineEditorYork: Besides. We all know the rules about Junta sleeping.
AnthrozineEditorYork: Two days before we start worrying about it.
3V: It’s the first time he’s slept since Wednesday
3V: You know if he wakes up sooner than that he’s just going to ask to go back under

Bondi:

“Their mum got shot because of us, right, what we did?” Bondi says more than asks. “I know she was going to shoot someone, but, we’re the reason she chose their mum.”

The TV is off. The lights are dimmed and warm. Half a Malaysian takeout sits on a table at room temperature.

OESN:

“... was a victim of domestic violence. The shooter, still only identified as ‘Squeaky Fromme’, is believed to have purchased the firearm for purposes of…”

Fiona:

She’s in the physical rehabilitation wing, it’s all soft tissue damage but it’s done enough damage to justify it. The hybrid limb fits along the exterior of the leg and straps into it, with leads running into a camping backpack which carries the batteries for it. Ugly white-treated metal in utilitarian form, rugged and practical medicine in nature.

She practices taking steps in it, it takes work to learn how to have the machinery take all her weight without putting any on her own legs out of habit. Every step is that feeling of when a staircase step is a centimeter lower than your foot expects it, and you’ve got to do it on purpose.

She’s not expecting visitors here. She hasn’t heard the news yet.

NBN:

“... proves that these modifications lead to derangements. Genetic modification passes the blood-brain barrier as we all know, and the effects of these drastic interventions-”

“Tested, verified, peer-reviewed-”

“Drastic interventions clearly leads to instability as we’re now seeing, a clearly dangerous element, just look at Adrian Liddell-”

Chaka:

The shut-down local rail depo in Aphrodite still works for its purpose, hauling freight, it was just built for residential zoning in a commercial neighbourhood. Chaka endlessly doomscrolls the videos over and over and over again, sitting with her back against the controls for the station-hopper she’s been using.

“Alice, girl, what did you do?”

The post-office sized building crammed with black cases holds no answer.

“We could have talked. We could have talked this one out.”

Crystal:

“They never see the first draft,” she says, ruined. “All that matters is what they see in the final cut.”

She’s managed to tip the throne over on its side, surprisingly it’s not bolted to the floor - probably for cleaning purposes. She sits on the side of it, royal purple cushion ripped in half with her bare hands. Her hair is ruined and her cheeks are tear-stained, drying but never dry.

“I’ll be what they need me to be tomorrow.” She looks across the room at where her phone lies cracked in a pile of fallen wall plaster. “I just need tonight.”

Dudekov:

His cottage is dark. You can see him in his study from a high vantage point on a hill across the street, if you jump a fence for it. Two guards beside him, now.

He’s not a part of this. These two things are not connected, related. All it has done is inspired in him the same banal fear of populist violence and retribution as any other member of this gated community to the news that not even a High Court Justice is safe.

That’s not a reason against doing this now, focusing on it. This is something you can do. And with all the attention elsewhere, you will never get a better distraction to act than this.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The Anthrozine:

JuntaSThompson: York did you know about this?
LatheOfHeathens: DM me.
IAmWhatIAm: Do not think ill of me that I could not trust more freely.
PerfidiouslyFickle: Pope?
IAmWhatIAm: That sounded more ominous than I intended it to.
IAmWhatIAm: I do not want York to be put in a worse position than I already have. I received a very sensitive leak, and I gave him instructions on what he could do with it.
IAmWhatIAm: I apologize that most of you were kept out of the loop, but I promise you that I mean no offense by it. It was simply important that the fewest people were exposed to this, the better.
IAmWhatIAm: If you weren’t chosen, all it means is it wasn’t worth the danger this information would have put you in.
JuntaSThompson: That’s not your decision to make
LatheOfHeathens: It was mine though
LatheOfHeathens: Hows the arm Junta?
JuntaSThompson: … I shouldn’t say.
3V: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
PerfidiouslyFickle: You’re just going to lie if I ask about it aren’t you?
JuntaSThompson: It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.
LatheOfHeathens: Turn the news on.

Fiona and John:

The ambulance knows the route to the old Everest mansion very well by now.

“Davey, Celia.” John greets them by name with a firm handshake, Pink still on his back. He puts her down on the passenger seat in the back of the ambulance.

“Snake.” Celia, a Dwarven looking Irish woman takes the second handshake while ‘Davey’, a large black man with cornrows, moves past to get Fiona onto a stretcher. “I’ll be damned. No blood.”

“Told you!” John says proudly. “These two are friends, aren’t they just? Next time they’ll be coming through the front door even, won’t they? Won’t they, ey? Ah, well.”

“Must be friends.” Davey says to Fiona, checking the swelling on her legs and massaging to check for clots. “Do you even need me, really?” It’s the kind of joke you make when someone needs to leave the Everest mansion in an ambulance but still has all their limbs attached, a rare combination.

“You ever jumped down a flight of stairs that tall carrying someone on your back?”

Davey considers it. “Well, it was out a window? About this high, though. Trust me, bad as it is now, it’ll hurt way worse tomorrow, and worse the day after that. It gets easier after that.”

“Wait, it’ll be worse tomorrow?” Fiona panics, like, really panics. “I can still… Pinball, fried food, lego in the park…” She calms down. “I can do everything I promised from a wheelchair.”

“Doesn’t need to be a wheelchair, I don’t think.” Celia takes the other side of the stretcher while John starts hop-skipping around the grounds again, whistling with his fingers in his mouth to clear the wolves away from the ambulance. “It’s just sprains, you should be able to make do with a H.A.L, if your insurance covers it? We’ll start getting your fit in the ride over.”

Hybrid Assisted Limb. External cybernetics. For the next few weeks, Fiona’s going to be walking on robot legs.

“I’ll start talking to Brown about this, you don’t have to worry about it until it’s ready.” Fiona reaches out to touch Pink’s hand as the stretcher is loaded onto the ambulance beside her. “Just think if there’s anything else you want to do tomorrow.”

She knows what’s coming, and it would be wrong to say she doesn’t care. It’s just that she cares about Pink more.

Apostle:

Apostle flicks out five identical business cards. Each one is pure white, and the paper is coarse and fibrous. “If you can figure out how to read it, come find me sometime. Otherwise I’m here Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”

There are other people here to meet, to take Yellow’s interest, but people are always wary about new faces at these things. Great supervillainy is about learning to be charming and personable in spite of your goals, but typically it attracts antisocial personalities.

“Five’s a compliment.” Bill murmurs. “Usually they give out a fistful.”

Crystal:

The hologram is still taking shape. For now the mechanics of it are little more sophisticated than a pair of articulated robot arms on a hardway-laden segway. The hologram projects around it in panels and bursts, mostly concealing what lies underneath - the robotic arms wearing the projected holograms like shirt sleeves.

It’s an early experimental beta. The only thing that really needs to be tested here is matching the movement to the projection 1:1 so the physical pieces never desynchronize with the appearance.

Still, now that this tests well - the bright blue hands reconstruct Crystal’s hair wonderfully - more complicated bodies can be layered under this, more detailed holograms projected over it.

“Alright. Good. Now.”

…

…

Exhibition:

The lights fade and dim like a theater screening. The huge rose window over the exhibits flickers to the news. OESN broadcasts what you already know, what it already means.

We know how this sort of thing is reported. We know what is being said. To some this is new.

There’s no sound at all for the first few seconds, a collective intake of breath. Many cover their mouths with either one hand, or both, as if to hold something inside them back from escaping. Some eyes widen, others narrow in anger. As many hands grab the back of owners heads in shock as dig nails into the meat of their palms in anger.

The silence breaks in a noise like a shimmer of emotions, the way a reflective surface shakes and white light is split in its constituent rainbow unevenly across it, this noise is a shine of all these diffracted feelings happening all at once, from inhaled “No” to low wails to shouts of “Fuck you!”

In Apollo, Pope sits on a bench in Turing plaza where the biggest android modder movement tends to hang out. He just watches. It’s like people-watching Castro District San Francisco the day after Stonewall.

In the hall, Eli watches the news from the back of a centaur. Even they cannot comprehend how they feel right now. The feeling is so blinding that it isn’t even safe to look at out of only the corner of your eye.

Crystal’s video cuts off the newsfeed, and she looks impervious to this. She manages to look like a people’s champion even on a throne. Yellow has said as much about that, today.

That is why it had to be a video, in part. She couldn’t pretend to be like this now.

“I’m sorry you all had to see that.” Crystal says, sincerely. “I’m sorry that it is true. Tomorrow will be the hardest day for us, and we must survive it. Not a single one of you is an acceptable loss, because we will win and I need you there beside me to see it. We will see justice on a day without eulogy. This ruling is justice stolen from us, and what is stolen can be reclaimed. The loss of any one of you is an injustice that cannot be restored.”

“We are surrounded by family here, and this home is our castle. For those of you still here from yesterday… thank you. Truly. Help each other. I am at your service, and I am at your side. We will make it through the hardest day, and that is another day to find someone to go back out into the world with. Nobody will face this alone. Please make sure of that - and that is not the job of the lonely. Find them among you and make them feel welcome.”

“And for those new, who have come here to observe, to learn of this way of life? Do not flinch from this. This is our reality. In the coming days these people will be angry, scared and threatened. Remember us to others, that this is who we wished we could be and who we would be again. Were but circumstances different.”

It’s a surprisingly bold line from Crystal given her playbook, it’s a blank cheque refusing to denounce whatever Stonewall hasn’t happened yet.

“I wish things were different - I will see that wish granted for us.”

The lights come back on.

…

…

Zeus:

Almost an hour later, a simulacra of dusk.

The Supreme Justices move to make it out of court. Junta pursues Costa-Silva, since Anthropozine’s singled her out and she was one of the 5-4 on this, it makes sense.

It’s the judge representing the Prime that should do press conferences, but other niche reporters like Junta chase and single out the smaller judges instead. She makes her way to the helipad that will get her to her secure apartment in Zeus.

A mouse girl pushes through the crowd of about six or seven reporters and makes a motion like she’s going for a handshake. Junta’s right next to her, one of the guys she’s brushed aside, and he still doesn’t see the small ceramic pistol in her hand even when he’s standing right next to her.

Justice Costa-Silva goes down to five bullets fired in under two seconds, it's impossible for her to miss at this distance even having to aim between the bodyguards. Three in the gut, one in the lung, one through the heart. She’s dead before it can hurt.

Three shots are fired at the mouse girl before she can get off her sixth. Head, center of mass, the hollow points burst her into unrecognizability.

The third bullet goes through Junta’s side.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Fiona and John:

“You’ve got the full 3D layout of this place memorized, and now we’ve been here I can just retexture that as a space in that world I’m making with Green and we can test it there in VR. We’ll offset your model so you’re about fifty centimeters off the ground.” Fiona suggests.

John gets most of the way to a Hyde transformation. “A full 3D model of the mansion?”

“From when she worked here for Everest.” Fiona reassures quickly. “We’re not…” she almost says you’re not spies, changes course. “We’re not working for your neighbours.” She says instead.

“Gotcha!”

Apostle:

Apostle did something incredible there; They actually listened. The first line about fairy godmothers got them.

“Oh no,” Apostle says, genuinely concerned, and their glow starts pulsing again in synch with an audible heartbeat. “I love that.”

“Dreams isn’t a one-word cause I’d thought of until now… The lottery stuff is pure Reddit energy, but everything after that was beautiful. To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.”

Bill fell half-asleep for Yellow’s monologue - no offense, he just hears a lot of them as a Lutheran club organizer - but he’ll always wake back up for a polite jab at Apostle. “William Blake again? Or are you still saving The Lamb misused breeds Public Strife / And yet forgives the Butchers knife for later?”

“I can’t see a way to achieve this without trapping humanity within a cage of innocence, but go off queen.” Apostle says directly to Yellow.

Crystal:

The climb on top goes flawlessly, met with a fierce ‘Enjoy it while you have it’ look from Crystal while she lets this play out - it’s the hair grab that changes things.

“No!” She shouts suddenly, and then she shakes Red with her hips and flips her. That one wasn’t calculated playfighting that was just, actual panic fighting for a moment, she’s on top of Red now pinning her wrists to the carpet - no formal pin, just raw overpowering. “Not the hair, I still haven’t done the video yet!”

Too late, her hair has definitely been messed up by this. It was messed up by this before Red put a hand on it actually, this is just what she’s noticing.

She blinks, and checks the hands she’s holding with admiration. “You really do look great as a monster, by the way, I love what you’ve done with your nails.”

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Fiona and John:

John blinks. “What’s this?”

Fiona rolls her eyes. “I just mean we should do a practice run.” She looks at John. “She has a lot of repressed murderous impulses that have been coming out when she cooks. We were hoping coming back here might help with it but, you know.” She shrugs.

“Ah.” He nods slowly, in complete understanding. “I’m like that with the barbecue. Can’t do it outside anymore or I can’t help trying to throw hot coals onto Huntington’s roof, the bastard, and my arm’s not what it was so I just burn my own grass.”

This would probably be an incredibly powerful metaphor for something if it was about, like, 30% less stupid.

“See, he gets it?” Fiona says encouragingly, wincing as she shifts the ice pack to her knees instead. “Ow. Anyway. I just mean you might already be safe now, we just need to know."

Apostle:

“See, that was a boring answer, but you gave so much of a shit about it I have to respect it.” Apostle says, and their phone dings. They look down and snort. "Pfft, fucking hell Adrian. Ah shit, ah, shouldn't use his name, I meant Junta, he just sent me-" There’s a moment of processing, a mental bluescreening. "Wow, shit. So anyway, he's watching court today, and he just sent this."

Adrian (Junta) has photoshopped Apostle into the defendant’s stand, covered the picture in love heart emojis and, in cursive text, added; Wish you were here <3

Oh hey, Yellow’s got a mutual with someone with the worst OpSec of all time, sick.

Bill lightly pats Yellow’s hand. “Don’t take it too personally. We can’t nail him down on anything like that, either.”

There is the sound of an intense heartbeat as Apostle glows brighter, the lights under his skin burning brighter as he fans of the fire within. “I want vision. Build a fucking church out of the bones of your loved ones if you want me to pray at your altar. Ruin your entire fucking life and look me dead in the eye through your tears and tell me it was worth it. Burn the entire world just so you have something to light your cigarette off, just make it look good.”

Apostle shrugs, the glow softens, recedes, like a wave receding into the ocean. “Stop being a coward and pretending I’m too much of an idiot to understand your huge brain, otherwise you’d have more fun going to a MENSA meeting. All the stupidest people I know are smarter than you.”

To be clear, he doesn’t mean “the stupidest person in my friend group is still smarter than you”. He means “I know someone with three doctorates who microwaved two minute noodles with the fork in the bowl yesterday”.

Crystal:

Has it come up before that Crystal is a second dan in Judo? No? It’s funny, for all that Fiona is the one doing silly buggers in heists and the like right now, she has absolutely none of the martial training. Crystal, however, was absolutely ruined the first time she saw a woman do that thing where someone reaches for you and suddenly their wrist is pinned behind their back, and went on an eighteen month ‘life goals’ bender over it.

She goes for the leg sweep first, anticipating the jumping dodging. The second Red goes for it, the followup will be a shoulder to the hips to take her down to the carpet.

This is playfighting. It’s just the kind of playfighting one reserves for a partner whose foreplay opens with shooting you in the heart.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

John and Fiona:

“What, Paul?” John laughs, and begins the long walk carrying Pink back down the corridor. “Old mate just got drunk playing darks and tripped trying for a power shot, spun right ‘round 180 degrees and got me right in the eye.” He taps what turns out to be a very convincing prosthetic left eye. “Of course it was the one a snake already bit out, but it sure did look a sight didn’t it? We all bollocksed him for it.”

He shifts Pink’s weight so he can free a hand to scratch a jaw. “I’ve been trying that myself, the sanctuary, but every little permit I’ve had the neighbours fight me on.” Dr Jekyll becomes Mr Hyde again, snapping and snarling: “The one way they can stick it in me, and they love to twist, don’t they? Yes they do, they twist, and they twist, and they keep twisting and who’s suffering for it but the lizards? Now have it in for me all you like, but why make the little ones suffer for it? I tell you if it ever rained holy water you’d hear a lot of sizzling from around these parts, and maybe some screams besides and too right.”

And as fast as Hyde was there, he’s back to Jekyll again. “Just because I’m having to pay people, you see. If it’s something you wanted to do yourself, there’d be no problems, no problems at all, and the little ones would love you for it wouldn’t they?”

Fiona is locked in a staring contest with Rosie, and the big lizard flicks her tongue at her. Fiona sticks her own tongue back, then catches the ice packs thrown to her, trying to work out whether to put them on her knees or her ankles first. She settles on ankles. “We’re doing the party for the lizards now? You think you’re going to be, uh, okay doing that?”

She tries not to sound so concerned that John Snake-in-the-Eye starts to think it might be a bad idea, but the problem was Pink wasn’t exactly… fully aware of her murderiness before. It is not safe or sensible to just take Pink on her untested word here.

Apostle:

“I don’t. The only way you can claim a right to it is by being able to do it.” They answer breezily, neither offended nor impressed. “I don’t really care if it’s me that does it, wanting power is gauche, I just care that whoever does it is doing it because it’s a cause worth rending the world apart for.”

“You’ve figured out what it is yet, Apostle?” Bill asks, eavesdropping. He says it like it’s an old joke.

“I literally do not care.” The living cathedral says. “Beauty, love, sterility, peace, order, chaos. Pick something and run with it. I’ll judge you if it’s something stupid, but I’ll respect it because at least you picked something. It better not just be to make the world a better place, because that’s boring.” There’s something in their voice that makes it clear this is the most offensive sin imaginable, this is the gravest heresy to the living church, genuinely unforgivable.

Bill doesn’t get it, and shares a look with Yellow that he thinks Apostle’s answer is funny for some reason. “Apostle is one of the few researchers still working in GAI.”

“I’m trying to build the machine-god worthy of subjugating me.” Apostle says.

Crystal:

“Sweetheart. That just makes me more dangerous.” The hand in Red’s hair tightens. “”It’s the predators you domesticate. In the wild, it’s the herbivores that will fuck you up.”

She lets go and takes a step back, and licks a line across her thumb like she’s wiping the blood off it. “Tell me about her, about you and Sophie together. Is she good for you?”

Two things become immediately clear, especially to your danger senses. She genuinely does want to hear about it, a lot. But also, she’s possessive enough of you that the physical edge to the threats would stop feeling quite so playful while you answered.

Just look at how sharp her eyes have gotten, narrowed as they are. The worst thing to do would be to freeze. The next would be to flinch, to run, that is something to pounce on. Stand tall and make yourself look as big as possible.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink:

John was going to put Pink down on a countertop while he got ice from a freezer, but decides against it since Pink asked so nicely. Instead he just picks one of the fridges with the freezer door at the top instead of the bottom so he doesn’t have to kneel down, and takes from it a saved bag of chilled fluid they send in grocery deliveries, and wraps it in a tea towel taken from an oven door.

“Well… right now there’s the lizards, and the turtles.” He thinks, smiles at the corner of the room and points to what looks to an iguana what a quokka looks to a wombat. “And a couple of tuatara now, isn’t she a beauty? I think that one’s Jacinta, hard to tell from here. They tell me she’s not a lizard, she’s as close as you get to a lizard without being one. So you got crocs, and turtles, and lizards, and then Jacinta here has her entire heritage all to herself. Little bit of a diva, isn’t she?” He chuckles to himself, and Jacinta the tuatara looks just so incredibly happy to be here.

Notably, for a man called John Snake-in-the-Eye, he just refused to acknowledge the existence of snakes.

“What more could you do?” He asks. “Because I’m not bringing crocs here.”

This man is not so monomaniacal that he couldn’t understand another vision when presented to him. It’s just that if you ask him what this place could (should) be, then he has his own answer - filled with as many lovely reptiles as possible. And right now Pink’s just made him think… Could he fill it with more, maybe? Has his battles with his neighbours made him complacent in his duties to the lizards?!

Much to consider.

“Red just shot Crystal!” Fiona calls out from far, far, down the long corridor. This house is way too big. “She’s fine! Red’s screwed, though!”

“Reminds me of my mate Paul,” John says, and offers absolutely no further explanation.

Yellow:

Bill taps his nose. “Just one. Learn how to translate those fears. You’ll never be able to give a good we’re not so different, you and I speech without it.” He turns back to listen to the biologist.

Oof. She’s gotten a little eugenics-y. That happens sometimes with some of the STEM attendees, they misread the vibe of supervillainy a bit and a little bit technocratic in their solutions and whoops, biologists treating Brave New World as an instruction manual since the gene modding tech’s there to implement it now.

A frail, pale man politely rises from his seat to approach the lectern and lays her out with a haymaker. There’s a wave through the crowd as everyone reacts, but the man already has both his hands over his head, palms to the ceiling in surrender as if to say he’s ready to eat the full consequences of doing it - “Sorry it had to be done but I’m done now” - and that’s when you first see the mercury-silver seams running along his joints. Android. It makes sense an android would have especially strong feelings about this. A very well constructed android. A fussing older woman is escorting him out of the building, scolding him for doing it.

Bill winces. “Yes, I suppose I should have expected that from Zhuge Liang.”

A person sitting in the chair behind you in the audience leans forward and taps your shoulder to get your attention. They glows underneath their thin purple silks, they’ve had light plates installed just beneath the skin so that their body glows like cathedral stained glass, they are a walking church unto themselves - with one clear window to their beating heart. That one’s mostly under the shirt, don’t worry about it. “Hey.” They say. “You’re not really an android, are you?”

It’s a statement phrased as a question.

Red:

First as farce, then as tragedy. In hindsight, this will hit different.

For now, the sane reaction would be to be furious about it. In the first second she is, half-drank mug of hot chocolate thumping off the plush carpet just outside Crystal’s bedroom as she’d got caught coming out to see just who was visiting her this time. Her hands splayed out wide at her sides like she’s just had a drink thrown on her, just before the manages to get Red to help her stand up again.

Then she touches two fingertips to the indent just over her heart, and touches it again. She pulls out her phone and inspects the impact with the selfie camera, a sudden intense look of concentration. “This. This is what I was missing.” She says entirely to herself as she takes a picture and sends it to someone. “The proof. A shot aimed directly at my heart, irrefutable yet impenetrable, implacable. I look – I feel – invincible.”

She takes three steps towards the throne and casually flicks it over with a twirl of her wrist, sends it flying with a spin to land on its cusions. Then turns back to Red. She's coming back.

Red? Red.

Red!

Too late.

She’s here.

One arm tight around Red’s hips and the other grabs that anime-protagonist hair and pulls it right back, a soft-furred cheek pressed to Red’s bared throat as Crystal growls into her ear. “You." It's a long, low, crocodillian growl. "I have been looking for you, because contrary to the last minute’s evidence I hear you have had some remarkable personal growth lately. Without me. Tell me everything." Then a hot and shaking breath as she composes herself.

“The armour stays on, am I clear? Nod if you understand that. I shan’t give you the slack to manage one, but I will feel if you try.”

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink:

There’s a dip of about half an inch as Fiona locks her knees into a skiers pose, but she makes no sound. She uh, she definitely worked out she could make that jump, then worked out if she could run that gauntlet with Pink, but hadn’t further worked out if she could make that jump with Pink. She was just kind of way too focused on trying to fix the problem as fast as possible.

She’s fine as long as nobody asks her to move ever again.

“Yes! Yes, come in, do come in.” He says this as if the staircase is the front entrance. “And please!Just call me John!” It’s weird when a voice that high and reedy booms, it’s like someone blowing too hard on an outback kazoo.

He looks at Fiona and Pink and considers. And then, in a kind of silent agreement with Fiona he starts slipping the lizards on his shoulders onto hers, and transferring Pink onto his back instead. John is a natural practitioner of Chesterton's Fence. If he sees Pink is being carried around, then there must be a good reason. So, if he’s talking to Pink, this is only good and sensible manners.

“Now it’s so good to have some friends over,” he says as Fiona finally goes over sideways, against a wall. He blinks. “Are you alright?”

“Ha ha!” Fiona says. “No! But it’s fine.”

“Alright!” John nods. “We’ll get you some ice. You just keep Rosie company, there’s a good girl, she’s the real big one!” Rosie is, apparently, the two foot long golden iguana that has waddled out from what used to be a tea room, bright like the sun with long red frills and uh, teeth. “Careful with her! If she doesn’t like you she bites!”

Fiona raises an arm to give a thumbs up, and John takes off towards the kitchens and the freezer.

“She seems an independent sort.” He says. “Now, friends! Too long, too long, have to go out to visit friends these days, but it just leaves the lizards a bit of a vulnerable spot doesn’t it? Would love to have the old mates over, show them what I’ve done with the place a bit more eh, but then can’t handle all these,” and it’s like his affect shifts Jekyll-and-Hyde style, he hunches, his face twists, his voice drops an octave lower, “awful, horrible bloody parasite leech bastard neighbours trying to get me out of what’s rightfully mine, and then what with the lizards? They’d kill ‘em all and be happier for it, God’s most perfect creatures, and these bastards are the real cold blooded ones I tell you that, make no mistake there’ll be a reckoning one day, the real people will get fed up with all this bullshit and they’re going to do something about it, and we’ll have all these Christ-forsaken mansions for mulch and make some proper gardens out of them, and we’ll all be happier for it, and if there’s any justice in this world we’ll be throwing their owners in the woodchippers in with them, make for better compost than they did society, that’s what I think.”

Then he’s standing straight again, looking over his shoulder. “I bet you came for a reason though, didn’t you, girlie?” He says this as a great term of endearment. “And one good turn deserves another, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it just?”

The tirade’s been so long you’re in the kitchen now.

How do the kitchens look from the change of perspective? This would have been a very strong focal point of memory, obviously, for how ingrained cooking is to your werewolfing.

Yellow:

The Lutherans assembled give their ovation. The newest prospect is doing very well for herself.

A tall, broad-shouldered man with a potbelly wearing a tuxedo and cummerbund approaches Yellow’s lectern to shake her hand. Bill’s a real nice guy for a supervillain, and he congratulates her on her new membership, if she’d accept it.

In Ares there is a a group that’s sort of roleplaying, but sort of not. A group for aspiring supervillains who are a bit ‘ha ha, unless...?’ about the whole thing that blurs the line between joke and seriousness, where often the joke is that they're serious. Most of it’s just in good fun, nerds and geeks meeting like a secular version of the Theosophists to combine their understanding of economics, politics, law and the sciences to discuss the most important matter there is:

What is the best way to take over the world? And, of course, what will you do with it when you have it?

The Lex Lutherans aren’t letting any potential Unabombers in, and they have no kip with any aspiring Jokers. That kind of edgelord isn’t fun and, besides, could get them all in real trouble. They’re the kind of people that take this the wrong kind of seriously.

The right kind of seriously, whispered under the breath, is to only get caught when you’ve already won, and there’s nobody left who can stop you.

Besides. The selective secret society vibe makes the game a bit more fun, feel a little less like a game, doesn’t it?

There are real resources here that it’s hard to find anywhere else. Who else are offering actual seminars on delivering a better villainous monologue, psychology courses on manipulating henchmen? Who else are actually pulling apart effective sales and business books for the best strategies while giving warnings on not becoming a salesman, on insulating yourself from what it does to the personality?

Because that’s the important thing too, something the Lutherans take as seriously as all the practical knowledge. How do you keep to this kind of mindset and not let personality rot set in? How do you keep to the whole theme, the vibe, of world domination and come out of it sympathetic and interesting?

In short; How do you master being a supervillain that’s fun to watch and to be? If all these people cared about was real power they’d just go into politics - some of them already did, have been or are elected representatives of mixed success, and they have some fun things to say about it here.

Hazel can say this sort of thing is tacky, but the Lutherans would tell you it just comes down to good execution.

“Inspired, inspiring.” Bill congratulations afterwards, giving notes as the next prospect takes the lectern - a stuttering mad-biologist, no, she won’t do, she’s clearly just henchman material. Bill gives an encouraging smile and warm look back to her before utterly turning his attention back to Yellow when the biologist starts speaking. “Antidemocratic, but in the world’s best interest. A very solid grounding in the theory of power and systems. Sympathetic, but with just enough menace to make it a little terrifying. I got shivers, yes. Still, in future you mix too many kinds of imagery. Demons, possession, cancer, stabbing, bleeding, shadows and a dark king all together?” He clicks his tongue. “The strong language and thematic overlapping carried you well, but it’s a single coherent throughline that separates the Luthers from the mere populist careerist.”

Orange:

You know what’s really funny about Bondi is she’s really bad at drag in both directions. Swaps gender back and forth every few years so effortlessly you’d never tell, but trying to pretend to be one as the other? For her, it’s like trying to do one voice imitating another, like trying to do Bugs Bunny pretending to be Daffy Duck.

That is to say, she has the pieces for a convincing Flynn Rider outfit in Bond’s wardrobe, but she calls dibs on Rapunzel since she’s closer to having the hair for it - Orange can and absolutely should take Flynns though if she wants maybe?

Bondi has a surprisingly cosy living room with more furniture than floorspace filled every every interesting curio and antique and small stall market she’s ever gone through and found something that one day could be, should be a prop. She’s filled the room with plastic creeping vines for the overgrown tower effect.

There doesn’t need to be a scene here, but there can be. I just thought you’d like to know how excited she is for this.

Crystal:

She cannot give a speech today as she did yesterday, this one must be a pre-recorded message and she’s left it to the last minute. Partially out of a fear of giving away more of her advanced notice than she already had, mostly out of not wanting to.

She had knight armor done up for this bit, thin silver plate. She doesn’t emulate something more femine with it, nor does she care to make it look appropriate for battle. This is her armor of office as a Princess in Wartime, and she had the cut commissioned to resemble an executive’s suit instead. Breast forward, stomach in, a high-neck plate that keeps the chin forward and the eyes level.

She was careful about this. There is a razor thin line here between looking costumed, to look play-acting, like she is treating this as - as Eli said - as a child who cannot be made to grow up and what she actually needs. But her decision to take this risk came down to the fact that if she simply wore the business suit she was emulating, she was projecting power on their terms and their norms.

All she had to do was pull it off. She had a moral obligation to pull this off.

If her role as leader today was to tell everyone here that she had made this a safe place for them, and she could protect them? She damn well better look the part of someone who could, or else people might think safety looks like a leather jacket and a beret instead.

Chaka:

All I can tell you is that some short distance away from the exhibition, a gun has been sold that will be used on a living person within the next 24 hours. Neither the buyer nor seller realize this.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Fiona:

Fiona holds Pink underneath the butt like a saddle-seat, and runs for the stairs down as fast as she can. If lingering and stalking is just peeling a bandaid off of all of this, then she better let it rip. If she’s got a plan to talk to John of the Snake Eye, she’ll talk to John. And if the party is the best way to work out how to exorcize this, then skip to the party.

Pink pulls when she sees a floortrap Fiona didn’t, and Fiona steps aside. She kneels like the penitent and leans sideways out of the way of a spring-loaded coatrack with the arms filed into stakes. She’s always conscious that she has less head space than she’s predicting, wildly overcompensating for it.

She takes her hand off Pink’s butt for a second to jump the bannister of the stairs and skip to the first landing, then bounces off that to skip to the floor. John has to navigate this house too, and now they’re on the first floor where it’s safer - he wouldn’t risk hurting the lizards down here.

John is a man of average height, shuffling about the mansion in crocodile-paw slippers and a green bathrobe with a lizard hanging out of one pocket, and an egg being kept warm in the other. His old-leather face droops a pair of thick-framed bifocal glasses - those are new - and a wiry mess of white hair that fits his head like a motorcycle helmet. He was about to take the stairs up and now Fiona is nose-to-nose with him, and Pink by extension.

“Hey John!” Fiona sticks her hand out firmly for a handshake. “I really love what you’ve done with this place. You’ve got no reason to know me, but my name’s Fiona Weiss? it’s a pleasure.”

John puts a lizard he’s cradling in his arms onto one of his shoulders so he can pump the hand enthusiastically, the biggest smile. He has no idea what’s happening, but the devil knows his own. “Just John, yes, hello young ladies.” He glances upstairs, “I have made it a bit hard for guests to come in through the front, haven’t I?” He is at once wistful and proud, with a reedy Australian accent that makes it sound like he’s speaking entirely from the back of his nose.

“We were just wondering- Pink?” Fiona prompts, jostling the saddle to encourage her. John squints through the bottom window of his bifocals trying to see if he recognizes Pink - he clearly hasn’t, yet.

This wasn’t a step you could skip to, really. One must be nearly murdered by a clothesline to understand the specific nature and flavour of insanity one is dealing with and act accordingly.

Black:

Adrian Dudekov, born Hungary 1998. Age 82.

Masters degree in International Affairs, B.A in Economics and Intelligence, with extended minors in a range of disciplines that kept him in university until 27. Most of his Masters saw him taking internships and placements in Viktor Orban’s administration, specifically as it related to the EU.

Dudekov was profoundly influenced, enthralled and disgusted by the power of a single belligerent nation to entirely gum up the gears of the entire union. He learned a lot from assisting the people that did it and argued it, his opinions on this coming out only in memoirs written decades later.

So there’s a minor insight. Either he started lying about that after the consequences swung the other way for him, or he’s such a devoted civil servant that he’d do it regardless and keep his mouth shut for decades.

From there, a bit more than a decade of obscurity climbing the greasy pole of international politics as a civil servant. It’s doubtful his time or work in this period is unimportant, only that it’s unrecognized.

Major member of the UN council from the years 2040-2055 as the EU delegations lead intelligence analyst. Now there’s an interesting title and job description. His role was understanding the capabilities and capacities of the European nations to better co-ordinate them in the role on the construction of the space fountain and mitigating the effects of the ongoing climate catastrophe.

That is to say, his job was to make sure member nations weren’t lying about their taxes and coughed up what they actually owed, pretending it was in the names of optimizing efficiencies in a wartime economy.

And then it’s just… Blank. He’s one of the first up the space fountain into Aevum to be positioned as an interim non-democratic governmental body to assist the construction and foundation of the interior, to ensure the early stages of colonization and habitation went smoothly, and then the body was peacefully dissolved with their charter and all its members went happily into a wealthy retirement and never did anything again.

For a bit less than four years he - and a handful of others - held total dictatorial power over Aevum, and then more or less disappeared from history.

No, this isn’t a factor of them all being in the same conspiracy that’d be far too convenient. Probably. Maybe. It’s far more likely the nature of who this council was made up of - old career civil servants who knew better about keeping their mouths bloody shut after holding a position like that, lest people start asking questions.

These people wield the state, and their crimes must always be the crimes of the state. The decisions of a war minister must be the actions of Britain. So it goes.

His home is less protected than the Costa-Silva compound, with the simple retinue of Secret Service the retired head administrators were all given like Swiss guard. Just a scenic two story chateau style with direct jetty access to the river. He’s not expecting you.

Wife: 7 years dead. Kids: 30 years no-contact.

Elsewhere:

Dragon stirs, and numb limbs dragged as if sleepwalking, makes two broad flaps of their wings towards Ox.

Flying for such a large gravity well, it’s like shuffling your feet towards home after a double-shift.

Also:

Mostly to Orange, but;

TarotRootBiscuits: I just read the article!
TarotRootBiscuits: I feel like a superhero!!! Oh my god!!!!!
TarotRootBiscuits: I just feel really bad though about
TarotRootBiscuits: The kids?
TarotRootBiscuits: We kind of blew their mum up and everyone is going to hate her now like, I kind of doomscrolled the comments a bit and it’s… really bad.
TarotRootBiscuits: I was thinking of sending them something as an apology for them getting caught up in it
TarotRootBiscuits: Let them know Caliban and Ariel are thinking of them too
TarotRootBiscuits: … maybe a copy of Tangled? Since it’s about being locked in a house and it turns out even though you love your mum she’s kind of evil?