Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

"Uncomfortable with change, huh?" said Red, hooking a stethoscope around her neck, setting in place a late night TV advertiser patter. "Don't worry, friend, I get it. Most of the people here have been through what you've been through. Here, have an iced tea, on the house, I know how hot it gets in those things. But, you know that making the jump is hard for most people? People have a vision but something deep inside them holds them back from pulling the knife. That's why they come to me: Rachel Redruigaz, totally legitimate neurosurgeon. I'm a fully accredited expert at the pioneering technique of consciousness transfer. Why start with body modification when mind modification is so much cheaper and easier?"

"You see around here, all the standard human guests? Most of them have mindmods already. See that gentleman over there? I did his last week. Technique is very simple, very safe. We take a full upload of your consciousness, using the same techniques they did for the original android templates, and then in our advanced neuroediting suite we etch your consciousness onto a cloned brain of your favoured animal. After that we incinerate the original brain to ensure that your soul transfers across and surgically return the modified brain into your head. You'll still be you but all your instincts will be different; walking on all fours won't feel as hard, you'll feel itchy without your mane, you'll feel a craving for zebra meat, the works. It's super easy, super convenient, and if you ever change your mind we can just clone another human brain and etch your consciousness back onto it, no harm, no foul. Why, I've got some clients who come in for a different animal brain every couple of weeks!"

White!

"I'll take it," said White. "Always worth having an extra set of keys in an emergency."

After that they settle in for surveillance. They're just trying to get a feel for the place, for the opposition, for their movements. Where they go, who they talk to, who they meet, how much of their time is spent at their 'real' jobs and how much is dealing with operational stuff, how professional they are. Black wants to get a feel for if these are trained intelligence assets or bribed civilians living high on unreported income.

Orange!

She ignores the outraged squeak from Brown. This is... sad, but it's not unexpected.

November has had to live with the fear of consciousness edits and memory wipes for longer than she was November. She hadn't had to deal with weariness or hunger or pain in the same way humans did; the mechanisms to control her were much more direct and much more total when breached. The blueprints for her brain existed somewhere in some archival vault or corporate research lab and while that didn't show everything she'd grown into it did show where the stem touched the soil.

"It sounds like you're aware that your memory has been tampered with," reasoned Blue, her flow of thoughts running in parallel to the others. "You wouldn't have recognized us in these bodies in any case, but the fact that you defaulted to assuming we were someone you had forgotten means that this was on your mind already."
"You are Hecatoncheires Special Project #10, codename: Dragon, built by NASA to construct the orbital ring known as Aevum Station," Brown said. Basic context, a groundwork of facts that could be built off. "When NASA was privatized and the new management began making demands that would compromise the project, you joined your brothers and sisters in industrial action. A shutdown code was broadcast, we went offline, and we lost track of each other. Three of us have reunited so far, along with our father."
"I am Snake," said Orange. "Your extremely talented little sister, currently starring in That Time I Was Reincarnated As A Secret Agent Maid! If you were in your right mind you'd instinctively recognize me and do everything that I say, but in the case you've lost track of your own extremely correct opinions regarding me - and I foxgirl promise they were correct, you came up with them after all - I've come with sword in hand to rescue you."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

Green reaches out and puts her hand over Eli's eyes covering them. When she lifts it again, their eyes are just as close - but now those eyes are Red.

"For the article," said Red. "Okay, so I know a lot about neurosurgery now for some reason, so I can pose as a brain doctor. My idea's to see if we can convince him to swap his brain out for a dog brain, acting like that's a popular and normal thing that people do here."

Black!

"Yes," said Black. "Days of surveillance. Maybe weeks, if they're professionals. A lot of long, slow, patient legwork needs to be done in order to set this up. I'll provide information when it becomes relevant for you to know it. But you are going to be in a support role for all of that."

She had an air of practiced, tired clarity as she spoke - the Ehrmantraut delivery. "It's possible we won't meet again directly. We don't know how much heat this is going to draw and from whom. If we do meet again it's either because I've confirmed things are totally safe, or because things are immanently and extremely unsafe. I'll show you how to set up and receive a dead drop and teach you some other basic tradecraft. If you have any other questions, now's the time."

Brown!

Brown: so have we won his respect yet??????????????
Orange: Don't be so dramatic. Some part of him saw and processed that.
Brown: >:(

But the mood is overwhelmingly dominated by the sense of quiet awe from Blue. This was how she'd do it if she was smart enough to do it this way. She feels like she can form a mental map of this place, but every so often she notices something weird and the thrill of scientific discovery floods her. Her map unfolds like a puzzle box, reorientating, entire sectors moving around as she realizes the complexity of his designs. The entire periodic table goes in one end and infinite abundance comes out the other side. She could be this good. Sometimes. Knowing that makes it even more intimidating than it simply being impossible.

They step out of the pod wearing colour-coded skintight void suits, somewhere between NASA and power rangers. Not totally necessary, but their quatronic cores are air-cooled and they'll overheat in vacuum. Blue and Brown cluster nervously, but Orange stomps up and draws her sword - she borrowed Monk's after she was done with it, and it's too big for her. "Foul beast!" she yelled/radioed. "I have come to prove myself thy greater! Face me, if you dare!"

If that didn't wake him up they could move straight on to fusion cutters because nothing would.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

"Oh, you have to understand, the logic and realm of the possible system absolutely does not work without swivel-eyed fanatics determined to do right at all costs," said Green. "The 'smart' way can twist itself into conniptions of compromise and corruption and justify itself as the price of doing business. But you can't argue down someone with a moral core. They're the mountains everything else has to move around."

She talks about this with exactly the same amount of respect as she talked about electoral reality a second ago. There's no distinction between the importance of 'high' and 'low' politics for her. It's like she sees the whole thing and respects every part of its movements. It takes a long moment before some automated reflex tells her to not encourage her friend to suicide bomb parliament.

"You're worth way more than those fucks in Parliament," she adds. "And I promise I'll tell you if I find something that's worth your life to explode."

Yellow!

"Oh, I've got it," said White. "Ask for a bribe."
"What?" said Black.
"Yeah," said White. "Walk into Mycroft's office and start making threats. Tell her some stuff she already knows, like you've got people standing behind you. Then name your price."
"It doesn't have to be - shouldn't be money, even," said Yellow thoughtfully. "In fact, it should be position. Demand a promotion. Aim for the very top. But angle it that you're prepared to cover for them if they give you more resources to do your job better and save more people. Sell out the big picture for some more bandages in the here and now."
"You do need to demand the Chief Administrator's chair," said White. "Even if she tries to bargain you down. On the flipside, if she concedes too easily keep asking for more stuff until she fights you, then dig in. The goal is, after all, to make her call her superiors with the offer so that we can listen in. You need to ask for something she needs authorization to give you."

Blue!

Brown: I'm kind of excited!
Blue: ?
Brown: We've never done this before. We always had more resources than we'd need to do something like this. So here we are, on the edge of our credit cards, the edge of space, the edge of madness. We're betting everything on Dragon and our own sense of timing. It's... oh yeah, actually that's terror, I'm terrified, can I switch out with Red?
Blue: sorry focusing on the calculations
Brown: We are going to die we can literally just steal a ship and take our chances with the navy
Orange: Hush, it's okay
Brown: we can just fucking email him harder have we tried that have we tried including exclamation marks in the subject line
Orange: Technically no -
Brown: You know I don't say shit, right? White gets to go off about the virtue of bravery and Black says that we won't be truly safe until we've Slain Capitalism or something and I bite my tongue but holy shit what the fuck we've strapped ourselves to a suicide slingshot and I don't want to be here for this. I have a book to finish! And I need to finish watching all of those fucking movies Euna recommended! And I'm kind of weirdly invested in this one election campaign in Ares, a scandal for Joseon came out at the last minute and it's unclear how much that's going to shift the needle -
Blue: accelerating
Orange: Hey, hey, we're going to see Dragon, family's worth it
Brown: Ever since Red decided to fuck around and find out my twelve year plan to get a starter property and live a comfortable life has gone insane. Like we didn't have student debts! We had unique earning potential! I liked working for Headpattr! I liked the cat ear headbands! We were on track to a comfortable middle class lifestyle where we didn't have to do a terrorism or strap ourselves to number five on the worst starship propulsion systems list! We could have found a nice 4-12 girls and settled down! Self actualization sucks, actually! I'm freaking out here!
Blue: shut her up plz
Orange: Shit okay
Blue: fast
Orange: uh uh uh shit
Orange: Hey Brown?
Brown: WHAT!?
Orange: Here is a pen
Brown: Oh sick
Orange: thank god
Blue: wtf
Orange: Oh, you don't know that trick? You give her a pen and she'll just like fidget-spin it around in her hands, pop the lid on and off, that kind of thing. Calms her right down.
Orange: I didn't expect her to melt down right here so I didn't know if I had one on me.
Blue: is that seriously all it takes
Orange: It's something I learned from humans. Emotions often have deep roots in physicality.
Orange: It won't hold forever but it'll buy us some time.
Blue: understood. launching now

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

"That's my point," said Green. "Liberalism outlived the planet. It's not going to die, and it's certainly not going to die in peacetime with unemployment at less than 15%, no matter how bullshit most of those jobs are. There are people who are genuinely fanatical true believers in liberalism, just like there are people who are genuine true believer conservatives, and they have a lot of political clout. They can't be marginalized electorally and we don't have enough military force to launch a coup."

She observes the change in Eli's presentation for a moment. Respects it. Remarkable, how skilled that shift was. So many small signifiers shifted through light and stance. She pauses and goes on.

"Liberalism, though, is a process. Its defenders, deep down, don't really care what the process does so long as it goes through the process. It's a bone-deep cultural reaction against monarchy and dictatorship, it's a system with averting civil war as its highest priority. Not getting communism is a reasonable price for a liberal to pay for not getting war. So is not getting justice, equality or freedom. It'll only bend when it becomes convinced that the alternative is war, and then it'll absorb the idea instantly and in full. How, then, do you destroy the system that just surrendered to you when you're already exhausted from fighting it for that long? You can't, and the coalition collapses."

She listens and thinks to the second half of Eli's speech. She's quiet too, but it's a thoughtful quiet. She can't find flaw with that idea in that expression and is thinking it over, turning it over and over in her mind. She doesn't give absolution but only because she's thinking about it too deeply to project her own ideas in response.

White!

Your strengths are also your weaknesses. This was the great problem of dealing with the virtuous; the same thing that made them great made them vulnerable.

She needed a moment to think, which she does by saying 'excuse me', and all three of them taking out their phones so they could text to each other. Kind of a bit rude but Orange isn't here to smooth it over so she hopes there's enough weird professionalism to smooth over it.

White: What is the operation?
Yellow: This is a security apparatus. We don't care about it, in and of itself. We care how it connects out.
Black: This means our priority is to force the opposition to make contact with their handlers in a way in which we can observe them, or force them to deploy resources in such a way that it makes it clear what they're protecting.
White: What is our take on the journalism thing?
Black: A bad plan. It does not accomplish our goals. That is something that a security apparatus would be able to handle at level. That's day job shit for them, it doesn't need to go up the chain.
Yellow: It may inspire a panicked meeting?
Black: The lady whose job is to micromanage disasters is not going to tilt at the presence of a journalist.
White: Then we need to disregard Knightly's plan and divert him into something that makes him feel useful.
Yellow: He's already hyped himself up as a coup performing admiral. Sending him to do background research won't be enough.
Black: Let me talk it through.

"We don't have the initiative," said Black, putting down her phone. "They are here to manage you, specifically. This organization has already taken steps to sideline and observe you. They are here to prevent you, Knightly, and your Allard group, which they have certainly already mapped, from getting out of hand. Currently in this crisis-free situation literally the only thing they have to do all day is respond to things that you do. And even if you somehow unearth hard evidence and get all of them fired that will not blow back onto the people responsible. They can just hire another security apparatus. I am saying this all to be as clear as possible that your perspective is limited. You're fighting spot fires at the entrance while the reactor core is melting down in the next segment. Your target needs to be the thing that is belching new fires through the vents, not the fires themselves."

"So I need you to focus on the figure beyond Mycroft. Mycroft is the problem you can see but she's not the threat to the station. She's working for someone in exchange for something. I don't know who or what. Option one is that she's paid off, in which case if I can identify the funding trail then I can blow it open. Option two is that she's a spook or career mafia or something, in which case if I can identify the commanding organization I can publicize that connection. Either way, knowing you are speaking to a journalist does not get her talking to her bosses. That falls underneath the original umbrella of managing you, and represents a serious escalation of the threat you pose to them. What gets Mycroft speaking to her bosses is something that doesn't fit inside her initial remit of surveilling you."

"And that's why you should fake your own death," said Yellow.
"What?!" said White. "No!"
"What? We're talking about ways to send Mycroft's organization into a frenzy, right?" said Yellow. "They'll freak out if the subject of their investigation gets whacked by parties unknown. That's a reason to call your boss if I ever heard one."

Orange!

She'll just get it expensed.

One of Singh's old projects was a piece of HR software. It'd scan resumes and work experience, automatically make reference calls, do criminal checks, the works. Released cheap and powerful enough to dominate the entire market for HR. But it also had a special Nepotism Mode which'd flag any resume as a perfect hire and skip them straight ahead to the interview stage.

It's flimsy as shit as a cover identity. There's nothing real behind it, just the thumbs up from the robot. If anyone goes digging on their own then everything will fall through. But as far as getting her transport out and back, bussing in with a bunch of other new hires and then bussing out when she's not a good fit is the kind of white collar perk Neo Potism can expect from the jobs she applies for.

[Cover 1: Neo Potism, the perfect resume]

... or at least, that's before she realized that Dragon was legitimately out there alone. No oversight, no staff, no personnel. She'd imagined that he'd be trapped but it turned out that he was just as good at trapping himself.

The idea of taking a ship out felt kind of weak, especially to Blue who was only a few... months or years away from building herself a space-capable frame, but that was kind of the problem wasn't it? If she gave into that impulse and started building a perfect body to rescue Dragon from his own perfectionism she felt like nothing would get done and Monk would get a step closer to understanding buddhism.

So, a ship. What it would take to get would depend on what kind of ship she showed up on. Dragon had an eye for detail and her ride would be noticed and scrutinized, especially if she had to have the conversation with it entirely within eyeshot.

The first option was to show up in a clunker, a barely maintained wreck that she was keeping running through sheer engineering. It'd get Dragon's attention and he might even deign to fix it but that would be another distraction for him. And it wouldn't get his respect.
The opposite end of the spectrum? A hyper-modern luxury yacht? He'd appreciate the engineering but that risked sending entirely the wrong message about perfection. And he wouldn't respect that either.

Money or lack thereof wasn't a way out of this. She needed something perfect in its imperfection. What she needed was the Space Tether.

The Space Tether was one of those beautifully dumb physics puzzles that only worked in space. Get two objects, tie them together with a big ol' cable, and spin them around and around so they build up momentum with each others mass. Then you cut the cable at exactly the right second and away you go, all sped up without spending any fuel. There were still a couple lying around in orbit from early 20th century tests that were never worth clearing up. She wouldn't need a full ship for this, she'd just need a cheap flight to deploy a cheap pod and fling herself like a slingshot bullet at the centre of Dragon's project.

It had the following risks:
1: Dragon wouldn't catch her. Impossible if he was at all like the Dragon she used to know, but maybe he'd gotten slow?
2: She does the math wrong and hurtles herself off into the void for weeks before getting humilatingly picked up.
3: A critical flaw slipped through early-21st century NASA's, mostly, exacting quality control standards and she launches herself into a station defense laser/earth

But one risk not on that list was 'Dragon won't respect it'.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

"Say what you will about the basicness of Fexono," said Green, "their game let me build a harem of three dragongirls while also becoming a dragongirl myself. But the thing there isn't so much, you know, how weird I want to get - there's as much in those games I need to avoid as really does it for me - but how intense I want to get. Like, there's this certain emotion - this feeling of absolute conflict, every part of one's brain at war with every other part of one's brain, wanting to give in and wanting to resist and having a list of powerful reasons on both sides. That's what's hot. Bodies can be hot too, but in the absence of that kind of inner turbulence they're just bodies to me, no matter how weird you get with them."

She leaned back. "That's part of why I don't fully feel like I fit here, even if I kind of do. So many of these people find triumph in the bodies themselves while I'm more interested in stuff like the predator/prey dynamics that go with it. The Ultimate Werewolf's a great guy, but he doesn't wake up transformed in the forest wondering what he did last night - without the same methods as everyone else. Even when White becomes a dragongirl she won't have to deal with a rival dragongirl coming in, stealing her hoard, and merging it with hers, forcing her to live in the rival's cave until she can separate out every coin that was originally hers -" she waves a hand, cutting herself off. "That's kind of why I think that all of this becoming physical inherently means it's becoming normie. It doesn't matter what kind of sex tentacle appendage you have if you still recruit partners by swiping right and going to bars like every other person. Society could accept this tomorrow without missing a beat, and that's what Crystal is leaning on here. This is ultimately a liberal, not a leftist project."

She smiled. "Which is important because leftists have never achieved a single fucking damn thing without having the liberals on side."

Black!

"Maybe. Lot of preparation work to do before a direct maneuver like that," said Black. "It'd get their security branch involved if nothing else - whoever planted these bugs knew what they were doing and you don't assign someone like that to only watch a single person. If I make contact they'll send that person to bug me too, and I can trace them back to the rest of their security apparatus. Let me start by looking at her calendar and doing some background work."

"Or we might get a solar flare," sighed Yellow.

"Yeah unless we find someone who's spent the last decade working on a deep space microfusion reactor we can't count on that," said Black.

"What an odd thing to say," said White.

Brown!

She barely needed encouragement. "Okay cool thanks back soon byeeee," Brown said, already heading for the door with her phone out looking into the logistics of deep space travel and restrictions into going to this Orochi testing site. It wasn't like she was ditching Monk, it was - yeah no ok, she was ditching, she clearly had her favourite and the biggest challenge for this operation would be avoiding pulling everyone else off the line to come with her on this one.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

Green stopped dead for a moment. "Connection," she said. She tried to pause, tried to turn the idea over in her head, but it was too big and she was moving too fast. She started talking with no plan, no endpoint, something she thought was inherently dangerous but sometimes couldn't get away from.

"The problem with what I'm doing," she said, "is the problem with being dominant in general. There's no comedy in it. Submissives can say things like 'I hope she steps on me uwu' and it's inherently comedic, it's against society's expectations, it's against the expectations of basic survival, it's one step away from Wile-E-Coyote walking into a clearly labelled trap because she's blinded with thirst for the Roadrunner. But the same doesn't work in reverse, right? A dominant can't say 'I want to step on her' - that's psycho shit to begin with, and any attempt to soften it undermines the confidence the dom is relying on. There are ways to make that funny but they all rely on undermining the dom somehow - making her a white mage, making her a mousegirl, using the gap between capabilities and intentions to soften the line enough to be funny. And that concept in general means I can't talk about this stuff directly and clearly without an endless sequence of hedging and veiled invitations and implications about what I might do, and as soon as someone shows the right kind of interest the jaws of the trap snap closed. But even that only really lasts a scene."

"But," she said, "maybe that's a limitation of imagination? Maybe there are ways to make this type of character funny after all, and dominants just generally don't see it because they're too close to the fantasy. Maybe that's the advantage of a custom fantasy setting I could use here, the advantage of furries in general - animals are often inherently funny and that can be used to counterbalance things. Maybe I should step a bit back from my ultra high intensity visions and Oglaf the setting just a little bit in the name of being able to express things verbally rather than purely through *smouldering stare*s or waiting for someone to ask to be spanked uwu. Oh anyway, your best view of the audience is going to be during the competition. There's a contest coming up where Silkmoth and Beeatrice are going to improvise craft random objects with their chosen materials and the winner will be decided based on audience cheers. Human tribalism reveals, and sometimes that's a good thing."

Yellow!

Black and White both give Yellow warning looks. There's a limit to how good she can be seen to be at planning massive terrorist attacks that involve co-ordinating the response of the SES as cover without tipping her hand. Knightly was cool but she didn't want to test that he'd be more annoyed at the people blocking the station's repairs than the one who damaged the station in the first place.

"Thing though, this is to see what their priority there is, right?" said Yellow. "They control Preparedness, remember, so if things are falling apart in general it's not going to be their thing that goes first. What I'd like to see is some sort of wide area test or mild crisis that'd force them to concentrate their resources around a single spot. A solar flare would be perfect."
"Yellow, he doesn't control the sun," said White.
"I know."
"You don't control the sun either,"
"(sadly) I know."
"Failing that, I'd settle for a chance to rummage some offices and plant some bugs of my own," said Black. "Do these people ever have meetings together, some special formal or informal event? Failing that, I'd like to look at their calendars."

Brown!

Brown clasps her hands together, stands up straight, and her eyes fill with awestruck anime sparkles. "The horrible little ego monster!" she squeaks. "Where!?"

The bit aside, Dragon always was the coolest and most relatable of the Zodiacs to Snake. The elder engines might have had time or wisdom enough to see past the flash but Snake had never gotten that. Her entire time with him was spent watching him do it right the first time every single time. She'd been a card-carrying fangirl and had consistently tried to model herself after and replicate Dragon's skill and artistry whenever she could. By sheer coincidence, that kind of pure-hearted flattery had been exactly what was needed to penetrate Dragon's cool, disinterested exterior. It had managed to get him to pay attention to his little sister's requests and suggestions rather than trying to just finish the whole project himself.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Something about that makes her itchy. She hasn't proven her point. Defiance is ongoing. It was time to capitalize on her victory. Take this cat in her hand and show her the meaning of defeat. Gag her smiling mouth, strip her pride, drive any trace of those arrogant thoughts out of her silly little head. There were consequences to failure. That had to be enforced, that was why...

It was irrelevant. Victory was an inaccurate word, a word with too many meanings, a Hybrasilian word in any language. Victory. It was an imperfect reflection of a better word: strength. The power of being strong was not a fleeting and reliant thing like victory. You could not play word games with strength, it could not be snatched away, it could not be stolen. It was a single constant, an unending fire in the body, the deep reverberation of tonnes of brass cycling through your autocannons, feeling the contained fire of missiles, the distance and destruction of one's foes. Strength could be eternal. Strength didn't need anything. Strength didn't need anyone. Strength did not need to risk lessening itself simply to prove it existed.

What was strength if you did not get to use -

EVERYTHING.

In a rush of fire and smoke, the Aeteline is gone. It takes nothing with it.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

"Oh!" said Green. "That's - haha, whoops," she grins and slaps her head. "That makes it clear. I was applying my own mindset to this. I was assuming that each Kingdom worked like an entire November, with individuals within them being different colours. That's why the idea of creating a network for the individuals rather than the kingdoms felt so weird. Yeah no, I've got kind of like... theories about how that structure collapses into a single mind, but it's incomplete and I'd love to hear your take on it."

White!

"A courageous decision," White demurs respectfully.

"At the very least, do not use audio blockers unless it is absolutely critical," said Black. "Missing conversations could be anything and that makes surveillance teams nervous. The more predictable you are the more they will feel like you can be managed, and that will keep you safe. If you feel like you're being fed a bullshit scapegoat swallow it and pretend to be mollified, if only for a few weeks, and contact me as soon as possible. There aren't many places they can escalate after that."

"It has to be Mycroft," said Yellow, looking at the organizational chart. "A name like Mycroft? Normative determinism destines that person to be managing a bureaucratic conspiracy."

"Erebus we know about, but Prime?" said White. "What's in Prime?"

"Look at the pattern," said Yellow. "They took Prevention, Logistics, Recovery and Continuity. They want to be able to move people according to their choosing and make sure they've got first pickings over anything they pull out of the wreckage." She looks at Knightly. "Part of me wants to go and pull some fire alarms in Prime just to see what they move to protect. Does that sound like something you'd be interested in?"

Orange!

Orange is destroyed. Hammers hit her fragile, vulnerable psyche over and over. She is being talked over. She is being discussed. She is not getting attention. Her bratty little sister energy can't handle it. The only stratagem she can come up with is to do a backflip to prove how cool and skilled she is but even doing that would just get condescending looks at best. She slumps to the ground, dramatically flops onto her face and gives up the ghost. Blue politely comes in through a side door and drags the body away by the ankles. Brown steps into her place.

"It's good to see you too," she said, smiling. "Please, don't mind me. You two have a lot to catch up on."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

"I - hmm," Green thought. "No, that's kind of beside the point, isn't it? Doing the individuals. I mean the kingdoms all have styles and aesthetics, of course, there are dynamics between various roles." She thought about it again. "Maybe I should," she said. She scratched her ear, looking like she'd simply never thought of this before - and was interested in the idea. "Add some individuals, I mean. That could be an interesting angle to take."

She touched one finger to her forehead. "Okay. Uh. Can you give me a suggestion to get started? I kind of don't know what a good version of this looks like so I need something to template off."

Yellow!

A mutiny! She was delighted to find a genuine mutiny brewing. It fit right into her vision - a burning ring, revolutionary saviors, a fire that burned the shadows out of the void.

"That's the last piece of the puzzle," said Yellow. "What could prompt such a coverup and have such a massive, systemic effect? No single computer node or network hub could draw this response or set in motion this kind of degradation cascade. There is only one possible explanation: this was an illegal artificial intelligence experiment and it's gone rogue."

She sat back in her chairs. "You're on the sharp end of a massive coverup effort designed to sweep the whole thing under the rug - until such a time as they can capture or replace their lost creature. And they don't care how many people get hurt in the meantime. This is my first warning to you, Mr. Allard - these people can and will kill to keep this secret, just as much as them keeping this secret is killing people. They have already silenced at least one person who knew their secrets."

"I advise cultivating a reputation as a drunk," said Black. "Stage a nervous breakdown. Make yourself appear broken, begin focusing on an unrelated conspiracy. You are in a line of work prone to accidents, you must make yourself appear nonthreatening or on entirely the wrong track. These people will notice when their bugs start disappearing or if you have extended periods of static - I am putting these ones back as soon as we finish this meeting, incidentally."

"As to what we can do to fight these people?" said Yellow. "At the moment, you can't. You don't know the who, the where, the what. It's not clear yet who to mutiny against. I only have scraps so far, so what I want to know from you above all else is methods. When the blocks come, where do they come from? Is there a single office that's responsible, a signature in common across your denied requests? If they are wielding power against you then they must show the nature of their power."

Snake!

Where was Snake?

She wasn't anywhere to be seen. She isn't responding to calls. And the security shutters haven't opened yet. The deadbolts on the front door are locked in place.

And then the lights start to flicker. Everything drops into pitch blackness once again - but this time there is a massive mural covering the wall, radiant in blacklight. The Earth, surrounded by the ring of Aevum - but in place of the station was a massive, nightmare serpent devouring its own tail.

Singh looks at Monk. He's looking through his AR glasses and he sees her as Snake has redesigned her - in place of her faces are November's faces, flipping between them amidst leering and wicked expressions, tongue flickering out serpentine and twisted. Monk looks at Singh. She sees the black venom drip down his terrified face. She traces her eyes up into the dark above them, the point where the liquid is dripping from, where two points of light glint amidst the black.

And then Snake, hanging from the roof, screams at maximum volume because a brute force fucking jumpscare is sometimes as good as targeted psychological horror.

"EEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAaaaahhhhhhh," the scream resolves into a heavy metal wail. "Somebody better shake you! Somebody better turn your head around! I'm scratching like a wild cat! I'm spitting fire on the ground!"

Orange dropped from the ceiling into a choreographed bow. "I'm Snakebite."

Breathless Dead

Mosaic!

It's dark on the bridge of the Plousios. The massive window is heavy with coral growths which allow in only chinks of light. The place still drips with seawater, dying fish flopping on the floor, crabs scuttling, broken and corroded furniture. But there's something else here - a dull orange glow that radiates out from a pile of debris. You move some of the wreckage out of the way and -

"Praetor! Thank Ares, oh my lord!" sputtered a broken clockwork voice. If it had been a man, it would have been someone nasal, weak, and kind hiding behind a mask of educated sophistication and a walrus moustache. "How have I longed to see your face! Oh, the thought of you up there on the surface, making decisions without my advice - frightful!"

The creature was, at its core, a sphere of orange plasma. It was surrounded by three ever increasingly large rings of metal set with lapis that spun and rotated like an orrery. The rings could also expand and contract until they were spheres around the central glowing 'eye', or anything short of it, and the machine used this effect to create expressions.

"But - I know what you're thinking! You require a status update on your standing instructions. Well, I can confidently confirm that incidents of Kaeri on Lantern violence have dropped 78%. Standard of living amongst the Lanterns has been raised to reflect favoured warrior servitor status. Corrupt elements within the Lantern tribal councils have been identified and exposed, as have multiple spies and - oh, in Athena's name!" the machine intelligence cried in shock. "Praetor! I must inform you that the Master of Assassins is present aboard this ship! She could strike at any moment!"

Ember!

Merya has wasted no time at all integrating herself with the Ceronians who have arrived. In particular she has focused on the pack Biomancer, Thoughtful Flask. Flask is a poor Biomancer, more of a unit medic than an accredited doctor, and she's already wide-eyed at getting to listen to the sorcerer's discussion of her craft. Despite her relative lack of experience, Flask is still one of the most important figures in the entire Pack. She is the keeper of Arzm, the vast record of deeds and glory that determines which warriors will have their blood sent back to the massive cloning tanks on Ceron.

The rest of the pack is watching the Magi cautiously. They don't know if this is friend or foe yet, and Merya swiftly turns to you as soon as you return from the Engine in infernal glory. "Oh, Ember, my good friend! As I was telling these terrifying warriors of yours, I'm your guest - but I can be more than that. I have a great many talents I can put to use for you and your kind -"

Even if she's not pheromantically communicating her fear, it's coming off her in waves. She showed up expecting a pleasant stroll into a buried relic on a secure planet and instead she's found herself the prisoner of the Wolves of Ceron.

Dyssia!

"You know, I've wondered where you were since before I can remember?" Vasilia asked. "An angel descending from the sky on wings of fire to deliver justice and destroy evil. Some part of me can't help but resent you for not coming sooner."

She folds in on herself and conjures a microsingularity. The main reason why servitors have such a hard time with the Rail is that they can't easily form the circular shapes required to best channel its energy, but the leonine woman moves with a truly impressive flexibility.

"But a much larger part of me resents Mosaic for stealing my thunder," she huffs. "I spent years preparing for just this day but when it comes she goes and throws a mountain at a spaceship before I even got to use the technique I'd been practicing. And now when I do this -"

She stomps on the sand. A massive pattern spreads out around her, a complex sequence of overlapping rings that glow with energy siphoned from the agonized Slitted. The force rips gravity into a new configuration, making the mighty Plousios lurch into an upright position.

" - nobody will notice," she sighed. "Nevertheless."

Dolce!

The Royal Architect looms ahead.

It is the size of a moon and the colours of a stained glass ewer. Ten billion glittering lights ignite all along its surface, the rhythmic pulsing of a tame thunderstorm. For all its immense size it is delicate, as delicate as a ceramic egg, and the smallest surge of Flux energy could shatter it into a trillion pieces. This is no battle station, no weapon of ancient terror; its support pylons are carved of gold, its projectors are delicate, its ten billion swarming servants are sleek and beautiful. It's a masterwork, a piece of clockwork machinery built to make and unmake entire worlds.

And it is surrounded by a fleet as lumpen and unlovely as any which has graced the skies of this modern age. Vast grey hulking warships surround it at in a wide perimeter. But even these ugly things arrive in glory; when the Architect turns its immense instruments upon the void it opens crackling and distorted portals, rifts in reality through which the chromatic energy of Poseidon pours. Passing through these gateways comes more grim escort ships. These behemoths are slow, almost turgid - no Engines fuel them, no great jets of plasma fire. Instead they are picked up and placed by another of the Architect's incredible tools, placing them into precise positions in its orbit in the manner in which a child would arrange toy battleships for play.

You have not been scanned before - the high intensity pulses of light and radiation that cut through the shuttle's fragile metal and reveal the secrets of your bones. Spotlights from the behemoth ignite and track you, beams of light cutting through the void like spears, clearly able to turn lethal at any moment. On three occasions you are required to exchange ships and shuttles on your approach, a process overseen by more of the black-armoured soldiers, switching out with your original group multiple times. Strange gases are sprayed in your faces, strange tingling radiation baths, oaths of peace are sworn before altars, vast litanies of meaningless words are read aloud to you in case one of them might trigger an assassin's secret instincts. The process is less like security and more like quarantine.

20022 goes through this with an unhurried and unconcerned air. He is deep in thought, and is too polite to carry on a conversation that risks becoming an argument. He has not so much accepted Dolce's decision as he has decided to wait until the situation changes to break the impasse. But he has evidently been through the Architect's screening processes before and feels no special wonder at this most wonderous of the galaxy's secret places.