[b]November:[/b]

You're left waiting longer than you'd think. Watch, if you like, as Rudy takes a few moments to read what he can of the premium dispute services, not bothering to do the same for the Pinkerton investigation. There was never a doubt [i]which [/i]button he'd press, but he is meticulous in his decision to press it.

Maybe killing's not in his nature, but you don't get office space like this if you don't have [i]some [/i]kind of predator's instinct. Defenses raise at the too-good-to-be-true, a glint of steel in a dark alley out of the corner of his eye. But maybe that was your point.

Finally, Rudy taps the button.

"May I have a minute please, Ms?" He calls from his office at the same time. does not specify which 'Ms' he means - trusting whoever answers to be it. "In my study, if you'd be so kind?"

When White answers - this is her plan, her contingency, her call to answer - he presses a remote on his desk to close the door behind her. Red's shattered remains are where you knew they would be, look how you'd have expected them to look. There they are all the same. Rudy looks for all the world like a trench soldier who's been given the order to go over the top. A place beyond fear or pride or duty - he is already dead, and the next five minutes determine whether he can claw his life [i]back[/i].

"This [i]was[/i] an accident." He kills the tremor of pleading in his voice, straightens up again. Walks until he is two paces from White and stops. "Whatever it takes for that to be true, I will pay. That's what's best for both of us. Because if this is investigated - if you try to look into what [i]caused [/i]this accident - neither of us will ever be safe ever again. Please."

No apologies. No remorse. Your blood on his hands.

Well?



[b]3V:[/b]

Your gracious host is a woman named Lorraine Ferris. Her emails were polite, warm, friendly. Something from an ancient era, she still types with ":-)" emoticons, right down to the little hyphen noses. It makes sense you hadn't heard of her before she reached out to you, most of her work was done a lifetime ago, before yours. Even then, knowing what to look for, left you with the impression of a woman screaming into a megaphone, desperate not just to be heard but to be something that could not be ignored. 

Even just skimming her old work - what publications you can still search, what aging servers still carry legacy websites - one thing is clear through it all. Lorraine Ferris was angry. Too mad to live and too angry to die. Prominent in two fields, ecology and artificial intelligence, to see the worst atrocities humans would commit to each. Her work at Cogitech on AI ethics predated the Wyatt-Tversky paper by at least a decade. The chip on her shoulder was big enough to have plate tectonics. 

None of that history is evident here. There can't be anything here that draws more power than is provided by the gleaming solar panel that makes the cabin's roof. There isn't even a television that you can see. 

Now Vesna sees Ms. Ferris move about her kitchen, past the living room between them. You can see her clearly through the long, sliding glass door, and she clearly sees you just fine, too. She puts a kettle on, then takes a stoppered bottle of water out from the fridge and puts it on the bench, takes two wine glasses.

Ms. Ferris gives Vesna a nod - a smile, even, though a quick one. It's not a natural expression for her, and even that second took obvious effort. Then she moves to a comfortable chair by the fire inside, sun-bleached and moth-eaten, and even her wire-muscle mountain-climber frame doesn't protect her from making an arthritic wince as she settles. She takes her ereader out and waits, her back to you. 

You are welcome here, and you will not be hurried. 

You may take as long or as little as you like. With a word, Ms. Ferris would join you out at the railing instead. Depending on your mood, this is either a generosity, or she's put you in [i]zugzwang[/i].

A question for past and for present: When you prepared to come out here, did you learn about Lorraine through interrogation or investigation? That is - did you focus on researching her history, finding what was online about her, or did you focus on asking her about herself through your email correspondence, before this in-person interview? 

The internet doesn't forget, and Ms. Ferris clearly preferred this sit-down. This means 'interrogation' is a target of 11, roll 3d6+4 (cool, charm, [i]I Know You[/i] boosted). 'Investigation' is a 2d6 +2 (clever, social media) roll, beat a target of 8. Investigation would also allow you to keep your [i]I Know You[/i] boost for the sit-down meeting. You only get to make one first impression. Either approach will lead to an advantage. 

That was then, this is now: How long do you wait, before making your decision to greet Ms. Ferris (or maybe Lorraine, if you're lucky), and how do you do it?



[b]Persephone:[/b]

NBN is all said and more. Its only other major competitor is the more liberal, more anodyne, less sensationalist OESN (usually pronounced 'ocean'), the Outer Earth News Syndicate. OESN has more of a pride of place here, its crews aren't with you behind the bollards but directly involved in setting up the rigging and scaffolding for the stage event literally unfolding in front of you. OESN is better for the kind of brand the A-listers are a part of. NBN was clearly tipped off to have gotten here so soon, maybe just to have noses thumbed in their direction. 

A cynical voice might suggest that a manufactured culture war needs a belligerent side, and NBN provides belligerence in spades. 

Mishka Ardent was a smart choice of focus. York mentioned her ratios on Hive are legendary, she'll double down on every bad take without surrender. To show discretion is to make a tacit admission that there might be negative social consequences for airing your ideas - Mishka Ardent's too arrogant to have that filter. Her mentions exploding like the Tsar Bomba just reassures her she's the Gallileo of 2080. 

She's in an argument with a ridiculously handsome man you don't recognize, who wasn't introduced to you, but it sounds like Ardent considers him an equal. 

"... cannot be taken seriously until you denounce these calls to [i]abolish[/i] the police."

"Please," the man says - bassy voice in the microphone, sweeping a tense hand through neat salt-and-pepper hair with other, "It's hyperbole, it's rhetoric, it's not policy. This is just a case of a language barrier. Your tribe uses euphemism to undersell the real. 'Clean our streets' means pogrom the homeless. The radical left use hyperbole to gild the real. When they say 'eat the rich' they mean taxes. Learn the language barrier, and maybe we'll be able to have a real conversation."

"Frankly, Alan, what else could 'abolish the police' mean?"

'Alan' has his back to you now. You can't see his face, but he sounds exhausted. "We're on-message here. Retrain, reform, reintegrate into the community. We need to be on the same side here, Mishka, we want the same things. We're just appealing to different bases to get it." 

Mishka pauses. "Why is it so wrong to take people at face value? Nobody's calling for a bloody pogrom. Just- Have you been on the subway lately? Homeless people shit in escalators, if you lock them out of the toilets. It's filthy. I want them housed as much as you do, just get it done."

Alan sighs. "I am well aware of the human need to shit." A click of the tongue, a tilt of the head. "We need to communicate an effective synergy here, and I can't have you torpedo this because you're jumping at shadows on cave walls. Learn the language, and don't feed a fire by giving it oxygen. Denouncing is platforming. Stay on the real message."

"Filthy." She hisses, then takes a deep breath. "Alright. If I'd known you were backing this, I wouldn't have-"

You're interrupted with a shake that knocks your headphones loose, back around your neck. York's back, a look of absolute disgust on his face, bruises on his elbows, and Ted's crumpled over in a heap beside you, twitching. 

"Oh, eat a bag of cement, that was a love tap [i]at best[/i]," York grunts, yanking Ted back up to his feet by the scruff of his jacket and dusting him off, even though Ted's a full head and shoulders taller. "Listen, mate, clench your thighs next time, it's just the shock of it. Sorry about that, you seem lovely. Yeah?" Ted winces, shakes out a nod, and York looks back in the direction he's come from. "None of these prissy dinguses go to a live show? Can't have been good ones. Got through faster than I should have. Here's Harkness, she's who we're here for."

Harkness is a woman with spaghetti braids down past her shoulder blades, and precise geometric tattoos in thick lines down from her elbows to her wrists. She offers a hand to shake, her warm and level eye contact not even sparing a second glance at your prosthetics. "Jezebel." She raises her voice over the crowd effortlessly - practiced. "It's a pleasure." 

"Anything good?" York asks, tilting his head to the rig.