“Well!” 3V says, cutting through what might have been, in the (flesh-and-blood) hands of a much less capable person, a nightmare of an awkward moment. Her smile’s too self-aware of what’s about to come out of her mouth, and she’s inviting Ferris to laugh along with her, not at her. “I’m afraid that most of what I’ve got to work with is a bit ridiculous. [i]3V[/i]’s silly, sure, but [i]Ms. Valentine[/i] isn’t that much better.” A lifetime of getting little chocolate kisses and jokes about how won’t you be [i]my[/i] Valentine, and laughing at February every year to avoid cringing at it.

You’ve got to control the moment. You’ve got to project both magnanimity and power, and how better to do that than making them laugh? So what if it’s an audience of one right now? Everybody’s acting, darling. ([i]Daaaaahling.[/i]) Because the price of not doing that is being [i]awkward.[/i]

The real trick is finding the sincerity, too. You know how many people can’t hack that after mugging for the stream over and over and over again? It’s always got to be the sincerity. And she’s sincere in wanting to make Ferris laugh, a little bit, at ridiculousness and the dumb little dance we hedgehogs have to do.

“You could just use [i]Vesna,[/i] but if we go to drinks [i]and[/i] first names in fifteen minutes? I’m not [i]that[/i] easy, ma’am.” A wink, a sincere grin, a lift of the shot glass and a-down it goes.

And that buys her just enough time to wonder why a woman doing her best to live a life free of the culpability that everybody else buys into would want to talk to [i]her.[/i] Friend of a friend situation? Or because she represents the journalists, because she’s the one who was willing to drop everything, leave the keys under the proverbial mat, and climb a mountain just to speak with her? Because it’s very obviously not watching her old streams. Hell, maybe it’s just the novelty of seeing someone who used to be somebody, too, getting involved with the real activists and the shit-kickers.

“What do I want?” 3V muses out loud, once the moment’s passed. “Well! I want to have a good time. Meet interesting people. Make a fuss about things that deserve to be made a fuss about. Sleep at night knowing that I dug my heels in where I should.” That’s still surprisingly tender; she bounces after it with the giddiness of someone playing with a knife against their skin. “I run a little place on Aevum because it’s fun. I could be making a lot more money if I wanted to encourage people to get into a game designed to find people with gambling addictions and fleece them for a bunch of digital pictures, but it wouldn’t be [i]fun.[/i] I climbed a mountain today because it was there and people for centuries have thought it was a pretty big deal, so I might as well, right? And I’m going to jazz up what you tell me so that folks who can’t climb mountains or even take enough time off work to come out here can be entertained for a little bit, and feel things for a little bit, and maybe somebody smarter than me will have a realization and realize there’s something that they can do with your way of looking at the world to improve things. I think we owe it to everybody else to make things better, and we owe it to ourselves to chip in, because otherwise the only thing left is deadening the part of you that cares, y’know? I can’t bring down capitalism, and I’m definitely not strong enough to be as hardcore about avoiding consumption as you are, but… like, the alternative is rolling over and ignoring how shit things are for other people and climbing mountains because you can put the pictures online or because it’ll convince you that you deserve your managerial job. When really, the mountain’s here to be really, [i]really[/i] human at.”

This time, the tea. Down in one long gulp. Roll the taste around before it’s gone.

“I wish everything worked like that, you know? Just! Everybody rolling out of bed and asking themselves what would be [i]fun[/i] to do. And maybe, if we all promised to be cool about things, it’d even work.” Her smile’s tinged with a bit of self-criticism, trying to establish itself before Ferris can express it. “But some people just want to see Number Go Up, or proof that they’re special and don’t have to play by the same rules. Gotta have [i]moderation[/i] one way or another…”