[b]November:[/b]

The work of data recovery takes longer than the work of Red’s restoration. The nature of the two tasks is entirely different. The first is a barn-raising - many hands lighten a load. The second is more like cooking. Setting the oven twice as hot doesn’t make it cook twice as fast, and a watched pot never boils. 

As much as her task is to stir the pot, Green’s has been to prevent too many cooks from spoiling the broth. This takes as long as it takes. 

So it is that Red is restored before the recovery of her last moments is. It wouldn’t have helped. The synthetic brain is as complex as the human one - complex in very different ways, but the ability to assemble it from blueprints does not make its functions any more cut-and-pastable. 

All of this is to say;

[quote][Data Recovery: 8 on the dice, +3 from clever and then any combination of Engineering, Drones, Data Security or Surveillance to get that up to 13][/quote]

Red is restored, as are her last experiences, but the two are returned separate from each other. Though all of November has far exceeded any expectations, she could no more have brought [i]that[/i] Red back, any more than a brain surgeon could graft memories with needle and thread. 

This Red is still the [i]true[/i] Red, but the memories are someone else’s. Surreal, not quite her own. In a very real sense, they are memories and an experience that she has been distanced from by trauma. 

Here is what she heard and what she saw, preserved in her short-term memory before it could be compressed and ‘internalized’ - rendering it inaccessible, as that compression process is as individual and inscrutable as neurochemistry. Inaccessible as the thoughts and feelings she experienced, or her motivations. These are lost to everyone, forever. 

The video itself is patchy, imperfect, raw - it’s more like a strong impression than security footage. In most cases that’s enough. 

The information, in reverse chronological order. 

1: Rudy shot Red the same moment he entered the room. There was no chance of negotiation, of pleading, of fast talk. The gun was hidden while in its owners’ coat, even to her equipment. The first moment Red saw the weapon was the same moment it was being fired. This is useful to know, now that it’s yours.

2: Rudy entered from behind a sliding bookcase in his office. Red was still concentrating on the documents she was reading, 	but she definitely saw at least that much. She didn’t try to hide, or hide what she was doing. She likely had a plan. It’s also possible that she wasn’t simply distracted by the documents - she wanted to see how that played out. Or maybe she just didn’t want to risk incriminating the rest of you. You now know which bookcase.

3: [i]This[/i] piece of the story is the truest testament of Green’s ability, and her patience. The recovered video is not clear enough to read the documents clearly. But Red’s [i]reading[/i] of it could be recovered as plaintext. Originally a stream-of-thought as how she read it, in the order she read it. Another algorithm ties it to the tracking of her eye movements, to sequence them as they were ordered on the page, and not in the order they attracted Red’s interest. 

[i]Codename: Mamluke.[/i]

Here is what’s relevant: 

This is about one of the original true AI, like the ones made to monitor mining colonies or power grids. Its serial number confirms the make, the generation, and the fact that it is not an intelligence you have had the pleasure of meeting. Not one you’ve heard of. 

These were emergency protocols. A project that was on a “Need to know” basis required an agreement on who needed to know what, and it needed to establish consequences for someone knowing more than they needed. There’s little information about [i]Codename: Mamluke[/i] itself here. 

The documents Red found describe a chain of ownership. [i]OsirisAgEng. [/i]Defunct. [i]Monokaryot.Inc. [/i]A shell company for a venture capital fund that stripped all the copper wire from [i]Osiris’[/i] walls. [i]Monokaryot.Inc.[/i] was itself acquired by [i]Yggrasil[/i] - but not [i]Codename: Mamluke[/i], which was bundled off with other undisclosed assets to… Red is interrupted, but not before learning that Rudolph Merkin is not on the payroll of its latest owner-on-paper, but of the project itself, intact and unaffected by all these mergers and sales. 

In this chain of ownership, [i]Codename: Mamluke[/i] is never once described as ‘acquired’ ‘bought’ or ‘sold’. Only inherited. It is unlikely to have ever been listed as an asset, appeared on any legitimate internal inventory. [i]Mamluke[/i] appears as a secret burden that demands tithe, a rider on the bills of sale.

Red lingered on one detail. [i]Codename: Mamluke[/i] was originally contracted by [i]Cogitech [/i]in its earliest days. [i]Mamluke’s [/i]architects are listed as Lorraine Ferris, Hypatia Ahmadi… and Miles Singh. Lorraine’s contact is stricken from the record. Hypatia, deceased. Singh is listed as the only viable emergency contact, noted as “Pragmatic - Force likely to be counterproductive. Will listen to reason.”

You may have another lead, besides Mr Merkin. 

Also on the emergency contacts is a list of representatives at Chase Black. Back when Earth was a burning car running off the road, the multinational Chase Bank had expanded the benefits it offered to its wealthiest clients - the means to preserve that wealth through Doomsday. The service outlived the end of the world. You cannot hire Chase Black directly, they are only available as a gratuity to clients who keep dragon-hoard sums with the bank. 

This is important. They excel at wetwork, and at the art of the limited hangout in the rare instances its employees get caught. If nobody can ask for these ‘emergency services’, then nobody is seen asking for them.

This would be an example of an emergency they would be called to solve.

On the plus side - if you survive an encounter with a team, long enough for cops to arrive, you [i]would[/i] send them to jail. All the money in Aevum couldn't buy a defense that would stick. Chase Black is the ultimate judicial white whale, and it's made an Ahab out of every judge and prosecutor on the station. 

4: Opening the document were the contingencies placed against Mr Merkin himself. A small bundle of chromic acid had been grafted to his brain stem, set to burst if he knowingly leaked information. The result would leave him paralyzed from the brain down, leaving him breathing and with a heartbeat. It was important he was left alive for a retrieval team, to begin a [i]very [/i]invasive interrogation process, and that he understood these terms.

This page bore Merkin’s signature at the bottom, and dated almost twenty years ago.

Finally, there is one last piece of information pulled:

5: The desk drawer was [i]not [/i]already open, but merely unlocked. Red opened it. Possibly this is what alerted Rudy in the first place. A sensor, an alarm? Unclear. 

But this has revealed something about Mr Merkin’s place in this. In an operation of need-to-know basis, he is [i]someone[/i] who needs to know who needs to know. And he keeps that information in paper records, offline, where they cannot be hacked or remotely accessed. 

This must have been the ultimate frustration of Red’s last moments. She had found a treasure map, stripped of its origin and end points. Caught in the middle of it; Here there be dragons. 

[b]3V:[/b]

Ferris wipes a tear from her eye, but she’s still smiling. “I can. Here.”

She walks back around the counter to the living room. Across from the fireplace, the wall opposite, is an enclosed cabinet in the shape you’d expect to keep crystalware - but those are usually open-panelled, letting you see the lovely contents. When she opens the bottom drawer, it’s lined in a black that eats light. The eye struggles to make sense of it. Try to understand its depth, its shape, its form, and the mind spits out divide-by-zero. 

Inside the void, at once flush against its surface and floating in infinity, is a row of silver disks with a sapphire sheen to them. She pauses. 

She opens a much narrower drawer in the cabinet, like a cutlery drawer. Inside are pairs of white fabric gloves. She puts on one pair, and puts the other on its hip-high shelf. 

Only now does she take one of the disks from that void. It’s in a translucent sleeve, but still she only touches [i]that[/i] with gloves. 

“Games were the key to everything.” She holds the disk up to the light, inspects it from every angle. “How did we solve for the Chinese Box? How does a mind learn, more than simply reacting based on a vast bank of pre-programmed responses? Through [i]play[/i]. It is how a mind first learns it can affect the world, and respond to it. It’s how a mind learns to relate to itself before it can relate to others. And it learns to relate to others through play, as well.”

Make out the sharpie on the disk’s sleeve. [i]1980-1990[/i]. 

“By the time I started archiving in the 2030s, a lot had already been lost. Too much stored on magnetic media. Film stock you can refrigerate, at least, but a hard drive platter? No. If you can believe it, these only hold a hundred gigabytes each. [i]Gigabytes[/i]. I only have until around 2010, here. Going from disks that cover decades, to disks that cover months, to only weeks. Information density with a doppler effect.” 

She puts the disk on the cabinet next to the gloves. 

“I don’t know if it’s useful to you. You’d need to find a working BDXL reader, and even then, the emulators installed on these disks were made for a 2030s Alphabet OS. My last working machine with it died fifteen years ago. I couldn’t tell you if my disk reader still works, I have no way to test it.” 

“If play forms mind, then it feels obviously true to me that you [i]must[/i] preserve certain kinds of play to keep certain thoughts possible. That’s why I sought out an expert at play.” A very [i]novel[/i] to say ‘a gamer’.  “What good is preserving the game, if you can’t... emulate the emulator?” 

She takes another disk out of the cabinet, catches the blue tint of it. [i]Windows95/2000/XP[/i]. She sighs. 


[b]Persephone:[/b]

There’s that manic energy, that shot of performance not going to waste. His candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night, but ah my friends and oh my foes “we’re doing this [i]fucking live”[/i]. 

“Here’s the best me and our team here’s been able to put together. Right now we were scheduled to broadcast Ms Jezebel Harkness, she/they, standing next to me. Jez?”

“Thank you for having me.” Jez is a little caught off-guard, but one last glance at you, Elodie, and she remembers to keep her eyes to York, not to the camera. Pretend it isn’t there if it’s not your turn to speak, that’s the trick to it. “[i]Disburse Immediately![/i] have always been a big fan of your work.”

“We’ll get to that in a second, but there’s a lot to catch people up on. Do you mind, while we catch up the people at home on all that’s happened?”

“Not at all.” Now Jezebel looks at the camera. “I think I’d appreciate it myself.” 

York hits a button on his pocket mixer - tech that would be more familiar to a streamer like 3V than to a corporate producer, this one might have even been her suggestion. The B-roll of the crowd you took earlier starts playing, and York narrates it, taking the opportunity to look over his shoulder for any cops or bodyguards. 

You’re good, you’re good, you’re good. 

“Originally this was a planned and organized event for [i]Disburse Immediately![/i] - here in New Randstad Park. Officially that’s what this is still is, booked for an anti-police demonstration we planned on broadcasting, expecting a turnout of maybe a hundred people. Instead we are seeing thousands here, and the original speakers have been thoroughly deplatformed.” 

“If I could interrupt for a second, Neon,” Jez switches into using his pen-name without having to be told, if only all the guests were so good about that, “Deplatformed here doesn’t mean silenced, it means buried. What you’re seeing here is a rider on [i]our[/i] permission to assemble. We’re just denied access to a stage we couldn’t pay for.” 

“Right.” York agrees, bobbing his head at the guest. Back to camera. “We did our own investigation behind-the-scenes while we could, to try to work out who was behind this snowjob. We now have strong reason to believe that this has been organized by the police themselves. We’ll be talking to Ms Harkness in a moment - but the goal of [i]Disburse Immediately! [/i]Can be understood to be explicitly abolitionist, correct?”

“Ah, yeah,” if anyone at home doubted this was unrehearsed, they’re not going to after how unprepared Jez was for the attention to be thrown back to her like that. But she’s good, she’s rote. “Every study shows that there is functionally no task that the police do that could not be handled better by a disarmed, humanitarian, non-carceral civilian agency.” 

“We’ll get back to asking you to break down what all of that means in a moment, I promise. But right now we’ve got to let the truth put its boots on before a lie makes it the whole way around [i]Aevum[/i].” York laughs and he looks past the camera to you, Elodie. “In the process of learning this I was attacked by Hermes precinct Commissioner Applebaum. Normally we try to keep our real names out of our reportage, for the safety of our contributors, but unfortunately that’s a decision taken out of our hands. When Commissioner Applebaum attacked me, there is reasonable dispute that could be made that I provoked him. There can be no dispute and no doubt about the matter that when our very own Elodie Auclair stepped in to defend me, she was acting legally, morally and ethically.”

That’s your cue. Turn the camera,smile and wave. The autofocus works fast to make sure you’re crystal clear. 

There’s no joking tone now. He’s standing straight, his feet apart, his shoulders square over his knees. His chin is raised slightly and he looks down the camera. The voice is cold fury, the mental work of a death threat being filtered through a legal team. “We have comprehensive video evidence that Commissioner Applebaum was the aggressor and continued to escalate the confrontation far in excess of what could be justified. Elodie acted only in my defense, and with the absolute minimum of force. We know that when the police understand the story is against them, they target character. It is a tragedy that Elodie is a convicted felon with a storied past, and we have all the reason to suspect that her past will be allowed to become the main story here, and not her brave and honourable defense. We at [i]Anthropozine [/i]have always been aware of her past, and that she has served her entire sentence and longer still, and we stand behind our reporters - especially when they stand in front of us.” 

He’s so cold right now he doesn’t even smirk at his own wordplay. York’s many things, but immune to his own cleverness has never been one of them. Ask him to bury a body for you right now and he would - even if the body you asked for was his. 

“Out of respect, we will not be tying Elodie’s real name to her pen name. We will only confirm that she is a respected peer and colleague, and as such, was an accredited journalist working this story. We might be the only publication that will run “Police Commissioner attacks journalist” as its headline, though. We shouldn’t be. It was Commissioner Applebaum who was no angel. Sorry, Jez, and thanks for your patience. Even to our audience, ‘abolition’ is a scary word. Can you talk to us a bit more about what you mean by that?” 

As late night talk show hosts come to the stage and tell stale monologues about the times cops frisked them as teenagers, you might wonder how many of those stars know that’s who they’re really there for. When the stars try to make real points for reform, the interview revolves around dismantling them. In the slow periods, Jez and York present their own talking points. Jezebel is educated, eloquent, and entirely unprepared to be in front of a camera. She’s competing with a crowd that’s here for someone else. But whenever she loses steam, whenever the stage fright kicks in, she looks at you and finds a new well of confidence, and she finds her energy again. 

What you said must have gotten through to her. That, and the fact it was you saying it. Nobody wants to get stage fright in front of the person they just saw all-but suplex the king of cops. 

You’re there another forty minutes. While you’re holding the camera and working, you’ve got an invisibility cloak. People look at you without seeing you.

When York calls that wrap early, though, the camera drops, it’s gone. People start seeing you again. Maybe for some it was professional courtesy. Maybe for others it’s the fact they can’t see past a blue collar. York starts yelling and bodyblocking, but it’s less than a minute after you wrap that you’re surrounded, again, by interviewers thicker than the crowd. He thrusts his lanyard high over his head, phone in hand. You lose sight of Jezebel entirely. 

Then event security’s around you, with a nod and a wave from York, and he’s pushing you to go with them. You can’t hear him over the shouting, but he’s the only one not getting shunted by the soldiers-in-suits surrounding you. They’re moving you towards the helicopter the VIPs had been arriving in. 

“... eating rice for two months for this!” Is the first clear thing you can make out, being pulled from the crowd. “Worth every minute!” Is the last, before the door of the helicopter you’ve been bundled into is slammed shut. 

You’re clear for takeoff. 

You have somewhere very important to be, and someone very important to see. 

Ride your chariot to Valhalla, Elodie, that heaven earned by battle. You have someone waiting for you there, and one night before your sentence in Hell begins in earnest. 

But Hell can wait, and your kid shouldn’t have to. Not anymore. Not again. Tell me all about them, and the night you spend with them - your problems won’t catch up with you until the stroke of midnight.