Elodie freezes, file open and page half turned, gears turning as she converts the station's section numbers to geography and landmarks. "You made Rainbow Road? No. [i]She[/i] made Rainbow Road?" She closes the file, puts it back on the desk. "We. Humans thought that was a coincidence. Random natural beauty in something artificial. There's at least one church that wants to declare it a no-shit miracle. And she made that?"

She takes a minute to think, still aside from a few tentacles idly solving a rubics cube, then scrambling it and resolving it. Mindless physical therapy, all you need to know is the pattern. Don't even need to look at it at a certain point.

"So if she's the art and creative expression, why does she think that she's unneeded at her best state? Humans need art." She points to a few blocks of soft wood, a whittled steamer-ship sitting on top of them. "All of us do. I can't speak for you if you need it, but the fact that she's there, and has been there since the start, at least implies you or those who made you thought it was important."

And then there's a thoughtful quiet for quite some time.

*

The files themselves are meticulously, if oddly, organized. Each box is a story, written or in the process. Names and places get highlighted. Where something comes up in another box or file, the location is marked on a sticky note. Not bad for a system whose first requirement was "all on paper, no electronics".

She is trusting you with this, Heca. By definition anything you look at enters digital storage. But you, like her, would claw out somebody's eyes before they hook you up to a network. So she feels safe with this.

The process itself is simple. Write up a list of names, places, and concepts we're looking for. Open a box. Go through it to see if anything matches. They're all labelled by titles, picked for memorability more than taste.

Two hours later, they've got nothing.

[quote]That'd be a 6 and a 7 on +Clever, so that's a no on clues.[/quote]