[b]November:[/b] R/W/O: Soon, Rudy will give you a 10/10 rating. His Headpattr feedback comment will read; “Message received.” Even here, snubbed, he doesn’t have the nerve to push the issue by giving a lower score. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t a trap. It might just mean he understands you’re not falling for it, and there’s no sense in antagonizing you further. Tenners are easy jobs. Tenners are jobs that Red, White and Orange can either enjoy doing, or at the very least, sail through with a minimum of emotional investment. Nothing to prepare for, before tomorrow. No other jobs you can take while still on the clock for the sub-contractor. Time and opportunity to learn how the other teams are going. [b]3V:[/b] Gavin straightens. His expression flickers the internal conflict within, one you’re in a unique position to recognize immediately. The war between wanting to self-deprecate to put someone at ease, and the need to be taken seriously for making life choices that so many others have questioned. Mutually exclusive. Someone desperately out of practice meeting new people outside his field. Gavin screws his courage to the sticking place, and chooses neither. “I’m an anthropologist.” He explains, full enthusiasm and patter. “There’s a few of us, up here. I’m staying with the Surui, at the moment, and I have a colleague back on Earth with the tribe that stayed behind. Brazil still survives fairly well, considering. We’re comparing the cultural drift from climate disaster, versus transplantation. Typical of social science, we have two experiments and no control group.” He pats a tupperware container he’s taken with him, weathered and sun-bleached, full of grounds. “Amazing coffee’s remained consistent, at least.” This would be Ferris’s source of coffee, then. He leaves things on the bench, cocks his ear. The pitch of a shower changes when someone gets in or out of it. The water’s still running, but you have to pay attention to be sure someone’s still in it. Satisfied, he drops sotto voce. “Lorre hasn’t told you about…?” He takes the lack of immediate recognition as answer enough. “Some of us try to check up on her, every few days, just to be sure she’s still with us. She doesn’t like-” The shower shuts off, and Gavin shuts up. [b]Persephone:[/b] Nothing. Two hours of nothing. There’s probably something here that you’re missing. But all of it is obscured in anodyne terminology, legalese, copspeak. Your brain glazes over trying to draw meaning from it. You lack the statistical training to make an effective analysis that could coax the needle out of its haystack, if there is a needle to find. No, you know there is. None of this makes sense, otherwise. But this mountain of paperwork needs a guide who is native to it. A problem for tomorrow. With rest, and sugar, and food, and sleep, and rest. Wait. [b]November:[/b] [b]B/B/P(?):[/b] Someone is trying to get into Elodie’s apartment. They’re alone, unkempt hair and three day stubble leaking around the crevices of the dark sunglasses, three-ply mask and hoodie pulled tight. They’re knocking? They’re not. They stop after checking the peephole by strafing their head side-to-side to it, checking for movement, for silhouettes. They’re not knocking. They’re pulling tools from one pocket. A long thin strip of shiny metal ending in a saw tooth. How do you know this, and how do you react?