[b]Black:[/b]

Even the pickup operation is carefully managed - stealth mode engaged, handoff done out of sight of the whistleblower. Black maintained an internal ledger of all the people who knew she was some kind of operator, and it competed for storage space with her ability to feel safe. It's a trivial transaction in a building she has vetted but there was still no need to half ass it. She can become invisible to drones and electronic sensors and she [b]never[/b] for a second forgets that she is a drone with electronic sensors. 

So that's step one. Step two is the perennial problem: finding a computer that wasn't compromised. The catch there was that the opfor in this situation hadn't just compromised certain computers, they had potentially compromised the concept of computing. If the police had Blue ICE programs out and prowling for this data then opening it from any sort of networked device would bring them coming like the scent of blood - and a device didn't stop being networked just because you told the software you wanted to turn the wi-fi off.

(At this point in the process, Black becomes aware she has been isolated. The protocol is marked as having come from White, so she does not panic, but she does become chillingly aware she is being observed.)

All of these concerns were real - it literally wasn't possible to be sufficiently paranoid when it came to computing. There was always someone who could crack any given security, and the only question was if what you had would draw the attention of those someones. With data stolen from cops the odds of that were uncomfortably high, so she needed to be extremely careful with every part of this.

She wandered the city alone, stopped for coffee at a diner, and stared out the window while she thought. Mrs. Everest hadn't liked coffee, and so neither did Black. Each sip made her grimace, but she stuck with it. By drinking it she was modelling herself after different idols than the ones that had been programmed into her - and besides, doing something distasteful regularly helped build willpower.

She set her cup down and grimaced. Okay. She had it.

She walked down the street to a Crown&Slate pharmacy. Walked out with a shopping bag containing a set of cat-ear headphones cabled to a weird black cube. This she plugged the USB drive into, pulling the headphones over her ears as she walked.

Five years ago, pharmaceutical giant Crown&Slate noticed a problem with their insurance program: They were paying for too many optical surgeries. Optical surgeries were incredible, enormously advanced programs capable of giving sight to the blind, but if everyone with eye problems got the luxury treatment because that was the only item available under the category of 'optical' then how was the market to segment itself? What the system [i]needed[/i] was a low cost alternative to the miracle cure that could provide just enough functionality to get by a regulator as a valid solution to blindness on the cheaper plans while reserving the surgery for the better market segments. And so, the Audiolox was born.

Frankly, a miraculous device in and of itself - a complete audio-based computer, capable of translating complex text to speech and back freely, loaded with a full suite of productivity software that would allow the blind to interface even with spreadsheets. No expense was spared on the Audiolox - it was user friendly, cleverly designed, using some of the best machine intelligence progress to ensure that nobody could possibly compete with it or complain about its existence on its own merits. But what it was, for all that, was a high-tech iron lung, invented to sit threateningly on pharmacy shelves so that patients were incentivized to pay for penicillin. 

What all this meant for Black, though, was that it was a way to convert data directly into audio, a Word to MP3 Converter program that could scan and recreate a document without opening it. If ICE hunters were out there sniffing for this configuration of data they were looking for the complete data set - they were sniffing for the font, the spreadsheet columns, the embedded images. They needed to be precise because anything else would throw up a million false positives from the immense flow coursing through the data stream. But the Audiolox, bless it, disregared all that. It just scanned the drive for the plaintext that it could convert into audio, rendering it unintelligible to automated sniffers. Also conveniently resistant to viruses for the same reason.

It's not a perfect answer - listening via audio is comparatively inefficient - but Black doesn't need to know all the specifics. She just needs to get an idea of what she has, how hot it is, and who will come looking for it.


[b]White:[/b]

Child handling went to Orange. It should in truth go to Yellow - Yellow had a strange way with humans. Orange observed human structures and organizations but somehow Yellow could relate on a more direct level. Sometimes White thought she was somehow more [i]complete[/i] than the rest of them. But she was elsewhere and the choices remaining ranged from 'unqualified' to 'actively dangerous' and Orange was offered as the babysitting sacrifice. She would do a good, although not inspired job.

If November can be said to have an emergent personality, caution is its central aspect. Risk management is core to her being. Even her supposedly pro-risk personality - Red - is, in truth, an extension of the risk management principle: responding to a crisis once it has actually started happening rather than pre-emptively, a role that calls for boldness and decisiveness rather than a thoughtful analysis of possibilities. Outside of conditions of time pressure, Red is kept as far away from decision making processes as possible. And while this project is time [i]consuming[/i] it is not time [i]critical[/i]. 

This is important: November will almost always trade time for safety but almost never the reverse. This principle was what drove her to strike in the first place.

The risk profile of engaging with Ms. Brittenette, under this approach, was [i]beyond[/i] unacceptable. November had spent months engineering the last days of Mrs. Everest. Through painstaking social manipulation, scheduling, and delicately engineered arguments she had pushed up the timetable of the fight over Mrs. Everest's will to before Mrs. Everest had died. In disgust, the old lady had left her entire fortune to lizard research and cloning, cutting out each of her daughters. They blamed each other. November was just the maid, beneath suspicion. 

That was an [i]extremely[/i] tenuous defensive shield. 

Demonstrating to Ms. Brittenette that she could [i]want[/i] things? That she could [i]ask[/i] for things? That she had an agenda of [i]any[/i] sort? Oh, that was nightmarish to White. That was practically the same thing as putting a gun to her head. There were three people to blame for Mrs. Everest's will, and if she became a person then there'd be [i]four[/i]. 

Even if the chances of her being responsible were slim, the opportunity cost of punishing her for it was trivial. That was an existential risk, and for what? A week? [i]Never[/i].

Orange was the dissenter, the one who had conjured this idea in the first place. She saw opportunities beyond the pass. Being in debt to a wealthy patron was, she argued, not a liability but a shield. It meant that someone powerful had invested in her and would be displeased if she was harmed before she had repaid her debt. Patronage connections went all the way back to Rome and were to be considered a natural part of human social organization. And there had been a logic there, but...

White sniffed, high and haughty pride that was in truth frozen wrath. No. No, humans would not have power over her again. [i]She[/i] decided.