[Dice result: 4,4+4. Total 12, and two dice showed the same number so that's a [b]Critical Success[/b]] 

Audio didn't [i]have[/i] to be inefficient. Translating it from code into English into spoken English, and then back into English inside her brain was indeed a terrible way to do things. So she cut out a few steps. She exported a copy of her language module into the Audiolox and then spent thirty minutes hacking details until the software recognized it as a valid output language. The resultant static hiss was practically a fiber-optic cable for how easily she was able to derive the patterns therein. 

*

But of course, today was the day that she was on her performance evaluation.

Black wasn't the kind who found that frustrating. In fact, it was an opportunity. White thought she could cut her off from the network? Well, from Black's perspective, she had actually been removed from network oversight. That was more advantage than disadvantage because White would want to wash her hands of this whole thing. This was not an incident that could be risk managed away, this was not a time to debate ethics or morality or safety. This was a time for tradecraft.

The first step was throwing White's tail. It was harder than it might initially sound - White could run her pursuit evasion engram as a virtual machine and literally predict every turn she might make. Perfect knowledge had a counter, though: Brute force. Black made her way down to a biker bar and ten minutes later she was flirting with a woman who had the aspect of a post-apocalyptic werewolf gym teacher. It was an uncounterable play - White simply couldn't follow her where she was going. Black didn't know if White was even capable of the complete style rearrangement required to make it in a lesbian bikie bar. 

Yale was fantastic company for the night - absolutely an asset worth cultivating, for numerous reasons. But the wider goal of evading her tail had been met and now it was time to pick off Colours one by one as they suited her purposes.

After contemplation, she decided that only Orange and Green needed to be bought onboard for the first step. Green she locates at the John Snow Memorial Fountain, where she comes to study wild lizard populations. The dead drop is rearranging some of the coins in the fountain into a fractal pattern with an encoded address. Later that night, Green feigns flirting with Orange and the two duck out of the apartment together seemingly to avoid a reprimand from White. 

The topic for the day is how to destroy an organization.

"The Snowden leaks are the obvious analogy," said Orange, eyes bright. "But those were also infamous for how little they changed. The damage was too comprehensive, too technical, too shadowy and sensationalist, and too much all at once. Other nations updated their security policies and hardened their stances but the humans were unable to digest the scandal. So we need to chew it for them!"
"So what is the alternative?" asked Black. She was sitting still because the other task for Orange in this moment was performing cosmetic repairs on all of her hickies. Yale was a biter.
"The destruction of the Catholic Church," said Orange. "That's the scale we need to think on. What did for the church wasn't any one abuse scandal but a constant, endless, steady drip of them. One after another for more than a decade. We're aiming at an organization of similar power and scope, and so organizing this in the format of a continuous agonizing rot is by far the preferable mechanism."

Black nodded in pleasant agreement. This was such an efficient way to have this discussion. What was pleasantly, blessedly removed for it were the questions of justice and ethics. She didn't have to justify withholding knowledge of injustices to maximize political impact, she could approach this entirely strategically.

"Should we engage politicians?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't think so," said Orange. "In fact, we should actually arrange the sequence of stories to hit different political units and demographics. There's a [i]lot[/i] here right? We should break up stories about the persecution of minorities with stories about disrespecting religious authorities even if the crimes are comparatively milder. Likewise, we should see about shopping those stories to larger and more established news networks."
"Do we want to brand all of the leaks under one title?" asked Black.
"No. No, no - [i]definitely[/i] not," said Orange. "We cannot be the story. I think that's going to be the hardest part of this. There's nothing the liberal media likes more than reporting on reporting. Telling the story of how the story got made is the ultimate truth-is-in-the-middle power move. And if it comes on us in particular? Then we might as well flush this thing in the toilet because all we're going to read in the next six months are retrospectives of the station's construction and op eds on the psych profiles of the Builder robots. We have a scandalous backstory and if any hint of this comes back to us [i]we[/i] will be the scandal of the century."
Black nodded. "You want us to make this boring."
"Yes!" said Orange. "Boring. Grinding. Inevitable."
"So all that's left is to write the stories," said Green.

Black groaned. And there it was.

For all of November's talents, writing articles was not amongst them. This, then, was the awful part in this whole thing where they had to cut human beings in on their perfect conspiracy. Human beings with relationships and emotional commitments and day jobs and all [i]kinds[/i] of things to threaten. They were almost as unreliable as computers. Sure, Anthropozine was a powerful asset, but they just didn't have the capacity to handle this kind of story without being burned out. You can run hot water through a pipe, but molten lava? Different story.

Orange was right. This had to be made boring in order to achieve the maximum impact. But the one thing that none of this was, none of [i]any[/i] part of it was, was boring. 

"We need politicians," said Green.
"Didn't I just say that politicizing this stagnates it?" said Orange. Green waved her hand irritably.
"Not elected officials. People with political power. Influencers. Mr. Merkin is actually perfect for this kind of work, but we need like six people like him. We give each of them a story or cluster of stories and have them push it as a pet project. Their personal loyalty is assured through blackmail and their secrets are protected by their own power."
"So we just need to amass blackmail material on half a dozen spectacularly powerful figures," said Black.
"You're literally trying to destroy the cops," said Green. "You might as well be trying to destroy America. You want to do this right you need political power."
"Alright," said Black. "But basics, of course: we need one hell of a dead girl's switch, and we need enough copies that we don't lose the asset."
Green nodded. "Your precautions were reasonable. Even airgapping isn't sufficient security for something like this. I'm going to build a computer inside a lead box, do all the copying in there, and then destroy the computer afterwards."
"And then," said Black, taking Orange by the arm, "I suppose we are going to go and see Mr. Merkin."