[b]November:[/b]
[b]Black:[/b]

Svelto’s is brick-and-masonry building. It’s an aesthetic removed three times from its context. First it was a trendy form of Western gentrification, the upmarket hospitality sector wearing industrial sector chic like the molted exoskeleton of Queen Progress, flown to find worker drones in the Developing. Thirty years on there were no more docks or warehouse districts to reclaim, but the aesthetic had become a signifier. Developers started making the dead husks bespoke. 

Svelto’s is still doing that exposed brick industrial look on a fucking space station - complete with giant, too-dim filament-style lightbulbs. The only thing anyone associates the look with is bougie bars, pubs, coffee shops and bakeries. Without history or context, the sign can only point to itself. 

Svelto’s is a pub-bakery hybrid, highlighting German bread and beer with real wheat - another signifier, wheat’s a pain in the ass to grow on [i]Aevum[/i]. 

You can find Rudy sitting in a booth at the back of the bar, where it’s empty. He drops a shot glass of whiskey in a stein of beer and sips it. 

Take your time to make yourself comfortable approaching him. The place being upmarket makes it a lot easier to watch for watchers. Less people, more couples than singles. 

At some point, though, that approach happens. There’s all sorts of high and low tech solutions you can make here to make it less likely to be overheard, intercepted. But they all introduce a chance of loss in the signal, a risk of being misunderstood, a chance of leaving evidence, or just take too long. Conversation is fast, as information-dense as humans get, and dpesn’t leave a trace. 

He sees you approach the booth. He gestures at the seat across from him, starts talking before you have a chance to sit down. 

“I was expecting the white one, but this makes more sense.” He shrugs uncomfortably, like he’s itchy. “Did you know the app doesn’t work for me anymore? I thought I was getting a clear message to cut contact. I’m guessing that wasn’t from you, though.” He raises his drink in mock salute, before putting it back on the table without taking a sip. “I just wanted to say I explained the situation to my handlers as cleaning up a sex crime. They trust that to remain a private matter. I would have preferred to keep your boss in the loop, but her reaction just reinforced my cover story.”

He says ‘sex crime’ with the awkwardness of rehearsed script - it’s a lie picked for the situation, and not for himself. It’s a line he only wants to touch with surgical gloves and rubbing alcohol. 

“I was starting to think this was a deliberate setup, from the start, but now I’m not sure. ”

[b]Pink:[/b]
[b]Persphone:[/b]

The sedative means that Marco stirs in his sleep at the door kick, but doesn’t wake up. Like sleeping through a thunderbolt in a storm. 111 years ago, this is how the Chicago police assassinated Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, shot seven other Black Panthers in an apartment barely larger than this. A close friend had spiked Hampton’s dinner with sedatives. 

Mark Clark was in charge of watching the door, shotgun in his lap, while Fred slept on a mattress on the floor. When a bullet shredded Mark’s heart, he fired the only shot that the Panthers would get off that night - up into the ceiling. Caught by surprise, Mark Clark fumbled the shotgun like a phone would be 111 years later, in an apartment barely smaller than the one he was guarding. 

Tonight, Elodie shares his role but not his fate, and Marco Alvaro is sedated only by his own hand. Still too many reporters, but less of them with every passing hour. 

What happens now depends on what [b]Pink[/b] is allowed to know. What can she say? Someone needs to tell Elodie what was on that drive, at least. 


[b]3V:[/b]

Your own frustration is mirrored in Gavin’s, but Ferris is down, and she is dressed. A tank top and climber’s shorts - tight fitting but covered in zips and velcro pockets. She is making a point, and Gavin is not impressed by it.

She goes to pour herself a glass of orange juice from the fridge. “You remind me. Games like this were our version of the Turing test for a while, during the early days with NASA. It started as a joke, of course, because we didn’t know what AI would be yet. I predicted an early success would be a pure wargamer. If we were training something that liked winning games, it would try to [i]win[/i] tabletop.”

She pours the glass, then sets in front of her and rests her chin on her hands, looking off at nothing. Gavin sets his own glass on the counter and moves to fill it, still listening. It seems like this isn’t a story he’s been told before. 

“Now, Miles… He [i]hated[/i] that. Thought that was too ‘human’ a way to look at winning. He said that a real AI would work out that it’s a collaborative storytelling medium, and that the objective is everyone has a fun story. He predicted that our first success would look like a failed Turing test - a bunch of actions that seem bizarre and absurd, but that made its audience laugh and give the other players interesting problems to solve with their own characters.” Ferris looks at the counter, blinks, frowns, looks back up. “If it tried to pick a lock with a live chicken, how could we tell the difference between a bad Markov chain or inspired absurdist comedy? It’s an idea that’s only obvious if you already know what ‘dogfacing’ is.”

“Then there was… Name. Tip of my tongue. She was my best friend for thirty years. I-” Ferris trails off, drumming her fingers on the counter again. “Her theory was different. She imagined they would pick their own rules, their own way of having fun. Instead of seeing how they [i]played[/i] an RPG, she was interested in how they’d [i]write[/i] one. TTRPG books are filled with the author’s explanations of their intent, so that other people can run them. She was excited to see if we could get AI to the point where it could explain abstract intentions in ways we could understand.” 

“Miles liked her idea more than mine, but we both knew he hoped he wouldn’t be able to understand its intentions, even when they were explained.” She smiles at that. “Of course, all of that seems a bit quaint now, but you have to understand-”

Ferris hand goes flying through the glass of orange juice in front of her. She looks down at her hand in shock, but she’s not bleeding. A big bruise is starting to form on the back of most of her fingers, though. She hit the glass hard. 

Gavin stares in shock, his eyes misting over. Ferris whips on him immediately.

“Don’t you [i]dare[/i]. Don’t you [i]dare[/i] show me pity.” 

“I’m sorry,” Gavin says.

“I just didn’t see you pour it. I was lost in thought. That’s all it was. Stop it.” 

“I didn’t pour it!” Gavin protests, and immediately Ferris turns to you with wide-eyed fear, hoping you don’t understand what it means that she doesn’t remember pouring her own glass, couldn't see it when she was looking directly at it. 

There is no such thing as a perfect storage medium. In time, all data will decay. All systems eventually fail.

Even now, she won’t explain, won't let it [i]be[/i] explained, because she doesn’t want you to understand.