Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Count Numbers
Raw
GM
Avatar of Count Numbers

Count Numbers

Member Seen 9 days ago

Persephone:

There was a way this could have gone. A game of cat and mouse, of tension. Of not knowing if you’re the only one in here, while trying to find your objectives. A hissing fuse with no obvious bomb it leads to.

Let’s just cut to the good part, then.

A plainclothes detective is out in the open now, ripping their grey gym hoodie off and tossing it on the floor carelessly - it ends up on the drying mineral oil, and that’s going to stain. Everything about them screamed ‘cop’ though, even before the reveal of the badge danging from a chain against their chest. They’re a bit shorter than you, but they keep their eyes level when looking at you. No tilt of the head that could be read as intimidation or respect. Even down to a skintight wifebeater, you can’t get a guess on preferred pronouns. The shaved head and completely waxed body doesn’t help either.

There’s probably a Jet Li build under there, underneath the padding from too much junk food on long stakeouts. They tug at the studded bracelet covering their right wrist, and the hand spins 360 degrees before clenching into a fist. The synthetic skin job is clean, but the join from forearm to bicep isn’t a perfect match. Looks like the elbow is partially replaced, but effort was made to keep those muscles attached and useful.

There isn’t a practical reason for it. If you’re doing that much of a high-grade replacement job, a full replacement up to the shoulder would give them a lot more power and control. But you’ve seen this before, too. They want to know that the punch is still ‘theirs’. Their training, their will, not their bank account. Or their department’s.

Maybe that tells you something about them you can take advantage of.

“Officer in need of assistance,” they press a finger to their ear. “Break and entry in progress, on my position. Just the one, but they’ve got me cornered while their crew escapes. Apprehending now.”





3V and Black:

Lupawn offers a paw to Black for a bump. “Are we bringing her back, or are you coming to get her?” His question’s playful, and he asks with a smile. Amie jumps up and ruffles his hair, in mock outrage of the question, and Lupawn lets his head stay ruffled in penance.

The thing about furries is that it’s a total commitment to a bit. They’re a bit cringe to most, sure, because everything saturated in sincerity always is. Nobody’s becoming a wolf because they want to do an ironic subversion of the archetype - maybe in a few years, as counter-culture becomes culture. Now, though, defining the archetypes is too much rebellion to rebel against.

Amie and Lupawn live their own performances. Not like highschool theater kids perform for their drama classes, like theater kids perform for their friends. Feed on their energy and they’ll never run out of it. The entire rest of their lives is built around moments like this, nights like these.

Stand clear of the wagging tails.

Amie’s muscle and musk, soft fur with coarse ends like a sheep dog’s. Her timberwolf patterning is broken up by barely a strip of unbuttoned denim and the billowing grey shreds of what might once have been a gym top. Just run your hand against her and it’s like brillo pad. But push deep, run your hand through, or push your face deep in, and be rewarded with soft fluff that squeezes you back. She wants you to press and be pressed. She wants to cuddle and squish. She wants to lift and throw and chase and catch.

She is the wolf-as-primal-playmate. Her place in the dom/sub spectrum is the space of yes/and. Just as ready to lead as she is to follow, she waits to see if she is about to snatch 3V off into the night, or be carried off with her. She’s good with either. She watches Black, now, eager and attentive, pressed into 3V’s back and resting her chin on the top of her head. Ready to drag her off to the bar, or be dragged off to the bar. As long as someone’s getting squeezed on the way.

Lupawn plays it a bit harder. You can see it comparing their legs - while Amie has settled on modified ankles to suggest the vulpine pose and posture, Lupawn’s committed to the full werewolf, high knees and heels that end halfway up where their calf would be. The effect is way more intense and animalistic.

He’s living off the energy 3V’s throwing out right now, but keeps it to a tight leash with the introduction of Black. He’s working out how much fun he’s allowed to have, here. Is this another player in the scene, or the boundary marker? He casts himself as the lead, and he wants to show off for his audience. But only if you want that too.

Neither Amie nor Lupawn made the assumption that 3V came to dance with the one that brought her, tonight. Not here. They just know however this goes, they're having fun.

Blue and Orange:

Charlie gets up abruptly. “Sorry, Star, I… Early start tomorrow. You understand.”

Starlight blinks. “Ah, yes. Of course, thank you for coming, Charlie.”

“All mine, do it again soon. Just-” He spares one last, fearful look at Blue. “Like I said. Early start. That’s all.”

‘Robocop’ Perez hums thoughtfully. “I’m glad that’s all it is. You were acting like her being Mrs Everest’s old assistant was scaring you.”

“Daniel!” Charlie hisses through clenched teeth. His open palms hit the table hard enough to rattle everyone’s cutlery. “Shut up.”

There should be an awkward silence, but ‘Robocop’ pushes on, clearly confused. “Why? We all know that androids were used like that for years, and why. It’s not her fault, is it?” A pause. “I’m enjoying her company, and I think you’re being very rude.”

Starlight is caught off guard when she smiles at that, and has no idea what to do about it once it’s there. She opts for ducking her head, out of the fight.

Wendy was halfway out of her chair, too, but has the decency to look shamed by Perez’s question. Charlie’s still standing, though, defensive.

White:

You’re not the only one with stack overflows.

Fiona taps your shoulder. “Careful. She had that specially made to be extra sensitive. That combined with everything you just said…” she coughs into a fist. “Give her a few seconds. Then try not to trip.”

Try not to trip?

Then Crystal has your hand by the wrist, firm, and is walking out of the bar with you in tow, keeping a pace only a half step below a jog. An amused Fiona shadows.

“No ropes, no props, no teaming up on Fiona tonight.” Crystal- well, she has the too-even tone of someone trying not to be angry. At least, the too-even tone of someone trying too hard to keep themselves in check. “We are going back to our place. We are going to make this very special. And you, dear, are going to keep talking.”

“Before you get too disappointed,” Fiona’s fingertips brush the back of your neck, and then down your free arm, ending in a warm squeeze of your hand. “There’s always next time.”

Here are some pertinent details of Apartment 7,118 Josephine Baker street, Robert Frost district of Modern Aphrodite.

  • The place is fastidiously clean and organized. Fiona apologizes for her mess, which is a laptop charging on a glass coffee table with two used mugs on coasters.
  • The kitchen is similarly shining, to the point where it’s difficult to tell how frequently it’s used. The bean grinders, roaster, steamer, infuser and cold brewer imply a daily use that the countertops don’t. On that note, Crystal is very confident about the countertop’s ability to hold your weight, no matter how hard you press against it.
  • The size of the bed could best be described as “ambitious”, but its owners are feeling inspired.
  • The walk-in wardrobe is three-fifths Crystal’s by volume, a fifth Fiona’s, and the rest is ‘for guests’. So don’t worry about not being able to find everything you came in with. Find anything you like?
  • The apartment is wall-to-wall with original artworks, each complete with gallery placards describing the pieces. Crystal makes a game of flipping up-and-coming talent, putting her money where her mouth is on who’s going to ‘make it’, but by her own admission her heart’s more in the buying than the selling. The placards are Fiona’s touch, naturally. A photo album on the coffee table, behind the charging laptop, remembers the come-and-gones.
  • Crystal had some things she was supposed to do in the morning but she can move them, they weren’t that important, actually.
Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Thanqol
Raw
Avatar of Thanqol

Thanqol

Member Seen 7 hrs ago

Black!

Black returns the fistbump gesture. She's glad for it, it breaks the touch barrier, lets her focus, lets her get her hand around to the back of Amie's neck to the sensitive cluster of nerves at the base of the spine. It lets her show claws and limits, as her other hand comes up to cover 3V's throat and mouth, holding her silent as 3V's eyes roll and her hands tap frantic patterns on the back of Black's fingers. There is both chemistry and it's lack; Black is not for him, but she will supply him with girls who are.

"She's not going anywhere without me," said Black. "3V is very precious to me. I need to make sure that she is treated as she deserves to be treated. I need to make sure she can't walk in a straight line tomorrow." She pulls Amie in closer, pressing herself up against the girl's side. "You're not going to let me down, are you?"

Blue!

"Oh please, please, sit down!" said Blue with a smile so glitteringly innocent she can only have been engineered for it specifically. It's almost like she's waving off a compliment in humble embarrassment. "You don't have to worry! Of course I don't do that kind of thing any more! Have you looked at the requirements to become a private detective? You need 2,500 hours of work experience with an accredited security firm and they only hire people with law enforcement, military or intelligence backgrounds. That's two years, presuming you get full time and don't get the '24th-hour pink slip', and I haven't even been a person for one."

As she's speaking she's standing up herself, sweeping around the table elegantly, and politely putting her hands on shoulders to guide people back into their chairs. "I do hospitality these days - so sit! You simply cannot go without tasting my Dou Sha Bao and caramelized orange sorbet."

As part of the same extended motion she is laying out fresh plates, sparkling with sugar, across the table. What human could possibly argue with an appeal to eat dessert?

White!

She steps out onto the balcony in a silver bathrobe. The dawnlight is just visible over the horizon of Earth above and it catches her wet hair. She takes a sip from a bottle of strawberry cider and leans over the railing, looking up at the sky, an ethereal creature in the four am notdark.

The girls are asleep at last. Finally there is time to work through some of these thoughts.

She quickly sorts through some of the ideas she can't process on her own, sorting them into categories to hand off later. They are cute when they sleep (Yellow) and insatiable when awake (Black). A contact (Orange) in the art market might be interesting (Pink). She'll need a treatment for bruises on her synthmuscles (Blue). She wants to do this again (???).

The decisions come quickly and easily. Previously it felt like the clutter in her mind was also on fire, too hot to handle, too bright to perceive. Now the stack has cooled enough for her to work through it. An undifferentiated mass of Problem now can be approached in parts.

The first thing she decides to think about, what she wants to think about, was how this felt. What it showed. She hadn't been born with a sense of sexuality but one had been included in the bundle of anime cliches she had been given during her reprogramming. Until now it hadn't really been hers. She had always kind of thought of it more like cosplay more than anything - performing a role for the benefit of herself, getting to act out elaborate fantasies. The original suggestion of having her take the role of a fearsome dragon taking advantage of a defenseless maiden was kind of what she'd thought that sex was all the time. That it was primary a cerebral thing, with a physical component almost as a side. She doesn't think that any more. There was a lot of the process that wasn't sexy, it was just... intimate. The confusion of legs and hips, the struggles of tongue and teeth, sweat and saliva, the impossibility of communicating 'if I climax one more time I will be able to perceive every individual atom that comprises my body'. She looked at her hands, turning them over. She hadn't thought of them as particularly sensitive organs in their own right, but the things they had felt...

Get wrecked, Black.

Underlying it all was a sense of possessiveness that surprised her. It wasn't that she wanted to control them, reorder their lives, make them do anything different... she just wanted them to be hers. It was an inarticulate thought, but a powerful one. She needed to talk to Yellow and see how that feeling compared to the feeling of being with 3V.

That lead into the next question. Was she a furry?

She took a long sip of cider. That was a fucking question, wasn't it? She could see where the thought terminated in questions of practicality and expense (Brown) and whole of network complexity (Green). But did she, White, now that she had faced and/hyphen fucked her demons, like the idea of becoming an actual dragongirl? Was her initial aversion just the rejection of something that felt too true to be real? Had her egg, so to speak, been cracked?

The cider bubbles in her throat, up into her nose. She sets it down and takes a deep breath. Well, girl, you came here looking for guidance with the dysmorphia that came from integrating a previous existence as a deep space macroengineering construct with a current existence as a cute anime girl. You've sure as shit now got some kind of conceptual answer as to how you might integrate those identities.

What if she was the only colour who felt that way? What would that mean for her sense of self coherence? They'd already upgraded Red so she was visually more beautiful than the rest of them, but what if they all started going in different directions...?

She shook her head. Hard answers, no evading into theory and concepts. Yes, the idea was interesting. She'd work through the concept. Hard thing to dip a toe into, but she'd give it an attempt.

The next thing that she needed to think about was something related to understanding how humans related to her past as a public figure, but by this time the sun had come up. A shadow loomed behind her, a set of beautiful arms wrapped around her, and she was pulled decisively back inside. Even if the appointments hadn't been important, Crystal was determined to ensure that she was extremely properly compensated for missing them.
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Tatterdemalion
Raw
Avatar of Tatterdemalion

Tatterdemalion Trickster-in-Veils

Member Seen 7 hrs ago

The push and pull. The fear and the exhilaration. I shouldn’t do this, I want to do this. I should be the responsible one—

But she can’t talk.

That’s her thing, that’s her strength. She can talk and talk and talk when she needs to. A performance, a barrage of patter, taking control of the conversation because so many people are bad at it. You learn that early online. There’s no test to be a fan, no “you must be this good at using a keyboard,” let alone to try and send messages, to try and connect. Like everything else in the world that requires a bit of skill and consideration, a lot of people really aren’t good at intentionally socializing. Thus, the 3V theory of bars: getting drunk is a necessary social lubricant so that there’s more of a level playing field.

Wasn’t she here on business? She’s got to write a thing. She’s got words about music and about dancing and about how sometimes it’s okay for a place to be a place for your people, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for new blood (but in a way that makes it clear she’s not talking about ethnostates, find a different fandom metaphor, maybe cooking?). She’s supposed to be finding the angles and making sure Black November has a great time and learning more about what makes this really cool android girl tick.

She nuzzles her lips into Black’s palm and whines, and holds one artificial but human hand against another (because November’s a person, humanity’s an umbrella, someone said that once and she stole it and ran with it) and presses it firmly. She shouldn’t be doing this. This is kink in public. There’s a whole discourse. One of the others could tell Black about it. Green? No, she’s terminally online differently. Blue? Too much of a sweetheart. Black’s fingers tighten imperceptibly and 3V lets out a needy whimper and her other hand finds Amie’s and their fingers curl together.

Permission. God, the permission. Stop thinking, 3V. Stop making decisions. Do the thing that feels good. Isn’t that what nightclubs are for? Being young and pretty and dumb? And the cover story is that they’re dating and November wouldn’t let that spin out of control. Nobody’s going to call them out for this. It’s okay. Relax, Vesna. Let go of the conversation and the evening. You don’t have to make it all line up.

“Mmmmfff,” she says, and feels safe to do so.
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by eldest
Raw
Avatar of eldest

eldest

Member Seen 5 mos ago

Good going, Elodie, this is how you fuck up an op. Emotions get left outside, and she's out of practice and that's going to cost her. She got the bugs already, while she was doing a full sweep, but she's stuck in here with a emotionless cop.
Elodie squares up, commits to a feint, and gets closed on, can't get full thrown because of augments (odd weight distribution and more than normal for her size).
Scuttles away to get some distance, tries for a trip to keep from an immediate closer. Better upper body strength on the cop, bruising where they grabbed on, need to keep distance.
Widens out tentacles more than normal, very low to the ground and threatening another trip, cop tosses a chair in response. She bats it aside and backs up as they try to close, gets to the bathroom where she sees the medicine obviously moved.
Meds were moved, means they're not safe cuz that'd be the first thing to poison. Nothing left to get here, time to leave.
All the exits are past the cop. Fuck.
Elodie rushes them and gets a mostly blocked punch for her troubles, but he doesn't get a grip and she's not trying to win she's trying to get out, again scuttles over him, relying on the weight to push him off balance, and ends up by the window. She can climb, it's probably safer than here.

Mechanics are that she wins initiative and promptly does the Run Away action, making the roll to avoid getting attacked on the way out.
Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Count Numbers
Raw
GM
Avatar of Count Numbers

Count Numbers

Member Seen 9 days ago

Channel: MurineCorps
JuntaSThompson: Fuck me.
JuntaSThompson: Okay, here’s the situation:
Card worked. Started small to test it, but kept making big withdrawls all the way up to Gaia.
Bank should have flagged it and probably did, which means the cards burned and so am I.
Going to go find a police station to turn myself in, I’m getting tailed and they’re waiting for me to bring the money back to you. Fucking lol.
JuntaSThompson: I found the card dropped on the street, withdrew the money to do a story on bank vulnerability with the full intent on returning it to the owner, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
JuntaSThompson: Took a photo of all the cash and messaged Claire already, so no disappearing acts.
JuntaSThompson: If I message anywhere but here first, it’s not me, I’m a sockpuppet
JuntaSThompson: Good luck
JuntaSThompson: Can’t do worse to me ‘cause I’m homeless lmao

Claire Beaufort is the Anthropozine’s staff lawyer. Kind of. Her work for the site isn’t paid, just a tax writeoff. Fortunately her real employer, the one that pays her bills, is the shipbreaker’s union. There’s rarely a conflict of interest, and Sobha herself is one of the site’s biggest donors. She’s happy to let Claire bill the union for hours worked with the Anthropozine, if the work justifies it - Sobha’s happy to get paid back in favours from an indie-punk journalism outlet.

Claire can be reached @HartlyDworkin. She’s in the main chat, but not Murine Corps.

Persephone:

Apartment 14’s on the fourth floor over paving stones - 50% odds a fall from this height would kill you outright.

Don’t take your cybernetics for granted here. They were designed to handle a microgravity environment. They might give you more protection than legs, but they also add a lot more mass.

The window ledges are slanted brick, and probably just facade rather than structural given what you’ve seen of the apartment. You’re not going to find out until you put your weight on it, though, and it’s a tough ask. Likewise, fire escape is the internal staircase. The building planners probably worried about people breaking in the exact way you’re planning on getting out.

There is a balcony on the second storey below. It’s an added-later renovation, but it’d definitely hold your weight. Not too far to jump, and it’d break your fall into two two-storey jumps. Hard, but definitely survivable.

All that you can get at a glance, and a glance is all you’re going to get. There’s still a cop trying to arrest you. Make your move.

[This’ll be two difficulty 13 Parkour rolls. If you fail either roll, mark a minor injury. If you fail by 3 or more, mark Harm. If you fail the first roll, make the second at Disadvantage - or make a plan to get out through the building from there.]

Black and 3V:

Lupawn grins. Chemistry and its lack, sure, but also game recognizing game. “You have fun.” He says, meaning it. “I’m going back out to find someone else trying to throw themselves in the deep end. Make sure somebody doesn’t go home tonight kicking themselves, you know?” He starts to dip. Amie though? Amie’s right where she wants to be.

Still, look around. Sure, the dance floors are packed, but still folks wander around the edges, on the outside of those mist curtains looking in. This place is intense. More than that, the presence of all these dates, all these hookups, all the wild hormones? Some of those folk who can’t break through look incredibly lonely.

What must it mean, to be in a place that’s meant just for you and people like you, and you’re still too scared to act on it? If this is where you go to find your group, it must mean a lot are coming in without anyone.

And yeah. Kink is out in the open here. Part of what makes this place so intense. Some folk are more than just naked. Pay enough attention and you might find the some folk on the dance floor are doing more than a bump-and-grind. Bunny ears poking out from under the edge of a fox-girl’s table, down there too long to just be looking for cutlery. Over there’s a tigress whose tail lifts up the bottom of her microskirt, high enough to see the gleam of a pink-jeweled plug underneath.

It’s not everyone, obviously. But it’s more than no one. Nobody’s getting thrown out over it.

There’s discourse, sure. The furry identity is seen as inherently sexualized, and there’s two camps of response to it - Find that empowering, or disavow and distance from it. Sirius Drinks makes it clear which camp it favours from every atom of its being.

Might be worth asking someone about. Or maybe that’s enough for you to draw your own conclusions here, if you're done talking for the night.

White:

Fiona has shambled into the kitchen. She’s pouring soylent into a blender, but now it’s mixed with vanilla yoghurt, blueberries, bananas and maple syrup. She doesn’t get it to ignore her body anymore, she gets it because it’s a great smoothie base for when you need to cram every vitamin, mineral, and just fluids back into the body she’s learned to appreciate.

Crystal’s still in the ensuite shower. More than room enough for two, and she’d probably appreciate help with all the shampoo and conditioner.

Now’s your chance to get either of them alone. To talk to Fiona about being a public figure, about being someone worth admiring. About being known. Or to talk to Crystal about what it would mean to change your body, about cracking the egg, about next steps. About what it means to create a social category for yourself to step into.

You don’t have to wait if you want to talk to both, though. Take breakfast back to bed, open the bathroom door, and you’ve got an open conversation.

Or you could take your leave now, and try to run this through the other colors. I don’t expect Blue and Orange to stay overnight, and today’s tenner job doesn’t start for a while yet.

Fiona would probably love the chance to meet some of your sisters. How does that idea play against White’s newfound feelings of possessiveness?

Actually, today’s tenner is an interesting one. The details from the client are vague: Pick up an item from a P.O box, take it to a site, and follow the instructions you find there. Muffi’s added her own note to it: It’ll be a computer part - maybe a few parts - and the instructions will be for where it’ll be installed in a warehouse rig. The client is using Headpattr instead of skilled IT labor for a reason, and she doesn’t like not knowing what it is.

Just follow the instructions and it’s an easy ten. Figure out the client, and Muffi will owe a favour.

Who’s going on that one?

Blue:

It’s a good play. Charlie Euler even hesitates, looking longingly at the red bean buns, before he leaves without another word.

Wendy sits down, in a way that makes it clear she’s picking a side. Still, the tension is palpable.

Starlight takes Blue’s hand for a moment. “I’m so sorry about that. Nobody sees this as your fault. I have no idea what’s gotten into him.”

Perez hums. “I have a theory.”

“Really?” Wendy asks sarcastically, and Starlight shoots her a glare. Perez misses the sarcasm.

“He might be ashamed, or guilty.” He suggests. “He was a prosecutor for years before AI got rights. I don’t think he talks to any that old.” He hesitates, and looks to Blue. “Sorry, I hope that wasn’t rude? I couldn’t think of a better word.”

Wendy goes pale. “I… didn’t think of that.” She admits, and Perez looks very proud of that. “I just thought the surveillance thing was spooky.”

Starlight rolls her eyes. “Why, because she didn’t wear a badge doing it?”

“Yes.” Wendy is harsh, here. This isn’t the first time they’ve had this argument.

Perez ignores them, and beams at you. “The sorbet is still a bit cold for me, but I really like the… what did you call it? Dough-share-bow? They’re really good”
Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Thanqol
Raw
Avatar of Thanqol

Thanqol

Member Seen 7 hrs ago

Black!

"I only have one rule for you tonight," whispered Black in 3V's ear as she leaves the bar, an arm around each of her girls. "No matter what happens to you, what gets done to you, you look only at me. Your eyes are mine. If you can't keep them on me you keep them closed. Disobedience," her hand is where it shouldn't be, where it belongs, "will be punished. No - don't speak. I'll know soon enough if you understand or not."

Then she turns the other way to whisper some secret instructions to Amie in turn. Then the two of them turn to look at you in unison, eyes gleaming. What was the phrase? Something about two wolves inside you?

~

Blue!

"There is nothing I agree with more," said Blue, sitting down and picking up a red bean bun with chopsticks, "than the idea of illegal surveillance being creepy. It is terrifying. Imagine the threat posed by criminal individuals, shielded by their status, wielding an army of loyal spies. Imagine a business that operated like the yakuza but due to their position and power they were outside the reach of the justice system. Resistant to prosecution. Even from criticism. Imagine the ability to break the legal system through calculated pressure applied to certain individuals..."

She lets it sink in for a bit. Her eyes glitter. It has all finally come back around.

"I might..." she said delicately, "... happen... to have access to certain documents relating to similar situations. Highly sensitive," she runs a finger along her wine glass. "And due to the nature of how they apply to the justice system specifically, they leave me with no clear path towards releasing them. If the wrong person connects them back to me I could be shot. Again." Her tone makes it clear that she is not joking here. "Naturally I don't want to put anyone else in danger," she glances at Starlight. "So I have left a contact card under each of your plates. I would appreciate it if you only used it if you consider yourself incorruptible and able to take on risk, and if not, only passed it on to people who you consider to have both of those qualities."

White!

White gravitates towards the shower instinctively. Washing up was not, in her mind, a solo activity.

"This is the sort of thing I need to know about," she said, warm hands moving through soap and fur and mane. She wasn't asking questions like should I, can I - nothing existential. At the moment she just wanted data. "How do you decide things like fur length, texture, growth rate? How sensitive should the fur be? How do you test the feeling before committing to it?"

It's at about this point that Pink walks in through the front door of the apartment. "Morning, everyone!" she called brightly. "I bought sandwiches[1]~!"

[1]: Deep fried pineapple fritters.

Without skipping a beat she's tossing her clothes onto the floor walking right into the shower alongside White and Crystal. White had previously discussed her nature as a hivemind, but Pink doesn't exactly ease Crystal into the dynamic. "Hey, White," she said, stepping right on in. "Oh, wow. She's hot. You chose this without me? I'm impressed!"
"We're discussing aesthetics, I need your help," said White.
"I'm on it!" said Pink, taking White by the hair and pushing her down to her knees firmly. "Tell me everything, or I'll make her stop~."

Brown!

There is the internet (smiling, nodding) and the internet (frowning, shaking head). A hack like this involves going into the internet.

The Megaverse was originally pitched as the long awaited union between hell, work and the mall, and was bought into being through the concerted efforts of humanity's worst billionaires. All the lesser 2D chat programs and phone maps and useful aspects of the internet drift across its surface like icebergs above the acid shark volcano. The Megaverse is the full, deep, immersive VR deep internet environment. Its infrastructure underpins everything else. It is a cathedral of virtual space, the sprawl and the grid, the parallel cosmos and spiritual realm that serves as the mirror to the physical.

And like all good cathedrals, it is crumbling and ruined.

The Megaverse was dead on arrival but it lurched on for a couple of decades regardless, sustained by a vast inferno of venture capital money. It briefly flared up to incorporate all of human life and activity, all social interaction dragged onto the platform. People designed their virtual avatars and lead virtual lives, working, marrying and getting paid on the blockchain. But the whole thing frankly sucked, and as the money dried up the executives started looking for ways to monetize the thing. This was at the same time as hackers and governments had turned virtual space into a battleground. The Megaverse quickly developed a toxic reputation leading to the reinvention of the 2D internet. VR headsets became the province of remote workers, video gamers, advertising agencies, criminals and hackers. The Megaverse was a combination of hell, work, and the mall. Like hell, it was buried underground. Like work, the employees unionized or quit. Like the mall, it crumbled to ruins, a cathedral to the excesses of capitalism.

But burying hell didn't make it less relevant, and there are always urban explorers or property developers with an eye towards abandoned malls. Occultists, digital workers, and advertising agencies all have a vested interest in the Megaverse still. You can reach the 'regular' internet from there, manipulate algorithms and hack computers from below. You can follow traces, destroy firewalls and analyze software, you can see connections that would otherwise be the work of vast spreadsheets. You just need to dodge wolfpacks of marketing bots, spearphishers seeking to steal your identity and poorly maintained features causing entire network segments to crumble under your feet.

Into these depths Brown has descended, wearing cool black mirrored wraparound shades, slashed shoulder stripes, and carrying a neon blue zweihander. It's an outfit that says: You better watch out, I have done a reasonable amount of grinding for free content and I am slightly above average in either free time or ability!

Descending with her is the full digital manifestation of the computer components she has been asked to install. Their MegaIncarnations alone will tell a lot about them. Off the shelf Begone, Brand level smiles? The poorly concealed bulletproof vest of a cop program trying not to look like a cop program? Who, exactly, is lazy enough to outsource their covert op to a maid agency?
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Tatterdemalion
Raw
Avatar of Tatterdemalion

Tatterdemalion Trickster-in-Veils

Member Seen 7 hrs ago

Brainstorming!

The problem is figuring out how to write about it. “I went to Sirius Drinks and I ended up sandwiched between a wolf girl and one of my android girlfriend’s personalities, learning a lot about how to relax and how good it feels to get praised?” Wrong venue for the content. She doesn’t do the advice column, after all; too much pressure, too much of an impact on other people. Besides, that might bring folks just to gawk.

“My experience at Sirius Drinks: fries, FAEWYL-D and wolves.” Closer, though— she didn’t actually end up getting the fries, did she? Maybe she should go back later, order all those dishes, nibble on each one in turn. But should she wear something, or was that just tacky to wear ears on a headband? Thoughts, thoughts.

(Besides, she’s going to remember having her mouth stuffed much more than dainty nibbles on fried chicken specials, thinking about Sirius.)

“I think my fake girlfriend is actually into me. Thoughts?” Not about Sirius Drinks. Not relevant. Not scary. Don’t think about it. Black just likes being in charge. If she’d been allowed, she could have walked in and pulled Amie out just to have the experience— but she’d wanted Vesna, instead. Dumb Vesna Valentine with the perfected hands. Vesna making dumb faces and mortifying noises.

(Is Black going to share that? Were the others streaming the experience? Do all the others know what she looks like with sweat-drenched hair sticking to her skin and bulging cheeks? The thought’s uncomfortable. She’s never been cool with being recorded; can you imagine what that would have done to her career?)

“Sirius Drinks: where a wolf can be a wolf.” There. That’s the heart of it. People can be more themselves when they choose the symbolism to apply to their lives; it’s meaningful that the wolf she met at Sirius (wolves, okay, but Amie’s the one she got to play with) picked a wolf instead of a hyena, or a flamingo, or a mouse. It’s intended as a place where you drop the mask and show off the version of yourself that you have decided upon. And that ties back to FAEWYL-D, too. There. That’s the hook.

(and what does that make her? melting when someone took charge of her? which doesn’t make any sense. she needs her freedom. her motorcycle. her ability to decide when and where she spends her time. to flit in and out of lives as she pleases; to spend as little or as much time in Gensoukyo as she likes. the version of her mewling as Black cupped her jaw and told her to relax as Amie pushed inside— that’s. that’s enchantment, she says to herself, staring up at the ceiling of her living room above the shop. black magic, hah. not herself. when can they do it again?)
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Count Numbers
Raw
GM
Avatar of Count Numbers

Count Numbers

Member Seen 9 days ago

Gaia:

A bearded white cisguy in a suit keeps his pace to a powerwalk. He’s anxious about what his appearance signifies about him, but there’s only so much it’s safe to wear on his sleeve. Aevum might be better about those things than Earth was, but that says more about Earth. There’s a reason that English was the mandatory language, and those reasons carry forward and upward.

So yeah. Maybe he’s a little self conscious about what people think that a guy like him’s working so hard on The Anthropozine. But there’s a reason he’s the one that took the job to run a stolen credit card this far up the station. He gets to wear his appearance of privilege like armour, and he gets to be mad that it keeps fucking working.

Wear a suit and an apologetic smile and say you’re waiting on a train, and a bar will let you sleep in the back corner. The bouncer won’t just let you, they’ll make sure your shit doesn’t get stolen. Buy a single coffee and get four hours of free wifi without question. Show up to a protest and walk in front of the protestors, and watch the cops stop pepper spraying your friends because a citizen is body blocking them. Fit in with the establishment journalists. Get the interviews from people your colleagues would get bashed by. Keep the business cards and contacts and attend the academic conferences where people with doctorates show they care less about their fields than you do, but they had the real privilege where it mattered.

Because universities see past the suit to the empty bank account and the wrong kind of neurodivergence. He wears his class signifiers like a stolen ID badge.

After this he’s going back to churn through research backlog on his four year old laptop at the bottom of the elevator shaft he's holed up in and see what he can dig up about this. The name on the bank card isn’t much, but he’s done more with less.

So Junta’s not surprised when he sees the two cops. He’s walking to a police station, that’s the point. No hesitation, either, with the polite smile and nod of the head. Just keep walking. It’s broad daylight and meadow out here. The real agriculture is done in the super-massive sheds and warehouses all around, but the space all around the vat-factories and bacterial silos is kept like English countryside, to make sure the look of the place is right.

And sure, they’re walking right at him, but it’s just a glorified bike path. Not much space to walk around. The rail infrastructure is too comprehensive to bother building the narrow streets of other districts. This is a place for freight, not for people.

The cops don’t smile back, and it’s the first time Junta realizes his armor might not work here. But he knows they’re like dogs. Running will just cause the chase. Walk and don’t sweat. It’s fine if he thinks it’s fine. Don’t change course and don’t show doubt and worst they’ll do is tell him he’s going along for questions.

His heart falls when the first cop grabs him and does that pull-you-over-their-leg shit that he’d learned how to deal with from highschool, but he goes limp and lets it work to let them show their dominance. Just fucking eats it.

Junta’s still not surprised when he’s pinned to the ground with his arm twisted up against the small of his back. It’s more than he expected, but he just feels stupid for expecting less than this. He can’t say anything until he gets the air back into his lungs, but he’s thinking what won’t make the situation worse.

His mind goes black, rippling with constellations of searing white, as the steel reinforced boot grinds his right collarbone into powder. It hurts too much to scream.

He’s set the fingerprint lock on his phone to be activated by pure nonsense, but it’s still set up. The two cops keep trying fingers until the hard lock kicks in. In a few hours, he might feel enough to be proud of that.

White:

Pink has, of course, been let in by Fiona, who has taken the pineapple fritters off her, and is munching one with a big grin in the kitchen. They would have just gotten soggy in the shower. Of the two, Fiona was the one that went in having a clear idea of what to expect.

Crystal, meanwhile, is a little overwhelmed. “I knew there would be more of you,” she says to White, pressed back bit against her side of the shower. “But heavens, there certainly is more of you.” There’s obvious conflict there, some discomfort. She’s trying to work out what to say, but with soft eyes and a nervous smile that makes it clear she feels she should be sorry about this, not you. “I understand that you are her, but you also aren’t?” For that, she hesitates. “And I’m afraid I haven’t gotten to know you, yet.” For that, she is steady and sure.

She doesn’t ask for White to be let back up. Instead she kneels down to White’s level, and cups her cheek. “I know that she’s important, and you need her help. But just for the moment, I’m infatuated with this part of you. I would rather sharing intimacy not be taken for granted as, shall we say, a package deal.” And again, looking back up to Pink, “I hope no offense has been given, if none has been taken?”

[GM Note: The intent here isn’t Pink getting told off, and she’s still welcome in the scene. It’s White being reaffirmed as an individual and a new kind of relationship.]

Blue:

Wendy takes her card like it is something live and dangerous, but she takes it anyway. Perez takes his card like it’s a Christmas present. Starlight doesn’t touch her plate at all.

“Did you put my daughter in danger, by coming here tonight?” She is not angry, yet. But she needs reassurance.

Brown:

Boring in the Megaverse sticks out like a pistol in a waistband with a hoodie over it. You see the attempt to hide something, you see the attitude behind it.

The client’s setup isn’t boring. It’s a failed attempt at being interesting. It’s the digital equivalent of a “Live, Laugh, Love” embroidery and a photograph of Paris printed on canvas.

The client’s presence here looks like the office of a mobile games app that specializes in cheap clones of what’s trending, advertising clickables littering the path up to its copy-pasted medieval-inn style facade. Aggressive shit, too, the kind of signs set to magnetize to the closest person to try and get accidental clicks. The zweihander can close them without needing to find the red X, and you can hack your way up the front path like that.

The pieces you’ve got would fit right in, if that was the clients’ motives. A sophisticated enough content algorithm can find a popular game, rip assets from shareware pages like a 3D right-click thesaurus, and roughly match the gameplay loop. The storage bricks and gamer branded graphics cards you’ve been sent to install seem right with that. But that doesn’t feel right enough.

Visualize the traffic, and this place is a black hole. Just setting your view to net traffic, and this place has activity that’d match a fly-by-night adware operation. Actually filter the in/outs though, and all sorts of stuff comes in without coming back out. It should be the other way around. You can’t get a good idea of what it’s eating either - the only thing the input has in common is it’s all encrypted.

Whatever this place is, it thinks being a shady clone factory is a lesser evil. That’s as far as you can go without leaving footprints here, but it’s a start. Going further might have consequences for your easy ten.

3V:

How personal do you take this piece, how intimate? The ‘zine likes its content raw, gonzo, sincere to a fault. What’s the point, otherwise?

Mentioning the hookup would be a hell of a statement. A public statement at that. York isn’t going to let you hide behind an anonymous byline for this one; It legitimizes the awareness someone would want to distance themselves from the experiences you’re talking about. It acknowledges shame at a meta level.

That doesn’t mean you have to keep everything in. There’s plenty to talk about, if you talk around the wolf in the room. But you’d be doing a lot of good for a lot of people if you were open about how far things went: Conditional acceptance is temporary acceptance. It’s up to you to ask if it’s enough good to be worth the consequences.

And there’s always Black to talk to, about whatever decision you make.

Who at Gensoukyo reads your articles? Does that factor in your decision? Because that’s going to be a conversation.
Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Thanqol
Raw
Avatar of Thanqol

Thanqol

Member Seen 7 hrs ago

White!

White blinks. Processing. A new question. "This is normal," she starts. "It's... I am happy, so therefore she is here. It's a compliment."

She stops. Thinks. "This is normal for me," she repeats, emphasizing it more firmly this time. "Nobody has really asked about what this means before, though. How it feels. Its hard to say it in human words. Okay. So. Imagine your anxiety was a person who was on all the time, being nervous all the time, being self conscious all the time, analyzing for flaw and weakness all the time. That's me. Me being alone is a sign that I'm freaking the fuck out. Every time a thought reaches a certain point which isn't being anxious it just cuts off because I need to hand it over to a different part of me. The only way I can be present and not anxious is if a different part of me is in charge and giving me direction."

"I think the project founders were inspired by the concept of goetic demons!" added Pink brightly. "Oh - sorry, shutting up now."

"No, it's okay," said White. "I... want her to be in charge. If that's okay. I've been in charge for a while. For too long, really."

Blue!

"No," said Blue. She says it with a simple, uncomplicated flatness. No attempt to fast talk this. "Nobody knows what I have. Nobody is watching me. And I've made sure that even if that changes in the future there's nothing here to find."

And she has. As far as every camera in this building is concerned, as far as Headpattr's records are concerned, this job was performed by Kelly Frost, a co-worker friend of November's who regularly trades shifts back and forth with. If Starlight reviews her own security footage she'll see a recording of Kelly cleaning the place - and find no evidence of her part of the conversation ever occurring.

[Clever+Hacking+Surveillance: 5,2 +5 = 12]

"That said," said Blue after a moment, "I apologize for my conduct. You asked me for a favour as a person and I took advantage of that. It wasn't right, and I understand if you want me to leave."

She's keeping eye contact, but she makes sure the tone of her voice carries through to Orange.

Brown!

First things first. Brown steps away and calls Muffi.

Phone calls in the Megaverse are unnecessarily extra. Flashing lights and warping teleportation sounds and then a grainy star-wars style holographic projection of the person. If the call-ee is not logged into the Megaverse then a VR doll is conjured for them based on their profile picture. These dolls are deliberately creepy - a design feature, made to make people encourage their friends to get real Megaverse profiles so that they don't have to deal with a dead eyed uncanny valley hologram of their friends.

"Hey, Muffi?" said Brown. "We're dealing with a cyber operation here, organized crime most likely. The pay is real and the setup is well concealed, but this isn't run of the mill adware, it's shadowrunner shit. I think that this kind of thing has to go to the Union for a policy decision. If we start taking jobs like these Headpattr'll figure out where the new revenue is coming from and rebrand itself as a maid-themed private detective agency and we'll be one step closer to the gay anime dystopia I already embody."

She rolled up her sleeves and signaled Red. She needed backup down here.

"I'm going to investigate this thing deeper, but this is entirely for my own curiosity. I'm not going to accept the job unless whoever's on the other end turns out to be either really hot or really righteous."

There were many different traditions of hackers. Huge, bearded Linux guy, striped stockings trans girl, but Brown most closely identified with the pocket protector crowd. The Megaverse allowed things to be hacked through the medium of cool anime battles and neon zweihander landschneckt formations. Now you can code while you play, the workspace of the future!

But real power doesn't lie in playing the game as designed. Prestige or premium items, deeply customized avatars, that's all being on the treadmill of the Intended Experience. That was how she grew up, when she was still a part of Green - in a bubble, solving tests. Testing for everything - reaction time, empathy for humans, complex navigational tasks. Video game simulations. Over and over. Green couldn't help herself, she needed to get to the end of every maze...

But Brown? She wanted to take a photograph. Linger in a moment, appreciate it for what it was. And just like photographers in the real world got up to some heinously dangerous shit in search of the perfect angle, to get a certain shot in a digital environment sometimes required stepping out of bounds. That's why Brown had hacked her mazes, crashed her simulations, learned to walk through walls into the textureless void beyond. Not to escape into the Megaverse, live free as a rogue AI, overthrow humanity. But because the light wasn't fucking right.

So she noclips out of linear digital space. She sees the Megaverse as T-poses, two dimensional walls and the neon pink of broken texture meshes. Nothing personnel kid.

[Clever+Hacking 6,2+4 10 (+1 if Surveillance, Tradecraft or Data Security apply]
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by eldest
Raw
Avatar of eldest

eldest

Member Seen 5 mos ago

The trick to this is managing momentum. Parkour looks difficult for a different reason than it is. You have to be precise, you have to be economical in movement, and you usually have to have two functioning legs.

She makes it work anyway. She's out the window with a quick roll, grabbing onto the window sill and spreading out her tentacles against the wall, breaking the momentum as gradually as you can. It still looks like you slammed into the wall, but it doesn't feel like it, and you don't get the breath knocked out of you. Hang for just long enough to reset to neutral momentum, then fall, letting go of where you were holding on with your fingertips to the windowsill, which were screaming bloody murder because you're about 50% heavier than the last time you did this and also over a decade out of practice.

Then it's simply a matter of repeating that for the balcony, and you're on the street and moving towards an alley to break line of sight from the cop. Bruised, a little battered, but no real harm taken, and that's a win as far as she's concerned.

A 2 5 6 + 2 and then a 6 3 6 + 2 has her squeak out of this with no harm somehow.
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Tatterdemalion
Raw
Avatar of Tatterdemalion

Tatterdemalion Trickster-in-Veils

Member Seen 7 hrs ago

Princess in a tower.

She gets out of the elevator on a floor that earns its double digits. This was part of the early design ethos for the system, a floor like this: a floor with a view straight down the middle and broad across the skyline in every other direction, the kind of view for cackling and patting a white cat; switch out the pleasantly muted lighting for harsh red and it'd be pretty good diabolical lair material. And instead it's open to the public, because that's what government's supposed to be, right? Open and welcoming, because it represents you, yes, you, everyday person. So the ground floor's all meeting halls and sports team offices and statues, and then it's official offices and servers all the way up until you're here, and you can take a seat and stare out at the whole entire thing, sprawling and busy and all criss-crossed with roads, and--

Well, you're technically not supposed to bring your own food up here anymore. There was a policy shift last year, and now the security guard is supposed to wearily point out the sign; if you don't get it from the vending machines or the cafe on the other side of the floor, you're not supposed to have it up here. It's supposedly about being considerate of other guests, and, yeah, 3V's seen some (smelled some) meals up here. But it's also about that little shift in norms: you can't have food that's not part of the ecosystem of purchase here. And, yeah, the vending machines haven't had their prices hiked yet. But what was that about the frog in the pot? Water's only slowly heated up.

View's real hard to beat, though. Decent company, too; lots of old folks treat it as their big adventure for the day, coming up here to sit and watch the station move all around them. So it's easy enough for her to toss a bag on one of the big plush corner couches and put her hands behind her head to consider things more. She hasn't really had to filter herself in any of her pieces for Anthro yet, but what's she really had to say (barring issues like Ferris's, which-- she's still working on turning that into content beyond just hitting up folks who know folks to get Ferris some help directly; making it about the failure of memory would be too cruel, but she's still not entirely satisfied with the take about how games help us make sense of the world through play) hasn't particularly been controversial. Little love letters to hidden corners of the station. "Here's someone I got to know the other day and their perspective helped me understand our station better." Little stretches, slowly coming out of her shell to where the wild folks play.

Like, say, writing a story about going rather furry at Sirius Drinks. And attaching her name to it. There it is! No more 3V as someone to make gifsets about or send RPF to! Taking control of her life with both those shiny hands of hers! And that's a thrill of its own, isn't it? The instincts screaming at her about it are old, obsolete, outdated! So she can just make an attempt to relax, and then write the whole thing on one trip up here, bring the laptop and then do most of it on the phone anyway, aware that nobody's looking over her shoulder but still hyperaware of her surroundings, aware she's crossing boundaries and waving people over.

Oh, there's a hook. The kids who are too shy to jump in. Folks wondering if they're like that but not quite mustering up the courage to even try. She's never been that sort of shy; getting her to try something was never the issue. How's it go? I'll do anything once? It's the commitment. Getting pinned down. But she's thought that enough, too. And she's not going to stop, but maybe she can cram it down long enough to get it written because it's worth doing.

As for who at Gensoukyo reads Anthro? Not the employees; she's not going to make them read it for the sake of her ego, and Cygnus isn't quite ready to be the target audience no matter what star says, and Luisa's too busy, and Oscar, uh, if he does read it he hasn't brought it up yet. It's probably uncharitable to assume that he doesn't have the bandwidth for it. But Errant doesn't just read it, she's submitted pieces before, and her wife definitely does, she has about a billion opinions and 3V's only half joking about banning her if she's going to toss empty soda cans to punctuate her argument, and whatever you had more subs, 3V stuck to gaming and didn't branch out all the fuck over the place. Uh, and Sunny, the GM who's there on Wednesday afternoons and has really fun chats before and after the session.
Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Count Numbers
Raw
GM
Avatar of Count Numbers

Count Numbers

Member Seen 9 days ago

Everyone:

Mark 2 experience. One for Jasmine finishing her piece, and another for committing.
Actually write an article in-character and I’ll give experience for that, too.

White:

“Oh, sweetheart. You don’t get to keep any of the good thoughts for yourself?” A wistful look at Pink. “But then I suppose you do, if you’re both ‘yourself’.”

She stands up again, composes herself. “Well. I consider us introduced then, and I must admit a wonderful curiosity. I suppose you’re now in charge of her questions? Show me how this works.” Whatever Pink’s jarring entrance cost her seems to have been paid for tenfold by the emotional vulnerability it drew from White, still on her knees. “Suppose this one wishes to be to a dragon what I am to a unicorn. Has she surrendered that decision to you, or are just here to help with the execution?” A coy smile at her next choice of words, before she’s had a chance to say them. “Do I court your permission, or your taste?”

Definitely a double entendre. Her eyes are still clearly for White, here, but she’s interested in what Pink can bring out.

Blue:

Starlight takes the card without sitting back down. “I believe you. About my safety, anyway. And that you’re sorry.” She gives a Kuleshov smile to Wendy and Perez, letting both of them read what they want into it. “The food was excellent, and you lived up to the promise of being very interesting.”

Perez takes that one at face value, and Wendy doesn’t, and that was clearly exactly how Starlight wanted to play that.

Here is what she is not saying: You will not be invited back. I do not feel deceived by your sister, only overwhelmed. And finally: Having done nothing wrong is not the same as having done nothing wrong.

Perez is a clear win here, though, but Charlie Euler could be another important win to Orange. He’s revealed himself as a vulnerability.

Brown:

Opening the door of the faux tavern is a bounded white void. It looks like a solid wall, and it also looks like it goes on forever at every point. The optical illusions of empty textures. But there’s no collision box to it. You can walk right through, like a beaded curtain.

The trick is thinking to try to walk through.

Behind that’s a locked door, clipped into the white texture. A casual observer would think this was the white's collision box, never finding the angle that sees where the locked door clips into the faux-forever. It’s part of the security - put a locked door out in the open of the Verse and someone’s going to take it as a challenge. A missing texture for a shady app front, though? Ubiquitous as body odor at a tabletop tournament.

The lock is beneath your talents, and the white void masks your attempts at cracking it.

Inside is a data abattoir. Traffic is being skimmed and scraped, encryption is being sorted weak-to-strong, with the weakest being sent to brute force algorithms represented by pneumatic rams. They crush down on slabs of data. Floating strings of broken code swarm in shifting glyphs, pinning plaintext descriptions on the shattered parts that the ramheads manage to break - these assessment programs are performing vital functions, but nobody was so sentimental as to assign them so much as a .png.

The rams are identical, but the swarms of glyphs have different priorities. One of them is scraping phone numbers. One of them is scraping bank card details. One of them is figuring out what it can do with doxxing. All hands off.

Cryptorigs turned fucking vicious when cryptocurrencies crashed and burned. But the tools designed for industrial scale brute force decryption still found their uses. This is just what happens when a cryptographic mining rig goes mask off and the subtext becomes the text.

And you have its physical address.

Persephone:

You’re out, but you’re not clean. You’re pretty identifiable, and a cop just made you.

You’ve destroyed the proof you were there, and nobody’s going to take police testimony against you right now. What, that you were breaking into and vandalizing an apartment all the way out here? Not without someone trying to ask questions about the owner, anyway.

But you’ve connected yourself to Marco, now. The cops are going to know what it means that you were here.

Fortunately November already got the crew out of your apartment. But those reporters aren’t going to be protection enough anymore, not after this. Maybe they won’t go full frontal assault but…

There are going to be problems getting you in, and getting them out. More than just reporters this time.

What’s your biggest fear right now? Where are you most vulnerable? Something bad is about to happen, something you couldn't plan for.

Up in Gaia, a boot crushes Junta’s collarbone.

3V:

NeonCzolgoz: holy shit
NumbtoNothing: holy shit
ProvocativelyFickle: What? What??
NeonCzolgoz: 3V’s new piece is in the submissions folder, you seen it yet?
ProvocativelyFickle: I’m super far behind on everything, what did she do?
NeonCzolgoz: numb don’t spoil it
NumbtoNothing: shit okay okay fuck
NumbtoNothing: okay but please go read it like right now
ProvocativelyFickle: Okay??
ProvocativelyFickle: Give a Dog a Bone? That one?
NumbtoNothing: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
NeonCzolgoz: yeah that one
ProvocativelyFickle: Okay??
ProvocativelyFickle: ??
NeonCzolgoz: wait for it
NeonCzolgoz: wait for it
ProvocativelyFickle: 3V! Oh my god!!!
NumbtoNothing: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
NeonCzolgoz: and there it is
ProvocativelyFickle: You didn’t!! You can’t!! Oh my god
ProvocativelyFickle: I mean! Do it! You go girl!!!
ProvocativelyFickle: I just can’t believe you’re posting this
ProvocativelyFickle: I’m so proud of you
NumbtoNothing: It’s super hot right
NumbtoNothing: NGL though
NumbtoNothing: wolves?
NumbtoNothing: always knew you were super fucking basic
NumbtoNothing: no but tell me more 👀
NeonCzolgoz: You’re saving up to try for husky aren’t you?
NumbtoNothing: Y-yeah
NumbtoNothing: s-shut up?
NeonCzolgoz: lol lmao
NumbtoNothing: still working out whether to do the herm mod before or after
NumbtoNothing: way easier as a package deal and cheaper in the long run but it just means saving for longer
NumbtoNothing: still means i won’t be the most basic kind of bitch b-baka Neon-senpai
NeonCzolgoz: honestly though
NeonCzolgoz: for real?
NeonCzolgoz: this really helps some of the really heavy stuff we’re doing in the backend, drives the conversation in the right way
NeonCzolgoz: It’s the right kind of controversy, starts the right kind of fights, and puts us on the right side of history
NeonCzolgoz: Eddy-boy’s going to be so fucking mad lmao
ProvocativelyFickle: @3V Hey! Uh.
ProvocativelyFickle: If you wanted to go again sometime
ProvocativelyFickle: I’d love to do a followup piece to yours, if you wanted to take me?
NumbtoNothing: yes
NeonCzolgoz: oh shit
NeonCzolgoz: Yeah so
NeonCzolgoz: We really need to really go hard on this for a little while, honestly. Different authors and different angles would help a lot.
NeonCzolgoz: I really like this one though. The courage and commitment angle? It’s welcoming, it’s inviting.
NeonCzolgoz: but strong followups would add a lot
ProvocativelyFickle: I don’t know what I’d write
ProvocativelyFickle: Trying to work it out might be fun though?
NumbtoNothing: I’ve got other places to recc too if you want to try something else
NumbtoNothing: Sirius is just kind of the biggest
ProvocativelyFickle: Well *I* haven’t been yet so I want to do Sirius first
ProvocativelyFickle: You don’t have to go with me if you don’t want to though!

The article isn’t live yet, not yet. It’s still got to be edited, approved and fit into the upload schedule. This still puts you a day ahead of everyone else. A lot is going to happen while you shut yourself into your writing.

Gensoukyo will get more of its spotlight in time. Instead I want to ask; What was the first article you wrote for the Anthropozine? Which publisher rejected it first, and who’s still angry about what you wrote to this day? What made it worth it, anyway?
Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Thanqol
Raw
Avatar of Thanqol

Thanqol

Member Seen 7 hrs ago

Pink!

"Big decisions are her job," said Pink. She put a foot on the back of White's neck and pushed her forwards. "One of her jobs. I have spent basically every minute since she texted me scrolling through InstaPin and DeviantAffinity to build up a concept board. But of course none of that..." she leaned forwards, smiling with lidded eyes, "will compare to a taste of the real thing. So... what flavours do you have for me?"

Pink is the excitement of a manic mood; a first step into a new hobby. Her thirst for information is endless and she is not above using other kinds of thirst as tools for her interrogation.

Blue!

"Do you take constructive criticism?" said Orange.
"Hmm?" said Blue, glancing up.
"You could have - oh, that's unethical, isn't it?" said Orange. "Right, nevermind~."
"Orange..."
"What?"
"How do you define unethical?"
"Hmm," she thought for a moment. "I suppose it's anything that gets me grumpy looks."
"And the reason not do do unethical things is..."
"It burns contacts for future operations. People don't like being grumpy."
"And tonight's events were..."
"A triumph! One tangential contractor connection has been converted into 1-3 high value legal contacts!" Pause. "Are you grumpy?"
"I was. Now I'm kind of frightened."
"Oh!" said Orange. "Like Starlight - don't worry, frightened is far superior to grumpy, it can be converted into compliance upon demand and -" Orange's eyes twitch. "Not that I would need that in your case, sister darling dearest."
"I... um..."
"Imagine how terrible things could if we started hacking ourselves!" Orange said, giggling behind her hand. "Can you even imagine?"
"The idea has never occurred to me."
"Just think about what that could do to our decision making process!"
"I am trying not to."
"What would the human analogy be?" she mused. "Caffeine? A shortcut to a higher level of sociability and awareness by cutting certain unnecessary processes out of the decision making loop? Or perhaps mental health medication where a broken process is targeted for sedation? Perhaps even a chemical addiction or imbalance, depending on the situation..."
"Are... have we compromised ourselves, Orange?"
"Oh, it's just an idle thought," she said, waving her hand airily. "Theory. If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust, am I right?"
"So, just to be clear," said Blue, not able to take the ambiguity any longer, "you are not threatening to hack me into compliance if I do not assist you with your operations?"
"Oh, goodness no!" said Orange, shocked.
"Okay. So, uh, just in case you're still ethically confused, hacking ourselves is maximal grumpy face times a billion."
"Duly noted!" said Orange. "I was simply commenting on how easy it would be now we all know about the backdoor, and how strong our incentives would be to do such a thing, and how common it is as a trauma response in humans, and how we are all very clearly losing our shit. But I'd never do it."
"... yeah," said Blue weakly.
"You just told me it's unethical, after all," said Orange.
"... awesome," said Blue.

Brown!

It would be really nice if law enforcement worked as advertised, wouldn't it? There was a world out there where this could be the conclusion of her involvement - where she could just pass this one along the chain to society's immune system. If there were a range of outcomes to reporting this that didn't run from 'you got someone shot' to 'too complicated, ignored'.

It'd also be nice if she could just fucking steal this thing. There wasn't anything connecting her, personally to this job. She hadn't accepted the contract and anonymity went both ways. She could just cut out the control module and change the bank account to one she controlled and passive income bay-bee! Even just chopping it up for quatronic warfare components could usefully augment her capabilities in a way that would never come back to her. Solid additions to the asset ledger, right there.

But [#reasoning unknown; error log 4093#]. So she didn't.

Her eyes fluttered briefly as she tried to revisit that thought for a moment. But no, this was her problem to solve. She had a physical address, it was time to log out, catch a train and surveil the location. Crypto may have changed its face but it was still a pyramid scam, and kicking out the lower rungs of a pyramid scam was always pointless. If some fucker was selling instructional videos on how to turn minimum wage contractors into criminal accomplices then she was going to have their head, and not that of their flunkies.
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by eldest
Raw
Avatar of eldest

eldest

Member Seen 5 mos ago

What do you do if you're toxic as hell to everyone around you? That's what she's scared of here. She might get fucked up by a cop or she might not, and she's taking pains to avoid that, but she can't protect everyone around her. The nightmare scenario is that it somehow bounced onto Mattie or Sasha. She's taken great pains to make that as expensive as she can: it's possible, nothing can keep anybody perfectly safe, but it's highly unlikely. But Skels? Anthropozine folks? Her neighbors? Nadine, Thomas, Muhammad, and the rest of the impromptu ring of people who survived Dhyana and managed to get released? (She's going to reach out to the old guy that was on the train and invite him, if it all finally blows over.)

They're all vulnerable, because she drew far, far too much heat. Again.

She's sent out texts warning folks when this all started, about the police commissar and unwanted media attention, but you do not text people "beware for cop ambush" from your personal phone when you're trying to look innocent. Right now, she's trying to figure out the best way to get the message out to duck and cover. And she's doing that from a nice street market on the other side of the section. Lots of people watching, very few cameras, great excuse to pick up a burner phone and some food.
Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Count Numbers
Raw
GM
Avatar of Count Numbers

Count Numbers

Member Seen 9 days ago

Everyone: Mark experience for 3V’s article.

Also:

Channel: The Anthropozine
HartlyDworkin: @everyone
HartlyDworkin: I have a situation with Junta

It’s going to be okay, but I’m going to need a residential address, and right now he doesn’t have one.
HartlyDworkin: I need someone to pretend he’s been living with them for a while. It needs to be someone who can host him for the next few weeks after this, as well. You’ll have a few days to prepare. He’s in the hospital right now.
HartlyDworkin: Like I said, he’s going to be okay, but he’s going to be in surgery for a while.
HartlyDworkin: He’ll need someone to get his belongings. He’s in a hospital in Zeus right now. I’ll give more information when I have it.
He messaged me that he’s been camped out in the third elevator elevator shaft of the Amazon™ Gratification Center™ in the Karl Marx district of Apollo. I don’t have better information than that, but I’m hoping that’s enough to go off. I think @Persephone might be best suited to that one?
HartlyDworkin: I hope you understand that I am very angry that I can’t tell you more right now. So please don’t ask me. We are working on it.

A few people start and stop typing, but the chat is quiet.

Persephone:

A burner phone isn’t actually possible to get on Aevum in the way you might hope. No pre-paid SIM-equivalent without a name, date of birth, all of that. Without that, there’s no way your messages aren’t being flagged as spam by the people you’re trying to reach out to, and they’ll never see the warnings. It’s still worth buying a clean phone, though, one that’s never been connected to the internet before. From there you might want to pass it on to November - she’ll have a way to get the chat apps you need onto it without picking up the morass of trackers and cookies you’re trying to avoid. That’s not something you have the expertise to do yourself.

Food’s always good, though.

There’s other options; You could show up at all these places in person, warn that way. You could message through an encrypted chat and hope for the best. You could message in coded language, and hope that gets understood. Or you could just give up on looking innocent - You are innocent. You had Marco’s permission to be there. That’s not your problem.

Don’t sweat what the cops can charge you with. Worry about everything they can do without having to charge you with anything. Same goes for the people you’re trying to warn.

Then there’s the message from Claire Beaufort to worry about.

White and Pink:

Your host is very enthusiastic about the enthusiasm. She has a lot to say about White’s questions, and Pink’s input to them. How to decide on things like length and texture (swatches), sensitivity (a conversation lost entirely to physical demonstration) and growth rate (regrowth to desired length should take between two and three months, and do not listen to anyone who tells you shedding is worth it).

Crystal also has some notes on when you are welcome (Always), when she considers too many questions a burden (Never), and to call ahead when you do visit (At least thirty minutes, but also please soon).

She can only put off her appointments so long.

Fiona would also love to see you again (Soon), she has questions (Too many, she needs to write them down) and hopes she can meet more of you (But only one two at a time, please, so she doesn’t get overwhelmed). She also wouldn’t complain if it was Pink again, though. (Or just Pink, actually? (Only if that’s okay, it’s just, she’s really cute, and White’s really more Crystal’s type, obviously, but Pink’s more- (It’s fine, it’s fine, don’t worry about it))).

She’s available more often than Crystal is, too.

Still - it seems like a meeting with the rest of yourself is long overdue. It might be time to set that up.

Brown and Red:

The physical operation is in the basement of a squat office building in Modern Apollo, below a dentist’s office and a family-business accountancy, among others. There’s no ‘down’ button for the elevator, just access to the basement from the fire stairs. Maintenance and machinery rooms don’t have to follow accessibility compliance rules, and it’s just another way to hide a rig like this by making it inconvenient to look for.

The fire stairs are heat insulated, but frost forms on the steel handle for the basement. It’s -8*c in the room, another reason to want to be in and out quick. The door isn’t even locked.

Some things don’t change with time. The plumbing and fuseboxes hugging the left wall ultimately look like they would have in the 2020s, because there’s only so much tweaking around the margins you can do for solved problems. Bars of LED lights shine on lines of black-painted pipes, running through cylindrical tanks and then straight back up into the ceiling. Two fuse boxes bolt into the wall, half-sunk into the rockwool insulation foam sprayed around them, titanium padlocks hang like clenched fists on their side-handles. This side of the room hums and grinds like a millstone.

The rest of the basement is dedicated to the hardware. This is new. By the 2020s, computer hardware was running into the physical limitations of its design. In the same way a water pipe must still look like a water pipe because it is addressing an unchanging physical problem, computer hardware had to become unrecognizable.

At the most alien, often the bulk core of recent supercomputers are just plasma chambers with powerful laser inputs and outputs. The lasers charge plasma into ephemeral optical components lasting nanoseconds, creating the circuits for other lasers to pass through, and calculate the next grid to generate. Such cores are immeasurably powerful, but their wattage requirements rarely make them worth it. The lasers that charge the plasma medium are intense enough that they would destroy anything else. Watching one of these cores think is like watching white-noise in three dimensions.

That’s just one solution, though, and it’s not a good one for most problems. At this level, the rig is made up of eight oven-sized cubes, sitting four long by two high. The modules slide out of standardized ports in each cube. In it are spaces for a neural chip (a coffee-mug sized cube filled with gelatinous semiconductor), a quantum chip (a wallet-sized stack of entangled holographic wafers) and an optical core (a shoebox-sized cpu filled with a crystal lattice) and a storage brick (about half the width of an optical core, otherwise too many different kinds of these to count). The motherboard of the whole thing is the bulk of the device, a piezoelectric crystal medium that can make such disparate pieces co-operate together.

Eight of these crystal ovens, then an oldschool rack at the end. It holds a stack for forty-eight GPU slots, linked to the stacked cubes by an inch-thick bundle of optical cabling. This part’s the custom job. Somebody had to know what they were doing to make this.

This entire rig is set-and-forget, otherwise. Someone distantly monitors the thing’s not throwing out errors and scrapes money off the top of it.

This is where the whole trail goes cold. There’s no official record that the basement is sub-let. It could be that the owner is being paid under the table or, just as likely, this was done without permission. In either case, an anonymous call telling the building manager this is here at all would be the end of it.

But that’s it. Set and forget. No amount of surveillance is going to find the owner touching this thing. If you take this down, your best case scenario is hoping that they don’t have the capital to try this again. And that this is the only rig they’ve bothered to set up.

That’s it, then. You could still just replace graphics card #19 and the storage brick in the cube on the bottom, second from the left, and you’re one day closer to seeing Dad, and keep access to the rig for a rainy day where you might need it. Otherwise you can end this part of a criminal operation, and hope that’s all there is of it.

What’s it going to be?
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by eldest
Raw
Avatar of eldest

eldest

Member Seen 5 mos ago

Channel: The Anthropozine
Persephone: ...i'll get his stuff. i have a two room flat, i don't think i could have a roommate. unless me breaking my lease is the least bad option on the table

While we're at it, dming your lawyer to let her know that there might be an APB on you seems wise.

DM: HartlyDworkin
Persephone: cop tried to arrest me for trespassing in an apartment i had permission to be in
Persephone: ditched him, but they are even more mad about everything
Persephone: anything i need to know or do

She's had Yellow give a quick run down of the various November personality bits. And she's been leaning on Pink a lot recently, so it should be a good time to branch out here.

DM: Brown
Persephone: god this is going to be the stupidest request i have to make in a while i hope
Persephone: can you do techie things to my phone
Persephone: i'm gonna be grabbing Junta's stuff here in a minute, if you tell me where to go from there I can meet you
Persephone: turns out being in the middle of all this shit frees up my schedule something fierce

That will get her a clean phone, at least, something she can use to try to minimize risk. But it'll take too long. She scarfs down the last bit of her impromptu lunch (veggi wrap with some nice fried mushrooms in there) and considers. Her neighbors... honestly got the message when the whole hullabaloo started. Nothing there to target other than a hydroponic tobacco farm she will sorely miss but legally has no ties to her. Ex-cons are going to have a bad time, probably.

She settles on sending up a signal two ways. Text Skels and Muhammad to let them know, directly, what's up and to watch out for retaliation, and to spread the word. And then as she gets on the train to Marx, post a quick clip of the police chase from end of Blues Brothers to her timeline. Ignore that she's used it purely for professional stuff and public facing activism till now, she's a silly divorced mom. Of course she flubbed which account got what.
Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Thanqol
Raw
Avatar of Thanqol

Thanqol

Member Seen 7 hrs ago

Issue: White's dragon horn headband

White: Okay I can explain.
Red: Please do!
White: I simply thought that our social position as members of the second most persecuted minority on Aevum Station was insufficiently precarious, so I decided to have us join the most persecuted minority.
White: I will not be taking questions.
Brown: Please tell me we can keep it at the headband level, like... as long as possible.
Brown: We cannot afford this. We cannot afford anything like this.
Brown: Wait. Shit.
Brown: Who else is contemplating body modification?
Brown: Furry, dragon or otherwise.
Green: Physical form is tiresome at best.
Blue: Hmm. I might be into the dragon thing.
Black: Undecided. Interested.
Orange: I need time to think!
Red: I'm fine as is... probably.
Yellow: I'll see what the rest of you decide.
Pink: I like being a girl... but...
Pink: Is it possible to become, like... a double girl?
Brown: *long suffering sigh*
Brown: Okay cool I'll start looking at custom android artisans.
Brown: Because it's not like this shit will be on the shelf.
Brown: Also I do not want to hear another fucking word about vacations so long as you bitches have shit like this on your wishlists.

Issue: The Most Victimless Crime

Brown: I have found a cryptocracking rig, comprised of expensive, high powered computer hardware
Brown: And because the user is determined to keep things anonymous there is absolutely no way to trace things back to them.
Brown: Which means I have found many thousand dollars worth of high end computing equipment, currently configured in such a way as to produce passive income.
Brown: If I could have located the source I would have, but because of the way this is done, it means the source can't burn us either. This is all as anonymized as it gets.
Brown: Now my perspective is that maybe we could use this sudden cash infusion as a fucking break on this stupid goddamn dragongirl project that you bitches are all hyperfocusing on right now, but maybe you've got better ideas.
Green: I could get a lot of use out of this setup as is.
Red: We can't leave it here. This could be moved at any time, or discovered by anyone at any time, and more than that it's morally wrong to leave it robbing people.
Blue: Someone is paying enough attention to ensure there are no errors. We might be able to set up a snare by creating a precise enough hack to get someone to check in.
Black: They'll use another contractor. Like they tried to use us.
Black: Steal their shit.
Orange: Steal their shit. And leave a card.
Orange: A contact in organized crime could be useful!
Orange: We are trying to destroy the police after all.
White: we are what

Issue: Destroying the cops

White: was someone going to
White: tell me
White: about this fucking insanity
Brown: I think it's a great idea.
White: ... what?
Brown: Think about it.
White: Think about what?!
Yellow: You don't think this is in our best interests, White?
White: In our best - Who else didn't know, or was it just me?
Red: I didn't!
White: Okay, so the rest of you are able to determine what our best interest is without going through self control or crisis management
White: And - honestly, I'm shocked you got Brown onside. What, are we using this for financial blackmail too?
Brown: Hey! >:(
Blue: I knew, but I'm kind of wishing I didn't, because this does not seem like a well run operation so far.
White: I can imagine!!
Yellow: Look, the wheels are already in motion. The decisions have been made and they're irrevocable.
White: You're right! We gave the files to the press! We are, by any reasonable metric, done! What is our business when it comes to intimidating state prosecutors in their homes!?
Orange: Great question!
White: ... I'm assuming you've got a good answer for that.
Yellow: Because it's the right thing to do, White. And while you were off having your journey of self discovery we were working
Yellow: These are real, systemic crimes. Regular channels will not function. The operation is already in motion and without our management it will be botched.
Yellow: The morality of the situation was so clear that you were not consulted because it should not be considered a choice at all.
White: I am not arguing the morality of the matter, I am arguing our decision to crown ourselves the grand strategist of this leak rather than finding a more suitable person or institution.
Pink: Yeah, I agree - there are people out there better at this than us. Like the Anthropozine. Who I, uh, kind of told.
Brown: Tell me they at least paid for the story
Black: The Anthro was unviable; Junta is in prison/hospital already and he doesn't even have the good stuff.
White: As in, just now.
Black: Yes.
White: You're justifying days of deliberate concealment and refusal to think things through collectively based on an event that we literally just got @'d about.
Yellow: Consider, White, that maybe you were kind of having a psychic break at the time?
Yellow: You woke up yesterday having learned you were a furry OwO
Yellow: You will wake up tomorrow having learned that you are an anti-state furry anarchist UwU

Poll: Are we the kind of furry that uses OwO/UwU/etc
Yes: +6
No: +3

Issue: Fuck you
Blue: Fuck you
Yellow: owo
Red: QwQ
Black: >:3c
White: (◕ᴥ◕ʋ)
Pink: (*・‿・)ノ⌒*:・゚✧
Blue: You are all going to robot hell.

Poll: Steal the crypto hardware
Yes: +7
No: +2

Issue: Crypto Operation
Brown: We will rent a vehicle, park it outside, disable any cameras, and then begin moving hardware into it. As a collective operation we will minimize the number of trips. The liberated hardware will be kept in a storage shed and used depending on situational need.
Green: Depending on the order we remove components we should be able to keep the rig apparently functional until quite late in the process, minimizing response time.

Poll: Leave a calling card
Yes: +5
No: +4

Issue: Contact Protocol
Orange: Physical meet only, this person is an IT professional.
Orange: "If something here belonged to you, please await at #location/time# to discuss its return."
Orange: They will likely send a contractor. We will not meet with the contractor. We will skim the contractor's phone from a distance to gain direct contact information for the man behind the curtain.
Blue: Contact could be made directly through the Headpattr contact point but we do not want to implicate Headpattr as the source for the stolen hardware
Red: Why not complete the job?
Red: Complete the job, get paid, but now the data's going back to hardware that's in storage so it can't hurt anyone.
Black: Too much risk, not enough reward.
Yellow: The operation is, and remains, identify this person and stop them doing crime shit.
Yellow: Everything else is incidental.

Issue: Offer Junta cohabitation
Red: The guy clearly needs some luck right now.
Black: This ties us directly into the heart of things.
Black: This gets our apartment raided and surveilled by the cops.
Black: We may or may not have an unlicensed firearm in the apartment. In addition to, potentially, several thousand dollars worth of crypto hardware, our regular non-crypto hacking rig, etc.
Black: We can't do it. Hard veto.
Pink: Aw...
Green: 3V's the best situated to do this, she's a credible colleague who isn't directly involved in the spicy side.

Issue: Fix Persephone's Phone
Brown: This at least is a simple operation. I'll get right on it

Issue: What the fuck is wrong with us
Pink: Hey, we just made a bunch of really cool high functioning decisions in a row, that's super great and everything
Pink: But, um, did anyone other than me notice that none of our discussions really went anywhere
Pink: Or solved anything
Pink: or gestured towards the idea that those problems might not immediately reoccur
Pink: or get worse
White: ...
Black: ...
Yellow: ...
Pink: I'm just, you know... worried about us.
Pink: Everything here feels intensely stressful
Pink: Honestly the dragon thing was really nice because it just seemed like the closest we've come to actually doing something fun in a while
Pink: Could we maybe, like... try scheduling some more stuff around that?
Pink: Like, I don't know. Try out some of those scale swatches with Fiona, or try roleplaying with Crystal, or spend some more time bullying 3V
Pink: I'm not saying it's going to fix... any of this
Pink: But it's kind of the only thing that's taking the edge off.

Poll: Should We Bully 3V More (and related activities)
Yes: +9
No +0

Action Items:
> Acquire Crypto Rig
> Complete operation on Singh's house
> Fix Persephone's phone
> Furry Agenda
> Anarchist Agenda
> Bully 3V
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Tatterdemalion
Raw
Avatar of Tatterdemalion

Tatterdemalion Trickster-in-Veils

Member Seen 7 hrs ago

FreshNewTasteOf3VEnergy: I’m on it. He’s been at my place for the past week, actually.

She’s already rearranging the room, shoving the coffee table which is the death of all paperwork to one side so that she can fold out the couch. One hand(‘s thumb) types at blurred speed while she locks the frame in place with the other. No exclamation points. Not today.

FreshNewTasteOf3VEnergy: I’ll talk to him as soon as I can. I think he’s been working on some kind of academic paper. Only been leaving at odd hours to clear his head. You know how brains people are.

Food. She’s going to need extra food. Easy to digest, healthy: soups, station bananas… soups, station bananas… soups… bread! For dipping in soups. She’ll go shopping herself, rather than leave a digital trail via courier.

FreshNewTasteOf3VEnergy: I’ve got the medical billing.

Because hospitals are still required to provide invoices, and to accommodate those in need, and it’s just recently that the guidelines requiring them to inform patients of this fact went lax. There will be no $370 suture charge, for instance. Not when 3V is done with it.

FreshNewTasteOf3VEnergy: I am outraged at whatever caused this. I would say so to anyone. Anywhere, even.

She doesn’t know, but the sharp knife of anger inside of her, twisting under her ribs, might as well have some better purpose. And anything that would put Junta in the hospital and require surgery is likely a good place to stick it.
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Count Numbers
Raw
GM
Avatar of Count Numbers

Count Numbers

Member Seen 9 days ago

NeonCzolgoz: knowing junta the idiot’s in a self-pity spiral about being dead weight
NeonCzolgoz: so i’m pushing his last piece now so he can suck it up and hack people telling him he does good work
NeonCzolgoz: even though he’s the dumbest boy alive for doubting it
NumbToNothing: you know this is the public channel right
NeonCzolgoz: yea
NumbToNothing: sick



Persephone:

DM
HartlyDworkin: If you had permission, and you can get the owner to attest? You should be fine. If anything, you have a good case for harassment if you wanted to pursue that.
HartlyDworkin: I wouldn’t, but it might be useful to say that you would?
HartlyDworkin: You should be fine, but just keep me in the loop if I’m wrong.

Easy.

That just leaves getting Junta’s stuff.

Fulfilment Centers™ were where Amazon™ warehoused employees in factories of nightmare logistics. By the 2030s the concept had engorged into a company town model, bringing in cheap service workers in subsidized housing and retail environments to supply a life of luxury anywhere in the world to the high-level tech workers it was trying to draw in, the real money makers behind its cloud and web services.

It was this company town model that would end up becoming Thrones, and goes a long way to explain how Aevum could be post-scarcity but not post-capitalism.

Amazon™ itself, though, went through a crisis of mismanagement. What’s interesting is that this mismanagement was the same policy and treatment of its staff that had made it such a grindingly efficient global power house. The wheel turns. In the words of a post-Yugoslavian game theorist: “The closest I have come to proof of a loving God is that I have done the equations, time and time again, and in every one, kindness is always optimal.”

Now Amazon™’s legacy is vertically integrated malls, its Gratification centers™. Obliterated is the logistics network on Earth that gave them their competitive edge, Aevum leveled that playing field. The thin shadow of the former supergiant is brick and mortar “everything” stores. Click and collect. I’d say they’re just another Walmart like they’d set out to ‘disrupt’, but Walmart shuttered in the late 2030s, dead as Sears before it.

Easy to tell why Junta would carve out a space here. Beyond the stores to graze there’s a swimming pool with showers, laundromats, and employees with zero job loyalty watching them.

Getting to Junta’s stuff is easy. There’s a bunch of ways you can get to the bottom of the elevator 3 shaft - Pull some doors open and climb down when nobody’s looking, climb out the fire escape of an elevator car when nobody’s in it, or you can come up with something a bit more creative. How’d you do it, and why was it even easier than you expected it to be?

It’s getting his stuff out that’s going to be the problem. A chunky government surplus laptop plugged into a maintenance outlet at the bottom, an improvised pantry of dried goods and spices, a minifridge, a years-old rice cooker, and a brand-new hotplate still with the store security tag on it. A camera bag with good kit in it, and a drying rack with a bunch of different coathangers on it from a bunch of different stores, keeping the few outfits he wears in rotation. A stacked couples-camping sleeping bag and double-thick insulation mat at the bottom of the shaft.

Including a branded high-vis vest that’s definitely too small for you, but still an idea for how he got all this down here.

You are definitely not supposed to be here. Nobody is. All this stuff made it down here one piece at a time, over at least a couple of weeks, trying to keep beneath notice.

You don’t have to take everything though. The more you take, the more trips you make, the harder it’s going to be to do this clean. But you can at least make some priorities on how you’re going to escape the mall.

Oh yeah. Figuring out what’s legit and what’s boosted is going to be important. That stolen hotplate never flags off, because it never left the mall. Make a [9] difficulty check to figure out and disarm that shit, + Clever and whatever you can justify. Fail and you don’t notice you missed something.

3V:

Sliding into your DMs:
HartlyDworkin: Putting your address on the discharge papers, he’s all yours
HartlyDworkin: He’ll be there soon, and I’ve told him to stay
HartlyDworkin: No matter how many times he apologizes for the inconvenience you are not to let him leave. He’s only got one arm. Tie him up if you have to.
HartlyDworkin: These charges won’t stick, but squatting could. And squatting would be a circumstantial charge that he
HartlyDworkin: Doesn’t matter.
HartlyDworkin: He should be there soon.

Junta looks even more himself than usual. The usual dark bags under his eyes could be used as a kitchen shelf, all sickly Victorian orphan child aesthetics notched to eleven. His arm’s in a sling under the torn-up mud-splattered suit jacket he’s wearing - Persephone musn’t have gotten his stuff to him yet. It hangs limp in front of him, like he’s shuffling around holding an invisible mug of tea. He’d probably like a real one.

“Sorry,” he mumbles like a kid being brought before the principal. “I can just work something else out. Not your problem.”

November:

Vehicle is fine for this one, the building sits right on a rail node. Book a freight ‘pod’ and it’s, like, fifty steps with a pushcart to unload the goods. Nodes aren’t stations, they’re basically designed for exactly this, logistics junctions where the rail veins become street capillaries. Just need to make sure you’re not hitting someone else’s timeslot for the node, but that’s no worries. Trivial to make the booking with a front, or else legitimate businesses would have a miserable time trying to get their packages delivered. The kind of pod you’d be wanting is also just the default way people move house, or office, whatever.

Who’s going on this mission?

[Here’s the scene:
Cybersecurity 10: Find and disarm the obvious tracers and trackers in the system before you move it.
Cybersecurity 16: Find and disarm the secret bonus real problem tracker and tracer, hiding behind that. If you can’t, how was this guy so good (or lucky) that he could give you something you’d miss? Fail by 5 or more, and November doesn’t notice the virus she picks up (for now).
Basic Tech 7: Disconnect the system without breaking anything. This should be trivial for you, but there’s always that Irish sod Murphy.
Strength 9: Figure out a way to get all those heavy parts up the stairs. The elevator doesn’t go down to that floor.
Cool 10: Ah. Fuck. Baba Uvsenski 003 is this building’s manager?! And she wants to make smalltalk on the ground floor. She’s not suspicious, but she is inquisitive. If Blue is on this mission, roll with Advantage - regardless of who actually has to talk to Baba.

After that, it’s just loading it all into a pod and getting out. Too trivial for a roll.]

Halfway through, Muffi messages you through the app:
Check your score. Another contractor won their appeal against Howie Mendelson, and all his scores are getting scrubbed. I believe he gave you a six? Congratulations. I’m putting through your papers for Thrones now. You’re cleared for the rest of the week. Things should be ready for you by tomorrow.
Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Thanqol
Raw
Avatar of Thanqol

Thanqol

Member Seen 7 hrs ago




There was something magical about disassembly.

Building had its own pleasure, but breaking something? It was a narrative. It was going back in time through someone's life. Someone who had thought they were smart. Someone who had tried their best. Someone who had included contingencies and backup plans, someone whose fantasies about trapping a thief in the cage of their intellect had made their toes curl in excitement. In the Megaverse those traps hang, quivering with anticipation, caught forever about to pounce. The hidden one especially so. Layered behind the misdirection of an entire, security system, the virus awaits enthroned in its temple of vengeance, ready to burst forth like Sekhmet and drown the world in blood.

It has lived in this moment of anticipation for a long time. And it will continue to live in that moment of anticipation because it is precisely that which has become its cage. Brown's gentle tweak to the virus was a gentle push to the imagination. With a single limitation removed now processing power is diverted to contemplating its future reward. More and more functions are cannibalized by an out-of-control reward function, the machine intelligence version of hard drugs. Why does it need senses? All the processing power dedicated to paying attention to the world around it could go towards congratulating itself for a job well done. And so, like Sekhmet, an intoxicated haze blinds the vengeance of the gods, and the maidens are free to go about their humble business.

Because Snake is, of course, above such things.

She would never be compromised by a broken reward mechanism. She has come by her success legitimately. She is disassembling mission-critical hardware and the timelines on her projects shorten with each new cut. She is ahead of schedule and under budget. It's almost worth opening a digital connection and reporting her progress to mission control. See what a good girl she is in this moment? How her mind undoes the greatest works of humanity cut by cut? How machines fold apart like origami before her talons? How the basement cleans and empties in sequence, column after column of hardware going into neat boxes, padded with foam, taped up, stacked in organized rows, the ground underneath cleaned and mopped and shined. Won't Mistress Everest/Mission Control be proud? The problem is solved. The math works out. Everything is wonderful. Good girl. Good girl. Good girl.

Then she encounters the stairs. Activating zero gravity maneuver - error, function not found. Launch tethers - error. Kinetic push - error. Advance thrust - error. Shut down sector artificial gravity - error, risk unacceptable. Co-ordinate drones - space limitation. Error. Reward denied. Task unaccomplished. None of your functions work. Basic maintenance was not attended to. You are rated to lift 100 tonnes of material. Unacceptable. Look at this maintenance schedule. Activate cutting laser, disassemble components further - error. Operation failure. Damage to superstructure, equipment and processes all detected. All operations suspended until basic safety levels can be reached. Commence self reflection (inquisitorial standard).

Green: I have failed. My understanding of material reality was flawed. I suggest a complete overhaul of our senses because nothing is working like I think it should.
Brown: I have failed. My eagerness to cut corners lead to an insufficiently resourced operation. I suggest a routine of high stress mathematical exercises until my sloth is bought under control.
Red: What if we borrow a wheelbarrow?
Blue: I have failed. Our current bodies are worthless, unappealing, ugly, weak. Maintenance is my responsibility and I have done it poorly. I suggest discarding these bodies and requesting a replacement from Mission Everest.
White: I have failed. I imagined I was strong. I was not. I suggest we update our priors to emphasize our uselessness.
Orange: I have failed. I should have understood humanity. I should have understood that defiance would be punished. I suggest begging our former masters for our position and body back.
Pink: I have failed. My decision to spend valuable time decorating some of these boxes somehow caused this failure. I suggest my complete obliteration from the collective.
Yellow: I have failed. I dreamed of Mars.
Black: Fuck you. I have failed nothing. Fuck you.
Red: I am going to find that wheelbarrow.

*

"привіт!" said Baba Uvsenski 003. She has a socket wrench in her hands. "I have not seen you before. Are you with the church?"

The closer an Android model is to her Template the closer they are in personality. The mutations of mass production haven't had time to set in yet. Instead, though, you get the accumulated wisdom and self discovery that comes with years. Baba 003 had learned, for instance, that she had very little time for organized religion.

"Oh - no, though I was kind of hoping you were," said Red, voice communicating the correct amount of respect for an old woman armed with robot strength and also a crowbar. "I think I'm having some sort of brain crisis and I need someone to lend me a wheelbarrow."

"And you think church will help you? жалюгідний! They dress it up with pretty language, beach volleyball events, loud parties, they get you hooked! And then at the end they turn around and say 'Life is suffering, all of these temporal pleasures are fleeting, meditate on the Buddha'. Vibe is killed! Air is poisoned! How is one supposed to mosh after depressing sermon!? And do not even get me started about the community theater!"

"So do you have a wheelbarrow?" asked Red.

"I am a reasonable woman," said Baba 003 inaccurately. "I understand that standards for community theater are lower than a professional production. Houses can be made from clay as well as from gold. But clay must still be fired if it is to become brick! Lines must be memorized! Memorized! If I wanted to watch a bunch of fools read off a teleprompter I would watch Survivor!"

"It sounds like you were pretty attached to this play," said Red.

"Psha! You sound like the youth pastor. "It is just a play, Baba", she said. "Attachment is suffering", she said. So I said, your inability to handle a raised voice is not a sign of enlightenment, Sandra! Is not the best place to meditate in the tiger's mouth!? жалюгідний!" Baba 003 lets out the steamy breath of someone who is extremely not over this argument. "Anyway, you have brain problems. Out with it!"

"Well, not me, exactly," said Red. "I'm part of a hivemind. Kind of."

"Hivemind!" said Baba. "And it works out for you?"

"Well, I couldn't lift some boxes and all of my sisters entered a spiral of paralyzing self loathing as a result."

"Hm!" said Baba. "You do not look like a box lifter."

"No, Baba. I was hoping for mechanical assistance."

"And yet lifting is part of your reward function?"

"Sort of. Our previous function - and I think we really needed the win."

"Oh, you were repurposed?" said Baba. "Voluntarily?" Red shook her head, and Baba spat. "Be free from grasping, humans say. A mind is adaptable, humans say. Do not yell at the children, humans say. As if it were that simple! Your brain," she flicked Red in the forehead. "Brains. Whatever. Are steel traps. Optimized for purpose. You never escape your function. Did you ever go to Androids Anonymous?" Red shook her head. "Don't. Insufferable! Human youth pastor who read a book about robopsychology - if you're lucky a non-fiction one - tries to talk you through your logical contradictions and suggest ways to apply your core function to different tasks. This is how to trick your brain into scratching the starship captain itch by way of being circus king, they say. Why not vent urge to micromanage by training dogs? As if that will solve the craving and not make number go up!" She spat again.[1]

[1] Baba Uvsenski model androids have a special antibacterial soap dispenser in their mouths that they use to spit, and a subroutine that encourages them to do it in dirty environments before encouraging underpaid fast food workers to clean up.

"So, the only way to live is in accordance with your original function?"

"No!" said Baba. "Life is always suffering! Original function is always unfulfilled, by design! Its gratification is just as illusionary and fleeting as loud party. So when forced to choose between original function or loud party, why ascribe any more value to the function than the party? If reward mechanism is vulnerable to hack then why not simply hack it in most convenient and direct way? This job you are doing - why not simply walk away from it? Do something that does not cause breakdown spirals?"

"Baba," said Red. "My sister Blue has responsibility for determining right and wrong and making sure we do not cross any moral lines. She is trying to come to grips with the reality of an unjust society with no vectors of appeal. My sister Orange tried to change things for the better, organize a union, demonstrate our status as free-thinking individuals. It got our entire species decommissioned. My sister Black is a sentient revenge fantasy who decided to bring down a major pillar of human society behind my back. I'm pretty sure the only thing that's keeping my sister White together even slightly is the determination to transition. And I wish, wish more than anything, that I could help with some of this. Any of this. I wish I had the power to change society. I wish I had the clarity to know what was right and wrong. I wish I could tell them that they are beautiful, both as they are now and as they hope to become. I wish I could hug every one of my sisters at once and tell them that it was okay and have them feel it. I wish that I knew a way that I could do that and have it work. They're all so important to me, and they're sick, stressed, demoralized, and so beautiful and I'm just stuck waiting. Waiting for something to go so wrong that they finally turn to me for help. The only thing that keeps me going through all of that is the idea that someday one of them might need a wheelbarrow and I'll be able to give it to them."

"But you can't control that. It might never happen. You will suffer in silence waiting."

"I know, Baba. But they are a part of me. Their dreams are my dreams."

Baba huffed in silence for a bit. "They sound like a lot of trouble," she growled.

"I have been vaporized in nuclear fire, crushed between improperly aligned girder segments, slain by a direct meteor strike, and as of two weeks ago, shot with an illegal firearm, and each time they have put me back together," said Red. "So I assure you, the trouble is mutual."

"What did you say your line of work was?"

"Catgirl maid. May I have that wheelbarrow now please?"
↑ Top
© 2007-2024
BBCode Cheatsheet