It's easy to forget that the system works as advertised.

When you control for enough variables then everything can function correctly. Effort can translate into wealth. Police can mean protection. The endless harvest of data can be used to optimize services and improve resident comfort. An alternate reality can be built that does not try to pick your pocket. The howling void of space can be made to give forth a gemstone from nothing, and within that gemstone are contained the dreams and memories of forests, of fantasies, of memories of peace and stability. In theory, everything works. In theory, there is no reason why it should not.

Yellow lets her glasses flick through different filters and back to reality on a thirty second delay, set to shuffle. Green is burning to explore, to rip open maintenance hatches and map the shapes of network connections and see if different overlays contain secrets or implications about the truth of the grand machine. Brown can't be bothered with any of it. The others are each joyfully embracing their own aesthetics - and why not? Isn't that the point to this, to all of this? That people should have nice things? That those people who just want to check the fuck out of a disappointing reality should be able to do so? Was vanishing fully into the digital space any morally different than building a sexy robot dragon body and castling into it?

If you just control for enough variables. Should nobles of the robe be allowed into the heights of government, or only nobles of the sword? Should access to power be extended to the Catholics, Irish though they were? Have we not solved inequality now that the foot stamping on the human face might be wearing high heels? Thus ran the long discussion of liberal thoughts and politics. Right now they were discussing the androids but the outcome to that debate was inevitable. Of course discrimination against androids would in turn become ghastly. That was already starting to happen. And of course the boot was already winding up to step on furries. In a few decades there'd be a cute foxgirl CEO committing securities fraud, complaining about her unjust six months house arrest, and ten thousand poor people would lose their homes. Because behind the diversity of passengers on the shuttle to Thrones was the common denominator of the ticket price: the only variable that mattered in the end.

She couldn't bring herself to hate the process. Those victories mattered. They'd mattered to her, materially. She'd walked out of a prison and into the world. And then she'd walked out of the world and into Thrones. She could stay here, if she wanted. The system would have [i]worked[/i].

The system had two hands though. It lifted with one and crushed with the other. And she could not tell herself that those actions were independent.

*

She opted to go through Headpattr for the scouting process. Firstly, to get the feeling for Thrones interior spaces; how to navigate and how to escape. Law enforcement presence and force. The feeling was grim. This place was hundreds of miles removed from any alternate locus of power. If her father was secretly a monster, if he'd sold them all out the first time around so he could come [i]here[/i], if he had a bomb in [i]his [/i]brain, then...

November was scared. So much could go wrong. To avoid being flung right out of this place as an unwanted glitch in this miraculous computer mind. And if it was her against [i]any [/i]of the residents she'd be gone. Only one variable mattered.

She played it safe. Explored the systems. Felt the rhythm. Got a sense for popular AR filters and how they changed human behaviour. Stood back and observed for a while.

[Prep Roll: 3, 2 +3 Clever vs 7 = 8. 2 prep, +1 from Overprepared for 3 prep]

*

[b]3V:[/b]

When Red opens the back door, she has the requested pack of Advil+2 and a bonus bag with a couple of bottles of limoncello, plus an ouija board. Blue is standing behind her with a water spray bottle she turns on Hunter with aimbot precision to thwart his attempt to escape.

"Hey," said Red, coming in, tossing the ouija board on the board game library, covered all the while by a ruthless and cold-eyed Blue and her spray bottle. "Were in you the mood to play any games tonight? Or is that, like, too close to your job?"