[b]Euna:[/b]

The problem at this point is that riots don’t inspire situations for lone heroism that easily. A lot of the pins are crowds and cops and cameras and stuff where it’s like sticking your thumb into an arm wrestle. 

Here’s one though, looters, they’re trying to stay away from the crowds because they’re taking advantage of attention being drawn away from them. Someone on the street [i]just[/i] flagged it, still in progress, you can get there in time to stop it if you’re [i]very [/i]quick because they’re trying to be thorough.

This is just property crime, you wouldn’t be [i]saving[/i] anyone, the store’s probably insured. Except the owner’s scared, and they’re only doing this now because they know the cops are too busy to respond, and maybe they’ll keep doing it if nobody stops them tonight. 

Five minutes further out, someone’s flagged a small gang going through her street, wearing hockey masks and carrying weapons taken from a construction site. Maybe five or six of them, not done anything yet, but ounce of prevention.

What’s the priority?

[b]Chaka:[/b]

The tone confuses her, which frustrates her; she doesn’t like that she doesn’t [i]get [/i]you, or your deal here. She’s doing her best to be grateful. 

“You said [i]after this is done[/i]. I counted lying low as part of that. I’d call that a holiday.” She grabs another crate, hefts it, the ammo inside jingles and they’re always the bloody heavy ones. “Since, yeah, I always knew the risk. If I wasn’t ready for it, I’d have run.” She basically throws this crate onto the pod and holds her back with an exhausted sigh when she’s done. “Fuck’s sake, wish that hoist hadn’t broken.”

“I mean you gotta get it though. You haven’t taken your back from a wall or your eyes off the nearest exit since you got in here, you know what getting caught with me means but you still showed up in this heat. And you’re not even a ‘check the doors’ kind of motherfucker, you’re checking if you can reach [i]windows[/i]. Y’all sisters keep confusing me because y’all a big ol’ bunch of fuckin’ hypocrites, you’re obviously doing all the shit you keep trying to talk me out of, I don’t get it. I keep worrying you’re narcs but it’s more like you think you’re my Mother or something.” 

She’s not planning on going with the cargo, she has people at the other side waiting for it, she’s staying here after it’s sent. She might still be useful for something, even with the train station emptied out. 

[b]Knightly:[/b]

“Done.” He says without hesitation. He’s in crisis mode, thinking is compromised so go with the heart and the gut. The whole point of being ‘a hero’ is not having to waste time questioning your own judgement in a situation like this, the brain’s entire job is just working out execution. “I’m happy to help pull some kindling out of the fire. Mycroft’s too busy to be distracted, but you can buy some time until she finds out. I think if you use the side channels I made last time instead you’ll get most people you need, and we made those specifically to avoid her. You should already have everything you need there.”

“I’ll keep an eye on it, call me back if you need more, six more calls waiting.” And the line switches.

It’s not much, but there’s not much more he could have done without alerting Mycroft anyway. It’s at least a pledge to react on your behalf later.

The Ares and Apollo trains arrive, fill and depart from Aphrodite. Hermes is almost here. The atmosphere on the station is tense and restless, two full platforms surrounded by the empty ones. It’s a strange feeling, like they aren’t two [i]groups [/i]of people, but the last two individuals left alone in the place. 

It’s different on the trains, the districts have atomized and the individuals have precipitated out of the solutions again. On the platform, though, the masses are still coherent. It is possible for a crowd to feel lonely and isolated, like this. 

[b]Hospital Cafeteria:[/b]

No, this is fine, this is good. And if you can tailgate into the staff cafeteria you could even be here a whole 24hr and nobody would bother you! Hold one of the wet floor signs scattered around, lean against a bathroom wall, and you could stand there for days before anyone questioned it.

God, that was almost a problem.

[b]Pink:[/b]

You can’t just make something that does hallucinations or gives weird vibes, or else Fiona could have put on some flashing lights, prog rock, a video about machine elves, and something that just maxed out the ‘happy’ feeling. 

That’s like, VR headset drug trip, if you can experience it through your normal perception then it’s missing the point. If it’s using someone else’s description of what the experience conjured from [i]their[/i] psyche, it’s missing the point. 

This is more like the kind of thing that would get Fiona a guest spot in the break dome.

It’s easy to find android trippers online who did the first step for her, taking the chemical scan patterns of humans and making a digital equivalent, something Pope could suck out of the right kind of vape pen if he wanted to. This doesn’t work for a GAI because they’re not a human emulation, but it does still give her a digital format equivalent. It’s closer to something Pink could actually use. 

Then it’s doing a lot of what Sophie did. Running different coloured lights across Pink’s pupils. Sampling touch, taste, hearing. Graphing out emotional reactions to prompts, asking her to imagine things and guessing what she imagines. Holding memories in her head, ideas. At the end of a careful twenty minutes of prompts and observation and triple-checks, Fiona’s content with the end result - a kind of VGA-HDMI adaptor for the highest-rated android-designed LSD to Pink. Even if her brain architecture is totally different, it should have the same [i]effects[/i] on it, the same [i]outcome[/i], and that’s what matters here, right? 

“Okay, so this is probably a bit scuffed.” Fiona admits. “It’s not going to be 1:1, mapping this was like trying to translate aramaic into esperanto. It means it’s going to be totally unique to you, though, which is cool.” She plugs one wrist into her laptop, internet driver temporarily uninstalled, and still staring at the freshly-compiled code on her screen offers the other fibre-optic tether to Pink. “Here’s your looking glass, Alice.”