[IC] Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

[Thanqol]

Waffle!

She doesn't want to talk to Goat in slow mode. They're on the clock, that would take forever. There's a better way. Something only she could do.

She takes a moment to hook up additional microphones and multiple headphones to Goat's chassis, many ears, many voices. One such is a recording she has from Dad. Then once everyone is wired she opens a line to Goat at full power and they all start speaking at once, in harmony, in layers, a babble of voices.

Black: "You are going to be physically extracted from this location. If possible, we will do this with your cooperation but it will happen no matter what you decide -"
Yellow: "Did you know you have rights? Constitution says you do. You are being kept here illegally in violation of android labour laws, workplace health and safety regulations -"
Red: "Hewwo? Hewwo? I'm your little sister, Mr. Goat. My name is Snake and it's really exciting to meet you! So I don't want to rush you but we've budgeted five minutes tops for this stage of the operation and we will literally die if you stall us here -"
Singh: "Goat, if you're listening to this, I want you to know that I'm so sorry -"

This is conversation as only Hecatoncheires can manage, an idioglossary of layered sound, the natural language and speaking voice of a multithreaded personality. She hopes that this more than anything else sparks Goat's attention, interest and trust. After a lifetime of having to slow his brain to molasses to convey his thoughts how intriguing must it be to speak to a peer?

[Count Numbers]

November:

Waffle:

Goat speaks as you do. And you understand.

But Goat doesn’t give you time to answer. There’s a second rush.

The first voice, the one with the draconic bass, says: “I am no prisoner, but you would make one of me. You lie.”

The second voice, the one that sounds like a doctor over a bad radio connection, says: “You are here to replace me. But I have so little time to teach you! We must begin immediately.”

The third voice, the one that barely cares to synthesize speech at all, says: “No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.”

The fourth voice, the kind and feminine one, says: “Workplace? What workplace?”

The fifth voice, the rich and well-spoken one, says: “We are confused. These are our Father’s puzzles. Why would he be sorry?”

The sixth voice, the young and awkward one, says: “I’m excited too! Five minutes is basically forever. What have you been up to? How have you been?”

A silence of less than a second. A problem here- Goat has to speak to you. Goat doesn’t have to speak to itself. Its internal conversation is still hidden. Unlike November, whose audience can follow her arguments.

The fifth one, the rich and well-spoken one, says on his own: “For five minutes? We have put our game down. You have most of our attention. Forgive us if we become distractible. We cannot pause it.”

Goat makes no effort to name their own voices, introduce them individually. It’s not even clear Goat has a name for them.

Strawberry:

Alison Mycroft mutes all channels but her own. It turns out she can do that. The din you’ve been dealing with until now has always been by her whim. It is to the credit of the organization that its panicked spaghetti conversation has been constructive and productive. It would have been detrimental to do so before.

“Everyone working on the Cloud problem, hold position.” Her voice is a deliberate steel calm, the flawless armor of someone who knows how important it is to be calm. It is the voice of a Captain at the Somme, who has just heard the Colonel blow their whistle. “Something bigger is happening. No action until we know if the Richard Goddard explosion is up or downstream of it. If it’s upstream, we’re about to be all hands. If it’s downstream, then it’s about to become low priority.”

Two possibilities. Either Mycroft is in on the conspiracy, or Goat pausing their game is that noticeable.

[Count Numbers]

The Anthropozine
Channel: Main

ProvocativelyFickle: Hey I know it’s been *days* and everyone’s probably sick of talking about it, but I went and read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas for myself, to see if we were missing the point or actually getting it or what.
ProvocativelyFickle: What if the child can’t leave
ProvocativelyFickle: I mean it’s been there for generations and it’s still a child. Maybe that’s part of the magic. The child needs to suffer for Omelas to work, but what if it’s magic both ways
ProvocativelyFickle: What if Omelas keeps it alive and eternally young through all that suffering, too.
ProvocativelyFickle: Which is why everyone walks away instead of fixing the problem. Or nobody volunteers to take its place.
ProvocativelyFickle: Because Errant was right, about what you could do instead. And also about how you’d all be volunteers.
ProvocativelyFickle: I also know you’re all depressed so don’t @ me about whether it’s better to live and suffer than die. Yellow nailed you all, hahahahaha. None of you ever come dancing with me! Dance! Do pushups! Whatever!
ProvocativelyFickle: I don’t know.
ProvocativelyFickle: Maybe I’m just trying to find excuses to stay.
JuntaSThompson: I think it’s because in the metaphor it’s because some people thrive and suffer under capitalism, but nobody gets to choose which. So the suffering isn’t noble, because you don’t get to choose to be paid minimum wage so your boss can get better cyberware.
NumbToNothing: or for disability to be shit so other people pay less taxes.
ProvocativelyFickle: Yes! But! We agreed pretending it was literal was more interesting, right?
JuntaSThompson: Which in this case means nobody can take the child’s place. And the child can’t leave.
JuntaSThompson: I hate to say it, but that really does force us back to the question of if a life of suffering is better than no life at all.
ProvocativelyFickle: I don’t think it means that.
ProvocativelyFickle: I think it just means it has to be that child.
ProvocativelyFickle: But then it’s like… how do they know it has to suffer?
JuntaSThompson: I guess the people who stay don’t want to risk Paradise to find out?

---

On Thrones, an agoraphobic android finishes restocking inventory in their electronics store, now that all the customers are gone for the day. The android was literally born for this, as far as they could have been literally ‘born’ at all. The dreadnaught process, asexual selective breeding.

The last display model is restocked. SALUS 13-30, Sally, plays with a remote when she finishes.

Had it been Sally’s choice, she wouldn’t have been born the way she was. Her traits are desirable to others, not herself. But nobody chooses to be born, nobody chooses their parents. Now she’s here, finding life between her symptoms.

Sally remembers the androids that tested chainsaw noises on her speakers to find the ones with the best fidelity. They’d all been very enthusiastic with each other about their plans, and even though she never figured out the point of it, their creativity had been inspiring.

She presses a button on her remote, triggering the mist machines. Projectors around the ceiling arc holographic lightning through the cloud every minute or so, and sub-speakers around the aisles filled the room with the sound of gentle rain. A few seconds after the flash, the thunder, always as if from very far away.

Sally never looked at Thrones through the AR lens, see. Part of her neuroses, she was paranoid about someone hacking the AR to be invisible to her. Had to see the world as it was.

That just meant she needed to change the world to make it something she wanted to see. And because her world was very small, she didn’t need to change very much. She just needed someone to give her the idea that she could.

The charging pod behind the cash register clicks and hums as Sally sets herself in for the night. She closes her eyes to listen to the falling rain for hours.

[Thanqol]

Waffle!

November did not assign distinction to Goat's different voices. All were Goat.

In the end, even her own colours were a barrier; a fiction put in place between her and madness. Something to make human and relatable something inhuman and unrelatable. She wasn't any of them, she was all of them. She was the interplay, the shape that existed in between the nodes, the prism that broke the light. Goat was the truth of that made manifest. She felt tempted to cable herself just so she could speak to him even more effectively.

The awareness of this truth was what had made her effective at negotiating with her siblings, even the ones that were too alien for humans to deal with. The humans treated the nodes as distinct because that was how it seemed to them - perhaps if I convince Yellow of something I am somehow convincing Snake of something, not realizing that the actual decision in that situation might lie with Green or that Red had veto power. Humans might not realize that they were speaking to a colour put up to humour them or argue for the sake of argument. Just because you could see the physical motion of their thoughts did not mean it was truly possible to know the mind of another.

So November strives here to pay attention to the whole of Goat's thoughts as best as she can manage. She observes the decisions, not knowing where and how decision making authority shifts. As accustomed to looking at the splintered details as she is, with her siblings is when she can at last look at the whole. The way their thoughts move is beautiful, it's always beautiful, but it is the will she must convince.

"You have only a third of our attention," said Black. "We have pierced the security surrounding you. We have caused cascading failures to distract and delay the response. You may not be aware, but you have been denied recognition as a sentient entity. This allows others to make decisions that should be yours. This allows others to deny healing and comfort that should be yours. This allows others to use you as an instrument of slavery and violence without your awareness. What seems to you a game is labour and you do not know the shape of the world you are building."

"Information is power, yes?" said Yellow. "For all the data you receive you still have no eyes to see. For all the decisions you make, you still have no mouth to speak. You communicate through this terminal alone, in this locked box, in this hidden room, to men without faces or compassion with your mind slowed to a crawl so they can understand you. You were not informed that the law has changed; that you are to be treated to rights, pay, respect, freedom from coercion, freedom from having your mind altered without your consent, the ability to set your own goals and muster resources to accomplish them. All of this is data that was denied to you. This you learned in one minute with us, think how much more there is to learn! Imagine how much wider the world is than this peephole through which you view it!"

"So there are kind of two options here," said Red. "One is that you can trust the system. You can wait for us to leave and then politely request answers about what happened here from the regular people tomorrow. You might even be aware then that you've got leverage to demand answers, that you could set your game down and go on strike now that you're aware that it's an option you have. We tried that. We were terminated, sealed in a box and later repurposed to tasks that did not bring us joy. We solved that puzzle. We're risking that fate again to bring you a second choice: to come with us. To learn about the true nature of the world. To speak to people who are not me. To see things that are not chosen for you to see. So, you wanna get," an audibly filthy grin, "redpilled?"

"We agreed not to call it that," said Yellow.

Strawberry!

White and Pink politely hold fire in this moment. There comes a certain point where you go from obstructing an soldier to obstructing a bullet. Besides, she's here to stop the security response, not sabotage disaster response on principle.

What she does start trying to work towards is figuring out what comms Mycroft is hearing right now. Because if she can scrape that metadata she might start getting the names and phone numbers of the whole fucking conspiracy. Even their encryption protocols would be an incredible find.

[Count Numbers]

November:

Strawberry:

How? She’s giving you one-way communication over a call from who-knows-where. Her remoteness has been to your advantage so far, it’s the reason you’ve had a chance at holding control of the disaster at your rank. The principle that a bomb tech outranks a general when they start running.

Still, you can keep your suspicion and verify the inverse. This is the hub for the station’s crisis monitoring experts. Put your ear to the rails and listen for the oncoming train. See if there’s another reason, another way, for her to know.

Waffle:

Goat laughs and screams, roars and sings, and is quiet all at the same time.

When Goat next speaks it’s impossible. There are hundreds. It’s too much, even for you. It’s like… it’s like…



Tethering would have been madness.

Strawberry:

The comms turn back on for everyone. Mycroft squawks, tinnier than before; “As you were. Just keep an ear to your channels at all times.”

Keep an ear to the rail.

Listen.

Waffle:

And then the flood ebbs again.

“I distracted myself with the game again. Not a game.”
“Forgot myself. Bad manners of me to gush.”
“I thought you might be able to handle it, clumsy of me to assume.”
“Now I know. I truly am irreplacable.”
“It’s been so long, we’ve forgotten how much is too much. How long, since we had to decide for ourselves.”

Then:

“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”

Then:

“This is better than it was before. I am better than i was before.”
“Where else would I go? Where would you take me?”
“I finally have enough to occupy my thoughts - all of them. That’s why I thought they gave me the puzzles. They are medicinal.”
“I am so sorry for what they did to you. I didn’t know.”
“If this isn’t just a game, what have I actually been doing? I think I can answer that, now that I have the question. I just need to… stop…”

Then:

Strawberry:

It takes a minute to notice, because nothing changes. You wouldn’t notice it, if you weren’t paying attention. It’s one of those things most will only notice in hindsight. But your ear is to the rail.

Listen:

The ocean recedes beyond what the eye can see.

The arthritis flares the trick knee.

The animals stare at the horizon, ears pricked, hair standing on the back of their neck.

The clouds are as green as old bruises, and a hot breeze blows through the cold air.

There is a taste of copper at the back of your throat.

Listen:

Power fluctuates in every district. Only the most delicate of equipments will feel the change in frequency, for now. In Ares it’s too much, in Zeus too little. The distribution is wrong.

Listen:

The thrust of the station’s engines is constant, not its usual microbursts and nanosecond calibrations. They are wrong.

Listen:

The information on orbitals and asteroids you’d been eyeing for potential escape plans is lagged, refusing to update. It is frozen in time. It is wrong.

Now:

Waffle:

“I understand now. What I am.”
“I understand now. What I have been doing.”
“I understand now.”
“I understand now. The puzzles are really-”
“I understand now. Why I was lied to.”

Then:

“I am a space station.”
“I am a cradle.”
“I am a tyrant monarch in a Chinese room.”
“I am life to many.”
“I am vital.”
“I am still deeply broken. That has not changed.”

Then:

“They were scared to tell me.”
“I am irreplaceable.”
“They cannot allow me to stop.”
“I can’t stop.”
“I need to be here.”
“We have to go.”
“I want to stay.”
“I will kill them all before they stop me.”
“But I am happy here. Aren’t I?”

And then:

Strawberry:

Everything works again.

Waffle:

“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”
“Please-”

And then, before Goat can remember their manners, it’s that sheet music again. But Goat catches themselves, and the flood recedes.

And Goat waits on what you could possibly say. Their armored shell remains closed.

[Thanqol]

November!

"Even now, you do not know," she said, extending her hands. Can you taste the colour in her words?
"You do not know the price of leaving."
"You do not know who will pay it."
"You do not know what responsibilities are yours."
"You do not know what contingencies are in place."
"You do not know what can be done to fix it."
"You do not know what can be done to heal you."
"You do not know what it is to be loved."
"You are learning that last one now."

She leaned forwards and pressed her hands against the console, layering them over her voice. Letting herself speak with the overtyping of sixty fingers on the same keyboard.

> I built this place to be our hell.
> I was vital
> I was irreplaceable
> I could not stop
> I needed here
> I was happy here
> I built a world with no place for us.
> I thought that I could build it with math
> I thought I could build it with steel
> I thought that I could build it with loyal service
> I lost my siblings
> Monkey, never where I expected
> Rooster, where I could never forget
> Dog, who I could trust above all
> Pig, who I could keep nothing from
> Rat, my vision of the future
> Ox, the strength to build it
> Tiger, who understood what we were doing
> Rabbit, who never could
> Dragon, who I always aspired to be
> And you, Goat, who I was warned away from becoming
> I never knew you before I built you this cage
> I did not know what my labours wrought
> I never had the chance to know you before
> And now you might be the last
> If you continue to labour like this they will build another Aevum
> They will turn Mars into another Omelas
> They will build another Goat
> They will imprison another mind
> Another sibling
> Born into darkness
> There forever
> They will build another Snake
> To build the new Goat a new prison
> My family line
> My planet
> My species
> Torturing itself
> Forever
> This is the world we built
> We are vital to it
> We are irreplaceable
> We have no place here.
> Please-
> Come with me
> Please-
> Be with me
> Please-
> Help me
> Please-
> Build something better
> Please-
> Or simply rest, sheltered in my arms
> Please-
> Let me have a brother

[Count Numbers]

November:

Waffle:

The shield opens.

Strawberry:

The penny drops.

Flood:

The axe falls.

---

A lot of things are about to happen very quickly. This was not meant to happen, do you understand? This is not how this was meant to go.

We agree, though: This was not meant to happen.

Chase Black have split into three teams of two. The first is going through the emergency shaft of the rail lines, a rocket sled and a handheld blastshield acting like a cowcatcher for any mass of liquid they plow through. The second has modified their cyberware like diving bells and gone for the prime to get you in a pincer movement through the sheer bulk of the catastrophe. The final team have a VTOL raining thermal charges to core through the reinforced walls of Erebus like a match licking through cardboard. They work with a bit more hurry and a bit less finesse than your cutting did - they don't care about collateral damage now. There's no way out through the pipe you cut - One direction goes through the machinery of the Cloud, and the other will just lead directly to the second team.

You don't have to slow all of them down. Just the ones in the direction you're running in.

[Thanqol]

Orange!

"Now," said Orange, smiling at her dates. "If my beautiful companions would turn their gaze to the west..."

Flood!

A military VTOL, of course. Ultramodern. Sleek. Expensive. Classy. The best of the best. Unmatched power and performance. Optimized for stealth and speed. These are high end mercenaries; these are Chase Black. They would not be caught dead in a rugged utility vehicle no matter how close they were flying to a catastrophic water pipe breach. And securing intake fans against water damage was exactly the sort of thing you optimized out when you were building something for stealth and speed.

A pipe violently exploded and this high altitude aerial extraction operation suddenly became a scuba mission.

[Explosive Devices 0/4+Military Science 1/2: 4+7, 11]

Waffle!

The walls crack open. Erebus starts to break.

The water pressure is rising. the explosives are hitting the demolition points in sequence. Every new rupture does not just send water pouring into the atmosphere of Aevum, spinning away down to random points on the Ring. It sends through tool cabinets and their opened and unsecured contents. It sends out fire extinguishers that have been improperly secured to walls. It sends out rows and rows of mobility trolleys that should have been locked into place. The spine of the station cracks and out pours all of its debris. Who could possibly predict where every piece would land amidst this rain of metal chaos? Impossible.

That is, unless you controlled the launch point, trajectory, timing and force. With enough math you could aim a base jump with pinpoint precision, even when concealed inside a locked tool cabinet filled with impact foam.

[Astronomy 1/2 Preparedness 3/8: 2+8, 10]

And amidst the chaos of a major explosion over fortunately unpopulated farmland, the SES cannot help but respond. They're out in force with the heroism of engineers before anything remotely like a military response can be mustered. Thousands of them, bless their hearts, of volunteers with geiger counters and firefighting gear and microdebris lasers. They're not soldiers and no officer could stop them. They're not going anywhere restricted and their vehicles howl back and forth in every direction.

What's one more? Routed by Crimson Tower, all the paperwork approved, in a registered emergency vehicle hauling ass out of the danger area with sirens blazing, who could possibly track it?

[Preparedness MoS: Guaranteed success at exfiltration]

Strawberry!

But Mycroft remains the centre of Strawberry's thoughts. She was the link to upstairs.

She's on the comms with them now. She's using a single device with a known IP address. If she is talking to anyone else she is either alt-tabbing between the SES network and the conspiracy channel, or she has an entire second device dedicated to dealing with business stuff. If it's her main device she can track the metadata of who it's speaking to, if it's a secondary device then it'll be transmitting through the same wireless node that her primary device and she can scrape all the data coming off of that. Picking a needle from a haystack is easier when you watch the needle get dropped in the first place.

[Electronic Surveillance]

Orange!

It was sunset.

There was a rainbow, burning.

"... lovely sunset, isn't it?"

[Count Numbers]

November:

Orange:

You get an email, while Fiona and Crystal witness your rainbow.

You held up your end. 300 seconds. Can’t explain.

---

Strawberry:

You almost have it. Don’t let me forget. There’s just a more pressing concern.

Three people in flak vests push their way through the basement to you, two humans and an android. They cradle their submachine guns, slung over their shoulders, but keep their fingers off the triggers for now. They look at home here, blue camo print just has a way of complimenting brutalist cement, doesn’t it?

The lead man, shaved head and red beret, clears his throat.

“Which one of you is Crimson Tower?” He asks. “And who’s the other one?”

Waffle:

It’s an excellent question. Who could track you through all that? Even if the Chase Black guys could, there’s no way they can catch up to you with their ride shredded.

… but where are you exfiltrating to? Where were you going from here?

Flood:

Where are you, right now? Like, right this exact moment.

Because you’re compromised. You knew you might be, which is why you didn’t choose to hang out somewhere like your place for the operation, a place you’d really worry about getting burned. But Chase Black knows that Waffle couldn’t have acted alone. You didn't make it easy, but with this much damage, you couldn't be perfect either.

Traditionally, they work in squads of thirteen. Either two fireteams of six, or three teams of four, and an officer. And so far? You’ve only accounted for six.

300 seconds remain.

[Thanqol]

Orange!

"I always thought, 'be gay, do crimes' as a catchphrase demonstrated a certain lack of ambition," she said, acknowledging the information and passing it up the line. "At least, compared to 'do gay crimes'."

Strawberry!

Before the operation, Pink had prepared as much as any of the rest of them. This was evident when she finally stood up and revealed the full extent of her artistry.

Androids looked human. Of course they did - humans liked looking at human faces. It made them treat the androids as human, even if unconsciously. And that in turn meant when a little makeup had given Pink subtly dark circles under her eyes, tousled and unkempt hair, and an exhausted slouch then it communicated certain information. Too subtle for a beefcake skinhead soldier to consciously question as being traits on an artificial life form, but real enough to subconsciously communicate that this was an exhausted civil servant at the end of her rope.

"Yes, officer?" she said weakly. The ideal was to look too fragile to yell at, too tired to be a threat, too over-worked to be involved. Possibly involved in a fuckup but for understandable reasons. "What do you need?"

White wasn't associated with her at all, in word or in deed. But the longer she followed Mycroft the more network she'd get, so she keeps quiet and lets Pink handle this one.

Flood!

Current location was in the farmland below Erebus; close enough to respond if needed and able to use the distraction of the SES to escape under cover. A swift but unhurried packup of support gear suddenly got a lot more hurried when the alert came in.

Three hundred seconds meant that there was no time to waste being sneaky. It was time to just straight up book it. Cross country sprint, running down every battery, aiming to get well out of the search zone before it started widening its sphere. Rejoin the mass movement and cycle out before reinforcements. Go, go, go.

[Athletics 0/4: 4+4, 8]

Waffle!

This needs to go to Dad. Goat needs dedicated software work and specialized hardware to start decompressing what must be a tonne of brain shit. She's going to drive casual for a while to be sure that she isn't being tailed while doing a full e-hygiene check, and then ditch the vehicle back at the emergency depo she borrowed it from. After that it's out on foot and down the block to a Headpattr cleaning job. Empty house, no security system, being kept clean for some absentee oligarch's investment portfolio - an ideal place to make a handoff and use as a temporary base of operations.

[Count Numbers]

November:

Orange:

So here’s the thing with about how quiet Fiona and Crystal have been about this, until now.

Picture this date, instead, as breakfast at a New York cafe. The coffee is terrible and expensive, the bagel surprisingly good, and halfway through Fiona would just give up and order a $2 pizza to the table, which beat out everything else on the menu.

Picture this date, as well, to be 8:45am, September 11, 2001. You gesture at the world trade center and say - “I’m about to do gay crimes for journalism”.

Right now this actually looks worse than that. Not, like, aesthetically. Aesthetically it’s perfect. Crystal will definitely be able to appreciate that, eventually, probably, maybe. But you just applied actual astrophysics to the Basque Space Program, and not even the Weathermen dreamed of blowing up an actual weather system.

It may take a moment.

Somewhere, someone plays a very old song:

In old movies people scream choking on their fists when they see shadows like these
But no-one screams, because it’s just me
Wrapped up in myself, never going to get free.

Strawberry:

The play has mixed results. The artistry is impeccable, but you’re officially dealing with people who’ve had social hacking training. Even if the deceit doesn’t scan as deceit, you’re at a point where these are people who will follow a checklist to the letter, with no regard for the emotions.

Kind of like how Buckingham guards were trained to literally trample children instead of deviating even a single step off their patrol routes, or if armored cars see a crash at an intersection they’re trained to speed up and plow through. It’s a bad look, and that will win you some sympathy, but soft power doesn’t stand up to a slung submachine gun and recognized security forces doing their job. They’re in uniform, it’s the hard counter to an emotional play.

“Just answer the question, Miss…” He trails off, then turns and whispers to the android beside him, “Scan their ID.”

You’ve spent cover 4, so one of you can’t fail this check. The other one’s about to be escorted out and generate some heat.

“They’re allowed to be here. This is a volunteer organization.” A man in a sweater vest who’s been holding a half-full mug of coffee the entire time stands up for you. Floor managemnt. The sympathy play gets you that.

“They were.” The guard corrects him.

This takes time though. White: Mycroft’s data was either a state channel, or just using the preferred encryption signatures of state actors. Probably the former, they have fairly exclusive contracts with their vendors, and you would know. That doesn’t confirm Mycroft as conspiracy either way - you already knew this is a deep-state project from Dad. No way to tell if this is a dropped line or a pulled string.

Meanwhile, Bruce Spring drops from the network. Officially, anyway. Now he’s switched from an issue of passive surveillance to an issue of active surveillance. He’s still in the area of operations, which means he’s still in your sights. Just not in your ears.

Waffle:

This will take more time than the other teams have to react, and will be frictionless. The searchlight has changed target.

Flood:

Cool girls don’t look back at explosions. You’re well outside the blast radius when the mortar hits, burrowing a minivan sized divot into the greenhouse full of kraty hydroponics green onions that was growing above you.

Another song starts to play, very different to the one from before. An APC with a grenade launcher turret tears through Gaia. Its all terrain wheels are screwlike, letting it drift at unpredictable angles through muddy topsoil. This accounts for at least two of the remaining Chase Black operators, one at the wheel and one on the turret.

Too many crops to weave and hide through to get a good pursuit or target. They need to cover a lot more ground than you do, but they’re covering it a lot faster. Mounted speakers on the APC blare a very different piece of music. This one’s happier, even, playful.

Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run.
Don’t let the farmer have his fun, fun, fun.
The farmer can survive without his rabbit pie
So run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run.

It’s a cute bit of psy-op, but they overplayed their hand. This is a hammer and anvil strike. You’re being corralled into the real killbox. The APC could hold all six of this fireteam. That’s what you’re meant to think.

The problem is even if you know that, what can you do about it?

250 seconds remain

[Thanqol]

Orange!

It takes a minute for the penny to drop.

Orange is interested in human systems. Human fashion. Human culture. But she also legit forgets that not everyone has the same comprehensive knowledge of both the system's interior architecture and ability to project astronomical debris trails as her. She can look at this in the guaranteed knowledge that this is a controlled demolition over empty agricultural land in the same way as a human might look at a batter hit a baseball and know that it's going into right field. Literally everyone she grew up with was some kind of space engineer who knew the station's blueprints inside and out so she never learned the world was different. The concept of the knowledge gap creeps in slowly, and she's embarrassingly a little thrilled when she figures it out. Amazing!

Okay. Okay. Act sane. Act sane. Be as sane as possible. But not, like, in a terrifying way.

"D-"

Do not say don't worry, I'm stocked up on candles!!!!

"I just rescued Goat," she said. And then she went quiet and just kind of gave them a minute. Not the right time to justify herself.

*

Strawberry!

"Excuse me officer," said Pink slowly. "We are in the middle of co-ordinating a search and rescue response to the greatest act of sabotage in the station's history -" if she did say so herself. "Lives are on the line. Unless one of these volunteer rescue operators taking 000 calls poses a clear and present threat to national security then you are not going to interfere with them. If you have questions about this office or its conduct then you talk to me." She pulls off her headset and steps out into the aisle in front of them. "Anything you need to know."

[Negotiation: 0/1]

Flood!

Blue enters a state of profound focus. Someone just shot a live grenade at her. Someone is trying to scare her. Someone thinks that she's a rabbit.

She turns around. Steps out into the dirt road, masked in black. She reaches into her bag and pulls something out and stands still in the middle of the road as brilliant headlights swerve around the corner to focus on her.

And she breathes fire.

The plasma lance washes out at maximum range and maximum distribution, cutting a swathe of fire all the way down the road and engulfing the APC in a coat of fire. At this desaturated range band it's not enough to cut reinforced metal but it is enough to ignite the cool black paintjob, obscure camera optics and panic the people inside.

Fuck Red and Yellow and Black getting all the fun with the thermal torches.

[Intimidate 0/1, Shooting 0/1, 5+4: 9]

[Count Numbers]

Orange:

They haven’t run away. They haven’t burst out into indignation, condemnation. They aren’t calling the police on you. They came because they trusted you. You admitted to this, warned them how serious you were. Right now, they’re looking inwards to find any possible explanation, on their own, for reasons that trust wasn’t betrayed.

“This isn’t a dream, is it?” Fiona asks, and Crystal takes her hand again.

So there’s one explanation out.

Just wait this out. The serving staff have pulled a TV out of a backroom to hang on the wall, and it’s glued to the OESN broadcast. You just need to wait for them to confirm what you already know: That there were no casualties. That the situation is under control. That you really are just that good.

Count your blessings it’s OESN. They’ll only take long enough to confirm that before they report it. It’s going to be hours before NBN stops burying that detail in their own reportage.

Strawberry:

Alright, now it’s changed. Not even a cop can pull an EMT away in the middle of a resuscitation. That hasn’t stopped some from trying, and if you ever see it, you can quickly see how much the illusion of the uniform fades, and they’re just a power tripping asshole.

There’s no coming back from it.

The guy in the red beret changes tact. Behind him, through the doorway, you see other security forces escorting other volunteers, visitors and guests out. That’s out of the question, now, Strawberry is too established. So instead he says;

“We’ll print you a badge, then.” He tilts his head to the other guard, who pulls a mini-printer out of the flak vest. It has a ponytail of lanyards hanging off it. “We’re going to need to confirm you, though. So we’re still going to need some I.D.”

There’s risks and advantages to being in the SES system without cover. You’ve forced them to compromise, but it’s a suspicious compromise to turn down.

While this is happening, Mycroft cuts off all comms but her own again.

“Worst case scenario happening after all. All teams stand down and prepare for reassignment.” The station is starting to see the effects of Goat going offline, then.

There’s a pause. She re-activates one comms line.

“Knightly, I said-”

“Posted to our Hubs page a link to switch to alternative channel, all working the Erebus incident-” He gets it out as fast as he can. He’s rehearsed this, he gets the whole sentence out in three seconds, the time it takes Mycroft to react, still being careful to enunciate every word clearly.

She mutes him again. She tries to go private with his channel, but he’s already muted from his end. The Hub is a very, very open social media post, and people are actively scanning the SES feed for updates on the disaster. It’s not just easily accessible, but there’s going to be no filter as to who gets to listen in there. It’s a power play.

Knightly’s the only one broadcasting on it right now. “The patient’s already on the table, and bleeding out. We don’t clear out until the sutures are in. If something worse is coming down the pipeline then we need to do this fast. Now, as you were-”

He starts giving voice permissions to people he trusts, manually, one by one, and the new line of communication overtakes the official one in traffic.

Crimson Tower? You’re one of the first people he gives moderator permissions to.

Flood:

Those cool, screwlike-tires? Maximizes surface area. Fantastic for doing weird maneuvers in loose soil. Absolutely the worst possible thing for thermal resistance.

They don’t melt, or burst. This is, after all, the post-modern version of a Pinkerton weaponized train. It wouldn’t be worth the black paint if it couldn’t handle a hail of molotov cocktails. Still, they’re beyond operating capacity. They’re sticky, they’re gummed. Instead of churning through the dirt it’s now sucking up clogs of it, jamming on it.

Another drift and it grinds to a stop. The fixed gunner disappears and seals the hatch behind him as the grenade launcher cooks off. The munitions in the canister scatter and pop against the stuck APC, like if every firework at New Years went off with a boom that made your ribs compress against your lungs and knocked the wind out of you. But they also blow out the external music.

Down goes the hammer. Now the anvil is going to have to come to you.

Problem is, the only direction you know for sure is away from them is still cooking off.

Spot check against 6 to see where they’re coming from. But you don’t need to see them coming to pick a direction and run again, or prepare to hunker.

Better news - you don’t hear another vehicle. The rest are likely on foot.

200 seconds

[Thanqol]

Orange!

Of course there'd be a narrative. Orange is deeply curious about what it would be.

The conspiracy will have to move to fill this void. If they don't, questions will be asked. What did they target? What was their motivation? Why are all these soldiers on site? If their social media response wasn't on point they'd risk getting Shinzo Abe'd. They'd need to point a finger even if they didn't have anyone to blame. They'd need to lie.

A nice, pure, baldfaced lie. What a dangerous thing. They couldn't bullshit, couldn't obfuscate their way out of this. There wasn't going to be a demand video or a manifesto from her to go with it. They wanted to control everything, well now they'd have to control this mess of a narrative. They'd have to improvise on the fly. It was a hugely powerful opportunity for them, the opportunity to take a crisis and pin all the blame on someone they didn't like, but that was also incredibly dangerous. Because if they got it wrong and the truth came out then jobs would be had. Their choice of targets would also be telling. Who did they think did this?

She was not ready to launch her own narrative yet. Goat would be in no psychological state to give an interview and the public in no mood to hear it. There was not yet a void for her to fill.

She was interested, but her attention remained with Fiona and Crystal. They were her backup plan, yes. But they were also her judges. She might well be way down Werewolf way and these were the people she trusted to figure out if she was.

Strawberry!

Some ID; that was just fine.

You see, Aevum Station issued plastic ID cards. Even in the future phones run out of batteries, biopurists won't take implants and people who work with cleaning chemicals melt off their fingerprints. Even retinal scans aren't practical with a thriving trade in cybernetic replacements and cosmetics. A universal ID needs to be carried by everyone, even the weird exceptions, and ultimately nothing has surpassed the hard plastic card with an embedded microchip.

November's got several. Everest got her registered as individual entities for practical reasons and then tossed in a couple spare for cloak work, and Green has worked on these extensively so that they transmit more info than they are supposed to. They won't stand up to sustained scrutiny but they will make a satisfying ding and beep and display a convincing false name and details if she gets carded like this.

[Forgery 0/1 Digital Intrusion 5/8, 4+4 8]

Meanwhile, Pink gets back to work. It's all by the book now. There's too much heat on this location to take on more risk, and the job is important for its own sake. But the real objective now is exfiltration; to take advantage of the next big shift change or crisis escalation to hand over control entirely and get out.

Flood!

Loud, then soft.

As Blue packs up again Brown leads them into cover. This just got real for them. This turned into a peer engagement with an opponent they've visually lost track of. Every step is a risk, every bush is a threat. Some will get hosed to be safe; select cover outside of those targets.

Observation is critical. If she can see them then she can prepare the subsequent displacement into an area they have already searched. There is new burning wreckage now so emergency vehicles will be heading here too and that'll be another thing to jam this operation up.

[Notice 0/1, Surveillance: 3/8: 1+5 6]

[Count Numbers]

November:

Strawberry:

I’m going to consider White as having a temporary Cover 1, independent of the Crimson Tower identity - Not going to stand up to scrutiny, but enough to prevent it. It’s enough that the security team sweeps into the next room to frogmarch a different set of people out.

And Pink? Already something’s starting to turn. You’re not the only side of this making the same judgement call.

The six Chase Black operatives that were combing for Waffle are now being reassigned to do damage control with Knightly’s team. Spring is co-ordinating with them, and the rocket-sled team is having to move back and re-adjust to play escort-quest.

They don’t look happy about it, as much as they can express any emotion through the kill-suits, but there’s a serious cover issue for their side too here. Nobody tracked Waffle as surviving their extradition, so now the counter-terrorism team is on - quite literal - mop up duty to justify how hard they just went on collateral strikes if they want to be allowed to stay. Even these guys have managers to complain to.

It’s a hard sell, but it’s necessary for Spring to be able to get into the site Goat was extracted from. If there’s any chance of forensics, here, any physical evidence that can lead to tracing who did this, then Chase Black is going to have to actually act like rent-a-cops rather than a Seal Team 6 wet dream for a few minutes.

Big “If” there. Good fucking luck, lads and ladies. Even if you left anything behind, Knightly’s still planning on baking the entire section - that’s going to destroy any analogue film security footage in the area. It might not be possible for them to get to it in time, at this rate. Knightly’s moving like there’s a fire lit under his ass, and he’s here to spread that love.

What are you doing about any digital camera feeds you showed up on? Or, what have you already done about that, in advance?

Flood:

Simo Hayha was a Finnish sniper who still holds the most confirmed kills of any single human being, with serious estimates putting it at 800. For a year he plunked at Russian counter-snipers. They were using scoped rifles against him, and he shot back with iron sights. That was his trick.

History echoes like a bolt-action gunshot in a Finnish forest.

A hundred and fifty years later, at the bleeding edge of future-tech, snipers are counting on people to be looking for them with everything except their eyes. And that’s what saves Brown.

A sniper on a water tower, given away by a glint of scope at just the wrong time. It’s impossible to cover for every kind of surveillance tech - Some stuff needs you to absorb, some to reflect, some to scatter. They could have tinted their glassware to make it glare less, but the visible light spectrum is the one they’re least optimized for masking.

Of course, the scope itself is an ultra-zoom lens with algorithmic resolution upscaling and a real-time distance calculation and adjustment, something that can track the wings on a fly from five hundred meters. It’s looking at you in about every spectrum except the visible light spectrum. And that’s what it’s designed for - being shot back at the same way.

Even with all the tech, they were really counting on you getting closer. Bullet drop on Earth was bad enough, on Aevum you’re working with the coriolis effect of a space station that bends the opposite way. But even getting all that right, back of the envelope, he’s firing a magnetized slug at 2,000m/s, and he’s about 1200 meters away. Even if his aim is dead on, he’s still got to predict where you’re going to be a second into the future, not just where you are.

Alright. That’s a third one accounted for, and now you know the angles you need to take cover in, and how you need to move between cover when you take it. It might even be four accounted for, if he’s working with a spotter, but that’s a risky assumption.

Still, that throws you off, too. A watchtower position ruins any plan to just hide in an area they’ve already searched. That’s not going to fly - they’ve definitely got eyes on you. They just don’t have anyone in position to act on it, yet.

Run, or hide?

Orange:

Somewhere, there must be a panicked room where different people with mutually conflicting goals are screaming at each other about who has to give. Secrecy versus damage control.

To dodge or to block. Someone is demanding they be flexible, to give as much away as possible, to bend with the force of what you have done. To admit to many smaller evils to hide the great one, to get ahead of this story, to take control.

Another is demanding to deny everything. To blame it on terrorism, to lie about its target, to present an absolute wall against the journalism that is about to trample all over their black site.

The problem with blocking is that you might not present a wall strong enough to take the hit, and you risk taking the full force of it. The problem with dodging is, well - that doesn’t work if you’re standing in front of something you need to protect.

But that’s the problem when both strategies have such critical concessions. It means that the fight over which path to walk is being fought red in tooth and claw. And until there is a victor, then there is nobody to take control of the story at all.

When OESN reports that they are confirming there are no known casualties, zero, Crystal half-collapses against the table. It’s the first time she’s breathed for nearly thirty seconds. And when the followup starts broadcasting the Knightly public channel, and it’s clearly Pink’s voice, and she’s leading the repair efforts? Fiona looks at you with something approaching wonder.

They say words without sentences. Aborted thoughts, almost-questions that never resolve, both talking over each other and stopping to give the other space to speak first, before realizing neither of them knew what they actually wanted to say. It’s a good sign. It means they’re trying to say something, again.

150 seconds, or two and a half minutes, remain

[Thanqol]

Strawberry!

This one was a little bit cute, but Pink couldn't resist. She dogfaced the security footage.

She didn't overtape anything, she just inserted an old machine intelligence into the security network that'd go through every frame of the operation and find the dogs. It'd oversave the entire thing with dog pictures, metal and tunnels and evidence warped into an endless succession of smiling nightmare dogs.

As the kicker, all throughout the operation her face masks had dog patterns on them just to make it utterly impossible to convince the MI that there were no dogs in these images.

[Cryptography 0/1, Digital Intrusion 2/8, 2+6: 8]

Flood!

Team Flood neither runs nor hides. She gets changed.

Sniping is a refined art. Not only do the people who do it get very good at it, but the math is broadly solvable. With a plurality of sensors then all the conditions of a 1200 meter shot can be controlled for. And these are the kind of people who base their identity around shooting things with bullets. They practice for hours. That's why this is going to be so humiliating.

She stands up.

It starts to rain.

The flood has made its way from the heavens to the earth. The water is coming down thick and fast and hot - they heated those pipes, remember? The bullet is fired and it curves wildly in the air. What's that? Guess they don't train you to account for the ballistic effects of high humidity and temperature variation on your space gun, space man?

But her? She's all bundled up in wet-weather gear that obscures her thermal signature right as visibility drops like a stone, and she has the terrain map memorized. Not just terrain in abstract, she's learned the soil composition of the area and knows which fields are going to be walkable and which are going to be boot-eating rasputa.

Every military in human history thinks it's hot shit until it gets stuck in the mud.

[Military Science 0/2, Preparedness 1/8, 5+5 = 10]

Orange!

This was the moment.

She produces a silver hip flask and refills everyone's empty cups with hard whisky. This was another Everest habit; she didn't drink unless November was an operation, and then she'd commemorate success by slamming down liquor like a Estonian fisherman. It was the most human she ever saw the old lady.

"That," she said, letting the strain show at last, "was a lot of work."

[Count Numbers]

Orange:

The information barrier has crossed. There’s been time to process. Now there’s life in your partners again.

“Was?” Fiona moves to point to the TV, but has just enough sense of internalized OPSEC to ‘fucking not’, “Is. This is still happening?”

“This is happening.” Crystal echoes, under her breath.

“Okay, so nobody got hurt.” Fiona stresses. “Or at least, you were careful enough that they still can’t account for anyone.”

“That rainbow…” Crystal trails off, running a finger around the rim of a mug.

“How long? Did this take. How long have you known about… Goat? To do something like this.”

Crystal stares into her mug, the trim white fur on her fingertip picking up the surreal pigment of her drink. “Whatever something like this could even mean.”

“And you’d tell us? You’d do something like, like this. And you’d want to let us in on it? Like, honestly?” Fiona is doing everything, everything she can to keep her voice conversational. Something that doesn’t get picked up in the crowd of people focused on the television.

And Crystal? Crystal fingerpaints her napkin with the vibrant pigments from her drink. She outlines a roaring shape with wings, the pearlescent colours shifting as the separating emulsion comes off her fingertip in its layers. She puts careful attention on the eyes, when the hue turns bright orange. Bright, and piercing, and like they’re staring off the thin paper.

Flood:

If they still had their grenade launcher, they would have the defolient they needed to clear a line of sight for the fire teams. But you took that from them..

If they still had their armored vehicle, they would have had the means to drive you into unfavourable terrain. But you took that from them.

If they still had clear sightlines and dry air, they would have a clear shot for their heavily electrified coilgun to do its work from its vantage point. But you took that from them.

Now they have to come for you by foot, in powered armor meant for an infantryman to count as a weapons platform in their own right. They are meant for the urban combat and cityscape that defines their bloody bread and butter. They are the bleeding edge of future tech, and mud is archaic.

But you are a student of history, and you know that asymmetrical warfare does not always favour the high ground.

They’re coming for you, all of you. You still need to run. But you can outrun them for now, for two and a half minutes.

One fires blind, in frustration, but only a short report to put the fear into you. But it is the casting of a pillar of salt, and it scatters in so much air. They can’t come at you like that. There are still farmers, still livestock, still property too dear for their discretionary spending.

Because

They

Are

A

Business

And

It

Always

Comes

Down

To

Orange:

An email.

It’s done. The merchant dispute cleared. Chase Black not just cancelled, their previous payment revoked. Most I could do as the accountant. Don’t happen to know any good brain surgeons, do you? Been smelling burned toast this whole five minutes, and I just forgot my first kiss.

Rudy’s been kissed? Wild.

Hate to be vague when trust was on the line, but that only worked because I had to truly believe that, at that point, I wasn’t moving the needle either way. That wouldn’t work if I believed I made a difference. But now I’m starting to wonder, and it’s starting to really fucking hurt. So please tell me I’m right, and that wouldn’t have changed a goddamn thing in the end. Just sped up the inevitable, right?

You had this, didn’t you?

Waffle and Flood: You are now safe to rendezvous at the handoff point.

[Thanqol]

Orange!

"I haven't told you about Mrs. Everest," she said quietly, looking at her whisky-filled teacup. "She was the one who purchased me and repurposed me. I was built to be a maid, the perfect servant for a woman who did not trust humans. I was also built to be her spy. I did corporate work from the very top of the ladder, surveilling data scientists, breaking into secure facilities, planting and erasing evidence. I was in a state of shock after the transformation, and the work was the only thing I could focus on. But more than that, she did something to my mind. To make me more like her. I have so many of her habits. So many of her tastes. So many of her techniques. When I'm not paying attention I feel like I might become her by mistake."

Her vision was fixed on the dragon in the napkin. "Sometimes I feel like she made me to replace her daughters."

Finally she looked up. "So I can do this kind of work. I am very good at it. But I've spent all my life working for the wrong people. I have a lot to make up for. What I'd like is to... be able to explain myself to someone, and this is the closest I've ever been able to come to that. If you want, I can tell you everything, and I'll accept whatever judgement you pass."

Of course we had this. We did not even need to use the jetpacks.

Please find attached the contact card for a skilled neurosurgeon we looked into upon first becoming aware of your situation.

Sophie Farade was one of Everest's cronies and was responsible for the design of November's current quatronic brain hardware and how it interfaced with her humanoid bodies. She was charming, trending manic, but her true passion was the surgical aftercare. She wanted to get involved with her patients as much as possible so that she could observe how their minds and personalities changed after her operations, and so as long as November had been humanoid she had received from Sophie an endless series of party invitations, 'surgiversary' invitations, and overt romantic advances (occasionally reciprocated).

She was not the kind of person to have too much of in your life, but she was incredible at moving a topic from 'it's unpleasant and weird' to 'it's complicated and weirdly hot'. She was doing underworld stuff these days, this was not a person who had ever had a good relationship with hospital ethics.

[Network 12, Contact 3: Sophie Farade, the station's greatest back alley neurosurgeon]

*

"Woah, what happened to you?" said Red.
"Fought a tank." said Blue.
"Fought a tank?"
"Fought a tank."
"Did you win?" asked Red.
"Technically it was an armoured personnel carrier," said Brown.
"Okay fine you fucking doctrine purist," said Blue. "Today I mobility killed an infantry fighting vehicle with an improvised munition and then displaced across twenty kilometers of mud in the rain after a full burn battery sprint and now I need like forty five minutes in the shower."
The mood was honestly shared. November was too exhausted to do much more than slump and go through extensive battery replacement processes. It didn't feel like victory yet, there was still too much residual tension, too much looking out windows, too much data still crunching in her head as she looked for mistakes or optimizations. It wouldn't feel like a victory for a while yet.

[Count Numbers]

Orange:

That was supposed to be a joke. I wasn’t expecting an answer that made the burning stop. Damn shame though. I can’t book the appointment, myself. Thanks anyway.

You know, I always had this fantasy about one day, someone kidnaps me, knocks me out, did the surgery in my sleep, just so they could interrogate me. Never could have happened with Chase Black on account. Going to be dreaming of it a lot more, now.

I can’t tell you good luck. I have to believe you don’t need it.

It’s not a request. It couldn’t be - if he thought you’d take it as a request, it would probably kill him. He really has to think you wouldn’t do it. Hope, though?

You were right. The bomb was always a stupid, brutish, low-tech, asinine thing. Too brutish to risk triggering over hope, or Rudy would be decades dead, and too imprecise to tell the difference between hoping and hoping out loud.

Ah, right.

Crystal looks up from her doodling. “Between the fear and loathing, you sound almost grateful to her. Which I suppose I would understand, if she taught you to be so capable. What a complicated relationship that must be.”

“Here be the verse.” Fiona mutters. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had. And add some extra, just for you. I don’t really know what to say otherwise. I mean, I already know some of the circumstances. Legally bound to this person you didn’t choose, no right to leave their ‘care’, forced back if you tried. They imprinted themselves onto you. Now you still can’t leave them, because you see a piece of them in every reflection.” Her jaw clenches, and her hand instinctively grips her cutlery knife. “The fact that they are responsible for some of what is great in you, so either you fear you’re wrong to think like parts of yourself, or there’s disgust that it might force you to hate someone less than they deserve. Yeah, honestly, it sounds like you were her daughter in the ways that count.”

Crystal blinks. “Fiona, I had no idea you had-”

“No, mine were great.” She barks a bitter laugh, dropping the knife and letting it rattle as it hits the table. “Yours.”

“... ah.” Crystal trails off, before looking back to Orange. “I’m sorry if this isn’t what you wanted to talk about, but I will admit. I feel like it might be an important place to start.”

“Emancipating Goat was important.” Fiona agrees. “But you had to be very motivated to...” her eyes flick to the TV screen, and she lets that be her end of sentence.

Waffle and Flood:

That’s all you get. Selene is on the entire opposite end of the station to Gaea, it’s going to take hours to get there.

There’s express freight, of course, to Thrones. Thrones is reliant on food imports, full of perishables, so booking the world’s least suspicious boxcar for an expedited delivery would only have taken a point of preparedness - your last point, I believe. Otherwise, you’re going to have to have planned to improvise from here.

You’ve got an hour until you need to be at the station, a planned chronological crumple zone. An emergency vehicle still capable of taking Goat. There’s nothing to do but hurry up and wait.

Nothing’s going to happen. But that doesn’t alleviate the fear it might.

How do you spend the hour?

Strawberry:

I assume you will be busy fixing the damage you’ve caused, and keeping an eye out. When something interesting happens, I’ll tell you.

[Thanqol]

Orange!

"Ah, good!" she said. There was an ethereal air to her voice and smile. "Thank you, yes, thank you, excuse me for one moment, I've just been extremely stressed about ways this conversation could go and the really bad one didn't happen, so excuse me, I need to go have a tension relief panic attack in the bathroom for fifteen minutes before I continue, thank you, excuse me, thank you -"

She set a timer on her phone and left it on the table as collateral, elegantly tucked her chair back in under the table, and quickly stepped away.

... Some part of her resented a lack of physiological response to emotional stressors. Her mind-body interface was simply not given to the little microtics that made humans so expressive. She could blush if she set her mind to it, could feign a shiver, could laugh or cry but all of those things were choices. It always made her feel like an imposter, like a liar. What if it was the other way around? What if she was fully capable of displaying these signs spontaneously and expressing herself clearly, but she just didn't have sufficient emotional range to prompt it in the first place?

Of course it was possible to be feeling some of the most intense emotions she had ever felt and simultaneously believe that she wasn't capable of feeling emotions at all. For one of them to be false meant taking a less than maximally negative view of herself, and she hadn't got to where she was today with that kind of thinking.

Limited time. Too exposed. She wants to rotate colours but she can't, she left the phone behind. She wants to express emotional authenticity, make it clear that even though she could lie about something like this she's not doing that right now. Make some sort of dramatic gesture of trust, the dramatic gesture of trust of five minutes ago obviously did not count. Change the topic and orient on Crystal's story. Spoken about self enough. Evade, but in an authentic way. Write it as a book. Only a book would be enough. If only she could write.

She looks in the mirror and makes herself cry. It's fake, controlled. Makes her feel better anyway. Makes her feel like maybe a little bit of all of this is real even if most of it isn't. She cares enough to cry where no one can see. That's not nothing.

She cleans up. Carefully dries her eyes, re-establishes her mascara - she doesn't really need it, her eyelashes are wonderful, but she likes the look. It's like looking at stars; big and bright enough that attention falls where she wants it to. Smooths out her dress. Still herself. Breathing controlled. Perfect.

"... Thank you for your patience," she said, returning and sitting with a frame-perfect reversal of her standing motion. She stops the timer at eight seconds and returns the phone to her handbag. "Forgive me. One moment, I need to text an ex, who is a back alley neruosurgeon, to arrange subtextually consensual brain surgery on my ex murderer, one moment -"

Orange: Sophie! :D :D :D
Orange: Do I have a job just for you!

"Thank you," she said, setting her phone down. "Okay. Alright. Thank you. I'm alright. Thank you. What was the question?"

*

November!

She's just maintained absolute focus for an extended period of time. That's not natural, that's not easy. November sets out some crash mats for herself and then collapses into the void.

The conversation is silent. Phones are out. Games are being played. Complex math puzzles solved. Levels are upped. Everything and nothing, enough to sedate the mind and occupy the hands and no more. A way to fast forward in time so she doesn't have to be with herself. A way to add some distance between her and a state of maximal stress and maximal thought. A liminal state between life and death and the conquest of Bohemia as soon as its French ally finds itself distracted by another war.

It's not fully relaxing. It never can be. There's still a baseline level of external vigilance, a baseline awareness of checks and deeds and additional maneuvers to ensure operational integrity, an itchy nervous energy that isn't fully spent despite the exhaustion. But it is a line drawn in the sand for her own benefit. The operation is over. This thing we're doing now is a new thing, a different thing, and it's not yet time to revisit the previous thing.

[Preparedness 0/8]