Count Numbers

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

Black knows where to find Rudy - address and contact details. But White has already snubbed him, decided he isn’t worth the risk, and that might have made things more complicated. Maybe not.

He’s an interesting candidate. Beyond his resources, you have evidence he’s a professional in these waters, if not a consummate operative. How many times did you have access to his home and office before Red sniffed him out? That, and the fact that she didn’t get away with it.

Don’t get it twisted. The man’s spirit animal is the bird that hangs out in the open mouths of apex predators to pick their teeth clean. If his clients sense their asset has become a liability, the jaws might close on you, too.

Still, he works from home, so you know where to find him. Tomorrow morning, Orange will be assigned to White again and to babysitting duties, but she’s free tonight.

1: Where is Green going to do her copying where she won’t be noticed? What is her plan for the copies?
2: Who is meeting Rudy, and how are you preparing to do it?

Persphone:

York’s answer is immediate.

Neon_Czolgosz: this party i’m at is fucking lame lmao
Neon_Czolgosz: i can be there in thirty minutes, otherwise i’ll crash now and be around 9am.
Neon_Czolgosz: might not be able to dodge anyone, real good at making them not want to pay attention to me though

Sometimes it’s saying ‘cunt’ as loud and as fast as possible, sometimes it’s stream-of-thought Malcolm X and Mao quotes. Sometimes it’s loudly demanding attention for a real social issue going on, in detail and specifics. He’s a clown until someone wants a joke, at which point he’ll stay brutally on-message and spoil it.

Stealth is a mutually exclusive survival strategy to advertising that you’re extremely toxic, though, and York’s all-in on the one he’s good at.

It probably wouldn’t help to tell him it’d be dangerous to be seen with you. Telling him wouldn’t make him stealthier, it’d just make him more determined to show up and share the heat. No sense trying to protect him from it, either; if the cops find out Marco went to you, York’s going to be a target anyway.

What’s your plan for the night? What are you standing watch for, and how are you keeping yourself from getting too bored?

[Staying up all night, high on stimulants, keeping constant surveillance is going to be a Difficulty 9 Cool roll if you attempt it - no relevant bonuses to it I can see on your sheet. Failure won't cause something to happen; It just means you don't get to know for sure.]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Black:

The files start with folder names, listed from oldest to most recent:

Classification: Janus
Classification: Listerine
Classification: Custodiet
Classification: Fact Check
Classification: Accountable
Classification: Inexcusable
Classification: Fault Line
Classification: Insight
Classification: Dauntless
Classification: Strangler Fig
Classification: Mockingbird Egg
Classification: Apple Barrel
Classification: Fish Head
Classification: Crooked Penny
Classification: Emperor’s Clothes
Classification: Tweezer Factory
Classification: Pokemon Blue
Classification: Bootstraps
Classification: Sisyphus
Classification: Heal Thyself
Classification: Gangrene
Classification: House Divided
Classification: Shibari
Classification: Rot
Classification: Nurgle
Classification: Rat King
Classification: Existential Threat
Classification: Pressure Cooker
Classification: Ball Gag
Classification: Paper Shredder
Classification: SOS

At a 1.33x playback speed, it takes forty seconds just to read the folder names.

To get a useful sense of their contents would take either an hour of listening, or a few minutes of very precise skimming and some especially clever leaps in logic. Black, you get this information either way, but I’m going to make you roll a difficulty 8 [Clever+Data Security] roll to work out which it is - and what that looks like. Sometimes taking longer doesn't mean safer. It means more exposure to mitigate.

Here is what you learn:

• Some of these are internal investigations. Investigations meant to find and quantify police corruption. Some of these are actions based on the findings of those earlier investigations, meant to prosecute and hold accountable. The rest are operations meant to sabotage and suppress the internal investigators.
• In audio format, it would take you thousands of years to get through all of this. The amount of data here is staggering. This is like panning a riverbed for gold using only bare human hands. It’s scary how much gold you find with such brutish methods. In Classification Existential Threat you listen to the names, rank, and badge numbers of senior officers complicit in destruction of evidence, suppression of witnesses, perjury, forgery, and manipulation of the press. Just one paragraph from one file of one of thirty-one folders.
• You ever heard of the elephant’s foot? It’s a pile of nuclear slag from Chernobyl that melted through more than two meters of the reinforced reactor housing meant to contain it? That’s how hot this is.
• It’s not enough to leak this. The data is too raw to just drop this on an anonymous server and call it a day. This needs to be translated into stories, coherent summaries and boiled down distillations on what this all means. If the data is dropped as-is, there’s too much chance that it can be ‘neutralized’ before the public can know how important it is. Either played off as an elaborate conspiracy theory or ‘the way things used to be’ - but ‘It’s not like that now’. An unfortunate past, not a present.
• If the cops know who has this? If the guy who gave Elodie this didn’t get it clean? They may both be in tremendous danger. The cops are scared of her right now, but that pales in comparison to how scared they’d be of her having this disk.
• White did not cut you off from the Anthropozine group chat, which remains a secure and encrypted line. Can you trust that?

The rest of November is free to act and react - I am just focusing the spotlight on Black until she is able to share it.

Elodie:

Marco blinks, and takes the hoodie off, only a singlet underneath. Which is when you see the overgrown stubble isn’t just overgrown stubble, and he’s more distinctive underneath the sweats than just a guy in his late twenties.

You’d say he’s about two thirds of the way into his transition. The fur’s still coming in patchy, but it’s already growing in its mixed colourations, black with big white spots and grey patches around his chest and shoulders. Without the hood hiding them, his ears are becoming taller, more pronounced circles. His hands are pinker past his wrists. His growing tail is probably taped to his legs under the baggy sweatpants.

The face is always the most finicky to get right, the most drastic to see different in the mirror, so it’s the last to come in. For now, the hoodie is enough to still hide who he really is.

“How cliche, right?” Marco laughs bitterly. “That I’m a scared little mouse? But I'd have to be stupid to not be scared right now. But that's the only time you can be really brave, because bravery is when you do the right thing, no matter how scared you are.” The bitter is gone. He sits up straight for the first time since you’ve met him. He smiles. “I’m the bravest little mouse you’re ever going to see.”

No self-deprecation, no hesitation. No flinching, no shame. It doesn’t matter if you think that's ridiculous, because he has made peace with the fact that what is true about him, what is important about him, will make people think he’s ridiculous. But it is more important that it is true.

Furries aren’t trendy on Aevum. Certainly there’s plenty of biopunks, but it's not cool in the same way getting cyberware is. People don’t think twice about tattoos or dyed hair or holographic fashion or even casual nudity (in Aphrodite, Apollo or Ares). But furries? Furries are weird. Furries are cringe. Furries are ‘self-selecting subhumans’, a label that’s caught on because that’s how popular public intellectual Edward Obidiah Huxley refers to them exclusively.

(York roasts Ed Huxley on social media for being too scared to debate him, but Ed refuses to share a room until York retracts his promise to [sic] “Do warcrimes to him”. That might be context for why Marco-the-Mouse feels safer with Anthropozine than anyone else.)

“Yeah, I had self-harm urges, and depression, none of that’s new to me. It’s not. I can handle this.” He believes it, but the physical evidence contradicts him. He just can’t comprehend that he could feel 'worse' than this. “Adjusting to the new normal was helping. I was starting to feel like me for the first time, and then…”

He trails off. “Sorry. I know that’s not what you meant. Just. You know government jobs aren’t allowed to ask if you have gene mods? Anti-discrimination? I thought it’d be cool, but, I didn’t know it was a cop-job, just like the cops didn’t know they’d hired… someone like me. It was. Bad. They were going to - They said some things I wasn’t supposed to hear. Sensitive ears. I just wanted protection. Not for myself. They were going to hurt… the people who made me feel normal for the first time. For ‘fucking kids like me up’.”

This might be why he was so rehearsed before, so forced. He goes off script and he’s a juddering ball of sentence fragments and raw nerves.

He’s crying. He can’t help it. He’s trying to be brave. He’s such a brave little mouse. You know that look, Elodie, you’ve seen it too many times from the wrong people - but everything is worth it for the times it comes from the right people. He thinks you can handle this. Meeting you's just made him sure of it. He broke into your apartment and the first thing you did was take care of him and take control of the situation. He thinks you’re a big goddamn hero. He’s trying so hard to impress you and he thinks he’s blowing it.

“I didn’t hide what I was doing, because it was meant to be a warning to back off. I didn’t expect to find so much. It was an accident. Now every cop on Aevum is trying to kill me.” His pink hands ball into fists, and he squeezes them so hard his fingernails draw white lines against his palms. “But it’s not my fault there was so much to find.”

A shuddering breath that ends in a squeaky yawn. He relaxes his hands. He started venting, which meant he felt safe enough to be vulnerable with you and let this out. It’s having the exact effect on him you predicted.

“It was only ten days ago. I’ll take that pill now, please, if you’re still offering. Is it okay if I sleep under your bed, though? Hiding helps. Anywhere dark is fine.”

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Persephone:

He takes the sandwich graciously, but then stares at it in his hands, held in front of his mouth. Something else you remember. Different people handle stress differently. Two particular base urges either flip to minimum or maximum, depending on the person. Horny and hungry.

The former explains every interaction you’ve ever had on social media. The latter explains how, emaciated little thing that he is, Marco still forgets how to eat. His first bite into the sandwich is achingly deliberate.

The second, third, fourth and fifth bites surprise him. The sandwich disappears as fast as he can chew. The yoghurt as soon as he notices it. The carbs and sugars will do him good.

“I’m not that paranoid, yet.” He mumbles, wiping his lips with the back of a shaking hand. “Fast food’s obviously safe, and there’s a Long Pig just down the street from here.” Cloned human meat, no margin for error. “I just… forgot. I’ve been too busy.” He sounds like he knows how ridiculous that came out, and looks for a better reason. “I haven’t wanted to use my credit card, either, and I don’t have cash.”

He produces from under his hoodie a data drive. A chunky one, about an inch thick and covered in drop-resistant rubber. It comes with a power adaptor as well as a data cable, for rapid transfers.

“Everything’s here. It’s uncompressed, and there’s no password.” He holds it awkwardly out, waiting for you to take it off him. “I hope you know what to do with it. Also, can I sleep here, for a bit? Just for tonight?”

The sedative’s a good idea. You might not even need to trick him. Just put it in his hand, point him at the couch, and he might even thank you for it.

You might not want to risk the offer being taken the wrong way, though. Looking at how he inhaled the food you gave him, though, it might be easier to just slip it into another tub of yogurt. Your call.

Also, it seems like this guy’s only long term survival plan was breaking into your apartment and trusting you to be his Big Damned Hero. How flattering!

Lucky, you do have someone waiting in the wings to take this data off you, though, while you’re busy playing unwilling Mum. A specialist.

Black:

The reporters downstairs are clearing out. What’s left are mostly interns and junior members, flying drones and waiting for anything interesting to happen. The interloper seems to be on the mark about the police being too scared to move on the place overtly, too. Elodie should be able to handle this much on her own, now.

White’s just cut you free, and you’ve just been made aware of a data drive filled with contraband information. The most important thing about this information is that it’s unsafe for anyone to know you have it.

First, get it off Elodie. That seems easy. Second, there’s actually opening it safely and seeing what this even is. Do you need a specific place to do that? Specific hardware you want to use? Someone whose help you need?

Third, after that, there’s working out what to do with the information. But that’ll have to come after you know what it even is.

Dangerous, sure, but there’s plenty of ways to kill a cat, there's a lot that could mean. You might make an educated guess, though?

White:

Night. Less than a week until you see Dad again, as long as the others keep playing their parts and the score keeps going up.

Your first shift tomorrow morning should be a guaranteed tenner. It’s a wealthy single mum who needs a maid service that her two year old likes. The toddler has a thing for the cat ears. Clean the whole McMansion, don’t break anything, keep the kid happy, remember to feed her at lunch time, and you’re a quarter of the way to Thrones.

What’s the team? Who can handle kids?

Wait. Children. There might actually be another way, a faster way.

Brittenette. The middle child, the spider in the web. Zeus accommodates her far better than Thrones could - none of the three heiresses were particularly tech-minded - but she would have the connections if you reached out to her and asked for a favour.

It could get you a passport tomorrow, but with a string attached to it.

Is it even an option worth considering?

3V:

“Just, Gavin, please.” He says. He focuses on his hands again, deep in thought. “When you have one, you know how unimpressive it really is.” He looks at you as if to wink but, at the last moment, decides it’s laying it on a bit too thick. He’s already made the twitch of his head for it before he aborts, and he covers the movement with a shrug and a rub of his nose.

[3V, make a roll here, difficulty of 10, to overcome Ferris’ passive presence and make him spill the beans on what he’s holding back. You have an opportunity while she’s getting dressed. Two options if you fail. One; You meet more resistance than you were expecting, and you can back down gracefully. Second is you have to work him a little longer, so Ferris overhears you find out.

Either way, feel free to take control Gavin into your own answer, write his dialogue in a back-and-forth based on the roll. I trust you to have enough of a sense for his voice. Have fun.]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Persephone:

The guy stands up off the sofa immediately, and flinches away when you pass. No, definitely not an assassin. He’s clearly more scared of you than you are of him. Look at his eyes as you pass and see the dilated pupils and pink mist you’re familiar with. You could fit your thumb in the bags under his eyes.

You saw it in a lot of middle-class first-timers. Outside of prison, it’s a kind of CPTSD that hasn’t been common since trench warfare. He’s been living in terror for more than a week but less than a month, by your count. No safe place to sleep, no people he trusts to watch his back.

More than a week. It takes that long for the physical symptoms to accumulate like this. It’s his body trying to maintain its adrenaline high so long after its run out of reserves, and now it’s ripping up floorboards to make ceiling. Even high-stress workaholics have about two or three days of buffer, as long as they don’t sleep in their offices and take weekends off.

Less than a month. He’s not fully burned out yet. He’s still twitchy and jumpy, which means his mind and muscles are still receptive to the fight-or-flight juices. That won’t last. You know what the crash feels like. It’s worse than going cold turkey after a 10-espresso-a-day habit.

The problem is that it’s more than the fatigue and the fog of a stimulant crash. The brain also goes into an intense depression, because it’s been pushed beyond breaking. For a while, it loses the ability to regulate mood, recycle dopamine and serotonin.

If he can be handled through the crash when it happens, it will be the first chance of recovery. The mind can acclimate to its new sense of risk, even though he might spend the rest of his life with his back to the corner wall of restaurants. He’ll settle into a new normal.

Without that help, he’s going to be at a serious risk of self-harm. What happens when the brain withdraws from such an intense survival impulse. Knowing this doesn’t make you responsible for it. It’s just part of your assessment of a person who would break into your apartment despite clearly being terrified of you.

“Please. I need your help, and I don’t know anyone else I can trust.” He says. “My name is Marco Alvaro, and I’m a whistleblower. I have important information about Aevum police that everyone needs to know. A lot of very dangerous information. You’re the only person I think I can trust right now, the only person they’re scared of. Please help me.”

He says this like he’s spent the entire time on your couch drilling it, over and over and over. His entire body braces when he runs out of script. In case he needs to argue. In case he needs to beg. In case he needs to run. He tries to stare at you defiantly, but always those bloodshot eyes are darting back to windows and doors.

November:

You don’t get all that subtext, Black. Just the rehearsed speech, and a much more complicated risk to manage.

3V:

“Dr Rolfe, fun? Maybe.” Ferris snorts. She’s very annoyed, but her jab still betrays personal respect. She’s implying doctors can’t be fun, but takes for granted Gavin is a real and valid example. If you’ve already picked up on that insecurity, Ferris must have. “I’m sure he needs his rest, though. Feel free to join us for breakfast, but we might be a while, so it might be better if you don’t wait up.”

Translation; She doesn’t want to leave you alone with Gavin.

Gavin gives you a nervous look, shrugs helplessly. “Breakfast sounds lovely, Dr Ferris.” At least brave enough for that bit of snark.

“I’ll just need to get properly dressed, if you don’t mind?” She’s still holding the towel shut, not trusting it to stay tied on. “I didn’t know you played, though, Gavin. I used to love running Age of Atlantis. I’m sure there are better systems, but none matched it for that feeling of hopeful optimism. I’m sure I’ve written some one-session games I’ve never had a chance to run…”

Of course she would rather run games than play them. Add it to the pile of radiating top energy. Still, another insinuation. Just because you can’t see her doesn’t mean she can’t hear you.

Or maybe the feeling of being eavesdropped on pales in comparison to one of the saviours of the species offering to run a game for you.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

3V:

Gavin smiles sheepishly. What he is about to say either makes him very cool, or very uncool. “I’m one of the few people you’ll meet who actually knows the rules to chaturanga. I used to love playing a Janissary in Age of Atlantis, but it’s been… too long, ha. Just hard to find a group out here, and distance play isn’t nearly as much fun for me.”

Age of Atlantis is a popular tabletop line, what D&D was to Vance and Tolkein and what Call of Cthulu was to Lovecraft, Age of Atlantis is to the works of Jules Verne. It’s a mashup pastiche of badly misremembered pop-pulp 19th century aesthetics. A typical party could mash up a samurai, a vaquero, a Napoleonic grenadier and an Ottoman janissary without batting an eye.

Janissaries have beautiful swords and ornate long-range rifles, and make excellent support nukers. It’s the class you pick when you want your friends to drag you along for the ride, but you don’t want to feel like dead weight - Sniping allows them to cover the frontline adventurers while guarding the rear, where their sword allows them to defend the more fragile characters like the Diplomat and the Occultist.

It’s the class you pick when, deep down, your favourite thing to do is protecting the real heroes, letting them take bigger risks. God, you bet he keysmashes when he’s flustered in textchat.

You’ve played AoA, of course. It’s impossible to be in the Gamer™ space without at least trying it. Even if you found it wasn’t for you, the game’s popular enough that character preferences still bleed through cultural osmosis in the same way, in 2020, most people have an idea of an archetypal Rogue or Bard or Paladin.

How deep did you fall down that rabbit hole, though? Or did you bounce off it?

Lorraine Ferris is down the stairs again, towel around her waist, wet hair tight to her neck. Is that pity in Gavin’s eyes? It disappears the second Ferris finds him.

“No, please, stay,” Ferris says. Hot-and-cold, a friendly threat, a warning and an invitation. “It’s always so nice to have you visit, Gav. I know how hard the trip is for you.”

Gavin’s ten years past his prime, and Ferris must have another thirty past that. Still, there is no doubt in your mind she could kick his ass, if she wanted to. She should be visiting him, she clearly thinks.

“Ah. Well.” Gavin looks at you awkwardly. “I hope you don’t mind?”

It’s unclear whether he means if it’s okay for him to stay, or okay for you to leave. Probably deliberately.

Persephone and November:

The hooded figure closes the door behind them and waits.

Well. No. More than that. They’re sweating. They go for tap water, then decide against it. Instead they fill the kettle, boil it, fill one of Elodie's sports bottles with the boiling water, and then put that in the freezer. After that, they go sit on the couch, press their hands together, and wait.

After ten minutes, they go and get their water bottle out of the freezer, test it, put it back in, and wait. Another ten minutes, they pull it out again for real this time, and chug the whole thing. Boiling water again, then back into the freezer.

When they’re not hydrating, they just sit on the couch and wait. They didn’t bring a book, they don’t appear to be listening to music, no portable games consoles, no mobile phone. No electronics that Black’s equipment can detect.

They are still waiting for you.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:

R/W/O:

Soon, Rudy will give you a 10/10 rating. His Headpattr feedback comment will read; “Message received.”

Even here, snubbed, he doesn’t have the nerve to push the issue by giving a lower score. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t a trap. It might just mean he understands you’re not falling for it, and there’s no sense in antagonizing you further.

Tenners are easy jobs. Tenners are jobs that Red, White and Orange can either enjoy doing, or at the very least, sail through with a minimum of emotional investment. Nothing to prepare for, before tomorrow. No other jobs you can take while still on the clock for the sub-contractor.

Time and opportunity to learn how the other teams are going.

3V:

Gavin straightens. His expression flickers the internal conflict within, one you’re in a unique position to recognize immediately. The war between wanting to self-deprecate to put someone at ease, and the need to be taken seriously for making life choices that so many others have questioned. Mutually exclusive. Someone desperately out of practice meeting new people outside his field.

Gavin screws his courage to the sticking place, and chooses neither.

“I’m an anthropologist.” He explains, full enthusiasm and patter. “There’s a few of us, up here. I’m staying with the Surui, at the moment, and I have a colleague back on Earth with the tribe that stayed behind. Brazil still survives fairly well, considering. We’re comparing the cultural drift from climate disaster, versus transplantation. Typical of social science, we have two experiments and no control group.” He pats a tupperware container he’s taken with him, weathered and sun-bleached, full of grounds. “Amazing coffee’s remained consistent, at least.”

This would be Ferris’s source of coffee, then.

He leaves things on the bench, cocks his ear. The pitch of a shower changes when someone gets in or out of it. The water’s still running, but you have to pay attention to be sure someone’s still in it. Satisfied, he drops sotto voce.

“Lorre hasn’t told you about…?” He takes the lack of immediate recognition as answer enough. “Some of us try to check up on her, every few days, just to be sure she’s still with us. She doesn’t like-”

The shower shuts off, and Gavin shuts up.

Persephone:

Nothing.

Two hours of nothing.

There’s probably something here that you’re missing. But all of it is obscured in anodyne terminology, legalese, copspeak. Your brain glazes over trying to draw meaning from it. You lack the statistical training to make an effective analysis that could coax the needle out of its haystack, if there is a needle to find.

No, you know there is. None of this makes sense, otherwise.

But this mountain of paperwork needs a guide who is native to it.

A problem for tomorrow. With rest, and sugar, and food, and sleep, and rest.

Wait.

November:

B/B/P(?):

Someone is trying to get into Elodie’s apartment. They’re alone, unkempt hair and three day stubble leaking around the crevices of the dark sunglasses, three-ply mask and hoodie pulled tight. They’re knocking? They’re not. They stop after checking the peephole by strafing their head side-to-side to it, checking for movement, for silhouettes.

They’re not knocking. They’re pulling tools from one pocket. A long thin strip of shiny metal ending in a saw tooth.

How do you know this, and how do you react?

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Persephone:

I should take a moment to talk about how Aevum could let dilapidated buildings stand, unmolested, for years. There’s a gut feeling that space is all about scarce resources and ruthless optimization, an innate bias that recoils against any waste.

The truth is, Aevum has a lot of empty space. Sure, there’s a housing and migrant crisis going, but that’s an issue of privatization, not accommodation. When a nearby station fails - the large ones, anything with a population in the hundreds-of-thousands - it’s not an issue of finding room in Aevum. It’s the process of eminent domain and settlement. Finding the money, and the people willing to take it.

YIMBY activists have been pushing for keeping public-owned apartment blocks empty in anticipation of disaster housing, and they’ve had some success at it, but almost always only after the crisis has happened. One group, Hotels For Hope, has been running apartments bed-and-breakfast style with volunteer workforces, to donate in times of need. They do good work, but have an obvious conflict of interest where their funding model is mutually exclusive to the service it’s intended to provide.

Still. While Aevum’s interior surface is only two fifths the Earth’s, it uses that space much more efficiently, and was designed to handle a population of up to twenty billion. An interior handrail of the station, running the ten thousand kilometers of the station’s zero-G core, was wire pulled from the Brooklyn Bridge in what had been New York City.

When making that bridge, the architect had intended a safety factor of eight. During the building process, a contractor had slipped inferior wire past numerous safety inspections, and of the resulting cables, only five of the tested eighty were sound to specification. Found too late, the bad wire had already been woven into the cables.

But the design had been so good that the bridge, with its rotten wire, still lasted a hundred and eighty years, right up until New York had been subsumed by the rising waters of the 2060s. Reclaimed, it still exists as a statement, as something you could trust your life on.

A look into the minds of the people who built this place.

It’ll be years before it’s worth the cost of restoring a building like Geiger’s Counter, at the earliest.

This is a safe place. That’s guaranteed. No one knows to look for you here, and nobody’s going to stumble across it by accident. The cost to demolish it safely is more than the land’s worth.

You can’t live here, but you can work here. Throw up your corkboards with the coloured string, connect to the internet, and feel safe for a while.

How else have you made this place your own?

[If you want to follow up leads here, you’ve got no relevant specialties. +Clever, try to beat 7. Bigger success means more info, maybe group prep. Following a lead takes an hour - even if you fail at it. You’ve probably got time for two topics before you should start heading home. This will also count for generating new leads.]]

3V:

If only Proverbs knew what they’d done.

How high do you jump when there’s a knock at the front door? A visitor standing on that balcony overlooking Eden with its liturgy to Moloch. He’s an older man, though not as old as Ferris, closer to his fifties, wearing a pastel-green shirt and khakis that are both three sizes too big for him, generous folds of excess material sloughing down the way wax cools on a candle.

He gives a dainty wave, then lets himself in. He gestures to the rucksack he’s carrying. “I’m just here to deliver some groceries. I like to be a good neighbour, didn’t think I’d be interrupting anything. Can’t remember the last time Cassandra had guests. I’m Gavin.” He drops the bag on the kitchen counter, and begins sorting and stacking things, putting things away. He clearly knows where it’s all supposed to go. “Is she here?”

He’s smiling, he’s pleasant, but there’s an effort to it. He says ‘neighbour’ but it’s clearly been a long walk for him. What thin, wispy hair he still has is stuck to his scalp, and he doesn’t match Ferris for lean proportions. The walk took a lot out of him, and it wasn’t a casual thing.

He is completely obvious to the fact you’re being flirted with, right now. Upstairs, there’s the sound of a shower starting. Gavin lets out a breath, but only for a moment before he sucks it back in and looks tense again. "Sorry, am I interrupting something?" he asks.

November:

R/W/O:

Your job, slated after Muffi, was especially requested of you specifically. It’s a delivery job, which is unorthodox - Headpattr charges more than courier service apps. Maybe it makes more sense that the client is Rudolph Merkin.

Rudy’s overpaying for a delivery of a rare coin - a 17th century Korean mun seed. Hardly the rarest, but a plausible enough reason to order your services again so soon, a reason for you to end up at his apartment again.

It might be a trap. You could always refuse.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

R/W/O:
Muffi keeps going through her work. “It’s fair. Projection is a powerful thing. People even name their robot vacuum cleaners, and treat them like pets. A friend of mine calls his Pancake. It’s cute. You know what Pancake doesn’t do?”

Muffi flips open one of their windows to the various three-and-four star ratings that November has accrued, and twists it to face White. “Pancake never deliberately breaks anything just so she has a mess to clean up. Pancake never causes problems just so she can solve them. Nor any other android worker on the roster.”

“Being built to thrive in crisis? That’s optimization. Seeking out crisis to thrive in? That’s personality.” Muffi barks out a laugh. “Lucky for you, I always seem to have enough of them.”

Muffi could not possibly know about Red’s self-destructive actions with Merkin, or what Pink’s doing right at this moment. Or how you’re planning to collaboratively inflict every horror movie simultaneously on Dad, as an alternative to picking up a phone. If she did, though, she would definitely gesture at it as a clear example of what she means.

Still, a conclusion she’s reached without need of it.

“I’ve got you slated for two jobs a day, if you can handle that, mornings and evenings. 8am-3pm, 6pm to midnight, for five days. All as close together as I could manage, nothing with more than an hour commute from one to the next. If you can do five days at that schedule, you’ll have a passport by day six, be in thrones by day seven. Normally I wouldn’t put that workload on anyone trying to go for a perfect score. With you? I thought it might make it easier. At the very least, it’s as optimal as I could make it. I’m sure you’ll find some tweaks of your own.”

It’s a challenge, then.

There’s ways to go about this. Some of these can be made to be two person jobs, leaving rotating rest-spots. Others are ‘until the job is done’. Having three pairs of hands on those would free up the entire team to rest faster. And they’re all ‘tenners’.

Just five days.

Persephone:

Skele shrugs. “HAKUNA MATATA. I DO NOT GO LOOKING FOR TROUBLE, I DO NOT LOOK INTO TROUBLE. I ONLY HEAR ABOUT IT. LIKE, UH…” Skele bangs his skull with one of his arms while two work the burrs out, “AH! RUMOUR THAT THE UNLEDED GANG IN ZHUKOV DISTRICT - NEAR HERE, YES? ALL COPS.” Skele snorts, a bizarre sound like a chiptuned harmonica.

The UnLEDeds are small time extortion and drug runners, big time ‘true flesh’ purists. It’s usual to see the type hate on biopunks these days, furries and anyone else who pushes anatomy past its factory settings. Less usual to see anyone get hard up about cybernetics. In the old days they’d be more of a blood-and-soil movement, but they see extensive modification as a sign of weakness and degeneracy.

The reason 3V could never run an unmodded stream chat longer than thirty seconds.

“WHAT DOES IT CHANGE, THOUGH?” Skele asks. “REMEMBER WHAT ALL PARENTS SAY? IF I CAN’T SEE YOU, YOU CAN’T SEE ME? BEST NOT TO LOOK.” Skele begins the laborious process of re-attaching the tentacles. “NOT MY OPINION AS YOUR ROCKET SURGEON. THIS TROUBLE WILL FIND YOU ONLY IF YOU DO NOT LOOK FOR IT. ALL DONE.”

This is, of course, the moment Elodie finds out about her eviction notice. To this Skele has nothing to say. Anything would sound like an ‘I told you so’. So he says anything else.

“I WILL SEE IF YOUR FRIEND IS STILL WAITING FOR YOU OUTSIDE.”

B/B/P:

“WOAH WOAH WOAH, PINK ONE,” Skele throws two hands up in the air, and two to the side of his head in shock and awe, “TELL THE WHOLE NEIGHBOURHOOD WHY DON’T YOU.” Back into the door, and back out again with a big enough camera to take proper pictures of it. That, at least, is appreciation. “AY AY AY. WE TRY TO KEEP THINGS SUBTLE AROUND HERE.”

The mathcore playlist kicks at 95 decibels, even through the metal door.

“OKAY OKAY. YOU ARE SORRY, YES? WE’RE GOOD. JUST. DON’T KEEP APOLOGIZING. ONE MOMENT.”

Fucking_Skelator skips back into the workshop, to help Elodie back into her wheelchair. There’s an obvious joke here about always needing to find her feet, after this, which is why nobody makes it, when they make the handoff to Pink again. Carried out with the wheelchair, slung over a shoulder, is a power washer and some paint thinners.

Don't worry. That's not getting added to the fee.

Persephone: So it's not an immediate concern but the cops leaned heavy on my apartment building and they caved. I've got 4 months to find someplace else.
Persephone: Any leads would be handy. I've got some time before dealing with it at leatyjn3
Persephone: Another fucking burr. Of course. Least*

ProvocativelyFickle: Four months notice? We could squeeze you in!
Neon Czolgoz: Don’t you have four flatmates already
ProvocativelyFickle: Yeah. I mean…
Neon Czolgoz: Eli stop typing before I throttle you
NumbToNothing: uwu

NumbToNothing’s been homeless three times in the last two years. Twice from bad breakups, once from their parents thinking their ADHD prescription was a relapse and kicking them out over it. They were about to offer help anyway.

JuntaSThompson: I’m going to be honest, my listed address is just a P.O box. I’ve been squatting for a while now.
Neon Czolgoz: Shit. Really?
JuntaSThompson: By choice. I’m good at it, and it stretches the UBI out a lot farther.
Neon Czolgoz: fuuuck me
BreadSanta: Sorry, been busy
BreadSanta: Persephone still need a place?

BreadSanta, AKA “Bill”, is an ombudsman with the Stations Near Aevum Fast Food Union, or SNAFFU. The ‘SN’ part used to be more relevant in the early days, when all the smaller privatized habitats hadn’t all collapsed or failed yet. These days it’s mostly to keep the acronym cute. BreadSanta is the closest you get to a professional saint.

BreadSanta: I can make room if you can’t find anything. Might be tight, though. Otherwise I’m good to help on moving day, as long as I can fit it in the calendar.
Neon Czolgoz: king.
Neon Czolgoz: also uh
Neon Czolgoz: nah, nevermind
Neon Czolgoz: way funnier if I don’t tell
ProvocativelyFickle: Tell what?
Neon Czolgoz: youll know it when you see it

3V:

You’re the first to find it, by coincidence, by itch. What Neon was talking about in the group chat.

A late night show adapted the gist of Elodie’s incident into a made-for-TV sketch.

The guy playing the Police Commissioner looks a lot like him, and they’ve really nailed finding someone who fits the profile and has great comedic timing. Elodie’s build is a bit less conventional, so her likeness is a much looser fit. Fortunately, when comedians who come close to Elodie’s build make it this close to the A list, it’s because they’re just that funny. The actress nails it.

York played himself, but only in the literal sense.

And you’re the only one who’s seen it, so far.

Unfortunately, Ferris is still sleeping in. Breakfast is the result of an open invitation - open cupboards, open fridge.

There is nobody to distract you from the onslaught of Yellow’s flirting. A choice between the direct assault, and the retreat again into nature and hermitage.

Well?

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November:
Red/White/Orange:

Muffi thinks for some time. With how she’s focused on the screens in front of her, you could be forgiven for thinking she just hadn’t heard you. Finally, she says;

“You like purpose and challenge. Even now, you’re treating my home as another job to be taken seriously, even though you know this is an easy ten for you. Grazie again.” She shifts. “It’s a cleaning job, with more socially denigrating aspects. Most people want this to be easy. Make the money they need, and get out. Not you.”

She points at her screen. “Molly and Daveed hover around 9, because they’re squeamish, but they love how they look in cat ears and like being told. I try to keep them away from God’s favourite jobs - children and drunks. They never ask, they don’t want to look weak, but wanting to be able to handle it doesn’t make it so.”

“Felicity can only stay at 9.4 because I can ensure she only works with female clients. She doesn’t want to believe it, but she can’t handle male attention. She gets hostile. Felicity doesn’t see the pattern, only a lot of isolated incidents where she was justified. I have to account for needs she can’t admit she has.” Muffi considers that, and picks Slaughterhouse V from between her feet, scratches the calico cat underneath its chin.

“It’s not Felicity’s fault that the cleaning she’s good at is tied to a service that implies flirting. And it’s not Molly and Daveed’s fault that the flirting they’re good at implies cleaning. I have to discover that, without being told.” She shrugs. “You? You know I give you the harder cases. It’s not just that I can rely on you for them. It’s because that’s what you need. Problems to solve. Something to justify your attention.”

“Your ‘emergent property’?” Muffi snorts. “You’re dangerous when you’re allowed to get bored.”

Persephone:
P/B/B:

Fucking_Skelator holds the heavy metal door open for Persephone. Heavy metal in the sense of its construction, though also in the sense that it was one last barrier between the streets and the physical force of the music blasting inside. It can be felt as much as heard.

“FUCKING_SKELATOR, A PERVERT?!” Fucking_Skelator’s aware that a highly detailed skull isn’t the best at conveying the deep, rich and expressive emotional language he needs it to. To compromise, he’s adopted very expressive eyebrows. Thick neon green and highly mobile. He raises both of them as far as they’ll go. “YOU HAVE MADE ME VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. THAT YOU THINK I MIGHT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ANY OF THE VULNERABLE FRIENDS WHO COME HERE. KICK ROCKS, MA’AM.”

Fucking_Skelator pointedly closes and latches the door behind Elodie as they lead her to the workspace, shaking their head, unbelievable.

“SORRY IF THEY ARE A FRIEND TO YOU.” Fucking_Skelator says as they assist Elodie on to the table. “BUT…” a four-armed shrug. What else is there to be said?

Whether you’d call them a doctor or a mechanic, they’re good at what they do. There’s a sling hoist here, for friends with even less mobility. It’s exactly what it says on the tin, made for anyone who has no strength below the neck. You get wrapped in essentially a split-open baby-onesie, hooked up to a person-scale crane, and scooted about ass-out in a sack. There’s a rail thin line between it feeling like a carnival ride and like the most humiliating and degrading experience of your life, and all of that comes down to the bedside manner of the operator.

Unlike most hoists, Fucking_Skelator’s painted theirs a matte-black, added high-gloss blue-and-green flame decals to it, called it THE CLAW, and replaced the horn sound with the victory music from an arcade grab-a-prize game, because anyone at the receiving end of it’s “THE BEST PRIZE”.

It’s not all clown shit. Some people prefer solemn dignity, and they get that. What’s important is Skele means it when they say they treat friends here, and they treat their friends as friends. Fucking_Skelator is not a professional, and makes the most of that.

“LET ME THINK.” Skele checks the bindings around Elodie’s waist, around her shoulders, the routine to make sure she’s not going to slide off the table when the tentacles are pulled off, “THERE’S THE BLACK SITE IN WALT DISNEY. I DON’T KNOW IF THAT COUNTS AS RECENT.” Skele shrugs with the top two arms while the bottom two work on decoupling. “THAT’S STILL A THING.”

The tentacles don’t go all the way off, and never all at once. Just enough to check the internals. Skele’s eyebrows shoot right down at something, and the technician crashes through boxes on pig iron shelves looking for something. They find it, something that looks like a masochist designed a dremel - except this one’s painted bright pink and covered in unicorn stickers. The music’s still louder.

“GOOD THAT WE FOUND THIS EARLY. YOU HAD A BURR PRESSING AGAINST SOME CABLING, WAS CUTTING THROUGH THE INSULATION. THAT COULD HAVE CAUSED A NASTY SHORT.” Simulated nerves turned off, the experience is best described as getting dentistry from your gynecologist. The pink tool carves away at the metal of the prosthesis housing.

“THE BLACK SITE IN DISNEY, MODERN HERMES, I MEAN. THERE’S A BIG RED BRICK FACTORY LOOKING BUILDING, ALL THE WINDOWS ARE PAINTED BLACK AND THERE’S A BARBED WIRE FENCE AROUND IT. KNOW TWO FRIENDS TAKEN THERE, COULDN’T SEE THEIR LAWYERS FOR A WEEK, HELD WITH NO CHARGES. BEEN GOING FIVE OR SIX YEARS NOW. ALL INTERROGATION CELLS, OFF THE BOOKS, NO ARRESTS. NEVER SEE ANYONE TALK ABOUT IT THOUGH, EXCEPT HERE.”

“POLICE FUCKUPS THOUGH? TRYING TO SQUARE OFF AGAINST YOU, APPARENTLY. FUNNY MISTAKE. MAYBE THAT WAS HOW YOU GOT THESE BURRS, HUH?”

How does Pink make the most of waiting? And do Black and Brown have a plan for Elodie's return?

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Everyone:

ProvocativelyFickle: Thanks 3V, I threw in what I could, as always
ProvocativelyFickle: Wasn’t much, sorry
NumbToNothing: working on it.
Neon Czolgoz: dont sweat it Eli, just throw the link in the flog-blast piece
NumbToNothing: ah fuck guess i’m still doing that
Neon Czolgoz: im getting your ass youre still doing that
NumbToNothing: owo
NumbToNothing: okay, okay-

The piece goes live, with 3V’s crowdfunding effort attached. With any luck, it’s not the only way it’ll spread, but it always helps to paperclip this stuff to content. The minor notoriety the site’s getting from Persephone’s association with it couldn’t hurt.

That’s not strictly true, actually.

Neon Czolgoz: comments sections have been cooking off too
Neon Czolgoz: might need to bring on some new moderators at some point
Neon Czolgoz: since me and Junta have better shit to be doing
JuntaSThompson: Ostensibly.
Neon Czolgoz: see he keeps using internet fights as an excuse to procrastinate and I’m calling his ass out on it.
JuntaSThompson: That’s a me problem, huh?
Neon Czolgoz: when I do it it’s critical research actually
Neon Czolgoz: anyway yeah
Neon Czolgoz: so if anyone can think of anyone who’d be a good fit
Neon Czolgoz: help protect us from ourselves
JuntaSThompson: Please.

Worth keeping in mind.

Persephone: in no particular order
Persephone: @ProvocativelyFickle i'm alive, unbeaten, and not arrested. doing fantastic.
Persephone: @JuntaSThompson if you have any way to track police attention, now's the time. i want to know where they're acting squeaky clean around to find out where to dig
Persephone: @all in case the above doesn't make it obvious i'm not dropping this. i already got burned and i refuse to let this fuck up my life with nothing to show for it. that being said... i'm also low on leads. i've got one name and police behavior to go off. so i'll be in my hole digging.
Persephone: and @NumbToNothing *sprays with water* no shit-talking your own work

ProvocativelyFickle: Hey!!
ProvocativelyFickle: Yes!!!
Neon Czolgoz: fuck
Neon Czolgoz: well, you heard the lady
JuntaSThompson: I mean, kind of? Listen, what I can do is aggregate press reports. I don’t have any way to see if what they’re actually doing has changed, but usually OESN acts as a police stenographer. If the reporting changes, I can maybe flag that. But I’m going to be honest, this is going to be looking for signal in a noise factory.
NumbToNothing: Don’t bother, noisefactory’s a dead genre.
JuntaSThompson: Fuck off, there’s no way that’s real
NumbToNothing: [file attached]
JuntaSThompson:
JuntaSThompson: I’m going to go put my mouth to a firehouse of police procedural reporting now, it will hurt my brain less.
NumbToNothing: 😘
ProvocativelyFickle: Hey just because nobody’s said it yet
ProvocativelyFickle: I promise we won’t let this fuck up your life, okay? @persephone?
ProvocativelyFickle: We’re all here and we’re all going to help
ProvocativelyFickle: We’re going to make things okay!
[7 people reacted with :blinking_neon_up_arrow:]
Neon Czolgoz: we’re in this as long as you are, as deep as
Neon Czolgoz: but don’t throw good money after bad if you don’t got the chips
Neon Czolgoz: never think you don’t have more to lose
Neon Czolgoz: because you will always be wrong.
JuntaSThompson: Grim.
Neon Czolgoz: That’s a reminder of how seriously we need to take this as well, yeah?
NumbToNothing: Ah shit, York using grammar
Neon Czolgoz: Sure am.

3V:

The kind of problem you can’t escape, no matter how far you run. No matter where you go, you take yourself with you. But as long as you’re out here, it’s obvious why you can’t be expected to handle it.

Physical distance justifies emotional distance. The vacuum of space insulates you against social discharge.

Still.

But for your host, sleeping in as long as she’s allowed, you’re alone out here. You have an entire mountain, all to yourself. Apparently your only assignment is to find some meaning in all of this, whatever that means.

Does this change anything, for you? Does this reaffirm the solitude as something to find comfort in, or does this sharpen it against you?

Does the thought at home push or pull at you?

I’m being so rude, forgive me. I really should ask. How did you sleep?

November:
Red, Orange and White:

Muffi operates out of a fourplex unit in Euclid, Classical Apollo - just a single hex counterclockwise from your own place. It’s still a trip out from Saint Ambrose, but closer than Rudy’s office-apartment in Confucious.

Aevum’s layout is heavily inspired by how Dante described the Christian Heaven. The nine horizontal sections are named for Heaven’s spheres, with six vertical divisions named for human eras. The municipalities, the neighbourhood-level districts, are named after the people who would end up in that sphere of heaven, from that time period.

It’s a civil engineer’s idea of adorable, and it means Aevum has a unique approach to nominative determinism.

A quirk of this is that the class divisions throughout Aevum are inconsistent. Not all fields of human endeavor flourished in all time periods. The middle era in Ares draws names like Nobunaga, Richard the Lionheart and Joan of Arc. Apollo draws its names from philosophers - the dark ages lack star power, relying on important but lesser known people like Saint Ambrose.

Sections with lots of large, important names in them tend to be more highly developed, often wealthier. That’s fine - there’s still a need for large, lower density sprawls, and breaking up the uniformity helps make the station feel more… human.

Considering that, it’s almost surprising that Muffi made it into Classical Apollo. It’s neck to neck with the Enlightenment as Apollo's desirable hex. Euclid rubs its shoulders against Aristotle and Socrates, shares a bus line with names like Buddha and Laozi. Not the kind of district you’d associate with Headpattr workers.

Muffi had been a good data scientist though. Had to have been, for what she set up. Her move to Headpattr was a form of working retirement, since she had her mortgage paid off and her kids grown. She’d just thought casual cleaning should have been less stressful, just a way to keep moving and keep feeling useful. A chance to take the constant chest pains she’d been suffering seriously.

And it was, once she’d solved the tenuous and precarious aspects of the app.

Elected to her role is right. There are many archetypes of leadership, and Muffi exemplifies the kind who doesn’t want to be there, but nobody can think of anyone who could replace them. Anyone else who could do it won’t, and everyone else who would do it can’t. No surprises. The position requires long hours, a good head for politics, is largely thankless, and entirely unpaid.

She has two shares of her fourplex, both apartments on the left half renovated into a single space. Upstairs are three empty bedrooms; one converted into a hobby space, another a spare for guests, another a storage space when she ran out of ideas for the space she had. It’s not something she advertises. There’s always someone in Headpattr in crisis, someone needing a couch to surf or a place to crash, and if anyone knew Muffi had so much of it…

Her home is sanctum. The position asks too much of her already, and this is the last part of herself she refuses to give.

When she assigns it to you as your first task, November, understand the full implication of the trust she is extending to you.

She sits at her kitchen table, a laptop set up with all three screens unfolded. Her cats - Henry, Thomas and Slaughterhouse Five - weave past her ankles towards the dinner she’s put out for them, and all that shedding fur guarantees that this will be a real job, not just a social call.

Her short black curls have all of their colour except for the very roots, the silver flecks giving the impression of steel wool, complimenting the sharp lines of her greek nose and her hard, square jaw. When she asks her question, she doesn’t keep her eyes off the chat programs and maps she has open in front of her.

“You know I have to ask what you want this score for.” She says. “You don’t have to tell me, and maybe it’s better if I don’t know. But it’s very…” Muffi hesitates with her choice of words here. “Out of character, for you to want less of a challenge. I’m worried you’re going to do something, and that means we lose a team of our best performers.”

“I’d also appreciate a change of linen, for the spare bed, if you have the time, but just a vacuuming and a dusting would be fine, grazie mille, miei cari.”

She means it. No matter how you answer, you’re getting your tenners, with Muffi being the first. Just say you need to get to Thrones, and she’ll ask why, but again, you don’t need to answer that. You don’t need to tell her that you want to inflict every 80s mid-budget horror movie on your absentee father simultaneously, or bring up anything about what happened with Rudy Merkin.

But imagine the look on her face if you did.

Persephone:
Black, Brown and Pink:

For subterfuge: Black, your opposition at the apartment has been disgustingly amateur. Most external listening methods can be thrown off by playing music most of the time. Pink’s talking serves the same purpose better. Anything that gets around that means planting bugs, getting closer. So far no journalistic organization has tried so much as a fake handyman bit.

That only means that inside Elodie’s place is secure, until the cops show up. Outside’s a different story, since most of the opposition doesn’t seem to care about espionage for now. They haven't given up on conventional methods yet, maybe.

Outside are camera crews and interview teams, at least three news vans bringing equipment. At least some seem sympathetic. Would Elodie consent to an interview? An exclusive? Is there any way to pass on that request? Even if it’s from Brad Thoroughgood himself, OESN’s prime sexyman?

Eyes on the apartment, they’re looking for anyone bringing her groceries, associating with her. Friends are fair game for ambush interviews.

A notice from the landlord gets posted around 08:11. All tenants are to be advised that the stairwell is for residents only, and the police will be called to escort any journalists blocking the stairs or hallways from the building.

Elodie got out while the getting was good. It’ll be hard to get back in. A real plan, with real luck.

Fucking_Skelator needs no plan. No plan survives contact with Fucking_Skelator. With a professional, you work to the schedule. There is an understanding of cost, of deadlines, and that business will be completed in time and in quality.

Fucking_Skelator is not a professional. Fucking_Skelator is Fucking_Skelator. This shit is so fly by night that the Nachthexen, the Night Witches of World War 2, would take pilgrimage to Fucking Skelator’s place to take tips. Fucking_Skelator is not a businessman. He is a friend who happens to own excruciatingly illegal, pirated, contraband tools for the repair and maintenance of deeply unethical, highly proprietary, officially discontinued prosthetics of the sort you might get saddled with if you were expecting a life sentence of prison labour in a Jupiter gulag.

He is a good friend of Elodies. He doesn’t know Pink. He does not like having to trust Pink, and while he likes Elodie - who couldn’t? - he hasn’t known her long enough to take her vouches as gospel. Fucking_Skelator won’t say this in so many words. Fucking_Skelator will instead say things like;

“PERSEPHONE! MY FRIEND. YOU ARE LOOKING TODAY. YES, LOOKING INDEED. HOW ABOUT WE TAKE A LOOK AT YOU, EH? EH? THE PINK ONE. EH. I DO NOT KNOW ABOUT HER SO MUCH. HAVE NOT SEEN HER AROUND SO MUCH. MAYBE I DON’T HAVE THE PARTS. MAYBE I MIGHT NOT EVEN LOOK. MAYBE PINK ONE SHOULD WAIT HERE FOR HER FRIEND PERSPHONE TO BE TOUCHED UP, EH? EH? YES, YES.”

Pink? You can either bullshit or charm him to keep close with Persephone when she’s taken in. I do not think this will be a shock for you to learn, but Fucking_Skelator is more cool than clever, so bullshitting is going to be easier. He’s not stupid though, to have lasted this long. [8] and [11] respectively.

You don’t have to try, though, if you’re comfy waiting in the alley for a bit.

While Elodie gets her tentacles retuned, recalibrated, a followup email advises that residents have been having difficulty getting the police to follow through, so alternate options are being explored.

Alternate options appear to be canceling Elodie’s lease, an email that arrives just a minute later. She has four months to find a new place, with the corporate landlord promising reimbursement if she leaves sooner.

Four months? Without something to stoke it, the media firestorm can’t last more than four days. The cops definitely implied that they wouldn’t be providing any services to a building that housed Elodie in any capacity. Good luck proving it.

That’s just when she gets the email though. It’s up to her when she actually checks it, notices it, reads it.

Persephone: How does the tentacle recalibration go
Persphone and Novembers: What’s the plan to get Elodie back in her (for now) place?