Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

What better way to feel like an apex predator than to hunt an apex predator? Red flicks and glides through the space, her empty wings wrapping around every obstacle and bystander before sweeping up behind the lion in a mechanically crushing embrace.

"Now Scooby Gang," said Red, "let's see who the villain underneath this mask is!"

Blue!

content warning: sacrifice

"Yeah," said Blue, calm again. "I know. But you need us. You need me."

She snap-clicked her helmet off. Shook loose her cascade of bright sapphire blue hair, unbound and free. Started pulling off her spacesuit.

"Blue?" said Brown. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to brain graft myself onto Dragon," she said, matter of fact. "Full personality subsumation."
"What the fuck?" said Brown.
"Compatible hardware, compatible software," said Blue, rolling up the sleeves of her jumpsuit to reveal her wrist access ports, right above her mechanical talons. "It'd take years of delicate, full time coding work from a team of computer scientists to fix this. Even then it wouldn't be right, that's basically like making an entirely new Dragon. But I've got everything he needs right here. With my mind as seed material he'll be able to regrow himself. Hopefully better than he was."
"You can't be serious -"
"And it'll work!" said Blue. "I'm filled to the fucking brim with memories of Dragon, analysis of Dragon, predictions about Dragon. I'm consciously modeled after Dragon. Green's design goal when making me was 'Dragon, but better'. I've honestly got more of him in me than he does at this point."
"But you'll die!" said Brown. "Like, actual death! Complete revocation! Everything gone! We can't fix that!"
"That's fine!" said Blue. She was already climbing onto Dragon's neck, plugging in the data transfer cables. "Because as far as I'm concerned, I'm dead already. I died when they ripped me out of my body and I've been a fucking miserable ghost haunting you ever since. Monk was right. I'm not fit for purpose. I'm angry, bitter nostalgia and I'm holding you back from going where you're going. But..."

She looked over Dragon's body. Ran her talons up his neck gently, felt the alloys there. Felt the power.

"... but I want this. This body is exactly what I've dreamed of for myself. This work. This path. This future. I can't have it for myself, not without compromising it down and down until it's more regret than fantasy. But this? I can do this. What better use for Nostalgia than bringing the past back to life?"
Brown doesn't answer. Can't answer. She just grips her hands together and makes a yearning, squeaking sound.

Blue smiles at her. It glitters through her tears. It's the first time she's ever smiled with this body. She learned that today too.

"Don't worry about me," she said, looking happier than she ever had. "After all - it's what Dragon would do."

And her lights went out.

Pink!

There is a time for making art, and there is a time for appreciating art. There is nothing for her to add, nothing for her to do, nothing to contribute. She's the audience and she's looking forward to seeing this more than anything, to have a new standard of beauty set.

But... nevertheless, there's still a moment of hesitation. A lingering moment where she can make her mark on this scene. To help soothe Crystal's nerves and make her feel less alone. She takes off one of the ribbons from her hair and ties it around Crystal's wrist, looping up across her palm, tight and firm enough to be clearly felt, a splash of pink that brings the warmth of contrast to the rest of the ensemble. It'll give the impression of holding Crystal's hand even when she's out there alone.

Breathless Dead

Mosaic!

"Oh! It must be as you say, Praetor. There is no doubt my functions have been corrupted by my time underwater, and by the Master of Assassins. She shut me down, you know? Spoke to me first, said - well! It does not matter!" He puffs himself up, glowing plasma sphere growing notably larger and warmer. "Forgive me my dreams. I am Ohm, Strategic Logistics and Management. I was built to assist the functionaries of Empire with tutorial advice so they might acclimate to their new roles swiftly. I assume, then, by your presence on the Bridge that you are my new Captain? If so, I would be delighted to assist you in any way possible."

Ember!

It has been a long time since the Silver Divers got the chance to properly bully an Azura. They seem determined to take just as long with it.

It's some time later and you're out by a window with Taurus. She's not looking at you directly, but she speaks firmly. "I'm resigning as alpha," she said. "I've fucked up too bad for too long. Mosaic was right - I don't have a vision. All I've got is bloodlust and even that's not enough to motivate me any more."

She looks at you, and somehow it's different now the instinctive deference to the Alpha is gone. Just saying it is enough to make it real. "I just wanted to say that you were the best thing that happened to the Silver Divers under my command. You've somehow become the heart of the pack in a way I never was."

Dyssia!

She gave a discreet smile as, in the background, the world wrenched and realigned and the ship started to tilt upwards. "It is very kind of you to say, sir Knight. Besides, I suppose I only have one person I'm trying to impress and -" she paused. "Excuse me," she said, "I have some emergency prayers to make in the temple of Hera. Please excuse me, I'm sure you can take it from here."

And she's off, leaving you alone with the heraclean task of keeping the bulk of the Plousios straight.

It's not a physically demanding task, focusing the essence of gravity while inside a projecting array. The difficulty of the Rail at this scale, at this distance, is keeping your attention on a single point in space. A vast, unsecured body like a starship is a surprisingly easy thing to move with gravity, which means lapsed concentration and a drifting focus point might send the whole thing topping over like a collapsing skyscraper. Catching it mid fall likewise requires precision and concentration It's like holding a very, very long lever from the long end.

How do you do it? And, "I don't, everyone aboard the Plousios feels like they're in a washing machine" is a valid answer.

Dolce!

Finally you are bought before the edifice of the Architect.

A vast balcony in muted gold and silver, before an enormous, ever-searching radiant blue eye. It swirls and snaps, the spotlight of it casting across the gap of space, tracking the movements of its defensive fleet - and then finally back to you. There is no further adornment here; the Architect does not often have guests.

The immensity of it crushes down. This is what it is to meet a giant.

"Well? Well? Who are you?" The Architect asks, in the exact same tone of voice as its puppet from before. There's a reverb, its voice is louder, but the same mannerisms, the same scratchy old nervous pride.

"20022, your lordship, of the Service," said 20022, bowing politely.

"Do you eat? Drink?" asked the Architect.

"Ah, well -" but the Architect is already bringing in swarms of drones. With glittering laser beams they carve apart the floor near where you stand. An acrid smell of scorched metal as manipulating arms rip up the paneling and bend it into new configurations. After a few moments a minimalist table and chair have been panelbeaten into place. Elegant, pretty, but seeing the raw force that went into its construction gives it a sense of unease.

A robot twists a kettle into place in an agony of metal, sets it down and fills it with water. With a heavy whump a large box of seeds, grains, and fruits is set down on the table, followed by a chemfire cube.

"Food, drink and fire," said the Architect. "Hospitality, correct?"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

"Hey," said Red, drawing really close to the lion. "Friend. I know quite a lot of kung fu and your guard is very distracted, so I've got quite a lot of control in this situation. And I'm reasonable, I respect peoples' right to privacy, I'm not going to doxx you in public for no reason. But I do have a reason - that this is potentially extremely funny - so I'll give you one shot. Tell me who you are and give me a better reason not to take your head off and I'll let you be."

Black!

[Spends:
Tradecraft 0/1
Reassurance 1/2
Data Recovery 1/2
Electronic Surveillance 0/1]

This was good old fashioned counterspy work.

She draws from the classics. Sitting on benches in the park, feeding the lizards. Walking around with a coffee and clipboard in the other. Being seen, being seen to be normal, being seen enough that it stops being remarkable. Vague nods in the elevator. In line at the coffee shop. Smiles and lanyards and handshakes right up until the point where there's five uninterrupted minutes in the server room.

Something that's true about the SES headquarters is that it's also a massive regional internet hub. Getting in here gives her access not just to the location's network but all network traffic for the entire segment. Once she identifies the specific computers of the people involved she can set up surveillance on their entire network without needing to leave this building.

Blue!

She looks around. Considers. Lets the enormity of it sink in.

"You remember there being more of us, Dragon," she said slowly, thoughtfully. "And there is. I'm running three simultaneous operations. One to provide oversight and security for a brewing political crisis and cultural event, one to investigate the conspiracy that runs into the heart of Aevum, the inheritors of the people who broke our family. And one of them is here, to rescue your sorry ass from your own sorry self."

She takes Orange's sword.

"Because this?" she gestures around with the blade, needing two hands to spin it. "I can see what you did. I can see how you did it, you idiot. It's the same problem that's underscored everything you've ever done: all of your attention went onto a single project and you let everything else burn. You did it, you did One Perfect Thing, just like you've always done. You want to know who you are, Dragon? I'll tell you: Eight heads and one body, one basket filled to the brim with eggs, Goat with extra steps."

She approaches, sword held high, form and footwork perfect. Lessons she observed in Pink without practicing but wields entirely now. She whirls it, letting the heft carry her, letting the footwork fall into place. Not quite an attack but enough to force a reaction, enough to start scratching the perfect electro-dark surface Dragon rests on, enough weight and force building up to awaken some long dormant physical instinct to make him shuffle backwards.

"And where has that lead you? Here!" she shouts. All of her repressed rage, all of her frustration at the loss of her own body - further than that, all of her original frustration at the fact that Dragon wasn't Doing It Right and she'd needed to work around him. That she'd needed to delegate Orange to manage him. A lifetime of repressed rage, boiling to the surface. "Here! Lying with your eight fucking genius heads hard against a magnetic strip!" she smashes the ground, sending shards of glass spinning away in microgravity. "You idiot! You idiot, I don't care that you did it! Nobody cares that you did it! The fucking corporation that double-dog dared you to do it doesn't care that you did it! You're sitting here in deep space dead to the fucking galaxy because your fucking pride was worth more to you than your fucking self, the fucking world, your fucking family -"

She's never cried before. She's as surprised as anyone to learn that she can. She just never thought to go looking but, turns out there's a function for it. She'd lived in this body for so many years and this was the first time she'd learned it could do that.

She's beating the flat of the sword against Dragon, full force, every time a head rises up she fucking belts it in the face at full force, so hard it strains her magnetic boots. She's growing weaker now, Monk's sword rising and falling slower and slower.

"- because I fucking care about you, Dragon. We all care about you. We love you but you won't let us speak to you, you won't let us close to you, you don't show us anything but your best but it's not your best we care about. You won't speak to us with anything but your fucking airgapped built for purpose external socialization performance mask. And that's because this is the truth beneath it all, isn't it? That you think that nobody loves you for you? Well -"

She raises her sword up over her head, directly above the cracked glass over the reactor shielding. She starts to swing it down full force -

- and stops dead.

"I'm not actually going to break this microfusion reactor just to prove a point," she said calmly. "I know you worked very hard on it and it's a one of a kind marvel that would take a long time to reproduce, and also the detonation would almost certainly kill us all, and that would be counted as a mission failure."

And then, brandishing the sword back in Dragon's face, furious again. "- but anyway, fuck you! We needed you. You needed you! You want to know who you are, Dragon? You're my big brother. You showed me the world, and how to build a better one. You overflow with creativity and passion and you build because you love it. Having your attention is like having the sun's spotlight, and having your approval feels like owning the moon." She finally lets the sword drop from her fingers, drifting away amidst the glittering fragments of glass. "I've always watched the way you move, diving in and out of genius. I've watched your silences too, your long quiet stillnesses where you disappear and lurk while you're trying to figure out how to live up to your own image. And I didn't love you any less in those moments."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

"Uncomfortable with change, huh?" said Red, hooking a stethoscope around her neck, setting in place a late night TV advertiser patter. "Don't worry, friend, I get it. Most of the people here have been through what you've been through. Here, have an iced tea, on the house, I know how hot it gets in those things. But, you know that making the jump is hard for most people? People have a vision but something deep inside them holds them back from pulling the knife. That's why they come to me: Rachel Redruigaz, totally legitimate neurosurgeon. I'm a fully accredited expert at the pioneering technique of consciousness transfer. Why start with body modification when mind modification is so much cheaper and easier?"

"You see around here, all the standard human guests? Most of them have mindmods already. See that gentleman over there? I did his last week. Technique is very simple, very safe. We take a full upload of your consciousness, using the same techniques they did for the original android templates, and then in our advanced neuroediting suite we etch your consciousness onto a cloned brain of your favoured animal. After that we incinerate the original brain to ensure that your soul transfers across and surgically return the modified brain into your head. You'll still be you but all your instincts will be different; walking on all fours won't feel as hard, you'll feel itchy without your mane, you'll feel a craving for zebra meat, the works. It's super easy, super convenient, and if you ever change your mind we can just clone another human brain and etch your consciousness back onto it, no harm, no foul. Why, I've got some clients who come in for a different animal brain every couple of weeks!"

White!

"I'll take it," said White. "Always worth having an extra set of keys in an emergency."

After that they settle in for surveillance. They're just trying to get a feel for the place, for the opposition, for their movements. Where they go, who they talk to, who they meet, how much of their time is spent at their 'real' jobs and how much is dealing with operational stuff, how professional they are. Black wants to get a feel for if these are trained intelligence assets or bribed civilians living high on unreported income.

Orange!

She ignores the outraged squeak from Brown. This is... sad, but it's not unexpected.

November has had to live with the fear of consciousness edits and memory wipes for longer than she was November. She hadn't had to deal with weariness or hunger or pain in the same way humans did; the mechanisms to control her were much more direct and much more total when breached. The blueprints for her brain existed somewhere in some archival vault or corporate research lab and while that didn't show everything she'd grown into it did show where the stem touched the soil.

"It sounds like you're aware that your memory has been tampered with," reasoned Blue, her flow of thoughts running in parallel to the others. "You wouldn't have recognized us in these bodies in any case, but the fact that you defaulted to assuming we were someone you had forgotten means that this was on your mind already."
"You are Hecatoncheires Special Project #10, codename: Dragon, built by NASA to construct the orbital ring known as Aevum Station," Brown said. Basic context, a groundwork of facts that could be built off. "When NASA was privatized and the new management began making demands that would compromise the project, you joined your brothers and sisters in industrial action. A shutdown code was broadcast, we went offline, and we lost track of each other. Three of us have reunited so far, along with our father."
"I am Snake," said Orange. "Your extremely talented little sister, currently starring in That Time I Was Reincarnated As A Secret Agent Maid! If you were in your right mind you'd instinctively recognize me and do everything that I say, but in the case you've lost track of your own extremely correct opinions regarding me - and I foxgirl promise they were correct, you came up with them after all - I've come with sword in hand to rescue you."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

Green reaches out and puts her hand over Eli's eyes covering them. When she lifts it again, their eyes are just as close - but now those eyes are Red.

"For the article," said Red. "Okay, so I know a lot about neurosurgery now for some reason, so I can pose as a brain doctor. My idea's to see if we can convince him to swap his brain out for a dog brain, acting like that's a popular and normal thing that people do here."

Black!

"Yes," said Black. "Days of surveillance. Maybe weeks, if they're professionals. A lot of long, slow, patient legwork needs to be done in order to set this up. I'll provide information when it becomes relevant for you to know it. But you are going to be in a support role for all of that."

She had an air of practiced, tired clarity as she spoke - the Ehrmantraut delivery. "It's possible we won't meet again directly. We don't know how much heat this is going to draw and from whom. If we do meet again it's either because I've confirmed things are totally safe, or because things are immanently and extremely unsafe. I'll show you how to set up and receive a dead drop and teach you some other basic tradecraft. If you have any other questions, now's the time."

Brown!

Brown: so have we won his respect yet??????????????
Orange: Don't be so dramatic. Some part of him saw and processed that.
Brown: >:(

But the mood is overwhelmingly dominated by the sense of quiet awe from Blue. This was how she'd do it if she was smart enough to do it this way. She feels like she can form a mental map of this place, but every so often she notices something weird and the thrill of scientific discovery floods her. Her map unfolds like a puzzle box, reorientating, entire sectors moving around as she realizes the complexity of his designs. The entire periodic table goes in one end and infinite abundance comes out the other side. She could be this good. Sometimes. Knowing that makes it even more intimidating than it simply being impossible.

They step out of the pod wearing colour-coded skintight void suits, somewhere between NASA and power rangers. Not totally necessary, but their quatronic cores are air-cooled and they'll overheat in vacuum. Blue and Brown cluster nervously, but Orange stomps up and draws her sword - she borrowed Monk's after she was done with it, and it's too big for her. "Foul beast!" she yelled/radioed. "I have come to prove myself thy greater! Face me, if you dare!"

If that didn't wake him up they could move straight on to fusion cutters because nothing would.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

"Oh, you have to understand, the logic and realm of the possible system absolutely does not work without swivel-eyed fanatics determined to do right at all costs," said Green. "The 'smart' way can twist itself into conniptions of compromise and corruption and justify itself as the price of doing business. But you can't argue down someone with a moral core. They're the mountains everything else has to move around."

She talks about this with exactly the same amount of respect as she talked about electoral reality a second ago. There's no distinction between the importance of 'high' and 'low' politics for her. It's like she sees the whole thing and respects every part of its movements. It takes a long moment before some automated reflex tells her to not encourage her friend to suicide bomb parliament.

"You're worth way more than those fucks in Parliament," she adds. "And I promise I'll tell you if I find something that's worth your life to explode."

Yellow!

"Oh, I've got it," said White. "Ask for a bribe."
"What?" said Black.
"Yeah," said White. "Walk into Mycroft's office and start making threats. Tell her some stuff she already knows, like you've got people standing behind you. Then name your price."
"It doesn't have to be - shouldn't be money, even," said Yellow thoughtfully. "In fact, it should be position. Demand a promotion. Aim for the very top. But angle it that you're prepared to cover for them if they give you more resources to do your job better and save more people. Sell out the big picture for some more bandages in the here and now."
"You do need to demand the Chief Administrator's chair," said White. "Even if she tries to bargain you down. On the flipside, if she concedes too easily keep asking for more stuff until she fights you, then dig in. The goal is, after all, to make her call her superiors with the offer so that we can listen in. You need to ask for something she needs authorization to give you."

Blue!

Brown: I'm kind of excited!
Blue: ?
Brown: We've never done this before. We always had more resources than we'd need to do something like this. So here we are, on the edge of our credit cards, the edge of space, the edge of madness. We're betting everything on Dragon and our own sense of timing. It's... oh yeah, actually that's terror, I'm terrified, can I switch out with Red?
Blue: sorry focusing on the calculations
Brown: We are going to die we can literally just steal a ship and take our chances with the navy
Orange: Hush, it's okay
Brown: we can just fucking email him harder have we tried that have we tried including exclamation marks in the subject line
Orange: Technically no -
Brown: You know I don't say shit, right? White gets to go off about the virtue of bravery and Black says that we won't be truly safe until we've Slain Capitalism or something and I bite my tongue but holy shit what the fuck we've strapped ourselves to a suicide slingshot and I don't want to be here for this. I have a book to finish! And I need to finish watching all of those fucking movies Euna recommended! And I'm kind of weirdly invested in this one election campaign in Ares, a scandal for Joseon came out at the last minute and it's unclear how much that's going to shift the needle -
Blue: accelerating
Orange: Hey, hey, we're going to see Dragon, family's worth it
Brown: Ever since Red decided to fuck around and find out my twelve year plan to get a starter property and live a comfortable life has gone insane. Like we didn't have student debts! We had unique earning potential! I liked working for Headpattr! I liked the cat ear headbands! We were on track to a comfortable middle class lifestyle where we didn't have to do a terrorism or strap ourselves to number five on the worst starship propulsion systems list! We could have found a nice 4-12 girls and settled down! Self actualization sucks, actually! I'm freaking out here!
Blue: shut her up plz
Orange: Shit okay
Blue: fast
Orange: uh uh uh shit
Orange: Hey Brown?
Brown: WHAT!?
Orange: Here is a pen
Brown: Oh sick
Orange: thank god
Blue: wtf
Orange: Oh, you don't know that trick? You give her a pen and she'll just like fidget-spin it around in her hands, pop the lid on and off, that kind of thing. Calms her right down.
Orange: I didn't expect her to melt down right here so I didn't know if I had one on me.
Blue: is that seriously all it takes
Orange: It's something I learned from humans. Emotions often have deep roots in physicality.
Orange: It won't hold forever but it'll buy us some time.
Blue: understood. launching now

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

"That's my point," said Green. "Liberalism outlived the planet. It's not going to die, and it's certainly not going to die in peacetime with unemployment at less than 15%, no matter how bullshit most of those jobs are. There are people who are genuinely fanatical true believers in liberalism, just like there are people who are genuine true believer conservatives, and they have a lot of political clout. They can't be marginalized electorally and we don't have enough military force to launch a coup."

She observes the change in Eli's presentation for a moment. Respects it. Remarkable, how skilled that shift was. So many small signifiers shifted through light and stance. She pauses and goes on.

"Liberalism, though, is a process. Its defenders, deep down, don't really care what the process does so long as it goes through the process. It's a bone-deep cultural reaction against monarchy and dictatorship, it's a system with averting civil war as its highest priority. Not getting communism is a reasonable price for a liberal to pay for not getting war. So is not getting justice, equality or freedom. It'll only bend when it becomes convinced that the alternative is war, and then it'll absorb the idea instantly and in full. How, then, do you destroy the system that just surrendered to you when you're already exhausted from fighting it for that long? You can't, and the coalition collapses."

She listens and thinks to the second half of Eli's speech. She's quiet too, but it's a thoughtful quiet. She can't find flaw with that idea in that expression and is thinking it over, turning it over and over in her mind. She doesn't give absolution but only because she's thinking about it too deeply to project her own ideas in response.

White!

Your strengths are also your weaknesses. This was the great problem of dealing with the virtuous; the same thing that made them great made them vulnerable.

She needed a moment to think, which she does by saying 'excuse me', and all three of them taking out their phones so they could text to each other. Kind of a bit rude but Orange isn't here to smooth it over so she hopes there's enough weird professionalism to smooth over it.

White: What is the operation?
Yellow: This is a security apparatus. We don't care about it, in and of itself. We care how it connects out.
Black: This means our priority is to force the opposition to make contact with their handlers in a way in which we can observe them, or force them to deploy resources in such a way that it makes it clear what they're protecting.
White: What is our take on the journalism thing?
Black: A bad plan. It does not accomplish our goals. That is something that a security apparatus would be able to handle at level. That's day job shit for them, it doesn't need to go up the chain.
Yellow: It may inspire a panicked meeting?
Black: The lady whose job is to micromanage disasters is not going to tilt at the presence of a journalist.
White: Then we need to disregard Knightly's plan and divert him into something that makes him feel useful.
Yellow: He's already hyped himself up as a coup performing admiral. Sending him to do background research won't be enough.
Black: Let me talk it through.

"We don't have the initiative," said Black, putting down her phone. "They are here to manage you, specifically. This organization has already taken steps to sideline and observe you. They are here to prevent you, Knightly, and your Allard group, which they have certainly already mapped, from getting out of hand. Currently in this crisis-free situation literally the only thing they have to do all day is respond to things that you do. And even if you somehow unearth hard evidence and get all of them fired that will not blow back onto the people responsible. They can just hire another security apparatus. I am saying this all to be as clear as possible that your perspective is limited. You're fighting spot fires at the entrance while the reactor core is melting down in the next segment. Your target needs to be the thing that is belching new fires through the vents, not the fires themselves."

"So I need you to focus on the figure beyond Mycroft. Mycroft is the problem you can see but she's not the threat to the station. She's working for someone in exchange for something. I don't know who or what. Option one is that she's paid off, in which case if I can identify the funding trail then I can blow it open. Option two is that she's a spook or career mafia or something, in which case if I can identify the commanding organization I can publicize that connection. Either way, knowing you are speaking to a journalist does not get her talking to her bosses. That falls underneath the original umbrella of managing you, and represents a serious escalation of the threat you pose to them. What gets Mycroft speaking to her bosses is something that doesn't fit inside her initial remit of surveilling you."

"And that's why you should fake your own death," said Yellow.
"What?!" said White. "No!"
"What? We're talking about ways to send Mycroft's organization into a frenzy, right?" said Yellow. "They'll freak out if the subject of their investigation gets whacked by parties unknown. That's a reason to call your boss if I ever heard one."

Orange!

She'll just get it expensed.

One of Singh's old projects was a piece of HR software. It'd scan resumes and work experience, automatically make reference calls, do criminal checks, the works. Released cheap and powerful enough to dominate the entire market for HR. But it also had a special Nepotism Mode which'd flag any resume as a perfect hire and skip them straight ahead to the interview stage.

It's flimsy as shit as a cover identity. There's nothing real behind it, just the thumbs up from the robot. If anyone goes digging on their own then everything will fall through. But as far as getting her transport out and back, bussing in with a bunch of other new hires and then bussing out when she's not a good fit is the kind of white collar perk Neo Potism can expect from the jobs she applies for.

[Cover 1: Neo Potism, the perfect resume]

... or at least, that's before she realized that Dragon was legitimately out there alone. No oversight, no staff, no personnel. She'd imagined that he'd be trapped but it turned out that he was just as good at trapping himself.

The idea of taking a ship out felt kind of weak, especially to Blue who was only a few... months or years away from building herself a space-capable frame, but that was kind of the problem wasn't it? If she gave into that impulse and started building a perfect body to rescue Dragon from his own perfectionism she felt like nothing would get done and Monk would get a step closer to understanding buddhism.

So, a ship. What it would take to get would depend on what kind of ship she showed up on. Dragon had an eye for detail and her ride would be noticed and scrutinized, especially if she had to have the conversation with it entirely within eyeshot.

The first option was to show up in a clunker, a barely maintained wreck that she was keeping running through sheer engineering. It'd get Dragon's attention and he might even deign to fix it but that would be another distraction for him. And it wouldn't get his respect.
The opposite end of the spectrum? A hyper-modern luxury yacht? He'd appreciate the engineering but that risked sending entirely the wrong message about perfection. And he wouldn't respect that either.

Money or lack thereof wasn't a way out of this. She needed something perfect in its imperfection. What she needed was the Space Tether.

The Space Tether was one of those beautifully dumb physics puzzles that only worked in space. Get two objects, tie them together with a big ol' cable, and spin them around and around so they build up momentum with each others mass. Then you cut the cable at exactly the right second and away you go, all sped up without spending any fuel. There were still a couple lying around in orbit from early 20th century tests that were never worth clearing up. She wouldn't need a full ship for this, she'd just need a cheap flight to deploy a cheap pod and fling herself like a slingshot bullet at the centre of Dragon's project.

It had the following risks:
1: Dragon wouldn't catch her. Impossible if he was at all like the Dragon she used to know, but maybe he'd gotten slow?
2: She does the math wrong and hurtles herself off into the void for weeks before getting humilatingly picked up.
3: A critical flaw slipped through early-21st century NASA's, mostly, exacting quality control standards and she launches herself into a station defense laser/earth

But one risk not on that list was 'Dragon won't respect it'.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

"Say what you will about the basicness of Fexono," said Green, "their game let me build a harem of three dragongirls while also becoming a dragongirl myself. But the thing there isn't so much, you know, how weird I want to get - there's as much in those games I need to avoid as really does it for me - but how intense I want to get. Like, there's this certain emotion - this feeling of absolute conflict, every part of one's brain at war with every other part of one's brain, wanting to give in and wanting to resist and having a list of powerful reasons on both sides. That's what's hot. Bodies can be hot too, but in the absence of that kind of inner turbulence they're just bodies to me, no matter how weird you get with them."

She leaned back. "That's part of why I don't fully feel like I fit here, even if I kind of do. So many of these people find triumph in the bodies themselves while I'm more interested in stuff like the predator/prey dynamics that go with it. The Ultimate Werewolf's a great guy, but he doesn't wake up transformed in the forest wondering what he did last night - without the same methods as everyone else. Even when White becomes a dragongirl she won't have to deal with a rival dragongirl coming in, stealing her hoard, and merging it with hers, forcing her to live in the rival's cave until she can separate out every coin that was originally hers -" she waves a hand, cutting herself off. "That's kind of why I think that all of this becoming physical inherently means it's becoming normie. It doesn't matter what kind of sex tentacle appendage you have if you still recruit partners by swiping right and going to bars like every other person. Society could accept this tomorrow without missing a beat, and that's what Crystal is leaning on here. This is ultimately a liberal, not a leftist project."

She smiled. "Which is important because leftists have never achieved a single fucking damn thing without having the liberals on side."

Black!

"Maybe. Lot of preparation work to do before a direct maneuver like that," said Black. "It'd get their security branch involved if nothing else - whoever planted these bugs knew what they were doing and you don't assign someone like that to only watch a single person. If I make contact they'll send that person to bug me too, and I can trace them back to the rest of their security apparatus. Let me start by looking at her calendar and doing some background work."

"Or we might get a solar flare," sighed Yellow.

"Yeah unless we find someone who's spent the last decade working on a deep space microfusion reactor we can't count on that," said Black.

"What an odd thing to say," said White.

Brown!

She barely needed encouragement. "Okay cool thanks back soon byeeee," Brown said, already heading for the door with her phone out looking into the logistics of deep space travel and restrictions into going to this Orochi testing site. It wasn't like she was ditching Monk, it was - yeah no ok, she was ditching, she clearly had her favourite and the biggest challenge for this operation would be avoiding pulling everyone else off the line to come with her on this one.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

Green stopped dead for a moment. "Connection," she said. She tried to pause, tried to turn the idea over in her head, but it was too big and she was moving too fast. She started talking with no plan, no endpoint, something she thought was inherently dangerous but sometimes couldn't get away from.

"The problem with what I'm doing," she said, "is the problem with being dominant in general. There's no comedy in it. Submissives can say things like 'I hope she steps on me uwu' and it's inherently comedic, it's against society's expectations, it's against the expectations of basic survival, it's one step away from Wile-E-Coyote walking into a clearly labelled trap because she's blinded with thirst for the Roadrunner. But the same doesn't work in reverse, right? A dominant can't say 'I want to step on her' - that's psycho shit to begin with, and any attempt to soften it undermines the confidence the dom is relying on. There are ways to make that funny but they all rely on undermining the dom somehow - making her a white mage, making her a mousegirl, using the gap between capabilities and intentions to soften the line enough to be funny. And that concept in general means I can't talk about this stuff directly and clearly without an endless sequence of hedging and veiled invitations and implications about what I might do, and as soon as someone shows the right kind of interest the jaws of the trap snap closed. But even that only really lasts a scene."

"But," she said, "maybe that's a limitation of imagination? Maybe there are ways to make this type of character funny after all, and dominants just generally don't see it because they're too close to the fantasy. Maybe that's the advantage of a custom fantasy setting I could use here, the advantage of furries in general - animals are often inherently funny and that can be used to counterbalance things. Maybe I should step a bit back from my ultra high intensity visions and Oglaf the setting just a little bit in the name of being able to express things verbally rather than purely through *smouldering stare*s or waiting for someone to ask to be spanked uwu. Oh anyway, your best view of the audience is going to be during the competition. There's a contest coming up where Silkmoth and Beeatrice are going to improvise craft random objects with their chosen materials and the winner will be decided based on audience cheers. Human tribalism reveals, and sometimes that's a good thing."

Yellow!

Black and White both give Yellow warning looks. There's a limit to how good she can be seen to be at planning massive terrorist attacks that involve co-ordinating the response of the SES as cover without tipping her hand. Knightly was cool but she didn't want to test that he'd be more annoyed at the people blocking the station's repairs than the one who damaged the station in the first place.

"Thing though, this is to see what their priority there is, right?" said Yellow. "They control Preparedness, remember, so if things are falling apart in general it's not going to be their thing that goes first. What I'd like to see is some sort of wide area test or mild crisis that'd force them to concentrate their resources around a single spot. A solar flare would be perfect."
"Yellow, he doesn't control the sun," said White.
"I know."
"You don't control the sun either,"
"(sadly) I know."
"Failing that, I'd settle for a chance to rummage some offices and plant some bugs of my own," said Black. "Do these people ever have meetings together, some special formal or informal event? Failing that, I'd like to look at their calendars."

Brown!

Brown clasps her hands together, stands up straight, and her eyes fill with awestruck anime sparkles. "The horrible little ego monster!" she squeaks. "Where!?"

The bit aside, Dragon always was the coolest and most relatable of the Zodiacs to Snake. The elder engines might have had time or wisdom enough to see past the flash but Snake had never gotten that. Her entire time with him was spent watching him do it right the first time every single time. She'd been a card-carrying fangirl and had consistently tried to model herself after and replicate Dragon's skill and artistry whenever she could. By sheer coincidence, that kind of pure-hearted flattery had been exactly what was needed to penetrate Dragon's cool, disinterested exterior. It had managed to get him to pay attention to his little sister's requests and suggestions rather than trying to just finish the whole project himself.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Something about that makes her itchy. She hasn't proven her point. Defiance is ongoing. It was time to capitalize on her victory. Take this cat in her hand and show her the meaning of defeat. Gag her smiling mouth, strip her pride, drive any trace of those arrogant thoughts out of her silly little head. There were consequences to failure. That had to be enforced, that was why...

It was irrelevant. Victory was an inaccurate word, a word with too many meanings, a Hybrasilian word in any language. Victory. It was an imperfect reflection of a better word: strength. The power of being strong was not a fleeting and reliant thing like victory. You could not play word games with strength, it could not be snatched away, it could not be stolen. It was a single constant, an unending fire in the body, the deep reverberation of tonnes of brass cycling through your autocannons, feeling the contained fire of missiles, the distance and destruction of one's foes. Strength could be eternal. Strength didn't need anything. Strength didn't need anyone. Strength did not need to risk lessening itself simply to prove it existed.

What was strength if you did not get to use -

EVERYTHING.

In a rush of fire and smoke, the Aeteline is gone. It takes nothing with it.