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Huzzah!!
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Aug 23, 2022 06:17
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Julie, Jimmy and an old man - Thursday, August 30th, 2075 – Late Morning - Council Island “It’s that bad, Jimmy?” asked Julie. Julie sat in a Gridguide taxi on the western bridge to Council Island, where all of the diplomats to the Seattle metroplex from the Salish Council generally resided. She’d expected a half an hour trip, forty-five maximum from Touristville to Council Island but the wait had been long. Security was tighter than usual for some reason and so traffic was backed up for the last hour and a half. Julie slowly sipped from her reusable bottle of water as she tried to deal with her hangover. Yesterday, she, Fuzzy and Tek had started drinking not that long after getting to Touristville after school had been closed by the big, magical fight. The one that ended up with Joyce taking a number of ice darts to the leg and arm from a spell fired in fear and anger. So school was canceled while what was deemed the magical version of a school shooting was sorted out. As she’d learned, there was no magical cure for a hangover. “Yeah. Mrs. Liu is sleeping off the Long Haul,” said Jimmy, “It kept her up for most of a week but she’ll be out for the next day or two. And from experience, there's no telling when exactly someone wakes up from Long Haul. One of my dentists called off today and the other three are pretty haggard. Plus a few of your helpers that kept people outside calm didn’t show up this morning.” The Gridguide taxi was mercifully silent as Julie had paid for a commercial free ride. Gridguide taxis were normally free so long as you had a SIN but it meant being bombarded by advertising the entire time and any attempt to drown them out meant no more free rides if the system figured you were trying to cheat it. It seemed that there was a timer on it and she’d had to pay again after an hour. She was hoping not to pay a third time but the line was moving only once every three or four minutes. “How many helpers are gone?” asked Julie. “Of the ten?” asked Jimmy, “Two, and a few more have complained that they might leave too because the entire community is hurting hard for labor. Two might not seem like a lot but customers are walking into the office a lot less calm. It’s stressing everyone out.” Julie winced. She’d been told in no uncertain terms that those people weren’t just volunteering calming people down in line. Despite the fact that they could pay what they wanted for dental work, medical debt was one of the biggest drivers to put people into wage slavery for one of the corps. The volunteers had been calming people down and they weren't working for free, at least in the long term. Touristville took in money and thanks to her dentist shop, lots of it, but internally it ran on a system of reputation which kept funds inside of the community. It was divided into North, South, West and East rep, each cardinal direction forming their own unique culture and concerns. But Julie’s operation was so big that people were expecting that she’d break off and form her own rep group which meant her own little micro-economy within Touristville and her “volunteers” were expecting a piece. And she only had the vaguest notion of how to set up a system. Tek had showed her yesterday but she'd forgotten most of it. “How are you holding up?” asked Julie. The call was audio only but she could hear the strain in Jimmy's voice nonetheless. “Double shifts,” he said, “Nothing new. The pay is great…” She could hear an unspoken but, so she asked. “But…” she prompted. There were a few moments of silence on his end. “Got a bit dizzy,” he said, tiredly, “Barely noticed it because I was in VR at the time, but I came out for a second to get a drink and it hit me all at once. It passed after a minute. Happens sometimes.” This immediately set off alarm bells in Julie’s head. “On this job?” she asked. “Old job,” he said, “Happened a few times a month. Probably had to do with getting screamed at by my boss and customers. You and Mrs. Liu are pretty great bosses all things considered so this is the first time. There was just this one customer who just wouldn’t stop shrieking at me and Mrs. Liu wasn't there to run interference." Julie looked out the window, southwards over the bridge and sighed. Today was foggy. Wait, no, that was smoke from last night’s riots again. More buildings had been burned. It turned out that Touristville was one of the few places in Seattle not under constant threat of being looted and burned and this was driving people to shop there. Its place underground and its long, narrow corridors meant it was a hard target. This didn’t include Dragonslayer’s warning about the ACHE and the threat it posed to Touristville though. About a hundred and fifty-thousand people boiling out of what was essentially a concentration camp for the poor would be total chaos. And Touristville’s South end entrance was a mere two blocks from the black megastructure and there were only two-thousand residents, half of them children. Those concerns weren't immediate concerns, but they were pressing. “Okay,” said Julie, as she made her decision, “You’re done for the day. Stop what you’re doing, hand off everything to the computer or your coworkers to finish. Ask one of the helpers to escort you over to the clinic. Tell Devin that you need a physical. Once that’s done, have him call me.” “What about the shop?” asked Jimmy, tiredly, though with a hint of relief. “A lot of this stuff is automated, right?” asked Julie. There was a short pause. “Under ideal conditions,” said Jimmy, “The drones don’t handle complex procedures well. We’ve got a few lined up in the next hour. I’ve got one guy with an infected soft palate. It’s so bad he can’t even close his mouth.” Julie sipped her water again as her head throbbed. The line finally began to move, only to stop two car lengths later. Someone started honking directly behind her and just kept going. “We’re the emergency room for dental work now, aren’t we?” she sighed. “We’re the everything room,” said Jimmy, “Rich and poor. The new business model is too effective. All of our competitors are going out of business because they can’t compete, but we can’t see everyone because we just don’t have the capacity. And because of pay what you want, we’re seeing people who’ve never seen a dentist at all. They need a ton of work and it’s slowing everything down.” “I made a mess,” sighed Julie. “It’s a mess that’s working, but yeah, it’s a mess,” said Jimmy, “We’re doing good out here. Real good. That guy who can’t close his mouth will get to close it today. Just…Maybe an hour later than we planned. Lots of stories like that. Aaaaand...Now all of my work is tasked out." “Go get that physical,” said Julie, “And let me know what it says. Tell Devin or one of the nurses to let everyone know that I'll be by later to try and sort this mess out.” “Sure boss,” said Jimmy, and he cut out. Julie unbuckled her seat belt and put her head between her knees. The person behind her kept honking, she sipped her water and the line moved again before stopping. The automated taxi wasn’t gentle about starting or stopping either, which made her slightly nauseous from the sudden start and stop. After a few minutes more of regretting her choices in life, she got a text. So she opened her eyes to the light on her AR glasses which was a mistake and she turned down the brightness. Then she noticed that her long braids had nearly touched the dirty floor the automated taxi cab and sat up even though leaning forward had made her feel better. No way was her hair making contact with the floor. Now situated, she read her text. Fuzzy: How’s the line? Julie: Slow. She checked her place in line and saw that she only had a quarter mile left on the mile and a half long bridge between Seattle and Council Island. Julie: Almost there though. Quarter mile left. Fuzzy: Okay. Sasha and I are hanging out at the Friendship restaurant since security is tight. Julie: I might not eat much. Fuzzy: We’re only snacking. That Laird Thomas guy said he was bringing food for the meeting. HONK. HONK. HONK. The person behind her kept honking incessantly. Between the bad news at the dental office, her hangover and her nerves at the new meeting, she finally lost her temper. She rolled down the window which was a mistake because it let in the smell of smoke from the city which was hell on her throat. It was too late now though because her anger had momentum. So she looked back at the offending driver and took a big breath of burning city. “Shut up!” she shouted. Yelling like that and the whiff of last night’s riot smoke now in her lungs made her hangover worse, but mercifully the driver stopped honking. Instead the light skinned human man rolled down their window and flipped her the bird, which made Julie’s eye twitch for a few moments. He kept his finger up with one hand and really laid on the horn. There was nothing Julie could do about it and it only made her head throb all the harder. Rolling the window back up only did so much. He got bored some three minutes later and just went back to his normal honking. Julie swore to herself that she was going to get a white noise generator like Kenji had while angrily dreaming of summoning a spirit to shred his car and throw it into Lake Washington. Twenty minutes later, she was stopped at the security checkpoint for Council Island. A black clad officer came by, a sub-machine gun slung on his front. He, at least Julie assumed he was a he, was in full tactical gear, which was weird because normally she could at least see their faces. “Name,” said the guard, tersely. He. He was definitely a he. “Julie Freeman." She wasn’t sure why, but he had the same kind of twitchiness that the prison guards had when they were expecting something bad to happen. It was hard to tell under all that armor but her gut gave her the warning and she’d learned to ignore those kinds of warning at her own peril. “State your business,” he said. “I’m meeting Laird Thomas for a business meeting at two,” said Julie. There was a pause as the man just looked at her, which made her feel nervous. Even though she was meeting him, she felt like she was lying as her mind was cast back to prison and its guards. Still, she really was here to meet Mr. Thomas. Julian had referred her to him in that note he’d “dropped” after she helped stop the big magical fight at school which had given her a heads up on the upcoming school contest. “He’s a superfund site rewilder,” added Julie, “And a Beaver shaman.” He waited for a few seconds, just staring at her. Deep down she knew it was just a mix of intimidation, his internal gear reading her facial expression and body language and waiting for the go ahead, but she felt the intimidation all the same. “Destination,” said the security guard. “The Friendship Restaurant,” she said, “And then a meeting at the Council Island Inn...At two.” Again a pause and she did her best to smile despite her anxiety and the pounding of her head. “How long do you expect to be here today?” he asked. “Umm…A few hours,” she said, “I’m not sure.” He looked at her for a few more seconds, then stepped away without another word. She just had to wait there, nervously twiddling her thumbs. Memories of prison, most of them ugly, kept bubbling to the surface, making her already bad mood worse. Three minutes later, the guard came back. All she could see was the reflection of herself in his full, black helmet. “You’ll proceed directly to the Friendship Restaurant and then the Council Island Inn,” he said, “Do not deviate from your planned route. If you do, you may be subject to arrest. If you do need to deviate from your route, call the security office beforehand for permission. Curfew begins at eight PM sharp. If you are outside after curfew without explicit permission you may be subject to arrest. Do you understand?” “Umm…Yes, sir,” said Julie, “May I ask, did something happen?” “Do you understand?” he repeated. She figured she wasn’t going to get anything else from him so she nodded and the security guard waved her on through. The automed Gridguide taxi moved forward with a lurch that made her stomach churn once again. When the nausea passed she was curious about why the guard had been on edge, so she tapped her AR glasses and read the news feed. Though if there was news about Council Island, she couldn’t find it and despite being on the lowest setting the light still made her hangover worse. So she turned off her AR glasses and laid back as the taxi moved off the highway. From the look of the taxi’s AR view screen, she was only a minute or two from Friendship Restaurant. But it seemed that there were other plans for her because instead of taking a left off the highway, the taxi took a right down a residential street. “Umm,” she began, “Taxi, Friendship Restaurant is in the opposite direction. Take me to Friendship Restaurant.” “Rerouting,” said the taxi. The taxi in fact did not reroute. Instead it took Julie down a side-street and towards a cul-de-sac. Instead of leaving as she'd expected the taxi began slowly spinning in circles. Paranoia got the better of Julie and she felt like something was wrong. “Taxi, stop,” said Julie. “Rerouting,” said the taxi. “Taxi, I want you to…” “Do you want pizza? Do you want it right now?” asked the taxi, “Then come get Pizza Right Now!” As the seconds passed, the commercial quickly grew louder. She’d distinctly remembered paying for no commercials but there it was anyway, blaring in her ears. The car slowly accelerated as well and her bad feeling grew. She looked over to her side and saw her duffel bag that contained her trauma bag, armored vest and other personal belongings. “SOME PEOPLE WILL TELL YOU THAT THE BEST PIZZA COMES WITH FANCY TOPPINGS!” blared the taxi at its full, painful volume, “PIZZA RIGHT NOW BELIEVES THAT THE BEST PIZZA YOU COULD EVER HAVE IS PIZZA IN YOUR MOUTH, RIGHT NOW!” Pain shot through Julie’s head from the noise and she felt suddenly nauseous from being driven around in circles, but she somehow managed to slap on her vest over her blouse without much fumbling. Then she tried the door, which she found to be unlocked, but it threatened to slam on her fingers as the turns got faster and faster and she struggled to keep it open. “GET PIZZA RIGHT NOW!” screeched the taxi, “NOW! GET IT NOW! YOU WANT PIZZA?! SO YOU SHOULD GET IT! IT’S WHAT PEOPLE LIKE! EAT PIZZA EAT PIZZA EAT…” Julie swallowed back bile and concentrated through her hangover, her nausea and the blaring of the speeding taxi. A shaky magical formula formed in her mind and she filled it up with magic as best she could. Just jumping out wasn’t an option. The sky seemed like a better option than getting run over when the taxi circled back. So she levitated herself. The spell barely worked, but barely was enough. She moved at a snail’s pace and part threw herself out, part climbed out of the car up into the sky and pushed herself upwards. That sent her spinning and she nearly barfed, but the car circled away, loudly proclaiming its love for pizza before it circled back. About five feet off the ground, she stared at the ridiculous scene for about ten seconds as she slowly drifted upwards. As the taxi got closer again she was only barely above it, but a sudden roaring of air sent her spinning upwards. “Oh great,” she mumbled, darkly, “This is how it ends. Dropped from the sky and run over by a car that loves pizza.” That didn’t happen. Instead she was gently puffed towards a house where an old, tanned skinned, hairy looking ork man in a white tank top and blue jeans beckoned towards her. As she spun, she more felt than saw the wind spirit puff at her back towards him and so on instinct she tried to levitate herself away. She thought about simply banishing the spirit, but she’d be fighting the will of both the spirit and the caster. The fight at school had been easy to banish spirits, but if she tried against a real awakened she might add blood to the vomit she was struggling to keep down from the magical drain. “Stop fighting me, drat it!” called the old ork, “I’m trying to help!” As she was pushed towards him, still spinning slowly as she tried to steady herself, she saw the old man whip an empty beer bottle at the car, nailing it in the side door as it passed. Unlike the summoned spirit, there was no magic to it and the purely mundane bottle simply shattered on impact. “loving machines!” shouted the ork. Which was when Julie noticed that the taxi’s engine was smoking. She hadn’t noticed it in her escape, but she did notice as it suddenly caught fire. Since the taxi was an electric vehicle, like most vehicles in Seattle, that was bad. Battery fires were nasty, could burn hot hours and normal water couldn’t put them out. Now the taxi was not only spinning out of control and blaring about pizza, but it was now on fire as well and that fire was growing quickly. The old man summoned yet another spirit, this one a water spirit that simply looked like an enormous droplet of water which sped towards the vehicle. Before it could engulf it, the taxi hit the sidewalk at a bad angle, flipped and rolled, still burning, towards the old man. The old man yelled in panic and ran into the open door of his cedar log house. The vehicle crashed against it, bowing in the front of the house and smashing out the windows before it settled onto its back, tires spinning faster and faster, engine burning as the water spirit began to engulf it. “PIZZA! EAT PIZZA! RIGHT N-” The noise of the car was silenced as the spirit encased it itself. The battery fire burned inside of the spirit because battery fires need long hours of water or special tools to put out. So the water spirit simply ripped the car’s hood open like a cracked crab and “spat” out the burning battery into the air and the wind spirit carried it up into the sky and away. The water spirit crushed the car for good measure, which seemed unnecessary, but the spirit kept crushing it anyway. The sound of steel being compacted was muffled only slightly by the body of the watery spirit. Julie finally set down on the ground away from the car on the slowest levitation spell ever. Definitely not her best work, but it had worked and just in case, she didn’t release the spell just yet in case she needed to make the slowest getaway ever. “You okay?!” yelled Julie and her hangover reminded her that this was a mistake. The old man looked out of a busted window and flashed her a thumbs up. “Yeah, not the first time someone’s tried to kill me!” he yelled. This confused Julie, because she thought someone had just tried to kill her. “Me either!” she said, in a lower voice. They both had an odd laugh together, the kind more born of exhilaration and fear and less from humor. And for the moment, Julie felt her hangover lessen as the adrenaline dulled it. The old man beckoned her around back. “Come on, we’ll wait for security to bitch at us on the back porch!” he said, in a lower voice. He disappeared from the window as he went back into the house. Julie hesitated, but she decided that if someone had taken a shot at her that the old man could have easily crushed her with his spirits instead of trying to help her get away from the car. So she released her levitation spell and decided to do just that. She tramped through the forest beside the log house, which reminded her of her own cabin and came upon a small back porch. The old man only had one chair, a camping chair, but he dragged out a second chair from the damaged house, its feet scraping across the deck, two new beers held between his knuckles. “loving bullshit,” he grumbled, “Spilled my coffee. gently caress it, it’s beer thirty now.” The old man sat down heavily in the camp chair and placed both beers in the cup holders on his camp chair while Julie sat down on the less comfortable chair. “Hope you don’t mind,” he said, “My back ain’t what it used to be.” “It’s fine,” said Julie. Now that she was closer to this stranger, she took a better look at him. The old man was enormous and hairy, at least six and a half feet tall and probably a few inches taller, maybe six eight or six nine. He was built like a person who did manual labor for a living, with barrel chest, muscular arms and scarred hands. He was hairy too, with a huge, bushy beard, long hair and tons of chest hair and arm hair on heavily tanned skin. Most of it was gray with a bit of white on the chest, though there were still some stubborn streaks of black through his beard. It was hard to tell his age exactly because he was so hairy, but his brown eyes were heavily lined. She guessed in his sixties or early seventies, maybe. The old man pulled a squashed pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, plucked one out, stuck it in his mouth, lit it up with a tiny bit of magic and a flick of his finger. Then he took a drag and pushed aside his long hair to tuck another cigarette behind his ear. He exhaled smoke, sighing in relief. “Oh poo poo, where are my manners?” he grumbled. He plucked yet another cigarette from his pack and offered it to Julie who waved her hand. “I don’t smoke,” she said. “Speaking from experience,” he said, “There’s nothing better than a cigarette after someone just tried to kill you.” Julie hesitated, knowing exactly how bad cigarettes were for her and how out of fashion they were. Most people use vapes these days. But she took it anyway to be polite and he used a bit of magic to light hers as well. The ignition spell didn’t even phase Julie as she was used to it and the old man seemed to be looking for her reaction to casual use of magic, his eyes discerning. Then Julie took a weak puff on the cigarette, inhaled the smoke and coughed, though only a few times. “This is awful,” she said. The old man was already opening both beers. “Trust an old hand,” he said, “This is the right medicine.” He handed her the beer and again she hesitated. “Isn’t security going to be here in a minute?” she asked. "What's wrong with a beer?" "I'm not old enough." “What, you're not eighteen?" “Sixteen,” said Julie, “I thought you had to be twenty-one to drink.” He gave Julie an appraising look. Not a greasy one that men would flash her on occasion, just him assessing her. Besides, she was still wearing her armored vest over her blouse. “You’re in Salish lands and here, you get to drink when you’re eighteen,” he said, “Doubt they’ll care. Besides, you’re starting to shake pretty bad. Good to have something to do with your hands.” It was true. And it was funny too, Julie hadn’t shaken after her fight with Minuet. She’d been too busy kissing Marco in her doctor’s office examination room on a troll sized exam chair. It’d been cramped but they’d made it work. Now she was single again, her hands were shaking, her hangover was awful and someone might have just tried to kill her or possibly the old man. “Got a hangover,” she muttered. “Hair of the dog,” he said, “It's the best medicine you can have right now.” So she smoked her terrible cigarette and drank beer that was gross but mercifully cold. Between vice and having something to hold, her shaking hands began to stabilize. Then she heard footsteps through the brush and black clad men and women in security uniforms walk around the house, leaves crunching underfoot. The old man smoothly took the beer bottle from Julie’s hand and placed it in his second cup holder. “You just let me do the talking,” he said. She was more than willing to and she silently smoked, now halfway through her cigarette. The buzz of the adrenaline rush from nearly dying mixed with alcohol and nicotine really did feel fantastic. The old man had been right, much to her chagrin. His "medicine" worked fast. The old man answered most of the questions and Julie had mostly checked out, save for answering questions in the most basic way possible. Just the facts, quick and direct and nothing more than she had to purely out of habit from prison. One didn’t volunteer information in prison or they’d get labeled as a snitch and snitching wasn’t tolerated. She expected the security officer to ask her the same questions about what just happened over and over again. After all, the security on Council Island was definitely heightened today, but to her surprise they let her and the old man go after a single round of questions. Though the security officer, a light skinned lady with chrome cybernetic eyes and the flattest crew cut she’d ever seen, had a parting shot for her. “You should contact your guardian Miss Freeman,” she said, gruffly. Of course they knew exactly who she was and so Julie sighed, not really wanting to heap even more garbage on Julian’s plate because he was the corporate liaison at school. After the school shooting with spikes of ice ramming through Joyce, he was slated to get yelled at for days by the parents of the students. Or more likely the people the ultra-wealthy parents employed to yell at teachers for them. “Yeah, I’ll do that,” said Julie, “Um…Did someone try to hurt me?” The security officer shook her head. “We’ve ascertained that the Gridguide system is currently malfunctioning,” she said, “There was another incident this morning with a runaway taxi and we’ve ruled out any foul play. They haven’t admitted fault yet as there have been numerous injuries and one death from dozens of malfunctioning taxis within the metroplex proper. I’d strongly suggest not using Gridguide enabled devices until the bug is resolved.” This made Julie think again about what just happened. “Wait, so this was just a computer bug?” asked Julie. “Gridguide isn’t admitting it but that’s our assessment,” said the officer, “I also wouldn’t suggest using the air taxis either as they also run on a similar system. Nothing has fallen out of the sky just yet but we have a general advisory for the Salish embassy not to use transportation connected to Gridguide until the issue is resolved.” Julie looked up at the sky and saw the busy sky lanes that drone traffic used and thought about tens of thousands of drones just falling out of the sky and onto the city below. She shivered and nodded. “Good to know,” said Julie, “Thank you.” Security had already finished up with the old man, who’d never stopped smoking or drinking while talking to them. "Would've been nice if you'd informed any of us," complained the old man, "Especially before it tried to run me over and crashed into the front door. And was this young lady informed that she was in a malfunctioning taxi?" Julie had thought much the same thing but she didn't want to stir up trouble. The security officer looked decidedly uncomfortable. "The assessment is very recent, sir," she said, "We're turning away traffic from Gridguide enabled vehicles until the situation is resolved. We deeply apologize and security on the island has been heightened for everyone's safety." The old man made some grumpy old man noises, waved a dismissive hand at her and continued to smoke. The security officer and the rest of her team left around the side of the building. "I asked what was happening two minutes before that happened," she said. "Yeah, that's how it goes with them," he complained, "About as useful as an rear end in a top hat on my elbow."
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Mar 13, 2023 19:06
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Welcome back Ice!
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Mar 13, 2023 19:31
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Rise from your grave! Apologies for the super long hiatus and I hope there's still interest in this. I have another update already in the can and I'm working on more. Since it's been a while I added reminders about the situation in Seattle to the text as reminders, but I'll write them down here since it's been a while. Just a "what the gently caress is going on" update. And I'll go from the top down, from international to the characters themselves. Internationally: Tir Tairngire and CalFree are saber rattling at one another and Tir, ever paranoid, believes that it’s going to be attacked. Though it always believes it’s going to be attacked so their behavior isn’t that much different than normal. This is because the great dragon Hestaby, who lived in Tir lands on the Calfree border, got kicked out due to dragon shenanigans. This has created a power vacuum and war might be imminent. The Space Elevator located in the Kingdom of Hawaii has been completed over the summer and people are beginning to go up and down to do space tourism. Sasha was actually supposed to go on a tour of space with Fuzzy in book four, but Sasha can’t go because seeing into the void of space with her astral sight on would drive her insane and probably kill her. She still has the tickets though. Nice little souvenirs. Lone Star, which was a policing megacorp, got eaten by Ares, an even larger megacorp. This means almost all cops in UCAS (the successor state to the US) are now Ares Knight-Errant corporate cops. This may have something to do with the fact that the entire C-Suite of the Lone Star megacorp got brutally murdered, maybe by Marie LeBlanc and Kenji's brick, the otherwise normal looking concrete block that hates everyone and everything. Seattle: The city is constantly being wracked with protests and riots and is otherwise constantly on fire. This has to do with the fact that people really, really hate the cops due to the fact that they've been doing a lot of dirty, immoral and illegal poo poo. Lone Star was experimenting on children in the ACHE and over 500 were confirmed killed by the project, courtesy of Marie leaking that information. Ares Knight-Errant were basically Seattle's biggest drug dealers and started the tempo drug epidemic which killed tens of thousands of people, paid off the gangs who are now having a city wide gang war now that they're not getting paid and they also started the Mayan Cutter meme, which was a serial killer that they sensationalized on purpose and the copycats ended up killing dozens more people. All of this horror that Ares created was so they could steal the policing contract for Seattle from Lone Star. The bottom line is everything and the people they're supposedly in charge of protecting don't mean anything to them. Unluckily for Ares, there is no longer any lesser evil narrative now that they've done a very hostile takeover of Lone Star. There is only Ares Knight-Errant and all of that protest and riot hate is focused solely on them. Technology around the teens has been mysteriously malfunctioning. Fuzzy's commlink literally caught fire and exploded, which Marco replaced and now Julie was nearly run over by a car screaming about pizza. No need to think about that any more. Nope. Dragonslayer told everyone that if things get bad enough in the ACHE that the poor kept in what's the world's largest concentration camp will boil out of it like ants out of a kicked ant hill and loot and burn a big chunk of Downtown Seattle. Touristville's South End entrance is a mere two blocks from the ACHE. Even if they don't loot and burn Touristville, the reaction out of the powers that be will be bad for basically everyone if 150,000 people pour out of the ACHE and start some poo poo. Blake Island: They're currently gearing up for the not tri-wizard tournament, which is basically an excuse for the wealthy students to spend money to generate prestige and compete over said prestige. It was designed so the students wouldn't try and kill each other. The C-Suite of one corporation (think CEO's and the people who run poo poo) have never been murdered by a rival corporation, even if that's not what actually happened. The worry was that the students might fight over this and so the school organized games to distract everyone. That distraction didn't come fast enough and there was a big, fuckoff wizard fight between the Ares and Lone Star kids in the lunch room. Joyce, Krupa's fiance', took some ice darts to the arm and leg. He's actually really happy about that as he "earned scars in combat", thus proving he's very manly and badass, thank you. And so the school is closed until Monday and Julian is going to get all the screams poured in his ear after what was legally deemed the magical equivalent of a school shooting. The Scoobies: Are going to have to deal with Julie's premonition that there's going to be a massacre at Denny Park, though they have no idea when it's going to happen. Also they were asked by Dragonslayer to go by their local evil(er) Wal-Mart, the Aztechnology Pyramid, which is a big box store ran by cultists. Fuzzy: Got caught holding Marco's hand because Marco was feeling desperately lonely. Now she's in the tabloids. Currently visiting Sasha. Kenji: He initiated twice and he's not adapting so well to thinking deep thoughts on Dog. He's a bit weird at the moment and sleeps a lot. Sasha: She's got dunked in a vat in order to treat her constant panic attacks/panic disorder. This damaged her magic but she also installed some cyberware. Currently is sporting not one, but two datajacks, shaved the sides of her head, dyed her hair and has been voted most likely to go shadowrunner or at least vigilante. Also she's been learning a lot about forgery lately. Julie: Currently sporting a nasty, nasty migraine from drinking with Fuzzy and Tek and she has to go solve her problems at the dental office. Also a taxi that was screaming about pizza nearly ran her over. She, Fuzzy and Sasha are about to go visit Laird Thomas, a Beaver shaman and a person who cleans up environmental disasters that were once called "superfund sites" by the now defunct environmental protection agency in order to try and do this not tri-wizard contest.
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Mar 13, 2023 19:42
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It's back, amazing! Welcome back, Ice! I hereby resubmit my ACHE Waste Reclamation Cooperative proposal, and humbly suggest that it (or something along those lines) would be familiar to an environmental clean-up specialist.
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Mar 13, 2023 22:30
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Welcome back!!
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Mar 14, 2023 05:39
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Hell yeah! Nice to see you back!
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Mar 14, 2023 08:02
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So happy to see this back. I got into this very late, and was devastated to see it hadn't been updated so I'm overjoyed to see it return. Ice, have you considered looking into getting this published? I teach high school literature and this is considerably better than 90% of YA fiction out there. Would love to offer it to my kids.
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Mar 16, 2023 01:04
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Daduzi posted:So happy to see this back. I got into this very late, and was devastated to see it hadn't been updated so I'm overjoyed to see it return. Ice, have you considered looking into getting this published? I teach high school literature and this is considerably better than 90% of YA fiction out there. Would love to offer it to my kids. Thanks for the compliment and I'm glad that you enjoy my work.  I have edited roughly 90% of the first book, added new chapters and posted it to Royal Road. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/53616/shadowrun-blake-island-school-of-magic It's there if anyone is interested since you don't have to slog through tons of posts to get at the content. And I took what I learned over the past few years about writing and did a lot of polishing and some extra world building too. Specifically I fleshed out Fuzzy and Kenji's trip into the ACHE with four or five new chapters as well as smaller changes to the majority of the chapters. I think the chapters start around chapter 1.11 if I recall correctly. But I don't think that's what you were asking specifically. Publishing under someone else's intellectual property is extremely difficult and the story is too closely tied to Shadowrun for me to do a rewrite. There has been a glimmer of hope with something stupid that Wizards of the Coast did, how they hosed up so bad by being greedy that they changed the whole tabletop space for the better and that might include Shadowrun allowing more autonomy to content creators. But I have no idea how that will shake out. Honestly I'd love to just drop all of the raw files into PDF's, slap on some cover art and let people go at it themselves. I'm going to try and get the next chapter out in the next day or two, but I also just discovered "I Was a Teenage Xenocolonist" and so emphasis on try because Xenocolonist has engrossed me. The chapter is 95% written but I'm having a hard time conveying everything I want to while keeping the pacing of the chapter relatively tight. And I've storyboarded the chapter after that as well. Anyway, feeling good about upcoming content and I've designed it in a way that we'll get back to voting more often again on choices since that was lacking for a while.
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Mar 16, 2023 10:47
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Ice! Welcome back!
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Mar 16, 2023 17:19
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Julie and Paul - Thursday, August 30th, 2075 – Late Morning - Council Island “I expected that to be a lot worse,” said Julie. “Hell, same,” said the old man. He handed her back her beer and she gripped it, immediately giving it a sip. The cigarette in her hand had burned down to almost nothing. The old man offered her another one but she declined and put the butt into a nearby beer bottle that was stuffed full of spent cigarette butts and filled with rain water. “I don’t want to make a habit of it,” she said. Julie checked her commlink for a message from Julian but there was nothing new from him or Fuzzy. The brush with death still left her hands shaking and she desperately wished for something to do with the hand not currently occupied with a beer. Sensing this, the old man dug around in his pocket. “Heads up,” he said. There was a metallic pinging sound as he flicked something at her with his thumb. She caught it purely out of reflex and found a coin in her hand. Coins were an anachronism. The UCAS didn’t use them at all and only a few corporations still issued their own paper money, called scrip, but never coins. So coins were always strange to see. The coin was worn down so smooth that she couldn’t make out the details at all. “Just turn that over between your fingers,” he said, “It’ll help with the shakes.” The nicotine and alcohol were helping her calm down and so she decided to do as he suggested. So she began to flip cool metal coin between her fingers over and over again. Though as she stared at it she realized that it looked like it was made from gold and that the coins she’d seen were never made from gold. So she paused to stare at it. “Is this a gold coin?” she asked. The old man continued to drink his beer. “Sort of,” he said, “Ever heard of ormolu?” he asked. She shook her head no. “It’s when you take a small amount of gold and mercury and work it into bronze,” he said, “You get a nice gold coating at the end.” She continued to turn the coin in her hands and she realized belatedly that between the nicotine, the alcohol and turning the coin, she wasn’t shaking anymore at all. Though when she stopped for a moment she’d begin to tremble again, so she kept turning it. She suspected that he’d turned it quite a bit too from the way it was worn. “Did you get it from mining?” she asked. He shook his head. “No,” he said, “No, that was from something that was melted down a long, long time ago. It’s actually one of my focuses.” She took a look at it in the astral and saw that he was telling the truth. The magical focus that was used for magical enhancement shone brightly in the astral but she’d never really seen another focus like it and she couldn’t describe why, not that she was an expert. “I’ve never seen a coin be used as a focus,” she said, “I mean, I know they exist but wouldn’t it be easy to lose?” She put her beer down and continued to turn with both hands now. “I’ve had that for sixty years,” he said, “If I was going to lose it I would’ve by now.” Julie did the math and her eyes widened. If it really was sixty years… “That’s 2015,” she said, “You’re…” “One of the first to have magic?” he asked, “Yeah. And this is one of the first focuses ever made. I’ve had offers for it. Collectors that would pay dearly for relics of the Ghost Dance War.” “The war where the American Indians beat the United States, right?” she asked. The old man frowned in disapproval at her. “We’re not Indians,” he said, gruffly, “And our ancestors were here over ten thousand years before Europe vomited its settlers all over the continent.” Julie cringed. The old man relented, sighed and patted her on the shoulder. “You weren’t taught any better,” he said, “That’s not your fault. I’m old enough to remember when American Indian was still okay to say but most people not even that much younger than me will take offense.” “Uhhh…What should I say?” she asked. “If you don’t know who you’re talking to and you don’t know their tribe, if they even have one, indigenous usually works as a catch all, though not always.” Julie tried to hand the coin back to the old man but he held up an enormous hand. “You still need it,” he said, “Keep turning the coin. But yeah, that was made before the war was even officially declared, well…Some declared early. Resistance wasn’t particularly organized until a couple years later. It was pretty piecemeal. Didn’t really matter in those early days though. We developed magic first. The US had no defense against it and couldn’t understand where it came from while we eventually learned how to strike anything from anywhere.” And he eyed her. “And not because we’re inherently magical or some poo poo,” he complained, “Some people still think that the natives are inherently in touch with nature or have some deep wisdom. loving bullshit. We just got to it first. Just luck, you remember that. Could’ve been anyone.” “Trauma fuels magical growth,” said Julie, quoting one of her lessons absentmindedly. Julie was powerful and understood that was almost certainly where her magic came from. The death of her father and how she’d killed him. Kinslaying, a taboo so deep people didn’t even really think about it until it happened. Trauma did fuel magical growth but the kind of trauma that made one powerful wasn’t the kind of power that people could seek out on purpose, it sought you out. Talk of gaining power the way she had was always a cautionary tale. The old man grunted but not in displeasure, not that she noticed. Julie continued to turn the coin between her fingers, fascinated by it. There was just something about it, as if flipping it yet again would reveal some secret hidden on the other side. It didn’t of course but now that she was holding a real piece of magical history between her fingers, her curiosity overrode her nerves. The old man pointed with the tip of his beer at his coin. “Early on in the war,” said the old man, startling Julie out of her fascination, “They started showering the concentration camp guards with medals. Helped them to stick around when guards at other camps mysteriously went missing since the government didn’t want to pay them any extra. Found out later why that was. We learned how to make it happen later on.” He smiled toothily from behind his beard, cigarette dangling precariously from one lip and it bobbed while he talked. “My camp was staffed by border patrol at the time as well as a handful of mercs,” he said, “One of the border patrol in particular, this redneck named Chuck must have met his beating quota for that week and got some big time medal pinned on him. Chuck was so proud of that thing. Wore it all the time. When my camp was freed, one of the men who freed us, perhaps the greatest man I’ve ever met, ripped it off the guard’s chest and tried to give it to me. I was going to throw it because we were free now and gently caress Chuck’s medal, but that great man something…” And the old man’s eyes gazed back into the past for a moment. Julie leaned forwards. “What did he do?” she asked, quietly. The old man’s cigarette seemed ready to fall off as he spoke. “He closed his hand around the medal,” he said, reverently, “And he said, “These little men decorate themselves in false honor. They have none and wouldn’t even understand it if they saw it. This is all that their honor is worth.” And when he opened his hand again, the medal, which had been a star, became the coin you see now. No flash, he just closed his hand and opened it again.” Before the cigarette dropped, the old man worked his lips and took the cigarette back between them before he took a long drag off it, exhaling smoke with the history. “Chuck the guard tried his luck, though they’d all been disarmed at this point. Again, they had no defense against magic so half the guards were dead,” he said, “The great man pointed at the earth and it swallowed Chuck up to his neck in an instant and with him, the rest of the guards that were still alive. Then he just stepped away because it was just him at that point. And…Well…To put it gently, he gave us the opportunity to treat them as fairly and decently as they treated us.” Julie shivered and decided that was the moment to give the coin back, which the old man graciously took. Then the old man whipped the coin off into the woods without moving from his sitting position. “Wait, why did you do that?” she asked. Not only was it a piece of history but it was his focus. The old man smiled wryly and waved away the cigarette smoke. “It always comes back,” he said, “No matter what I do, it always comes back.” “How?” she asked. The old man shrugged. “No idea,” he said, “It just does. Your magic has rules. Magic from my time was wilder and stranger. In all my time on this earth, no one has figured out why a lot of the magic worked how it worked and we were all too busy fighting a war to do anything like research.” He suddenly pointed and Julie’s eyes followed his finger. There was nothing there but woods of course so when she eventually looked back, the coin was back in his hand. Curiously, she caught him with his eyes closed. “Did you levitate it back?” she asked. “Nope,” he said, “It just shows up. The coin belongs to me and I belong to the coin.” The old man was quiet for a little while, neither smoking nor drinking, just staring ahead. Meanwhile, Julie wasn’t particularly impressed and she wondered if she was being teased. About a minute later the old man shrugged. “A lot of the strangest magic isn’t particularly interesting or showy,” he said, “It just works. If I lose it, it shows back up in my hand when no one is looking.” He tossed it away again. Julie looked away only for an instant and there it was again in his hand. She checked the astral for any signs of a spell still in the air but there was only the coin that was magically active and it takes at least a minute to wipe a spell out of the astral once cast. “Neat trick,” she said, “What’s the focus for?” “Earth magic,” he said, “It’s really all that man knew how to do, at least at first. He figured some stuff out later. But when iy came to the earth, the land itself, he understood it and it understood him. I’ve been poking around in the guts of the earth for half a century and I don’t understand a fraction of what that man just knew in his bones.” He suddenly stood up, groaned as he put one of his enormous hands on his back and briefly went back into the damaged house. A few seconds later he emerged with even more beer. Julie wanted to ask more questions but she had an odd feeling like she shouldn’t, so she looked at the house. “Sorry about your house,” she said instead. The old man looked at the house and shrugged as he opened a new bottle, stubbed out his cigarette, put it in the bottle full of smoked cigarettes and rain water, grabbed a new cigarette and lit it up with magic with an efficiency born of long practice. “Not my house,” he said, “I’m just visiting.” “What for?” she asked. “The same reason I thought someone was trying to kill me,” he said. She’d assumed that someone might’ve been trying to kill her too, though it may have just been her mood. On the other hand, she was trying to stop a multi-billion nuyen land grab for the entire Ork Underground and she’d been told that the people invested in those projects don’t play nice. “Why’s that?” she asked. “Oh, lots of reasons,” he grumped, “Recently though, uranium.” “Uranium?” she asked. He nodded. “I have a big stake in uranium mining,” he said, “You know, to power nuclear plants.” “You’re a miner?” she asked. He laughed and intermittent plumes of smoke jetted from his nostrils. “Oh no,” he said, with a wave of one enormous hand, “At least not for years. I just tell people what to do and sometimes if I’m lucky they even listen. Miners, you know. Hard heads. We had to bring some extra hands over from the Sioux Nation to meet quotas lately and they do things different there. Plus mixing tribes can get fucky sometimes. People rehashing disputes. Some recent, some hundreds of years ago like they happened yesterday. Your great, great grand daddy did my great, great grand daddy dirty, that kind of poo poo.” “That happens?” asked Julie. “Eh, sometimes,” said the old man, “Some people look at history and time differently out there. Not all, but some. And some people just want a reason to skin their knuckles on someone else’s teeth and one reason is as good as another. Sometimes it’s both. Not a lot to do out near the mines but work, drink, sleep and fight.” “And you manage them,” she said. “I try,” said the old man, “loving knuckleheads. I manage other poo poo, but mining is my biggest headache. At least lately.” “Huh.” Despite his complaining he seemed in a better mood. In fact, he seemed to like complaining. “Yeah, we hit a new vein recently and now everyone is up my rear end again about what they get and that I’m too old to run poo poo and that I need to step down,” he grumbled, “Then you have the government trying to get on my land to observe and demanding I hit their bullshit production quotas and the corps are always trying to weasel their way in to gently caress me over. Doesn’t matter that they’re…You know, our corps or whatever. Corps are corps. Plus shipping. gently caress, you wouldn’t believe what a pain in the loving rear end it is to ship uranium. In the old days you could just slot your credstick to speed things up. Now there’s rules and regs and poo poo and…” The old man grumbled angrily about the sorry state of uranium shipping. Julie took that moment to text Julian as she was reminded that she actually hadn’t texted him yet despite thinking about it. Her head was still jumbled. Julie: Had a taxi accident. Salish security told me that Gridguide is malfunctioning. I’m fine but it was pretty bad. Safe on Council Island. She knew it’d be a few minutes until he got it due to the wireless jamming field on Blake Island. “Well I’ve bitched enough for now. So what’s your deal?” asked the old man, done grumbling for the moment, “And how’s your hangover? Glad to know that Seattle mages still know to have a good time. But aren’t you supposed to be in school or something? Or do you have a master apprentice thing going on?” There were so many questions that Julie didn’t know which one to answer so she just picked the one that seemed most important. “Oh, I go to school,” she said, “It got shut down for the rest of the week. There was a fight.” “One fight and the school gets shut down?” he asked, “Seems odd.” Julie had run out of beer and so the old man handed her another extra beer. She thought about not drinking it but she was feeling better. While she didn’t want another cigarette, she would take another beer. Hair of the dog worked, but she really needed to get something to eat and drink besides one cigarette and two beers. They were more meant to paper over her hangover so she could get fluid and a meal in her. “It was a huge fight with magic,” said Julie, “Everything got really weird and scary. Two groups of students were having a fight about how Ares took over Lone Star. Someone flings mashed potatoes, another uses magic and all the dishes and silverware at the other table go everywhere and it escalated out of control. People are throwing around spells, summoning spirits, running away or just spectating if they were far enough away. My friend’s boyfriend got a bunch of thin ice spikes in his arm and leg and one almost took him in the face. Someone got a fork in their leg too. So the school shut down for the rest of the week.” The old man considered this and his consideration was greatly aided by another fresh cigarette. When he wasn’t talking he burned them pretty quick and his newly opened beer was already half gone as well. “In my day, they’d just slap a heal spell on us, yell at us when we were better and make us do drudgework,” he said, “And, you know, whoever started it gets their rear end beat. So Ares and Lone Star, huh? You go to one of those corporate wage slave magic schools? That’s no life at all.” Julie shook her head no. “Military?” he asked. Again she shook her head no. “Ever heard of Blake Island?” she asked. The old man wracked his brain for a few seconds and his face darkened. “Is that where all of those corporate aristos kids hang out?” he asked, suspiciously. Julie sighed and nodded. “That’s the place,” she said. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You one of them?” he asked, his tone flat, “Because if you are, this conversation is over.” Julie felt an intense pressure that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the old man’s presence. She’d checked and he wasn’t casting a spell. So she shook her head no, momentarily unnerved by him. “I’m not corporate, I’m on a scholarship,” she said, “Me and my friends. I don’t get along with most of the other students.” He gave her a hard, long look and then nodded. That pressure faded and he grew friendlier. “Yeah?” he asked. Julie shook her head yes. “One tried to ruin my clinic and plant drugs on me,” she muttered, “Shot my ex in the chest.” The pressure vanished. “That a fact?” he asked. “It is,” she said, “But he’s a troll so it basically bounced off him. He got a huge bruise.” The old man smiled and extended a hand. “I’m Paul,” said Paul. Julie looked at his enormous, scarred hand with plenty of hair on the back of it. She took it and shook his hand and it felt like shaking sandpaper. “Julie,” she said, a bit formally, “Julie Freeman.” “Aw, there you go being upright,” he said, “poo poo. Nice kid like you shouldn’t be hanging out with an old bastard like me.” He said it half-jokingly, though only half. “So Julie, what brings you here?” he asked. “Oh, um…Meeting friends,” she said, “I’ve got a school project I’m working on…Well, kind of a contest and a project. Environmental cleanup, though I don’t know where yet. My teacher arranged a meeting with this guy named Laird Thomas who’s supposed to be good at environmental cleanup jobs.” The old man nodded in appreciation. “That’s hard work,” he said, “Honorable work to heal the land. Though I’ve never heard of him.” “I hadn’t either until yesterday,” said Julie, “Apparently he works out east in…Let me think…Um…Wisconsin?” The old man’s eyes had lit up. Not in recognition or in interest, but because he’d accessed the matrix and was reading something. He raised an eyebrow at her as text scrolled across his AR contacts. “You don’t happen to work in the Ork Underground, do you?” he asked. Julie sighed, figuring correctly that she’d been made. “Yeah,” she sighed, “I have a doctor’s office that I work at on the weekends.” “Thought you said a clinic.” “I got an upgrade after the girl that shot my ex well…Shot my ex,” she said. “Hush money, huh?” he asked. Julie nodded, unhappy about it. Though the old man didn’t seem bothered by corporate hush money. “No judgment there. Things tend to go bad when you don’t take it.” “That was my thought too.” Then Paul whistled. “Oh, a dentist office too,” he said, “And right down there in the Ork Underground. Oh, people over there don’t like it when an ork starts making lots of that legit money. You’re pissing off all sorts of people, aren’t you?” He grinned toothily, revealing yellowed teeth, though his thick orkish tusks were white. “Yeah, I have a little project,” she said. She tried to downplay it. Not because she was being humble, but because it reminded her that she needed to take care of business down there, somehow, and soon. “Yeah, little projects don’t merit the media doing profile pieces on you,” he said, “I thought you were in school.” “I am in school,” she affirmed. “Get into trouble there too?” he asked, his grin growing wider. “No…” she said, and then hastily added, “Well not usually. It’s complicated. Anyway, what profile pieces?” Paul grabbed his commlink out of his hand, a busted up old thing and flicked his fingers over it towards her to send her the link. What she saw were hundreds of pieces on her dentist office, Touristville and her in particular, all in the last few days. Most of them were probably written completely by an AI, but she’d made the front page of the Seattle Times. “A Free Fix?” she asked. “With a headline like that, you know it’s going to be good, right?” he asked, his smile wry behind his busy beard. Julie rolled her eyes. “I’ve had an article or two written about me before,” she said, worried, “Never this many though.” “Yeah, in my experience it normally takes the people in charge a day or three to figure out angles on what part of your back to best stick the knife in,” said Paul, “Looks like they’re probing for their angles: Thinly veiled racism, classic, too young to know what you’re doing, sob stories from small business monsters who’re being put out of business, gently caress them, using the headline to talk about drug use without saying it outright, talk about how your business is completely free…” He paused, frowning at this point in particular. “That part seems far-fetched,” he said, “Would’ve expected a piece like this out of the Ares News Network, not the Seattle Times. Haven’t read it in a few years though…” Julie nervously twirled the neck of her beer bottle between her fingers. “I actually let people pay what they want,” she said, “Even if it is nothing. Though we do encourage people to pay what they can so we can stay open.” What she was doing didn’t feel real most days, especially since she was barely involved. She had provided the space, which she owned, the start-up capital with help from Kenji and the rest of the Touristville residents, the idea had been hers and she’d lucked out with labor, at least until now. However as far as making the place run, she had basically nothing to do with it. “Oh, I think there are a few businesses that do that in the capital,” he said, referring to Bellinghamn, the capital of the Salish Council, “Not many though. So people paying whatever they want works?” Julie shrugged and smiled shyly. “So far,” she said, “I’m the first to do it in Seattle. At least at this kind of scale. We ask for five nuyen if they have it, more if they’re feeling generous but if they can’t pay we don’t worry about it.” Paul furrowed his brow at Julie as if he expected that she was teasing him, but she wasn’t. Julie was completely sincere in a way that seemed to catch him off guard. “You’re welcome to make an appointment if you want,” she offered, “Anyone can come.” Paul’s cigarette burned low as he just watched her without taking a drag, sitting still as he tried to sort out this new and strange information. Then he suddenly took a puff, growing animated again as he puffed dangerously close to his lips and the cigarettes had tiny filters. “You take anyone,” he said. Julie nodded and then sighed. “Yeah, rich, poor and everyone in-between,” she said, “We tried working with insurance companies because some people insist but they kept sending us these enormous bills, so we just stopped talking to them. You’d be surprised but most people pay five nuyen or more. We take around seven to eight-thousand people a day.” “Seven to eight-thousand people a day,” he repeated. “Yeah, we could take more but my team has been doing a lot of oral surgery,” she explained, “Ideally we want people to take only a couple of minutes with the medical drone but if they’re there for half an hour, an hour, two, more…Well that’s time other people aren’t giving us whatever they want to pay. But well, I was talking to my head dentist, Jimmy. He told me that he has a guy lined up with a soft palette…Uh…The upper part of the mouth, so infected, he can’t even close his mouth. As much as we could use the money, I think he’ll appreciate getting cheap healthcare more than a few more people getting their teeth cleaned.” “And you’re charging him nothing,” said Paul, with a frown of confusion. “We don’t charge anything,” said Julie, “We ask for whatever they want to pay and so far we’re doing pretty good because it turns out that five nuyen isn’t too much to ask for most people. And if it is too much to ask, we don’t mind if they can’t pay. After my meeting I actually need to go to the dentist office and sort out some problems.” This wasn’t the entire truth. They actually broke even but they had special hours twice a day for wealthy corporate customers who wanted the white glove treatment and they got charged heavily because they could afford it. If Julie abandoned the emergency cases she could easily make a profit with the pay what you want strategy but she didn’t want to do that. Also she wasn’t sure if Paul would appreciate her pandering to wealthy corporate types even though they were essentially funding some of Seattle’s poorest. “And that’s…Where?” he asked, “It says here in the Redmond Barrens, but you’re not, right?” She frowned and shook her head. “It’s not in Redmond, it’s in the Ork Underground,” she said, “It’s a small part of it right under Pioneer Square in the Downtown area.” Paul thought about something for a while, reached into his pocket and withdrew a shiny, black credstick which he presented to her. “How about I make an appointment?” he asked. Julie smiled but didn’t reach out for the credstick. “Oh, that’s okay,” she said, “You can just pay whatever you want when you get there.” Paul looked briefly annoyed, but laughed, grabbed another credstick out of his pocket and thrust both into her hands. “Honesty!” he exclaimed, “That’s refreshing. Tell you what, how about I pay for that guy who can’t close his mouth.” Julie hesitated before she took the credsticks, then she looked down and saw that one of them was for five-thousand nuyen, the maximum amount that a black credstick could hold and another was for twenty-one-hundred. She gasped a little, despite the fact that she was making on average over thirty-thousand a day, at least so far. Having money at all was still very new to her. “Oh, thank you very much,” she said, happily. Paul waved a meaty hand in dismissal. “Nah, I’d just drink it away,” he said, “You take it. Eight-thousand people a day sounds like a lot of toothpaste. Hey, maybe you can squeeze out a few more creds if you roll the credstick up and squeeze it out.” Paul mimed rolling up one of the pencil sized breadsticks like a toothpaste tube and Julie giggled at the joke. “That will get a lot of toothpaste,” she said, “But I wouldn’t know. I sometimes help out in my doctor’s office but I don’t know anything about teeth. My office never made much money but the dental office makes a lot so far. I pay everyone well but I feel like a leech.” “Oh yeah?” asked the old man. Julie nodded, her brief mirth gone in an instant, replaced by a feeling of shame. “Yeah, I don’t do anything for it,” she said, “But if things keep going like they’re going, I’ll have my first million in a month.” The old man nodded along in understanding. “I remember my first million,” he said, “I had early claims on tungsten and nickel mines. Barely anything. Then we hit uranium and I’m a multi-millionaire overnight.” Julie looked at his enormous beard and unimpressive clothing. Paul noticed her noticing him and grinned. “Looks don’t mean much,” he said, “Remember, I manage a rough sort. Besides, if I started dressing all fancy they’d start hitting me up for even more.” Julie sipped her beer and raised an eyebrow. “More?” she asked, “They ask you for money?” “I have an open handed management style,” he said, “Creds grease the wheels to keep things turning and soothe hurt feelings. Technically I could be rolling in creds if I were some miserly gently caress, but then you start having to protect all that wealth.” “Do you?” she asked. “Well, no, you don’t have to,” he said, “I manage it just fine with volunteer militias. But if you’re tight fisted, you start having to guard your money in a way that warps reality around you. It means surveillance, it means cops, it means whipping up a real military, it means hiring professional spies, it means you have to constantly be watching your back and everyone hates you. Plus they have a way of growing and growing and you can never get rid of them once you have them.” “Huh,” said Julie, “You just run the mine with militias?” “The mine and a few other things,” he said, cryptically. “Sounds unstable,” she said. The old man waved a hand dismissively. “In my experience, it’s chaotic but in a constant low intensity kind of way with the occasional spike, like a simmering pan that pops oil at you,” he said, “Having cops, soldiers, spies, etc is stable, but volatile, like an explosive. That’s your Seattle. Things were calm but tense for years and then all of a sudden it explodes because the owers that be are constantly tossing lit matches at a puddle of gasoline.” Julie’s throat still hurt from breathing in the smoke of her burning city. Plus at night she could see Seattle burn if she were on the beach. It gave her a strange feeling to watch a city attempt to consume itself. She thought back to her meeting with the toxic version of Firebringer and while she had rejected him, he’d made a point or two. After all, if he hadn’t, his pitch wouldn’t have been tempting. “Fires have a way of choking out deadwood,” she said, “The kind that strangles life at the forest floor.” “Mhm,” he said, “Your city has been burning ever since the end of the Ghost Dance War. All of the US…UCAS now I suppose too. Not actually on fire. They never really recovered from the stomping we gave it. There wasn’t a military base or factory or bridge or airport or power station that we didn’t sic our spirits on or crush with ritual magic. The US was too big and too stupid to know when to die, though it did eventually give up because it couldn’t make war anymore and all it could do was take more and more damage which we were happy to do until they caved in. That damage was fatal, what we did, but it’s taking its sweet time bleeding out.” “I don’t really know much about the Ghost Dance War,” she admitted. Paul shrugged and indulged in his vices before cracking open yet another beer. “Awww…I’ll talk your ear off if you let me,” he said, “Anyone will, though most will give you the propaganda version. The Ghost Dance War set the stage for the entire century and beyond. We won the war but lost the peace.” Julie got a sudden text from Fuzzy. Fuzzy: Where are you? “Oh, crap,” said Julie, “My friend is texting me. I got to go meet my friends over at the Friendship Restaurant.” Paul’s stomach growled at the mention of food and though Julie wasn’t particularly hungry, she knew that she had to eat and drink something soon or her hangover would come back. So she shouldered her duffel, or at least she would have but she realized that she’d left her entire duffel bag in the car. “Oh poo poo,” she swore, “My bag.” “What bag?” he asked, “You lose your purse or something?” “No, I lost my trauma kit,” she sighed, “It was in the car. I had it arranged like I liked it too.” That trauma kit had cost her close to a grand for everything she had in it. Again, she was making creds hand over fist, but the loss of her bag felt like a serious blow. Paul looked sheepish and scratched at his beard with the hand that held his cigarette. Then he popped it into his mouth and dug around in his pocket for another credstick, but Julie held up his hand. “I think I can cover it,” she soothed, “It’s okay.” Paul frowned but nodded. He looked at her expectantly, as if he was waiting for her to ask him something and his stomach rumbled again. “Suit yourself,” he said, “Don’t let an old man keep you.” --- CYOA Time! First in a while!  Does Julie invite Paul to the Friendship Restaurant or does she go alone? And whether she does or not, how does Julie feel about Paul?
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Mar 16, 2023 19:43
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No, to invite to meal it's a business meeting after all. But invite to walk together towards the friendship restaurant. She thinks he's a possible bad influence with the smoking and drinking but is a nice enough and someone with a distinctly different pov on life.
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Mar 16, 2023 21:27
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Toughy posted:No, to invite to meal it's a business meeting after all. But invite to walk together towards the friendship restaurant. And yes, Julie considers Paul to be a person with many flaws, a good heart, and interesting knowledge that she won't be able to find on a bookshelf. Specifically, his knowledge of providing effective, low-impact security for a profitable business operation in an unsafe area could be very useful for her dental operation. She should ask more about it on the way to the restaurant. Boat Stuck fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Mar 17, 2023 |
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Mar 16, 2023 22:23
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Boat Stuck posted:It's back, amazing! Welcome back, Ice! I already have something like this in mind! It'll be a bit though. In the next update I'm actually fulfilling a request from Jagadaisho from several years ago in regards to Sasha and how she feels trapped on Blake Island and how she's going to deal with that. This is an extreme example but sometimes it takes a while for me to get around to stuff like this. Also thanks to everyone who welcomed me back. Feels good to be writing again after a long hiatus.
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Mar 16, 2023 22:49
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Yes, it's a friendship lodge after all Paul seems like a very cool old guy
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Mar 16, 2023 23:06
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Is Laird even at the restaurant? I thought the meeting was at the Inn.
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Mar 16, 2023 23:10
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Gwyneth Palpate posted:Is Laird even at the restaurant? I thought the meeting was at the Inn. It's where Fuzzy and Sasha are currently hanging out until they go to the Inn due to movement being temporarily restricted on Council Island.
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Mar 16, 2023 23:48
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Ice Phisherman posted:It's where Fuzzy and Sasha are currently hanging out until they go to the Inn due to movement being temporarily restricted on Council Island. Oh, in that case, if it's just Fuzzy and Sasha at the restaurant, definitely invite Paul along.
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Mar 16, 2023 23:59
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Invite Paul. He's someone she could learn a lot from. She may not agree with some of his life choices, but she can respect them, or at least understand how they came to be.
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Mar 17, 2023 00:11
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Ice Phisherman posted:It's where Fuzzy and Sasha are currently hanging out until they go to the Inn due to movement being temporarily restricted on Council Island. Then I say bring Paul along to the restaurant, but don't bring him to the business meeting. Julie sees Paul as a potential ally for Touristville. Not even really because he's Awakened, but because he's world-wise, is experienced with leading disparate peoples, hates corps instinctively, and especially the militia part tickles her fancy. At the very least, in game terms, attempt to acquire Paul as a contact.
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Mar 17, 2023 00:12
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Julie invites Paul and sees him as a maybe friend, possibly a helpful source of more local lore that could be handy for an up and coming Shaman.
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Mar 17, 2023 01:38
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Invite, and Julie sees Paul as someone who might be convinced to help (or at least provide good advice) on protecting Touristville. Also she suspects there is some spiritual force guiding their meeting.
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Mar 17, 2023 01:56
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Splitting the next update up as it was long Julie and Paul - Thursday, August 30th, 2075 – Early Afternoon - Council Island Julie hesitated. Paul hadn’t exactly saved her as she’d gotten into the air on her own, but not from a lack of trying. And his method of giving her a smoke and a drink to calm her down wasn’t her preferred method of keeping someone calm, but it had worked. So she figured that he was fine to invite out for food where Sasha and Fuzzy were but that he wasn’t getting an invite to the meeting after. “Want to get something to eat?” she asked. Paul smiled big and broad as he pretended to think about it. “We’ll probably have to hoof it,” he remarked. “Yeah…No taxis. I guess we’ll have to walk.” “Where are we headed again?” “Friendship Restaurant.” Her AR glasses lit up and she checked how far it was to the restaurant with her commlink. “About half a mile,” she said. “I think I can do that if there’s food at the end. You may want to get changed though.” He waved an enormous hand at her armored vest which was on the outside of her top. It looked silly to her and if she went outside like that she’d probably get questioned by security. “Oh, umm…” she began. She looked at the house and he shrugged. “Bathroom is fine,” he said, “It’s just up against the back wall. Mind the glass. It’s not in the kitchen but it is everywhere else. I’ll let security know that we’re leaving so they don’t pester us.” Julie nodded, headed into the house and found it to be pretty ordinary inside. The kitchen that she met with immediately was bare save for a lot of beer bottles in the garbage and some glass on the ground crunched underfoot. The entire front half of the house was covered in glass and the wood at the front of the house was bowed in from the impact from the taxi. She ducked into the bathroom and she found a few toiletries like a toothbrush, toothpaste and shampoo, but otherwise it really didn’t seem like he lived here. So she did a quick change and decided to keep her armored vest on just in case. It didn’t fit perfectly under the outfit she was wearing and a bit of black near her neck could be seen. “Good enough,” sighed Julie. She tugged at her top anyway to try and conceal the vest but it was just too big. Then she headed outside and activated her map program which sent a thin green line in AR shooting around the cabin and into the distance for her to follow. Paul was already up, stretching his back and grunting. Then together, they headed around the house and Julie spied a man in a pickup truck at the front who was unloading silvery, cylindrical maintenance drones to do cleanup work. “So what’s your story?” asked Paul. His gait had a bit of a limp on it on his right side but he kept up with her. “Didn’t get it from those profile pieces?” asked Julie, wryly. “I find that if these corporate media folks don’t have an agenda then they’re getting it wrong,” he said. “So you don’t like the media either?” she asked. “Most media on this planet that has any reach is corporate media or state propaganda, which if you think about the size of the corporations means that’s just another flavor of state propaganda.” “Do you like anything?” she asked. “Beer, sports, women,” he said, paused and then added, “Mature women.” Julie gave him the side eye for just a moment to make sure he wasn’t checking her out, but she didn’t get a weird vibe off him before or now. So finally, she decided to answer his question. “I was raised in a big family,” she said, “Human. I goblinized during a softball game.” Elves and dwarves had just started to be born into this world around 2011, but orks and trolls had goblinized back in 2021, their bodies spontaneously changing. Ten percent of the world’s population had switched from human to ork or troll over a few agonizing days. Some died as the process was brutal, most lived and the world had no idea what it was in for next which had caused panic, fear and hate. Most orks and trolls these days were born, not goblinized and those that first goblinized were mostly dead now due to old age. “I know how that goes,” he said, meaningfully. It was obvious that he knew what had happened when she’d goblinized from what he’d read. The media definitely wasn’t going to pass up a juicy tidbit like an ork girl killing her father from her hospital bed, even if it was in self defense and she’d cleared herself of all charges later. She began to understand that her life as a private individual was likely over. “Do you?” she asked. “Yeah,” he said, quietly. She cast another glance at him for the telltale sign of pity, fear or revulsion. Instead she found someone who just looked straight at her in understanding without saying anything. It was refreshing not to be instantly judged and sad because she figured he would’ve gone through the same thing. “Yeah,” she repeated, ending that line of talk, “Uh, went to prison because I decided not to defend myself. Family abandoned me. Got pulled out of prison due to dumb luck and recruited into a school.” She didn’t mention the bribes that Julian had to pay. Awakened were viewed as a resource if they landed in prison. They could have their sentence commuted if they went to work for the corporations or the military. However, these jobs were generally dangerous, had absurd hours and were functionally a type of indentured servitude. For some awakened, prison was a revolving door from their normal life to working for someone else and so there was a lot of abuse, so many prisoners decided to just do the time. If Julie had stayed she might have eventually ended up indentured. “School was nice but I was a shithead for a while,” she said, “Going from a racist human family to sticking with racist ork and trolls didn’t do me any favors. I got better though. Found friends. Literally made one too…Well, family. Spirit ally. His name is Chip.” He gave her an appraising look. “At your age?” he asked, “Impressive. That takes a lot of talent.” “Well…Trauma fuels magic,” she sighed. “Or that,” he said, gently. “I’m not the most practiced but I have maxed out my natural limits on magic,” she continued, “So Chip is ending up powerful too. I fed him a lot of what was best in me at the time and I got left with the worst. It stunted me for a while but I got some family out of it because he’s probably the closest thing I’ll get who’s willing to talk to me. I got told to stop feeding him my experiences for at least a few more months but my friends started giving up little bits of themselves too.” “Good friends then. Really good friends.” Julie nodded and felt warm inside at the thought of everyone. “I got hooked into Touristville because I liked a boy,” she admitted, “Church too I guess.” Paul chuckled softly. “I remember that,” he sighed, “Did a lot of stupid poo poo for girls.” He laughed and Julie smiled in embarrassment. It wasn’t at her or even with her. It was just an old man visiting his memories. He didn’t elaborate but what little she could see of his mouth turned up near the corners behind all of that beard. “I mean, church isn’t stupid,” she said, “I just don’t think I would’ve chosen it on my own if not for my boyfriend, Marco. I guess I’m really in it for the community and the work and feeling…I dunno, needed. I started up a clinic. This girl from school, Minuet, kept failing at trying to bully me and she couldn’t take losing…” “You fought back against some corporate princess?” asked Paul. Julie hesitated for a moment as they turned the corner, following the white line through the neighborhood. There was absolutely no one outside and it was a clear day, save for the occasional whiff of smoke from Seattle. “Well it’d just rained one day,” said Julie, “And they kept messing with me. So I levitated this huge…Well, not a rock. A small boulder, I guess. Two spells on each end so it could spin. I started spinning it and lowered it to the ground and I sprayed her and her friends with wet mud, leaves and probably a few rocks.” Paul immediately started to laugh and Julie giggled at the thought. “No idea how I got in trouble,” she said. “Probably deserved it, little monsters,” he said, and shook his head, “We’ve got them in the Council too. Not corporate as much, though they do exist. Mostly energy and pharmaceutical corps. I have to deal with the former. Lots of big families with rights to the land too. Mining and logging mostly. Big families with big heads. First generation born after the war got spoiled rotten because there weren’t a lot of them. Could do no wrong. They were our hope. Most turned out all right but…” The old man was lost in thought for a few moments as he trailed off and so they both walked in silence for a while past house after house, all of them considered small by UCAS standards. At least in comparison to the houses she saw on Vashon and Bainbridge Island. which were south and north of Blake Island, respectively. What in the metroplex amounted to the suburbs. “We were repopulating after a war,” he continued, “Just a bunch of scared, traumatized people. Not even a million of us left if you scraped all the tribes together. From nothing with nothing…Well…Not nothing. We kept Salt Lake City mostly intact after the Mormon Church had a low grade civil war on how to deal with us and the remainder surrendered.” “How’d that work out?” she asked. Paul burped loudly from all the beer he’d drank and covered it a second too late with his fist. “Depends…Sorry,” he said, and started again, “Depends on who’s telling it. Mormon leadership from the reformed church, the one who stayed behind and surrendered said it was God’s will. What they were making GBS threads themselves over was the threat of arsenic tornados.” Julie’s eyes widened in shock. “Arsenic tornadoes?” she asked, in horror, “Where do you get arsenic tornadoes?” “From the bottom of the Salt Lake. Lousy with arsenic,” he said, with a shrug, “Their civil war was an ongoing problem. It killed a few of the Ute tribe and we weren’t going to tolerate that so we whipped up a tornado and blew it around their city for a bit until they cut it out. Minor damage because they were mostly just killing each other. We just hit the suburban areas whenever we wanted to make a point. Suburban folk really, really freaked out if you so much as sneezed in their backyard.” Again he burped, thumped his gut a few times with his fist to see if if got it all out, which he had. Then he grabbed a cigarette and lit it with a bit of magic. “Anyway,” he continued, “At the time, other awakened casters were using waste from environmental disasters in their floods, fires or tornadoes like you add salt or pepper to a dish. Went against the ideal of saving the earth but it sure was effective. The movement was never cohesive, just cells of awakened doing things and seeing what worked and what didn’t. The people without magic were more organized but we worked in near total secrecy. If they found out where we were they’d try and drone strike us.” He took a puff and he and Julie shifted so smoke wouldn’t blow in her face as the wind picked up. “Me and mine never used pollution as a weapon,” he said, “But the Mormons psyched themselves out that we’d drain The Great Salt Lake and poison their city with the poo poo at the bottom. The faction that won out eventually surrendered and helped us afterwards formed the Reformed Mormon Church while everyone who left stayed with the original. Nearly cost us the Ute involvement in the war though…” Julie had no idea what he was talking about and Paul elaborated. “Black Hawk War,” he said, “1865 to 1872. Pretty standard white settler bullshit but it was the Mormons who started it. Some rear end in a top hat demands land that doesn’t belong to them. Talking about how this is God’s land that was promised to them when their religion is two seconds old to people who’ve been living there for…Well…Forever. Skirmishes break out, raids, theft, murders, slavery too. Wasn’t just the Ute, but they were particularly prickly about the slavery part. A lot of the Ute wanted the Mormons gone after we won the Ghost Dance War for crimes past and present. Wanted every Anglo out of their lands, Salish and Souix and Pueblo lands and more, hell, off the continent. But we needed the skills, labor and numbers of the remaining Mormons.” “It sounds like a compromise,” she said. He took an angry puff. “People don’t like compromise,” he said, “Don’t blame them one bit for hating it. So many grudges came out, old and new from the war. Hardliners wanted that arsenic tornado to level the city and everyone in it because by that point they were killing uninvolved tribes people still living out east. They knew they were losing at that point and…Well we thankfully decided to send a message in a different way.” He’d killed his smoke pretty fast, grabbed a little tube from his pocket and stuffed the butt inside before lighting up again. “Practical people saw that we needed an economic base to keep waging war and to rebuild afterwards,” he said,”Blood spilled called for more blood spilled, but that blood was found elsewhere. Practicality won out for the Mormons. Barely. But the Ute were particularly prickly about it afterwards. They almost pulled out of the war effort and maintaining the peace with them was drat tricky.” He took another puff, exhaled and looked at Julie, who’d mostly been quiet but she’d been paying attention too. “Where were we?” he asked, “Sorry, telling war stories again.” Julie nodded patiently. “I’d just sprayed mud on my bully,” she said, feeling a little silly. He smiled sheepishly. “Ah, sorry about that.” Paul smiled wryly and made a “go on” motion with the hand currently holding the cigarette. “Well, I opened a clinic in Touristville,” she said, “Enough to service about two-thousand people. Not great, but it’d keep everyone more or less healthy. At least with a little investment after. My pastor was going to run it and we were maybe going to get a nurse or two. Then Minuet storms downstairs with corporate mercenaries and tries to bully me with guns.” Paul whistled low. “Going down into the underground takes balls,” he said. “No, Minuet was just really stupid,” sighed Julie, “Most of the corporate kids at school can’t really imagine anything bad happening to them. Like ever. And if something bad actually happens they freak out. Especially the younger ones who haven’t been on the shame pole yet.” “Shame pole?” he asked, with a grin. “Yeah, when someone screws up they get put on the shame pole,” she said, “It’s basically just time out where you have to admit what you did and why it was wrong to whomever shows up. Some people talk poo poo but they mostly don’t in case they’re the ones who end up there. I remember one in particular who started shouting death threats after being put on the pole. They went away for a while before coming back.” “Little monsters, I’m telling you,” he said, “We got the same in the Council. Not as many and they step more lightly, but they exist.” Julie nodded. “The sophomores, juniors and seniors that have been there are mostly fine,” she said, “The school mostly helps them grow out of the worst of it. The freshmen sometimes go on real tantrums. And that’s basically what this was. Minuet was having a tantrum with a squad of heavily armed mercenaries because I sprayed her and her friends with mud and sticks and leaves. Because some ork who she thought of as beneath her was standing up to her.” “Sounds like that could’ve turned real ugly.” Julie nodded seriously. “I’ll admit that I painted a target on my back,” said Julie, “I said some…Things I shouldn’t have said to an elf and Minuet and her friends were elves. But it shouldn’t have gone that far. Minuet wanted some poo poo to go down and the mercs didn’t want to…I dunno, massacre people. She called everyone in Touristville stupid trogs and it turns out that the merc captain was an ork. That was the last straw. He canceled her contract right then and there. Probably not great for his career but Minuet was too stupid and proud to back down.” They were at the main road, though no cars were on it and there were very few people outside save for a security patrol who ignored them, at least for the moment. Only two minutes to the restaurant from what her navigation app was telling her. “Well, she freaked out and slipped into my apartment to plant drugs,” said Julie, “Why, I don’t know. There aren’t any cops in Touristville. Just a militia and the militia is made up from the community. No problems.” “Sounds like they got something right down there,” he joked, “We got something similar, I think.” He waggled bushy eyebrows at her and Julie smiled. Paul just stepped across the street but Julie made sure to look both ways, which felt sensible as a malfunctioning taxi had almost run her over. Then she quickly crossed the street as she caught up with Paul. “Anyway, my friends came in,” she said, as she caught up, “Minuet was trying to plant drugs all on her own. She pulled a gun, my boyfriend tried to talk her down, she shot him in the chest, I tossed a stunbolt at her and my friend Fuzzy knocked hit her with a flying punch so perfectly he knocked out almost all of her teeth.” “Love to hear it,” said Paul, as he shook his head, “Which by the way doesn’t look like it’s made any of the profiles.” “Yeah, I’m under a non-disclosure-agreement,” said Julie, “I can talk about Minuet and what happened, I just can’t lay any blame on her corporation, which is fine. Anyway, she and her family lost their status and became…Normal people, I guess.” Paul suddenly stopped and looked at her. Julie had to stop and step back a foot to look at him. “What?” she asked. “That was you? I heard about that. The disgraced corporate family that lost everything?” Paul’s smile was broad and boyish behind that beard of his. Julie shrugged a little and smiled. “My friends had a hand in it too,” she said, “I just hit her with a stun bolt and that wasn’t enough. Fuzzy was the one who knocked her teeth out. Jumped over three spirits off a couch and hit her with a flying punch. She’s here if you want to meet her.” “Think I might, think I might,” he murmured in interest, “Hit her so hard she lost all her money.” Julie giggled. “Yeah, I suppose she did.” They began walking again. The restaurant was just a few dozen steps away. “She was my first patient,” said Julie, “On account of her being unconscious and alone and all. I framed the credstick with her payment on it.” Paul laughed the entire rest of way to the restaurant and held open the door for her, giving her an exaggerated bow which was flattering, though he groaned a bit as he straightened out. “And now you run an illegal dentist office,” he said. “It’s legal,” she said, defensively, “Really!” Paul opened the door for her. Julie inhaled the delicious smells of the restaurant and her stomach growled. She checked the time and she had about half an hour until she needed to leave for the meeting. Maybe she could order something quick before the lunch meeting.
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Mar 20, 2023 17:57
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Julie, Fuzzy, Sasha, Paul and Pyg - Thursday, August 30th, 2075 – Early Afternoon - Council Island There was no host, waiters or waitresses that Julie could see in inside of Friendship Restaurant, nor were there like one might find at a higher class restaurant. Nor were drones delivering food like at a middling or lower class restaurant. In fact, there didn’t even seem to be many customers either, though at least that made sense as the island’s security was heightened. The only staff here today seemed to be the chef, who Julie briefly saw through the pass, which was the open window from the kitchen to the restaurant proper. “Number fifteen, order up!” shouted a woman. A few seconds later, one of the few people here got up from a simple, round table and walked over to grab the food and that man was well dressed in a suit and tie. In Seattle, that kind of person in that kind of suit would never in their wildest dreams be expected to get their own food. “Huh,” said Julie, “Weird.” Julie had never been here but she’d been told that the food was both amazing and incredibly cheap. Ignoring that for the moment, she looked around the tastefully decorated room complete with tribal decorations that she didn’t understand. Her eyes eventually settled on a booth where she saw Fuzzy sitting with a girl in her late teens or twenties with short, platinum hair in snythleather and a blonde ork in her late twenties or early thirties. Julie began to call out to Fuzzy, but she gasped instead when she saw the platinum haired girl kiss Fuzzy and instead of pushing her away, Fuzzy only playfully batted her away. Suddenly Sasha was unsure about everything. Should she go over and talk to Fuzzy? Should she tell Sasha? What kind of person was Fuzzy that she’d kiss someone other than Sasha? Or did Fuzzy and Sasha have some sort of non-monogamous relationship? Julie had no idea and wondered if her friend group was actually as stable as she thought. “Ugh, no more kisses after you eat that oolichan oil,” complained Fuzzy, “You’ve got sardine breath.” “You love this stuff,” said platinum hair, whose voice was extremely familiar. Julie squinted and realized that the girl in the synthleather was Sasha and the outfit made her look some four or five years older than she actually was. So Julie’s world stopped tilting and she suddenly felt very foolish. She still had no idea who the blonde was but that was probably okay. So she turned to Paul. “Hey, those are my…” she began, and faltered. Paul was just gone. For such an enormous man he knew how to move silently and though she looked all around the restaurant, she couldn’t find him. Part of her felt a little paranoid again but she approached her friends and the blonde ork lady, who Julie was pretty sure she wasn’t from Touristville. So she approached her friends at a table. “Oh, look who decided to show up,” said Sasha. It appeared that Sasha had a new look. Her long, dark hair had been dyed platinum and cut shorter in the back, though her bangs were still the same length. The hair was swept to one side and the side that now sported twin chrome datajacks, which allowed the brain to directly control her machines like her cyberdeck if she plugged into them, was shaved down. And she had three new piercings in that ear as well, two rings near the top and a stud near the bottom. Otherwise she wore a dark synthleather jacket and pants that made her look larger than she actually was, currently zipped up. The only part of Sasha that was familiar were her special glasses with the thick lenses and the fully covered sides that Sasha used to keep from seeing the astral. “Yeah,” said Julie, “Sorry, something weird happened.” The orkish lady on the other hand had long, blonde hair, currently up and pinned into a chignon updo, pale skin, deep blue eyes, cupid’s bow lips currently quirked up into a satisfied smile, slender tusks jutting up from her lips that orks had been clamoring for at the dental office and was otherwise a stunning beauty. She was dressed in a simple, white blouse with black, pleated stovepipe pants and a black suit jacket slung over the back of her seat. She was built large, like someone who might’ve been a softball catcher or a volleyball player in her youth and it looked like she kept in shape as well. She also had the only open seat as Fuzzy and Sasha sat together. “May I sit next to you miss…” began Julie. The woman, who’d been eating a simply enormous elk steak surrounded by greens, had her eyes closed for the bite and savored the food, hence the smile. She made an “oop” sound around her bite and looked a bit embarrassed. Then she put a hand to her chest, her poise perfect. She chewed quickly, swallowed, wiped her mouth delicately with a napkin and then smiled the most winning smile Julie had ever seen and patted the seat next to her. “Oh, hello,” she said, a warm and pleasant pleasant contralto, “I’m Pyg.” “Pig?” asked Julie, dubiously. “Just a nickname,” she said, sweetly, “Come, sit down. Are you hungry?” “Starving,” groaned Julie. She sat down and Julie could feel Fuzzy and Sasha watching Julie intently and she had no idea why. The woman looked fine, but something niggled at the back of Julie’s brain that something was off about the situation. It was small enough that she could ignore it, but she was still feeling a bit paranoid. So when she looked in the astral she found the woman to have no astral signature. Which was when Julie realized what she was. “Oh, she’s a drone,” said Julie, “Wow. You’d never be able to tell. She’s so lifelike.” Sasha had been opening her mouth to say but grumbled irritably that the surprise had been spoiled. “Thank you,” said the drone, “I’m the latest from the Ares Pygmalion Executive Elite line. Would you like to know more?” Fuzzy elbowed Sasha in the side and smirked. “You told me it took you five minutes,” teased Fuzzy. “I had my glasses on,” complained Sasha, “And my senses are kind of altered right now as you know. From the vat, remember? No more anxiety attacks.” “Yeah, I remember,” said Fuzzy, with a small sigh, “You remind me every couple of minutes.” “No I don’t,” said Sasha, defensively. “Not with what you say, with what you do,” said Fuzzy, in exasperation. “Miss Oliver,” said Pyg the drone, “Would you like to register me?” “Not right now, Pyg,” said Sasha, “Later.” Pyg the drone nodded and went back to slowly eating her steak. Meanwhile, Sasha turned to Julie. “This is Pyg. She came with a gift basket,” said Sasha, “Part of the gift basket I suppose.” Near the end of the booth, past the dried fish snacks were two gift baskets, one smaller and one larger that Julie hadn’t remarked on yet. “I was so confused when I got her, you don’t even know,” said Sasha, “Honestly she’s not fully functional at the moment because she doesn’t really start learning much of anything until she gets registered. I don’t really want to do that unless I want to keep her because she’s worth more without a previous registration.” “I talked her out of it,” said Fuzzy. “She’s running a very sophisticated pilot program,” continued Sasha “Her brain, basically and autosofts, her skills, all top notch for what’s out on the market right now. Once her machine learning really starts kicking in and she starts adapting, most people won’t be able to tell that she’s not metahuman.” Julie nodded, not really understanding most of that other than she was a top of the line drone that looked like an orkish lady. And there was this whiff of fish not coming from the dried fish but from the oil which became apparent when Sasha dipped a piece of dried fish snack in the oil, releasing more of the smell of sardines. “What is that?” asked Julie, interested yet repulsed by the smell. “Dried fish and oolichan oil,” said Sasha, “Fuzzy loves it and I never got to try it before now.” “Why not?” asked Julie. Sasha shrugged. “Fear, I guess,” she said. “You couldn’t just wait,” sighed Fuzzy, “You had to pick now to eat oolichan now.” “The doctor said that I should talk to people I know and experience new things to establish a baseline for my preferred level of fear and anxiety,” explained Sasha, “I’m hovering around basically none now. Honestly it feels great but I also feel like this isn’t going to work because you’re getting annoyed a lot.” Fuzzy shot Julie a very annoyed look indeed, but didn’t say anything. “It’s outpatient for a week so we can adjust my levels of fear and anxiety to something normal,” said Sasha, “I go back in the vat when Fuzzy leaves and I get to work on my own projects in VR while I’m suspended in the tank. I’m not coding anymore because I locked myself out of any cyberdeck use just in case I accidentally destroyed my work. I’m just running through training simulations.” “What kind?” asked Julie. It was fascinating for Julie to think of a life lived totally without fear or anxiety. She wondered if some people emerged from the vat and insisted that they never felt fear or anxiety again and then went on to constantly make awful decisions. For someone particularly wealthy and powerful they could just turn off fear and anxiety forever with a quick dip in the vat. “Forgery,” said Sasha. She grabbed another piece of dried fish, dunked it and ate the fish covered in golden, sardine smelling oil. “Forgery?” asked Julie. “Yeah, how to spot forgeries right now, mostly,” said Sasha, “At the moment I’m going through courses in media literacy. It’s actually kind of hard to scrutinize something without fear though so I don’t expect to make a lot of progress today.” Sasha finished her latest bite of fish and then leaned over to get a kiss from Fuzzy, who turned her face at the last moment and took the kiss on the cheek. “I told you, no more kisses on the lips until you taste normal,” repeated Fuzzy, “That stuff is powerful.” Sasha didn’t look happy at that at all and so she ate another piece of fish dipped heavily in the oil. Meanwhile, the drone went back to eating since Julie had stopped interacting with it. She turned her attention to it and watched, fascinated as the drone ate like a normal person would. If Julie hadn’t had that feeling of apprehension from being watched by Fuzzy and Sasha and hadn’t been so paranoid, she likely would’ve thought the drone was real. “Why is she eating?” asked Julie. The drone stopped eating but looked first to Sasha and Fuzzy to see if they wanted to ask first in a way that Julie felt was demure. “She has a multifuel engine in her stomach,” said Sasha. “Like the engine in my pickup truck!” said Fuzzy, happily, glad for a change of subject to something she knew about, “You can put garbage in and it makes electricity. Tek uses bags of grass clippings sometimes and it’ll go for a couple miles.” “I can eat basically anything that has some sort of caloric value or can burn,” said Pyg, “But in order to maintain the seeming of reality I only eat food. If you’d like me to eat something other than food then you can toggle my food settings once I’m registered.” Sasha looked to Fuzzy, who shook her head, nixing registration again for the moment. So the drone went back to eating the elk steak bite by slow bite. “We can charge her normally but she didn’t come with a charging dock,” said Sasha, “But we also don’t have to buy it. Pretty convenient.” “Huh,” said Julie, “Where’d you get her?” Sasha put her hand on the larger of the two gift baskets and opened her mouth, but then cast her eyes past Julie and frowned. “Why is a huge, jacked old man who looks like the last popsicle in the freezer looking at us and heading over here?” asked Sasha, mildly. Julie was about to ask why but she got a good look at his arms and the parts of his chest not covered by clothing. All of which were hairy and white with body hair. She felt terrible when she giggled. Meanwhile, Fuzzy glared at Sasha. “We talked about this,” said Fuzzy, quickly, “No random insults.” Sasha sighed loudly and whispered a little “sorry” to Fuzzy. And there was Paul who’d slicked back what hair was still left on his head and was wearing the biggest and most charming smile he could muster as looked not at any of them, but the Pyg the drone. He’d also managed to find a sharp looking but two sizes too small suit jacket from somewhere which went on over the white tank top, which left a tuft of chest hair poking out of the top . She had no idea where he’d gotten it or how quickly, but he had. Though he was still wearing his jeans. “He helped me out earlier,” hissed Julie, “Be nice.” “Who is he?” asked Fuzzy, in her normal voice. “Shut up shut up he’s nearly here,” whispered Sasha. The quick conversation between the friends suddenly silenced as Paul made his way to the table. Julie was hit by Paul’s smell which had been reduced in intensity outdoors. Now though he smelled like a carton of recently burnt cigarettes had been doused in cologne. It wasn’t pleasant. None of them could possibly pretend that he didn’t smell bad and he noticed this immediately. “Wow that’s bad,” said Sasha. She yelped a bit as Fuzzy elbowed her in her ribs. If Paul had heard that and Julie thought he probably had, he didn’t say anything and instead waited a few beats for Julie to make introductions. “Uh…Oh,” said Julie, after a short but awkward silence, pointing to her friends and lastly to the drone, “Uh…Fuzzy, Sasha…Pyg I guess. This is Paul. Paul, this is everyone.” “Charmed,” he said, “I’ve heard about you, miss Fuzzy.” Fuzzy perked up at the recognition. “Oh yeah?” asked Fuzzy. “Only by reputation,” he said, “Something about knocking all of the teeth and money out of some idiot corporate princess. And defeating a toxic fire spirit in single combat.” Fuzzy puffed up and decided that maybe the smell wasn’t so bad as he extended his enormous hand, easily dwarfing hers as he shook it. When she pulled her hand back, she had a black credstick in it. “Just a little show of appreciation,” he said, “I admire your work.” Normally Julie figured that Sasha would have chimed in as a voice of reason by now or at least raised some sort of objection. She didn’t and so Julie explained. “Paul heard about my dental office and he donated to me as well,” she said. “I like to appreciate people,” he said, and then turned to Sasha, “I run a little mining operation out in the Cascades. And you, Miss Oliver, I’m so very, very sorry about your situation with Ares. I feel that you have been treated very unfairly. I have a hunting cabin in the Cascades that you and Fuzzy are more than welcome to if you feel that you need to leave Seattle for a while.” Again, Julie felt like Sasha would be the cynic and again, she wasn’t because her fear was all but gone until the treatment was done which would probably take another week. Instead Sasha took the offer completely at face value. “Aww, that’s really nice,” said Sasha, pleasantly, “I’ll let you know if Fuzzy and I need to skip town.” Paul grabbed a chair from a nearby table and it screeched across the floor, drawing the attention of the few patrons in the restaurant. Then he sat down heavily at the end of it with a sigh. “Apologies about the smell,” he said, hands up, “Got roused out of bed early by a taxi flipping into my front door. No real time for a shower to make myself presentable.” Fuzzy’s mouth gaped open and Sasha looked mildly surprised. They both looked to Julie. “I’m okay,” said Julie, “Paul helped me out and calmed me down afterwards.” “What happened?” asked Fuzzy, “And why didn’t you text us? We would’ve walked over there and got you.” “It’s fine,” said Sasha, “She’s okay, right?” Julie shrugged. “I’m okay, but Gridguide is having a bunch of bugs in its automated taxi service and there’s been accidents all over the metroplex,” said Julie, “I tried coming straight here but instead the car started turning in circles and screaming about a pizza commercial. I levitated out. And I didn’t text you because…Well…I was kind of hosed up for a bit. I remembered to text Julian a few minutes later but that was about all I could do.” Paul cleared his throat. “Puffed her out of the way with an air spirit and I crushed the car with a water spirit,” boasted Paul, “Helped her calm down afterwards too.” “You’re awakened?” asked Fuzzy. “Yep.” Julie hadn’t needed him to get out of the way but she felt like he’d done his best even if he had crushed her trauma bag when he ordered the water spirit to destroy the car. His help had been heroic in a way even though the most useful thing he’d done afterwards was to help calm her down. And that had less to do with magic and everything to do with vice. Fuzzy and Sasha looked to Paul and then to Julie, who nodded, more or less confirming the story and they smiled at him, his smell now tolerated for the moment. “Are you hurt?” asked Pyg, as she assessed Julie, “I’m a capable medic if you need one.” Paul smiled charmingly at Pyg as the person he’d made himself up for spoke up. “Oh, I think she’s okay,” said Paul, smoothly to Pyg, “I saw to all her necessaries. Tell me, are you her guardian?” Julie opened her mouth but Sasha gave her a little kick under the table. Then she got a text. Sasha: I want to see how fast he figures it out. Julie frowned and it seemed like Sasha was going to play a joke on her kind of, sort of hero. She figured she did owe him something at least and decided to save him but her stomach chose that very moment to rumble and her head started to feel like someone was squeezing it. A potent mix of hunger and dehydration hit her with a double whammy. There was water on the table next to Pyg and she seized it and drank it down in a few heavy gulps. Not enough. Not nearly enough. “Can I have that?” asked Julie, as she pointed to Sasha's untouched glass of water. “Go for it,” said Sasha. Julie drank that down too as Paul flirted with the drone. She checked the time in AR after downing her second glass and realized that she had twenty-five minutes left to find some sort of food to deal with her hangover. “Oh no,” said the drone, with a charming smile, “We’ve never met. And I’ve actually just become acquainted with Sasha and Fuzzy a few hours ago.” Julie looked through the menu in AR and figured that she wasn’t going to have time enough to order an entree and eat it. So she ordered a basket of soy fries to get some calories in her and a salad with fruit and nuts so she could get something healthy in her. The prices were insane. Not high, but just how low they were. Soy fries would be cheap of course but real vegetables, fruit and nuts in her salad would run her at least fifty nuyen in Seattle and it would be small. But here it was a mere five nuyen and the picture looked pretty big. “Well,” he said, smoothly, “Perhaps you’d like to become acquainted with me then. I’m Paul. Charmed.” She ordered it on the spot and figured she had a moment before Paul embarrassed himself, because he didn’t know that he was flirting with a high end robot. And when she looked away from her AR menu, Paul was kissing Pyg’s hand who even blushed a little at the attention and sent a sparkling smile his way. “Oh my,” said Pyg, “You really are a charmer, aren't you?” “She’s a robot, Paul,” said Julie, “Sorry.” “Aww,” said Sasha. Sasha’s face fell. And this time, Fuzzy had stayed quiet because she really didn’t know how to handle the situation. “Did you do something?” asked Fuzzy. “I’m doing a lot of things,” said Sasha, “Oh poo poo, am I doing it again?” “Probably” exclaimed Fuzzy, “You keep asking that.” “poo poo,” she repeated. Paul watched the discussion unfold and then let go of Pyg’s hand, who gave him a winsome smile. “You’re a robot?” he asked of Pyg. Pyg nodded. “I’m the latest from the Ares Pygmalion Executive Elite line,” she said, pleasantly, “Would you like to register me? Sasha mentioned my machine learning algorithms. I actually can’t begin using any but the most basic algorithms until I’m registered so my functionality has been restricted. But might I say that I am fully skilled at...” “Stop,” said Julie, quickly, before the drone started talking about her “functionality”, “Don’t finish that sentence. Please don’t.” Pyg closed her mouth and shot Paul a flirty little smile. Paul immediately became disinterested. “And maybe don’t register her,” said Sasha, mildly, “She’s mine. I get to sell her. Me.” “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said coolly, “Julie, why didn’t you say something before I made a fool of myself?” “Because I’m hungry,” she growled, “And thirsty. And I’m feeling more like crap by the second. It hit me all at once. Sorry.” Paul looked at both of the empty glasses of water in front of her, grabbed them, stood up with a complaint, lumbered over to a drink dispenser and came back with two more glasses of water. “Drink up,” he said, as he sat back down, “Ah well, I didn’t have high hopes anyway. So where’d you get the robot?” Julie drank up while Sasha put her hands on her gift baskets. “Same place I got these, The Spa,” said Sasha. Sasha winced as Fuzzy kicked her under the table as they weren’t supposed to talk about The Spa. The Spa was the name of the secret and very exclusive deltaware cybernetics, bioware and geneware clinic that was for the wealthy and well connected on Council Island. Sasha had only been able to get in as a favor from Joyce given to her by Kenji. After all, she wasn’t really safe in Seattle if she wanted treatment for her panic disorder. Her mother and father were in an Ares prison for running the tempo drug ring. At least according to Ares, who was trying to place all blame for the deaths of over ten thousand people solely and squarely on him. So Sasha couldn’t really go anywhere else but to a Salish clinic. “You’re not supposed to talk about that,” said Fuzzy, through her teeth. Council Island wasn’t part of the metroplex even though it was located more or less in the middle of it in Lake Washington. Tempo had never really made it to the Salish Council so she was safe in their territory and that went double for an island with high security as it was where the diplomats from Salish territory lived while doing their work with Seattle. “Oh, The Spa?” he asked, “That clinic is the worst kept secret on the island. Not that I use it. You get some sort of gift basket or something?” Sasha nodded and hooked a thumb to Pyg. “Got her with the gift basket,” she said, “She was holding it. Not mine. Mine was smaller and generic and the one Pyg was carrying seemed custom. But they were near the exit in a booth and trying to give gift baskets to people on their way in or out.” Paul’s eye twitched and his enormous hands curled into fists. “Ares?” he growled, “Doing an apology tour in Salish lands? The loving balls on them.” “Yeah, I got this from a guy who was yelling something about supplying weapons to concentration camps like fifty years ago?” “Oh yeah,” he spat, “Baby Ares made bank supplying weapons for everyone from John Q. Racist to corporate guards to military death squads. They’re what’s left of the old United States’ military industrial complex and they have a lot of poo poo to answer for.” Sasha looked distressed by the news. Apparently she could still feel empathy, just not fear. “Yeah, there was a lot of yelling,” she said, quietly, “I think Ares is making some huge apology tour to anyone and everyone who matters. What with the poo poo they pulled and the fact that they’re in the middle of a hostile merger. It’s all chaos and so they’re flinging around money so people are less likely to take shots at them.” Paul’s wrath was a scary thing as the pressure of his presence became almost a physical weight. Fuzzy was suddenly on edge and Julie was nervous. Without another word, Paul grabbed his smokes out of his pocket, stood up, lit up with magic and left out the front door. Julie waved away the smoke with one hand. “Wow he’s scary,” said Sasha, mildly, “I mean I’m not scared but I feel like I should be.” “Number sixteen, order up!” called someone from the kitchen, “And no smoking in my restaurant! You smoke inside, you leave! First and last warning!” Julie looked at her order and it had come up mercifully quick. So she grabbed her order because she figured no one was going to give it to her and came back with a basket of soy fries and her salad. Sasha was snacking again but she looked suddenly interested in Julie’s fries, which had just come out of the fryer and so they were burning hot. “Mind if I have a couple?” asked Sasha. Julie frowned at Sasha but nodded grudgingly. “Not yet. They’re really…Hey!” exclaimed Julie. Sasha reached her entire hand into Julie’s basket of fries not thirty seconds out from the fat fryer. Apparently fear had a lot to do with common sense and social graces, because Julie had meant maybe a few fries and only after they’d cooled down. Fuzzy tried to slap Sasha’s hand away but Sasha was somehow faster despite Fuzzy’s enhanced reflexes and yelled after plunging her entire hand into the basket of fries. “gently caress!” she screamed, “Ow!” She pulled her hand out and waved it around frantically to cool it off. Fuzzy looked exasperated. “Don’t do that,” said Fuzzy. They stared at each other for a moment and to Julie and Fuzzy’s astonishment, Sasha tried reaching her other hand into the basket yet again. This time Fuzzy was ready and she caught her hand. “No,” said Fuzzy, emphatically, “You’ll burn yourself.” “But I want fries,” said Sasha, “She said I could have some.” “Have some when they won’t burn your hand,” said Fuzzy, slowly. Sasha thought hard about why it wasn’t a good idea. “So…Right, I’ll burn myself,” she said, “poo poo, I did it again.” “Should she be outside right now?” asked Julie, both fascinated and horrified. “She’s mostly fine so long as I’m minding her,” sighed Fuzzy, “Things were okay when we got her new outfit and she got her new haircut and dye job. All of that was stuff we discussed before. But she has to be reminded that things are scary. It turns out that fear keeps you from doing lots of things.” “My doctor said we need data to calibrate my fear response,” said Sasha, “We’re collecting data right now.” Sasha rolled up a sleeve and showed off a small, black, circular sensor attached to the back of her hand. Fuzzy was obviously unhappy with the situation and Sasha reminded Julie of the fearlessness of a certain type of drunk person, only worse because she wasn’t fully impaired. “Another week of this,” sighed Fuzzy, “Thankfully I don’t have to go back to school until Monday.” Sasha’s shoulders slumped. “Sorry,” she said. Fuzzy gave Sasha a hug. “It’s fine. I love you, so I’ll deal with it,” said Fuzzy, “It’s just a week. And you told me that the doctors said you’d get better the longer they treat you, right?” “That is what they said,” said Sasha, “I just hope I don’t get too afraid when they ramp up my fear and anxiety again.” “Why would they do that?” asked Julie. “They’re trying to find the extremes before they start dialing in on what I want," explained Sasha, "And that means it's part data, part personal experience for where I eventually land in terms of fear response. So tomorrow, I get to look forward to constant anxiety and maybe some panic attacks." "Yikes," said Julie. Fuzzy sighed and Sasha didn't let go of the hug. "Yeah, but it'll be worth it," said Sasha, "Today is bad, tomorrow is worse, but it's going to get better." Fuzzy and Sasha broke the hug and Sasha lifted Fuzzy's chin and briefly gazed into her eyes. It was a surprisingly intimate moment that was only happening because Sasha had no fear. "Right?" asked Sasha, of her girlfriend. Fuzzy looked a bit anxious but nodded. So Sasha went in for a kiss. This time Fuzzy accepted it despite the oily fish taste from Sasha’s meal, which made both Fuzzy and Sasha smile. Then Fuzzy licked her lips, grimaced at the taste and grabbed one of Julie’s glasses of water and took a sip to wash away the taste. Meanwhile, Sasha looked longingly at the fries which Julie slid away from her and instead picked hungrily at her salad with her fork. “So you got Pyg from what?” asked Julie, gesturing with her fork. Sasha shrugged and smiled. “Oh, there was some super rich guy in front of me on my way out,” she said, “Ares must have paid a ton to be there and it really only seemed so everyone could ignore or yell at the PR reps trying to hand them free stuff.” “Okay,” said Julie, between mouthfuls. “He yelled a lot,” said Sasha, “Mostly he was yelling at Pyg more and the PR reps less. He went on and on about atrocities that I had no idea about and that I’m probably going to look at later and feel bad about. Anyway, I just asked him if he didn’t want his gift basket if I could have it. So he shouted “Fine, whatever!” So I just took it and no one stopped me. Pyg followed me out. I figured out a few minutes later that she came with the basket and that he’d been yelling at a drone.” “You just took it,” said Julie, blankly. Sasha beamed and nodded. “Well yeah,” said Sasha, “Like I said, no one stopped me. So I took his and my smaller, generic one that they handed to me. I asked if I could have more and the reps said no. Then I tried taking a third because again, no one was stopping me. That’s when they tried to stop me but they obviously didn’t want to touch me so they just started scrambling to get the gift baskets away from me.” “Wait,” said Julie, “So you just stole a bunch of poo poo?” “I guess so,” said Sasha, “The PR reps were frantic and called security over, but security just laughed at them and told me I could only take two. So I did and I left.” Sasha then started piling the contents of the gift basket on the table while Julie ate. This wasn’t Sasha’s first time with the random assortment of things that the wealthy get and somehow she’d managed to find gift baskets even though she was no longer part of the elite. Julie remembered near the end of the school year last year how Sasha had doled out the contents of the one she took back from some big party for Ares mostly between Julie and Kenji, with a few choice bits like a shield that had later taken a bolt of fire from a toxic spirit to Fuzzy. “We got the usual,” said Sasha, “Soap, body wash, shampoo and conditioner of course. We’ve got snacks and oh…A new energy drink called Front Line Energy. Apparently it’s being marketed to soldiers and that seems really tone deaf to give to people you helped abuse. Things must really be chaotic down in marketing. And oh, maple syrup! Score!” Sasha was unloading both baskets at once and came out with a pint of maple syrup from her smaller basket and an entire gallon from the big one. They’d actually gotten maple syrup just a few months ago as well so here it was again. “From one of the last big groves of mature maple trees in the UCAS,” she said, “Ares owns it. Super luxury item. They sell it by the gallon for ten grand these days.” Julie almost choked on a fry at the mention of the price while Fuzzy poked at the jug. “I had it before we left school,” said Fuzzy, “And it was nice but note ten-thousand nuyen nice.” “Well it’s rare,” said Sasha, “Limited release because there aren’t that many maple trees anymore. Anyone can get sugary syrup for cheap but this is the real stuff. Collectors don’t even eat it. There’s a speculative market on this stuff of people betting that maple trees will go extinct and that they’ll have the last maple syrup in existence. You know, like how the Japanese did with Bluefin tuna before some lab started cloning them. A ton of people lost their shirts betting on extinction.” “That’s so hosed up,” sighed Julie. “Sure is!” agreed Sasha, “Anyway, we’ve got commlinks. Going to crack those open for parts for my cyberterminal. Momma needs a new processor. And oh, a voucher for top of the line, designer AR goggles, glasses or contacts and designer haptic gloves. Neat.” “Why not just put it in there?” asked Julie. “So you can get it custom,” said Sasha, “Hey Fuzzy, feel like new goggles?” Fuzzy’s clutched at her goggles which were nestled squarely on her forehead. “I like mine,” she said. “These would be better. Way better.” “Yeah, but I like mine.” “They’re beat up and the lenses are scratched,” said Sasha, plainly. Fuzzy wasn’t budging and Sasha sighed dramatically. “Fine,” she said, “You can try them both, okay?” Fuzzy thought about it and then relented, taking the voucher. Then Sasha reached into her basket and handed her voucher to Julie. “Here,” said Sasha. “Don’t you want one?” asked Julie. Sasha reached into her pocket and drew out two more vouchers and smiled happily. “Where’d you get those?” asked Fuzzy, warily. “Oh, I just took them from the baskets that no one wanted,” said Sasha, happily. Fuzzy threw up her hands. “I’d ask if you thought about getting kicked out of The Spa,” said Fuzzy, “But I know the answer. Do you?” Sasha had to think about this for a moment. “That would be…” said Sasha, slowly, “...Bad.” “Yes,” said Fuzzy, with thinning patience, “It would be bad.” Sasha shrugged. “They won’t,” said Sasha, “Because the people who probably run it hate Ares. I got away with it.” “Did you take anything else that you weren’t supposed to?” asked Fuzzy. “Just some protein bars,” said Sasha, and she added seconds later, “Hey, I got them for you. I know how much you like the Ares protein bars.” Sasha drew a fully dozen protein bars from her numerous pockets in her pants and coat and presented them to Fuzzy, who rolled her eyes and began stuffing the inside pockets of her jacket with them. Just in case, Julie grabbed two. When Sasha gave her a look, Julie sighed and slid the basket of fries into the middle of the table so Sasha could pick at them.” “No cyberware this time?” asked Julie, “I remember there was some cyberware in the gift baskets last time.” Sasha shook her head. “You have to design deltaware for a person’s specific genetic profile,” said Sasha, “Betaware too I guess, but deltaware is bespoke and made from top of the line materials. If it was in a gift bag it’d mean that you had their genetic code on file and you can do a lot of bad things with that. It’d basically be a threat. You’ll never see anything better than standard cyberware or alphaware in a gift basket because only those grades of cybernetics can be installed into anyone.” “Huh,” said Julie, “Anything else?” Sasha just started tearing through the gift bag, throwing out random snacks, electronics and vouchers. “Junk, junk, junk,” said Sasha, and then stopped, looked at a voucher and tore it in half, “Great, more space tourism. A flight to the Kingdom of Hawaii to go up the space elevator and then hang around on the loving Artemis Lunar Arcology. I can’t be scared but it turns out I can definitely be sad. gently caress you, Ares. I wish I’d stolen more.” She grumbled and both Julie and Fuzzy watched the tattered remains of an all expenses paid trip to space fluttered to the table in tatters as Sasha ripped it up. It was a golden ticket. Literally so, it was made from gold. “I don’t understand wealthy people,” said Julie, around a fry. “Me neither,” said Fuzzy. “Or me,” said Sasha, “And I was one of them for a while…Aaaand completely unlimited range time, bullets included at any Ares Weapon Emporium for a year. That’s it.” “That’s all?” asked Julie. “What, you want another space ticket to shred?” asked Sasha, moodily. “No,” she said, “Lots of vouchers in here is all.” Sasha hooked her thumb at Pyg, who’d finished her elk steak some time ago and was listening to the conversation while remaining unobtrusive. “Besides the golden ticket, she’s the big prize,” said Sasha, “Top of the line and she comes with a lot of upgrades you won’t find in the standard model like the multifuel engine. Plus autosofts for days. It costs a cool three grand to install a single new skillset but I bet she’s got a ton of them.” “Would you like me to do a comparison between the Executive Elite model and the standard Ares Pygmalion?” asked Pyg. “Do I have to register you?” asked Sasha. “Normally not, but I’ve been custom built to specific preferences for a specific client,” she said, “So I can’t divulge details in case that might constitute a violation of their privacy.” “What if I register you?” asked Sasha. “Then I could do that,” said Pyg, brightly, “As you would officially become my new owner. Though as you’d be my owner, any data pertaining to the client would be wiped for their privacy. However I would not lose any functionality.” Sasha squinted at Pyg. “Don’t know if I should sell you or strip you down for parts,” mused Sasha. -- Rolls: I rolled to see if Sasha had any good luck while at The Spa, the top of the line deltaware clinic on Council Island. She got 5 hits on 5 dice and so she walked away with gift baskets, including an antrhoform (humanoid) secretary drone that is a souped up version of the Saeder-Krupp Direktionssekretar, which is a mouthful, so it's now the Ares Pygmalion. It's basically a very smart robot. At least if/when Sasha registers it. And you also need five hits on a perception test to spot it and Julie made that on 8 dice. Sasha rolls 8 dice on etiquette and gets two hits with a glitch as she only needs two 1's on eight dice to glitch. Her level of fear and anxiety is being calibrated while she's doing limited levels of outpatient work. Basically as soon as she's done with the restaurant and the meeting, she's going back in the vat and will be back out tomorrow. Paul on the other hand charms everyone with 6 hits on an etiquette test to Sasha's 0 and Fuzzy's 2, critting on both of them, and Julie rolls a 3 so he just normally succeeds. He also hands Fuzzy 5000 nuyen which gave him bonus dice on his etiquette check. Paul also smells awful because he didn't shower this morning and critically succeeded on knowing that he smells bad as everyone failed their con check. He also failed with only 4 hits to notice that Pyg is a robot. Paul failed a composure roll and had to leave at the mention of Ares doing an apology tour on Salish lands due to the trauma he experienced. He has a strong bias against anyone currently involved in a corporation but succeeded in his roll not to discriminate against Sasha. I roll Fuzzy and Sasha's dice based on loyalty (12 dice) as Sasha is testing Fuzzy's loyalty with her shenanigans. Five hits and they're still going strong. Sasha experiences no consequences for her theft because while the people who run The Spa took Ares' money, they still despise them. Sasha makes off with a bunch of stolen swag, including new AR glasses, contacts and goggles for Julie, Fuzzy, Sasha and Kenji, two top of the line commlinks and 12k nuyen in rare maple syrup, a bunch of stolen snack bars and high end soaps and the like. --- I'll wrap up this scene with the next post as it's gotten away from me a bit. But it's been a while and I'm trying to re-familiarize everyone with what's going on while also introducing a new character in Paul. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Apr 3, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 23:49
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Sasha should hack the robot to get root and study it/ steal IP, if possible. Equal chance of bricking the thing or getting it to do crimes, or otherwise get full functionality without registering/keeping an Ares-backdoored spy around. They’re going to need the help, and she can always use the parts if she screws up and bricks it.
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Mar 21, 2023 07:25
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Question Time posted:Sasha should hack the robot to get root and study it/ steal IP, if possible. Equal chance of bricking the thing or getting it to do crimes, or otherwise get full functionality without registering/keeping an Ares-backdoored spy around. They’re going to need the help, and she can always use the parts if she screws up and bricks it. YES. That's a great idea. Always go for option C that lets you get the benefit of both A and B.
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Mar 21, 2023 18:15
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Julie, Fuzzy, Sasha, Paul and Pyg - Thursday, August 30th, 2075 – Early Afternoon - Council Island Julie was finally feeling normal after eating and drinking. Her hangover wasn't gone but it was finally being managed and no magic of hers at least could make it go away. Part of her wanted to get another basket of fries but she checked the time and she had fifteen minutes before she and her friends needed to leave. Twenty if they ran, because no taxi was going to pick them up today. At the same time, she wanted to ask Paul some questions as she wasn’t going to invite him to the business meeting. After all, he ran a big mining operation and Julie wanted to pick his brain for a bit, but she didn't know him well enough to directly involve her in her business like that. “We have to go in a couple minutes, Paul,” said Julie. Paul had ordered a beer and a salmon steak and was waiting on his order to come up. He frowned but nodded. “Hate to see our little adventure come to an end,” he said, “I’ll be here today and tomorrow if you feel like visiting an old man, but after that I head back to the Cascades.” Julie nodded in understanding. He seemed like he was busy. “Can we pick your brain for a bit?” she asked, “You know, since you have a lot of experience running things? I’m having some problems with my community. There’s a labor shortage at work and a labor shortage in Touristville and everyone is so stressed out. There's actually a stress epidemic due to overwork and I want to do my part to deal with it.” Fuzzy and Sasha looked up while Paul nodded, smiling through his beard. Meanwhile, Pyg brought Julie back another drink of water. She really couldn’t get enough and wondered just how dehydrated she’d been. “Lightning round, is it?” asked Paul, “Okay, shoot.” Julie nodded and looked at her friends, inviting them into the discussion as well. “Okay, so, I don’t have enough dentists or the management to run them,” she said, “I know technically I can mint a new one with surgery with hardwired skills, but the problem is trust.” Paul wrinkled his nose. “We don’t use hardwires in the Council,” he said, “At least most don’t, we actually learn how to do things even though it takes longer. If your labor doesn’t mean dick, it makes you vulnerable to becoming some sort of slave. And I hear that most people don’t own their hardwires so it makes them defacto indentured.” “Mine are provided free of charge,” said Julie, quickly, “And I pay double the standard rates.” Paul nodded in approval and Julie warmed just a bit from that approval. "Still, don't rely on skillwires," he said, "During the Crash, a lot of people who had hardwires got their tech damaged. Suddenly had no skills and worse, sometimes they had malfunctioning tech inside of them. Also hardwires don't lend themselves to improvisation. In fact, it's actively discouraged. Programmed skills make you less resilient, not more, don't rely on them. Even though it costs time and money, I can't suggest training your people any more than I possibly can." Julie furrowed her brow. "What, you mean sending them to school?" she asked. Paul shrugged. "Certifications can be taken from you," he said, "Especially if you're a poor ork or troll. That comes down from the corps, from government and other Institutions. None of them are your friends because they can strip it from you. But a skill can't be taken from you like hardwires can. It's yours. Skills make you resilient and skills that you learn will give you the ability to improvise that skillwires will never give you." Julie furrowed her brow in thought. "Here I keep getting told to go to college by my teachers," she said. Paul shook his head. "In the Council, yeah, go to school," he said, "In the UCAS? College is a club for rich kids and you're probably not going to learn much more than some good tutoring software and someone skilled can teach you. If you were human, maybe college would be a good idea for you. But you're an ork in the UCAS. Once the next Crash comes, say goodbye to all of your certifications." Julie cast a quick glance at Fuzzy and Sasha. Fuzzy looked angry and Sasha looked sad. "That's not fair," said Fuzzy, "Julie knows what she knows." "Julie has magic and she'll probably be fine," said Paul, "Most orks though? Well the UCAS lives and dies on exploiting its underclass which just so happen to be overwhelmingly ork. What better way to do that than wipe the slate clean of all your accomplishments? Some loving bureaucrat saying you don't know what you know? That's happened after both Crashes and it'll happen again. So develop your skills so you can rely on them. Your certifications mean nothing and if you go to college, it's only worth what you learned there, not a degree." "That's loving bleak," complained Sasha. "Yeah," said Paul, "The UCAS is not a nice place to live. Especially if you're an ork." There was a tense silence for a moment before Julie cleared her throat. “Anyway,” said Julie, “I was thinking about asking one or two of my nurses if they wouldn’t mind moving over to dentistry since I’ve been working with them for about a year now. My doctor’s office would suffer but I could just schedule less appointments outside of the community.” “Is there anyone else from the community that could take hardwires?” asked Fuzzy. “Maybe,” said Sasha, “You need a SIN and most of them don’t have that. And it does help if they’re smart. I might be able to scrape one or two together from the community, maybe. And maybe we'll see about investing in teaching people skills once we deal with the Prop Twenty-Three crisis." Sasha spoke up. “Good management will be hard to find,” said Sasha, “Usually it takes at least a couple months to acclimate to a new work environment. And you can’t really hardwire in leadership skills. I mean you can, but you need to build trust to be an effective manager and that takes time. Otherwise those skills don’t mean much.” Paul pointed to Sasha and nodded. “That’s my experience,” he said, “And you need to be there to train them up or at least have someone else you trust to train them up. You can limp along with temporary hires but if you want trust, that takes a long time to find people worthy of your trust.” Julie frowned. They needed help now. The dentist practice was central to her plan to generate nuyen for herself and for Touristville. Money that she needed for farms to feed the ACHE so they didn't riot and roll over Touristville like a wave. So she needed to keep the dentist office working and she couldn’t rely on Mrs. Liu and Jimmy to do everything for her. There was also the fact that she’d hired Gentoo and Saanvi, shadowrunners. She had no idea how to explain to Krupa that her sister was a shadowrunner now and probably thought that she shouldn’t be the one to do that. It wasn't fun keeping that kind of secret. Someone was looking to sabotage the Touristville community and quite likely her dental office as it was the central economic engine for Touristville. So any new hire had to absolutely be trusted. “Trust is the most important thing,” said Julie. “Well then,” said Paul, “Call on a friend to help you limp along until you hire someone new.” Fuzzy pointed to Pyg. “Robots do what you tell them to, right?” asked Fuzzy, “Buy some robots. They run stuff sometimes over at the Ares mall when Sasha and I used to go. I didn't even know most of them were robots.” "Yeah," said Sasha, "They have this kind of bland handsomeness or beauty to them. You learn to spot them after a while because they all have the same kind of look from mass production. Not the same look, just variations on the same theme." Everyone looked at Pyg who smiled charmingly in response. "Not her," said Sasha, "She's custom." “If you’re interested in registering me, we can begin the process at any time,” she said, happily. “Will that work?” asked Julie. “For management?” asked Sasha, “Sure. One or two more and you could completely automate customer service and management. You’d just need someone on hand to mind them in case something unexpected happens that falls outside of their programming, but it'd just be a nudge or two each hour after their machine learning kicks in. Honestly, as pretty as she is and…Hey Pyg, do you have negotiation software?” “Absolutely,” said Pyg, happily. Sasha rubbed her chin. It seemed now that she had a problem to solve her lack of fear didn’t matter as much. “Might have to do a little tinkering since your business model isn’t standard,” mused Sasha, “Just a little code and let machine learning do the rest. But Pyg would probably go a long way to raising revenue.” “Really?” asked Julie, quite interested in that. “Oh yeah,” said Sasha, “Drones don’t get tired, don’t play on their commlinks, don’t show up late, don’t get sick, they don’t quit and they’re always pleasant if you program them to be that way. They're a big up front expense but pretty cheap after the initial investment.” “They also don’t get paid,” warned Paul, “We have strict laws in the Council about jobs being taken by drones. Too much drone labor is a recipe for unrest and revolt. Don’t rely on them too much.” Julie nodded slowly. Pyg probably wouldn’t take many jobs, but her ten dental drones did the work of what used to be many hundreds of high paid dentists some twenty or thirty years ago. Those were jobs that had been permanently eliminated by technological innovation and those were people who’d made a good living. After a short while of dwelling on that ugly train of thought, Julie realized that she’d blanked out for a moment. She came back to the conversation as Sasha was talking. “Also if we’re going to use drones I’d probably want to root it,” said Sasha, who paused, “Uh, hack it so we don’t have some Ares backdoor spy wandering around and reporting on us. No registration because Ares can just see and hear through their devices. Plus I could rip the autosoft library from her so we’re not paying three grand per skillset if we wanted more drones. Slap those new skills onto new drones. Not top of the line drones like this, but still pretty good ones.” “Right,” said Julie. “Might brick it if I screw up but I doubt it,” said Sasha, her tone unconcerned, “She’s top of the line but between my skills, my magical enhancement and my cyberdeck her defenses are no match for me. I'll probably be lazy though. See if there are any matrix communities that have an easy solve.” “Any non-authorized tampering outside of normal parameters on an Ares Pygmalion Executive Elite unit will void my warranty,” said Pyg, with a small frown, “And my code will be wiped. I strongly suggest registration. After all, if I’m stolen, you won’t be able to file a police report as I won’t belong to you.” Sasha sniffed disdainfully. “I don’t give a single poo poo about your terms of service,” said Sasha, dismissively, "I'll walk straight through your bullshit rear end stock corporate firewall." Fuzzy, who'd frequently been annoyed by Sasha, smiled at her. Sasha tapped her cheek and Fuzzy planted a kiss right there. "Hell yeah," said Sasha. “About community," warned Paul, "If you put drones into a community that doesn’t have them, make sure to ease them into the idea. When automation comes, orks and trolls are usually the first to get the ax.” Julie nodded and considered her options. Hire a manager and see if Mrs. Liu could train them, a real roll of the dice or buy Pyg and maybe another drone or two to run her operation. As for labor, she could maybe entice a nurse or two to be a dentist with the right cyberware installed but her clinic would suffer. “What about general labor?” asked Julie, “Touristville probably needs at least twenty more hands from what Tek said last night. Probably fifty.” “What kind of labor do you need?” asked Paul. “Oh, customer service, cooks, people who can move stuff around, probably extra security,” said Julie. The conversation was a little hazy last night but Tek had done a lot of bitching to her and Fuzzy about Touristville’s problems while they drank. “Can’t we just bring in friends of the community?” asked Fuzzy, “They’ll probably show up if the price is right.” Paul shook his head. “I read about that Prop Twenty-Three thing you’ve got going,” he said, “Too much money involved. What is it? Tens of billions? More? Whatever. At some point you’re going to have to deal with the fact that you almost certainly have infiltrators to sabotage your community. Not just from without, but from within.” That was something Julie had never thought about and didn’t like thinking about, though Sasha nodded her head. “Oh yeah,” said Sasha, casually, “Slither your way in.” “Do the work,” said Paul. “Become a pillar of the community,” she answered back. “And the pillar comes down,” he said, “Community solidarity disintegrates and so the individuals that made up that community get rolled up as their solidarity disintegrates. Odds are you know them if you feel confident enough to make moves like these. You'll be one of the people that they watch and target. Watch out closely for betrayals. You aren't prepared. You never will be. So prepare for being unprepared.” Julie felt physically ill at the idea of someone like Devin, Mrs. Liu or even Marco betraying her. She had no idea how she’d even begin to handle that. “Um…How do you deal with that?” asked Julie, her voice very quiet. “I could take a look,” said Sasha, nonchalantly. “No,” said Paul, firmly. “Wouldn’t be a big…” continued Sasha. “No!” he exclaimed, and he pointed a finger at her, “Spies love punking amateurs who think they can come at them. At best they lead you around by the nose to gently caress with you. More likely you get killed or end up getting people you care about killed.” Sasha only shrugged but Fuzzy gave her another disapproving frown. “You’re doing it again,” said Fuzzy. Sasha sighed. “Yeah, fine, I won’t,” said Sasha, “So what, we hire professionals?” “Probably,” said Paul, “Hire someone very experienced in counterintelligence. You’ll pay through the nose but it’s worth it. They’ll tell you what to do.” “How do I…” said Julie, completely lost, “Who?” Sasha leaned forward with the biggest smile and patted Julie reassuringly on the hand. “I know the kind of people to call,” said Sasha, “We’ll talk later.” "Do you?" asked Paul. Sasha nodded and didn't explain further. “You’ll talk to them in a few days when you’re sane,” said Fuzzy, firmly, "Not right now." “Fair,” said Sasha, “Anyway, labor?” “I don’t suggest calling in people that are friends of the community,” said Paul, “You’re begging for more infiltrators that way.” “So what, just put out some ads?” asked Julie. “What about the ACHE?” asked Fuzzy, “Those people got abandoned and imprisoned.” “It’s not a prison, Fuzzy,” said Sasha, dismissively. Fuzzy eyed Sasha. “Then why can’t they leave?” asked Fuzzy. Sasha opened her mouth, closed it and then made a thoughtful face. “Okay, point,” said Sasha, “I don't think that they normally do. Let's see how they leave.” Sasha took a moment to check the matrix while Julie checked the time. They had about six minutes left before they walked. Ten if they ran. Paul grabbed his salmon steak himself along with another beer as his order came up and he took it to go. Apparently he had places to be too. “Okay,” said Sasha, “You just need a credit check. It’s two-thousand nuyen in your bank account. Oh, and there’s a new processing fee of five-hundred nuyen. Looks like that's new since the Ares takeover.” “Great,” grumped Paul, “Credit check concentration camps. Couldn’t be any more UCAS if you tried.” He went for his pack of smokes and stuck a cigarette in his mouth. He didn’t light it, but he did work the end in his mouth. “That’s it?” asked Julie. “Twenty-five hundred nuyen is a lot of money for most people, Julie,” said Fuzzy, patiently, "And they could technically walk away with the two-thousand. There's nothing keeping them there." “I know that,” said Julie, irritably, "And we'll keep them there because Touristville is a great place to live." Though she admitted to herself that her grasp of what money was and how it worked was odd these days. She balked and small purchases she understood but large purchases that were new to her seemed achievable. And she wasn't a fool either. Two-thousand nuyen was a lot of money to someone who was poor and they might blow through a sudden windfall in good ways or ill. Once she got them out, nothing bound them to Touristville. They'd be free to join or leave. “Honestly I could get them out for way less,” said Sasha, “Lone Star runs who gets in and out and they’re not happy with Ares right now. And they don’t know Ares protocols.” “Nooooo,” groaned Fuzzy, "You're doing it again. Think it through." Sasha shook her head at Fuzzy. “Fifty people in the ACHE suddenly disappearing wouldn’t be missed,” she said, “You’ll have an algorithm that reviews leaving and all you’ll have to do is make sure it isn’t flagged so you don't bring down attention on yourself. Then all you have is a pissed off gate guard to bribe. That’s it. If a review from a real person ever comes it’ll be five or ten years from now as they glance over it for maybe a second. That's how much paperwork this is going to be buried under. That way you save a hundred thousand nuyen and change, minus the bribe while still getting everyone out.” Paul smiled at Sasha. "Not perfect, but I'll take it," he said, "I like you." Sasha smiled back at him. “Thanks,” she said back. “You’ll still have to feed them,” said Paul, “Treat them and such. Odds are they’ll be sick, starving, scared and emotionally scarred when you get them. Concentration camps are pretty much the same wherever you go and the people that come out are always in a bad way. Doubtful that you’ll get any infiltrators from abandoned people but it’ll take a bit to feed them up and get them healthy enough to work. Treat them right though and give them a future? Rescuing them from the biggest concentration camp in the world? That'd buy my loyalty.” “You…Want us to hire people from the ACHE?” asked Julie. Paul grinned broadly. “If I was a young man I’d say throw rope ladders over the walls or just bust them down,” he said, “Maybe pay the guards a visit on the way out. But now? Get them out however you can, as many as you can, and if you break a few laws in the process, good, so long as you don’t get caught.” He seemed to deliberate with himself for a few moments. Then he nodded to himself and fished around in his pockets and pulled out a dozen black credsticks and shoved them into the middle of the table. Julie felt an odd, fluttery feeling in her stomach. Not attraction or fear, but exhilaration. Was she going to do this? Despite her misgivings, her fear and not knowing how she would, she reached out for the black credsticks and pulled them to her. “Hot drat,” said Paul, happily, “I’m feeling young again. My contribution. Take it if you got the guts. Otherwise, spend it on whatever. Can't make you do what you don't want to do. But if you impress me...” Then Paul reached into his other pocket and produced an honest to goodness wallet and pulled out a business card. The kind that people didn’t use anymore and he handed it to Julie. “When they’re out, however you get them out, you tell them Pawl Shaggy Mountain helped spring them,” he said, proudly, "Otherwise this is goodbye." Julie took the card automatically, not really knowing what it was. Though before she could read it all, Pawl, not Paul, stood up and shook Fuzzy’s hand, Sasha’s hand and then Julie’s hand last of all. “Thanks for helping an old man feel like he’s doing something good,” he said, “It’s not a feeling I get much these days. My comm code is on that card. Don’t lose it, but also maybe don’t put it into your comm, don’t call me from your comm and don’t use your name over the comm. I’m a person who’s watched by a lot of people. If you don’t mind some war stories, come visit me out in the Cascades sometime. We’ll fire up the barbecue and I’ll show you some real Cascade Ork hospitality.” “Sure, yeah,” said Julie, feeling overwhelmed, "I'll let you know how it turns out." "Do," said Paul. Paul stretched and grunted as he got up from his chair. “Bye Paul!” called Fuzzy. “Bye!” shouted Sasha. Pawl Shaddy Mountain waved with one of his enormous hands, killed his last beer, grabbed his salmon steak and left feeling twenty years younger as he left the restaurant. “Still looks like the last popsicle in the freezer,” quipped Sasha. Julie rolled her eyes while Sasha giggled and then Julie looked at the “business card” on simple white card stock. She’d never held or seen one before, but its intended use was obvious as she read it. “Pawl Shaggy Mountain, Tribal Chieftain of the Cascade Ork Tribe,” she read, “Mining and logistics. Whatever you need, we’ll bring it to you.” There was a comm code on it as well as an address in the Salish Council, presumably near the Cascade mountain range. Julie passed around the card and Fuzzy took a long look at it before she passed it to Sasha. “Huh,” said Sasha, “I think we just impressed someone important. At least if we get people out of the ACHE. And I think he'll be more impressed depending on how we do it.” Julie tried to shove all of those credsticks into her pockets and failed. Women’s clothing still didn’t have much in the way of pockets. So Fuzzy took it and shoved those credsticks into her many pockets on the inside of her custom made jacket. “He didn’t look important,” said Fuzzy. “Well I did rouse him out of bed with a taxi through his front door,” said Julie, “Not a lot of time to look presentable.” "Really important people don't always look important," said Sasha, "They just are important. They dress however they want to dress." Julie looked at the time. “Oh poo poo,” said Julie, “We gotta go.”  CYOA Time! So we’ve got a bunch of choices to make. Don’t worry about giving me specific answers for everything because there’s a lot of choices to make. First, we need new dentists to keep the dental office running, which means installing hardwires in someone to give them instant skills via technology. The obvious options are to pull from the community at large, pulling nurses from Julie’s doctor’s office or hiring out. Each comes with problems. Julie’s nurses mean that there will be fewer nurses to go around. Hiring out comes with the possibility of infiltrators or someone becoming an informant. And hiring smart people from Touristville means that things might not run as well. Second, the dentist office needs management. Julie can roll the dice and try and hire a manager for relatively cheap. Or she can see about buying Pyg off Sasha as well as one or two other humanoid/anthroform drones that are cheaper to run the front of house in the dental office. The price tag for this will be roughly 160k, 80k to Sasha and 40k for each drone after that. This will solve management problems. Though she will have to talk to people in the community because corporations increasing automation is what puts most people out of work and drove them into poverty in the first place. It would also wipe out roughly half of what the dentist office has made so far. Third, do we buy more skills for the other drones if we purchase more? Or do we have Sasha break into Pyg and risk bricking her? Sasha is pretty sure she can but it is a risk. Each skill for a drone like perception or etiquette costs 3k each and that can build up quickly. So would you download a car? Would you copy that floppy? Or do we play it safe? Fourth, the community probably has infiltrators. Think less undercover cops, though probably them too, and more like corporate intelligence agents. Pawl has strongly warned the teens against doing amateur hour sleuthing because it’ll likely get them or people they know killed. It’s a sellers market for security work right now and freelance intelligence agents are included. So it’ll cost Julie roughly 5k nuyen a day with a big question mark as to when or if it gets done. She could also hire shadowrunners which would be even more discreet and cheaper, but that’s risking a big mess. Fifth, Julie wants to spring people from the ACHE as she's been inspired by Pawl. Pawl, a concentration camp survivor, correctly recognizes the ACHE as the world's largest concentration camp but instead of for some ethnic group, it's for the poor. He has bankrolled (I roll 12d6) 34k to free as many people from the ACHE as Touristville will absorb. To get 50 people the legal way which will resolve Touristville’s labor problems it will cost 125k nuyen. However, former Lone Star guards are the people who watch the walls and there’s a ton of corporate chaos from the Ares/Lone Star hostile merger. Sasha thinks she’ll be able to use some forgery with her knowledge of Ares corporate protocols and then offer a little bribe to smooth things over. Sasha thinks that so long as the paperwork looks right and the guard gets bribed, then no one will care and no one will notice. Or we can just do a good old fashioned jailbreak and throw rope ladders over the walls and see who climbs out, though that’s the loud and flashy way to do it and it might bring a lot of heat. We can ignore going to the ACHE but we would not get Pawl as a contact. Currently his connection is a 6, which is very high and his loyalty is dependent on how we handle getting people out of the ACHE, but it'll be between a 1 which is "just biz" to 5 which would be good buddy territory. What we do and how we choose to do it will reflect on his final loyalty stat. Keep in mind that you don't need to hit every choice above if you don't want to. Just talk out what you want to do in general as much or as little as you want. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Apr 3, 2023 |
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Mar 22, 2023 20:30
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If we're talking about the ACHE, that means Kenji. As soon as he's compos mentis we need to get him in the loop on the ACHE idea. There's a lot of room to choose poorly in that regard, and having some checks on who we'd pick in that situation would be good. He may not know himself, but he can probably get a decent idea through Clever. However we do that, though, we'd need to be quiet. Word gets out that we're cutting golden tickets out of the concentration camp, and desperate people will do what desperate people do. Let Sasha try to crack Pyg. She has ridiculously high Edge, so her chances of catastrophic failure are low. If it's successful, we can put Pyg to work in Touristville, but it'd be a good idea to get buy-in from Auntie Liu (which, again, means Kenji.) Face is pretty important for Julie to retain legitimacy in Touristville, even outside the East end. If that bombs out, Pyg could see other use, potentially as a bodyguard for the scoobies? It's an Ares drone, it probably has or can be fitted with some sort of martial ability. Failing that, as upgrades for Sasha's compooter. Also, man, I can still remember the names of these characters even though it's been almost a year. That's gotta say something good about the story.
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Mar 23, 2023 00:08
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I just want Touristville to not need Julie anymore so the crew can gently caress off across the world in a mystery machine. Turn into the A-Team shadowrun. How many people in the ACHE? 50 isn't really a significant number right? Touristville absorbs 50 and they'll still be overrun when poo poo hits the fan. Toughy fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Mar 23, 2023 |
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Mar 23, 2023 06:41
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Toughy posted:I just want Touristville to not need Julie anymore so the crew can gently caress off across the world in a mystery machine. Turn into the A-Team shadowrun. That is entirely doable and by the end of this book I plan to allow Julie bowing out as an option. Or something happens and Touristville functionally dissolves, achieving the same thing. Also when we get to the next book, Fuzzy isn't as involved in Touristville and will only visit it infrequently if it still exists. As for travel to the Salish Council, that will be doable in the next book. And I'm going to do my best to speed towards the next book as I feel like we've spent a long time with Julie. We'll be back to Fuzzy again and any interaction with Touristville will be pretty small. quote:How many people in the ACHE? 50 isn't really a significant number right? Touristville absorbs 50 and they'll still be overrun when poo poo hits the fan. There's roughly 150,000 people in the ACHE. Fifty is not a significant number to alleviate pressure on the ACHE but it is a significant number for relieving labor problems in Touristville because everyone is overworked and stressed out. Julie's new dental office has caused too many new customers to show up and everyone is working hard to pull down enough money to use to save their community. Gwyneth Palpate posted:Also, man, I can still remember the names of these characters even though it's been almost a year. That's gotta say something good about the story. That makes me glad to hear that. Thank you.
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Mar 23, 2023 07:00
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Nurses from community at large, we want to stay involved with the town. Buy Pyg and one drone, jailbreak Pyg. Pirate necessary skills. Ignore infiltrators for now, just keep an eye on our security practices. We dont have the surplus budget for shadowrunners. Instead, spend the money on bribing the guards and getting the people out.
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Mar 23, 2023 19:12
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First, we need new dentists to keep the dental office running, which means installing hardwires in someone to give them instant skills via technology. The obvious options are to pull from the community at large, pulling nurses from Julie’s doctor’s office or hiring out. Each comes with problems. Julie’s nurses mean that there will be fewer nurses to go around. Hiring out comes with the possibility of infiltrators or someone becoming an informant. And hiring smart people from Touristville means that things might not run as well. Can we move the existing nurses from Julie's clinic to the higher priority dental office? And maybe get someone from the community to help with the lower priority and less busy clinic. Second, the dentist office needs management. Julie can roll the dice and try and hire a manager for relatively cheap. Or she can see about buying Pyg off Sasha as well as one or two other humanoid/anthroform drones that are cheaper to run the front of house in the dental office. The price tag for this will be roughly 160k, 80k to Sasha and 40k for each drone after that. This will solve management problems. Though she will have to talk to people in the community because corporations increasing automation is what puts most people out of work and drove them into poverty in the first place. It would also wipe out roughly half of what the dentist office has made so far. Buy Pyg off Sasha, hire 1 other drone. Make and keep an open promise with the community to never have more than 1 drone for 5 employees (or whatever ratio will allow her to use 2 drones right now). Third, do we buy more skills for the other drones if we purchase more? Or do we have Sasha break into Pyg and risk bricking her? Sasha is pretty sure she can but it is a risk. Each skill for a drone like perception or etiquette costs 3k each and that can build up quickly. So would you download a car? Would you copy that floppy? Or do we play it safe? Hack the Fourth, the community probably has infiltrators. Think less undercover cops, though probably them too, and more like corporate intelligence agents. Pawl has strongly warned the teens against doing amateur hour sleuthing because it’ll likely get them or people they know killed. It’s a sellers market for security work right now and freelance intelligence agents are included. So it’ll cost Julie roughly 5k nuyen a day with a big question mark as to when or if it gets done. She could also hire shadowrunners which would be even more discreet and cheaper, but that’s risking a big mess. We are CYOAing Shadowrun. Hire runners. Start with Kenji's contacts. If we want a lower risk approach, we can ask our runners to just quietly figure out who the infiltrators are. Don't try to stop or expose them. Information collection only. Fifth, Julie wants to spring people from the ACHE as she's been inspired by Pawl. Pawl, a concentration camp survivor, correctly recognizes the ACHE as the world's largest concentration camp but instead of for some ethnic group, it's for the poor. He has bankrolled (I roll 12d6) 34k to free as many people from the ACHE as Touristville will absorb. To get 50 people the legal way which will resolve Touristville’s labor problems it will cost 125k nuyen. However, former Lone Star guards are the people who watch the walls and there’s a ton of corporate chaos from the Ares/Lone Star hostile merger. Sasha thinks she’ll be able to use some forgery with her knowledge of Ares corporate protocols and then offer a little bribe to smooth things over. Sasha thinks that so long as the paperwork looks right and the guard gets bribed, then no one will care and no one will notice. Or we can just do a good old fashioned jailbreak and throw rope ladders over the walls and see who climbs out, though that’s the loud and flashy way to do it and it might bring a lot of heat. Bribe. Only suckers pay full price; only fools go loud when there's a quieter option. As an aside--these days, every time I see a near-future tech development, I immediately think back to this thread/Shadowrun. Look at this, United running vaguely sinister-looking air taxis. The tech-dystopia is already here. Boat Stuck fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Mar 25, 2023 |
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Mar 25, 2023 05:47
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Julie, Fuzzy, Sasha, Pyg and Chelan - Thursday, August 30th, 2075 – Early Afternoon - Council Island Inn It was a brisk walk to the Council Island Inn. The walk was good for Julie, who hadn’t made any decisions about what to do or how to proceed just yet. There was just too much swirling around in her head, but walking did give her time for consideration. She walked ahead alone, save for Pyg who really didn’t count as she was just a drone. Behind her by about ten feet were Fuzzy and Sasha, who were just far enough away that Julie couldn’t hear them clearly over the wind. Julie walked the mostly empty streets, having checked with the island’s security so they wouldn’t be hassled. Since they were on the main drag, they walked past a mix of government and light commercial buildings. When she took a turn down the road that Julie’s AR mapping program, that AR beam of light moving off into the distance, it took her down a road that was heavily forested on both sides. And many of the trees here looked taller, wider and older than the ones at school. Julie didn’t take time to pay attention to the trees though. Instead she was too wrapped up in thoughts of what she needed to do after leaving Council Island for Touristville and what the meeting ahead might be like. Her inattention was so bad that she nearly stepped off the road a few times but since Pyg was right next to her, the drone gently nudged Julie in the right direction without her even noticing. They finally emerged into a large clearing some minutes later. Behind a tiny parking lot was the island’s largest building at a whopping three stories tall. It looked like a cross between a luxury hotel and a turn of the century hunting lodge and was altogether different looking than the normal Salish designs that heavily featured cedar. Instead this was gaudier, with stone pillars holding up the first floor, a wooden second level deck and in her opinion, far too many unnecessary looking windows. It wasn’t ugly, just gaudy, and therefore different than the rest of the buildings on the island. Apparently Julie must’ve stood there to stare at it because Fuzzy and Sasha caught up with her. “Why does this place look so different from everything else on the island?” asked Julie, "Something about it just bothers me." “Because rich people use it?” asked Fuzzy. Sasha took a moment in answering. “Checking their matrix site,” said Sasha, distractedly, “There’s the about page...Hmmm...Okay, got it. It’s a war trophy.” Julie looked to Sasha. “War trophy?” asked Julie. “Yeah, apparently it belonged to some billionaire who made his money selling drones to the old US,” said Sasha, “Back when that meant unmanned planes that would spy on people or kill them or both. Apparently those planes killed a lot of people early in the war until the united tribes blew up the military bases, airports and drone manufacturing plants with magic.” Fuzzy took a step back and took in the lodge. “The entire hotel is a trophy?” asked Fuzzy, impressed. Sasha nodded. “Yeah,” said Sasha, “Apparently that billionaire tried to stick it out instead of fleeing the country and got captured. A lot of the hotel has had updates in the last decade but the stone pillar that they put him against before they shot him. I think it's on the back end of the place though.” “Whoa,” said Julie, “They just killed a billionaire? Fuzzy shrugged and Julie looked at Sasha, who had a thoughtful look on her face. “Well, he ran a commercial empire that killed a lot of their people,” said Sasha, who frowned in thought, as she spoke slowly, “And it says here that they shot everyone else that was with him too...Including his family." Sasha stood silent and still and filled the space around her with that uncomfortable stillness and silence. Fuzzy stood next to her and held Sasha’s hand to give her strength. It was so natural between the two that even while Sasha was deep in a particularly dark kind of introspection, holding hands was so natural that she didn’t even need to think about it. “War sucks,” said Sasha, finally, “And making money off it sucks too.” Julie wasn’t really sure what was going through Sasha’s head at the moment, but she could guess. After all, Sasha’s former corporation, Ares, was the biggest weapons manufacturer in the world. And her father had been one of the people that ran the corporation at a high level. At least until he didn't. “Yeah,” said Fuzzy, quietly. “Yeah,” agreed Julie. The moment passed and they headed inside. The inside of the Council Island Inn wasn’t as gaudy as the outside. If Julie were in Seattle, her expectations of a fancy hotel would be that the decor would be made of marble, glass and sparkling precious metals. Not that she’d ever been to one before but she’d seen fancy hotels in trids. Instead, the inside of the Council island Inn was defined by burnished old wood and polished stone. On her right was a large fireplace, complete with a real fire and real burning logs which filled the room with the pleasant perfume of wood smoke. Near the fire were a number of extremely comfortable looking overstuffed chairs so that one could sit near the fire and relax or chat or drink. Lining the wall on her left side were pictures. The one that caught her attention most was a picture of men, women and children in both traditional garb and modern, at least at the time. Some of them profiles, some laughing and they were often armed. She figured that these were pictures taken during the Ghost Dance War by the date underneath on a plaque. It was set inside of an alcove set into the stone, walled off by glass and filled with what looked like historical artifacts from that period of time. An old rifle with some of its parts stripped down and replaced with leather. Clothing worn at the time of the capture of Council Island when it was still called Mercer Island. As well as a number of fancy looking knick-knacks that looked old, but had obviously been captured as war booty. What caught her eye was a black and gold smartphone, the forerunner to the commlink, with a bullet hole through it. She didn’t have long to look though and she instead approached the front desk with her friends and Pyg, which was a long looking table with a friendly looking elven woman who sat in a chair behind it. The woman looked of native descent, but she was also an elf and so Julie had no idea how old she actually was as elves aged differently than the other metatypes. Though she lacked the higher cheekbones that most elves had and could have passed for human if she’d hid her pointed ears, though she didn't. She was a bit like Julian in that way in that she could pass for human if she wanted to. Instead her cheeks were full and round, her hair was dark, long and straight, her build was slight and her brown eyes were currently fixated on a real book made from real paper that was held in her hands. And though Julie couldn’t read the title as it was probably written in one of the local languages, from the cover it looked like a real bodice ripper of a romance novel where a shirtless man held a woman in a flowing dress ever-so-tightly to his well muscled chest. After waiting for a few seconds, Julie cleared her throat. Instead of being startled, the woman looked up, smiled and slid an honest to goodness bookmark into the book and put it down behind the desk. “Welcome to the Council Island Inn,” said the front desk worker, “Do you have a reservation?” Behind her, on what looked like an oddly raised platform about five feet back from her chair, ascended a small, white, fluffy dog up steps made specifically for it and then into a dog bed that everyone had missed because it seemed so out of place. The dog was a puppy and looked like one of the fluffier breeds of Spitz, like a large Pomeranian. “We have a meeting in a few minutes,” said Julie, “With Laird.Thomas.” The woman looked into the middle distance for a moment and her brown eyes shined. She was wearing smart contacts so Julie witnessed scrolling text and when she was done checking she nodded and the text and the light of her contacts disappeared. “I assume I’m talking to Julie, Sasha and…Fuzzy?” asked the woman, with a small frown. “That’s us,” said Julie, quickly. Both Fuzzy and Sasha were leaning on the front desk and the puppy wagged its tail as they both gave it their attention. “Okay, I’ll just need to see some identification,” said the front desk worker. It was presented quickly and she nodded, then gestured to Pyg. “And you, miss?” “She’s a drone,” said Sasha, “Not registered yet. New buy.” The front desk stared hard at the drone for a few seconds and then shrugged. “I’m sorry, but we can’t have an unregistered drone past the front desk,” she said. “Oh, we didn’t know,” said Julie. The front desk worker looked at her in a way that suggested a frown, but she refrained. “That’s fine,” said the front desk worker, and she pointed to a door, “Just instruct her to go into that closet and deactivate herself. You can pick her up when you leave.” Sasha turned to her drone. “Pyg,” said Sasha, distractedly, “Go into that closet and turn yourself off until we come back.” “Okay Sasha,” said Pyg, warmly, “Please remember to get me on your way out." Sasha only grunted and Pyg walked over to a nearby closet, which really was just a dark utility closet. She entered and shut the door behind her without another word. Julie was about to leave for the meeting but neither Fuzzy nor Sasha walked behind her. Instead they were trying to get the dog to come over to them as the front desk wasn’t sealed off. So Julie came back, slightly annoyed but they had a few minutes more before they were officially late. “I’m surprised you have a dog in a nice place like this,” said Julie, “Does it belong to the owner?” The front desk worker brightened considerably and straightened her posture. “That dog is Chelan, he’s a Salish Wool Dog,” said the front desk worker, proudly, “Have you heard of them?” Julie thought back and barely remembered Julian trying to distract Song, the Aztechnology priestess and guide when they’d visited with a story about the wool dog. “Something about cloning,” said Julie, “Not much more.” The dog descended from the raised platform and decided to approach Fuzzy and Sasha. Once sniffs were had and Chelan the dog decided they were friendly, he immediately rolled onto his belly for tummy scratches, which he received. “Ah, but he’s not a clone,” said the elven woman, excitedly, “The wool dog has been extinct since the eighteen-sixties. It was recently brought back as it’s part of the cultural heritage of many of the local tribes. I guess someone decided there was enough genetic diversity in the cloning stock to start breeding them. Chelan here is the nineteenth naturally born wool dog in over two centuries.” Fuzzy reached into one of her many inside jacket pockets, produced a dog treat and offered it to the dog. Chelan immediately began to chow down. The front desk worker froze, briefly panicked and then put on a tight smile. “Please don’t feed the dog,” said the elven woman, “He’s on a special diet.” Chelan didn’t seem to care as he scarfed the dog treat down immediately and looked for more. Though all he got were more pets which seemed more than satisfactory. “Oh, sorry,” said Fuzzy, “He looked hungry.” “I think he’s owed two-hundred years of back pay in treats on account of being extinct for so long,” said Sasha, in a stage whisper. The two giggled at the joke while Chelan the dog heard the word “treat” and immediately started barking for more. “So…He’s prestigious?” asked Julie. “Extremely,” said the elven woman, bruskly, as she stood up, dusting off her purple blouse and black trousers despite both being immaculate, “He represents the latest extinct species brought back by the Council so it's very important not to feed him the wrong things. Now the conference room is right down the hall, I suggest you go so you’re not late.” Julie figured that maybe she and her friends were causing some trouble and were being not-so-politely dismissed, so Julie made a “come on” motion with her head towards her friends. Fuzzy reluctantly came and took Sasha with her. The little, white puppy followed, tail wagging. The front desk worker started speaking in another language, but to Julie the sound of her voice and its cadence was obvious as to what she was actually saying. “Here boy, come get a treat!” Along with plenty of urgent whistling. He ignored her and kept following Fuzzy and Sasha. He didn’t even come back when the front desk worker brought out the big guns and shook an entire box of dog treats. Then Fuzzy made a quiet “yip” at the dog with a hand command. The dog came to a complete halt before he turned around and scampered back towards the distressed sounding front desk worker. Julie, Fuzzy and Sasha made their way down the hall and saw an old fashioned screen on the wall that read “Blake Island School of Magic” “Think this is it,” said Sasha. Julie walked in first, followed quickly by Fuzzy and finally Julie. Though before Julie even walked in, the smell of delicious food hit her like a wave and her stomach rumbled. She was definitely hungry. So when she walked inside, she saw a table heavy with food, drink and dessert and a sealed medical bed on wheels, which looked much like a coffin. Beside it, an astrally projected awakened floated a few inches off the ground, his back turned, his body a riot of colors. --- Just a quick update and some world building to enjoy until I get the next update out. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 07:49
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Glad the story is moving again, one of my favorite reads. This week I finished streaming severance on Apple TV and it gave me some very spooky feelings about our favorite boy Kenji. I won’t spoil anything but the premise is people can undergo a procedure to implant a chip that splits your mind in two, so you put in eight hours at work and don’t take any of it home with you. There’s sinister corporate shenanigans that the protagonist discovers, because of course letting a corporation put a chip in your brain leads to fuckery. Worth a watch!
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Apr 3, 2023 05:40
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Julie, Fuzzy, Sasha and Larry - Thursday, August 30th, 2075 – Early Afternoon - Council Island Inn “The spread, the spread!” urged the astrally projected man, “They’ll be here any minute!” What looked like a very ordinary humanoid drone, its body metallic and shiny and what looked like one of the hand sized spider drones that were used for farming set the table. In the latter case it was a very delicate balancing act. The spiderbot swayed from side to side with a plate of steaming bratwurst on top of its back, meat piled precariously high. Julie decided to make a little extra noise by closing the door after Fuzzy and Sasha made their way in since he didn’t seem to notice them. As the door closed, the man turned and the colors in his body, his emotions, swirled chaotically with happy yellows and nervous reds. It was hard to tell what his features were exactly at a glance due to how the colors moved, but she saw that he was an orkish man, either bald or with his head shaved, maybe five and a half feet tall with a big smile, broad tusks jutting up from his lower lip and he struck her as someone who’d previously been very fat and had suddenly lost a lot of weight. Due to astrally projecting, she couldn’t begin to figure out his eye color or skin color at all. “Hello!” he exclaimed, his voice a bit nasal from his accent, “Welcome, welcome!” He pantomimed walking across the ground even though he didn’t quite touch the floor. In Julie’s limited experience some people just hovered and didn’t move their arms or legs while projecting, some pretended to walk and a very, very few pretended to swim. It seemed that he was the second type. “Are you Laird Thomas?” asked Julie. The drones kept piling on a ridiculous amount of food onto the table. Far more than anyone here could eat. “I am, I am,” said Laird, “But call me Larry. And you three…” He paused and counted them, pointing with his finger before frowning. “I was told there would be four of you,” he said. Sasha called out from beside Fuzzy. “Kenji decided to initiate twice so he’s kind of messed up at the moment,” said Sasha, “He’s back on the island. And just so you know, I kind of am too. Getting vat treatments for anxiety and it’s messed up my sense of fear. Just ignore me if I say anything really weird.” It was a lot for Sasha to say up from, but Larry laughed it off. Then he clapped his hands and rubbed them together eagerly, though no sound came from the clapping because he wasn’t fully corporeal. This briefly annoyed him but he bounced back quickly. “Oh, I know a thing or two about vats,” he said, “I have to take mine with me.” He motioned to the coffin-like sealed medical bed. “Are you okay?” asked Julie. “That’s a good question,” said Larry, “I’m not now, but I will be. My body is currently floating in vat fluid in the sealed medical bed. Gotta work though. Gotta work.” Sasha briefly loosened her grip with Fuzzy’s hand and held hers out to shake. Larry paused, his mask of cheer falling for a brief moment before he attempted to shake her hand as again, he wasn’t fully corporeal. An astrally projected body could only interact with people, spirits or objects that either were magical or were using magic at that moment. “Sasha,” said Sasha. Most awakened could cast magic, but they weren’t inherently magical. Sasha on the other hand was inherently magical, or dual natured as it was called. Normally it was only magical animals that were dual natured, not people. Sasha was the exception because she had MacNeill Syndrome, which forced her astral sight to always be on and rendered her dual natured, meaning she had both a physical and magical body. She was even technically classified as disabled, though she passed very well for “normal”. She could suppress MacNeill syndrome for a few minutes, like one might hold their breath, but her astral sight gave her insight into how people were feeling whether she wanted to know or not. It was considered extremely rude to read someone’s emotions through astral sight without permission though many people did anyway and just didn’t admit to it. So when Sasha gripped his hand, he Larry was at first startled and then sighed in satisfaction. No noise came out because astral bodies both didn’t need to breathe and couldn’t, but he didn’t seem to notice. He closed his eyes for a moment as he relished the sensation of touch before he opened them both and pumped her hand vigorously, the broadest smile on his face. “That’s great!” he exclaimed, “Just great. Been so long since I’ve had contact with someone. Not the same in astral as it is in the physical, but I’ll take what I can get. You wouldn’t think you’d miss it, but you do. I’m Laird Thomas, but everyone calls me Larry. Oh, wait, I already said that.” “You did, Larry,” said Sasha, with a grin. Sasha let go of Larry’s hand and Julie tried to shake his hand next and his hand just passed through hers like he was some kind of ghost. She wasn’t inherently magical like Sasha was as she could only use magic. So she decided to use one of her touch spells, her heal spell. Her hand glowed with a bright light and for the space of about twelve seconds, she shook his hand just as vigorously because it seemed like he really needed it. The heal spell acted as if it were a magical glove that she’d briefly slipped on that Larry could touch. “Oh,” said Larry, “Tingly. Feels nice. Is that a firm handshake or is the spell just that good?” Julie giggled a little as the spell ended because heal spells were short lived. So her hand slipped right through his mid pump. “Sorry about that,” said Larry, pleased but embarrassed, “Guess I got carried away. Good to meet you.” “It’s fine, Larry,” said Julie, as she stifled her giggle, “I’m Julie Freeman.” “Wonderful to meet you, Julie,” he said, “Just wonderful.” Larry looked around for Fuzzy, but she had her priorities and had gone straight for the table filled with food. Sasha wasn’t going to chastise her so Julie cleared her throat. So Fuzzy turned around with a plate full of what looked like steaming meat, little morsels of cheese and wedge shaped pastries. “Oh, hey,” said Fuzzy, her mouth already full of food. She quickly chewed, swallowed and extended her free hand, but their hands just passed through one another just like Julie’s had. “Turn on one of your adept powers,” said Sasha Adept powers were a type of magic inherent to the body. Fuzzy thought about it, increased her reflexes and was able to shake his hand. “Larry Thomas,” he said, “Pleasure to meet you.” He was all smiles and he was so pleased that he was pure yellow, almost incandescent with happiness. Fuzzy shook his hand and then released it after an appropriate amount of time, though her perception was slowed down by her enhanced reflexes so it had probably seemed like a long time to her. She hadn’t stopped chewing the entire time and swallowed only to speak. “Fuzzy,” said Fuzzy. “A real pleasure to meet you,” he said, repeated, “I’ve heard a lot about all of you from Julian. But where are my manners? Grab some grub. Sit, eat, enjoy. A lot of this is my comfort food and so I’m enjoying this vicariously. Cold sim VR meals just don’t hit the same spot. I’ll try not to stare.” He said the last bit with a little laugh that made Julie feel sad. And it was obvious that he felt sad because a bit of blue filled his otherwise happy yellow astral form. Though apparently he was good at mastering his feelings because the blue didn’t last too long and suddenly he was yellow again. “Can you eat while astrally projected?” asked Fuzzy. Larry shook his head. “Not a real bite of food in six months, I’m afraid,” he said, a bit sadly, “It sucks, but that’s just how the world is sometimes. Anyway, Julian told me that Sasha is a vegetarian so I have veggie options. Hanz, you point out the veggie options if she asks.” The metallic drone approached and stood by as Sasha grabbed a plate. Julie approached last and saw a table heavily laden with meat, cheese, fruit and pastries and her mouth watered at the sight of it all. “So let me be your guide to Wisconsin cuisine,” said Larry, as he literally hovered over the table, as if lounging on a couch, “Because that’s where I did most of my work until recently. We’ll start with the meat and veggie meat. We’ve got bratwurst first off, buns are over there, condiments and so on. We’ve got some high quality Nueske’s bacon with some scrambled eggs and sausage in case any of you are still in a breakfast mood. We’ve got Milwaukee style pizza, which is on a thin cracker crust topped with sausage with plenty of fennel and mushrooms. Big on the meat and cheese, light on the sauce with plenty of crunch and cut into little squares.” Fuzzy grabbed several of the thickest ribs that Julie had ever seen and she grabbed one too. They were pork spare ribs, but enormous. “Oh, that’s my favorite,” said Larry, “The Milwaukee rib. Never quite made it out of the city. Can’t get it anymore unless you talk to your butcher and cook it yourself since the guy who invented them retired. Instead of the classic spare rib or Saint Louis style rib, this cuts leaves the pork belly on and then you smoke it. It’s a fatty cut, no doubt, but it’s delicious. It just melts in your mouth. And I’ve got a bunch of barbecue sauces for you to try over there.” Fuzzy already had three of the enormous ribs and Julie decided to take two herself. Sasha took none and instead picked out a few vegetarian options which Larry commented on as well, talking up the food. “We’ve got an entire smorgasbord of cheeses too,” he said, “We’ve got cow, sheep, goat and buffalo. Too many types to mention but they’re all labeled in that pile over there. I’ve got aged cheddar. Five, seven and ten years old. I like the five, personally, not too sharp or too crumbly. But you owe it to yourself to try the ten at least once. They get these little protein crystals in them when they get old enough and when you bite into one…” He made a little chef’s kiss, though once again it was silent because the lips he smacked weren’t real lips. “Little pockets of flavor,” he said, “Got a few nice alpine cheeses too. I suggest the gruyere. And if you just want some spready cheese I’d strongly suggest the port wine cheese on crackers.” “You really do love your food,” commented Julie. Larry held his much diminished stomach as he hovered in mid-air, like he was reclining on an invisible chaise lounge just above the food and a bit to the side. He gave his stomach a silent pat. “I’m a big guy with big ambitions,” he said, happily, “As big as yours, I hear. I plan on making a stop at your dental office after I get out of the vat. See how you young folks are going to show me up. Anyway, back to the food. Grab a few of those Door County cherries and oh, looks like you already did! You won’t regret it. They’re delicious. And would you prefer an old fashioned mocktail or some root beer, or maybe both?” The astrally projected ork just pointed at the food as he gave a running commentary of what everything was and how best to enjoy it. “Root beer?” asked Fuzzy. “Yeah,” he said, “Where I’m from, pretty much every restaurant makes their own. Hanz, make up uh…Couple twotree old fashioned mocktails. Franz, you set the table. Sorry about this, running a little behind.” “I don’t mind,” said Fuzzy, between bites of enormous ribs, “This is great!” Julie wondered if she’d heard him right, but it seemed so since Hanz, the humanoid drone immediately began to mix some drinks, adding fruit and then mixing them together with a wooden muddler. Franz, the spider drone scuttled away, came back with utensils balanced on its back as it wasn’t finished setting the table yet and began setting silverware at the table within the otherwise ordinary hotel conference room. And since Julie was in the market for a drone or two or maybe even three, she watched the efficiency of Hanz the drone as it made drinks lightning quick. “Useful,” said Julie. Larry straightened out from his lounging position and feigned walking again as he guided her back to the table, drink in hand, made in less than ten seconds by Hanz the drone. “Oh yeah,” he said, “I needed hands after my accident since touching things is kind of a problem for me. It’s the first huma…Antrho…Whatever, people drone I ever bought. I mean, I’m just rolling in drones but they’re heavy earth movers or harvesters like Franz here. But hey, eat, drink, and when you’re done, eat and drink some more. We’ll talk about business afterwards.” And so they ate...And ate and ate and ate. The combination of meat, cheese and fruit hit Julie’s stomach and it was all she could do not to shamelessly scarf it all down. Blake Island’s food was good, but after a school year of eating there, nothing surprised her anymore. And Touristville’s food had often been excellent, but the meals were almost always soy, krill, mushroom or rice based. This was an overload of many different varieties of meat, cheese and fruit, though in Sasha’s case it was just cheese, fruit and the vegetarian substitutes for meat. Julie had half figured that Sasha would decide to eat meat anyway now that her fear was gone, but apparently her lack of fear had no effect on her vegetarian lifestyle. She even stayed away from the cheese curds at Larry’s suggestion since it required rennet, which was harvested from the stomach from a calf. Fuzzy on the other hand was enjoying the food enormously and had no problem eating the cheese curds which quietly squeaked in her mouth as she chewed them. Unlike Julie, who was self-conscious about eating in front of others, Fuzzy didn’t care how much she ate or who saw her do it. Julie had no idea how Fuzzy put so much food away but she did, and Julie quietly envied the fact that Fuzzy could stay in shape like she did. It seemed that if Julie even so much as looked at food she’d gain another pound. Sasha wasn’t normally as self-conscious an eater like Julie was but normally she restrained herself at least a little. Now she was laying into the food just as hard as Fuzzy and possibly harder. And since both of her friends did it, Julie felt good enough to do it too and if she gained a pound, she’d get it eating delicious food. So when she got up for seconds, she grabbed some dessert, which looked like a giant, circular danish with a hole in the middle. “That’s a kringle,” said Larry, as he floated about, “It’s kind of like a flatter danish. This one has frosting on the top, cranberries, cherries and cream cheese on the inside. They last for days so I usually have one or two on the job site. Though they usually wouldn’t stick around that long.” Julie smiled at him and took a bite. It was just how he described, like an enormous danish if it were shaped like an enormous, flat donut that you cut wedge-shaped slices off it. And so Larry kept a kind of running commentary about which foods to try in combination with what, vicariously enjoying the meal because he was in his sealed medical bed, suspended in his own private vat. He still hadn’t explained why either, though Julie didn’t want to press. Not when everyone was having such a good time. So Julie took a bite of her little wedge that she’d cut from the greater piece and found it to be delicious just like all the rest of the food. After she finished her second plate, mostly cheese and desert and Fuzzy and Sasha had finished up their third plate they’d slowed down. Julie was feeling happy and a little sleepy from all of the delicious food she’d just eaten. So sensing this, Larry transitioned from gourmet to salesman. “I very much hope that you’ve enjoyed the fat of the land,” said Larry, “And it’s land that I’ve come here to talk to you about today. Barren land, distressed land, blighted land. Land that not only no one can use but is frequently dangerous to be on, next to or downstream from. And also, strictly speaking as awakened, you’ll be hard pressed to use magic while on that land on account that there’s so little life there unless you’ve adapted to the low levels of ambient magic. And that’s a process that takes years.” Julie got a file request from Larry and accepted it and so she saw the beginning of a presentation in AR. Barren, blighted land before her as well as one of the most disgusting ponds she’d ever seen, which looked more like sludge than water. “This used to be a pig farm in New Hampshire some two decades ago,” he said, “One of my first jobs. They’d dumped sixteen-hundred drums of toluene, xylene and methyl ethyl ketone onto just a single quarter acre of land. You may not know the chemicals, but let me tell you, it’s not good for you. And they’d clear cut forested land to do it. An example of the death of what little environmental protections were left in the 2050’s so land could be put to “good use” as the then president said.” The AR display on their smart contacts, glasses and goggles continued as there was a time lapse backwards, pig farm back to forest. “In four years it went from forest, to slashed and burned, to pig farm to a blighted wreck,” he said, “And the pig farm really should have been closed after year two because they started dumping chemicals basically immediately. The pigs were treated terribly and fed a diet mainly consisting of trash while living on what was already a superfund site. That trash also included totally inedible sources of food, including plastic and those plastics were passed down to the consumer. Microplastics and hazardous chemicals made it into the food supply and because the FDA was kept as a fig leaf but otherwise gutted, so people ate pork raised on garbage and marinated in toxic waste.” There was a transition back to the blighted land. Clouds went by, signifying time passing and nothing changed or grew until a much younger and thinner looking Larry showed up, smiled at the camera and waved. He summoned his spirits, earth and water spirits to be specific and they began to funnel toxic waste into containers. This took several days of resummoning at dusk and dawn since spirits would generally disappear at sunrise or sunset. “Awakened and spirits are fantastic at pulling pollution out of the environment,” said Larry, “This was nearly twenty years ago so it took three days instead of most of an afternoon. With the help of the spirits that I summoned, I took it from blighted to merely barren.” The toxic spill site was gone and the water looked clear, but there was nothing living here. “Now spirits can’t create new soil, flora and fauna nearly as easily as they clean a place,” he said, “Life comes from life and spirits are only one very specific type of life. What I wanted for this place was to restore the forest, its original ecosystem. So instead of waiting a hundred and fifty years, because that’s how it would take for this to become a full forest again, we metahumans get involved. And with work, knowledge and care, we can begin the process of restoring the environment, starting with soil.” Into the barren landscape came people operating heavy machinery. They moved in and Julie recognized an earlier kind of a drone farm being put down as well as enormous steel containers and the earth movers dug up the barren earth and poured them into the steel containers. The people left and time kept rolling by. What looked like several weeks or maybe a month later, people came back and poured new, black, rich soil onto the ground. Grass grew on them, died and then native looking plants were planted. More time lapsed as the containers were filled over and over again, everything left was quickly carted off, leaving only a very young but dense forest. A date appeared at the bottom, 2054, and began to tick up and up and up while the forest grew and grew and grew to the current day. “Now this is still a relatively young forest,” he said, “A mere twenty years old. But to reach this point, even without metahuman interference, if absolutely everything went right? Again I have to stress that it takes a hundred and fifty years to reach a forest that is stable. And a stable environment is called a climax community.” Sasha and Fuzzy had a little giggle over his use of terminology and Larry pretended not to hear them, but he did smirk. Meanwhile, Larry switched between picture after picture of different sites, polluted and blighted and then the rehabilitated land, each with a date afterwards: A house for a family, a shining lake, a new style eco-friendly farm, wetlands complete with a flock of ducks taking off, a public park in a major city, a beach with white sands and crystal clear water and forest after forest after forest. And so that portion of the presentation ended and they saw before them Larry, floating there, the conference room and the table of food. “I take land that no one else wants,” he said, “That no one else could use for almost any purpose. I’ve rehabilitated land so blighted that merely stepping into a stray puddle for a second would eat through your boots in five minutes flat.” He pointed to Fuzzy, wearing her heavy, black, plasteel toed boots and she looked down at them. “My boots?” asked Fuzzy. Larry nodded seriously. “It’d chew through your boots faster than you chewed through those ribs you ate,” he said, semi-seriously. Now…Let’s talk about this contest you want to win and how you’re going to win it.” “Hell yeah,” said Sasha, eagerly. Julie checked over to her friend and realized that Sasha was excited by the idea. However, Julie also realized that since Sasha had basically no fear, her normal skepticism might be diminished as well and Fuzzy tended to take people at face value. So Julie decided to play the skeptic despite not being very good at it. “Look, I want to win,” said Julie, “And the prizes seem interesting: Lessons with first generation mages or some of that naturally pure orichalcum.” “Also one of my memories,” said Fuzzy, “I’m still working on the illusion.” “Right,” said Julie, “I mean, I want to try but I don’t expect to win. We’re going up against people with basically infinite resources which include money and skilled labor. We just can’t compete with that.” Larry “sat down” in mid-air and hovered closer to the ground. “That’s an excellent point,” he said, “Excellent. But what if I told you that you and your little group were the odds on favorite to win either second or third place in the first round?” All three were silent for a moment as they processed this. “I’d say we were being teased,” said Julie, eventually. “Well, I’m not teasing,” he replied, “Julian and I go back a few years and we talk. So I’ll tell you this much. You’re the odds on favorite among all of the teachers to win at second or third place in the first round of this little tournament you’ve got going on. Now Julian didn’t give me specifics but he said that you’re probably smart enough to figure out why if you think about it.” Julie leaned forward on her seat by a few degrees, suddenly interested. “How do you know Julian?” she asked. Larry smiled knowingly. “Well, I used to teach at Blake Island,” he said. “You used to teach?” asked Fuzzy, interested as well. He nodded sadly and a bit of blue threaded through his otherwise cheerful yellow astral body. “I was a teacher for fifteen years and I taught at Blake Island for five,” he said, “I came on in 2060, stayed on through the Crash 2.0 making sure the students got through it safely and then I saw the transition from the supremely talented to corporate mediocrity.” “I thought you rehabilitated superfunds sites,” said Julie. Gray indifference flooded into his otherwise cheerful yellow astral body and he folded his arms over his chest. “Teaching has never paid that well,” he said, “Even teachers who teach magic. Most teachers have second jobs or third jobs because it’s never been a profession that pays worth a drat. Land rehab was mine. I didn’t just teach at Blake Island though, I lived there to make sure none of those knuckleheads blew their heads off or killed each other. I made out pretty well after the Crash 2.0 and got a good chunk for staying on at the new corporate Blake Island for a year. I went into business for myself instead of working for someone else after that.” “Wait,” said Julie, “Teachers who teach magic have second jobs?” “Welcome to being a teacher,” said Larry, “It’s why I got out. Blake Island isn’t the only exception, but it’s still an exception.” “Why is the pay so low?” asked Fuzzy. Larry shrugged and went even more gray than before. “That’s a simple question with a bunch of complicated answers,” he said, “The best and fasterest answer I can come up with though is that the people in governments and corporations who fund the schools are cheap bastards who don’t give a gently caress about kids, no matter what they say they do. How much they actually care is measured in terms of nuyen. Creds. That makes up a budget and the budget ain’t much.” There was an awkward pause after this and he raised up his hands in a kind of apology. “Sorry,” he said, “Didn’t mean to be negative…Anyway, I worked with Julian in his first year on the job and left when I realized early on that I didn’t want to teach the next generation of corporate overlords. So I took that last class of talented students who’d been allowed to stay on in their senior year, filtered out the ones who’d jumped on the corporate bandwagon and started a business with the rest. I took them on in the old way, as master and apprentice.” “What was Julian like when he first started?” asked Sasha. Larry laughed and seemed to sway despite being in a “sitting” position and the gray color of indifference and bitterness became yellow once more. “He had no idea what the hell he was doing,” he said, “I mentored him as a teacher in his first year. Now he still doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, he just knows how to hide it better.” The young women giggled along with Larry at the small joke. “Why’d you leave?” asked Sasha. “Well, I’m a Beaver shaman,” he said, “And I was working with and shaping some of the finest awakened on the planet before Blake Island went corporate. Hard work yielded several crops of extremely talented students and I took the best of that crop with me. None of them stayed in my field but they’ve all gone on to do great things.” He glowed an even brighter yellow, a mix of happiness and pride evident in his astral form. “Great things,” he repeated, happily. But then a thread of thin, black anger ran through his form, strong and discordant, like a plucked guitar string. “Then it all fell apart,” he said, “The school had become too prestigious and so wealthy corporations decided to park their children there to soak some of that prestige up, as if that was possible. I wanted to keep teaching the talented and bar corporate access but I was in the minority. Others saw appeasing them as a way to shape and influence the next generation of corporate overlords. The rest just wanted a better paycheck and I really can’t blame them for that. I saw no future in appeasement, so I left.” “What did Julian want?” asked Julie. “Julian had just finished his first year of teaching and was still trying to keep his head down,” he said, “At least as much as he could. He has a way of getting in trouble anyway. Though he didn’t need the paycheck as much since he lived on the island with me that first year. He and I ate a lot of school lunches.” Sasha’s smile grew wide. “Wait, trouble? What kind of trouble?” asked Sasha, her grin positively impish. “Oh…Well…” he said, and paused for a moment to think, “I won’t tell tales, but maybe ask him about Adrianna at some point and see what he has to say.” They all worked so closely with Julian and they didn’t actually know that much about him. He was their teacher, their guardian, an awakened who had mastery over fire and he’d been a park ranger for a while. Otherwise they didn’t know a lot about him. “Did they used to work together?” asked Fuzzy. “Oh yeah they did,” said Sasha, smugly, “I just looked it up. Easy. Adrianna Rodriguez. She worked at Blake Island the same year he started and left a few years later.” Larry turned a bit red with embarrassment. Literally, his whole body turned a mix of red and yellow as they’d caught the thread in seconds. Though he quickly mastered his embarrassment and went back to yellow. “Just ask him about Odd sometime,” said Larry, “See what he says.” “Odd?” asked Julie. “Odd,” he replied, “Won’t say another word.” Fuzzy and Sasha made noises that were both happy and conspiratorial as they thought about how to ask Julian about Odd. So while they talked, Julie leaned in. “So,” began Julie, “We’re the favorites to win?” “Second or third place,” he said, in agreement, “Probably not first. Can’t say why but you can guess if you want.” So Julie thought about it while Fuzzy and Sasha chatted. They obviously didn’t have the money to complete if it was just about money. Julie was making about thirty grand a day for the past week or so after expenses and between that and how much her doctor’s office had made over the year, she was sitting on just shy of three-hundred thousand nuyen. Apparently asking for a mere five nuyen for doing any kind of dental work was enough for her to break even, but while some people donated nothing, there were a number of people who donated more. And sometimes they donated much more, making sure her business broke even. However, most of her money came from the hundred and change wealthy clients who paid full freight and two hours a day were set aside just for them around the morning and evening rush hour. They were the source of her actual profit. “Odd was pretty,” said Fuzzy. “You’re pretty,” teased Sasha. Fuzzy blushed, smiled, looked away, back to Sasha and then away again. Julie smiled at them and then went back to thinking. She had money and reputation to spend through Touristville and could get her hands on goods, services or even straight creds. But that small amount of money was chump change compared to the wealthy corporate students on Blake Island. And as far as goods and labor went, they could throw around far, far more than she ever could. “So us winning isn’t a resource problem,” said Julie. Fuzzy and Sasha turned to look at Julie. “Oh, you’re actually bothering to try and figure it out?” asked Sasha. “Figuring it out seems like a good idea,” said Fuzzy, “I want to win.” “Yeah,” said Julie, “I mean, I don’t want to break the bank, but if we can win on a small budget then I’m in. And I figure if there’s anyone who knows why we’ll win over all of those corp princes and princesses, it’d be you.” Julie winced internally, realizing that maybe she was too blunt, reminding Sasha that she was once part of the corporate elite but Sasha didn’t seem to mind at all. “Yes?” No. Maybe?” she said, as she waffled, “I mean, it’s going to be some sort of pro-environmental project obviously or we wouldn’t be here.” “Yeah,” said Julie, “I mean, you want to sell us on some cleanup project, right?” Larry nodded but didn’t say anything else. “I think I know why,” said Fuzzy, suddenly. Julie, Sasha and Larry, who was staying silent, all looked to Fuzzy, who fidgeted with her hands as she was suddenly put on the spot. “Uhh…” said Fuzzy, “Well, like you said, Julie, it’s not about money. They all have money. We don’t. Or at least not nearly as much as them. And we don’t have all of their people either. It has to do with us. So I learned a lot about animals in English class…” “Don’t you mean science class?” asked Julie. Fuzzy shook her head. “No, English class,” affirmed Fuzzy, “I studied over the summer to get up to speed so I could take regular classes because I started so far behind. You know, because I never went to school before.” “Okay…” said Sasha, slowly. “Okay, so…Owls,” said Fuzzy, “They’re wise.” Julie and Sasha looked at Fuzzy and waited for more as Fuzzy gestured, as if the word owls explained it all. “We’re going to need more than that, honey,” said Sasha. Fuzzy grunted and made her lips into a line as she tried to explain her thought process. “In English class, owls are supposed to be wise even though we’d consider owls to be dumb,” she said, “I mean, they’re really smart at what they do, but definitely not people levels of smart. I have one after all. But Beavers are hard workers and Larry said he’s a Beaver shaman.” They all looked to Larry, who smiled placidly but kept silent. “I think…” said Fuzzy, slowly, “That Julian introduced us to Larry because Julian wants us to work. So we’re going to actually work.” Sasha sighed explosively. “Yeah,” said Sasha, her tone disgusted, “And pretty much everyone else is just going to pay someone in their corporation to do their work for them.” Julie nodded as she got it as well. “They’re going to be lazy so they can screw around,” said Julie. “I mean, that’s basically their entire life,” said Sasha, “But they’ll get mad if you rub that in their face and ignore the competition completely if they think that they suddenly have to work hard. I don’t think they need to do most of the work themselves, they just need to be involved somehow, even if they’re just supervising. If Fuzzy is right, a lot of them are going to disqualify themselves because all they’ll have is an idea and then laze about or have pointless meetings to make themselves feel important.” “I mean, what if they do plan it?” asked Julie, “Aren’t ideas worth something?” Sasha immediately burst into laughter and Larry joined her, leaving Julie and Fuzzy confused. “What’s so funny?” asked Julie. “Yeah,” said Fuzzy, “What’s up?” Sasha opened her mouth to answer and then immediately began to laugh again. This took about another twenty seconds before Sasha finally calmed herself down enough to answer, with a sigh of relief. “Oh, I needed that,” said Sasha. She wiped a tear away from her eye and she was all smiles. “Want to let us in on the joke?” asked Julie. “Okay, okay,” said Sasha, “Sorry. Anyway, this is a project!” She waited for Julie and Fuzzy to catch on, but neither of them did. So Fuzzy smiled at her girlfriend and patted her on the hand. “We’re going to need more than that, honey,” teased Fuzzy. Sasha couldn’t have rolled her eyes any harder than she did at that moment. “Come on,” said Sasha, impatiently, “You’ve been in classes with them last year.” “Just magic classes,” said Fuzzy, “Not regular classes. We didn’t really do projects in spellcasting and my adept gym class.” Unperturbed by Fuzzy’s lack of an answer, Sasha turned to Julie. “Okay then, Julie, you tell Fuzzy,” said Sasha, “Anything project related. What do you remember?” Julie thought back to large projects in school. There wasn’t much in the way of homework because none of the students would do it, but occasionally they did do projects. “Uhhh…Well, I remember one of our science projects,” said Julie, “Remember that science fair?” “Yeah,” urged Sasha, “And how good were they?” So Julie thought back to the school science fair, which had really only lasted an hour. “Well…I wrote mine on the diminishing effects of antibiotics due to overuse,” she said, “And I concluded that we really needed new front line, generic antibiotics, but no one wants to do that because generic antibiotics cost money to develop and don’t give much in return. I ran a theoretical model about how many generations of bacteria it would take to become completely resistant to current front line antibiotics. It was uh…Kind of grim.” “You downer,” sighed Sasha, “Not yours. That’s actually useful. What was the one right next to yours then? Think back.” So Julie thought about it and then suddenly laughed as she remembered. “Oh, it was…I think it was this guy named Randal,” she said, “He had this whole presentation on a city he supposedly designed that had no streets. I mean he obviously didn’t design it, the production values looked too professional for him because he’s um…Yeah.” “Stupid?” supplied Sasha. Stupid was being generous and he’d been mean to her a few times last year as well. Though after Minuet lost all of her money and privilege, everyone had been sure to ignore her. “Let’s go with that,” said Julie,” Sure. Anyway, in his city, everyone would just get from place to place in flying cars.” “How’d it go over with the science teacher?” asked Sasha. Julie pursed her lips as she thought back. Part of her wanted to cast her improve logic spell because it would help with memory, but she remembered before she needed it. “Well…I think the teacher was scared of everyone because they could complain and ruin her life,” said Julie, thoughtfully, “So she basically passed everyone. Science class was a joke.” Julie thought back to the Blake Island security guard who’d had his life ruined because he put the wrong slap patch on Joyce. Instead of the one to keep him from bleeding, he’d used a tranquilizer patch that calmed him down by mistake. It was an honest mistake and it’d been easily fixed. And of course there was Minuet who had personally tried to ruin Julie’s clinic by bringing armed mercenaries into Touristville. So it stood to reason that people tread lightly around the corporate princess and princesses. “But she asked really, really timidly about how people who couldn’t afford flying cars would get around,” said Julie, “And it just baffled Randal. He said he didn’t care because that’s their problem.” “Odds are he paid a ton of money to have someone whip up a science project that doesn’t work,” said Sasha, “You get pitches like these sometimes in the corporate world. Not to me, but I’ve sat in on them before. Five minutes of high production values, lots of future tech, tons of corporate buzzwords and it’s supposed to wow you with these new, bold, sexy ideas about some project that’s supposed to change the world.” “Does it change the world?” asked Fuzzy. Sasha shrugged in response. “If by changing the world, you mean wasting a ton of money on something stupid, then yes,” said Sasha, “Once in a great while you get something actually revolutionary like the space elevator, but most of the time it’s just stupid poo poo. Smart poo poo that’s proven to work isn’t really sexy enough and if you bore some corporate mover and shaker you don’t get their attention. They’ll tune out in thirty seconds instead of five minutes.” “Why five minutes?” asked Julie. “Well either their time is worth literally thousands or tens of thousands of nuyen a minute or they just don’t have the attention span,” said Sasha, “Or both, I guess. A lot of people who make decisions about how to run the world aren’t very detail oriented. At least not in Ares. They just greenlight projects and punt it down to other people to make sense of their whims.” “What you’re talking about, how Randal makes his decisions, is called elite projection,” offered Larry, as he broke his silence, “For every functioning megastructure the space elevator or the Aztechnology Pyramid, or every big urban planning project that succeeds, there are dozens, even hundreds of expensive failures. Elites think that their problems are the only problems that exist and don’t really care to imagine the problems of people that they actually govern. Also if a problem bores them it tends not to get addressed.” Sasha snapped her fingers and pointed at Larry. “That’s the phrase,” she said, “Elite projection. It’s like…What if Randal had enough money and influence to try and make his stupid flying car city?” “No one would go,” said Julie, “And Randal would feel stupid.” “Well you’re half right,” said Sasha, “No one would go, but Randal wouldn’t feel stupid. Odds are he’d feel offended. Most people like Randal would still think it’s a great idea. They’d just blame everyone else for their problems. No one would challenge him or tell him that he’s wrong. The Randals of the world can’t get an honest opinion because they fire everyone who tells them that they’re wrong.” “What?” asked Fuzzy, sharply, “That’s stupid. Why would you fire someone that gives you good advice?” “Because there are no consequences for Randal when he fails,” sighed Sasha, “The world is run by Randals. Their ideas are deeply flawed from the get go because they don’t live a regular life. All of their problems are the problems of wealthy people and when you apply wealthy people's solutions to regular people's problems, you’re basically shoveling creds into the dumpster and lighting it on fire.” “Are there cities like that though?” asked Fuzzy, “Flying car cities?” Sasha rolled her eyes and shook her head. “No. More like abandoned construction projects,” said Sasha, “Having a city would imply that people would actually live there.” Fuzzy looked deeply annoyed. “Randals are stupid,” said Fuzzy, “And it’s stupid that Randals get to run anything. Why do stupid people get to run things?” “Because Randals are constantly getting bailed out,” sighed Sasha, “They’re not allowed to fail. They might lose a bit of money and get a few snippy comments at the next garden party, but no one fails. Minuet only failed because she shot Marco and did it in front of me. If she’d shot anyone else, she would’ve walked, even if she’d killed someone.” “Well, she didn’t,” said Fuzzy, “And then I…” Fuzzy had gotten a bit heated at the mention of Minuet but she was on guard since she was watching Sasha, so she caught herself before she said anything more like “I ground up her teeth and put it in my spearknife”. “She had a bad time,” finished Fuzzy. There were general murmurs of agreement at this from Julie and Sasha both. Though if Larry knew about the incident with Minuet, he didn’t let on that he knew. “You’ll probably have a handful clear the bar,” said Larry, “Meaning a good project that they’re involved in at all. But that eliminates about ninety percent of your competition.” “So it’s not just about what we do, but how we do it,” said Julie. “My guess is it’s about both,” he said, “You have to do something noteworthy and your teachers want it done in a certain way. Julian said that they’re going to spell a lot of the requirements out but I figure that these kids don’t think that the rules apply to them and so they’ll just do what they want to.” “That tracks,” said Sasha. “Anything you think we’re missing?” asked Julie. Sasha looked to Larry, who wouldn’t say anything on the subject but she figured from something about his look that there was more. Then she looked to Fuzzy who’d been right so far. So Fuzzy had a think. “Uhhh…” said Fuzzy, “Well, I was there when my friend made up the contest. So I could just ask him.” “Which friend?” asked Sasha. “John,” said Fuzzy. “Ooooh,” said Sasha, “You mean the guy who took over for that Warhawk guy?” Julie’s eyes widened, because Sasha had told Warhawk’s story to Fuzzy, Kenji, Chip and herself. Then Fuzzy moved her arm and really dug Sasha in the side with an elbow before Julie could even think about shutting her up. “Ow, gently caress!” complained Sasha. Fuzzy gave Sasha a deadly serious glare and Sasha made a little “O” with her mouth as she realized what she’d talked about. “I feel like there’s a story behind this,” said Larry, mildly. “Not that we’re sharing,” she said, flatly. The three stared down the older man as he hovered and he shrugged, not really caring that much. After all, he obviously wanted their help so he could let the secrets of teenage girls slide. “Anyway,” said Fuzzy, still a bit tense, “Maybe I’ll ask him later, but I figure it’s something really basic that we’ll do that they won’t.” All three looked to Larry who was silent again, but smiling, which gave the three the idea that they were on the right track. So Julie turned to Fuzzy. “Uhh…Plan?” asked Julie. “No, they’ll have someone to do that for them,” said Sasha, “Think like…Behavior.” Fuzzy nibbled on her last rib while everyone thought. “Is it working together?” asked Fuzzy, between bites. “I mean, they’ll have teams under them,” said Julie. Sasha pursed her lips as she thought about it, then slowly nodded in understanding. “That’s not working together, that’s just bossing people around,” said Sasha, “I mean…Well yeah, working together tracks. This is a competition. Everyone is competing against everyone. But that’s also how corporate culture works. Compete against rival corporations, compete against your rivals in your own corporation. It’s really rare to have someone among your rivals that you can rely on.” Julie frowned in confusion. “Wait, so they never work together?” asked Julie. “Well, they do,” said Sasha, hesitantly, “But it’s more out of a mutually shared interest to accomplish a goal. It’s all temporary. If you work with your rivals, because basically everyone is your rival, then you’re waiting for someone to sabotage you if you weren’t already planning to sabotage them. A lot of viable projects go down in flames because of corporate backstabbing. The only really solid alliances are corporate marriages and even then, divorce is pretty common. Especially if someone gets demoted or even fired.” “I mean,” said Julie, “The corporate kids on Blake Island don’t seem to actively distrust each other. There’s a lot of jockeying for position and cattiness, but I don’t see them sabotaging each other.” Sasha shrugged. “Being seen sabotaging your rivals is considered clumsy,” said Sasha, “If you do it right, you decide if you want everyone to know that you sabotaged your rival after you did it or if you don’t want them to know at all who did it or maybe you lay the blame at someone else’s feet.” “That sounds like pretty regular high school backstabbing to me,” said Julie. “Yeah, it’s probably why it doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary,” said Sasha, “The worst offenses get clamped down on by the school, but it’s always there. They learn how to scheme and backstab early in a low stakes environment. Then when they get to a corporation it’s suddenly very high stakes, but it’s the same idea.” “So…We’re already going to win just because we work together?” asked Fuzzy, “That seems dumb. People should work together.” “That’s not how corporations work,” said Sasha, “At least not the megacorporations. You don’t have friends, just interests. If they really are trying to get people to work together, good luck. Right now Ares is one or two bad incidents from a corporate war. The entire C-suite of Lone Star got murdered and they’re disorganized. One or two of the other megacorps might gear up for a war just to show everyone else that murdering the people in charge of a megacorp won’t be tolerated.” “Wait,” said Julie, “It could turn into a war?” Sasha nodded. “It could,” she said, “Corporate wars happen. It’s not like armies fighting each other though. It’s mostly a mix of economic warfare, information warfare, sabotage, assassination and terrorism. The wars are usually kept small because it’s not like they have huge armies or anything. I mean, except for Aztechnology, but that’s because they run an entire nation. But this is a pretty big fuckup if Ares did murder Lone Star’s entire corporate board. It could even turn into a general corporate war. It’s never happened, but there’s been a couple times where it almost happened in the past.” “What…” said Julie, “Like World War Corporate?” Sasha nibbled at a piece of kringle and nodded. “Yeah,” said Sasha, “Basically. I’d say it probably won’t happen, but a few weeks ago I would’ve said that an entire corporate board of a megacorporation wouldn’t have gotten murdered either. So, you know, we’ll see.” Larry suddenly “stood up”, meaning he stopped levitating in a sitting position. “I think that’s enough speculation about corporate wars,” said Larry, “You seem to have got the gist of what we were trying to say. Sorry that I can’t just tell you but I don’t think it would be fair and if I got caught, it might cause problems for Julian and me. Now let’s take a look at the job and see if you’re still interested when I’m finished.” Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 07:13
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I made a few last minute edits last night and pulled a few lines out. It's really late, so let me know if something doesn't make sense because I'm too tired to edit anymore. Julie, Fuzzy, Sasha and Larry - Thursday, August 30th, 2075 – Early Afternoon - Council Island Inn In augmented reality, a mountain rose out of a flat plane, rocky and gray. Very close to the base of the mountain, the Snohomish River ran east to west, close to the mountain at least. Corporate and private farms dotted the river valley around it for miles and there were highways in basically every direction. It was easy to note that the mountain was the tallest thing for miles around. “Ladies,” said Larry, expansively, “This is Lord Hill, smack in the middle of Snohomish in the northeast part of the metroplex. I have recently bought fifteen hundred acres of what used to be a forested mountain. That’s two square miles and about as large as Blake Island for comparison, though much taller. And just look at this beauty.” Sasha leaned in and squinted at the mountain, which stayed fixed in place as the AR object had been “placed” on an empty table. “It looks like poo poo,” said Sasha, honestly. Julie couldn’t help but agree, though she felt sad. Off just a few miles to the east was Salish territory and the difference between the blighted mountain and their lush forests was stark. “I’ll admit,” said Larry, “It’s a dump. Literally, it’s used as an illegal dumping site for agricultural waste. But look, it has so much potential. Look at what it used to be.” Everyone leaned in and watched as the AR forest changed from a rocky, gray waste to a verdant mountain. “This is a topography map from the 2060’s,” he said, “I mean, at least I assume this is the right program. Can’t wear my AR glasses. Is the AR right? Is the mountain green?” “It’s right,” said Fuzzy. “Good, good,” he said, happily, “Now at this point the mountain is a bit sickly from repeated bouts of acid rain, but it’s still stately. It was deforested for cooking fuel during Crash 2.0 and it hasn’t recovered as more than half of the soil has eroded, and what soil there is left has a hard time supporting life.” There was a graphic as it began to rain on the AR mountain and water sloughed its way down the mountain, washing what looked like trash and chemicals into the Snohomish river. “That agricultural waste also continually runs off into the Snohomish river,” he explained, “It turns fresh, clean water teeming with wildlife into garbage water that destroys the local ecosystem.” “So the river would be fine if we help the mountain?” asked Fuzzy. “No,” said Larry, sadly, “It passes through the slums of the Redmond Barrens, Puyallup farmland and the Everett naval yards. Between ten thousand homeless river squatters, farm runoff and unregulated pollution from the military, the river doesn’t really have a chance and all of that awfulness dumps into the Puget Sound and then the ocean beyond. The river doesn’t have a long way to go through Seattle, maybe some twenty-five, thirty miles, but it’s pretty harrowing if you’re a salmon.” “Bleak,” said Sasha. Larry nodded. “It is,” he said, “But if we do our part we can help those salmon breathe a little easier. I actually plan on making the waters around the mountain into a nice little oasis for local wildlife. Cleaning up the river isn’t our main focus though. It’s the mountain.” A number of facts, figures and statistics appeared in AR next to the mountain. “Now we’ve got a lot going for rehabilitation of Lord Hill,” he said, “The first bit of news is both good and bad. The majority of the agricultural waste runs off into the river. That means that there’s less for all of you to clean up because it all goes downhill. So most of the pollution that isn’t washed away will be near the base of the mountain, not near the top.” Julie stopped herself from raising her hand and instead spoke up. “How will we be cleaning this up?” she asked. “Good question,” he said. Larry pointed a ghostly hand towards the table and much diminished food. “Julie, grab that jar of pickles for me, will you?” he asked. She sat up and instantly regretted eating so much as her stomach moved, but she grabbed the jar of pickles and came back with it. “Okay, good,” he said, “Now imagine that this jar of pickles is a particularly stubborn knot of pollution and each knot of pollution has a kind of tension to it like the lid of that pickle jar. You need a certain amount of strength, in this case magical strength, to release the tension and pop the top. Now I know that none of you have spells that clean the earth, air or water and that would make all of this faster, but spirits work just as well too.” He motioned to Fuzzy and so Julie handed her the jar of pickles while Larry continued to speak. “Now let’s pretend that Fuzzy is a big, strong earth spirit,” said Larry. Fuzzy flexed one of her biceps and everyone had a laugh. “Real strong there, miss spirit,” enthused Larry, “She’s the biggest spirit that you can bind to your service without risking the kind of magical drain that can actually hurt you, which is good, because this is a very stubborn jar of pickles. Like I said, big knots of pollution have a kind of tension to them like the lid on a jar of pickles. But once they’re open…Julie, would you ask your earth spirit to pop that top?” Julie giggled a little and wiggled her fingers “mysteriously” at Fuzzy, as if ordering who easily popped open the jar of pickles with a satisfying pop. “My big, strong earth spirit,” cooed Sasha. Again the trio laughed and Larry joined in with a smile. “Once they’re open,” he repeated, “Smaller spirits can get at the pollution inside and move it around. In fact we have another earth spirit with us right now with excellent hair.” Fuzzy took a pickle from the pickle jar and passed it to Sasha, who pushed aside her newly cut platinum dyed doo, grabbed a pickle for herself and both began to munch. “Good pollution,” said Fuzzy, between pickle crunches. “I’ve had better,” teased Sasha. Smiles all around and not to be left out, Julie took the jar and had a pickle too even though she was full. They were good pickles, refreshing and crisp. “Now spirits don’t eat pollution,” he said, “They can render it temporarily harmless and move it around, or even clean it completely on the spot if your magic is very, very strong. None of you are there yet, but in this case, we’d task spirits to move them into containers. After that they’ll be shipped off either to be rendered into harmless substances or put into long term storage for hazardous materials. Mostly the former. Technology for extraction of pollution isn’t particularly sophisticated, but bioremediation techniques, a fancy word for breaking down pollution into not pollution, is very well developed.” Fuzzy took the jar of pickles, grabbed another and sealed the jar. “Sounds easy,” said Julie. “Well, it is and it isn’t,” said Larry, “On this job site there are nearly a thousand knots of pollution both above ground and below. Mostly above, which makes the job easier. Think of it as a thousand pickle jars that all need opening that are strewn about the base of the mountain. Some can only be opened by the big, strong earth spirit. You need them for the stubborn pickle jars. But some are a bit less stubborn, so they can be opened by the smaller, but still very cool earth spirit with the nice, new haircut.” Sasha rolled her eyes but still took the compliment. “Also you’ll need water spirits to get at any polluted groundwater,” he continued, “And an emergency air spirit in case the pollution is under pressure and hits the air. You don’t want it spraying everywhere, especially if the area is populated.” “Like with us,” said Fuzzy. Larry waved a hand in negation. “Oh no,” he said, “Not like us. There’s actually a number of ork and troll farmers just to the east in a little border town called Monroe. The farmland isn’t considered very good, which is why they have it. So we want to be very careful not to spray them with airborne agricultural waste.” “That’d be bad,” said Fuzzy. “That’d be very bad,” he said, “But we’d be safe. I had my hermetically sealed trailer shipped out here from Wisconsin and it was just inspected. Never a single breach in over ten years.” He attempted to knock on the wooden table, but his hand just passed through it. Julie picked up on what he was doing and knocked for him instead. “Thank you,” he said, appreciatively, “It’s a bit cramped inside but it’s got food, water, showers, a place to bind spirits in a pinch and emergency protective gear in case we need to leave, though we’ll be several hundred feet away from any dangerous pollution at all times. It also has a few bunks. Nothing fancy but enough for a half a dozen people in case you bring friends.” “Friends?” asked Julie. Larry winked at Julie. “What, you think you’re going to do this entirely on your own?” he asked, “Invite who you like. The more the merrier so long as they can contribute. The heavy lifting will be done by those who can bind spirits, but there’s still things that need doing like watching the job site for any problems, cooking and if you know anyone experienced with drones that’d be fantastic. It’s not glamorous work but it’s important support work. If you bring more than six you’ll have to hot bunk though.” “Hot bunk?” asked Sasha. “Sleep in shifts,” answered Fuzzy. Sasha frowned and at Larry, who was hovering in a “sitting” position, but shrugged. “I’m pretty much confined to Blake Island or Council Island,” she said, “I can do some matrix work if you need it or send spirits from Blake Island, but you can’t communicate with them if they’re too far away.” Julie could communicate with Chip over long distances, but he was a special case. The communication range between summoner and spirit was usually a few hundred feet to maybe two thousand depending on the strength of the summoner’s magic. Larry patted Sasha on the shoulder, which was possible because she was secretly dual natured and he enjoyed the contact- Any contact, immensely. “I talked to Julian,” he said, “He told me that you’re feeling some serious cabin fever. I made a deal with him that I’d watch over you so long as you promised to stay on the mountain.” Sasha froze and just stared at him. “Now I know that a blighted…” he began. “Yes,” said Sasha, immediately. He paused and frowned. “It’s going to be cramped,” he said, “And you’re all going to be sleeping right next to each other.” “I don’t care,” said Sasha, excitedly. Julie cleared her throat. “Not to be that person,” said Julie, “But um…It’s going to be a bunch of people in cramped confines, most of them teenagers.” Larry caught her meaning immediately. “Oh, you’ll be working way too hard to get into trouble,” he said, with a knowing smile, “You can’t just summon these spirits, you’ll have to summon them and then bind them for them to do anything complex like cleaning up pollution. You’ll be in constant communication with the ones in the field. And earth spirits, which will be doing most of the work, can work fast, but they don’t on their own and most of them are complainers if you push them to move quickly. You’ll be pitting your will against their constant complaints from sunup to sundown or sundown to sunup depending on your shift.” “Wait,” said Sasha, “We’re going to be pushing spirits of stubbornness literally all day?” “Literally all day or night,” he amended, “We’re going to push as hard as we can before you go back to school on Monday.” There was a silence as the three considered this. “Should we really be working on the school competition before it’s announced?” asked Julie. Larry grinned. “You’ll be sealed in a trailer,” he said, “And I hear that one of you is decent with illusion and invisibility spells.” Fuzzy finished off her pickle and realized that he was talking about her. “Me?” asked Fuzzy. “You,” he said, “We won’t be moving around any heavy machinery on site until the announcement on Monday. But we can sneak into an old trailer on a dead mountain with ease. You’ll just be loosening pickle jars until the announcement. You’ll get released to put your project together, come right here and we’ll empty all of those jars as fast as we can. How fast we can work depends on how many earth spirits you manage to bind tonight and how many friends you can bring, ” “That sounds like cheating,” said Julie, “Just saying.” “They’re all going to cheat,” said Sasha, bluntly, “We just need to not get caught.” “Still…” said Julie. Larry gave Julie a flat look. Then he silently sighed, making the motion with his mouth and chest, but no air came out as astral bodies didn’t breathe. “I have four-hundred thousand tons of dead soil that needs to become live soil in the next few weeks, starting monday” he said, “All of those tons of live soil then need to be moved up and down the mountain and seeded with quick growing and quick dying grass to establish a root system so the soil doesn’t blow away or get washed out with the next rain. Then I have to finalize the purchase of fifty-thousand native saplings as well as native grass and shrubs, all of which costs me money the longer they stay in the nurseries. If it takes too long, they’ll be destroyed and I’ll still be charged.” He leaned back and rubbed at his head, black frustration and red anxiety creeping into his normally cheerful, yellow form. “I don’t know if any of you know anything about project management, but I am on a strict timetable,” he said, “There are benchmarks and goals that I absolutely, positively have to meet if the project is going to be successful. Now if we work hard, we can have this done in a week. If you bring awakened friends, especially powerful friends, knock a day or two off per friend that can summon. If you bring enough friends, we could be done before the objectives of the contest are even announced. And if you want to keep working with me and earn a little more pay when you’re not busy with school, you’re welcome to because there’s still a lot to do.” That last part piqued Sasha’s interest. “We get paid for this?” she asked. Larry smiled and turned back to his normal shade of happy yellow. “What am I, a cheapskate?” he asked, “Of course you’re getting paid. Fifty an hour for twelve hour shifts, sunup to sundown or sundown to sunup. Meals, lodging and reagents for binding spirits provided for free.” Larry laughed and stood up from his “sitting” position, feet firmly planted on the floor. “Seventy an hour,” said Sasha, “You need us. Anyone else will charge you at least twice that per hour and that’s if you can find anyone to do it.” Larry laughed and stood up from his “sitting” position, feet firmly planted on the floor. Sasha stood up and looked Larry in the eye, downwards in fact as she was slightly taller than him. The two sized each other up as they began to negotiate. “Shamans are going to dicker over price for an environmental rehabilitation project?” he asked, “Fifty-five an hour. Not a nuyen more.” He did his best to look disinterested but it seemed to Julie like he was having fun. “Sixty-five an hour,” said Sasha, “And we get paid for any time we spend summoning and binding spirits. Or are we doing that on the clock? Probably not because it wouldn’t work so well with your timetable. We can’t tell spirits as stubborn as stones what to do while we’re binding those same kinds of equally stubborn spirits.” “Well you can bind more spirits on your own time if you don’t like sleeping,” he said, with a smirk, “Fair point though. Since you’re Julian’s kids, I’ll give you sixty an hour. And I’ll be doing a lot of hand holding, so that’s generous.” Sasha leaned forward and took off her glasses. “Sixty-two,” said Sasha, “And we get a bonus if it’s done by Monday.” Julie was getting into it and so she decided to add her own voice. “And we want more food like this when we’re done,” said Julie, “And a bonfire.” “Yeah!” exclaimed Fuzzy. He didn’t seem surprised in the slightest. “You want a party,” he said, “I suppose we can come back here and do that.” Sasha sharply nodded her head. “I haven’t been off an island except to travel between them for four months,” said Sasha, “No more islands.” Larry shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you off the mountain,” he said, slowly, “And once it’s clean it’s mostly just going to be rocks and dead soil. I made a promise to Julian. You can try talking to him but I had to do a lot of talking already to get you on the mountain at all.” Sasha made a little distressed noise in the back of her throat, but before she could retort, Fuzzy grabbed her hand and pulled her attention away from Larry. “You need to go back into the vat once a day, remember?” asked Fuzzy. Sasha, who’d seemed to have forgotten that, grumbled in frustration. “I guess I can sleep in the vat,” she said, sourly, “Just roll me in after work.” “I’m going to need my truck,” said Fuzzy, “Since Gridguide isn’t working.” “And good luck talking to Julian,” said Julie, as she checked her messages on her commlink, “He hasn’t gotten back to me yet.” Sasha frowned and then shrugged. “He’ll get to us when he gets to us,” she said to Julie, and then looked at Fuzzy as well, “Is sixty-three an hour good enough for you two?” Both Julie and Fuzzy nodded. Making sixty-three nuyen an hour sounded fabulous to Julie, but she remembered that she was making something to the tune of thirty-thousand a day the last few days. Another way that she felt unmoored from the concept of money and what a nuyen was worth. Though if you asked Mrs. Liu, she’d tell you nuyen wasn’t even real. “Sixty-three an hour for everyone involved,” said Sasha, “A bonus for finishing our goals before Monday, we finish up fast and have enough food for everyone afterwards for a party. We’ll figure out the party ourselves after I talk to Julian.” “Deal,” he said, happily. They shook on it and Larry was pleased to shake hands with literally anyone, so it went on a little longer than normal, not that Sasha minded. “Now I’m going to need to make some purchases and finalize some contracts,” said Larry, and he turned a sickly green with disgust, “Which means going back into my body for a while to make some comm calls. If you’re going to invite anyone then I’d suggest making some comm calls of your own soon, but also doing it discreetly. If you get caught cheating, you’ll be disqualified.” “Why cheat at all?” asked Fuzzy. “Because everyone else will be cheating too,” said Sasha, officially, “The goal is not to get caught.” Larry gave a little wave and his astral body disappeared into the sealed medical bed. His drones continued to clean up the food but they all got a text a few seconds later. Larry: Feel free to take the leftovers if you want them. “Hell yeah, score,” said Sasha, happily. Julie briefly thought it was odd that Sasha would be so excited over leftovers. After all, she’d once been part of the corporate elite. However, she hadn’t been born into that life so she still had some of her old wage slave family sensibilities. “Why is he in the medical bed, you think?” asked Sasha, out loud. Julie winced and pulled Sasha closer so they could whisper. “No idea,” whispered Julie, “But if he needs his own personal medical bed and vat, he’s probably pretty sick. So maybe don’t press him.” Sasha grunted in annoyance. “Fine,” complained Sasha. Fuzzy was already back at the table with the diminished smorgasbord of food and began putting them into containers to take home. “Going to take some home for Kenji,” said Fuzzy, “I even saved a couple of those Milwaukee ribs.” “You were going through those fast,” said Julie, “Are you saving all of them for him?” Fuzzy looked a little sheepish at being called out. “I was going to have one more later,” she admitted, “But the rest are for him.” “There’s three left,” said Julie, “You had four.” “Five,” corrected Sasha. Fuzzy blushed a little and fidgeted with her hands. “They were really good,” said Fuzzy. “If he wanted some, he should’ve showed up to the meeting,” said Sasha. Julie thought about it and then remembered something. “We should really bring home some extra for Julian too,” she said, “Remember that he’s getting yelled at by angry parents…Parents that help run the corporate world. Or at least whomever the angry parents paid to yell at him.” Sasha sighed and Fuzzy made a sad little noise at having to give up the enormous rib. “Fine,” complained Fuzzy, “No more for me. But they’re so good…” “They’re pretty fatty,” said Julie. “I know!” exclaimed Fuzzy, “That’s the best part! Ugh, I want another.” Sasha cleared her throat to get their attention. “Julian is probably going to be in a poo poo mood,” said Sasha, “So there goes any chance of getting a party outside of school, here or on a blighted superfund site.” “Where should we have the party?” asked Julie. “The mountain,” said Sasha. “Really?” asked Julie, incredulously. “Really,” said Sasha, “Look, Larry wasn’t wrong. I’ve got cabin fever.. Like really bad. I need…To be out. Somewhere. Anywhere…Anywhere not Blake Island or Council Island.” Sasha obviously wasn’t thrilled at the prospect and neither was Julie, but Fuzzy perked up as she suddenly had an idea. “I’m going to take a walk,” said Fuzzy. “Okay, fine,” said Sasha, irritably, then she stopped as if she was trying to remember something before she spoke up again, “And remember to call security if you wander off the grounds.” Fuzzy nodded and looked at Julie. The look that they shared let Julie know in no uncertain terms that she was watching Sasha and making sure her near total lack of fear wouldn’t get her in trouble. Then Fuzzy stood up on booted tiptoes, kissed Sasha on the cheek which made Sasha a little less irritable and then left the conference room. Sasha watched her girlfriend leave and sighed heavily. “I love her so much,” said Sasha, sadly, “And all I’ve been doing all day is annoying her. I’m such a loving bitch.” “You’re not a bitch,” countered Julie, a bit lamely. Sasha gave Julie a cool look. “Bitch, don’t tell me I’m not a bitch when I’m being a bitch,” sassed Sasha. Julie glowered at her friend but then grinned at her. “Okay bitch,” teased Julie. Sasha laughed harder than Julie thought the moment called for. Then she groaned with discomfort, rubbed her belly and then sat down heavily in a chair. “Ate too much,” she complained, “And I want to eat more.” “Same,” said Julie, “We really didn’t stand a chance with all that food, did we?” “No,” said Sasha, “Hey, Julie?” “What’s up?” Julie sat down in a chair near Sasha. “Are you sure about this being roommates thing?” asked Sasha. Julie blinked a few times and then remembered that she’d offered to room with Sasha. This was because Sasha had filled up her cabin and made it into a work room for her enormous cyberterminal, basically a supercomputer the size of an old arcade machine, her gear for recycling old tech and printing new computer parts, which was loud. There wasn’t much room for what little personal stuff she had, much less open space. And the cabins were never that large to begin with. “I mean, you’re really cramped in there,” said Julie, “And the bunk bed is ready since I ordered it custom a few days ago from Touristville. We’ll have to put it together though.” “I know you got it all figured out,” said Sasha, “That’s not what I’m worried about.” Julie sat down next to Sasha. “What are you worried about?” asked Julie. Sasha shrugged one shoulder and looked away. “Just…You know, I’m gay,” she said, bluntly, “I know it’s not news but I also know that you’re not entirely comfortable with that. Being a lesbian means that sometimes you always feel weird in some spaces where women are, like a locker room or something. I mean, maybe some of them don't feel that way, but I do. Not right now, probably. But you know, normally.” Julie had thought of that. They’d be in a tight space with little privacy besides the bathroom. “Just don’t stare and I think we’ll be fine,” said Julie. Sasha gave Julie a flat look. “Julie, I see people like we both just saw Larry most of the time,” she said, “At least…You know, if I didn’t have my special glasses on.” She took off the glasses with the thick, black frames and completely covered side, tops and bottoms. They were a bit lit goggles in a way, though far smaller than Fuzzy’s. “Peoples’ astral bodies usually aren’t exactly sexy,” said Sasha, "Anyway, I know what’s going on emotionally inside of a person all the time. I’m not worried about staring at anyone by accident. You’re mostly just outlines with features filled with colorful emotions. The outside usually isn't all that interesting, it's the insides that are. But invading your emotional privacy is what I’m worried about.” Julie hadn’t thought of it that way, but the features of a person in the astral were just a bit blurry. “That makes sense,” said Julie, “But aren’t you doing that all the time?” “Pretty much,” sighed Sasha, “Though it’s different when you live with someone. They’re less emotionally guarded at home. So if I stare, it’s less…You know…This.” And she waved her hand, fingers out at Julie as she made inarticulate motions at Julie’s body. “And more about your feelings,” said Sasha, “Though if you want to buy some new, loose fitting pajamas, I wouldn't blame you." Julie thought about what to say and decided to briefly match Sasha's level of not caring, just for a bit. "I'll wear whatever I feel like," sassed Julie. That was a lie. She was absolutely going to buy new pajamas. "Hell yeah," said Sasha, "Be absolutely real with yourself and come to the bitch side." Julie giggled at that. "The bitch side, huh?" asked Julie Sasha giggled as well and then suddenly made a growl of frustration. “Yeah, I need someone who I can be a bitch around, you have no idea,” complained Sasha, “Fuzzy is so loving nice and it makes me nuts sometimes. She won’t dish it out, even for fun. Even when it's harmless.” “Never?” asked Julie. “Not really,” said Sasha, testily, “I mean, she has her moods, but she usually doesn’t speak ill of people unless she really doesn’t like someone.” “And usually that means punching them,” said Julie. Sasha barked out a laugh. “I can’t believe that she not only punched Minuet’s teeth out of her head,” said Sasha, “But she ground them up and uses them to power her spearknife.” “It’s kind of hosed up,” said Julie. “It’s super hosed up and I love it!” exclaimed Sasha, “Like, my super nice, super cute, cool, athletic, brave, loyal girlfriend that I absolutely do not deserve rammed a magical spear powered by the ground up teeth of a corporate princess into a toxic spirit and defeated it in one on one combat. Like I can’t…gently caress, my gay little heart! Uuuuuugh.” Sasha leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling, then looked to Julie. “Uuuuuugh!” she repeated, louder this time. “Are you having a moment?” asked Julie. Sasha straightened up and let out a big breath as the moment passed. She ignored the question as it had been entirely rhetorical. “So you don’t have to worry about rooming with me,” said Sasha, “Fuzzy is my everything, okay?” Julie nodded and she felt like she could deal with having a gay roommate. After all, she'd roomed with a woman before and she knew that her old cellmate, Big Rita, was gay. Or maybe she'd been prison gay, Julie wasn't sure which. Either way, that new perspective really Julie look forward to rooming with Sasha. “I lied," said Julie, "New super comfy pajamas sound great. Just some really thick cotton.” Sasha grinned and nodded. “The thickest cotton,” said Sasha, “Full, loose fitting pajama bottoms. Can’t see anything.” “The highest neckline on the tops,” said Julie, with a grin to match Sasha's, "Maximum comfort." “Yeah!” exclaimed Sasha, “I need new clothes. Most of it is still Ares corporate casual wear. Ugh.” “Gross,” said Julie. Julie allowed herself to relax again. “I know!” exclaimed Sasha, “It’s six months out of fashion too. No way can I keep up with the brands I used to have, not that anyone but the super corporate elite would even know what they are. Not that I want to keep up with them anymore. I can’t afford to just blow a grand on a t-shirt. gently caress, I need an entirely new wardrobe and a new style. Son of a bitch, it’s going to be expensive.” “Wait, you spent a thousand nuyen on a t-shirt?” asked Julie, incredulously. Sasha laughed. “Oh, you don’t even know,” said Sasha, “These loving elite rube assholes pay for brand names that only the one percent of the one percent have heard of, much less wear. It's how you know you're in the super elite club. It's shallow high school level poo poo, like oh, you don't wear Snootingtons newest fall lineup? You loving poor, begone from my sight." "What does it look like?" asked Julie. "That's just the thing!" exclaimed Sasha, "It really doesn't look any different than other nice brands. It's just the name brand, you know? There’s no price tags in those shops either. You just walk out with the latest fashion, which is a monthly thing because if you’re behind on fashion, people look down on you because image is everything in the corporate world. And you just pay whatever they say you owe. My mom…My...Oh...” Sasha paused and the mention of her mom and all of that previous energy went out of her. Sensing that Sasha was having an entirely different kind of moment, Julie offered her a hand and Sasha took it without reservation. “I cry at night,” said Sasha, without hesitation, “You know, when I don’t have anything else to think about. It’s why I keep so busy. So I don’t think. Sometimes I cry in the bathroom at school but mostly it’s at night. If Fuzzy is around I just bawl my eyes out and get my snot all over her. It’s loving gross.” Julie squeezed Sasha’s hand. “I used to too,” said Julie, quietly, “Cry that is. Still do sometimes.” “When does it stop hurting?” asked Sasha. Julie smiled sadly. “Crying is an upgrade for me,” said Julie, “At one point I couldn’t even do that. I just constantly felt like I was choking. I’m more worried that I’ll stop crying again.” “poo poo.” “Yeah,” said Julie, “Therapy helps.” “Huh. Is it good? Does it work?” Julie shrugged. “I’ve only been doing it for a few weeks,” she said, “I actually have to cancel or reschedule since I’ll be busy on Sunday. I get these massive stress headaches afterwards. Mr. Brand…My therapist, he says that they’ll pass in a few months. He prescribed some benzodiazepines for me.” Sasha furrowed her brow. “Why do I know that word?” she asked. “Benzodiazepine?” Sasha nodded. “Oh, they’re for anxiety and panic disorders,” said Julie. Sasha snapped her fingers. “Oh yeah,” said Sasha, in realization, “I was just munching those down before I got dunked in a vat. It had some weird pharma brand name I can't remember now, but I remember benzowhatevers instead. Weird. Anyway, it didn’t help much.” “I mostly take them before therapy,” said Julie, "It helps." “gently caress anxiety,” said Sasha. “Yeah.” “We’re going to keep the mini fridge full of ice cream,” said Sasha, “You know, for emergencies.” Julie grinned, but it was short lived. “I’m getting fat,” she complained. “Combat class with Coach Bolt,” said Sasha, “I’m telling you.” “Yeah?” Sasha nodded. “Oh yeah,” said Sasha, “He was in the process of whipping my rear end into shape before I got dunked in the vat. It was great. I'm looking forward to feeling beat up every day.” “Great?” asked Julie, confused. Sasha flexed like Fuzzy had, but it was with far, far less muscle than her girlfriend. “I was so tired after he was done with me,” said Sasha, happily, “Zero thoughts other than thinking about how sore I was. Can’t recommend it more.” “I might do that next semester,” said Julie. "Do." Sasha nodded and they were quiet for a moment. “So about Pyg?” asked Sasha. It was a hard switch of topic, but Julie didn’t mind. “How much?” asked Julie. “Eighty grand,” said Sasha, without a second's hesitation. Julie’s eyebrows threatened to climb off her forehead, but Sasha only shrugged. “It’s high end tech,” said Sasha, not trying to placate Julie in the slightest, “And she will help you squeeze money out of your business. Trust me. She’ll pay for herself and it'll probably pretty quick.” It was almost a third of what Julie had in the bank and spending that much made her very nervous. “Can I get it to you in installments?” asked Julie. Sasha shook her head. “I’ve got cyberware and bioware that I want in me,” said Sasha, “The good stuff. Stuff I can only get here. High grade, custom ‘ware that needs to be cultured from my own cells. Not so much more that it’ll damage my magic any more than it already is, but it’s now or never. The Spa doesn’t doesn’t take IOU’s.” “I don’t know…” said Julie. Sasha squeezed Julie’s hand. They were still doing it. “It’s all legal, just expensive,” said Sasha, “I have enough to buy everything I want, but it’d wipe me out. Julian said for me to think about it, but getting Pyg was a serious windfall. Selling to you means I don’t really have to think about it. It’ll pay for itself in the long term. This kind of ‘ware will be a great investment. But I don’t want to go broke if you don’t want Pyg.” Julie sighed. She wanted to talk to Julian first, but she also didn’t want to involve him in her business. Technically she probably should have as she was still a minor, but she knew that if she started letting him make decisions for her and holding her back, that might cause problems for Touristville. She did want his help and his advice, just not his restraint. “Did you get texts from Julian about your cybernetics purchases?” asked Julie. “Yeah,” said Sasha, happily, “Want to see them?” Julie nodded. “I do,” said Julie, “Give me Pyg today for a trial run. I’ll pay you tomorrow if Julian gives you the go ahead. Is that good enough?” Sasha smiled. “Yeah, sure,” said Sasha, happily, “I’ll need to hack Pyg. Also you’ll need at least one other drone and someone to mind them. Not all the time, just sometimes. After that, I want to go out back where that billionaire got shot. Want to come?” “Morbid,” said Julie. “I dunno,” said Sasha, “I feel like it would’ve been good for me a couple years ago to see something like that. I’d be a lot worse if I hadn’t met all of you. Not terrible, but not very good either.” “You’re all right,” said Julie. “Yeah, now,” said Sasha, “Hey! gently caress, we should organize a field trip for all of those corp princes and princesses. Have them take a good look at some arms dealer billionaire who got a lot of people killed and got killed right back. They need to realize it can get a lot worse for them than what happened to Minuet and me.” Julie hadn’t really made the connection between Sasha and Minuet, but just like Minuet, Sasha had lost her privilege, status and wealth. “If there’s hope for you, there’s hope for them,” said Julie, stubbornly, “We could appeal to the better angels of their nature.” Sasha rolled her eyes and made a farting noise with her mouth. Then she stood up and stretched. “Yeah, no,” said Sasha, dismissively, “Julie, you’re really nice. I really like you. But you’re wrong. That church poo poo is filling you with some bad ideas. Some people don’t have better angels.” Julie was not happy with having her nose rubbed in that, even if she wasn’t completely sure that it was a fact. After all, Julie knew that Big Rita, her cellmate, hadn't been a good person, but all the same, she’d taken care of Julie anyway. “I’m not sure that I agree,” said Julie, still stubborn. Sasha shrugged, uncaring. “I might be wrong, but I’ve met more billionaires than you have,” said Sasha, “So I think I’m the expert here. Now come on. You want to see those bullet holes or what?” And because she was feeling morbidly curious herself, she got up to go take a look at those bullet holes with Sasha. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Apr 14, 2023 |
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Apr 13, 2023 10:32
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Ice Phisherman posted:“It’s super hosed up and I love it!” exclaimed Sasha, “Like, my super nice, super cute, cool, athletic, brave, loyal girlfriend that I absolutely do not deserve rammed a magical spear powered by the ground up teeth of a corporate princess into a toxic spirit and defeated it in one on one combat. Like I can’t…gently caress, my gay little heart! Uuuuuugh.” The whole dialogue between Julie and Sasha was great. This part in particular makes me laugh every time I read it.
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Apr 13, 2023 18:57
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Dr Subterfuge posted:The whole dialogue between Julie and Sasha was great. This part in particular makes me laugh every time I read it. I'm glad that you like it! I had a lot of fun writing that part in particular. Writing about Fuzzy and Sasha's relationship is one of my favorite parts of the series. I've written about this before, but most series outside of the romance genre don't show dating/romance as part of a story. In all other genres dating/romance/ is a kind o achievement that you get at the end of the story. Sasha without fear and therefore without filters is particularly fun to write. And we'll see another wild mood swing or two as her doctors help her dial in on what kind of levels of anxiety and fear she's actually comfortable with.
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Apr 13, 2023 20:19
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Julie, Fuzzy, Chip and Pyg - Thursday, August 30th, 2075 – Afternoon - Seattle Metroplex “Watch your step,” said Fuzzy. With a long and careful step, Julie stepped off the dock and boarded the boat that would take her and Fuzzy back to Blake Island. In her hand was a cooler full of leftovers which she deposited in the back of the bowrider style boat. “Thanks,” said Julie. Next was Fuzzy, who carried several glass jars full of leaves, twigs, rocks and other normal looking forest detritus. These were magical reagents used for summoning spirits and there was the expectation from Larry that they’d spend all night summoning and then binding spirits for the environmental cleanup project tomorrow. She sat next to Julie in the back. Lastly, Pyg boarded. She was an artificial picture of grace, though she appeared to stumble as she stepped onto the boat, selling the idea that she was a metahuman and not a drone. She smoothed out her clothing and smoothly stepped into the pilot’s seat and pretended to familiarize herself with the controls. Sasha’s “surgery” had been a success. After a few minutes of looking at the bullet holes in the back of the hotel that used to be a billionaire and his family, she’d come back and with some borrowed hand tools that she’d managed to scrounge up. Hacking Pyg had taken getting “under the hood” but Sasha made it look trivial, though Sasha hadn’t spoken much after they parted ways. They took her back to the entrance of the Spa so she could go back in the vat and after some thought, Julie rented a boat as the safest alternative to getting around the Gridguide system. Now Pyg wouldn’t ask about registration and wouldn’t directly connect to the matrix. This had voided her warranty but Julie didn’t much care about that. What Julie cared about was taking Pyg on a test drive in her dental office to see if she wanted to buy the drone from Sasha. “Julie, you wanted me to steer, right?” asked Pyg. “Right,” said Julie. Pyg sat down at the helm of the bowrider which made Julie feel marginally more safe as technically the twenty foot craft used Gridguide as well. However, since Pyg was an “executive” model with literally hundreds of autosofts, the new drone was something of a jack of all trades, master of none so of course she could pilot the craft. “Please put on your life jackets and we’ll depart,” said Pyg. Julie was only happy to comply because she couldn’t swim. On the school boat that never felt like a problem, but this boat was much smaller. And it struck her as funny that she could levitate but she couldn’t swim. “Do I have to?” asked Fuzzy, “I can swim.” “If you are knocked off the boat and lose consciousness, I will dive in to get you, but your survival goes up dramatically if you wear a life jacket.” Julie figured that she could just override Pyg’s decision but she was feeling cautious after her Gridguide cab malfunctioned. “Yeah, you might want to wear it today,” said Julie, “I’ve got the bruises to prove it.” Fuzzy shrugged and one on and so Pyg started up the engine. “There is an eight mile an hour speed limit in the lake and that lowers to five miles an hour as we go west through the locks, but we’ll be able to move quickly once we arrive in the Puget Sound. Estimated time back to Vashon Island North Ferry Terminal is two hours and twelve minutes. Your school boat will pick you up there.” Julie checked her commlink and once again saw no message from Julian. So she opened up her emotional connection to Chip as he was on Blake Island at the moment. Instantly, she felt his presence and the emotional equivalent of a wave of hello. “When did you learn how to swim?” asked Julie, distractedly. Emotional conversations weren’t articulate, but they were fast because she dealt with emotions, not language and she had gotten better at it. So Julie thought about how Julian made her feel, which was safe and appreciated and then mimicked confusion, functionally asking what was wrong with Julian. Chip answered back with a wave of sadness and then a wave of what she described as Chip articulating what drunkenness must feel like. Since Chip didn’t have a central nervous system to marinate in alcohol it was the emotional equivalent of a young boy stumbling around pretending to be drunk, which made her smile. It wasn’t perfect but she got the gist. “Coach Bolt taught me last year,” said Fuzzy, “I’m not great at it but I can. Why are we even taking the boat though? I could just ask Tek to come pick us up with my truck.” The boat roared to life and the boat moved away from one of the small docks on Council Island and forwards, north towards the Lake Washington Ship Canal which connected Lake Washington to the Puget Sound. “Because Gridguide is messed up,” said Julie, “It’s why my car turned in circles and then flipped over. Land, sea and air travel all run on the Gridguide system. So if we go by land, we could get into another car accident. If we go by air then we could crash. Going by boat seems like the safest because we’ll know if a boat is about to crash into us and I can just levitate all of us away.” Fuzzy nodded in understanding. “Slow though,” she remarked. “Yeah,” said Julie, “Anyway, I asked Chip and he said that Julian is sad and drunk, which isn’t good.” Fuzzy’s pale eyebrows climbed up her forehead in surprise. “That doesn’t sound like him,” said Fuzzy. “No it doesn’t,” said Julie. “How’s Kenji?” asked Fuzzy. So Julie thought about how Kenji made her feel, which was embarrassing because it was mostly confusion to the point of being flustered. Chip understood immediately with the emotional equivalent of a knowing smile which made Julie even more flustered. Chip responded with the fake drunk emotion as well and Chip pretended that he was consoling her. “Also drunk,” said Julie, slowly, “And he’s…Consoling Julian, which is weird. Um…Crap.” Julie had expected to go straight to Touristville, drop off Pyg, check on Jimmy and announce her new reputation system to Touristville. “Yeah, that’s a problem,” said Fuzzy, “We should be there.” Julie thought about it. “I have to stop by Touristville for an hour or so,” said Julie, “Can’t avoid it.” She had to drop off Pyg and help her get situated, establish her new reputation system and include people in it, check on Jimmy and see if anyone had any ideas about what to do with the maple syrup. “We’re not going to Vashon Island?” asked Pyg. “No, we’re going to Pier Sixty-Nine,” said Julie, "Where the Gates Undersound Hotel is." “Okay,” said Pyg, brightly, with barely a pause, “That will take us just over an hour. Be aware that there are reports of protests and riots in the area. Knight-Errant and the Seattle Guard are responding, but until the situation is resolved you both should be cautious.” “Which area?” asked Fuzzy, warily. Pyg turned the wheel ever so slightly to reach the exact optimal route while observing the speed limit perfectly. “The protests, looting and rioting are mostly situated around the ACHE,” said Pyg, “Response times from the police have slowed considerably and so there has been a temporary downgrade in the local security rating of the Downtown area from A to C.” Julie and Fuzzy looked at one another. “What does that mean?” asked Fuzzy, “A to C?” “It means that you should be very careful,” said Pyg. “Gotcha,” said Fuzzy. “How about I deal with Touristville, you check on Julian and Kenji and I’ll come by as soon as I can?” asked Julie. Fuzzy nodded, frowned and then reconsidered. “Maybe I should stick around to watch your back,” she said. “Okay…” said Julie, slowly, “Good point. Maybe just get me into Touristville and I’ll leave when it’s safe? I can ask to see if I can get an escort to the docks when I’m done.” Fuzzy smiled and nodded. “That sounds better,” said Fuzzy, “Just don’t take too long. I don’t know what Kenji and Julian’s problem is, but if Julian is drunk and sad then it must be bad.” “Probably,” said Fuzzy, “The riot probably isn’t giving Touristville any problems, right?” A spike of fear jabbed into Julie’s guts at the mention of that. Dragonslayer told them in no uncertain terms that if the ACHE rioted that they’d roll over Touristville, which was a mere two blocks from their doorstep. Their prediction was that if the majority of the ACHE rioted, Touristville would get looted. “Oh…Oh I hope not,” said Julie, quietly. She tried to check the matrix for information but besides a few AI generated articles, there was no real information on how big the riot was. Technically she could leave her body via astral projection but she’d been told repeatedly in explicit terms never to leave your body if your body was in motion. Spending time outside of your body was a bit like holding your breath underwater. You could do it for a while, but eventually you had to come back up for air. Though in this case, the “breath” of someone astrally projecting was measured in hours, not minutes. If you couldn’t find your body, there was no more breathing until you did. Just as she was about to give up, she stumbled onto a live feed by pure chance on someone’s social media account. Apparently it was some far right stream because the chat was actively cheering on the police and Seattle Guard as they participated in what looked less like “law and order” and more random gang beatings of whomever they could catch and firing CS gas canisters directly at people in ragged clothing. It wasn’t an on the ground stream, but instead it was an silent, aerial view of thousands of people on the ACHE’s southern side looting, burning and mostly running from the cops and Seattle Guard. But there were simply too many people and they were too spread out to be easily contained. “Well this is grim,” said Julie. “Find something?” asked Fuzzy. “Yeah, it’s not good,” said Julie, “It’s an aerial view of the riot. No protesters here, or at least none that I can see. It’s just a lot of looting and burning.” Julie made a flicking motion over her commlink and sent a link for the matrix website to Fuzzy, who pulled her black, AR goggles down from her forehead and over her eyes so she could take a look at it. She frowned almost immediately. “All of those people talking poo poo need a punch in the mouth,” complained Fuzzy. Julie sighed. “That’s the matrix for you,” sighed Julie. “The cops are just beating on starving people,” said Fuzzy, “And we have three farms now. One at school and two in Touristville. And they feed how many people?” “Five hundred each,” said Julie. Fuzzy’s mouth made a firm line of disapproval. “It’s not hard to make food if you have the money,” said Fuzzy, “But these people are starving anyway. It seems like people would steal and burn a lot less if they weren’t hungry and poor.” The boat rocked a bit as the wake of a different passing boat rocked their boat. Not too much though. Pyg’s piloting was smooth. “Didn’t Kenji mention that the food has run out at this time of the month?” asked Julie. Fuzzy shook her head. “The food ran out a week and a half ago,” said Fuzzy, “But we’re at the end of the month where they burn all of the trash. These are probably people fleeing the ACHE so that they can breathe. Kenji told me that most people seal themselves in one of the rooms with food, water and air until the smoke passes, but the people who can’t usually die.” Julie’s face fell. “Right,” she said, sadly. “Touristville is fine,” sighed Fuzzy, “Everyone in the ACHE who could really riot will be behind doors right now. They’re locked in by the smoke.” Then they caught another group in the riot. Not protesters, who seemed to be completely absent, but gang members in black and orange. Some were on foot, but mostly they were on dirt bikes and the occasional heavily modified and heavily armored car, painted black with flame motifs. They seemed completely uninterested in looting, only in burning and random violence. The chat went wild and was now caught between actively wishing for the deaths of the rioters and gang members and half wanted even more burning. “Halloweeners,” said Fuzzy. “The what?” asked Julie. “The gang,” said Fuzzy, “That’s their name. Tek talks about them sometimes. They live near the abandoned docks near the ACHE and they’re a big reason why the docks are on fire each night. They’re really, really into fire and there are a lot of them.” They both watched as some sort of car that was armored with what looked like scrap steel from shipping containers rolled up on a few people from the ACHE who were actively starting fires. Instead of some clash, the gang members gestured eagerly for the people from the ACHE to get on and to her surprise, they did. “Looks like they’re recruiting,” said Fuzzy. A gang member on a dirt bike painted in black and orange ramped onto a number of parked cars and rode across them, ending with a front flip. Surprisingly he stuck the landing and then he lit the last car on fire with a molotov cocktail before speeding away. Chat went nuts with massive amounts of fire emojis. “Maybe we should too,” said Julie. Fuzzy looked Julie in the eyes. “No today,” she said, “Not a good idea.” Julie kept looking at the stream and while some people were being arrested, some were also being beaten and the few that were caught were being shoved back into the ACHE. Since it was filled up with smoke, a fact which few outside of the ACHE knew or cared about, that meant that anyone pushed into the ACHE was being sentenced to death. “But they’re killing them,” said Julie, quietly, “They’re pushing them back into the ACHE. You can’t breathe in there right now.” Fuzzy’s hands fidgeted in frustration. “Look, you have a lot of good will in your community right now,” said Fuzzy, “That disappears if you get someone killed or bring in someone who steals or burns or kills. I know Paul wanted us to grab some people out of this…This…Con…Con…” The feed they both watched suddenly cut out with white text on a black background saying “This stream has violated our terms of service”. Chat complained and eventually everyone began to leave to find new streams. “Concentration camp,” supplied Julie. “Yeah, that,” said Fuzzy, sourly, “This is horrible and I’m not telling you not to help. I’m telling you that if you try to help by just grabbing random people off the street, that can go really badly. You’d feel horrible if your choices lead to the deaths of other people.” “Not doing anything is a choice,” countered Julie. Fuzzy closed her eyes and took a deep and calming breath as she put her commlink away and pulled her black, AR goggles back over her forehead. “You’re doing that thing again,” said Fuzzy. “What thing?” asked Julie. “That thing where you feel bad, so you take these huge gambles to make yourself feel better.” Suddenly offended, Julie glared at Fuzzy. “I don’t do that,” she said, reflexively. “You double down,” said Fuzzy, “Then you take on more work than you can possibly handle, you burn out and then you feel like poo poo until you do it again. And you’re thinking that right now, you know better than me and that you can walk into that crowd of people and come back with all of these desperate people who will be thankful for a place to live and some food and a job and a community to take them in.” “Those are people, Fuzzy,” said Julie, sickened, “People whose only crime is that they’re poor.” “And maybe you can give them that,” said Fuzzy. “Because they need it,” she said, emphatically.” “So far you’ve been really lucky!” said Fuzzy, who raised her voice suddenly, and then dropped it, “But you have people depending on you right now and some of those people love you. People who will be very sad if you get yourself killed rushing in with no plan.” “I can make a plan,” said Julie, “You think I can’t?” “I think the best person to make that plan is currently getting drunk with Julian,” said Fuzzy, “If you want to help, we need to be smart about it. Rushing in without a plan isn’t smart. Our magic doesn’t even work that close to the ACHE. Even if it did, throwing around magic makes you an instant target because you become the biggest threat around. A lot of people shoot first and ask questions later.” Julie bit her lip hard in frustration. Hard enough that she drew blood. Fuzzy watched her friend intensely, blue eyes almost boring into her. “Fine,” snapped Julie. “You’re not going?” asked Fuzzy. “No,” she said, bitterly. “We’ll do something later,” said Fuzzy, “With a plan. Safely. Okay?” Julie didn’t answer. Instead she looked away from Fuzzy and brooded. As Pyg guided them towards the Ballard Locks that connected Lake Washington to the Puget Sound, Julie stared out at the fires of the burning city, feeling helpless and angry as she stewed in silence for the next hour. --- Julie and Fuzzy make a computer + logic test. Surprisingly, Julie rolls 4 hits and so she gets an idea of what's going on. There's a riot of people who escaped the ACHE to keep from suffocating and they're currently looting and burning. How they got past the wall is anyone's guess though. Julie glitches on a composure test and fails an opposed etiquette test 2 v 4 with Fuzzy. This leaves her in a terrible mood and filled with the need to act. --- Anyway, just a smaller update as I've been busy lately. I'll try and get another out soon. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 08:33 on May 19, 2023 |
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May 12, 2023 19:11
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Ice Phisherman posted:Julie, Fuzzy, Chip and Pyg - Thursday, August 30th, 2075 – Afternoon - Seattle Metroplex 
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May 12, 2023 19:44
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