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Eclipse Phase (Private)

Abigail Hammond
After Breakout​

As Abby gets her simulated drink, she finds a data packet attached to it, one that even a cursory inspection reveals to have some serious public-key cryptography on it. It would take a quantum computer to even have a chance of cracking it. There is a simple line of text that isn't encrypted though, one that says: "crack me if you can". She never could resist a challenge. Fortunately, she knows a guy who works with the Argonauts back on Shukra, in a slightly different branch than her.

Once granted access to the computer, she feeds it the data packet, and sets the parameters she was sure would work the best. At that point, it was all up to the computer and a week's worth of work. In the meantime, she took on a freelance job for a buddy she met through the Argonauts, running pentests on his servers in exchange for some credit. The guy's system had most of the usual holes, but was secure enough once she was done with him that she doubted many hackers would be able to break it without a backdoor.

A week later, she got a message from her contact that the data packet had been successfully cracked. Inside was a message from a month ago, with the identities of the sender and receiver scrambled but the IP addresses left intact. A bit of digging and they seemed to lead to Octavia on one end and... back home to Noctis-Qianjiao on the other. Considering the message itself seemed to be some kind of report from a PI of some kind, it wouldn't be too out of the question to assume her parents had hired someone to keep tabs on her. But how did RJ end up with this? She needed answers, and it seemed like the best place to start was to find this PI, because she doubted RJ would want to reveal everything.
 
Venus - Octavia​

The day-long journey from Shukra to Octavia is spent in reasonable comfort aboard one of the Morningstar Constellation’s transport blimps, with views of the thick cloud layer stretching out to all sides of the horizon and a clear sky above - all of which have to be appreciated from within the airship, the atmosphere still a ways off from breathable. But like the famous portrait of Aphrodite, Octavia rises from the surrounding cloud layer, glorying in her own beauty. Shaped like an inverted cone, Octavia’s superstructure is adorned with spirals and curves like wards against gravity itself, suspended in the air by its own buoyancy against the thick Venusian atmosphere. The docking spaces at the top of the aerostat are the busiest on Venus, its docking spars and port facilities fantastically adorned to add to the station’s breathtaking beauty.

“Welcome to Octavia!” proclaims AR signage at the far end of the airlock from the transport blimp from Shukra. As the primary spaceport of Venus, the terminal is bustling with activity as tens of thousands disembark from or await blimps, jets, Venusian cruise liners and yachts all along the fanciful docking spars. The terminal’s halls are spacious - per the norm on Venusian aerostats that rely on being lighter than the thick Venusian atmosphere to stay bouyant - and done in elaborate designs and brilliant colors that shift with the light.

As Abby makes her way out to the upper level of Octavia, the scale of the habitat begins to become apparent: home to half a million inhabitants, the aerostat is half again the size of the next largest habitat in the Morningstar constellation. The interior spaces of Octavia are even more spacious than many of the other aerostats - particularly in comparison to Shurkra - as they are intended to impress the many thousands of visitors from around and beyond the constellation. Its halls are bright, colorful, and alive with the din of residents and tourists alike, pursuing the many pleasures or brisk business to be found here.

The activity of the aerostat’s mesh is dense; an entire city filled with half a million residents along with another few tens of thousands of tourists and mesh traffic arriving from off station means finding a particular IP address will be a determined effort, even with a generic one in hand. Proxy opens a window in Abby’s entoptic display with what ads for hotels she has let through the filters and corroborated with reviews from previous patrons for reasonable per-night prices given Abby’s taste.

[Depending on how long you want to stay, we could be here for a day or a week - might want to consider price accordingly,] Proxy suggests.
 
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Abigail Hammond
A Week in Octavia​
"Radical. Find us something decent, but not too fancy. I want to see if I can spend some time blending in," Abby replies, opening her own window to the local job search sites, and deliberately applying for a few freelance jobs that she knew would improve her reputation but not much else.

Over the course of the week, she helped one of the local hypercorps test their security protocols and spent time researching the location of the VPN server that the Octavia IP address was from. It turned out to be further down the aerostat. Still, this might actually be easier than she expected initially.
 
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Octavia - Hexaferrum Offices​

The journey down to Hexaferrum’s Octavia offices takes some time, even with Abby’s muse guiding her along the public transport system from the upper levels to the corporate district of the aerostat. The bright, glittering architecture evocative of classical art nouveau gives way to more utilitarian corporate designs, with sleek lines and monochromatic palettes that allow logos and advertisements to pop out much more clearly with the contrast. Foot traffic lightens up somewhat, with masses of tourists giving way to packs of besuited executives or service robots going about their rounds. Hexaferrum’s Venus headquarters are nestled along wine of the rows of Corp offices that looks out on an open vault filled with the air Octavia needs to remain aloft, its automatic doors parting at Abby’s approach.

Hexaferrum is apparently old-fashioned enough and sufficiently wealthy to have a corporate office and waiting room, one that has comfortable couches but that lacks a secretary seated at a desk. Instead, Abby is pinged by a disembodied AI secretary, an AR avatar of which stands by the door leading into the office with folded hands and a benevolent smile on her face: “Welcome to Hexaferrum’s Venus headquarters, Abigail Hammond! My name is Alani, and I am free to assist you: would you like to open an account with our security services?”


Abby grins and nods, “I most certainly would. What kind of pricing are we looking at here?”

“Thank you for asking! We have many different options priced at different tiers depending on your needs! Our standard package is priced at one hundred and fifty credits a week for a sixth month period!” Alani replies, “Our basic package would cost a very reasonable ninety credits per week for a sixth month period.”


“Excellent. I think the basic package will most likely suit my needs. Now, just in case something were to happen, what are the terms that apply if I need to cancel my account before the six month period runs out?” Abby asks, already forming a plan in her head. -swap-


“Oh dear, that would be very unfortunate,” Alani responds. “We would be forced to keep your deposit, and additional charges may result from premature breaking of your contract. May I ask why that might be a concern?”-swap-


“It's always good to know the terms of a contract before committing to anything. For that matter, what other terms and conditions should I worry about?” Abby says nonchalantly.


“Your muse has been sent the terms and conditions of the contract to read over now; perhaps you would like to take a moment to read them along?” Alani answers, oblivious to the patronizing quality in her tone.


[Analyzing...], Proxy informs Abby. [As contracts go, it’s not the worst thing you could put your name to - but she wasn’t kidding about the deposit, a thousand credits up front to be refunded upon the conclusion of your six-month period, voided for premature termination of the contract. It also specifies that entering this contract does not give you special access to Hexaferrum’s servers - I imagine you’re facing legal action if you get caught messing around in their systems, including dead storage time or indenture to work off your sentence. Other than all that, it’s the usual ‘don’t be a dick with our software or share anything illegal, we reserve the right to terminate contracts without refunding deposits or subscription, so on and so forth. Nothing too unusual, but it does pose some...obstacles to your plan there.]


[Cool. I need to figure out if I can either get out of this contract after this job or be so undetected that I keep my account.]

Aloud, Abby replied, “Not necessary, my Muse has already looked it over. I think this will be agreeable.”


“Excellent!” Alani proclaims! “We will require a deposit of one thousand credits along with your digital signature to our contract!”


[They sent us the contract,] Proxy says, opening a window in Abby’s entoptics with the contract, highlighting the line where Abby’s signature is required. Adding the signature is as easy as a thought, and the credits are wired without incident.


“Welcome to Hexaferrum! Your account will be ready for you to use as soon as you create your login information,” Alani says. “Thank you for your business, and do not hesitate to ask if you have any further questions!”


[Well, we’re in, what’s the next move?]
 
Rushing Jaws
Ceres - The Hidden Sea​

“Glad we had a good time,” Rushing Jaws says aloud in the oceanic simulspace. Floating there with him is Arpita Mirchandani, her simulmorph done up to give her the appearance of a mermaid - half the Venusian psychosurgeon from the waist up, half merfolk from the waist down and clad in a burkini that clings to the human half of her simulmorph. Rushing Jaws kicks off, swimming in the simulated ocean to process the memories of his fork as they swim into formation following Arpita’s expert psychosurgery. They are integrated within seconds, and two beings are made one with a minimum of friction.
“Thanks for the help doc, doubt there’s anyone else in the system I’d trust what’s left of my mind with like I can trust you.”
“I am happy to be of assistance,” Arpita says in response, her simulated voice clear through a medium that it shouldn’t be. “Have you found a mental care specialist here on Ceres?”
“I got a couple, try not to use em if I don’t have to,” Rushing Jaws replies.
“I understand your wariness, but having a perspective other than your muse would do you good, my friend.”
“Yeah, I know,” Rushing Jaws replies. “Still sounding it all out.”
“I understand. Perhaps you would be more comfortable with a neo-cetacean psychosurgeon?”
“Maybe so,” Rushing Jaws replies, rolling into an orbit around Arpita. “Suppose I should look into one.”
“I would only advise you to be careful who you trust,” Arpita says. “For all of my busy schedule, there is something to be said for us being able to talk frankly about what you encounter.”
“Yeah,” Rushing Jaws replies. “Don’t worry doc, I’ll maintain opsec.”
“Good,” Arpita says. “i must be moving along to new calls; be well, my friend.”
“Back atcha, doc,” Rushing Jaws says, disconnecting from the simulated ocean-

-and back in the real ocean, its dark, cold, and crushing depths known to him and hundreds of thousands of others as the Hidden Sea. Surrounded by friends, Rushing Jaws kicks back to life, shaking off the return to consensus reality like it is just another half-sleep to be roused from. Rushing Jaws calls out to the morphs surrounding them with the greetings of the Maelstrom pod, and hears happy whistling in response. The lights of Wujec glitter like a metropolitan beacon against the surrounding inky darkness, as the very crust of Ceres blocks any view out to the surface; despite this, Rushing Jaws 'sees' far beyond what the light can show him, the sounds of the neo-cetaceans surrounding him, the city beyond them, and of activity for many kilometers around paints a sonic picture in high fidelity.
“Everything go okay?” A neo-orca asks, one who swims close to Rushing Jaws in a close orbit; Azure Song’s neo-cetacean notes have a timbre of worry to them, only somewhat assuaged by Rushing Jaws’ call.
“Far as I can tell, we’re five by five; the doc I know’s real good at what she does, and has a heart big enough to fit the solar system out to the Kuiper belt,” Rushing Jaws replies. “Also? I got 5k in cred from that, and all it took was playing a sim game with some random sapes!”
“Nice!!” Azure Song replies, swimming in close to nuzzle her brother - a gesture that Rushing Jaws warmly receives in lieu of being able to hug. The echoes of their conversation bounce off several other orcas, some dolphins, some porpoises, even a humpback, all of whom click or whistle conversations of their own in the language of neo-cetacea.
“I received the deposit while you were in psychosurgery,” the neo-whale among them chimes in; Serene Ochre Melody dwarfs all of them, true to her name in the soft power of her voice and the gentle might of her strokes, her body adorned with bioluminescent patches that swirl and pulse in time with her voice. “Congratulations on your victory, Rushing Jaws - what is next for you?”
“Probably gonna work my usual beats,” Rushing Jaws answers. “Got a battlesphere rumble lined up in two weeks’ time, till then I guess I could help keep the peace around here.”
[Speaking of, we should speak more of the Concern,] Melody says to Rushing Jaws over a VPN line.
[Suppose we should,] Rushing Jaws beams back
SOM: [The delicate dance goes on, and our...friends in the Concern continue to press into us.]
RJ: [Anything happen that I should know about?]
SOM: [In the time you were in psychosurgery, I received a troubling report from our mutual acquaintance within the Concern. It seems the Concern wishes to raise their profit margins for reasons that remain beyond my grasp just now, and are planning a push against both AnCap and Mutualist businesses in the Wujec area.]
RJ: [A push, huh? How much was Nona able to say?]
SOM: [Little, as I did not ask for details that could compromise her. I suggest you report in to Trident and prepare to work your usual route.]
RJ: [Roger/Wilco. Do you know if Azure’s in on this?]
SOM: [She is, and she is setting her work with HydroGen to one side to volunteer with your patrol.]
RJ: [Music to the ears. We’ll see about making sure the H-C respects the balance of power down here.]
 
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Abigail Hammond
Mission Success?​

It wasn't easy, but she managed to pull off the hack. Abby left the office complex and went up to the transit station, using one of the nanofabricators there to make an ecto and a fiber-optic cable. Once that was done, she scrambled the ecto's mesh ID a few times before heading over to a local bar and plugging herself and accessing her account with Hexaferrum. Once inside, she had to find the right node, which wasn't easy but getting in did get her noticed at first. A half-hour's work later, she had shaken them for the moment, and was searching to find the original copy of the message she was sent. Eventually she had a mesh ID and two more messages, both heavily encrypted of course.

"Son of a bitch. Nothing's ever easy, huh?" Abby swore to herself as she unplugged and headed over to a nearby disassembler to trash the ecto.
[What's the problem, Abigail? You have a better lead than you did before.] Proxy pointed out, confused by Abby's mood.
[Yeah, but now I have to call in more favors, and spend more time waiting on the computer to do the heavy lifting for me because some asshole invented a code I can't crack manually and some other asshole, likely employed by the Hammonds, decided to make my life difficult by using it.]
[Why not just call y-] Proxy couldn't even finish the suggestion before Abby cut her off.
[N O]
 
Rushing Jaws
Ceres - Wujec City​

[Security Alert - HydroGenics Offices: Explosion detected, multiple sensor spimes compromised-]
“Shit, time to go!!” Rushing Jaws whistles in neo-cetacean, Azure Song on his wing along with the neo-dolphins Arielle and Maryam - the four of them armed, armored and racing for the nanotechnology hypercorp.
The interior of Wujec is a maze in three dimensions; this district of the bathyscape is totally flooded - design rather than fault for the aquatic denizens of the city - but kept at pressures less extreme than to be found just outside the superstructure. The main corridors of this section of the city are built wide enough for all four neo-cetaceans to swim side by side of each other, but it is Rushing Jaws that darts ahead, clicking furiously to map the tunnels ahead of them - and to warn anyone ahead to the side of the tunnel, complimenting the AR warnings that the squad of Trident Mutual Security Co-operatives need to get by. Morphs of all kinds comply with the order, clearing the way as Rushing Jaws and his squad rush on to try to save lives. Rushing Jaws has his muse open a line to one of Trident’s central operators, a neo-octopus named Nemsha, patching it through to the rest of the squad via TacNet.
RJ: [RJ to Nemsha, requesting sitrep]
N: [HydroGenics office targeted by some kind of explosive attack, spimes and sensors compromised, attempts at contacting survivors ongoing.]
AZ: [Is the office under attack?]
N: [Unknown - unlikely if our prime suspect is behind it but caution is advised.]
AZ: [Rog.]
A: [Any information on the explosive?]
N: [From what I can tell, there’s no sign of any hazardous materials - just a classic high-explosive charge. Reading extensive damage from the cavitation though.
M: [Injuries?]
N: [Likely extensive, prep your nanobandages.]
RJ: [Roger/wilco]

Rushing Jaws ceases his clicking a block away from HydroGenics office, the others falling in behind him with weapons drawn. Checking Nemsha’s feed, Rushing Jaws sees the floatmess beginning to settle and signs of weak movement on what feeds survived the explosion. Swimming ahead of the others to take point, RJ keeps his gun up in case the poor aquanaut on the cameras is bait for a trap. He clicks steadily, peeking through the door with his smartlink-equipped rifle-
-and seeing no movement aside from the aquanaut. He sweeps the room both visually and acoustically before kicking off to swim into the room, attaching his gun to a holster to free his cybernetic hands for paramedic duty. Azure Song, Maryam and Arielle enter behind him, Maryam preparing first-aid as Azure Song and Arielle keep their weapons up.
“Hey there,” Rushing Jaws greets the semi-conscious aquanaut in his native Mandarin, his cybernetic hands reaching out to take hold of the morph. The aquanaut shakes herself out of her stupor, only to begin thrashing and frenzying in panic, the water around her beginning to mist with her own blood.
“Hey hey hey you’re okay,” Rushing Jaws says to the aquanaut, cybernetic arms close but standing off to avoid injuring the aquanaut, “or at least you’re gonna be okay so long as you settle - look at me, friend.”
“What, who...?” The aquanaut tries to say, still in shock from the explosion and losing her will to fight.
“It’s okay, we’re with Trident and we’re here to help,” Rushing Jaws tries to say - fairly certain his words are getting through as Maryam swims up to ascertain the nature of the wounds.
M: [Shes gotta be delirious, these are looking bad]
RJ: [What’s up?]
M: [Multiple wounds from shrapnel and cavitation trauma - it’s a wonder she’s still alive.]
RJ: [Keep her steady and hand me a nanobandage, we’re gonna earn our keep today.]
AZ: [Arielle and I will secure the rest of the lab, make sure no one’s trying to raid anything.]
RJ: [Rog, call if whatever.]
AZ: [Copy.]
Azure Song kicks off with Arielle into the labs with guns up, clicking to sound out the scene while Rushing Jaws focuses on saving this aquanaut’s life. Clicking softly as he works, Rushing Jaws is able to ‘see’ the full extent of her wounds - and what his echolocation reveals to him is troubling.
“Hey, friend?” Rushing Jaws calls; he has to repeat the call a few times before she seems to notice.
“Wha...?” The aquanaut asks.
“What’s your name?”
“Umm...”
M: [Not good.]
“Do you remember your name?” Rushing Jaws asks, gently as he can while he works to close her wounds.
“...Magdalena,” the aquanaut answers.
“Good! Hey Magdalena, nice to meet’cha, wish it were under better circumstances...” Rushing Jaws says to her, continuing to carry a conversation to keep her attention from wandering toward the proverbial light. Although it is a near thing, Rushing Jaws is able to stop her losing any more blood to the surrounding water; her morph is still going to need a few days in a medivat, but she’ll still have it at the end of all this. Rushing Jaws pings her inserts for a medivac, then swims on into the labs to see what he can do for the others.

“What a goddamned mess,” Rushing Jaws says to her sister as the last of the victims are shipped off for the hospital in ambulance-capsules. The two neo-orcas and their dolphin comrades kick off to swim for the next disaster site - an explosion at a Mutualist-aligned watercraft yard, with a dozen injured and potentially in critical condition. All of Trident’s squadrons are on high alert, communicating over secured channels to prevent their prime suspect from eavesdropping and adjusting their approach. Before they even arrive, another attack is reported on a third site - this one an anarcho-capitalist site, one known for defying Hidden Concern rules about water extraction but that has a contract in place with Trident - and Rushing Jaw’s squad is alerted by Nemsha that they might have to divert to that site after the yard. Several more cases pile up as Rushing Jaws and his comrades tend to the wounded at the shipyard - a large number even for a group as casually brutal as the Hidden Concern.
N: [Sending you the sitrep now.]
RJ: [Holy fuck, what is the Concern’s deal??]
A: [Subcrustal Hydrocraft miss a protection payment or two?]
AZ: [This has to be worse than that. Someone must have pissed off one of the bosses for an attack like this.]
M: [I got a friend who works as a tech with these folks, they’ve been paying their dues.]
RJ: [But they aren’t on H-C's take: that makes them fair game.]
M: [Holy fuck...]
A: [What’s this goddamned city coming to when they can just bomb anyone they don’t like?]
RJ: [This ain’t usually their style either...something’s up here.]
M: [Speaking from experience there?]
RJ: [I only ever worked with ‘em and not for ‘em, but even from those days I got enough of an impression to be able to tell you that terror attacks this blatant aren’t their M-O.]
AZ {PM to RJ}: [You thinking of talking to Nona about it?]
RJ {PM to AZ}: [Might do, only she might not answer. She’s usually quiet during this sort of shit, doesn’t wanna be seen to be snitching.]
AZ {PM to RJ}: [Ask after her health?]
RJ {PM to AZ}: [Good idea - better make sure she’s not among the victims.]
RJ: [Okay - time to save some lives!]

Twenty hours later, and Rushing Jaws is chomping down savagely on a mass of cooked vitromeat with his sister, enough there for two more neo-orcas but all of it allocated for the two of them. There are few words shared between them in the open water of the ‘park’ chamber where they eat the first real meal they’ve had in nearly a day. The hunger is gnawing, maddening, and Rushing Jaws feels the itch, the drive to dose MRDR and drown his frustration and exhaustion in a crimson haze, to take out his anger on inert meat.
RJ: [Wanna go toss a seal or something later?]
AZ: [Maybe even three.]
RJ: [Fuckin a’]
For a moment, no words: only the crunching of neo-orca jaws on synthetic - but no less tasty meat]
RJ: [god damn...all those people.]
AZ: [You put the fuckin work in, bro - we saved a lot of people.]
RJ: [Saved ‘em from simulspace, anyways.]
AZ: [No one’s mass producing neo-cetacean bodies yet, and until they do, your paramedic skills are gonna be valuable. You check your rep score lately?]
RJ: [Check my wha-]
Rushing Jaws’ frenzy is almost stopped when he has his muse pull up his feed and see how many pings his @-list profile has received since this miserable day began. Māzǔpó reads a few of the messages he’s received - messages of heartfelt praise from podmates or families of the victims, and those are enough to make him stop and float for a few seconds. Māzǔpó informs him that the local hospital has requested his help in treating the victims; although better equipped than Rushing Jaws was as a field medic, his knowledge and quick thinking helped save lives and would reassure many in the wake of the attacks.
Māzǔpó, tell ‘em I’ll show up after I’ve had a proper rest and a good meal or two.
[Are we budgeting time for recreation?]
I did say we were gonna toss a seal. Shit. Um, yeah, probably best to tell ‘em we’ll be along in eight - ten hours or so.
[Done!]
Rushing Jaws acknowledges the response with a neo-cetacean click as he continues tearing into the well-earned meal that will fuel both his hunts and his work to heal in the days to come.
 
Ceres
The Hidden Sea​

Out where the lights of Wujec are a distant beacon amid dim constellations of bathyscapes and submersibles, Rushing Jaws shares the darkness with a cerean octomorph, swimming slowly and singing the same old pod songs to map the surrounding water and mark the occasional submersible, bathyscape, or pod of morphs within a kilometer of the two of them. The orca and octopus uplifts maintain a lazy pace, orbiting each other in a slow dance amid the high pressure and deep cold of the subcrustal ocean, speaking aloud not a single word to each other. They say nothing over their mesh connection for some time either, a long distance between them despite their close proximity.
[That was one hell of a stunt you and Trident pulled], the octopus eventually says over a private chat. Not quite as big as Rushing Jaws’ cerean orca morph, the octomorph is nonetheless an impressive specimen, her bioluminescence turned down low but still visible from up close and the tools of her trade kept stored in capsules or holsters, her arms well away from all of them.
[Beg pardon?] Rushing Jaws asks.
N: [We’re in privacy mode RJ, can’t we just talk?]
RJ: [Wish we could, but you know how this game goes Nona - H-C finds out who hit them back and they’d be lucky to survive the purge.]
N: [Yeah...]
A moment of silence, the two morphs swimming through the dark together.
N: [Still, that was a hell of a job.]
RJ: [Yeah?]
N: [Sure. Just the right balance of hitting the Concern back without pushing too hard and starting a war.]
RJ: [A tricky balancing act.]
N: [I admire it. A cornerstone of resistance is making it unprofitable to press too hard; it was thought that a show of terror would bring certain intractable parties into line, and instead only provoked a reprisal.]
RJ: [How’re they handling it over at the octahedron?]
N: [Oh they’re pissed.]

Rushing Jaws smiles an orca smile, hidden from view by the deep darkness of the Hidden Sea.
N: [I have echolocation mods installed in this morph by the way]
RJ: [Yeah?]
N: [I saw that smug smile]
RJ: [Dunno what you’re talkin’ about]
Rushing Jaws feels a playful swat at his pectoral fin from Nona’s tentacle.
RJ: [If it wouldn’t cost me a favor to ask, how pissed are they?]
N: [Very.]
RJ: [Like they’re out for blood?]
N: [I haven’t been sent after anyone, if that’s what you mean.]
RJ: [Yet.]
N: [Yet.]

Another moment of silence passes, Rushing Jaws clicking and listening for what few obstacles are to be found out here.
RJ: [Bombs ain’t usually their style, is the thing.]
N: [Neither is security corps breaking into Concern fronts and sabotaging operations either.]
RJ: [Strange times.]
N: [No kidding.]
RJ: [They waiting to see if anyone starts swimming with a swagger?]
N: [That, and anyone who doesn’t get the message to pay up]
RJ: [Any inkling as to why they’re squeezing?]
N: [Now that’s gonna cost you a favor]
RJ: [Fair play, forget I asked.]

Another wordless moment, the sound of old revolutionary hymns sung in a neo-cetacean voice filling the dark water surrounding them.
N: [How do you think they did it?]
RJ: [Who’s what now?]
Another swat from a tentacle, this one distinctly harder.
N: [The operators who broke in to that front? How do you think they did it?]
RJ: [Probably a standard covert-ops job, even if the operators ain’t covert ops: team of three or four go in, two on electronic overwatch, avoid engagement until all other options are exhausted, stay dark and move soft while cyberwar keeps the guards distracted, hit their objectives - in and out like ghosts.]
N: [Just like that?]
RJ: [that’s how I’d figure they did it, anyways.]
N: [Sounds...obvious.]
RJ: [Its simple. Simple plans are good ones, long as they got contingencies and flexibility. Complicated plans mean there’s more room for things to go wrong.]
N: [That’s for sure.]
RJ: [H-C always did love their complex plans; what makes y’all so scary is that you got the brainpower to keep ‘em on track.]

Nona doesn’t respond, instead keeping in time with Rushing Jaws’ aquatic dance; Rushing Jaws knows that this silence is contemplative, and doesn’t break it by pinging her, instead just continuing his song out into the Hidden Sea.
N: [They still talk about you.]
RJ: [Who’s that?]
N: [The underbosses. You notice your little rep bump?]
RJ: [Surprised to hear it. Figured they’d still be pissed.]
N: [Nah, you were never initiated.]
N: [You could have been though.]
N: [You still could be.]
RJ: [You hear that from the octahedron?]
N: [Don’t have to; word filters down. You made waves back in the day, and left an impression.]
RJ: [That shit’s just not my speed, Nona.]
N: [Why not? We’re pushing against the sapes, too. We’re gaining territory in the Belt and the Trojans, got practically no competition out in Europa, and are even finding our niches in-system. Our star’s on the rise and you could still get in on this.]
RJ: [Might be tempted to take a job every now and then if the pay’s good and it hurts the Consortium - not interested in joining up. Concern goes after good people around here and I don’t much care for that.]
N: [Who? Sapes and ancaps?]
RJ: [Anyone who wants to do their own thing and not pay the rackets, seems like. My tail just about fell off after all the swimming I had to do last week to keep up with the wounds. Concern’s gotta pick its targets more carefully if it wants me in their corner.]

Another contemplative radio-silence; Nona hasn’t broken off to swim away yet, which is ordinarily how neo-octopi communicate their displeasure.
RJ: [How’s your health, Nona?]
N: [What do you care?]
RJ: [Cause we both had it rough back in the day and I still care about you, believe it or not.]
N: [Orcas and your excess of compassion.]
RJ: [I like to think it’s a feature rather than a bug of the uplift.]
Another swat, back to being playful.
N: [Im doing well for myself. Few better in the Concern’s ranks of ‘problem-solvers’ than I, and I’m one of the people so they take good care of me.]
RJ: [Small blessings.]
N: [Cheers to that.]
N: [How about you?]
RJ: [Doing alright myself. Creds from the tournament are paying my bills easy and I’m the talk of the town for both helping out during the bombings and for some odd association with whatever happened the other day that saw y’all’s operation messed up.]
N: [They’ll be paying top cred for you soon enough.]
RJ: [Or at least flailing around to offer me favors.]
N: [Small blessings.]
RJ: [Cheers to that.]

The two of them circle back toward the distant beacon of Wujec City, another moment without words passing between them.
RJ: [Whats the word about the Concern following the attacks?]
N: [What?]
RJ: [Should we be bracing for escalation?]
N: [Not how this game goes, RJ.]
RJ: [I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’]
N: [Never hurts to be prepared, make yourself a hard target.]
RJ: [Its how we get shit done around here.]
N: [Yeah. This was only a part of it, not the whole plan. For every wrinkle, five other things fell into place.]

Rushing Jaws thinks better of asking what that might mean.
RJ: [We’ll stay frosty.]
N: [Good. I like Melody and the others.]
RJ: [Me too. She could help you too, you know.]
N: [We both know I’m in too deep for that.]
RJ: [Least right now, you are.]
N: [What do you mean?]
RJ: [Well, given enough time, who knows what could happen?]
N: [Fair point.]

The two swim with more speed and purpose, with a long way yet to go to return to Wujec. Rushing Jaws continues his song, the echoes bouncing off steadily increasing submersible traffic or bathyscapes suspended in the Hidden Sea.
RJ: [Coming out for the battlesphere fight next week?]
N: [I have tickets. Thinking of winning?]
RJ: [Thinking of putting on a good show while I do it too. Going up against someone in a Selkie morph.]
N: [Interesting choice.]
RJ: [Not a bad one, considering.]
N: [Think you can take ‘em?]
RJ: [Maybe even with enough showmanship to make rep level five!]
N: [I will buy you weedmeat if you pull that off.]
RJ: [I always like a hit after a good fight.]
N: [Takes the edge off the MRDR.]
RJ: [You know it.]
The rest of the swim back to Wujec passes in radio silence, closer enough for eavesdropping to become a Concern again. The two of them remain in a close formation, swimming side by side until just about reaching the entrance to one of the pressurelocks leading into Wujec’s bathyscape districts. Rushing Jaws and Nona share a nuzzle for several seconds before Nona breaks off for another entrance, leaving Rushing Jaws as his cybernetic arms unfold from his body and reach out to initiate pressure cycling.
 
Extropia
Hyperdrive
​
“Welcome racing fans to Extropia Sports Network, coming to you live from the press box here at the Hyperdrive Speedway cylinder in orbit around 44 Nysa! This is Liu Gengxin-”
“-and this is Aleksandra Bogdanova, here to bring you all the action you crave! That’s right, it’s time for another show at the Hyperdrive, and it’s going to be an intense field today. None of the racers slated for today’s event are slouches, but we’ve got a full house of serious contenders who know their machines and are ready to see who comes out in first place!”

[On the feeds are two sportscasters, one sleeved in a heavily-modified splicer morph with Han Chinese characteristics with bright patterns created by his morph’s chameleon skin and the other sleeved in a synthetic morph evocative of the Lunar Steel morphs, feminine in presentation and a beauty in chrome. Both are seated at a table, and behind them are sweeping shots of the Hyperdrive speedway track as the drones transmitting those feeds float above the spinning floor of the cylinder.]

“First, the track: Hyperdrive has been configured for wheeled racers and set for a .75g spin, making weight a much bigger concern for our racers than some of them might be used to, having cut their teeth on the courses on Mars or Titan or maybe even in microgravity! The track itself-”
[Gengxin pauses as the image cuts to a three-dimensional representation of Hyperdrive, the track highlighted before the model unfolds out to two dimensions to provide a ‘top-down’ view of the course]
“-is set for as many sharp turns as it has long stretches, so positioning and timing of speed versus agility are going to be crucial here.”
“That’s right, Gengxin - we’ve got forty racers on the track today, and it’s going to be an extremely tight field as they try to keep ahead of not only each other but the track itself. You’ll note the straightaways constrict and expand in length all over the course, so the racers are going to have to be on top of when to hold back and when to floor it.”
“Speaking of, I think it’s time we cut to the roster to see who’s up for this run.”
“There’s almost too many to count! It’s a wildcard race today, fans, so that means we’ve got racers from all over the Solar System here gunning for the prize and for system-wide renown. We’ve got everyone from Anarchists to Ultimates, AGIs to Uplifts, Civilians to Military on the list, names that you know and love along with some new contenders who’ve shown their stuff and earned their name here.”

“That’s right Aleksa - and first, the name that’s on everyone’s mesh feeds: Motozawa Shigeru.”
[On the feed flashes an image of a masculine Remade morph, the iconic morph of the Ultimates faction with its distinct lack of hair, larger cranium, wider eyes, smaller nose and teeth, and hard expression.]
“Shigeru coming to us all the way from the outer fringe - an Ultimate from the Pharos habitat, a bastion of the ideology and a racer who’s seen action not just in some of the harshest environments the Solar System has to offer but who’s driven across alien planets, and who’ll be bringing that experience to the track today. He’s a favorite on the gambling tables, and it’s not hard to see why.”

“Yes well, he’s in good company here at Hyperdrive today - because he’ll be going up against the likes of a literal speed machine, SAQAS, an AGI who allegedly hacked a transport vehicle on Mars and drove it like he stole it - and who hasn’t looked back since.”
[SAQAS’ avatar is that of a stylized lean humanoid figure made of electricity, a figure with a runner’s build and with eyes that shine with a determination to go fast and far.]
“SAQAS, the name an acronym for ‘soft and quick as shadows,’ has taken jobs as a shipping pilot, but make no mistake - this AGI’s no slowboater. He’s fine-tuned his software to be able to make the nanosecond-time calls that make the difference between victory and defeat. He might even give Shigeru a run for his cred!”

“He wouldn’t be the only one: the one, the only Mach Infinity is on the track today!”
[The racer image is swapped out for an image of a biomorph, one with the rugged look of a Flat-turned-pod: Dark hair, cybernetic eyes, and a generally lean frame augmented with cybernetic implants and enhancements from too many companies to count at a glance. His denim race vest, covered with WinPins, is prominently displayed.]
“A fan favorite and Extropia local, you know him, you love him, the interplanetary man of mystery and racing for Nerrix Industries, here to give all these folks a hard run for their rep. Analysts have described his racing style as ‘classical’ after watching thousands of hours of footage, and some speculate that Mach might have cut his teeth on the tracks of old Earth herself.”
“Wherever he earned his wings, he’s a sure shot for the number one spot - although he’s going to need all his skill and focus for this one, because also racing here today-”

[The image is replaced with a Blackbird synthmorph, with considerable modifications to bring it more in line with neo-raven physiology. Decals and designs have been airbrushed onto the morph’s chassis, and he has the assaying appearance common to neo-corvids.]
“-is neo-raven hotshot Tycho Gracewind, all the way here from the Mahogany habitat out by Neptune.”
“I wonder how a neo-raven gets racing experience out by Neptune?”
“This bird’s been all over the system - and if rumor has it right, beyond! The mercurials of Mahogany are in good standing with the Love and Rage Collective, so it’s possible Tycho’s done some driving in earth- or even super-earth gravities.”
“He’s picked a good day to come out today, I’m looking forward to seeing him on the track!”

“Finally, we’ve got the infamous anarchist pilot, a living legend among the smugglers and even a wanted criminal by the Jovian Junta, none other than Jacqueline “Jackie” Cooper!”
[The image cuts to a transhuman whose morph displays Samoan features, fire in her brown eyes and her curling hair tied back in a ponytail; her morph sports a jacket with custom designs that shift in accordance with their programming where it is not near-to-packed with anarchist symbols and a great big autonomist star on her right breast.]
“Think the Jovians are going to crash the party to nab her stack?”
“Not unless they want to risk an international incident between the Republic of Jupiter and the Republic of sports fans!”
“Also they’d have to catch her first - which she’s managed to stay three steps ahead of the Republic, and is infamous for staying ahead of her competition on both the track and in the black. Jackie’s picked up some serious moves from plying the smuggler’s trade, running below the radar of polities in which she’s a wanted criminal and getting away with the gold every time - so far!”
“She’s got her work cut out for her today, and we haven’t even gotten to the rest of our competitors!”
“Let’s head on over to the stables to see how they’re all shaping up!”

[Cut to the Hyperdrive garages adjacent to the starting line, where forty different racing cars are tended to by entire crews of morphs in preparation for today’s race - some of them bearing up under the relatively high gravity of Hyperdrive than others but all hard at work to make sure the racers are ready for their run. The cars themselves are done up in exquisitely bright colors and elaborate designs, some carrying logos of sponsoring corporations or collectives and others bearing crests of the habitats of origin. The drone feed flies in and tightens focus on Mach Infinity’s racer, his crew of automech droids following their instructions to ensure his racer is ready for today’s run…]
 
Mach Infinity
The Queen of Mean...?
​
Mach wasn't sleeved in the morph they showed on screen, the digital representation of who and what he used to be. Looking at that vest... Felt wrong. Sleeving and interplanetary Needlecasting meant people... Didn't have personal stuff, sometimes. Not up at the top, at least. Down low, yes. People had personal possessions. Him, and a lot of people? There wasn't anything you could bring with you. No favorite hats, or quirky T-shirts. No favorite jackets, no 'personal' effects. Sure, there was stuff you had at home, but... You couldn't take that little piece of home with you. He wasn't sure why he felt nostalgic right now. In a lot of ways, a vest was a vest... In others though... It was his trophies. The proof that he raced, he won, and he worked hard. It was his memories. All the times he was cut off at the last moment, all the times he came so close to first, and the few times where HE was the one who won it all... It was still odd. He couldn't remember the second gold. He only had three from the underground cups, all his other golds were legal. But number two eluded him. Soon enough, he heard something odd.
[Queen of mean - The Snake]
A bit of eurobeat. A great song. And... Something else. He felt his hands, he felt the warmth in his chest, he felt... More alive than he had in a long time. He felt something like a memory, like the pieces coming so close to fitting together... But they just never lined up, and so many were missing. He was sure he'd done this before. But this time... Hm. He snapped back to reality. He wasn't the body he was born in. He was in Nerrix's Gargoyle, getting ready to drive a fucking classic car inside of a big gravity tube with about a quarter less gravity than earth. Thank goodness for downforce. The machines were doing fine, Nerrix knew his preferences super well... But nostalgia nagged at him until the song changed. He tried to shake it, but... Damn. He had a race to prep for, he HAD to let go. So why was it so hard?
 
Extropia
Hyperdrive
​
The garage bays of Hyperdrive are filled with the noise of industrial machinery and of crews fine-tuning their repairs on the dozens of race-cars present and awaiting their shot at the track. Divided into three tiers, the garages are arranged in rows, with Mach’s race-car in the middle of the lowest tier. To Mach’s left, the crew of Jacqueline Cooper - consisting of flexbots that move with the purpose and frenetic action suggesting egos are sleeved within them - fine-tunes their work on her sleek racer, painted in gaudy dazzle-camo and incandescent colors but with autonomist sigils on clear display. To Mach’s right, Matsumoto Shigeru works on his own vehicle - painted in amethyst and devoid of much ornematation aside from the sigil of the Ultimates faction - with only a handful of robotic assistants, like a master painter carefully attending to his craft in an almost effortless way. Past Jackie’s rig is that of SAQAS, and past Shigeru’s is Tycho’s; the other racers past that are eclipsed by the rows of machinery and the frenetic crews that make their last-minute preparations. A clear roadway runs perpendicular to the garage bays, one that leads out toward the track and on to destiny.

Mach wasn’t looking at the people, really. Sure, passing notice was given to their sleeves, but the gargoyle’s thousands of eyes took in the racing machines. He looked for the bulkiest racers, and the lightest. The fastest, versus the slowest. Of course, a race like this, he didn’t expect to see many bruisercars. But… Well, maybe there was one somewhere. Besides, figuring out how they rigged their machines was really damn important. It told him their strats and styles, which he’d need to know. But… He still couldn’t focus.

Although somewhat more varied than the racecars of the early twenty-first century thanks to advances in materials science and automotive design, the race cars on display are superficially quite similar to each other, with some variety to their chassis, but all tending toward the aerodynamic, the swift, and the agile. The designs of the chassis, conveniently, also conceal most of the intricate components that allow these racers to achieve speeds hitherto-dreamed of by the drivers of the early twenty-first century. Not a one of them looks behind the times, tech-wise; all of them look ready for a race.

“Don’t you know you don’t have to turn your head to look around in one of those gargoyles?” A synthesized voice falls from Jackie’s racer, translated by Mach’s inserts from Samoan with a teasing tone.

“Gee, not all these eyes are the same. You ever sleeve one of these? Hell, you ever sleeve synth at all, or did one of your buddies tell you all about it?” Said Mach, looking with his ‘face’ at the samoan, then her entirely synthetic crew. Then he added “Oh, yeah, also if I look at you with my face, you KNOW I’m looking at you. And sometimes you want people to know.”

As Mach looks toward the racer and the flexbot crew, a digital projection of Jackie Cooper appears in his AR feed, leaning up against the rig that the flexbots walk right through without a second’s care. “Funny you should ask, I’m sleeved in this car right now! Well, infomorph in a rig connected to the racer’s systems, but same difference. You make a good point though - I’m flattered that Mach Infinity’s lookin’ my way to size up the competition - suggests he’s got a reason to look over his shoulder - not like that Matsumoto over there like he’s dosed on Mono No Aware or some shit or SAQAS who won’t even say ‘hi.’ In any case, I’ve sleeved all kinds of morphs in my time - what makes you partial to synth, eh?”

“Bioshit gets in my way sometimes. A good synth, it’s all plug, play, easy fixin’. Still, I wouldn’t be looking at you if you weren’t your car. Sure, the difference between cockpit and computer’s a big one. But the cars matter a little more than the people when you’re not using stock racers. ‘Specially since they tell you about who the person is.” Mach said, having not stopped walking. He was almost tempted to look at the ‘lesser’ teams, too. But that would take forever.

“That so?” Jackie asks, a flexbot stopping to regard Mach’s own racer before returning to its task. “I’m looking out at you from the eyes of my flexbois here, cozy in the simulated cockpit of my racer here where I can’t be knocked off balance by g-forces but still get the full sensation thanks to the sims I’m running; what’s that say about me as a person, I wonder?”

“Says you want it both ways, and you’re compromising. You don’t want Bioshit or having a body to get in your way, but you want to feel everything like you do. Not exactly a hard case. And definitely not obvious from here.” said Mach. If she hadn’t said anything, he would’ve assumed she went full bore carhead.

Jackie has a hearty laugh at Mach’s commentary, her digital projection looking Mach in the optical sensor currently aimed at it. “Best of both worlds, baby - you get the haptic feedback like you’re there without getting crushed flat by g-forces. Not so important here, but definitely out in the black when you’re racing spacecraft - or when you’re dogfighting. Reaction time’s the speed of thought, which can make the difference out here and out there. I got my ol splicer back home and a pleasure ‘borg rented on Extropia for when I get done; out here, speed is life.”

“I feel that. Synths aren’t much different, thinking about it. They just have perks, sometimes. Live fast.” Said Mach, deciding he didn’t have much else to say to Jackie. Man… She reminded him of someone, in a way. Couldn’t figure who, though. Still, Matsu was silent, SAQAS was quieter than that, and Tycho… Well, Mach wasn’t sure what the hell he was up to.

With the enhanced hearing present on the gargoyle morph Mach is sleeved in, he hears a soft chuckle come from Shigeru - his enhanced vision allowing him to catch a quick glance at the Ultimate as Shigeru returns his attention to something on his own entoptics from looking up at Mach’s direction.

So Shigeru WASN’T completely ignoring everyone. Hm. Mach wasn’t quite sure what he found funny, but he didn’t have anything to say, either. He could press him, but why bother? Shigeru was a superstar, probably thought he’d win by default. Mach was fine with letting him think that. He’d prove him wrong precisely because he wouldn’t expect it.

“Your technology is formidable - but what happens when it fails?” Shigeru calls to Mach, his attention remaining focused on his entoptics.

“Dude. You’re saying that like your car ISN’T technology. Any device can fail, but I’ve done all my pre-drive checks. I know that it won’t fail unless someone makes it fail. How about you give your car another once-over, your Bio-eyes might’ve missed something.” Mach said, honestly wondering if he should facepalm FOR Shigeru. Honestly, what did the dude think he was doing? Archery? Survival? MMA? This was RACING, and unless he swapped that car for a horse, he was almost as techy as they were.

Shigeru’s smile widens with a single laugh, and he closes whatever he’s doing on his entoptics to look Mach in whatever sensor is aimed at him: “Quite right, my friend. It never hurts to be sure - as I’ve had to learn more than once across the galaxy. Only I have not become my tools; my race car is an instrument, but I remain distinct from it, an entity refined in form and independent from complex devices will millions of potential failure points. For your sake, it is to be hoped that your morph is as well-kept as your vehicle.”

“Let’s be clear: A lot of what you see is more my contract than my choice. And my checks included the ‘goyle. Geez, by your logic you must go in for a physical every month. Heck, you ever have anyone doublecheck your stack while you’re in there?... Whatever. At least I can pipe the car’s sensors into myself. You’ve gotta rely on displays.” said Mach, deciding he was done with Shigeru, too. Mach honestly felt a little offended. He’d need a minute to recenter before he started driving.

“Bound to circuitry,
Servant to a machine will,
How far left to fall?” Shigeru says aloud, following Mach’s advice and returning his attention to his entoptic readouts.

Mach stopped dead in his tracks. “I’m sorry, but do you actually know what you’re saying?... Do you have something to add on that, some little thing you know, that I’d know?” He said, doing his level best to glare at Shigeru with his non-face, waiting for him to say something. Did he know about Nerrix? Was something screwy with the race lineup?... Was Shigeru here for something other than the race?

Shigeru looks back up to Mach, affecting a surprise that Mach has anything more to say to him at this point: “I make a point to know my opponents, Mach Infinity. You are a formidable talent, and will make a worthy test of my own skill. Yet for all of that, you are the contractual slave of a machine; slavery does not suit you, Marcus Speidwagon.” The last of his words ring with a note full of pity, and he returns his attention to his pre-race checks, one of his servitors springing to action at some invisible command.

The press didn’t know that much. His fans rarely had any idea. Nobody knew that much. “And then you let them know you’ve got a source. Nobody knows that much. You got a hacker? An insider? How the hell do you know half that much, Shigeru?... Who the hell told you?” Mach said, subtlety quickly going out the window as he walked closer. Of course, Mach didn’t have a laser pulser on him. Then again, he was a fucking Synth. Remade or flat, Shigeru was human. And humans were notoriously fragile…

“Perhaps you ought to make a point to know your opponents, Mach Infinity?” Shigeru suggests, an instant before AR warnings and instant messages appear in the entoptic feeds of everyone at the Hyperdrive Garage.

[ATTENTION ALL RACERS: REPORT TO YOUR VEHICLES IMMEDIATELY AND STAND BY FOR RACE ORDER.]

“It seems we will have to continue this another time,” Shigeru observes, his assistant robots hurrying to retract equipment and clear the driveway of any obstruction for his deep-purple racer as he takes a single deep, contented breath. “May the best driver win.”

With that and a silent command from his inserts, the driver-side door to his racer opens, and Shigeru offers a shallow nod before stepping into his car.

[ATTENTION ALL RACERS: REPORT TO YOUR VEHICLES IMMEDIATELY AND STAND BY FOR RACE ORDER.]

Mach didn’t say anything, but he knew that he’d have to look into Shigeru. He had a source on Nerrix, and whether he was gonna find a way to shut the guy down, or see if he had any connections to the dead drop people, he’d have to look into this. He had to! Because sources on Nerrix were sources on HIM. And he wasn’t exactly keen on that. Mach only took a few seconds between Shigeru backing off and running to his own vehicle, jacking in and doing a few doublecheck diagnostics and connection tests. Everything seemed good, he just had to get out there and race.
 
Extropia
Hyperdrive
​
Warning alarms blare as car doors close and seal, shutting out the outside world - shrinking the universe down to the road ahead, the rumble of the engine, and the sounds of AR readouts that are tuned in to the Hyperdrive crew channels. One by one, orders go out for racers at the far end of the garage to drive out to the starting line, one by one as their cars are remotely piloted by Hyperdrive’s own AI. The racing pilots are shuttled out to the track, the low ceilings of the garage opening out to the open space of the cylinder, the track winding its way up to the far side of the cylinder and back around to the starting line. Remote drones bob and drift above the racetracks, streaming footage out to ESN and, comparatively slowly, out to the rest of the Solar System.

[Cut back to the sportscaster’s box, where Aleksandra and Gengxin await their cue to start taking-]
“The final moments pass as everyone masses on the track for the big race!”
“That’s right! Today’s race will consist of four laps around our winding, .75g track today! This being according to league regulations, there won’t be any exciting traps or obstacles for the racers to navigate today - just the racers, the turns, the straightaways.”
“Let’s check the betting pools as they make their last calls, Aleksa!”
[An infographic appears between the two sportscasters, with six icons above bars on a bar graph; Shigeru, Jackie, Mach, SAQAS, and Tycho have their own bars, and the last icon is a silhouette with a question mark.]
“As you can see, Shigeru is a favorite in the betting pool - but it’s by no means a sure thing. Mach Infinity is clearly a contender to go off the betting pools, with Jackie not far behind. Tycho and SAQAS are bringing up the rear - but that doesn’t make them slouches. The other thirty-five racers are in that last column, and who knows if we won’t have a dark horse in the running who will make someone very rich?”
“That’s why we all tune in, after all! Oh - let’s cut back to the track, where we’ll be getting underway here in just a moment at the Hyperdrive Extropia speedway...”

[The last of the racers have all been aligned in ten rows of four cars each. Scattered among the track are the five favorites, all awaiting the starting command as Hyperdrive’s AI relinquishes control of the vehicles back to their drivers. In a stylistic flourish that is also a nod to tradition, a boom folds out from the side of the track, rows of lights on it that all remain black save for two flashing red lights at the very top rotating down in a tall column that hangs just above the front row of racers. Seconds remain on the countdown, none of the racers knowing when the lights will tick down and all of them bracing...]
 
Extropia
Race to remember-Hyperdrive​

The starting line was the perfect place to recenter. Nobody but him and his car, all comm feeds were cut (save the emergency and course alert channels) and his music was loud. No questions, no thoughts for what would happen after the race, no thought about what came before. Another song came on.
[Give me Love and Money - Za-Za]
He could feel the damn puzzle pieces again. He hit the mental skip button harder than was entirely necessary. He wanted to think about that, but he couldn’t afford to, he had to recenter.
[Back on the Rocks - Mega NRG Man]
Now he could think about the race. He expected little aggression, given the delicate nature of everyone’s cars, but he also knew people would still play chicken right to the end, really press their luck because they thought the other guy would break first. Everyone else was looking from car to car, giving cocky smiles, grim glares, and determined looks to their opponents. Mach kept his face pointed straight ahead. He was focused on the track, on the race itself. The announcers were hyping the race, the competition was posturing, and he was focusing on the only thing that he had to, the only thing that functionally mattered in his mind: Cars, track, and time. He was centered. He was ready.
A high, ringing chime sounds from the column of lights at the front of the pack, and the red lights cease flashing, holding for three seconds before counting down.
Red.
Red.
Red.
Red.
Red.
Yellow.
Yellow.
Yellow.
Green.
Go.
Tycho was the only big name ahead of Mach, and the rookies weren’t super likely to be a problem. Mach didn’t totally dismiss them-He was a rookie when he started, and he was damn good even then-But they weren’t as big a concern as Tycho was. And as they hit the accelerators, the order of racers was bound to change fast.

“It’s a competitive start, but it looks like our favorites are rising to the top, Aleksa!”
“You got that right - Mach Infinity takes the lead just ahead of Tycho while SAQAS and Jackie are able to pull ahead of Shigeru.”
“A surprisingly weak showing from Shigeru - but the race has only just begun.”

Tycho wasn’t able to navigate the newbies as well as Mach did, as much held back by luck as he was by the difference in skill. But Mach’s attention for the other racers was shifting towards keeping track of SAQAS. He and Jackie both passed Shigeru easily, but SAQAS was gaining faster of the two. But most of Mach’s attention right now was on the course. He knew how to drift, he could countersteer like a damn champ. The trick was finding the break point in the straightaways. The point where straightening out was pointless. Where he’d have to transition directly from one drift to the next. He could feel it…

“Looks like Shigeru was able to pull ahead of Jackie and Tycho with some expert timing on that turn! Mach with a strong lead for now, but SAQAS and Shigeru are keeping up with him!”

Right on prediction, SAQAS was the one on Mach’s tail. But Mach was sure he was starting to pull away… No break point like he thought there’d be, though. Just a close one before a few long stretches let him see Shigeru again. Mach was starting to pay them less mind. If things kept up, he’d pull away and interact with nothing but track for a while…

“And that’s the end of the first lap, with Mach in the lead, SAQAS and Shigeru vying for second, Tycho in third, Jackie in fourth...the rest of the pack only seconds behind but struggling to lap them.”
“Strong opening for Mach Infinity in this race, Shigeru recovering admirably and SAQAS staying competitive.”
“Not a strong start for Jackie and Tycho’s having some trouble holding his spot too?”
“For now, Gengxin - but this track’s full of twists and turns, and we got plenty of race to go.”

Damn, Mach would’ve expected to pull away on the starting line’s big straightaway, but that wasn’t the case. The others were accelerating right there with him. Their cars were so damn similar… Fuck, Mach would’ve expected to have something extra in here, but… Nope. At least he was keeping his lead, but if he didn’t pull away, they’d have a really damn good chance of catching up, especially if they managed to draft off of him…

“Looks like SAQAS is just able to edge Shigeru out for second place, pulling ahead and hot on Mach’s tail!”
“Tycho and Jackie bringing up the rear of the leads, vying for fourth place as they take the winding course!”

SAQAS really was a damn racing machine. It wasn’t going to give up the chase, and he could feel the AGI keeping damn close. Slowly closing… Mach wished he could shake things up, but he couldn’t see any conceivable way to do so. He just had to dig in and look for his chance. There had to be SOMETHING he could do to shake the machine.

“Looks like Tycho’s able to draft off of Shigeru and pull ahead of both him and SAQAS to get into second place!!”
“Shigeru’s not slacking either, pulling ahead of the AGI for third.”
“Jackie keeping ahead of the pack but only just - Mach Infinity staying firmly in command here.”

Mach started to see it. SAQAS wasn’t being quite as tight as he could’ve been. He was playing safe? Did SAQAS not fully trust his car? A car that fine could’ve handled things so precisely, and here SAQAS was, playing it safe and not cutting as close as Mach! He couldn’t believe it! But now, Shigeru started taking advantage of the machine’s hesitation, and the corvid drafted on him in turn. Damn, that was a shakeup, and Mach needed it. He was gaining just a tiny bit of distance, and he almost had breathing room. Maybe up ahead he could lose them.

“Hello hello HELLO!! Motozawa Shigeru, taking advantage of tricky turns and long straightaways to outmaneuver not just Tycho but pulling ahead of Mach Infinity and taking the lead!! Tycho and SAQAS just able to pull ahead of Mach, leaving him vying for fourth with Jackie Cooper!”
“Incredible!!”
“Fortunes can turn on a dime here at Hyperdrive speedway!!”
“You got that right, Gengxin - I think I heard screaming from the booth!”

If this was a fucking anime, Mach would’ve chosen this moment to scream out ‘NANI?’ but this was NOT an anime. This was Mach racing with a lot on the line. He held that front through most of the race… But here he was, competing with Jackie for fourth. What the FUCK happened? Mach had to, HAD to pass them! All of them! And he had about half a race to do it… Mach’s alarm quickly turned into something of a devilish internal smile. It was fucking ON now, Shigeru. It was fucking PERSONAL.

“Oh my god, Aleksa, did you see that!?”
“I did, but I don’t know if believe it! It looks like Mach Infinity has fallen back to...seventh? Eighth place??”
“The racer with the commanding lead, knocked all the way back to the pack. Shigeru holding his lead in first place, SAQAS hot on his tail and Jackie pulling ahead of Tycho to keep it spicy in the lead.”
“It looks like something happened with Mach’s racer, there-“
“-it really was blink-and-you-miss it, but it looks like he was able to avoid disaster.”
“Mach’s got plenty of time left to turn this around, but he’d better hop to it.”

Mach could feel it. Something went WRONG. He thought he felt the car slip out of gear for a second, and suddenly everything was screwy. Mach managed not to crash, but JESUS that cost him. Now he was in eighth and fighting the rookies! THE ROOKIES! Damn though, if they were this close, he actually had to respect them. But he had to pass them, and everyone else here. He had to go faster!
“Going into the middle third of the track here and Mach having a hard time pulling ahead of the pack there, looks like.”
“Whereas Shigeru’s holding a steady lead up at the front - Tycho pulling ahead of SAQAS and even Jackie getting ahead of the AGI to keep this interesting!”
“This has not been Jackie’s race today, has it?”
“Not yet, but this race has been full of surprises, and it ain’t over till it’s over.”

Mach was pulling back into it. No emotion but determination. He passed the rookies, and he could see SAQAS again. Pedal to the metal, no holding back, he had to get out there again.

“Mach Infinity is back in this race, folks!!”
“Pulling ahead of the pack to get back into this race.”
“Just in time - we’ve got one last lap to go here for the race!!”
“Look at this!! SAQAS pulling ahead of Shigeru for the first place spot as we go into the last lap of this race!!
“Muscling ahead of Tycho and Jackie, the two of them falling back to third and fourth place!”
“They’d better watch their backs - Mach Infinity’s back in this race.”

Only five racers ahead. He had one lap, ONE LAP to pass them all. He could do this… HE COULD WIN THIS. Mach just had to laser in his focus further. No thoughts of what lay behind, only eyes for the road. That was how Mach was supposed to live. -swap-
“Here he comes, Mach Infinity pulling steering around Tycho to become a threat to the leaders!”
“Shigeru pulling ahead of SAQAS to retake the lead as we go into the last lap of this race!”
“Jackie managing to get into third - could this be her getting ready to steal the race??”

Four racers. Faster. More focused. The rear didn’t matter, just keep going forward. No personal or entitive thoughts, Mach didn’t even register himself and the car as distinct entities anymore. He had to go faster. He had to turn tighter. He had to focus.
“Shigeru just holding his lead as Jackie Cooper comes up from behind as we’re closing on the finish line here folks!!”
“Mach coming up from behind to give SAQAS a run for his money, Tycho nipping at their heels as much as he can!”
“There’s not much track left!”
“Coming down to the wire!”

One car beside him, two ahead. He started to register who the racers were again. He started to think outside of the race. And he shut it down. He had to finish strong! He had to hit the top three, MINIMUM. HE HAD TO WIN! -swap-
“Mach Infinity and Tycho Gracewind pulling ahead of Shigeru and the others to tie it up!!”
“They’re coming in neck and neck!!”
“It’s gonna be nanoscale!!”

No-one ahead. Just straight track. The cars were fighting more than their pilots, really. And Mach couldn’t tell whether his was winning or losing.
“UNBELIEVABLE!!”
“Did you see who made it first!?”
“That was too fast even for me - Tycho Gracewind and Mach Infinity, neck and neck at the last with Shigeru, Jackie and SAQAS closing the leader’s circuit!”
“Oh hold on, the results coming in now...high-speed polydirectional analysis confirms it, Tycho Gracewind has won the race!!!”
“Absolutely incredible - what a spectacular showing from these racers today.”

As the last of the forty cross the finish line, the pilot AIs commanded by the Hyperdrive course crew kick back in, assuming control of the racers on behalf of the pilots and guiding their cars into a formation to bleed off speed and make one last lap around the track. Tycho Gracewind’s racer runs ahead of Mach Infinity’s, with Motozawa Shigeru’s racer falling in behind Mach’s, Jackie’s behind his, SAQAS behind hers, and so on, running the course one final time as the winner’s circle is prepared and the garage is prepped for the thirty-seven other race-cars.

Mach instinctively tried to keep driving for a few seconds before he realized the pilot AI had taken over. His senses slowly began to bleed back in. He opened his comms to hear the announcers and maybe even the other racers. He wondered who had crossed the line first, how close it was, and… Well, if anyone, himself included, COULD forget such a race. It was fucking beautiful, as he replayed his own memories. Some cynical part of him said it would get Nerrix a ton of credits for selling the M-data, but he tried not to listen. Damn… Just, Damn. Mach didn’t need to breathe, but he needed a breather. He had to come down from this. His nonexistent heart felt like it was going too fast… At least, too fast to be finished with the race.

By the time the racers loop back around to the garage, where once there was a starting line there is now a winner’s circle - a literal circular platform with three rectangular spots to park vehicles. The AI pilots proceed to drive the racers for Tycho Gracewind, Mach Infinity, and Motozawa Shigeru up to the winner’s circle, while steering the other thirty-seven pilots back to their spots in the garage to start tending to their vehicles and putting everything away.

The three winners find their way into position, stepping out of their racers and facing the brilliant lights and camera drones broadcasting their images all over Extropia and out to the solar system at large. The platforms are elevated, the drivers standing off to the left or right of their cars depending on their preference, greeting the wave of cheering that rolls over from those who made the trip out to the cylinder to watch the race live.

The voice of Aleksandria Bogdanova breaks through the din, pumped out through immense speaker banks as it is broadcast with the rest of the finale: “People of the solar system, your winners of this race: in third place, racing out of Pharos, Motozawa Shigeru; in second place, racing out of Nerrix Industries, Mach Infinity; and in first place, racing out of Mahogany and taking home the grand prize, Tycho Gracewind!!”

The wave of cheering is renewed again, with fireworks launching from the platform up into the zero-G space of the cylinder before going off in a dramatic - albeit harmless - display of sound and fury to herald the victors of Hyperdrive’s latest race.

Mach was actually okay with second. He raced for the top, but once everything was over, he knew he didn’t get first every time: His WinPin jacket of old was proof of that: Only three golds, about seven or eight silvers, and a whole lotta bronze. It was a little surprising that he was beaten by a bird, but given that photo finish, and the little raven’s tenacity, he couldn’t do anything but respect that. Though he did have to wonder what the controls in his car looked like… Did he just jack in directly or something? Well, Mach took his place, saluted the Blackbird, and noticed Shigeru… Right. They weren’t done. He sent the man a quick text, since Mach himself almost forgot about the incident in the hangar…
[We still have to talk, Motozawa. You’ve got insider info, and I need to know where you got it.]
 
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Hyperdrive
Winner’s Circle
​
Shigeru doesn’t turn to regard Mach, or even seem to notice that he has received a message, instead facing the cameras and smiling - holding himself with a winner’s pride tempered by having missed first place by two spots.

Nonetheless, a response is swift in coming: [Bold of you to make such a demand of me, Marcus Speidwagon - but, as you have proven to be a worthy opponent, I suppose you have earned an answer.]

[I am an Exemplar of the Ultimates, and my rank grants me access privileges beyond the initiates; your master has contracted my comrades on more than one occasion, and it was through these connections that I was able to acquire your ‘inside info.’ As it turned out, your indenture contract is not listed on the IndEX primary registry: Nerrix has done a fairly good job keeping the true nature of your contract out of the public eye for the most part, but I discovered them as I was following up on a clue from another search query. It seems Nerrix is leaving room for the possibility that someone, at some point, might offer the right price.]

The platform begins to descend back to the track, the doors opening for racers to re-enter their cars and pilot them back to the garages. Just before he reenters his, Shigeru glances at Mach, a message coinciding with the glance.

[I will grant you this: you have an Aspirant’s fire, Mach Infinity. Slavery really does not suit you.]
 
Mach Infinity
Answers found.
​
So he wasn’t the only one on Nerrix’s payroll? Mach figured on some level that Nerrix’s company had employees, regular folks doing regular work... Mach even wondered about other ‘Agents’ like him, but he didn’t have anything solid until now. It was the hiring out part that was surprising. Why hire out if you were a paranoid AGI with way too much processing power? Nerrix had to know this sort of thing led directly to leaks, and Mach actually found one. The only good answer was that Nerrix didn’t have much choice.
[I’ll be honest, I hate it. Still, Nerrix hiring out, period, seems out of character. I won’t ask what they did, and I know that even if they told you, you wouldn’t tell me. And I can respect that. Still, begs the question about what the big N’s price tag for me is. Doesn’t really matter, though. Good race, Shigeru.]
Mach messaged back, thinking hard about Nerrix’s hiring of the Ultimates. What would he have had them do? And why them over any other options? Though, thinking about it, how could you know what the other options were before you knew what the job was? Damn. He couldn’t ask Nerrix without tipping his hand, either. Damn.
 
Vidar
week 1

“You're making the face,” Puck said.

Vidar said nothing, only quietly vibrating. Holding on to the wooden kendo sword was a stuffed rabbit.The sensation like there were snakes inside each of his joints, moving in slow counter clockwise motions in his cartilage had plagued him for the past ninety three hours and he was tiered.

“I'm having a day,” He said.

“You can come next week, we'll all be here,” She said.

Vidar frowned so she slapped his arm, “Get it together captain Norway, didn't you just win fucking break out crisis or some shit. You're very brave and your not fooling anyone with your little rabbit eyed morph.”

He looked up at her and she put her hands on her hips, “If you keep doing that I'll kiss you.”

“Please no.”

“Your gonna let me love you someday right?”

“You absolute monster~,” He complained as she gave him a hard shove. He shoved her back. They had this conversation several times, Puck was very forward. Puck aesthetically looked so much like Five it hurt. But puck was nothing like anyone he'd dated before, and if he was being honest she was so young it bothered him. Thirty seven felt like a child and he wasn't sure how to unpack that. She put him in arm hold and he yelped and beat her ineffectively with the kendo sword like a squabble between children until she let him go.

Eddy, a hulking neo gorilla with cyan leopard spots in his fur, walked over chuckling, “Are those the moves you were raving about Puck?”

“Yep, thems were it, whatcha think?”

“Not bad- you really from Oslo?” He asked him.

“Unfortunately,” Vidar said.

“You any good?” Eddy asked.

“I'm alright. I taught for a while,” he said.

“Well show us what you got,” He said and all but manhandled him onto the mat as he called for the attention of those gathered for the demo.

The demo went well, but Vidar's public speaking was a little meandering and a lot of the old Norwegian slang used to talk about knives took some time to explain and when he demonstrated with Eddy he realized he never gone blade to blade with a gorilla and that it really changed some of ones tactics. There short spare ended in laughter as Eddy sent him spinning in the low grav. It wasn't 0g thankfully and he landed back on his tip toes feeling a bit like sailor moon as he did so.

But he explained the concept of flash as a form of intimidation and showmanship and as a way to gauge skill before a duel. He explained how it mostly useless in a fight save when existed to mask another more deadly strike. He asked if people still did mag grava and got a laugh for being very out of the loop.

He handed one uppity kid his ass who said there was no way you could take a kendo sword with just two knives. Another guy tried to ask a whole bunch of questions about kung fu weapons that he didn't know, “I'm from Disney land, I have no idea,” He said finally.

It wasn't the worst demo he'd ever given,nothing would ever top the broken ankle of '76. And later when he'd gone back to mounting orchids and playing 7 games of rocket crush Eddy invited him back for another demo when ever he wanted. It was another 32 hours until the snakes in his bones slithered away and disappeared.
 
Devin Murphy​

Quill was fond of saying that you couldn’t have a bad day on a scum barge, but the past month had proved that you could definitely have bad weeks. Devin didn’t think Cris would ever let go of the dud hab. At least it had distracted her from the deal that had gone sour earlier.
“You could have at least found a hab with a nest of something in it,” she complained. “That would have been fun.”
Quill and Marina had a client in, and so they’d shooed the kids out to roam the rest of the Peculiar Taste of Silence. They were a motley little group, Cris and her boys, but far and away not the strangest transhumans on the swarm. Most everyone gave them room on their way, even those who were only on the barge for fun and profit. The butterfly knife Cris was playing with probably had something to do with it.
“You have a very concerning definition of fun,” Armand told his sister. She made finger guns with one hand at him, the other still twirling her knife. The Scordato siblings were a matched set, tall and angular, with sharp jaws and prominent noses.
“Next time I’ll be sure to let you fight monsters for fun, you weirdo,” Devin told her. Several someones further down the hall had dueling music, and the old-Earth K-pop was just barely beating the canned Martian pop in volume.
“That’s all I want,” she said.
“No thank you,” said Armand.
“Um,” said the Grim.
“What’s up?” Devin asked him.
“You should see this,” said the Grim, and showed him the spike in mesh traffic. It was enough to let him know something big was about to happen, and Devin was about to bring it up, so that they could go digging into it, when he got the message from Atreides Apogee.

[Salaam, Hara. Your urgent assistance is needed. It has come to our attention that an unknown art dealer in your vicinity is seeking to sell certain masterpieces to the highest bidder. Please investigate and ascertain the nature of the artwork and its potential impact on the public. If it is truly of masterpiece quality, do whatever it takes to keep this artwork from falling into a private collection. If you can, learn of the artists behind the work, but the priority is acquiring the masterpieces. You have collaborators on their way to help with your assessment, the artists Azathothwakes and Heliotrope, as well as myself and an outside contractor: be sure to greet and accommodate your colleagues on their arrival, we will meet soon. Keep us apprised of your progress.]

“Fuck,” Devin said to the Grim.
“Fuck,” the Grim agreed, and his swearing in his sing-song accent never got less funny.
"I gotta go," Devin said.
"What, your fuckbuddy on Locus call?" Cris asked.
"Huh?"
"I didn't know anarchists did booty calls," Kostya said mildly, the words unintentionally hilarious in his thick Russian accent. He was smaller than the Scordatos, but still much taller than Devin, and his beat leather jacket had a number of Soviet space program patches on it.
"Sometimes you just have to have have D," Armand said wisely. Kostya cackled.
"You're all fired," Devin said. Their misinterpretation of his and Vidar's relationship was not the worst cover story, but it did annoy the shit out of him. Hopefully Vidar never found out.
"When is he going to visit you?" Kostya asked.
"And have to deal with you vultures?" Devin asked.
"Born and raised," Cris said proudly.
"I'll catch up with you guys later," Devin said, and slipped off in the direction of the Peculiar Taste of Silence's main red markets.
“Whatever, loser,” Cris said. Devin flipped her the bird and scooted off.

[Talk dirty to me, Atreides. You know I can’t pass an opportunity like this up,] he replied.

Someone on his scum barge was being very, very naughty, and he was very interested in finding out who.
 
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The Broken God
Part 1: The Devil's Toys​

A month passes following the Tournament, and life grinds on from the Sun to the Rim. On Venus, a mystery slowly unfolds; on Extropia, a race is run; on Ceres, battles are lost and won; on Locus, techniques are shared. Aboard The Peculiar Taste of Silence, however, a ship has come in to dock, bearing precious - and if the rumors are true, dangerous - cargo. The players are seated: one by one, the pieces are put into play...
​

  • A couple of days after your blades demo, a message arrives for you over the Eye. It lacks a time stamp, but Starglass’ codename is one of the first things decrypted.

    [Heliotrope, we’ve got a mission for you. We received word from a sentinel aboard the scum swarm The Peculiar Taste of Silence that a red-market dealer may have happened into some dangerous technology. You are to report to the Locus egodrome and cast off for The Peculiar Taste of Silence as soon as possible - your spot’s already booked and your morph reserved on the other side. Agents Hara and Azathothwakes will be waiting for you on the other side. We’ve also got another agent, Atreides Aopogee, and a 'contractor’ out there to assist you - who you’ll probably recognize from working with at Outpost Sigma; Abigail Hammond still isn’t on the team yet, so remember your opsec until she's approved. Upon arrival, primary objective is to identify the dealer, determine the nature of the technology, and if it’s exceptionally dangerous, move to secure as soon as possible. Secondary objective is to find out where the cargo came from, by whatever means necessary. Cast out as soon as you can, and keep us posted.]

    Firewall missions are never straightforward or simple; if a posse is being rounded up for a mission like this, it’s almost certain that something big is going down. The relative distance between Locus and the mission site - an Earth-Mars cycler swarm currently closer to Mars at this phase of its cycle - means that Starglass could be more direct than usual, but you will still need to depart for the scum swarm as soon as you can, notifying anyone who needs to know that you’ll be off station and offering whatever cover stories will keep them from asking why.
 
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Vidar was very very high when he received the message and the only opinion he could muster on the mater was a loud “I guess.” The last thirty six hours had been a whirlwind of chaos and socializing the likes that only a successful art installation could bring. It was part labyrinth of delicate orchids mounted with increasingly uncanny value into flesh like forms. The truth was the whole thing was sleeveable and that each orchid housed an eye and that the uncanny feeling of being watched was true. Vidar had pitched the idea and the others had wrought it to its terrifying conclusion. He sleeved it once to make sure the the placement of the eyes made the kaleidoscope pattern he had intended- and had a panic attack so intense after that they had nearly scrapped the debute. Until Puck confirmed that; “Its actually fucking cool as shit guys.”

He had been planing on sleeping for at least three days, honestly. He set all the timers for his garden, and micromanaged them for a moment, not sure if he'd be gone for several hours or several days.

2sday[Gonna cast out to scum-friends. Tell everyone very interesting lies if they come trying to get me out of my room.]

helixhopscotch[are you actually going someplace or are you just gonna hide in your room for three days like you said you were?]

2sday[I'm actually casting out. But if we tell elaborate lies when I'm actually gone and when I'm nonverbal in my room it will weave and intriguing web of mystery.]

| || || |-[why are you like this?]

2sday[I'm an artist now. I make art.]

Motzerelasticks[Captain norway is saving a kitten. Got it.]

helixhopscotch[Off seducing martian royalty.]

| || || |- [Eating caviar naked with gliterati.]

Pogo|ogoP [neocretacean singing lessons.]

motzerelasticks[winning break out crisis tournaments :///]

Pogo|ogoP[visiting Oslo. Gonna bring home more mcelroy content]

2sday[kisses]

He called Chubs out of her nest and gave her several kisses before making arrangements for an egocast with the proper channels and then sent starglass a message that was simply his ETA.
 
Ceres
​
Rushing Jaws is at the center of a whole crowd of admirers when the message arrives.
[Azathothwakes, you’re up: we received word from a sentinel aboard The Peculiar Taste of Silence that a red-market dealer may have happened into some dangerous technology. You are to report to the Locus egodrome and cast off for The Peculiar Taste of Silence as soon as possible - your spot’s already booked and your Fury reserved on the other side. Agent Hara will be there to help you get situated, and Heliotrope is on their way. Another agent’s already over there, Atreides Apogee, and they’ll be bringing along a contractor you’ll remember from Outpost Sigma: remember your opsec, she’s not vetted yet. Upon arrival, primary objective is to identify the dealer, determine the nature of the technology, and if it’s exceptionally dangerous, move to secure as soon as possible. Secondary objective is to find out where the cargo came from, by whatever means necessary. Cast out as soon as you can and update us on your status.]
Here I was enjoying normalcy, Rushing Jaws thinks amid a cacophony of sonar and neo-cetacean conversations; aquatic morphs of all shapes and sizes surround him, many of them his @-list admirers singing songs of his recent battlesphere victories or otherwise podding with him, all illuminated by the floodlights of Wujec City that pierce the darkness of the Hidden Sea. His mood is still ebullient, but the forethoughts of another Firewall mission begin to creep into his mind like the first eddies before harsh currents.
Māzǔpó, start putting the word out to those in the need-to-know.
[The usual cover story?]
That’s right. Merc gig, harsh NDA.
[On it.]

“Alright everybody, this orca’s got a job lined up,” Rushing Jaws calls out to the few dozen aquatic morphs in his orbit; a chorus of disappointment rings out in response, well aware that the celebrated battlesphere fighter - fresh off his victories against Augustus Voynich and Bruno Riptide - also takes mercenary work all over the Belt. Rushing Jaws swims another hour-long lap around the superstructure of Wujec City, sending off the usual away mission messages to his employers and contacts on the @-list and CivicNet local to Ceres. The crowd peels off as everyone finds their appropriate pressurelocks to re-enter the city with - everyone wishing Rushing Jaws good luck on this latest job or speculating what kind of work he can get with his new status - until it is just Rushing Jaws and his sister, Azure Song, sharing the busy waters surrounding the city.

“I always hate this part,” Azure Song says.
“My backup’s safe and sound, sis, I’ll be back one way or another,” Rushing Jaws reassures, nuzzling his sister in the neo-cetacean way.
Azure Song doesn’t say anything right away; Rushing Jaws can sense the apprehension in the stiff way she kicks and swims. He can feel eels in his own stomach over the idea of leaving his sister - the last of their pod - behind for another mission, going up against fuck knows what in order to keep an ungrateful solar system spinning along a little longer. Azure Song’s always been there for him, ever since the M-9 days. She knows him - and he knows her - like no one else in the solar system. She’s pod. He needs her. And he’ll be gone for days at best, weeks or possibly even months depending on how this shakes down. It’s enough to make him want to tell Starglass to fuck off.

[You’re doing this for her, aren’t you?] Māzǔpó asks, materializing in his entoptics as her usual avatar without bidding.
...yeah, Rushing Jaws replies.
[Track your target], Māzǔpó reminds him. [Get this done and that’s one less thing that could take her away from you - or vice versa.]
Yeah, he acknowledges, the thought with an edge of resentment to it for her being right. He glances at Azure Song - who glances back, having kept up with him in sharing a pensive silence.
“What’s up?”
“Just psychin myself up, is all.”
“What’s the job?”
“Client asked for confidentiality,” Rushing Jaws replies.
Azure Song whines in irritation.
“Can you tell me where you’re going, at least?”
“Need to know, sis.”
Another irritated whine.
“The money better be good.”
“It oughta be, I’m a hot commodity right now.”
Rushing Jaws watches Azure Song smile a neo-orca smile in response to that, warming his own heart.
“When do you have to go?”
“ASAP. Should probably make my way to the body bank.”
“Putting your morph up for rent?”
“Yep. Good cred in that.”
“What if you’re back before the week is out?”
“Well then you oughta warm up the ghostrider module you surely have in that morph of yours, if you’re so worried.”
Rushing Jaws catches Azure Song barrel into him with all her weight, the cetacean equivalent of a punch on the arm for being a shithead; they are both smiling now.
“C’mon, see me to the egodrome?”

---
The Peculiar Taste of Silence​

A sharp, reflexive gasp of dry air shocks the person sleeved in a Fury’s body to life. This is followed by a second, shuddering breath of air and then another, as the ego remembers to take additional breaths of the air strapped to the decanting table - flavored with the vaguely minty taste of the protective biogel that kept the morph healthy in storage. The breaths are deep and harsh, almost on the verge of hyperventilation, before the Fury is able to settle its breathing into a stable pattern. The person within that Fury only looks up at the ceiling, the body strapped to the table with velcro straps to keep it from floating away in the barge’s microgravity.
“Fuck,” Rushing Jaws says, slowly coming into his new morph’s senses, not marking the voice as his own. Small, dry, and deaf, Rushing Jaws thinks. She’s a sape, alright.
Taking a moment to flex and relax the spidery fingers of the morph, Rushing Jaws then undoes the velcro straps keeping the morph’s torso bound to the table, ‘sitting up’ to undo the straps on his ankles. Looking around, Rushing Jaws finds himself in a cramped space - the decanting chamber he’ll likely have to vacate in a few minutes - to find a basic change of clothes waiting for him. The standard full-body mirror is present, showing off a Fury morph with some kind of white-person phenotype, close-cropped hair and some scarring over fighter's musculature. The fury glares at him from the mirror in appraisal at first, the glare in her eyes sharpening with the minutes that pass.

“Māzǔpó?”
[I’m here!] His muse responds, Avatar manifesting like a pixie in his entoptics as initialization readouts stream by in a peripheral window.
“The fuck’s wrong with this Fury?”
[What do you mean?]
“The voice is wrong, for a start,” Rushing Jaws rumbles: he starts to sing the calls of his pod, but the glottal fry of the voice distorts the sounds to an unacceptable margin and he cuts himself off. “What the fuck…”
[Hey, RJ, stay with me, what’s the matter?]
“Who the fuck is RJ? I’m just a sape who thinks she’s a fuckin’ whale out here to die fighting whatever the fuck this asshole’s got aboard this ship.”
[Breathe.]
Rushing Jaws opens his mouth to protest, but the words are strangled by Māzǔpó’s command. He obeys, breathing in for seven seconds and breathing out, just like he was taught. He forces himself to keep breathing through the fresh memories of crushing pressure immersing his immense body, of nuzzling an orca all the way through the grid of corridors that make up Wujec City, as he settled into a body-pod large enough to house his body - which ought to tear this one to pieces inside a minute-
[Breathe.]
Rushing Jaws is about to snarl at his own muse when he sees the hard look on Māzǔpó’s face; he chokes it down and continues breathing, just like he learned as a pup during a bad sleeve. Was that me? Is this me? What the fuck is going on.
[You are Rushing Jaws. You’ve sleeved Furies dozens of times before.]
“Where’s the orca end and the sape begin, I wonder,” Rushing Jaws quips, the Fury in the mirror sharing his grim smirk.
[Never knew you for a philosopher,] Māzǔpó quips back.
“Fuck, okay, gotta find Devin, gotta stop talking to my muse out loud, gotta get armed up and get this done with.”
[RJ? Breathe. You’ve only been out the roughly eleven minutes it took your ego to get here from Ceres - outside of the uploading-to-resleeve time.]
“God damn it,” Rushing Jaws lets slip between breaths, doing his level best to get a handle on the continuity shock. Or, whoever this is who thinks she’s Rushing Jaws. She’s got the memories, she’s got the attitude, she’s got the feeling like she’s in the wrong body despite how responsive and solid it is: this poor bastard’s gotta be the one to save the universe today.
A thought strikes Rushing Jaws, delivered by the devil on his own shoulder: “I know what’ll sort me right out-”
[Let’s make sure we’re going to be here for a while before we think to indulge?] Māzǔpó intercepts the thought.
“Fine. Fuck, okay- yeah whatever, let’s go find our boy,” Rushing Jaws says, slipping on the jumpsuit left with the morph to spare him the indecency of floating around The Peculiar Taste in the nude. As soon as the suit’s fit is adjusted to the Fury’s strong frame, Rushing Jaws pulls the latch on the glorified closet and casts himself out into the body-bank hallway.

Azatothwakes {PM @Hara}: [Alright, ya girl’s here and ready to fight some art, let’s gear up and go find our art dealer.]
 
Extropia

Mach wasn’t opposed to the job, not at all. But like a lot of jobs something felt off from step one.
“Nerrix, why the kite? I love ‘em, and I’ll appreciate some firepower in a scum barge, but if this is just a deal, do you honestly think I need it?”
A few seconds pass before Nerrix replies: [You are representing me, Marcus Speidwagon: Gray Xu will respect a combat morph as an agent of mine. If Gray Xu or any of their associates think to try acquiring my authorization codes by force, or even attempt to incapacitate your morph and acquire your egodata, then you will be better prepared to deal with that possibility. You will likely be asked to power down your weapons, but until then you will be a hard target and armed. Afterward, you will still be a difficult target to hit. I am equipping you to deal with duplicitous partners, Marcus Speidwagon. Optimal projections indicate that such firepower will be unnecessary; the majority of projected outcomes indicate that armament and combat ability will be necessary.]
Marcus rolled his eyes a bit before he spoke up again. “It makes sense, if you’re expecting the deal to happen in an open area. Those are in short supply on scum barges though. In the tight spaces I’m expecting, I’ll get bottlenecked at some point, shot easy. It would make more sense to go heavy with something like a milled-up Daitya… But that’s almost a vote of no confidence. And I’ll need delicate hands to inspect the goods… Fine, I’ll go kite. Anything else before I cast out?” -swap
Another few seconds pass: [If you are concerned about tight spaces, a Daitya’s large size would inhibit its ability to operate in the confined spaces common to scum barges; a Fighting Kite is small and possesses stealth capabilities, which - should you find yourself in a combat situation - I advise you prioritize stealth and escape, Marcus Speidwagon, or acquiring aid from discreet local elements should you see fit. Report your status as soon as you arrive at the scum swarm, and again upon gaining access to Gray Xu’s ship. That will be all.]
Marcus frowned, but acquiesced: “Gonna get ripped apart by autoshotties in the opening volley, but sure. Sleeve me in the only combat morph anyone calls delicate… At least it’s a fave.”
Then he cast out.

The Peculiar Taste of Silence.

Silence. He loved that track. People kept making it and renaming it in the sims, but it was always the same: A Möbius strip, designed so that racers didn’t have to turn, ever. Some versions had booster pads or recharge zones, others didn’t. But if you wanted to know your machine’s absolute max speed...

The mind snapped to in a Fighting Kite. Felt right, just like home. Had to have been tuned recently, Nerrix probably asked for them to do that. After the incident with the gear slipping in that race car, he must’ve been stepping up his gear checks. The body wasn’t the problem. The mind was. He knew he wasn’t really a hardcore metal motherfucker, he wasn’t the real deal. Just a really damn good fork. Was the him at home working on that F-zero? Would he know the full story if this him died? Would anyone?
Does that matter now?
He thought, or so he thought. Meter was subtle like that, and Marcus-B didn’t register it wasn’t his thought. So he concluded that fork or legit, he was close enough to the original to do his fucking job.
[On board and sleeved. This Kite almost makes up for the race car. So where and who do I start asking about Gray Xu?]
 
The Peculiar Taste of Silence

[On board and sleeved. This Kite almost makes up for the race car. So where and who do I start asking about Gray Xu?]

Meter’s answer comes in the form of a window in Mach’s entoptics opening to Guanxi, and contact information for Gray Xu appearing in a search query that Meter types out before searching the local mesh for the name. Sure enough, the information returns a hit: Gray Xu’s name and G-rep profile show them to be present aboard the scum barge. Meter highlights the the ‘message’ bar, as if suggesting Mach be the one to reach out.

Mach didn’t like Meter riding shotgun in his head, but at least meter wasn’t an asshole like Nerrix.
[Gray Xu, right? I’m representing Nerrix, your buyer. Need a spot for the meet.] -swap-
A few minutes go by before a response arrives from Gray Xu: [Your codes check out; enclosed with this message is the location of my ship. I’ll let the guards know you’re coming, flash the same codes you sent and they’ll let you through.]
Gray Xu’s ship is identified as the Annora Arabella, and is docked about ten minutes from the body bank. A map of the Silence appears in a new window, with a highlighted route stopping short of the rotational cylinder and keeping to the access corridors that allow ships to dock along the Silence’s outer hull. Mach needs only follow the AR graphics that manifest in his entoptics along the maze of corridors to find his way to Gray Xu’s ship.
Mach didn’t like this much. His danger sense was-a-tingling.
[No chance you can take the merchandise to neutral ground? I understand if you think someone could crash the deal, but I’m old-fashioned.]-swap-
[No chance: you don’t walk around with top shelf shit in Little Shanghai if you don’t want to get that shit taken from you real fast. You got my address.]
[Fair, but I’mma be real mad if you try to fuck me. Don’t even ask what Nerrix would do.]
Mach-b had little choice on this job, but he did choose to set a new record for Silence, and tried his damnedest to turn ten minutes into five.
Shooting off into the corridors of the Silence, morphs of all shapes and sizes blur past. The scum barge’s outer corridors aren’t exactly clean, but they are kept fairly clear of floatmess given that traffic has to be able to float through here. Morphs of all shapes and sizes start shouting angrily at Mach to slow the fuck down! as he screams past them, mixing with the music and noise playing from various rooms he shoots past. He looks set to arrive at the Annora Arabella within five minutes-
-when a blockade of armed and angry-looking anarchists have closed a blast door, guns trained on the Fighting Kite.
“Oi! Pinche cabron! Cut those jets ‘less you wanna get wasted!”
Mach, of course, pulled back hard and went to hover, looking about as angry as something with a camera for a face could.
“Geez, what are you guys, hall monitors? Wait… You probably don’t get that, but whatever. Why the roadblock, is something going on? Aside from me exceeding a speed limit that I didn’t think existed?”
“You rocketing your way through our barge like ‘this some kinda racetrack’s the fuckin problem, cabron,” one of them - floating in the center, sleeved in a hard-looking biomorph of feminine presentation - responds, her accent a rough spanish spiced with scum barger patois. “We got dozens of pings on you causing accidents up and down the hallways, so clearly we gotta have a word with you. ‘The fuck you thinkin’ like this some kind of obstacle course?”
“... Look, this is my first time on a barge and I expected the halls and doorways to be just a little wider than the average civvy. But it’s not my first time in the heat. It took me less than five minutes to get here, and somehow you guys organized this blockade before I arrived?... You guys were ready. But probably not for me, right?” Mach said, analyzing the situation. He’d definitely get ripped up if he tried to fight, and no alternate routes went through them. Maybe he could double back and find another path, or slip somewhere and go stealth, but he didn’t have to just yet.
Some of the anarchists laugh and shake their heads upon hearing ‘first time on a barge;’ the one in the middle simply keeps an eye on you, her focus going out a little as she reads the information on Mach’s @-list profile.
“Essé, if I had a cred for every time some jackass thought they could go wild on a barge and just say ‘it’s my first time on a barge’ I’d be one of those hyperelites in Elysium with a nice penthouse. Since you don’t know how scum barges work, let me enlighten you, Marcus Speidwagon.”
The showdown is starting to draw a crowd, with onlookers poking their heads out of module doors and several more armed anarchists floating around on Mach’s six; only a couple seem to recognize the name, going off of the scattered ‘what?’s and gasps that sound out over the hum of life-support systems.
“It’s true, we don’t got the laws that those pinché Consortium types do. We like to take it easy here on the barge. We like to live it up. We like to live, si? Some jackass runs into something important, takes out a whole bulkhead? That’s a lotta good people need new sleeves and counseling, if we’re lucky to snatch ‘em from the black. If you wanna go on a narcoalgorithm bender, shut your guns off and have a sober chauffeur and go nuts - you don’t just take some drive and fuck around like we’re not in a tiny island of life suspended in the vacuum, si?”
“We don’t got laws, but that don’t mean we don’t got rules. You come into our house? You respect the barge, and you respect the people who keep it for you, or we take that shell and give it to someone who needs a stretch from infospace, comprendé?”
“You respect the barge, otherwise, people are gonna get mad. When they get mad, they tell their neighbors “watch out for the jackass speeding through the corridors like people don’t live here!” People hear that enough, they’re gonna get concerned. They’re gonna set up blockades like this, they’re gonna find out who’s racing through their corridors, then they’re gonna sort that shit out one way or another. Myself, my comrades, the people floating around you now? We live here, man. Ain’t no police stakeout, ain’t no criminal conspiracy. We lookin’ out for each other. It’s a smaller boat than it looks, essé.”
“So, welcome aboard The Peculiar Taste of Silence, Marcus Speidwagon. You gonna look out for us while you’re here?”
“Geez, how many of these speeches have I heard? Every single underground raceplace I ever been to came with one. And if I wasn’t looking out for people, I would’ve hit someone by now. So I get it, I’ll chill, and I won’t speed indoors… Still, you are definitely bullshitting me on the barricade. Less than five minutes for five first response to get on the scene in Biomorphs? You had to be close by, waiting for something… Any chance you tell me what before I walk into it?” -swap
“We were waiting for you, essé,” the scum barger responds, more laughter issuing from her comrades. “Funny shit is, we were close by: we were smokin’ hash, doin’ our thing, when we got an alert over the mesh ‘bout some jackass with a fighting kite morph ripping through the halls and pissing people off. People watched you tear through the halls, they followed your course, we got in touch with the right people and had this bulkhead closed so we could have a chat. ‘S how we do things on a scum swarm, savvy? We don’t need cops cause we look out for each other. Whole barge lookin’ out for itself. Fuck man, you need to cool your jets, I got a narcoalgorithm for some good hash in my capsule, get you in a good cyberspace for whatever the fuck was so important you had to speed to get to it!”
“Your Mesh ID’s already flagged with us and now we got surveillance of your morph, essé - you’re all over the mesh now in a bad way. That means enough people keepin’ an eye on you to probably wanna rethink your speed demon ways. You seem reasonable enough; we gonna come to an understanding here, then we gonna open this door and go back to chillin’, same as everyone else. You can get to where you’re going - assuming you gonna be cool about it - and the swarm’s gonna keep in its Earth-Mars cycle. Nothin on the other side but good people and whatever you lookin for, essé; you wanna chill?”
“Nah, Boss might grill my ass for being late as is. I gotta go and seal a deal. But yeah, I won’t run in the halls anymore. And I’ll be as chill as the other guy, so… Hoping he’s chill. Later, guys.”
“Suit yourself, ancap - just remember folks watchin’ you now,” the barger replies before her eyes go out of focus again in regard to her entoptics. After a few seconds, the bulkhead door begins to open, retreating back into the walls with a slow but smooth motion. The crowd disperses as the anarchists lower their guns and start casting back into a room off to one side.
“Offer’s on the table for some e-hash if you want it - got a feeling you could use some,” is the last thing the barger says before grabbing hold of a handhold and reeling herself into the chamber, leaving Mach alone in the corridor -swap-
Mach probably would take her up on the hash, but not right now. Right now, he had to get to Gray Xu. So he did so at a reasonable pace. And hated the two minutes of it. It wasn’t too long before he found the airlock, flashed his ID, and prepared himself for the typical ‘vague threats about being late/unsubtle’ thing so many criminals went through with. Namely, he prepared himself to interrupt the shit out of him because he just didn’t want to waste time with that bull. -swap-
The remaining two minutes pass without event, and only the occasional glance or wary expression on the faces of scum bargers Mach passes by. Sure enough, the airlock indicated by Gray Xu’s directions flashed on his AR feed - which gave way to reveal two serious-looking slitheroid synthmorphs packing particle beam bolters, both of which focus on Mach as he closes in on him.
There is an idle instant of the guards checking Mach’s credentials, followed by a look that even on expressionless synthmorphs reads as clear confusion.
“The fuck?” One of the guards says, looking back toward the airlock door.
“Okay start talkin buddy, who the fuck are you?” The other demands, weapon raised at Mach. -swap-
Mach flashed the codes again, saying “I’m representing the buyer, dipshits. I thought your boss told you I’d be coming. He certainly told me flashing the codes would get you guys to wave me right in.”-swap-
“Funny story: we did. Someone rolled up here a couple minutes ago by the name of SpeedMachZX, showed us the codes to look out for, we let him on through. So I’m gonna ask again, asshole, and if you don’t give me a good answer we’ll pry it out of your stack: who the fuck are you?” -swap-
“I’M supposed to be SpeedMachZX, the fuck? Shit, what the hell was he sleeving? He’s a fake! Or maybe you guys think I am but either way you gotta let me in so we can sort this with your boss. Because you can shoot me in there the same as out here. Maybe better if you got turrets.”-swap-
“Don’t fuckin move,” one of the guards commands, weapon trained on Mach’s kite. The other keeps their weapon up, but with less focus, a silent communication going on between himself and, presumably, Gray Xu. Several tense minutes pass without any action from the guards, the one keeping his weapon trained on you as the other facilitates communications. Several minutes more go by, which are ultimately broken by the other guard refocusing on Mach with his particle beam bolter.
“Boss seems pretty convinced you’re the fake,” he says aloud, finger moving toward the trigger.-swap-
“Wasn’t sure I was the original!”
Was all Mach said before he sped off, going at max speed down the halls. Again. He felt like people would understand it this time, since he was about to be shot at.-swap-
The guards take fire off their shots at the fighting kite: two go wide and strike the walls of the corridor, but two strike home, small explosions tearing through the chassis of Mach’s kite and sending him hurtling toward a wall. -swap-
Alarms blared in the mind. Mach-b felt the two explosions fuck him up, bad. And he knew he couldn’t survive any more of this. So he hit the wall, locked his joints, and shut down everything but his external mics. His ears. He’d play dead. And pray that they took his whole body instead of just the stack.
All is quiet in the hall for a moment, the sounds of servos slowly picking up as one of the sltheroids advances toward the inert shell Mach is sleeved in. Without any video, it is impossible to tell what happens but suddenly the servos stop - and a new sound can be heard, the sound of a rifle being leveled on a target
Suddenly, the rapport of a firearm breaks the silence, a synthesized “fuck!!” ringing out just above the din. The first burst hits the the wall with a thudthudthudthudthud, but the second round strikes home to hear from the sound of metal tearing and the shocked cry of the guard. The sound of whining servos proceeds an ugly crashing sound as the morph hits the far wall and going ominously quiet.
“Who the fuck are you??” The other guard calls from down the hall, opting not to shoot.
“This synth is mine, back the fuck off or you’re next!” The interloper calls back, her words translated from arabic.
“Wanna trade??” The slitheroid calls.
“What??”
“You take your kite and fuck off so I can get the slitheroid, no one gets hurt?”
“Give me one good reason to trust you!”
“We both got people downed, we’re trying to get them back. Help me to help you?”
A moment of silence passes.
“Stow your gun.”
“Stow yours.”
There is a sound of a safety clicking back into place, and a weapon being holstered.
“...we got a deal?”
“Yes.”
There is a sound of a morph kicking off the far wall and arresting herself on your side before Mach’s morph’s few remaining haptic sensors detect hands collecting the ruined chassis of the fighting kite.
“I do not know if you can hear me, saddiq,” the interloper says in a low voice toward Mach, “but it is my hope to help you. Remain still, and I will see you to technicians.”
“See?” The slitheroid calls. “Pleasure doing buisness…”
The interloper doesn’t respond, instead moving down the corridor - away from the Annora Arabella, carrying Mach’s chassis in her off hand.
Mach listened for a good while before he booted up the camera and looked to his rescuer, saying “That was painful… Who are you, and why are you helping me?”
The camera reveals someone sleeved in a bouncer morph of indistinct phenotype, done up in a smart-fabric vacsuit configured to look like a jumpsuit with a hijab and an automatic rifle’s stock poking up over her shoulder; the bouncer regards you with minor surprise, but quickly returns her attention to the corridor ahead.
“I’m afraid I must ask for your trust right now, saddiq, while we are out where everyone could hear; you may call me a friend - and if it isn’t too bold, it seems to me like you could use one out here.”
“Yeah. I think I could. But I at least think I know who you’re with. So yeah. I think I can trust you for a few minutes.” he said, turning his camera to where they were going now.
The corridors of the Silence are gaudy in the scum barger style, music blaring from rooms and faces peeking out at the bouncer and the ruined kite in her arms. The maze of the corridors gives way to an opening like an elevator shaft, where she and a handful of others wait for a moment before it begins moving - slowly at first, accelerating to match the .4g spin of the Silence’s cylinder.
“I am glad to hear it, saddiq. I can have you to a good technician in that time.
“That’s good. If you’re who I think you are, I got some interesting news for your boss. Assuming I didn’t just end up forking wrong somehow.” Mach said, knowing full well that he might have to resleeve. At least he knew some security people who had a pod they could loan.
 
Being alive for the first time, again, fully formed and terribly new. The sensation warred inside them as they gasped at air,locus felt like a dream and everything before like a nightmare. They waited for it to click that the dream was over and for them to remember that no I'm not a knifegoblin that's very silly I have to get up and do what ever it is I usually do. But it never came. Eleven minutes of real time had passed in the transfer, if his entropics could be trusted, and they supposed they could. But it felt like an unreal lifetime ago- like all of him had really made the jump. Or the important invisible soul bits were missing. But then- those had probably been toast years ago- They had already been dead for a long time, they reminded himself. This sensation was not a new revelation, just a reminder of what they already knew. The feeling that they were a ghost intruding on the soul of some morph unlucky enough to house him stuck to his insides like a mental and spiritual poison. And agitated that persistent niggling belief that Arpita had so eloquently named W/M maladaptive psychosis. The distress hit hard and sudden- manifesting as series of physical spasms and a short lived panic attack. Everything was terrible.

This is just a very bad sync they thought slowly when the fit had passed, leaving behind him a deeper empty feeling. Just a bad sync It was nothing like the first time, or being reinstated with seven years of lack. They were properly dissociated now and it was probably okay to just stay that way for a while. It was best to just not think about it till the feeling faded. it was a feeling. And those were not always true- except when they were other peoples feelings, in wich case their abilities were pretty accurate. They let their thoughts chase themselves around in an unproductive soup.

“Hey boss,” Penny said, appearing to them as a believably tangible and properly sized in his entorpics. They knew they wern't okay when penny deemed she needed to pretend to be real to talk him. “what gives, you've been awake for seven minutes and you haven't turned on candy crush yet?” she pretended to wipe some invisible and impossible dust of their naked shoulder.

“I hate candy crush.” they said. And found his voice small, high and soft. Wich might have bothered them if his sense of self was tighter in the moment. But they felt small and soft and willing to be some one, anyone than who they were convinced they were. Peny made a face and lifted her hand in the antique motion for answering a pocket style phone.

“113 I'd like to report a missing psychic detective. Terrible mental health, About...” She put her hand on his head, “This big? Plays candy crush constantly. Terrible sense of style. Likes swords, rats and orchids.”

They laughed a sort of belligerent unhappy laugh and shooed her out of his vision, bidding her to be small. They unstrapped them self from the table and saw that they were much to small to be a fury. They quickly confirmed; a ghost. Big round blue eyes in a round face with short dark hair and dark skin. It sent a shock of adrenaline to recognize himself in those eyes- but there they were naked, girl shaped and still crying a little. But it grounded some part of them, even as their brain buzzed with intrusive thoughts. It wasn't ideal- but it was inside their capacity to cope. They dressed quickly while Penny described the lay out of the peculiar silence for him. They slipped out the hatch into the bodybank hallway and opened up a humble three windows of candy crush. They scrubbed at their face, eyes and face still visibly flushed from distress. They resisted the urge to blow their nose on the sleeve of the pink jumpsuit they'd been provided.

Heliotrope {Pm @ Hara}: Come find me or I'm going to go get high instead.
 
Last edited:
Devin Murphy
​
Devin sat at the body bank's waiting area, flicking through the Peculiar Taste's bulletins and waiting for RJ and Vidar to finish getting sorted in their new bodies. There wasn't anything that stuck out immediately as being what Firewall was looking for--some asshole treating the halls like a racecourse, times for an avant-garde theater troop's production of Friends, and a reminder of what you shouldn't give to tourists, unless you were personally going to babysit them the entire time they were fucked up (we mean you, Squid, it's not fucking funny). Nobody seemed to have gotten whiff of the increased traffic, or at least, hadn't thought it was worth looking into, which meant their "art dealer" was being very careful. A professional, probably.

And then, one right after the other, RJ and Vidar both pinged him.

Azatothwakes {PM @Hara}: [Alright, ya girl’s here and ready to fight some art, let’s gear up and go find our art dealer.]

Heliotrope {Pm @ Hara}: Come find me or I'm going to go get high instead.

Hara {PM @ Azatothwakes and Heliotrope}: Hey gremlins. I got you muffins.

Devin stood up and went to go find them. He did indeed have muffins--he was always starving after resleeving, and nobody ever seemed to think to give him food. He also had chifir, because he also always wanted a drink after, and Kostya's ridiculous overbrewed tea was going to be as close to getting them wasted as he could without, hopefully, actually getting them wasted. He also had a bag full of supplies, because they were going to need guns and shit, of course.

Hara {PM @ Azatothwakes and Heliotrope}: Can't miss me, I'm 5 feet tall and covered in sequins.

He was wearing tailcoats covered in green and blue glitter over a black t-shirt, and black crewman's pants with too many pockets and swaths of extra fabric sewn on the knees, the left red, the right blue. They were tucked into short black and cyan and magenta boots. It was a look that anywhere else would have raised eyebrows, but on a scum swarm passed for inconspicuous.

The rest of the system was fucking lame.
 
Devin was impossible to miss and he waved as they joined him. There was an incredible sense of dread that occurred when Vidar, mistaking Devin and them self being normal sized, had to look all the way up at RJ when they arrived. They swallowed as the previous extensional dread was drowned out by the not unpleasant fantasy of letting them break him in two. They crammed the offered muffin into their mouth and mustered up a; "Wow. muffins. thanks." in a soft full mouthed monotone. The feeling that this poor girl was possessed by the cranky spirit of a dirty norwegian old man was not abating anytime soon at this rate. Hopefully it was a matter of moments before RJ took point and he'd be to busy to be stuck in his head.
 
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