Okay, @EarthScorpion, as you wield disproportionate influence in this quest, I would ask what you dislike about my proposed plan, as compared to the "Bluff and walk away" version.
It's actually fairly straightforward to dovetail the goals of your plan with ES's plan. In skeleton form, we apologize and truthfully say we didn't realize that she would be this angry after so many years and recuse ourselves from reactivating her. Someone with less history can come in and bring them back into the fold later. If we play our cards right (not my specialty), she'll want us to stay, if only so she can rant at us more.

I never said this. :V On a reread, Sirocco's plan is insane.

[x] Bluff the fuck out of him
[x] Walk away
 
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Okay, @EarthScorpion, as you wield disproportionate influence in this quest, I would ask what you dislike about my proposed plan, as compared to the "Bluff and walk away" version.
Bluntly, what is your justification for telling her the truth when:
a) she hates us
b) we can't untell her if it turns out to be a bad idea
c) we can still tell her later if we decide it would help
d) we have no guarantee that it will work
 
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[X] Bluff her
[X] Just walk away.

Welp apparently Nicaragua was more important than we thought, though we do get some good information out of this.
 
[X] Don't tell her the truth. We have no real insight into who she is or what she wants, and you can't undo such a thing.
 
Bluntly, what is your justification for telling her the truth when:
a) she hates us
b) we can't untell her if it turns out to be a bad idea
c) we can still tell her later if we decide it would help
d) we have no guarantee that it will work

Telling her the truth about death of the personality?

First, why it doesn't hurt as much as it might seem.

- I don't believe that it really matters if this *particular* piece of information gets out. Letting on that we've had memory rewriting and that we know about it is a pretty big deal, for various reasons, but that's not what this would be doing. We don't need to worry about letting the info get out to Threat Null, because Threat Null almost certainly knows - unless we're going to assume that none of the people in charge of building INVISIBLE BEAR got caught up in the Dimensional Anomaly, which seems unlikely - especially since they did have the kill-codes, and we know they have the guy who was our mentor at the time, who knew us both before and afterwards. We're also not making particularly strong claims... the wording as selected could be anywhere from "complete personality scrub" (implied) to "picked up some additional, fairly strong conditioning". Furthermore, as Serafina noted, we've had time to develop an independent personality since then - and the stuff that *most* people really care about with respect to us tied to things that we've done since INVISIBLE BEAR, rather than the things we did beforehand.

- Some people already have this information, like anyone who has access to the files on INVISIBLE BEAR. This almost certainly does included Threat Null, as previously noted, but likely includes others as well.

- Most importantly, though, we lie about who we are... all the time. It is *entirely in character* for us, in a situation like this, to do something like overstating by a fair margin the effects of something like INVISIBLE BEAR. In fact, my write-in does do exactly that (presenting a relentlessly professional and low-emotion front suggesting that we still haven't recovered all that much of a personality). As far as someone like Bastion is concerned, having us in this situation claiming that we were reconditioned to the point of death of the personality isn't necessarily particularly strong evidence that we were reconditioned to the point of death of the personality.

Now, what it buys us.

- It sells her on the idea that we didn't get away scott-free. This is helpful to reducing her overall hostility towards us, and to convincing her to interface with Jamelia rather than anyone else. Right now, the party has two social tanks who would function for this purpose, and Donald is busy. Thus, having her go through anyone else means either putting up a construct member who isn't as good at the social-fu, pulling Serafina out (*terrible* idea) or waiting for Donald's schedule to free up a bit (takes that much more time). Alternately, we could try to get someone from outside of the Amalgam, which is *also* most likely a terrible idea, for various reasons, or give it to someone who isn't social-specced (not best). The not getting away scott-free thing is also why we're implying that we're not the head of our amalgam. Indeed, we're pretty much implying that we've been shuffled off to Watcher duty somewhere, and are unlikely to rise all that much in the future.

- It doesn't give her time to think/plan/act. Right now, she's a semi-hostile but potentially convinceable and a bit off-balance, which is a situation that Jamelia is *really good at*. Once Jamelia walks out of here, she's going to think, and then she's going to grab whatever info she can, and then she's going to act. It's *possible* that if we take control of the situation we can keep her from acting after we go by convincing her that the wheels of the bureaucracy are turning and she's better off staying put, but if we just pull a bluff-and-go, that doesn't seem all that likely... and there are all sorts of potential complications that could come out of her eventual actions. Especially if she attracts the attentions of Threat Null, it could get... messy. *She* is certainly not going to mind the idea that Jamelia has gotten where she is inappropriately, that Control has decided that she's the Adversary, and that she needs to be wiped out. This meeting is pretty much the only time that we have guaranteed (or nearly so) that Threat Null hasn't gotten to her.

- It gives her a chance to rant about the unfairness of it all, directly to our face. This has some benefits in reducing hostility (rather than stirring it up, enflaming it by showing off how well we're doing, and then walking away so that it can fester *properly*) but the bigger deal is that we might learn something. There are things that she knows that we'd dearly like to, but she's not going to tell us just for the asking. She *might*, on the other hand, throw them in our faces as she vents about the unfairness of it all. She is, in fact, highly likely to throw at least some of it in our faces while she rants about the unfairness of it all.

- To my eye, it much more strongly reinforces the idea that the technocracy wheels are turning, and that if she can reign it in for a bit, we can get her back where she should be. More to the point, if we can sell ehr on that, and sell ehr on keeping us on as "primary investigator", we're pretty much guaranteed that she'll give us at least some access to the stuff that we need to see to determine if we want to reactivate... given that we'll have been accepted as an official investigator to determine just that, and will be getting at least some support.

...and, in turn, a lot of it collects together to refute "c) we can still tell her later if we decide it would help". There is an opportunity to learn something here (via ranting) that will not come again. This meeting is basically our best (possibly only) opportunity to convince her to treat us as an official investigator (which opens up a lot more useful information at minimal additional cost). It's also our best opportunity to reduce her resentment - and if we don't, it's entirely possible that that resentment, now enflamed will cause her to do something (like, say, call some sort of Control-owned hotline) that will make life *hugely* more difficult for us. This moment is a tipping point in a lot of ways. Things are unstable. We can't just walk away now and come back later.

The hating us... well, as noted, part of the point is to work on reducing the level of hating us, by giving some acceptable answers to the resentment underpinning it - and answers that she will want to hear, as they come with the feeling that someone she's resented really has gotten what's coming to them. Even having her be the one to choose to throw us out against our probable preference, rather than use just walking out on our own, will give her at least a bit of satisfaction on the matter (should she choose to go that way) and will mean that she's likely to internally take at least some of the responsibility for any delays, rather than blaming it all on us.

As for guarantees - well, we don't have any guarantee that *anything* will work, ever. Even if it doesn't work as well as I'd like, though, it's likely to grant a partial success. She'll have a suggestion that we got at least *some* of the comeuppance that was coming to us, she'll have a chance to vent a bit, and she'll have some reason to believe that with a bit of patience she may come back out of mothballs. She'll likely go home feeling better, and she'll be a lot less likely to do something that could get us all killed or mind-controlled by Threat Null while she waits for a replacement investigator (which she's been told may take a bit). She may still resent us, may not have told us anything new, and may have told us never to get anywhere close to her again, but she won't be galvanized by the meeting to go out and make things worse, and that'll give Donald time to finish what he needs to with the Ivory Tower/White Tower thing, get briefed as well as we can manage, and head in as a more agreeable investigator (probably with Henriette as technical assistant).

[X] Don't tell her the truth. We have no real insight into who she is or what she wants, and you can't undo such a thing.

For the record, we totally have insight into who she is and what she wants. We know that she's been mothballed for decades, and out of the loop, and in spite of feeling demeaned by it and resentful of it, she's done her best to do the job well. She's applied a similar degree of pride to her own appearance, to her augments, and to her own bodily maintenance. We have some decent insights into who she was back in the day, and there is a fairly good chance that she hasn't been compromised by anyone else yet. As an example, if she *had* been compromised by Control, she wouldn't be bitching us out, she'd be taking this opportunity to draw us into a deathtrap of some sort or setting up a future meeting to have us killed at. What she wants is to get back into the Union proper, to have her frustration validated and her work and value recognized, and to have us get at least a reasonable fraction of what she feels we so richly deserve.

There is a low-to-moderate possibility that she's also been compromised by something (almost certainly *not* Threat Null) in which case she will also want to make sure we don't find out about that and/or that she isn't investigated by technocrats who would. There's a moderate-to-significant possibility that she's made some compromises along the way that the old Control would not approve of, in which case she'll want to either make sure that we don't find out about those or that they don't come back to haunt her for some other reason.
 
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[X] Bluff her
->[X] Just walk away.

I'm not really happy with any of these options. Finding some way to defuse Dyne at least enough to get her to listen to reason is obviously the objective, but none of the choices reliably lead there. And disclosing details of Jamelia's life to her, when she has not done to anyone else, strikes me as very out of character. On top of all the disadvantages of doing so.

So this probably causes the least damage, even if it seems wasteful to just give up on the conversation if it doesn't go Jamelia's way. Keeping open a line of communication, if not to Jamelia, then to the official Technocracy, seems like it could at least salvage something.
 
[X] Bluff her
->[X] Just walk away.

I'm not really happy with any of these options. Finding some way to defuse Dyne at least enough to get her to listen to reason is obviously the objective, but none of the choices reliably lead there. And disclosing details of Jamelia's life to her, when she has not done to anyone else, strikes me as very out of character. On top of all the disadvantages of doing so.

So this probably causes the least damage, even if it seems wasteful to just give up on the conversation if it doesn't go Jamelia's way. Keeping open a line of communication, if not to Jamelia, then to the official Technocracy, seems like it could at least salvage something.
Nothing reliably leads there. We are not in a reliable situation. All you can do is chip away at it - to influence things in the direction you want it to go. Doing that, though, is going to require at minimum convincing her that we did pay some sort of significant cost in the aftermath of the whole debacle. As far as "very out of character" - well, it's true... but then Jamelia is currently trying to figure out what's in character for her, isn't she? ...and the reason this is coming up here is that this woman has, in some ways, an actual honest right to know. That doesn't mean by itself that we *should* tell her, but she was actually harmed by our actions in the past. Do we care enough about that to try to give her some degree of closure? Who *is* the new Jamelia?

I gotta say... when we've had some talk about "maybe it's time to switch vices" and we run into a choice where two of the four options include suppressing that vice, on a story arc based around the same sort of stuff that started those discussions? That means something.

As a side note, if we play our cards right here, and do *really* *really* *well*, I suspect that she may be recruitable. She's certainly the right tier for it, and she really does want to leave her current role and move on to other things. Not saying that we *want* this, necessarily, but I suspect that it's possible.

I'm not saying that my write-in leads to either ditching Chameleon or improving our chances of recruiting her (a bit too much deceit for either), but maybe the possibilities will spark some ideas in someone else's head. I really don't think that "bluff and flee" is the right choice here.
 
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Fear. No plans that avoid disclosure
I direct attention to the below
No. Absolutely not. Because that would be Jamelia doing a terrible job of faking that this is the first she's heard of this. Think about it, if this were really the first time Jamelia had heard of this, would she walk away? Or would she poke and prod and ask probing questions while pretending to know what the woman was talking about?

[X] Bluff her.
-[X] But do a good job of it by imagining how you'd react if this really were the first time you heard of this.
--[X] indirectly probe at the memory changes while pretending to pretend that you already knew about this
-[X] She seems to resent the loss of her former position, allow her the catharsis of venting while prodding her in the direction of looking forward to getting back to doing "real" work.

That's 2 mind procedures,
  1. suppressing the fact that Jamelia actually did know about the memory editing to act like she didn't
  2. making the angry Iterator expend her anger and start being happy
    1. We've actually seen this one used before on the captured fanfiction writer
 
I gotta say... when we've had some talk about "maybe it's time to switch vices" and we run into a choice where two of the four options include suppressing that vice, on a story arc based around the same sort of stuff that started those discussions? That means something.

Yeah, it means that Jamelia's natural cool sometimes has a costs. It doesn't mean that we can discard it like it's not something critical to who she is - not with out either quite a bit more soul-searching, or a sharp shock from someone or something else.

[X] Bluff her. We do have authority, and being hated can be almost as useful as being loved, if you prod them the right way.
->[X] Be willing to walk away, but is so, put her under pretty intensive surveillance. We have resources, let's use them, and if we can find an actual connection to Threat Null, that might be what we need to accomplish larger objectives (of course, if Panopticon grabs here, there may be fuckall we can do about it - but regardless, that's more information about Panopticon we'd have).
 
I direct attention to the below
Okay. So I admit that I'm a bit confused with your answer. Specifically, the "faking that this is the first she's heard of this (well)". Is she faking that this is the first she's heard of the debacle? That's essentially the same as either outright admitting that she had her memory changed (problematic for reasons stated) and faking that she's jsut findign out now (doesn't help much) or trying to convince Dyne that *she* had her memory changed (bad idea, as she's predisposed to dislike and distrust you). If you're just saying that we're pretending that this is the first we've heard of Dyne being mothballed... well, that still doesn't address the core of her resentment, and it doesn't give us terribly fruitful lines of inquiry. If it's something else, then I'm not sure I understand. Explain please?
Yeah, it means that Jamelia's natural cool sometimes has a costs. It doesn't mean that we can discard it like it's not something critical to who she is - not with out either quite a bit more soul-searching, or a sharp shock from someone or something else.
It also means "Hey, if you want to work towards changing your vice, here's one meaningful decision point where you can do so, with costs on both sides to make it interesting." It *is* something critical to who she is, but it's also changeable right now. Worth noting that the second suppress pick is only weighted a bit less than either of the non-suppress picks. Also, it's not about outright discarding right now - it's just a question of which way she gets pushed.

Oh, and hey - there's another factor. Dyne is an intelligent technocrat who knew us reasonably well back in the day, has some experience with NWO, and has dots in Mind. Assume for the moment that we had gotten off scott-free, and still had all our memories. We just walked into her place of power with a cover story that pretty much directly declared us as "NWO, come to visit" (thus ensuring her personal attention) knowing that she would be able to identify us with relatively little effort, when we had reason to know that she would feel deeply wronged. This is not something that a competent veteran NWO would do under most circumstances in that situation. Certainly, in that situation, said competent veteran NWO wouldn't then immediately turn around, give some excuse, and depart. Dyne would know this, or at least would be reasonably capable of figuring it out. If we don't want her coming to her own conclusions, we need to give her an explanation that makes sense with the way we walked in here. What story would you have that bluffing tell? If we just wanted to check on her status as a fully functional technocrat, we could have sent almost anyone else, and gotten a (much) better reaction. If you don't want her to suspect altered memories (or at least consider it a possibility) we're going to have to give her something else plausible.
 
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Opening up to Dyne about how we got punished is not guaranteed - or even likely - to make her feel more sympathetic and less angry towards us. It stands a markedly high chance of increasing her contempt and making her see us as more of a perfect little meat robot Technocracy doll. She hates us. Trying to succeed at this social engagement with a tool - Jamelia - that is massively flawed for purpose is stupid. Trying to come at it sideways and get around that flaw is circuitous and pointless. If your approach runs into an obstacle, you do not try to surmount that obstacle, you avoid it. Jamelia is not the tool for this task. Dyne hates her, Dyne has spent years hating her, Dyne is not going to stop hating her because Jamelia gives her a sob story and a chance to vent. We should back off believably and send someone else in, who she does not hate, and who can do this job better. Nothing requires Jamelia to handle it. If we flag her to Bastion at the same time as we admit our possible memory tampering to him, he can handle it himself.
 
Yeah, we end this meeting as quickly as possible, tell Dyne we'll send someone to handle any future interactions with her (note: we probably do not want Threat Null pretending to be the followup contact), and leave.
 
Opening up to Dyne about how we got punished is not guaranteed - or even likely - to make her feel more sympathetic and less angry towards us. It stands a markedly high chance of increasing her contempt and making her see us as more of a perfect little meat robot Technocracy doll. She hates us. Trying to succeed at this social engagement with a tool - Jamelia - that is massively flawed for purpose is stupid. Trying to come at it sideways and get around that flaw is circuitous and pointless. If your approach runs into an obstacle, you do not try to surmount that obstacle, you avoid it. Jamelia is not the tool for this task. Dyne hates her, Dyne has spent years hating her, Dyne is not going to stop hating her because Jamelia gives her a sob story and a chance to vent. We should back off believably and send someone else in, who she does not hate, and who can do this job better. Nothing requires Jamelia to handle it. If we flag her to Bastion at the same time as we admit our possible memory tampering to him, he can handle it himself.

How do you know this? Maybe she's just incredibly tsundere and soon she'll be going "i-i-it's not like I want to join you on your quest to fight Threat Null b-b-baka!" (You're right on that)

More seriously you do have several people who can do this effectively. You have General Garrison, who as we have already noted broadly respects you, and would love having the extra industrial capacity Cybersolutions can give him. You have Clarent, who respects you. You have Henriette and Antoinette.

On the Kessler in the audience issue, I'm going to note that Kessler's waiting in the lobby. This is at least in part because it's not like it increases his response time significantly.

And speaking of Henriette, she may be currently talking to Ms. Clarent about augmentations and girls boys being a child soldier. Currently poking at that a bit.

I'm not understanding the attraction of walking away without getting anything done.

Lemme quote something relevant.

You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done

Every gambler knows
That the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away
And knowin' what to keep
'Cause every hand's a winner
And every hand's a loser
And the best that you can hope for is to die
in your sleep
 
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I'm not understanding the attraction of walking away without getting anything done.
Well, then switch your view on what we actually got done:

*We learned that Dyne remembers Jamelia, and remembers an incident that might relate to the ones Jamelia now suddenly remember. This means that unless Dyne was planted here years ago with false memories just to confirm the false memories Aristide would implant on us, then Jamelia pretty much has confirmation that at least some of her new memories are true.

*We learned that Dyne is very bitter about her mothballing (contrary to the last guy who seemed to have chosen to have his memories erased voluntarily), and that Jamelia herself might not be the best to influence her.

*We learned that Dyne wants back in. She really, really does. This makes things a heck of a lot easier for people to recruit her. While Jamelia herself has a disadvantage here (Dyne dislikes her) some other people, especially IX-type, could do this easily.

Basically, this is all but done. Jamelia herself has already gotten all she needed from Dyne right now (unless she manages to totally get Dyne's trust, but even if she does Jamelia couldn't trust that she did manage to gain her trust anyway), and she has confirmed that "getting her back in" is almost trivially done by some of her contacts- and those contacts would owe her if she spins this well.

As for how Jamelia gains by going away? Because Jamelia thrives on being under-estimated as much as she thrives on being feared or not noticed. When someone looks down on Jamelia "because she has it easy", Jamelia is glad: this means that person is going to be manipulated much more easily. Jamelia doesn't have the insecure need to make sure people see her as sympathetic. She is The Man.

[X] Bluff her
->[X] Just walk away.
 
We also just got an excuse to let Bastion and a few key others in on the fact that our memories have been tampered with, without revealing that we've broken the wipe and remembered everything in full.

That is very important. That means we can start preparing for ways that can blow up on a level outside just Jamelia herself, without alerting Threat Null to the fact that the cat is completely out of the bag. They may be aware that we know that the bag exists and has something in it, but that is expected, and if we don't react to that knowledge then they will become more suspicious for the lack of follow-up.
 
[X] Bluff her
-> [X] Just walk away

Its simple good cop / bad cop.

Now if General Garrison shows up or Dr Lovelace invites her to dine and fuss over Dyne plus listen to her bitching about how awful the NWO is. Then suddenly shes leading a Construct at the leading edge of ItXs plan for the Masses
 
I think in this specific case, bluffing her is the right approach, and that we aren't in a position where revealing any weakness or trying to break her out of her decades of reinforcing her hate for us is going to accomplish anything good.

With that in mind, in the short term at least, reinforcing her hatred of us may be the right approach. Bluffing her with a "Ohoh? I hadn't been made aware you were here, or I never would have come. The union lost a lot of records in the late nineties- our files still showed you as active... though with curiously few status reports."

Come off as the high and mighty perfect NWO princess she hates us as- professional, bureaucratic, and a hint of that old rivalry. Deny any discussion about the past- "I'm not here to talk about Nicaruga, and I'm not here to let you rant out twenty years of pent up rage. We have psychiatrists on retainer for that. I was here to evaluate this construct's status and potential for top level reintegration into the union's active roster- but we both know you'd never accept anything I have to say. Someone else will be in touch to handle this evaluation, Ms Dyne."
 
With that in mind, in the short term at least, reinforcing her hatred of us may be the right approach.
... why? What possible goal does that serve, beyond making her an even easier target for Threat Null subversion attempts that use us as a "bad guy" to reel her in? Look, our only aim here should be to get out without revealing anything, and prime her for later contact by non-Threat-Null assets if we can. Stay as neutral as possible, give a good, truthful reason for being here - for fuck's sake do not try to lie to the woman, she's probably good enough to stand a reasonable chance of spotting it if we do - and then stage a tactical retreat. Don't try to talk her down, don't try to rile her up, just satisfy her curiosity as to why we're there at all and go.
 
Okay. So I admit that I'm a bit confused with your answer. Specifically, the "faking that this is the first she's heard of this (well)". Is she faking that this is the first she's heard of the debacle? That's essentially the same as either outright admitting that she had her memory changed (problematic for reasons stated) and faking that she's jsut findign out now (doesn't help much) or trying to convince Dyne that *she* had her memory changed (bad idea, as she's predisposed to dislike and distrust you). If you're just saying that we're pretending that this is the first we've heard of Dyne being mothballed... well, that still doesn't address the core of her resentment, and it doesn't give us terribly fruitful lines of inquiry. If it's something else, then I'm not sure I understand. Explain please?
Yeah I need to reword the a bit. But basically, I was going with "Dyne KNOWS Jazmin and knows she NWO". In other words beating a fast retreat is a terrible bluff because Dyne would recognize it as a bluff. Because Dyne should know that if Jazmin didn't know about any of this, Jazmin would bluff and investigate further. By leaving, Jamelia reveals that she already knew about it. Because she's not acting like she would if she didn't know about it.

TLDR: beating a fast retreat is not how Jamelia would act if she didn't know about this

[X] Bluff her.
-[X] pretend you don't know about the memory changes. Assume the character of a Jamelia that doesn't know
--[X] This character, "Jamelia who doesn't know about the memory changes," will in turn bluff that nothing unusual is going on while indirectly probing at the memory changes
-[X] Dyne seems to resent the loss of her former position, allow her the catharsis of venting while prodding her in the direction of looking forward to getting back to doing "real" work.
 
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By leaving, Jamelia reveals that she already knew about it.

Alternatively, it shows that when presented with new information she didn't expect that has incredible implications about her personal identity and could very well be used against her she feels that it's best to regroup to plan out her actions when dealing with Dyne or reassess her priorities. It could also mean that she doesn't actually trust Dyne as a source of unbiased information given her hatred toward Jazmin, and would rather pursue less potentially misleading avenues of inquiry first that won't color her perceptions or risk giving away such valuable information to one of her most bitter enemies. Hell, someone might even think the conditioning she has subconsciously biases her towards making decisions that steer her away from inquiring about these things further and dismissing them, or any other myriad reasons.
 
... why? What possible goal does that serve, beyond making her an even easier target for Threat Null subversion attempts that use us as a "bad guy" to reel her in? Look, our only aim here should be to get out without revealing anything, and prime her for later contact by non-Threat-Null assets if we can. Stay as neutral as possible, give a good, truthful reason for being here - for fuck's sake do not try to lie to the woman, she's probably good enough to stand a reasonable chance of spotting it if we do - and then stage a tactical retreat. Don't try to talk her down, don't try to rile her up, just satisfy her curiosity as to why we're there at all and go.

If you'd read what else I said it should be clear that any action by us will reinforce her hatred of us unless we're specifically going to attempt to 'get her on our side' which totally won't explode in our faces.

Playing to her perception of who she thinks Jamelia is would be the best choice because it doesn't put her in a position where all her perceptions of reality have been challenged and thus gives her a reason to deviate from course. By being the Jamelia she expects Jamelia to be, we can avoid most chance that she'd go and do something or talk to someone that could blow everything we've worked so hard on up.

That's what I mean by reinforcing her hatred of us.

Not some cartoony "ohohohohoh you suck" villainy.
 
We've wandered off on trails of speculation for a bit now. Let's return to what we know.

She doesn't expect Catherine Dyne to be there waiting for her, with an annoyed expression on her face. She's older than Jamelia remembers. The old Dyne looked like a HITMark, a cold porcelain beauty whose features concealed militarized cyberware. Now she's more human. Her age isn't quite visible-she could be anywhere from her late 20s to mid-30s, but she's definitely not been under a full anagathics regimen. Probably homemade, Jamelia thinks. She looks like she's out of favor-but her combat augmentations are most definitely not out of maintenance, even if they are outdated. "Jazmin. So nice to see you again. After everything you've done, you'd think they'd have sent someone else." Her voice is bitterly sarcastic. "Come to laugh at me after you managed to dodge your little mistake but kept all of us in the blast?"

"No-" Jamelia starts. She suspected that they never got along. Their contacts were... professional from what she can remember, but nothing more than that. There was always this tension from the few memories she has, that they mutually agreed to be allies on the battlefield but wanted nothing to do with the other whenever possible. She wonders if they had just started off on the wrong foot, or if there was some deeper impetus.

"Because you have some nerve walking up to me after your little stunt in the 80s like nothing's happened. After you fucked us all."

What can she say? How can she tell Dyne that she's not the same person? How can she say that she legitimately doesn't remember the catalyst of this all? That she doesn't remember anything about Vigilance and she needs to know because there's something out there which will take her apart if she doesn't know where she's vulnerable? She only remembers fragments. Bits and pieces, things that are partially there. She doesn't even know why she still has these memories. She recalls asking for them to be completely erased. Death of the self. A new start.

"Nicaragua was your fault, and somehow you're the only one in the unit to make it out scott-free after you fucked up for a second time. No wait, even better than scott-free. Everyone else went into the reject bin, but you? You got a second chance, and clearly you made pretty good use of it, Little Miss Self-Righteous. Some of us have been mothballed for decades, waiting to be called back. Some of us had promising careers and futures until you ruined them because of your own personal goddamn failings. Some of us have had nothing to do but busywork that we normally delegate to Damien washouts and unwitting dupes for the last 30 years because they can't be trusted. Because one member of the unit went Nephandic, and another went rogue."

Why did she get to keep her memories? Jamelia thinks. Ah yes. She remembers seeing Dyne's dossier in Iran. She was deployed there with the Iteration X backup strike teams. One of those Biomechanics who straddled the line between scientist and soldier, an all-too-common type of person in Iteration X. Multiple neural firewalls-she'd be safe from coercion, and she probably has some way of blanking sensitive information if captured anyways. Jamelia wonders if she'd have ended up the same way if she didn't choose to forget and they managed to piece Jazmin together despite that. A bitter old woman, sidelined, never quite trusted.

Dyne is going to take a bit of work. Someone who had the mental flexibility to end up in Vigilance despite being in Iteration X-she's not your usual Iterator. She'll be willing to second-guess, to be passive-aggressive, to do outright sabotage, and Jamelia suspects Dyne would be more than willing to rat her out if it might put her back into the Union's good graces. Unfortunate, seeing that the enemy Jamelia is fighting can promise her much.

And if she makes waves-they might realize Dyne exists and that Cybersolutions could be useful. And if that happens-it might just be better to cut that line of questioning short right now. After Moscow, she definitely has enough goodwill to pull this off, if she does it right and leaves the right kind of evidence around.

So...
- She apparently always disliked Jazmin, and has had a whole bunch of resentment to pile on top of that.
- She knows secrets from Jamelia's past that Jamelia doesn't know.
- She's willing to Do Things to get back at us, and has a fair amount of personal resources to do that with.
- She desperately, desperately wants to get back into the Union.
- We just stirred the pot

Possible gains from this situation
- Reintegrate old resources into the Technocracy (...because current ItX leadership really would love to pull her little group onboard)
- Learn more about our own past
- Acquire favors/resources/other influence

Possible losses from this situation
- Have information about our past get where we don't want it to
- Dyne goes over to Threat Null
- Dyne becomes our personal nemesis in ItX
- Things get... "messy". Bastion is displeased.

That resentment isn't going away on its own. If we just bluff-and-go, at *best* it'll stay as it is. If we then reintroduce her to the Technocracy as a whole and get her reintegrated (as she deserves) she will have both means and motive to make our lives and objectives a fair bit more difficult in various ways. Additionally, we *won't* have the information in her head, and it will most likely show up somewhere and somehow calculated to cause us significant harm. This is a lose plan. "Back off, and then reintegrate her into the Technocracy" leaves us *significantly* worse off than we would have been had we never walked in at all. This is a bad plan and will do bad things to us.

That having been said, I don't really see us deciding to eliminate her in cold blood (if nothing else, there are *way* too many ways it could go wrong) and if we just leave her here in mothballs, and *don't* reintegrate her, the chances of her going Threat Null are quite high. I would say, then, that if we don't want our little adventure here to come off as a significant net loss overall, we *need* to work on ways to get her to hate us less.

Fortunately, not everything is working against us. She's an 80s technocrat from ItX, where "person you were just fighting and hating last month is now a HIT MARK and taking orders like a good little drone" was totally a thing. I'm not saying that my plan is the only viable way to get out of this without dealing with a serious snake in the grass, but it at least has a decent chance of getting us out of this with an overall net positive.

I suppose we could try to kidnap her and rewrite *her* personality/memories to a degree. We do have a Mind 5 medtech on the payroll, after all. I mean, it's not like we don't *have* options.
 
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