Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns

[Sirrocco]

I hadn't thought about convincing the Amalgam-391 leadership to take credit and help cover up her involvement, but it might very well be a good option to. If Serafina gets the opportunity to do so before Panopticon launches its own investigation.

Click to shrink...

All it would take is a phone call while en route to wherever she's going. I'm sure the Xiaolan comes equipped with a cellphone-equivalent.

 

[notanautomaton]

I think we might want to tell the good Father that if he wants to take the pain to the things that hurt him, he and his allies should head over to the Void Engineers, and tell tell him that they work with some Reality Dev Mages. Because if I were in charge of the Void Engineers, getting the Father would literally make me cry with joy. Seriously, the guy can reenact Neon Genesis Evangelion on Threat Null, what's not to love?

 

[Sirrocco]

I think we might want to tell the good Father that if he wants to take the pain to the things that hurt him, he and his allies should head over to the Void Engineers, and tell tell him that they work with some Reality Dev Mages. Because if I were in charge of the Void Engineers, getting the Father would literally make me cry with joy. Seriously, the guy can reenact Neon Genesis Evangelion on Threat Null, what's not to love?

Click to shrink...

That seems like the sort of thing to try to sell him on after we join forces with him to kill the Resident. "Oh, hey - you're directly responsible for the death and traumatic experiences of a bunch of innocents. I can relate. Also, you're not likely to be able to stick around here - much of your congregation is dead, and in a way that looks *really* suspicious to the rest of the technocracy. Why not try going on a little crusade against these threats to all that's right and good with the world? I know people who can help."

 

[WhatIf]

[X] La Iglesia Del Diablo - Serafina knows where the… the thing that made this entire alien invasion possible is. The one who sold all those people into that. It's summoned into a church and if what the priest says is true, there's an open dimensional rift there. Head there. Kill it dead - and Alice can make it stick. Father Orisino is going there no matter what you say, and he and his Traditionalist allies will be willing to hide you, or maybe you can even use the dimensional rift before it's sealed to flee into the Umbra. [Father Orisino joins the party for this]

Also I agree with Sirrocco and MJ12 Commando on this
[x] Convince Dr Fujiyama take credit for the operation so that he profits and our tracks are covered.

 

[Smartphone]

[X] La Iglesia Del Diablo - Serafina knows where the… the thing that made this entire alien invasion possible is. The one who sold all those people into that. It's summoned into a church and if what the priest says is true, there's an open dimensional rift there. Head there. Kill it dead - and Alice can make it stick. Father Orisino is going there no matter what you say, and he and his Traditionalist allies will be willing to hide you, or maybe you can even use the dimensional rift before it's sealed to flee into the Umbra. [Father Orisino joins the party for this]

Because I want a Hispanic father Anderson on are side even more than I want flying psychic war-squid, and putting the beat down on a resident seems thematically appropriate given everything else that has happened thus far.

[X]And the Dr. Fujiyama plan to avoid problems, from the union.

 

[Quantumboost]

Her main problem is that she doesn't have a Pepper Potts to spray her with a plant mister.

Click to shrink...

I will note, like all good comic book names, that Alice Aristide is alliterative.

 

[Sirrocco]

{X] La Iglesia Del Diablo - Serafina knows where the… the thing that made this entire alien invasion possible is. The one who sold all those people into that. It's summoned into a church and if what the priest says is true, there's an open dimensional rift there. Head there. Kill it dead - and Alice can make it stick. Father Orisino is going there no matter what you say, and he and his Traditionalist allies will be willing to hide you, or maybe you can even use the dimensional rift before it's sealed to flee into the Umbra. [Father Orisino joins the party for this]

Because I want a Hispanic father Anderson on are side even more than I want flying psychic war-squid, and putting the beat down on a resident seems thematically appropriate given everything else that has happened thus far.

[X]And the Dr. Fujiyama plan to avoid problems, from the union.

Click to shrink...

The bracket on your first vote is wrong. Might not be counted.

Also, formal vote.

[X] La Iglesia Del Diablo - Serafina knows where the… the thing that made this entire alien invasion possible is. The one who sold all those people into that. It's summoned into a church and if what the priest says is true, there's an open dimensional rift there. Head there. Kill it dead - and Alice can make it stick. Father Orisino is going there no matter what you say, and he and his Traditionalist allies will be willing to hide you, or maybe you can even use the dimensional rift before it's sealed to flee into the Umbra. [Father Orisino joins the party for this]

[x] Convince Dr Fujiyama take credit for the operation so that he profits and our tracks are covered.

...because I do like the idea of doing that much more damage to Threat Null on the way out, because I do have that thing about acquiring all available party members (and think that we still have a chance to pull Alice and Father Orsino more-or-less to the side of the Union, if we work it right. Serafina's still a heck of a social spec, after all, and both of them are kind of at loose ends at the moment.

The Dr Fujiyama thing is both because I want Serafina to have a chance to come home to the Union and because I am amused by the idea of Dr Fujiyama having the bizarre experience of being manipulated and exploited by a woman that he's slept with, again, but having the fallout, instead of being terrible, be something that hands him his medium-term objectives on a platter, just because.

I imagine that Threat Null is going to be Not Best Pleased by this whole turn of events as well.

 

[veekie]

[X] La Iglesia Del Diablo - Serafina knows where the… the thing that made this entire alien invasion possible is. The one who sold all those people into that. It's summoned into a church and if what the priest says is true, there's an open dimensional rift there. Head there. Kill it dead - and Alice can make it stick. Father Orisino is going there no matter what you say, and he and his Traditionalist allies will be willing to hide you, or maybe you can even use the dimensional rift before it's sealed to flee into the Umbra. [Father Orisino joins the party for this]

[x] Convince Dr Fujiyama take credit for the operation so that he profits and our tracks are covered.

He is a guy who really really wants a promotion, and we know Professor Li wants a good excuse to minimize the power of entrenched interests like Allende.

This could legitimately work. "Yes, I had to deceive you, I'm sorry-but you can take all the credit and that'll get you to where you want."

Click to shrink...

Well, he'd probably still be pissed but not as pissed as he could be.

[ ] Ride Off Into The Night - They won't have a better chance. Everyone's distracted by the crashed UFO and the Anomaly. Serafina and Alice (and Alicia) have a ragtag collection of Union gear, a sweet motorbike and a 'borrowed' stealth gunsquid. Time to slip off into the darkness.

Buggering off. Safe, but it doesn't really change anything.

[ ] La Iglesia Del Diablo - Serafina knows where the… the thing that made this entire alien invasion possible is. The one who sold all those people into that. It's summoned into a church and if what the priest says is true, there's an open dimensional rift there. Head there. Kill it dead - and Alice can make it stick. Father Orisino is going there no matter what you say, and he and his Traditionalist allies will be willing to hide you, or maybe you can even use the dimensional rift before it's sealed to flee into the Umbra. [Father Orisino joins the party for this]

Father Orisino is cool and we get to ruin Threat Null's day once more...but risky because Major Threat Null Individual.

[ ] Xenokleptomania - The crashed alien carrier is being reclaimed by the Dimensional Anomaly and is swarming with aliens, but it's still somewhat intact for now. Take VPR 1st Company and your gunship and seize one of their smaller saucers, the ones which remind Serafina of Void Engineer corvettes. They don't need to be fuelled by human life - it just helps.

Well it IS a nice ride. But we already have a helisquid.

[ ] Poking The Eye - Panopticon are distracted by the giant alien spaceship. Serafina knows where they are. Hit them hard in the chaos, find their leader and brain-probe them to find their secrets. With them out of action, your escape will be easier and you'll have some leads to follow.

High risk. Ridiculously high risk.

[ ] Thelma And Louise (Fake) - Alicia has been a busy little imaginary friend and has 'borrowed' the cloning facility where Serafina originally got her Laura disguise. She's got a good quality Alice duplicate prepped and ready. Small issue! The aliens are sort of trying to take the cloning facility and she needs exfiltration and all the alarms are going off and Union reinforcements are already on route. But if you can get her and the clone out without anyone noticing and destroy the evidence that the clone exists, you'll be able to give Panopticon their successful mission. Um. Please hurry. The aliens really want this place. [Exhausts Your Narrative Quantum Uncertainty Alicia asset]

I'm not really sure what the heck is going on here.

[ ] Independencemas Day - NOT UNLOCKED - Control of Subjugation Corps Carrier or Subjugation Corps Corvette not obtained

That would have been fun, but with our rolls we'd have been trashed.

[ ] Offering A Hand To The Eye - NOT UNLOCKED - Reason To Believe Panopticon Won't Shoot Serafina Or Alice On Sight not found



[ ] False Codes - NOT UNLOCKED - Panopticon Forces Not Destroyed/Subverted

This is the kind of thing that'd be more fun with Jamelia around.


[ ] Laifu-Ruining Waifu - NOT UNLOCKED - Serafina is not in contact with her Syndic Ex

Donald still has dibs on harem shenanigans on this team.

[ ] Diplomatic Immunity - NOT UNLOCKED - Void Engineer Contacts not made

Pity about that.

[ ] The Witching Hour - NOT UNLOCKED - Alice Isn't Going Anywhere Near The Underworld Unless She Has Positive Proof An-Jin Is Far Away

Not sure how we might have run across An-Jin to ghostbust

[ ] The Lost World - NOT UNLOCKED - Professor Allende's Shallowing not investigated

Fun tangent, but a tangent.

[ ] Laifu-Ruining Waifu Pt 2 - NOT UNLOCKED - Blackmail Material on Dr Fujiyama not Found

Probably would have taken too long.

[ ] Gone Rogue - NOT UNLOCKED - Rogue Council Contacts not made

Threat Null vs Rogue Council.

Donald would be selling ringside tickets.

[ ] Star Gate - NOT UNLOCKED - Control of Teleporter in Amalgam-391 not maintained

Probably like the whole jack UFO thing. Awesome but too risky.

[ ] The Word of Blake - NOT UNLOCKED - Serafina did not hit Willpower 0

Subverted?

[ ] I've Been Such A Fool - NOT UNLOCKED - Serafina did not suffer a 10+ point Paradox backlash

*Witches out*

[ ] Death of a Doctor - NOT UNLOCKED - Serafina did not die in Mexico City

Phew

[ ] Harem Ending - NOT UNLOCKED - ???

Is this the part where Serafina populates a Harem by herself?

 

[Quantumboost]

Is this the part where Serafina populates a Harem by herself?

Click to shrink...

Might be from having multiple mindlinked Serafina-Xiaolians alive.

 

[Acatalepsy]

Let's think about this, and which one will actually advance our goals.

[ ] Ride Off Into The Night
Boring. Safe. Pick only if other options are unacceptable.

[ ] La Iglesia Del Diablo
On one hand, defeating Threat Null and stopping them from sending even more deadly Spirits through is critical to things like "survival of humanity as we know it" and "not giving Panopticon more assets". On the other hand, it sounds like the RDs have it under control, and even if they didn't, we could leak the location to the Void Engineers and have them deal with it (actually, we should probably do that anyway; they're all Reality Deviants that need to be suppressed anyway).

[ ] Xenokleptomania
Flying saucers are useful. We still need a way of destroying the Anathema, and a flying saucer with a BFG sounds like a good option, and it also gives us, when we reunite with Jamelia, mobility and stealth apart from the wider Union that we are sorely lacking. Downside: well, the VEs will probably shoot at us. So will Panopticon. Questionable how actually stealthy it will be, or whether the BFG will be sufficient as an anti-Anathema weapon (if it has a BFG at all).

[ ] Poking The Eye
This most directly addresses our current problems. We know almost nothing about Panopticon's current actions; stealing their data and figuring out what they're doing, what assets they have, etc, is probably the most directly productive action we can take. This could also draw the ire of Jamelia's good (well, better) twin, which could be hazardous (but advantageous).

[ ] Thelma And Louise (Fake)
This gets Panopticon off our backs, which gives us time to retreat and catch our breaths. Unfortunately, we're still all hands on deck as far as the rest of the team goes. If we were Jamelia, giving Panopticon a win might be a way to spin things into political victories (or create blindspots we can exploit later); as is we don't really have a chance to catch our breaths anyway, and we're not Jamelia so I don't think we have a way to turn this to our advantage.

I think I'm going with -

[X] Poking The Eye.

- because one way or another, we need to confront Panopticon eventually. Taking out some of their assets now and getting critical information on them - including who their commander is - is pretty much our highest priority, and right now is the time they're least likely to see us coming.

 

[veekie]

Flying saucers are useful. We still need a way of destroying the Anathema, and a flying saucer with a BFG sounds like a good option, and it also gives us, when we reunite with Jamelia, mobility and stealth apart from the wider Union that we are sorely lacking. Downside: well, the VEs will probably shoot at us. So will Panopticon. Questionable how actually stealthy it will be, or whether the BFG will be sufficient as an anti-Anathema weapon (if it has a BFG at all).

Click to shrink...

I believe a not-so-giant hypertech machine is exactly the sort of thing you don't want around the Anathema because it'd be easily subverted.

 

[fitzgerald]

[X] La Iglesia Del Diablo - Serafina knows where the… the thing that made this entire alien invasion possible is. The one who sold all those people into that. It's summoned into a church and if what the priest says is true, there's an open dimensional rift there. Head there. Kill it dead - and Alice can make it stick. Father Orisino is going there no matter what you say, and he and his Traditionalist allies will be willing to hide you, or maybe you can even use the dimensional rift before it's sealed to flee into the Umbra. [Father Orisino joins the party for this]

[x] Convince Dr Fujiyama take credit for the operation so that he profits and our tracks are covered.

 

[modrony]

[] Poking the Eye
[x] Church
[x] Convince Dr Fujiyama take credit for the operation so that he profits and our tracks are covered.

Church mission feels like something more suited for a frontline combatant and despite recent events Serafina isn't.
I do want Serafina re-united with the rest of the party eventually and 'hide with the RDs' is the opposite of that. Her political connections are useful and we would be discarding them if we go too far on the RD-road.

Father Orisino is fun, but I like him more as an ally than a party member.
I doubt he would be more than a temp member anyway. We can't have a chorister in our convention and I don't want him to stop being a chorister. It would be sad.

Poking the eye is an opportunity that won't come along very often and is better suited for Serafinas skills.
Sure, the risk is great but the rewards are potentially great too.

It was pointed out that Poking the eye was in conflict with Fujiyama. I do want to do that, so church it is after all. I don't want to just run.

 

[Aleph]

I have zero idea how we're getting out of this with Serafina's reputation intact. They're going to turn over Amalgam-391, in the short term giving Professor Li yet more power within the Progenitors and most likely being able to find links to discredit Serafina. Our best hope is that, really, Panopticon doesn't want that because there are going to be some serious Questions raised if Serafina is also in LA at the same time.

Click to shrink...

... actually...

... hahaha. Yeah, um. You know, this is a very relevant concern, but, uh...

... nobody has actually seen Serafina's face. Oh, Panopticon knows it's her, but FIERY ANGEL, even if tracked back to the Amalgam, can only be identified as a high-end Progenitor and narrowed down to a fairly small group of people.

Thing is, um. While Serafina is in that group... Panopticon can't actually say so publicly. Because "Serafina" is, of course, greeting Jamelia. What are you talking about? Of course she's with Jamelia. She's been in the LA Construct all along. How could she have been causing chaos in Mexico City when she's been putting the Amalgam back together after a vampire attack right there in the open?

Yeah, Ms Clock has, um, basically handed her the perfect alibi in the form of fake!Sera. And Ms Clock knows it's an alibi, but can't go and dash all the work setting it up to the four winds in order to discredit it without looking suspicious and possibly ruining her own more important plans.

Which isn't to say that we're in the clear. But as long as we can keep ourselves from being positively ID'd, we're... actually not in such a terrible position here as we otherwise might be.

Of course, Serafina doesn't know this. Yet (though she may be able to guess since she hasn't been reported dead). But if she goes to Fujimaya, she isn't covering her ass, she's blowing her cover. Right now, the Technocracy at large... doesn't really have any reason to think it's her. And I would be very, very wary of assuming the guy will play nice with her if she offers him that and reveals who she is.

 

[Cavalier]

The path back to Jamelia and company, and to dealing with Panopticon once and for all, goes from the Church through the Void Engineers. Traditionalist contacts making introductions and vouching for them are one way to get the Void Engineers to not try to immediately kill Technocrats who learn about Threat_Null. Probably.

 

[aetherGeologist]

[X] La Iglesia Del Diablo - Serafina knows where the… the thing that made this entire alien invasion possible is. The one who sold all those people into that. It's summoned into a church and if what the priest says is true, there's an open dimensional rift there. Head there. Kill it dead - and Alice can make it stick. Father Orisino is going there no matter what you say, and he and his Traditionalist allies will be willing to hide you, or maybe you can even use the dimensional rift before it's sealed to flee into the Umbra. [Father Orisino joins the party for this]


Sera... doesn't need to do this. Not necessarily. The VEs will have heard about this, and she's sure that they'll be sending in their own teams to find out how a UFO managed to appear over Mexico City.
But then they'd find Orisino and his congregation. And considering what he's what he's just been through, and what she's seen he's capable of- well, she can't see this ending well for anyone. Unless she goes in first with Alice, who was always good with D-Sci, and take out this EDE before anyone else gets hurt.
And the Traditionalists would owe them a very big favour, which she might need to get out of Mexico without Panopticon being alerted.

EDIT: Aleph makes a very good point about Fujimaya. Let's not blow our cover.

 

[ckk185]

Actually. What does serafina have on hand at the momment.

 

[EarthScorpion]

I think we might want to tell the good Father that if he wants to take the pain to the things that hurt him, he and his allies should head over to the Void Engineers, and tell tell him that they work with some Reality Dev Mages. Because if I were in charge of the Void Engineers, getting the Father would literally make me cry with joy. Seriously, the guy can reenact Neon Genesis Evangelion on Threat Null, what's not to love?

Click to shrink...

Have to say, not sure why you'd consider the angel-summoning priest to be someone inclined to trust or like the Void Engineers who do things like call angels "aliens" or "EDEs" and kick down the door and shoot Uriel with phasers.

The Void Engineers have historically done a pretty good job at alienating most Spirit users, by being tremendous cocks.

I will note, like all good comic book names, that Alice Aristide is alliterative.

Click to shrink...

But does the fact that her real name is possibly Elissa al-Hallaq ruin things for her in that field?

Well it IS a nice ride. But we already have a helisquid.

Click to shrink...

We are not talking about the same level of "nice ride". The X-PROG-311 is essentially an advanced invisible Hind with a warsquid combat mode. A small UFO is an XCOM small UFO capable of cross-continental stealth flight, along with whatever other bonuses you might get for capturing one intact-ish.

I'm not really sure what the heck is going on here.

Click to shrink...

It's very simple. If you pick that option, what Alicia has been doing is "taking over a Union cloning facility" and she's prepared a very nice Alice clone who should pass most checks, especially if she's killed in a way which doesn't leave too many remains. Unfortunately, the aliens are now attacking the cloning facility, so you need to go in and get her and the clone out before she gets caught and people realise there's an Alice clone running about.

Fun tangent, but a tangent.

Click to shrink...

If you mean "Avatar Storm-less access to the Hollow Earth which allows you to shake Panopticon's tale and means you only need to pick your way through a prehistoric land to find another way out, as well as plenty of access to lost Union/Etherite expeditions" as a tangent - as well as "being able to track down the elusive Professor Allende who's on safari in there hunting down more dinosaurs and interact with him in person" is a tangent... yes, it's a tangent.

Probably like the whole jack UFO thing. Awesome but too risky.

Click to shrink...

No, quite the opposite actually. If you'd stayed in the Amalgam-391 construct and either the alien scan hadn't found you, or you'd successfully run the base defence (UNLEASH ALL THE DINOSAURS), all you'd have to do is sneak Alice and anyone else you wanted out into -391 (possibly using those genetic kits to disguise them as constructs) and then you could use the MatTrans to gate out to wherever you wanted. Not only was it one of the potentially easiest ways of reuniting with the rest of the party, but also got you anywhere in the world you wanted to go, and if you chose to pillage rather than sneak out, got you a full fresh equipment loadout.

 

[Quantumboost]

But does the fact that her real name is possibly Elissa al-Hallaq ruin things for her in that field?

Click to shrink...

Given Pep's real first name is Virginia, clearly nicknames and aliases qualify, and it makes this particular comparison even more relevant.

Also, I notice I'd forestalled voting for the mainquest, so:
[x] Plan Screw you, I have no money.
[x] Plan suddenly werewolves.

Haven't thought of anything more awesome to replace these with.

 

[modrony]

How hard would it be to do the Fujiyama thing anonymously?
Two layers of security isn't a bad thing and it gives us potential blackmail material if we want something from Fuji later as well as strengthening the faction we want strengthened.

 

[Kerrus]

How hard would it be to do the Fujiyama thing anonymously?
Two layers of security isn't a bad thing and it gives us potential blackmail material if we want something from Fuji later as well as strengthening the faction we want strengthened.

Click to shrink...

For Sera it would be pretty easy. Hell, Serafina could easily contact and disclose information to him in the guise of some high level operative for one of the various secret organizations running about. He doesn't even have to know that it was Serafina in the guise of a Laura- or that the Laura was anything special at all. Plus it gives him ample opportunity to protect his amalgam from the full audit Panopticon would no doubt try in the wake of this and there have been some minor illicit things going on, to say nothing of the fact that these guys have likely found a reliably access point to the Hollow Earth.

[x] Poking the Eye
[x] Convince Dr Fujiyama take credit for the operation so that he profits and our tracks are covered.

Church mission feels like something more suited for a frontline combatant and despite recent events Serafina isn't.
I do want Serafina re-united with the rest of the party eventually and 'hide with the RDs' is the opposite of that. Her political connections are useful and we would be discarding them if we go too far on the RD-road.

Father Orisino is fun, but I like him more as an ally than a party member.
I doubt he would be more than a temp member anyway. We can't have a chorister in our convention and I don't want him to stop being a chorister. It would be sad.

Poking the eye is an opportunity that won't come along very often and is better suited for Serafinas skills.
Sure, the risk is great but the rewards are potentially great too.

Click to shrink...

Look, these options are not compatible with eachother. "Yes, it was me all along who decided to attack a sanctioned task force with all my spare assets!"

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Of course, Serafina doesn't know this. Yet (though she may be able to guess since she hasn't been reported dead). But if she goes to Fujimaya, she isn't covering her ass, she's blowing her cover. Right now, the Technocracy at large... doesn't really have any reason to think it's her. And I would be very, very wary of assuming the guy will play nice with her if she offers him that and reveals who she is.

Click to shrink...

She doesn't need to identify herself. She just needs to make it clear that he may be a lot better off if he doesn't look too deeply into anything that happened.

 

[Cavalier]

Yeah, an anonymous message with an attached Mind effect to encourage him to do what he needs to do anyway to best exploit the situation for his own interests might be sufficient.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

... actually...

... hahaha. Yeah, um. You know, this is a very relevant concern, but, uh...

... nobody has actually seen Serafina's face. Oh, Panopticon knows it's her, but FIERY ANGEL, even if tracked back to the Amalgam, can only be identified as a high-end Progenitor and narrowed down to a fairly small group of people.

Thing is, um. While Serafina is in that group... Panopticon can't actually say so publicly. Because "Serafina" is, of course, greeting Jamelia. What are you talking about? Of course she's with Jamelia. She's been in the LA Construct all along. How could she have been causing chaos in Mexico City when she's been putting the Amalgam back together after a vampire attack right there in the open?

Yeah, Ms Clock has, um, basically handed her the perfect alibi in the form of fake!Sera. And Ms Clock knows it's an alibi, but can't go and dash all the work setting it up to the four winds in order to discredit it without looking suspicious and possibly ruining her own more important plans.

Which isn't to say that we're in the clear. But as long as we can keep ourselves from being positively ID'd, we're... actually not in such a terrible position here as we otherwise might be.

Of course, Serafina doesn't know this. Yet (though she may be able to guess since she hasn't been reported dead). But if she goes to Fujimaya, she isn't covering her ass, she's blowing her cover. Right now, the Technocracy at large... doesn't really have any reason to think it's her. And I would be very, very wary of assuming the guy will play nice with her if she offers him that and reveals who she is.

Click to shrink...

But who says Doctor Fuj-whatever needs to know it was Serafina. As far as he's concerned, his amalgam was hijacked by Ceelicia from Damage Control, right?

 

[MJ12 Commando]

JB CXLI: The Wolf, The General, The Witch, and The Innocent

There's a barrel filled with burning trash in the middle of the bar room. Two people are sitting by it, wrapped up warmly and wearing fingerless gloves. That's purely for aesthetics, but Donald doesn't mind it so much since everyone else managed to get them to stop playing the harmonica. It's bad enough that they're Reality Deviants who channel their talents by invoking the archetypes and right now are trying to use the Wandering Vagrant to avoid notice by the watcher outside, but harmonica music is more than he can tolerate right now.

It's been a couple of days. A couple of frustrating days. He is exhausted, and also aggravatingly sober. But if he has a drink, Reina will stick her hand down his throat, pull out his tongue, and then use it to garotte him.

When he told her that he didn't think it was physically possible, she smiled in a very disquieting manner. He's not prepared to take the risk. Especially here in VR, where it's possible she might have found out how to turn on Toon Mode. In Toon Mode it wouldn't kill him, but there's a lot of things he doesn't want to live though. He really hopes she doesn't understand pop culture references enough to know what it is, but she's osmotically absorbing knowledge like a sponge.

Reina is an amazing woman. Donald admits it freely. He also freely admits to himself - though he's not saying it out loud for fear that she'll hear - that she's a charismatic, authoritarian asshole who probably considers the magic word "please" to be intolerable Reality Deviancy considering how rarely she uses it. Man, at least Director Belltower says things like, "Sykes, if you would please make arrangements to gather the required intel, I will go down to the field and put myself in extreme danger, then wind up in hospital having completed the mission and narrowly failed at getting myself killed for the third time this week. Next week I've scheduled annoying the evil space ghosts of Control so much that they'll try to assassinate me in six different ways again, so please add that to your calendar".

Well, she doesn't actually say that, but he knows that's what she really means. It's how she shows she cares.

Also, there's a risk Rose will try to tell Reina about things which will get him killed, he thinks darkly. Poor Rose. She's going to be in such a state when she gets back. He really, really hopes that Serafina is okay, but fears she isn't.

And the reason he's in such a dark mood is that he's heard an all-too-familiar sob-yep from one of the dark corners of the room, and he's wondering if he should approach Janice. She woke up him more than enough, sounding like that. He isn't sure whether she wants to go over there. She might not want to see him. He doesn't want to see her in an emotionally vulnerable state, especially considering that the truce at the moment in here is awfully tentative.

He waits. Plucks up the courage. It's another sob from her which makes up his mind, and taking a deep breath, he walks over to her corner where she's sprawled out, hat over her face. She's twitching and thrashing her arms all over the place. In the most gentle and dignified and not-at-all-creepy way he can possibly manage, he tries to wake her up without getting hit in the face.

He fails his secondary objective.

A few minutes later, they're sitting next to each other in the dark corner, nursing black coffees. Donald has also obtained an ice pack for his eye.

"Thank you," she says quietly. Her green face is beaded with night-terror sweat.

"Hey, I remember how it was," he says. He winces. "Clearly out of practice at not getting hit. Things'll be all right."

"I hope so," she said.

"How's your body?"

"Perv," she says, glaring at him.

"Are we doing this? Are we really doing this?" Donald asks wearily. "Given you're trapped in here, I am a bit worried that you might die."

"For your information, Mother Nature will provide," Janice says archly. "And the way Mother Nature has provided is by giving me a familiar who I have extensively trained in caring for me in case I get trapped away from my body." She sighs. "Although I can't say much for the taste in my mouth, since there's a good chance he'll be feeding me catfood once he empties out the fridge."

"He's a cat?"

"Yeah. Prehensile tail, thank the goddess, or else he'd have to carry things in his mouth. I hope he'll think to phone one of my friends, because it'll make things much easier."

Donald chuckles, and then shakes his head, sipping his coffee and looking for a tactful way to say the next point. "The nightmares aren't getting any better?"

Janice pulls her legs up onto the seat and wraps her arms around her knees. "They're getting worse," she says in a tiny voice, staring at the fire in the barrel. "It's not just the jungle any more. It… it was bad enough dreaming of being a monster, hunting men through the mists. Killing them silently with knives and teeth and claws. Eating their brains to steal their memories. Being the eyes gazing from the undergrowth." She looks at him, but she's not looking at him. She's staring through him with a thousand yard gaze. "Now sometimes I dream I'm in a worse place. It's dark and… and the things in there. The writing on the walls. The… the things they're doing. To children. I want to kill them all. I want to die."

"Janice," Donald says, eyes widening in concern.

"In the dream," she adds hastily. "In the dream, I want to die. The… the monster went there to die. And to kill as many of them as possible." She rests her head on her knees. "Stupid werewolf past life," she says quietly. "Or whatever. I never asked for this."

Donald doesn't really have an answer for that. "You didn't want to use sleeping pills before. Have you considered starting?" he asks.

"Hah!" she mutters harshly. "You haven't changed that much, Donald, if your solution is 'drugs'." She sighs. "Started in the past few years," she admits. "Obviously, they don't work here since… you know, can't log off and take them. I'm mixing them with a homeopathic solution I prepare. It helps when I combine them - neither of them work on their own anymore. I never should have done that stupid prati-prasav ritual."

"Be careful with the dosage," he advises. "I sometimes got some nasty side effects from mixing homeopathic solutions with conventional drugs."

"I would show you more respect for that advice if I didn't know you studied homeopathy so you could get your hands on cheap drugs," she says, coldly.

"I was poor!" he tries to defend himself. He gets the feeling from her that she's been saving this up for a while, and makes the decision that he's not looking to really argue with her given she's always in a bad mood after a nightmare. But he isn't sure how to defuse this without making her angrier or her starting crying, so he'll just sit back and take his lumps.

"And now that you're rich, you now profit by selling people sugar pills you know don't do anything," she adds, swirling her coffee and taking a sip.

Donald shifts uncomfortably. "You could consider it me striking a blow by annoying the Progenitors?" he tries weakly. "Look, placebos make people feel better and I make sure the packaging tells people to go see a real doctor if they have severe symptoms. Someone's going to make money off this either way, so it might as well be me. And I put the money to good use. Better me than… say, some Pentex company."

Janice narrows her eyes. "You're a real asshole, you know that," she says harshly. "At least the better kind of Progenitor thinks they're helping even if they're over-medicalizing things and… and drugging people with expensive solutions rather than letting people use real knowledge! You're just profiteering! Making money off people being sick and selling them something you don't even think works!"

"I support UHC," Donald objects, but she isn't listening.

"The worst thing is… you fucking well know homeopathy can work if you do it right. You're a fucking cheapskate who used to make homeopathic cocaine using sugar as a base. And yet you doublethink your way into thinking you're selling 'placebos' which we both fucking know is a Technocratic coverup to explain why things which 'shouldn't' work really do."

"I'd just like to say that homeopathic cocaine was actually pretty unsafe, because it was really easy to OD if you didn't take enough of it," he mumbles.

Why are so many of his exes so hard to argue against? Although Janice is problematic because she's smart and somehow has a talent for making him feel guilty, compared to some of the others - cough Karen cough - who never really argued with you as opposed to some figment of their imagination who made more convenient arguments for them to knock down.

She wraps her hands around her mug. "The worst thing is… the worst thing is," she says, not entirely coherently. He can sort of guess at the stress she must be under right now. After all, her body is out there. "The worst thing is… you're still almost you. But not quite. You've got all the right mannerisms, but… but not quite. Here you are, coming over to comfort me because I had one of my fucking nightmares-"

"Why wouldn't I?" he asks, slightly confused.

"Because you're not exactly you! Except you are!" she explains in a not very explanatory way.

"Huh?"

"They… you… someone went and changed a core bit of… of who you are, but you're not acting like it was a core bit and now you're being you with your you expressions but how can you be you if you don't run around with your old polaroid camera treated with the same drugs you're taking and… and…" she looks at him, eyes almost frightened. "Did it hurt?"

"Did what hurt?" His shoulders slump. "Oh. Jan, I'm… I'm not pretending the Union is perfect. Far from it. It's a very flawed, human group. Just like everyone else in this mess." He pauses. "Apart from the aliens and the EDEs and-"

"See! The spirits! You know the word!"

Donald runs his hands through his short blonde hair. "Honestly, 'spirits' isn't a very useful term," he says. "Anyway, I prefer my spirits alcoholic."

"Stop doing that! Stop… stop showing they got in your head and then acting like you're still you."

Things are a little bit surreal right now, considering he's sitting next to a facsimile of a sexy version of the Wicked Witch of the West and trying to defuse an argument.

Eh. He's been in weirder places.

"They didn't get in my head." He keeps this quiet. "Look, I know sometimes it happens, but seriously. Look, I know very well the Union is universalist. Yes, it wants everyone to join, but people who walk in through the front door or who get picked up straight from the Masses-"

"From the Sleepers."

"-well, it just doesn't work out that way. I didn't get my head cut open. I don't have brain implants. I got some gene therapy but I paid for that myself, because… fuck it, my granddad and two of my uncles died from heart problems. I used to have the high risk genes. And yeah, you know what? A bunch of Iterators are weird about cybernetics, but I'm not the sort to be an Iterator." He deliberately doesn't think about what Christos Barberis told him. "I don't do the stuff I used to do because it's dangerous and there's no need and… and in the end of it, I get paid very well to produce economic activity and invest in other projects so they reach the market, and I'm really damn good at what I do. Do I feel like a sell-out? Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes I wish I could be doing more."

He swirls his cooling coffee, but doesn't take a sip. "Fuck it. For all I know, all that's just a bunch of self-rationalisation for how I'm some kind of Dollhouse simulacrum stuck in the body based off my personality scans. But I don't think that's true, you know? Like, sure, that's what a sim'd say, but I'm pretty sure they'd make a sim based off me less… you know. Me. They'd probably take fewer recreational drugs - yeah, I've still got several habits." He grins. "Several better ones, actually. And if I really was some brainwashed sheeple-man my workaholic superior wouldn't look quite so exasperated when I show up at the office at ten."

The note of the conversation sours considerably. "Yes. And you're working for Jamelia Belltower, so, you know, I can't really trust anything you say." Janice jabs a finger at him. "You seem just like the sort to fall for her, with… with your polished shoes and your spy gadgets and… and your sense of humor! Well, she's little and humorless and highly competitive and a smug excessively sober know-it-all!"

"Are you internet-stalking me?" Donald pauses. "Are you internet-stalking her?" he asks, semi-humorously.

"As you taught me," she says darkly, "it does to keep track on the field assets of the other side. So yes, I have read up on her, because she's the sort of person that they might send after me if they want to… to try to make me think I joined up willingly."

Sad music starts up, wavering and quavering over the flickering of the firelight.

"Shut that goddamn harmonica up!" someone shouts from the other side of the room. "Jesus Christ, Phil! It's really fucking depressing!"

"And some of us are trying to sleep!" someone else chips in. "That means you two in the corner too! Find somewhere else to argue!"

"Invoking the Wandering Vagrant needs harmonica music! You're ruining the ritual!" one of the figures by the barrel retorts. "Stop oppressing my paradigm!"

Ah, yes. Donald hasn't missed this bit of being a Traditionalist. Despite outside appearances, getting Technocrats to do things together when there isn't a clear chain of command is rather like herding cats. By contrast, getting Traditionalists to do things together with people outside their cabal is like herding wet, hungry cats.

Weirdly enough - or perhaps not so weirdly enough - Reina seems to consider it entirely tolerable. Well, perhaps the Invisible College was also like wet hungry cats.

***​

Arms folded, Reina gestures at the lightform floating in the air before her. It's a sparkling, glowing collection of spheres connected by thin diaphanous threads.

It reminds her of the kabbalah. Although if anyone else were to ask her, she'd say it reminds her of the node-to-node grids the Progenitors produce of the structure of the brain, which they seem to have thoroughly meshed into the Consensus these days. And they remind her of something else, too, which she is explaining to the surrounding rag-tag members of the Council of Nine Mystic Traditions.

Of course, that's the bitterest irony. She says she's surrounded by Traditionalists, but she's also surrounded by the heirs of the Virtual Adepts and the Electrodyne Engineers. Good, solid Conventions only a few months ago in her own memories, and yes, the Engineers might have been getting in a snit about the planned phase-out of the obsolete ether theory for much more elegant and mathematically simple relativity, but she was sure it was just a small period of disquiet. It seems her death pushed debate into full on rebellion. It was probably all Victoria's fault. The Chair of Unity was not very good at living up to her title. Quite divisive. Honestly, far too young to have such a senior position - and not the equal of poor Francis in the role.

And the loss of the Virtual Adepts pains her worse. She does not know the full story, but it seems so damn stupid. What on Earth were her colleagues playing at?

"The underlying principles of this 'Digital Web' - of course, I should have recognised them earlier," Reina is saying. She taps her fingers on the table. "They're Anne Milbanke's work. Purely theoretical, of course, but she was a member of the Lighthouse Keepers in good standing and quite brilliant in her work on organised social systems."

"I'm not familiar with the name," one of the Virtual Adepts says, tilting his head.

"She lived her life in her husband's shadow, and later her daughter's - and she never considered this theorising much use," Reina says. "She preferred her work on prison reform and the abolition of slavery - and yet everyone remembers her for her marriage to that rascal Byron! Shameful."

"Ada Lovelace's mother?" the Adept asks, tattoos lighting up with interest.

"Ada had her father's temperament, but her mother's mind - and it was her mother who made sure she was taught to make use of it," she says primly. "But never mind that. In its raw form, the Milbanke model allows us to effectively treat this system as an abstract hierarchical node-based model. She developed it originally for modelling human populations. If we realise this abstract model through Arthur Collier's work, we may be able to expose the substrate and thus bypass the technological systems here which are reliant on the works of men of science and are compromised by the being which lurks outside."

"Collier, eh?" a man with a halo and glowing white wings says. "I've studied some of his work from a theological perspective. It has some very interesting commonality with common Akashic thought. Have you read the unexpurgated 'Clavis Universalis, or A New Inquiry after Truth, being a Demonstration of the NonExistence or Impossibility of an External World'?"

Reina narrows her eyes. "How did copies of that survive?" she asks, then shakes her head. "Never mind that. Yes, I have. What I suggest is that we make use of the core conceptual mathematical framework of this Digital Web as a carrier for the signal, in much the same way that the crudities of ether-space science can use the etheric substrate as a carrier."

A Virtual Adept wearing a slinky dress covered in butterfly-wing-like patterns reaches out and sticks a hand into the lightforms. "Okay, so if we shift this hologram to this model," she says, twisting her hand and adding a layer of intersections and annotations over the top, "what are you saying exactly?"

"I'm saying," Reina says, taking a pen and sketching a pillar over the top of the kabbalahic neural network, "that the underlying core structure is an abstract mathematical space unrelated to the technological implementation. It won't be trivial to access the abstract mathematics, but the abstract rendition will have the same relationship to the Digital Web as the Digital Web has to reality."

This produces more than its fair share of immediate arguments.

***​

Donald's cup of coffee is cold. He's on his own now. Janice has gone off to try to get some more sleep, despite the nightmares.

He can't sleep. He's getting philosophical. He hates doing that. He prefers to get drunk so he doesn't have to ask himself really awkward questions. And the harmonicas don't help.

Fucking damn it, Janice. Most people just saw her as a lefty Verbena techno-witch who spent her life working on all kinds of social causes. They don't ask what kind of woman puts that much effort into such things. Why she doesn't seem to sleep when she throws herself into her latest cause, whether it's vegetarianism, female rights in Sub-Saharan Africa, BDS, or venturing into other dimensions to document and map them so other people know what to watch out for.

He always seems to find himself around obsessive, cause-driven people. It's something about being an enlightened scientist or mage or whatever. If you've got Genius, you're never happy with the world as it is. You're always driven for something more. If she changed sides, she'd probably turn up in the Watchers or the Ivory Tower and have great sweeping plans for social reform.

Hell, he's the same too. He just gets so angry sometimes, when he sees hypocrisy in an organization. When he sees people not living up to their self-proclaimed values. It's the kind of thing that leads him to change side to the Technocracy, then go and embarrass his higher ups by calling out SPD corruption, then wind up with Director Belltower and her determination to personally piss off the space ghosts of Control. He gets like this worst when he can't take the edge off his mind with chemicals. His vices - his sex, drugs and rock and roll - distract him. Give him more space to be the guy he was before he went on an experimental drug trip at college with a synthesized LSD-derivative someone he knew had cooked up.

Well, it'd worked. Totally blew open the windows of his consciousness. He knows for a fact that the Progenitors and the NWO have historically used drugs for exactly that purpose. RDs need Genius too.

And Janice is right. As usual. What he used to do, as part of the Cult of Ecstasy - apart from the time he spent calling himself a Seer of Chronos to try to show up the people who just used it for fun - was a core part of who he was. He remembers knowing that the Technocracy brainwashed people so they stopped believing in their RD 'paradigm'.

But he switched sides. And he wasn't brainwashed. There wasn't any chair where they made him watch violent films while Beethoven played. He just… stopped doing the stuff he used to do. Mostly. Uh, there are a few black marks on his file, but in his defence that was only in do-or-die circumstances, like when Nephandic EDE-possessed bioroids kicked down the front door of his office. Maybe it's just growth as a person.

The thing is, the thing is… he used to do that kind of thing all the time. And sure, there were often some fucked up side effects from his drug experimentation, but there are fucked up side effects when the Progenitors experiment with drugs too. He just had cheaper drugs. And some of the things he used to do would be really useful right now. He knows that. And despite that he doesn't want to do them - and that worries him. Thinking about doing them makes the same feelings of guilt as he got when he did the things that got him the black marks.

But he wasn't brainwashed.

Then why doesn't he do some of those things any more?

Because he's told not to.

Why does he listen to them? Why doesn't he just drink and help him sleep and shut down these thoughts? Why does he listen to Reina like that?

… uh, duh, because she's a very scary lady who'd be scary even if she wasn't wearing Rose like a meat puppet. And Rose is a killing machine with the personality of a young kitten.

Point. He needs to find some more harmless people to hang around with. But that doesn't change his central thesis. What he used to do used be a core part of who he was. He doesn't do it anymore. He doesn't feel like he's a different person. So does that mean it wasn't as core as he thought it was, or who he is has been… adjusted? And if he's been changed, is it some subtle hyperpsych almost indistinguishable from unassisted mind-changing, or did they just get someone like Sera in and cut out all the memories he didn't need?

Like the bits they removed from Rose after the madness of London. Oh God. Donald rubs his temples. That thing is still out there. And Rose doesn't know the truth. He'll… he'll have to see if Reina can do something to tell Rose the truth. Maybe the visceral hatred for the I-50 construct she showed - and the way it fanmurdermachined about Control - can be used to work her against her brainwashing.

***​

The man who looks like an angel stops Reina on the way out of the room. In a decidedly non-religious way, he has his hands in his pockets and looks distinctly awkward.

"A word to the wise," he says.

"Yes?" Reina says curtly. She doesn't like him much, and considers his 'costume' hubristic - and insofar as anything can be blasphemous, she thinks it's blasphemous.

"I'd take more care about what you say in front of your techno-buddy. You're," he rolls his eyes, "being a bit careless about how non-doctrinaire you're being. You're talking about ether, for goodness sake, and for your own safety you shouldn't do it unless you're talking about anaesthetics."

Reina simply stares at him.

"Look, you're pretty decent and you're clearly not the most orthodox 'Crat out there, so just… be careful, okay?" he says. "Like, I know enough to see that you're justifying using gnostic principles to access the Plato's Cave gnostic Realm of Ideas version of 'communication', but your superiors might not be so appreciative. Just… get your story straight before you write up your incident reports, and watch out for Sykes tattling on you."

"I will bear that in mind," Reina Lior, the Chair of Generals, Arch-Mechanist of the International Brotherhood of Mechanicians, says.

The man grins at her. "And if you show up here again, I wouldn't mind talking more about post-Reformation English radical Christian exegesis. It's always been a pet hobby of mine."

"Perhaps," Reina says, smiling at him. "My original training was as a theologian, after all, and I do like a good debate." Her hand twitches, and she rubs it. "I'm sorry," she says, "but I have more things to read up on. We will talk later."

The smile leaves her lips as soon as she's left him behind. A blind fool who dresses up as an angel and believes in a God which is only the product of man. Her contempt is personal, because she remembers being just the same. Shaking her head, she heads to the ladies bathrooms and makes sure there's no one else here.

"Stop it," she commands the air.

Her reflection stares back at her sullenly.

"Be useful or shut up," Reina tells Rose coldly. "You're embarrassing me. If you're not going to provide pertinent information if and when I request it of you, I will be obliged to isolate you further. You're weak and pathetic and so I'm not going to give you back this body when there are things which have to be done which you are completely incapable of doing yourself."

Rose's full lips wobble. "You're… you're bullying me!" she says. "And… and… and you're going against Control and you should be fighting the enemies of the Union? I… I respected you! I looked up to you! I… I… I don't know why you're… you're being Bad! It's Bad to be Bad!"

Reina isn't impressed, and crosses her arms, tapping her foot. "Are you done being six?" she asks.

"I am six!"

"Really? Because you were quite insistent that you were not six when you were wanting to pin down Sykes and ravish him," Reina says, raising an eyebrow. "It seems I believed you had more emotional maturity than you truly do."

Rose wipes her eyes on her sleeves, and blows her nose. "You're… you're associating with RDs and talking about RD things and… and you're acting against Control and Control told me to kill Donald so I have to do it because they're Control and it's Good to do what Control says because Control is Good and… and… and… you're even lying to them!" Rose accuses. "You're lying to the RDs! So they do things you want them to!"

"Am I?" Reina says.

"You are! That's… that's not Anne Milbanke's things at all! You made that all up! And said it was the work of the mother of someone who's really famous and let them think that obviously Ada Lovelace's work must have built off it!"

"I don't see why you have a problem with me lying to 'Reality Deviants'," Reina says smugly.

Rose coughs and splutters a bit. "Because… because you're a Reality Deviant too!" she snaps. "You do bad things!"

"How can I be one if I was on the Invisible College?" Reina asks.

"Control said… said the enemies of the Union had to die and you're helping them which means you're an enemy of the Union and… and…"

Reina lets her babble on for a bit, the distress and mental stress of what she's saying and what she believes clashing within her head.

"Are you quite done?" Reina says flatly. "You're irrational, incoherent, and in no way a worthy successor to me. You're weak and you refuse to take responsibility for your own actions. You deny yourself any agency. For goodness sake, Dr Rosario is a better inheritor to the Order of Reason than you are, and she's flighty, self-indulgent, driven by her womanly urges and wastes her talents. Do you think she would terminate you if Control ordered it of her?"

Rose lets out an incoherent moan. "If Control ordered it… it'd… it'd be Good so I'd do it because it'd be Good because I'm Good and… and… and Sera is Good so she'd do it because it's Good to do what Control says and… and… and it's Good to be Good and… and…" She's weeping openly now, big fat tears running down her cheeks.

Watching dispassionately, Reina Lior shakes her head. "Pathetic," she says sadly. "No wonder you can't even do more than occasionally cause muscle spasms in my arms. You're so weak-willed - for all that your flesh is strong with this… repugnant vampiric taint - you can't even dream of seizing your body back from me. Me. A tired old warhorse who wanted to rest. I should be easy. But you're so weak that you rely utterly on the instructions of Control and can't use any of the rationality of mankind, any of the genius and intellect and capacity for understanding which built the Order of Reason."

She leans on the counter. "You hold the faith of my youth in contempt and call it 'irrational', but you show the same blind, childish faith in Control - who were just men. Yes, I know it well. You want to be like me. How could you even be like me if you refuse to think for yourself?" She shifts, metal armour whirring. "You're wrong. I don't like Dr Rosario, but I've seen enough to know the sacrifices she's made for you. She hasn't advanced as far as she should have, even given her feckless nature. She is precisely the sort of person I would expect to disobey an order from the Invisible College if it forced her to go against her loved ones. And because I was not and am not a fool, I would not give her that nature of order."

"Sh-sh-she would! B-because Sera is Good! She… she would do it because… because… because…"

"Do you think this behavior impresses me? Do you think it impresses anyone? Even Control, no doubt, considers you an utterly expendable pawn. They never wanted you. They wanted me." Reina folds her arms. "So you turn on the people who want you for who you are, and blindly obey without questioning the people who consider you an undesired accident."

Rose snaps and starts shrieking wildly, eyes glowing red. She lunges for Reina and hits the glass. Snarling, hissing, trying to bite at it with her fangs: she's lost entirely to the stress atavism.

Reina just turns her back on the mad girl and walks away. As she leaves the bathrooms, she smiles so her reflection can't see her quiet amusement. Rose is improving. She's falling to the disgusting haemophage traits faster, and is less coherent in her attempts to explain why it's the right thing to try to kill Donald. She's resorting to violence and babbling because she doesn't have answers, because Reina is breaking her down - which she has to do before she can build her up again, without the weaknesses Control built into her most basic psychology.

"We've got more in common than you're willing to admit," Thorn gloats in the back of her mind. "You hate what your precious Union has become, too. You, a tired old woman who wanted to die. Filled with shame. Filled with guilt. Didn't you see how you found yourself more at home among these young Traditionalists, these post-Technocrats? You drove me away from her, but you can't deny the truth yourself."

"Get behind me, Satan," Reina whispers. "Gabriel brought messages and wisdom to me. You are the adversary who must be overcome so that she can grow. In a kinder world, one such as you would not be her angel."

"Religious references. How rich from the woman who knows that there is no God but what we make." Thorn appears in the shine of the wall tiles, a halo tied to her head with wire. "And you've made your God. Bravo. Do you think the Catholic Church of Christ Computer will put you up in their shrines and speak of your fatherless birthing of this divinity, Mary? Will you be exalted in the hosts of Heaven? Or perhaps you're looking for punishment in Hell."

"No Heaven. No Hell. Only consequences," Reina says grimly.

***​

"What up, my dawgs?

(Yes, I know, that's your word and I shouldn't culturally appropriate it. But I felt it'd help set the tone, and that this very much isn't a formal Project J offer.)

Let's cut to the chase. Shit is fucked. I'm trapped in an umbral realm isolated by the actions of a very powerful spirit which I'm pretty sure you'd be able to confirm is massively allied with the Weaver. It can't get in here, but it can kill me if I leave. I'm pretty sure it was ultimately behind what happened in LA a few days ago, if they haven't covered it up, because that's when it moved to murder me and I had to flee to a safe umbral Realm which it doesn't seem to be able to access. I'm hopefully getting this message out by routes it can't follow, but a human can't go down these paths.

I'm not asking for your help here, or for you to directly face the spirit. I don't even think it wants to kill me as a primary objective, but it wants me out the way, so it's going to try to keep me pinned up in here. There's the location of a building in LA I'll attach to this, though - pretty sure it wants to control that place. My friends will be heading there some time soon, and I'm pretty sure it controls the place now. It'll lay a spider-like trap, and try to get them to walk in so it can kill them. Or maybe infect them with its technology and control them. I'm calling in what you owe me for Dallas, because I need your help to help save my friends and defuse the trap the machine spirit is setting for them.

Be careful. It'll probably have up-gunned the place and fortified it - it's normally one of our bases. You guys are decent, so, you know, I'd advise against you going on a suicide run. However, just as a purely incidental suggestion, perhaps someone on your side who really wants to throw down with 'weaverscum' (clearly we need to do some work on reclaiming that insult) might be willing to fuck up some shit of the pawns of a powerful Weaver spirit. They might even be entirely willing to bravely lay down their lives and get out of your hair should I be wrong and the spirit show up.

Yours sincerely,

Donald Sykes

***​

After sending that one message via spirit courier through some platonic realm of communication-something something Qaf, the explanation confused him more than it enlightened him, Donald desperately wants a drink. Which is why he's sitting at the bar, alone, glowering at a glass of cranberry juice while other people are enjoying the libations the Spy's Demise can offer. When he goes to bars with Director Belltower, she always drinks things like this. He really doesn't see what she sees in them. It's acidic, tart and no doubt disgustingly healthy.

Ah. She must empathize with the juice.

He isn't a happy bunny. His suit is getting pretty lived-in, and would be worse if it wasn't very expensive smart fabric. Fortunately the Spy's Demise has showers, but it doesn't have a gym and that means he's feeling pent up. He's tried working out in one of the backrooms, but it just isn't the same. So instead, he's been thinking - angrily - about how to fuck over the people who tried to kill him, tried to kill his friends and are responsible for the severe fall in his living standards.

He has an idea. One of those spiteful, cruel ideas that he only gets when he's sober.

"Serafina," he writes, doodling on a notepad.

"I hope you're okay. Just to confirm that it's me, remember that night after Brighton? You know it's me because only we should know about this. I wish you were here. I could really do with you in my arms right now. I'm safe right now, for now. Rose misses you too.

"If you're on the run too, you should know I've got caches prepared. Data, safehouses, some tech. Never know when things might turn sour." He glowers at his cranberry juice. "Follow these instructions."

"1. Go to witcahca.com

"2. Login using username $ldapavaa and password 12&47)GreenCa$hFla$hFa$tMa$hMa$t$ailor

"3. There's a text document there with another username and password in there. It's a special account set up for emergencies using the primary Syndicate account management panel. You can get into it using that username if you put it into the HSBC online banking system, which'll take you backstage.

"4. Once you're in, you'll have access to my emergency contigency. Use it well. I'm not in a position to take advantage of it.

"I don't know what else I can say. I hope this'll help you make it out of this okay.

"Donald out"

He checks the note. He hasn't technically lied here. Mislead, yes. But he does have caches prepared. These just aren't his caches. His emergency caches aren't connected to the global financial network, and literally compose of buried treasure. Well, buried suitcases of cash. And a few literal treasure chests he bought from the props department of Pirates of the Caribbean. Because goddamnit he deserves a literal buried treasure.

But this isn't that.

This is his "fuck you for taking me hostage, I'm spoiling everything I own" contingency. The one which he got Serafina to snip out of his own braintapes, and which is a recent new trick of his. Anyone tries to login with the code in the hidden file, it'll put all his mainstream assets into lockdown. No withdrawals. No control. Complete lockout. And for an extra bonus, it'll raise plenty of alarms in the Syndicate that a mid-ranking Financier hit such a drastic code. Oh, the Computer can probably hush things over, but questions will be asked and if they want to use his assets, that'll put them in a bind and require dedicated hypereconomist attention to try to fix. It'll stop anyone taking advantage of his stolen identity - and if they want to undo the damage he'll do to himself, they'll need a pretty skilled hypereconomist around who'll have to jet all over the world to various very expensive holiday destinations where shell companies have been set up which are configured so they require interactions in person - no online or over the phone banking here.

He grins bitterly. If Serafina's been replaced with a false Serafina and she - or her backers - inputs this code, he'll be beggared until he can reset everything. He should go tell Janice that he's dirt poor again. Once this goes out, he'll only have the shirt on his back. She'll probably tell him that it serves him right. And maybe it does. But it'll keep the enemy distracted-distracted enough that they might not be able to handle what Jamelia Belltower can bring. He just needs to trust that they can deal with the problem. The god-machine out there is trying to keep them isolated to stop them from communicating. It's worried. Donald would be flattered, if he wasn't concerning a god-machine of impossible power which thinks 'kill them all' is a valid solution to its problems.

"Um. Hello?" The voice is tentative and with a lilting hint of Italian. It's Rose.

"Hello yourself." Donald says, relieved. He turns around. She looks worried, hesitant, fragile. Completely different from how she looked when Reina was in control. She even seems to be shorter than Reina is-something about her posture tricks him into thinking that, even as he knows they're the same height and have to be. "It's good for you to be back."

"I'm sorry." Rose says. She doesn't say what for. She doesn't need to.

"You couldn't have done anything about it."

"I know." Rose says quietly. "I know. I wanted to kill you." she whispers.

"It's okay. It wasn't your fault." Donald repeats. "I know you didn't really want to do it."

"I did. It was what I existed for, what I had to do. My goal in life." She says quickly. "I wanted to do it. I made excuses about how this was the best way to express love. After all, dying together would be worth it, right?" Her voice hardens as she takes a tentative half-step forward. She's still deliberately not getting close. "You don't understand what it's like. It's not as if they denied me a choice. Forced me to do it." She chokes out. "I wanted to do it. Wanted to kill you. Wanted to help them. You can't understand."

And Donald's thoughts come full circle. Janice, Reina, and now this. What does it mean when someone can not only make you do whatever they want-but make you want to do anything? Did they do it to him? He doesn't know. He can't know. He misses Rose the child, the one who has been given yet another reminder that however she might look like an independent woman, she's a weapon with a leash. Her choices have been made for her on a fundamental level. And she realizes that. And she hates herself for it. What did Reina do to 'help' her? Donald tries to think of something, but she leaves long before he can find the words to express what he feels.

He really needs a drink. And he still can't get one.

---

This is just a 'brings everything together' update to close the scene. The Jamelia update should be this weekend.

A Whole New Rose, Pt. 1
Congratulations! You've rebuilt and completely traumatized Rose. She has a new Virtue/Vice combination, which you have to vote on. To destroy the conditioning, Reina had to break Rose down completely. Needless to say-she's a little broken. Choose her new Virtue. If people end up voting for a combination I don't feel fits the fact that she's just been traumatized via two acts of immense violation (both her Conditioning and breaking it) I reserve rights to ignore any votes and give her any self-destructive combination I feel good about.
[ ] (2.0x) Martyr: Gain WP when sacrificing yourself for a cause.
[ ] (2.0x) Penitent: Gain WP when you atone in some portion for your wrongs.
[ ] Charmer
[ ] Idealist
[ ] Write-In (Writeins are likely to be rejected without good reasons behind them)

A Whole New Rose, Pt. 2
Choose Rose's new Vice.
[ ] (2.0x) Penitent: Spend WP to resist trying to do something to atone, and regains WP if she does something actively harmful for her to do so.
[ ] (2.0x) Martyr: Spend WP not to sacrifice yourself for your chosen cause, get WP if this sacrifice is excessive or unnecessary.
[ ] (1.5x) Optimist: Spend WP to do anything besides think the best will happen. Regain WP when this is a bad idea.
[ ] Charmer
[ ] Idealist
[ ] Write-In (Writeins are likely to be rejected without good reasons behind them)

Who Let The Dogs Out?
Roll 10d10x7 for Donald's attempt to convince the Get of Fenris and Red Talons, by proxy, that they should try to attack the weaverscum.