Shimmer, Glimmer, & Gleam - A Quest of Loss & Gain

[Morrowlark]

Five days since Impact

While a certain someone is having its first experience at a pharmacy, four other someones are having a meeting - excuse me, five, Clara just hauled herself through what would be a submersible port, if THEY STILL HAD A -

"Seashell bras do not work," Clara bitches, resting her chest against the floor. "But the good news is, while fish dream, they mostly seem to dream about food, sharks, and sharks made of food."

"How do you get a shark made of food?" Jalex asks, quirking a glass eyebrow.

In answer, Clara points out the glass walls of Station 104; the other four turn their attention to it, and watch a massive, terrifying shark made completely of kelp swim past, ignoring the schools of fish that are nibbling at it. Bits of glass beads fall off when leaves get too torn to hold them.

"Gods above," Millie sighs. "Okay. So no massive beasts from beyond the stars, no unsettlingly sexual tentacles, nothing of that nature. I'll chalk that up." And they suit deed to word by standing and going to a chalkboard that currently has two columns, W and L, before chalking a cherished third tally under W. The L column is looking pretty fucking crowded. "Strict rationing means we've got maybe two months down here. Only having one person who can fucking leave but not go on land -"

Clara flips Millie the middle finger.

"- is a problem. Rupert, how's your patient?"

"In my medical opinion? I'd rather have the tentacles." Doctor Rupert pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. Brianna, his patient, has been unconscious since the world changed; even now, as everyone is watching, more of her vitiligo fills in with glass. "She's not losing any blood, and she's not getting worse physically, but..."

"But," the others say in unison, sighing. Clara hauls herself up and out, well past the point of caring about what is essentially her now-obligate nudity; a long tail, all of glass and scaled in stained glass, has replaced her legs. The newly-crowned mermaid wrings saltwater from her long brown hair. "Who fuckin' knows what she'll be like mentally," Clara finishes. "Jalex fuckin' turned into the fish whisperer but only for glass fish, I'm godsdamned this, which, thanks, never knew turning into my fursona would suck this much fucking cock, Millie...Millie, have you fuckin' figured out what you do yet?"

In answer, Millie returns Clara's previous gift by slowly cranking one hand as if to lift her rising middle finger with a jack.

"And Rupert's a fuckin' horror monster."

Oh, did I forget to mention that? Excuse me. The good doctor has large spider legs made of glass growing out of his back. Please carry on.

"I...have a suspicion about that, actually," Rupert muses. "But I'm loathe to test it until my patient is on the mend. I've been looking through some of the books..."

"And?" the others ask, leaning in.

"...And I believe these legs match the profile of the West Coast Sea Spider. The one that traps air bubbles in its webs. I've been able to weave strands of silk-like glass -"

"Kinky," Millie and Clara say at the same time.

"You two are going to be the death of me," Rupert shoots back, with a resigned sigh. "We have time. Give it another week, and then we can see about someone with legs perhaps making landfall. In the meantime, keep trying to communicate with the surface. Someone has to be alive up there, and as Clara so often reminds us, the death of perhaps eight furries takes down global telecommunications for an indefinite period of time."

"And given that I'm one of them," Clara intones, grimly, "the clock is fucking ticking."

 

[Morrowlark]

Nine Days After Impact

The tribe's caravans came to Bob's "cabin" as fast as they could safely manage. The great change had killed a few horses and destroyed a few motorcycles, and altered many more, along with each member of the tribe, but there were duties to see to in this emergency, and foremost amongst them was family, however distant it may be. Thus they trundled up Mount Kallis, grateful that the spring floods were over months ago, in a clattering of hooves and wooden wagons and the rumbling hum of bikes burning ethanol. It was decided, given the situation, that Red Feather and Flint would be the one to make contact with Bob, whose home had seen better days. A trapper and mountain man by profession and inclination, Bob had, in his past, married into the Sea's Children in the manner of the Imperials and their own traditions both, and though - to both of their sorrow - his wife Morning Call had proven barren, he had been a good friend, a good husband, and a shockingly competent uncle to the children of her brother in the years before her passing. Now the world lurched and bled, and the Sea's Children would not forget.

Still, with every window shattered and the doors off their hinges, Red Feather and Flint entered Bob's lonely home with an axe in one hand and a pistol in the other. Scant minutes later, they emerged with an unconscious Bob, his wild beard made all of glass, cloaked in furs made from woven and tarnished silver such as he would have never worn before, and though both had long experience on hunts and on farm work that made them strong, Bob weighed as much as both of them together stark raving naked, nevermind now. Their kinsmen raced to help carry the unconscious man.

"He must be changing deeply," Chief Long Road mused.

Bob's former sister-in-law, who had taken Shortcut as her deed-name and was currently fused from the waist down with her motorcycle, spat a stream of saliva and tobacco and responded in the manner of the Imperial city-folk: "No fucking shit, Dad."

* * * *

11 Days After Impact

Bob woke slowly. This was because everything hurt. His body hurt. His shoulders hurt. His back hurt. Somehow his beard hurt. His heart hurt, but that'd been hurting for awhile; Morning Call was taken from him nine years ago now, passing from a surgical complication. Air in her bloodstream, nothing anyone could have done. That pain was an old friend. It meant, as his father-in-law had said, that Morning Call had been worth loving.

Hold up, was the world moving?

Bob blinked blearily, and tried to sit up. A firm hand pressed on his chest (ow Merciful Mara please no) and pushed him back down. "You will want to be still," Long Road said, kind but firm. "We are blessed in that our doctors survived, and they were quite clear that if you leave this bed they will kill both of us."

"Y'all always had just the shittest doctors," Bob grumbled, through the pain. "...I'm on a caravan?"

"I'm afraid the story you're so sick of me telling after a few cups has finally come true. The Empire is fallen, its cities are broken, and once more the land belongs to those who treasure it." Long Road sighs. "...It could have waited awhile, and been more gentle. But we have been to the peaks and seen...seen such things, Bob."

"Please, Bob is my father. Call me Bobert." That got a laugh out of Long Road, and a weak grin from Bob. "...World ended, huh?"

"As I always tell you, the world is fine. It is its people who have changed, and must change further. We are traveling towards the outskirts of Salt Bay City. There is good to be done there."

Bob arched his eyebrows, and then realization hit slowly. "...The farmers. We're heading out to make sure they live it through planting season, get in another harvest...ha, Clever Jossil really gonna torque all our balls after His priests spent so long bitching about cash crops. Good on 'em."

Long Road patted Bob's shoulder. "The time of your long isolation is, I think, ended. Though I should warn you..."

"...Of?"

"You recall your words to my daughter?"

Bob wracked his - "Do you mean the bit where I'd only remarry if the world ended?"

"Shortcut rather takes your view about the end of the world."

"Fuck me..."

"That seems to be her plan, yes."

 

[Morrowlark]

Missing an eye and an arm fucking sucks. It was your good arm too, but luckily for these situations the gods have invented security teams. Your old buddies from Containment have you covered while you do what you think of as 'wizard shit' despite yelling at anyone else that calls it that. Today, right now, you're still on street sweeping duty. Heavy-duty combat hammers smash through the spines of glassy dogs and oversized 'rats', and you crunch along behind in your heavy boots, opening up car doors and noting the location of statues. Some of them are inside buildings, and you have to do your whole thing with the crude steel mirror you've hacked together, staring into their reflections. Some of the buildings are not home to hostile manifestations, and you mark them with spray paint; others are very much occupied, and they get a different color of spray paint.

"Area secured, Captain," one of 'em says to you, and you favor her with a winning smile that makes her melt. Ah, Hannah. You're gonna have to decide if you have free time to indulge in her later...Monroe had made a decent point that now might not be the time to indulge in your favorite hobby, that being sleeping your way through every woman in Threshold that will have you, but counterpoint, stress makes you more horny, not less.

"Good job," you tell her. "By my count we've got about seventeen on this street. Pass my compliments along to Doctor Moorbride and ask him to prepare his circle."

Hannah snaps a smart salute and rushes off. You don't wait; Moorbride is a professional, same as all of you, and by the time you've gathered your rescues he'll be ready to refract the lot of you out of here and back to safety. Damn lucky he developed that as a side effect, but then again, he was the mind behind those teleporters that Threshold was spamming at every rich bastard who'd buy one, before Impact. All of them are nonfunctional now, and it warms your heart to know that a great deal of worthless people are starving to death in safe rooms they can't escape even now. You wonder if they have air down there. You hope they don't.

You approach a sedan, in which is a family of three; two women and a teenage boy in the back seat. Driver first, to minimize potential accidents. You place your only fucking hand on her forehead, and close your eyes.

There it is.

You drag a finger down an invisible seam in the front of the glass, and it opens up like a cocoon, releasing a gasping, refracted woman. She sobs in shock and relief, and you take a note of the changes; glass fringes her ears, replaces her nails, integrates itself into her body in place of a delightful but somewhat conservative outfit. Mm. Maybe she and her wife will want to thank you later. Wouldn't be the first time, and who are you to say no?

"What's happening?" she gasps.

"World ended," you tell her, with a shrug. "You're being rescued into the new world. Careful peeling yourself out of that thing - wait right over there, and when your family is free go down the street to where the nerd with the glass hair is making a circle."

"Will we be safe?"

"Yes," you promise, and you mean it. You know you're a terrible person. Your regrets should have died with the old world, but they didn't. But no one under your watch is going to die unless you die first.

You are [XXXX], the chooser of the living
​

* * * *

"Still don't trust you Threshold boys," you grumble.

And Karl says, "Good, don't. If you'll work with us that's good enough."

It's been you and three dozen members of the Guild of Construction and Electricians, plus twenty of those Threshold shit-kickers, for weeks now. The deal is pretty simple; free food, water, medicine, and protection in exchange for keeping the city's grid up, and to be frank that was an easy deal to take when the one-armed bitch who wouldn't stop staring at your wife's tits had brought your children home alive and well, if not...entirely unchanged. But now they're bringing intel that some kind of arsonist or, worse, some kind of manifestation of an arsonist, hit the border of east side and took down an entire strip. If that's not handled, the grid won't bear it forever. The trouble is, you're also not in infinite supplies. Telephone poles don't fucking build themselves.

"It's a bad patch," you grumble again. "We can't keep this up forever, soldier boy. What's the endgame here?"

Karl gives you a shrug, and an apologetic look. "I dunno. But it's not a secret, I just don't care personally. Ask Francesca, she's got charts and shit."

"Charts." You sigh. "We're gonna have to figure out parts of the grid to shut down. Places with no survivors."

"We're working on moving survivors. Just keep steady."

You are Brian Killbride, Guildmaster.
​

* * * *

"Really cannot believe the world blew up and people decided to be racist about it," you bitch, and also moan. Beside you, Shortcut puffs away on a cigar, and she shrugs at you. "Listen, I know you hate people but come on."

"I'm trying to come on, someone here won't ride me."

"Everlasting Lady, take me now," you say, rolling your eyes. "You come find me for a reason?"

"Sure did. Bears."

"...Bears?"

"Huge fucking nightmare bears."

"...I comprehend. Y'all usually avoid big predators, and I..."

"Am a very sexy career moron, yes."

You sigh, and start walking over to your gear. "You good for transportation?"

"You really just ask the bitch fused to her motorcycle that? Really Bob? Really? Fucking really?"

You are Bob. There are bears.​

 

[Morrowlark]

The Jaklan Empire's history with the cultures now collectively known as the Sunset People has been, to be frank, traditionally rocky. When the Empire expanded west it found the land already quite occupied by nomadic peoples riding new animals, which would be dubbed 'horses' by later Imperial peoples who found it difficult to learn the language of the Sunset People. In this alone there is perhaps some grace to be granted to the colonizers, for the language of the natives is heavy on clicks and whistles that the human body has difficulty making if one does not grow up learning them, but here the grace runs dry, as early contact was often violent. An empire is a hungry thing.

The political will for an extensive war was, however, not there. Brutal losses in the Empire's northern expansion were still fresh in the mind of both citizens and soldiers, and the nomadic Sunset Peoples gave battle in ways the fledgling Empire was not yet ready to counter. The shed of blood would be ended by a combination of treaty, exhaustion, and a surprising cultural commonality. Though the Sunset People did not and to this day still do not traditionally recognize most of the gods of the Empire, instead venerating their ancestors and "spirits of the land" (here there is a long history of the shamans of the Sunset People settling on a turn of phrase they do not like, but which is 'least wrong'), they knew the face of one being the Empire called a god - their Everlasting Lady, known to the Sunset People as the Friend of Man, beloved by both cultures even if every last other detail was often argued over or disagreed upon. The burgeoning peace movement amongst Imperial citizens seized on this touchstone, lending their voices to a call for understanding that resonated well as the riders of the Sunset People reaped their share of Imperial blood on the field of battle.

The accords reached in 1397 Standard Imperial Calendar (SIC) acknowledged the rights of the Sunset People to their traditional roams in perpetuity and reigned in the evangelical Imperial Cults, themselves to face internal strife that would become the Canon Wars less than 15 years later, spilling more Imperial blood than the Sunset People ever had or, if we are to be honest, ever will, while agreeing to let the Empire settle land "between" these roams which had value to its hunger. Though many historians will argue, not without reason, that in the 300-odd years since the Sunset People, having won the wars, slowly but surely lost the peace, their rights have never been fully reneged upon by their former enemy. While some credit can be given to peaceful cultural exchange and a symbiotic relationship between the settlers of this "new west" and the Sunset Peoples, it would be remiss not to mention the no less than four Emperors whose deaths are, legally, at the hands of the Everlasting Lady, the very night after giving orders that would have contravened their agreements.

Unknown to history, the first of those, Empress Hilda Vonn, was actually killed by one of her palace maids in an act of passion for her infidelity to the young woman. But let it never be said that the Everlasting Lady misses a trick when she sees the chance to do her friends a solid.

 

[Morrowlark]

In a place where the dead, or something like them, or something made from them, go (or are made), there is a Wasp. It was not there a moment ago; soon, it will not be there again. Young Stella had always had a certain fondness for wild places and natural beauty, and in so doing she had made her dominion amenable to the Wasp; that was, in fact, how they first met. And so, now, in places that are wild within the realm of the maybe-dead or the dreams-of-the-dead or, perhaps, against all odds, immortal souls, the Wasp makes the smallest twist in the dream, and those places are now the Wasp. And then it waits, politely, for its young friend.

She wings in bearing a great pitcher of fertilizer. "Thirsty?"

You will not find me declining your hospitality, young Stella.

She gets that wistful, dreamy look on her face that she always gets when the Wasp uses her first and most treasured name. So few do, these days. And then she pours the drink at many roots which are currently the Wasp, and sits upon a fallen log that is also the Wasp, and crosses her ankles playfully, looking up into the canopy with a delighted expression.

Your work continues unimpeded?

"Oh yeah," Stella says breezily. "Not even a hitch. I'd been worried about the new arrivals causing refractions in here, maybe a cascade into a new satellite, but nah, nothing. Whatever happened to Domus, it's already happened, and they just kinda gotta...deal." Here she slumps a little, and sighs. "I do not like the amount of dreaming that flooded in. It's getting nasty."

You know the choices laid out before you.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I could manifest like I used to but then I might get refracted, and if I change too much this place comes apart. So I can be brave or I can take care of the friends I have here, who only have me to rely on. Doesn't mean I have to like it."

Should -

"Should the wolf be unhappy, yeah yeah, y'old coot." Stella sticks her tongue out at a flower, where a bee is busily drinking nectar. "I dunno if your failing eyes have caught this but my sexy wolfgirl phase was three thousand years ago, I'm over that."

The wild place that is the Wasp chuckles, fondly. Well then. Consider me chastised. Perhaps I can cheer you; I have found one within my dominion who needs a friend. One I cannot reach out to more than I have already. It is...hurting.

Stella winces. The wildflower and the sunset are of the Wasp, certainly, but in times like that it skews far closer to the wolf and the maggot, and humans tend to not enjoy those reactions to their pain so much. "Can you show me?" A riot of wildflowers grows before Stella, creating a portrait of Marie's face. The Wasp's friend, who insists she is not a god, makes a Face about it. "Oh come onnnn. She's gonna make it weird! She was part of fuckin' Mara's stupid cult that press-ganged my name into its bullshit, she's gonna be like 'oh my lady' and 'forgive me' and fucking - come on!"

She needs a friend, Stella.

"You can't do this to meeeee - ughhh I'm just bitching to bitch now, I'm gonna, you know I'm gonna, I know I'm gonna." Stella kneels, and brushes the flowers with her hand. "...She has such haunted eyes. What happened to her?"

So the Wasp tells young Stella a story. A long, bad story, about how it's never been easy to be Marie.

 

[Morrowlark]

Let us zoom out, and out, and out, and out, and then way back in somewhere else. This place will not come up again; we will not see these people again after this story. Their lives will go on to be complex and involved and full of struggles, but mostly we are looking at them because them being here, and not elsewhere, answers certain questions.

Our protagonists are a Major, and a Sergeant. They were not part of the same command before; they are now. Their uniforms, in Imperial purple-and-gold, have seen better days and are less 'uniforms' than they are 'collections of useful pockets and belts'. Calling them by a rank is probably not right any more, but we're going to ignore their names, because, again, they are not important. They will stop being important the moment we cease looking at them. They are resting, indeed, lounging, at the edge of a rough-built settlement that borders a coastal jungle, south of the Reformed Empire's borders. Behind them, way behind, glass ships that shattered in the first storm and continue to splinter into the sea are gently moldering.

The Sergeant says: "If I wanted to ask the thing we've all been avoiding asking..."

And the Major says: "You'd have to say it, wouldn't you?"

Mm. Yes, he would, wouldn't he? That seems to make it more real. So he looks at his supply of cigarettes, and decides that this will need one of his last dozen. The Major lights it for him, and lights one of her own off his. The chain of command has really broken down these past few months. If any of the brass were here the tribunals for the various relationships would need their own dedicated lawyers.

And the Sergeant says, sideways: "You've been talking to the local oneiromancers, those, what're they...not shamans..."

"Medicine men," the Major says. "Yeah, of course I have. Had to. Ours sort of died."

They did. Turned to glass and then shattered when the ships beached.

Still sideways, circling the question, the Sergeant says: "I was on a base, you know. Way back near Throne City. And then I was just on that ship."

"Interesting," the Major says. Her voice is carefully disinterested; this is sort of like the thing no one talks about. But not quite. A gauche admission, but not quite that unspoken taboo, the thing we Don't Do.

So the Sergeant takes a drag on his cigarette, and blows smoke up into the blue sunny sky, and he says: "Why're we here, Major? Why aren't we like those jungle monsters that dropped outta the dreaming, the local slasher-things? Why're we here and people?"

The Major sighs. And she claps her hand on the back of her lover's neck and presses her head to his, and her voice gets low. "Near as the medicine men think they can tell, we got squeezed between a poison dream and a bad nightmare, and popped out as ourselves. And we're just lucky that the locals didn't see us and start shooting."

"A..."

"We're in a foreign land, 'defending our way of life'." There's a bad taste in the Major's mouth when she says it. "And we're also a ravening horde coming to kill and burn and steal. So we're neither. That's what they think, anyway."

"...Don't like that," the Sergeant admits.

"Nobody likes that. But the Havari are willing to believe that we're idiots who can't get back home, and give us compassion. Can't that be enough?"

"Got family back home," the Sergeant says.

And the Major looks at the shattered ships, and she shrugs. "No you don't," she murmurs, and her voice is so very defeated. "None of us do any more."

 

[Morrowlark]

Look this way, and she's a crow. Look that way, and she's an empress. Close one eye, and she is clad in armor, holding a shield and a spear, attended by a murder of black-feathered crows. Close the other, and she's your mother. She is all of these things, and she is none of them, though all favor one foot; the other is made of glass.

She is speaking: "This isn't how I wanted my empire to end."

The one who answers is known to you. You've seen him behind the counter of fast food joints, and up on electrical poles. He is the black-masked protestor holding a burning bottle. He is a guildmaster, presiding over apprentices. He is your inspiration; he is your fellow. He, too, is speaking: "It's the end your empire got, my love. The question is, what do we do now?"

A wasp says: "Must we do anything?"

A woman with black-feathered wings, your friend when you have none, sighs and hangs her head. "You of all people don't get to say that, you old codger. Does that girl even know what you did to her?"

And the wasp says: "What she makes of her gift is her choice. That is the way of gifts."

There is a great sighing from all assembled. A new voice; you know her too, dressed in neutral colors, blending in, watching, waiting. A young thing, still, stripling; she sits behind a judge's bench, and stands beside it, in a police uniform. She dresses in an attorney's suit. She is breaking into your house, even now. There is so much glass in her. And she says: "I'd like to do something. Before I go."

The others are silent. She is dying, they know. If she acts, she will finish dying, or something like it. It can be hard to tell, with gods. Can't it?

The crow says: "I won't make the same mistake twice. No champions or law-givers or warlords, not again. Not after...not again. But what if we can help them help themselves?"

And the man who is a cashier who is an anarchist who is a guildmaster answers: "Whatever power we give can make a king. Whatever power, my love."

"...Not whatever power," answers your friend the reaper. "Not if it's everyone's power. The world is so brimming with dreaming, it's almost like the sea outside, right now. We could write a new law."

The wasp muses: "A new law...in what sense?"

Death, who loves you, says: "We'll reach in together. Just a touch from all of us. New rites, given to their oneiromancers. Something to help break the curses of perception laid down on the innocent. People are dying before they can return to themselves and coming to me in confusion, terror, and pain. Let's give them a way out. When they start using it, it'll cement itself. As if it were always part of the world."

The woman who is detective and killer winces as she rubs a glass jaw with fraying steel fingers. "...I could see it. It could be done."

"I have conditions," death warns. "I want out. Free reign. When I tell people I'm not what they say I am, you all back me up. I'm not helping unless you agree."

And the mother of empires sighs, and hangs her head. "...Fine. You always were..."

"If you say pissy I'll kick your ass in front of Peepaw."

"Is it such a bad thing, to be a god?" the electrician asks, his voice soft, and pained.

"I don't care if it's good or bad," death answers, plainly. "I care that it's not what I am. And that all of you except the wasp want to fucking argue with me about it. So. That's done. I am who I say I am. But if it helps, I think...think...I can save Hanna's life while I'm at it."

The lawyer and her client lift her head, and blink owlishly. "How?"

And death shrugs. "You were mortal once. You could be mortal again. I think I know the way...and the wasp's new friend could be...helpful, there. Maybe you never become a god again. Maybe you do. Maybe you change so much that I'll have to mourn my friend forever. But it's an exit that's not the door out of my dominion. If you want it."

The gods of an empire, and a reaper, and a wasp, look at one another. One by one, they nod. Death is the first to leave, to make her preparations, but soon enough there is only a crow, and an old zookeeper, on pension from the guild.

They are both so very tired.

"...I wanted them to stop on their own," the empress complains in a small voice. "To learn to be better than...than I...made them. Where'd it all go so wrong..."

A servant's hand, on her shoulder. "My darling...there's work to be done."

"I suppose there is. They love us, still. We can't just abandon them."

 

[Morrowlark]

"So, how're the civvies doing?"

"Bitch, we are the civvies." Esteemed readers, please permit me to introduce Nathan. Currently he's in a very small room that looks sort of like a security office. It has room for two chairs, the other of which is occupied by his sister (Carrie), a thin sorta counter with inbuilt keyboards with just enough extra room for the food they're not supposed to have in here, and your standard-issue bank of ominous computer monitors. Or. Well. They would be ominous if they were actually running a security feed, right now they're mostly running projections.

Anyway, back to the conversation.

"You know what I meant," Carrie shoots back, rolling her eyes. "I don't wanna say 'hey how's the unrelated innocent people' 'cause I'm sure fuckin' innocent people, you got a better term for our rescues?"

"How about 'rescues'?"

"I feel like we both watched a thing about how reducing people to someone you save reduces 'em, you might recall, it kinda defined the teen psychodrama genre?" Carrie turns her attention to the monitors and frowns. "...I do not like this squawking about the birds. And I do not like that Isoldt is just letting fucking Clara run 'em unsupervised. If we lose weather prediction our models are fucked."

"Our models are already fucked, sis, Doctor Young didn't include the damn weather in his plans and I don't know how he could have. City lost a lot of the grid when that storm hit, which means moving up the timetable on buried cables, which means moving up the timetable on the settlement, which means we need the place clear of bandits and monsters, and unless you've got an army hidden up your ass we don't have the men to conquer our own city whenever we want." Nathan frowns, and he sticks his pencil in his mouth to chew on. It's comforting. "I ain't about to be the one to go to Isoldt with complaints and no actionable ideas. You in a hurry to get yelled at in three different languages?"

"I am not." Carrie taps the little counter with its little inbuilt keyboards, eyes sliding over one monitor. "...I really wish we could just go all-in on solar. But even if we could keep electronics manufacturing up and running, which, no, not on your life, the storm just hit too damn hard. Every panel in the city is busted to shit, not that there were many. It'd be so fuckin' convenient though, keep the grid atomized, not have to worry about balancing it or running cables...bah. No. No pie-in-the-sky, what do we got?"

"Skilled labor, mostly."

"Okay but what do we do with it? I don't wanna diss the giant hole in the ground that kept us from refracting here but if I spend another month in this hole the revolution? Will be led by me."

Nathan sighs. "Why'd we have to end up with the Young that only knows how to slay and lay? Doctor Young woulda had this on lock."

"The fuck he would have, man was always the first guy to be like 'I'm not a historian, please stop asking me why royalty declined'." Carrie drums her fingers, her frown deepening. "I mean shit he said it again when he hired us, remember? The big contingency plan needed people competent to keep people alive through the transition period. So. Skilled labor. Everyone who was able and willing to get into HQ during the preliminary impacts...the thing is if you just throw a pile of nerds at a problem all they produce is arguments. Source: I'm a nerd."

"I can't even take that low-hanging fruit without killing myself to have it." Nathan snaps his fingers. "Get Isoldt on the horn, I had an idea and we're gonna need her radios for it. If all we've got is nerds, let's reach out and touch some people, give the expertise away. If the other brewing cultures have access to better tech and better information that's more survivors, right?"

"It's also more competent bandits," Carrie muses.

"I'll ask if her dad raised a pussy little bitch, that always gets her on board."