Episode Fourteen: Hitting The Fan(s) - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

23 Minsky

The morning after seeing the team up to inexplicable shenanigans, Night calls a team meeting. “Is it a team meeting or an intervention?” Paragon wonders. Night’s pissed: the 4I Central Committee called to grill her about the team and the cult, and she didn’t have answers. Star offers, “We have discovered a deeper meaning to the universe, Night, that upon which NeoTokyo flourishes. Also I’m a goddess now.” More helpfully, Carbide says, “Basically Star conned a bunch of cult idiots into thinking she’s a goddess and is going to use that to steal all her money. And we may need to fuck over the over-church because they’re fucking with our bakery.”

“So the Flan is selling nanite pastries,” Paragon comments. Vir adds, “And this all started with the orphans, and now we have a housekeeper.” Paragon mentions something about solving the nanite question with necromancy.

The discussion reveals that not even the Team members were on the same page with their plans for the cult: Carbide thought they were going to bilk the church leadership and run, not continue operating the cult. Star, however, says she wants them “to be a normal cult that drains people of their money instead of their actual blood.” She adds that with her attention span, it’s likely to be a medium-term scam at best: “I want to suck them dry, redistribute their wealth through purchasing goods and services to stimulate the economy… and then take the money and run.”

Night doesn’t want to be affiliated with a cult known for preying on the hopeless, and adds that she needs to know what’s going on if they’re going to be living under the same roof: she expects them to take side jobs, but doesn’t want to be blindsided.

Star says it’s a side gig, not the team’s or 4I’s. Night argues that the distinction won’t be clear to her enemies, and she and the 4I are likely to get caught up in the backsplash. Carbide argues that the Church isn’t qualitatively different from the corps Night’s sent them up against, but agrees that the team should be more conscientious in what they bring home: they should have read her in when it became more than just getting a nice lady’s daughter out of trouble.

Star offers to call in lawyers, Paragon refuses to “ask permission to do her job,” and things get heated. They suggest cutting Night out, and she refuses to be thrown out of her uncle’s community.

Carbide asks why this is a big deal for Paragon and Star: nobody’s demanding Paragon gets permission for anything. Star brought home a cult and didn’t tell Night about it and that’s not okay. We need to make sure that stuff that involves the group, everybody in the house is read in on.

Star wants parameters, after Carbide sets some down. Carbide’s displeased: “We’re living together, we might as well actually live together.”

Paragon’s going to list all her jobs, because standards are hard, and better safe than sorry, “and I have a hard time with people and causality, and I only want to have this argument once.”

Vir humbly apologizes for thinking Night knows everything already.

Carbide says that it’s clear it’s bigger than a medium term scam on some local rich tentacle worshipers: “We should figure out what’s going on with the nanites, because that’s some bullshit. We probably should have backed off and done some more recon when we found out they were part of the global organization - this was a small scale pump & dump before the pope got involved!”

Night offers muscle on standby. Carbide says probably yeah, but their MO seems to be more drugged compliance than guns. Discreet support for Star’s meeting with Tentacle Pope is probably a good idea, but their interactions so far appear to be fairly low-key. The thing with the wheat and nanites is a quiet long term play. It wouldn’t surprise him if the Tentacle Pope wants to say, cool it you’re making too big a splash, we have things going on.

Paragon adds that a fair amount of their plans are going to depend on what exactly the nanites do. If they build structures in people or brains to make them grow tentacles, maybe they’ll need to take down the entire organization and burn it with fire, but we don’t know that yet.

Night brings up Netwatch. Carbide says they’re kind of assholes. He’s been thinking of keeping them in the team’s back pocket, but their problem-solving is nuking things from orbit, so they should save it till they need that, and personally he doesn’t want to tie the team further to them. Things seem resolved, and Night remembers that she’d gotten a lead on Vir’s sister: Shan is a Venus with the Sailor Scouts in Old Dome, and is living in a Scout barracks/dorm/squat on Level 5. Her network has confirmed identity, and general health and safety, but not made contact. Vir says that if they live through the confrontation with the church, they might ask Night to set up a meeting through her people. Paragon offers that her contact on the restaurant-menu job is a Princess – and they’re in conflict with the Scouts. Night thanks her for the helpfulness of that.

As the meeting breaks up, they notice that Mango the cat had been sitting through the whole thing, until the discussion of Shan, when she checked out. Star notes that NeuralNymph’s been acting weird, and has been promising to come over, but hasn’t, and hasn’t been returning calls promptly. Paragon speculates on the nature of the kittyborg collective, and thinks Mango’s a spy. Carbide interjects, didn’t they all expect that Mango was reporting back to the other cats? Star wonders about the bigger game, and Paragon’s worried about Netwatch: this is exactly the kind of thing they’re around to prevent.

It’s agreed that Star will interrogate Mango.

Night discusses the overall security situation with Carbide: she wants to sit down with him and Firebrand to design a defense in depth for the community that isn’t too scary and militarized for the residents.

Paragon thinks that the menu might be part of a Bai vs St Pierre internal corporate struggle.

Somebody comments on the kittens’ laser eyes. Carbide’s concerned: “if the kittens are burning holes in things, we need to corral them in my workshop to do adjustments and have another talk with Mango, because that means they’re going elsewhere for their upgrades or doing their own. I just thought it’d be cute if they have their own laser pointers to chase around.”

Vir gets messages. From Sister Chromatid: Wanna come dancing with her and Friction tonight at The Crimson? Inception of Jade is playing, and they’ll be releasing new tracks! There’s another message from Friction: please say yes, and she’ll send over an outfit! Incoherent typing ensues: Vir’s definitely going!

Paragon gets a message to the digital dead-drop she set up: a photo from Waring of him and Arik in Hawaiian shirts and umbrella drinks, caption, “Living The Good Life!” She expects steganography and runs a decryption, but gets gibberish. She’s able to decode bits of a memo from Arik: • They’re chemically powered, not electrical. • No clue what these do. They do something besides reproduce once they’ve reached critical mass. • The code isn’t written in any software language he’s ever seen. He’s attached a sampel of the code that kicks in when the nanites achieve critical mass. • They’re safe, and life on the Drift is really, really good. Grateful and all that, but…

Since it’s a delicate subject, Paragon goes through anonymizers to investigate the difference between chemical and electrical power in nanites. She learns that medical nanites usually run off body electricity, a fairly high energy source. This means they’re generally fairly easy to detect, but there’s also a danger of them running hot and causing fevers or worse. Chemically powered ones are going to do what their thing and reproduce really slowly, but they’re generally safer and undetectable.

She realizes that it was the software sample that screwed up her decryption last time, so does another run, isolating the nanites’ code. The closest thing she can find is Chinese military software from World War Three.

Apparently there’s an expert on Reddit, who goes by “hotdogwater.” She teases him (pretty sure it’s a him) with a snippet of the code, and gets a response back almost immediately: it’s ZM16 – where’d she get it?

“I’ve got a new-old toy,” she replies, sending a bit more, with the unrecongnizable bits.

Quite a bit of time goes by before she gets back “wtaf.”

“that’s what I said Marcie!””

“u got acces non-Fed dbs? looks not human”

Paragon suddenly gets a dancing gnu video running on her eyes.

“herd u got invite”

“the question was stupid”

“shrug curiosity tests, we all get em. answer interesting?”

“meh, to me. also don’t really have an answer yet”

“u should see the toy store”

“not really into toys”

“ur loss ”

“stopped playing with dolls at age 6”

“no like hacker tools? I didn’t send you question, I’m just inside. your choice.” dead line

Paragon passes on “not human code.” Carbide asks if that means it’s cat code, Paragon says no, non-Federation. She doesn’t have any contacts, and “the people who could help with that are too enamored of their bullshit.”

Star heads out for her meeting with Cormac Kiselyov. She gets Kenji, from previous jobs, and Mina Sinchaloy of the Night Witches for backup. The meeting is in the lobby of upscale hotel in the Spire, the Hotel New Otani. She greets Kiselyov with an old-throwback greeting in a way that makes it look more archaic. She’s made an impact.

She orders that super complicated drink, and notes that he seems disappointed to wait for his to be delivered at the same time. Innuendo flies.

He starts in bluntly: he’s heard from sources he’s inclined to trust both that she’s a grifter and a con artist, and that she’s seriously holy. So what’s her deal?

“On the one hand, I’m a grifter and a con artist. On the other, you know where I came up from and the people with whom I worked before this occurred. You know the ways some of those people came to power. I had a long time to recover, and read and researched and became more deeply understanding of the things that move our universe. So on some level I am sacred as are we all.

“My vision evolves every day as I see more and more of the ways in which what I found had twisted away from the truth, but - I greeted you with an old greeting, I think there’s value in what came before but in understanding this is not Earth, not the 19th Century, and the things that are needed here are not necessarily. the things that applied in the beginning. I am in many ways an embodiment of the nostalgia and the modernity of this world. I cannot evolve outwardly. but inwardly I’ve never been the same moment to moment.”

She adds, “I can’t say I’m any stranger to negative press. It is the constant companion of someone in my temporal business. This is a religion, but on NeoTokyo the only true religion is capitalism and profit. What is your church doing toward that end? That’s the thing that interests me. I can sway hundreds of thousands with my voice alone. I can bring messages, destroy messages. I haven’t decided what needs to be done with your church. This is your opportunity to convince me.”

She asks about ops in Old Dome. “If you want to spread here and you want my help doing it…. this is my city. Religions persist longer than other corps, but the best ones do it by adapting and knowing when to bring in fresh blood. Do the bread and circuses, but tell me what else you’re doing in Old Dome.”

Kiselyov stresses the power of the shadows and the long term: unlike corporations, they’re not playing for short term maximization. Their operation in Old Dome isn’t high on the agenda: most of their operations are in wealthier, more stable cities. Old Dome is mostly about brand recognition: events, sacrifices, food giveaways. He doesn’t know what the deal is with the nanites or the wheat: they all get orders from “The Old One” – who may be one person, several, who knows. But information is strictly need-to-know, and on that, no one but the Old One seems to need to know.

She tells him she wants to see how the locals react to their message. They should stay in touch as to how the larger church feels about developments – and if he can find out anything about the food distribution, she’d like to know. But her primary concern is a new direction for her investment, one that focuses on power and profit: “I want to see a new direction that puts us in places like this than in warehouses that still smell like fish.”

She propositions him: she’d like to see him recreationally. He says after the bread and circuses. She sweeps away, vaguely disappointed that despite his pragmatism he seems to be a real believer.