Episode Nine: The Test Kitchen Job, Part 2 - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

13 Minsky

Paragon awakens to her media alerts on herself going off like fireworks on Corporate Liberation Day. Bounty boards, emergency notifications, news, talk shows: “Olivia Hyde” is everywhere, along with her photo from the camera in Harb’s safe. Some are going with the old “wanted for murder of her family,” but there’s a new one that’s trending heavily on social media: that she framed two domestic workers for the robbery she committed. Per their contracts, they were executed and their assets seized, including the 2 ½ year old daughter of one of the maids, whose indentures were sold on the open market, the proceeds going to pay the homeowner’s insurance claim. There’s a 500NB award for all verifiable information leading to herr arrest or execution, and a 10,000NB bounty, dead or alive – for her and your accomplice. And they have a photo of Carbide.

Carbide finds a message from Iso: there’s wanted posters up all over the neighborhood. He should know the neighborhood’s tight, but… word is, he’s hooked up with some psycho corpo princess and is getting working folk murdered for his crimes. It’s bad. And if anybody’s looking for an excuse to pocket a few enbies for a bounty, well…. He’s got a PR problem. At minimum. And what really is the deal??

Carbide calls him back to explain: the netrunner he’s working with is a little odd, but she doesn’t even carry a gun: she’s no killer. The wanted posters… he missed a hidden camera on a job, and just got out ahead of the maid service coming in. And really pissed off the head of security for a corp- the cousin of the guy whose house they hit. The execution shit, he’s pretty sure that’s her doing.

Iso suggests he needs to make it right, if they took the fall for his job. And some little kid… Carbide agrees: he’ll come up with something. Maybe they can find the execution orders. Iso says the young Party cadre he’s in with is pretty good at messaging: they’ll probably be able to help. There’s an unspoken but understood “but do something about this.”

To no one’s surprise, Night calls a team meeting. This is on her, she says: she hired the team personally for that job, and she should have followed through more thoroughly. Paragon says that at least she’s changed her look: she’s got cat ears now. Vir and Star remind her that they’re just a headset. But they have whiskers! Which hide her face!

Night continues: the only identifiable family either of the maids had was the daughter. The group can let it be, and the kid will be an indoctrinated laborer, working the rest of their life and living in corporate barracks to pay off their indenture. Or they can heist the kid, and (1) get her to agents who can pass the kid off as an exec orphan, and sell her to an exec family – er, place her with a professional adoption agency – or (2) drop her off at the orphanage Vir visits, where they can keep an eye on her, or (3) keep her. Not that she thinks any of them individually is up for raising a kid, and collectively, they’re probably worse.

Expectedly, Carbide says, “Oh god, not a curious toddler in my workshop!” Star asks when the maids were executed. Interestingly, none of the media accounts say, and they all conflate the two robberies: the one the maids almost walked in on, and the second one where the safe camera got a photo. Paragon notes that BSP probably didn’t care about the first robbery, but after the second they discovered her, which triggered the response.

Carbide suggests that they need something on BSP to get them to back off. Paragon notes that St. Pierre the CEO is rumored to have massive blackmail material on the Bais – and didn’t Star want to give her ex a try? Yes, Star does want to tap that. Vir suggests adopting him – not bringing him into the household, but turning him to their cause. If they do, Paragon would want him back, she says, around the tiramisu she’s shoveling down, from the new local bakery.

Night continues, adding that there’s also Paragon’s and Carbide’s safety. And an image/propaganda problem for the 4I, even if it’s a pretty attenuated one.

Friction suggests that the kibble thing could be huge, if they can document it and come up with an app to scan for it. They can go really big on the branded propaganda. She’ll be the media spokesperson: being with CCRU gives her more backing than the rest have. Not that the 4I’s toothless, but corps don’t like pissing off the source of a lot of their high end lab talent. If Star can get some verification at Shimizu U., could Paragon and Vir take the data and develop an app to detect the chemical?

Star, however, suggests a nail polish that changes color when it detects the chemical. Both Vir and Friction love the idea, though Star and Friction fight a bit over the branding. Star puts Vir in touch with her licensing and marketing people, to get production spun up in anticipation of the formula Vir will develop.

Paragon muses about a need for a stealth deck, something more concealable than Dino. The Team suggests maybe a teacup-dog-in-a-purse disguise. Paragon admits she could just put him in a backpack, but that’s no fun.

Star arrives at the Cybernetic Research Lab at Shimizu University for her appointment with Camden Zemke (“Marmorealist”). They chat pleasantly for a bit: Star asks about NeuralNymph, and Marmorealist replies that she’s out doing fieldwork – a bit odd for her new role as lab director, but she does have a dissertation to finish. They tell her they’re ready to install her next-gen EMP shielding: it will completely protect against overloads and also defend her against remote hacking. Since there’s no meat involved, it’s a pretty simple process of removing her skin and layering the sheeting in. Star asks to meet with Lina Bolovoi (“Borborygmi”) to talk about her digestive needs before the procedure, as she’s expecting to have some dysphoria issues after being taken apart. Marmorealist completely understands, and takes her across to Bolovoi’s lab.

Borborygmi is… acerbic, and brusquely shoos Marmorealist on out: she’ll return Star when she’s done. Star explains her needs: she wants a real metabolism, so she can actually get nutrients from real food.

Borborygmi clarifies? She wants to poop? No, just not have flow-through. So, little poop cubes to store, easy cleanup. That’s hard. She explains that the synthetic nutrient Star uses is manufactured from CHON (carbon/hydrogen/oxygen/nitrogen feedstock). It’s usually done in a vending-machine-sized processor, like Star’s boba tea unit. Now, turning food into CHON feedstock is easy. CHON to synthetic nutrient, hard. Miniaturize? Very hard. Not sure if market, but technical challenge. Will write prospectus and run by funding. Two years.

Star asks if they have a good research biochemist for a project. Borborygmi offers up a grad student, Star tries to hold out for somebody with a lot of expertise. Borborygmi tells her that she’s got a grad student (“not brilliant. promising.) who’ll have to make time for her, unlike somebody senior – and probably won’t cut himself in for a big piece of whatever she’s up to. And, disposable, if problem.

She leads Star down into the bowels of the building, to a tiny office, and leaves her with Paulo Carvalho Viera, metabolic pharmacology grad student. Viera is eading a paper copy of Miguel de Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life and smoking a clove cigarette. Star gets a contact high: little sparklies in her peripheral vision, and noticeably quicker to process information. Later, everything would smell of eggplant for next six hours.

They verbally spar at length: he has no idea why she’s in his office, or why he should want to run her high-school lab test. It takes all her wiles to bring him around, working on his ego, challenging him to find something Con Brands thinks is undetectable.

He relents and runs the analysis, which takes over an hour. He can tell there’s something new and psychoactive, but not its exact properties: he’d have to run human subjects testing for that.

Star asks if there’s an intern or anything around. There is. He’s deeply skeptical of Viera’s order to eat the test kibble, but he does. Star tells him to run outside and get a shoe from a stranger, and bring it back to her. He zooms off. Viera is impressed.

Viera explains that the chemical is embedded within something that looks like a standard flavor enhancer. It isn’t – and it has a different intellectual-property tag than the other proprietary chemicals in the sample: it’s BSP’s. Now that they know it’s there and what to detect, it should be easy to develop a test: just scan for flavor enhancers, then look for the sole BSP tag. He can’t do it – it’s not his field, and she’s taken up enough of his time.

Viera takes her back to Marmorealist, and is awkward – Marmorealist says that’s why they keep the grad students in the basement.

The procedure is straightforward, but Star’s appalled to discover she’s a quarter inch thicker in every dimension. Not only is she FAT, but it’ll throw off all her lighting and holo-projection cues: that’s going to mean a lot more work for her and Shift.

She asks to stop by NeuralNymph’s office to leave a note to call her, adding “THEY MADE ME FAT!”

Back at Honeycomb Hideout, Vir and Paragon get to work on their respective projects. Developing a chemical test doesn’t take Vir long, and she sends it off to the manufacturer for inclusion. It doesn’t just change color; it gives off a pleasant floral scent when it detects the chemical. Paragon writes the code for the app, agreeing to market it with a notice that it was “based on information from 4I.” The code bears her usual “Paragon” signature, but embedded in it is a number of “O.H.”’s, and “Still not a murderer.” The folks at The Smoking Gnu will have some fun figuring that out!