Episode Thirteen: The Flaky Pastry Job - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

18-22 Minsky

Star asks Vir to contact the cultists to get the Church’s materials, since they’ve told the group she’s too busy to talk to them and all knowing anyway. So they should say, I don’t want to upset Star by letting her see all this heresy, but I need to. Vir considers Hepzibah: “The other one’s crazy.” Carbide thinks cultsts are crazy by definition, but Vir says there’s degrees and degrees: “Asenath doesn’t care what the doctrine is, she just wants to punish whoever’s bad. Armitage probably used all the text pages to roll weed or something.”

Vir gets a digital dump and sets up a date later to go over the stuff with Hepzibah – that’s what coffee shops are for (Star: don’t invite Joker to the Batcave).

Star sets up a meeting with Kiselyov later this week (after she gets to cram). He knows she’s a diva popstar, even if she is a con man, so didn’t expect an immediate interview. She starts planning her outfit: she’ll work subtle embroidery into her sleeves. Eely can be there at the meeting, that’s fine, but no, Paragon, we’re not going to hang tentacles everywhere. Have you been missing your therapy sessions again? Turns out yes: Paragon’s got a calendar filter to make them go away.

Kamal Sutherland passes on to Star all that he’s found out about his sisters in fifteen years. It isn’t much, but:

• 3 younger sisters: Aditi, Nisha, Sadia. 15 years ago he was 13, they were 11, 9, and 3.

• Parents Chandra and Malcolm were both VP-level at Wu Media, the parent company, in acquisitions. He was supposed to be babysitting, but fucked off to get high with his friends. Came home to find them gone, and word that his parents had been killed in an attack on corporate HQ by MilCom.

• Official word was that the retaliation was total, and nothing more was ever said by anybody. He’s talked to a lot of the mercs, and nobody’s ever credibly mentioned involved with hostages or prisoners.

• Unsubstantiated rumors that they were held at a black site prison in the Outback, but never anything specific

• Nguyen said she had a roster taken after an attempted breakout a couple years after the fall of MilCom.

Paragon doesn’t think a sports executive is all that great at netrunning, so she’d like to do her own searches. And she thinks he’s an idiot, which Star is adamant about: that was the dumbest blackmail deal ever.

She learns there were biotech/pharmaceutical corps involved in the conflict. Thus it would have been pure profit to have found a bunch of hostages and just kept them for experimentation – they’re publicly dead anyway. She doesn’t necessarily believe in a raid or breakout, but imagines some corp took over the prison when the victors picked apart MilCom’s corpse. Her best source is Birdseye’s long-form piece on the war. She finds it interesting that the rumors with the most legs have been those around some heroic rescue, and that there’s been so little speculation about the prison being taken over for medical experimentation. If Paragon had this massive bounty of test subjects, she’d make sure the rumors of that go away and not gain traction. Any good outcomes are off the table: a breakout from the inside, somebody would have heard from at least one of the prisoners again. That nobody has heard from any, there was no escape and survival, could not have happened. Unless they randomly decide not to reclaim any part of their lives, and are okay with all friends and loved ones thinking they’re dead. And that is not reasonable.

She spends several days piecing together old records to assemble a near-comprehensive list of the people captured that day.

Meanwhile, Vir has a hefty stack of digital downloads, dating back a couple hundred years, including a set of training manuals for color-coded advancement for acolytes. They put the abstruse theological stuff aside: easier for Star to tweak the manuals. Carbide notes that in the cults that’s where you get people to give you all their money, is in the advancement. Vir agrees: every level is a moneymaking opportunity, plus you have to buy a new set of robes, add tentacles to your tentacle sash.

Star provides goals of not sacrificing teenage girls and keep the upper church happy. Vir looks for deviations, but no, the locals have been running a tight ship. “So Star, how do you feel about being this cult’s version of Joseph Smith? New revelation!”

“I don’t understand the reference but sure?”

Vir explains, “If they’ve been doing what corporate wants them to do, you’ll have to come up with a new revelation.” Star loves it. Carbide offers, they’re trying to call some other world’s elder gods.

Shift got distracted developing a musical based on the life of Joseph Smith, and Star course-corrects them. It’ll take a couple days for a redo to client specifications.

Paragon takes a break from database searches to pick up the bakery question. She’s waiting till the bakery is closed but not open again, between midnight-2AM. She heads out to case the building, trying the alley, avoiding front and back cameras. Dresses nondescript, like a normal person with a hoodie and a backpack zipped up, so Dino is not visible. She stealths past the front camera into the alley.

The bakery’s net security is… bakery-level security. Weirdly, it kicks Paragon’s ass, and there’s a long, brutal net-fight against NB150 worth of defenses. At least nobody was around to see that! She returns to her lair and goes through the files, which are extensive and meticulous: apparently Filova is as hardcore about her paperwork as she is about her customers. Paragon learns: • The Flan bakes on site from real ingredients.

• Sandria Semochai opens, and bakes croissants, muffins, and pastries.

• Annamaria Filova comes in to work counter in the morning, then rotates with Sandria, as she does patisserie.

• Ximena Sidorovna comes in to work counter at lunch, then bakes breads, cakes, and pies. She closes.

• They produce about 1000 kilos of baked goods a week. A lot of that is cakes, which don’t seem to sell much at all ((but are heavy)).

• They seem to be selling about 10% of that (8-17% spread), at prices that are on the high side for the area, but considerably less than, say, Café Hoàn Kiếm in The Spire. They sell mostly breads, with a fair amount of breakfast stuff: croissants, muffins, etc. Hardly any of the signature cakes in their displays.

• Not everything they buy is from ConBrands Wholesale! You’d expect a bit of local black-market sourcing, especially for berries, etc., that can be grown under arcology sunlight and camouflaged relatively easily. But!

• They seem to be getting real fucking wheat flour from an independent source. Like, from wheat. Not replicated, and not the NeoGrain™ grown on terraformed farms. This is earth-shattering. You might want to consult with the Dirty Hippies.

• Their contract for the flour is with Arkham Consolidated Holdings, LLC – the parent company of Level Seven Operations, Inc., of which Starscream is the minority shareholder.

• The contract provides them with flour and working capital if and only if they produce a minimum of 1000 kilos of baked goods per week. Contract signed by Lavinia Gaspare-Salvatore.

• Every other day there’s a closing-time pickup of everything left – except the box that Ximena brings to the Electric Sheeple.

It’s the middle of the night, but Paragon wakes up the team, informing Star of the wheat-smuggling: “They’re supplying something to the bakery. They say it’s actual wheat flour from plants!”

“You know I don’t know anything about supply chain.”

“Your cult’s overlords are supplying air-quotes wheat flour to the bakery. “I think the pastries are mind control!”

“Like ConBrands mind control? Liske the shrimp puffs?”

Paragon focuses on the supply deal, using small words. “I know what capital is!”

Paragon’s frustrated: “But I don’t know what you know and don’t know – you don’t know what wheat is! So I’m just going to explain everything!”

She asks if anybody else wants to spy on the bakery? Everybody’s in. Paragon will bring thermoses and sandwiches: “We’re not going to buy from the bakery!” Carbide has telescopic vision in one eye, so he can scope out the bakery form further away.

Paragon asks Vir, how are your chemistry skills? Paragon’s going to buy a cake tomorrow, and asks Vir to go to absolute town on this cake. She buys the cake that sells least: the one with the most volume of disappearances. “Do science to it, friend!” Carbide cuts a slice and sets it aside. “If it turns out to be a harmless cake, I’m dibsing that piece.”

Star says, “We can get a better one!” Carbide counters: “But this one’s here now, and if I eat this one I don’t have to get a lecture about how I’m betraying the party and bowing down to our capitalist overlords.” The test comes back clean; Carbide grabs his piece and goes off to his workshop.

Star paints her nails with their ConBrands psychoactive-detecting polish and sticks them into the cake. No positive. They’re concerned that there’s something in the flour beyond the ability of their onsite tools to detect.

Star calls NeuralNymph and gets invited over to the lab. She swings back by the bakery and buys them out of cakes: she knows how to get to the hearts of scientists! Everybody comes with. Carbide possibly is interested in helping with the leftover from the testing process: he’s become a fan of baked goods since moving off kibble.

They hand over the cake. NeuralNymph introduces the lab’s new hire, Astrid/Sister Chromatid. Vir helps Astrid with the testing. They’re doing great, “bonding with the science wench.” They’ve made a science friend! Astrid invites Vir to come out dancing with her and Friction. Vir does not mention their tragic DDR accident.

They discover that the wheat’s biochemically clean – and grown in soil in a particular region on the far side of the planet. Very weird that it hasn’t been detected by ConBrands surveyors! But, there’s nanites.

Carbide looks up with a forkful of cake in his mouth. “Nanites?”

“Let’s go to the clean room!” Star asks the scientists who might be able to analyze their samples. Nobody! This is the kind of work that gets your barista killed by Netwatch. But NeuralNymph heard about a guy who was working on medical nanites but he got killed at Star’s concert…

Star asks, “Is it possible to isolate the nanites?” Astrid centrifuges out a couple samples for everybody: party favors!

“Carbide’s been eating cake! Let’s get a blood sample!” “This is why I used to eat just kibble!” “You mean the kibble with mind control drugs in it?” Paragon makes the case for microwave burritos, and everybody agrees that microwaving should be great protection against nanites.

They decide to do stool tests from Carbide over the next few days.

“Netwatch owes us one” is not a good reason to go to them, unless we want them wiped off the face of the planet, which we might. Star was all “interesting” at “gets your baristas killed,” but not quite yet…

NeuralNymph gets the actual address to the hideaway. No cake unless it’s been microwaved, they promise. So no ice cream!

Vir suggests Carbide find the minimum level of radiation to sterilize them, then maybe a session in a tanning bed. What level of radiation is necessary to kill these in a human body and would that hurt the human?

They’ll be wanding all their food before eating it…

Over the next few days, Carbide dissects and analyzes his poo, and hands over all the data to Paragon: “should you decide to engage in any necromancy this might be helpful.”

Paragon plans to get the samples to the “dead” scientist. She seals the nanite containers, numbered. Uses her skills from trying to decrypt the ginger noodles to encrypt the information, in what when viewed will look like a “greetings from your friends” card. “Pepperidge Farms remembers…” The card also has a text file that reads like a cheery letter: “I know you like glitter, it’s very special.” She’s underlined certain letters and words to construct into “the glitter is nanites, the cake has nanites, what do they do” and a sufficiently secure address for data to be sent. She doesn’t’ send it to the scientist but to his husband, but the letter is addressed to the scientist. She draws pictures of Dino on the letter, in different costumes, as an identifier. Hopefully with a physical package of someone mailing baked goods to a friend, there won’t be anything for Netwatch to pick up on.

Vir and Shift meet with Deacon Hepzibah at the coffee shop Armitage likes. Vir compliments Hepzibah on how well doctrine has aligned with the church, and informs her that Star has an appointment with Kiselyov. Hepzibah warns them to make him happy, or else inquisitors. Vir wonders why Asentath is so scared of them.

“Asenath likes to play with her food, the inquisitors don’t.”

Vir compliments Asenath, which she’s figured out is a way to get Hepzibah on her good side. It works. Double-teaming with Shift, the two do a phenomenal job of selling Hepzibah on the new doctrine. Hepzibah apologizes for having doubted Vir’s dedication, and for continuing to have reservations: clearly they’re all divinely inspired. Hepzibah agrees to work with Shift on language, on making the new materials sound properly church-y.

That night, Paragon and Carbide go on stakeout. Pickup of the leftovers is scheduled for 9:15. About 8:45 Carbide sets up on a building with a clear view of the loading dock 700 feet or so away, a brownstone 1/3 of the way across the circle of the park with a clear line of sight. He’s working on neighborhood security as a cover for what he’s doing up there. He’s established enough of as the neighborhood fix it guy so as long as tools and something that goes beep or clank, neighbors will assume he’s supposed to be there.

Paragon’s back in the alley, sneaking close enough to see if the truck has an access point. She gets caught on camera. But why should she care? She lives in the neighborhood. She’s looking for a kitten, if anybody asks. She stealths in and plants a tracker on the pickup van. She and Carbide get great photos of the truck, the driver, and the two loaders. One has a croissant stuffed in his mouth, so presumably they don’t know details of what they’re transporting. They watch Ximena leave with a box towards the Sheeple, as the van takes the road out of the neighborhood.

Back at the Honeycomb Hideout, Star’s doing her nails (despite the internal Agent color interface) and sipping a green tea boba.

Carbide builds a highlight reel of the van, full body shots, and closeups from his perch, and throws it up on the display. He plots the stops against maps of the Dome. Carbide called it: the baked goods are being distributed to the poor and desperate across town.

Paragon is already constructing her report to the Gnu. “Real Wheat Wut? From Arkham!” She’s going to bury the Gnu in information, and may be a tag at the end saying “next time do your own legwork.” “If you want me to do something make it sound interesting, not dumb” Carbide: “And not to come up with a techbro dare, but something like, this might be a genuine problem that affects your neighborhood.” Star agrees: couch it in interesting information: they throw away 82% of their output, why?

Carbide wonders if they haven’t gotten the part about the nanites or the wheat flour. It was supposed to be Paragon’s audition, so quite possibly a question they thought they knew the answer to and that wasn’t going to be something terribly important, just info that is hidden, can you find it, are you as good as us?

“I dug about 3 layers deeper than you bothered to, please stay out of our way while we take down Arkham and set ourselves up as the new evil overlords of this particular cult.”

“Mildly selfish overlords!”

Night is going to wonder why they’re analyzing bakery trucks and Carbide’s poo… In his workshop using his cybereye and electronics tools to analyze a stool sample in a Tupperware contianier. In Paragon’s lair, a conspiracy den of how the pastry is going out into the population…. She goes upstairs, and Star’s getting fitted in gothy costumes – this is the most normal thing that’s been happening so far.

They wait for “the spirits” to get back to them with an analysis of the nanites.