The woman painted in red and gold recoils as Khalil casually invades her space, despite it being less of an intrusion than she was inflicting on Vincent. "If itsh like that." She turns unsteadily to the man in the Hazer morph, "You coulda had better for free, handsome." As the group moves away, she allows herself to be guided by the flow of the crowd until lost among the revelers.
The sensor-free path ahead leads around a corner, where the graceful arc of Little Shanghai dome can be seen curving to almost vertical as it approaches the ground. The buildings are in worse repair as you move towards the periphery, and a desperate edge starts to rise from the partying crowd like cheap cologne - the breath of the souk, as people circulate through its once-grand Art Deco entryway.
Your HUD timer now reads 6min.
Khalil:
She's a real person, and now leaving drunken insults towards your current (false) mesh handle on social media. Janni tidies up the ones left on your profile with the attitude of someone cleaning up after a strangers' non-housebroken pet.
As you wind through the press of the crowd, thing seem to be going smoothly at first. Dante looks back at something near Vincent, but his crowd-reading fails him and he moves directly into the path of a synthmorph that may as well be a bipedal forklift. It's like trying to body-block a wall, and the impact elicits a digitized snarl of curses. Staggering away, he's unable to warn Vincent about the person moving towards him.
No one else notices the woman in red and tawny-gold until she steps out in front of Vincent. It's none too steady, but not quite the motion of a reeling drunk. All the same, she manages to hook a necklace of cheap plastic beads around the Titanian's neck and press herself against him before he can move away. "Can I have this danche?" she asks. Vincent is still within the dead-sensor zone, but only just.
Vincent:
Agrippa informs Vincent that local tradition is for the recipient of such a token to flash the person who gave it.
Mathar & Khalil are approaching from behind Vincent, as yet untroubled by the revelers. Krasnyy is a few strides ahead of Vincent and his new friend, and Dante was in the lead.
The longer Dante spends in tune with the revelers, the more he feels their emotions buoy him up: joy, celebration, and urgency. Today is Fat Tuesday, but tomorrow will be Ash Wednesday, the solemn day of renunciation that kicks off Lent. Even the non-Catholic majority has caught that side of the mood. The net effect is a kind of high that makes it difficult to think clearly, at the same time as Dante feels hyperaware of the people around him.
Then he happens to look over his shoulder and notice the rising column of smoke that's beginning to obscure the vivid light show being projected onto the dome surface. It's like being doused in ice water. And... was that the faintest hint of a flaw?
Compelled aspect: Beloved of the Virus, for empathy. Dante gains 1 FP.
As you make your way through the crowd, there's a subtle shift to the music. The bass line turns a shade harsher. The soaring synthesizer begins a graceful descent into an areal dogfight, its simple joy gaining a fierce, almost anticipatory edge. It's not at all difficult to pick out Smythe from the mass of people - his current dance partner is wearing a quicksilver synthmorph, and is contributing to the light show in a dazzle of almost sculpted-looking afterimages.
The hallway that parallels the length of the club's main room is almost shockingly calm and empty by comparison. Immediately ahead, double doors lead to the kitchen, and a green-haired 'pod wearing an apron is standing in the doorway shouting to someone on the far side. To the left is a door labeled "Employees Only", and farther down the hall to the right is the one awaiting a key. It opens at Dante's touch, and an AR countdown timer appears on your HUD.
The far side is what passes for an alleyway on the subsurface levels of Valles-New Shanghai. The oversize corridor is surfaced in rust-orange Martian concrete and hums with the active machinery of the dome's infrastructure. Nearing the stairwell that will return you to ground level, loud slurred voices can be heard from the cross-alley ahead, but they don't seem to be moving.
You emerge from a service entrance perhaps 2/3 of the way to the souk, into the massive ongoing street party. There's a small clear space where a jazz band is performing in playful counterpoint to the algorithmically-generated faux-blues emanating from speakers across the street. Everywhere else has too many people in it for ease of movement. The timer shows 12min.
Dante:
Beta informs you of the drunken trio in the cross-corridor before they start making noise, and reports the crowd conditions before you get out to the street. He also makes note of a service 'bot or two that started towards the planned route and either veered off or suffered apparent software errors. F3L1X reports that groups of PMs are spreading out from a vandalized station half a mile or so northwest, which is currently on fire.
Roll Kinesics or Athletics to avoid/bull through crowd obstacles while remaining within the no-recording zone. Everyone but Dante, roll Alertness.
Jhonen's AR image leans out of his body for a moment to give you a wink. [I sent xer a few units of gender fluid last week, while setting up for tonight's tricks. He left a good review on it - should be back to normal by tomorrow if he's only taken one.] The nanodrug, while not common enough to be illegal, was certainly a grey-market curiosity.
418 goes to work, but its data-compilation from disparate sources will take a few minutes. On the other hand, the boss' muse, Mykola, responds instantly with a set of nearby transport options which meet zer specifications, inside and outside the city. This is trivial enough to do without a roll. If you have the Pilot skill, you have access to an appropriate vehicle. Describe them as you please, or IM me and we'll hash something out.
Jhonen watches Vincent for a reaction as he names a figure that could fund a 5-person Titanian microcorp for a fiscal year or so. [Assuming both parts of the job are completed, of course.] He shrugs, but elaborates for the foreigners' sake. [The nanofab underground could help you produce a duplicate case, or one of the cartels. The clients' security spec doesn't preclude it, so long as everyone takes normal precautions.] The fixer seems about to say something else, but sits up straighter and looks into empty space for a moment instead. He appears more alert, but not alarmed.
[The 'People's Militia' is dropping by early this year. Most times, we get another six hours.] Your muses inform you of a large upload from Jhonen and a translucent AR map unfolds before each of you, describing a route from the Space Amnesia into the warren of mini-domes that make up the Little Shanghai souk - the worst neighborhood in this already disreputable part of town. Jhonen waves a hand to the map. [T-Factor set up a bunch of dead-sensor routes for the celebration; he's good for them. After you use the attached public key at the service door in back, you'll have 15 minutes. You ought to be able to make it in 10, but the safety margin is there if you need it.] He leans back in his seat, clearly not intending to join you. [Best of luck.]
Jhonen collects the questions and enqueues them in a box in the top-right of ones' personal AR display, ordered for efficiency. He ticks down the list, starting with the box. [The cryo-case reports itself to be one of these.] A flick of his fingers, and the AR image of a rectangular case takes shape as if resting atop the map. It's roughly the size of a human hand, with a matte blue anodized aluminum exterior and grey plastic shock guards on each rounded corner. The same material covers the integral handle which runs the length of the case opposite its hinge.
[The courier appears to be one Shaleen Gaurige, whose job description for NWM is 'transportation specialist'.] The image of a woman with dark hair and features that hail from the Indian subcontinent forms in the air above the table, a three-dimensional product of security camera footage. Her posture speaks of barely constrained restlessness.
[Looks like there are only two guards. NWM's own security, not a class act like Direct Action. Company car to go with it.] Next to the image of Shaleen, a 2D frame unfolds itself. The video shows three people walking through a parking lot: Shaleen, a blandly androgynous-looking 'pod, and a neo-chimpanzee. The latter two wear uniforms of vaguely official style - the sort which tries to evoke ingrained responses to authority, without actually claiming it. All three of them are using atmosphere converters, masks obscuring the lower half of their faces. The neo-chimpanzee has a sidearm, and the 'pod has a rifle slung over xer shoulder. They board a flying car of middling quality (nothing fancy, but not obviously cheap) which moves out of the camera's view in ground mode.
[To the best of my knowledge, the only people who want that little box are the client and its originally intended recipients.]
Private channel to Khalil:
Jhonen's expression barely changes on receipt of the message. [Nothing I can put a finger on. But something about this... I keep thinking about one time when my client had got snookered and sent us after bait. Closest call I've had, getting out with my skin.] His eyes rest on Khalil perhaps a fraction of a second longer than necessary, while the video plays. [Be careful out there.]
When everyone has linked in, Jhonen cracks his knuckles and waves a hand over the table, causing an AR map to unfold across it. [The courier with the cryo-case left New World Metagenomics in Noctis-Qianjiao this morning. Bio-containment regs confine experimental microbes to ground transport, so you should have no trouble catching up.] A position marker and mesh ID appear on the map*, tracing a route SSW from Noctis-Qianjiao. [That's the box. Since it's meshed, the client has supplied an ID mimic to extend the time before it's discovered missing.] The dull grey object that Jhonen sets on the table resembles a stylus more than anything else. [Obviously, it's not supposed to stand up to visual inspection.]
He settles back into his seat. [The destination is in Hellas Planitia, but the blind drop you're to leave the cryo-case at is carved into a glacier in southern Promethei Terra.] A marker appears for each destination as it's named. [The box is to be delivered with original seals intact.] Jhonen's digital 'voice' has a faint touch of skepticism when he describes this deviation from standard process. [I advised the client that it would neither stop NWM's research program nor keep the products out of others' hands indefinitely. Microbes are like data; they want to be free. But the client insists, so the instructions are what they are. Payment is half up-front, half when the drop registers presence of the correct, unopened case.]
Jhonen surveys the group's expressions. [Any questions?]
Jhonen raises an eyebrow at the little device. "Pass. When Mesh signatures blink out, it catches more attention than it's worth." He shrugs a shoulder. "I'm keeping tabs on the nearby outgoing traffic. Usually good enough." His voice has a faint uncomfortable edge to it on the last sentence.
FYI: Everyone but flats has a secure data jack somewhere readily accessible on their morph. Some information is still better off never touching the mesh.
Jhonen grins at the nomad playing himself. "You've found it." He draws a hub and several spools of cable from a pocket, hooking himself in via a data port on his left wrist. "If you don't mind connecting yourselves for confidentiality, we can get started."
Smythe gives Vincent a laid-back smile and leans towards him to be heard over the music. "One asks the Vatican-in-Exile, which accounts by Earth time as it would be in Italy. That would give us one in summer and one in winter, if we had enough outside seasons to notice."
He shakes Dante's hand with a measuring curiosity, not bothering to hide that he's stacking up the others' presentation in-person against mesh presence. "Good to meet you in the flesh." He flashes a grin. "Simulspace engines keep getting better, but they're not quite the same." Smythe gestures broadly to the rest of the booth, "Please, take a seat."
And here I thought you-all worked that out already.
Not necessarily arriving at the same time (I think Khalil is planning to have scoped the place out beforehand and be waiting), but present for collective briefing / Q&A.
If you want to talk in real-time, I'm pretty sure that I and the other three players with finished sheets will be available in Paizochat this evening. (The other two can arrive late or be called in "as needed".)
Tonight, Valles-New Shanghai is in rare form. Light shows are projected onto the domes overhead, the streets reverberate with music, and every public space seems utterly jammed full of people wearing every imaginable morph, mod, or costume. It's Mardi Gras: The one night where social strictures are laid aside and all sins are permissible.
You, however, are on business.
If the metropolis is aglow, Little Shanghai dome is a nova, brighter than it ever is in the daytime. The neon is permanent, but fanciful LED decorations adorn every home and business - painting the quarter and even its adjacent souks joyous. Half the celebrants are wearing synthmorphs, and at most a tenth were ever Catholic, but everyone loves a party.
Shouldering through the crowd, your destination is in sight.
The club named Space Amnesia is down a flight of stairs in the sidewalk; the under-street usually lit via the glassteel floor of the canal that separates pedestrians from traffic tonight swirls with a glitter of nanomachines whose sole apparent purpose is to sparkle in every imaginable color. Space Amnesia itself is windowless, but its 'front' is a screen chosen by that nights' performance group: it currently advertises DJ Bitswarm against a background of vibrantly psychedelic cellular automata.
The pair of bouncers at the door are courteous, but the neo-Gorilla and her Olympian partner both look like they wish they were drinking.
Inside, strobe lights, smoke, and glitterdust overwhelm the dim blue background lighting, and the dance floor might be the most orderly part of the room. DJ Bitswarm's skill and taste run to bone-shaking basslines layered under soaring synthesizer work. You manage to recognize the bar, straight ahead at the back, the performers' stage at far right, and the other two walls are lined with semi-enclosed booths. Aside from the dance floor, the rest of the space is scattered with tables full of people. They might be socializing, but it's hard to even hear oneself think.
Your contact recognizes you before you spot him, and Smythe of Jhonen Smythe waves you over to a reserved booth. Unlike most of the patrons, he's clear-eyed and sober, if still cheerful about it. Jhonen doesn't seem to be with him at the moment.
