Taltos
[Write, write, write.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Taltos
[Extending. Write, write, write.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Taltos
[Stam.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Taltos
[Extending, but refining the process. +1 diff. WP.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Taltos
[Stam.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
Grace
Grace
doesn't waste time, it's precious these days. She's got Táltos' number,
and it's time to spread the information around. He gets a text, and it
goes like this:
Grace: Hey, we should get together sometime. When's good for you?
She
doesn't say anything about the real reason for meeting. As she said
before, 'I'll just invite you over for tea, or something, and it won't
be tea.'
Taltos
Somewhere in the city. There's a
man in his late twenties or early thirties or maybe mid twenties it's
awful hard to tell. The point is somewhere there's this man (beguiling, lusty [resonant]),
and he's outside where the wind can get him and when his phone dings
from his laptop case he hears it like an after-effect. Blinks his long,
straight lashes and then somewhere in the city there's a young woman who
just sent a text and she gets a reply text and the reply text goes
like:
Táltos: What about now?
Grace
Grace: I'm all for now, but... where? I need a few more dimensions :)
Grace tries to go with a math joke. Time being a dimension, space being three... So she needs to know a few more, yes?
Taltos
Táltos: :] I'm @ City Park by Ferril Lake right now
Táltos: The one iwth th boathouse
Táltos: *with
Táltos: But if you want to grab a drink we can meet at [near-by coffee shop-cum-independent bookstore]
Grace
[Awareness! Because always!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
Grace: The lake is fine. BRT
It
doesn't take long, really. Grace lives very close, and when she is
close, there is that faint echo of slipping, sliding, reminiscent of a
tiny earthquake -- if Táltos is paying attention..
She wears what she always wears. It's jeans and sneakers, and that grey turtleneck jacket, topped off with her laptop bag.
Taltos
[IS Táltos paying attention to things? Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Taltos
Táltos (beguiling, Satyrical) is more alert and more energetic today than he was the other night when there was a Convergence [Confluence]
of Awakenened Individuals. The wind has braced him or the grass has.
There are late, out-of-season clovers near the soles of his big-big
boots, dockers or something with the laces half-undone, tongue gaping,
skinny dark jeans that are worn enough they're hanging onto his belt
like they've gotta do that or else. He's wearing a band teeshirt that's a
little short for him (he's just tall, tall and thin, makes him seem
taller, but less big), over that a jacket that's green and vaguely
military probably cozened from a thrift-shop chest. And, as usual, he is
a man who wears jewelry well: a series of necklaces, most of them
tucked beneath his shirt, one glinting gold, though only two rings on
his fingers today, and those not easily visible because his left hand
has a bandage wrapped around the hand and wrist.
And where is he
wearing all of this? By Ferril Lake. Under a tree that's beginning to be
turn as gold as the honey bees'd make from the clover by his feet, see,
its leaves rough and shaken, a laptop bag at his side and one arm along
the back of the bench. He was typing away earlier, but between getting a
text from Grace and waiting for her, he seems to have decided to just
watch the lake and the trees. He does it with enjoyment.
He does it with presence.
It's
hard to imagine Táltos feeling awkward about anything, no matter how
idle his hands are. They're idle now- or are until that sense of
slip-slide, quake-shake, shifting (something shifts, something is
shifting, little-changes, little pushes, little revolutions: oh, I am
beginning to know your resonance) has his nostrils flaring and has him
looking around until Grace comes into sight, then shifts forward, both
feet coming off the grass then thumping down again just as his hands
thump onto his thighs, then mid-rise he raises one hand instead (there's
a clink, a clatter, something belled and metallic around his wrist) to
say by way of greeting,
"'Ey, Grace!"
Grace
Her
shoes crunch on the grass (the grass that thinks with superpositioned
pigments that dance everywhere at once to find their way) and she's
thinking about that when she comes across Táltos.
His is not the
worst presence one could be in. There are others she's felt, stronger
and overwhelmingly dire or sickening. But Táltos enthralls. The very
clover beneath his feet reach out in their own responding lust.
"Hey,
yourself. I brought my stuff, you want to get hooked up?" she asks,
smiling. "I can also get your laptop, if you want. Or, do you have
questions first?"
Taltos
Mid-rise becomes
muscle-tremor (earth-quake, slip-shake), then muscles re-bunching then
slackening, so he sits down hard (and noisily) on his spine, spares his
bones a wince as a tithe to being alive to feel it, then scootches an
inch to the side, leaving Grace a clear space on the bench for her to
call her very very own, and then Táltos is regarding Sera's protégé
quite seriously. Quite seriously indeed, though the after-effect
eye-crinkle grin is still in effect: a mellow late-afternoon sort-of
light that warms his eyes. He swipes some hair off of his broad brow,
and says, "Questions first. Be prepared for an unrepentent and
mistrustful Luddite. Tell me the story of the information network, and
how'dja come to be its," here, he scratches the underside of his jaw,
"guardian or keeper?"
Grace
"See, this is why
we're in the park, and not in a bookstore... It's less easy to
overhear," she says, sliding her laptop out of its bag, putting it up on
the table.
"I got hacked by someone really fucking strong, who
told me that I had been spotted and my chat logs put on watch. So, the
guy I was chatting with and I had to get creative. See, the Authorities
really seem to perk up when you've got someone trying to teach you all
the history of the Virtual Adepts in plain text..."
"So, we came
up with Ginger. We being myself and Gadfly. He's been kind of showing me
the ropes, yeah? I set up the encryption, he set up the wards, and
we... took over a phone sex line." She's booting up the machine now, the
background a swirly math-y looking thing. It's not geometric, it's wild
and tangled.
"But you know, that's all well and good for the two
of us, now we have secure communications, but I thought why not extend
that to the rest of Denver? I mean, we could all use a way to talk about
important things without having the NSA hear about it first."
Taltos
"You got hacked?" He turns the echo into a question, Táltos, a clarification of the given value of You, because he's (unrepentent [mistrustful] Luddite) not sure she's using the word to mean her computer systems or just phone logs or a more invasive (more immediate [slip the thread into the spirit and drag out thoughts and words and control]),
and there's wariness behind it. He isn't someone who gets filled with
nervous energy when he's wary though he's always full-up of energy
unless he's drooping, wilting, and he's not wilting today, but the
point: the point! The point is his energy isn't nervous, but he does
sound wary, not skeptical but cautious or concerned.
He doesn't
interrupt again, and when she finishes her story he chuffs a laugh- this
earth-smoke sound of a thing, less humour than appreciation,
follow-it-up-with, "All right, I see. Nice. So,
forgive-me-if-this-is-too-whatever-or-retreading-old-ground-but," a wave
of his hand, sweeping, "but what do you think about the traditionalists
you've run across? Why're you them against the Authorities That Be? The
latter too still for you?"
Grace
He asks that
question, and it makes her eyes drag off of the screen where she was
working on setting up the program. "Too still? You mean, they slow
progress? Well, that's just the tip of the iceberg isn't it? Here's a
story for you. One kind of near and dear to my own heart. There was this
guy, right, and he's a genius. Decides to liberate the JSTOR online
library of science journals, because it's behind a pay wall, and all
that knowledge should be available. Should be accessible to the Third
World, should be accessible to anyone. He doesn't even break any laws
doing it," she says, sighs heavily.
"But they found something to
charge him with. And they killed him. I'm pretty sure of that now. The
papers say suicide, but I don't think so. It's played out like that
before. Time and time again, someone decides to do the right thing and
break down the walls, and they just..." she trails off, like she can't
come up with words strong enough to describe what they do.
"The
first one of Them that I met tried to get me to help track down Gadfly,
so that he could be disposed of, I'm thinking. I wasn't even Awake yet.
But... just fuck that. They treat people like they're obstacles, and
society like their Ponzi scheme," she says, and she's obviously upset,
can't really concentrate on the work now.
Taltos
Grace
is upset and Táltos puts a hand out. He either touches her hand,
knuckles raw-red, fingers long, a jangle of bracelets, or he touches her
shoulder. He touches her anyway: spring-warmth, clover-conjuring,
green-fuse driving, summer-kinged warmth. He's loud and he's unsubtle
and he might not be a person who invades personal space with impunity
but he doesn't always pay notice to it. Táltos (the táltos [shaman])
gives her a close-lipped smile. This wistful twitch of his mouth. Then
he withdraws again, resting his elbow hard on the park's table, near the
humming of Grace's machine, and cups his chin in his hand, leaning
aslant. His shoulders are narrow, but sharply delineated through his
jacket.
"Sorry about your friend ... or your hero. The genius."
He nods. The suicide-that-maybe-wasn't. Táltos looks contemplative, and
pats one of his pockets down, though he doesn't bring anything out of
it- it's this half-formed intention like he wants something but isn't
sure what it is.
"And I didn't mean 'slow progress.' I meant- " He
pauses. Then, "I don't believe you've used your spark, your
Jirilo-gift, uh, how do you say, a Working while we've been near, but I
can feel your signature and it feels like-" He squints, lashes coming
together but eyes not closing "- something eternally shifting, something
moving and revolutionary. It's just a little spark, but it's pushing or
changing."
"And they aren't for change. They're trying hard to make everything still and changeless."
Grace
She
nervously moves that hand away when he touches her. It's not that she
doesn't like him, but the contact of another person has never been
comforting to her. And now, the tingling nothing in her fingers makes
such unforeseen touches shocking with needles.
"Why would anyone
want to keep things the way they are?" she asks, disguising the strange
jerk of her hand by returning to the keyboard.
"Still, I don't
think that's the point. One could change the world for the worse, too. I
want to see it change, yeah, but for the better. Do you think, those
impressions you get of people have something to do with them as a
person?"
She is new, this one. She asks questions -- must ask questions.
Grace
"Here, give me your phone, if you are still interested."
[Sorry, forgot a line]
Taltos
[Ooh, do I notice? Empathy!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Grace
[Manipulation + Subterfuge = Nuh uh!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Taltos
Why would anyone want to keep things the way they are? "Better the devil you know."
Táltos
doesn't watch Grace any more carefully than you'd watch a Technocrat
(perhaps not a Union Technocrat, but the Sons of Ether and Virtual
Adepts will always be Techno-mages, Techno-crats, to Táltos), or let's
be honest, a strange Traditionalist, who's offered you a place on a
'secure' network they're in control of. He doesn't think she's nefarious
or going to use it against him -- she seems to be what she's presenting
herself as. But the dreamspeaker is still a touch wary. "If something
or someone does breach Ginger's security, does she have any standing
orders? Self-destruct, mass-warning dings?" The hand he'd put out
instead goes to his phone though he doesn't hand it over quite yet. He
takes it out though.
"And - you mean on a who-they-essentially-are
level? In some respects, I do. Those impressions tell a lot about how
someone looks and interacts with their own canny gift, you know, or how
they've used it in the past, or the how of
their usage- what they do in order to interact with the world on that
level. Personally I find how the balance between primal forces lays
itself out in a worker's resonance one of the most interesting things
you can feel in your bones."
Grace
"The beauty of
Ginger is that Ginger does not phone out. You contact Ginger, along
with whoever else might be trying to use the line for... ah... other
purposes. My little bit to alter your phone just lets you into the
deeper level. It will look to the rest of the world like you are in it
for, you know, phone sex," she explains, and is a bit nervous about
that. So far everyone's taken the idea fairly well, but then...
"If
Ginger gets found out, they'll be able to tell that some hacking went
on, but they won't be able to trace it back to you, and they won't be
able to trace our social network. There's just no trail to follow. If
Ginger gets breached, she dies a quiet death," she says, and there is
conviction in this.
"So, I mean, if you're worried, I'm not going
to say don't be. Everything's dangerous. Just, a lot of work has gone
into this. And some Work as well, if you get my meaning."
His
explanation of their resonances makes her wonder... The shifting
revolutionary, the thing that wants to break down the walls? Well, yes,
that does seem accurate. What is hacking, but breaking the barriers
down, and getting in? And she hacks the universe itself. She just looks at him with those ever-moving eyes, and nods, like 'yeah, I think so too'.
Taltos
His
reluctance doesn't spring from potential phone-sex line appearing on
his phone-records. Táltos doesn't have a wife or girlfriend who'd get
all irritated. He doesn't have invasive parents who'd be disappointed.
His reluctance just springs from a deep mis-trust, something that floats
underneath the surface. So he hesitates again, but then hands his phone
over. "All right, sounds fair enough. Just give me clear instructions."
And
Grace gives Táltos a look and nods, and he nods back. His mustache (and
it's a fine mustache, it is - well-kept, thick, practically glossy)
twitches as he considers something, then -- movement! -- just leans
forward, both elbows on the table now, hands together and fingers
twined, like he's anticipating, eyes going from his phone to Grace.
Watchful! Watchful. Expectant.
Unsure whether-or-not-he-should-be-quiet. He goes with 'quiet,' for now.
Well.
He tries to go with 'quiet' for now.
Grace
Grace
gives him a small smile, as he bores into her with his eyes. And then
it's to his phone, and to her laptop, and she connects laptop to phone
with a cord, and begins tapping away.
It's not long. So many have
received Ginger so far, that modifications to the program to get it to
work on their various devices have already been made. She just has to
run the right commands for this one. Every now and then, she sneaks a
side glance at him to see if he's still watching her, hawk-like. "So...
I'm not peeking, if that's what you think. I know it's hard to tell. But
I don't do that." Well, how would he know? She could peek, do far worse than that even...
After
a few minutes of extreme focus, she undoes the plug, and hands his
phone over, with a slight smile. "It's fairly simple. Just call the
number labeled 'Ginger' in your contacts. Or you can text it, if you
just want to drop off a message. There will be a menu you can interact
with."
And if Táltos does decide to test out his new toy, he'll
indeed be presented with the following menu, spoken in low, sensual, a
bit robotic tones:
"Hello, and welcome. To listen to messages,
dial 1. To view text messages, dial 2. To leave a voice message, dial 3.
To leave a text message, dial 4. And remember, love is just a dial
away."
Taltos
He does keep watching her.
Interested. Most of his weight hanging on his elbows instead of in the
seat of his pants like it should be if he were really sitting. Easy to
imagine Táltos as a kid being told to sit down properly at the table
young man. When she says she's not peeking, his eyebrows bristle
upwards, but he nods to accept what she told him. Believe it? Well,
perhaps. He's trusting her with his phone in spite of reservations, and
that'll have to be it, for now. But he does keep watching, curiously.
Táltos
accepts the (his) phone back and weighs it in the palm of his hand.
Muscle-memory wants it to be heavier. Wants it to be more of a stone.
Poetic language almost demands it. Of course the phone's just as heavy
as it ever was, just as dense, and he does play with it a little,
tactile man like Táltos can't resist, though he gives an exaggerated
little shiver at Ginger's sensual-laced-in-hollow-robotic voice,
smiling, "Gives me the willies, and not where you'd want 'em," and after
he's heard the menu, he says, "So it'll work like a - communal
message-board? Mass text-messages to everyone on the network, etcetera?"
Adds,
"Thank you. It's a very... social move." He has to think of the right
word there, that pause between very and social. "May I ask you something
about politics?"
Grace
Grace laughs when he says
Ginger gives him the willies. "Really? Sera wanted to marry her," she
says, seemingly not offended by his slight against Team Striped Horse's baby.
"Yeah, it's like a communal message board. People have asked if it
could do more, but not without breaking some of the security features,
and I don't really like that idea."
When he asks her about politics, she quirks a brow. "What about politics?"
Taltos
"I
think she sounds like a woman made of eggshells, an empty eggshell
woman," Táltos says. "How're you supposed to imagine holding such a
thing?"
Another, smaller, exaggerated shiver-shake.
Then,
"Well, I've heard your thoughts on the conventional fuckers, but I'm
interested in the perspective of somebody new on the Nine and all that.
How'd you pick your mentor. Gadfly," and he sounds musing. His eyes do
go softer when he starts to muse, but now that he's done playing with
the phone, slips it neatly back into his laptop bag, fingers lingering,
he's really just watching the apprentice. "There no other paradigm
you're drawn to?"
He doesn't sound like he's trying to devil's
advocate argue her out of her choice. He really does just sound:
curious. The kind of curiousity which is like a charm, scratched on a
tree, a song-whisper-thing, come-hither: his curiousity is always come
hither, huh? That's Táltos, hithering at the same time.
Grace
"There's no other paradigm you're drawn to?" she responds, smirk-filled, turning his question back.
"I
didn't choose Gadfly. Well, I mean, I say that, but... It's like, I
chose this a long time ago, long before my eyes were open. I wrote a
story once, about Alan Turing, and it made a few waves in places I
couldn't have dreamed about. Gadfly memorized it," she says, chuckles at
that one. "And when I had Awakened, he didn't even know. He just wanted
to meet this writer he was so fond of."
"So... We were friends from the beginning." The very beginning, actually.
Taltos
He
laughs -- a shake-of-his-shoulders, the sound something between the
fluid gleam of a snicker and the full-bodied
(love-of-life-want-want-want) of a guffaw -- when she turns the question
back. He says, "There are two other traditions with philosophies I find
interesting, though not quite true once I learn more. So yes, there
is." He crosses his eyes at her, and smirks: at himself? Perhaps. "So."
But
to give Táltos credit (and he's very good at multi-tasking, at
following more than one thread of conversation [at listening to the
sussuration of a storm, voices dragged through them, while also carrying
on a bar-crawl]), he settles as she talks about not choosing, about the
choice being made, about Gadfly and how they came to meet, and he nods,
cupping his chin in his right hand again.
"What's he like?" A pause, then, grin, "What impression does he leave?"
Grace
"Well,
as far as other traditions... I only really know a few very well. I'd
say... Sera's is close. She's the one who sat me down afterwards and
explained what had happened to me. But she couldn't grasp how I
understood the universe, and I couldn't grasp how hers works either.
Just, there's similarities, I can tell.
"The Etherites, I understand a lot better. I guess they would be a second choice?"
She doesn't really know why he's asking. But it's not like her to leave a question unanswered, her own or someone else's.
When he asks about Gadfly, she bites her lip. The first impression one gets of Gadfly is not particularly good.
"If
someone wanted to find the Platonic ideal of the junction between
distracted and nervous, he'd be a good candidate? He's very shy, very
paranoid. But he's utterly brilliant."
Taltos
"The
idea of going beyond all boundaries appeals, eh?" on Sera's tradition
and Grace's attraction (minute though it might be?) to it.
Táltos
cocks his head when Grace bites her lip, and then flicks a glance toward
the lake. He's still been resting most of his weight on his elbows, and
he finally (jangle, jingle) collapses back on his buttocks. "If I ever
come in contact with him, I'll keep that in mind."
"Come on," and
now he flattens his hands on the table, pushing himself up and standing.
"I'll buy you a drink, coffee if it's too early in the day, in
appreciation. Give appreciation to the grain spirits, or bean spirits as
it were. Tell me where I can find this story you wrote."
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