It's during a hacking session that Nick texts her. Not the "breaking and entering" kind, but the plain old coding kind. There was a time when this sort of fuzzy subjective meaning shit used to piss off the alpha nerds, who kept on trying, unsuccessfully, to get the word "cracking" to mean the malicious attack. Cracking a safe, cracking into a vault, it had precedence. It didn't stick.
Now, the word 'hack' has about three different meanings, and it still pisses off the old alpha nerds, but they can't do much about that.
So what Grace is hacking on in the middle of the afternoon is a tool. A password-guessing device that uses databases of old, previously hacked passwords to guess new ones. This is why they always tell you to change you password every x days, kids.
Anyway, the chime from her phone causes her to blink and then to ignore it, because phh. Probably unimportant. But it causes an itch in her brain that doesn't go away until she checks to be sure.
Nick: hey, Sera told me about talking to the cops and the kid she's looking after. she said you might know more.
Hmm. Well, that doesn't exactly explain much, but Nick probably shouldn't over text anyway.
Grace: Come to my place? We can talk about it.
In private. And she doesn't offer much more than that, because it's very likely she's on a watch list.
Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas, too, may be on some sort of watch list. He is Awakened, and he works in a hospital: traditionally one of the bastions of Conventional thought, though sometimes the social sciences lean both ways, and in that Nick has found his home. He is not as cautious as he ought to be, or so his friends tell him: but he is cautious enough to be careful of what he discloses over text.
So he agrees, and after obtaining the address from Grace, he makes his way over to her place. He hasn't been to River's apartment before, may have even forgotten that Grace and River are roommates in fact.
He arrives downtown perhaps an hour after his initial text (though he was polite enough to provide Grace with an ETA. He's considerate of such things, Nick.)
There is another chime from her phone when he arrives.
Grace
Grace has, at the very least, washed up and dressed by the time he gets there. It's tempting to forget about sleep, hygiene, and street clothes when you don't plan on traipsing out of your room for a few days. At least, it is for her.
This is the unspoken reason why Kalen made sure to outfit her office at the old place with a small kitchen, refrigerator, and coffee.
She greets him at the door in wet hair and a fresh jeans-and-t-shirt combo. The t-shirt has a happy sloth picture on it, and her socks are done in a penguin pattern.
"Okay, so. I don't know anything about Sera talking to the cops, or this kid? So I'm a little lost. But come in, dude. Let's figure this out."
Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas is well used to mages who abandon, or simply forget, the body's basic needs: he is married to a Hermetic. Had he arrived to find her in her pajamas it would not have surprised him. He himself is put together as he often is in a way that is almost artful in its disarray: wearing a rumpled pale pink buttondown over a pair of shorts, his curls oiled back and to one side in some attempt to tame them.
There is something different about him which will be difficult to place at first, because it is a feeling, a sense he gives off (as resonance often is.) He stands there in the small space after he is invited inside, twirling his wedding band around his finger with the ball of his thumb. "Thanks," he says, as he steps past the threshold.
Once the door is shut, "Sera met with a Chorister who was also a cop, and she'd found an Awakened kid. An apprentice. He seems like he's pretty tech savvy, so I thought you might know him. Or know something of him."
Grace
Chorister who is also a cop. Grace frowns a bit, in thought. "Isolde? From Colorado Springs?"
She makes her way toward the couch -- River's couch. The whole place is River's idea of what constitutes a living space, because Grace knows herself. Her own room has a bed and bookshelves in it, and nothing else.
"I'm afraid I don't know him? Does he have a name, or an alias? I might know him and not know it. Many of us don't exactly get together in meatspace very often."
She flumps herself onto the couch, taking up far more space than is usually allotted to small women. "You're... different today."
Nicholas Hyde
Nick follows her to her couch. There is a little point that has appeared between his brows, appeared when Grace named the Chorister: she says that, and he shakes his head. "I don't know her name and I haven't spoken with her," he says. "But it sounds like that might be her, maybe. I'd like her information, if you're willing to give it."
Meatspace, Grace says, and Nick nods to this again. It's a slow, contemplative movement of his head; he processes things this way. He sits down on the other end of the couch so as to allow her to take up as much space as she wishes, and half turns in her direction. He takes up less space than is generally allotted to men. And he smiles when she comments on his difference, and says first, "I went Seeking last week and came back."
He folds one leg underneath him, and his smile has faded now and back into that thoughtful expression. "His name is Grant. I don't know his last name. His dad was running some sort of snuff film ring and Grant was helping maintain the website. He's young though. Probably eighteen or nineteen."
Grace
She nods and smiles a little to him at the mention of a Seeking, but leaves her commentary to that. Mostly because the next thing out of his mouth has her eyebrows raising a lot.
"Grant Kherrington the Third, aka NomNomzDead, son of evil asshole Grant Kherrington Junior and Elizabeth Bartlett. I read his email," Grace says. "I also owned their onion site and shut it down."
She doesn't explain what an onion site is, because doesn't everybody just know?
"So, yeah. I know of him. He seems like..." she shakes her head. "A kid who had the wrong fucking father. His emails were like... He was trying to fight back, but not too hard. I think he was afraid of his dad."
Nicholas Hyde
"What's an onion site?" Because evidently not everyone just knows, and Nick is the sort of man who asks a lot of questions. He is naturally curious.
His eyebrows, too, are raised: enough so that she can surmise that they are probably talking about the same Grant. What he says next confirms that. "Yeah. I've spoken with Grant a couple of times. Sera gave him a place to stay. I think he was afraid of his dad, and I also think he was kept in isolation to the extent that he didn't really understand the full implications of what he was doing."
Grace
"Ahh. It's a site you can only get to using TOR. The Onion Router. It encrypts and decrypts your data requests and posts over and over again, in a process akin to peeling the layers off of an onion. It's supposedly safe. But I know ways around that," Grace says, waves her fingers as if to say it is simple. It isn't, but that's beside the point.
"I figured as much, about the isolation. His dad had him 'killed' on paper, probably so he wouldn't have to go to school. I can only imagine what that life was like."
She sighs once, looks out the window. "I've been trying to track down his dad, but if he's not already dead, he's playing it smart and going off-grid."
Already dead. As if to say that when Grace finds him, she will make sure of that.
Nicholas Hyde
He's an intelligent man, Nicholas, but he can only half-follow Grace's reply: sometimes intelligence isn't enough, when a base of knowledge is lacking. He is only dimly aware of the sort of data requests she is talking about; it is all abstract to him. "Ah," he says.
"I'm not sure if he knows where his dad is, either. He's pretty eager to talk to people, though. It might be helpful for him to talk to you. I'm not sure he realizes he's Awake, or what that even means."
Grace
"Well, I can supply him with some answers. Not many, but some," she says, her eyes still on the window.
There is a bit of the morose in Grace's response, as excited as she might be to talk to another tech-leaning Awakened individual. She's still trying to hunt his father down. She was the one who started the process of turning his life upside down, even if his life was a shit-show before now.
There's really no way to tell how Grant Kherrington the Third is going to take all that.
"If he doesn't know what being Awakened means, I can show him. If he wants to know if things are ever going to get better?" she shrugs.
"Where is he?"
Nicholas Hyde
There is a furrow of one of Nick's brows, a quirk of his mouth when Grace shrugs. "What do you mean, if he wants to know if things are ever going to get better?"
A beat. "He's at a place of Sera's. Let me check with her to see whether or not she wants me to give the information out. If she doesn't, I'm happy to bring Grant to you instead. I'm sure he'd like to see more of the city."
Grace
"Well, that's a question only he can answer, eh? I can't," she responds. Recovery or further falling into his father's ruts is going to be up to Grant, really.
She rolls her eyes at his suggestion that Sera might not want to give the information out. Grace has lounged on Sera's bed smoking her pot before. That's almost a given. But...
"Okay. I'll be around. And if I'm not, I can be around. Just let me know when you want to set this thing up. I'll be happy to help however I can."
Nicholas Hyde
"I suppose," Nick says. "I think things are going to get better for him, though. I think he wants that."
He bites the inside of his cheek here, still thoughtful. Perhaps he missed the roll of her eyes; his gaze is elsewhere, off at some undefined point in the room. Perhaps he is only ignoring it.
"Are you willing to provide me with Isolde's information? I'd like to talk to her a little more too."
Grace
"I've never actually met Isolde. I have her number, though. If she asks who to blame about her number getting around, you can always throw Angela under the bus," Grace says, slight uptick of a smile. "Angela Avella is her partner on the force. She's Chakravanti, and I've been helping out with a few things on her plate -- including this whole... snuff porn thing."
Grace's nose wrinkles up at the mention of what the site was selling. She had to look at it, if only just to confirm that yes -- that is what the site was. A red room.
She shifts on the couch, pulls her phone out of her jean pocket, and flops over enough to show Nick her contacts listing for Isolde.
Nicholas Hyde
Nick's eyebrows lift briefly as Grace mentions Angela, Isolde's Chakravanti partner: a name unknown to him, apparently. He pulls his phone out of his pocket so that he can add the number into it. "Thanks," he says. "I'm glad that you helped bring all of that down, it sounds like it was bad news."
That is putting it lightly, but, well. They are both experienced enough to have seen as bad and worse.
A beat. "How are you doing, Grace?"
Grace
"Yeah. I just went out looking for companies that didn't deserve to be in business anymore, you get it? I didn't expect to find something like this, really. But it's what I found.
"I'm glad I found it, too. I just hope it was enough, and I found it in time."
He asks her how she is, and her head lolls to one side in contemplation.
"I'm good. River and I are scouting out some real estate. Maybe I can house Nomz in whatever I finally manage to get? I'm looking to create a kind of meeting-place and housing for us that isn't all the way out in Morrison. And bonus points, it would be something nobody else knows about yet. I mean, it would be safe, for a while."
Grace is okay. Okay as long as she has something to strive for, at least. Always, there is something on her horizon.
"How are you? I mean, Seeking. That's pretty cool, man," she says, gives him a smile.
Nicholas Hyde
"I'm sure you found it in time to save lives," Nick says, and there is a little furrow to his brow here: there were probably other lives that weren't saved. He doesn't say this; Grace is not at fault and doesn't need the guilt.
Nick hums thoughtfully as Grace tells him that she is planning to construct a sort of chantry. "It would be nice to not have to hike all the way out there," he says. "I'm doing well. Glad to be...I mean, I felt for a while that I was building up to something. I'm glad it...that I found what I was looking for."
Grace
"Well. When you go out looking for yourself, sometimes you are surprised to find that quarry," Grace says, smiles at him. "We're usually so relentlessly hidden away."
She smiles again. "It is good to hear that you are glad to be."
Everyone should be so glad, shouldn't they?
"I don't know when it's going to happen to me again. I'm usually kind of blindsided. But I'm sure it will. Maybe that surety is my sign it's going to happen soon, eh?"
Nicholas Hyde
Grace smiles, and so: so does Nicholas. It is easy for him, this mirroring, reflecting the emotions of others back at them. It is easier for him to do this than it is for him to understand how he feels separate from what he sees in them, sometimes.
"Maybe," Nick says. "Depending on how in touch you are with your guide, you might be able to bring it on yourself. Though I suppose it can be nice to be surprised."
Grace
"I don't know if I want to challenge my guide to 'bring it on'. It might make me participate in a cheerleading competition, led by Pat Sajak. It's kind of a dick sometimes," she says, with fondness.
"You know, the first message I got from my Avatar was a text that read: 'DO YOU WANT TO PLAY A GAME?' Little shit thinks its funny."
She laughs, because it really is.
Nicholas Hyde
There is a quirk of his mouth when she laughs, a pull of the muscles there at the corner and along his cheek. "Sometimes I think it might be nice to have one with a sense of humor. I don't always see mine taking the same form, but she isn't much of a joker."
Grace
"Mine never takes the same form," Grace says. "Birds, Technocrats, a giant Hydra, the aforementioned Pat Sajak..."
So, you know, a wide range of crazy there.
"It's kind of a question, right? A surprise. What will it be next? Sometimes its jokes are hilarious ones like shooting me over and over again until I learn not to be afraid." She rolls her eyes. Still, it was doing that for a reason, wasn't it?
"I don't really know what mine is. It's 'it' until I can figure out something that fits better."
Nicholas Hyde
There is another lift of his eyebrows, a subtle arch, as she tells him what form her Avatar has taken. "I don't know if we're ever supposed to completely understand what it is," Nick says. "That's one of the themes of something that's divine or infinite, isn't it? We can't fully grasp or define it."
He reaches up thoughtfully to tweak one of the curls near his ear, tugs on it and lets it spring free as his eyes wander away. "At least, not before Enlightenment. Maybe that's where Enlightenment occurs. That understanding."
Grace
"Pssh. There are plenty of ways to define infinity. Countably infinite, uncountably infinite... the infinity of numbers between zero and one, the infinite numbers both real and imaginary, the infinite number of prime numbers. Some infinities are bigger than others. Some infinities are very very small, bounded ones.
"I think Enlightenment is a big infinity. One of the everything ones. The infinity of emotion, of consciousness. An infinity of universes in the sea of them. We may not be grasping it ourselves just yet. But maybe that's for the same reason an individual neuron doesn't grasp the color red.Something is attempting to grasp it, and we help by trying?"
Nicholas Hyde
Nick listens in this very intent way: it is clear when he listens that his sole focus is on Grace, on her words, on understanding and processing the words she is saying. "I think we're saying the same thing, in a sense," he says. "The point is, it's unfathomable to us currently."
Grace
"Maybe it isn't, to all of the 'usses' everywhere and everywhen. I don't know. A thought I've had, before. Like the universe itself tries to figure things out through us. That it learns. I've seen it happen before, in another universe. Straight from the personification's mouth."
Although, knowing this universe, would it be a good thing to meet its personification? It wouldn't exactly be nice would it? Then again, are they ever?
To what purpose is that question being answered?
"Maybe the thing that is capable of understand is just curious, like us. It would make sense, right?"
Nicholas Hyde
"Maybe," Nick says, and this too is thoughtful. "I suppose it could be curious about us the same way we are of it. But I don't...I don't know if I necessarily see it as something external. Believe in some outside entity larger than myself, that is."
There is a little frown there, something that suggests he is trying to wrap his head around it, around the thought. "I believe in an interconnected creation, I suppose, and that's the larger thing for me. I don't externalize it that way."
Grace
"Neither do I. Externalize it, that is. Natural versus manmade, observer versus observed. They're all artificial boundaries that we make. But, we make them for reasons, because sometimes it is easier to understand a thing if you dissect it. The important thing to keep in mind though, is that your boundaries aren't actually there.
"We are the larger thing, trying to understand itself -- partly by erecting artificial boundaries that we experience as conscious lives."
To keep the paradox of the one and the whole, to switch between the two like unfolding a paper snowflake when it becomes advantageous, this is how she sees 'it'.
"There was a guy. A physicist. David Bohm. He came up with the idea of an implicate and explicate order to the universe. The implicate order has a sort of 'folded' quality to it, and the explicate order are the abstractions through which humans experience reality -- an unfolded quality. When folded together, we are one, when unfolded, we experience a separation, but we're the same general 'thing' in both concepts."
Nicholas Hyde
Nick makes a ruminative noise; his eyes drift skyward as he considers her words. "So how do the artificial boundaries help us understand ourselves, then?"
Grace
"I think of it like..." she breathes in, looks at the ceiling. "Okay, you want to write a story about human nature. Obviously, then, you write about a robot."
She leans back on the couch.
"Why? Well, because in that case, you can clear away everything else about humans except one or two parts, and examine how those parts interact with each other. Maybe at first your robot doesn't experience emotion, it just has the ability to reason. You examine the implications of that. Then, you give it emotions, and examine the implications of that. Now, you have a better idea of how reason and emotion both interact with each other and how it is when they don't.
"The parts are interesting in and of themselves, and can't be fully understood until teased away from the whole. But then, the whole is also interesting too, so we can add things to the parts until we get a whole, and inspect that process too."
She looks amused at the ceiling for a bit.
"But then, I write science fiction, so of course I'd say that's the way the universe thinks of us."
Nicholas Hyde
Nick makes another musing noise as he considers this. "So you think the universe sets us up to interact with each other, that way, sort of an eternal thought experiment."
Grace
"I think the universe sets us up to interact with each other and with itself. I think it sets up electrons to interact with other electrons in its eternal thought experiment. We aren't exactly special, except that we have a tendency to accelerate the process a bit.
"It also never forgets anything that has ever happened, and I think that has a purpose behind it too. Otherwise, you could much more easily unmix a milkshake or unscramble an egg. The arrow of time's purpose is to remember what the universe has learned, in a way. It's very tightfisted with that data."
Entropy, Nick. All conversations with Grace eventually lead to this point. It's like a law of the universe.
Nicholas Hyde
Nick scrubs a hand along the side of his jaw as he listens, his eyes still on some undefined point in the room. "I see," he says, and maybe he actually does. "So you're...trying to understand how the universe works, and you're hoping to tackle that question as you move on toward Enlightenment? For when you Seek again next?"
Grace
Grace blinks at the ceiling. "Well, no. Most of my Seekings have dealt with... I don't know. Behaviors my Avatar didn't think would lead me to Enlightenment any faster, if I kept indulging in them? Basic stuff. Removing obstacles, and all.
"Maybe next time, it will be different. Or maybe it will never be different, and I will never cease being someone new."
She laughs. "As if that wasn't the way it already works. We are always someone new, from nanosecond to nanosecond."
Usually, though, that newness isn't quite so profound.
Nicholas Hyde
"We are," Nick agrees. "I think that happens until you reach Enlightenment. Until you reach a point in the Wheel where it stops." A beat. "So your Avatar mostly gets you to try to stop old behaviors, instead of learning new ones?"
Grace
"Mmm. If you stop an old behavior, don't you learn new ones as a general rule? Like, if you stop being overly-emotional, you learn control? There's two sides to every coin and all."
Like her, when she had to cease being afraid, and learned bravery. A turning, there, however slight. Towards what? Something better? Or something else?
Nicholas Hyde
"I suppose you do, in a sense," Nick says. "But I think it's more in the framing of it. Trying to learn a desired behavior isn't the same process as trying to unlearn an undesired one."
Grace
"I don't know. You're the expert here on behaviors and psychology and shit. Changing the framing changes the painting, is what you're trying to say?"
Well. It changes the way you look at it, and isn't that a change? The biggest one, in some ways.
She tilts her head.
Nicholas Hyde
"Yes. That's the basis behind some therapeutic concepts, actually, cognitive behavioral therapy being one. Thought informs behavior, and the way in which you frame a thought influences behavior." Nick shrugs, then.
"I've been thinking about it a lot, lately, because I was...I was trying to avoid doing certain things, but all it made me do was feel more bounded in, not less. I think I started learning more recently when I started focusing on things I wanted to learn to do instead of things I wanted to learn to not do."
Grace
"Oh, well that's good. And it makes sense. Avoiding things isn't going to teach you anything, is it?"
Well, chances are he was trying to avoid the darker things. But there are two sides to every coin, aren't there? The darkness and the light go hand in hand.
"Whereas throwing yourself into things that you like, well that's almost guaranteed to. I... never really had that problem. I had the problem of throwing myself into everything all at once, though. I had to take a chill pill and realize that I wasn't going to miss out if I didn't."
Nicholas Hyde
Nick nods when she says this, and there is a glint of amusement there in his eyes. "I think Pen is like that too, sometimes," he offers. There is a certain kind of mage that is this way. Then, as an afterthought, "Well, a lot of the Hermetics I've met are like that. You're the only Elite I've talked to extensively though."
He stretches one of his arms behind him. "You had to learn to prioritize, or you had to learn to choose?"
Grace
"Yes," she says, the quintessential answer to everything.
"I mean, there was a time when I was a full-time grad student, and a full-time Awakened individual. It kinda sucked having all those priorities that I couldn't fulfill. I had to prune away some things in my life, but also figure out what not to prune, and how to manage my time."
She looks over to Nick, finally, after a good chunk of time staring out the window and at the ceiling.
"I think the same about Pen. You know, the first time we met, I thought to myself, well here's a kindred spirit."
Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas smiles, at that; glances back to Grace. He is remembering a conversation, remembering being woken up late at night by his wife who then had only been excited to have him in Denver with her. "I think she thought the same thing."
Nick reaches back and tugs at the curls on the base of his neck. "I hope that you Seek soon and it goes well, Grace." A beat. "I should head home soon, but I'm glad we got a chance to talk more."
Grace
"I am too. Thanks for telling me about Grant," she says, lifting an arm in a farewell gesture. "I'll be waiting for your call on that one."
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