The Brightness of Experience

Grace
It is not quite the time of year to be wearing a coat, but Grace has one on anyway -- a sharp red number with black plastic strips along the seams. She expects to be here when the sun has set for real and things get more than just a little chilly.

She is also lying down in the grass, her feet dangling into the pool that is the Node, her shoes and socks a safe distance away, so they can't tip into the water and ruin her day.

As usual, any approaching person will find her with her head squarely in her phone. Even here, she needs her internet like she needs her caffeine. And she's even wearing her special coffee-bean stud earrings today, to drive home her love of the latter.

Mr. Evian
Caleb has acquired a dog.

He put the dog in his pocket one day, namely because he had no idea what to do with aforementioned dog when he picked it up and didn’t quite want to put it down. People were talking and migrating. He wasn’t sure of the social protocol to keep going or engaging so he just… yeah. Caleb has a Chihuahua now.

It’s a tiny thing. Tiny, tiny thing and that is the first herald of Caleb’s approach. It is a small ball of fluff bounding over to the node at what would be a pretty reasonable speed were it not for the fact that the dog is so. Damn. Small. It has tiny legs and tiny paws and tiny everything (except a giant head because it’s a Chihuahua and they have huge heads in proportion to the rest of them). He decided that he didn’t want to wear shoes.

Where he walks, the world seems more alive. Grass seems more robust, healthier, happier.

The Chihuahua decides to attack Grace’s elbow, as soon as it gets there. Or if it wasn’t so far away.

Grace
There are the tiniest of barks. That's what initially draws Grace's attention away from her phone -- the yips of an excited chihuahua. And when she sees it -- it? Him? Her? her eyes alight with happiness.

This happiness is not abated in the slightest by the fact that it begins to gnaw her elbow.

"Oh. My God. You are so cute, I don't even mind the fact that you're attempting to eat me," Grace says, in her talking-to-cute-animals voice.

Mr. Evian
He hungers! Oh, how he hungers. And tries to get at Grace’s elbow and only succeeding in  flipping over on his back and sticking his tiny, tiny legs up in the air. I’m so vicious. Look at me, arrrrr

Wiggle wiggle wiggle.

“Ahhh, dog, why? Why are you trying to eat her?”

Hi Grace, this is the random awakened guy you met at the book store.

Grace
"I have a flavor, apparently," Grace says, reaching out with a finger to boop the dog on the nose. It'll probably be a bitten finger. She doesn't much care. "And that flavor is delicious! It's delicious, oh yes..."

There is a saying that states that the closer one is to a cute animal, the more inane the average human's statements become. Grace isn't average, but at least she's somewhat human.

Well, somewhat. She is also almost entirely ignoring Caleb in her complete focus on cute dog.

Mr. Evian
It wouls appear, however, that Grace is in the presence of non-humans. Which, of course, consists of the dog (who did try to eat her finger) and Caleb, who plopped down somewhere between the dog and the house, and is content to watch the Chihuahua try to play with Grace.

And he tries, he has his little mouth around her finger and has forgotten that he is trying to eat her and, instead, decides he is going to start licking the finger. His little eyes try to focus on her, and by the time he forgets what he’s doing his tongue is hanging out. The term, Caleb had learned, wasblep.

The dog looks between Grace and Claeb, trying to figure out very clearly what it was that he was doing here and what he was supposed to be doing.

Grace
And so, Grace wiles away a little time being utterly enchanted with all things pertaining to the cute dog -- its adorable ears, its stubby tail, the way it shows its tiny affection.

It takes her a while longer for that attention to shift to the dog's bipedal companion.

"You're ah... Caleb, yeah? This dog is unbelievable. So tiny! Does he have a name?"

Mr. Evian
“I don’t know how to ask him his name,” he says with a sigh, “he must have one, but I’ve just been calling him dog. I have been waiting to ask Annie to ask him, but she must have better things to do than ask her houseguests’ dog companion what his name is.”

“You’re Grace?”

Grace
"Hmm," Grace says, with an upturned mouth. "You know, if he has a name he calls himself, it's probably unpronounceable by people. Some combination of yips we'd never be able to imitate. If you chose a human name for him, it wouldn't be the first time someone didn't get to pick their own."

She puts her phone down at last, stuffing it into one of her shoes.

"I'm sure he'd love whatever name you came up with."

Mr. Evian
A phone!

Grace’s hand moves and the dog bounds over to try and catch the phone, because it will be his phone. Yes, yes it will be his phone and then he will be living with it and it will be his and then? And then?! Oh, damn, the hand is there again, time to try and eat the hand again.

“Names are so important, though. I got to choose my name, or at least most of it, I suppose it would be more like a nickname. I’m sure he has something he calls me.”

Mouth curls up at the corners, “what about Bill? What do you think about a name?”

Grace
"Bill's cool," she says, laughs when the dog goes after her hand again. Man, she must have dog magnets in her fingertips. "Bitey Bill."

"You got to choose the name Caleb? Why Caleb? I mean... what drew you to that name?"

She swishes her feet around in the Node's waters, a calming kind of noise.

Mr. Evian
"I read a lot of Christian mythology and I thought the idea of being one of the few people who was able to see the promised land after a long, long journey seemed really appealing. I found him interesting as a character, and it means bold. Or dog. Dogs are known for being loyal so... why not be known for being bold and loyal?"

Bill, as he has been dubbed, concludes that he needs to eat her fingers. Makes his vicious, vicious little sound and tries to pounce on her with his little, little paws. Bitey Bill is not a bright dog by any stretch for the imagination.

"Why did you pick Grace?"

Grace
"I didn't pick Grace. My mom did," she says, with perhaps a little more venom than is really warranted.

"But hey, that's not a bad reason for a name there. A bit of the Cynic about you? I don't mean that in a bad way. I have a lot of appreciation for Diogenes."

Mr. Evian
"Humans have complicated every simple gift from the gods," he says with a smile, a nod to the fact that he understood, "and I can appreciate the need and desire for independence. I wish I knew more about Diogenes, but my knowledge is lacking. Most of my education in the subject was directed entirely around history."

A moment, then he smiled, bright and pleased, "I like the name Grace. It has a lot of meaning. It flows off the pen."

Grace
Grace rolls her eyes. "It also doesn't describe me in the slightest. But then, how are you supposed to accurately describe a person before they're born, like, you know, when most names are given?"

She kicks at the water, then, raising a foot that's starting to go all pruned.

"I've had nicknames," she says, smiles then at a memory. Blackberries and rain. "One guy I know always calls me Kit, like a fox cub? It fits me better."

Mr. Evian
“Then stop being called Grace and start being called Kit,” as though it was that simple. For Caleb, it seems to be that simple- if you don’t like your name, change it. Simple enough.

He looks at her again.

“Why do you think that Grace doesn’t fit?”

Grace
"'Cause I'm about as graceful as a newborn giraffe, both with words and on my feet? I don't know. It just doesn't."

She attempts to pet the newly-monikered Bill. It'll probably result in another play-bite, but that's just so adorable anyway.

"I guess somebody showed you where the Chantry is, eh? I mean, obviously. Or you wouldn't be here..."

Mr. Evian
And it does. This is Bill. Bill’s response to anyone trying to love him is to try to eat them, then realize that he likes pettings, which ends in him licking and nuzzling and bouncing like a popcorning guinea pig.

“Margot brought me here,” he replied, “and Annie said I could stay. I’ve started on the westmost shelves in the library and I’ve been working around. If I keep at my usual pace I should be done with it in… eight months? She has a lot of books.”

Grace
"Aww. Margot and Annie are nice people," she says, "And you... you are just precious. Precious!"

A beat.

"The dog. I mean the dog."

She sighs contentedly at Bill's little bouncing antics. This is, well, just what she needed, really.

"I've been meaning to set up a place like this near the city. No Node, of course. I don't know how to make them, or if that's even possible. But Annie's said she'll donate the library in digital form, and I'll have space for people. I just haven't gotten around to it, because..."

Mr. Evian
"Because..?"

Grace
She paused there because perhaps the next words will break the spell of calm on this place. It's hard to talk about.

"Well, because I'm busy. There's been murders and disappearances I'm investigating. I'm really glad you ended up here, to be honest. It's safer."

Mr. Evian
He thinks about this. It's an odd thing, because the way that he looks is at once distant and a little like one would expect a toddler to look when they're processing a very complicated thought.

"I don't understand why someone would actively want to kill another person," he says, "there's a sacredness in living, in how much effort and energy it takes to become alive. It seems like you'd be destroying art."

Grace
She frowns a bit, as if trying to figure Caleb out -- a mirror of his own toddleresque quality.

"There's many reasons. The noblest of which is to end someone's great suffering. But I don't think these deaths were so noble. For one, if they were, we'd already know why the people died."

Mr. Evian
"But... if it's noble then it's not murder. Murder is harmful- ending someone's suffering isn't harmful."

A second, a beat as he pieces through what is going on, and what he knows.

"How did they die?"

Grace
"In one case, hypothermia. In two others, gunshots to the head and chest. In three others, we have no clue, and can only guess that they might be dead. They just never came back home."

She pets Bill again, Bill the oblivious. Bill the bitey. It makes things easier, somehow, when there's something that simple around. Bite and bounce and lick, in that order.

"It's all gone down in Colorado Springs, but yeah. From all accounts, they were all fresh Awakened Mages. That has everybody understandably worried that it might spread to here."

Mr. Evian
"Maybe people didn't want them anymore," he says. Doesn't insist, but offers as though this was a very real possibility. That life can be sacred on one hand but so easily tossed aside the next.

He nods, "I think things are okay here. Everyone seems to be really nice and Annie has a nice house and people are welcome here. There is a lot of support."

Grace
Maybe people didn't want them anymore. There's a sad statement. It has her petting arm going limp, to Bill's dismay. "I don't think that was it. They were missed."

It's possible to not be missed. The concept isn't really lost on Grace. On the contrary, she knows it too well.

"And, I'm glad to hear that you have the support you need here."

Mr. Evian
A second passes, and he sits with the idea that someone missed these people- did he know if he was missed? Did he know if his creator really cared for him, if he was more than just lab equipment? Why would he have been given away so easily, he wasn't ready to go and yet... the longer he moves on the more he wonders if he should have feelings about his state.

"What's a Mormon?"

Grace
"Er..."

Bit of a non sequitur, that. It has the train of Grace's mind a bit derailed for a second, as she tries to come up with an answer that makes sense.

"It's um... an offshoot of Protestant Christianity? Started by Joseph Smith, I think? They believe in angels a lot, and abstain from coffee, which is like," she huffs out a laugh. "A holy sacrament to me, so I'm obviously not Mormon. Why do you ask?"

Mr. Evian
"I tell people I'm from Utah and they keep asking if I'm a Mormon and at first I thought it was like being an alien? And then I wondered if it was an ethnicity? And I don't know what my ethnicity is, so I thought maybe I'm a Mormon?" he shrugged, "I figured you would know."

Grace
"Caleb, where are you from? I mean, besides just Utah..."

She sighs, sits up from her awkward lying-down-and-petting-chihuahua position.

"Eh. I guess you don't need to tell me if you don't want to, I just... I don't know anyone from Utah who wouldn't know what Mormonism is. Sometimes the question of where you come from doesn't just mean a location."

Mr. Evian
"I've been with a member of the Society of Ether for the entirety of my existence up until now," he says, shrugs and says this as though this is normal. As though spending time with awakened society was just how people lived their lives.

"We spent all our time in Eden, and then I left and came here," he said, "it's a lot more lively than being there."

Grace
"So... Isolated, like? Your whole life? They obviously didn't teach you everything you needed to know, did they? Like, well. For instance. What's a Mormon."

There's better ways of putting all this. Grace winces at herself for it, and resumes petting the bouncing ball of fluff, although she can't help but plaster her worry over Caleb all over her face.

He's just so... sheltered.

Mr. Evian
"Mormons never really came up. I have a basic introduction to numerous subjects, though. History, theoretical physics, the American legal system, superstitionist theories, gardening," he could go on and on, "and I know how to disassemble and reassemble most conventional electronic equipment to cannibalize for parts."

"Science doesn't need to be completely expensive."

He pauses.

"Are Mormons going to come up a lot?"

Grace
"Maybe. That and murders. There's stuff you can't easily just... learn out of a book. And as such, you're about to learn a lot. Not all of it good. Most of it, completely bizarre."

She swings around, and grabs her pruny, wet feet, so that she can more easily look him eye-to-eye, even if she rarely actually manages to do so.

"But... Someone told me once, that your eyes get opened to the beauty of the world along with the ugliness. There will be good things to learn, too."

Mr. Evian
"I'm finding that... the people you interact with and see... they're a lot more interesting than the magick of it all. This... maybe we're drawn to what's new."

Grace
"I did mean the people you interact with and see. There's not a whole lot of difference between that and the magick of it all, when you get down to it. I mean..."

She stares up into the sky, the stars starting to come out -- and from a place this remote, you can see them so clear.

"What Margot and Annie did for you, the support you have, that's beautiful. The ones who hate and kill, not so much. But they don't get to dull the brightness of experience."

Ned, Be Careful.

Ned
The knock comes on whichever of however many security doors Grace has between her and the outside world and that Ned has managed to gain access to before having to Knock in the first place.

Opening the door, he is brow perked and lip pursed, hair gel'd back and flat along his scalp (contained) while the semblance of his resonance, a controlled suffocation, like a baptism or a bit of bdsm with a trusted partner, washed in ahead of him, even as the effect he'd no doubt come here within, steadily begins to diminish and dissolve.

What was once a pair of slacks and black sweater, all as non-descript as it gets, becomes a more noticeably impressive black hoodie, cut up pair of converse and dark gray jeans.

"Did what I could to mask the approach. Hope that satisfies our mutual paranoia." A pause in the doorway the brow remains perked. "What's up?"

Grace
She's been doing this a lot lately -- inviting people to this place. It's one spot she doesn't mind if the Technocrats discover. It is empty except for a past life. A Sleeper version of Grace once lived here, and she kept it around out of a desire to have a place to store her clothes. This is the backup. It doesn't seem, to Ned, that anyone actually lives here. It isn't steeped in the sharpness of a bird's wing. There is dust.

And, there is Grace, sitting on a box at a tiny table with her laptop.

"You're actually the first one to do that, and it's nice. You probably should."

She turns to him, gives him what she hopes is a reassuring smile, and gestures over to the 'kitchen' counter where there is a plate of store-bought cupcakes. "If you want one... you know. Protect me from having to eat them all."

Ned
"No thanks. Trying to cut back."

Smile met with a smirk, his hands vanishing into his pockets when she invites him inside. He nudges the door shut behind him and follows her into the 'kitchen' gaze travelling the length of the place and easily dismissing it as a 'hideout' rather than a home. His hands remain in his pockets and he moves to pull his hood up (all the better to keep DNA samples/fingerprints from being left anywhere).'

"I checked out your 'Wiley' at an Auction the other week. His girlfriend is actually his Fiance and the pair of them are pretty tight knit. No secrets, so they're both in on it."

Grace
She shrugs at his dismissal of cupcakes, not exactly sad that there'll be more for her. But then he follows that up with more business. He went out to talk to Wiley. Okay. Well. That's news.

"I found out something that suggests that we need to be... well. More careful. At least one of the murder victims was a secret Technocrat. They've opened up their own investigation."

"But, please tell me what you found out, if anything?"

Ned
"Shit."

Something in Ned's features falls away, pushing him internal for a moment. A hand pulls out of his pocket against better instincts and grinds fingers into his brow for a second.

"I was hoping it was them doing the killings."

It takes a moment for the information to sink in before Ned returns to the conversation  hand slipping back into his pocket, a breath puffing free of his cheeks.

"I don't have much more than that other than confirmation of everything you told me about him. Description, Fiance. They do really dangerous hunts for 'sport' and as membership events go. One of Wiley's friends own's land up near Pike Peak where he said they can go to 'practice' the hunts...which was the location of one of the murdered Victims, St Croix? Who was a member of the Order as you know."

A pause to parse through any further information.

"I spoke to the Doc so I assume you've got the low down on what Margot and I sorted out with this Keeper thing. We're not going near that with a Ten foot clown pole and I think everyone else needs to steer clear of it too. Evelyn's  a pretty heavy suspicion at the moment so if someone wants to jump on talking to her, interrogating her, figuring out who the hell she actually is, that'd be pretty great..." Another pause. A bit of sarcasm there, though it doesn't seem aimed at Grace (because she knows the tone of his sarcasm by now when it's aimed directly at her).

"That's about all right now. I'll know more before the weekend is out, hopefully....but...."

Ned stares at Grace, sucking in a deep breath.

"I need to know how likely it is that it's a Euthanatos doing these killings." She mentioned Mike. She's been dating one. A high ranking one if rumours suggest. Ned's eyes are firm here, lips thin and pressed.

Grace
There's information. Stuff that Grace just soaks in, like the reference to Pike's Peak and practicing. Practicing on LaCroix? Ned wants to take everything directly to Evelyn, and that's a fine idea, except that they have no real proof yet, and it would just clue her in on the next people she needs to kill if she is the one.

And Grace would respond to all that, if not for Ned's last statement. The thing he needs to know.

"A normal, sane Euthanatos? Not likely, except for the Technocrat. I don't know about you, but if I found somebody spying on us for the enemy and endangering us all, it would piss me off. If Laura Fairbanks was hiding her status as a Technocratic Agent, there's no telling what else she was hiding. A member of the Euthanatos would be able to find out and dispense justice. But they also would, I don't know, tell people.

"They don't go after innocents, Ned. Not unless the only thing left in that life is suffering, they don't."

Ned
(Life 1/Entropy 1: Polygraphic Likelihood Test. Diff. 4 - 1 for Pain)

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[As far as Grace is aware, she is not even stretching the truth. Now, normal and sane are relative terms. It stands to reason that an insane Euthanatos is scary shit, but so are most insane Mages.]

Ned
"Far as I can tell, the Euthies have an agenda that doesn't sit well with a lot of the Trads. That agenda could well pose problems and more than likely, has posed problems in the past. Killing folks  is part of the mission. I can't imagine it would be terribly difficult to get carried away with that. Especially given Jhor and all that..."

Ned's nostrils flare. His hand in his pocket is bunched, fist forming a tight knot that the hoodie's excess falls over for the most part. The air still lingers with that controlled asphyxiation he brought in with him.

"...I've recently learned more about them and they are a lot more...exacting in who they hunt and why. In a clear cut world and case history, sure they're top notch and respectably doing the right thing. This situation though...a lot of variables involved. Maybe it's a rogue agent, or worse, a fallenone-" A vague curl to his lip that vanishes with a cleared throat "-or maybe they found something out about this Order we don't know yet and are playing 'damage control'."

The fist relaxes steadily, shoulders shrugging inside the voluminous hoodie.

"So far though....I'd like to know some other suspects you think might operate with a 2 to the chest, 1 to the head sort of mentality when it comes to killing people. Who are knowledgeable enough about crime scene cleaning to know what to wipe away and how to do so with impossible clarity. Can actively take on mages and deal with them pretty comfortably and who...by your account...aren't Technocrats."

A pause. No, he's done for the moment.

Grace
"Like I said, your average, normal, sane 'Euthie' has a rather strict code of ethics that they adhere to like it's a lifeline. And it is, considering. I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's never happened, that no Chakravanti has ever gone on a killing spree for fun or quintessence, but... I couldn't say that about any Tradition. And everybody knows how to use guns, man. Hell, it was a Chorister who taught me how to shoot, for fuck's sake.

"In my experience, they're less likely to be the cause of mass panic and murder than others. I know that's just anecdotal. I don't have a scientific data set revolving around Tradition serial killers, but you know..."

She sighs, looks at the door behind him. Remembers herself pleading with Whitney not to open it -- not to endanger herself...

"A Euthanatos once stood behind that door with the intent to kill me. It was probably the most compassionate and caring thing anyone's ever done for me."

Ned
"If it was just about the guns, I wouldn't be concerned. All the facts combined do a good job of eliminating a lot of potentials though. Capability to do all of this as well as keep the collective Mage community in Denver in the dark as to their identity alongside Kill three Mages without anyone, the Techies included, knowing until after the fact? That is not a small thing to accomplish, you have to admit that at least. Someone capable, skilled and secretive enough to make those acts happen that knows what they are doing and how to accomplish it all directly and effectively."

A pause. Hand held up.

"...But you're right. There's no guarantee whatsoever nor evidence. I'd like to be wrong but that level of capability is...well, you said it already." Scary Shit. "Regardless of that particular fact, our Cabal's going to do some investigating around the Order. Try to dig up some of the more esoteric nonsense these people seem to believe in. Part of me thinks there's something nephandic going on in their ranks but I won't know until we get a closer look. I do need to know more about what we'd be looking for though. Iconography or symbols or even phrasing and language. If you've got anything around that, feel free to leave it in the mail box."

Ned's wrapping things up. The air is clear and free once more and his demeanor seems a touch antsy. Ready to get moving again.

"Anything else?"

Grace
"It suggests a powerful Mage, to me. Not Euthanatos. Perhaps your Secret Keeper spirit cleaned up the crime scenes? I don't know. I also wouldn't know the first thing about Nephandic iconography. Empty voids in the depths of space? Cthulhu? Those ridiculous upside-down crosses that Goths like to wear? No. I take that back. That's an insult to Goths."

She rubs at her eyes. "And probably Cthulhu... I will say, though, that their Workings sometimes have a... feeling about them. They can use Magick like normal folks, but they can also use this kind of... inverted Magick. Qlippothic. You'd know it if you looked at it. Not fun. I can show you an example sometime. It might still have that... disgusting quality."

"But, you should probably know what else I found before you leave. Elizabeth Palor's father? Grandfather? Is a high-ranking member of the Falcon-people. His company is where I found that Technocrat talking about his dead partner and investigations into the murder. His name was Phillip Wright. He might be off trying the same thing as you."

Ned
"Mmmmm, well that puts Wiley's membership into perspective, given they're getting hitched. Daddy needs a successor."

Ned's eyes dart a little at the information, but he doesn't offer more than that. He pulls back from the kitchen with a glance around, already rolling his shoulders into an easier gait.

"I'll be in touch again once we've solidified something more concrete. I trust you'll share things out with the rest of the collective. Better suited than me...or the Doc I think-" A bit of a laugh there, utterly unbidden "-keep me posted on what else you might find though."

He's heading for the door, thoughtful if grim.

Retro -- The Fallout

Pen
THE SETTING:

A green field somewhere in Washington Park, clover and the dream of green: green as green only is when man wishes green to exist; green as a fairy's glade, green as a hope of summer. The setting: flower garden nearby, and it's late evening - not dark yet. Darkness will descend during the second act of

TIDUS ANDRONICUS

OR

THE TEMPEST

OR

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING*.

THE TIME:

Right now the sun is sinking, thinking about setting, There is a stage built up in the park for tonight's play, beginning soon--twenty minutes from now.

People are still coming with their blankets, their picnic baskets, their transportable chairs.

THE CAST:

Penelope Mercury Mars has already staked out a corner of the grass and has spread a nubby blanket out, something in grays and blues which looks like the sea and is well-worn, worn-so-well that it is raveling, that the only hope it had to continue its existence was to become a picnic blanket. Picnic blanket, most hallowed of blanket jobs!



*VOTE FOR THE PLAY NOW. BY SHOUTING IT OUT, OOC.

Grace
Grace came with Kalen, bringing the necessary food and drink. She would also consider robots to be necessary, but apparently no -- they are not actually so. Shakespeare did not know of robots. A very sad fact that, with time machines, should be possible to rectify. Why has this not been done yet? Or perhaps it has.

Shakespeare must have had to beat down the time travelers with a special stick made just for future-people. He probably gave it a unique name that would, had he writ it down, have survived the ages.

Shakespeare did know of spirits and wizards though, that much is evident by the play on offer today in the park. It also shows his feelings towards all those time travelers, by making his wizard break and bury his staff and abandon magic altogether.

"Woostick. I think he would have called it that. Or a Magerybopper. You think? A stick for bopping sorcerers?"

That, by the way, comes out of nowhere. If anyone were to ever ask Grace Evans what she was thinking at any given time, it might just be something like that.

Nick
Nicholas Hyde arrives very-nearly-late, particularly for someone well-versed in the Art of Time.  He appears in a whirlwind of dark hair (unfortunately frizzed by humidity) and checkered blue dress shirt and grey tie, fresh from work, and there is a bottle-shaped object in his hand, covered in a brown paper bag.

He halts at the edge of the park, scanning over the gathered heads, and: fortunately Pen's is bright red enough to be spotted quickly.

So he beelines, and soon enough he is about to -

"Oh.  Hello, Grace," he says, lifting a hand in a wave as he approaches and notices the Elite there with his wife.

Elliott Chandler
Kalen Michael Holliday has been a lot of people.  He is, in the end, another person now.

They are about to watch the Tempest.  None of the people he has ever been have watched this play.  None of the people he has ever been understood how to just stop and watch something ridiculous for the sheer joy of it.  The people he has been, likewise, read things to help them survive.

He appears tonight with Grace, calm enough, in jeans and a plain pale gold tee-shirt.  They have enough food to feed a small army.  And coffee.  Two kinds of coffee because some people want dark roast and some people like those blonde coffees.  It is, at least, less complicated than when he brings hot chocolate with about a dozen kinds of gourmet marshmallows.  (But there are hazelnut marshmallows, for Grace to put in her coffee.  And some extra.)

Both Pen and Nick get a subdued, though not hesitant wave.  "Hey."

Pen
Here are Grace and Kalen. Pen lifts a chin by way of greeting once they're close enough for her to acknowledge: cool, welcoming - glad, see, in a way that is quite uncomplicated. She is glad about people. The air is full of possibility; of spirits, of the end of a day; it is sleepless. See how she chases it with the luminous slash of a smile and a raised hand, fingers curved just so. Hello! Come here? Yes no? There's this flick of a look toward Nick because it has been all day long, all long day long, and such engenders longing, and anyway: she is glad in an uncomplicated way to see people knows; she longs in an uncomplicated way for someone she does.

There's a bag of stuff on one corner of the blanket. That includes an environment conscious bug repellent, some fancy cheeses, grapes, bottles; it includes salt and vinegar chips and a baguette. Simplicity.

Grace
"Hello! You like your coffee dark or light roasted? I... think this one is light," she says, grabbing a green thermos out of her bag and shaking it next to her ear, as though she could hear the darkness thereof.

The differences in what people constitute a picnic is definitely on display here, as Grace then unlugs her bag of coffee and stuff all over Pen's blanket. There are multiple thermoses. And marshmallows. And udon noodle take-out. And dumplings of some unknown kind. Also, cupcakes, because Grace decided that sugar was necessary.

There is very little simplicity here, or even a theme beyond "Hey, this might be tasty." Chaos, definitely. Delishus chaos.

And, also, a bit of bluntness, as if Pen and Nick's blanket were already hers to plop down upon. After all, the food and drink are also already theirs.


Nick
Nicholas watches as Grace's bounty spills all over the blanket: dumplings and marshmallows and thermoses and take-out.  A very generous bounty, all told.  It takes him a half a heartbeat, but he smiles up at Grace after a moment and gestures to the expanse of blanket.

Then he hands the bottle-shaped object to Pen, and takes a moment to reach up and loosen his tie and undo the last button on his collar before he sits down and leans over to place a kiss on her cheek.

His gaze then returns up to Grace and the man with her.  "Who's this with you?"

Elliott Chandler
Elliott seems a little more hesitant to just take over their blanket, although he does not seem at all concerned that Grace is putting their food out for people he barely knows.  Still, even if he has abandoned the Order, he is fond of Penelope Mercury Mars.  He settles; relaxed enough, yes, but at the very edges of the blanket.

For a second, even though he came with the food, even though he picked it out with Grace, he studies the food as though it seems as new to him as to anyone else.  He still expects something else.  Something more like what Penelope brought.  And wine.  Red wine and a different language.

Denver still seems surreal.  "We met once," he says quietly to Nick.  "Some time ago.  Though I was someone else then, I suppose."  Not that he actually offers anything other than that.  Apparently Nick asked Grace and will get his answers from Grace.

"Penelope," he says.  It is all the greeting that she gets, but there is a warmth to the tone and there is a little smile.  No.  It is almost all the greeting she gets, because now, now that they aren't bound by their Tradition and separated by it (though Pen may not yet have heard), Elliott reaches out across the expanse of nubbly blanket to offer Pen a hand.

Pen
"What a feast is here," Pen says, as Grace begins to unload thermoses and dumplings and cupcakes/as Nick bends down to hand Pen the bottle of (shh, it isn't alcohol, to be consumed publicly; it is in a brown paper bag, which everybody knows is just how people choose to drink juice sometimes in parks on warm summer evenings while the lightning bugs spark and the stars come out peer out slip away from the edges of the clouds which roil on the horizon to the west see and it will be a beautiful sunset once it comes for certain a sunset like a battle between Hell and Heaven a sunset of gold foil rims of luminous and bloody) wine. She sets the wine bottle down but her hand stays finds Nick's arm and then his thigh and then oh good a Nicholas shaped chair.

To Grace: "I like my coffee dark, but I'm not adverse to light. Would you two like to share our grapes, perhaps some wine? Have you two seen this troupe perform before? I hear they are very good, and that Prospero will be Prospera."

"I feel I haven't seen either of you in an age!"

Grace
Grace looks back and forth between the two men in disbelief. They don't know each other. "Kalen, you're so antisocial these days," she says, no disappointment or shaming there, just a statement.

Kalen will be as he is in the moment -- a whirl of changes around an essentially good man.

"This is Kalen. Or Elliot. It depends on what he wants to be called. My partner in crime and business, which is really one and the same when you think about it." It certainly is where Grace is concerned, in so many different ways.

Then, she goes to making a hole in the cupcake box. Managing that, she hands a lavender vanilla bean one over to Kalen, who clearly needs it.

"We are hoping to open a community center here at some point, because Denver needs more counselors before it goes and hurts itself again."

Pen explains how she likes her coffee dark, so Grace examines a red thermos and rolls it over. "This one's dark! There's a creamer tin in here somewhere, and hazelnut marshmallows..."

Nick
There is a furrowing of Nick's brows as Kalen says they have met before, and: it is hard to pin down faces sometimes, when one is continually meeting new people day in and day out.  Grace mentions Kalen, though, and then there is a light of recognition - ah! and Nick nods and extends a hand forward and up.

"I remember you from the meeting now.  Good to see you again," he says, apparently nonplussed as Pen seats herself on him; evidently he is so used to it that it gives him little pause.

Denver needs more counselors, Grace says, and there is another little furrow of his brows and Nick hmms and reaches for a few grapes.  "Were both of you expecting other people?"

Elliott Chandler
"I've been away a bit," he says to Penelope.  "But I've missed home.  And the people in it."

Elliott reaches for Nick's hand once his is free of Penelope's.  "Good to see you."  He smiles a little again, relaxed but for the first time a little unsure and his eyes travel from Nick to Pen, even if he is still, at least in theory, answering Nick's question about who he is.  "Probably Elliott, more than Kalen.  I've left the people I took that Name with.  Enough people know me by that that I expect it will stick with some of them."

"Denver," Elliott says, returning his attention actually to Nick, "Has a way of seeing to it that one encounters others.  We've simply learned never to assume that we will have a solitary picnic."

Pen
The clasp of hands, Pen to Kalen, was firm: gacious. Pen: she leans back against Nicholas and watches Grace's fingers whisper over the thermoses as if she were shaping the existence of dark roast as if she were a trasure-keeper, market-owner, and aren't there legends about Mercurial Elite Virtual Adepts and their caffinated rites in the deep dark hallowed hollow light of their monitors, rites which - fueled so, by coffee - might shed this world and blossom another? "Hazelnut marshmallows?" soft, this, and bright.

Then: "I recall you - " Kalen. A glance fixes him as the subject. " - saying something about community outreach among the sleepers."

And the conversation flows, as conversation will, and Penelope leans forward a touch to reach for thermos or pull out a cup so that Grace can pour some of the dark roast in (drink of shadows), and then:

The temperature does not drop in actuality, but Pen: she sharpens, come suddenly to attention: is as still, see, as ever anything ready to be pulled from a stone. She is studying Kalen. She studies him all through his commentary on the possibility of solitary picnics in Denve.

And then she says, "Why have you abandoned your Name?"

Grace
"We always expect other people. It's the way of things."

Grace just keeps right on going, after Pen's iciness shows up, offering a kettle-shaped ceramic device to her -- it is the creamer. A tube of marshmallows follows, their brown color indicative of something fancier than Jet-Puffed.

"He's decided to go be a priest of like, all the gods," Grace says, and she is so incorrect, and she knows it, and yet -- this is fun. "We've not got room for all the statues. He got me a Buddha one for my room, and I don't even have a room to put it in yet."

A conspiratorial smile at Kalen, there. Come, play this game with me. It won't be that bad, her eyes say. No matter what.


Nick
Nick settles an arm around Pen and reaches for the bottle of wine even as the others are preparing coffee - at night, in the summer, in the park.  Nick will take the wine, thank you.

"A priest of all the gods?" he asks, and here he turns his eyes up to the other man, and there's a sort of easy acceptance in them: curiosity and openness are often the same thing.  "So you're joining the Celestial Chorus, then?"

Elliott Chandler
Elliott does not, not really mind Penelope's sharpened attention.  He understands that this must, to her, seem as incomprehensible as it once seemed to him.

Grace tries to play, to seize the threat of an oncoming storm and to wrest from it something gentler and warmer.  There is a smile that flickers briefly, something that speaks more of fondness and indulgence than agreement.  Elliott though, allows Penelope to still see his eyes.  His expression.

Because this conversation is less about Nick, really.  Nick just got caught up in a moment between one Flambeau and one former Flambeau.  Grace struggles to pull away from the seriousness of the moment, but Elliott owes Penelope more than that.  They were family, once.  They might be, in another way, family again.

"For years," he says, very quietly, "Everything I did, everything I was called to do...there is a war whether I will it or not.  I will not try to pretend our world is otherwise.  But over and over and over again, the solutions I had were...."  His voice trails off, and it not only that they are surrounded by Sleepers.  Those Sleepers can almost certainly not hear him.  "They were what they were.  I do not regret what I have been.  Those things needed to be done.  But I was always too late, Penelope.  I was always too late and there was but one solution when I arrived.

"It wasn't enough.  I can't be what I was.  Not anymore.  And what use, your people, for someone who has only horror left for war."  He shakes his head.  "Fuck, Penelope.  There may be circumstances that force my hand, but given the choice...I would never again do the things that I have been forced to do.

"I don't belong there anymore, with you.  You know that.  I think you've always known that."

His attention slides from Penelope to Nick.  "Not of any, I'm afraid.  I just have a very inclusive sculpture garden.  Though you're right, about that second thing."

Grace
Grace fake-pouts at Kalen, because he's decided to be serious and not play along with her. Even about being a priest of all the gods. Inclusive sculpture garden? Pah. The hat one has to wear to be a priest of the All-Fathers has to be enormous and grand(iose). It would be awesome. To make fun of.

"There goes my plans to get you a Pope-headdress for Halloween..."

She obtains herself the thermos of other coffee, the blonde, as though Grace ever had a preference when it came to caffeine. She minds the taste of course, they are all lovely.

"You want a dumpling?" she says, to Pen. Dumplings make things better. Don't they?

Pen

When Pen feels Nick's muscles move, she reaches for the wine bottle and snags it before he. The paper bag crinkles and she sets it between her knees, investigates the bottle's neck and mouth,  ah, a cork and the bottle opener tucked away in the bag with grapes, too far for her to reach easily.

Never let it be said that Penelope is not a poised woman; she is poised, just now, and the thing about poise: one cannot tell whether it is because one is on a narrow edge, or a wide avenue; it is only poise; it might be the same anywhere, and ever. Her eyes are such a grey -- Prospero might've conjured such a color for his seaspray-laced cloak or Sycorax (Circe) might've looked into the scrying cup with eyes that witching; that gloam-drunk; that clear. She swiped the wine bottle but she is listening to Kalen Holliday Who Isn't Any Longer explain his weariness.

Her eyes stay on him as she leans forward to snag the bag; get the corkscrew, unfold it: a shining bit of metal. She hands them both to Nicholas, demurs with a courteous shake of her head when Grace asks her if she'd like a dumpling. She would not like a dumpling, just as she does not want the creamer; she does not take it when it is handed to her, unless Grace looks a though she's going to drop it other; then she takes it and sets it down.

"Why do you think I've always known that, Elliot? What could you mean?" It is easy for her to change names for someone; as long as they claim the name, it can be theirs.

She is poised, sure; that does not preclude passion. It tints her voice; it's there in the cant of her head - the flash of her throat when she glances at the stage, conscious alertness, then brings her eyes back; it's in the very slow circling of her fingertips along Nick's knee. She might not even realize she is doing that - she'd abhor what might be regarded as a superfluous movement right now. 

"Do you believe I hold something in my heart for 'war' other than horror?" 

Beat. "This conversation may not be comfortable for our companions." 

Grace

Oh, the ice descends upon this place, now that both Kalen and Pen have ignored her unspoken pleas to keep this whole thing lighthearted. She's been heavy too long. Going to collapse into a black hole at this rate. One must be determined to avoid that kind of thing. It can suck you in, despair. Looking at abysses and all that.

Grace smirks at Pen when she starts declining to accept gifts. Somebody is getting a never-ending delivery of hazelnut marshmallows to their house. More than one could possibly consume in a day, every day. She'll make it hard to cancel, just for fuck's sake. Don't like hospitality? That's too bad. She's going to hospitality the fuck out you. And just try to complain about being buried in a mountain of marshmallows. Oh, that will be fun.

She pulls out her phone, starts typing. "Hey, Nick? Where do you guys live? I want to send you something. Very important, can't discuss this sort of thing in public, you know."

Well. There will be marshmallows. And a note, which won't arrive via shipment. Wrap a lie in a truth, yes? She does have important things to share. And it looks like she and Elliot won't be welcome on the blanket here for too much longer.

Nick

Pen's demeanor changes, and Nicholas is quiet as it does.  He allows Pen to take the bottle of wine (still paper-wrapped) from his hands, and then moments later to hand it back to him with the corkscrew, and he does this all wordlessly.  There is a deftness in his fingers as he flips the wings on the corkscrew up and works the screw into the cork with a few quick spins of his hand, and then he pulls it free with a pop.

His silence could be mistaken for trepidation or fear: his wife is a passionate woman, and Nicholas is an insightful man, and the current of tension passing between her and Elliot could not go unmissed.

Grace says his name and this draws his eyes up and away from what he is doing, and then there is a little furrow of his brows.  "We don't give out our home address, but I can give you the P.O. Box," he says, his voice tinged with apology.  "What is it?"

Elliot

Penelope's attention sharpens.  It is impossible not to note the shift in the energy, but Elliott seems unconcerned.  Truthfully, he has not faced many beings he would consider more dangerous than Penelope.  Nor, truthfully, more graceful.  Iris was, perhaps, both of those things and he stayed his ground then.  His lack of fear then and his lack of fear now are similar things - to him, neither Iris or Penelope are enemies.

There are, aren't there, reasons he is leaving the Flambeau?

"If I thought you had any love of war," Elliott says softly, barely audible over the crowd, "I would not have offered you advice when you arrived in my city, I would have found the leverage to run you out.  I certainly would not be here now.

"I meant only that I thought you saw what I was just coming to understand then, which is that at some point I was going to hesitate a second too long and someone was going to get hurt.  Perhaps worse.  And that changed, in some respects, everything.  Not because I loved what I did once and did no longer, but because I was no longer capable.

"That my place is between people and things that would make them suffer has not changed.  But the ways in which I can protect them have changed.  Enough that in some ways, our path are divided.  

"Though I do hope not in all of them." 

Pen

There is a spark of reaction: a shooting star is the same thing as a falling star, and both smoulder in the wizard's cup. Her eyebrows perk: eloquent. He'd have found the leverage. She listens. She listens earnestly and with a whisper of tension in her shoulders and the End-of-Afternoon gold is gathered up, growing long in this twilight. Grace and Nick are having their own conversations: sort of. 

Pen. Simply: "I don't know what to say to you." 

Her gaze wicks away as water wicks from a stone. It lingers on the sward where the play is to be performed as she sets her thoughts in order (tries to). Her voice is confessional quiet but intense: of course it is intense (vibrant). "I'm not insightful as some other people are. I wish I was. I don't know how to say the right thing." Now her gaze flicks back to Elliott. "There's probably a right thing to say to you, but Ash and Oak wither if I know it. I should probably say nothing. But I can't say nothing. What should I say?"

"I don't believe you see the Order clearly. And how could you see yourself clearly in the Order if you don't see it clearly? You're speaking as if there's only one way to be. As if the only thing to do is fight and toil in gruesome scenes and watch your conscience chiseled away as you follow orders like tock follows tick and there's only one set of orders; but there's more than one House and more than one way to be. What is our Will for if not the freedom to choose and make what we would. I just -

"Tonight I want to watch the Tempest with Nicholas. I don't want to watch it with someone who I know, freshly know, feels such contempt for one of the more important things in my life. Elliott, I'm sure our paths will cross again. But right now you two should find your own blanket. I'm sorry, Grace. Thank you for the marshmallows and the coffee."

Grace

People are mostly incomprehensible. Kalen... Elliot didn't say the things that Pen's accusing him of. Contempt? Grace is still quite dedicated to bringing the fight to wherever it needs to be, and he holds no contempt for her, only love. Always that. Grace had expected this reaction from some people. Pen? Well.

Suppose that answers that question.

Not allowed to know where they live, not allowed in their general area even. For the present, at least. Until Pen cools down, if she cools down. On second thought, sending her marshmallows might be misconstrued as appeasement.

Grace sighs, looks around at the scattered array of food and drink, starts re-packing her favorites up into her bag.

"We can't both survive, and put these walls up between us."

She looks to Kalen, gives a sad smile. It'll be okay.

"I am going to be sending you both the details of what you should actually be getting worked up about." She lowers her voice. "Apprentices have been getting disappeared from Colorado Springs. The locals think it might be our most favorite enemies."

Sending it to your P.O. box. Because that's apparently safer. Yes.

"He doesn't hold contempt for you or what you believe in, Pen. Otherwise, he'd have contempt for me too. One thing I am not about to do is stop fighting."

The Mall of Doominess

Caleb
Bookstores are not, in fact, libraries. Sure, they encourage you to actually enjoy the books before you buy them but they don't actually ever really intend someone to finish the whole book before they purchase it. It doesn't seem like the best idea. It doesn't seem like a good business model but nobody would sell any books at all if they were shrink wrapped and kept on shelves like they were there just to be protected from dust, like all of them held pornographic ideas that shouldn't be given to people who aren't truly capable of understanding them.

No, who decides what we should be able to handle in our books? Who decides but those who manufacture, but those who bring out the product and sell it to the consumers, because even in information there is consumerism. There is a trade of something monetary for something intangible- the story. The idea. Something that you can't really return, and in effect reading a book in the book store was theft because you took what was truly of value and left its husk; it was peeling the banana, eating it, and then leaving the peel behind. You took its substance and left only the means that it was used to trasport the best parts to you.

Caleb, you see, had a concept of theft. You don't take something that isn't yours but information, but the words, the things that make up books don't really belong to anyone. So, he didn't seem to have a real problem with them. So there he is, forgettable but sprawled out in the aisle of some indie bookstore with aisles as thin and lacking in personal space as a piece of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture. The books are in some particular order, not arranged in the traditional way but in another traditional way- this particular place decided to play with the Dewey Decimal system instead of the standard layout of a place that has the fiction dominating a place.

He's in the eight hundreds. Somewhere between 820 and 830 in a dingy drab olive Army surplus jacket and a pair of tennis shoes that look like they've seen a couple marathons and survived to tell the tale. The staff leaves him alone.

Grace
The mall is not Grace's cup of tea.

It is a temple. A bastion of hyperreality, dedicated to the gods of consumerism. As if churches weren't already bad enough, these things show off what they're really about. Money. Buying. Selling.

Of course, they do try to hide that, a little. Everywhere, there are pictures of happy, beautiful people. If only one consumes enough, one might become like them. Nice, sunlit, happy. It makes Grace want to puke.

About the only thing this place has to offer her is the bookstore, which if any other place in town were selling "Structures: Why Things Don't Fall Down", then she would have gone there. Sometimes, you have to grit your teeth and participate in the fallen world, just to get what you need.

First thing she's going to do is scan this text and upload it somewhere, because fuck having to pay for information...

Grace
[Awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Caleb
[Do I feel a people? Per+aware, -2 because arcane]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Caleb
There is a feeling of something. Something that makes him look up from the books that he may or may not (definitely not) be purchasing. A feeling that makes the wind blow without it actually blowing. A feeling that is slight, a wrongness or a rightness but nothing strong enough to be felt beyond being off. And yes, there is something off in the air. He looks up from English literature and poetry and words, words, words to feel a shift in the winds.

Ultimately, the stag concudes that the snap in the branches is not enough to warrant him looking around too far for too long. There is a spark of creativity, a spark of something that has a keen edged mind and an ear for change. Something that glides along the cutting edge like a whet stone and rolls away the layers of dust and grime to peel back into something new. Not a literal peel. Nothing painful save for the pain that comes with change, with seeing the world grow and blossom outside of yourself.

Olive
[ah, what the hell.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )

Olive
This bookstore may as well be a library, as far as its layout is concerned. As far as its patrons are concerned, it is a little slice of heaven that smells like binding paste and leather. The occasional waft of secondhand smoke clinging to a flannel shirt or perfume on a stranger's wrist.

She is not far from the 800s herself, having sat herself down cross-legged in a corner. Small space like that almost makes the girl invisible. She is short and her braids make a curtain if she tilts her head the right way and she is reading through a stack of poetry volumes trying to decide which one she wants to take home with her and read until it falls apart.

Grace can tell she's there, still as a fasting nun and as peaceful besides. She looks up at the tennis shoes' passage and lets her nostrils flare though her physical senses are of no use here. For now the slim volume stays open.

Grace
Shit. It's happening again, isn't it? Confluence. She looks up at the ceiling, and glares at it. Universe, you can be creepy sometimes. For fuck's sake.

They aren't people she knows, the resonance isn't familiar. But it's there.

Where once she might have turned tail and fled due to the danger of Technocrats (and there is a danger) now, she wants to stay. At the very least, figure out what these people are about.

There are people here. More people than Mages. Who is who? She looks around, eyes not lingering on any one person for too long, lest they actually look back at her.

Caleb
(Do I physically notice Grace? Per+alert -2 (arcane), wearing glasses so diff 6)

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Nicholas
Nick is here looking for a present.  Nick has been trawling bookstores looking for a present for months, and none has yet happened upon him.

He is not here, as one might expect, for his wife.  If he were here for Pen it would not have taken him months.  His Hermetic sister (he has two of them see) is the one who is very difficult to buy for.

And normally he probably wouldn't be setting foot in a mall except maybe to try to find a new pair of shoes or a belt, and he probably wouldn't be looking in a bookstore in one, but: desperate times.  (One of his old mentors has told him, often, how the Technocracy has taken to building shopping malls on wellsprings and nodes, and Patricia often spoke of these things with distaste.  Perhaps he might have some bias.)  And so here we are.  The place had come recommended by people who are more knowledgeable about such things than Nicholas Hyde.

He's not there yet, but still walking down one of the aisles with his head down and his hands in his pockets, his thoughts elsewhere.  Sooner or later he'll turn into the bookstore, once he finds it.

Caleb
pokepoke

There is a person on the other side of the shelf, and he isn't meaning to poke her but the book shelves are hollowed things and double sided, so pushing a longer book back to be flush will, in turn, cause another book to be shoved backwards. He pushes again, not quite noticing the place of poking until he realizs he's prodding some be-braided person in the shoulder with a book about... uh... something.

The poking ceases. "Sorry," he whispers, and sounds like an announcer at a golf tournament.

And looking up from that poke he notices a singularly normal and unremarkable piece of wall furniture like himself... but this one is staring at the ceiling. His brows knit together and a frown comes across his face. He looks up at the ceiling, and then back at Grace-

"... what's wrong on the ceiling?"

Olive
Were Grace to have looked at her for very long she would have seen Olive looking right back at her. But Grace decides to look at the ceiling instead and Olive decides well maybe she ought to stand up but then a book comes tumbling off the shelf and bounces off the faux-leather shoulder of her jacket and onto the floor.

Sorry.

She whispers back, "No worries."

And, on knees and one hand, reaches out to rescue the book. A glance at the spine and a glance up at the place from whence it fell. Up onto her knees. She starts to shuffle-walk on her knees around the bookshelf without getting to her feet, which are clad in black Converse sneakers, because of course they are.

Grace
When looking for the weird, don't worry. The weird will come to you. Someone talks to her, asks her what is wrong with the ceiling, and it's...

"The universe. It's wrong."

Way to inspire confidence in people, Grace. Bravo.

"I was just telling it off."

Caleb
"Why do you think the universe is wrong? That seems like a bold statement," he asks this, not in an accusatory way, but rather like someone who was seeking information, like he may well have been holding a notebook instead of a lap full of English literature.

He looks back at the shelf- from the shelf to Grace and back at the shelf. He leans a little to the side, trying to get a better look through the shelf and concludes that this isn't working. Caleb then decides to scoot to the other side to get a better look at people whilst still talking to Grace.

It's not Graceful, though. He doesn't get far with his butt-scooting.

Grace
"Because. I never come here. It's slimy in malls. But every time I do, I run into somebody."

Well, yeah. It's not that uncommon to run into people in malls. Malls are typically full of people. But not Mages.

"What's your name, Mystery Man?"

Nicholas
Nick rounds a corner.  Nick passes the bookstore, in spite of the fact that the windows are lined with bookshelves and old pulp advertisements; this is how deep in thought he is.  Or how distracted by something else he is.  You decide.

Nick ends up somewhere far down the way and realizes he has no idea where the bookstore is.  He consults one of the floorplan maps available of the mall stores, and tracks his path back to the place with a fingertip.

Back he comes.

And then, finally here he is, passing through the front archway.

Caleb
"... if you didn't run into anyone at the mall, I think it would be because the mall is closed."

His brows knit together again. He scoots over again and again before finally deciding to give up on that, get to his knees, and meander to the other aisle where the woman he poked with the book was. He keeps talking to Grace.

"I'm Caleb, what's your name?"

Grace
"Grace," she says. Her mouth curves up a bit when he calls her on the absurdity of what she's saying.

"Well. I run into people all the time. But few who resonate."

She doesn't quite stop saying the absurd, but yes. There is a point to this. The average person overhearing their conversation might come to the conclusion that Grace has a few marbles missing, but she's okay with carrying that burden. She follows along as Caleb walks.

Nicholas
[Alertness?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas
There's a voice that is beginning to become familiar; many of Denver's voices are, finally.  Regardless: Nick hears Grace, and he hears Grace talking to someone he doesn't know.  By the time she and Caleb are nearing Nick he is at one of the bookshelves in the metaphysics section, arms folded as his eyes scan the titles.

He is not content with whatever he sees, apparently.

Nevertheless, he hears them and so he pokes his head over the top of the nearby shelves to look for them and determine whether Grace is in the mood to be interrupted, and for how long.  Not every social outing welcomes add-ons, after all.

Caleb
"... is everyone else inaudible?"

He... does not get what she is saying. It's clear on his face and he shifts awkwardly from one side to the next, off in his own little bubble of being vaguely oblivious and having, well, missed.

Grace
Grace notices Nick hanging out there. She doesn't understand why he might be hanging back. At the most, she attributes his reticence to something that makes sense to her. The last time they talked, she had to get away before starting a fight. Maybe he just doesn't want to poke a bear.

But Caleb, he is a mystery. A new thing to turn over and see if it is a threat.

"Inaudible to the sixth sense? Yes."

Caleb
[Do I notice Nick as a human person?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[He is not a human. He is a meat popsicle.]

Caleb
"All people resonate in their own way in both a mundane and metaphysical way, they just don't know it yet. They're just not loud enough yet," he says, muses over it and seems like a thoughtful baritone instead of a stern and dismissive one. He doesn't seem to be a dismissive sort. Caleb takes a look around again, past Grace to Nick to Grace noticing Nick.

Nick gets a smile, and a wave. Obviously, Nick and Grace know each other, so they should want to be together and talk, right? Of course right. He smiles like a pleased golden retriever.

Nicholas
Resonance.  Sixth sense.  Nick can catch those words from where he's standing.  And he does indeed remember how things left off last time with Grace; he of course knows that Grace and Pen had a conversation outside the bar, because there is little he and his wife don't share with each other.

Nonetheless, Grace's friend gives him a smile and a wave and Nick, too, smiles and waves at the two of them.  "Hello, Grace," he says, and takes a few steps so that he can find himself on the conversation's periphery.  There is a glance toward Caleb, a friendly incline of his head, a once or twice-over.

Grace
Ahh, good. Caleb is not a complete newbie. She was beginning to wonder.

"Nick. Hello. This is Caleb. I found him just now, wandering the stacks."

There is no friendly smile to greet him, not anymore. Just sticking to the facts for now, because that's how things go. There is more to discuss than just Caleb, but perhaps it's best not to do that in front of someone who might be a Technocratic plant, for all his talk about metaphysics.

Caleb
He leans forward, puts a hand on the ground, and stands up to his rather impressive height of... average. He's a couple inches over five and a half feet tall. Dark hair, dark eyes, and of an indeterminate ethnic origin.

There is a strange sort of tension, though, or rather he does notice the lack of smile from Grace.

"... you're not friends, are you?"

There's always a delay in his voice, a delay when the baritone is talking because it seems like he's taking the time to process what is going around, as though the world is full of data. As though everything is worth noticing and everything is worth latching on to.

Nicholas
"Nice to meet you, Caleb," Nick says, and he extends a hand toward the other man.  "I'm Nick Hyde."

He is not as suspicious of Technocratic plants: at least if one takes him at face value.  His regard for Caleb seems warm enough, at this point.

That is, until Caleb asks a very direct question and Nick's brows furrow in a wince.  He glances sidelong at Grace.  "We're on the same side and everything," he says, "but there's been a little tension recently, yeah.  It's nothing you have to worry about, Caleb."  When talking to people with observation skill but little tact, sometimes honesty is best.

Grace
"What Nick said," she says, because he's better at explaining things by far.

Then, she pulls out her cell phone. Types away at it for a bit.

Grace
Nick's phone alerts him however it is set to, with the following text messages.

Some shit's gone down. I need to tell you about it.

Meet me at Auraria Student Lofts, apartment 203, after the bookstore?

Caleb
There is a hand to shake! Ah, he knows what to do with this, and he reaches forward to take the hand offered and he grasps- firm and comfortable with work. His hands aren't soft. Up down. Up down. Stop. He nods once it's done, a confirmation to himself. Aha! Done right!

"Oh," he says once Nick gives his appraisal of the situation, and there is a lag in that moment before he replies, "I'm sorry that happened, I hope things get better." It's a genuine statement, devoid of all things resembling sarcasm not unlike when you're talking to a four year old. It's rare to have that lack of guile.

Grace isn't saying much, just three words and then whips out her phone.

"Oh! Where did you get that?"

Surprise, delight.

Nicholas
It's rare to have that lack of guile, and the slight curl at the corner of Nick's mouth indicates that he might appreciate it, even.  "I hope they do too," he says.

There is a vibration there in his pocket, and Nick after a moment pulls his phone out of his own pocket and glances at the screen.  He tucks it away again moments later, glancing amused between Caleb and Grace.  "I was here to get a present for my sister, actually, so I can't really stick around.  I'll hopefully see you around though, Caleb," he says.

Grace
He's getting a present for his sister, can't stick around. Sounds like an excuse, maybe, but whatever. That's not important at all. His knowing what she's discovered, that matters.

Caleb asks where she got her phone, and she says: "Online. Amazon."

Amazon has everything, and despite it being a similar interface with consumerist religious practices? At least you don't have to deal with actual people.

"It's a OnePlus Three."

Caleb
"That would be cool, I hope to see you around too, Nick Hyde," all one name. "There's some cool books here, there is probably one she'll like."

Grace tells him it's a OnePLus three... which makes Caleb's brows knit together and makes a frown cross his face.

"So... it's... a four?"

Nicholas
"Hope you both enjoy your day."  Nick waves at the two of them and then circles back around to the other end of the stacks, wandering farther into the bookstore.

Nicholas
Once Nick has left, Grace receives a reply text:

Another day, maybe.  Don't have long today.  I'll text you later and we can meet up in a couple of days.

Grace
There's something off about Caleb. Which is a realization not unlike the pot's upon figuring out that the kettle is black.

"I think maybe that's what they were going for, when naming their company OnePlus."

"You're new here," she says, with a fair bit of confidence. She knows everyone in Denver. "Where are you from?"

Caleb
Where was he from? This makes him think. Makes him legitimately think. While doing so the young man moves to start picking up the books he;d strewn out on the floor and putting them away carefully. There's no hesitation in knowing where they went, though. It's the Dewey decimal system, he doesn't have any difficulty with it because the locations were obvious.

Where is he from?

"... like, my home town?"

Grace
Grace shrugs. "Sure."

"Home town, the last place you visited before coming to Denver... Whatever. I'm curious. Unless you don't want to say."

Caleb
"Fifteen miles outside of Moab. Have you been? Utah's really nice, I caught a ride down here with a couple truck drivers. Where are you from?"

Grace
"I'm from Phoenix, Arizona," she says. "So, pretty close to where you started out, I guess."

Poor kid. As guileless as he is, to have hitched his way here?

"No car, huh? Do you need a ride somewhere?"

Caleb
"No, I don't have anywhere to be. Thank you though," he says to Grace. She says she's from Phoenix and he nods once, twice, a third time as though he needs to log that away in his memory.

"I think I might stay in Denver for a little while. Should I?"

Grace
She grimaces a bit, looks down to some detail on his clothing. "Maybe. It's not any worse than other places are, but... It can be pretty awful. We'll try to keep you safe."

Hi, welcome to the hellhole, just like the hellhole you're from! Want a basket of cookies? Some pumpkin bread?



Caleb
"Safety isn't a guaranteed part of the human experience."

Not hard. Not harsh. Just fact, like he was reporting some grand truth that was clear and curt and concise. The human experience was not rife with safety, this was a myth. He doesn't sound jaded or edged or woeful or pained. His clothes aren't new by any means. That coat looks like it's walked more than its fair share of marathons.

"Don't worry about it."

Grace
"Don't tell me what to worry about," she says, little lift of a smile.

"It's never guaranteed, no. But it can be... lured. With promises of cake. Or maybe safety likes whiskey?"

She banishes that notion, a moment after saying it. "No. Safety doesn't like whiskey. Hah."

Caleb
"I don't think I've ever had whiskey," he muses, "what's not to like about it?"

Grace
"Never? Really? Hmm. Well, it's alcohol, so it can make you feel like doing unsafe things. But aside from that...."

Mmm. Moab. Utah. There's a reason why somebody his age might not have ever had a drink before, right?

"It burns when it goes down. The first drink, heh."

Caleb
"... none of that sounds pleasant at all, I think that safety might be right in avoiding whiskey."

He makes a face like he's really not to sure about this whole whiskey thing. He's doing to have to think about it, and the thought it clearly written across his face that, perhaps, this should be something he should avoid.

Grace
"Up to you, man. My drug of choice is caffeine. You have had coffee, right?"

Mormon test. They are abstinent when it comes to all things addictive.

"Well, that and weed. It's even legal here, so..."

Caleb
He shakes his head no. And then, again, for the legal weed. He blinks a couple of times, puts his hand back in his pockets and shrugged.

"We didn't really have that stuff at home. I didn't have chocolate before I left, either."

Grace
"Do you wanna?"

Look at Grace, right now. Pushing drugs on the poor sheltered newbie. Drugs like chocolate. And coffee. Her face just lights up at the prospect of introducing somebody to coffee, of all things.

"It's okay if you don't."

You'll just ruin her day, is all.

Caleb
"Okay, that sounds good. Just let me get my backpack from the front- do you know a place that makes coffee?"

Oh, does Grace Evans know some place that makes coffee? HA.

Meeting with Andrés

Grace
It wan't seven in the fucking morning when Grace blew up Doctor Sepúlveda's phone for a change. She slept first. Naps are important, if you want to remain coherent.

It is, instead, six in the evening.

The messages he gets are thus:

Hey. I've got news. Meet me at Auraria Student Lofts, apartment 203.

Insert obligatory multiple 'Hey's and emojis.

Andrés
The forensic pathologist had sent back a series of flying-stack emojis but no other verbal confirmation of what time she could expect him or if she could even expect him at all. By the time she had messaged him he was well on his way to being completely stewed, and may or may not have still been fucking around with power tools.

Suffice to say he snuck out without alerting his students to his absence, and let himself into Grace's apartment like the woman couldn't shoot him for pulling this stunt.

"What's so goddamn important you couldn't leave me a voicemail?" he asks on his way through the door. That's proof enough the Technocracy hasn't hijacked and cloned him, at least. Unless the Technocracy is able to mimic an individual's propensity for swearing. Then they're in trouble.

Grace
"Same thing that's so goddamn important that I went back to this place to meet you?" she says, and gestures around the bare-bones apartment. "I basically only keep this place around for when I want to talk about horrible shit and I might be being followed."

Grace is busy tacking away at her laptop at a small dining table. She doesn't look up to greet him. Nor does she shoot him upon crashing into her door like that.

But really? She knew who she was inviting over. The resonance of creepy fuck was welcome.

"You know how I said the Technocrats probably weren't involved in this whole thing about Apprentices dying? I was wrong. Some of the dead were theirs."

Andrés
"Wait a minute, wait wait wait..."

He removes his cellphone from his pocket. He's dressed like a depressed humanities professor and not a highly intelligent disciple of Matter, but one of the cardigan's boons is having deep enough pockets to fit an abundance of items. When one's Work requires many items, this is a great boon indeed.

At any rate he finds it quick and taps the screen a few times.

"Say that again. The bit between 'Apprentices dying' and 'some of the.'"

Whether Grace tells him to knock it off or he decides to of his own accord, his next remark is the same:

"Explain."

Grace
I was wrong. He wants to record her saying she was wrong? The fuck? He gets a glare for that one.

"Laura Fairbanks was actually Agent Laura Fairbanks. I ran into a guy's emails that he'd tried to delete and rescued some bits and pieces from the purge. The guy is a Tech. Probably Laura's partner or something. He got a lot of condolences, and reassurance that an investigation was starting up looking into her murder.

"He's hiding out as an accountant... CFO or something at this company connected to the Falcons. Looks like the other side is sniffing the same scent that we're on."

Andrés
"What's the company called?"

Grace
"Palor Technologies. I found a credit card on the weird dude I tracked that had the name 'Elizabeth Palor' on it, and Papa Joe Palor, the CEO of Palor Technologies, was talking about going on safari with a guy called Wiley. This is all connected as fuck."

Andrés
"Hmm."

Sepúlveda takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, smoothes down the skin beneath his eyes before putting the glasses back.

"And Palor Technologies is located where?"

Grace
"Colorado Springs."

She ceases typing, looks over. "Why do you ask?"

Andrés
Sensing that they're going to be here a while, the Etherite sighs and sits down on a box, feet planted wide like he doesn't trust the structural integrity of the impromptu chair with the task of bearing his weight. Because he's so musclebound and hulking, you know.

"You know what they say happens when you assume," he says. "Something about asses. Does Angela or... anybody... in Colorado Springs... know about this?"

Grace
"Not yet. But I'm working on that. My next stop is to visit Annie. She knows everybody. She'll have the ability to figure out who to tell. But you were going to be looking into this thing too, and I wanted to make sure you didn't step on a land mine before knowing it was a minefield."

Grace watches him sit, gently, on the box. It says that it contains oranges, but most certainly does not. It holds his weight because it is full of textbooks.

"There's other things in the emails I found. Wiley used to go to this support group or something at Saint Paul's Catholic Church -- with Ginny and Garrett Murray. They were talking about reporting Evelyn to CPS because of whatever was going on at home."

Andrés
Snort.

"Good thing they didn't, eh?" He pats down his pockets like he's trying to find his cigarettes. Nervous habit. This isn't his house and if bars are relentless in their refusal to allow smoking he doesn't expect a Mercurial Elite to allow it. "We'd never find the caseworker's body. Is the support group still active?"

Grace
"Yeah, I was planning on going, just to see what the fuck is going on over there. But not before I let everyone know the Techs are crawling all over Colorado Springs. They meet every other Tuesday at the church. The group's called 'Project Hope'."

She looks at the ceiling. "It's just fucked up, all over. I don't think they noticed my looking into their emails, but I can't be certain that's going to last forever. They could do their own forensic analysis on that server if and when they figure out somebody hacked into it. I covered my tracks and melted my rig, but that's about the best I can do."

Andrés
[corr/entropy/mind/time 1: what are the odds that anybody noticed, aka "i have no empathy so i use devices to be reassuring."]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Andrés
As Grace starts to expound upon her reasoning behind doing a full wipe-down after taking a peek at some idiot's Yahoo account, Andrés takes a breath that's as much to keep himself from interrupting as it is to do anything else and reaches into his back pocket to remove a device that looks like two other electronic devices microwaved together.

He punches buttons like he's using a calculator instead of a smartphone. That's all she can tell from where she's sitting. It churns and makes other tiny processor noises before he gets his answer.

"Laura's partner might be annoyed," he says, to the matter of forensic analysis, "but I highly doubt he's going to run a forensic analysis on someone rifling through his 'sorry your partner got cacked' account. Dial down the paranoia for a second. Who's going with you to the support group?"

Grace
Grace thinks. She hadn't expected to go with anybody, really.

"You? We could impress them all with our fine handle on the art of talking to people," she says, levels him with a look. "It wouldn't take much for either of us to pull off the look of someone needing psychological help."

"Maybe if we're lucky, Wiley will stop by. Or Phillip Wright, the secret 'Crat."

Andrés
[extending that roll for giggles +1]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Andrés
A swift THWAP of the device against the side of the box of oranges slash textbooks, and Sepúlveda bites his lower lip when he looks down at the device. Wets both lips like it's really fucking strange for him to have gone so long without drinking something, then taps a couple of buttons.

Nope. That's what he thought.

"Uh," he says, "who the fuck is Phillip Wright? He only has a twenty-five percent chance of giving a shit about the email thing."

Grace
"The one whose emails I read. He wasn't doing normal accounting for Palor Technologies. More like, accounting wizardry, if you get my drift. Totally a 'Crat."

A corner of her mouth turns up.

"Thanks for checking that for me."

Andrés
"Don't thank me, thank my Y chromosome."

Just in case she was starting to warm up to him, there he goes making a sexist joke implying of course he had to check her work for her.

"You sure you don't want to send Nicholas to the support group? He could take Margot with him, Margot loves sitting around talking about feelings."

Grace
"What does your Y chromosome have anything to do with anything? Aside from your dick?"

Which, you know, may be of ultimate importance to him.  Maybe he just loves telling everyone he has one, like a toddler.

"I could ask if Nick wants to check into it, sure. He might be better at the whole... meatspace interaction thing."

Andrés
Aside from your dick?

A flick of his eyebrows meant to stand in for a shrug. That's exactly what he meant.

With the matter of Grace asking Nick to check into it on its way to being settled, Andrés frowns and stands from the box and pockets the device again.

"The fact that you refer to it as 'meatspace' only proves my point." Before he can turn to leave, another thought grabs him. His frown deepens. "This, eh, this email purge of Phillip Wright's, you think it's related to the, eh..." Snap snap snap of his left thumb and finger like the word is a lighter whose hammer won't strike. "... the evidence going missing from the ME's office?"

Grace
"Maybe. They might have gone back afterwards and made sure the mundane authorities didn't look too hard at what is obviously too much for them to handle? It would make sense. But I don't think they were responsible for killing their own."

The fact is... It's looking more and more like Evelyn Murray is. Killing Technocrats is one thing, but they weren't the entirety of those who bit it. It grates against her that the Traditions might not be the good guys in this scenario.

Andrés
"Me either."

They're in silent agreement on the culprit being Evelyn Murray, but Andrés has been a disciple of the Society longer than Grace has even been Awakened. He knows morality isn't black and white. By most people's standards, he's a villain. Look at what he did to his own wife.

"Keep me posted on the field trip, yeah? If Nicholas can't make it, I'll go."

Grace
"Okay," she says, "Thanks."

Once that's said, she turns back to tacking on her (new) laptop. Things need to be set up again, to her exacting specifications.

Andrés
For about half a second it looks as if he's about to say something else. That half a second passes, and Grace is already back to getting herself back online. Whatever it says dissipates, and the Etherite lets himself back out the way he came.

Technical Difficulties

Grace
Somewhere in Aurora, in the bleak hive of a suburbia, a hacker lurks in an unassuming, cheap blue car. It's lit, barely, by the glow of blue text on a black monitor, which states that she has found her quarry. Well, the first of them.

It's hard to go cracking into a joint without an internet connection. Sure, you could physically break in, swap hardware, or call up and socially engineer your way to passwords, but that's just not the kind of thing Grace excels at.

Besides, the easy route is to just blow anything's encryption away with Chloe. Who needs passwords when everything, to you, is in plaintext?

The first thing there was to find, then, was the poor schmuck whose wifi connection she's going to use.

She let a couple of people know she was about to head off and do this. Kalen, River, and Mike -- the first few people who would notice her missing if it came to that. There's always the risk that it might. Especially now that she's fairly certain, one way or another, that other Mages are involved.

The tools are ready.

It's time to turn reality over.

Keystrokes tack as she hooks into the quantum state of chlorophyll molecules, once tasked with finding the best paths for photons to travel through Chloe's leaves, now in the midst of switching to perform Grace's calculations instead.

[Life 2, Entropy 3, Forces 2, and Corr 3 -- Plant-based quantum computing, Diff 6 - 1 (personalized instrument) -1 (taking time)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (5, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Peregrine
Sure enough, these sorts of things were easy for Grace. Easy enough, in fact, that she must certainly be becoming bored with these sorts off endeavors. She has the data skills of a goddess and what does a goddess do when the mortal world no longer satisfies her?

Well, she writes and rights the wrongs that are committed against those in the mortal realm. She acts in the interests of the people, benevolent creature- distant creature. Could she really say she had ever been a part of them?

She finds herself parked in front of an apartment complex. Someone has their window open and there is a Steven Universe marathon going on inside. She can probably hear the rumble of fanatical nerds inside. It's as close to a party as someone can find on a Wednesday in Aurora; the complex is decent enough. It's by a railway stop.

Grace
Chloe, once "turned on" is an obvious bit of weird science. Lasers and mechanical arms don't really belong together with a hydroponic houseplant. None of that would make sense to a casual observer walking by. She's covered with a blanket in the floorboard of the passenger side, because that's just what you have to do with reality-breaking equipment.

The first thing she does though? Is not breaking reality. She's just going to straight-up look up the Order of the Falcon. They're a charity. They have to have an outward face. Do they have a website? Are some of the members known? Do those members have companies to exploit?

Peregrine
There is no problem with looking up the Fraternal Order of the Falcon, just like there isn't a problem looking up the Masons or the Elks. GRace comes across a few web pages from the news saying that they've done some charity work across the United States helping with pro-gun lobbies as well as the victims of gun violence. They seem to be a mixed lot.

There are stories about the Falcons helping victims of gun violence, then siding with gun lobbies (and then, again, helping victims of gun violence.) There's some flack from PETA regarding their members and their policies on hunting (namely the requests for the caps on the hunting of gray wolves to be lifted, or at least raised to a higher number) and then seeing the organization raise countless dollars and holds fund raises lobbying against big oil and dumping tons of resources into the rights of small farmers and indigenous peoples.

What Grace finds is that it's not hard to find people who are members- who are open and proud members, as a matter of fact. Colonel Joseph Palor, for one, seems to be interviewed in several of the articles regarding the Falcon's position on the rights of land owners and hunters.

When she takes her first glance, it really does just look like any other fraternal organization.

Grace
It's not exactly a shock that their little society looks so mundane on the surface. That's the job of any cover. Time to rip that cover off.

Joseph Palor. Related to Elizabeth Palor, perhaps? Not exactly a common last name, and Wiley had her credit card. Interesting.

Perhaps he needs a look or two.

Where does Colonel Palor get his money? Does he have an email address?

Tak tak tak. Let's try to find that...

Peregrine
She is able to find that without any real digging or problem. Data could be extrapolated easily enough from following the information that was readily provided.

Grace finds that Colonel Palor is in charge of some of the technological contracting in Colorado Springs. The colonel works for Palor Technologies and Subsidies- they're working very heavily with the defense industry- there's really only three things you can do in Colorado Springs. Government contracts. Technology contracts. Hospitality and tourism.

It would appear that Palor Technologies and Subsidies are not going to be opening any ski resorts any time soon since they have the other two things Colorado Springs does well completely on lockdown.

Grace
Grace makes an expression akin to smelling something foul. Defense industry technological contracting. That reeks of Technocrat. If so, this place will have security the likes of which mortal men cannot begin to fathom.

Good thing she is no man.

All right, Palor Technologies and Subsidies, where's your zero day?

But first, a few defensive protocols are in order. Shielding for her rig so it can't be used to channel an explosion. Shielding for her mind so it can't be used to drive her into a telephone pole, or whatever they do to make it look like an accident.

[Mind 1: Shielding! Diff 4 - 1 (personalized instrument)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 8) ( success x 3 )

Grace
[Extends!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Grace
[Forces 2, Matter 2, Entropy 2 -- Resistance. Protective measures against her laptop being destroyed, exploded, melted, turned into a lawn chair, etc. Diff 5 - 1 (personalized instrument) - 1(taking time)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Grace
[Extends!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace
It takes a while to put her protections in place. To fold the equations of her mental processes into a tighter configuration, to seal the interfaces (as much as one part of the holistic mind of the universe can). Simplifying and perfecting her laptop's innards takes longer. There's just so many ways to hijack the energies stored in a lithium ion battery to make it go 'kabloom'.

Eventually, though, she is satisfied. It looks good. Feels good.

She starts her aggressive operations by prodding at the external interfaces of Palor Technologies' web presence, looking for -- especially -- their email servers.

Should think about getting that Think Geek t-shirt that says 'I Read Your Email'. Ridiculously accurate.

Grace
[Computers, Diff 9 - 3 (Chloe) Doing a thing...]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

Peregrine
Sure enough, getting into the email servers of what would normally be a very secure company was easy as pie for her. Not Pi, mind you, but the round delicious kind. Grace had no problems with that particular greek Pi either, but that is neither here nor there.

Grace finds herself on a very neat, tidy set of email servers that do a good job of load balancing. The back end is massive, but the emails can easily be contained by two servers. They only have a paltry three hundred user accounts to deal with- it could barely constitute as a company worth mentioning if they only had three hundred email accounts.

Sure enough, there she is with the keys to the castle. What to find now?

Grace
Well. Now that she's here...

Let's start with good ol' Joe. Does he talk about his work with the Falcons? Does he ever send emails to a private account of his? Are there any obvious red flags?

They probably don't use work email to reminisce about vicious murders or anything, but it's a place to begin.

Peregrine
She gets... uh...

Man.

Joe is boring.

The guy is the quintessential grandpa. The man is talking about his daughter's wedding, his other daughter's new husband. His grand kids. The hunting trip he's taking in two weeks with Wiley. A flight he's taking to Singapore. HE even talks about the pipeline issues and the Native American tribes that are facing problems.

He does send emails to a private account (papajoe1950@gmail.com). It's all pretty boring, though.

Grace
Hunting trip with Wiley. Right. Hunting for wolves, or something a whole lot more dangerous? And who is he discussing that with? Are they a bit more interesting?

PWright. Who's that guy?

Let's read his email.

Peregrine
Mr. Wright is decidedly more and less interesting than Joe was, that much is certain.

Philip Wright is a man in the accounting department who seems to keep impeccable records, and seems to have a good enough relationship with his boss. They send each other comics back and forth, sometimes talk about hunting trips they've taken. Apparently Wiley and Joe are going on safari (literal safari. They are going to freaking Africa) and Philip needed Joe to authorize some purchases for standard equipment before he went.

Beyond that? Philip Wright's email is... shockingly empty. Empty in the way that Grace knows come from having a person of her calibre wipe something clean.Data unwritten. Data rendered back to its barest pieces. Gone, like it had never been.

Grace
Gone, like it had never been, but traces of evidence remain, like the single blonde hair. Holes where there shouldn't be, right? Somebody was really, really good, but so is she.

Information is never fully destroyed. Not even black holes can do it, despite their pure, maximal entropy. They radiate, and in that radiation is encoded the data of everything that ever fell in.

Still, it's... kind of hard to reconstruct a spaghettified object. And kind of hard to recover data on a disk if someone ran over it with high-powered magnet about ten times.

It exists, certainly. The universe remembers what emails this guy had in his inbox. Will she be capable of remembering it too?

[Computers, diff 9 - 3 (Chloe)]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[Investigation! Diff 8. Spending WP]

Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (1, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Peregrine
What Grace finds amidst her diggings and her rumblings is troulbesome to say the least, if only because she finds emails that seem to mean very little of anything. They're all technical and steeped in the know-how associated with finance and financial wizardry and Science therein.

The only thing of note that comes up is a fragment regarding Agent Fairbanks. A letter of condolence. An upcoming investigation therein.

Grace
Agent Fairbanks. Agent Laura Fairbanks? One of the deceased? But there was nothing in any of the police records that indicated that she was anything except a rich civilian.

Grace's hands lift off the keyboard like it's getting hot. This is starting to look more and more Technocratic by the minute. Like maybe she's reconstructing the emails of an actual Financial Wizard, in every connotation of that term.

And perhaps Laura Fairbanks was sent to spy on the good people of Colorado Springs?

It's all conjecture, but that's as good as she can get from the garbled remains of some deleted emails.

There's another thread to follow. Papa Joe's gmail. Maybe he gets a little less boring on his personal account.

Grace
Hacking into Google is something that's usually left to state actors. Big states. Like the United States. And even then, only because they can gain physical access to the backbones.

But hey. Grace already knows his login credentials at work. People, especially sixty year old people, don't often pick entirely random, different passwords for every account they use.

This shouldn't be terribly hard to just guess.

What do you want to bet it's something like one2three4five?

[Computers, diff 7 - 3 (Chloe!)]

Dice: 9 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 7 )

Peregrine
It was awful.

His password was PassWord2016!

Papa Joe has an incredibly boring email. He gets the obligatory twenty billion emails from Hillary Clinton and Nordstrom a day (some of those emails actually do come from a campaign advisor, too, and not a giant spam list. Oddly enough, those emails also have to do with charitable contributions and funny things they'd found on the internet. Mostly harmless emails between people who are friends who use their work email for personal purposes.)

What she finds, though, is a folder labeled Project Hope

Inside of that folder, there are a list of people and meeting dates and locations that Project Hope meetings are taking place. The emails go back for several years, some of which coming from someone named Melissa Ivy. Those emails abruptly stop and the Project Hope folder goes dead for a few months before picking back up with a new person in charge (Constance Pirelli).  She seems to be his primary contact for these things.

Several emails may stick out in her mind. One referencing the Murray twins (Ginny and Garrett have been coming for years but I don't think we've ever made any progress. I think there may be something going on at home. They're adults now, I can't have DHS step in, can you do something?) Another making reference to Wiley (Tell him thanks for coming and speaking to the group! It's always good to hear from one of the group's success stories to know things really can get better.)

Grace
That something was going on at Garrett Murray's house before he disappeared was always a high probability. Evelyn Murray seems like a real piece of work, from what she's heard.

Project Hope. A group. Like group therapy? Addiction counseling? A search on the term reveals about twenty different Project Hope organizations, because that's a catchy name. Everything from soup kitchens to free clinics use the term, but what about Colorado Springs in particular?

Peregrine
Grace finds that the people of Project Hope meet every other Tuesday at St. Paul's Catholic church in Colorado Springs. While he has been invited several times, it would appear that Papa Joe doesn't go very often, or chooses to keep out of group therapy or whatever this was supposed to be.

Grace
Whatever it is.

Connected, somehow. Wiley knew both Garrett Murray and that LaCroix person, at least. Everyone is ridiculously connected here, with threads of contacts between them. And then there's the stain of what looks like Technocrats.

But they weren't the ones killing. They were being killed. Is that it?

Grace wrinkles her nose. If only she could find Wiley's email. He seems to be the one person that everyone else revolves around.

Peregrine
Whatever it is, and whoever it is, it would appear that Wiley has done a very good job of keeping himself out of the public eye or, at the very least, knowing how to hide in plain sight. Knowing how to keep people off of his tail because none of the emails in Grace's current box seem to have anything to do with the young man.

Grace
Well. She still has the data from his hair. She knows where his girlfriend lives. There's ways to get to Wiley, if he won't be snagged as easily as Papa Joe.

There just don't seem to be any more easily-accessible pieces of information here, but more questions -- certainly more of them.

She might want to go to this Project Hope meeting, or ask about it at least.

There's a sigh. Nobody seemed to pick up on her. No horrible little ticking Technocratic timebombs, no explosives. And she has a potential Tech sighting to share with Angela. Stay the fuck away from Phillip Wright.