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.