[IC] Eclipse Phase: A trip to Renewal Options

[Jimson]

Phelan’s Recourse, your home away from home. But then again, where is home. Thanks to the TITAN’s, the system is a giant mess, and now it is getting put back together in pieces. The Inner System, with the Planetary Consortium and hypercorps, offer protection and growth, but at the expense of ones freedom. The Outer system, one has the freedom they desire, however safety is of another concern. You have each come to Phaelan’s Recourse for your own reasons: freedom to roam in any morph of your own choosing, to be close to a Pandora’s Gate, or fate has just lead you here. Whatever your reason may be, the most important is, wherever you may be, is the protection of all transhumanity. You are a Firewall sentinel.

[Sixgun_Sage]

Jackson smiled to himself, bopping back and forth to a beat only he could hear as he cleaned his pistol. It didn't need it, in point of fact it was probably the cleanest thing on the tin can hab, but the muscle-memory motions felt good. Reassembling and holstering the piece of surprisingly heavy ordinance he looked over the promenade rails, down into the gypsy market below as he commanded Fixit to call up a list of help requests sorted for safety, prefferance for work involving gunsmithing or pure consultation. It would take the muse a few seconds to parse and sort along his favored network circles so he called up a conspiracy rag in his field of view and ordered a drink from a little cafe not far off...

[BlackHat]

Dr. Mathew Esterly had been invited to Phalen's Recourse by some colleagues among the "fringe" xenobiologists, who were holding a conference aboard one research-vessel among the swarm that made up Phalen's Recourse. The conference was the E4-BCS (pronounced, "ee-fore-bicks" - and occasionally written as "Ephorbics"), which stood for "Echo IV Biological Complexity Symposium". The invitation came through connections Dr. Esterly had on the Circle-A List, which made the choice of venue less unusual. While the swarm of banged-up ships and habitats was known, primarily for its reputation as a hub of illegitimate activity, the venue offered a unique "neutral" location that would open the symposium up to members of all factions and facilitate the ideals of universal access to scientific information. Of course, the accommodations were not nearly as nice as they would have been if the conference was held on Titan or Pandora - either of which would have made more obvious choices given the conference's focus on Echo IV. Dr. Esterly understood that this particular event, and its organizers, had a black mark where the Gatekeeper corporation was concerned - the corporation did not appreciate its intellectual property being open-sourced into the public mesh, before they were ready to do so. He could only infer that the same sorts of peudo-anarchic xenobiologists would have a similar problem with the Titanian Commonwealth's democratic processes - despite their support of the autonomist agenda.

Dr. Esterly had been asked to give a short presentation at Ephorbics, on his work in the mathematics of astrobiological complexity - specifically, in reference to a publication he had made, earlier this year, in the area of modeling the evolutionary genetics of astrobiological phenotypes. While the publication was not focused specifically on Echo IV, he was able to apply the same concepts and develop some strong models of Echo IV's distinct evolutionary patterns. Dr. Esterly was more interested in attending the other talks and discussion panels, but understood that participation was, basically, the price of his admission. It turns out, he was not the only one who had similar arrangements. Despite the precautions to avoid Gatekeeper and Commonwealth influence, those two factions were well represented at the conference, and made up a fair number of the talks - agreeing to release (legally, one must assume) proprietary information, in exchange for inclusion and reputation among the anarchists. While Gatekeeper's intellectual property was avoided, or simply danced around, when these factions were in attendance, Dr. Esterly thought that their inclusion lended a much-needed sense of legitimacy to the symposium.

The turn out for Dr. Esterly's talk, in particular, was larger than the event-organizers had anticipated - the attendees were mostly infomorphs, who had egocast (probably darkcast) a fork in for the occasion, but the small run-down laboratory that had been assigned to his presentation was packed, uncomfortably, with morphs (more synthmorphs than biomorphs, he noted). While astrobiology was not his main field of research, his name was recognized as one of the leading minds in mathematics, and he had probably seen, first hand, more examples of alien life than most of the Ephorbic attendees. It was also not much of a secret that he had, several years ago, contracted the Watts-MacLeod strain of the Exsurgent Virus, which was the source of as much curiosity as paranoia, among his peers - particularly among the "fringe" (others might say "tin-hat-wearing") scientists who would chose to hold their conference on Phelan's to avoid hypercorp or commonwealth influence. Dr. Esterly expected that half of those attending were disappointed when the talk ended without any display of psi-activity, and that this was, he suspected, the reason why the majority of his attendees were sleeved into synthmorphs. He also got the impression that, although his talk was generally well-received, the mathematics involved went well above the heads of most of the xenobiologists in attendance - with the exception of a handful of insightful questions he received at the end.

In fact, not long afterwards, Dr. Esterly was sitting in a dingy restaurant, aboard one of the other craft, at a table with the attendees who asked those questions: a very friendly Gatekeeper biologist, a fellow mathematician, and a self-proclaimed "genehacker". Dr. Esterly had invited them to dinner, after his talk, singling them out of the crowd that attended his presentation because they had shown legitimate interest in his research, and their questions showed that they had a grasp of the fundamentals. Lexi, Dr. Esterly's muse, was busily accessing their professional portfolios, as they got to know one another, and, almost certainly, their muses were doing the same with him. The biologist, a Doctor Mallory Gaulding (a senior astrobiologist for Gatekeeper Corp), was sleeved into a Menton biomorph, one of the most common biomorphs seen at the symposium. The mathematician, an AGI calling itself "R.A.X.I.S." was sleeved into a swarmoid synthmorph, and clearly wouldn't be ordering any food. The genehacker, a techno-anarchist using the alias "AmiGO Prime" was sleeved into a heavily customized octomorph, and seemed to be a Phelan's local. Dr. Esterly's own Menton biomorph was heavily customized (for exoplanet exploration), and had been shipped in from Pandora - where it had been used to go gatecrashing. The fact that this morph had once stood on Echo IV, made it an obvious choice for this symposium, and Phelan's proximity to Pandora at this point in its orbit made the transportation less of a logistical nightmare. He probably could have picked up another morph on Phelan's, but he didn't adjust particularly well to new biology, due to his asynchronous condition - and he didn't want the integration complications to affect the quality of his presentation.

The four scientists had just finished a rather animated discussion about quantum modeling in molecular cellular biophysics, where Dr. Esterly had made a rather bold mathematical assertion, which he prefaced as merely a working thesis - neither able to be proved, nor disproved, using conventional mathematics - a stroke of insight into the universe, which would probably require years of research to validate or prove properly. The assertion was intriguing, however - a very creative solution to whatever mathematical discrepancy they were discussing - and it pulled the conversation away from quantum mathematics and biophysics and into a speculative realm of methods by which one might begin to prove such a theory. Over the course of the meal, they continued their intellectual puzzle-game, and the conversation eventually drifted from the assertion to the processes which led Dr. Esterly to it - the topic of asynchronous brainwave activity and its impact on the sciences in the last ten years. As the conversation unfolded, the three scientists impressed Dr. Esterly with their open-mindedness towards psi, and its potential to advance the sciences much farther than transhumanity could achieve on its own. It was Dr. Esterly, in fact, who played the Devil's Advocate for most of the night, proposing arguments against the foundation of his own work. Although none of the other three scientists were experts on the exsurgent virus, or the effects or limitations of psi, they managed to hold an interesting high-level debate over drinks (which Dr. Esterly's morph filtered before they could affect his judgment), well into the night.

[pragma]

The smell of bile permeated the cramped tin can and Jonah was deeply confused by this. Opening his eyes, he saw hundreds of tiny acidic droplets floating freely through the apartment he had on loan from the Galway distillery ship and a fluorescent orange and yellow cockroach the size of a small dog moving, with surprising adroitness in the zero-g habitat, to pick the blobs from the air.

Jonah asked the first obvious question: "Who the fuck are you little guy?" He reached a hand towards the darting, genetically engineered insect and was surprised to find it affectionately nuzzled before the creature went back to consuming the floating vomit. The vomit was, of course, the second obvious question. The liver of the bouncer morph was a technology that should have precluded this kind of accident, though the fact his ego had no recollection of the previous night suggests that whatever chemicals were involved likely redlined the organ.

Jonah kicked one leg ceiling-ward sending his morph into a quick spin in the center of a habitat before the hand on the end of his other leg grabbed a protruding pipe and fired him towards the floor. The grip pads on the hand of his kicking leg found purchase and he started picking his was across the ground weaving around the flying cockroach, the desk with heaps of paper -- each sheet decorated with tightly indented lines and frustrated scratchmarks -- strapped down by a pair of bungee cables and a batch of tools tethered to the wall but floating at a dangerous angle after the last bit of the ship's acceleration to reach his refrigeration cupboard.

Though he could eat at the communal makers he hated the crowds drawn at the nano-fabricators and he hated the lines. So Jonah cobbled this machine together from parts others discarded and regretted it immensely. It was a reminder of the virus, he presumed it to be Watts-MacCleod though he'd told no one else, running rampant in his mind. He opened it and plucked out a packet containing gel nutrition of some variety -- he kept poor track of what he put into his morph -- and immediately noticed the lightstrip failing to turn on. He instinctively cocked his head for a closer look and idly poked the button soldered onto the interior watching the bare wires wiggle and looking for signs of life from the light. He figured that the LEDs were probably alright but there was no clear indication of whether the wired connections had held so the obvious solution was to install a robotic frame to self-analyze the errors using machine grade steel from the Galway's junkyard and ...

"Goddamn it!" He slammed the door shut clutching a hand over his ear and frantically scanned the apartment to see if he'd built anything last night. His contraptions tended to have a mind of their own and he had lost too many lately. Well never again, there were too many loose already and he didn't know what they'd do. He was alarmed as his search revealed a terrifying set of anemone arms waving from the wall and emanating a set of cool blue grid lines on their surface. In terror he flung his food across the room to knock down the contraption, the trailing globules of glucose/protein mix arced slowly as it the packet clattered ... into the tools he'd dodged earlier? ... and a cheerful mezzo-soprano voice cut in saying ["Glad you found that, I was worried you wouldn't after that kind of a night, by the way you ..."]

"Sunshine you stupid bitch." Jonah collapsed into a chair running a tattooed hand over his head which was stubbled with black hair. "What in Phelan's would make you talk to me right then?"

His muse replied, generating herself in his field of vision as an attractive woman of about thirty in primly maintained business casual, ["You were making a scene, and you told me that you wanted to stop that. I'm holding you to that no matter what species of insect you woke up with. Anyways, you ..."]

"No, I don't have to stand for this shit. You're here to help me so don't push ..."

["Anyways, you promised to repair the damaged life support and weapons systems on the 'C10-Dragoon' a night cartel skiff which is currently docked on this cluster. In fact, it's occupants are headed this way to knock on your door according to the messages you don't take the time to read, probably because you promised to do this and hour and a half ago. I was highlighting your tools since your neurons seem to have calmed down enough to handle that kind of work."]

He recalled the blue gridlines he'd been terrified of and glanced at the tools again to find them helpfully tagged, in blue, with a reminder to fix the ship and a few quick guesses at what he'd need. No more words were exchanged as he sprinted for deep space, hoping the cartel members wouldn't be at the back door.

Minutes later, wrapped in a vacuum suit with an overloaded EVA sled coasting next to him, he set to work on the Dragoon. Minutes after that, though it would have taken hours if he hadn't lost himself in the voices, the ship was made whole and he only had to look forward to convincing the gangsters that he'd actually been working all along. Well, that and another night on Phelan's -- none of which had disappointed since his scum barge had joined the swarm.

[crizh]

She floated in space about five klicks from Phelan's Recourse. The simulspace was like a giant Saturnine Orrery, the old girl herself hung off Rebel's right shoulder and multi-coloured AR tracers plotted the course of the cluster through the system.

It was passing through the A ring in a couple of weeks and she had to be ready.

When she first got involved with Firewall it was innocent enough, a few badly damaged egos that needed nursing back to health but the horrors that they had witnessed could not all be explained away as hallucinations. Slowly the truth had started to dawn on her and her inquiries had eventually led to a full induction into the mysteries of the shadowy guardians of humanity.

She suspected it had something to do with her altered neural architecture but the revelation of the precarious nature of our existence and the truth about the TITANs had fired Rebel with a new sense of purpose and paranoia. Hence the move to Phelan's.

She had a lot of work to do. Morphs to design, a viral distributed darknet to build and goodness knows how many exsurgent forest fires to put out.

What she really needed was to be someone different. The sort of person that was good a dealing with criminals or a master of unarmed combat. That wasn't a problem, she was an expert at transforming egos into something new and different but it was going to take time and resources.

A Case. That was the first thing she needed, a design for a Case Morph with a few custom options.

She should get cracking. Time was short.

[Xahn Borealis]

[Wake up, clankbrain!]

"Buhh!" Three exclaimed with a start and a synthesised harmonic. What's with the rude awakening, Bizzy? he asked his muse. Hotheads on the line? [No, you're just drawing a crowd. Not everyday you see a synthmorph snoring. Stop pretending to sleep in the corridor,] she said with a stern harmonic. So, what, are they here to see something? [Depends, are you going to expose yourself?] Just one time that happened! One time! ... Ok, maybe three or four. Continuously. While jumping on that slitheroid's back shouting, "Giddy up!" And besides, I was thinking I'm in the mood for a performance." [<sigh>...If you insist.] I do indeed....

Loading a DDR narcoalgorithm and deciding on a good song to broadcast on AR, Jack Three took to the dancefloor...

Time to do the robot.

[ Spoiler ]

[OOC: Interest: Old Earth Culture roll 60 to find a good dance track to body pop to. Preferably something retro.

Art: Dance 60 roll to dance.]

[Sixgun_Sage]

Murphy found his way to the cafe and got a black coffee with a shot of Phelan's Ma in it, legitimately he knew he could have gotten something indistinquishable from a machine but he preffered the ambience of the cafe. Cup in hand and taking slow sips he scanned through the possible jobs Fixit had pulled up. Nothing there so he tossed the whole list and headed into the corridor to stretch his legs. It was only a few turns till he was down one of the side corridors that led to his crash pad and he was.... bemused by the sight that greated him, apparently someone was either just flat crazy or hooked on DDR. "I really wish I had gotten something a bit stronger, Fixit, hell, I wish I was back on Fresh Kills. No one there would blink if I put a round through a flex's head." [No resorting to bloodshed as a first measure, boss, remember what happened last time you lost your temper?] Murphy shook his head and did a guick look about, the flexbot was probably not gonna let anyone past so... kick off the siderail, grab the vent, swing forward, use the momentum to twist overhead andwe are back on our way.

[ Spoiler ]

Freerunning 22 of 60

[Xahn Borealis]

"Domo origato, Mr. Roboto!"

As the song starts to pick up, Three's flexbot body starts to move with slow, smooth movements as well as jerking into new positions not possible with an anatomically correct biomorph. Along with multiple smart material appendages and chameleon skin, the effect is that what appears to be several dancers occupying the same space. A small hat appears to be thrown on the floor near the performance as an entoptic object, accepting donations of any kind, from Rep to Credits or just your mesh ID. A guy's gotta meet people somehow...

[This is immature. Don't you have anything better to do?] Awww, leave me alone! I'm having fun! What would you have me do?

A fury morph does an impressive leap overhead, which Three notices. He attempts to move closer in an attempt to get the passing freerunner to join in with an acrobatic display of his own.

Three also sends the morph a mesh message,
[Hey, don't leave me out here on my own! Lend a hand? You got good moves.]

[Sixgun_Sage]

Murphy blinked and then finished his cup, grinning wickedly, "is this...being... for real? Trying to get me to dance?" [you have no idea...] Murphy spun through a little step, dropping low into a leg sweep and twisting his shoulders to throw out an open handed strike aimed at center of mass and meant to unbalance the flexbot, it was a trick he had picked up in the barracks from a soldier obsessed with kung fu and while he was feeling particularly bloody minded today, it wasn't enough to try to actually do the being any harm, if it fell he would go back along his way.

[ Spoiler ]

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2639850/ 8 on Unarmed

[pragma]

Jonah popped his helmet off as the airlock filled to atmosphere; the sense of breathing in low pressure jived with the morph's heavily modified respiratory system to produce a little euphoric kick which Jonah quite enjoyed. His head was still buzzing when the inner door opened with a faint rush of air and he was shoved against the hardened steel separating him from space.

"Why you take so long? Your eyes big, high on job?" A vein pulsed beneath the former Serbian's crew cut as the gangster seemed to will his presence to consume Jonah. And in that first instant, Jonah felt like the cartel member was succeeding as his own bowels slithered nervously while every conscious response vacated his mind. He was, however, proud that he didn't cower before the intimidating gaze of the Olympian morph.

"Your targeting system was bad, I fixed that too." He nearly choked on the words.

The Serbian wound up for a legendary slap, but clapped Jonah on the shoulder. "Don't be sad, targeting system is nice perk. I just haggle with you. Mechanics, all pieces of shit and you, only half-way." He grinned ear to ear as he threw and arm over the firewall sentinel's shoulder. "But here, we hire you because they say, 'he is fast, he does good work.' You were fast, you did good work, just hour late. I am happy, hire you more. But fuck with me again, or be high in time crunch, and I'll stick you with screwdriver, you bleed like bitch. Let's go get drink, be happy."

Jonah desultorily muttered "wasn't high" under his breath and then briefly reflected that this was the risk of cultivating his up and coming criminal client base: the occasional threat of death. On the other hand, at least the criminals were nicer about than firewall; firewall didn't offer to pay him at the end. He wallowed in self pity while the gangster -- who for some reason eschewed translation software in favor of five or six broken tongues -- dragged him to a bar on the distillery ship itself. But the cartel member's enthusiasm was infectious and the two were happily bantering as they weaved past a crowd growing around some kind of dispute between a fury and a flexbot and squeezed into a bar.

Settling down to Phelan's Da the two drank a quick toast. Some scientists babbled enthusiastically in the corner. Jonah briefly wondered if they needed anything built like a self-replicating telescope array to observe ... fuck ... gotta think about something else ... I want a cheeseburger. He wended his way to the maker to get the sandwich and thought briefly about a poem -- something with the words "crimson edge of a razor deal." He briefly fantasized about being a respected freestyle rapper before recalling he didn't have the charisma for it. Then sat again at his own table and devoted himself to being charming enough to attract more work.

[ Spoiler ]

Trying to show the Serbian Night Cartel member a good time in hopes of more g-rep.

protocol (defaults to SAV): 10, I rolled: 14.

Please add modifiers or tell me to use another skill (persuasion?) as appropriate.

[pragma]

Niko Borislav, that was his name, Jonah had been certain he'd met the criminal before and hoped that opening with his name would make him seem more likable. He was pretty sure that was how these things went.

"Hey, Niko ..."

"This taste like piss and bar is boring. Full of fucking nerds with quantum alien bullshit."

"Of course it tastes like piss. it's 'Da', what did you expect?"

"Leaving now."

"But, we're just getting ..."

"Is bullshit. Will call for more work, you find me for more fun."

Jonah slumped back, defeated, and nursed his watery alcohol.

[Xahn Borealis]

CLANK.

Three went down hard, landing on his back. If he was in a biomorph, he'd have probably suffered some head trauma or concussion. What actually happened was that his head simply fell off. Rolling across the floor, leaving the rest of his shell sprawled out comically, Three's world started spinning as his visual sensors were pointed in different directions, while still able to keep an 'eye' on the biomorph which had attacked him.

Don't. Don't you dare laugh, he told Biz, who promptly started laughing in his brain at the situation. [You so had this coming.]

Three manipulated the smart materials in his head to form small tentacles to crawl to his body.

[Octohead coming through!]

After reuniting head with body, [OOC: need Test here, GM?] Three stood and tried to look intimidating and tall by stretching to look taller and broader.
"Right," he vocalized, "Here's what's going to happen."

[OOC: Old Earth Culture Test. Modifiers? Don't worry, more to come.]

[Sixgun_Sage]

Murphy was still there when the flexbot pulled itself together bouncing in place like a boxer, hands weaving slightly and an adrenaline-high smile twitching at the corners of his lips. Sending a hundred spot into the bot's digital hat and darting side to side. "Y'know, never been a fan of putting on shows, especially like this, but it could be fun, tin man. What'ya say? I've got the cred..." He was stutter stepping in place as he spoke, even as Fixit broke in [Incoming message from the screened list, send it through?] Murphy nodded, still keeping in motion.

[Jimson]

While each of you are going about your lives, your muse alearts you to an incoming encrypted message from your Firewall router, Dr. Cornelius.

[Incoming Message. Source: Anonymous]
[Public Key Decryption Complete]
Please join me for refreshements and discuss current events at C67-j in 4 hours. I'll be hanging around. - Dr. Cornelius

After a serch of the mesh, each of you locate the section in the tin can maze of Phelan’s Recourse where residential unit C67-j is located. You also note that it is in a zero-g section of the habitat.

[crizh]

Rebels woke with a jolt. They looked around the small module they had constructed with the space junk bought from a variety of anarchist collectives upon their arrival at Phelan's Recourse.

After a few moments they got a handle on themselves, the merges were good and dozens of voices and POV's coalesced into the usual four. It had taken nearly a month to perform each of the dozen or so skill patches that she had designed. Each had been run concurrently in an Accelerated Simulspace and the whole process had taken less than one day of realized time.

Still, her core egos had experienced years of psychosurgical skill grafts in subjective time and it took them a few moments to recall what she was doing when she started this project.

The new module was a mess, the walls were dotted with General Hives grown directly out of the structural materials, the floors were a mess of power lines snaking around providing energy to the neutrino transceiver and over a dozen half built Case Morphs lying at odd angles on shelves and in alcoves. She'd whipped up a fabrication plan based on the Morph she'd purchased from the Plurality but had been in too much of a hurry to let the Proteans finish building each one, she only really needed their cyberbrains after all.

She had a lot of work to do, many, many blueprints to design and new ideas to test. She'd put together some other fabrication plans while she'd been waiting for the Hives to grow and the first of her experimental probes had been deployed into the A ring while she'd been busy growing her skillset. It's survey mission would be complete and it would be looping back towards Phelan's. With a bit of luck it's discreet payload would have deployed and her ball would be well and truly rolling.

-----

Charm, the Fork who operated as her Muse, interrupted her trains of thought to bring her attention to the message waiting in her inbox. A cold river of anticipation ran up her spine as she absorbed it's content.

Firewall.

She made a backup, transmitted it into her darknet and sent another encrypted copy out using one of the entangled particles she had shipped in-system with.

And then promptly forgot she'd sent the extra copy. Charm edited the XP log and forgot she'd done so.

Time to risk her mind in service of humanity.

[BlackHat]

[Pardon...] chimed in Lexi, Dr. Esterly's muse, at a carefully selected point during one of the natural lulls of their conversation (which she had been graphing in an overlooked AR display, labeled "biological oscillator synchronization"). The melody of her synthesized voice, as well as the manner in which she spoke, may have come off as unusual to many. These parameters were the result of programming designed to automatically configure the muse to a user's aesthetic tastes, over time. Since his infection, Dr. Esterly's aesthetic tastes have changed dramatically, and Lexi was still attempting to reconcile decades of accumulated preferences with the relatively recent changes to his neurological structure. Although the algorithm was common to many muses, and rarely even noticed by their users, Dr. Esterly was fascinated by the way in which it demonstrated the potential for the exsurgent virus to affect systems not directly rewritten by the nanovirus. The virus had an indirect affect on the way in which Lexi executed her programming, so, although not an asynch, or even a biological lifeform, she was not entirely immune to the affects of asynchronous brainwave activity. This related to what he had been discussing with the other scientists - a microcosm of the possibility that the exsurgent virus could have an influence on transhumanity that extended beyond the infected - but before he could cause the BOS-graph to spike by refreshing the conversation, Lexi chimed in again.

[Salient communique:] The short message that was routed through Firewall appeared in his augmented reality, along with an augmented route in his peripheral vision leading toward C67-j. Thank you, Lexi. I'll wrap things up here and... he was interrupted [...arrive punctually?]. An AR timer appeared that took into effect the estimated travel time through Phelan's. Dr. Esterly smiled and returned to the conversation. If his new friends had noticed his lapse of attention, they were polite enough not to mention it. Despite his procrastination, Dr. Esterly was interested to see what Firewall - or someone connected with Firewall - really wanted to discuss with him, but a message from Firewall almost certainly meant trouble and, at the moment, Dr. Esterly was of a mind to enjoy as much of his evening as he could salvage.

[Xahn Borealis]

"You and me, are going to have a little fun."

At this point, the music kicks in.

Three's movements, no longer predefined by the drugsoft and free from the distraction it provided, synchronise perfectly with the music.
Along with his nanotechnological appendages now forming shapes in the air and twitching and writhing in time to the beat, an entoptic lightshow creates a synesthesic effect for any observers. Those in the crowd who join in form a wall facing Murphy and are able, thanks to a low-level XP-feed of Three's emotions, to synchronise with his dancing perfectly. Ultimately, the whole performance is set apart from any other seen for a long time, perhaps even preceding the Fall.

["When I come through on the dancefloor, checking out that catalogue..."]

At this point, Three breaks off from the formation and dances close to a female pleasure pod in the crowd who reciprocates his attentions and dances with him.

["Can't believe my eyes, so many women without a flaw..."]

Through the use of his Ionic Mobility System, Three takes off, continuing his kinetic display, shifting shape rapidly, to the point that he is only humanoid when the beat hits.
At this point, Biz lives up to her name with an entoptic interruption.
[I have a message the hotheads, as you call them. It appears they-] before being immediately squelched. Not now Bizzay, Daddy's playing...

Three and the pod rejoin the dancers, moving closely around Murphy and surrounding him. Three noticed he appeared be to leering with a creepy smile on his face as he bounced out of the time to the music.
Is he horny or something? Hope he doesn't think I'm a robosexual or something...

[Your move, baby.]

[Sixgun_Sage]

Jackson was... surprised when it stuck to dancing, not really his thing but... he pulled a few moves he had learned from a pleasure pod on his first leave, nothing too far out there, more relying on his own grace to pull things off as Fixit gave him the message from the screened source, his Firewall router.

[ Spoiler ]

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2653106/ dancing

"Sorry, flex, duty calls so..." It was a good t hing everything around here needed some maintenance, gave him just enough room to grab a pipe and swing, the landing was... a bit more sloppy than he had predicted but he turned that extra momentum into a roll and came up jogging for his rooms. If the job was being sent his way that meant a good chance it was messy, which meant he wanted his gear with him and ready to rock.

[ Spoiler ]

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2653119/ Freerunning to escape the crowd

By the time for the meet he had been waiting just off site for a few minutes, his bags packed and ready to roll, a cigarette burning down in one hand as he levered to his feet and headed for the res unit. A fresh backup logged with the insurance firm and everything.

[Xahn Borealis]

"Not to toot my own horn, but I think I won that own. I think this round's on that guy!" Three remarks to a cheer from the crowd. They proceed to the nearest dance club with variable gravity throughout the length of the establishment.
[Are you at all interested in a message from Fire-]

Not tonight, Bizzles....

[THREE HOURS LATER]

[For Sun's Sake, WILL YOU WAKE UP!?]

"Buhh!" What now? [Dr. Cornelius has requested your presence at this hab module,] entoptically highlighting the outline of C67-j through the wall, [and he is expecting you in 10 minutes.] Well, he's gonna be disappointed... [Some things never change...] No? What am I, if not an unexpected change? Don't answer that, it's not your fault. <sigh>

Three disentangled himself from the pleasure pod, admiring her well-sculpted form as she slept. Silently letting himself out of her living space, Three made his way to C67-j, refreshing himself on everything he knows about Dr. Cornelius.

Heh, you know why they call 'em gynoids? [Because they are female humanoid robotic shells.] You're no fun.

[OOC: GM, make it happen. Three's got mnemonic augmentation, so he can call up an entoptic of every dealing he's had with Cornelius, if any.]

[BlackHat]

As the night wore on, the entopic timer ticked away - generally overlooked except when Dr. Esterly's muse, Lexi, forced it to the forefront of his perception. The four scientists' discussion went on for some time before reaching its natural conclusion. Dr. Esterly left his new colleagues with some final thoughts, and invited them to keep in touch over the RNA research network. He put the tab for their drinks against his own credit among the autonomists, bid them all a good evening, and prepared to follow Lexi's route to residential unit C67-j to settle that bit of business before calling it a night.

This brought his mind back to his Firewall Router, Dr. Cornelius, and the message he had delivered over the Eye. Despite his pretense of discussing current events, this wasn't the first time that Dr. Esterly had dealt with Firewall, and he anticipated that the two of them would have something far less banal to discuss. Firewall did not activate its agents lightly - and if there was something going on that required the attention of Firewall, Dr. Esterly was eager to hear how they believed he could help them. Of course, when dealing with Firewall, information is vital. For example, Dr. Cornelius was not Dr. Esterly's usual router, and he knew almost nothing about him. Dr. Esterly hoped to change that before arriving at the meet.

As he proceeded along the precalculated route, he began to scour the local mesh network for any data even remotely related to the residential unit, C67-j, or his router, Dr. Cornelius. Lexi, noticing his intent, chimed in predictably offering to handle the search for him, but Dr. Esterly declined. Since becoming an asynch, he preferred to handle this sort of data-fusion task, personally - the rewiring of his brain made him better suited to it than most AIs. As he was flooded with data - almost all of which was certainly unrelated to his interests - his mind began to rearrange the facts, numbers, and figures according to patterns and algorithms that his muse would not have been able to follow. Out of the chaos, patterns emerged - correlations his asynchronous mind disentangled from the "noise". The world around him slowed as his augmentations compensated for the heavy neural activity, and Dr. Esterly very slowly made his way through the tin can maze - following the entopic route his muse had provided, but keeping the majority of his attention on the cloud of entopic data he was quickly accumulating.

[pragma]

Jonah settled down and tried determinedly to mope, but couldn't keep his mind on that without it drifting dangerously to the combinations of parts he'd need to build antidepressant producing chemical factories. He tried to think about his business but his mind drifted towards the work he'd done this afternoon and the other modifications he could have made to the ship while no one was watching and so finally he determinedly focussed on thinking nothing. Just as he was getting images of anti-matter bombs creeping in around the deliberate void in his thoughts, Sunshine chipped in making herself manifest at the far side of the table.

[You have a message, you know.]

Look, I'm sure it's not urgent. I'll get it when I get it. As much as he liked to verbally yell at his muse in private, Jonah recognized that it was a bit gauche.

[It was sent three and a half hours ago.]

And if a spaceship's life support is so bad that it needed me within three and a half hours then I'm sure I couldn't have done anything.

[Patently false, you shouldn't get down on yourself. Also it mentioned a deadline a half hour from now ... and it's from a market sector that is burning up.]

Oh fuck me, it's really them. Jonah had sort of hoped that Firewall would just forget about him, but they kept crawling out of the woodwork. But he was a man with something to hide and Firewall was an organization that had a way with secrets.

I guess I can't ignore this. As usual you're a lifesaver.

The image of the muse adjusted a stray hair behind her ear, dug a notepad out of her blouse's front pocket and smiled as she ticked off a list of points. [It's what you pay me for. You don't have time to run back to your can, the route's uploaded though and you should have your gun and your vacsuit with you. That ought to be fine for this meeting.]

His muse vanished and Jonah grudgingly dragged himself to his feet and started shuffling towards the door. On the way, he was nearly bowled over by a menton morph (from the bar earlier?) heading out of the bar at a brisk pace. He furrowed his brow but was reminded that he needed to get to this meeting quickly. He rushed to the nearest lift and found the menton riding it as well. The two lost eachother as Jonah took advantage of the lower g's near the core of the ship and his extra hands to leap above the crowd and clamor over the superstructure to a shuttle. But inside, the menton was seated opposite him as they made the brief inter-ship hop to the tin-can maze. The final straw was coming up a few flights of back stairs and rounding a corner to see the other morph step off an elevator.

Jonah put on his best intimidating air and rested a hand on his holstered pistol and said "Hey there." Whether this was a criminal or an enemy of firewall remained to be seen, but selling himself as a badass seemed like a good idea regardless.

The menton looked wary. "Hello."

"I don't think I know you or owe you money, so why are you following me?"

[BlackHat]

The menton's eyes flickered back and fourth wildly, clearly focused on some private entopic imagery. After a pause, they flicked towards Jonah, and quickly down at the hand that was resting on a pistol, then back up at his face. Dr. Esterly deactivated his mental speed nanoware, for a moment, since it was clear he needed to converse with the bouncer in front of him. The movement of his eyes slowed and focused on Jonah once again, before Dr. Esterly spoke. "... following you?" He wasn't sure he had even heard the stranger correctly - one of the side-effects of increasing one's neurological speed. He looked around, as though seeing his surroundings for the first time - or perhaps verifying that the bouncer was alone. "I apologize. I wasn't really paying any attention - a bit busy, actually." He glanced in the same direction that Jonah's entopic route suggested he take, next, before returning his attention to Jonah. Dr. Esterly still appeared wary, and made no move to proceed, however - and rather than returning to whatever had been distracting him, he seemed to be looking Jonah over carefully.

[crizh]

Glittering in the darkness the tiny robots drifted from one particle of dust to another sorting, categorizing, altering, storing and occasionally discarding.

Each was fitted with tiny magnetic sails, ion accelerators and even microscopic chemical rockets which allowed them to move wherever they needed to go to achieve their task. At first they seemed chaotic but slowly their purposeful dance revealed itself. They coalesced around a number of small rocks massing a few tons between them and gradually assembled the raw materials they needed from the dust surrounding them.

Several small rocks the size of grapefruit are gradually honeycombed and filled with the machinery to support, repair, build and reprogram new generations of nanobots. The first generation of 'bots are cannibalized for the tiny reservoirs of qubits embedded in their nano-processors and the tiny caches of data they held. A fresh wave of 'bots were manufactured and slowly but surely they move through the dust collecting raw materials and hollowing out and converting larger chunks of rock into various machines of unique design. Chunks with a high water content were converted into sophisticated neutrino detectors. More than two dozen of these were formed and networked with laser links to form an effective Neutrino Transceiver. Some became simple data-stores, others built and stored qubits and yet others drew power from Saturn's magnetic fields to form tiny amounts of Metallic Hydrogen or tiny turbines that generated power from allowing that Metallic Hydrogen to decompress. One or two even built tiny probes and seeker missiles designed to carry payloads of new generations of nanobots wherever they were needed.

When the last of the programs finally exhaust themselves deep in the heart of the unit co-coordinating the Neutrino Transceiver a single qubit is flipped.

-----

While she chose the outfit she would wear to the meeting she checked on the status of stage one. A single orange light signified that it was time to start working on stage two.

-----

C67 - L

C67 - K

Some sort of altercation was occurring ahead of her. Two Morphs were performing some sort of strange paranoid social dance. A Dr Esterly and a Jonah something and both had I-rep scores according to her Muse. The overt displays of paranoia certainly seemed to confirm their relationship with Firewall.

Excuse me chaps, perhaps you could direct me, I have a meeting in C67 - J and seem to be a bit turned around. Could one of you gentlemen help me out?

[pragma]

Jonah and the doctor carefully sized eachother up. Both were obviously armed, Jonah's pistol strapped to his forearm and the the good doctor had something concealed beneath his billowing labcoat. Speaking of which, both were also obviously ready to jump into space each bearing a smart material vac suit: the doctor's labcoat and the orange ball stuck to the mechanic's belt buckle. Finally, they both had an exotic array of tools: repair spray, electronic rope, a flashlight and a fiber eye for Jonah, a spindle climber and assorted mildly concealed nano-technology for the doctor, and wrist mounted tools on both.

[Generally the people trying to beat you up or kill you don't have this many peer-reviewed and refereed publications, Jonah.]

Jonah's eyes flicked briefly to Dr. Esterly's profile and he immediately felt sheepish. But Firewall business is Firewall business. He unconsciously took the doctor's cue.

Come to think of it, it's a bit odd that a well respected mathematician and alien investigator is heading my way too.

"We may have gotten off on the wrong foot, doctor. I'm Jonah and I suspect we're heading in the same direction for a heated exchange." He eased his left arm, the one with the gun slide, back to his side and proffered his right. Another stranger started approaching the pair just as Jonah was easing his guard.

[BlackHat]

Dr. Esterly's cautious demeanor faded almost immediately after Jonah eased his weapon-arm. He shook the bouncer's hand, once it was offered, reviewing his public profile, out of habit, as he did so. Lexi dutifully filed the information away, for him. "That would certainly explain our paths crossing here. As for the upcoming exchange... " He looked up when Jonah did, both of them noticing the approaching Remade. When she admitted to being 'turned around', Dr. Esterly took a moment to review her public profile, and concluded that - in all likelihood - her comment was merely intended to break the proverbial ice. "Certainly, Ms. Mudlark." He gestured for her to join them, but made no attempt to forward a copy of the route, since such information should already be within her grasp. Her reputation - particularly with the Research Network Associates - had his attention. As the three of them began walking together, Dr. Esterly began to peruse her publications - suitably impressed by her standing in the fields of nanotechnology and psychosurgery. His mind wandered briefly to speculation about the sort of event that would lead to Firewall calling upon some of transhumanities leading scientists in their respective fields (and where the bouncer might fit into this think-tank). The hypotheses that filled his mind (made worse by asynchronous creative thought patterns) were unnerving, and he concluded that, where Firewall was concerned, anything was possible, but that they would find out soon enough. Entopic data-feeds continued to speed by in his peripheral vision, and Dr. Esterly appeared distracted, as they continued on, but he resisted the urge to speed up his thought processes and exclude social interaction, altogether.