Resist Intimidation: Charisma (7) + Intimidation (4) + Mod* (2) = 13 dice
[5] 4 4 2 2 [5] 1 [5] [5] [5] 1 3 [6] Hits:6

*John dosn´t think Conell would realy do this

Outside: Agent (6) + Analyse (5) = 11 dice
4 4 2 2 [5] [5] 4 [6] [6] 2 [5] Hits:5

Intuition (5) + Shadowing (4) = 9 dice
1 [6] 3 4 [5] 1 4 3 2 Hits:2

Outside: Intuition (5) + Perception (6) + Audio/Visual (3) + Observe in Detail (3) = 17 dice
[5] 4 4 2 2 [5] 1 [5] [5] [5] 1 3 [6] [5] 3 [6] [6] Hits:9
I asumed Forensics wouldn´t help much outside the building.

Inside: Agent (6) + Analyze (5) = 11 dice
2 4 1 3 [6] 2 [5] 3 2 [6] 4 Hits:3

Inside: Intuition (5) + Perception (6) + Audio/Visual (3) + Observe in Detail (3) + Forrensics / 2 (2) = 19 dice
[5] 2 1 2 3 2 [6] [6] 3 2 1 1 4 3 3 [5] 2 4 2 Hits:4

Logic (5) + Forensics (5) = 10 dice
[6] 2 4 1 [6] [5] 1 4 1 1 Hits:3

Carla
Monday 7/14/70 13:30:00

Indeed, examining the door and the lock she saw no signs of forced entry. Stepping inside and quietly closing the door, it took only a moment for the low-light feature on her glasses to gather up what little ambient light there was and convert it to a usable real-time image. It allowed her to see well enough by the sunlight that found its way through the heavy curtains that covered the windows, but the image lacked texture...she'd been hoping that the room lights were keyed to the door, but like most people's, it seemed the house terminal was waiting to sense Esmeralda's commlink before turning everything on. It took a minute, but Carla eventually found a manual switch in the bathroom - always the best place to look since it was the one place a lot of people didn't take their comms.

Once she got some lights on, she started taking a good look around the place. There was a front room, kitchenette, bath, and bedroom - all small.

Against one wall in the front room was the main telecom unit, complete with an extra-large trid screen, which was odd because there was nowhere from which to watch it - no sofa, no chair, not oven a floor cushion or zabuton. Carla looked for impressions or unworn patches of carpet where a piece of furniture might have been, but in doing so all she found was that the floor was extraordinarily clean. Turning to the big telecom/trid she found that it also was immaculate, except for a thin layer of dust - about a week's worth, she guessed. The glass panels on the front of the storage unit were carefully cleaned, and inside she could see a collection of optical chips.

The room smelled of pine scent.

The kitchenette was also spotless - no dirty dishes, no crumbs on the counter - it was even relatively clean under the refrigerator. There was a soy-processor, but it didn't look like it had been used...ever? The freezer was well stocked with ice, and in the refrigerator were several bottles of spring water. The crisper held celery and carrots, again, probably fresh about a week ago. Within the main compartment of the fridge was a single container of soygurt. It was about half empty, though carefully closed.

Under the sink were a full selection of kitchen cleaning supplies.

On the refrigerator door were a number of magnetic frogs in various poses, waiting to faithfully hold up memos or other hardcopy material. But right now they had nothing to do.

The cupboards held a neat set of simple eating utensils, plates, bowls and so on. Lots of vitamins, the bottles all lined up in a cabinet all their own. And two more cupboards with Hostess Ding Dongs. Case after case, all unopened, of Hostess Ding Dongs, stacked with painstaking care.

In the bathroom the shower curtain was also lavishly adorned with frogs. They cavorted about holding up flowers as umbrellas to keep them out of the rain. The shampoo was some utilitarian generic brand. The tub held not a trace of mold, the sink not a single dried toothpaste stain. There was a soap dish in the form of a frog lying on his back - place the soap on his tummy and smart-plastic arms held it in place. In a glass on the sink were two toothbrushes - on one the bristles looked well used (and a bit pinkish?), while the bristles on the other looked entirely unused, though it was out of its package.

The toilet seat was decidedly down. Sitting on the tank was a box of tissue.

Beneath the sink was another collection of cleaning supplies, including several bottles of pine-scented air freshener, explaining the woodsy aroma of the place which had by now grown almost cloying.

Medicine cabinet - Band-Aids, sugar-free chocolate laxatives, ibuprofen, lip balm, tiny scissors and a pair of tweezers, and an ointment for ingrown toenails. Not a razor in sight, but then, Carla thought, if you wore a habit all the time and were celibate...and in any case, Sister Esmeralda had always seemed quite unselfconscious about her relatively noticeable facial hair.

There was wicker basket holding a stack of white bath towels, and a white bathrobe hung on the inside of the bathroom door, several long strands of black hair remaining near the collar.

There was a brush, which also stubbornly clung to several strands of hair. But no cosmetics at all.

A cabinet held packages of toilet paper and a few boxes of tissue. Standing in the middle of the white-tiled room, something struck Carla as conspicuously absent, and she looked again. Finally she found it, high up in the cabinet with the toilet paper, but behind everything else - a solitary, unopened box of feminine pads.

The bed was made - sheets and a single thermal-weave blanket you could bounce a coin off of. A single hard pillow in a snow-white case. Neatly arranged under the bed were several dumbbells and some big rubber bands for exercising. A pair of Foot-Fit SmartSneakers.

There were two nightstands, one to either side of the bed. On one were a stack of introductory nursing texts with dog-eared pages, and a well used notebook full of notes on the books' contents. On the other night table were a number of the latest hardcopy fashion magazines - the latest Vashon Island and Armani styles shown off by the hippest models captured by the trendiest photographers. And on top of those was a heavy Bible, including the Apocrypha, of course. Carla had seen the Fathers using these as well, and couldn't figure out why people still preferred them to AR editions. The Bible's pages were frayed, and the pages were filled with highlighted passages - almost to the point where the highlighting seemed pointless - it seemed like more passages were marked than not.

In the closet were several habits, hung together with their wimples. There was one "casual" outfit - a drab, baggy affair with flowers that would leave not a centimeter of skin exposed - and some exercise clothes - baggy white sweat pants and jersey. All the clothes were self-washing. No spare bedding anywhere in sight, but then what was on the bed was self-laundering as well.

Above the bed hung a simple crucifix.

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worn copy of The Passion of Saint Catherine of Siena

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Carla
Monday 7/14/70 13:42:00

Perfect


Carla opened up the window half-way, leaving the curtains down, and hoped that the apartment might air out after a night or two. She pine scent was almost overwhelming, and Carla suspected that it might be concealing another odor.

She stopped and looked at the telecom unit as she passed through the room. After doing a quick matrix search, she looked up the date of St. Catherine's death and the date of the prayer that was written in Esmeralda's bible. Not expecting much success, Carla called up the telecom unit's access panel and tried codes:

14081376

and

29041380

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Carla
Monday 7/14/70 13:42:45

With the entry of St. Catherine's birthdate, the telecom prompt screen gave way to a collage of elite models, mostly showing off swimwear or undergarments, apparently culled together from the sort of up-market fashion publications that the nun kept by her bed.

Welcome, Esmeralda appeared in the center of the screen.

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BlueRondo

OOC is perfectly fine - as long as the results eventually get summarized IC.

First, just a little something on 2070 home electronics. You have probably already surmised all this, but just so we're on the same page -

The home terminal that is ubiquitous in any but the poorest home acts as a hub for the home's appliance network. It usually interacts closely with the residents' commlinks, and controls climate, lights, and all manner of personalized entertainment features. It generally also does everything a commlink does - acts as a PC and a phone. A lot of people like to use it as a phone when they are at home because it has a trid/vid image pick-up so the other person can see the user (commlinks often have the same feature, but obviously you then have to hold it in front of you and all they can see is your face). So it's a lot nicer. Same for entertainment - most people just sort of reach a sensory limit with AR all day. Sure, you could watch TV on your glasses with your commlink, but think - would you want to ONLY listen to music on headphones, even when you are at home and have a stereo? For most people, no.

So you know that for most people, this terminal stores a lot of info just like peoples' PCs, and also serves telecommunication functions.
Two things though - it is unpredictable what will be on it, as some people like to keep stuff on their comm, some on the terminal, and others both. All depends on the individual where their personal files are.
Also, of course, all information (and sometimes even turning the thing on) is protected in some way - password, encryption, whatever.

So - to your questions -
The chips are ALL exercise routines - Buns of Steel, Abs of Steel, Burn It Off, The Bootcamp Workout, even a Richard Simmons equivalent. A very nice library of various types of workout trideos.
You have no problem manually activating the entertainment features on the telecom - the last channel watched was the Cooking Channel.

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BlueRondo

The workout chips look like they are what they are.

You don't find anything hidden anywhere in the front room (there's nothing but carpet and walls and a curtained window besides the telecom).

You can easily manually access the entertainment features of the commlink, but yeah, it wants a wireless passcode to get into anything else.

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BlueRondo

Your medical training is enough to tell you that the vitamins are a real full-spectrum regimen - except for the total lack of calories, a person really could stay pretty healthy on this stuff if they could keep from just peeing it all out. All the bottles appear opened and only partially full, so someone's definitely taking them. One thing you notice is that dietary fiber supplements are particularly prominent.

The Ding Dongs are just Ding Dongs, as far as you can tell from opening the box.

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BlueRondo

It all really depends on what lifestyle the person is at. The nuns are definitely at Low. She has a compacter in the kitchen, but also wastebaskets in the bedroom and bathroom. The one in the bedroom is empty. The only thing in the bathroom's is some wadded up tissues that have sort of hardened into balls - but no color - looks like they were used to blow her nose.
Both wastebaskets have plastic-bag liners, leaving the actual plastic baskets themselves spotless.

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BlueRondo

Awww - I tried to include all the major, easily seen objects in the place, but forgot a chest of drawers. Of course there is one in the bedroom.

The top drawer holds panties - all white cotton briefs, size S. All very clean, but fairly old. Also white skirt slips. Way in the back you find the one piece of jewelry you have seen in the whole place (though you never saw Esmeralda wear it) - a bracelet of cheap plastic red beads.

The second drawer holds white socks, and also a well-read book - The Passion of Saint Catherine of Siena.

The third drawer holds well-worn bras. All white and no-nonsense. Some might miss it, but as a woman you notice that all the bras in easy reach at the front of the drawer are 32-A. But farther back are 34-Bs and 34-Cs. Also a few white sports bras. Also a few white camisoles.

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BlueRondo

As noted, there is a large window in the front room - heavily curtained. I didn't have Carla open it in the IC post when it was so dark, because of course anything you do with the curtains or window might be visible from outside, and I didn't want to make that choice for you.

But the window is only secured by a simple latch, so it is easy enough to open. Let me know if you open it, and whether you also open the heavy curtains.

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BlueRondo

The Bible is a tough one. It really is about half highlighted (various colors, lots of notations) and half not. And considering it is about 2,000 pages of 16th century English (King James Version), deciphering her notes might take a Biblical scholar days or weeks, depending on how they went about it.

You do notice that something has been handwritten on the inside front cover -

Oh supreme and ineffable Godhead,
I have sinned and am not worthy to pray to you,
but you can make me worthy.
---St. Catherine of Siena

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BlueRondo

Okay, once the pine scent fades, there is sort of a lingering sour scent - vomit?

Father Ortiz does have some records, but is hesitant to release them - confidentiality and all that. But perhaps he senses you are trying to do something about the situation, so he relents.
But there is precious little - she is a war orphan from Columbia (Aztlan/Columbia border fighting) raised in a convent orphanage there. They weren't real big on record-keeping, but you can get her birth date and names of her deceased parents. There are medical records, but all they show are routine vaccinations and uneventful checkups.
She took her vows at 18 and was sent to Seattle, where she has been for five years. Records stop after that. Father Ortiz and everyone else simply says she worked very hard, was almost fanatical about her religious observances, and kept to herself.

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BlueRondo

Yes, you can pull a call history up, and even messages. But they are few and far between.
In the past week, Padre Cardoza has called and left several messages, all just looking for Esmeralda, asking where she is and if she's okay. The first of these messages states that he tried her "regular" number (her commlink, you assume) several times, but it was always turned off or for whatever other reason he couldn't get a connection. So he had this number on the apartment records (the Church owns the building) and tried it.
Going back about six months there are a number of history entries that are simply marked "commlink access". This means that a call, either incoming or outgoing, was made to or from a commlink, and the home terminal was simply accessed as a display device. In other words, like I said, you get a much better face-to-face feed off the home terminal, so people like to use it, but it seems that like a lot of people Esmeralda preferred to receive and make calls on her commlink and then just route them through the home terminal as a mere piece of audio-visual hardware. As such, you see no readily available info on the home terminal about the nature or content of the calls.

And that's it for the call history. Both point to her using her commlink for all her phone calls.

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Anyway, about what you find on the computer -
First, as I mentioned before, I see breaking into home computers as a bit of a crap shoot since more and more people are keeping more and more files on their commlinks. And it is totally an individual thing what and how much they also keep at home, or keep at home instead.
Thus, everyone in 2070 knows that home terminals paint a somewhat more incomplete picture of a person than their commlink usually does.

Second, as you know, I am the most computer-ignorant person in the world. So if I leave something out that would just HAVE to be there, please bear with me.

Anyway, the first thing you find is the 2070 equivalent of a "desktop".
Most everything here is in icons, not words - just like today only more so.

You find icons for
A common, cheap Browse program.
A common, cheap Edit program.
An address book.
A piece of software that seems to be an aid in studying the Bible and other Catholic theological sources.
A piece of software you are familiar with that helps students of health care professions study.

That's it - it's even less than most people have at home.

You said you wanted to check out the address book. Pretty slim pickin's there too.

Entries alphabetically; second line is my shorthand for what you get if you "click" on them -

Ana
This file has its own encryption which neither of your password guesses works on.

Cardoza
As in Padre. Commcode.

Chiaki
Commcode.

Mia
This file also has its own encryption.

Ophelia
As in Sister. One of the other nuns assigned to this parish. Commcode.

Ortiz
As in Father. Commcode.

Patricia
Chaotic Serenity. Commcode.

Traininvain
Commcode.

Zephyr
Commcode.


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Carla, First Wave

Some other things Carla looks for:

-She looks for history logs in the browse/edit programs.

ADAMU - Easy to do with a basic knowledge of computers, which you have.
The edit log mostly shows that she spends a lot of time updating the collage that wallpapers her opening screen - mostly from upscale fashion magazines, and swimwear and lingerie catalogs. Mostly human, but occasional elves. Kate Moss/Gemma Adams types.
The browse history is very very long - just imagine your own PC's history of every Google search you ever made.
You find that it is about 70% food sites - online menus of various restaurants - generally very expensive ones - or cooking sites with lots of lavish illustrations and nutritional data on different sorts of cuisine. Just skimming through you get totally hungry.
About 10% is religious searches.
About 10% is image searches on current top models, or maybe some female athletes - those sports would center on hardcore endurance stuff like triathlon.
Remaining 10% is a real mishmash, just miscellaneous. If you want to sort through it (it is spread through all the other stuff) you can use a Data Search to identify any patterns - as I have been doing for all this stuff, I used one of the rolls you already gave me. You find that almost half of the miscellany relates to eating disorder sites, but they are fairly "dark" sites - by which I mean that some sites try to be discreet by limiting what info is available on a casual glance, e.g. they don't have site maps out an easily available. Getting into the exact content will take a greater investment of time.

-She looks for any sorts of documents or data stored on the unit aside from the address book.

ADAMU - Nothing like that - probably more stuff on commlink.

-The rulebook talks about how all the appliances, lights, air-conditioning, etc. in the house are usually linked to a central hub. Does the unit have any sort of "house maintenance" data or programs, or does that information appear to be stored elsewhere (probably her commlink)?

ADAMU - Yes, this terminal functions as the "house hub".

---If there is information on the house systems, could Carla find a history log of what times the front door was opened?

ADAMU - Lists last time door was opened from outside as when you came in, and the second to the last time it was opened from outside as the evening right after the last time you saw her, which was the evening right before the day you saw Black Cat.
The last time it was opened from the inside was about 90 minutes later that same evening.

By the way - in your IC post you say you "copy" some stuff down. I assume you mean you transfer it to your commlink? Or were you thinking of something else?

So here's what I kind of see happening, using your hallucinations as a guideline... some may be clear from the post, some a bit less "known". Feel free to pull me back in if I took too big of a liberty with anything.

* The taste of stag's blood, hot from the jugular... - Her finishing off the now-warm beer

*running wildly through dense woods, branches scraping deliciously into her naked flesh... - Dancing in the crowds very free spirited and brushing up against the girls in the crowds and their oversized jewelry and other accessories.

*muscular bodies tossing a virgin into the bonfire's flames, and then enfolding the Tir runaway in a sensual, promising embrace... - This is much more metaphorical and the subconscious part of her brain extrapolating her "sacrifice" from the Tir because of the rape and how it's also an opportunity for rebirth here in Seattle. Tuesday turning her affections on Etain and testing the bisexual waters with her and while Etain's not going out of her way to continue the affection, she's not rebuffing her either.

*standing on a cliff staring into the dawn sun... glorious... transcendent... until her corneas burned blissfully away and left her with only her pure Astral sight... - The peak of the band's performance, bright lights backlighting the band and her shifting over to the astral and looking out over the crowds, enthralled with their auras and seeing those of the band as well.

*The laughter and screams of hundreds of euphoric youth rising above the band of shadows... - Obviously the crowd's reaction to the bands set ending. And the stage being prepped for another performance and music pumped through the sound system to keep the "mood" going.

*A red-lipped fairy blowing pixie dust in a gentle shower over her that burned her nose... - I really see this as Tuesday giving her/sharing Bliss with her, I was also picturing this being Etain's real vice coming out of this (plus anything else you have planned). The "escapist" drug and it's addicting effects when she's miserable/unable to find Conall/missing home/etc...

*Swimming exultantly through a clear cyan sea, ruling the waves, and then being pulled mercilessly under, unable to breathe... - This I see as the initial effects of Bliss taking over and calming her down, and the drowning is basically the combination of effects of everything in her system not playing nice.

*A school of sharks bearing her back up to the surface...a smiling and dashing Patrick by her side... - I had in mind the 'crowd' kinda helping her through her multiple highs, and having an almost "near-death" type experience from the side effects of the drugs and that's why she "sees" Patrick...

*Patrick's face disappearing, giving way to a half dozen masks of lust, befuddlement, euphoria, bemusement and ecstasy above her and all around her... - Being pulled back into the thick of the party by Tuesday and her ever growing posse.

*The masks had hands, and the hands approached her, tempted her, became acquainted with her... - Taking a liking to one of Tuesday's friends from the crowd, the group sort of congregating in an alcove type space with couches and starting the beginnings of their own PG/R-rated "orgy" of sorts, not really having time to escalate to the more R/X rated stuff going on around them.. at least not Etain, perhaps Tuesday and the boys...

*And in the distance, above the musical onslaught, beyond the whispered promises massaging her ears, and deep within the desires of her flesh, a lone, majestic wolf howled. - I kind of see this as Conall's mentor spirit reaching out to her, perhaps with the aid of Moon Maiden to try to pull her off the start of this self-destructive path.