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I think this does mark the first incident of Mrs. Maureen going to be horrified by an event without it being the main kids fault this time. Goooooo team.
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Nov 25, 2021 02:38
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oh poo poo i caught up finally! this has been one hell of a ride 
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Dec 14, 2021 16:56
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Julie and Julian Wednesday, August 29th, 2075 – Afternoon - Blake Island There was little to do after the mandatory lockdown that followed the fight. Under the watch of security, more spirits than Julie had seen before in one place and all available teachers, magical and mundane, the students were escorted back to their cabins either individually or in pairs. This was almost always accompanied by veiled threats and complaining at their treatment. Julie had been escorted back with a still crying Krupa, who was completely inconsolable after witnessing Joyce's injuries. Now alone, there was little to do as the lockdown was complete. For the moment at least, Julie wasn't allowed to leave her cabin. That was all that her teachers or security would tell her. Hours passed. She’d checked in with Chip, who was doing okay and watching Kenji, who was sleeping a lot. He hadn't been confined to his cabin, possibly because he was in isolation, possibly because he hadn't been at the fight, but she didn't really know. At least she had Chip to keep her company, but she'd had to cut contact as ugly feeling from witnessing Joyce's injuries and Krupa's tears crept back in not long later. So she’d cried a bit and read some of her bible for solace which had kind of, sort of worked but she felt like she needed Pastor Devin to get the most out of it. So she’d stopped and had set it aside for later. Still, she needed distractions. So she’d checked hers and Kenji’s finances again from the last report because it was something to do. Not that there was much information to go over as the ledgers were kept simple. She guessed from previous reports that if the numbers kept steady, they'd have half a million nuyen by the end of the week. None of it seemed real, especially since neither she nor Kenji were working to make it happen. Sure, she owned the land and sure, she, Kenji, Fuzzy and the Touristville residents had provided the money to buy the dentistry drones. However, no one person could work hard enough to make half a million nuyen this fast and she wasn't even the one working. As the day stretched, even those thoughts hadn't kept her occupied. So now she was organizing and reorganizing some trauma bags since simple medkits certainty wouldn’t be enough for Denny Park. Weeks ago she'd bought one for Fuzzy, one for Kenji, one for herself and one for Mother Bear just in case, with Fuzzy’s bag currently on Julie’s coffee table, contents carefully organized and tabulated. It was this, the organizing and reorganizing the bags that had finally given Julie the sense of calm that she needed. With each bag she organized she managed to find a new way to put more gear inside and make it more accessible, which made her reorganize each bag once again. Someone knocked on the door and Julie gasped a little in fright, then immediately after she scolded herself. Carefully, she stood up from her seat and tried not to shake the table, which she’d brought closer to herself. When she opened the door she found Julian, who looked...Not great. Demoralized if she had to put a word to it. It was in his eyes and the set of his shoulders. “May I come in?” asked Julian. Julie opened the door wide. “Yeah, sure,” she said, “It’s a little bit of a mess in here though.” Julian’s expression didn’t change. He only nodded as Julie let him in. At first he glanced towards the neatly organized pile of medical supplies and then he squeezed in by the coffee table before he finally sat down. He placed a small, dark, audio only recording device on the table. "Before we begin, I am obligated to inform you that this conversation will be recorded," said Julian, "Do you wish for a lawyer to be present?" Then he held up a white noise generator and put a finger to his lips. Julie nodded in understanding. "No," said Julie, "I actually understand quite a bit about magical law." "Are you sure?" asked Julian, "I don't believe that it's wise to waive your right to a lawyer. This conversation will be scrutinized later. There is a lawyer right outside." Julie looked over towards her door and then back towards Julian. "I understand." “Very well, said Julian, officially, "Let's begin. Due to the circumstances around the school shooting, you are entitled to…” “Wait, school shooting?” asked Julie. Julian nodded grimly. “The casting of an explicitly lethal spell on school grounds falls into the same legal category as a firearms discharge.” Julie suddenly remembered and nodded. After all, she had studied magical law while in prison. Helping prisoners with their cases had been her “hustle” while she’d been inside. "Right, I should've known that," said Julie, quietly, “What am I entitled to?” Julian shut his eyes for a little while as he tried to remember. The silence lingered awkwardly before he found the words. “Speaking as your teacher, you are entitled to free grief counseling,” began Julian, as he rattled it off by rote, ”A week off school with the option of more if your personal or school appointed counselor allows for it, a month’s reduced class load, possible waiver from end of semester exams and the option of receiving and keeping a licensed emotional support animal of your choosing.” “Oh,” said Julie, “That’s a lot.” “It is legally required of the school,” said Julian, “And as your guardian, I have to ask if you wish to launch a lawsuit against the school.” Julie was shocked. “What? No.” “Do you feel like your safety at this school was or is in any way inadequate?” “No...No wait.” Then Julie thought about it for a few seconds because it was a serious question. “Still no." "The school has deemed itself to be initially within compliance set down in its initial charter," said Julian, "This may change upon revue. Speaking as your guardian, I suggest that you do not waive your rights." "Uhhh...Maybe then?" Julian nodded and his smart contacts briefly lit up as he made a note. “I’ll have someone else ask you later as I suppose as your guardian and as your teacher, you may feel inhibited.” “I really don’t.” Julian managed a weak smile. “That’s good,” sighed Julian, “I still need to do it. You may can talk to an impartial lawyer later. Do you have any other questions?" Julian raised the white noise generator and looked to Julie. With a nod from her he flicked it on and the recording device off. “So what happened?” asked Julie. Julian closed his eyes and took a deep, angry breath. “The corporate fight as Ares consumes Lone Star has found a new front,” said Julian, bitterly, “One student hit another student with mashed potatoes. The potatoed student overreacts and used a spell to fling dishes around. This kicked off a fight with magic with over a dozen students and a few students in the crowd decided to add to the chaos." "I didn't think they all attacked each other," said Julie. "They didn't," said Julian, "Some summoned spirits, some ran away, some used illusions to hide themselves or to try and stop the fight and again, some from those watching decided to add to the chaos. We're getting most of the last at least. They almost all summoned spirits initially bound here at the school and since spirits are unique, we recorded their likenesses." Julie winced as she remembered something. "Uhh...When I banished one of the spirits, I took control over it," said Julie, "Is that going to be a problem?" Sudden irritation crossed the teacher's face. "Which one?" he asked. "A bear spirit," said Julie. Julian grumbled. "That is a problem," said Julian, "Under no circumstances are you to use it." "Why?" "You might be painted as its summoner," said Julian, "The recording was heavily distorted from all of the magic flung around, but we know that some of the spirits summoned by students attempted to attack other student, not the security spirits. So if you summoned that spirit, you'd be blamed so the original summoner could avoid blame." "So what should I do?" "Release it," said Julian. "Isn't that um...Destroying evidence?" asked Julie. "No one can tell that you have it unless you summon it," said Julian, "So you can either use it and cause all sorts of problems for yourself, keep it forever and anger the spirit or let it go and earn a little good will for releasing it. The fact that you were able to steal its service away from its summoner proves your skill, now prove your wisdom by letting it go." Julie nodded, concentrated and addressed her bound spirits through the emotional connection that was much like Chip's. The two water spirits she found addressed her and she them respond in the alien way that elemental spirits frequently do, which was through their element. In this case, a gentle feeling of rain and the crash of waves on a shore, or at least how she felt about them, which felt weird. The bear spirit was easier to understand as it had feelings very close to her own, though simpler. It simply acknowledged her. With a small effort of will, she released the bear spirit. In her mind's eye, she imagined that it simply turned and lumbered away. "Done," said Julie. "Good." "So you said that there was distortion," said Julie, "From all of the magic? Tech can record magic." "It strains under particularly powerful magic," said Julian, "Or a lot of magic all at once. So it'll just be hard to prove who did what the closer they were to the center of the fight." "Can you prove anything?" "Some, but not all," said Julian, "The further away from the center, the more likely they'll get caught. Even if we can't prove it I don't want people who reach for lethal spells or using summons in a lethal way at the first sign of trouble in a school setting. They need more supervision than we can provide. We'll do our best to gently nudge anyone who we suspect but can't prove who cast offensive magic out of the school." "Are they getting expelled?" Julian laughed mirthlessly. "No one ever gets expelled," said Julian, "They'll just get transferred." "Minuet got expelled," countered Julie. "Corporate and government elite almost never suffer public embarrassment, much less punishment," said Julian, "Not in UCAS and certainly not in Seattle. Minuet screwed up so badly that her corporation dumped her and her family. Once that privilege is gone she's just a normal person again." "Like Sasha." Julian sighed and nodded. "Like Sasha, yes." "I see..." said Julie, quietly, "Is Joyce okay? He lost a lot of blood." Julian turned off the white noise generator, turned on the recorder and prompted Julie to speak again. "Uh, is Joyce okay?" she asked. "Once again, speaking as an official representative of the school, we appreciate your quick action in treating Mr. Sartel. However, I am not allowed to comment on his condition." "I mean, he has to be alive." "He was alive the last time I checked," said Julian, blithely, "He made initial inquiries about a lawsuit..." "A what?!" spluttered Julie. Julian raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Our lawyers have said that the accidentally applied tranquilizer patch on his arm created implied consent because he'd been accidentally drugged. But Julie, you need to remember to ask if someone wants to be treated before you treat them. That's the law. If they say no, you don't treat them. Legally, since Joyce's senses were impaired and he was woozy from blood loss, we believe that you're shielded from liability. So you could legally treat him, which further helped by the fact that you didn't actually touch him. You just advised the likely former school security guard about his error. Just be cautious about that in the future, okay? It wouldn't be good if you got sued." "Right," sighed Julie, miserably, "In future. Oh...Wait, former security guard?" "I cannot comment on internal school affairs, apologies." Again he clicked on the white noise generator and turned off the recorder. "I'll have that edited out," said Julian, "But yes." "Is he in trouble?" Julian frowned slightly. "He has insurance to cover any lawsuits," said Julian, "We all do. But I doubt he'll work in security ever again. The wealthy don't tolerate mistakes. Not when it comes to their own protection." Julie scowled. "How is it fair that someone wealthy shoots half a dozen ice spikes into Joyce and walks away but a regular person screws up in a way that didn't even hurt anyone and he has his life ruined?" Julian put his hand on her shoulder. "It's not," he said simply. Julie fumed and he gave her shoulder a small squeeze before he pulled his arm back. "Do you have any other questions, officially or unofficially?" asked Julian. Julie wanted to say no, but then paused as she remembered Julian himself. "Are you okay?" she asked. Julian gave Julie a tight smile. "No. For so many reasons, no." "Can I help?" asked Julie. Julian shook his head. "You helped enough," he said, "Because you helped things from getting worse. We noticed that you banished one of the spirits from the recording and now we know which spirit you banished which helps us unofficially know who did what." "And it didn't claw anyone." "Yes, I was about to mention," said Julian, "And the school will remember that you helped when others decided to make a bad situation worse. But all I want you to do right now is to stay out of trouble. The next few days and possibly weeks will be full of people screaming at me. Please don't add anyone else to that pile." "Okay..." said Julie, softly. Julian dug around in his pocket and placed a data stick on her coffee table. "And whoops, it looks like I left something here," said Julian, "Completely by accident." Julie frowned down at the data stick. "What is it?" she asked. Julian patted at his pockets. "Can't seem to find those contest rules...Maybe I left it on my desk..." "Is this even fair?" asked Julie, her tone dubious. "Oh well," mused Julian, as her turned away from her, "It's not like any of my kids would be able to win. At least if they participated like everyone else did." "Do you really think anyone is going to do this school competition after what happened?" Julian finally stood up and turned to face her. "Oh, forgot you were there," said Julian. "I'm sure." "Well, it's better to have a peaceful outlet for all of this anger than a violent one," said Julian, "In fact, I think I'll have a better chance of convincing everyone to participate precisely because they're less likely to tear each other apart." "Oh." "Now, you can stay here, locked down until Monday or..." "I'll leave," said Julie, quickly. Julian turned off the white noise generator, pocketed it and turned on the recording device which he picked up as well. "I contacted your pastor," said Julian, "He should already be waiting to take you to your grief counseling and he'll pick you up again when you're done. Fuzzy will come with you too. Please keep her out of trouble." Julian switched off the recording device, smiled a tight smile and helped Julie to her feet. Then she quickly pocketed the data stick and packed the loose medical devices into the trauma bag. Then she stuffed all four bags into a bigger box which she levitated with ease. "Have you checked on Kenji yet?" "I checked on him an hour ago," said Julian, "Still sleeping. Lucky him. Are you leaving Chip with him?" "Yeah." "Good idea. Contact the school when he wakes up." "Okay," said Julie, "Oh, and I need to come back to get the food from the farm." "That can be arranged. I doubt anyone is actually going to stay on the island. Between you and me, school will be out for the week. We'll start back up on Monday." Julie nodded. "This was a nice break," sighed Julian, "Now...Back to getting yelled at...Yaaaaaay." Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Dec 14, 2021 |
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Dec 14, 2021 20:00
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A lot of important tid bits here, no one is going to catch a break soon it seems, least of all Julian. Is Julian in charge of going every student or just the ones that aren't getting punished.
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Dec 15, 2021 18:08
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Julian needs a slice of life look into his hobbies, IMO. The reader knows little about his traits in such an environment aside from flying in to bone Kenji's childhood crush IIRC. What does Someone so thoroughly altruistic do when downtime comes around?
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Dec 16, 2021 03:59
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Blasphemaster posted:Julian needs a slice of life look into his hobbies, IMO. The reader knows little about his traits in such an environment aside from flying in to bone Kenji's childhood crush IIRC. What does Someone so thoroughly altruistic do when downtime comes around? What down time? The guy is burning candles from both ends from being a teacher, a guardian to three oops four kids and trying to plan for Denny park in secret, he hasn't seen Kenji's big sis unless she sneaks into his apt. He's been going around putting out fires( ha-ha yeah) until he's worn out. Pretty sure the closest to down time he's had is when they went north to fix their magic. His mentor is fire bringer he doesn't get down time. Unless you want a flashback when he was a runner and then maybe had some down time Toughy fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 05:40
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Keldulas posted:I think this does mark the first incident of Mrs. Maureen going to be horrified by an event without it being the main kids fault this time. Goooooo team.  Blasphemaster posted:I think Joyce can't really change his behavior and not react with anger in some way given what was done to him. He wants to reassure himself of his manhood and any perceived threat to that is going to be magnified in his view. He's brittle as hell right now, and I don't see that changing very soon. Joyce is extremely brittle, yes. He's not in a good place and he doesn't know how to deal with his own feelings. biosterous posted:oh poo poo i caught up finally! this has been one hell of a ride Glad you read the story. I hope that you continue to stick around.  Toughy posted:A lot of important tid bits here, no one is going to catch a break soon it seems, least of all Julian. Normally Julian is the disciplinarian for the island as well as the corporate liaison. In this case though, I think it'd be all hands on deck. There are 120ish students and Julian can't handle everyone. I imagine he came by Julie's place to get a break after getting screamed by entitled kids, entitled parents and corporate lawyers whose jobs depend on how well these kids get treated, no matter what they did. All of them are pissed off and many are scared. Blasphemaster posted:Julian needs a slice of life look into his hobbies, IMO. The reader knows little about his traits in such an environment aside from flying in to bone Kenji's childhood crush IIRC. What does Someone so thoroughly altruistic do when downtime comes around? vvv Toughy posted:What down time? The guy is burning candles from both ends from being a teacher, a guardian to three oops four kids and trying to plan for Denny park in secret, he hasn't seen Kenji's big sis unless she sneaks into his apt. He's been going around putting out fires( ha-ha yeah) until he's worn out. So I've spoken a long time ago about education, especially in k-12. And about my (limited) experiences as I tried to become a teacher. I got out of it, thankfully. Julian embodies one of the worst traits of being a teacher, which is a form of martyrdom. To some people, that seems admirable. He's teaching multiple classes, has four kids that he's doing his best to protect, is dealing with a conspiracy for Denny Park, he's working with the other teachers to create and run a school competition and now he just had the magical equivalent of a school shooting dropped in his lap. Education is absolutely full of people on their way to burning out. Normally you'd have admin staff guilting teachers, especially new teachers, into working harder. It's a big, black hole where time and effort go in. And there can be real results from helping kids. They always need more time and attention. But it comes at the cost of your life. And you're lucky if you get paid enough to be above the poverty line. A lot of teachers have second jobs during the summer, roughly one third of new teachers. And eventually you're required to get your masters, which you're not allowed to take time out for and the district frequently wants you to pay for it on your own dime. https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/almost-one-third-new-teachers-take-second-jobs Julian getting a girlfriend, or really, Min Yun getting Julian, wasn't something in the cards for Julian if left to his own devices. And when dealing with that kind of martyr personality, she's going to deal with the fact that he's going to be unavailable for long stretches of time (Monday through Friday) and she's going to have to carve out time with him Saturday and Sunday. Taking him away from education is difficult because the work that he chose is consuming him. I think that a slice of life with Julian would be fun and I may do it at some point. But if I did, what I'd drive home would be that he has no hobbies and he barely has a lifestyle outside of education. The occasional one night stand pre-Min Yun, but that's it. If he's not teaching and sometimes succeeding, frequently flailing at being a guardian, there's not much more to him. And being confronted with the fact that there isn't much to him beyond that would probably be pretty scary. -- I have the next update written. I just need to edit it. In the meantime, I'm working on a third update because I'm in a writing mood. Currently in the storyboard process. So look forward to more updates in the next few days.
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Dec 16, 2021 08:28
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Makes sense. Matryoshka doll of infinite altruism.
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Dec 16, 2021 14:38
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Ice Phisherman posted:
  
Toughy fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 14:47
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Can't help but feel that Denny Park is coming based off the fact that Julian is now officially tied up for the 'next few days and possibly weeks'. So while the future they saw isn't strictly correct, that's a very good reason as to why he's not with the kids when poo poo happens.
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Dec 17, 2021 03:27
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Fuzzy, Julie, Devin and Puppy - Wednesday, August 29th, 2075 – Afternoon - In Transit “You didn’t help at all?” asked Julie, “I thought that you had enhanced reflexes. Wouldn't that have given you plenty of time?” After a round of therapy with Julie’s normal therapist, Mr. Brand, Julie and Fuzzy had been picked up by Devin. In fact, not only had he picked them up, but he'd also dropped them off hours earlier as well since Julian was busy. At the moment they were all inside of a VTOL air taxi on their way back towards the Downtown area. The eastern part of the sprawl faded as they passed over the centrally located Lake Washington, also called Lake Acid due to the amount of acid rain that fell on it and pollution pumped into it, was on the way back to Tourstville. Even from above it didn’t look healthy. In fact its color was sickly blue and industrial brown, and trash from the city floated on top in areas like a layer of scum. “I was eating a burger,” said Fuzzy, “And I didn’t even get to finish it.” Fuzzy scratched Puppy behind the ears. She’d elected to bring him along, though unlike almost all of the students she was going to return to the school later on to spend time with her owl, Fluffy as apparently they needed quite a lot of attention. Also she wanted to finish the last of her deer hunting so she could free up time for more projects. “Do you need your hands to use magic?” asked Devin, “I don’t remember that being strictly necessary.” “It’s not,” said Julie, “Though some people use them to help them focus.” “Ah,” said Devin, “I might guess then that you didn’t want to do it.” Though it had once seemed a luxury, the air taxi was something that Julie used far more frequently than the Gridguide public transport these days. Even though most traffic was automated and moved at a decent speed, an air taxi was just faster when moving through the Seattle sprawl. There was also the ugly fact that most public transport wasn’t meant for trolls like Devin. Waiting for a larger ground based taxi likely would have meant even more time while the air taxis had more headroom, though only just enough. Waiting would have taken even longer than normal since a number of the Gridguide taxis had been damaged or destroyed in recent riots. “That fight was not my problem,” said Fuzzy, “If they want to beat each other up or kill each other then that’s their business.” Julie had even sprung to buy out of the commercials on the way back. It was all the same stuff, really. More news about the protests and riots. Ads for products, services and of course for politics as the election continued to near. That was what got her to pay up as one had started immediately upon takeoff. What kept her from permanently buying silence, literally, was that the yearly subscription fee for commercial free air taxis was a hundred times as high as normal taxis. Even a single commercial free ride was a hundred nuyen punch to the heart that she felt guilty over paying. Her nerves were frayed though after taking care of Joyce and so she'd paid for silence. “Tell me, Fuzzy,” said Devin, gently, “These students…They live near you, yes?” Fuzzy, who thought that the conversation was over, turned her eyes back from a window to look at Devin. “Yeah, I guess,” she said, “In the cabins.” “That would make them your neighbors, yes?” he pressed. Fuzzy’s frown deepened. “Not because I want them there,” she said, and spoke quickly as Devin opened his mouth again, ”Look, I know where this is going.” Devin briefly closed his mouth and raised an eyebrow. “And where is that?” he asked. “Church stuff,” said Fuzzy. “I generally think that way, yes,” said Devin, his tone a bit amused, “Well I don’t want to think about it or talk about it,” said Fuzzy, “I want to be left alone right now.” Devin’s amusement faded and he nodded slowly. “I suppose after what you saw today and therapy you might need that space. I understand. I’ll leave you alone.” Fuzzy stared intensely at Devin for a moment, then she grunted, slipped her black, AR goggles over her eyes and seemed to check out. She only seemed to pay attention to Puppy, whose head she continued to scratch. A little whine came from him as he took cues from Fuzzy’s obvious discomfort. He laid his head on her knee and whined a little more. “Can we talk about it?” asked Julie. “I think that’s fine,” whispered Devin, “Let’s just be respectful and keep it down.” Julie nodded. “I think I know where you’re going with this,” said Julie, “You’re talking about the golden rule, right?” Devin pursed his lips. “Not exactly, but it is very close,” said Devin, “A quick lesson if you’re feeling up to it?” Julie nodded again. “I think so,” she said, “I feel pretty wrung out, but I usually feel better after our talks.” “Usually?” “Well…Sometimes our talks go to heavy subjects.” Through the AR windows of the air taxi, Julie saw them pass over Lake Washington and felt them bank to the left as they turned towards the Downtown area. They flew above most of the buildings, including a few skyscrapers, though she could clearly see the stepped pyramid shape of the Aztechnology arcology and the massive, flat topped pyramid that was the ACHE, which were the only structures taller than their current altitude. Even higher still were drone skylanes, where drones, mostly delivery drones, moved this way and that in a tightly organized, grid pattern in the sky. Drones flew forward, ascended and descended in an almost beautiful dance, tightly coordinated and always on the move. “They do,” said Devin, “But not now. I’ll keep it light and simple. The golden rule. Do you remember it?” “I think so,” she said, “Jesus gave a sermon on the mount. That’s a hill I think.” “The Mount of Beatitudes, yes,” said Devin, smoothly, “I have a VR program if you want to visit it sometime.” “I’d like that, sure, but um…Yeah, the golden rule. Jesus said to do unto others as they would do unto you. It means just treat people the way you want to be treated.” The air taxi began to slow as they quickly reached their destination but didn’t land just yet. Instead a soothing electronic voice spoke up through the intercom. “Due to increased air traffic at the landing pad, we will briefly enter into a holding pattern. Thank you for your patience.” “Words from a good teacher,” said Devin, who ignored the voice, “Words you put into practice. Now I don’t know all of the details about that fight you saw, just the broadest strokes from what you told me. But if you helped others in a time of need, you treated others exactly the way you wanted to be treated. Am I right?” “I guess…” “No, don’t guess,” said Devin, firmly, “You did. You helped others like you would want to be helped. You did a good thing and I want to acknowledge that.” Julie positively glowed from the praise. “Um, yeah…” she said, a little flustered,” Thank you.” “No, thank you,” said Devin, “For your actions. He said that we have been told to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But Jesus said to love your enemies and your neighbors both. To…Well…Pray for those who persecute you. And you were persecuted by people like them just last year.” “It was more…Silence, honestly,” said Julie, “After Minuet and her friends I mean.” “I would say that attempting to ruin a clinic you helped set up for needy people, attempting to plant drugs in your apartment and then pulling a gun on you and your friends is definitely persecution. The silence that came afterward was...Well, I suppose they didn't know how to handle you. But it is my hope that you broke that silence was a truly good act.” “I’d really prefer the silence,” said Julie, “Most of them aren’t very good people.” Fuzzy grunted once. Devin’s smile strained, but he grudgingly nodded. “I suppose that’s true as Marco dealt with some of that silence as well,” he said, “But by treating others how you want to be treated, well…It’s a radical act, no matter how large or small. We don’t live in that world where that is common. Not yet, but someday, God willing. So it takes a special kind of courage to treat people you’re not disposed to like, maybe even people you loathe, with kindness, dignity and respect.” Fuzzy grunted again in disagreement. Devin and Julie looked over to Fuzzy, but said nothing and instead looked back to Julie. “You never know who’s watching,” said Devin, “You never know the mind or mood of another, only God does. But if you catch them in the right moment, at the right time, through your words and actions, they may see you shine out in the world. A lot of people want to be close to something that…That...Well, real." Julie was a little confused by this. "What do you mean, real?" she asked. Devin scratched his chin in thought. "Well...We live in an age where people are able to construct their own little personal reality bubbles," said Devin, slowly, "Maybe you watch the news. They'll tell you what you want to hear or what you don't want to hear, but what will enrage you. The same thing goes with social media, only moreso. The election is its own bubble of unreality because regardless of who gets elected and that we supposedly live in a democracy, nothing actually gets better for anyone. Add to this augmented reality, virtual reality, the matrix...Well...It can be very easy to feel like we're the only real person in the world. Like there are no hard truths beyond our own personal selfishness. In this fallen world, selfishness feels like it's not only the only impulse that's rewarded, but even that your own personal selfishness is the only thing that's real." Julie had to think about that for a while. "Soooo..." said Julie, slowly, "Since everyone is in their bubble, treating others like you want to be treated...Pierces that bubble?" "A bubble constructed of selfishness," said Devin, "Selfishness and fear and hatred and lies sold to you as truths. It's an illusion, but a powerful one. Caring about another person and demonstrating that care, especially for a stranger, challenges that bubble. Maybe it even pierces it. That's the power of caring about other people, Julie. Once you pierce that bubble, maybe they start caring about you back. And if we pierce enough of those bubbles and convince others to care about each other like they would themselves? To turn the power of their own selfishness on its head? Well...The world gets just a little bit better. A little bit brighter. You can turn a stranger, even an enemy, into a friend. That is the power of the golden rule. The power of reciprocity." Julie smiled a little, but she wasn’t as hopeful. “I was pretty far away,” said Julie, “From the fight I mean. I was on the other side of the room. And most of these...Well...Little nobility take security for granted. I doubt that they even noticed.” Devin maintained his cheer. “You never know who’s watching,” said Devin, “When I met Marco, I was just preaching in the corridors of the Ork Underground. Just a man trying to spread the good news where weapons and drugs and sex were sold. Marco came to me, angry and terribly alone. He…Well…Anyway, the old Crime Mall was changed into Touristville with time, effort, love and investment. God put me in the right place at the right time to convince a lonely, angry young man that better things were possible.” “Why was Marco there?” asked Julie. Devin’s smile faltered before he decided to pat her hand with his own much larger hand. “Sometimes people crave excitement,” said Devin, “Especially young people. Especially in their first few weeks in a new place. But I doubt even he knew what he wanted when he came there. After all, he found me down there. So I’ll say no more on the subject about what he thought he wanted. He was called and he answered. That is more than enough.” Silence followed as Julie seemed to have found some sort of sore spot. Minutes later, the air taxi finally began to descend. When it set down and the doors opened, Fuzzy unbuckled her harness and whistled for Puppy, who sat up. Together they walked out into the street and left Julie and Devin behind. “Do me a favor?” asked Devin. “Yeah?” “Watch over Fuzzy,” said Devin, “Marco made me…Aware of something.” They both stood up from their seats, though Devin still had to stoop so his horns wouldn’t scrape the top of the air taxi despite the claim that it had been advertised as “fit for larger metahumans”. Julie began to levitate her box full of medical supplies but Devin stopped her. “I think it’ll be easier if I just carry it,” he said. "I can levitate it just fine." "It's not that you can," he said, "I know magic is commonplace at your school, but it still draws attention in Seattle. People are on edge from this toxic shaman scare. I'd rather you not get harassed." "Is it that bad?" Devin didn't answer, he only smiled a sad little smile. Julie was reluctant, but she soon relented and so Devin carried the box. Outside was a line of disgruntled commuters in a much longer line than usual. Devin and Julie walked past them and the eyes of a few well-to-do people, mostly humans with a scattering of elves, followed them suspiciously. It was a look that Julie still wasn’t completely used to as she spent most of her time in Touristville. The ethnic enclave had a way of making those kinds of people feel unwelcome. And she wondered how some of them would feel if they knew that she not only was an ork, but awakened as well. “So what do you mean about Fuzzy?” asked Julie. She felt some of the stares on her back as they walked away from the pad. She figured most orks and trolls couldn't afford a VTOL, especially the kind that landed in the nicer parts of Downtown. “Gossip, sadly,” said Devin, “Marco’s security team failed and allowed certain trideo pictures to hit social media. Nothing too scandalous, but some people have been speculating on why Fuzzy was holding Marco’s hand outside of a pizza place.” They walked off the air taxi ramp and into the city proper. Just a few blocks until they found the North End entrance. “Did she?” asked Julie, “She’s uh…Gay. And attached. And he’s…I mean, a troll. I mean, love whoever you want, but humans and trolls generally don’t date because of the uh…” Devin delicately cleared his throat. “Differences in height, we’ll say,” said Devin, a little quickly, “But no, obviously. He was particularly lonely that day and she held his hand as a friend. He told me that he made her aware of what happened the moment she left the island. The media is speculating that one of the young scions of the EVO megacorporation is dating someone who is considered by some to be a local folk hero. So it’s mostly contained to tabloids and celebrity gossip.” “Is that why she’s so pissed off?” asked Julie, “Usually when she doesn’t talk she just doesn’t talk. I don’t see her shut people down like that.” "I suppose I'll just show you." Devin shifted the heavy box to one hand with ease, pulled out his commlink and made a flicking motion over it towards her to send her a file. Then he tried again, stopped and frowned at his commlink. “It’s being stubborn again,” he said, “One second.” He made a few more flicks before Julie finally received the file. Today she wore AR contacts and when she accessed it, it lit up in front of her as she walked. It was opaque of course so she could still see where she was going. The tabloid, called “The Daily Link” looked like every other crappy AR magazine she’d seen as a child while in tow at a supermarket. Her mother had been partial to them for a while. What made this different was what was splashed on the cover. It was Marco who held Fuzzy’s hand while they strolled into a pizza place. It gave Julie a momentarily thrill of involuntary jealousy before she banished the ugly feeling. “Troll Corporate Prince Slums it With Human Former SINless Warrior?” asked Julie, “Oh, great, casual racism.” “Classism as well,” said Devin, “Othering of the SINless. An open appeal to what is lowest in us. From what Marco tells me, Evo...His corporation, you remember?" "We both tried really hard to forget," said Julie. "Ah...Yes...Well...Evo has been denouncing the obvious racist tones of the headline on his behalf but let the rest slide. Troll and human relations aren’t considered particularly scandalous like say, human and ork relations are, just rare. Exotic perhaps, hence the headline. Fuzzy told Marco she didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to draw her into conversation but…Well…I hope she was able to talk to your therapist about it. I doubt Fuzzy knows what to do. Dealing with the media is over the heads of most people. Even people with entire teams of consultants like Marco falter at times.” "And Fuzzy went from the Puyallup barrens to an island," said Julie, "And she probably doesn't know how to handle it." "Yes, my point exactly," said Devin, "Marco is afraid that she might not fully grasp what's happening." "She is taking a computer class..." hedged Julie. Then she thought about it for a moment. "Because she barely knows how they work, okay, right, I'll talk to her." While they continued to walk through the crowd, Devin pulled off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose before he settled them once again in their rightful place. “How did this happen?” asked Julie, “No one ever took trids of me when I dated Marco.” "People probably did," said Devin, "And they were suppressed. Marco wants to be a private person, not some socialite." Julie nodded in agreement. "How bad is it?" she asked, "I really don't want to read this." “I don’t ever read the tabloids, so I can’t compare it to anything,” said Devin, “There were a few paragraphs about what happened, which was some hand holding and some speculation. Then it looks like they made up the rest with Marco’s life and what they could scrape up from Fuzzy’s, which while it's sensational, isn't much.” Julie looked to her left as something drew her eye through the tabloid haze. An entire building was under construction with drone labor as it had been heavily damaged by fire. And if there were any metahuman laborers, she certainly didn’t see them, even when she closed the file. Up and down the street in fact a number of businesses were repairing the damage from the protests and riots. All of them were being repaired by drones and if they had any operators, she didn't see them. "Not a single person actually fixing anything," she said. Devin looked around as well. "No," he said. He pointed with his free hand. "Guarding though, yes," he said. She saw a number of black clad security, toting sub-machine guns. Not police, but private security. The ones they looked at stood in front of a high end jewelry store. Though security wasn't only people. There was were a few small but mean looking drones as well. "Hey, quick question," said Julie. “Yes?" “Security-wise," said Julie, "Are the Spikes still um…Protecting the Touristville entrance?” “No,” said Devin, “Officially they never protected us. They protected the Big Rhino. The restaurant has been targeted during the riots a few times now. A number of hate groups have been using the chaos to target non-human run businesses.” “And the protesters get blamed.” Devin nodded sadly. "I see the fires at night sometimes," she said, quietly. "I don't see them," he said, "I feel them. Too close for me." They turned a corner and found themselves on Seneca and First where the old Seattle Utilities Building was. Nestled into a corner of the building was the Big Rhino. Once ork and troll children and young teenager would hang out next to it and offer guided tours and deals, but they were gone. Instead there was a line of people streaming out of Touristville and out onto the sidewalk, though only a dozen feet or so. “Oh wow,” said Julie. “It’s grown,” said Devin, “Everyone needs to be lined up fifteen minutes early. There have been a few people angry that they’ve lost their spot and come in to complain thinking the doctor’s office is a dentist office. Easy to do I suppose since the waiting rooms are the same.” Even now, more people streamed up from the stairs or arrived from the street. The line was constantly moving forwards but it never really seemed to shrink as new people constantly moved to the back. For a moment, she just stopped and stared as the line just kept moving and growing, the faces changing. “Did I do this?” she whispered to herself. A single conversation with Mrs. Liu, legal rights to the land, plenty of start-up money, a blessing from the community and now it was real. It was strangely empowering and terrifying knowing that almost eight-thousand people a day stood in that line to get their teeth seen to. “Are you coming, Julie?” asked Devin. He’d come back and now stood in front of her. Then he turned to look at what she did. “The line?” he asked. “Yeah…It’s full of people,” she said, “It’s not just mostly orks and trolls anymore. It’s everyone.” It was true. The little ethnic enclave was usually only visited by orks and trolls as well as the occasional human, elf or dwarf, frequently “slumming it” in one of the Ork Underground’s safer locations. But the faces of those in the line consisted of literally everyone. The customer base of the ethnic enclave had changed. “Devin,” asked Julie, “Did I change things?” Devin smiled at her. “From the moment you walked in,” he said, “But we still do the soup kitchen on Sundays.” “I haven’t been there in a while,” admitted Julie, guiltily. “And you’re welcome to come and help any time,” said Devin, “It’s an odd world where you can get your teeth cleaned and your belly can still be empty. But it’s better than before. So I’ll take it.” “Yeah,” said Julie, quietly. The line just kept moving, expanding and contracting, always moving. “I do have to get back to work though,” said Devin, a little quickly. “Oh, right,” said Julie. Together they hurried past the line of people and down the stairs into Touristville. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Dec 21, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 22:08
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Julie (and Kenji and Fuzzy) gets an achievement, making an ostracized community a place to be!
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Dec 21, 2021 05:42
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More importantly (in my opinion), they did so without sacrificing or compromising the community's soul - everyone might be coming to Touristville, but it's still Touristville. If you want an example where that didn't happen as gracefully, just look at Capitol Hill in our own timeline's Seattle.
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Dec 21, 2021 16:40
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I'll be honest, I was expecting the social media to be something more along the lines of 'Size Queen Nogway' more than being about Marco.
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Dec 22, 2021 08:38
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Julie, Fuzzy, Tek, Carmen and Puppy - Wednesday, August 29th, 2075 – Afternoon - Touristville Julie waved goodbye to Devin as he took the new staff only entrance into the doctor’s office. The big troll had to squeeze past those in line. People moved to let him in, some easily, some grudgingly, but it took a bit of awkward shuffling as space within Touristville was limited due to the sheer amount of customers who’d shown up. With Devin gone, Julie resolved to look for Fuzzy. There was the problem though that Toustville had all of these people now. Even on the ethnic enclave’s busiest days she’d never seen so many people. Her dentist office was bringing in thousands of people a day and since most of them only spent what they wanted to on their visit, many had nuyen left to burn. All of the stores and restaurants that she could see were near full to bursting. So Julie joined the river of people and walked. The north end mural was the same as before. Pictures of herself holding a giant toothbrush over her shoulder like an oversized sword, though it was weathered from people rubbing up against it. Above her was the “farm” that had been recently installed, which had been hung like hexagonal air ducts that spanned off into the distance. Just like the drone farm that floated in the harbor of her school, just unraveled. Not only would it provide food in the form of microgreens for salads but it also produced enough oxygen that made the extra people possible. And if she went to the right place, she’d also find the mushroom farm as well. She stopped staring up as she nearly tripped over someone and decided to pay attention to where she was going. And where she was going meant that she passed by the rest of the line and there were a few local volunteers dealing with people who had “medical anxiety” which ranged from normal heightened anxiety to full blown panic attacks. These volunteers were made obvious because they had bright orange blazers with the word “volunteer” on the back in black. And she wondered if that had come from Mrs Liu or, knowing her community, had emerged spontaneously from the volunteers themselves. She briefly watched one of the volunteers, an older troll, male with dark skin, escort a small family out of the line and towards the smaller entrance to her doctor’s office which was right next to the entrance to the dentist office. It led to the same place, she knew as they’d had to consolidate waiting rooms to save space as space was at a premium but she liked that her old door was still there. The dark skinned troll didn’t even notice her, his focus completely on an orkish man, his wife and no less than seven children. So as the crowd slowed down to accommodate them as they were all pulled out of line, Julie thought she understood why he wasn’t feeling well. At any other dentist office, that many children would probably impoverish your average person. Though maybe it was the thought of the medical drone itself. Some people did have problems with those. “Probably the money though,” she said to herself. Julie’s own dad would’ve been furious and terrified at the idea of taking her old family, all nine children, to the dentist. She laughed a little at the thought and then felt immediately sad when she remembered yet again that she’d killed her dad in self-defense and her entire family had abandoned her. The small silver lining was that she didn’t grow numb or have some sort of trigger memory that looped over and over again out of her control. Sad was an improvement because sadness would pass without ruining her entire day. Though it definitely did lower her mood. She didn’t stop to see how the other volunteers handled these people because she had to keep moving with the crowd as it once again began to flow. So she did her best to push her feelings aside for the moment. Her head swiveled as she looked into shops to watch for Fuzzy and Puppy and she desperately wished that she had some sort of detection spell. Chip did and she’d always assumed she’d have him close by, but he was busy watching over Kenji and so Julie was out of luck on that front. She quickly ducked into a clothing store. Not because Fuzzy was there but because she needed to stop and think. Technically she could just text Fuzzy but if she were in any of the parts of Touristville without a wireless connection, which was still most of it, she wouldn’t get the text. Julie could also go back to her shop, enter her mana lodge, astrally project and look for Puppy. After all, an animal would show up differently in the astral. Especially with the astral signature of an awakened person next to an animal. However, she decided to check up and down the North End corridor at least once before she texted or went back to her mana lodge. So Julie ducked back out of the shop and found out that she’d been right. Sitting down at a table for two inside of a small shop that was serving burritos was Fuzzy, Tek and Puppy, the last of which was currently being consoled as he shivered and whined. Julie awkwardly waved. Tek lit up a little when he saw her while Fuzzy looked up briefly, nodded once at Julie and then set her attention back on Puppy. “Oh, Julie,” said Tek, “Sup?” “Uh…Hi Tek,” she said, a little embarrassed. She barely knew him as he was Fuzzy’s friend. Though she did recall treating him after the fight that he and Fuzzy had late last school year. She didn’t know all the details but the community hadn’t been very happy with him for a while after that. What’s wrong with Puppy?” asked Julie. Fuzzy spoke up while Tek offered him a little piece of burrito. Puppy didn’t take it. “He got kicked,” said Fuzzy, angrily. “What?!” asked Julie, shocked, “On purpose?” Fuzzy shook her head. “No,” she said, “At least I don’t think so. It’s just too crowded.” Julie relaxed, nodded, reached out her hand and Puppy nervously licked it. Then she scratched him behind the ear while he continued to shake. “Want me to take a look at him?” asked Julie. “Please,” said Fuzzy. The sadness that had lingered was shunted completely to the side as she focused on her new canine patient. Dogs were new to her and she was no veterinarian, but she did have her magic. “I’ll try and find another chair,” she said. “No, you sit down. I’ll get it,” said Tek. Tek vacated the seat which Julie took with a nod of thanks. She looked around the burrito shop to make sure that no one was paying attention to her. Magic in public, especially down here so recently after the toxic spirit attack might start a panic. So she sized up the place before deciding to cast. The burrito shop was small and unlike many shops, which had doors, this had none so it was open to the noise of the crossroads. It had two small, two-seater tables on each side that could be pushed together. From the scraping on the floor, they frequently were. Tek squeezed past the line of hungry people and came back with a chair that he’d had to hold over his head before he sat down next to them again. “Table was dirty,” said Tek, “Lucky me.” He tossed a look over to a harried looking, caramel skinned young orkish woman with a slightly broad face, brown hair, currently in a hair net and dark brown eyes. She made burritos alone and looked expectantly at Tek. Then he gestured towards Julie, Fuzzy and her dog. The young woman scowled at him, but she nodded at him and mouthed the word “hurry”. Julie tried to speak to Fuzzy, but the noise of the crowd swelled and she had to repeat herself so Fuzzy and Tek could hear. “Want me to take a look at him?” repeated Julie. “Yeah,” said Fuzzy. “Well, I don’t know anything about dogs,” said Julie, “But I can use a heal spell on him.” “I could’ve used a heal spell on him,” said Fuzzy, defensively. Half a beat later, Fuzzy frowned at herself and then a little more sadly at Puppy. “I’m still not great at it,” she admitted, “Don’t want to mess it up.” “I think I can handle it,” said Julie, “The noise is a problem. Do either of you have a white noise generator? The crowd is pretty loud.” “No,” said Fuzzy. “I’ll post and see if I can get one,” said Tek. He pulled an ancient looking commlink out of his pocket and tapped out a quick message. “Still need some food moved later, Julie?” asked Tek, eyes down, while he typed with his thumb. “Yeah,” said Julie, “I’ll let…” The volume of the crowd raised as a particularly noisy group of people walked by, chatting and laughing. “I’ll let you know when!” she yelled. The group passed quickly and the noise of the crowd lowered back to a dull roar. “My dog first,” said Fuzzy. “Right, yeah,” said Tek, “I’ll just post and see if anyone has one to borrow. Hey, Julie. You still need that food moved later?” “Yeah,” she said back, “And soon, please. I’ll have Fuzzy text you with the details since I don’t have your comm number.” “I could definitely give you mine,” said Tek. Julie rolled her eyes. Tek shrugged and said something, but again it was lost in the noise of the crowd. He didn’t repeat himself and Julie wanted to focus on her furry patient instead of asking Tek what he’d said. “Okay Puppy, let’s take a look at you,” said Julie, “Could one of you stand in front of me while I cast?” Tek opened his mouth, but Fuzzy just stepped in front first and Tek closed her mouth. “Sure,” said Fuzzy, “Why am I doing that?” “Because I’m casting magic in public down here and I don’t want people to panic.” “Smart,” said Fuzzy. “Hey,” said Tek, “Someone already posted that they’re coming with that white noise generator.” “How long?” asked Julie. “Maybe five minutes,” said Tek, “I mentioned it was for you and it got picked up on fast.” Julie thought about waiting but decided not to. At least for the diagnosis spell. That was a spell that she could cast over and over again while the heal spell could only be cast once, pass or fail. She doubted that Puppy would have anything seriously wrong with him and she figured she’d need extra time to understand the physiology of an animal. “I’m just going to diagnose him,” said Julie, “I might need the time to understand if anything is actually wrong. I don’t think so though.” Fuzzy nodded in understanding and continued to stand in front of Julie. And then, with the ease of practice and despite the distraction from the crowd of hungry people, she first cast her diagnosis spell on Puppy with Fuzzy’s aid. Tek couldn’t help but he also blocked sight of the spell from the other customers as he stood shoulder to shoulder with Fuzzy. It was the first time she’d used the spell on an animal and despite that, she gained clarity quickly. When it worked, her mind expanded and took in the entirety of Puppy as a living being. After briefly marveling at the newness of the experience she noticed the nasty bruise that he had on his left shoulder. She’d dealt with much worse and seen much worse. Today in fact. She also noticed didn’t have an appendix but she assumed that this was just something different about dogs as he didn’t have any surgical scars. She kept that last part to herself. “Yeah, he’s got a pretty bad bruise on his shoulder,” said Julie, “That seems to be it. Help me out with the heal spell too?” Fuzzy nodded and then spoke, but again the noise swelled as people chatted, laughed and ordered food. The two people nearest them finished their meal and left, though their food was still left on the table. There was a place for bussing plates and a trash can, but both were full. Plus there was spilled food and drink on the floor, Julie noticed. This place was a mess. A noisy, chaotic mess. “Wait for the noise to die down!” exclaimed Fuzzy. Julie nodded in understanding but Tek spoke up. “...Want to wait for the generator?” Julie considered, but Puppy was shaking now and obviously in pain. She looked to Fuzzy, who obviously hated the state that her dog was in and decided to do it anyway despite the distraction from the crowd. Besides, dealing with the noises of the crowd would be good practice for Denny Park. “It’s fine,” said Julie, “I can make it work. Fuzzy?” When the noise lulled a bit she started the spell and imagined the formula of one of her most used spells in her head- The heal spell. Fuzzy added a bit of her own magic and together they pushed magic through the spell formula that Julie created in the air, focused on her hand before she applied it to Puppy with a touch of warm, bright light which seemed to sink into Puppy’s short, black fur. It wasn’t perfect, especially with the distraction from the crowd, but she felt the spell work as she touched Puppy’s shoulder. He still shook after she and Fuzzy were done but not as violently as before. The dog was completely healed and whatever he felt now was just nerves. Things settled down after that. The crowd was still too thick to take Puppy out safely so Julie and Fuzzy stayed at the table. Meanwhile, Tek busied himself. He grabbed the overflowing garbage can, brought it behind the counter and through a door and came back with a battered but clean trash can. Then he’d left again, this time with the tray full of dirty dishes and picked over food. When he came back he brought back a new tray for dishes for people who’d bus their own plates, a broom, a dustpan and a clean rag. So while Julie and Fuzzy soothed Puppy, Tek did some hasty cleaning. Minutes later, Tek had finished and Puppy had calmed down. Tek had a burrito, courtesy of the young woman behind the counter. She was still working hard but at least things were cleaner than they were before. The line hadn’t diminished one bit as the hordes of customers were hungry. So was Puppy, who’d finally stopped shaking and started sniffing at all of the good smells of the tiny shop. Tek took a bite of his burrito and he fed Puppy a smaller bite, who chomped it down immediately. “That was really nice, Tek,” said Julie. Tek folded his arms behind his head and grinned. “Yeeeeah,” he drawled, “Figured I’d help out since you two were busy. Earn a little rep, get a burrito and help out a cute girl. Maybe I’ll come back and see if she’s free later…Doubt it though. Everyone is busy. But a man can hope.” “I figured it was like that,” teased Fuzzy. “Yeah, it’s like that,” admitted Tek, “But whatever, poo poo got done. I can’t cook, otherwise I might spend a little time with her.” “Why is she working alone?” asked Julie, “She needs help.” One of the militia members, a short but stocky older, dark skinned ork in an armored vest and coat came by. He gave an upwards head nod to Tek and Tek nodded his head likewise. “You needed the white noise thing?” asked the militia member. “Yeah,” said Tek. The militia member nodded, reached into his pocket and gave a battered, yellowed white noise generator to Tek. It was an older model as it was about the size of a deck of playing cards instead of about the size of a pack of gum like Kenji’s. Belatedly, he noticed Fuzzy and Julie and his face lit up. Tek turned on the white noise generator and the noise of the crowd was muffled, though not completely. Maybe the crowd was too loud or maybe the gadget wasn’t as good as Kenji’s. Either way it did make conversation easier. “Nogway, Miss Freeman,” said the militiaman, happily, “You hanging around with this joker?” “Yeah,” said Fuzzy and Julie together. “You be careful around him now,” he said, with mock seriousness. Though when he turned his gaze back to Tek that gaze cooled by several degrees. Tek was unphased. “Appreciate the quick delivery,” said Tek. “Yeah,” said the militiaman, “Oh, Miss Freeman, thanks for the free cleaning. Had a serious toothache.” He stuck his finger in his mouth and fishhooked it to display gleaming white teeth. Julie smiled politely “Don’t hurt no more,” he said, voice a bit garbled before he pulled his finger away. “Glad to help,” said Julie, voice a bit strained. “And I’ll send any more of those toxic spirits your way, yeah Nogway?” he said, amiably. Julie’s memory carried her back to the Lucky Dragon Electronics. The screaming, fire, magic flying every which way. She shuddered. Fuzzy began to fidget with her hands but quickly stuck them in the pocket of her armored jacket. “Okay,” said Fuzzy, neutrally. The militiaman’s smile faded a bit and he awkwardly cleared his throat. “Anyway, gotta get back to it,” he said, quickly. Julie gave him a tiny wave, Fuzzy gave him a grunt of acknowledgement and Tek only nodded at him. As the guard left, Tek cast a cold look at his back. “rear end in a top hat,” he grumbled. “Maaan,” sighed Fuzzy, “I don’t want to think about that right now.” “Yeah,” sighed Julie, “But at least he was trying to be nice.” “rear end in a top hat,” repeated Tek. He looked down to the old white noise generator, picked it up and inspected it. “Might see if the community wants to throw down for a new one,” said Tek, “I remember fixing this at least twice and I wasn’t the first to fix it. Anyway, where were we?” Julie gestured to the woman making burritos. “Why is she working alone?” asked ulie. “Right,” said Tek, “Carmen…Oh that’s Carmen by the way. Do you know Carmen?” “No,” said Julie. “I think I met her dad for a second,” said Fuzzy, “The fat guy who made the big donation at the party at Mrs. Liu’s.” “That was him?” asked Julie. “I think so.” “Yeah, that’s her dad,” said Tek, “He went out this morning and hasn’t come back. So she’s been doing this alone for hours. Making that money while she can. Told her I’d find her help when I get up…Well, actually I told her…” Fuzzy interrupted. “Can’t you get someone to show up to help like you got the white noise generator?” she asked. “I don’t think it works like that,” said Julie. “It usually does,” said Tek. “What, really?” asked Julie. Tek shrugged. “You can post for labor,” said Tek, “Too much labor in one place and not enough in another means people move around. Some people ask a friend or family if it isn’t too busy, but when it is or when we need some specialized labor we post for it.” “Don’t they have to stay at their jobs?” asked Julie. Tek gave her an odd look. “Why?” asked Tek, “We’re not tied to one job like a wage slave. We show up and leave when we want and switch jobs when we want.” Julie furrowed her brow. “How does that even work?” “Pretty good most days,” said Tek, “Messy others.” “No, I mean how do they get to leave whenever they want?” asked Julie. “What?” asked Tek, momentarily confused, “Oh, sorry, misunderstood. Wow, uh…I mean, we’re not wage slaves. So uh…I guess we’re not tied to a single job. There’s just work and work needs doing. So you pitch in.” “Is it…All on the board or something?” asked Julie, also confused, Tek wave his hand dismissively. “I mean, for new jobs or big jobs, sure,” said Tek, “For the day-to-day stuff people pretty much know what to do. You don’t really need to tell them. It’s not like uh…gently caress, uh…Fuzzy, you’re better with words than me. Feed me a word. ” “Formalized?” she asked. “Yeah,” said Tek, “Formalized. Good word.” Fuzzy beamed with pride. “There’s just work and people do it,” said Tek, “Or they don’t. Maybe someone takes charge one day, maybe someone else the next or maybe no one is in charge because the work doesn’t need anyone in charge. They ask people to pitch in and they get people. The work gets done. Or maybe they don’t have enough people and they give someone a kick for being too lazy. But sometimes the work actually isn’t that important and they kick back. It’s a thing. Push and pull. Tagalongs and dragalongs, you know?” “I really don’t,” said Julie, honestly. Tek shrugged. “It’s just that,” said Tek, “There’s work everywhere. You just do it. Or you don’t. Or you let it slide for a bit because it’s not critical. Like me and this burrito.” He took another bite of his burrito and fed the ever hungry Puppy. Julie looked to Carmen and she was obviously unhappy. The line of customers seemed to have no end. For every customer she served, a new one found their way into the line. “Can’t you get her some help?” asked Julie, “Or post for it? I could post for it, right?” Julie pulled out her commlink to post for help but Tek put his hand on hers. “You could,” he said, carefully, “You shouldn’t.” “Why?” asked Julie, “She needs a break, right? I mean, she looks miserable.” Carmen did indeed look miserable. And Tek nodded in agreement. “You could,” said Tek, “Carmen might’ve posted by now. Her rep isn’t particularly high so maybe someone shows up. Maybe soon or maybe later. Maybe never. Labor is real short right now. A lot of work isn’t getting done. But if someone like you posts with your high rep? Oh, they’re definitely show up for you. Good rep means more people will jump at the job. And that’s a problem.” “It is?” asked Julie. “Yeah,” he confirmed, “Plug a hole somewhere and a leak sprouts somewhere else. There’s just too much work and not enough hands. So some poo poo just doesn’t get done. Tons of money to be made but you gotta pace yourself, you know?” “So what should she do?” asked Julie. “I’ll tell you what she should do,” said Tek. He turned off the white noise generator and turned his head towards Carmen. The noise of the crowd rushed back in and Tek shouted over it. “Carmen!” he bellowed, “No one’s coming! Take a loving break already!” Carmen glared over at Tek but the withering stare just seemed to bounce off him. As Tek turned away she quickly finished with her latest customer. But when the next customer tried to order, she instead walked behind the counter, found an ancient looking sandwich board, wiped off the old message and wrote with a thick piece of chalk, “On Break Soon! Come Back Later!” Then she went around the customer to the back of the line and put the sandwich board there. After that she went back to finish up with the existing customers. “Wait, she’s allowed to do that?” asked Julie. “Why shouldn’t she be able to do that?” asked Fuzzy. “Uh…I don’t…” said Julie. Then it dawned on Julie. This wasn’t a job as she knew it. There were no managers, no wages and apparently no set hours. Carmen was still conducting business but she decided when she worked, when she didn’t and for how long. She didn’t have to ask for permission to take a break or probably be denied permission by a manager when there was still work to be done and no relief in sight. “Oh,” said Julie, a little startled, “So she can just leave when she wants…” “Yeah,” said Tek. “And stop when she wants…” “Yeeeeah,” said Tek, slowly. Julie worked through this in her head. She had to because this simple act directly challenged something so fundamental that she couldn’t put words to it. At least not at first. Carmen needed a break. If she was making a wage somewhere else she would likely have a manager. If there was no relief and that manager told her that she had no break, then she had no break. If she questioned, challenged or ignored that manager she might be fired. If she was fired, she would lose her ability to support herself. Julie knew that most people lived paycheck to paycheck so getting fired was a crisis. They might end up deep in debt, end up homeless, maybe get pushed out to the barren or the ACHE or end up in prison. In fact, it was quite likely unless someone got another job almost immediately. But Carmen did not have a wage, did not have a manager nor did the shop even have an owner. When there was no relief coming she, on her own initiative, could take a break when she wanted to. Even if this meant shutting down the business until she wanted to return and that was if she wanted to return. Someone else might come by and cook because there were no assigned jobs, at least if Julie understood it all correctly. But until then, customers would just have to find their burritos elsewhere. “Wage slavery,” whispered Julie. "What about it?" asked Tek. "It...Really sucks," said Julie, both awed and horrified, "You're not kidding about the slavery part." "Not really," said Tek. "No I mean, you're really not kidding." "Oh," said Fuzzy, "Did you just get it?" "Uhhh...Maybe?" asked Julie, "I don't...Umm...Oh no." “Someone’s crack pinging,” joked Tek. Julie worked through this and realized that someone who worked at a job for a wage was not free so long as they worked. Someone might be terribly treated or they might be well treated, but if you worked for other people, you were not completely free. And the more you worked the less free you were because for almost all people who labor, work was not a place where a person was free to do as they wished. “What’s crack pinging?” asked Fuzzy. “Oh, blue collar humor,” said Tek, offhandedly, “Welding joke, really. You heat up metal with a welding torch and it cracks. When it cools and sets in a new way it makes a little ping sound. When you break someone’s brain it cracks. When it gets fixed is the ping. Understand?” “Ohhh…” said Fuzzy, “I get it. And Julie just…What…Crack pinged?” Tek nodded. “Looks like,” said Tek, “Blows everyone’s mind the first time they see it. Blew my mind hard the first time I saw it.” “Not me,” said Fuzzy, “Opposite for me.” “Yeah?” She idly scratched the top of Puppy’s head. “Yeah,” she said, “One of the times I was at the Ares Arcology with Sasha. There was this guy yelling at another guy. I had her explain it to me. Apparently some people are hired to yell at other people to work and that it’s yelling all the way from the top.” “Yep,” said Tek. "I mean, she didn’t explain it like that, but that’s how I took it. Dad told me that people do that out in Seattle but I didn’t understand it until I saw it. I mean, I knew that gangs would do that to people, but not that regular people would do that to each other. If you saw someone yelling at another person like that in Puyallup it’d probably mean that someone was about to get killed or robbed.” Fuzzy and Tek continued to talk, but Julie just watched the line diminish as she finished with her final burritos. A few people tried to get in line anyway. Some didn’t see the sandwich board and some clearly did but didn’t care. Carmen just pointed to the sign. She was going to take a break and probably close the shop. No one told her that she could or couldn’t. She was just going to do it, which fascinated Julie. Managers and above could refuse to work or try and force others to do so, but Carmen was just working fast food. Julie fundamentally didn’t understand that someone working fast food could dictate where and when they worked. Carmen did so. A customer that hadn’t been in line when she’d put the sandwich board tried to put in his order to Carmen. Julie couldn’t hear the man, a light skinned ork in a track suit with a shaved head, speak to her because of the mix of white noise generator and crowd. Carmen shook her head and pointed to the sandwich board as she took off her hair net and sterile gloves. The customer, now obviously angry, talked more animatedly and pointed at the food. Carmen didn’t argue any further. She did not try to soothe or reassure him. She did not wait for the permission of a manager to take a break because she did not need permission nor was there a manager to tell her yes or no. She gave no indication when she would be back, if at all. It seemed that even though there was money to be made, Carmen was done working and no one could yell at her to get back to work. This blew Julie’s mind. Something in her had cracked. The ping had yet to come. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Mar 10, 2022 |
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Mar 10, 2022 08:36
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Apologies for the long, long wait. I've been having a nasty spat of writer's block and I'm in a new relationship. So I'm trying to juggle writing with living a new life. Anyway, I hope to bang out some updates in the next few days.
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Mar 10, 2022 08:37
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Glad you're back. Hope everything is going good with your new life.
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Mar 10, 2022 14:42
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Wow holy poo poo great slice of life update. I really had a day at work and this really helped. Thanks Ice!
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Mar 12, 2022 00:44
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Mind blown, you can just stop?
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Mar 12, 2022 07:41
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Julie, Fuzzy, Tek and Puppy - Wednesday, August 29th, 2075 – Afternoon - Touristville “So that’s just normal?” asked Julie, in disbelief, “You just stop when you want?” This was the third time that she’d asked that of Tek. And for the third time, Tek nodded. “I keep telling you,” said Tek, “Things work different down here. I mean, we try to keep up appearances so people don't ask too many questions but things are stretched thin right now so we’re slipping. Even then we still have to remind each other that we can work as we please. Kind of hard when we have to keep up the act. Wage slavery doesn’t end when you stop working for a wage. Lingers in the mind.” Tek shook his head in disgust. Then he waved off someone, a confused would-be customer who’d wandered into the shop. The shop was empty save for them now though some people did cut through since the sides facing the crossroads were open. It made for a handy shortcut when foot traffic was heavy. “Hate it,” said Fuzzy. “But...I thought that was just the way things are," said Julie, a bit inarticulately, "I mean...I mean..." She sighed. "I don't know what I mean," she amended, a bit lamely. Her hands were held in hard little fists and she couldn’t raise her eyes to meet Tek’s or Fuzzy’s, though she didn’t know why. “It's the way things are until they're not,” said Tek, “Surprised you didn’t know about this. We don’t advertise but I thought you would’ve seen it by now. You’ve been here a year.” Julie squirmed in her seat and she had to make a conscious effort to relax her hands. “I thought it was why you had that party,” said Tek, “You wanted money and to have more wage sl…Uhh, people making a wage in the community, right?” Fuzzy looked from Julie to Tek and then back to Julie. “Let’s relax,” said Fuzzy, “It looks like Julie’s not having a good time.” Though it vaguely annoyed Julie, she knew that Fuzzy was right. She also knew that she also felt guilty but couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. Parts of why, yes, but not all of it. She’d been here a year and she still didn’t understand things, she knew that. But when she was here she was usually busy with either work or church. “Sure,” said Tek, “Different subject. Fuzzy, think you can bring in more meat?” “Huh?” asked Fuzzy, “Is there a market for it again?” “Yeah.” “But venison doesn’t sell down here like pork. We tried, remember?” Puppy’s ears perked up at the words “venison” and "pork". He raised his head licked his lips. “I mean, you paid me off in deer meat for hauling for you and fixing up that old truck,” said Tek, “On top of helping me fix my rep after uh…You know.” Puppy’s tail began to wag at the mention of deer. Fuzzy scratched his head. “No deer,” she said, “No venison. Meat later.” Puppy licked his lips nervously, whined and lay his head back down on the ground. Fuzzy looked back to Tek. “I remember,” said Fuzzy, “That fight you lost.” “I won that fight,” said Tek, flatly. “Mhm,” said Fuzzy, smugly, “Keep telling yourself that.” Tek frowned and grumbled a little and popped his knuckles threateningly, which only made Fuzzy’s smile even more smug. “Anyway, sold that meat,” said Tek, “Had it in the community freezer. Couldn’t move it for a long time like you said. Until a couple days ago. Dentist office is taking off but people aren’t staying. People get in, get their teeth cleaned, get out. They’re not here for what we got, just what Julie’s got, no offense.” Julie barely grunted in response. “Talk to some people running restaurants,” continued Tek, “Tell them that I can get real meat on the table. Not big cuts of it. Big cuts are too expensive and even if I could, I don’t have enough. So we cut that pile of meat thin as gently caress for days. Threw in some of those veggies you brought in too. Real meals for cheap. Suddenly it’s not venison. It’s just meat and veg, not soy, krill or mycoprotein. Real meals. I told them real deals on real meals, you know? People stick around for that and if they stick around for the food, they'll buy other stuff too. Worked like a charm.” "Glad it worked,” said Fuzzy, “Need more?” Tek nodded. “Yeah, I ran out of the stuff you traded me for work. Word is out but we got nothing." “Why not just talk to dad?” asked Fuzzy. Tek shook his head. “Don’t want to go over your head,” said Tek, and then he added with a smirk, “Even though it would’ve been easy since you’re so short.” Fuzzy’s smug smile soured a little, which turned Tek’s frown upside down. “Anyway, you got any deer meat left?” asked Tek. “Two kills in a freezer,” said Fuzzy, "Julian has one set aside for me so long as I keep it clean. Dad probably has more but probably not too much more. I have a few more deer left to hunt. Not many though.” Tek puffed out his cheeks. “Well, that’s not perfect, but I’ll talk to some people. Cheap real meals get customers out of the North End and buying poo poo elsewhere. We’ll take whatever you got so long as it can be made into food. Maybe someone comes up with something else to get people moving around. They usually do.” Fuzzy nodded. “I’ll let him know. Talk terms with him.” Tek nodded and now they both looked satisfied. Though Tek looked momentarily puzzled. “Hey, why are you even here today?” asked Tek, “I thought school was back on.” “School shooting,” said Julie, distantly, “Technically.” Tek’s eyebrows raised up. “Oh,” said Tek, a little surprised, “Oh drat.” “Not guns, magic," said Fuzzy, "Someone shot a bunch of ice spikes into someone else." “Anyone you know?” “One of Julie’s friends’ boyfriend.” “poo poo. You two okay?” “Yeah,” said Fuzzy, “I wasn’t close. Julie went in to help when things settled.” Belatedly, Julie realized that Fuzzy and Tek looked to her for confirmation of how she felt. She didn't know. Everything was so confusing but she did her best to summon up an answer. “I’m…Okay, sure,” said Julie. Fuzzy and Tek shared a look and he nodded to himself, as if he’d already decided on something. Then he placed a hand on Julie’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Well that’s something,” he said, “poo poo, I remember my first one. Had a couple before I dropped out. You want to drink about it? I’ve got some beer. Maybe I go topside for a second for something tasty. Can’t get a good meal down here right now. Not unless you want to wait at least. Everyone is too busy.” Fuzzy looked at Julie and pursed her lips in thought. “If you’re offering,” said Fuzzy, slowly. “Come on,” said Tek, “We’ll head over to my place.” “Don’t you have things to do?” asked Julie, a bit dully. “Things will be alright,” said Tek, "Let's go." Since Puppy was still with them, they waited for a quick break in the river of Tourists before heading into the South end where the number of Tourists quickly tapered off. There was a single older militiaman playing solitaire at a wide table in the middle of the hall. “No entry,” said the bulky troll, his tone bored. "Local," said Tek. The troll looked up at Tek and frowned, but only a little. Then his gaze switched from Tek to Fuzzy and from Fuzzy to Julie. The frown of disapproval brightened considerably. “Nogway,” said the Troll, “Miss Freeman. Good to see you.” He scooted a bit with a few screeches of metal chair legs across stone. It seemed that they were a kind of living roadblock. No tourists had business this far into the South End since it was mostly residential and work space. They nodded at him and walked on past. Though the big troll put a hand on Tek's chest, stopped him and had a brief conversation with him. Julie didn't hear though Fuzzy lingered close-by. Then Tek was released and they all continued on their way. “What’s his problem?” asked Fuzzy. Tek shrugged. "You know, me," said Tek, "I get poo poo from people. Especially the militia. Pretty desperate to take me on to run security. Not as bad as it was. Guess that's something." Fuzzy grunted as they walked further down the corridor into the mixed residential and workspace that made up the majority of the South End. Here and there they could hear the sounds of industry from people making clothing and furniture. These were the people who didn't interact with the public and went largely unseen by those outside of the community. "Is it really better?" asked Fuzzy. "Yeah," said Tek, "Like I said, you helped a lot." Fuzzy smiled. “So why’s he in the way?” “Break-in yesterday,” said Tek, “Outsider of course. Chiphead. A kid spotted him trying to get into an apartment off the main corridor. Kid ran for an adult and came back with a lot. Chiphead got beat down and tossed out but we’re back to locking doors for a while.” This briefly drew Julie back into the conversation. She knew that chipheads were those who plugged in computer chips into their brains to get high through a device called a chipjack. Basically just a thin slot near the temple. While some of the simpler chips were merely narco-algorithms, a recorded experience of some different drug, the more prevalent and complex drugs were hot sim virtual reality experiences. While most people were familiar with cold sim, which was safe, hot sim was largely considered better than life due to the vividness and intensity of those VR experiences. And those recordings of experiences could be absolutely anything: From drugs to sex to living the life of someone powerful to eating amazing food to being in love. It could be anything, the more perfect and vivid the experience, the more addictive they were. This high came at a cost though. The metahuman brain wasn't made to handle that kind of sensory input from hot sim chips. Someone who used and abused those better than life chips, also called BTL's or beetles, heavily taxed their brain. Your average addict had a brain that was riddled by dozens or even hundreds of microstrokes and most were one or two big strokes away from death. But chips were so addictive that addicts were constantly on the lookout for new highs as most dealers rigged the chips to burn out after a single use. And since the length of the recording on the chip only lasted for five to ten minutes, this kept chipheads constantly looking creds to get a new high. "Did you have to hurt him?" asked Julie. "Pulled a knife on the militia, so yeah," said Tek, "Besides, we can't just let someone come down here and cause trouble with no consequences. Gotta defend what you got or everyone will take it." "Still," said Julie, quietly, "Maybe we could do something." "Love where you're coming from," said Tek, "Really do. But someone comes down here to steal, flashes a knife when we say no, then they more than earned their beat down. They did that elsewhere in the Ork Underground they'd just get killed. A beat down is pretty gentle." Julie looked to Fuzzy for help but Fuzzy just smiled sadly and shook her head. Already demoralized, Julie didn't argue. They continued on and finally they reached an old door. Tek fumbled with some ancient looking keys and let them inside. The furniture was old, the walls, floor and ceiling made of a mix of ancient looking concrete, newer but not new plascreet and native stone. There was a newish looking trideo tank though. Tek grabbed a remote, turned it on and the tank displayed a local baseball game on his way to the kitchen. “Beers then back in fifteen,” said Tek. Julie just found a couch to sit on, which sagged a little. Even though the couch was old and would probably sag anyway, it made her feel fat anyway, such was her mood. Normally she’d be happy to watch a baseball game, often while multitasking which was how she normally watched. But she could barely pay attention. Not just to the game but to everything, even herself. Her attention span just kept shortening as her feelings turned sour. Time passed and Fuzzy shoved something cold into Julie's hands. Julie realized it was a beer and drank it. The beer tasted bad but not awful. And certainly not as bad as Big Rita’s old homebrewed prison wine. So Julie wasn’t particularly fancy when it came to alcohol. Puppy bounded up onto the couch next to Julie and pressed his furry body against hers. Fuzzy was nearby, quiet but available. And now for the first time since the violence, Julie had a real moment to herself to deal with what happened. So she drank her bad but not awful tasting beer and pet her friend’s dog and tried not to feel much of anything as she stared at but did not watch nor hear the baseball game. She didn't want to deal with what happened. She didn't want to feel anything. But she wasn't numb like she used to be. So many feelings swirled around inside of her, complicated and confusing and overwhelming. So she didn't much watch the game as stare at it. Didn't so much think about drinking the bad tasting beer as tip it back and swallow. Eventually, Tek came back with a box of Pizza Right Now Pep and better tasting beer. Her empty was switched out for something that tasted lemony and fizzy, but still alcoholic. The pizza was greasy and not good, but acceptable. She ate mechanically as she tried and failed not to dwell on her feelings. A long, flat tongue licked her hand clean when she was done, though someone gave her a wet napkin. She cleaned her hands thoroughly without thinking about it, completely out of habit from her medical practice, though she held onto the dirty napkin when done. Her head buzzed from the alcohol. “Bathroom?” asked Julie, eventually. “Door on the right,” said Tek. Julie nodded, sat up, headed into the bathroom, closed the door and sat down not on the toilet, but in an old tub. What had driven her to the bathroom wasn’t some pressing need from her body but an emotional need. Feelings that she only really now tried to deal with threatened to flood in: Joyce covered in blood, watching a security guard whose life had been ruined by a single mistake, new and strange feelings on wage slavery, the pressure of taking care of a community, the knowledge that she was going to a massacre and of course, the monumental task of feeding the ACHE. But another final memory came, unbidden and unwanted. The constricting feeling of her dad’s hands around her throat, as if she could feeling those strong, powerful hands that had belonged to a man she'd once loved try to choke the life from her. This happened sometimes. Not all of the time or even frequently, but sometimes in her darkest moments or when she was about to sleep or in her nightmares of course. Sometimes she felt like she could still feel those hands. Like they were still there. Still choking her. Before she just would’ve stayed numb to all of this save for the occasional outburst. But as Mr. Brand, her therapist had told her, numbness to pain also meant numbness to joy. Over long sessions, he’d help convince her that it was okay to feel her feelings and that it was safe to do so. She wasn’t done with therapy yet. Not by far. It was a process, still ongoing. But the work had yielded fruit. Julie allowed herself to break down. The feelings that threatened to overwhelm her finally did so. Tears came first. Then a hitch in her throat. A full sob. More. Then that emotional dam burst and it all came pouring out. She pulled her knees close to herself and fell apart for a while in someone else’s bathtub. A tub that was in a desperate need of a scrub, which she would notice later, but not now. She ugly cried and the fact that she could was an improvement. It was the result of a lot of work. She wasn’t numb to pain anymore, nor joy, nor any of the other emotions she felt. She felt it all: Joy and sadness, pain and pleasure, ugliness and beauty. It wasn't just a switch leading to a burnt out bulb anymore. All of the emotions she felt were bright and confusing and occasionally overwhelming. When she put herself back together some time later, she stretched a hand over towards the counter first for some tissues to blow her nose. Only then did she realize that there was still a wet, greasy napkin in her hand, pressed into a tight little ball. This prompted her to get up and actually rinse her hands. Once her hands were clean, she stood up and almost opened the door. Then she paused as she realized she didn’t want to go out and see anyone. Not yet. Not even if they meant her well. So she almost got back in the tub but only now did she realize how gross it was. So she just sat on top of the toilet lid instead. Julie she was done crying for now and didn’t want to start again, because she was still feeling fragile. Unwilling to be alone with thoughts that would probably only worsen her mood, she instead fished in her pocket for her commlink. There she found it and also that data stick that Julian had pretended not to give her, which she felt like she needed to get to. Its contents might be a welcome distraction. She slapped the stick it into her commlink and opened the first of the two files contained there. The first contained the notes on something that Julian had mentioned during the latest school assembly, if only hinted at. Apparently there was going to be a school competition. Three different ones in fact and she read them out loud. "Caring about the environment, caring about your community and caring about magic," she read aloud. Though only the first, "Caring about the environment" was outlined as the document appeared to be a rough draft. The rest was even more a work in progress. “Caring For the Environment” she read, appealed to her of course. Not only did she love nature, but magic came from an abundance of life and life was nowhere more abundant than in nature. There were a number of examples of what one might do. This wasn't going to be some essay for a grade or a sit down test. These were projects: Cleaning up portions of Lake Washington, of Puget Sound, rewilding initiatives and Julie’s eyes scanned past dozens of other examples. Then she checked the prizes and her eyes widened in response. There was nothing like money or things that could be purchased with money among the prizes. This, she vaguely understood, was considered crass by the wealthy. They had functionally infinite access to money or at least access to their parents who had infinite access to money. So money was really only useful to them in comparing who had more as a way of jockeying for social status. She read the prizes aloud to herself as a way of distracting herself. Julie felt something stir inside of her but she ignored it as she was interested. “Third place,” she read, “A certain memory shared by one of our own students as a part of her capstone project to fully awaken.” Julie wondered if this meant Fuzzy. It probably did as she was close to fully awakening. Or at least Mother Bear had said so. She wondered how Fuzzy would share any memories as last Julie checked, her friend didn’t possess any mental magic. But that was something else to talk to Fuzzy about later. At least when Julie felt like talking. “Second place,” she read, “Seventy-two hours of personal training time with a first generation master shaman.” This raised both of Julie’s eyebrows. Most of the first generation casters were not only old, but most of them had been killed in the first half of the century when magic had only just returned to the world. Either through accident, experimentation or most likely by other people who feared and hated the emergence of magic. Even Mother Bear, the oldest teacher at school, was still considered second generation. The youngest of the first were at least in their late seventies by now and most were far older than them. And while not all of the first were powerful, anyone considered a master was indeed powerful. A lifetime of steady dedication to the craft yielded steadily increasing results. Again a feeling came up inside of her. A warning. Something that her therapist had said. But this was all so interesting that she again ignored the feeling and kept reading. This was made easier by the first place prize. “First place, six grams of pure, natural orichalcum?” Orichalcum was an orange-gold magical alloy made up of magically infused gold, copper, mercury and silver. The alloy couldn’t exist without a high level of ambient magic in the surrounding area or within close proximity of a powerful awakened. So without magic, it’d just fall apart. Orichalcum was normally used for making high quality magical focuses. That was the lab created alloy though, which was normally considered superior to the inferior, impure alloy. But pure, native orichalcum meant not just some focus to enhance existing magical talent. It could be used to create a magical item. Not one that would burn out after a use or two either, but a real, permanent magical item. Like a flaming weapon that Fuzzy had been dreaming of ever since she heard about it at the lunch table. And for that same reason, it was impractical. A real, permanent magical item, if you could buy it, would cost somewhere in the millions of nuyen just to start for the most basic of them. And Julie figured that if someone really wanted, say, a sword that would catch on fire, that something could be rigged up with science for a fraction of the cost. “You can’t buy any of this,” she said, to herself. Fuzzy probably wouldn’t part with an important memory for money. Access to a master first generation awakened wasn’t for sale either. And pure, natural orichalcum was so rare that no one sold the stuff regardless of how impractical it was. Money couldn't buy these things. You needed influence. And influence was how the wealthy jockeyed for status and prestige, which was how they actually compared themselves to one another. In actuality, none of this was about the prizes. They were just a stand-in for prestige. Competing for status and prestige were the favorite pastimes of the wealthy. And from what Julie could tell, these were just the first round of prizes too. There were at least two more rounds of prizes just like these. Still, just like Fuzzy, Julie couldn’t help but imagine getting her hands on that pure orichalcum. Having a magical item that could heal wounds or cure diseases with a touch, over and over again, would be amazing. Maybe someday research on magical items would come out of its infancy. Until then, all of this remained a dream. She almost discarded the entire notion of competing. After all, she had things to do. So many things to do. Competing looked like a waste of resources. But then she remembered that Julian had dropped this for her. If it was impossible then he wouldn’t have bothered. So she came to the conclusion that if she wanted to win something, she might just do that. And that maybe she could help people and compete at the same time. Julie wished Kenji was here as she figured he'd see a dozen angles she didn't and hear or see what was clearly unsaid. So until then she closed the file and opened the second file. It was a resume of one Laird Thomas “Superfund Site Rewilder”. Julie didn’t know what a superfund site was so she consulted the dictionary on her commlink. Superfund Site - A location contaminated by hazardous waste that has been designated by the now defunct Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for long term management and cleanup. So it was an older definition of some sort of government agency that no longer existing. Not that the old United States existed either. The portion that had survived more or less intact was the United Canadian and American States, or UCAS which she supposed she belonged to even if she didn't feel it. And there certainly wasn’t anything like an EPA in the UCAS. Seattle, one tiny part of UCAS, was covered in environmental disaster sites. Especially out in the Puyallup and Redmond barrens, which had been abandoned by functionally everyone in the city save for the SINless, who'd been pushed out there. The Puyallup barrens was continually covered in volcanic ash. The Redmond barrens not only had a meltdown at the old Shiawase nuclear plant years ago, but served as a general dumping ground for both the city and the megacorporations. She read down the skills of Laird Thomas, superfund site rewilder: Heavy metal removal, VIC removal (volatile inorganic compounds), VOC removal (volatile organic compounds), nuclear waste removal, long term waste storage expertise, environmental assessment, Miyawaki Method Aforestation. Julie kept reading and she was impressed. Apparently Mr. Laird Thomas cleaned up these old superfund sites as they used to be called and “rewilded” a place, which meant restoring the old natural environment that used to exist there. And for a third time, Julie stopped. Something was wrong. She was absolutely missing something. Something essential. But the challenge, the work and the little mystery that Julian had dropped on her was too enticing. There were also all of those ugly thoughts threatening to overwhelm her once again and shatter that fragile calm she'd achieved. So she dove right back into the work. She scanned downwards to what he’d actually accomplished and it was a long list of matrix links of restored forest and parkland, though the links weren’t functional of course as she had no matrix access down here. Apparently Mr. Thomas had been back east in UCAS focusing on the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota for the last decade. Every two months, like clockwork, he’d rehabilitated some environmental disaster site for the last ten years until this year where he’d started to work in the Seattle Metroplex area. Then she looked further back on his resume and raised an involuntary eyebrow. “Faculty at Blake Island School of Magic, September 2055 to May 2065,” she read aloud, “He’s a former teacher? And wasn't that before the school went corporate? And through the beginning of Crash 2.0?” She couldn’t glean anything else from the resume. There was a comm code though. And it wasn’t too late. She had her mission. She reapplied her makeup since her eyes were puffy from crying and when she was done she tentatively poked her head out of the bathroom Fuzzy and Tek were doing their best not to look at her, but Puppy bounded off the couch and nuzzled against her hand. “Hey Tek?” asked Julie. “Yeah?” he asked, a little wary. Julie paused and finally realized what she was doing wrong. She was about to bury herself in work yet again. She was about to thinly paper over all of her troubles as a way of avoiding her feelings which meant she’d avoid taking care of herself. Again. Things that in her opinion desperately needed doing and she was on a timeline. But she also needed to take care of herself because all she was doing was avoiding her problems. There was so, so much work to do. And she wasn't afraid of doing it, obviously. But here was an opportunity to take care of herself. It was hard to let go, hard to take a moment for self-care. And she almost abandoned pizza and beer and a baseball game when people had obviously noticed she wasn't doing well and were trying to take care of her. Or at least in retrospect it was obvious. Being aware of these things were still very much a work in progress. “What’s the score?” she asked, “I wasn’t paying attention.” “Seadogs down two to five,” said Tek, “What else is new?” Julie nodded and grabbed a slice of pizza from the box. Then when she thought about her figure and then decided to get another instead of worrying. What she'd do tomorrow, no matter what, was take that hike that she'd been promising herself for weeks. So she piled not one, not two, but three slices of pizza on a plate and grabbed two of the tastier, lemonade flavored beers and sat down on a couch. Puppy bounded up next to her. And Julie allowed herself to take a breath for what felt like the first time in forever. She caught Fuzzy's smile and found that she was smiling as well. “Sounds perfect,” she said. She embraced fellowship, baseball, pizza and beer. Work could wait.
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Mar 19, 2022 23:51
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steelninja posted:Glad you're back. Hope everything is going good with your new life. Thank you. It's going well. JUST MAKING CHILI posted:Wow holy poo poo great slice of life update. I really had a day at work and this really helped. Thanks Ice! I'm glad that it helped out with your bad day. Writing these updates helps me out with mine sometimes too. Toughy posted:Mind blown, you can just stop? I don't want to do another huge talk on this after writing a huge update, but yes. If someone is free while working then they can start or stop or refuse to take poo poo if they so choose. But they also need to be reminded that their labor time is free time. They can start or stop whenever they want, but they're used to wage slavery. Anyway, we'll pull away from Julie in the next update and to Julian, Kenji and the fate of one Marie LeBlanc, a certain brick and what happened at Lone Star. I hope you like arts and crafts. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 19, 2022 23:59
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At least we have some wholesomeness with Kenji's golem project to look forward to. Funny thing is that I'm pretty sure the golem trash cleaner could be argued to be work for the student contest thing.
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Mar 22, 2022 00:24
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I was linked here from the Shadowrun thread in the LP forum, and wow, this is incredible. I just finished reading the first year, and I couldn't help but skim ahead a bit--it seems that the pace of year 2 is slower? May I ask if this was a deliberate choice? edit: pace as in how many words on average advances the plot by a month. totally fine with whatever the pace of updates is, completely understand this is a passion project and also covid has sucked Boat Stuck fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Apr 2, 2022 |
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Apr 2, 2022 09:29
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oh poo poo, I didn't realize this was actively updating  now I just have to read through the other 190 pages
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Apr 3, 2022 10:46
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Boat Stuck posted:I was linked here from the Shadowrun thread in the LP forum, and wow, this is incredible.  Thank you. I'm glad that you're enjoying it. quote:I just finished reading the first year, and I couldn't help but skim ahead a bit--it seems that the pace of year 2 is slower? May I ask if this was a deliberate choice? It is a deliberate choice, yes. There are a two main reasons why I did this. First, I want to give the feeling of having a lot of time before the Denny Park Massacre because as you said, Kenji's story (book five) and Julie's story (current) up to now take place in about a month's time. After the massacre, I want to speed up the narrative quite a bit. What I want is to have the feeling of being on the clock and not having enough time. A month seemed like a lot of time both to the characters and narratively to the readers. Then months will pass and they'll never have enough time. The passage of time is something that I like messing with in stories because it low key shapes how readers feel in regards to the narrative. So at first we crawl for a book and a half and in the next few updates we'll begin to sprint. After Denny Park I expect to go a lot faster until we hit the end point of this story arc which would be around the 2075 election, which is November third. Not that I particularly care who gets elected, but because the time limit on Prop 23 expires. That's when things come to a head. The second is that I have a lot of things I want to accomplish before Denny Park and I'm (finally) coming to the conclusion of what I want to accomplish before it happens. I can't really write some things beforehand because a lot of my planning comes from tying together the main plot, the metaplot and the subplots together. To create convergence between all of them. And for as many plot threads and themes that I have, tying them together is really hard because there are a lot of threads to weave together all at once. But I think I have about three updates before I kick off a very short leadup to Denny Park. And tying together everything has been a big part of what has been slowing me down. Denny Park is going to converge the metaplot with the plot and many of the subplots are going to be heavily influenced by the fallout. This will hopefully simplify things for me. -- On a related note, over the past few months I've been working on a small homebrew system for Shadowrun's lifestyle system. It turns out that Julie's dentist office is making a lot of money. And there's this serious problem of not knowing what to do with it. So lifestyle within Shadowrun means maintaining personal a lifestyle and how much it costs to do that. That means rent, groceries, water, power, matrix access, etc. It's pretty boring but it serves the purpose narratively of making sure of reminding players in a game that no matter how badass you are, the rent is always due. And you pay differing amounts depending on how swanky you want your lifestyle to be. Squatters pay 500 nuyen a month. A middle class lifestyle costs ten times that much at 5000. But most GM's barely pay attention to this outside of a little fluff. However, you can permanently purchase a lifestyle if you pay a hundred times the cost. This is utterly ridiculous because most games will not last a hundred sessions. Most don't even last a dozen. What I decided to do was to give everyone here control of what Julie and company spend their money on. Not as much on the small stuff. That's not as important. I'm talking about funding for projects that create a permanent change in the world. And you create that change through funding or through putting your hands on goods and services that the funding would provide. So if you wanted to buy more farms to feed the residents of the ACHE, participate in the school wizard tournament for prizes, invest in Touristville, create more dentist shops or put together your own shadowrunner team to do runs for you, all you need to do is allocate the budget. Then I do some writing. Spending scarce resources (nuyen) is about the best I can do to put narrative control back in the hands of everyone here because we haven't been doing a lot of choosing lately. So we can budget a little with 50k being the least amount to spend with a small effect on the narrative, 200k with a moderate effect and 500k being a large effect for the first round. And we'll keep coming back to the budget for what to spend money on and that will directly influence the narrative. Also, money won't be the only way of getting resources. If the runner team is well developed enough, with a little pay they'll go steal poo poo for you and I will count any successful runs as payment towards the permanent lifestyles. Why pay for robo farms if you can steal them? And in the next few updates I'll be providing a strong narrative reason in the next oh...One update for people than just Kenji and kind of, sort of Julie to get involved funding criminal actives. Which we absolutely don't have to do. If we want to run this thing squeaky clean, we don't have to get a runner team going. But if we do want to be gay and do crimes, slot your credstick chummber and we'll check in on how Warhawk is doing and we'll ask if he wants to rev up his katana and steal poo poo for you with Gentoo and Saanvi. And if we fund the team even more, we'll round them out with a decker and a mage. I'll provide more details in a post or two. But that's where I'm going right now with choices. Apologies for not presenting them for so long. I just really wanted to get the leadup to Denny Park settled.
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Apr 3, 2022 12:51
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A decker you say? Maybe a newly freed up decker familiar with the city and Kenji and like to use an avatar with a high number of arms?
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Apr 3, 2022 20:18
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Ice Phisherman posted:
That makes a lot of sense, and I think the change in pace works well. There is definitely a lot more to cover for this time period in the narrative. I'm now more or less caught up. Once again, this has been an incredible journey. If I may, here are some of my humble thoughts as a delighted reader, in no particular order, without a particular point: ********** One of the things that really struck me as I moved through the narrative and crowd commentary is the steady slide into chaos and darkness, both within the story as well as in reality from 2017 through today. Race riots, coup attempts, plagues, drastic increases in income equality, and now a terrible, murderous war that will directly cause food shortages starvation in large swaths of Africa and the Middle East. This thread ended up being an actual prophecy into the future. The locations were just slightly off, Denny Park vs Cal Andersen. Absolutely incredible. And there's a constant stream of news that provides definitive proof that we are heading right into a cyberpunk dystopia. Take a look at this, from 2 days ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/business/india-spinal-muscular-atrophy.html (or https://archive.ph/Y4oPP) quote:With a $2.1 Million Cure Their Only Hope, Parents Plead for Help Online The kicker, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onasemnogene_abeparvovec: quote:In December 2019, Novartis announced that it would donate 100 doses of onasemnogene abeparvovec per year to children outside the US through a global lottery. The decision, which has been claimed by Novartis to be based on a recommendation by unnamed bioethicists,[39] was received with much criticism by the European Commission,[40] some European healthcare regulators[41] and patient groups (e.g., SMA Europe or the UK's TreatSMA) who see it as emotionally burdening, suboptimal, and ethically questionable.[42] Novartis did not consult with families or doctors before announcing the scheme.[43][44] Alan Regenberg, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, said that the scheme was perhaps the best available since it may be impossible to reliably establish prognosis for children under two years of age.[39] A honest-to-god miracle treatment, actually using gene therapy: a single dose can insert new genetic material into all of the patient's cells and fully cure a previously fatal disease. But it costs USD $2.1m per treatment. The megacorp that makes it holds a literal life-or-death lottery once a year to give away 100 doses for free in a macabre, twisted perversion of "charity." A very lucky few elites in developed regions can afford it. Everyone else, tens of thousands of children a year, are condemned to die from a now easily-treatable condition. Replace "Novartis" with "EVO" and this can be used as-is for a Shadowrun campaign. Except in our reality there are no plucky heroes that will go into Basel's sewers to sneak in and grab a thousand doses to give out to the masses. There's just profit. And death. loving hell. ********** It's incredibly difficult for a single author to write a story that involve a large number of ethnic groups and cultures without coming across as insensitive, pandering, stereotyping, or just plain inaccurate. Yet this story manages to discuss everything from Native American and Central American cultures to East and South Asia societies, often in stressful, complex narrative situations, while staying respectful and (as far as I can tell) highly authentic. I think Ice's extensive research has a lot to do with it--for example, given how accurate his portrayal of Monkey was, I wouldn't be surprised if Ice in fact read a decent chunk of the Journey to the West for this. I also appreciate that Ice didn't feel the need to play it safe, and instead included both good and bad characters from various groups in his story--a "model minority" stereotype is still a stereotype, and characters like Pinchface are great for countering that. I think this aspect of Blake Island--accurate, insightful, respectful portrayals of many different cultures in a single coherent narrative--might be Ice's greatest technical achievement. I can't recall anything else I've read that did this better. ********** Funniest development: Min Yun getting together with Julian. Was this planned from the beginning? No, right? I can't wait for the scene where Kenji finds out. ********** Most awesome scene: Diego the Piper. That scene was planned from the beginning, right? Wizards, man. Don't gently caress with them. Also don't let them have prep time. ********** Regarding the creepy Azzie ice cream shop: Does it serve a practical purpose for Aztechnology? Like, since eating extinction ice cream stunts regular magic, does it boost blood magic or something? Or is it just cruelty without a purpose? I assume it can't only be a trap to harm non-Aztec awakened? Since there are not that many awakened in the first place and even fewer who would deliberately walk into an obvious Aztechnology trap. Not that I would put it past the Azzies to do that, but it just doesn't seem like a good use of resources. Also, was that more-or-less the best possible outcome for the Aztechnology visit? No permanent damage, got a bunch of free stuff, with nothing owed to Aztechnology in exchange for being banned from visiting the pyramid again, which I think suits everyone just fine. ********** I think the only feedback I may have, is that I would probably prefer fewer "Amens" and other non-plot-relevant overtly Christian content. I think because that's because Christianity is the only real-world organized religion with a major focus in the story. Therefore it seems a bit preachy, even knowing Ice is a declared atheist, when there is a fair amount of pro-Christian dialogue but little or none for any other religion. But this is strictly a personal thing. ********** Ice really likes the verbs "coo" and "soothe." I have to admit, every time I see "coo," it does take me out of the narrative a bit because it's such a rare word usually, yet Ice uses it constantly. But it's gotten really funny for me, please don't stop.
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Apr 9, 2022 12:29
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By the way, I have an in-universe plot-related suggestion. I think this is something that fits the narrative, and would be a community improvement idea that the characters should be able to develop. The ACHE Waste Reclamation Cooperative The very fact that the ACHE garbage pile burns so readily hints at its hidden value--things that burn contain energy and raw materials, resources that if properly processed and extracted can create durable, long term value and positive externalities for the entire ACHE as well as stakeholders in greater Seattle. Theoretical basis: * Things that burn contain useful energy, because if they didn't, they wouldn't be able to burn readily. * That energy can be extracted in a waste-to-energy incinerator, which can generate electricity, but can also be used for heating and water desalination. It can also be used to power other parts of the waste processing facility. * Furthermore, waste burned in a temperature-controlled furnace generates significantly less pollution, as the higher and more consistent temperatures ensure that otherwise harmful toxic compounds and ash are instead completely decomposed to fully reduced gases, e.g. CO2 and water vapor. See, generally, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK233627/ and https://etc.org/advanced-technologies/high-temperature-incineration/ * In addition to containing extractable energy, household waste also contain value raw material that can be recycled and reused. * Even today, recycling centers are increasingly automated, with optical scanners and mechanical sorters able to automatically evaluate and separate incoming waste into recyclable and non-recyclable streams. * Such automated processes will likely have developed significantly by the 2070s, given the industrial capabilities described in the narrative. * I'm not sure if Shadowrun actually covers this, but in other near-future science fiction, nanoassembly facilities often require a feed stream of basic compounds as input. E.g. Snow Crash. A recycling facility can supply such a feed. Implementation: * Medium-scale automated facilities in the narrative seem to be readily available, relatively affordable, and highly capable. For example, a complex automated farm that can feed several hundred people is obtainable for just tens of thousands of USD-equivalent funds. And an entire dental treatment suite is just a few thousand. * A waste reclamation facility suitable for the ACHE waste stream should be on the same order of complexity as the farm. While in the narrative waste piles a dozen stories high, that's only because it's burned infrequently. A waste processing facility would operate continuously, and therefore its scale can be relatively small. According to the EPA, in the US, residents generate about 5 lb of waste per person per day. Given ACHE's below-poverty income level, the waste per person per day is likely to be significantly lower. Let's say 1 lb per day. At 1 million population, that's 500 tons per day, or 11 pounds per second. Easily doable with a relatively small industrial furnace. As a point of comparison, a midsize 1000MW coal power plant burns about 9000 tons per day or 200 pounds per second, 20x the amount. * That also gives an idea of how much energy the ACHE waste facility would generate. Each ton of waste produces about 500 kilowatt-hours of electric power, so 500 tons of waste will produce 250 megawatt-hours a day, or 10 megawatts of continuous power, enough for almost 10,000 modern American households and probably significantly more ACHE residents given their likely lower power needs. This energy is valuable and can be sold of traded. The energy can also be used to power water desalination, allowing the ACHE to utilize its Puget Sound location to generate drinking water from easily accessed seawater. * In addition, given the in-universe automation capabilities described elsewhere in the narrative, an automated drone-based recyclables sorting system should be entirely implementable. The separated, reusable materials can be sold to further increase the economic value of the project, and in the longer term, provide feedstock for light manufacturing within the ACHE itself, see infra. * Plot wise, our plucky heros should be able to come up with this idea, and it fits their values perfectly. Julie has literally been collecting recyclables for months now, CHIP is made of recyclables, Kenji grew up with the ACHE garbage pile and has likely thought about it a lot, Fuzzy knows the value of never letting anything useful go to waste, etc etc. They've also been thinking about business ideas and sustainable value generation in the context of ACHE. Effects, operational stability, and stakeholder value generation: * The cooperative, once established, should be stable in the long run due to its significant positive externalities. * Yes, because the facility is a profit center, it will likely attract attention once established. However, because it can generate so much value, it will likely be able to fund its own defense. * More significantly, the facility creates value for everyone in ACHE and the surrounding communities, and therefore everyone's interest will be aligned in keeping it running. Garbage disposal is already a shared concern among all the gangs, see e.g. the truce when garbage is burned. With the facility running, ACHE residents will no longer have to deal with the constant odor, which not only affects their health, but also affects their ability to obtain employment. The facility makes life better for everyone. Therefore, even if gangs do fight over it, their personal interest will be best served by making sure that the facility itself is undamaged and continues to operate. * Similarly, the current uncontrolled burning of garbage is likely to generate significant amounts of toxic ash and other pollution for a large radius surrounding the ACHE, including powerful corporations and elite communities. A controlled burning process will drastically cut down on the pollution, and powerful stakeholders surrounding ACHE will have an interest to ensure that the pollution remains under control. In addition, the recycling process will reduce the amount of fly ash that has to be disposed, so whoever is currently paying for that (likely the Seattle government) will save money there as well, giving them a further interest in ensuring the continued operation of the facility. Long-term potential: * The facility's energy and raw materials creation will generate significant funds for ACHE that can be used to buy food and supplies, and increase stability. * Without the stigma of smelling like garbage, ACHE residents will have an easier time finding jobs and making connections outside, bringing in more resources that can be used to improve the ACHE, like Touristville. * As the ACHE builds up capital, the raw materials from recyclables can be used to jump start light manufacturing within the ACHE itself, further increasing its economic potential and community cohesion. edit: Spiritual/astral considerations: * Part of the ACHE's negative aura must come from the disrespectful way it treats the departed. * While the waste treatment facility can't by itself stop the violence and death immediately (although it should in the long run help significantly by increasing economic equality), the facility can have a cremation sub-facility that will be able to put the deceased to rest in a more respectful manner. Ashes from cremation can be scattered in Puget Sound, or be used to help bring in new life as soil amendment in an automated farm if spirits deem that appropriate, which I think should be. * This should help improve the aura of ACHE. Maybe not by a lot, but every bit would help. This is a win-win-win for everyone, in ACHE or not, in gangs or not, and is something that should be feasible in-universe and in the realm of ideas that the characters can generate, especially with a bit of help from their spirit mentors. Boat Stuck fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Apr 10, 2022 |
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Apr 10, 2022 11:44
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So I did a rewrite of the next scene. The entire first scene didn't make it past the editing room floor as I felt it wasn't very good. Luckily, the one I'm writing is highly entertaining and feels a lot more natural. So I hope to have an update in the next few days.Quackles posted:oh poo poo, I didn't realize this was actively updating Good luck to you! Let me know how you like it if/when you finish. I love feedback. Toughy posted:A decker you say? Maybe a newly freed up decker familiar with the city and Kenji and like to use an avatar with a high number of arms? That is entirely possible. Boat Stuck posted:One of the things that really struck me as I moved through the narrative and crowd commentary is the steady slide into chaos and darkness, both within the story as well as in reality from 2017 through today. Race riots, coup attempts, plagues, drastic increases in income equality, and now a terrible, murderous war that will directly cause food shortages starvation in large swaths of Africa and the Middle East. I'm loathe to say anything like prophecy. I don't have the greatest track record when it comes to prediction. Sometimes I hit the mark square on. But more often I'm either correct, but I'm off by months or years or I inject what I want into my predictions instead of considering what is most likely. And that's if I'm not completely off the mark. I will also say that making predictions isn't particularly healthy for me because of the sheer amount of work I have to do and how much staring into the abyss that requires to talk about anything considered bad or awful with any degree of accuracy. quote:It's incredibly difficult for a single author to write a story that involve a large number of ethnic groups and cultures without coming across as insensitive, pandering, stereotyping, or just plain inaccurate. I do a lot of reading and researching and talking to people about culture. Some I know about, most I don't. But research goes a long, long way. What I'll do in the book is write the occasional line that to 99% of people looks like nothing in particular. It might be interesting or you might gloss over it. But if you're part of that 1% of people, I've hit some sort of cultural touchstone that is unmistakably theirs. And I try to make these as deep a cut as possible. To show that I know that I know what I'm talking about. The truth is that I actually don't know a lot of what I'm talking about. But part of being a good fiction writer is creating what's called "verisimilitude" or the seeming of being real. If I think that I need to talk about some sort of culture, I'll do my research ahead of time, find some sort of cultural touchstone and then insert it. And the more that I do this, the greater the seeming is. The fiction draws you further and further in. I do have some familiarity with East Indians for example. But as far as it concerns Saanvi and Krupa's story, they're second generation East Indian. I did talk to a few people about this. Did my research. But what effected them most strongly would be a combination of being raised by malignant narcissists, being raised in a militaristic, fascist country and for Saanvi, going through training in the military and then being betrayed by that military. Being East Indian is part of their identity, but it's not near the top of their identity. It's a part of who they are. I did have some excellent touchstones for Chinese culture. Again, research and people to talk to. And because I got along with those people particularly well, you have more Cantonese influence because I found it interesting and fun. But for Native American? Specifically Coast Salish? That's daunting to me because I don't want to get it wrong. I've read a lot on them but I don't feel confident about having them talk about their culture in the book until I can talk to a real rear end person. And I haven't as of yet. The two figures we have talked to who are Salish are Peter Duro, who is a diplomat and Tahoma, who is a program. And diplomats are easy to write because while a diplomat's behavior is informed by culture, it's still a job. Diplomats gonna diplomat. And as for Aztecnology, as Fuzzy would say, they're LARPers. They're not the Nahuatl people, some of which would be the descendants of the Aztec people. They're a corporation who appropriated a dead culture, sort of revived it, monetized it and then bought into their own bullshit by pretending for long enough. I'm very familiar with the Aztecs historically because I'm a history nerd, so I can bring some really interesting poo poo to the table in terms of the ancient Aztecs. But I don't have to learn anything about the Nahuatl people at all which makes things so, so much simpler for me. Aztecnology is no more Aztec than Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee. It's an aesthetic. quote:Funniest development: This wasn't planned but it made sense in the moment and tickled me immensely. And the thread. Julian is pretty drat slick and whenever he gets owned I want to make it noteworthy. A lot of stuff I write isn't planned exactly. As I've said before a few times in the thread, the story comes from about one third me, one third people making choices CYOA style and one third the dice. When each character has a character sheet, it means that there's a range of things that can happen to them and that range is defined. But because Shadowrun dice are fickle, it means that you can either crush a roll you weren't supposed to or you can crit glitch while rolling twenty dice. But having defined skills means that this adds to the believably of the character. And when this character or characters interact with the world, you get what's essentially a tabletop game. And with my input and reader input and dice input, you get some really neato emergent behavior out of what's a mix of simulation and collaboration. I'll set up a scene, roll dice whenever skills apply or there's any kind of conflict and the scene takes shape. Where if I wasn't collaborating with readers or rolling dice, I might write a lot more conservatively, erring on the side of "believability". But if weird poo poo happens because of choices or dice rolls, I just shrug and roll with it. And this also means that with what I want to write and with instructions from the thread as a guideline, I start rolling, interpret rolls and an outline of the scene unfolds in front of me. I don't always stick to the outline because sometimes it just doesn't work when I try to write it down. But then I just whip up a new outline. I can't find the outline for Julian and Min Yun, but if I recall correctly, Julian had a ton of negatives on his dice rolls from being exhausted, emotionally drained and terminally lonely. And Min Yun made good rolls even though her etiquette skill is terrible. Even though Julian normally rolls 16 dice for etiquette and Min Yun around 6, Min Yun won the conflict and changed her life and Julian's life for the better. Whereas if Julian won the conflict, he might have deflected her and remained lonely. To me, either outcome would be excellent in terms of character building and drama. Either you get this outcome where the two get together or Julian sabotages himself yet again. Personally I think that the dice landed on the better side of things in terms of positive character growth and more drama, but I would've made either way work. quote:Most awesome scene: Not from the beginning. This came later. I take cues not only from thread choices, but I also pay attention to individual people talking in the thread and I look for interesting ideas. Especially when someone mentions it more than once and/or if it gets traction in the thread. In this case, Deadmeat mentioned how scary "rooftop shamans" are on multiple occasions and I thought about how to incorporate that into the thread. In this case, I thought about how to take a middling magic wizard and make them terrifying. In this case, Diego corralling a bunch of rats, both regular rats and devil rats and use them as a swarm. And with some demolitions skills, he straps explosives onto devil rats. The "face towards enemy" claymore mines that turns a rat into an overpowered shotgun blast of steel ball bearings. He uses a pretty low level fire spirit to lure out the gang members and then just buries them in rats and explosives. In a straight up fight between a single, middle-lowered powered awakened (Diego) and an armed and armored gang, the gang wins every time. But with preparation, the wizard wins every time. In this case, Big Dredge, the leader of the gang thinks that Diego is soft as it's been years since Diego has been "Diego the Piper", the guy who drowns his enemies and rats and explosions. He thinks that he can just shake Diego down for money and Diego gets Big Dredge to believe it. Big Dredge thinks he found a mark and he loses the initiative. Diego gains the initiative or first mover advantage, what have you. Which if you read any fantasy books is the last thing that you want to give to a wizard. But if Big Dredge was smart, he wouldn't have tried to shake down a rooftop shaman. If Diego lost, I was fully prepared for Fuzzy's home to get burned down and for everyone to flee to the Petrowski farm in Puyallup, which I've mentioned a few times that Diego is friendly with. And for Diego to possibly die in the process. But really, the biggest hurdles for Diego was first to convince Big Dredge that he was weak, then stall for time, prepare the rats, drive to the staging ground which was a hill to the west of the site (I checked google maps for terrain data), not blow himself up in the process and then keep control of the rats. If too many rats had died then Diego would have lost control of them and there goes his entire offensive. When I initially statted out Diego, his admittedly abridged character sheet wasn't particularly threatening. I think six or eight dice for casting spells, which is basically competent. And if you're just comparing sheet to sheet, most veteran Shadowrun players would scoff at Diego the Piper. What makes Diego terrifying is that he has basic resources, prep time, the proper skills, the terrain advantage and then he's ruthless enough to massacre people. Not because he's a psychopath, but because the only option he was given was violence. quote:Regarding the creepy Azzie ice cream shop: So this is really fun and I'll expand on this a little beyond the scope of your question. On the backend, I approached a friend of mine who is a food critic. I asked specifically about food that has to do with blood and/or sacrifice and we talked for hours and nerded out about food and we both designed this scene together over the course of about four hours. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ortolans-birds-enjoyed-french-delicacy-are-being-eaten-extinction-180972272/ I'll just quote the Smithsonian here. quote:To prepare the French delicacy ortolan bunting, one must capture the tiny songbird as it attempts to migrate south for the winter, force feed it much like the witch from “Hansel and Gretel” fattens up her hapless victims, and, finally, drown it in a vat of Armagnac brandy. If you watched the Wheel of Time show, you actually saw the head of their inquisitors eating an ortolan, but without hiding his face. And I took its meaning as "I can and will destroy God's most wonderful, most innocent and most defenseless creatures for my own pleasure and I feel no shame". This is an extremely deep cut that I don't think most people would get since it means understanding French cuisine and the symbolism behind it. It's going to sail over the heads of most people. You also have pressed duck. These are ducks who are not bled at slaughter as is normal for most animals. Instead their meat is flavored by the carcass, which is crushed in a machine and the blood and bone are used to flavor it. There's also this intense cracking, snapping sound from the duck press machine. Both of these dishes were delights to old French nobility. Not just because the food was supposedly good (I have no idea) but because they're terminally bored aristos who need to be constantly entertained to stave off ennui while also delighting in open cruelty. There's also the dirt in the "sports bar" which was imported from hosed up gladiatorial matches which was soaked from blood and death. So it's not just the aristos who are into blood and death and pain and sacrifice. The ice cream shop was a kind of culmination of that four hour talk with the food critic with the idea being about blood and death and pain and sacrifice. What would the terminally bored aristos of the future eat? What would actually impress, if not delight them? And the answer was single batch food. Strains of fruit that were developed for a single batch of ice cream (in this case) and then rendered extinct. So if you're eating strawberry ice cream, that strawberry flavor of the month will never, ever exist again. By eating it, you destroy it. That entire lineage of strawberries is born to die. The critic was actually fascinated by the idea of single batch food. And I agree it is fascinating in its own way and would attract a certain kind of person. But what I'm more interested in is an institution that has an ethos of creating and then permanently exterminating life for the sole purpose of delighting bored aristos. And we also talked about tomb honey, which is honey taken from Egyptian tombs because if preserved, honey never goes bad and there's a finite amount of 2000 year old honey. But I couldn't fit it into the narrative. Sad. What I was trying to display at the Aztechnology pyramid is an ethos of hierarchical domination built upon blood, pain, suffering and death. And that this is not communicated at all in what they say. What they say is irrelevant. Elites largely don't talk openly to the public and if they do it's usually an accident. How they communicate with people and control them is through architecture, control over culture, control over economics and action. quote:I think the only feedback I may have, is that I would probably prefer fewer "Amens" and other non-plot-relevant overtly Christian content. I think because that's because Christianity is the only real-world organized religion with a major focus in the story. Therefore it seems a bit preachy, even knowing Ice is a declared atheist, when there is a fair amount of pro-Christian dialogue but little or none for any other religion. The reason that there is so much pro-Christian content is because Julie and Marco live in a bubble. Being a Christian is central to both of their identities and this is Julie's book. So it's going to show up more frequently. In Julie's case, she has exactly zero experience with Christianity outside of the Touristville bubble. And what I'm interested in with Christianity versus Aztechnology is talking about ambivalence in the religious sense. Which I really do hope that we get to. The lack of ambivalence meaning that good things only happen to good people and bad things only happen to bad people. While some religions have resolved the problem of ambivalence where bad things can happen to good people and good things can happen to bad people. And while that doesn't sound important, if you are part of a religious movement that believes that only good things happen to good people, then no matter what you do, if you're say...Wealthy, then no matter what you do, you are objectively a good person. And if you are say...Poor, you are objectively a bad person. So in the eyes of Aztechnology, being wealthy makes you moral. And the more money you have, the more moral you are. And if you take this to one of its logical conclusion, you can end up with a pleasure cult. Edit: Also I'd posted other stuff here, but in my defense it was seven in the morning and I was seriously having trouble sleeping. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Apr 10, 2022 |
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Apr 10, 2022 12:10
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Ice Phisherman posted:The reason that there is so much pro-Christian content is because Julie and Marco live in a bubble. Being a Christian is central to both of their identities and this is Julie's book. So it's going to show up more frequently. In Julie's case, she has exactly zero experience with Christianity outside of the Touristville bubble. And what I'm interested in with Christianity versus Aztechnology is talking about ambivalence in the religious sense. Which I really do hope that we get to. The lack of ambivalence meaning that good things only happen to good people and bad things only happen to bad people. While some religions have resolved the problem of ambivalence where bad things can happen to good people and good things can happen to bad people. And while that doesn't sound important, if you are part of a religious movement that believes that only good things happen to good people, then no matter what you do, if you're say...Wealthy, then no matter what you do, you are objectively a good person. And if you are say...Poor, you are objectively a bad person. That makes sense. I think you already hinted at this with Marcus' Calvinist mentor, so I'm excited to see where this goes. By the way, any thoughts on this? Boat Stuck posted:The ACHE Waste Reclamation Cooperative Boat Stuck fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Apr 10, 2022 |
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Apr 10, 2022 21:44
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Boat Stuck posted:By the way, any thoughts on this? Seems like a neat idea to me. Naively at least something that gets rid of something bad (trash and pollution) seems like it would be less of a target than something like the farms that's explicitly about making something good.
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Apr 12, 2022 17:02
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Hey, I have some news. The short of it is that I'm putting Blake Island on hiatus. Apologies. I've been working on this series for almost five years now and the last book in particular has been something of a slog to write. I feel like I'm getting closer to the ending that I want while also telling a satisfying story but it's also feels like it's getting further and further away at the same time. And my ability to create new content for this series has gotten slower and slower as a result. I want to work on my own writing project for a while. As I've proven a few times, I just can't manage writing two stories at once because both end up failing. I'd actually like to revive an old project of mine, "You Can't Steal My Joy", which was a fantasy western that I started in 2018. I feel like I'd like to pump a book or two out before coming back to Blake Island, refreshed and ready to write again. And since I'd be starting (restarting) a new series, I could write much, much faster due to a lack of initial complexity. I don't think I could write books like I used to in my romance novel days where I could shoot out a rough draft in two weeks, but a new project would certainly get done much more quickly. Anyway, that's pretty much it. I just need a break from Blake Island is all. I'll post the link for You Can't Steal My Joy when I reboot it in the next few days or so.
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Apr 27, 2022 19:50
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Looking forward to the new(revived) series!!!
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Apr 28, 2022 03:00
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Same!
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Apr 28, 2022 03:33
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That's cool, do what works best for you. Looking forward to continuing the other story
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Apr 28, 2022 04:07
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Take as much time as you need. Looking forward to You Can't Steal My Joy as it's what got me following your stuff in the first place
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Apr 28, 2022 16:33
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I'm down for fantasy western. that's essentially what shadowrun is anyway.
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Apr 28, 2022 20:45
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darn oh well + ooh looking forward to the other thing
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Apr 29, 2022 20:13
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ooof I finally caught up with the thread after a month or so of reading on and off. I posted in here like twice about 4(!) years ago but I fell off when Year 1 ended. This story has been basically a permanent fixture in my mind, and I'm really really happy this went on trucking. I'm really looking forward to when you come back from the hiatus, IP. Also, Boat Stuck, while I was reading the story, I also thought about collecting the garbage from the ACHE. Admittedly I didn't think about incineration, and that's a great idea as well.
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Apr 29, 2022 23:47
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Hey folks, sorry about the long wait. A number of things happened in the last few months while I was taking a break from writing and doing research. First, I got covid! And that hosed me up for about a month. Fun times. Don't get it if you can manage it. Most people might be done with covid, but covid isn't done with us. It's left me with a persistent dry cough but otherwise no other long covid symptoms, knock on wood.Second, my laptop is dying and that's messed with my ability to do research and storyboard. Normally I run these things until they die but I've been getting some random shutdowns lately. So I'm currently in the process of getting a new one along with upgrading my tech in general to something approaching 2022 instead of the early 2000's. Third, I'm still in the process of researching for my book. I wanted "You Can't Steal My Joy" to be a kind of dive into culture and faith as well as doing some weird fantasy Western poo poo, but that was from a different time in my life when I was still exploring faith. I'm not really doing that anymore and so it's made me reevaluate what kind of story I want to tell. I feel like the me of 2018 would have been able to tell a satisfying story but I'm not as sure now. I still want to do it, but I'd just take a different angle on it and I have a number of books I want to read and take notes on first before I tackle it. I don't know when that happens, but it will as it'll be the first book that I'd bring to market in years. So long as I think it can be sold of course. Fourth, I still want to come back to this story and give it a satisfactory ending. Before I felt guilty for letting it languish for so long but after an actual hiatus I feel pretty positive, refreshed and eager. I've even wrote a few dozen pages of storyboards to keep myself focused and give myself an idea of how long it'll take to end this and when it ends. The project looks a lot better after I've broken it apart into manageable chunks. Anyway, I want to finish this story before moving on to others. Not because I feel like it's owed to anyone, but because I have a bad habit of not finishing projects that I really enjoy and it's a habit that I'd like to break. Expect more updates to Blake Island School of Magic in the future as I attempt to navigate us all towards a satisfying conclusion. Apologies for the long wait. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Aug 22, 2022 |
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Aug 22, 2022 22:27
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