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[_DivideByZero_]

((Waiting on HEN and Dwarmin))

[Dwarmin]

((Shit, I'm really blanking on what else I can do here...umm...nope, totally lost.))

Action: Look for a way to cause some economic trouble! um!

[HighEndNoob]

A person who can counter robotic sensors...I should make note of that.

Continue listening to the employees while still acting non-sapient.

[_DivideByZero_]

Moravia Orbital Colony, Ulysses | 237d/3008AD | Von Hapsburg System

Moravia Lobby Alpha, Floor 3
Heated Combat! (All initiative rolls default to a [1].)

Megacity Time: 6:30

Crap.

"Dooby Greene.  Actually, I was giving this fellow a hand here; been hoping to get a job here.  You hiring?"

BS my way out of this.

[6/1] ((Basically a 5))

The manager smiles.

"Oh I see, you were just being a pal. Well, school's just out, so a lotta kids are looking to our department "

((Shit, I'm really blanking on what else I can do here...umm...nope, totally lost.))

Action: Look for a way to cause some economic trouble! um!

Well, the best way to cause economic damage is to blow up the station! Barring that, however, crashing the stock market is a decent option. Knowing how reactive the general populace of the station is, it shouldn't be hard to cause a riot outside the front of some major company's headquarters. Alternatively, you could coerce a stockholder to sell out for a really low price, that would be sure to drive down stock prices and render a corporation poor.

This broker seems to be preoccupied with selling goods to/from merchants in the form of hard cash. However, political science tells us that where there is profit to be had, corporations will build up whatever market apparatus they need to divert capital to their goals. There surely is a stock market here, right?

[4] As it turns out, there is a poster on the wall that you missed, perhaps due to its being transparent except for the text. This blasted architecture!

The poster links a couple of stockholders in some major companies. You look up each name to find out where they are. The smaller shareholders are excluded from the listing below.

Tektonics Corporation (Electronics, handheld devices) - 5 mt
Brighton Myers - 1,500 t (Gold is stored in Laudeville bank, which is quite near to this tower)
Aaron Masser - 1,024 t (A rich dude in a house on the other side of the Rhombus)
Aeonia Zeal - 924 t (A traveler who buys a lot of stock in local stations and coming back to review her investment after the fact. She left for the Georgium Sidis last week, meaning she should be there about now.)

Generation Tech (Cloning, gene modding, and controversial therapy methods) - 10 mt
Aaron Masser - 5 mt
Hugo - 1 mt (A mercantile Computer Intelligence that bases itself at Roche Brain, an apartment in a neighboring tower which has been renovated to support his biochips. He is an artificial human rather than an AI, which most people don't get the differences between.)
Aeonia Zeal - 524 t

Rigel Macro Hardware (Starship components, primarily reactors and radiators) - 7 t
Aaron Masser - 3 mt
Brighton Myers - 500 t
Hugo - 350 t

Meanwhile, the fish storms out of the broker's office, and the blob creature begins to slither over into the broker's room. The broker doesn't notice this immediately and asks who's next, before realizing the blob has already started moving at a snail's pace.

After a couple of minutes, the blobman is in.

A person who can counter robotic sensors...I should make note of that.

Continue listening to the employees while still acting non-sapient.

SpaceInc Employee 1: Where are the others?
Stranger: In my ship. I will cal them over and we can meet them in the lobby.
SpaceInc Employee 2: I'll call up the headquarters and tell them to bring down an elevator for us.
Stranger: Hm? The elevator isn't prepared?
SpaceInc Employee 2: Elevator's kept on standby in the headquarters ring in case of an emergency. Since the headquarters lacks a dedicated hospital, it's important that we be able to send people down as fast as possible. The elevator takes a few minutes to run all the way.
Stranger: Ah...

Purchase the phone, and leave before WARDEN gets too far.

"Excellent..."

You purchase the phone standalone, as you don't really intend to be staying here for too long.

Outside the shop you discover that Atlos is merely standing still, waiting for you. That's good. You spot some official SpaceInc employees talking to a person in a strange striped suit off in the distance. Meanwhile, you hear someone yelling back from the way you came, although not at you. Looking back, you see a group of humans holding signs protesting through the mall.

Valrak sits around and waits. Nerin sits around in the waiting room, taking a lollipop from one of those cup thingies that doctors offices always seem to have that are normally full of lollipops.

Nerin: [5] There is in fact a lolipop dispenser!

You observe the two scientists from before walking past the waiting room. One of them glances at you, recognizing you immediately, but continues moving. The other one seems to be shambling around as if dizzy or hurt.

Valrak: [5] You receive two footlong sub sandwiches after a couple of minutes, one of which you immediately devour. You fold the other one in the thermal wrapping it came in.

The scientist comes back and tells you the results of the study:

"Alright, so the goo happens to have... adapted to some of the nanites present in the samples. The nanites are still performing their regular functions, although they don't seem to recognize the goo as a threat anymore due to its biomimickry. This only happened after some time, and judging by your appearance you are clear to go. We are going to study the goo's interactions with the nanites a bit more, just to understand what's going on. Then we will destroy the sample as you asked."

[~Neri]

"... How sapient is this blob? Nerin probably knows more about this kind of stuff, but it shouldn't be able to mimic to the level of confusing KX9 nanomachines without being intelligent. Those lil buggers are advanced."

Nerin walks over to the healthy scientist. "Erm.. Is she okay?"

[Toaster]

Deuce nodded.  "Oh, I understand.  But a man's gotta step up to get a good job.  Anything else need doing around here?"

[_DivideByZero_]

"... How sapient is this blob? Nerin probably knows more about this kind of stuff, but it shouldn't be able to mimic to the level of confusing KX9 nanomachines without being intelligent. Those lil buggers are advanced."

"Blob races are pretty rare, most of the ones we encounter are from the same world, Demeter, a superterra orbiting a low F-class somewhere around Polaris. Its oceans consist of one giant blob-ocean, while its forests are usually just one big, green colonial blob, and so on. There are sapient blobs, too. We call this one a Shifter, due to its ability to change its color and form..
Without cellular differentiation, every part of a sapient blob needs to be able to fulfill the role of cognitive processing and intelligence. Hence, we typically run into trouble with authorities when we keep samples of the blob for study, as even the smallest bit might just have feelings that we can hurt. Rights and dignity and all that.

Here though, we can dictate our own terms."

Deuce nodded.  "Oh, I understand.  But a man's gotta step up to get a good job.  Anything else need doing around here?"

"We're a little short on manpower, yes, which is why we are hiring. However, due to rules we gotta fill a quota for those under 18. Still, there's usually room for non-youngsters. I'm a recruiter for the life support department, would you like to visit my office and tell me what your skills are? We could use someone with a bit of management experience."

[~Neri]

((Sorta edited in a dialogue for Nerin right before you posted~

[Toaster]

Deuce mentally shrugged.  Worse he could do was get thrown out of the job interview, he guessed.  "Sure thing!  I know I'm the man you're looking for."

[~Neri]

Nerin walks over to the healthy scientist. "Erm.. Is she okay?"

"Why hasn't the world this blob is from been Glassed yet? It's a class 3b infectious agent with the potential of becoming a class 6. This is the kind of thing the KX9 would have purged upon encountering. Almost as bad as the KX9 26b experiments. Had to Glass a whole Denworld continent because of that Incident."

Spoiler: KX9 26 (click to show/hide)

26's are complete shapeshifters. There aren't very many of them and the ones that do exist tend to live in isolated areas away from others. They're fairly antisocial by nature. They were originally designed by GenTek as corporate infiltrators, although this was discontinued relatively fast when it was found that several GenTek employees had been replaced by them. The remainder that didn't escape were locked in what amounts to a small cell until the revolt. Post revolt they tended to be antisocial and avoided other KX9, although they tend to get along with the more upbeat of KX9 oddly enough. The 26b experiments were an attempt to remove the inbred size restriction on KX9 26's. As with many KX9 experiments. This went horribly right. The result was a ravenous blob of flesh with similarities to a Lovecraftian Shoggoth that overran the facility on Denworld 12 and rapidly overtook half the continent, triggering thirteen separate Cascade Events before a trio of 62's and a number of Purgeships were scrambled and the entire continent burned down to the bedrock. Post Incident. Denworld 12 was evacuated, the Rabbithole closed, the oceans boiled, the rest of the planet burned, and several layers of orbital minefields distributed. The KX9 may be eccentric, but they take no chances when something like that gets loose.. To this day, the planet remains a barren wasteland and has been redesigned Denworld 12x, the system retains a fairly high number of KX9 Purgeships and a mineral rich planetoid that was a Warrenworld at the time of the incident has grown into a Shipyard Denworld was designated Denworld 12. The current Denworld 12 specializes in orbital bombardment ship construction and research. Denworld 12x is the perfect testing range for this, and the KX9 test new types of ordinance regularly.

[_DivideByZero_]

((Um, it would take a ridiculous amount of energy to glass a planet in the Covenant style, although nuking it heavily would probably be enough to make it uninhabitable.
Some calcs:
Boiling the Earth's oceans: 3.4×10^27 J
Amount of uranium needed to provide that energy: 4.2173158×10^13 kg = 42 billion tonnes
Let's not forget that rocks take much more energy to boil than water.

More likely, they just bombed the hell out of the continent using fusion explosives, but that's hardly capable of glassing the surface down to the bedrock.

Wasteland, yes. Evaporating layers of rock? No way.))

"Why hasn't the world this blob is from been Glassed yet? It's a class 3b infectious agent with the potential of becoming a class 6. This is the kind of thing the KX9 would have purged upon encountering. Almost as bad as the KX9 26b experiments. Had to Glass a whole Denworld continent because of that Incident."

"That's hardly proper. Nothing comes out of the world unless we bring it off ourselves. The world can't be feasibly mined for advanced resources because its entire surface consists of gelatinous matter over the ground, so there was no advanced civilization on the world when it was discovered and there still isn't. Not to mention that studying the life there has let humans make huge progress in the medical fields. Your predecessors could have died to Aeon plague had Demeter's life not been well-documented and studied."

Spoiler: Aeon plague (click to show/hide)

A grim reminder of why exobiological safety protocols exist. A team of explorers working for Aeon Frontiers brought back a disease which consisted of a simple molecule that nobody believed it would be a threat until it was too late. It was a compound that happened to replicate itself, albeit slowly. The rate of multiplication, however, became exponentially huge as large quantities of the molecule would organize into complex, more efficient structures which would proceed to make more molecules, until it reaches levels that are toxic to most forms of life. The end result was a water-soluble pathogen that could survive engulfment by the immune system and could only be destroyed by denaturing the molecule.

The cure to the Aeon plague was built by a team of researchers experienced in Demeterian exobiology. They engineered a variant of a lifeform on Demeter that could process the Aeon plague molecule into harmless byproducts, something only possible thanks to the exotic natural reactions found in Demeter's ecosystem.

Nerin walks over to the healthy scientist. "Erm.. Is she okay?"

[1/4] The other scientist ignores you completely. Some random emergency worker mentions that she tripped on a pet or something and got hurt.

[~Neri]

((The didn't turn it to glass Cov style. (Yes that's what the Cov do in universe. Bullshit but it happens.) It's a barren wasteland, not a cryatalscape. They call it glassing because it's the equivalent of making it completely uninhabitable for effectively the next several millenia without dedicated terraforming procedures. Planet isn't earth sized, barely qualified as a planet, oceans aren't particularly big either.))

"So if this species can't get offplanet without human intervention. Why the crap did you take it offplanet? Also probably should get those guards and every single shopper in that store checked for blobness. They made quite a mess. Hell, I'd quarantine the whole bloody market district if I were in charge. Purgercore would just detatch and burn the module if they were in charge."

[_DivideByZero_]

((The didn't turn it to glass Cov style. (Yes that's what the Cov do in universe. Bullshit but it happens.) It's a barren wasteland, not a cryatalscape. They call it glassing because it's the equivalent of making it completely uninhabitable for effectively the next several millenia without dedicated terraforming procedures. Planet isn't earth sized, barely qualified as a planet, oceans aren't particularly big either.))

((Your snippet mentioned burning the planet down to bedrock. Which is a feat orders of magnitude above boiling all the oceans, even. Not to mention that Europa has more water than Earth, which makes size less important than composition.

I'll take it that the planet was some kind of oasis world in a precarious state (astronomically speaking) and that the nuclear devices boiled off enough of the oceans to start a runaway greenhouse effect.))

"So if this species can't get offplanet without human intervention. Why the crap did you take it offplanet? Also probably should get those guards and every single shopper in that store checked for blobness. They made quite a mess. Hell, I'd quarantine the whole bloody market district if I were in charge. Purgercore would just detatch and burn the module if they were in charge."

"Because we didn't discover it? It's a done deal by now, they're everywhere. The more benign strains, that is. The more virulent strains, such as the one you encountered, are kept under maximum security. Unfortunately, we've suffered a betrayal by someone in the upper ranks. That one was deliberately released by someone with clearance.

Anyhow, we've studied this one. They don't generate spores or any of that kind of stuff--its material has high surface tension. You just happened to walk close."

Deuce mentally shrugged.  Worse he could do was get thrown out of the job interview, he guessed.  "Sure thing!  I know I'm the man you're looking for."

"Excellent..."

He leads you to his office just outside the garage door you entered through. Sitting in his desk, he asks you to take a seat.
"So, do you have any experience organizing work shifts? How about motivating people? Are you a team builder?"

[~Neri]

"Only a few people should have clearance correct? Have them detained on grounds of potential warcrimes, bioterrorism, and criminal insanity. Do scans on them. Find who did it, why, and turn them into a HPU."

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

HPU=Human Processing Unit. Basically a brain that's had the mind wiped and is being used as a computer CPU.

[_DivideByZero_]

((A jolly bump for everyone else))

Deuce mentally shrugged.  Worse he could do was get thrown out of the job interview, he guessed.  "Sure thing!  I know I'm the man you're looking for."

"Excellent..."

He leads you to his office just outside the garage door you entered through. Sitting in his desk, he asks you to take a seat.
"So, do you have any experience organizing work shifts? How about motivating people? Are you a team builder?"

"Only a few people should have clearance correct? Have them detained on grounds of potential warcrimes, bioterrorism, and criminal insanity. Do scans on them. Find who did it, why, and turn them into a HPU."

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

HPU=Human Processing Unit. Basically a brain that's had the mind wiped and is being used as a computer CPU.

"Hm, we could use some dedicated workers. The human mind is not a computer, but it routinely performs some things a computer can't do easily. We'll put some researchers into figuring that one out. Anyway, you're free to go. Since you're already here, however, and you look capable, do you mind if you can give us a hand?

The person who released the blob is somewhere on this station. I personally don't have any of the info myself. But you can ask around and see what you get. Those two women over there..."
She points to the two scientists you talked to personally before.
"They're in charge of the recovery operation. They have records of every door opened and every wireless connection in the labs."