AubreyAubrey bid Malissa a quick good-bye and left the Well. Time was an odd thing. In some ways she was a very different Neo than she had been when this place had been a regular haunt, and yet in some ways it felt like she'd never been gone. Malissa was still running bar and complaining about keeping the station running, Aubrey still felt like she was down two flight feathers in a storm at every conversation, and Fuzzy was still the person that she needed to talk to. Nostalgia was not a feeling that Aubrey was used to, but, as she took the lift up the heart of Deliria's central spire, riding with a half dozen others to the station's apex, it was strong in her breast. There were reasons why she hadn't been able to see herself on Deliria permanently, but it was still nice to be back.
Fuzzy's gallery was as breathtaking as it ever was. The gallery occupied the top of the central spire in its entirety, and thus took the form of a singular circular room. It was designed to appear as though it was outdoors, with planters everywhere overflowing with life and trees spanning floor to ceiling and providing scattered shade from the artificial sun that hovered at the apex of the domed room. The chirp and flutter of birds could be heard in the trees, but the entire room was spotless thanks to the constant tending of cleaning bots; without a clot of dirt out of place or the slightest mark from any of the avian occupants to mar the aesthetics.
Winding paths of silvery stone, wound through 'rooms' parted by hedges or wooden fences or stone walls. The curving nature of the paths provided tantalizing glimpses of the rest of the gallery, showing just enough of the non-immediate pieces of art to evoke curiosity and dare the viewer to continue deeper into the labyrinth- not that the pieces of artwork in each individual room were not fascinating in their own regard. Fuzzy's collection was vast, and the items on display were rotated regularly. Fuzzy's only really requirement for his collection was excellence, a clear mastery of craft. Poems engraved on bronze, holo-sculptures, crystal spindles that played fine music with nothing but the application of breath, drawings of charcoal that still evoked deep feeling despite their humble medium- all were welcome here. Part of the joy of the gallery was the discovery of art in a vast variety of forms, each one speaking to the singular effort of its creator.
In fact, the only kind of art that Fuzzy abhorred was what he referred to as 'effortless art'. He kept a single piece of such art in the center of the gallery at all times, a halfway mark to counterpoint everything else the viewer had seen, and to keep in mind for everything else they would see.
The gallery today seemed exceptionally beautiful, though perhaps that was only in contrast to the Reunion's faded beauty. Fuzzy had redone the grounds work, with an emphasis on waterfalls; one central one cascading down to form three smaller ones at asymmetric points. The air was fresh and clear, without a hint of the slight metallic tang that the recyclers usually added, and butterflies danced across the planters. With the artificially sun shining warmly from above, it was almost possible to forget that this was merely an attraction aboard a space station. Almost.
Aubrey would have liked to browse a little, but there was business. Fuzzy included poetry periodically, and the pieces he selected were always beautiful. Sometimes dark, sometimes poignant enough to tear the heart in two, but always beautiful. Aubrey did her best to set a stately ace around the other viewers noting a number of gawkers. There were more than usual, and their mannerisms a bit less respectful than normal, but that was to be expected with the station packed with
Goliath Falls fans. If they made trouble, well, they'd find that the ivory clad gallery attendants were good for a great deal more than simply explaining the odd details of a piece of art. The individuals that Fuzzy trusted to guard and maintain his gallery were among his most talented and dangerous, and he granted this shift as a reward for jobs well done. Not that they seemed terribly in danger of being called to action. The guests of the day were less polite, but still polite and careful around the art. Fuzzy had a reputation, and no sane neo would cross him.
Continuing forward, Aubrey began to grow slightly worried that Fuzzy had been called away. He was fully capable of performing the bulk of his duties from practically anywhere, and while the gallery was his favorite place on the station, he enjoyed wandering throughout his vessel in order to keep a feel for the day to day of the place. Normally, if he was in the gallery, he could be found staring at one of his favorites, simply contemplating it. Fuzzy was a distinct enough individual that Aubrey was certain that she could pick him out of the crowds, but she was nearing the last turns of the gallery and had seen not an inch of his bald hide.
“Aubrey,” a low, soft growl called from above, his lazy accent making it sound like 'Oobrey'.
“I have told you many times, appreciation of art is appreciation of truth. There is no truth that does not aid the mind, no matter what that mind's search may be.”Aubrey looked up, doing a double take at the life size statue of Felid on top of the marble plinth. The statue smiled at her and stretched, yawning to show its very many, very white teeth. Fuzzy slid down from the plinth, landing gracefully beside Aubrey and letting a holoform statue take his place on top of the plinth. It was surprisingly easy to mistake Fuzzy for something unreal, too carved and too artistic to be part of the real world and not a piece of art. He was completely hairless, and both exceptionally large and well muscled. His skin, taught over muscle, was a dark purplish tone, not unlike that of an exotic stone. He had golden eyes, though flickers of color danced in them- the backimage of the retinal screens through which Fuzzy conducted business constantly. Aubrey wasn't really sure if she'd ever seen a time when Fuzzy wasn't doing some kind of work in the background, even when he 'relaxed'.
”Good afternoon, Fuzzy. Some find it customary to bring gifts after long travels to afar. I have brought only questions. I am sorry for being so mercantile when I would prefer to count you as a friend... Do you have some time? I should have asked Malissa for a drink to bring you as a gift...” Aubrey said rapidly, quickly exhausted what little she had prepared that sounded sensible and petering out towards the hand.
Fuzzy smiled and flicked his naked tail forward, ushering her to walk with him.
“Good afternoon, of course, where are my manners. Truthfully, there are a number of cultures where the onus of gift giving falls upon the one who is visited. After all, you have traveled far to see me, and yet I have done nothing- but I still receive the pleasure of your company.” Fuzzy turned to favor Aubrey with one the heavy-lidded looks only Claws were capable of, and Aubrey was reasonably certain had some relation to the human wink.
“I think I know your questions, but ask as you wish and we will speak of prices and... mercantilism.” ---
SadishAction: Time to do some of my own research into the mysterious attacks. What's the equivalent of an internet cafe these days? I need to go there.
The Think Tank had an uplink service to the Deep, with slight costs for some rather breathtaking speeds. One of the side benefits of Deliria being an information hub was that she had priority access to nearly everything, and that trickled down to the citizenry. Still nursing her bulb of SeaLite, Sadish set herself up a slight distance off from the bar area, near a cluster of bio-sculptures and within a quick flick of an air-bubble for when she needed to breathe. Trawling the Deeps was long work, and while Sadish much preferred to do it someplace where she could be comfortable in her own skin, she didn't want to have to take a break to breathe every ten minutes.
Some time later, Sadish was firmly wishing that she'd spent more time studying the intricacies of how to actually find something specific in the Deep. She was an excellent doctor, archaeologist, and bio-engineer, but sorting through the endless of sea of information that was similar looking to what she wanted, but still utterly irrelevant, was a difficult, time consuming, and exhausting chore. The only thing she had to show for her labors was a snippet of video that had allegedly been hacked out of the recording feed of an AL-Loy recon team that had been investigating a ghost ship. It was relevant because she recognized the ship as Grenac's, a polite and decorous Cane who specialized in stealing stolen goods with a team of a half dozen bore jumpers. If the Tiamen had been looking for people to steal back the Exile's Star, his name should have been pretty high on the list. He was a good Cane, and one who preferred to split bounties rather than risk a shootout with other mercies. It also seemed that he was very dead.
The video feed was of terrible quality, probably as a result of it being piggy-backed nine ways til Sunday, but the outline of Grenac's ship was clear when the AL-Loy docked with it. There was no noticeable hull damage and the running lights were still going. The audio was non-existent on the feed, but judging by the fuss the AL-Loy reclaimers were making over the docking seal, there was something wrong with the port on Grenac's ship. It didn't seem to prevent them from getting a hard seal, and when they opened the door (with no apparent need to enter a code) there was no rush of the airlock equalizing pressure. The ship hadn't been vented. The inside of the ship looked normal, borderline untouched. She was a Mercy ship, so not everything was military precision, but the only sign of a struggle was when the recovery team reached the ship's mess. That... that was difficult for Sadish to describe.
The easy part to see and understand was what appeared to be a brief scuffle, shattered plastic cups, a laser burn across a table, a section of ceiling lighting perforated by automatic weapon fire. It was much more difficult to explain the bodies, though it was difficult to call them bodies anymore. There were eight... stains in various places in the room. The skeletons, hideously warped, were still in the middle of the stains, but only a few tatters hunks of meat and cloth clung there anymore. Everything else was lost in the puddle of what seemed to be putrefaction that surrounded the skeletons. It didn't look natural, not like their bodies had just fallen and rotted. In fact, judging by the stains the ran up the walls and spattered the ceiling, this had been... explosive.
Sadish was not easily sickened, but this seemed a rather excessive way to kill someone. Also fascinating, and not something Sadish had seen before on quite that scale, but potentially excessive.
---
Scarlet and Kesari"Hey, Kari, I'm trying to scout out a bit of the med bay - you know, the part that's probably more radioactive than the goddamn reactor chamber - and Boris left this clusterfuck of an instruction manual for the airlock. You got a little time to help me figure it out?"
"Scarlet! Hi there! Sorry for the late reply! Sure I'd LOVE to go and help you out! I-...had this on 'call waiting'! I'll be right there! (How long ago was this)..."
There was no option in her communication device to put calls on hold. It recorded the finished message--she had everything on 'quiet' as she was busy thinking.
Go and help Scarlet out!
Kesari arrived bouncily, her buoyant happiness clashing more than slightly with Scarlet's expression of near total frustration. The fact that Sadish's brilliantly pink survey drone was also there, as well as its oversized control module, brought more than a few question's to Kari's mind, but they were at least momentarily forestalled by a withering look from Scarlet. Scarlet immediately directed Kari's attention to the sticky note attached to the vent control, the one that looked like it was sneezed out by a man locked in an asylum for the criminally obsessed with sports.
Kari seemed much more fascinated by the note than Scarlet ever was, muttering about Finite State Machines and transition diagrams while using her tech-harness arms to sketch something on her personal device. After a couple of minutes, and no small number of rapid erasures and re-writes, Kari showed her new version of the diagram to Scarlet and explained how, in theory, it should be solved. If Boris was using anything remotely close to standard notation.
- Commands issued consist of some sequence of letters A,B,and C. BCCBABAA is an example of a command, but BCCASCCB is not. The entire command must be issued at once.
- The command is evaluated left to right.
- The machine starts with the leftmost node 'Active'.
- The Active node is moved based on the next character of the sequence. A moves it along blue, B moves it along green, C moves along yellow.
- Unless a explicitly stated by the machine, active nodes become inactive at each new character. (Lines that loop back mean the node remains active on that character)
- Nodes that have two lines away on the same color will activate BOTH of the nodes they link to. Those nodes will then spread their activity as normal.
- The goal is to get each of the goal nodes, the nodes with double circles, to be active.
- Don't activate the node with the giant red X.