goneawaycomms | Brand Saint John

[this link lands in his secure inbox]

Oh, hey, we had an Atlantis too. 'Cept it called itself Thera, an' it disappeared when the magic levels dropped below sustainable. Turns it it shoved itself into an astral bubble that went fucky an' its just been doing its last three thousand years or so on repeat... ask how I know. I'll tell you, it's 'cause I got fucking stuck there.

[She makes a broad, exhausted gesture]

Things are basically sort of stably unstable, I'd say. No major wars just now, or any interesting new plagues. It turns out you can get used to anything, 'cept maybe Rig cooking.

[Brand opens the link and skims through the contents as Saturday talks. He'll go over it more thoroughly with Rune later.]

Our Atlantis got fucked by plague during the war. It's still uninhabitable; Rune and I grew up in New Atlantis. Don't ask him about it unless you've got a burning interest in historical architecture, he'll take any opportunity to ramble on about that shit.

[Nerd. Why'd he have to go and pick "old buildings" as a special fucking interest instead of "how to not get dead in a fight"? Good thing he's got Brand or he'd be fucked.]

I hear tell that the kitchen staff will let us scavenge after hours if we're nice and clean up after ourselves. I'm not nice and I can't cook, but I've got a background in nutrition and I know how to wash dishes.

Oh yeah, they're pretty chill. Some of us have higher-then-normal caloric needs an' we tend to hang around after hours feeding ourselves - I'd lost a couple pounds before I found out about the night crew.

[Brand sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.]

Fuck, these people are morons. I'll bet they calculated caloric intake needs using the fucking desk-job pencil-pushing adults as the standard, too.

Right in one. This place... I'm still not convinced it's mostly incompetence. Some of it just makes too much sense as malice.

At a certain point, the distinction between malice and incompetence is fucking academic.

[He taps his chest where they'd implanted him with a shock collar.]

They're not short on malice either.

It's not academic if it helps predict their moves. What they intend, what they value, what they want, how good they are at getting it... we're deeply on the back foot. Knowing what's what could matter.

Fair enough. I'll do my own research and we can see where we line up and where we disagree.

[It's not that he doesn't trust Saturday's assessment, it's that he doesn't know her well enough to know whether or not he can trust her assessment. So far, she seems to be competent enough, which is a good fucking start.]

Anything else you think I should know?

Let's see. Don't underestimate the other New Hires, an' you can basically trust 'em to be sensible and community-oriented. Cameras are busted, the gardener dude doesn't mind you picking fruit unless you get greedy - oh, an' the Stuff makes people, sometimes. Like, real people. That are totally new and made of Stuff but still people. We've all basically agreed not to go in guns blazing. You can disagree, but don't get caught if y'do.

How frequently does somebody verify that the cameras are still busted? Because if they're more malicious than stupid, that's a trick worth checking.

[Everything else he mentally files away to confirm with Rune later.]

I think our friend who made the private network keeps an eye on it, but you're right, I should find out.

Have you seen any thin, dark, opaque materials that could be cut up and placed behind the lenses of the cameras? Electrical tape or something like that?

Not recently. I can add it to my scavenging list.

I'd appreciate it. I don't like cameras unless I'm the one on the other end.

Brand Saint John

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