Players:
Summary: Gwyn and Mike discuss infiltrating Mutant Town for support.
Date: 12/2/2012
Log Title: Skii-ball Sucks
Rating: G
The Sony Tower - Arcade
59th Street runs east to west along uptown Manhattan forming a border between Midtown and Uptown Manhattan. Central Park can be found off of 59th Street and from here it's obvious where the upper class of Manhattan lives.
In the safety of his room, Mike receives a PGP signed email using the PGP key he gave Gwyn yesterday. It contains a secret question: "What was the Busker's name that we met at?" and a block of numbers that are presumably an encrypted message.
It takes a moment of seaching his memory for the answer: something spoken out loud in his presence. "James"
Using the key and his own private key gets a short message: "I want to help. Who is R?"
Mike considers. No WAY he's going to give Rashmi's information to a strange mechanoid he just met. It could be, what, a newtype sentinel or something, wanting to go in and do Bad Things to make sure that she's KEPT off the air. Paranoid? Hell yes.
The message also had a PGP public key in it for the Gwyn person. So he uses that to encrypt the reply: "Help with what, specifically? Also, which R?"
A response comes fast: "Meet me somewhere?"
Mike does a quick search for places in public where there have been no particular signs of Purifier activity and where people are likely to be, who would witness anything stupid happening. The Sony Tower comes up as one of several, so Mike selects that.
He sends a map indicating the subway exit at 55th and Lexington, then directions to the arcade in the privately owned public space in the Sony Tower nearby. He just has time to get there.
Standing at the exact pinpointed spot offered by the map is Gwyn. They stand, dressed much the same as before inside the arcade while looking at the various games with a grin reflectant of some form of joy. There are witnesses indeed here, and most of them are playing race simulators, or playing a crane game. A wonderful, happy place to be to balance out the topic at hand.
The Sony building has a very nice public-space. Kids especially love the "Sony Wonder Technology Lab" with its colorful and generally harmless games. There's a rather pleasant arcade which will probably have a Wreck It Ralph soon. Mike Drakos arrives among a surge of other shoppers - there are a handful of retail sites operating for the season - and approaches Gwyn without fuss and without breaking radio silence.
"Have you seen the muffin man? I heard he lives on Drury Lane," Mike says, since clearly there should be some kind of spy counterspy exchange.
Gwyn tilts their head and seems genuinely curious for a flash of a moment before responding, "I'm going to go into Mutant Town. I intercepted the messages, and carbon-dated the arrival pattern. Some useful data was extrapolated, but I need to know more, and you hinted you knew something." Also a smile creeps across Gwyn's face as their arms spread wide as if expecting a hug, "It's a pleasure to see you!"
Passive scans showed no signs of overt weaponry, so Mike accepts and returns the hug. There is a distinct difference between the appearance and the reality: instead of friendly, warm, somewhat yielding flesh, there's friendly, but cool, rather unyielding metal. It's like hugging a car, if the car had arms and legs and was smaller. Oh, the jacket and tee-shirt and jeans and shoes feel real enough, but in reality they're not what they appear to be'; they're Mike's class uniform underneath the visual illusion. All thanks to Stark/Forge/Drakos image inducers (cumulative improvements make for better imagers.)
"I try not to make it an unpleasant thing to see me," Mike says. He then says, in a voice which has that slightly echoey sound connected with some sort of tight-beam, focused sonics, inaudible away from the point at which they're intended to be heard, "Mutant Town. I recommend against it, but if you insist, I can give some advice."
Note that when he says that, his lips don't move.
Gwyn seems pleased by the hug, but doesn't awkwardly linger and steps back afterwards. "Well, you said there was someone in there who had been cut off. I can restore power and internet access temporarily. I need to know who R is, and how to get past the patrols, though." Gwyn tweedles a little bit, still speaking in normal audible tones, "There are blind spots in the schedule I can slip by. So where am I going?"
Mike looks curiously at the Gwyn, and tight-beams, "Blind spot in the schedule? Please explain. How will you get in and out?"
Outwardly, Mike's saying, or at least his lips appear to be saying, "Really, its not a good idea. You shouldn't even think about it." Just in case they've got surveillance that he can't sense, like a wired camera outside his perception.
Gwyn goes wide-eyed at the tight beam sonic sounds. It's pretty easy to interpret the inaudible sounds, but it takes a few cycles of cleanup and post-processing to get something that makes sense. All of this decoding and re-encoding happens over the course of a second, causing an awkward hesitancy. Just as soon, Gwyn replies in the same way with a sonic tightbeam just out of hearing range, "Security patrols the outer areas. They move around. There are blind spots when no one is within eyeshot of a part of the fence. I was going to clip it and slip through." Gwyn's mouth says, however, "Why shouldn't I? I've got family in Mutant Town."
Another sonic tight-beam in response: "I didn't observe any times when there wasn't also a sentinel within optical line of sight. I did watch for several hours, and I recognized those holes. They might not respond to you but they might. I don't care get close enough to see how well they can sense me." Meanwhile Mike's mouth is saying "Lots of people do, but these fanatics will gladly arrest and imprison you on suspicion of being a mutant."
He tight beams one more thing: "I suspect that the holes in the security coverage are a trap. It's what I would do."
Gwyn seems to get frustrated, "So we're just supposed to let them take our friends and family?! My sister needs her inhaler, and without that she could DIE." A sonic tightbeam is just as quickly returned, "You're right. But I don't think they can. If cans with messages can make it over the gate, then I should be able to sneak through. I'm not a mutant or a human. Would you share your information?" In addition, Gwyn adds via tight beam, "I'll bring med supplies for R and them."
"I feel for your situation, but there's nothing I can do about it. We're just people, hon. Shoot us and do we not bleed?" That's for the outside voice, the tight-beam says, "Only if I can go with you. Otherwise, I cannot say that you'd even get close to the place you need to be." Mike looks grim for a moment, appropriate for either conversation.
Gwyn starts to tear up, "But…" The android hugs Mike again, crying a little bit, "I miss her so much…" A tight beam response doesn't come back immediately. Instead, Mike is allowed an interaction before there's a response, "Okay."
While it's not visible - thank you very much holographic image sleazy tricks - Mike slips a card with additional information into Gwyn's pocket, during the semi-awkward hug. He tight-beams, "Contact me at this new email address and we can arrange logistics. I need to set this up. When do you want to do it?"
Gwyn quickly recomposes themself, eventually letting Mike go while wiping their face on their sleeve. So androids can cry, how about that. "I'm sorry.. Do you want to maybe play some skii-ball? It would make me feel better." Gwyn tightbeams back, "Tomorrow."
"Yeah, sure," Mike says, "Skii-ball is great stuff."
His tight-beam response is "confirmed, we can nail down precise info once you have it. Be ready with a back up plan and an emergency bailout plan."
Gwyn smiles a little bit, and begins leading Mike towards Skii-ball. No further tightbeams are made, but skii-ball is most certainly there to be had. As it turns out, Gwyn sucks at skii-ball.
Mike, out of courtesy, isn't much better.
