21:16 <Crion> The Wherehouse is comfy on a February night, but its occupants are considering going right back out there...or are they? What is the plan? Go drop in on the uh lovebirds in the tunnels beneath UMBC tonight, or wait on it? 21:18 <trenchfoot> I mean, we probably don't want to talk to them now, they seem sort of busy. 21:19 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart doesn't want to go back out tonight. He's not going to say this out loud, though, so if everyone else decides they want to he doesn't look like a whiner. 21:20 <CBN> Tony, still a little embarrassed from having discovered that he can snoop on people while tracking them, in one of the worst ways. "Hey so. I'm thinking we don't need to rush out and go hit these tunnels, right?" 21:21 <CBN> Tony: "Since I'll have a lock on her til dawn, we can just wait until she clears out at least, and that's one less person we have to worry about bumping into down there." 21:21 <trenchfoot> Nels, agreeably: "They seemed a bit busy." 21:21 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart, lips pressed together to keep the snicker back at 'hit these tunnels', nods. 21:21 <banana> There's a muffled ding! outside - the Market elevator. Probably Melanie's finally made it back. 21:22 <CBN> Tony: "Thank you for not saying anything about bumping down there, Stewart." Tony goes to get another beer. 21:22 <VoxPVoxD> Voice cracking: "No problem." 21:23 <trenchfoot> Nels: "Are you all right? I think I have a first aid kit around here somewhere..." 21:23 <VoxPVoxD> "I'm fine. Just - wow that's a weird contract." 21:24 <dammitwho> Maggie: "I dunno about the rest of you, but I could use a break 'til morning anyhow. College parties..." 21:25 <CBN> Tony, from the fridge: "They're all weird and get weirder, apparently!" Clink of grabbing a brace of bottles to pass around in two hands. Returning to the main room, he offers one to each before sitting. Any declined are his. 21:25 <banana> Melanie enters the lounge/kitchen/hangout room/big empty space from the main hall, humming a little. "Contract?" 21:26 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "We got a lead on the Sun's Cinders people." 21:27 <CBN> Tony: "And an eyeful." 21:27 <trenchfoot> Nels waggles her eyebrows meaningfully. Or she thinks it's meaningfully, it probably just looks weird. 21:27 <dammitwho> "At least with vampires they don't expect you to know what bands they're talking about! I barely stayed alive out there!" 21:27 <banana> Oh, someone's accomplished anything toward our actual goal tonight. That's a good thing, because Melanie did NOT. Good times though. "Hey, that's great. Is there a musical connection of some kind?" 21:28 <trenchfoot> Nels: "Sorry for abandoning you, Maggie." 21:29 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Maggie was fine. No one cares if you're cool if you're holding." 21:29 <VoxPVoxD> "There's a recurring internet meme format about how different behaviors or possessions aren't a substitute for having a personality. Sharing drugs at a college party *is* a substitute for having a personality." 21:30 <trenchfoot> Nels blinks. But, not the time. 21:31 <banana> Melanie: "That's true. So's sports gossip!" 21:31 <CBN> Tony: "Isn't it pronounced may-may? Spring said..." He trails off. 21:32 <Crion> Steve is currently snoozing, but splayed out like a cartoon goose instead of tidily packed up with his legs and wings. 21:32 <banana> "Did you know that last year there was this three-team guy, Nagro? Like- lacrosse, hockey and school football. He was MVP for the Retrievers *and* half the other teams in the U." 21:33 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "That's too much sports." 21:33 <banana> "I have learned many things tonight. But all of them were like that." 21:33 <trenchfoot> Nels: "I think the U is something different. I saw a clip of it and it was definitely not about UMBC." 21:34 <banana> Melanie: "It's contextual." 21:36 <banana> Melanie's actually on shaky ground with her memory for that one, so she's moving on rather hurriedly. "The band chat - this is where you found some people from the cult?" 21:37 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I'm not... sure it's a cult." 21:37 <VoxPVoxD> "They seem like hunters, almost. One of them's a servant of or rebel from the Machine." 21:38 <banana> Melanie makes a hand-spreading gesture, do-go-on. Her fingers splay out a looot further than most peoples' would, so feel free to convey as much information as you've got. 21:41 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart explains what he and Nels saw - Jina and Sami seeming to flirt, it looking like Sami was Jina's mark until it didn't. They made excuses to leave and as soon as they were out of earshot started talking shop about looking for someone or something. They identified at least some of the motley as being unusual in some way. "Then a truck rolls up, and our other two missing persons are 21:41 <VoxPVoxD> inside. One's driving, one's strapped in the truck bed." 21:41 <VoxPVoxD> "In the passenger seat was 'Father Thorpe', who is from the Machine. Maybe-probably the preacher guy?" 21:42 <trenchfoot> Who didn't they mark as weird? I think it was all of us minus... Melanie? 21:42 <CBN> Tony: "And that Thorpe guy, I could not get a lock on. Got a pretty good one on the other two though." 21:43 <banana> Melanie's sitting on a sofa arm by this point. "Wow. We certainly stumbled across something- it sounds like they were all participating in this thing?" 21:43 <Crion> Sami seemed to clock all of you on his way out -- not as anything supernatural, just as a crew that all arrived together. 21:43 <Crion> Melanie was likely too deep in conversation to notice. Or she was just pretending. 21:43 <banana> "I wonder whether it's voluntary enough that we should report and leave it alone. This might be a bear's nest we don't need to kick. I mean mare's nest." She's drunk a bit. 21:44 <trenchfoot> Nels: "I mean, I plan to report it. But I don't think I can leave this alone." 21:44 <trenchfoot> She politely does not comment on the phrases. 21:44 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I definitely want us to make a report and see if we get an order to stand down. I don't think we will, because I don't think he asks us if he doesn't want us to play this out. But, we gotta give them the chance." 21:46 <banana> Melanie: "It sounds a bit.. protagonised. Voluntary missing persons, mysterious weaponry and powerful figures, being recruited into something while developing relationships.. I just wonder whether these guys are off to fight something that, frankly, we would rather not know about." 21:47 <banana> "Saving any Lord Sages present." 21:47 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What kind of thing would you rather not know about?" 21:47 <banana> "..Really sad stuff? Massive inequality that's structurally infeasible to address?" 21:47 <banana> "What werewolves eat." 21:47 <trenchfoot> Nels: "If she knew, then she probably wouldn't want us to know, right?" 21:48 <trenchfoot> "Or that stuff. That's... also a thing." 21:48 <banana> Melanie: "Yeah I wouldn't do that to you!" 21:48 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "That covers most paranatural bases." 21:48 <banana> "What we need to know about is things that endanger our community, or at least relate to it." 21:49 <trenchfoot> Nels: "I feel like that last one might actually apply, here." The werewolves one. 21:49 <trenchfoot> "Not, like, in this instance. But." 21:49 <banana> Good point. 21:50 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's hard to know if we need to know or want to know something before we know it - or at least, know enough to start guessing." 21:54 <banana> Melanie: "I hear what you are saying. Not to play keeper's advocate, it's just that what we were asked to do here was like... find out why three kids vanished. We found out! They've gone off to do something dangerous and ill-advised involving guns, angels, etcetera. That could be a legitimate life choice." 21:54 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Do you want to stop?" 21:55 <VoxPVoxD> "That seems like a more pertinent question than what we're meant to know." 21:56 <banana> Melanie: "Not exactly, or not on my own account, if you know what I mean? I'm curious.. and if anyone's getting entangled further I want to help.. the thing I'm a bit worried about is bringing the freehold, the courts, to the attention of.. entities. That don't already know and hate us." 21:58 <banana> To the Winter representative on the motley: "Did they feel like a risk, a connection to any real kind of threat?" 21:58 <trenchfoot> Nels: "From what we heard, I think they already know about us." 21:58 <trenchfoot> "Maybe not us but..." 21:58 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah... though we don't know what they know. The kids the other Machine man was chasing-slash-running-with knew about vampires and willworkers and werewolves but didn't seem aware of fae stuff." 21:59 <banana> "Just how cosmic and all-orchestrating is this gottvonder Maschine?" 22:00 <CBN> Tony: "Not to us no, but...I dunno man. It's a coin flip whether weird shit is going to just be weird shit that's out there, and is gonna be weird shit that ropes us in later, like wizard shit." 22:01 <CBN> Tony: "And to me, worst case scenario is we keep digging until we wanna drop our shovels." 22:02 <banana> Melanie: "Ehhn." 22:02 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "....I don't know. I know it's wormed through infrastructure in at least the Continental US - the kids got chased from coast to coast almost. I can't tell what it wants, or if it wants anything coherent, or if I just see too little of it, or if its intelligence is just too far above or sideways from mine." 22:02 <VoxPVoxD> "My gut impression from what I've seen is that it's reasonably cosmic and not very all-orchestrating, if that makes sense." 22:04 <banana> "It does. Sometimes the forest can't see the trees. Or- the whole of the thing may be the sum of its parts." 22:04 <CBN> Tony: "And this is...a different kind of that, from the stuff with the wizards and the death egg?" 22:05 <CBN> Tony rubs his temples, which looks especially gross in his hedge mien. "How many of layers of those are there." 22:06 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah. Very different underlying, uh, mechanics. Power is very precious to the Machine people in a way it isn't to willworkers or us. And it's completely embedded in mundane reality, instead of intruding on it and rubbing against it the way willworkers do." 22:06 <banana> "Perverts." 22:06 <trenchfoot> Nels: "I don't like that." 22:07 <VoxPVoxD> "My Keeper was like that. Is... like that. Felt like that." 22:08 <trenchfoot> Nels shudders. 22:08 <banana> :C "Do you need to find out? Like.. to avoid the feeling of having a blanket over your head and pretending it means the t-rex can't see you either?" 22:09 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart's voice is sharp. "No. It's not like that." 22:09 <VoxPVoxD> "I just don't like leaving fog-of-war on the map." 22:11 <banana> Melanie: "Um, I don't get the saying." 22:12 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...it's a video game thing. In strategy games you can usually only see the part of the map you start in and the rest of it is obscured. Parts you've seen before but don't have eyes on, usually you get to see the terrain but not what's on it. Places you haven't been at all are just black." 22:12 <VoxPVoxD> "The fog of war." 22:12 <CBN> Tony: "Happy to help you turn any stones over you feel like flipping, man." 22:13 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart gets up to make a drink. There's a hedgespun false back to one of the kitchen cabinets, and a couple of liquor bottles in there. Possibly Stewart forgot to mention he did that. "Thanks." 22:14 <trenchfoot> Nels: "I'm going to see this through. Hard as it might be." 22:16 <banana> This is a completely alien impulse. Or.. not completely- Melanie gets the desire to learn, to understand and categorise. Very much so! What she doesn't feel a need to do is totalise, encompass all possible information; it seems overwhelming, impossible. What's wrong with carving out parts of the world that you can actually defend? Roots, as it were. 22:16 <banana> To Nels: "You don't like leaving things unfinished, right?" 22:17 <trenchfoot> Nels: "I like helping people." 22:18 <banana> Melanie: "Me too. I don't know if these people need or want help, but I'll help you find out." 22:18 <VoxPVoxD> "Question is... who are we helping?" Stewart pours a second drink. He's still by the kitchen. 22:18 <trenchfoot> Nels: "If not the people already there, then anyone they might target. That's good enough for me." 22:22 <dammitwho> Mildly: "If a bunch of worked up, wild-eyed teens are out with guns, it's good to have someone there to make sure they don't hurt anyone who doesn't have it coming." 22:25 <banana> Melanie, singing: "Teens with guns~" 22:25 <banana> "We will run free, with the buffalo..." She gets up, giggling to herself, and she'll take that second drink if Stewart's offering it. 22:26 <VoxPVoxD> Absolutely. 22:26 <dammitwho> "Is that '100 Gecs'?" 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "They have a song called Stupid Horse." 22:27 <banana> Melanie: "Probably! I don't remember, but my parents used to play it all the time." 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> "It's not my thing, kind like an autotune Blink 182. Very... you had to be born after 9/11 kind of music." 22:28 <trenchfoot> Nels: "Should I look them up?" 22:29 <CBN> Tony: "Is 9/11 why music's bad now? People mention it once in awhile." 22:29 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Couldn't hurt." 22:29 <VoxPVoxD> To Tony: "In a sense." 22:29 <banana> Melanie: "There's an animation, you might like it." 22:29 <trenchfoot> She's learned what 9/11 was at this point, even if everyone is absolute children about it. 22:29 <VoxPVoxD> "It's more like the dividing line after which culture became bad, because everyone went insane." 22:29 <dammitwho> You blow up one government building and everyone loses their minds. 22:30 <VoxPVoxD> Especially when the government does it. 22:30 <trenchfoot> Nels: "I can tell you with confidence that we were always insane." 22:30 <banana> "That sounds a lot more plausible to me." 22:30 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah but there's like... phase changes. Paradigm shifts." 22:30 <CBN> Tony: "There were wizards and shit before 9/11 though, right? I figure vampires had to have been around before that, since, old." 22:31 <dammitwho> Maggie: "Sure, you don't have to be insane to be a wizard." She's never seen the 'but it helps!' poster. 22:31 <banana> Melanie: "Imagine.. if there weren't wizards before 9/11. They've got this mythology about tearing open a Veil that conceals the true reality..." 22:32 <trenchfoot> Nels: "I stopped listening after 'imagine if there weren't wizards' and that sounds great actually." 22:32 <CBN> Tony: "Since we at least know our weird shit happened way before that. So that's established." 22:36 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's hard to know what 'the past' was like, in a world where magic exists and shapes reality. Even more than it was when we thought we were just doing regular history and anthropology. So I dunno. There's a point past the range of vision where the rules you can observe get thin and fuzzy." 22:37 <banana> Melanie: "But we can observe the present. So- we'll check in before going further. I'll email Summer and make sure there isn't some kind of enemies list. Santander will have declamatory opinions and cryptic hints. Then we'll probably check out the sex tunnels." 22:38 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "They're racism tunnels people have sex in." 22:38 <VoxPVoxD> "If you have sex in a broom closet it's still a broom closet, not a sex closet, right?" 22:38 <CBN> Tony: "....................." Full beer down. 22:39 <banana> "The tunnel system is being reclaimed. Queered, if you will." 22:39 <VoxPVoxD> "Your semiotics are so powerful." 22:41 <trenchfoot> Nels: "It's a broom closet to anyone who doesn't know that it's a sex closet." 22:41 <CBN> Tony: "So for us, we know the dark truth." 22:41 <VoxPVoxD> "But it's still got brooms in it. It's *always* a broom closet. Does the sex nature overwrite the broom nature?" 22:42 <trenchfoot> Nels: "I mean, it did for my purposes." 22:43 <banana> Melanie: "Now it's an epistemological question. You have knowledge a priori, the essential nature of the closet- I mean the tunnel. Then you have knowledge derived from the Wyrd, which ontologically speaking is "inadmissable in court". I submit that the parties with the greatest claim to justified belief about the tunnels' nature a posteriori, are those who have exposed their inner 22:43 <banana> selves to the tunnels, by getting naked therein." 22:43 <CBN> Tony: "Heh. A butt." 22:43 <VoxPVoxD> "Wait, why is the Wyrd inadmissible?" 22:43 <banana> "It's a god damn liar." 22:44 <VoxPVoxD> "...okay, fair." 22:52 <trenchfoot> Nels just nods sagely. 22:54 <VoxPVoxD> Sunk into the couch with what is now his fourth drink, Stewart wonders what Lauren is up to. He wonders how long he could go on vacation for, just not returning calls, not doing any freehold stuff... and whether he or his bosses would be the ones who couldn't tolerate it anymore first. 22:55 <trenchfoot> The boss needs you, you don't need them! ...which means they'd probably be asking what's up sooner than he would go back. 22:56 <VoxPVoxD> True for workers, generally. But is it true for Stewart...? 22:58 <trenchfoot> I mean probably? Look, pal, when I was involved in this kind of thing it was to get companies to stop making people cut their hands off with saws. 23:00 <VoxPVoxD> Things have changed in some ways. 23:04 <trenchfoot> Do they still try and get people to cut their hands off with saws? 23:04 <VoxPVoxD> Not in America. Those jobs are all overseas now." 23:04 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Do you guys ever think about like... vacations?" 23:05 <CBN> Tony: "The boat, my dude." 23:05 <CBN> Tony: "Someday." 23:05 <trenchfoot> Nels: "The last time I thought about a vacation I ended up here." 23:06 <dammitwho> Maggie: "I'm on vacation right now." 23:07 <banana> Melanie: "Would a vacation involve.. disrupting your routine and going to unfamiliar places? Asking for a friend." 23:08 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Not necessarily. In fact, as the middle class becomes increasingly downwardly mobile, such that travel is prohibitively expensive and free time increasingly hard to come by, there's been a push to decouple the idea of being off work from any kind of adventure at all." 23:08 <VoxPVoxD> "Try this word on for size: Staycation." 23:08 <CBN> Tony narrows his eyes. "This is one of those fake things you say to mess with us." 23:09 <VoxPVoxD> "No, Tony... it's one of those fake things *they* say to mess with us." 23:09 <CBN> Tony: "Fucking A." 23:10 <banana> Melanie: "Fuckin' A-cation." 23:10 <CBN> Tony: "Once it's warm enough to get out on the water, this is why we need a boat." 23:11 <trenchfoot> Nels: "Do you think we could get a dock in the Wherehouse?" 23:11 <CBN> Tony: "We could get back here from a door in it, and get from here to Baltimore. Just hang out on the seas whenever. Just imagine. Fishing. Drinking in the sun." 23:11 <CBN> Tony: "Oh I mean like a real, regular, no weirdness except what we put into it, boat." 23:12 <trenchfoot> "You say that and I keep thinking about a Wherehouse boat dock." 23:12 <CBN> Tony: "Listen, I'm not going to tell anyone we only need one boat." 23:12 <CBN> Tony: "That would be Unamerican." 23:13 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Setting aside the cost of the boat, if you wanna rent a slip in Baltimore you're looking at like 20 bucks a foot a month." 23:13 <banana> Melanie: "How much manual dexterity do you need to fish estuary catch?" 23:13 <VoxPVoxD> "Well, no, it's probably more now. That's what it was when I last heard my dad complain about it." 23:13 <dammitwho> Maggie: "I do enjoy fishing. A sport you can compete in while asleep is very civilized." 23:13 <trenchfoot> Nels: "That's what baseball is for." 23:14 <dammitwho> Maggie: "You can play baseball while asleep?" This is obviously a setup for a swipe at some hated player or team, but feeding straight lines is part of what friends are for. 23:15 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "They're not sleepy, they're just slow." 23:15 <trenchfoot> Nels: "The Brooklyn Dodgers sure tried." 23:15 <CBN> Tony: "That's a good point Stewart..." Wheels are turning now. "What if...what if we put a door off the water somewhere, hooked it up to a dock here, and we could just...drive the boat here and there, like how we walk." 23:15 <CBN> Tony: "Infinite boating..." He is surely lost to you now. 23:16 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "The Inner Harbor Hedge is some bleak shit." 23:23 <banana> Melanie yawns, which turns into a hiccup. "I think I need to go stand up for a bit." 23:26 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart smiles. "Don't forget water," he says, rubbing his eyes. 23:28 <VoxPVoxD> "Ah, shit. It's late. I gotta-- christ, I gotta *walk* home." 23:28 <Crion> Stuart could also call an Uber, the devil's carriage. 23:28 <Crion> *Stewart 23:28 <trenchfoot> Nels: "Are you sure? I still need hours before they give me a license." 23:29 <VoxPVoxD> Melanie pretty much ruined Uber for Stewart. Well, no, that's not fair. Team Fortress 2 ruined Uber for Stewart, Melanie just gives him a better argument. 23:30 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh shit, that's right, we live at the same place. You're a genius." 23:31 <banana> "Please drive safe Nels." 23:32 <trenchfoot> Nels: "I always do!" This is a lie. 23:32 <VoxPVoxD> Despite his empty-stomach inebriation, Stewart deftly tosses Nels his keys. 23:33 <Crion> The drive home is precisely as eventful as you wish it to be. Traffic is light at this hour. 23:34 <trenchfoot> She is only slightly worse than Stewart might expect as a driver. Um, depending on how highly he thought of her driving. She's fine. 23:35 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart plugs his phone into the dash to charge it but yanks it out when it immediately starts in on the playlist with a very aggressive horn section. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG-_yG-n8Yg&list=PLqoVwH1yoXtUaAPpwMN3eX6ralHeb0TEv&index=55 23:35 <VoxPVoxD> He has no visible judgment or comment on her driving. "Sorry about that." 23:35 <trenchfoot> Nels: "Got anything else? I... don't really know how to seek out stuff I might like, so." 23:35 <dammitwho> Maggie, thoughtfully after Stewart and Nels have left: "You know, it's a good thing Stewart found Lauren and by all accounts Nels has a healthy love life. I'd hate having to busybody myself into trying to get them together." 23:36 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "These are... this is all the songs I've heard." 23:37 <VoxPVoxD> "You might like this one:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWLcKQLz_7g&list=PLqoVwH1yoXtUaAPpwMN3eX6ralHeb0TEv&index=70 23:38 <CBN> Tony, to Maggie while cleaning up empties: "That's the scariest thing I've heard all night, and we spent the better part of an hour talking about a weird machine god cult." 23:38 <trenchfoot> It takes her a moment, but yes. She does. 23:40 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Do you ever look at the life your fetch lived and think, 'no, ew, fuck that'?" 23:40 <trenchfoot> Nels: "...no. She got what I wanted." 23:41 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...me neither. There's an open spot here." 23:41 <VoxPVoxD> "Do you wanna practice parallel parking?" 23:42 <trenchfoot> She looks at him before she says anything. 23:43 <banana> Melanie: "That would be hot. But it would be extremely, extremely weird." 23:43 <banana> "..you guys got this? I'm falling asleep I think." 23:45 <dammitwho> Maggie: "Oh, absolutely not. I've got a headache though, so I'm gonna take a slug of Aunt Mags' Sleepytime Tonic and hit the hay." 23:46 <trenchfoot> It takes her another moment, but she parks immaculately. Then: "I've got some food and water for you, if you don't want to just... stumble back." 23:47 <Crion> If Stewart has been texting, he knows Lauren is indeed home. 23:47 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Thank you, but stumbling back is exactly what I want to do." 23:47 <VoxPVoxD> "I've been avoiding her so much lately." 23:47 <VoxPVoxD> "Good night, Nels." 23:47 <trenchfoot> Nels: "Say 'hi' for me." 23:47 <trenchfoot> "Good night." 23:49 <Crion> The first creature he'll meet upon opening the door is of course Chup, who is fatuously lounging under a heating vent. No central air, but the apartment's heating works pretty well. 23:50 <dammitwho> Work better if the vent weren't clogged by a cat. 23:50 <VoxPVoxD> At least the windows take a unit. "Chuuuuuuuuuup," Stewart intones bassly. 23:51 <Crion> Muow. 23:52 <Crion> From their bedroom, where Lauren has her personal rig (she keeps the Project in a closet far from electrical outlets when she's not working on it directly): "Hey, honey." 23:52 <VoxPVoxD> What's Lauren up to? If she's not between the front door and the kitchen, Stewart goes there first, to get a glass of water and make a sandwich. 23:52 <Crion> She is not. It sounds like she might be gaming. 23:52 <VoxPVoxD> There we go. "Hey! I'm glad you're still up." 23:52 <Crion> "Fuck!" Yep. 23:52 <Crion> A few seconds later she appears in the doorway. 23:53 <VoxPVoxD> "Oh no, did I distract you at a critical moment?" 23:54 <trenchfoot> A few doors down, Nels begins fiddling with her guitar. Nervous tic. And she still needs to figure out how to teach kids -- does she need a piano at home? She probably at least needs a keyboard. Golly. 23:54 <Crion> "No, me not being any good at Overwatch is a bigger problem than getting distracted. Bad game. Gotta stop reinstalling it in the hopes its become a good game." Observing him in the kitchen: "You, sir, appear quite toasted." 23:55 <Crion> That last sentence is said like she's borrowing the intonation if not the accent of someone on a BBC period piece. 23:55 <Crion> Which, of course, she has been binging on her second monitor. British television, that is. 23:56 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "S'fine. Nels drove me home. She needs hours for her test still. Parallel parked too." 23:56 <VoxPVoxD> He does a strangely good dusty English valet: "My lady." 23:57 <Crion> She giggles at that, and at the parallel parking. "Did you-all go out as a motley tonight?" 23:59 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "We were on an op. Crashed a college party. I think technically I bought their pizza." It's hard to eyeball how much lettuce belongs on a sandwich until you've clearly pulled off too much, but you're not going to put the leaves you touched *back* so you just have a lettucey sandwich. "Those missing people are part of some kind of apocalyptic hunter cult. Details hazy." 00:00 <VoxPVoxD> "I didn't drink at the party. Had a couple when we got back. Weird night." 00:00 <Crion> Lauren will wander over and gallantly handle some of the extra lettuce. 00:00 <Crion> "Oh, is this that thing Nels is doing for Santander?" 00:00 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah." 00:02 <VoxPVoxD> "It's not clear they're... missing, really." 00:02 <Crion> "What are they, then? On the run?" 00:02 <VoxPVoxD> "I mean, odds are still pretty good, but. They could've been radicalized rather than indoctrinated." 00:03 <Crion> "Huh." 00:03 <VoxPVoxD> "They're not running, they're still in the area. But they're tooled up and they've got another Machine man with them." 00:03 <trenchfoot> It was super fucked up, Nels does not say because she isn't there. But the sounds of her guitar-playing are probably audible. 00:06 <Crion> Lauren makes a face. "Another one so soon? Huh." 00:06 <Crion> "Maybe there are just a lot of them wandering around and we missed them when we didn't know where to look." 00:06 <Crion> "You know, like everyone else does us." 00:06 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Kind of a Baader-Meinhof situation, yeah. We were talking about, what we wanna do next. Cause technically, job's done, right? He wanted her to find the missing persons and we found them." 00:07 <VoxPVoxD> "Nels was like, 'we should see this through', and Melanie was like, 'we should stop', and I was so mad at both of them. I have no idea why." 00:09 <Crion> Lauren quirks an eyebrow. "Huh. Well...what does seeing this through look like, to you?" 00:09 <Crion> "Is what I would ask." 00:09 <Crion> "And, well, what I literally am asking." 00:09 <VoxPVoxD> It's not a Scooby Doo caliber sandwich, but it's pretty big. "Apprehending their project and then taking a line on our response to it, and then carrying that out." 00:10 <VoxPVoxD> "Step one, figure out what exactly they're doing. Step two, figure out where we stand on it. Step three... walking to where we stand on it." 00:10 <VoxPVoxD> "I guess that's just the same thing I already said." 00:12 <Crion> Lauren nods. "But when Nels said it...do you think maybe it's the sense of obligation that bothers you? This kind of mission with, I dunno, hidden bonus objectives for completionists." 00:14 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "No, although this conversation did make me have to explain to Mellie what a 'fog of war' is. I think... I dunno. Nels sees a chance to help people, I think. She's supposing that someone, somewhere, isn't being looked out for. But like... we don't know that. We don't know who it would be if they are." 00:17 <Crion> Lauren nods again. 00:18 <Crion> "Do you think that's a bad impulse to have, or just a kinda naive one?" 00:19 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I'm not even sure it's naive, like- statistically, in any given situation, someone is getting fucked over, right? If you just make that bet every time you're gonna come out ahead on the night." 00:21 <VoxPVoxD> "I guess if there's something naive about it, it's the idea that everyone who needs help is helpable." 00:21 <VoxPVoxD> "Or, helpable by us." 00:22 <VoxPVoxD> "That was basically the view Mellie took - our first obligation is to our community, and proactive meddling carries, uh, the risk of exposure. Which, again, perfectly logical." 00:22 <Crion> "It seems to me like it's a useful impulse to have in the motley...if balanced out by someone with caution and a clinical eye to examine, you know, the risks." 00:23 <Crion> "Yeah." 00:23 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You'd have to be a real asshole to get mad at either of them, honestly." 00:23 <Crion> Primly: "It sounds like mainly you just got angry with yourself." 00:25 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart laughs, burying his head in his hands. "It's the one person you're always allowed to get angry at! It's like being racist against Italians." 00:25 <Crion> Faux-scowling: "Damn piano-movers." 00:29 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart giggles and then he sighs. "They were just college students. Before... whatever they're into now. Just completely ordinary teenagers. Lacrosse players." 00:30 <Crion> Lauren: "...Probably less of a lurch than we had. Likely more consensual, too." 00:30 <VoxPVoxD> Fiercely: "Exactly!" 00:31 <VoxPVoxD> "The whole night I kept thinking about when *I* was in college, you know, the couple semesters I got. Some stuff is different but a lot of stuff isn't. And I kept thinking, if I hadn't gotten taken... what else might've got me? Where would my toe have crossed the line? Everybody's toe crosses the line. I firmly believe that. We talk about secrecy and hiding from society, but people know, 00:31 <VoxPVoxD> you know?" 00:32 <VoxPVoxD> "They know what's out there. They just don't have the right words for it." 00:33 <Crion> Lauren nods. "The missing people fliers in every suburb...parents telling their kids to stay on the highways if they have to drive to Philly, and really they'd prefer you drive. Cities are hardly safer but...they're brighter, at least." 00:34 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "And kids are moving to the cities, and not moving back. I wonder how much the average age of a vampire killing changes here versus, like, Nebraska." 00:35 <VoxPVoxD> "Or maybe some empty-nest retired lady hears pipes in the woods out back and then there's a fetch posting in all her QAnon Facebook groups." 00:40 <Crion> Lauren: "You ever think about the parallels there?" 00:41 <Crion> "With Q. Politicians and entertainers getting 'executed' at Gitmo, and held for trial...replaced by clones." 00:41 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...yeah." 00:42 <VoxPVoxD> "It pairs well with the thought that... we have no idea how many people have been taken." 00:42 <VoxPVoxD> "We can only see the ones who came back." 00:42 <Crion> "And like, what if Q really IS JFK Jr.? The real one, though, and the fetch died in that planecrash?" 00:42 <Crion> "Yeah..." 00:44 <VoxPVoxD> "What do you think your life would be like now? If you never got taken?" 00:45 <Crion> Lauren makes a face. "You know, at 16 I had considered moving out to LA and trying to do the waitress-to-actress dream?" 00:46 <Crion> "Revelations out of THAT town the past couple years have made me think that, in some ways, I dodged a bullet." 00:46 <Crion> "While, you know, leaning into a pickaxe." 00:46 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Holy shit." 00:48 <VoxPVoxD> "That's surprising to hear. I can picture you acting... I can't picture you wanting to act." 00:48 <Crion> She laughs, a bit sadly. "I was a different person then. And much younger." 00:48 <VoxPVoxD> "I acted a lot when I was that age. But I never thought about doing it seriously. I didn't have the right personality for the kind of acting jobs that go to dudes that fat." 00:49 <Crion> Is this the first time he's mentioning that he used to be a lot heavier? 00:49 <Crion> To Lauren, that is. 00:49 <VoxPVoxD> Probably. 00:49 <Crion> Then she'll blink a little bit in surprise as she realizes what the words mean, but take it in stride. 00:49 <VoxPVoxD> This is more than Stewart has talked about or suggested that he thinks about his pre-Durance life in... ever? 00:50 <Crion> She picks at the extra lettuce again. "What kinda personality? Like John Goodman?" 00:53 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "There's a few archetypal fat guys. One is John Goodman. One is John Candy. One is Jabba the Hutt." 00:53 <VoxPVoxD> "None of them are really in my range." 00:55 <Crion> She laughs. "Not a problem anymore." 00:55 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...yeah." 00:56 <Crion> "You want help with that sandwich? I just realized I haven't eaten since breakfast." 00:56 <Crion> Chup muows too, and moves in.