The Daily Grind - Chapter 126 (Patreon)

Kinda shorter than I'm used to today.  I'm still, *still* exhausted from the process of moving.  But at least I'm mostly done.  Though I've still got a frankly idiotically large pile of board games sitting behind me that need to be shelved.

Also, today marks the start of the November writing challenge for our little discord server.  I'll be posting my own entries here, but if you want to read everyone else's, there's a space for it on the Discord.

Happy Halloween!

_____

“And *thus*!”  James projected his voice across the room, rapping his index finger against the offending word on the stapled together trio of pages he was holding.  “While both modern and ancient philosophy cannot come to a conclusion on *if* certain things are better than other things, and science, religion, art, and culture are still working out what those supposedly better things would be anyway, there is only one answer.  The human race must be preserved, until such time as we can accurately answer the question.”  He finished, with a flourish and bow, stepping down off the bench of the cafeteria table.

A smattering of applause and hisses greeted him from the group of knights assembled here.  “Encore!”  Anesh called out from across the table from him.  “Encore!”  He repeated, as someone in the room stealthily wolf whistled.

Standing in the swinging double doors to the kitchen, Nate idly spun the pizza cutter he’d been holding through the whole speech, rolled his eyes in time with the spinning blade, and commented, “I *asked* if anyone wanted Hawaiian.”

“I know.”  James said flatly as he tossed the pages onto the table.  He leaned forward, stabbing a finger down at the essay.  “That is *also what I asked* when I assigned this writing task.”

“You’re getting pineapple on your pizza.”  Nate muttered, turning to walk back into the kitchen.

As everyone settled down and resumed their previous conversations before James had interrupted them by reading a high school level essay on philosophy, the people he had been talking to started asking him questions.

“Really? He wrote that about pizza?”  Anesh quipped.

Alex, who’d been sitting with them and trying to discuss pandemic response tactics in a non-depressing way, shrugged.  “I mean, it sounds like he just found the smartest way possible to say ‘no comment’.”

“Right?”  James grinned.  “I’m thinking of interning this one.”

“First of all,” Anesh started, pursing his lips, “I think ‘interning’ when used that way means you’re going to put him in a grave?  Second of all, I’m actually a bit not a huge fan of the human-centric language he used.”

“Interring.”  The elder camraconda gave a static hiss from its spot on the bench.  “Even I know this.”  It bobbed its head a second later, “Agree on the human word.  I will not be left out.”

“To be fair, the kid is still in high school.  I seem to remember being actually racist when I was in high school.”  James admitted.

“You got better.”  Anesh argued.

“Eh.”  James shrugged.

“No, see, you’re missing the point.”  Alex interjected.  “I mean, okay, yes to the humanity thing because he’s *been here* and knows camracondas by name, so that’s weird.  But also, James, you gave this kid a *really* hard question.”

James gave her a level stare.  “It’s a silly meme question.”

“Yeah!  Exactly!”

Anesh tapped her on the shoulder.  “Just explain before my boyfriend dies of confusion.”

“Fiiiine.  Okay, so, if you asked about, like, the ethics of self-defense, or social support programs, or whatever, then there’s actual hard data about how to get desired results.  A lot of people don’t actually use it, like when anyone who talks about ‘the economy’ cuts food stamp programs without realizing that those programs make ‘the economy’...” She made air quotes every time she said that. “ ...stronger.  But the data is there.  And he could have given a real answer based on that.  But *instead*, you asked something that’s frivolous and silly.  There *isn’t* a single correct or incorrect answer, but for some reason, certain people get *super* angry about it.  It’s actually a great test.”

“Because he has to figure out how to say ‘no comment’, but in a way that still makes sure that if you *are* one of those fanatics, you won’t be mad.”  Anesh supplied.

James leaned his elbows on the table.  “Huh.”  He mused.  “Huh!  Okay, so, I’m a mastermind then.  Excellent.”

“I mean, you should still read other essays from him before giving him an internship.”  Anesh said.  “That said, are we actually doing the internship thing?”

“The best defense against the dungeons is knowledge.”  James sighed.  “And these kids… I’d rather that we at least offer a potential path, even if it’s for ‘the best’.  Gives people something to aim for, and keeps them out of the hands of groups like Status Quo.  And for those that we don’t pick, I’d like to get a second support group set up.”

“I can talk to Lua about that.”  Anesh said quietly.

A tray clattered into the center of the table.  “Here.”  Nate gruffly spoke.  “You get Hawaiian.”

“Yessss.  Pineapple on pizza.  The correct answer.”  James gave a wolfish grin as he added a couple slices to his plate.

“Really?”  Anesh and Alex asked together.

“Oh yeah. This, and being flagrantly bisexual, are the two main things that disappointed my da…” His voice hitched.  “My dad.”  James finished, clearing his throat.  “Fuck.  Forgot.”

Anesh reached over and laid a hand on James’ own.  “If it’s any consolation, my parents never got a chance to be disappointed in me for being bisexual.”

“Are you actually? This is one of those things we’ve never really talked about.  I asked Alanna the other day, and she said her sexuality was ‘sure whatever’.”

“Oooookay.  I’m taking my pizza and checking out of this conversation.”  Alex said in a joking tone, but stood up all the same.  “Oh, but yeah, like I said earlier.  Let me know if we find a green or something that does decontamination.  I know we’re wearing masks now, but there’s still a lot of people coming through here, and the more research I do, the more panicked I get.”

“Can do.”  James saluted her.

“Um… do we actually have to talk about sexuality?”  Anesh asked, furiously blushing and sheepish.

“Nah, not if you don’t wanna.”  James told him.  “Besides, that might make elder here feel awkward.”

“I observe.”  The camraconda added to the conversation.

Anesh glanced over at the snake, opened his mouth like he was considering responding to that, then closed it again and turned back to James.  “Alright.  Thanks.  So, are we actually getting interns?”

“Yeah, I think so?”  James shrugged. “We need more people.  And this solves several problems; adrift and scared students, manpower issues, public relations, and also just a way to actually accomplish our objective of doing good.”

“I do like that objective.”

“Same.  I do want a sanity check, though.  Do you see any potential problems?”

“With bringing grade schoolers on board? Yes.  Hundreds.”

“...Okay, well, now I’m worried.  Can you share them?”

Anesh chuckeld.  “Well, the largest one is just finding people that match our culture.  I do think we have a good general ‘vibe’, as the kids these days say…”

“They do not.”

“...but how exactly do we know if someone is going to operate in good faith?  Your essay idea is actually a great way to weed people out that we *know* won’t fit.  But it’s more elimination than inclusion.”

James cleared his throat, eyes flicking to the side.  “The essay idea, to be clear, was because I didn’t have a good answer, and wanted to get rid of the kid that called me the manager.”

“Sarah told me about that.  Then she laughed for three minutes without pausing to breathe.”  Anesh stroked his chin.  “I think she has a purple for that.”

“Laughing, or breathing?”  James aksed

“Knowing Sarah?  Could be either, really.”  Anesh shrugged, glancing back at the kitchen to see if more pizza would be coming out soon.  “So.  Yes interns.  No programmers?”

“Too expensive.  Way too expensive.  We’ve set some emerald chips on the digital environment problem, though.  Going by Virgil’s… Virgil’s models, it should take maybe six to eight months?”

“He kept good notes, huh?”  Anesh smiled forlornly.  “I will miss him.  He added a perspective we needed.”

James nodded in agreement.  “I’m not sure how to… I don’t want to say ‘replace’... how to fill the hole he left?”  He sat down the crust of the slice of pizza he’d just finished destroying.  “We’re not really a corporation where we can just slot people in and out of roles like modular pieces.  We’re way too personal.”

“But if we weren’t, it wouldn’t work.”  Anesh pointed out.  “You already even wrote the idea of developing with the chaos into the operations manual.”

“I may regret that.”  James admitted with a sigh.

“Things change.”  The camraconda chimed in.  “Always change.  Since we are here, changes over and over.  If we had not changed, we remain trapped.”  He rose up to a coiled striking position, and as James and Anesh thought on his words, lashed out quickly and vanished back down to his place on the bench with one of James’ slices of pizza in his mouth.

‘I guess that’s why no one likes corporations, huh?”  James commented.  “They don’t change, really.  People grow and the structures they’re in remain the same.  Like keeping a plant in a pot too small for it.”

“I don’t think we need fancy metaphor to say that corporations suck.”  Anesh told him.  “Or at least, most of the megagiant ones.”

“Fair.  You know, the elder reminds me, you know what’s been bothering me for a while that we never figured out?”

“What?”

“Why did Officium Mundi try to stop us from getting to the camracondas?”  James posited the question with spread hands.  “It couldn’t have known they were there, or that the tower was there.  Or that we were planning anything!  So why did it start building a death-zone of break room and maimframes around the tower?”

Anesh made a small ‘ah’ noise, raising a finger like he had a good answer,  before lowering his hand again.  “Hm.”  He said, instead, glancing down at the elder.  The camraconda, too, perked up.  Leaning partially on the table in the way that camraconda’s had started signaling they were joining a conversation in earnest.  “That’s a good question.”  Anesh said.  “Could there have been… hm.”

“I mean, the dungeon couldn’t see the tower, right?”

“Hostile observation prevented.”  The elder agreed.

“But only for the tower.  So it could see around it.  Maybe it saw us vanishing and reappearing?”  James bit his lip.  “I’ve thought about it, but I just can’t come up with an answer that satisfies.”

Anesh clicked his tongue.  “Is it possible that one of the other camracondas… left the tower?”  He asked the elder.  “Went outside the protection, contacted the dungeon?”

“Never.”  The elder responded almost instantly.  “Never.”  The word was repeated in a lower volume, a physical hiss from the snake matching the digital word.

“I’ll be honest, I’d find it hard to judge them if they did.”  James told the camraconda.  “Trapped in that one tower, for… how long? Months?  Years?  I’ve been largely sticking to the same three places for the last couple months because of this pandemic, and I’m already going nuts, and I can *go outside*.”  He sighed deeply.  “Like, I wouldn’t be happy about it.  But I would absolutely understand.”

“No.”  The elder replied.  “Our… souls?  More important than space.  More important than moving.  You would not stroll if the light of the sun killed you.”

“Poetic.  But fair.”  James conceded.

“So how then?  Now I’m curious.”  Anesh grumbled.  “It must have been tracking where we were, right? And us vanishing from its perception was clearly a major anomaly.  Did it *know* that it had a missing section? Or is this a way we can bait it into creating zones we can farm?”

“Oooooh, no.  No farming maimframes.”  James admonished.  “I’ve been shot multiple times by those now.  No no.  Not again.”

“Bah.”  Anesh dismissed his boyfriend’s concerns about *being shot again*.  “You lack vision.”

“That’s what I keep saying about the skulljacks, and no one believes me!”  James threw his hands up.  “The support group is getting amazing at, like, doing google searches and stuff.  But we’re squandering the potential of these things!”

“James, your list of ideas includes abandoning permanent bodies, creating artificial warminds, forming hive minds with dogs, forming some kind of transhumanist cult, and evacuating the consciousness of the recently deceased to safe storage.”  Anesh pointed out, eagerly grabbing a slice of the non-pineappled pizza that Nate had just sat down one table over.  The chef, to his credit, quirked an eyebrow at their conversation, but didn’t interject.

“Okay, in order…”

“No, no.  No long explanations.  Sum it up.”  Anesh admonished him.

James almost growled at his boyfriend.  But then, his partner had heard most of this argument at least twice by now, so he tried to make it succinct.  “Alright.. um…” He thought for a second while Anesh scarfed down bell pepper and olive pizza.  This was harder than he thought.  “Okay.  So.  We are not our bodies.  And I love my body, especially these days now that I have actual muscle, but it’s not ‘me’.  I would gladly give up my permanent residence in this shell, if it meant helping someone else out of death, or if we could more efficiently move around who is doing what.  Also I’d be fine being a dog for a little.  Until we can artificially make new bodies, obviously.”

“When I read your list of potential ideas, the word ‘warmind’ was still on there.”  Anesh pointed out casually.

“Well *obviously* we shouldn’t make minds just to be weapons.  I meant, like, copying the gestalt of you, me, and Alanna, and then making that one balanced person, who is just very well suited to combat.”

“And is that tied to the cult thing?”

“Consensual cult thing!”

“That still seems super unethical.  Maybe find a better word.”

“I admit, that one was mostly on there as a leftover to my reaction to fighting Status Quo and the Old Gun.  And it’s been… almost a month since then.”  James sighed again.  “Fuck, we’re just on endless crisis mode, aren’t we?”

“It’s very exhausting.”  The elder commented around its bite of pizza.

“We need more people.”  Anesh told James.”

“Start scheduling interviews or whatever it is you do.  I’ll handle it.”  James relented.  “Also, let me know when Alanna gets back.  I wanna talk to her about our vetting process.”

“She’s at the protests today, again.”  Anesh said.  “At least those filter masks everyone is wearing are decent at stopping tear gas.”

“I admit, with some embarrassment, that I don’t think I understood, and still may not understand, the extent of how bad the police are.”  James closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and silently hoping his partner would be okay.  “You know, I talk a lot about the arcology thing, and I *do* seriously want to pursue that.  But I am not looking forward to discussing with everyone exactly how we want to set up the peacekeeping structure.”

Anesh grunted.  “I still get randomly pulled over every couple weeks.”  He said.

“Are you a poor driver?” The elder camraconda asked.

“No, I’m brown.”  Anesh answered.

“Alright, now *I’m* checking out of this conversation.”  James said, standing up and finished with lunch.  “You explain systemic police abuse of power to the poor innocent snake.  I’ve got to go meet a private eye that I hired.  Elder, I’ll catch up with you later if I learn anything for you, okay?”

“Thought you found the guy?”  Anesh asked.

“I did.  But he didn’t reply, so I’m finding him in person.”  James said, brushing crumbs off the aloha shirt he was wearing, and heading down the hallway toward the front of the building with a wave over his shoulder  “Later!  Have fun with that discussion!”

James shook his head as he walked down the hall, taking only a brief pause this time to glance down to his right at the couch embedded in the wall where it should, by all rights, be intersecting the kitchen.  They had never actually figured out why some green orbs seemed to work around normal Earth geometry, and some decided that the rules of casual directional relation were for suckers; though if he had to guess, James would have settled on the idea of ‘sometimes it just seems funnier that way’.  He was willing to bet no one would accept that as an answer, though.  So the quest for truth continued.

Though, head-shakingly oddly placed as it was, the couch was a good constant reminder that he had green orbs in his bag from the last office run that he needed to use here in the Lair.  James filed that little note away in his enhanced memory, and headed into the front room of the building.

Sarah was here, along with Lua and Tyrone, packing up the mass of folding chairs that they used for the support group.  A few non-order victims were still hanging around, the remnants of the people rescued from the Office and Monster-Karen who doggedly refused both to either join the Order in full, or give up on their lives.  James couldn’t begrudge them that; it took a certain amount of strength to do what he did, but he was sure it took more to make the decision to survive an ordeal like that and deny it the power to warp who you were.

Some of those people still flinched around the camracondas, but the fact that some camracondas had actually joined  the support to ask for help processing their relatively new feelings went a long way to normalizing them as people.

It was through this collection of people cleaning up snacks and chairs, looking for their car keys, and having conversations in half-english half-hiss that James encountered a distraction.

“Boss!”  The distraction, a five and a half foot tall goth girl with bags under her eyes, greeted him.

Momo was the only one who called him boss.  A few other people had tried it, and James had told them to knock it off.  They’d listened, too. Even Harvey, and Harvey barely listened to James at all; especially when it came to differences of opinion in how secretive they should be.  Momo, though? Momo just powered through.  And after about a month of it, James had more or less relented, and now half the Order was vaguely aware of the fact that Momo had some kind of special dispensation to call James whatever she liked.  That wasn’t *true*, but that didn’t really matter at this point.

“What’s up?”  James asked her, noticing then that Momo had another girl trailing behind her, probably around the same age, but dressed less like she was going to an alt rock concert and more like she was prepared to hand out flyers to people about the dangers of smoking.  A modest blouse, slacks, and just a touch of makeup that made the young face look professional.  The look of confusion she was wearing seemed out of place, and also kinda funny.  “Who’s your friend?”

Momo grinned at him.  “This is Liz!  She…”

“Elizabeth!”  The other girl protested, her voice sounding exasperated, but not actually angry.  “My name is *Elizabeth*.”  She insisted.

“Yeah, get used to that.”  James told her.  “Momo has some kind of special dispensation to call people whatever she wants.  I’m not sure how it happened.”  He started to extend a handshake to greet her before he remembered the present circumstances and awkwardly pulled back.  “I’m James.  Nice to meet ya.  What’s up, Momo?”

“So, her mom is Karen.”  Momo explained.  “Who I thought wouldn’t be here today,  But she is.  And for some reason, doesn’t want Liz getting friendly with the snakes or something?”

“I mean, it might be that we have an actual casualty rate around here.”  James said, trying for humor and just making himself sad instead.  “Still.  Hi.  You’re welcome to hang out here.  The camracondas are… well, most of them are friendly.  Knife-In-Fangs is learning to be kitchen staff, so…”

Liz shook her head.  “I don’t understand.”  She said.  Her voice was quiet, but had that tone of someone who was just good at conversations; clearly understandable regardless.  “What is this place? Mom said her work was strange, but…”

“Oh, um.”  James tried to think of how to describe what they did.  “We’re professional heroes?”  He settled on.  “We save people, mostly.  And somehow this turns us a profit? No.  Something else… look, my finance guy is out of state, I don’t know how we make money.”  He admitted.  “Oh!  You mean the magic!  Yeah, we have magic.  Want some? I can find you some skill orbs if you want to see what I’m talking about, and annoy your mom.”

“Yeah, sure.”  Momo waved off his little joke.  “Look, if you see Karen, just don’t tell her that…”

The elevator dinged behind them.

James turned, quirking an eyebrow at the panicked look on the girl’s faces as the doors slid open to reveal Karen herself, looking down at a file folder.  Without missing a beat, James turned, swept an arm, and casually ushered the two around the corner and back toward the cafiteria.

“Ah, James.”  Karen greeted him as she walked out of the elevator.  “I needed to ask you something.”

“Good timing.”  James stealth joked.  “What can I do for *you*?”

She paused.  “Is it one of those days?”  She asked.  Karen might be the closest they had to a normal responsible adult in the building, but she still understood that sometimes, everything happened all at once.  James appreciated it.

“Almost.”  He said, glancing around the corner to where Momo and Karen’s daughter were pressed against the wall, waiting for the older woman to leave.

“Well I’ll be quick.”  She said.  “I’ve found this paperclip, and according to the iLipede and Research, it performs a selection sort on any stack of documents it’s attached to, from least to most unknown piece of data.”

“Okay, rad.”

“Yes, I thought so too.”  Karen nodded seriously.  “But I had a question for you, since no one else had a good answer.  Why does it work if I clip DVD’s together?”

James blinked.  Tilted his head.  Then let out an overlong “Huuuuuuuuuh.  Huh.”  He took the offered paperclip from Karen and turned it over in his fingers a few times.  “Well that’s weird.  I’m always thrown off when we get there ‘map is the territory’ kind of objects.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Oh, the phrase?  ‘The map is the territory’ is from… well, I don’t know where it’s originally from.  I’m stealing it from a contemporary philosopher named Wales.  It’s mostly used to describe game mechanics…”

“I don’t…”

James held up a placating hand.  “I know it’s not your thing.  I’ll do the quick version.  The term refers to when the game mechanics, usually in an RPG, don’t make sense, but still *work*. Like, in Dungeons and Dragons, you roll a twenty sided die to attack.  No matter what, if you get a one, you miss.  And a twenty hits.”

“That seems… fair? I don’t play games.”  Karen informed him.  In case he hadn’t known.

He had.  “Well, here’s the thing.  What if you’re throwing a rock at, say… a tank?”  James asked.  “A twenty still hits, does damage.  At that point, you could, maybe, hire a few hundred random serfs to lob rocks at your problems.  Because five percent of them will statistically hit.  The rule, the ‘map’, in this case, has become the world itself.  The territory.”

“And this ties into the paperclip because…” Her eyebrows narrowed.  “Ah, no, I see.  It has a rule, doesn’t it? It defines ‘documents’, and then doesn’t bother to elaborate.”

James snapped his fingers.  “Exactly.  In games, we don’t elaborate because it gets stupid.  But we’re not in a game.  This is real life, and none of us are interested in losing out because we keep to the spirit of the rules.”

“Helpful.  Thank you.  I believe I have a few ideas of how to better use this to sift through Status Quo’s files now.”  Karen nodded at him.  “I’m going to go get lunch now.  Excuse me.”

James glanced around the corner to where the two girls looked panicked, Momo shaking her head and waving him off.  “Do you like pineapple on pizza?”  He asked Karen

“No.”  She said without hesitation.

“Might want to eat out today.”  He offered, helpfully.

“Mm.  Thank you.”  She said, before tucking the folder under her arm and heading out toward the door, fishing her car keys out of her coat.

He waited until she was outside and in her car before leaning around the dividing wall.  “Momo, you know the kitchen has a back way out, right?  There’s a million hidey holes back there.”

“Yeah, but her mom would yell at me.  Nate’s actually scary.”  Momo retorted.

“He’s…!” James started to argue, then actually thought about it, and shook his head instead.  “Yeah, okay.  At least hide behind he couch or something next time.”  He admonished.

Before actually leaving, he did want to use the spare green orbs they weren’t using for testing.  The influx of them had dropped over time, but Simon and Other James had bagged a pair of tumblefeeds last week, and it was always worth using the orbs here as long as no one had any plans for experimenting with them.

Wandering behind the counter for the front room, a remnant from whatever this place had been before they’d occupied it that they had never had the time or energy to remove, James looked under the cabinet space where he’d thrown his bag last week.  The hollow opening under where a cash register should have been was, unfortunately, empty.

James frowned.  It was unlikely someone had stolen his bag.  Who would even know where he’d thrown his “I’ll get around to it later” backpack full of orbs at 4 AM after the last dungeon run?  Only people he trusted, really.  Maybe also Randall.  But Randall couldn’t really conceive of using the orbs; unless he was a really good actor and absolutely dedicated to throwing everyone off his trail.  Which he might well be, given that he was FBI.

The really awkward thing here was, James had just spent the last three days or so casually flaunting his ability to *remember* stuff now.  That upgrade had fixed, or at least patched over, one of the biggest problems his depression caused.  And now he’d promptly gone and lost at least two green orbs that were slated for the Lair.

He popped up from behind the counter, looking around at the handful of people still in the room.  “Has anyone seen my bag?”  James called out.

Heads both human and camera turned toward him, all of them shaking or matched with the word ‘no’ in some way.

“Shit.”  James muttered, suddenly feeling pretty awful.  It was still a testament to the grip that depression had him in, that one minor setback could turn his mood sour in an instant.

Still, he wasn’t prepared to let it get in the way of what he had to do today.  With a sigh, James started heading to his car, prepared for his attempted meeting with the next of kin of the progenitor of all the camracondas under his care.  He called out to Sarah on the way past, letting her know he was heading out and giving a wave.

As he reached one of the two front doors, while affixing his mask to his face, the door swung open and the mildly surprised face of Daniel paused on the way in.

“Oh!  Perfect!”  James greeted him.  “Haven’t seen you in a while!  Can you find my bag? You and Pathfinder can find things, right?”

“Nooooo.”  Daniel slowly let the word out.  “And you haven’t seen me because I was camping.  But is it that bag?”  He pointed behind James to the rack of hooks where coats and backpacks were hung up.  There were actually two rows, one lower than the other for the camracondas’ evolving line of fashion.

James glanced, looked back, and was prepared to admonish the man in front of him, when he stopped and did a double take.  “Yes.”  He said, confused.  “Why is my bag here?”

“Someone probably just hung it up.  You leave backpacks on the floor all the time.”  Daniel sniped at him.  “Pick up after yourself.”

James wasn't really listening, too busy rifling through his bag and cracking the two greens before he headed out.

[Local Area Shift : Construction Speed -  +1.8 tons material processed / day]

[+3 Skill Ranks : Cleaning - Mopping]

[Local Area Shift : Time Added - Hygiene - +14 minutes/day/person]

[+2 Skill Ranks : Metallurgy - Alloying - Aluminum]

“Ah, excellent.”  He sighed in relief as the orbs worked their magic.  “Thanks for your help.”  James nodded gladly at Daniel.  “Hey, do you think you could find the nerf gun that we’ve been looking for? The one that shoots fire, not…”

“Not the one that shoots spiders.  Yeah.  I’m on it.”  Daniel sighed, but for a different, less excited, reason.  “We would like it on record that we aren’t a scanner, though.”

James nodded.  “I understand.  But fireballs.”  He rebutted.

“Oh, I agree.”  Daniel said.  “I’m just making a token resistance.”

“Got it.  Okay.”  James smiled under his mask.  “Anyway, I’ve got a meeting I’m probably certainly late to by this point.  I’ll see ya later.”

“Have fun.”  Daniel held the door for him while James passed by, before ducking into the Lair himself.

James half chuckled to himself through his mask as he walked to his car.  It was a nice day out, and while the cloth covering made the warmth uncomfortable around his face, he was getting used to it.  There were a couple people standing on the street corner just up the slope from the Lair’s parking lot that had the full filter masks on, which James would have *really* found unbearable.  He already sweat too much; adding a sealed zone to the mix would drive him nuts as soon as it started itching.

The drive to where he was meeting the investigator he’d hired was decently long.  Maybe twenty minutes, and the end point was in one of those little office parks off a winding road that split off from a main route.  The kind of road that James never really looked twice at, and was always surprised when he had to take one to get to a tiny two-room office to get car insurance or a window screen repair.  It was *almost* enough to make him think there was something intentionally obfuscating these spaces, but he was pretty sure that was just the part of his brain that was constantly on dungeon time kicking in.

Once you’d spent a solid year of your life doing nothing but dealing with supernatural threats, every tiny discrepancy in daily life started to look like magic.

The man James had hired greeted him in the front of his office.  It was… cramped.  A room barely the size of a small apartment bedroom, with a single back room for storage that James could see was basically packed full of filing cabinets and a short desk.  The detective himself was basically the opposite of every stereotype James had learned from old noir films.  Bald, on the upper end of middle aged, a big hooked nose, and thin oval glasses.  He looked, and spoke, like a high school computer science teacher, and not like he was the kind of man who ‘down these mean streets must go’.

Which was kind of the point, James supposed.  No one would be keeping an eye out for the dad waiting to pick his kid up, or the bored accountant hurriedly taking notes.  They’d be looking for someone in a trenchcoat and dark sunglasses.  Or at least, he would have.  He wouldn’t *now*, obviously, since he’d thought about it.

“Your man isn’t answering your calls because he doesn’t answer any of his calls.”  The detective, who just went by Velazquez, was telling James.  He had his hands folded in front of himself as he leaned forward over the desk.  He did that, James had noticed; got closer to talk to people, like too much distance created information decay or something.  Normally it would be fine, but these days it just made James nervous.  “The phone rings, and he doesn’t even flinch.  Never acknowledges the thing.”

“Yeah, that… that checks out.”  James groaned internally.  “Honestly I should have considered this might happen.”

The PI didn’t exactly raise his eyebrows, but the man did shift forward a centimeter or two, like he was forming a conspiracy and not just handing over an address.  “Well, he’s not deaf.  You said that he wouldn’t run, and you were right.  All it took was knocking on the door, and arranging a meeting.  Everything’s above board, here’s the hours he’s home and available.  I told him you weren’t a debt collector, by the way.”  Here he did that thing again where he notably *did not* ask James a question.

James pointedly did not answer a question.  “Alright.  Thank you very much.”  He said, taking the file folder and standing up.  “If you need to bill me for more hours, just send an invoice.  I know the actual contacting part wasn’t originally part of the professional stalking.”

“I prefer the term freelance espionage.”  The investigator said with a small grin, standing and offering James a hand to shake.

James gave a guilty look.  “Ah.  Pandemic, right?”  He said, not taking the hand.

“Eh, no worries.”  The other man said.  “Well, good luck with that.  You’ve been a lot easier to work with than most clients.  Feel free to contact me if you need anyone else tracked down.”

“Can do.”  James said as he left, heading to his next destination.

It was late afternoon.  Not quite what he’d call evening, yet.  Velazquez had given him a list of times when the person he was looking for would be home, and be open to someone coming to talk to him.  ‘Now’ was a potential time.  No sense waiting.

There was a non-zero amount of tension in James’ chest as he drove through the streets of his hometown, across city lines, down a freeway, and into an area that was similar in composition to his home zone, but somehow just a little bit off.  Different store names, even if they were the same store types.  Different quirks on the road signs.  That sort of thing.

This happened basically every time he went on a road trip.  He was getting used to the world being bigger than one city of about a hundred thousand people, though.

The place he was going was an apartment complex.  And as he pulled into the gravel parking lot, he made the unfortunate conclusion that it wasn’t a very nice one.  Not enough space, too much graffiti that wasn’t interesting, stairs that wobbled under his boots as he walked up them, it just had that feeling of being run down and kind of unpleasant.  Half the other cars in the lot had dented bumpers or a broken window.

Finding the apartment the detective had listed for him, James rapped on the door, and waited.  Again, he felt that anxiety about talking to someone new.  Someone unknown.  He wasn’t exactly here to provide good news, after all.  And with someone he’d never met before, there wasn’t an easy way to tell how they’d react.  Much less if he could get what he was after, which was for this random person to agree to meet the camracondas and just… talk to them, really.

How did you tell someone that the people who’d killed their mother had formed a cult around her, and wanted to have a chat?

After five minutes of awkward waiting, during which he politely didn’t knock again as he could hear rustling from inside the apartment, the door cracked open.

“What?”  Came the barked word from inside, past two chain locks James could see through the crack.  The voice was hoarse, old, and had a slight slur to it like the man was drunk.  He didn’t say anything else, just eyed James through the small opening.

“I’m looking for the son of Candace Williams.”  James said, putting on his best official voice.  He was wearing something that was close enough to a suit that he could pull out his -still fake - FBI badge if need be, but he didn’t want to open with that.  “One of our informants told me he lived here.”

“The kid?”  The man on the other side snorted.  “He’s out.  You talk to me, if you want him.  What’s he worth, anyway?”

James’ eyes narrowed.  This was not going the way he had expected, but it did have one positive effect.  Being pissed at this dude was doing wonders for his anxiety.

“Sir, this is an attempt to contact next of kin.  If you would…”

The man on the other side of the door cut him off.  “Ah, bitch is dead, eh?”  Was all he said, before he snorted, and slammed the door in James’ face.

James had, in his life, been confronted with some truly awful people.  How could he not?  He’d worked tech support for cell phones.  He’d once encountered a man who had spent twenty six minutes telling James that *technically*, his phone was still legally his, even though he’d left it at the scene of a hit and run he’d committed, and that James needed, *needed* to unlock it.  Or he’d be sued.  Or murdered.  Or something.  The point was, he was used to dealing with assholes.

That did not, for a second, mean this blood didn’t catch fire at the insolence of this bastard slamming the door in his face.

There was a brief window where James debated just kicking in the door, shooting him, and then hanging around the apartment waiting for ‘the kid’ to get back.  But he reigned that in.

Instead, he went and sat on the stairs.

He had sudoku on his phone.  He could wait a *long* time.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait very long.  Which was good, because even though he *could* wait a long time playing number puzzles, his phone’s battery was finite, and he wasn’t like Alanna with a purple orb mutation that let him survive July heat while wearing a suit jacket forever.

“‘Scuse me.”  The muttered voice made James look up from his phone.  Not that he hadn’t noticed the guy coming, but he’d chosen to force an encounter by not moving.  He was probably at the tail end of his teens, if not in his early twenties.  But he had a look like he’d been continually trampled by fate for most of his life, and the sad look on his face instantly softened James’ own simmering anger at whoever was occupying the apartment.

“You wouldn’t happen to be Willams, would you?”  James asked, looking up from where he was perched on the steps.

The kid, without missing a beat, slung his backpack off his shoulder, flung it at James’ face with enough force that it could have knocked him out if he hadn’t caught it, and then turned and booked it.  Worn sneakers throwing up dust and chunks of gravel into the hot July afternoon as he started scrambling past a couple cars like he was about to dive through the scraggly bushes on the edge of the lot and disappear into the next complex over.

He didn’t even say anything, just started running.  So, in the least threatening voice James could manage, he called after the fleeing form.  “It’s about your mom.”  His voice carried over the rumble of cars on the nearby cross street, and he raised it to make sure the kid could hear him even as he got farther away.  “You don’t need to talk now!  But I’m gonna leave my number here!  Call me when you’re ready!”

Either he’d heard promises like that before and didn’t believe James for a second, or the kid was playing it safe.  He paused only for the briefest moment, when James mentioned his mother, but then picked up speed again and took off.

“What the fuck has been going on in his life that he’d just leave the backpack?”  James mumbled to himself.  Something was wrong here.  Not wrong in a dungeons-eating-people way, or an old-gods-and-cruel-power-structures way; just wrong in the way that shitty people and shitty lives poisoned the community around them.  “Fuck.”  James settled on.

He didn’t have anything else to say.  He just left a slip of paper with his phone number on it in, tucked obviously into the kid’s backpack.  Actually, he left several, so it couldn’t be ignored or missed.  Then he stuffed the bag under the first step, where it would be easy to see for anyone who wanted to go upstairs, and easy to miss for anyone walking past.

He took one last look at the building as he got into his car to drive off.  Again, briefly considering burning it down, just on principle.  It had the feeling, in the back of his head, like an infected splinter.  James was starting to wonder exactly how much his perception of the world had been changed by the Office; he’d started getting feelings on magic items and spatial distortions the more time he spent inside that weird wonderland, and that was perfectly fine.  But he wasn’t sure he appreciated the low level of anxiety that came with noticing more and more the poisoned atmosphere around certain places in the real world.

What felt like a year ago, and what actually might have been about a year ago, Anesh had talked about the differences in how it felt before and after he’d gotten a skill orb for perception.  The way that he could suddenly see more of the world, understand little clues and cues that told a story.  And that maybe, sometimes, he didn’t *want* to know the story that was being told.

It reminded James a bit of how, as a voracious reader, he could never actually figure out how to *not* read signs on the side of the road.  If someone wanted to put words into his brain, all they had to do was write them large enough, and stick them to the side of a highway, and eventually he’d see them and process them.  That was of course no guarantee that it would influence him in any meaningful way; but the way that he approached the world meant that he would certainly at least *think* about it, whether he wanted to or not.

And now, driving back to the home base of the Order, James realized something.  Even though he’d always thought it was stupid that in most horror stories, the true defense was *ignorance*, that it was sheer foolishness to assume that not knowing something would protect you in any way, that he now understood why it would *feel* better.  There was just a safety, a snugness, to the idea that you’d got it all figured out.

Even with the dungeons, from Officium Mundi, to the Akashic Sewer, to whatever the hell El had found out in the highways of Tennessee.  James had this idea that, yes, there were more out there.  But he’d *got this*.  He had a handle on it, even when surprises popped up.  He had his weapons, his companions, and his ethics.

And then he ran across something like *this*.  This place where people didn’t so much live as they did suffer.  Where a kid would run upon hearing his name, too afraid of anything to even stop and hear the story of his own mother.  Where the smell of an unwashed apartment and the edges of a broken window showed off a callous hatred.  Not for anything in particular, just an anger, and a hate without direction.

They needed to step up their game, he thought, driving.  They needed to actually start leveraging their wealth, their power, into usable tools they could start applying to problems.  Maybe sometimes that would just mean throwing money at problems.  Maybe it meant it was time to build small-scale prototypes for his grand vision of an arcology.

He’d check in with Research when he got back.  See how things were going on creating warped spaces.

James’ phone rang, just about the time he’d gotten a good eighty percent of his anger processed out of his brain.  He picked it up, flipped it to speaker.  “Hey Harvey.  What’s up?”

“We’ve got a problem.”  The older man’s thick voice came through the speaker from James’ passenger seat.

“Did Research create a black hole in the basement?  I told them not to do that.  Dock their pay.”  James answered.

“No.”  Harvey’s serious tone made James pause.  No time for jokes, eh?  “We need you back here.  I think Status Quo is back.”

“On the way.”  James said curtly.  He didn’t hang up; Harvey would take care of that.  Instead, he let his hands settle on the wheel, let his driving skill kick into high gear, let his Aim settle his vision into vectors and lines of assault through the traffic.

Then he slammed the gas pedal down.