Move 17 (Chapter 1.17)

[yhlee]

Year 361, Month Three, Day Seventeen (Monday), ~05:00

Mikodez finds himself treed by Alaric (bearing "sleep aids") in the corridor outside Medical. In whatever confrontation happens, the much-adorned mothling known (among other things) as Crowned-with-Eyes (henceforth CWE) wriggles free of the Andan cloth and flutters straight into one of the nearest examination rooms, humming joyously. Several medics can be heard exclaiming in fear and/or annoyance at the intruder. One of them squeaks, "Is that another of Magistrate Gerae's pets?"

(...pets?)

Alaric, EDIT: Iawa, and Sulen can take advantage of the distraction to get by Mikodez and into Medical. The triage nurse will recognize them as the recent visitors and direct them toward a pallet where "Imsayed" (Istradez) is lying; he is apparently now sleeping rather than knocked out, but has yet to wake from his ordeal.

Sasha is in the midst of oxygen recycler diagnostics and reading through the maintenance logs. Around this time, Yehan (running as NPC), who has actually gotten some sleep, stops in and asks if Sasha could use some breakfast and/or assistance.

Ashari is enjoying a restful sleep in preparation for what's to come. They can, if they choose to get up early, check in on the others, or determine what to do with Gerae of the mysteriously weaponizable lockpicks. [NOTE: If smokedetective doesn't respond to this move, I'm going to put Ashari on inactive status and run as NPC as necessary to move forward.] Virmad is a likely candidate to either volunteer or be asked to look in on Gerae. Among other things, Gerae is still awake and is (if anyone checks on him, whether through camera surveillance or by persuading Sasha to open the room) scratching messages onto the wall with a stylus that was left in the room.

===

CURRENTLY INACTIVE, running as NPCs: Ankat, Kaliyan, Yehan, Istradez

Comments

Re: MEMO: checking on Gerae [paging Ashari; CC: Sulen, Sasha]

[zuhrovet]

Sasha replies:

have u checked the cameras. is he even awake

The embedded camera icon will, presumably, provide a vid of Gerae's current activities.

Gerae's current status

[yhlee]

Gerae is pacing the room. There are dark bruises under his eyes. It's not inconceivable that he's under the influence of some specialized stimulant bubble tea. He's muttering to himself in a low language that Sasha doesn't recognize and sounding frantic.

Re: Gerae's current status

[zuhrovet]

Stars of hell, Sasha is working, she is not responsible for deciphering the actions of wayward Rahal. And Yehan's in a meeting with Ashari.

"Grid," she asks, "can you identify the language that the prisoner is speaking?"

Meanwhile, she's hunting through the design files, looking for fidget spinners or fancy pens.

Re: Gerae's current status

[yhlee]

The grid informs Sasha that it appears to be a...thieves' argot variant of a semi-local language.

She finds some design files for fancy brush pens whose color will change according to some fiddly controls on the handle.

Re: Gerae's current status

[zuhrovet]

Sasha sets the grid to record Gerae's soliloquies, and asks it to attempt a translation, though she's guessing it won't have much of a corpus to draw on. She sends Yehan a pointer to the recording, so she can start an analysis once her meeting with Ashari is done.

Then she heads to the common room to print a pen and a tiny recycling sticker. Prophet only knows what the pen's colors will look like once the printer software is done with it, but since nobody's actually going to be using it, that's not a serious problem.

Re: Gerae's current status

[yhlee]

The grid hums an acknowledgment. Once Yehan gets out of her meeting, she'll see the message and send a note that she's added it to her to-do list.

The pen, if tested, has a distinct preference for fluorescent colors; further experimentation will establish that the ink glows in the dark. The recycling sticker, at least, appears to be perfectly formed.

glowing pens

[zuhrovet]

Sasha doesn't like glowing things. She takes the pen down to the airlock, to see whether it sets off her radiation alarm.

Re: glowing pens

[yhlee]

It doesn't set off the radiation alarm. [ :) ]

Re: glowing pens

[zuhrovet]

[That's good: Sulen has all of the moral high ground at the moment, Sasha doesn't need to compound things by handing them a radioactive pen.]