<Crion> It's been a couple days since the...thing...with Gerald. It's after Stewart has met up with the ladies from his meet-and-greet, again. Including his neighbor. It's after the freehold changelings weirdly started hanging around the building 24/7. And it's something like three in the afternoon. What's Stewart up to?
<VoxPVoxD> Probably trying to record again. Video build guides pull a lot of traffic from less-engaged players, and they let him show off the stream. Youtube's about a third of his income.
<Crion> Well, then instead of a polite buzz, he'll get a BANG BANG BANG on his door.
<VoxPVoxD> Fucking-- "Just a second!" he calls, extracting himself from headset and chair, slipping into slippers, and checking to see who's at the door.
<Crion> Through the keyhole, he sees Lauren Ipsum of the Autumn Court. She's wearing a zip-up hoodie and track pants instead of jeans and a tanktop this time, and she's got what looks like a huge bag of gear over her shoulder, but it's the same LED eyes and the same flat, annoyed face. She narrows those eyes, almost like she can see Stewart watching her, and raises her fist to, uh, knock again.
<Crion> Peephole.
<Crion> Surely.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart'll open the door before knuckles meet wood. "Hi. What's up?"
<VoxPVoxD> He'll step back to let her come in.
<Crion> She stops her fist in mid-air, narrows her eyes further, then straightens up. As if it's an imposition: "Stewart."
<Crion> She will not step in yet.
<Crion> "I've been sent to get you online."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Cool. Okay."
<VoxPVoxD> Another pause. "I, uh, formally invite you in."
<Crion> She was clearly waiting for that, but she still rolls her eyes. "I'm not a vampire."
<Crion> She looks around the place. What's the layout? How clean is he keeping it?
<VoxPVoxD> It's a two bedroom apartment, fresh-smelling and immaculate. The smallish living room, where they enter, has a couch and a coffee table with a covered ipad on it and a stack of library books: Heidegger Explained, Stan Rogers: Northwest Passage, and Kaplan's 2019 GED Test Prep. The kitchen, visible through an open doorway, seems to be mainly cases of energy drinks and fresh fruit.
<Crion> Lauren looks around the place twice, then says: "Hmph."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, I know, I should have more stuff on the walls. Do you want something to drink? I have ginger ale, Red Bull, iced tea..."
<Crion> "Water. But take me to your computer first. And make it presentable."
<Crion> "I can wait here."
<Crion> There is a definite air of 'I've had to deal with boys' PCs before' to that.
<VoxPVoxD> "Computer's through here. I use the second bedroom as an office." Indeed the room is well-lit, but artificially so, as the window is blackout-curtained. The space is dominated by a large desk and chair. topped by two monitors with a third mounted up on the wall behind them. The left desk monitor has video recording software open, the right has a browser with thirty tabs paneled
<VoxPVoxD> with Twitter and Discord desktop apps. The rear monitor is currently fixed on the desktop, which is solid black and adorned by icons manually arranged in a circle in the center of the screen, except for the empty Recycle Bin in the bottom right.
<VoxPVoxD> A mic hangs down between the monitors, feeding into the neatly bundled and routed cables that run through and around the pile of machines.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart meets Lauren at the doorway with a glass of water.
<Crion> She nods. "Make sure to tell Santander that when he's doing taxes. Or else he'll demand to see your apartment to see if he can find a space to claim as a home office."
<Crion> She takes the glass and sniffs it. It seems reflexive, not personal; there's no ostentatious glare attached to it.
<Crion> When she's determined whatever she's determined about it, she sips it. Then: "Coaster?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I use that spare mousepad."
<Crion> She nods, moves the mousepad well away from anything with a charge going into it, and puts the glass down. "Are you on basic Verizon or FiOS?" Baltimore's a one-provider town.
<Crion> She's put down her pack by the door to the room.
<VoxPVoxD> "FiOS. So far I haven't had any problems with uptime, and the latency's okay..."
<Crion> She nods. "Good, that means I don't need to go downstairs and hack shit. Send your next bill to the office. Santander will arrange to have it paid from there. Court wants you online." She gestures to his rig. "Shut it down, we're gonna change up your network and that might mean changing what's plugged into what."
<Crion> Lauren heads back to her bag. "Oh, and if Google Fiber comes to down, under no circumstances are we touching that shit."
<Crion> *town
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart powers down. "Something up with Google? Besides the obvious?"
<Crion> "Everywhere it shows up, freeholds start going dark."
<VoxPVoxD> "Shit."
<Crion> "Correllation isn't causation in the real world. Might be in ours."
<Crion> She pulls out a stubby board with a bunch of ports on it. "Once you've got that shut down, I need to see your router. You know what a switch is, I'm guessing."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart nods, showing her the router.
<Crion> Did he get the landline cable running into the same room, or do they have to head over to the bedroom?
<Crion> And he's on CAT5 connection right? Not on wifi?
<Crion> Yes, these questions ARE the equivalent of 'is he stupid,' but, well, Lauren would check to see if he was stupid.
<VoxPVoxD> Yeah, his main rig is wired up. The router's right here, on an end table in the corner of the room. You can see the hole they drilled on installation day underneath it.
<Crion> "Nice," she says. "This is good. So here's what I'm going to do." She puts the switch down next to it. "I want you to put the switch between the router and your PC. Put it somewhere comfortable for you. We're putting another computer on your network, with a firewall."
<VoxPVoxD> "Okay..." Stewart does as directed.
<Crion> She nods and walks back to her bag. "You'll need another CAT5. Here's a couple." She tosses three onto his chair, each with a velcro tie on it.
<VoxPVoxD> "Thanks."
<Crion> Then Lauren pulls a stubby blue box out. "This is the firewall. You'll have your normal connection and traffic lights -- green and orange-yellow -- but you'll also have a white/red toggle light here." She points to a real big light on the top of the firewall, big enough to be distracting when it's turned on. "Santander made this. Normally it's quiet white, shouldn't be offensive to
<Crion> the eye, shouldn't be distracting."
<Crion> "It goes normal red and there's something on your network that shouldn't be on your network. It can read up and down the lines -- so back through the switch, to your router, and into your PC."
<Crion> "It goes hazard red and you need to shut everything down."
<Crion> She moves forward to plug it in. "I'll demonstrate."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart watches.
<Crion> "You have a free spot in a surge protector?"
<VoxPVoxD> "On the end there."
<Crion> "Alright." She plugs it in, connects it properly, then pulls an allen wrench out of her hair. "Sit down in your gamer chair. You need to know what this looks like when you're in the moment." There's no mockery there now that she's fully into business mode.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart goes to sit, realizes the cables are still there, and fixes it before sitting down.
<Crion> "Here's safe."
<Crion> There's a white glow on the corner of his vision. A little bit distracting but nothing he can't adapt to if he has like, a lamp or a clock in his peripheral vision.
<VoxPVoxD> "Okay, yeah, I can get used to that."
<Crion> "Okay. Here's alert." The white light becomes a harsh red: distracting, but still a single point. It'll definitely get his attention.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart nods.
<Crion> "And here's danger." The entire room is suddenly bathed in red light. It's honestly incredible that something that small can put out this much brightness, and it pulses like an alarm.
<VoxPVoxD> "Jesus."
<Crion> "If you see danger, you rip the power cord out of the wall," Lauren says. "I don't care if it kills your rig. We can buy you a new rig."
<VoxPVoxD> "What flips that?"
<Crion> Flatly: "Santander knows what it looks like, from a network infrastructure perspective, when a Keeper is in your system. It took...a lot of time...to learn that. And some bodies."
<Crion> "So our firewalls do, too."
<Crion> She sets the firewall down. "...These things are incredibly difficult to make and cost a lot of time and effort. Don't spill a coffee on it."
<Crion> "Kingsley spent nine months making this one himself."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart doesn't say anything. He only belatedly nods in recognition.
<Crion> "I can't make you keep this network the way it is and you're gonna do whatever the hell you want when I'm gone. But if you take this thing offline, you might end a stream somewhere different than where you started," Lauren says. "Are we clear on that?"
<VoxPVoxD> "...yeah."
<Crion> She nods. "In that spirit, I've got this." She walks over to her bag and pulls out something that looks like a weird, very thin extension cord adapter with a secondary cable that leads to a...big, red button covered by a plastic, hinged lid. Sort of like an ejector toggle on a fighter jet, if Stewart's played any flight simulators. "Put this between your surge protector and the wall,
<Crion> run it up to your desk, keep the button covered.
<Crion> "Keep it out of your facecam."
<Crion> "But if that light goes to danger, flip it up, press it -- it'll blow the plug out of the wall without damaging it."
<Crion> "Only works once, but if you have to use it, we'll be doing a lot more than just giving you a new one."
<VoxPVoxD> "How often does the freehold lose people through the Internet?"
<Crion> "Not often." Her voice gets uncharacteristically quiet. "Just the once."
<Crion> Then it's back to its normal confidence. "And that's why we've got these measures in place."
<Crion> "My advice is also to put shaped explosives on the fuse box but no one else seems to want to go in for that."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Do you have them on yours?"
<Crion> "No," she says. "I have them on the point the main power line into the house comes out of the ground."
<Crion> "Not practical for an apartment."
<Crion> How many monitors does Stewart have?
<VoxPVoxD> Three; two on the desk and one mounted on the wall.
<Crion> Lauren looks at them all, then nods to herself. Then she pulls a black computer case about the size of a large, hardback book from her bag, along with a stand and a power cord. "Toss me a CAT5," she says as she puts the stand somewhere inoffensive but close and unspools the power cord.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart tosses her the cord. "What's that?"
<Crion> "This is your Autumn box."
<Crion> "It'll need its own monitor. That monitor can't be connected to the others. This needs to be a closed system."
<Crion> "You want to repurpose one of these or should I get one from the car?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart thinks for a moment. "We can use the wall monitor for that."
<Crion> Lauren purposefully doesn't plug it in yet, but lays the plug next to an empty spot on the power strip. Then she walks back to the bag and pulls out a cheap keyboard and mouse. "Okay. Wire it up with these two; it's your setup. Feel free to replace them. But no KBM switching."
<Crion> "The monitor has to be dedicated, too."
<Crion> She takes the CAT5 and connects it to the firewall -- the gaming rig isn't, since it's now off the switch. But by her explanation, the firewall will be able to tell if something bad's in his rig anyway, even though it's downstream.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart wires it up. Lauren is really relaxing to be around.
<Crion> Not a usual reaction to her bullshit, but she seems to be taking it.
<Crion> She sips her water again.
<Crion> "Boot it up when you're ready."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart boots up his hex-box.
<Crion> It's...faster than an SSD. The BIOS screen shows a logo that reads ASHES THEN WIND with a crumbling leaf blowing through the text to the left, and then suddenly Stewart is greeted with what looks deceptively like a Windows 10 login screen...except all the scrolling background pictures are of autumn, and instead of giving an account name and prompting for password entry, where the
<Crion> account name should be it says: WELCOME, STEWART, TO THE ENDLESS ROUND
<Crion> And below that: SET PASSWORD.
<Crion> With a period.
<Crion> "I'll be outside," says Lauren. "Get me when you're done."
<Crion> The field blinks.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart enters a long sentence for a password: Oh, what a to-do, to die today, at a minute or two to 2.
<Crion> When he hits enter, the box immediately returns: ACCEPTED.
<Crion> Then it loads onto what appears to be a clean, if fall-themed, desktop...with one link. A browser called 'Leif.'
<VoxPVoxD> It makes him wonder what Melanie is doing right now. Probably thinking.
<VoxPVoxD> What's Leif open up to?
<Crion> A web portal, it looks like. It doesn't have an address bar to go anywhere else. There's a username field already filled with STEWART.FALL, and...no password field. Where it would be, there is instead a line reading in all capital letters, DEMONSTRATE YOURSELF.
<VoxPVoxD> "I'm in, Lauren," he calls.
<Crion> She walks back in. "Good. Nice."
<Crion> She rummages in her bag and comes up with what looks like a USB fingerprint reader.
<Crion> She tosses it to him. "Plug that in and leave it in. Your fingerprint is your passport."
<Crion> Lauren grins. "We got it off the elevator."
<VoxPVoxD> Done and done. "Very nice." Index finger on pad. "It is I!" he proclaims under his breath.
<Crion> Three dots go across the stream slowly enough to seem ostentatious. Then, replacing DEMONSTRATE YOURSELF., is: JUSTIFIED.
<Crion> It loads into a beautiful web portal with a link to an email, an integrated STFP, a forum, and a wiki.
<Crion> *SFTP
<VoxPVoxD> "Very cool. Who's on this network?"
<Crion> Lauren: "If you're under duress, tell them you need to cut your finger to log in. Then do it with the blood. The Court will come running."
<Crion> "All of us. I'm the webmaster, of course. But the King down to Knife Kid, we're all on here."
<VoxPVoxD> He clicks around the wiki. What kind of information is on it?
<Crion> The wiki has...lots of entries. Too many to go over politely now, but lists and sublists for each court, and then additional entries for uh, vampires, 'mages,' and...werewolves??? If he clicks those, instead of a page he just gets a screen that reads 404: SORRY, MAGISTER. PETITION YOUR LORD.
<Crion> Lauren: "Yeah, you don't get EVERYTHING right off the bat."
<Crion> "Haha. Bat."
<VoxPVoxD> "There was a vampire at the warehouse with Gerald and the cops. He like, exploded into a cloud of bats and flew away."
<Crion> "Yeah, that uh. That was the joke."
<Crion> She gets a bit quiet. "That's how they bring you in."
<Crion> "It's always some shit like that."
<Crion> "And you're lucky. It's not always Gerald."
<VoxPVoxD> "He said, 'they tell me the fear is the point'."
<Crion> A forced laughed. "They're not fucking lying."
<Crion> "Anyway. What kind of phone you have?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart shows her. "iPhone Xs."
<Crion> "Yeah, that's supported. Plug the charging adaptor into the free USB port and you'll get a secure app downloaded to it. It acts like a VPN; the mobile interface is actually pretty good on iPhone. Android's a piece of shit to do dev for. Your thumb on the screen is your passport and it'll work the same way -- under duress, tell them you have to cut your thumb before you open the app.
<Crion> We can track the device."
<VoxPVoxD> "Who writes the software for this stuff?"
<Crion> She grimaces. "I worked on the west coast. In another life."
<Crion> "Santander designs, I implement."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What kind of stuff does the court need help with? What do you need help with?"
<Crion> Her eyes narrow a bit. "I. Am fine, I think. Thank you." She relaxes a bit. "But in terms of information technology, I'm in a defensive position. I play--do you follow soccer?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart shakes his head.
<Crion> "Right. I play 'defense,' and I play 'keeper.' Uh. 'Goalie.' That's the hockey term."
<Crion> "Ugh. Right. Keeper vs. keeper."
<Crion> "I'm on guard, let's say. It would be useful to have someone on attack."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What does that entail?"
<Crion> She grimaces further. "It entails an entirely separate address for you to do it from, for one. We're not putting you out there from home. We'll have to set up a black site."
<Crion> "And we'll have to do more to protect it than a box."
<Crion> "This is a work in progress."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart still feels like he's not doing enough to contribute. "Okay."
<Crion> "Look, idiot," she says, but it's a nice version of 'idiot.' "You've been doing this for like. Two fucking weeks. You don't need to be thrown into a warehouse with a supercomputer and three different physical breakpoint redundancies to kill the internet access until at least June next year, and that's only if you beg for it. People aren't going to think less of you."
<Crion> "They're going to ask you for more than enough, anyway."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I just keep running into people who need so much help, and people who are working so hard to help..."
<Crion> "...Yeah. That'll happen a lot."
<Crion> "You just need to remember the length of what you can do. And while you shouldn't overestimate it, don't underestimate it either."
<Crion> "Anyway. Open the command line."
<VoxPVoxD> >_
<Crion> "cd leaves"
<VoxPVoxD> The sound of typing.
<Crion> "add chat dot app october lauren"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart suppresses the urge to look back at her.
<Crion> Text flows down the screen when he enters that, then clears. The only thing that remains above the command line is: >???
<Crion> Lauren: "feat of the dot bat"
<Crion> *fear
<VoxPVoxD> fearofthe.bat
<Crion> The command line snaps shut, and an application window opens. ENTER ENTER ENTER THUMBPRINT
<Crion> "Not yours."
<Crion> Lauren walks up and presses hers down on the reader.
<Crion> WELCOME TO THE LIST
<Crion> "You're in our, uh."
<Crion> "You know what a Discord is, right?"
<VoxPVoxD> "Yeah, it's like IRC but more annoying."
<Crion> She grins. "Yeah. So this is like Discord, but not dumb as shit."
<Crion> "I built it off IRC."
<VoxPVoxD> "Nice."
<Crion> "Thank you."
<Crion> "...Anyway."
<Crion> She walks back to the door. "So that's all the stuff."
<VoxPVoxD> "Awesome, thank you so much."
<Crion> "You can access all your court shit on the isolated PC, and chat with whoever's online through The List. I'm pretty much always online."
<Crion> Her eyes flash oddly. It's almost like a blush. "...Yeah no problem. I should get going."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart lets the moment linger a beat too long. "Okay, cool. Thanks again. I'll see you online. And presumably... at... stuff." He doesn't have a clear picture of what the court social calendar is but he assumes there are functions people are expected to go to even if they are nerds.
<Crion> She hefts her bag. "More than you'd like. You're now part of the freehold IT group. Every time The Young Street can't get into his freehold e-mail, you're on the listserv." She grins. "Owned."
<VoxPVoxD> "Cool. Hopefully I can take some of the load off the rest of you guys."
<Crion> She gives him a weird look. "'Cool?' Really?"
<Crion> "Like, I just put you on a job."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "After I said I wanted to do more to help! You helped me."
<Crion> "You're going to have to be online and checking that monitor, and, and talking to me and shit, all the time."
<VoxPVoxD> "You're fun to talk to!"
<Crion> Her frown deepens and she shakes her head. "I hope I did."
<Crion> At that she furiously blushes and strides for the door.
<Crion> "I'll be online. Later!"
<VoxPVoxD> A job, a friend?, AND a magic computer? This is a great day. But between Lauren and Nels he's now actually behind schedule. This Volatile Dead build won't publish itself.
<VoxPVoxD> A job, a friend?, AND a magic computer? This is a great day. But between Lauren and Nels he's now actually behind schedule. This Volatile Dead build won't publish itself.
magic computer? This is a great day. But between Lauren and Nels he's now actually behind schedule. This Volatile Dead build won't publish itself.<VoxPVoxD> A job, a friend?, AND a magic computer? This is a great day. But between Lauren and Nels he's now actually behind schedule. This Volatile Dead build won't publish itself.