[voice]

[unmakeme_tlv]

I don't particularly like feeling out of my depth, and that's a feeling I'm coming up against with alarming regularity here. Clearly something is coming, and it's going to be awful, and we're probably all screwed. But let's just pretend that we're not. I have food, I have weapons, what I don't have is the time to go wading through all the chatter on these things to pick out the bits that are relevant. So I'm willing to trade goods for information. I don't care if you're an inmate, as long as you know what you're talking about.

[Private to Bond]
I think we should talk. What do you think?
[/Private]

[Added after Bucky, Iris, Bond, Ben, and Gary respond:
I meant the times this has happened in the past. I'm looking for someone who's been here long enough that they can give me details on other times this has happened. Or if no one is willing to do that, just tell me when so I'm not searching blind.

Comments

[imfollowinghim]

You got plans on how you're going to wade through the inevitable bullshit?

[y hello]

[unmakeme]

Not really, no.

[imfollowinghim]

Then I hope you know how to juggle.

[unmakeme]

My partner's an ex-carnie. You'd be amazed what I can do with a flaming chainsaw and a couple of bowling pins.

[imfollowinghim]

You should put on a show up on deck sometime.

[routemistress]

Well I'm sorry, I'm sure, for interrupting your important...whatever it is you're doing with our trivial little crisis. We will be distributing food and weapons, by the way.

[unmakeme]

I'm not doing anything, and the crisis isn't trivial. That's the point.

Whatever your stockpiles are, I can't imagine that adding to them would be a bad thing. I don't mean that I have enough food for a few people, or that I have a few guns.

I also know that people don't ever offer something for nothing. If I want someone to give me a real chunk of their time, I have to value it - I have to pay for it.

[routemistress]

My time and attention's not for sale, Natasha. And the people 'ere, who are warriors, vigilantes, Inquisitors, space travellers, sorceresses, assassins, geniuses, captains and soldiers, don't fill the airwaves with irrelevant chatter when there's a crisis on, we really don't. We're trying to brainstorm ways to make it go smoother. Why would you not join in on that? Your ideas're worth more than guns and food, you know.

[unmakeme]

Yes, but you do in between them. I've tried going back on the network to the times this has happened before I got here. There's too much information to sort through and not enough time to do it in.

Obviously it's not useless chatter now, but when things are calm? We make a lot of it.

...Relatively calm.

[routemistress]

Fair enough. Though a word of advice: you'll get folk less narky if you try not to phrase requests like you're asking your secretary to type you up the summary of a report you don't want to read.

Right. Are you sitting comfortably with a drink in reach? Somewhere out there's a mirror barge, whose purpose is the opposite of this one. The wardens are the cruellest and meanest, and their purpose is to crush every trace of hope out of the poor bastards in their care. To break 'em.

Last time we collided with that barge, we 'ad the exact same signs before'and that we're getting now: Anya's laundry, the random strangers glitching on the network, the writing on Morgana's mirror.

Last time we were on that Barge, we were pretty sure she were dying. The death toll 'ad stopped working right, the CES and CTS 'ad gone, we were running low on food, ports were getting unreliable. And a door appeared on the deck. A bunch of people went through it, and those are the ones getting symptoms now - the 'eadaches and the flu and the losing time. Bruce and me are in the middle of running brain scans and medical checks on 'em.

We don't know exactly what we're going to find. But last time, we found a barge short of food and resources, where all the people you can count on most are liable to want to kill or torture you.

Some of us 'ave very dangerous counterparts, and we're putting strategies in place to 'ave ourselves dealt with. We're also setting up passwords and contact phrases so unaffected folk'll be able to identify each other on the other barge's network without breaking cover. Megamind and me are about to go on an industrial-scale grocery run so that every passenger'll 'ave a backpack full of stasis-cubed food and survival kit when it 'appens.

[Private]

[lastrat]

[He doesn't respond immediately, but he doesn't let himself delay long.]

If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not die again.

[That said...]

How do you measure with non lethal take downs? [He says it with a hint of irony. Such a foreign concept, most of the time.]

[Private]

[unmakeme]

They're not my specialty, but I'm not bad.

[What she actually wants to say is a little more difficult to get to the surface.]

[Private]

[lastrat]

Good. Put me down if you have to. [Preferably breathing.]

What do you want? [What's his part in this new unspoken understanding?]

[Private]

[unmakeme]

You're trying to make it so I never sleep again, aren't you?

[Which does not mean she won't do it.]

I promise. If I have to, I will. You don't have some inherent talent for getting out of properly secured restraints, do you? If I leave you hog tied in my guest room, are you going to stay there?

[What she actually wants it to talk about things that neither of them really want to get into. Distraction is not something she's too proud to take.]

[warisart]

If you are feeling out of your depth, find the condition uncomfortable, and do not have the time or the interest to improve your own standing, as a warden you always have the option of going home, ma'am.

Basic necessities are already readily available to anyone that requires them, information or not.

[unmakeme]

You're telling me you don't feel out of your depth? You're telling me that this is normal and comfortable for you, that you like it? I can go home, which is not the same as it being an option.

Interest is not a problem, but I feel like a lack of time is a very distinct disadvantage here. There are years of conversations and I'm pretty sure I don't have months to sift through them all for the relevant ones before whatever's going to happen happens. I'm more useful well informed, and I've got nothing else to trade for that information, unless you'd like to offer a suggestion.

[warisart]

[He could argue, of course, point out that she had plenty of time prior to this week to familiarize herself with the backlog of network chatter. Point out that it is not anyone else's task to inform her when she has the comparative freedoms that she does.

But she is right: there is little enough time,and in his experience very few people end up taking him seriously anyway. Instead, he cuts the feed.]

[this_corrosion]

Some kind of laundry conspiracy with evil twins. You seem like the type who comes prepared anyway.

[unmakeme]

One person, well informed and prepared and in exactly the right place at the right time, can change the course of history. That does not mean that being prepared and eager is enough. Especially here.

I'm looking for solid information about the times this has happened already.

[this_corrosion]

If it won't be enough, why worry about something we can't even change?

[unmakeme]

I didn't say it won't be enough. But the difference between success and failure is almost always information, both quality and quantity.

[mistconduct]

Hey, hey, no, hang on. I've got a ban on certain weapons going to my inmate and I was just stabbed through the throat by another inmate with a knife. Please do not give knives or anything to people, holy shit.

[unmakeme]

How long have you actually been here?

[mistconduct]

I've actually been here fifteen months.

If I'd been here fifteen minutes I still wouldn't want someone giving my inmate something without me checking in with them first.

[unmakeme]

Not why I was asking. Obviously I'm not going to give your inmate anything you don't want me to. Relax.

How many times do you remember something like this happening before? Just the once?