40 Writing/Chasing The Rhino/TP4
Step Two
Leon knows he needs to get into ImpCorp, fast, but the team are not willing or ready. He enters the ImpCorp reception and struggles to gain entry and is assaulted by an enraged Princess. He wakes in security. He is interrogated until his bioscan, just implanted by Fix, appears. He frees Princess from her cell by linking his mind pocket to her, but struggles with The Abstract interrupting his perception of The Real, casting doubt on his ability to connect to The Abstract, or return his mother to The Real. He must find his mother’s body and a way to stabilise the connection to The Real.
Sequence One
[[TP / Step / Sequences]]
Leon draws out his ‘skin’ and enters reception. Suunto tells him they are not ready, but he has to dispel her to concentrate on the skin. He is confronted by security as his bioscan does not match, and he manages to pass it off as a glitch, although he is not allowed to enter, despite being recognised visually by the guard. He realises he has been too hasty and should have waited for Fix to insert the bioscan. An enraged Princess arrives and assaults Leon. He falls heavily to the ground and struggles to remain conscious.
Central Dramatic Question
Will Leon gain access to ImpCorp?
Sequence Two
[[TP / Step / Sequences]] Leon wakes, secured to a medical bed, ironically, inside ImpCorp. If it was a plan to aid him, it worked. A security guard and doctor look over his biological scan. There is a strong physical resemblance, but no record of his enhanced biology. Leon contacts Suunto and is told Fix is trying to insert the bioscan, but is having difficulty. Leon is interrogated by the security guard, and they prepare to do a mind scan. Leon knows if that happens, it will confirm he is not the skin. Leon must find a way to avoid the mind scan.
Sequence Three
[[TP / Step / Sequences]] Hamelin’s rat delays the mindscan equipment. Fix insert the bioscan and Leon manages to talk his way to being freed. He discovers Princess is held in a more secure cell and must find a way to free her. He knows he will be tracked as a person of interest, by the AI security now - something he was desperate to avoid. He draws an irate Jem and Princess into his mind pocket and facilitates the opening of Princess’s cell lock, with the aid of Hamelin’s rat. He struggles with the connection and it leaves him exhausted. Leon knows he must figure a way of avoiding detection by AI Security.
CDQ Answer
Yes, but it is not as smooth as he planned and is now being followed by AI security.
Character Arc
Leon moves from determined and overly confident — to — annoyed with himself for attracting the AI security and feeling somewhat helpless at being tracked by security, but also determined to overcome his difficulty.
Moral Dilemma
Does he leave Princess behind and continue moving though ImpCorp, or help find her a way out? Forcing his team to work under pressure by triggering their grief of his recent death, or waiting for them to be ready?
Ms. Penumbra Sequence One
[[TP / Step / Sequences]]
Rakin, her old friend from the Executive, tells her they will be coming for her today. She despairs and gives the orders to the Shadow Bishop to start the executions. She, at least, will have her revenge while she has power, and maybe some more time. Leon arrives at her apartment, alive and tells her that he plans to infiltrate the building this morning. She must find a way to assist inserting Leon’s bioscan into the skin’s file before he enters ImpCorp.
Central Dramatic Question
Will Ms. Penumbra find a way of inserting Leon’s bioscan into the skin’s profile?
Ms. Penumbra Sequence Two
[[TP / Step / Sequences]]
Ms. Penumbra makes contact with a ruminates on her consciousness being copied, until Suunto calls and says she needs help inserting the bioscan quickly. Ms. Penumbra makes contact with a technical advisor and exchanges her freedom, to insert Leon’s bioscan in the skin’s file. She becomes frustrated, as they are only able to weaken the security. She facilitates Fix’s access to the security flaw in exchange for his attention on avoiding copying her conscious. He agrees, but offers no guarantees he will be able to solve it. He is her last hope.
CDQ Answer
No. She is not able to access it, but manages to weaken the security around it for Fix, in exchange for assistance with finding a way of avoiding her conscious being scanned on transition.
Character Arc
Ms. Penumbra moves from despair and thoughts of revenge — to — energised by the possibility of her plan working, but also concerned about her imminend conscious scan.
Moral Dilemma
Ordering the execution of the executive member who have pushed for her transition, which effectively is attacking the organisation that helped her gain power. Using her knowledge of others to blackmail them to do what she wishes, which ultimately involves risking their own lives.
Create a shell - transfer everything else to Leon. He smuggles it in to you after you transition, if they find you there. Leon will know it all though. He will sense that she was involved in his mother’s betrayal?
Ms. Penumbra makes contact with a technical advisor and offers his freedom to pull apart the security around a file. He cannot do it totally, but can peel back AI security elements. She will need to authorise it though. She knows it will expose her somewhat, be she does it. There will be little complications. She asks him to fake the work timestamp for this afternoon, but do the work today and fake the job order for a week ago. Someone in her department forgot to update his bioscan and she needs to do it quickly. The usual process will take a few days. She only has a few hours. He does it in exchange for a release of her hold on him. She agrees and thanks him for his service. She will not call on him again.
She considers her moves. She has exhausted her options for stopping them copying her conscious. No matter what she does from now on, there is little chance of stopping them. She has tried all her sources. They did not even know it was possible. It must have something to do with the portal to the ImpVerse. If it moves through the portal, then they must have a way of taking it from her.
She considers wiping everything from her mind before she transitions. She could do it. The AI could wipe her clean of the past twenty or so years. She could be that girl that she was again. In love, ignorant to the world and everything in it. But where would the power be in that? She knows so many things. They wouldn’t be able to wipe her from the ImpVerse. She has too many failsafes for that to happen. They hope to wedge her, or contain her, by knowing what she knows. But as she has leant over the decades, it is not about what you know, it is about how you leverage with what you know. She has few secrets, and Emmet has been the greatest of them, open and exposed, but no-one had thought to exploit it. She wires up an automated AI message to tell her contacts - those she wishes to keep safe - that their information has been compromised, and schedules to trigger it with a word. It should give them enough warning to create a defensive play. Or run. But from what she can gather, her position will not be replaced. They want a clean corporation once she passes. They want to bury the past and pretend it never happened - wipe their blood on the mat and sit down for Sunday dinner at Grandma’s.
Leon arrives just as she returns from her memory refresh. She realises she may have been too hasty again. This situation is making her sloppy. First Variel, now the executions. Still, the ball is in motion now. He is alive and plans to infiltrate ImpCorp this morning. She is astounded at his return and realises she has set something in motion that she cannot stop. But with Leon back, she has a shot of getting Emmet back. She realises he has just returned and is confused as to how. He says he rode back on a rhino, and she tells him to keep his secrets if he wishes. He tells her he may be doing it alone. He has not convinced Suunto yet. She tells him she will do what she can to convince her. He tells her not to worry, he thinks he has a way, and will let her know. He wants to guarantee that if he fails, the team will still get paid. She tells him that is not the way things are done, but reconsiders. She does not need the money anyway, and if it means they are convinced to participate, then she will do it. She agrees. He tells her he will be going in at 9am, at the change of shift to ensure it is busy enough not to be noticed. Her plans are in tatters, but it is what it is.
He says he will need help to insert the bioscan. She will need to take a few risks to open a hole for Fix to insert it. It will happen quickly. She tells him she will do what she can, but there are lines she cannot cross. He tells her that Fix only needs a few layers open. He can do the rest. She says she will see what she can do.
He asks her what they are stealing and she tells him it is something precious. She knows he wants to access his memories, but it appears to be something more at stake. There is a hardness to him that was not there before. She tells him that there will be time for him, when the lock is being opened, for him to look around a bit. He surprises her about asking questions about the founders. She starts to tell him the common story, and he tells her to tell her the real one. So she does. She tells him of the real story. How Emmet was a scientist, researching for new ways to source energy. The world was in crisis, faltering, and the team had discovered what they thought was a new source - something complex to do with physics - that they could exploit. There was an unexpected consequence of the experiment, and Emmet died. His body continued to live for a few days, somehow, but he was not there. For all purposes, he was brain dead, but his body was teeming with the energy the tried to extract. He was a battery source all on his own. It was in his biology. It took them less than a day to resume the experiment. The energy source was connected it seemed, to his body, through to the hole they have punched through to something else. It was not what they have intended to look for, or find, but it was something that they know could solve their energy problems. And when they stabilised the connection - connected it some months later to machines to stabilise the flow - that was when they discovered he was still there, on the other side. The revelation was beyond anything humanity had experienced. Had they punched a hole through to heaven? His body was laying in a bed in hospital, attached to life support, and his consiousness was somewhere else. This was heaven. It had to be. They managed to communicate to him through the machines, and all he wanted to do was talk to me. We had been together for years at that stage - just fit where others had not before. He made it seem like we were always going to be and in reality, had always been. But as you have gathered by my living alone. It was never going to last. He helped them establish and maintain a connection from the other side. There were hopes of getting him back. I hoped for that. But it was not to be. His body eventually failed. Even the life support could not sustain him. I wept for him then. He would not be coming back to The Real. But he was not gone. His conscious was still there. Everyone was waiting for him to fade. At first, we thought he might have been an echo, but he wasn’t. He kept on working, kept on being and eventually, I told him his body had gone. He said he already knew. He could not feel it there anymore, but he was OK here. He would keep working on a solution and she could come to him one day. He told her of the marvellous things he could do with his mind. He coined the phrase ‘Imp’ for impression. He was always clever like that. They stole that from him, of course, but he would have given it away, anyway. We existed like that for years. I worked my way onto the project. I was just in resourcing at that stage, but moulded myself into a ‘fixer’ and found them things they needed through alternative channels. I needed to stay close. Every day, he would come up with something new they could attempt to stabilise the connection further. He said time worked differently there. They had teams of scientists working in shifts and he would take them through new theories and calculations. It was like the longer he stayed there, the more he mangaged to manipulate time. I felt him change slightly, but we were always the same. We would talk of memories, and he said when we talked, he would relive them again, as if he were there the first time. The Abstract, he called it, would mold itself around him and he would be there again. With their help, he managed to stabilise the connection. I was one of the first though. I could sense the change in him. He was somehow older than he should have been, but he was the same Emmet when we were together. We relived moments in The Abstract that I did not remember. And we changed adapted them into new moments. I tasted what The Abstract had to offer. And then it changed again. When I returned, the connection destabilised again. They needed a way to stabilise it, so they used his conscious in a way he did not intend. They used him to create a bubble in The Abstract. I am not sure how they did it, but they trapped him in there. His conscious is the connection to the ImpVerse. That carnival of an entry is built on his prison. All that hope and joy above him, and he has no way of accessing the world he helped build. She takes a moment to compose herself. Leon is silent. This was not what he expected, but he is glad to have heard the tale. ‘And the founders?’ They are the ones who came next. They were the ones who helped to build the structure around him. They were the ones who locked him in his prison. Or, at least, they were the ones who facilitated it. I am not sure if they knew what they were doing or not. They were called the Abstratects. They build the space that the ImpVerse inhabits. Slowly at first, they expanded the stability that Emmet’s sacrifice provided. The bubble expanded to fill a space for billions of consciousnesses to exist. And look at us now, we are approaching the capacity of that existence soon. I am not sure what they will do when they need to expand. Perhaps another bubble, built on betraying those who created it? ‘What of the founders?’ She stops a moment, puzzled by his enquiry. ‘Why them?’ ‘I am interested, that’s all. There is the legend, but I think we both know that legends are usually PR in overdrive.’ ‘Indeed.’ Like all things ImpCorp, there was a cold analysis of profit and power and less concern for the people who helped create it. The plan originally was to allow the Abstatects to play for a few years, really test the boundaries of what was capable, but as the competition started to get sense of what was going on in the rapidly growing company that used to just be about theoretical energy sources, decisions were made to launch and dominate before the competition could get a foothold. And in hindsight, they were right. They did dominate. But that came at a cost to the founders. They were betrayed, as ultimately everyone of importance to ImpCorp is (reflection), and when they were trailing the final iteration of their bubble, ImpCorp trapped them within. She is not sure how, exactly, but it was absolute. Their consciousness were locked into the bubble tehy created and their bodies kept in their stasis pods. She has leveraged a few favours from knowing what happened from members of The Exective. Many who have passed already undergo purification or absolution (make it a religious term and the corporation religious as well.) Leon asks about where they are now, and she is curious. They are at the conduit source, of course. Most of them are there, she assumes. She has not been in there for years. Why would she visit a morgue? She can see the last of her words have stung him. She wonders why. Is there something about the founders she is missing? As soon as she sees the flash of a sting, it is gone. As if he caught himself half way. Maybe it is returning to his body after all this time. Anything is possible, considering he has just come back from the dead. She sees him falter a little, as if his body is not obeying his commands. She asks him if he is ok, and he says he is getting used to having a body again. She asks about what it was like. He says if was everything and nothing at the same time. He has trouble with his memories, and she tells him she does as well, but hers is a sign of her age. He tells her that in The Abstract, if you dont have a lot of memories with you, it could be a lonely place. She balks at his statement. She knows she wants to have her memories with her when she transitions. She wants to have them streamed to her from her machine when her body goes. She has a way, thankfully to do that… or does she? He thanks her for her time, and leaves. He has a lot to prepare for in the next few hours. She does as well. He says he will be going in at 9am, and she will need to prepare things from her end regarding the bioscan security and provide more security elements to him. She tells him she will assist when he makes it through. He must avoid a mind scan at all costs though. If he is caught, they will scan him and everything will be exposed. He says if everything goes according to plan, then it will not be a possibility.
He leaves, and she quickly starts runnign through the logistics. There is so much to organise and little time to do it. She is going to have to call in a few favours and set a few people free from her grasp. It will be worth it. If they can open the lock that binds Emmet, then she can be with him again, even if that means condemming billions of consciousness to death.
maybe that is the price she is willing to pay - but she ends up getting it in her own, destroyed mind, or in pergatory instead, locked away somewhere, with her memories of Emmet to keep the girl she was - and transforms into - company for eternity. Effectively, Ms. Penumbra dies, and the trauma is erased that caused the Ms. Penumbra to exist. She returns to the girl in love with Emmet for eternity. She becomes her memory.
She sits and contemplates her next move. The Catholic plot is underway and things will get bloody, but it may result in tighter security. If he can get in the building before the first assassination, then he should be able remain undetected. If security is heightened, then he will have little chance, especially with a dodgy biological scan. She checks her watch. They are coming at three, but she also knows that the time they give you is never the time they come for you. That is what she would do, anyway.
She calls Suunto, who tells her that it appears the job is back on. Suunto is not impressed. She tells her she has a way of inserting Leon’s bioscan quickly, but it will expose her greatly. She does not care at this point. She wants him to get in. Suunto asks if she can just walk him in, but she says that even she cannot push someone through security. The security of the building is its own independent facility. There is no way to manipulate someone who has to go through a daily mind scan by an AI. Suunto asks if Leon will require a mind scan, but she says it is unlikely. They only do security from what she has experienced. There is no use doing it for everyone. There are too many people working in the building to do it for the regular workers. It is better to just ensure an AI watches the place and the security on hand can be relied on. Another few years though, and things will likley change.
Suunto tells her to stop ruminating and to get on with it. She says that no matter the result, everyone gets paid. She will forward the agreed payment to her account and will requests that Fix work on something for her as a matter of priority after Leon’s bioscan is inserted. She says she will ask him, but Ms. Penumbra tells her it is something to do with her episode a few night’s before as manipulation. Suunto agrees to tell fix to do it, as long as it does not risk the job, or compromise them. She tells her that it should be fine and asks for his direct contact. Suunto does not provide it, but agrees to patch her in to him. They talk and he manages to evade a few levels of security. It will speed things up dramatically, but he still will be pressed for time. She watches as he, Hamelin and the rats works furiously on it. They are good. If she were around longer, she could bargain with security to ensure a few favours, or perhaps save this security flaw for another time.
What is Princess doing there?
Sequence Three
[[TP / Step / Sequences]]
Hi
CDQ Answer
Character Arc
Moral Dilemma
one
Rakin, her old friend form The Executive arrives. She was not expecting him. He has a bottle of whiskey and she suspects he comes with bad news. They sit and he shares that she will transition tomorrow. The Executive do not wish to delay her transition and risk her mind going into total collapse. She starts to deny that her mind is an issue, before realising it is not going to make much of a difference. She becomes resigned instead. He wishes her to come peacefully to her death, and she says she has a few thing to tie up first. She may be able to squeeze it in in under a month. He tells her, even though he should not be telling her, that they have a time booked for tomorrow. She protests - too soon! He tells her he fought hard for more time, but they are concerned about her health. She tells him it is all bullshit and he laughs. They want her gone so they can move on from the past. He suspects, being her junior of five years, that he will be next. He is approaching sixty, and he has noticed his role is getting smaller each year. As he talks, she realises it is all over. She has no chance of getting Emmet back. He will be gone to her. She has exhausted her supply of infiltrators and there is no way she can risk her time in the ImpVerse, even without Emmet. If she cannot have Emmet, then she will have to take the power before she goes. And if she cannot have power, then she will have revenge. She knows who the main conspirators are in the Executive against her, and she has already given over the names. She will attend to them quickly, tonight. She warns him that she has heard rumblings of Catholic desperation. He tells him he raised it with the Executive, who did not hear the same things. She tells him she listens to different things. She warns of violence. They have done it in their past when cornered and he should be wary. He tells her that he has seen the reports. She tells him they are not her reports. Her reports tell them to expect pushback in the next few days and weeks to come. She tells him she knows that they plan to break their own rules regarding scanning the minds of those who transition to The ImpVerse. He says he has not heared that and she believes him. Although he has been involved in the expansion of ImpCorp for many years, he is a numbers man, and would not be involved in that side of it. She says that her head is full of information that created this corporation and information she has given assurances would only stay with her. There are those on The Executive, including himself, that will suffer if they get their hands on her collective conscious as she transitions. He does not mind if they know his information, but he can see why she would be concerned, given her line of business. He will see if it is true. She tells him not to bother. She knows it is. She just wants him to stop them doing it. He agrees that it is not ideal and he will see what he can do. Although they both know that there is little he could do. But it is nice to hear his reassurances. He says his goodbyes and embraces her. He will let her know when the team is ready for her. He will get her personally. She tells him not to bother. She appreciates his visit, but this is an apt goodbye. She has appreciated his friendship - and she has.
When he leaves, she calls the shadow bishop and tells him to start the killings immediately. She is going to cause the most disruption she possibly can. She trades a name of a high ranking archbishop in the Vatican, and the information he provided to her, in exchange for targetting one of the Executive members. She tells him she needs to give some indication it is a Catholic plot. He is unsure until she tells him the name of an secretary in the Vatican as well. She regrets handing both names over, but it will be a bloody night for everyone. She needs to prevent them scanning her mind and the only way to do that is to give them something else to worry about, until she can figure a way of avoiding them scanning her conscious at transition.
Her only way at this stage is to transition without them by taking her life in her way. She has rigged her memory machine to be wiped remotely at her death. She knows if she transitions though, that they have likely already set up protocols to copy anything that moves through her connection. She has tried to secure an alternative connection through to The ImpVerse, but that is something that she has been unable to overcome. She may try Fix. He seems resourceful, although she does not know how he will be able to do it from within the ImpVerse itself. She will talk to him, just to be sure. Although, she has seen his ImpVerse conscious - there is nothing there he could use to manipulate him. Although, she could always use Jem to bargain with him. She could offer them many things in the ImpVerse. It will have to be a pure transaction and will something so huge at risk, she does not like dealing that way.