Old World Blues

Anything you might want to try out that doesn't temporally or thematically fit the serial should go here. This is an ideal space for all your what-ifs and might-have-beens, as well as for your average silliness.
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Karl the Mad
 

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Re: Old World Blues

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What on earth more did the boy expect? The girl had met him once before and seemed to remember it, that was already more personal than he was used to these days! Fucking brats anyway...

"As if I care what people like," he muttered to no one in particular. "Keep your eyes open, girl, and next time I won't be so harsh, hm?" Then he turned to walk away, not really caring whether Three approved or not. Three wasn't his therapist, after all.

The young mother stared a moment more, then cleared her throat and made an effort at her composure. "Yeah, he... he already saved me once before, actually. Although I forgot all about it until just now." She looked confused, then shook her head. "Anyway, I, I'm not gonna take it personally, I'm kinda used to being yelled at. I'm Michelle and this is Zelda. Say hi, honey." The girl just stared shyly up at Three, and buried her face in her mom's shirt again.
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IamLEAM1983
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Re: Old World Blues

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Three allowed himself a split second's worth of deliberation. Maybe setting an example might help...

"Hi, Zelda!" said Three, waving at the girl. "That's a very pretty name. Is your mom a gamer or a reader?"

He looked up to the woman and smirked slightly, smoothing out his features just as quickly. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "Is that a usual occurrence? I don't want to pry but, well, helping the locals is my job. If there's anything I can do or if you need references or resources..."

It was fairly common knowledge that Holden Hall's website contained a lavishly-appointed Links section covering just about every potential crisis, from medical emergencies to suicide prevention hotlines as well as support for abuse victims. If Three and his friends could handle threats from beyond the pale of mundane misfortunes, they had to delegate what made life's gray edges to more qualified individuals. 
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Karl the Mad
 

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Re: Old World Blues

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Michelle seemed flustered by the sudden attention. "I'm just clumsy, that's all," she replied, chuckling awkwardly. Zelda was impatient, and she started whining in her mother's arms. "Sorry, I need to get going. Can I just, take your card or something...?"

Half a block away, Marius was pretending to be interested in a newspaper he'd picked up at random, although his attention was on Three. It was obvious to him that the boy was his minder, self-assigned or otherwise, and he was still on the fence about whether to make it hard for him or play along for a while just to see what would happen. That was as good a reason as any to do anything, right? "For the lulz," he muttered under his breath, snorting at the absurdity of it.
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Re: Old World Blues

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"Just check Holden Hall's employee directory," amenably replied Three. "I'm Aidan Drake. It's all there in case you need to reach us."

He offered Michelle a smile. "Sorry for keeping you; I'll let you get back to it," he said, also beginning to turn away. He hated forcing civilians to disengage conversations he'd forced on them. "Have a nice day!" he called out, and then jogged across the street.

He'd spotted Vlastos about half a block away in front of him, but opted not to be too intrusive with the Alexandrian. His stop hadn't been too far, anyway - hence his going on foot and skipping the Pedway. Vlastos would see Drake walk inside a store named Exabytes, the neon signs in the single window advertising lot prices for small businesses as well as high-end gaming hardware.
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Karl the Mad
 

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Re: Old World Blues

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Michelle waved, then went on with her day, trying to be more alert than before. She didn't want to end up relying on that scary old man too many times, after all.

Marius, meanwhile, yawned and got bored and decided passive-aggressiveness was boring. So he followed Three into the shop. Commercial-grade computing stuff, fun. Most of it below what his company needed, though.
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Re: Old World Blues

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Owing to his shopping list, Three didn't exactly browse around. Exabytes was your typical Clone PC builder and OEM manufacturer, which meant half a wall of monitors all running 3DMark 25 at high settings, along with a few prebuilt systems waiting for window-lickers to wake them up. The 2010s' fixation with widespread RGB lighting had died out, while transparent panels now played host to holographic displays. Three briefly eyed a black ATX tower glowing green with pressurized nanoparticles, a panel on the motherboard sending out a visible ionizing current. The tiny motes of non-ferrous magnetic particles currenly floated in the shape of a readout of the system's clock.

Useless doodads, aggressive packaging and poorly-rendered 3D waifu bait as an I/O panel and motherboard box feature. That was a gamer-oriented store, alright.

The clerk was a male Drifter of some indeterminate years, his chest emblazoned with a Doom tee-shirt. A pudgy little E-Cig waited next to a laser-projection phablet, the floating display showing someone's review of what had to be a Prog Rock event of some persuasion. He gave Marius a nod as the door's electronic chime rang.

"Hey," said Three, "can you help me with a parts list?"

The clerk closed his phablet. "Sure, hand it over. I'll see if we have 'em or close equivalents..."

A few seconds later, the blue-skinned alien's top pair of eyes looked up to Drake, the bottom one narrowing slightly. "That's... probably overkill, you know that? What's your plan, actually? Gaming, streaming, both? Graphic design?
- That's for the office, actually. I'm Aidan Drake, Preston Hauser's had to downsize his hours at Holden Hall, what with having a restructured family company to deal with..."

The Drifter nodded. "Right, right. I remember seeing the Vienna Council's deposition for the trial on the news... Anyway, so this is for networking? Server management? That's seriously overkill, like I said. You could get by for Goliath OS 5 with half as much RAM and some kind of i7 processor from five years back. No overclocking, no messing-around, nothing."

Three seemed amused. "Shouldn't you be pushing for more than I need? Small shop like this, you gotta work off of a commission, right?
- I do," agreed the Drifter, smirking, "but corporate cred matters. Can't have loyal repeat customers if you don't grease a few palms. In which case, actual helpfulness matters."

Drake winced slightly. "Yeah, I don't know that I'll need to come back here often... Preston's fill-in comes from Wyvern's IT division. Home office."

The salesman whistled. "Right. The old lizard's got himself one of the best posses online. I heard he tried to offer freaking Deadline a work packet. You know him?"

The soldier scoffed in amusement. "Something like that; Hauser tracked him down for us, last year. Guy's the loosest of all cannons out there.
- So who's your hire?"

Three's lips were pulled tight. "Can't say. Workplace policy. You know he works for Kuhn, you can probably figure it out on your own."

That made the salesman drum on the counter. "Yeah, I've got some idea as to who that might be... It does explain the hardware choice, though. Front-ends through a cranial implant, in-field monitoring, legendary social engineer online who's posted prank videos on YouTube... The bored genius type."

Aidan chuckled. "Yeah. Dude's probably going to somehow manage sniffing for packets while leading an armful of guilds on lunchtime."

After one last laugh, the clerk set to work ringing up an estimate for the rig. "I heard some of you pulled a stint in China, a year back. Came back moderately filthy rich.
- I think our guy knows," chuckled Three. "Hey, sweet! I can get a Twitch-ready gaming monster off of Lord Holden's back and he won't say shit because LOL, Victorians are dumb!"

The Blueskin smirked. "Full refund's available if the Dumb Victorian wises up. So, with that beast of a GPU, you're averaging around six thou."

Three scoffed, his eyes wide. "Holy shit!" he said. 

Having perhaps sensed Vlastos, Three eyed the vampire and smirked. "What do you think, Marius? Would Archie have license enough to pull a Jaded Immortal on our brazen systems techie? I'm almost tempted to use that kind of money to look for a Masterson or a Naughton difference engine, instead. Cutting-edge computing, circa 1882."

The Drifter laughed and went for a stuffy British accent. "By George, what ludicrous speeds! A six-step division, finalized in just over a minute!"
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Karl the Mad
 

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Re: Old World Blues

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Marius snorted. What, they thought he didn't know computers? "Considering what you pulled down from the Hong Kong job? No, he wouldn't," he replied. He reached for a parts catalog and thumbed through it. "Your guy's just fooling around, anyway. If he were serious about blowing cash on a gaming computer he'd go for something like this," and he flipped the magazine around. "Even I know Intel's no good for overclocking, not easily anyway. Anything sporting an AMD A14 would work just fine. Hell, we had end-user desktops built with enough RAM slots to house over a hundred gigs of the stuff three years ago!"

He huffed a sigh and looked out across the store. "That stereotype of ancient vampires being technically illiterate... it really bugs me. I had to keep abreast of it for my own purposes, throughout the years. But there is a certain enjoyment to be had in throwing people off." He had insisted on in-house contracting and security for his antiques ventures, which had required he do a lot of his own research. In the end he had found it necessary to design his own security systems, since nothing else on the market had the kind of failsafes and anti-mage features he envisioned. The tricky part had been ensuring the magi-digital interfaces were simple and functional enough that security techies could manage the runes and the wards from the comfort of a screen without more than a basic understanding of the magics that had gone into them.

And if they had enough leftover capacity to run whatever latest-greatest shoot-em-up suited their fancy, well, who was he to tell his people how to amuse themselves when it was slow? As long as it didn't interfere with actual operations, he couldn't give a fuck less.

Keeping all that to himself, though, he eyed the salesman. "You're a bright kid, what would you do with an unlimited budget and some otaku telling you to go crazy?"
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Re: Old World Blues

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The salesman and Three seemed slightly perplexed by Marius' defensive stance. When had they insinuated he couldn't have developed a working knowledge of computers? That said, the Drifter looked at the proffered magazine article and pouted slightly.

"It really depends on the games involved," he noted. "Look, if we're going to talk about this, can we drop the pretense, mister Drake? This is for Travis Connor, right?"

Three nodded. "Yeah, sure; since you've sussed it out.
- Well, some games are more GPU-bound than others, some really pull on the CPU - like that second Shadow of Mordor sequel and its Nemesis 2.0 gimmick. GPU-heavy stuff typically amounts to FPSes or whatever uses the graphics card to do more raw math; which is why a lot of mid-tier businesses use gaming rigs instead of render farms or math-crunchers. Stuff's leaked out since the end of mister Vlastos' trial," he said, eyeing the Alexandrian, "and a lot of what he managed ran off of custom supercomputers and ASICs."

Impressed, Three gave Marius a look. "What did Bitcoin mining contribute to your operation, anyway? It's a foul-proof way to make small sums of money, sure, but I wouldn't buy a Chinese mining complex's entire hardware just to finance a fraction of your drilling operations from a year back, in Iceland. That just seems inefficient."

The salesman refocused on the ad. "So Marius Vlastos is an AMD boy... That's cool; I had a lot of fun with last year's Ryzen run. I like Intel a tad better since there's less thermal throttling involved, but Red refocusing on air-cooling designs to compensate was an inspired choice. I know a few Intel users that cadged Wraith Spire fans from friends with AMD hardware and a custom cooling job. Intel's stock fans are just..."

The Blueskin made a face. No further elaboration needed.

That said, he refocused on his sales-point rig and clicked his tongue. "Connor's rig, Connor's choice. Guy like that, he wouldn't like the idea of even the most computer-savvy vampire on the block pitching in to mess with his rig specs. He's probably compensating for some CPU-heavy tracking apps like what he uses to shadow a few of Wyvern's lawyers. Corporate software's always non-optimized crap, anyway."

Three smirked. "Honestly, I'm just surprised a Drifter's working as an authorized reseller."

The man shrugged. "Anyone comes here looking for QEC hardware or Maintainer clusters, I just point 'em to Frank Brenner, close to Mertown's marina. Being legal means more paperwork, but it also means I won't end up with demonic Triad freaks or cyborg Yakuza knocking on my door. Plus, my Paradise lingo sucks. Casual threats or racking up a tab might be standard out of the gravity well, but here? Unless you're in with the Commission's bottom rungs and like the smell of dive bars out of Sandhill, the hometown jive's only going to get you in jail. A lot of us expats are aliens who just couldn't cut it."
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Karl the Mad
 

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Re: Old World Blues

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"I had to find a tax write-off somewhere, Alekos was getting sloppy," Marius explained regarding the Chinese mining buyout. "And Bitcoins were a vanity project. Nothing serious."

He blinked and stared off over the salesman's shoulder, disconcerted at himself for starting to enjoy the conversation. "My company's needs have always required me to stay up to date on technology, and we're small enough that I can still have a hand in most of the overall stuff that goes on without having to micro-manage everybody. Custom supercomputers might not have been cost-efficient up front, but in the long run it was the best way to go; our security requirements demanded nothing less. And AMD had a reputation for easy customization, so that's what we went for."

He couldn't restrain a scowl. "And our corporate software was streamlined, too, I'll have you know. Or so my tech guys said when they thought no one else was around."

Three could probably surmise that Marius would likely be getting more involved with technology in the future, without his grand schemes to occupy his time. Anything to distract him from his failures, after all...
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Re: Old World Blues

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Drake did indeed do just that. 

"With the way you're talking, it sounds like you're ready to pitch a tent either in Silicon Valley or in one of Tehran's campuses..."

The salesman printed the as-of-now unofficial invoice and handed it to the soldier. "Can I just advise ignoring San Francisco?" he asked, looking at Vlastos. "I get that you're probably richer than most mundane moguls out there, but cutthroat land prices so close to Haight Ashbury is just fucking inexcusable. The southern West coast's culture is crumbling all because techies can't get enough fast commutes and avocado toast."

Three smirked. "Sounds like first-hand experience.
- It fucking is," replied the Drifter. "Me and a buddy started a small company to try and democratize access to QEC hardware, prove that you could receive data packets from Paradise and work off of imported Maintainer clusters without your quasi-sentient rig thinking it'd be cool to trigger country-wide blackouts. We had the tech, we had the means to safeguard the overall user experience, and asshats from San Mateo's neocon fringe shot us down over a moral panic - only to sell the same exact product to their buddies in the energy industry."

The soldier sighed. "Sucks. If that coincided with the recent spikes in weird Maintainer activity in Paradise, I can see why some people would fly off the handle.
- Yeah, that was a month ago. I'd kept this place as a sideline, in case Turing Computers went belly-up. Turns out I was right. Corrupted clusters uploading themselves to an armature in Hydroponics and nearly killing all of the station's crops and half of its oxygen-producing ecosystems scared the shit out of opponents to Transhumanism. Quasi-human rigs that can crack jokes maybe smacked too much of Her for the time period."

Three frowned. "How's Paradise now?
- Running off of oxygen reclaimers until the forests finish healing up. Luckily, the main species is some kind of giant alien moss patch from some world the Wardens knew about, way before the Riot. The stuff practically needs to be scraped off walls near our parks; we'll be back to full O2 production within three months." 
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