HOUR 3

After talking to the - the word monster keeps coming to your mind, but you somehow avoid using it in his presence - individual in the abandoned reactor sector, you slowly get his story out of him.

He calls himself Old Afreed. He likes to think of himself of the gentleman of the vents. He apparently used to work on the situation, though what is job was is not exactly clear, not even to himself. Some time ago, he was supervising some other workers when there was an explosion. He came out of it extremely injured and remembers being taken to a 'special bed' that was supposed to 'fix him up'. It did, but it did it a bit too well. He escaped when the pain of the third extra arm growing was too much to bear. He's been down in the reactor ever since.

He only recently met Adam. Adam discovered him scavenging for scraps, and gave him a box of soup. He's been getting soup from him periodically since then.

Unfortunately, he didn't see anything that would tell him who killed Adam, though he offers his help in 'hurting them like they did to Adam'. Hopefully it won't come to that.

Do you bring him with you or leave him here?

The trek down to the reactor took half an hour, and the trek back - the safe way that Alfreed showed you - took just as long if not a bit longer, so by the time you reach the populated section of the station again, you're well into the third hour on the station. You had a suspect - the owner of the Starfire, Frankie - but the visit he paid to Adam was apparently just before he received another visitor.

Who was this other visitor? Perhaps you should revisit the motive side of things. Why would someone want to kill Adam?

You come out in a small alcove on the observation deck, just above the Galleria Market. Adam is standing there in his temporarily rented android form, looking out the window at the stars. "So many things I never got to seeeeeeeeeoooouuuuuu..." His audio codex hitch midway, then catches back up. "Ireallyhopeyoucatchwhoeverit was that killed me so that at least my family can go." Corporate androids have limited bandwidth.

The Galleria is a huge open space in the middle of the station. It looks just like every other mall has about a decade after it was built, for as long as malls have been a thing. Small pieces of trash lie in corners that bored sweeper-bots don't bother to touch. A few of the lights flicker. The doors of all the empty shops are wrapped in plastic or are covered in aluminum sheeting. Looking down the stairs from the observation deck, you can see four small, vacant shops in the middle. The shop walls don't go all the way to the Galleria's ceiling, so above them, you can see the other staircase that leads down to the Union Hall. On the left-hand side are four more vacant shops. On the right are two larger shops, somehow still in business.

The closer of the two is Anarchy Ink. It's a shop catering to those into glass-surfing and alternative lifestyles. There is a tattoo parlor in
the back. Adam follows your gaze. "That's Lloyd's place. His bedroom is in the back, behind the tattoo place. We used to drink together. Fought a lot too. Maybe we weren't real good for each other, but it was fun." The front of the shop displays a line of glass-surfing suits, armored and brightly painted. The helmet is armored too, and has a HUD instead of a faceplate. Lloyd is in currently, handing out flyers to the newest and greatest glass-surfing location.



The further shop is Lee’s Shop-MART. It's what passes as the only non-corp general and convenience store. It's independently owned and operated by Edwin Lee, a retired botanist. There's two boxes of Raspberry Twist flavored protein sitting by the door at a discounted price.

Lloyd grins. "You wanna go for a ride? It's like nothing you've ever experienced, man, I tell you. The pure exhilaration of seeing the hills sliding by at such a pace... It is such a high. Of course, before you can go on a full course, you've got to train. I imagine a robotic fellow like you could catch on pretty quick though. Probably wouldn't take you more than a couple tries to qualify for a diamond course." He slowly focuses back in and his eyes fall on the boxes. "You want all those protein bars? What for? You don't eat 'em do you?"

"Oh." The smile on Lloyd's face falters. "Oh yeah. I did hear about that. Nasty way to go. Actually, I saw out surfing this run when it happened, sort of a safety check -- I mean as far as you can go with safety anyway. You gotta make sure there's nothing like... oh I dunno... basalt pillars sticking up randomly. If there is you gotta flag it at least a couple klicks ahead so people have time to avoid it. Anyway.

"I hope you find it all before someone finds out the hard way. And yeah, we can definitely sell you a suit if you want. They're not super-cheap, but the investment is one you'll only have to make once." He doesn't mention that you never have to make it twice because if the first investment doesn't work, you won't be around to complain.

Lloyd laughs. "The corp is pretty strict on it, but they're stricter in the punishment than they are in the practice, if you know what I mean. When it comes to glass surfing though... You're going two klicks a second, you know, so things smaller than mountains tend to sneak up on you."

Then he looks at Seth. "Hell, if you've got a suit like that though... maybe you don't need to worry about anything smaller than a mountain. Wanna go on the next run?"

"Soup?" Lloyd shrugs. "If you just want soup, your best bet is the automat in the Towers. Ground floor. There's vending machines everywhere of course, but you don't want anything from them unless you're starving. Listen, I've got to get back to work. If you want to make the next run, man, just let me know, and I'll save you a seat."

Lloyd thinks a bit before he answers. Finally, he sighs, and says, "Look, man, I usually try to stay out of the middle of all the station politics, but... Mutant? I remember one thing that happened, might be relevant, might not. It was... years ago. At least two or three... Adam was a shift supervisor back then. On one of his shifts, there was some kind of accident. Killed the whole crew but Adam and one other guy. Al? I think. Adam got out okay, but AL lost his arm. Had to undergo some sort of medical trial that Omicron - that's Persei's biogen arm - was running. It worked... but something happened and the project was shut down. Never saw Al again.

"That's why he moved to food assembly, so there wouldn't be any more accidents. Ironic huh? Funny cuz he did mostly stay under the radar. -- Except... You know, now I'm thinking about it, there was one other weird thing. Adam was supposed to get a bonus last month. He was really excited, because those don't happen often. I wanted to go out to celebrate, but he said he couldn't afford to. He'd already used his bonus on something. Then, last week, there was some sort of surprise inspection that turned up a problem, and he lost the bonus."

"I don't think they're all that normal. See... The corp likes to keep things running. They're required to have inspections, but if they find anything wrong, they have to shut down, and well... They don't want to shut down. Money, you see. So they have inspections so they can say they've had an inspection. They're all very well organized and scheduled. So I don't know what was up with that one. You'd have to ask that smily little supervisor of his, Gregory Goodman. If you wanna really piss him off, call him Greg."

Lloyd shakes his head. "Hell no. That's what Adam was so upset about. Said it cost him a fortune and he'd already leveraged it to do something and there'd be hell to pay if he couldn't make the money back."

It sounds like the next stop is Gregory Goodman. If Seth is going glass surfing, the next run is going to be pretty much now. There's more surfers coming in as Bob leaves. Seth might be able to get info out of them, if he thinks there's any info to get.

If not, he can join Bob.

The corporate management offices are up higher in the station, lest anyone in charge have to dirty themselves by coming into contact with the work they're overseeing more than necessary. Gregory Goodman is the type of person that would have been played by Alan Rickman or Andrew Scott a few hundred years ago in the heyday of flatscreen stare media. As soon as you're shown into his office you wish you were somewhere else. The slime that covers his sneer is already all over you and you'll have to bathe for a week just to get the ick off. And he hasn't even said anything yet. When he says, "Good afternoon. How can I help the authorities today?" the slickness of his words as they hit your ears might just make you nauseous. Hopefully this guy is up to something, because the idea that someone could just be like this as a default setting is sickening.

As Seth comes to find out on the shuttle out, glass surfing, at least for a beginner, isn't all that deadly. That's because if Lloyd notices something going wrong, he can slave your board to his, and guide you through. While you're on the shuttle, he walks everyone through how to control their board and gives a little tryout for board control. You have to pass this to be able to control your own board at all, or you get slaved to his from the start. He's after a paycheck after all, not liability for someone who wasn't paying attention becoming a two-mile-long smear. Everyone on the shuttle (there's about 7 in all) is suited up just like Seth, so you can't see faces, and there's not much talk. Nerves probably. Does Seth want to talk?

Mr. Goodman nods curtly. His voice slides down your ear like a Rigellian bloodworm. "Yes... That I was. I'm not sure what I can really tell you though, his end should tell you everything you need to know. I found numerous violations of protocol in his work area."

---

The shuttle to the surfing run on the nearby moon takes about 30 minutes. On the way, Seth and three others get a fairly generic speech from Lloyd about safety and proper procedure, but there's nothing really new to Seth. Once there, the side door is opened. You can see down to the smooth glass hills of the small moon, conveniently worn by time into the perfect surfing run. The ground is conveniently striated with the lower altitudes dark burnt orange, fading to light brown as it gains altitude. You should be able to get some good air on some of the larger hills, just not... too much. You don't want to break orbit.

Lloyd steps up and says, "Okay, jump one at a time, leave ten seconds between jumpers. We will monitor you from up here, and once you've gone once around the moon twice, you'll see the gravtrap on the left. Hit that and it'll slow you down enough that we can pick you up. Don't hit it and we'll wait for you, but only as long as our air holds out. Alright, GO!"

The others jump out, one every 10 seconds, and then Seth is up. The air hits his suit at a thousand miles a minute, and the landscape zooms in as he falls. The antigrav on his board cuts on at a hundred feet and pushes him hard away from the surface as he gets close. The thin atmosphere of the moon barely slows him down at all.

"Oh, certainly, certainly," Mr. Goodman nods obsequiously. "You know how it is with these people. Not an ounce of sense, any of them. He probably leant over to try to clear a catch without switching the machine off. I see it all the time. Most of them end up with just a finger gone, of course. Still, any corner to cut, and they'll do it. It was just lucky I managed to catch him off-guard last month, or we'd have had to pay out a substantial bonus to him. That would have looked bad in Accounting."

He leafs through some papers, finally raising his eyebrows as he raises a single sheet of paper from the sheaf. "This is the incident report. As you can see, he'd swept the floor with a Class C broom instead of a Class B, and there were three plastic tabs left behind. Tripping hazard."

On the contrary, Mr. Goodman is almost ecstatic as he explains how he caught Adam on that minor technicality. Once a broom is a couple months old, it won't clean to code anyway, so if he doesn't replace the broom quite on time, that gives him a windows to deny bonuses, and, truth be told, gets him a little bonus of his own for not having to hand out so many bonuses. He hands the paperwork over happily, knowing that everything in writing is 100% correct and in line with company policy.

Goodman grumps. "I'm surprised you're putting this much effort into an open and shut case -- if you'll pardon a fairly accurate pun -- Besides, I think that was the first chance he'd had. That's one of the reasons I try to keep bonuses low. You can't give those people too much money, after all. They'll always find a way to get in trouble with it. From what I heard he had plans to spend it all as soon as he got it anyway. What those plans were I don't know, but really, no savings at all? Money is just a moral hazard to people like that."

When Seth reaches the recovery point, Lloyd's shuttle speeds to meet him, getting him onboarded and secured. The rocket on the other hand, is not secured. No attempt is even made. When the last surfer is loaded up, the shuttle heads for the high atmosphere, and then angles to give everyone a good look at the land below. Right on cue, three nuclear blasts blossom up from the surface. "And just like that," Lloyd says, "Your ride today creates the course for the next wave."

The other two surfers give a cheer, and now that all the excitement is over, Seth has a chance to look them over. One, a woman, wears a tight-fitting hot pink suit with a wide neon yellow stripe up the legs and arms. On the leg stripe, in strong stylized lettering, it says ROCKTOPUSSY. The other is a man who's wearing perhaps the weirdest-looking suit you've seen in a while. IT's bright orange and while at first Seth sees multi-sized polka dots in dark purple adorning the suit, after a brief ocular zoom-in he sees that they are instead plums of varying sizes. A sticker on the top of the helmet's visor says Plum Crazy, but the plum isn't a word; its actually another plum.

The woman sees you looking at them. "Hey. Tag's Feastman. This is Rickydick. First time up?"]

@Jomsviking

His file says he was married, so I guess she'd know. I never look into the personal lives of my employees, too much -- unless I have to. The implication there is that he would if it would make him some money.

The trip up to the residential area is uneventful, but slow. Three changes of elevator packed with a mix of workers heading down to the mines and family members trying to live a normal existence a lifetime away from the rest of the galaxy. The elevators are a microcosm of minor suffering and not-so-slight inconvenience. Your feet are stepped on. You are cramped. The air is stale. But you eventually get to the fifth floor of the tower block Adam's family is on. You have to ask around for a bit before you're pointed in the right direction.

Adam's widow is a cafeteria worker, not quite making enough to make ends meet now that he's dead, and the apartment she and her child live in is testament to this. When the door open, there's several large square brown spots were furniture once stood that's been sold recently. The short brunette looks worn out, but she smiles at the child at her side when he says hello to you.

"What can I do for you, Mister...?"

Adam waits at the end of the hall, not wanting to disturb her, but not wanting to be too far away from her either. He was here when you arrived, but you didn't notice him until after you'd knocked. He may be worried about something else happening, or it could just be nostalgia. Either way, it's clear he knows he's disturbing. "Hall," he says, nearly inaudibly.

"It's Hall," she says, somewhat louder, not noticing her shadow. "And yeah, money'd be nice. That's why he put out that reward, though I don't know how likely it is to help. I don't know how I can help you, either. We work opposite shifts so we can always have one of us here with Rose. Leaves us with just enough time to be tired at each other and wake up grumpy the next morning. Better than what we had back on Tympanus, though."

You know the name. Tympanus is synonymous with failure. The terraforming didn't work. The artificial eco-hubs don't work. Every year, there's fewer colonists. They were lucky to get out when they did. Makes sense that they wouldn't mind being here; it's miles better than where they'd been. At least it had been until recently.

There's a coughing fit from behind her that sounds like it could rip up pavement. She holds a finger up as a wait gesture and moves back into the house. Most of the lights are off in an apparent energy/money-saving effort - it's clearly not for convenience. A little girl is standing at the corner of her room, peeking out at the front door. "You should be in bed sweetie." She reaches across the counter to fill a glass of water and drops a few SooperFrootJoose drops in it. "Drink this. It'll make your throat less dry. And try to get some sleep. Maybe we'll be able to get more medicine tomorrow."

She turns back to you after Rose heads back into her room. "Sorry, she's been sick a long time... Anyway, He must have died just as I was putting Rose to bed, so I'm not sure what I can tell you."

Amy Hall shrugs. There's no effort behind it. No struggle. It's like the last twitch of an old cat before it finally closes its eyes for the last time. Defeat. "I remember the power failure. For me, nothing much happened. I was home with Rose, so I just sat in the dark. I remember being worried that the power would be out so long the air would get stale in the apartment. It was out an awful long time, at least two hours, but it came back on before that happened. I don't know that Adam had any trouble with anyone, but... well... we'd needed money for Rose a couple weeks ago, and we couldn't afford it. But then all of a sudden, we had the money for it somehow. Adam never explained how. He might have borrowed it."

Amy shakes her head tiredly. "They happen. Who knows when. There's solar flares that mess with the systems. It never stays down long enough to cause problems, but these apartments aren't exactly the priority when it comes to comfort. AC goes out, no one cares. I could have opened the door manually, but with no lights... I guess he'd have had to go to the Lounge. Starfire that is. The owner supposedly offers credit. God knows the corp won't. I don't know much about it."

It's a sure bet that if Seth is back on station, you'll find him tending to his cat, and that is indeed where you find him. Sporting an extra set of armor no less. The EVA suits are built to stop radiation and blunt minor impacts, so they'll give you good protection against lasers and a fair bit against melee and a bit against kinetic weapons as well, though that might render the suit useless afterward.

After a short conversation to catch each other up on everything, it's time to head out again. This time, to the Starfire Lounge. Adam, as usual, is waiting in the hallway to accompany you, though when you come out, he's muttering to himself. "Stupid accident. That's where it all went wrong. We were fine before that..." Seeing you, he looks up and the thought seemingly erases from his mind. "Hello again! Have you found out who killed me yet?"

It'll take a bit to do that, and you haven't found all of them yet, but going through the packets you have, you find three. You carefully wash the fruit off the brain slices and lay them in the plastic discs, closing the covers, then insert them into the engram decrypter. You plug Adam into the machine as well, and activate them one by one.

"I am shouting. Lloyd is here. I feel his fists crack my nose and I taste blood. I tackle him and everything is a blur...."

"A young woman opens her apartment door and invites me inside. I hand her a bag of Perseus scrip. Thousands."

"I am arguing with my manager. He says repairs will be Tuesday but if I do not take my team down anyway I will lose my job."

The woman's name is Sarai Lee. She's employed in Life Support. Looking at her record, you have to wonder why she's there. Multiple degrees in biosynthesis, citations in several ground-breaking papers, successful work in crop adaptation on several colony worlds. She works the night shift. Her apartment number isn't listed.

Also of note, however, is that this isn't all you Seth can see. There's other areas of the network that are connected, but that have separate login credentials. Typical for a corp to compartmentalize information, but it does beg the question, 'What are they hiding? And does it have anything to do with the case you're looking at?'

Seth tried to breach them all.

"Bob, I am about to dump a large load of information, I can see the numbers clear enough, but perhaps your intuition will sift through the materiels faster than mine." It was always concerning when Seth said something that implied he didn't know. Being a logic machine and displaying the capacity to guess...He would reserve the hardest hack after he and Bob could establish context.

There's a LOT of info here in the banking system, but you can see that Adam was at one point slated to receive a 10k credit bonus. The transaction was actually approved and started, but then cancelled the day before it was scheduled to finish. At the same time, Adam took out a few loans from the casino the two weeks before the bonus was set to come through, with repayment dates the day after the bonus was set to go though. When Adam's manager screwed him out of his bonus, he royally screwed him.

There is a link here to the medical clinic's payment system, and it's not very secure (5d10). @Jomsviking

That's another partial so you get the information you need, but you're almost immediately kicked out. Might be best to not be where you are anymore.

The only record you find that's relevant to any of your keywords is a daily action report dated from a couple years ago.

MINOR INCIDENTS: 3 sprained joints, 2 complaints of back pain, 7 Alburian flu, 5 migraines.
MAJOR INCIDENT: Mining elevator failure.
-- FATALITIES: Piet Sheridan, Marvin Hirata, Ian Wellman, Toshihisa Clifford, Allison Demetriou, Harold Eastman, Dana Hashmi, Simon Gopnik, Ansgar Onishi, Ioannis Dubois, Mohammad McConnell, Camilla Koome, Alfred Timmins.
-- INJURIES: Adam Hall.

This has got to be the disaster that immediately followed Adam's being forced to take his crew down.