Scene #9725: Where You Were

Owner	Pose
Flamel Parsons	Flamel Parsons has built a big machine. This motherfucker is always building some big machine, but this time, especially, when told to come push a major investigation, he has responded by bringing a large device. Wheeling it over smooth concrete through the Foundation halls on a cart, he might be mistaken for a Laplace worker, but his lanyard does say he's a visitor care of the Foundation, so... Maybe the spinning satellite dishes are for some normal divinations. --- You're in a conference room. Tall. A bit too long and a bit too wide. The smooth surface of the wood table is uncannily reflective and the tall window at one end lets in "light" without allowing you to see outside. "When you see things," Flamel explains, pacing around the table. "Generally, what you commit into your actual memory is a compressed version. The concepts and the broad strokes. We call this 'long-term memory'. There's higher-fidelity 'short-term' memory, where you hold a lot more sensory data, while those long-term memories are being refined and crafted by your high-speed internal memory encoding system. But, specifically in your visual cortex, psychic traces we can read through psychometry function as a kind of high-definition sensory memory. Usually, this built-up data buffer is reset every two major high-stress life events -- that is, first it's residual traces, then on the first big high-stress incident it's moved to the traumatic processing sector, then on the second, it's dumped, in a queue." "Luckily, the Storm has re-calibrated everyone's definition of high-stress life events!" Flamel's beaming smile and optimistic tone are a little weak here. "And Schneider's major activities near the Foundation were fairly recent before the Storm. Which means someone in the Foundation saw and heard her, even though they don't remember her." The machine he has unfolds, like-- oh. Like a dollhouse. "I don't... have an accessible mental model of Schneider anymore. But I remember how her memories were structured, from when I visited, once. So if we can find trace fragments of her, we can re-assemble some psychometric memory-traces." Shuddering static roils inside. "I've already brute-force networked enough of the Foundation through proxy jumps and psychometric relaying via objects! The warrant I was given handled most of the privacy filtration, and the rest can be handled through casual mind-wipes. I drank a lot of coffee and did one all-nighter, which, I've gotta reiterate, you can only do once every few months. Anyway, if the data exists, I have it here -- it's just buried under two years or so of other memories. We need to narrow it down. Rewind through relays of relays of relays and eliminate any contaminants that got in when I was running the brute-force memory-map. With me, please." --- When everyone is settled into one of those ergonomic-yet-not-comfortable office chairs, he begins. He sinks a finger into the first of the dollhouse rooms, eyes shut and body shuddering. The others accompanying him will find themselves astrally drawn into all this as well.
Timekeeper	This is all by Sonetto's request, technically. Flamel went to Constantine, Constantine's affairs are usually known to Madam Z, Madam Z informed Sonetto, Sonetto reached out to Flamel to ask if he-- in a professional capacity, for his ideological alignment with the Foundation and nothing to do with Schneider personally at all-- could help with her investigation at all. So here she is, sitting near the head of the table and near the weird machine, in one of her only brushes with multiversals in person ever since the Storm. She's wearing her Investigator uniform, prim and perfect as if it was all the same as it was months ago, paying somewhat-more-than-usual attention to Flamel's explanations of the machine. For being the link between the Paladins and Flamel Parsons in this moment, Sonetto feels the urge to explain the latter when the former enter. She seems totally neutral and focused, making it really hard to tell in the moment how she might feel about Flamel, Schneider, or Vertin unconscious several buildings away. "Hello, thank you for coming. I believe Madam Z likely told you, but Mr. Parsons and the Psychonauts thoroughly renounced allegiance with the Manus Vindictae and offered assistance to the Foundation instead. The Vice President granted him amnesty, so... he is here to assist." "Anyway, if the data exists, I have it here -- it's just buried under two years or so of other memories." Despite her apparent extreme focus on mission-matters, the longer Flamel talks about Schneider, the more weirdly squirmy Sonetto gets. She holds out her hand to the dollhouse hesitantly, then drops it, like she's worried she'll break it somehow. "So that means... every memory of Schneider, besides from those of us who met her personally, is contained in here?" Sonetto lingers on that for an unnaturally long pause, eyes locked on the machine without relaxing. As if to break hypnosis, the topic she immediately returns to once she blinks is to blandly recite mission details again, directed at no one in particular. "The inciting hypothesis behind my investigation into the St. Pavlov Foundation's reputation among local era arcanists is that, um, Schneider Greco's belief that she and the Greco family would not be able to rely on the Foundation for safety hindered the field mission operations in the Chicago of 1929, losing the Foundation intelligence, tactical ground, and lives. If there was mismanagement that could have prevented this... then there are likely many more arcanists to come with similar views."
Tamamo	"Thank you, Ms. Sonetto. I am sure Mr. Parsons was only a bit too excited to explain the reason for all of this." Tamamo's surface thoughts suggest she instead thinks Flamel keeps a messy office, with unfiled notes everywhere. Today marks another effort toward accomplishing... something, with the Foundation, and Tamamo is doing her best to make it the opposite of 'enemy territory,' no matter her means and goals, which means this is another day to wear a mostly monochrome outfit, as if almost a uniform. It's not quite office-wear just for the all-weather jacket over it, but the black heels and pencil skirt carry that vibe strongly, as they did when she met Madame Z. Lilian would be the only one likely to notice she's redone her jewelry, going for even more understatement, though the two bands on her left ring finger only stand out more for that. She thinks -- her wards against mind reading again in place -- about asking Sonetto how much of this is personal. She thinks about asking how much of it is 'personal to Vertin.' She asks nothing of the sort, taking in the monotoned but far from dull theory, and instead says, "I hope you are properly pacing yourself. While there is much to do, the same will be true tomorrow, the day after that, and the week that follows." 'If there was mismanagement that could have prevented this...' "For there to be 'something that could have been better done' is a very common thing. We should not be surprised at this. Whether there were actions taken that went against established law, or were done for malicious reasons is another matter, of course."
Lilian Rook	If this weren't by Sonetto's request, Lilian wouldn't even show up. And Lilian actually trusts Flamel more than practically every other Elite she knows. Which annoys her. It also annoys her that, when she's actually in the room, she already finds herself mentally playing the role of the human skeptic; an idea that persistently haunts her whenever she has to deal with this world and its people, despite being something that isn't too rare for her to do. She trusts Flamel's psychic bullshit to do psychic bullshit, and she knows the look of all of it being silly has nothing to do with its efficacy; those facts are thoroughly settled by past experience, both with Flamel himself and with the Multiverse at large-- which makes it both easier and slightly harder to separate herself from the comparison by her 'openmindedness'. The problem is, exactly, that she knows Flamel's psychic bullshit will do something. Her skeptcism arises not from the subject of 'is it even real', but 'will this actually help the investigation at all? or will it send us on an adventure?' She keeps her mouth shut on that question as long as Sonetto is in sight, crossing her arms and tapping her foot about it all to keep the dismay at bay (something very rich coming from her, with her lightly traitorous accessory), but shoots Flamel a few 'I'm watching you' looks when she isn't. 'Hello, thank you for coming. I believe Madam Z likely told you, but Mr. Parsons and the Psychonauts thoroughly renounced allegiance with the Manus Vindictae and offered assistance to the Foundation instead.' "So I've heard." says Lilian, and nothing else. The less she digs into her feelings about that, the better. Because Flamel helped kill a girl by trying to save her girl. Because he was on the wrong side for the right reasons. Because Lilian herself barely did any better than he did, in the end. And because she still thinks everyone else is invested enough to care about what she thinks of Manus Vindictae at all. At least, she wants to believe they are. It's be a useful excuse not to think. 'So that means... every memory of Schneider, besides from those of us who met her personally, is contained in here' "I suppose you secured Marian's voluntary cooperation as well?" Lilian says to Flamel, a little snippy. Knowing that Sonetto wasn't allowed near the woman, her fixation on Greco's sole surviving family has only gotten stranger over time; more intense, more morally fixated, personal yet parasocial. She glances back at-- "Sonetto?" '...um, Schneider Greco's belief that she and the Greco family would not be able to rely on the Foundation for safety...' Lilian presses her lips into a faintly concerned frown. She decides to put it out of mind for now, if only because she has to be the Multiversal veteran here, and Sonetto has to be allowed to keep her dignity as the lead investigator. "I think that's a reasonably founded hypothesis." she says, once Sonetto is done. "Enough that it aggravates me that we have to do any work to prove it at all. I don't know much about the Foundation compared to them, but even I could tell that its name is like poison to any arcanist who ends up having to skirt the rules to make ends meet. From that corner, the Foundation must look as if it's there to punish you specifically."
Lilian Rook	She keeps her opinions on tactics and intelligence to herself. The fact that Manus Vindictae vastly outclasses the Foundation at the moment isn't helpful to litigate right now. "Still. I will begrudgingly state for the record that Regulus' aversion to the Foundation was overblown and poorly founded. Schneider's ironclad insistence was . . ." Lilian takes a deep breath, and quiets herself fractionally from confidence lost to conjecture. "As an experienced vetera," is the couching. "I trust my intuition. She had some other reason to believe that Manus Vindictae was her only shot. Some reason that was so obvious, so absolutely convincing, that she didn't even entertain hopeful debate; or even spiteful debate." 'For there to be 'something that could have been better done' is a very common thing. We should not be surprised at this. Whether there were actions taken that went against established law, or were done for malicious reasons is another matter, of course.' Lilian makes an unhappy 'mmmh' sound, tantamount to agreement, if noncommittal. "Ultimately, either helps our case in the necessity of 'Team Timekeeper' as a political entity, but criminal wrongdoing would be--" she glances around the room, looks at Flamel, scowls, and continues anyways. "Something Pedra would like to see very, very much. It's a very useful piece of political goodwill to display, if we're that lucky."
Marigold	. . . . . . On the inside, it's not a dollhouse in terms of size. It might be easier to navigate if it were. This is a bus stop. The year is 1929, and the city is Chicago. The bus stop is here because someone from the Foundation remembers it, probably from their morning commute. You can tell which parts that nameless employee remembers best- the mildly uncomfortable seats, the texture of the pavement where their eyes would rest- because those are filled-in with sharp texture, almost real. Where that absent employee remembered less- the building down the street; the sign across the way- is instead papered over with smooth toylike simplicity. That's where the dollishness is. Past even those is black space; the edge of the memory, but in leaping-distance of other islands, other bits of Chicago. This is a memory of a hundred days all composited together. The sky can't make up its mind whether to drizzle or not. The newspaper on the newspaper stand is illegible. The people are gray fuzzy ghosts, and the cars smear together into a colorful blurry ribbon that sometimes honks. Off in the distance are other landmarks, closer in memory-space than they really were in life. A church, someone's house, a few offices, a library, a bar... 'the city as people remember it' is smaller than 'the city', but not small enough yet to make searching convenient. Certainly, almost none of these people remembered Schneider at all.
Flamel Parsons	Every memory of Schneider that still remains? Flamel nods. "Exactly. Aside from the Concord and the Manus... No Chicagoans still around who'd know her, so it's trace Foundation memories." He shakes his head. "Unfortunately, there's a lot of non-Schneider in with very little of Schneider. You'll help me with 'the sifting', as they keep saying around here." He shifts to a bright smile. "Ever tried 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon'?" That one was invented in 1994, but also it's related to cinemaphile culture, so this might be the wrong Foundation investigator assistant to try that on. "What about Chains, by Frigyes Karinthy?" Okay, that one might actually land. "The theory goes, anyone in Hollywood has less than six degrees of separation from prolific actor Kevin Bacon, by working on the same project as someone else. Anyone in a given culture, even the "global culture", has less than six degrees of separation from anyone else, by contact or association. Well, this is what I call a Karinthy Psychometric Chain." But Lilian brings something up. Wouldn't Marian know best? Are her memories in this? "...No." His eyes are down, a bit. "It's likely Schneider worked to conceal the worst of the difficulties from her, and Marian can give more honest testimony directly. Since she'd never lived through a Storm before, her memory-cycle already happened twice, it's already pared down in long-term and out of the buffer. And she's already been through so much, it would be wrong for me to..." He briefly clenches his fist. "We won't-- We just, I suppose, won't get a chance to see her clearly." When he looks back up, there's a weak smile. "It's a good thing for photos, huh? Ha ha..." Tamamo gets an odd response. "If something changes, if something becomes better for all this, it'll still be important. It's our job to make a purpose for a purposeless death." Headshake. He clears the fog. "Let's start the chain with you, Sonetto." --- He emerges into 1929, Chicago, a bus stop from the morning commute. "One of the field-office workers responsible for reviewing summary arcanum registration reports had received a packet from Chicago during 1929." He says, brushing a fingertip across the ground. "That I think you saw this-- no, last week... Looks like, crossing the hall? We've got a matched resonant trace of the same environment. Try to find her, or a path to key intersections between the Foundation and her residential area. Here, watch this." He reaches up behind the employee -- here, represented as a mannequin in Foundation uniform, and begins turning a crank. A wheel spins, and frames of memory project onto the surface of the environment as literal projections, warped by the perspective of the viewer. "Check the neighboring islands too. Follow chains if you can catch relevant memories for them. We'll pull back separations."
Timekeeper	"I hope you are properly pacing yourself. While there is much to do, the same will be true tomorrow, the day after that, and the week that follows." "Ah..." In the past few weeks, Sonetto's accumulated resistance to the strange unnameable neurochemical jolt that the pair of Tamamo and Lilian give her has faded, so she gets confused when Tamamo speaks to her like that. (The neurochemical is, of course, 'having her wellbeing cared about'.) She does have a reason powerful enough to buffer her against meekly nodding in agreement, though. "I will not exhaust myself beyond my limits, but things may still change a week from now. With Timekeeper, or with the rebellion, or with my own orders." "I don't know much about the Foundation compared to them, but even I could tell that its name is like poison to any arcanist who ends up having to skirt the rules to make ends meet." "Even if that is the case," Which Sonetto is somewhat-willing to agree with on its face; the internal wincing at associating the phrase that definitionally also applies to Regulus and Schneider with 'bad people' comes later. "We still have to determine which policies, or which unsanctioned actions by individuals, cause them to feel that way." "Um, my belief, which is shared by Madam Z and others, is that the Foundation's ideals would not possibly produce this result on their own. Proving that Schneider was turned away by the Foundation is only one thing, but... the investigation and process of review requires a record of the actions taken." Sonetto sits on that pensively, then adds more quietly, "It is not as though the Foundation would accept every arcanist criminal into its employ on the face of it." "Whether there were actions taken that went against established law, or were done for malicious reasons is another matter, of course." Sonetto nods, as equally relieved by the sentiment as Lilian is bothered by it. "That's right. Our station in 1929 did not go as well as it should have. What we have to uncover is why." Sonetto is yet to make any declarative statement about the politics of, frankly, anything that's been happening. She hasn't even voiced her support for the Storm Reformation bill as far as anyone's heard, and her status as the most straightlaced Foundation adherent seems to make it unlikely that she'd go so far as to say 'the Foundation alone isn't enough'. Still, it's a lot easier when all she has to do is voice other people's words. "Chairman Pedra has accused the Chicago branch of poor management since before the Storm of 1929, but the incidence of the Storm itself escalated it into a challenge for control over the office. If the headquarters-affiliated staff of the Chicago branch office were derelict in their duties, it would likely lead to a collapse of the legal support for its current administration." "Ever tried 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon'?" Sonetto blinks gormlessly at Flamel. "No. Bacon would freeze at such low temperatures." The explanation does make sense though, once he says it directly enough to penetrate Sonetto's skull.
Timekeeper	"One of the field-office workers responsible for reviewing summary arcanum registration reports had received a packet from Chicago during 1929." Inside, Sonetto marvels briefly at the blurry diorama of the world, composited from more days than she's stepped foot outside Foundation grounds in total. She looks at the gradient of clarity from sharp to black, the every-weather overhead, and murmurs, "So this is memory...." It's actually helpful to see the metaphor arranged into art around her. She quickly latches onto a method for how to find Schneider in the vast, dreary space, leaning over the Foundation employee's shoulder to watch the film frames projected in front of them. "What would stick out... we can follow the trace of oranges to find Schneider, can't we?"
Tamamo	'So I've heard.' And Tamamo hasn't heard much more, but she knows enough of both the Concord and Flamel not to doubt it. It'd be stranger for anything else to be the case. Rather than him, she looks to Lilian, and listens. ...a little snippy. Not unwarranted, overall, but definitely focused. "I suppose no individuals were consulted specifically for permission." That much will soon prove, if not entirely certain, much more likely. But Marian... She'll think about those two later. 'Enough that it aggravates me that we have to do any work to prove it at all.' "One might consider it less as a search for truth than as a search for specific proof." 'It's our job to make a purpose for a purposeless death.' Tamamo's posture suggests she's about to speak, but she just looks at Flamel without quite opening her mouth, until he shakes his head. This can wait, too. '...things may still change a week from now.' "I am certain that, no matter what changes, much will be asked of you." She won't press further than that. A bus stop. "We are looking for matters concerning 'an office.' Would it not be better to check the offices, first?" With that said, Tamamo still goes to check the memories that spill out, her heels making the same sound on the memory of concrete as she remembers them making before. It takes her a few moments before she decides that memory-concrete won't do anything to actual-stockings and she lets her knee touch the ground for a closer look at parts of the projection. Somewhere, here, a connection to an office, a clipboard, a file, a briefase... surely there's something like that. If not, she can go and head toward where she can see the sort of nondescript office district so popular with shady pseudo-governmental organizations.
Flamel Parsons	"Orange..." Flamel stops cranking the projector-head he's working with. "God, you're right. You know, a memory of a smell has a lot more unusual evokation-trigger stability." He turns, inhaling as if to begin giving a highly confident, brightly cheerful request to Tamamo. But sometime between him forming the idea and him actually managing to start saying it, a startling realization blazes through his mind that it might not be wise to say to the fox-spirit woman something like, 'You could try smelling it with your foxness!' Especially given the fact that her fox parts are ears, not a nose. So instead he just sort of emits a short, "Y" sound at her without clear explanation. Pause. "...ou're a great cook! I bet you could catch the smell of an orange if you put your mind to it." Good suggestion, which he has just decided to process as if it were his own because Sonetto offered it freely in his vicinity.
Tamamo	'...a great cook!' "I am passable, I suppose," says Tamamo, without any of the shyness that would prove that a genuine statement of humility. "Oranges? If you think that this would be helpful, Ms. Sonetto, I shall see if I cannot find a trace of such."
Lilian Rook	'I will not exhaust myself beyond my limits, but things may still change a week from now. With Timekeeper, or with the rebellion, or with my own orders.' Lilian sighs sympathetically. "We may need you to be less exhausted than 'just below your limits' at any time. Feel free to ask for help at any time." she says. It sounds just slightly like 'attagirl'. 'Even if that is the case' Lilian's eyes widen. "My my." leaves her lips. It's a bit more like 'attagirl'. 'Um, my belief, which is shared by Madam Z and others, is that the Foundation's ideals would not possibly produce this result on their own.' Her hand wobbles, demonstrative of nothing. "Ideals seldom produce anything on their own. "People carrying out their own interpretation of them do. I hate to say it," she doesn't, "But the Foundation's are much more 'open to interpretation' than the opposition's. When you try to control how they may have been interpreted nearly a hundred years ago, the extant data quickly becomes completely unusable." 'It is not as though the Foundation would accept every arcanist criminal into its employ on the face of it.' Lilian raises an eyebrow. "Do you think Schneider would have told them she was?" she says. "Furthermore, her entire family is human, remember?" 'If the headquarters-affiliated staff of the Chicago branch office were derelict in their duties, it would likely lead to a collapse of the legal support for its current administration.' There it is. Something that renders half her cautioning moot, which Lilian was very much hoping to hear. "And a lovely, non-Vertin scapegoat." she says, laughing humourlessly. "Well, I suppose it's hardly a scapegoat if they're the actual cause." 'One might consider it less as a search for truth than as a search for specific proof.' "The proof that won't wound the egos of the people still clinging to a convenient delusion." Lilian slumps a little towards Tamamo. 'You'll help me with 'the sifting', as they keep saying around here.' "They don't." Lilian says, a little too hastily. "Don't repeat that." She can't quite tell whether she is a peverse ally of Flamel's in this, or if it she just feels upset about thinking of Schneider as 'sifted' before she consciously realizes it. 'Ever tried 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon'?' "Is that a drink?" 'The theory goes, anyone in Hollywood has less than six degrees of separation from prolific actor Kevin Bacon' "Oh, you mean the Caesar number." Lilian says, blinking in sudden recognition. "How far you can go through a citation chain of mystic texts before you reach 'from Caesar's written accounts'. 'It's likely Schneider worked to conceal the worst of the difficulties from her' Her expression sours. "It's 'likely'?" she says, the word dangerously light; sharp. "She knows--" Then it flattens. Lilian halts, for unknown reasons, and slowly shuts her mouth. "Enough. It's fine. You're right. Questioning her directly has been amply productive already." 'It's a good thing for photos, huh? Ha ha...' "What few of them I can get." Lilian spits. She's still mad about Holly. At everyone, really. Just a little. 'It's our job to make a purpose for a purposeless death.' That feels like the one thing that Lilian silently agrees with. She'd said as much before, in her grandiose, sentimental way.
Lilian Rook	. . . . . . . . 'Y--' Lilian's scenario-absorbing reverie is broken by a brief, prescient tingle from the threat sense she reserves for Flamel specifically. Fortunately, she is unable to fill in the blanks on what he could possibly have meant to say originally, but it's a while before she takes her eyes off him and goes back to scanning the surreal composite of the projection. "The hairband was a gift." she says, out of nowhere. "I'm certain she was sensible enough to button up her jacket when walking around outdoors." Not because of her sense of decency, mind. "But her . . . 'visual identity', I suppose, were always front and center." Now she has to actually define it more significantly than 'arcanist-y'. "Pearls. Feathers. Red and silver. Velvet and snakeskin. The flapper look wasn't standard for the period; it was new and memorable, so it should stand out" Lilian decides to leave it at that. It's something else to go on than Sonetto's suggestion, so she's helping by adding anything at all. Textures stand out to her more than smells, and colours are typically especially vivid in her memory; especially red. Even if the collective traces are so dull and blurry, she expects even a suit-wearing Foundation ghoul to have some recollection of glittering pearls and bright red feathers between all the drab brown-black-blue hats in a crowd. But even rendered as strangely toyetically as it all is, scrubbed of detail and viscerality, walking the streets of Chicago worsens Lilian's mood in under sixty seconds. By two minutes, she's actually separated from Tamamo's side, walking with a quick, aggressive gait down the street, towards the church. She's barely thinking of the Grecos' piousness; a church is somewhere that she is less likely to experience the phantom blaring of horns and the memorized reek of wet asphalt and leaded gasoline. Then she opens her mouth again, because she can't bring herself to leave it at that "People in that godforsaken city latch on tight to the slightest nonconformity. They'd never fail to notice slightly-too-eyecatching jewelry, or an unusual accent or eye colour, or a girl with a hairstyle who walks a little too confidently."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel scratches his cheek a little, staring at the ground, turning Lilian's words over. "Right. So, we'll see a jump in resolution. That sort of opinion, it encodes straight into the sensory cortex. We're looking for a huge boost in detail, immediately around the same area of the Karinthy Chain as a citrus scent. That's good guidance, I think we can get at least a direction." He's careful when he tries to remember her, you know. You can tell, if you watch the way his posture shifts. The posture is 'the holding of a precious valuable'. Every time he remembers her, ever time he gets the mental photographs out, they get a little fuzzier. He'll never be around her, never see her move, never hear her voice again -- and, like any brain, every time he remembers her, she gets a little more distorted by the act of remembering her, a photograph fading every time light shines on it. So he's careful. To remember her, but not remember her in-depth. Not hold the photo out in the sun too long. Or else he'll lose even that. Maybe, though, just maybe, he can't stand to hold the photograph too long. It singes him a little. Too bright, or too hot.
Tamamo	'The proof that won't wound the egos of the people still clinging to a convenient delusion.' "Hmm, do you expect it will be so? I was thinking more of, 'only with proof will they listen to that which is obviously true.'" Tamamo takes the opportunity to briefly put an arm around Lilian and squeeze against her side. The opportunity doesn't remain long, afterward. 'They'd never fail to notice slightly-too-eyecatching jewelry, or an unusual accent or eye colour, or...' "Ah..."
Marigold	Someone remembers the stained-glass windows of the church clearly. Someone else, the roadside stand where apples are being sold... Out of a sea of blurry cars, one has a readable license plate. It's the one that looks almost like a swear word. The office buildings' exteriors are abstractly smooth, but the potted plant in the window is crystal-clear. It's funny what lodges in the memory. Scents, too. Rainwater, gasoline, charcoal smoke, fish, a meatball sandwich-- Oranges. There it is. The first glimpse of the memory named Schneider Greco, for those who follow that scent, comes suddenly on a little island depicting a moonlit street. Turn the corner and there she is. A nameless Foundation employee had glimpsed her from behind as she walked behind a car; the pale light shining off her even-paler back, bared by her dark jacket shrugged off one shoulder. Just as Lilian said, her pearls and feathers are so sharply defined- the employee's eyes must have lingered- that she almost looks real. Her presence tinges the whole area sharper, less toyetic. But her face is turned away. She was carrying a paper bag filled with groceries and bread. It's a senseless mundane moment. Judging by the way she's turning in towards the next house's door, maybe that's where her family lives. If Schneider's memories, or Marian's, were included in this simulation, that house would be bursting with life. But they aren't. There are more like that, if you keep looking. A glimpse of her coat, of her hair, sometimes even a gun... glimpses aren't enough. ---- There are several offices, and not all of them are promising. But following Flamel's premise, or just searching patiently enough, Tamamo can come to the Foundation office: a two-story brick building with austere white masonry embellishments, its facade just a little better-remembered than the rest. Here there's a different problem. This place is so central to enough employees' memories that, while the static chairs-and-counters of its interior are rendered sharply at every inch, the days blur thickly into each other. Second to second, day turns to night turns to day. The sussurrus of white-and-beige-clad figures shift and murmur and laugh- the employees remembering a hundred moments with each other- and coffee appears and disappears from counters, now for waking up in the morning, then for staying up at night. How can you sift through to the 'when' that Schneider was here?
Flamel Parsons	Flamel stops in that moment, the one with Schneider seen from behind. He steps around the shape, to see her from the other side. --- The Director paces among the old containment cell for UPE-1929. His eyes twitch, his hand on his cane-- --- --clenches, like his teeth, sucking in air for a moment. "It's like," He whispers, to her, or to himself. "You were self-contained. Alone. People are supposed to be half in themselves, half in the world, but you--" --- "--were just in yourself alone." The Director says, leafing through folders in the Records Department. Empty, sparse folders, cast aside. "Like a conspiracy. A conspiracy to leave you un-remembered. A global effort--" --- "--To eliminate a truth, to leave something un-remembered, to censor something." Flamel raises a hand, almost reaches for the memory's shoulder. "They're supposed to do that for the hollow earth, the secret replicant, the alien, the strange. So why--" --- "--Why, why, why--" The Director paces in front of webs of red string. --- "--Why did they do it to you? You were just a girl? Why did they do that to you?" But the memory doesn't speak. It can't speak. It's not a mental image of someone, it's sensory information, modulated by literal available data and affected by things like subconscious eye focus. No face, just features. Enough to put out an APB, but not enough to see a human. Much less an Arcanist. Flamel turns away and gets on to the office. "Sorry. Let me see what I can do about these day-overlaps."
Tamamo	Making note out loud of anything in the way of 'a scent of oranges' as she works along toward the office, Tamamo finds it as well-defined as she'd hoped -- and also rather noisier and more chaotic. From here, she can look through anything at all, reaching around like she'd seen Flamel do to look for a projector crank. This might be a bit harder for her than for a psychonaut, but she'll figure it out. If she were just looking for Schneider, it might be a lot harder -- but she isn't, even if that was Sonetto's request. The mission Sonetto's pretending this is will likely lead to the same place, but works just as well for Tamamo. With that in mind, she starts looking over the shoulders of office workers typing and scribbling reports, using the dates they put down to establish her sense of 'when,' and following the lines carefully from there. She just has to find... "Hmm, what would it be? Not a 'request for asylum,' if she were certain... unless there was a time when she was not certain... 'registration of arcanists' would certainly... not include her, if she were so avoidant. 'Manus Vindictae activity' would be... fruitless to assess, if she were an unknown asset, before 'that' encounter." This ends up being difficult, after all, but Tamamo is both patient and methodical. "One among you remembers red and feathers, I am sure."
Flamel Parsons	"I'm going to see if I can color-code them by subjective experience-haver and order of last encoding." Flamel says, nodding to Tamamo. As for the structure of the world, cranks and machinery should help. Trying to moderate the structure of the artificial astral structure, arrays of colored projector lenses pop up on lights, and the crank Tamamo reaches out for is a progression of both time and color, swapping the lens; rose-tinted, green-eyed, and every color between and around. Matching color to date should work, and subdividing the color-coded times should narrow precise dates and times. But what about the exact category of paperwork? The words are sharply rendered, so an investigation into the paperwork itself should be fruitful in data, but maybe less in meaning, until an expert works with it. "Ahh-- Sonetto, that's you here, I think. Maybe Lilian? I'm only loosely familiar with where Psychonaut and Foundation bureaucratic structure overlaps. Any idea what Schneider might have ever filed with the Foundation?" He asks, not knowing precisely what depths he may be cutting to.
Timekeeper	"If you think that this would be helpful, Ms. Sonetto, I shall see if I cannot find a trace of such." Sonetto has absolutely zero problem with, or seemingly any recognition of, Flamel regurgitating her own suggestion to Tamamo as if it was his own. So much so that, while looking around to try and ascertain the connections between memory isles, being addressed by Tamamo about it takes her by faint surprise. "Ah. Yes, because she smelled like that." Was Sonetto paying attention to this? Is it just part of her greyhound nature? If she noticed it so clearly as background information, that'd point strongly to the sense being useful in finding Schneider among these memories. "Do you think Schneider would have told them she was?" Sonetto didn't really think about that. She sort of just figures that a criminal is sensed on contact by every person they interact with, like the stain on a thief's hands. "It... may have come up when they investigated her identity in the city." The Greco family, minus one, all being human is what keeps needling at her. Not because Sonetto holds particularly strongly to the stance that the Foundation would give preferential status to humans, but because Schneider, as an arcanist whose goal was to support her human family, should be precisely who the Foundation is meant to help mediate with the world. The Greco family is a microcosm of Chicago as a whole; if they weren't helped, who was? "And a lovely, non-Vertin scapegoat." Sonetto opens her mouth to protest, but closes it by the time Lilian gets to her next sentence. Instead, she says, "If this investigation turns up that result, then Timekeeper's efforts to assist Schneider would have been endorsed in the abstract, but mismanaged before Timekeeper met her, making her alliance not suspect at all." The atmosphere of 'Chicago, again' doesn't escape even the densest among those who revisit it. The city of faceless ghosts is a ghost itself in memory, a place never to be visited again, but whose vapours were so suffocatingly inhaled for twenty four hours that every physical sense tingles in recognition. Sonetto is much more inured to the leering eyes and half-overheard words than Lilian is, but the bleak, damp veneer of it all reminds her, that everything with colour in those days in the city was found hiding underground and out of sight. There's a marquee in front of a half-remembered store, where a patch of rain steadily drips off the awning. Sonetto catches it in her palm, pooling it to reflect all the lights in the windows lining the street. "The image of Schneider... would certainly be unmistakeable here."
Timekeeper	The first whiff of orange makes her gasp sharply and whip around to the source. Half of a syllable escapes her mouth when she sees her first glimpse of Schneider, then dies as the peripheral memory vanishes. She tries to follow where Schneider might have walked in the city, to see her own perspective as to how she got to the Foundation office, but there just weren't enough people watching to draw even a partially coherent line from one point to the next. She fades in and out like a dream. Sonetto rubs her mouth, flattening her expression to focus again. "The office... Schneider said before that she asked her entire family to return to it in the worst case. If several of them came at once, we could try to search for memories of groups of similar-looking individuals." Sonetto passes behind the sharply remembered receptionist's desk like she belongs there, drifting through the memory of the office she was familiar with. She comes to a stop, some distance away from a cloud of grey and white around a water cooler, indistinct voices raised in chatter above the quieter sussurrus of conversation. After a few seconds, she makes a strange expression, holding a hand delicately up to a spot on her chest that corresponds neither with her heart or any kind of salute. "Or we could search for memories of... gossip. Cruel laughter."
Lilian Rook	'Hmm, do you expect it will be so? I was thinking more of, 'only with proof will they listen to that which is obviously true.'' "Sweet as ever." Lilian says, wearing a thin, weary smile. . . . . . . . . Memory is a funny thing to explore like this. Even as the symbolic foulness of Chicago oozes through its pores and bubbles up around her, quickening her steps lest they stick, filling her lungs with its imagined fumes, Lilian finds herself lingering on the fact that she must have experienced 'psychological representations' counting at least into the tens, but none of them so mundanely concrete as 'someone's memory' like this. Mind-scapes, wish realms, ancestral weapon souls, psychometry and artificial somnambulism; all of them made her think very little of what this would actually be like. This . . . Half-living diorama. Even though it moves and breathes, honking and chattering and smelling of urban life, the toyeticness of it, once rendered sufficiently cold and unpleasant by association with her own memories, lodges in Lilian's thoughts at a strange cross-angle to the other way in which the world can be like that; rendered lifeless for its lack of change, still living for its eerie, breathtaking, sickeningly infinite detail, unlike this, but somehow exactly like this as well. She retreats into her own thoughts, comparing and contrasting, wondering at the mechanisms of her own memory, and then the concept of memory entirely, until she moves on from the church and enters the Foundaton building while wistfully thinking about where memories go. She wasn't paying attention to Flamel at all. So it could mean anything when she turns to look at him, finds the approximate region of his eyes, and says, "Sucks to see how the sausage gets made, doesn't it? Even when it's your 'truth phenomenon'." ''registration of arcanists' would certainly... not include her, if she were so avoidant.' Lilian stiffens and relaxes, then breathes in and out. "If it were absolutely necessary to get her family in, I can imagine her pretending to be human, but if it were only convenient, then she wouldn't." Lilian says, confident. "Wouldn't dare. Wouldn't lower herself to." Honestly, it surprises her that they're all here in the first place. She assumed Schneider had some experience with the Foundation, but . . . "We had no information on her during the Valentines Day Massacre, did we?" Lilian says. "They hardly gave us anything on the gangs at the time, admittedly, but they had more on the historical dead than they did on one of the most powerful mobsters in the city; a high-profile, screamingly arcanist one. We only had that after." 'I'm going to see if I can color-code them by subjective experience-haver and order of last encoding.' "How much easier this would've been if she'd ever worn the Klein blue." Lilian says. Unwisely. Uneasily. Thinking too much. 'If this investigation turns up that result, then Timekeeper's efforts to assist Schneider would have been endorsed in the abstract, but mismanaged before Timekeeper met her, making her alliance not suspect at all.' "The investigation as a whole will turn up that conclusion all the same." Lilian says. She doesn't slow down to clarify, like she often does for Sonetto when she realizes she's speaking too 'loftily', leaning too much on heuristic. "The issue is, in part, how much of the Foundation isn't endorsing what they should, isn't it? The Chicago branch is the obvious suspect-- criminally so-- but I was simplifying when I spoke of it as a bargaining chip for Commissioner Pedra."
Lilian Rook	"The objective of this investigation, as it relates to the Storm Reformation bill, is to make an example of those who think they can play fast and loose with who the Foundation stands for, and in doing so, snap the elements who've been toying with the idea back into line." 'The image of Schneider... would certainly be unmistakeable here.' For an instant, Lilian imagines the heart-stopping scenario of her own image being found anywhere here, from the day and night before the Timekeeper's countdown. Remembering who they're actually tracking here is a logical reason to stop thinking about it, but she shakes her head to force it out of mind instead, more vehemently than she has to. 'The office... Schneider said before that she asked her entire family to return to it in the worst case.' "I wonder what it is that Manus Vindictae tells their own about the Foundation." Lilian says, immediately dissolving into the aggregate smear of the crowd. The lack of individuality, nor the blurring of one person into the next, or their own next and last frames of motion, doesn't seem to enter her perceptive field. In the stochastic smear of dead humanity, she navigates the kalaeidoscope like a mountain goat. While she thinks, her fingers trail along the edge of a bolted-down seat, absentmindedly feeling its texture, as if to align her thoughts in the abstract 'direction' of its corner. "Surely they must know that only the Saint Pavlov Foundation's headquarters are immune. Do they share that at all? Do they share the idea that all of the offices are? The sponsors are as well? It's a very easy sell, from the outside. Perhaps they just leave their members to gossip amongst each other, and believe what they believe." For once, the yearning edge to her hypothetical is largely minimized. Trying to imagine Schneider's last days occupies too much of her attention; the thoughts spoken aloud are primarily investigative. "It'd strange that she'd send her family here if she didn't think the Chicago office could somehow find them Storm immunity. The only reason to go without her would be if--" Lilian grimaces. "The only one I can think of would be that she didn't bring up her family until she was certain. And the only reason I can think of for that would be 'expecting to be rejected, for being an arcanist', so that they could all have a shot without her, as humans." She takes a deep breath. "Well. Perhaps that's a leap. No need to theorize when the truth may be right in front of us." She stops at the desk, looks once around the lobby, and says, "Funny. She stood out so much on the street. I don't see anyone particularly striking in here."
Marigold	"--To eliminate a truth, to leave something un-remembered, to censor something..." "They're supposed to do that for the hollow earth, the secret replicant, the alien, the strange. So why--" "--Why did they do it to you? You were just a girl? Why did they do that to you?" It's a good question. The girl named Schneider Greco could have answered it. The memory named Schneider Greco cannot. In one sense she is only one victim out of millions. The ghostly crowds you can spot her through- all of those faceless figures were forgotten more thoroughly, and in the end died just as dead. Is the tragedy here only that she was almost saved, and Chicago's other millions never stood a chance? But no, that can't be all of it. Because the world tried to erase her while she was still alive, too. Somehow, in some fashion that Flamel Parsons now may never understand, Schneider Greco was an alien on this Earth. ---- 'Groups of similar-looking individuals' catches... nothing of relevance. No family with twelve daughters, black hair, and red eyes. Did Schneider's family not make it here, even when she asked them to evacuate? Did they not trust in her word when it really counted? Or had all the employees evacuated already, by the time her family came? ... Knowing the inevitable outcome, maybe it's better you don't see the Grecos in their final hours. Searching for 'derisive laughter' in the office finds a lot. The men here (it's 1929; it is nearly all men) remember laughing about all sorts of things, some wholesome and some unwholesome. A coworker's faux pas. Racy jokes. An idiot in a story. Minor car accident, on the street. Similarly, every category of paperwork is a matter of bulk. Even 'request for asylum' can mean all kinds of things. But right where the two overlap, there's a scent of oranges. And as Tamamo or Sonetto or Flamel seize on that moment...
Marigold	"My-lord, please. For your kindly eyes..." It's her voice. It's slightly faded by imperfect recollection- or is it you who remembers Schneider's voice incorrectly?- but that's her, it's really her, speaking to the ghostly man behind the wooden counter in that small waiting-room. She wears her dark coat with an unusually modest white gown. The guns aren't with her. The bruises from her latest bout at the Walden are on her hands and collarbone. Her hair is a half-inch shorter; was this before she even met the Concord? And the way she leans up on her tiptoes, for the height she needs to push a sheaf of papers towards the Foundation clerk... But it isn't her. Schneider's face is gone, abstracted away into featurelessness. The man whose gaze you're seeing through didn't care to remember it, even though the office is empty on this cold morning but for her. On the asylum request, she has written the names of her mother and father (with paltry incomes, as is relevant to aid); her twelve sisters; and herself. HUMAN is written fourteen times in total, and ARCANIST once. Not all of the paperwork is legible, but the parts that stood out in memory are. ... I and my family know things of the Manus Vindictae, and are in fear of them, as we are of the Storm we know is coming to Chicago and this era. Whatever services I can offer you for a grant of safety I shall. If you understand this you must know we have no other hopes... "And if I may ask you to read the--" "You're literate, right?" the beige-clad gray ghost behind the counter interrupts. "... Yes, my-lord." "And you wrote down everything important? Then you don't need to say anything else. We'll give it a look." "Of course, my-lord." He takes the papers and he goes in the back, chatting with the other men as they give it a look. Their voices ebb in and out of memory. There's something about "fuckin' Italians" and something about "... heard about the Storm?" and something about "just parroting gossip", and someone says something about adoption, and then the laugh goes up. An employee gives Schneider the paperwork back with a bored expression, folded up. Her shoulders droop at the non-response. She makes it just out the door before she gets the courage to unfold them and look at what's scrawled on them in red. 'PAUPERS FUCK OFF' Memory does not capture what came after. No-one's eyes were on her then.
Flamel Parsons	She's gone, out that door. Out that door, to her fate. Flamel was silent for that whole exchange. He heard her voice, for the first time in over a month. Speaking up in all of that would have been unthinkable. And when she's gone, he's just staring at that door, where a memory of her passed without any recollection. Breathing shallowly. There's a ringing in his ears, one that builds from a soft whine to a deafening sound that is blocking out everything he could hear. He doesn't move, doesn't even blink. When he turns back, he moves slowly, his optimistic smile feebly weak and brittle. He says, "Someone," Swallow. "Someone has to do something." He nearly looks back to the door, but averts his eyes, as if somehow it got too bright even though nothing changed. "Someone's gotta do something. Someone's gotta do something." In just three repetitions, each word has lost its meaning, sounding like nonsense absent semantic load. "Someone's gotta do something." He's staring at his feet now. Fundamental facts of the world contradict. This has to happen, yet must never happen. The freedom for the men who work in places like this to behave like this, well, it must be a feature of institutions, and yet institutions must, must do something besides the the natural outcome of this. "Someone's..." He stops repeating it. He looks up to Lilian, Tamamo... And to Sonetto. Sonetto who knows so much about all of this, about the Foundation and about Schneider and about what it means to be 'human'. What it means to be 'arcanist'. 'Italian'. Or 'Pauper'. A yawning, gnawing question burns inside him. What should he be internalizing? He can't just say it, but he can't move forward until knowing what kernel of truth to carry away from this -- knowing that it will break some flimsy piece of his inner truth, and shape something he's going to do in, with, to the Foundation. Someone's gotta do something. Who? What?
Tamamo	Tamamo had made enough different guesses over the course of this search that she was bound to eventually be able to say, "Ah, so, I was right, after all." About a few things. To Sonetto, she beckons with her hand after catching her eye, to look at what the mission demands -- the behavior, or misbehavior, of Foundation personnel. 'Is this permitted?' 'Is this ordered?' She doesn't expect she'll need to ask. It speaks for itself, this failure to uphold ideals, this betrayal of her expectations. It's not to rub her face against it, but some coloring of that may be unavoidable. There's no avoiding it. Tamamo's protecting no one's eyes from what happened here and then. 'Someone's gotta do something.' "Though it is right to mourn a friend, Mr. Parsons, remember that what we do here is not for the sake of those in this past, but for our future, that those like the wrongfully abandoned need not share that same fate. We labor not for the dead, but for the living. Those who remain are those who can be helped, and it is for them that we will." To Lilian, "To speak only of 'corruption,' we have our smoking gun, as it were. We may find here their faces, their names, those to whom they wrote letters, and even the numbers to their safe. I suggest we find these things by other means, if we do not wish to place some strain on Mr. Parsons' continued stay."
Lilian Rook	'My-lord, please. For your kindly eyes...' Even if it's a little off, it's close enough. Enough for her train of thought to fly off the abruptly ending rails beneath it and crash somewhere irrecoverable. Lilian has spent more time thinking about Schneider's death than almost anyone there that day, and it still gets her. Consumed as she is with the shape of shape of her absence in every room of the Foundation, every time she comes here, she believed herself the most braced of anyone for something so hollow as a memory, and was wrong. The sudden, urgent need she feels to rush through the crowd over to where 'Schneider' is, to tell her everything and ask her everything in turn, to greedily know just one more facet of her mind to carry forward into the lukewarm hole she had left in the Suitcas, is defeated not by cold reality nor by common sense, but by the weight of the words she remembers as her last. Schneider's, and her own to her. So Lilian says "They didn't even remember her face." and clenches her fists by her sides. "Not even her eyes." She says it like it means anything. As if anyone in this amalgam of daydreams posessed all that much humanity either. As if all of them did. "Just her accent, some bruises, and how weak and small she looks like this." 'fuckin' Italians' '... heard about the Storm?' 'just parroting gossip' She doesn't need to read the words on paper to get angry. When they finally arrive, they're little more than the formal stamp on a letter whose contents she already knows by heart. Her fists tremble, aching from tension, held below her waist only with agonizing effort. Her teeth clench until the jaw ache radiates into her eyes. Some urge compels her to move her hand, and she redirects it to her face instead, pressed over the scar as if smothering a stray spark. "She should have walked through that door in red, and she should have shot them all to death like animals. They didn't deserve to see her in white." The fist still at her waist clutches tight around the knot of blue she started wearing the day after. 'Someone's gotta do something. Someone's gotta do something.' Lilian breathes sharply back in. She smushes both palms to her face, digs the heels of her hands into her eyes, and chokes back the burning bile she feels creeping up the back of her throat. Every neuron below the brainstem screams at her to draw her weapon and do the job for her, and all of them above scream at her to do anything else, anything less hatefully pointless, in front of Sonetto. 'Someone's...' "When I told you to kill Druvis if you had to," Lilian says, from behind her own clenched fist, turning her voice to smoking gravel between her fingers. "That was when you were supposed to do something. When I told you all in the Concord not to try and play both sides. When I said that this was this and that was that, and if Schneider couldn't be ours then she had to be Manus Vindictae's. Do you remember?" "Back when you all thought you could see the writing on the wall after Angela, after me, and thought you'd get ahead of it this time; like Manus Vindictae and the Foundation and everyone else was stupid and only you had the answers. That was when you were supposed to do it." She can't bring herself to name the specific Code. She can't bring herself to say it as it is, either. But it is what she thinks of. As good as it feels to cut down Flamel, she can't hide how unhappy with herself, too, in trying. "When it's life that's on the line, the chance to 'do something about is' so short that you'll miss it if you flinch. You'll never know it was there unless you're looking, hard, both eyes open, all the time, and only if you never blink. We're here because Vertin understands that, Schneider understood it, and the Foundation doesn't at all."
Lilian Rook	'We labor not for the dead, but for the living. Those who remain are those who can be helped, and it is for them that we will.' Lilian drops her hands away from her face, mutters an apology for her 'language' just loud enough for Sonetto to hear, and trudges back to Tamamo. Once she feels the heat of the moment bleed away, she reaches out to take her hand, as if waiting for hers to cool. "This is all for Vertin's sake." she repeats. An agreement. A self-assurance. "And all the people in all the other Storms who still deserve her." She takes a deep breath. "But things like this happen to people like her because they keep dying, and being forgotten, and everyone who might have helped tells themselves 'the dead can't be helped' afterwards. It's all we ever hear, after all the ones who need help are too dead to ask for it anymore. So . . . I suppose I'd like to think about doing something about it now. If she can't be alive to get angry about it where everyone can see, I want to do it for her."
Tamamo	Tamamo's hand is taken, and she holds Lilian's, rubbing thumb to knuckles. "If it is your wish, however large or small, then I will support it. Think not I would ask you quell your anger. I know you would not forget those who must still need us and them, even then."
Flamel Parsons	Wheels struggle to turn in Flamel's mind. Systems grind as they try to reconcile. Flamel steeps his mind in misery for a time. As usual, he understands this as a necessary request: Suffer now, to a certain specific degree, because that is what's needed to do this. It's needed to balance doing something awful, and to be good. But, just this once, Flamel's body stops that posture mid-movement. He is a good person. He doesn't have to be every kind of good person, but he can be one type of good person. That's something he's refused to leave un-internalized. So his face hardens up, and his weak smile seeps onto his face, trying to fill up with hope and kindness. "S--... I need to do something about that, then." He turns to Sonetto, expecting something. "Something about this. Something to stop this from happening again. I can't, won't, do what Schneider would have done. But I've got to do something for her." The sunglasses keep his gaze from being searing, but the rush of expectations on Sonetto, without Vertin to drive her forward, are surely massive. Because if she doesn't have a plan, soon or now, Flamel will come up with one.