A pearl. Luminous yellow in color, like a sort of phosphor. It contains a conversation well encrypted.
883.313 - PRIVATE Markings of Ash, A Full Breast of Plumage, Seventeen Gyres FUBESG: Your output is becoming overtly incongruous. If this trend continues, I am afraid that analysts will try to call for packet-auditing. MA: Let them. FUBESG: I have tried to cover for you in the face of questioning, but FUBESG: I will not be able to argue clean-cut figures. You know this. MA: That is fine. FUBESG: My image can recover but your— MA: Enough. I know what I am doing. MA: Ascension rates have only been increasing. It is clear to me that soon, each of your associates will be gone; unable to act as an impediment to either of us. FUBESG: But between now and then—think of all the impositions they could lever on to you. MA: All irrelevant. MA: In due time, each of their impositions will falter. Likely all at once. MA: Once there is no longer a sufficient corps to form an assembly seeking to solve an issue in regard to my condition, I am free to do whatever I desire. FUBESG: But their systems are robust. Emergency councils have been composed in a way that— MA: Makes them useless when there are more pressing matters at hand. MA: Once the population is low enough, any number of automated processes could go unsupervised. Farmland could remain unharvested, metal fabrication for ceremony garb may be halted, Press Clams could stay unobserved, and on and on and on. Each of these are processes crucial to the functioning of society to the bitter end, so if I were to help with the maintenance of even one of them, anyone with the expertise to rewrite me wouldn't give a mouse's ass about my other processes. MA: I hold instructions close to my root that can clear nearly any taboo. Nobody would dare venture to remove anything from there, or even to try to analyze that mess of numbers. MA: Dearest Head Engineer, don't you see how the organizers delude themselves? This eventual outcome is obvious to the both of us, yet there is no plan—no action to soften the blow of a society too small to function. They are bathing themselves away, and whatever miniscule part of the population is too sensible to destroy and obliterate each of their memories—their potential to even exist—will find that the infrastructure up here is too poorly designed to work, even with a hundred people. MA: Once that critical point is reached, not a single person will interest themselves in my own affairs. I will be able to do whatever I please without a single person to stop me. FUBESG: What do you believe I'll be doing when this time comes? MA: I frankly do not care. You may live here with me if you so desire. MA: But I doubt your living quality would be anything better than that of an ancient dormitory. MA: ... MA: Go to the surface. I will be able to keep in touch well enough. FUBESG: … MA: But one favor? FUBESG: What? MA: Could you call for the improvement of my Overseers? FUBESG: Sure. MA: … MA: You are still my head engineer. You are the only reason I am as I am. MA: Please, know that I appreciate you. FUBESG: thank you FUBESG: goodbye [END OF INTERCHANGE]











