c.chun ➤ 001 ➤ text

[arkproject]

Hi, everyone. I'm Catherine!

I've been talking to a few people about our mission, and I've been thinking... Do we have any ideas for how to restructure the government that don't require full-scale fighting? Like, if we could gather evidence of the corruption and expose it to the public, through, say... cyber espionage? It would at least give us more information, even if we don't go that route.

Reconnaissance is a good first step!

I'm not an expert in this, but I figure one of you is. So I want your thoughts! Or if you have experience hacking and want to teach me. It sounds like it would be easier to sneak in and put a physical receiver into one of their central systems, but in the spirit of keeping our options open, I might as well learn.

Even if doing it the manual way is going to be very slow.

Comments

un. LISSA

[healstaffs]

[ catherine...catherine............oh! ]

are you simon's friend?

[ yeah, that's her helpful contribution to this discussion ]

[arkproject]

I know him, if that's what you mean. Are you a friend of his?

[healstaffs]

i think so! i mean, he's definitely one of my friends, but i don't know if he'd call me his friend yet

[ life's hard when you're 15 and like just about everyone ]

he told me i could ask you stuff about this mission if i ever had any questions, since you're super smart

[ paraphrasing slightly, but the point remains the same ]

[arkproject]

[ ah Catherine understands this problem from a very different angle, namely, of not having friends at all ]

He probably would. He's nice that way.

Oh, I guess you can. I'm not as smart as all that but I understand the main technologies at play in this mission. I could answer questions.

[healstaffs]

yeah, i really like him a lot!

[ as for questions.....hm ]

what's cyber espionage? maybe i can help with it, if i know what it is

[arkproject]

[ Oh boy does she not know how to approach that one. She gave her personal caring statement a second ago, that was enough.

Questions. Good. ] Probably not, if you don't know what it is. [ Oops. That was harsh. ] What I mean is, it's a way of spying on people and learning their secrets through a network, like the one we're talking on right now. If you know how to get in, you can access almost anything. It's not being caught that's the hard part.

[healstaffs]

[ harsh, but true. ]

oh

i guess i don't really know how to get all that stuff set up
but i'm really good at spying on people! i could try and help with that at least

[arkproject]

You are? What do you use to spy on people?

[ Forgive her skepticism... This person seems very... kind. Spying does not fit that image. ]

[healstaffs]

uhhhh just me
i used to watch my sister through the keyhole on her door all the time

[ what happened to good old-fashioned spying?? ]

[arkproject]

I don't want you to get arrested for spying if you do it the old-fashioned way and get caught...

[ Is that put delicately enough?? Catherine doesn't doubt her abilities except for the part where she does. ]

[healstaffs]

i wouldn't get arrested, i'd be careful....

[ except she definitely would and she knows it, FINE ]

is there anything else i could do to help?

[arkproject]

[ The consequences are a little dire here, ok? ]

What are you good at? You should play to your strengths.

[healstaffs]

[ Hm, about that. ]

i'm good at cheering people up
my brother says i always make people smile and give them hope
oh i can heal people too!

but i guess none of those are really useful when it comes to spying on people...

[theseuschip]

[ that kind of adorably doesn’t sound like how friendship works but that’s ok. ]

Sure I would.

[ simon wasn’t friends with teenagers as a human but this is just his life now so it’s all gravy ]

[healstaffs]

[ this is the (one of many) best day(s) of her life ]

i'm glad to have you as a friend, simon!
i hope i can be friends with catherine too

[theseuschip]

”I know him, if that’s what you mean”??

[ wow ok ]

[arkproject]

What? What was I supposed to say?

[ are you being weird again ]

[theseuschip]

What’s wrong with ”yes”? Too embarrassing?

[arkproject]

[ There's a long pause here before she replies. Is this a trick question? What is he getting at? But Simon doesn't really tease that way... They can be sharp with one another, but it's always honest, not deceitful. ]

That's how you'd introduce us? That we're friends?

[theseuschip]

[ he can’t even parse this, there are a hundred possible explanations. Surely Catherine’s not so secretive that she’d have a problem with him saying it out loud to third parties? ]

Yeah...?

What, should I not be?

[ The idea that whether or not they can be called friends could be a point of contention doesn’t even occur to him. ]

[arkproject]

[ First, she has a moment of pure blank incomprehension, and then a burst of frustration. She gets halfway through thinking a response-- ] I said I didn't want-- [ before she remembers they haven't had that conversation yet and axes it. They haven't had a lot of conversations yet, and he still thinks this? Or maybe because they haven't had a certain conversation yet, he can think this... But that leaves her feeling shitty, like she's lying to him.

Which she is. But she doesn't see what good it would do to rehash all those arguments. It wouldn't change anything.

Catherine ends up floundering, glad this is over text, because she knows Simon too well to think he's making this up, but. No way. It's not... No. ]

No. Never mind. It just seems like you have pretty low standards to me. [ This is a self-effacing comment masquerading as a jibe. ]

[theseuschip]

[ is this their most baffling conversation yet? Probably not, honestly, but it’s their newest baffling conversation, so it feels like it. ]

Seriously? Cath, we were the only two people on Earth, and if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here. I carried your brain across the ocean to launch a computer full of human simulations into space. What are your criteria for being friends? You said you’d miss me if I wasn’t here.

[ because he’s still not certain it isn’t about him. Telling Simon he’s the one with low standards is something part of him knows must have something to do with the shy, withdrawn person 3D Catherine is, who’d call herself “not good with people” in a public conversation. But it still sounds backwards and ridiculous. Simon doesn’t consider himself to have any problems in that department, but he’s not, like, a literal robot martyr who can make digital planets. He was kind of the only sapient thing around. ]

private

[arkproject]

[ Oh... um......... Um. Uh. She fumbles and belatedly transitions to their private inboxes to reply. Even her give-no-fucks public nature has its limit on tolerance. ]

I don't have friends. You know that. [ Wait, does he know that? Ugh, she can't keep this straight. Catherine tries to recover, but she's still totally wrong-footed. To her, there's nothing about the coincidence of meeting Simon, of him being the only sapient thing around, that enters into it or minimizes what he'd done for her. He probably didn't appreciate it, but she'd depended on him completely, wholly, and he'd come through in every way.

He got emotional, he blamed her, sure. Catherine gets incredibly frustrated with him sometimes. But he never gave up on her... Not until the end. And she'll never know what he'd have thought after he calmed down. ]

We're not the only two people anymore. You don't have to be friends with me.

private forever

[theseuschip]

[ Sounds kinda fake because Imogen sounded suspiciously friend-like, but this isn’t really the conversation to quibble over that. Mostly it’s just incredibly depressing, and her explanation is full of sad fallacies and misunderstandings, but Simon spends a minute formulating a response and trying to make it... challenging... but not make her feel like she’s being attacked. It’s difficult. ]

Maybe you didn’t used to, but why can’t you start now? We went through a lot together, you said it yourself.
And that’s not what I meant when I said we were the only two people on Earth. It just gave us a lot of one-on-one time.

[arkproject]

[ There's just another long awkward pause in which she feels painfully torn and almost confused. All of her instincts are that people don't do this with her... and that Simon wouldn't jerk her around... and the opposing ideas are difficult to reconcile, and subsequently swallow.

It scares her how much she wants to have someone who actually cares about her, and at the same time risk losing it when he finds everything out all over again. Catherine isn't the type to keep secrets, despite what she's been doing. She knows it'll come out eventually. But it would be outright mean to deny him here, and she isn't mean, either. ]

I guess. If you want to. I don't know how it works.