Soul Bound

1          Soul Bound

1.2        Taking Control

1.2.4      An Artful Carnivale

1.2.4.37   Monkeysphere

Only fifteen minutes in which to find the location of their secret headquarters from assassins prone to being elusive and, on the topic of problems that might be caused by the increasingly numerous and capable desperate people, to find ideas on how to respond to them in arlife from Tomsk, who was being even more elusive than the assassins.

Kafana: {Tomsk, you were saying “However…”}

Tomsk: {However, even if you were to eliminate the precariat by giving them all overpaid sinecure jobs for life, that’s just welfare in a thin disguise. They wouldn’t feel they earned it. That sort of situation doesn’t give a feeling of self-worth. It lacks dignity. Sure, they’d be less desperate, but it ignores the other half of the equation. Why do you get even comfortably wealthy people joining death cults, and falling for fanatics who promise them a greater meaning to their existence?}

Kafana: {I don’t know. Why do you?}

Tomsk: {Because they don’t feel their current life is meaningful. They don’t feel loyalty to their current society and improving it, because they don’t think it holds any loyalty towards them. Some live in a society where they don’t have a vote. Some do have a vote but don’t see casting that vote having an effect. They don’t feel listened to. They feel powerless. Insignificant. Worthless. And they resent it.}

Kafana: {Like the way the Lovari don’t feel any allegiance to Torello or any need to help defend it, were pirates to attack it? “They do nothing for us, so why should we do anything for them?”}

Tomsk: {Even when the state does something, such people feel it is impersonal, like the state doesn’t really see them - not as individuals, anyway. Crumbs from the giant’s table, scraps the giant doesn’t care to bother picking up. There’s no emotion, no human face, behind the giving. Or they see others gaining more, and feel robbed of “their fair share”. The psychological reason behind it doesn’t matter so much as the lack of caring for others, for the people they classify as “them” rather than as “us”. You don’t blow up nice Mrs. Meadows who lives next door and whose door you fixed for her once, and she gave you a pot of homemade jam. But the bastards in the town over there, who honk at you on the roads if you drive too fast or too slow? They’re fair game. It’s all about the monkeysphere.}

Kafana: {The what?}

The manta ray banked left and started along the shallower narrower canal separating the Scorpioni Den from the area with the Doss and the Night Market. They were gliding just above the canal bed, and there was far more rubbish here - presumably because the water flowed more slowly. And, was that a dead body?

Tomsk: {The monkeysphere. Otherwise known as the drinking buddy number. The number of people you know and keep in sufficiently close social contact with that if you saw them in a tavern you wouldn’t feel embarrassed about joining them uninvited for a drink. For most people that’s somewhere between 100 and 250 people. Extraverts with good memories tend towards the higher end, but even they have to use artificial aids to keep track of the favours and details involved in maintaining interpersonal relationships, if they become politicians, journalists or other professions that depend upon networking.}

Kafana: {And that relates because?}

Tomsk: {Because as society gets larger and more complex, more fractured and more automated, people find it harder to relate to it, to identify with it. At some point, people move over to actively rejecting it, treating society itself as the enemy. I think part of the reason why the Lovari act the way they do is because it evolved as a habit that serves to distance themselves from society. Less chance of young Lovari settling down in a town with non-Lovari if the town contains folk who’ve been tricked by the group and might take out their revenge upon an individual once the group supporting them has moved along the road.}

Kafana: {You’ve a nasty suspicious mind.}

Tomsk: {I’ve seen that sort of thinking before. In the street gangs, and among freaks in the circus. They don’t want their self-esteem tied to acceptance by society; they make a clean break, to avoid hankering after it. They burn their boats.}

Kafana: {And you’re afraid of people like that taking over an asteroid or a biologicals lab?}

Tomsk: {Have you any idea how easy pervasive drone delivery makes a global scale bioweapon attack?}

Kafana: {You’re talking about a return to the Bad Years.}

Tomsk: {There was a lot of craziness back then. Not just the headline grabbers such as cannibalism among groups too afraid to leave their houses, or mobs invading zoos to slaughter all the animals because some idiot journalist put spin on a scientific paper about cross-species transmission in order to get advertising revenue. On the part of governments too.}.

Kafana: {Like the Gerontocide?}

Tomsk bowed his head for a moment, then spoke bitterly.

Tomsk: {The evidence wasn’t leaked until years later. They deliberately chose to let the retirees die, and concentrate their resources upon saving “the deserving” who might still pay income tax. They even used their cyber division to boost faked stories about seniors who volunteered as first responders to nuclear plant meltdowns saying the same willingness to sacrifice for their country applied. Is it any wonder there’s so little trust in politicians and their advisors?}

They made another left turn, onto a wide but shallow canal full of gondolas. The target she was tracking had ascended to nearly ground level now and moving about slowly, with considerable pauses.

Kafana: “It looks like he’s moving around a single building, doing stuff rather than travelling; probably reporting in. I think we have their headquarters.”

She got a quest update notification, and checked the quest log:

Name   : A Sailors’ Revenge

Type   : Normal

Level  : D

Origin : Etruscan City States / Torello / Libri / Captain Nafaro

Details:

Captain Cuniberti of the Valorosa has been assassinated.

Help his crew find the assassin, so they can rain justice

down upon the perpetrator at the point of a bloody cutlass.

Progress:

You have located the Assassin’s HQ building and gained

a description of a man with the bleeding mask.

Name   : Find the Leak

Type   : Chain, Competitive

Level  : D

Origin : Etruscan City States / Torello / Arsenal / Tenente Leggera

Details:

Someone is leaking the schedule of convoys carrying metals to Torello.

Find out how the pirates are getting the information, and tell Leggera

before it is too late.

Progress:

You have asked Lucian of the Lovari to investigate the ex-members of the

Red Circle, down at the Bully Pit. You discovered the Lord Ruffo is betting

on metals becoming increasingly scarce, and that the pirates are avoiding

harming ships other than their direct targets.

Name   : Market Mayhem

Type   : Chain

Level  : E

Origin : Etruscan City States / Torello / Necropolis / Ruffiana

Details:

Someone has paid for the assassination of several people connected

with shipping, and it is having a big impact upon the financial

markets of Torello. Discovering who benefitted the most from

the deaths of those particular people.

Stakes : Become a personal enemy of Gideon, the Skeleton King

Progress:

You have traced the beneficiary as far as Vanni di Avolo.

Name   : Tremors in the Market

Type   : Normal

Level  : D

Origin : Etruscan City States / Torello / Mercato / Pantalone

Details:

Someone has been intercepting couriers carrying market information

from incoming ships to Torello's exchanges, and Pantalone (head of

the Bancario) is worried that if some investors having foreknowledge

it is going to upset the status quo. Help bring stability back to

Torello's financial system.

Progress:

You discovered The Brute Squad intercepting a courier, and that

Beltrame was behind it.

Name   : Defend our Reputation

Type   : Normal, Completed

Level  : E

Origin : Etruscan City States / Torello / Mercato / Mikalos Czerny

Details:

Rumour has it that the auctions run by House Czerny are rigged.

Investigate what’s behind the rumour, and provide evidence of your findings.

Progress:

You have discovered that items with falsified provenances were being

auctioned by the firm "Ciotto & Sons", and have evidence confirming this

and that the man behind it is Baron Dado Orsini.

Name   : Battle the Bully

Type   : Normal

Level  : E

Origin : Etruscan City States / Torello / ???

Details:

The Baron is receiving artifacts and other items from the Pirates.

Foil his scheme!

Name   : Cart-esian Mystery

Type   : Class_Restricted

Level  : E

Origin : Etruscan City States / Torello / Arsenal / Ulpian

Details:

Find out what happened to the cartload of scrolls that survived the

desecration of the Library of Rac, and bring word to Ulpian.

Progress:

You have found a scrap of parchment from the original scroll collection.

You have learned the name of Rikel, son of Jonas the farrier.

Name   : For the Honour of Amaryllis

Type   : Normal

Level  : D

Origin : Etruscan City States / Torello / Libri / Master Poet Moschus

Details:

Prove to Mistress Amaryllis that Master Painter Poussin’s version of the

story about Nomia, Daphis & Lamia is incorrect.

Progress:

You have spoken to the Undine, Nomia, and learned the sacrifice she desires.

Name   : Skill challenge

Type   : Repeatable, Solo (Alderney), Timed

Level  : E

Origin : Etruscan City States / Torello / Arsenal / Sweet Delights

Details:

You boasted you could make a better mask than any at Sweet Delights.

Prove your skill within the next 7 days (arlife time).

Stakes : ???

Well, they’d definitely made some progress today, though they’d ended up with more quests than they’d started the day with. And none of them seemed connected with their main Lovebirds quest chain. Should they just ignore the minor ones, like that silly skill challenge? Alderney was already far too pressed for time. Whoops, thinking of which...