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Wild Evening Island
d8f4d2
Suggestions taken: All of them except opening our brain, because we can't get anything from that yet.
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"You have paid for your lesson in the need for politeness and consideration. We are at balance. If you don't mind my asking though, why wouldn't you meditate and find your place in the world? It is a useful way to learn things you need to know, and to understand the things you do know better."
Spade frowns as he continues driving, and asks, "Why bother with a windscreen, and comfortable seats, and seatbelts, and airbags, and double shock absorbers for a car? That stuff just takes up space, and mass. That lowers your handling, top speed, safe speed, and the distance you can travel per KWh of battery charge. So you're better off without any of it, right?"
"You think seeking visions is like throwing away your windshield and seatbelts?"
"I remember that seeking visions like that, it wasn't something we could do before the world ended. It's dangerous, it's weird, and I know roads and people enough that I don't need or want to do it very often. I'm better off not sacrificing my attention on my surroundings to get vague hints that don't make any sense, just like I'm better off not sacrificing my windshield, shocks, comfy seat, seatbelt and airbags for a bit more speed and handling."
"The communion gives more than just a speed and handling increase you can't even use because this road is too rough and winding. It's a source of knowledge and insight that gives us more than we had before the change."
"Most of the people alive died from the change, and people still do die from getting put in a coma by it. They also die from getting distracted and headfucked by that psychic bullcrap. I want no part of it unless the other choices are all clearly worse."
"No guts."
"Dumb risk. I take enough of those speeding along like this every day. Speaking of speeding along, we're here early."
The electric car launches up through the air, then thumps back onto the incline of the hill further up. At the top of the hill a windmill sheathed with solar film flies by so quickly you barely recognize it. Past the windmill, you finally see your first in-person view of Fort Hippie.
Electric fences to keep in livestock and keep out predators and pests, towers wrapped in solar film with machine guns or windmills at their tops, a collection of steel frame and concrete brick buildings covered in planters and solar panels. All this and more goes by too fast to examine before the car fishtails to a stop in front of one of the larger, steel-frame buildings.
"I was told to come to the sunken, concrete bunker near the center," you state, uncertain why Spade stopped here.
"We're forty minutes early, your meeting is supposed to be a lunch date. Please get out of my car and into that shack, they're not ready for you yet. This place is the local watering can. I took you here to wait because I'm stressed out after driving with a scary, exhausting person like you in my baby. Now c'mon, we're here."
"I hope they have something to drink that isn't alcohol."
"You can't drink alcohol, but you can take a guy's stuff and threaten him? That's two times scary, folks who never drink are the ones you've gotta watch. They get their kicks from weirder things."
You judiciously remain silent about Spade's bad singing as you exit the car. First you swing your frame pack onto your back, then haul the two heavy bags of almonds out of the back, one in each arm. While you're doing this Spade attaches and rolls down solar film over the hood and windows of the car. He double checks that all the doors are properly closed and locked, then catches up to you waiting at the building's door and opens it. As he holds it open, you step into the dark.
You scan the place as your eyes start to adjust to the dimly lit interior. There is a solid wooden bar with an open kitchen behind it, a stage, wooden tables with a mixture of metal and wooden chairs, speakers and spotlights hanging down from the ceiling around the stage, and a giant, doughy, lump of a man on a hammock by the door. The windows are all protected by wire mesh and raised high to provide light, and potentially airflow, but no view outside unless one climbs up on a stool or table.
A gray blur whooshes out of the kitchen, thumps against the wall near the door, and lands as a rumpled apron on the large man in the hammock. A woman's voice follows the apron, "Get in the kitchen and mind the stove would you? We've got early arrivals for lunch." Moments later an olive-skinned woman follows the voice, wearing a white bandeau with shoulder straps, and a skirt. As she steps into full view behind the bar she speaks to Spade, "You're early. Skinny, scars, and saffron, with all the bags, is the new arrival?"
-Come in, sit down, talk with the woman.
-Hold 3, to spend on the questions listed under read a charged situation one for one.
-Ask about (fill in the blank).
-Other (specify)
P.S. We can't open your brain or read a charged situation because we already have. If we sit down to talk with someone we could maybe read a person but doing so implies our conversation with them is adversarial and important, so if we do that it will be.
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