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[recollecters]

Welcome to Retrospec™, the last social media network you will ever need. You are one of the few selected to test this exciting new platform based on our cutting-edge algorithms. Less than two hundred invitations have gone out, and membership is not currently open to the public. However, we hope you will come to see how useful Retrospec™ is, given time. We have for your use a variety of features such as text, voice, video, and image posts. We encourage you to explore our many options. Anyway, now that the copypaste part is out of the way! Jim here, requesting you guys make your secret meetings a little more exciting. It's not like you're not trying with the whole "let's meet off the network!" dealio, but I have some serious concerns. For one thing, no secret handshakes or phrases? Not even dramatic meeting locations? The trying rating is about half a star if that. And I'm almost bored to tears with the whole back and forth about what's going on. Not bored enough to give you a cheat sheet, but still. I can't get myself taken off surveillance duty, so at least try to make it a little more exciting! You guys might like this wikihow. Later! Jim Halloway Research & Development Retrspec Incorporated Please feel free to use this post as a network mingle. Every toplevel can be considered a new post, and threadjacking is permitted. No NPC response will be given. Usernames are the character's full real AU names, not aliases or chosen nicknames or usernames, and seemed to have filled themselves in; nothing characters do can change or obscure their names currently. Characters who have been in game for more than one month will find they can change their profile pictures; newcomers are locked into their first choice. At various points throughout the day users will be sent images of themselves from behind, regardless of where they are. There doesn't seem to be any way to catch whoever might be taking and sending these, however, especially since being alone in a room doesn't seem to be a deterrent. This post is an overflow from the original post here. Feel free to either carry over threads from there or create entirely new ones.

Comments

[true_noir]

(OOC: From here)

I can be quite stubborn. I want to believe that there must be somewhere that is remotely safe, though it might require some real work to find a way to do it.

[sotenbori]

Passing messages on paper might be easiest. Possibly in code.

[true_noir]

It is not a terrible idea. But, before we go further with this discussion, I think it is safe to assume that here is not the best place to be having it, for what I suspect are somewhat obvious reasons.

[sotenbori]

Suggest an alternative and I'll be there, then.

[true_noir]

[She didn't know this man, so somewhere public sounded good.]

I know a starbucks, on First and Main. We can meet there and talk, if you would find that amenable.

[sotenbori]

Sounds good to me. I'll meet you there

[want to continue to action here or move it elsewhere?]

Action

[true_noir]

(OOC: Here works well, I think. We're not under threat of captcha after all.)

[She sent him a time to meet and was there waiting about fifteen minutes beforehand. A steaming cup of tea rested in front of her, along with a half-eaten scone and one of those canned energy drinks that they seemed to think tasted like fruit juice.

She looked up when she saw a face that matched the icon and waved him over.]

[sotenbori]

[at least it isn't too hard to find her, especially since she gets there before him. he waves back and walks over to her table.]

Lemme go order somethin' so I'm not just wastin' space.

[he goes, orders a black coffee, and comes back before too long so sit across from her, duties of being a good customer now taken care of]

Okay, hey. Thanks for meeting with me.

[true_noir]

[Purple hair didn't hurt either, most likely. It wasn't brightly colored, but it was identifiable. She nodded while he got his drink and waited patiently, taking another bite as she remained patiently there. When she spoke, it was with a bit of a French lilt to it still.

You are welcome. It certainly is strange times that we live in, to meet like this, is it not?

[sotenbori]

[the purple hair definitely doesn't hurt. he's a little more difficult to spot in a crowd since he's not missing an eye, but once he gets that sweet regain meet ups are going to be super easy.]

No kidding. Clandestine meetings, missing horses, dancing fruit that seemed normal until just recently. It's fucking crazy.

[true_noir]

[Even if depth perception was going to be a bitch...]

The question is how do we deal with this. [Whether he noticed or not, she wasn't wearing the cloak that had begun to appear in her pictures, nor any of the objects she'd gained recently. Her phone was in front and conspicuously off.]

They seem to have access to almost every way to watch us, so we have to find ways to talk without them seeing. That almost seems more important to start, or anything we do is undone.

[sotenbori]

[ha ha ha it'll be fINE]

Right. It's not a problem with any simple solutions. [he pauses, thinking for a moment] I heard people tried to break into their office but it was empty?

[true_noir]

I've been in twice, and it is mostly a joke at our expense. [She took a sip of her drink.] The first time, there was a desk, two doors and an elevator. Nothing in the desk, and the elevator panels were fake. We could only leave when someone used the app to contact outside.

The second time, the security code to get in was what you americans call a "Mad Lib." When complete, we got in to find glass tubes with colored rocks inside, and no elevator or desk. If you touched the rocks, you felt homesick and fled for home, chased by reporters asking about your mad lib. [She took another sip.]

I doubt anyone will ever find anything worth finding there, though I will go back repeatedly, just to make them think it is working.

[sotenbori]

[majima listens, nodding after she finishes talking]

That makes sense. It sounds like one of the few things we actually can accomplish.

[true_noir]

It is one of the easiest ways we can approach this. Make ourselves look like we're playing along, learn the tiny bits we can, while looking for some other chance to hunt down real information.

[She grunted.] I would say that a lot of what we are doing is biding time, waiting for them to slip up, but I am not infinitely patient. I want to do more than just wait for them to make a mistake.

[sotenbori]

How long have you been noticing these things for?

[the way she says it, it's gotta be longer than him certainly. she's obviously got experience here]

[true_noir]

The app first appeared around Founder's Day, in January. As far as we can tell, nobody else had it before then, and the strangeness did not seem to happen before then. So, about five months.

[sotenbori]

That's a pretty long time.

[he's surprised - both that it's been going on that long without him noticing and that it's been going on that long with still so few concrete answers.]

[true_noir]

To say the least. But it hasn't shown any signs of lessening. If anything it is getting worse, though we're I think starting to get a bit more desperate to find answers, the worse it gets.

[sotenbori]

And it's hard to do that when they're watching your every move.

[he Understands]

[true_noir]

Which has led us to places like these. Some level of planning seems to be in order. It is simply hard to plan over the network, because if we plan where they can see us, it ruins the entire attempt.

... a way to pass word without alerting them would be best, but something that isn't too hard to do, because we're not all spies here.

[sotenbori]

That's why I said the thing about the code! If we could just come up with a way that we knew, and then even if it got caught in a picture they wouldn't be able to know right away.

[true_noir]

I've read about something called the Caesar cipher. It's a simple substitution cipher, the sort of thing that children use nowadays. It isn't especially hard to crack if you know it's being done, but it could confuse someone not really paying attention.

I was thinking of putting in an order with oriental trading for some decoder rings to pass around. You know, so people could do that.

[sotenbori]

[ majima nods. there's no way to stop anyone from figuring out a cipher if they really wanted to, he figures, but that's a good start.]

That's not a bad idea.

[true_noir]

It might do very little, but if it helps us for even a moment, it's something. [She shrugged.] At the very least, it will feel as if I am doing something, and sometimes what we really need is the feeling that we aren't just sitting idly by, at least until we actually find a way to oppose them.