xx49.07.27 | 15:21 | Still Sunday | [LIVE]

Can I type with my mind? Yes I CAN type with my mind.

"It's working," I said. Oh, back to past tense. "Is past tense the default?"

"Yes, I changed some of the settings this morning."

"What? When? If you've been touching my Opal without my permission—"

"Relax, Curls, I did it remotely. And don't worry, I can't access your precious diary or whatever, not unless you tag the entries as 'open'. Hang on, I'll link you to the big screen."

"Is this the live update system?" C2 asked, interested. "It seems to work very well. Oh ... how does it know I was 'interested'?"

"Like I keep saying, I'm a genius," said Daniel. "Actually it's Charlotte who thought you were 'interested', it's just translating her interpretations into text. And very well too, if I say so myself."

"Which of course you do," I said. "Don't you think it's weird that it's past tense even though I'm saying this right now? I mean ... NOW?"

"But by the time you've said it, it's already been said," said Daniel. "That is ... well, you get what I mean. Past tense just looks better, in my opinion. What do you think, C2?"

"It doesn't make much difference to me. I think the whole system is very clever."

You REALLY had to say that, didn't you C2. Now he's going to get all smug—

"Haha—hey Curls, we're literally READING YOUR MIND."

"Can we stop this now?" I asked. "It's starting to get embarrassing."

"I'm also a little uncomfortable," C2 said. She was looking away from the screen. "It feels wrong."

"I'll turn the screen off," Daniel said, doing so. "There."

"Don't you need it for your 'checking'?" I asked.

"Nah, it's not actual output I need, just diagnostics on the P&O AI. Just keep running it live for a while and I'll have a look at the log later."

...

So now nothing's happening. Daniel's just monitoring and C2's watching and I'm sitting over here thinking about nothing.

"This is pointless," I said. "We're not going to find anything. We should DO something!"

"Like what?" Daniel said. "We have no idea what's going on, we have no leads—WHAT, exactly, do you suggest we 'do'?"

"Your brother is right, Charlotte," C2 said. "Information-gathering is important. If you act without knowing enough about the situation, you could make things worse even if your intentions are good."

"But if we don't act at all then the situation could get really bad—like with Arrow Island, if I'd waited then everyone there would've had their brains turned to mush!"

"I'm not condemning what you did," C2 said. "Sometimes action is necessary. But it's good to get more information if you can."

...

That was me sulking for a bit. I know she's right and I know Daniel's right but it doesn't make much difference. I've been letting myself get complacent, with C2 coming here and everything—I've let myself forget just how much of a threat these supervillains are. It's so scary not knowing what they're planning, what they're doing—what they're doing RIGHT NOW!

"I know," I said. Daniel and C2 looked at me. "I know you're both right but it doesn't change anything. Something's going on, we know that much. In the last six months there have been at least twenty schools hit by Segregation. Probably way more. And all the investigation and research we did showed similar events going back more than two years. So whatever this is, whatever's going on here, it's been going on for far too long."

"It might already be nearing its end," said Daniel. "If you look at the trends they're definitely slowing down, and the last few places hit by Segregation have been specialised schools—marine biology, zoology, nanotechnology, theoretical physics ... it's almost as if they're collecting specialists."

"For something terrible," I said. "Right?"

"I feel that it's safe to assume it's not for something good," said C2, quietly.

"Exactly! And something else that's weird, that's WAY too weird to ignore—NONE of the people who were taken for Advanced Self-Improvement have shown up ANYWHERE. It's like they just vanished! My theory is that they've all been taken to some kind of huge evil secret base, PROBABLY in the Dead Mountains."

"This again—Curls, there's no secret base in the Dead Mountains, that whole area's lousy with grey radiation, even with radsuits and counteractive radiation you wouldn't last more than a day. I know that weird ornithopter went through there but that was only to lose the drones—"

"And why did it go THERE to lose the drones? Because grey radiation scrambles tracking equipment. There's no way to scan the Dead Mountains—"

"I can so easily see this becoming a circular argument—Curls, just drop it, okay? You just said it yourself, there's no way to scan a grey rad zone, even if they do somehow magically have a base in those mountains there's no way we're gonna find it."

"Well ... well HUH."

"You're frustrated," said C2, one of her not-quite-questions. "Because you want to act but you don't know what to do."

"I just feel ... I feel so strongly that 'reacting' isn't going to get us anywhere with this. There's something so BAD going on here and that we don't even know what it is just drives me crazy. We have to ACT. We have to DO something."

"So what, then?" said Daniel. "What could we possibly do?"

"I don't know! I just want to be out there, fighting to stop this—"

"You don't even know what it is you're stopping—"

"EXACTLY! It's just soooooooooooooo

fatal exception in module [LiveUpdate 1.4.7]

thread: thread[S.io/output/output.dc]

cT threads: 34

dactyl.lusc.DataBufferInt..(DATABUFFER|DACTYL:12)

dactyl.lusc.SafeZone.(SAFEZONE|DACTYL:10)

dactyl.lusc.StillNeedThis.(NECESSARY|DACTYL:06)

dactyl.lusc.Fuse.

dactyl.helpers.Dangerish...(tag|NoDanger)

dactyl.helpers.OkaySausage..(tag|IWUerr946/953?)

dactyl.helpers.HelloPickle..(tag|null)

dactyl.helpers.FreddyIsDeady..(tag|NotDeadYet)

dactyl.helpers.SirCalmFur..(tag|PatienceSirPatience)

dactyl.subsys.PutThisAnywhere..(UnderDone:10/OverDone:05)

caused by: unknown quantity in submodule [EmoCut]