Saturday, July 14, 2012

Phew, Linköping again, DRYH c3s3c

Suddenly the train blows the whistle and soon after starts to brake and slow down (making a lot of noise) and the train pulls in on a small almost never used station in southern Linköping near Tannefors. Hurrying they jump off the train before they miss the opportunity. As the train pulls away again they see that the train is made for older narrower rail sets. In some way the more modern wider rail sets at the station narrows where the train are and then widens again behind it. Once again, weird.

Sandra desperately looks around her to find one of the newpaper stands that the local bus and train company pays for. She grabs one of the free papers and look at the date. It's the day after they ended up in Mad City, shortly after 8 AM, about the time they ought to be at work (for those who work at daytime). Yurev calls his mentor and tells him that he has had a rough night and needs to stay home and will be at his office tomorrow again.  Sandra says ''Hi'' and leaves to get to work as soon as possible. Maurice joins her since they are going approximately the same way. Yurev Leaves to get home and Erik is ambivalent, he ought to go to work tonight on the other the police might be watching the place and searching for him. Still he has his side business to think of and to meet those customers he need to be at the reception at his father's hotel.

Yurev takes a long walk homewards to clear his mind and gather his thoughts. Sandra and Maurice go separate ways in the inner city of Linköping. Maurice walks home and leaves the coin bags he has with him from Mad City and then walks to his work at the cathedral. Sandra goes directly to work. Erik decides to visit his father to check the state of the searching of the hotel and if they're looking for him.

At White there's some commotion. The first question Sandra gets when arriving is wether she were at the office anything this night.Apparently there were a breakin at the office this night. Sandra tries to play unknowing. Everybody thinks it's strange since it seems that noone has stolen anything, for example all the expensive computers are still at the office. The current theory is that the thieves heard the guard company arrive and fled before they arrived. The large open office space where there last night appearred the whole stage set that Sandra's working with is looking normal again. The only trace of anything happening is the kicked-in office door.

Sandra sits down to work since she has lots of work to do to finish the stage set before deadline and it's also her thesis work and the work that will bring her her first spotlight moment, a jumpstart for her career. As she opens the file it is empty although the file application showed a size of gigabytes as expected. Sandra looks at it in shock but with relief she realise that there's an automatic hourly back up. She retrieves the latest backed up version of the document. The computer works for a while and sadnra grabs a cup of coffee. When she gets back she has another file of several gigabytes that's empty. Sandra sighs and calls the ever-so-comptent-or-not IT firm they have a support contract with. They promise to come over and have a look at it. As he puts it ''It probably just has to be retrieved from the back up''. Since White is quite a big customer they're soon there (meanwhile Sandra is having some more coffee). A technician arrives and promptly sits down by her computer and retrieves the same back up as sandra already has retrieved earlier. ''That's it'' he says and stands up to leave. ''Sandra stops him ''Just wait a minute'' and opens the file - empty. ''That has no meaning to me'' the technician says in an attempt to get away. ''Means?!?'' Sandra says ''It's empty!''. ''You mean it's the wrong content?'' he asks. ''No. I mean that it's empty.'' Sandra tells him annoyed as she is. The technician doesn't understand what she means with empty. To him there seems to be a lot of loose phrases from obviously a lot fo places. ''You haven't happened to cut-and-paste a little wrongly?'' he suggests. As Sandra has him to read some of the phrases she realises that he sees something in the file while she doesn't and to him it's just loose meaningless phrases.

Sandra tells him that this is totally wrong. He tries to calm her by telling her that they wil just use the second newest version of the back up. Sandra has another cup of coffee meanwhile. ''Ok, now it's restored'' he says ''By the way, I fixed your mail as well''. Sandra stops him from leaving and looks at her mail and miss like the last three weeks of mail. She tells him that she miss mail and asks why he had to touch at all. ''But it didn't work as supposed anyway'' he answers. ''I want the mail I had. I need that for my work'' Sandra says and has a hard time to not yell at him. Ok I'll fix that. You go and have a cup of coffee in the meantime. When Sandra returns and once more stop him from quickly leaving there's more than three weeks of mail missing. The IT guy looks nervous and promises that a collegue of his that knows e-mail in and out shall be here before lunch. Sandra sighs but realises that this is as best as it gets right now and sits down to try to get something done. Before doing that she has to tell her mentor and boss how the IT guy not fixed averything and had to break her mail. 

Well before lunch the other IT guy arrives and ''just needs to borrow her computer for a few minutes to fix it''. After a while she hears a ''The mail's fixed'' followed by a clonk from the door. Sandra runs after but doesn't manage to catch him. She returns to her computer. The latest four to five weeks of mail is missing. Very upset Sandra calls the IT firm and have them to call the second IT guy and have him to return.

Maurice goes home and leave the coins and his bond paper. He also replaces his watch with his extra watch, not as good but still reliable. Then he goes to the cathedral and start working. While there he ofcourse checks the smal door under the preacher's pulpit. It's closed but unforutanately still unlocked. Maurice moves some stacks of chairs in front of the door. That way nobody, hopefully, notices the door and if somebody tries to enter the church again there will be noise. He has to find the key and lock the door for good. After that he starts to do the cleaning and meanwhile he carefully looks for eventually disappeared things. Later that day, coming for preparations for today's service, the bishop and two priests arrive. As they walk through the cathedral to the back room they finish a discussion on some rock star. One of the priests are very upset and almost go as far to say that it's The Devil's music while the bishop is quite calm and tells him to relax and that it's just a show. Kids always loves what their parents hate and thereby rock stars do what they do to appeal the kids. Nothing to worry about, just cool down.

Erik arrives to his father's place and his father is relieved to see that everything's OK with Erik although he asks where Erik was during the commotion and why it was possible for the drug dealer to try to pose as portier. The police has been silent regarding what exactly happened but they suspected that drug dealings were done in the lobby of the hotel and did a razzia. During this the drug dealer tried to pose as portier and the were some kind of commotion, maybe even a fight, and the pusher managed to get away and disappear among all the people going to and from the train station. Eriks agrees on that it is kind of messy and noisy around the hotel during certain nights. Erik tells his father that there had been surprisingly much commotion this night and that some joker had been banging on the windows and that he had run outside to try to catch the guy. Apparently this happened meanwhile. To his father Erik suggest that they get some camera outside and maybe a locked lobby or a gate at the border of the garden around the hotel. The police, according to Erik's father, will be continuing their hunt elsewhere as it seems very stupid if the pusher should reappear at the same place where he almost got arrested. When he leaves he tells his father to call him if the police wants to talk to him - so he can prepare himself and think of there's anything special he wants to tell them.

Yurev strolls around the city waiting for the shops to open. He's gonna search the pawn shops and antiquarians to find a mechanical watch as they seem more reliable when strange things happen. He finds and buy one but it do hurt a little. As Yurev passes by one of the rain water holes down to the gutters he hear a ''pftui'' as something big were spitting and a piece of a formula comes flying up and lands on the street and starts to roll down the quite steep main street. Yurev thinks it's part of Fermat's Great Theorem and starts to follow it to catch it before it falls into the stream at the end of the street. Luckily for Yurev the piece hits a tree at the end of the street, bounces of that to the side and stops against a building's wall. Yurev picks it up quickly and cleans it as a bypasser looks strangely at him. Yurev ignores her. She doesn't understands anyway. He then goes to the cathedral although he only has found one mechanical watch and gives it to Maurice as a replacement watch for the one Maurice sold to get them all money. Since he's there Maurice gets them some coffe and they sit down but don't really dare to talk about what has happened since other people arre around. Maurice has a theory that it's the germans. They have been trying to conquer France the whole last centuary and hasn't stopped. There were rumours about the nazis and occultism during the second big war. It must be them germans again. Yurev doesn't say anythng on this since he's less usre about why this is happening.

The second IT guy arrives at White and actually manage to fix Sandra's e-mail although for a while there is yet another week of mail gone. With the clarity of the one knowing better the other one he tells Sandra that she shall not configure her mail client for POP. Sandra almost explodes again and tells him that it's not she who has configured the damn thing. It's they who has done that. The computer has worked until the first guy arrived today and fucked it up. The second IT guy leaves and speaks to the office boss about something. Shortly Sandfra hears her boss' upset voice: ''Invoice!?! If I get an invoice for this I'm gonna personally return that to you administration department. You tell your chief that!''

Maurice has decided that he has to gather the others and try to get this door thing solved soon. After all they are the only ones understanding at least a few things about this. Yurev gets a new SIM card and a new smartphone but he has to get a slightly simpler one since he has spent some money lately.

Yurev takes the bus to campus and his work althoug he avoids the culverts, A building and the open space outside A building. At the university web site and posters at campus Yurev sees notices that there's still tickets left for Late Summer-X, a special extra Summer-X especially for the returning Vincent Warmer who will do part of his show as the main consert at the event. Vincent Warmer did study at the university shortly before switching to the rock star career. Yurev actually had him on a maths course, to Yurev he's known as ''The Drop-out'', noone has failed so completely ever at a maths course. Still, could be interesting to see. He do play some kind of hard rock although it is kind of whimpy hard rock according to Yurev. Vincent do some kind of horror show but Yurev can't really believe that that stoopid can perform something scary at all. Still, could be interesting, Yurev gets four tickets. Then Yurev goes to the department where the textile teachers reside to try to get one of them to make him a 1930's costume to better blend in when he continues his hunt for the rests of Fermat's Great Theorem and stop the monsters from destroying it. He actually manage to interest one of them to do, partly by giving her a ticket to Late Summer-X.

Yurev's player gathers his 3 Discipline dice and the game master rolls 1 Pain dice. Noone rolls any successes so Yurev wins and Discipline is dominating. Game master uses the two markers for Despair and removes Yurev's player's sixes and then it is an even cut between Pain and Discipline. The player and game master rolls a die each to solve wich should be dominating. After two rolls it is decided that Discipline is dominating. Yurev is in such good condition htat y
the player can't use any of the bonus when Discipline is dominating. The textile teacher is convinced.


Yurev thanks her and returns to get a new ticket to Late Summer-X. He then goes to his office to type the formula into his computer to get a back up copy of it. He also creates a copy on his USB disk and on his personal Google sites wiki page. As he sits there he hear a silent yelp from the cellar. The yelp is cut of with a silent thump againt the floor, the ceiling of the cellar. Yurev finishes it and leaves a soon as possible.

Erik returns to his job in good time to check that it seems OK and to be there when the rock star arrives to buy some ''stuff''. Vincent is soon there and the dealing is quickly done. As he hands over the ''stuff'' Erik asks Vincent what kind of place it was. Vincent looks perplex. Erik tries to explain and refers to when he SMS:ed Vincent. ''Aha'' Vincent says ''You mean when you had your bad trip the other night?'' Erik drops the matter and the rock star leaves.

Erik's player uses one marker of Hope to remove on check on Exhaustion and Maurice's player uses the other one to remove a check on Exhaustion as well.

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