“Nothing is impossible, try enough times, improving each time, you’ll succeed eventually, you just need to make that first attempt. I am patient, I can wait, however there are other ways to change a societal system, never put all your backups in one hard drive as they say.” Afterthought was fairly certain they used that metaphor correctly, though A.t did improve it a little, at least in their mind. “Again, there is more than one way to get things accomplished, you can bypass the defences without being noticed, or have the defences concentrate on something else while you slip in through the chaos. Trial and error leads to all scientific successes, it’s true we would need to get past the outer barrier, but how we would do so is fluid.” A.t. also used a proxy and did other things a paranoid man in a basement somewhere would. He wanted to appear as if he were a man behind a curtain somewhere as much as possible. “If you are wanting to talk about actual ideas for plans, I do not think we should do so here. But before we go any further I would like MICA to be able to weigh in.”<br/><br/>___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________<br/><br/><br/>Katie frowned for a moment. “It’s not missing, oh no, I know where it went, I just can’t get it back. I miss it sometimes, I miss a lot. The government ruins everything! I’ll do everything I can to make them pay for what they did!” She wiped a tear from her eye and then she smiled at him changing demeanors completely. “Your brain needs to relax and recover sometimes, media is good, if you ignore the bad bits, working all the time will break you, believe me I know, really really I do. Need things that lower stress, less stress makes you a better person, it does. I know you don’t watch movies, but I’ve seen a lot, and in all of them the one to save the world is always the hero. They just usually save it wrong and with the government, you should be a hero so you can save it right, and then I could be your sidekick or something, wouldn’t that be nice? I think that’d be nice. Plus I learn even from things like silly movies, learn a lot about society from them. Life has not been kind, neither has the government, sometimes I wonder if it’d be easier if they’d both just burn down to the ground… But that’s crazy talk, anyway I’m gonna love cooking for you, cooking is so much like chemistry.”<br/><br/>She then finished dressing his wound and pulled on his good arm towards her home. Her father was allowing her to stay there, after losing her son he had been more supportive in what ways he could. It didn’t take long to get there and it was a pretty nice place once she showed him inside, except there was blast marks here and there. The place was also sort of a mess, there was chemistry equipment spread around, there were also vials of liquids in various places, the labels on them said things like: Sunlight smell, green texture and brain waste. “Make yourself at home. Isn’t that a weird phrase, like you’re a machine that’s trying to be made and I’m telling you that you need to do it at home. That’s weird isn’t it? People say the strangest things. Do you like music? I love music, it helps me think better.” She picked up a remote and turned on the stereo, something resembling classic rock came on. It was about a girl breaking up with them, it was a slow and sad song with a lot of emotion in it. She lowered it so it was just in the background.<br/><br/>Katie looked at her computer briefly, seeing that she had several messages from Afterthought. “I’ve got to check this real quick and then I’ll get dinner started.” She read over RMC’s and Afterthought’s discussion, Afterthought asked her what she thought of RMC. She responded that they seemed intelligent, maybe a little naive, but certainly on their side. She posted in the forum real quick, “It’s nice to meet you RMC! You guys really went at it, All good stuff though, and you seem nice. It be nice to meet sometime. ^-^ I’m busy making dinner right now, talk later kay?” She then rushed off to the kitchen singing nicely to the song that was on, she seemed quite bubbly at the moment. “Is pork fried rice okay? I love asian food, especially the traditional spices. But I can make something else if you like, my cooking talent can take me far, I’ve got a lot of ingredients too, except hot peppers, I used them all for my experiment. 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide, quite powerful already but I was trying to mess with potency. Don’t you just love Chemistry, it’s so important and it’s what helps me get through my days. It’s too bad I don’t have any rats though, otherwise I could try my hand at that for you. Oh! You can use whatever you like in the house, just don’t touch my chemicals please, I have everything the way I like it and we also wouldn’t want any accidental accidents. Also a question, do you think the government does things to our food, I think they do, it’s okay though, this stuff is safe. I’ve tested it all in great depth, I would never offer a guest unsafe food.”<br/><br/>________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________<br/><br/><br/>Idealized? Brian wasn’t just sitting on his ass thinking about this stuff. He worked hard to do what he could to make it a reality, it wasn’t idealized, because his blood sweat and tears to change things were real. She was acting like none of this was important, when it was to him. Her too relaxed behaviour made him tense, though tense was his default stance, except when he was faking it for his image. Then she changed stances, calling his goals hypocritical, except she wasn’t as that would mean saying his goals were worse than what they claimed to be. She was accusing him of hypocrisy directly, that his standards and beliefs were contrary to his actions, but it wasn’t his fault that the system demanded specific actions be taken in order to work towards having those beliefs come to reality.<br/><br/>However he could dismiss that, it was her comparing him to priests molesting boys that struck a nerve. It was easily refuted as the truth was actually the opposite, he was put upon as an evil and corrupt man, that actually didn’t do evil things such as molesting and only did holy acts. But refuting it didn’t matter, the very subject made him very tense. He could tell she didn’t actually care about what she was saying. But that’s what irritated him, she was so careless with what she said without actually having a real stance. She seemed to be like most people he came across, having no care for the real and serious matters of this world. He didn’t care for people like that, he had to deal with enough of them in the high social events.<br/><br/>When she lunged at him it was easy to tell she was far off her mark, was she that drunk? When the man was revealed, he cursed himself for allowing himself to get so well distracted as to not pick him out. Now his tenseness reached full circle, in fact her being pressed against him made it all the worse. Which meant he did what he always did when tense in the presence of others, pretend everything was fine. “I’m sorry my dear, but it doesn’t make much sense that he was able to follow me undetected while I did my building hopping to this place. No, sadly I think he must have been here for quite sometime, watching you. Besides, what have I done that such a man would care to keep an eye on me? Well, regardless, I should get home, if you need help with anything, I’m sure you can find out where I live, it’s no secret. Use the roof entrance if you like, I’ll let you in. Good night madame, I will see you when I see you.” He then run and jumped to the next building. As he went he paid more attention to his surroundings, he also thought about what just went down. It seemed he was better off alone, even if she did notice the man when he himself did not, she was too much of a wild card. If someone didn’t have their full heart into something, he didn’t see how he could trust them with it.