1. Shooting, Beating, Stabbing

[Lance]

Clark leaves for the cafe, meeting Shift on the way, out of courtesy. "I had all the coffee in the world already, maybe a sandwich? Thx"

[shaidar]

Shift

"Greetings Clark. It would seem that my visual examination of the crime scenes was of little use. I did note that there were footprints with a tread similar to my own leading from them."

[thenewflesh]

"Gotcha. I'll ask the spiders." Louis replies. He sends off a query to his neuralnet; the spiders start crawling, probing the internet for omens and rumors about this XK7-8JR, passing them through a digital i-ching of convolution circuits and rectified linear units. There is a sort of irony, Louis grins privately to himself, in asking algorithms to run a Turing test.

Then, while he's already floating around in his neuralink, he sends off the assault to some res-heighteners: a cracked corporate bit of software, juiced up with special netmage sauce. Obviously since he's tunneling into his computer remotely, he's not interfacing with the res-heighteners straight: too illegal, both for being cracked and for the occult juice. Probably nobody's really looking, but can't be too safe. Instead, he's sending the video 'to a private collection'. Nothing to see here, Mr. Govcorp. Hopefully it comes back positive and they can learn the officers' identities.

I interpreted 'connections' here as being between ideas, disparate threads of information; that's for the spiders. I'm also using 'Mend' to repair the video quality.
Connections [1d8]=2
Mend [1d6]=5

[Lance]

Shift

"Greetings Clark. It would seem that my visual examination of the crime scenes was of little use. I did note that there were footprints with a tread similar to my own leading from them."

Clark shrugs "I guess it would've been too easy. At least you didn't stumble into some murderous gang on your own. Prints? Several sets or just the one? Could they be a false flag operation?"

[shaidar]

Shift

"It appeared to be a single set, I don't know if it was the same ones each time. Deceit is a possibility. I shall upload video extracts of the murder sites and the footprints from my memory cortex for offline analysis,"

I'm assuming the group has some kind of 'dropbox' for this kind of thing

[tibbius]

Outside the Snakepit there's more people, a serious crowd is forming. The owner or manager or whoever, a tattooed troll, shambles over to the glass door and locks it. "Best to sit tight," she says.

I've got Louis and Angus in the Snakepit, Clark and Shift in the alley about .3 km away

[BackworldTraveller]

Outside the Snakepit there's more people, a serious crowd is forming. The owner or manager or whoever, a tattooed troll, shambles over to the glass door and locks it. "Best to sit tight," she says.

I've got Louis and Angus in the Snakepit, Clark and Shift in the alley about .3 km away

If you've got shutters, I'd bring them down now! This is likely to get a bit tricky.

[tibbius]

Louis's Turing-bots ping. They think XK7-8JR could be a real boy. Maybe. They assess with 65% confidence.

The image enhancement shows the uniforms better. The assailants are Govcorp employees, but not police - they're Property Security, a wholly different part of the corp.

[thenewflesh]

There is a lull in the conversation. Louis stares out at the crowd, listens vaguely to the ambient hum of the snakepit.

Then, suddenly: "Property security. Not police. The res-heighteners came back positive. And I think our murderbot might be Homo Sapiens, or something like. Grain of salt: the spiderweb came back a weak positive. But I think someone's framing the bots."

The message is spoken, then messaged in abbreviated form.

Louis looks out at the crowd and the glass door. "I don't know about you, Angus, but this isn't what I signed up for."

[Lance]

Clark looks out at the crowd from the alley. "Damn, how am I supposed to get to the others?" His phone pings and he checks the message quickly. "So investigation number one: I guess you were right about your kind not being killers." he smiles at Shift.

Thinking for a moment, he asks for a picture of the crowd from inside the Snakepit and sends it to his boss, claiming he can't get back to work.

"Now, why would PropSec attack a prominent politician? Unless that one's ALSO a false flag operation." He sends a version of this question to the others.

Can we maybe talk to Luiz or someone who was with them?

[BackworldTraveller]

OK - We paid for these sandwiches up-front - Drink up and lets move along before the riot starts. Just walk away quietly and they won't care. This isn't the first riot that I've been through - just make sure you are behind the police line when the gloves come off.

[tibbius]

@Louis and Angus The cafe manager is sitting by the door holding a cricket bat. As you move toward the exit, he stands up, shaking his head. "This door isn't opening until things settle down," he says. "But if you want to go out the back way," he adds in a lower voice, "it's by the restrooms."

[BackworldTraveller]

Sounds fair enough. Good luck.
Angus taps Louis on the shoulder and heads deeper into the shop.

[thenewflesh]

"Ok," Louis says to the owner, "Thanks." And he follows Angus towards the restrooms.

[BackworldTraveller]

I know this gets everyone frustrations out, but I just feel sorry for the youngsters that bear the brunt of it. They really don't get what they are letting themselves in for if the police get antsy. And by the time they do, they are being carted off for 20 years or forever.

Did you get whether this is just righteous indignation, or is someone stirring this particular pot with rent-a-mob on both sides?

Angus looks carefully out the back. Coming?

[thenewflesh]

Louis shakes his head. "No, I was in a convex combination of in my own head and my neuralink. As if that distinction is even useful any more."

He looks carefully, too. If it looks safe, he opens the door and fucks off out of the building.

[tibbius]

The alley smells like excretions of all sorts, and there's a few rats by the dumpster. It's a long, dark, narrow space with high walls that runs the full length of the block to either side - 150 meters right, 50 meters left. It's deserted. Noise from the street at the front of the building faintly echoes - chanting, something incomprehensible through and around all the interposed structure.

[shaidar]

Shift

"Humans are known for their dangerous and emotional behaviour when in unhappy and in large groups. I must admit such behaviour is a mystery to me. For your safety we should remain here and I will send our location to the others. I agree that the attack does seem strange, who would benefit for Mr Luiz being in hospital for a number of days? Another answer is that for some reason they are escalating the situation to provide a reason for a crackdown"

[tibbius]

Has anyone been paying much attention to Stevie's campaign rhetoric?

[Lance]

I can't even remember their gender xD