Heist the Colours (RP)

"He was nice." Abby says accusatorially. "You guys had me all scared for nothing."

- Lio (and anyone else looking at the scene of the crash) -

Without taking inappropriate amounts of time investigating every detail, it looks like this car swerved to avoid another vehicle before it crashed. The other vehicle appears to have swerved over into the wrong lane while failing to avoid hitting a cat in the middle of the road, half a block back.

Something does not look quite right about the body of the squished cat. From this distance it looks very similar --identical, even?-- to the cat that was sitting by the bins where you parked earlier. More would require a bit of a walk and then some poking around at the corpse.

What do you do?

- Raf -

"Wilsons? That the old navy scrapyard?" Carl sounds surprised, but does not ask 'what are you doing out there?'. Wilson's is technically not a scrapyard, but most non-spacers don't understand the scale of spaceships, their lifespans, or that 'mothballed' means 'stood down, but ready for use', not 'scrapped'.

"Unfortunately," Carl says spreading his hands in meek apology. "Due to circumstances outside my control, I don't currently have ships. I can not get anything off the planet at this time."

He thinks for a moment. "If you can promise to follow the handling instructions exactly, I can make up a parcel that really needs to get out in a bit of a hurry. Which way are you headed? Maybe you can take it with you?"

As with the nature of the shop, you share an understanding with him that the need to follow the 'handling instructions' is more than just 'care of vinyl', you have handled some old(ish) vinyls and they are pretty robust. The implied handling instructions are 'Don't look in the package. Don't draw official attention to the package. Deny everything.'

You notice that he was confident he would have a parcel before asking you which way you were going. He is not willing to talk about where he needs stuff sent, though, and you will have to tell him something of your route. The more precise you can be, the more he can tailor the package and the more reward you could get [ref].

---

Carl is only interested in Jump destinations, nothing in-system. You know that you need to fuel the ship and then make it to a 'safe jump point' --which will take some days. And then you need to do a near-Jump, to a secret, off-the-beaten-path location near the outskirts of this system to meet your contacts and change the transponder ID on the ship. After that (about two weeks?) you are free to go wherever you want.

- Do you tell him about your 'secret' location? If so, he might be interested and have something extra-special for you.
- Are you willing to tell him where you plan to go next? If so, he can offer you a small package of records for each step you are willing to divulge. He will expect some reasonable promise that you will get there without undue delays.

If you are not willing to share anything with him he will provide you with contact details, but won't have any special feelings towards you when you call him later.

What do you do?

- Raf -

"Regnum Anima?" Carl says, sounding disappointed. "Not much there."

He taps away at his computer for a moment before nodding, and muttering. "Hmm... Yeah? Yeah. OK."

He turns back to you. "I wasn't thinking in that direction. But, if you are willing to wait five or ten minutes, I can print up some records. I can throw in your request for free, but it wouldn't sound the same, not with your knowing it is a fresh print. Make it twenty minutes and I can make them look old and used, which increases the resale value a bit."

You can guess that the 'resale value' is not the only reason to make them old, freshly minted vinyl 'does not look right' and might catch the attention of customs people. An extra 10 mins is not really that long, and really won't make much difference in the grand scheme of things, but you know your party may struggle with waiting around.

What do you do?

- Ronny -

"But... you promised!" Abby exclaims, pouting prettily.

You know that she had said the software was 'almost definitely required (though she could try make do without it)', but the new computer was just something she had been dreaming about. The new computer would help, it is almost twice as powerful as what you have (but 'double' is still only a change from +1 to a +2 (technically 1->2 Bandwidth, not +s)), but her estimations of her ability were based on using her current gear.

She will be disappointed --and you did promise-- but it will not have all that much mechanical effect.

Do you still go for the new computer?

- Raf -

"No more." Carl agrees. He has loaded a program on the computer and, quicker than you can follow, assembled lists of songs to be sent to the printer.

"You want that as well as the Chuck Berry?" He asks when you place your gift order for Ronny.

As the first record comes off the printer and the next one starts, he cools it and then gently places it in a sack filled with white powder that smells like chalk --assuming you have any clue what that smells like-- and carefully shakes it around. The covers are printed on old cardboard, and he gives them each a good rubbing on the outside of the chalk bag to weather them up as well, if they tear slightly he seems happy but does not add any deliberate tears.

- Ronny, Cat, Lio -

It is pretty obvious what happened: the car crash, the dead people, the blood on Lio's hands, that haunted look in his eyes. You don't hear sirens, but presumably someone will call emergency services or something, though no one has come out to look.

You have 11 minutes to kill --though you were told 20. What do you do?

- Raf -

Carl squints at you slightly when you place your second order for that specific single. "Hm... sure." He says, sounding casual. "No problem, I have that."

If you are paying attention to the process you might notice that what you picked was in the list he had prepared for delivery, but he searches for and selects it again for your gift.

After little more than half the promised time, Carl shakes off the last of the chalk and, admiring his own work, hands you your two records to examine while he shrink-wraps the stack that are going into the parcel. Yours smell a bit of fresh ink and plastic, but that is already starting to fade, and the chalk clearly had some aromatics added so there are the expected hints of smoke and age.

"The address is on the label." Carl says, slapping the sticker on the corner of the package. You might notice that the sticker does not mention Carl's and claims to come from some antique dealer in a different city.

"Time is of the essence." Carl says. "20K if you get it there on time, but they will deduct 5K for every three days it is late. If you are going to miss the deadline by two weeks, you may as well just not bother. Don't ask why. That's just they way they are."

Carl seems very relaxed about the whole thing. "Anything else you need?" He enquires. "You want those gift-wrapped?"

You know that your companions are waiting. What do you do?