fandomhigh | Day After Doomsday, Thursday, Per 2

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doomsday

Day After Doomsday, Thursday, Per 2

The sim looked exactly the same as it had last week when the students entered the Danger Shop, right down to having Hardison sprawled on the stairs, poking at his laptop. "Hey, y'all," he said, nodding. "Pull up a patch of floor or wall or whatever, a'ight? Normally, the way things are gonna go, the first few minutes of each class is gonna be spent goin' over what y'all've accomplished last week an' then tellin' you a bit about the day's scenario. But this week's gonna be a little bit different cause I think it's kinda important that we make it really clear how this class is gonna work."

He ran a distracted hand over his head. "So, one of the keys of survival in any major situation is communication. It doesn't matter what the problem is, if there are other people around, you gotta find some way of communicatin' with them. You can't all be independent, lone wolves here, doin' your own thing with no interest in what anybody else is doin'. At the very least, there ain't enough supplies an' stuff for you to scavenge to support all your own little projects. Right now, as far as you know, you are it. If there are other people still alive, you don't know about 'em. They certainly ain't in any position to help you. Any person you lose is irreplaceable--not just from a warm an' fuzzy friendship standpoint, but from a manpower, survival standpoint. Whatever they know an' you don't is lost. That's one fewer person to fight off whatever's out there, or to help barricade the door, or do any other task that y'all decide is important to your survival. Any decision you make affects everyone, no matter how innocuous it seems, yo. Everybody's gotta work towards your survival cause otherwise the odds of y'all making this out alive drop. This means talkin' to one another, findin' ways to work together, an' discoverin' one another's strengths an' weaknesses."

Hardison wished he had Nate's gift for this. If he could make four of the most independent and recalcitrant thieves work together to pull off amazing cons, he'd easily be able to convince a class of teens to do so. "So, last week, I got a basic idea of what y'all were gonna do between that class an' this one. Let's see if we can figure out where a bit more communication could be useful. We got one student who made a cold room for all the perishable food so you wouldn't have to rely on the refrigerators. This student can also create fresh, clean water at will, so all your water supplies have been topped up. The rest of the week, they brought plants an' planters inside to see about makin' interior gardens to grow fresh food in. Then we got another student tryna find ways to purify the pool water to make it potable an also thinkin' about makin' a garden an worryin' about food. One student is tryna make your generators work more efficiently an' quietly, while makin' the most of the limited fuel you had left an' another is plannin' on makin' a radio to try to contact the outside world." Yes, he was deliberately not mentioning names or other identifying factors. "Most of you seemed to agree that we needed scouts an' had ideas for what they should do, but nobody was able to give me any more information than that. Buncha y'all thought the scouts should be volunteers, but nobody asked if anyone wanted to go outside. Some of you had lists of things to look for, but didn't know who to give 'em to. Some of you tried to tell me what you wanted other folks to do, but that's the one thing I can't help you with. I ain't in charge of what your classmates do or don't do. You want somethin' done by someone else, that's on you to find the right person an' ask. If they agree, you can come to me an' tell me what's what. Otherwise, nothin's gonna get done, because I'm only programmin' in tasks that I am specifically told to do by the individuals involved."

He clapped his hands and stood up. "So, unlike the way the rest of the class will be run, only 24 hours have elapsed between last class an' this one. Just enough time for y'all to hopefully realize that much of what you wanna do over the week will be better done if you maybe talk to other people." Though he wasn't going to make anyone talk if they didn't want to, just insisting that doing so would be a very good idea. "Let's see if maybe we can't get a little more organized this week, huh?"

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"Yes. But if I find something that can go out and scavenge, I have a list of things Tali could use that I'll also look for. And if Jasper says he'll actually try training people to fight, I'll help him out there. I'm not going to do everything, though, so if he doesn't do that, he's S.O.L."

Raven was maybe getting a little impatient with her fellow classmates, too.

"Um. You can kill me off on a scouting mission if you want," she offered. "See if that makes everyone sit up and take notice?" She grinned. "Then I can come back as a monster!"

"...You just got real excited about that possibility," Hardison said, blinking a moment before he began to grin. It wasn't a very nice grin, either. "But no, you shouldn't do everythin' in this class. Folks need to be able to depend on one another, but that shouldn't stop 'em from bein' independent, too. It's why I've removed myself from the sim. We ain't here to be no one's parent, yo."

"There's a possibility I'm evil," Raven said cheerfully.

She thought she was joking.

"There's the possibility I'm a criminal," Hardison said, well aware he wasn't joking. "This is a judgment free classroom, yo."

"Really?" Raven asked. She was far too interested. "What sort of criminal? I mean -- hypothetically, of course."

Hardison just held up his computer for a moment--and then remembered that Raven was from the 50's and likely had no idea what that meant. "Short answer? If I were anything, I'd prolly be some kind of thief. One of the kind that can steal information, yeah, but so much of bankin' these days is just digital streams of money flowin' from one place to another.

Gone were the days when the amount of physical cash you put in your account was what you had. Instead the money was sent elsewhere and the money in the account was kept track of electronically.

And if it was electronic, Hardison could hack it.

"So . . . like a virtual bank robber?" Raven surmised. She wasn't trying to be insulting, she just hadn't quite gotten the full potential of the internet, just yet. "That's pretty neat. You wouldn't even need a mask!"

"That's a good place to start, yeah." Start being the key word. And it wasn't like he was into stealing people's identities or credit cards or anything. That was strictly amateur-hour stuff. Even before he'd donned a white hat, Hardison had skipped over harvesting SSNs and people's PINs and the like. "Also, I been attendin' the Oscars every year since I was fifteen. By this point, I don't even have to make my own tickets anymore. I'm actually on the list."

Or, well, that alias was.

Raven actually squeaked at that. "Omigosh!" She flapped her hands. "You must have met all the movie stars, then!"

Most of whom she didn't know, but she was still impressed.

"I was sittin' next to Halle Berry when she won her Academy Award," Hardison said, looking very smug. "Bought her a drink afterwards, too. Good times."

Not that she'd done much more than thank him, young as he'd been at the time, but hey! He'd bought Halle Berry a drink!

"Oh wow," Raven breathed. ". . . She's the one who plays Tempest* in the Y-People movies, right?" Raven loved the Y-People movies. Even the third one, which was terrible.

* I have no idea if there's already an established meta for Storm or not.

Funny, Karla also had intense feelings about the third Y-People movie. Go figure.

"That's her," Hardison said proudly. "The only woman of color to win a Best Actress Oscar in the entirety of Oscar history, yup."

"That -- really? Still?! And she's -- she's still pretty young! I would have thought -- well, by the seventies, at least. . . ."

Raven was never going to stop being disappointed in the future, was she.

Surprise! The answer was no.

"We've have four Best Actors in that time," Hardison said wryly. "An' almost ten Best Supporting Actors an' Actresses."

Huzzah!

"What the hell," Raven said, more resigned than surprised. "You should hack the Academy's voting instead of just the tickets."

She had zero doubt there'd been way more great performances that all that.

"Take a look at who won the last three years for Best Supportin' Actress an' say that again," Hardison said with a grin. "I'm goin' slow, but I'm goin'."

"Well good," Raven said. "Sometimes, change has to be forced."

"That's pretty much the motto of our crew," Hardison said. "Keep it up an' I'mma recruit you as a intern grifter."

"What, like the Yellow Kid?"

"Kinda," Hardison said. "But if we were anything like that, we'd be better at it. An' on the side of the little guy."

"How do you mean?"

~~Goes back in time to add the 'we're' in that second sentence~~

"Imagine if the Yellow Kid was also Robin Hood," he said proudly.

"So . . . you con from the rich and give to the poor."

Oh, Raven liked that.

"The rich have all the money, all the power. Normal folk end up buried under an enormous weight. We provide...leverage."

Because it had to be said. It had to be.

Note how it wasn't past tense.

"You've practiced that line," Raven noted. "That your motto?"

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