xx49.07.27 | 15:20 | Still Sunday

Today has been ... fun. Yes, fun is the right word. After C2 and I talked about the siege and how amazing Dad was and both had a little cry together we decided we should relax and have fun, so we watched some silly-cool movies together (apparently C2 and I have a common love; 'anything with dance-fighting') and then we ambushed Daniel in the monitoring room with his own air guns (they're the most fun thing he's ever made, they just shoot like a ball of air, totally harmless and totally fun) and also with lunch, C2 and I cooked together and managed to make a pretty nice chicken salad with kind of a peanut dressing (Botler prepared the chicken but C2 and I did everything else), so we all ate together in the monitoring room and that was fun, then we all just sat around doing the monitoring and chatting about the movies C2 and I watched (Daniel does not have the depth of appreciation for dance-fighting that C2 and I share, but I think you'd have to be totally weird not to enjoy it at least a little), and C2 and Daniel didn't talk about anything I didn't understand which was GREAT.

So now I'm just sitting here, watching Daniel teach C2 about the monitoring system (I love the way she listens, so attentive!) and writing this and just being calmly content.

"This system is ... interesting. I don't understand all of the technology involved but it seems efficient and clever."

I'm just writing down what C2 and Daniel are saying now. That was C2, in case it wasn't totally obvious.

"Yeah, there's like hundreds of satellites nobody cares about, most of them in slow-decaying orbits, Mum and Dad went around and fixed up a bunch with Wire Dreaming and D-Frag—hey, Curls, how'd they get D-Frag again? Isn't he supposed to hate Mum or something?"

"They paid him a bunch of money," I said. "It was such a boring way to get him to do it, I can't believe they didn't have to, I don't know, work with him to get into a secure facility or retrieve extremely sensitive personal files from some blackmailing ex-ally or something to win his help. But no, just boring old money."

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"Huh. Well, anyway, once we had the satellites everything else was pretty simple, Dr Tsezch helped with the initial design and Mr Falchion basically paid for it—Gaia apparently helped out too, but I don't know how."

"Mr Falchion—Charlotte and I watched his speech recently. It was very moving."

"Yeah, he's great. Not that I've met him but, y'know, it's pretty hard not to be aware of him and what he's done. We wouldn't even have this place if it wasn't for him."

[Auto-Transcribe: ON]

"Seclusion? He paid for it?"

"No, but he helped out Mum and Dad—before they joined up with him they were almost broke, 'adventuring' doesn't really pay very well, and they were spending most of what Mum was getting from her jobs on insurance and that kind of stuff. Mr Falchion made them part of his collective and convinced a lot of governments to partially fund the group, and I mean of course that hardly lasted any time at all but they got private sponsors and did a lot of advertising after that. Well, until the Dark Age. Then everything pretty much fell apart."

I don't think I've ever heard Daniel talk this long without him saying something totally un-understandable. It's kind of weird, actually.

"I've been learning about that. Charlotte and I watched Sniper's siege earlier."

"Oh. Yeah, that was pretty bad. Dad was awesome, though. Hah, but you'd never catch me doing anything that stupid."

"I would call it brave."

"Same difference. Charlotte's the one you want for that kind of thing."

"Haha, definitely, if you—hey! Did you mean for 'bravery' or 'stupidity'?"

"Either or."

"I think Charlotte is very brave. Although it's painful to do so, I can easily imagine her doing what Mr Powers did."

"Yeah ... but, I mean, it was much simpler back then. Even in the Dark Age, when things were really getting bad, at least there were definite 'bad guys'. All the heroes had to do was stop them. Not like with what's happening now, these supervillains ... I don't have a clue what they're up to, and I'm pretty much a genius."

Haha, just silence from me and C2 at that. Daniel's focusing on the monitoring and pretending he didn't just bring the whole conversation crashing to a halt.

"Hey, Curls. You been using the live update system lately?"

"No. It's kind of weird. I mean it works okay—"

"Could you put it on now? I've got a few tests I want to run. I'm thinking of releasing the code as open source but I don't want to do that until I'm sure all the major bugs are gone. Since we're just sitting around—"

"Okay, whatever. I'll have to end this entry first, hang on."