Watching

 Lucky and I had been brought close together by Wade's mini dampener amp, so my recall of scene: Mr. Starr's response to the question: who exactly was spying on him, is vivid, timeless.  "A couple of years after the Ivy infestation, I got smart and took M-corp to court for loss of livelihood.  Was going well when, bang, the police action started, M-corp dropped all the formalities of acting within the legal frame work, of course, and left me and P5 out of fair bit of change.  almost the minute the treaty was signed I began receiving messages, bills, that is, for their legal fees.  At first, if I got any payment, over any kind of network connection, almost instantaneously they'd bill me for exact the same amount.  So naturally I switched to cash only, and made the transactions here at home, at this table; a few got by, but soon I'd get a bill the instant I received payment; many time's the person paying me would still be here.  I tried an experiment, I made arrangements to sell some crushed soy to a person that habitually tries to short ya, does it every time, a compulsion or something, you have'ta go through a sorta dance with him; offer a second cup a tea, count the money, apologize to him, 'but I think your sum is short' and he say's 'oh yes, you're right, my error' and then he pays the rest.  So ya see my trap, right?  He pays me the wrong amount as he always does, and instantly I get a bill from M-corp for that same amount.  We do the dance and he pays the rest: about fifteen minutes later I get a bill for the second amount.  Ha! got em... bastards" peers at the screen on the wall. 

Supper time

Mr. Starr ate a big mouthful of potato, insuring he wouldn't be able to talk for awhile.  Mrs. Starr looked at Lucky, studying him as he ate, "so today, I got a message.. one of our old alerts, I haven't received one those for quite some time".  Jen quickly spoke up, "we had company man come out today, and he spent most of his time with Lucky".  Mrs. Starr made a look of concern, "oh.. I hope it wasn't serious".  "No Mrs. Starr, it wasn't, just a soil guy looking into a subsidence".  Mrs Starr was always on the look out for Jen, she had long since given up trying to fix her up with anyone she knew, so a new person was a highly desirable target.  "So, Jen.. is this 'soil guy' single" everybody groaned: "if he is, I would've been happy to ask him over tonight".  Lucky pointed around the kitchen, "where's gonna sit, I mean, it's cramped, just to let me out, you and Jen w'have'ta stand by the counter. and I'd have'ta push the table forward".  "We would find the space.  I'm sure your father would be happy to eat on a tray in the living room".  Mr. Starr finished his potato, "What this guy's name?" Wade stopped eating mid chew, Jen made an awkward sound, and Lucky looked up at the clock.  "I wasn't gonna tell ya, but I guess it'll get around sooner or later.. Ward Vogt".  Mr. Starr's eye's got big, he took a drink of water, shifted in his chair, lucky could tell he ran the, expand calm: "that kid? figures he'd be a company man" and started in on his carrots.

Conscience Control

Dampening sound was done and damping gravity was a thing, but Wade's amplifier was an entirely new use of those technologies.  Jen and Wade could make music but were novices controlling the networked amp, Lucky was expert at both playing the music, and controlling the amp though his infection.  Stand's to reason: Lucky, had been infected the longest out of their crew, and pre-infection had carried an implanted for years.  In fact, Wade and Jen had known Lucky for all their lives, and could not remember him not having an implant.  I, on the other hand know the specific time and date he was first logged in.  Prior to that, I can only glean the memories of mom, dad, Ted, and of course Lucky.  From what I can gather, the one thing that he was good at during his isolated years, was playing music.  After his first log in, it became clear that his visceral musical ability translated to a masterful command of the network, and when infected, the synergy between Lucky and the network was a force to behold.  Un or fortunately Wade was the only person to realise this aptitude of his and built a suite of technology around it, Lucky's favorite is the amplifier, and is a master of it.  He work's his bass guitar in conjunction with the amp's damping field's, commandeers the beat and channel's it to Jen and Wade. Controlling your self and playing along with Lucky, is like lucid dreaming, if you know it's a dream it's hard not to break the spell and wake up

Reply all

"I was up north evangelizing on the finer points of the greaseless chain; those ninnies up there, insist on smearing a barrel of grease on each link; well,,, the dirt and dust gets caught in the grease and forces the gears out of place, chain slacks, and off it comes; where as a clean chain, brushed every once in while with a wire brush, will last longer and not pull everything out of alignment.  I had the sides up on the harvester and had crawled into the straw walker, scraping the build up of grease off a connecting rod, and was into the lengthy summation of my sermon on the greaseless chain when I was hit by a laconic spasm.  This must have been the point when Jen's fear level, triggered that encrypted message. My sermon stopped and in a pre-reflexive fit I began to bang out a rhythm on that greasy piece of solid metal.  The whole machine became engulfed in my drumming; inside that web metal the sound was intense, Scary to say the least; and as I was painfully drumming out that hymn, I too triggered an involuntary encrypted message to Heather,L.J. and Lucky; who were thankfully not in motion at the time.  All very bewildering, and even more so for those greasers.  Evidently those two had slowly drifted away in an effort to remain ignorant of the virtues of the dry chain, and were not aware of the abrupt end to my lecture, but could hear my song ringing out of the harvester, thought it was time for the hymn and started ah singing along.  I was apparently receiving multiple messages from those in our cell then decrypting them; hitting the adrenalin threshold for another involuntary send, then re-encrypting a new 'reply all' message: stuck in a reply all message loop.  Finally somebody set an:'AutoReplyEnabled $False', and I could stop the drumming; but the chain greasers kept on singing while I was crawling out, and only stopped when I bowed my head in silence."