2020 Hogswatch Letter

December, 2020

Greetings, friends and family.

For all that we have collectively faced this year, my own life has been comparatively uneventful.  My house is quiet, apart from the antics of too many cats, and I have done little to change it, or myself.  

Early in 2020, the BookMobile stopped running.  I took a long hard look at the value of the van, versus the cost of repairs, and sadly let it go, replacing it with a much smaller vehicle.  Kept the license plate, though. 

Last month, I had to remove another tree from the back yard, as it was beginning to drop branches so large that I could not move them by myself.  I felt that it was only a matter of time before one of those branches hit the house, the car, or a power line.

I'm still with the railroad, although I'm changing shifts again -- from second back to third.  This is partly to accommodate my need for a social life, and partly to escape from a horribly inept manager, about whom the less said, the better.  

My health remains good, which is about the best news anyone can report these days.  Being stuck at home has done nothing at all for my emotional recovery.  Often I feel as if I am simply going through the motions.  

For a while I was making regular visits with a good friend (Hi, Jerry).  The pandemic put that on indefinite haitus, seeing that both of us fall into "at risk" categories, and I'd much rather bank on more future visits.  I look forward to becoming more social, with an expanded group of people, once such things are possible again.  For now, I only see my daughter once a week, and my son's family on very rare occasions.  The kids and grandkids are my lifeline; they keep me sane.

Speaking of which, Arthur restarted his online game.  The family games have always been a core part of our togetherness, and it has been a great comfort to gather together in the spirit of adventure again, even if it does have to be in a virtual setting because of the distance involved.  

My original plans for the year were to re-integrate myself with the theatre community.  Those plans have been postponed to next year.  For now, I've been livestreaming a weekly book reading, from a list of family favorites, over FaceBook.  I've also started volunteering at LibriVox.org, honing my narrative and editing skills.  

I am working on a writing contract, and the other party has been very patient with me.  I hope to finish that obligation in the coming year.

My complete contact information was printed on the obverse.  It is available to those who answer me my questions three without falling into the pit of despair or the bog of stench.  

There it is, my Year of Maintenance.  I wish you all a warm and happy holiday season, and a year full of joy to follow.

 John L. Payton

(PS - I'll also post last year's letter, to keep them easily available)

Foster's Imaginary Friends With Benefits (Part 2)

(Game date: 12/10/2020) 

"You've come to play as well?"

It was an anthrodrone, of course.  Child-size, and incredibly realistic.  Had to be a custom job.  Housing something alien, and dangerous, and it was just standing there, making chit-chat.

Okay.  I'll play that game.  "Nice place," I opened.  Let no one say that I can't be suave.

"Yes,"  Mistress Dawn giggled.  "I do like what you've done with it."   

So.  The Sunchild was fully aware that I'd triggered the drone attack, and was allowing it to happen, for its own purposes.  

No one was making a move yet, though they had spread out, jockeying for position.  I decided to try for a veiled threat.  "Shame about the spot on the rug," I said, indicating with my eyes exactly the place the drone was standing.

Its rejoinder was swift, and equally threatening.  "All will be cleansed, soon enough."  

Ms. Blackrose could no longer hold in her frustration.  "This is it?" she demanded, with a fair amount of disbelief.  "This is the Sunchild?"

"One of them," Katrya snapped, and then she was off.  

Foster's Imaginary Friends With Benefits

(Game date: 12/03/2020)

Aru Nepeta never did seem to fit in with this group.  He just didn't seem like the "outlaw" type.  (The same can be said of Varfana, but I haven't yet figured that one out.)  From the very first gathering at the Tenner Hut, even though he was attempting to help Ms. Doe evade capture, he did it in such a forthright way, even going so far as to give the TekKnight who drew the short straw (literally) his real name and ID.  He simply doesn't have much experience breaking the law, nor, when you get right down to it, does he seem to have that much desire to do so.  Yet, something drives him.  

I didn't discover that impetus until I started meeting with everyone, one-on-one.  Only then did he allow the full extent of his bitterness to show.

Hot Blooded

 Phase One of our long con on SimSoft and SiNet had paid off, and just in time.  We had the new anthrodrone that we'd stolen from CyberTek, but until now very little money for outfitting them.  This was a big payoff for us.  Even with putting aside 20K for anticipated legal fees for Phase Two, that still left us with 10K each, and 10K for the group projects fund.  I had passed out the credsticks, and we were all a little giddy.  The entire group was at the Sanctuary, and it was as close to a celebration as

we've ever had.  Oh, sure, I was trying to pass on some advice, such as, "This might be a good time to invest in drone armor, weapons, and clothing," but I might as well have been saying "blah, blah, blah," for all anyone heard.  I'd already done a bit of shopping, but I don't think anyone else had much time for it yet.

This was unfortunate, because in the midst of our revelry, our comms spontaneously switched to a news report.  The 'caster was saying, "...terror in the streets as these strange, glowing figures are attacking everyone in sight. Law Enforcement has been alerted, and is working to blockade the area, but it's unclear how many people may still be in danger. If you're in the affected district, we advise you to stay inside, do not open your doors, and wait for an all-clear..."

All voices hushed, and we exchanged meaningful glances.  It had been a few weeks since we had received a bona fide Peaches mission.  I guess we were overdue.  The autochef itself hadn't spoken, but, as Katrya put it, "Does it really matter?  We know."

The Body Snatchers Job (Part 3)

(game date: 11/4/2020)

I didn't wait for us to arrive at Sanctuary before loading up the datastick and scanning the schematics.  I was searching for one specific thing:  built-in security tags.  Where to find them, how to best disable them.  I wanted that done quickly; I wasn't taking the slightest chance that we could be tracked with this load.

I'll say this:  There is no way that the same engineers who scribbled passwords on stickynotes, wrote this documentation.  It had to be Hilda's work.  I found what I was looking for before we even got halfway to the Gate, and had all the tags erased soon after.  Only the docs for the juggernaut gave me the slightest bit of trouble; they seemed much more disorganized, but in the end it really was the same basic principle.

Back at Sanctuary, we took a peek at our ill-gotten gains, and I dove a little deeper into the data dump.

The Body Snatchers Job (part 2)

(Game date:  10/29/2020)

The anthrodrone stood in the far corner of the room.  Looming at about twice the height of a human, probably steel and plasmer construction, and one forearm had a plasmer rifle in place of a hand.  Obviously built for security, so we had to assume that it included motion and sound sensors.  So we froze, no one else breaching the doorway.  

Ever so slowly, Vamir crept the rest of the way across to the door in the other wall, and opened it.  

Most of us couldn't see much.  Had it not been for the video link-up we shared, we'd have seen almost nothing from our angle.  But Vamir could clearly see inside.  

It was a combination warehouse and manufacturing facility.  Several crates were stacked, grouped by color (red, yellow, and white).  A catwalk, probably for foremen, stretched above the floor.  Further south, a large group of machines lay dormant.  

And, at various points, more of the giant security drones stood sentry.  

The Body Snatchers Job

Game date: 10/22/2020

 I started having my recurring nightmare when I was very young, too small even to be groomed for a life of endless boardroom meetings and machiavellian machinations.  I am floating in an infinite space, surrounded by objects of varying size.  In some dreams, they appear to me as numbers, in others, as rocks or spheres, and sometimes they are just formless concepts, but always, always, they are motionless, or perhaps locked in a tight, slow pattern of motion.  Then, I notice the smaller objects occasionally dart from one place to another, but nothing comes of it, because they are too small to matter.  They are beneath notice, and their erratic, out-of-pattern behavior affects nothing.  Very rarely, a medium or larger one may move without consequence, but only slightly.  When one of the biggest objects attempts to break the pattern, to dart about as the smaller ones do, then the entire system comes crashing down around me.  And that is always when I wake up, frightened out of my wits.  

Once, after a particularly bad awakening, I told my mother about this nightmare.  She, being a mystical sort, told me that I must have an instinctual understanding of the world, for my dream mirrored how it works.  And she also said that I should not be afraid when they all come crashing down, because any

system so rigid is bound to end in chaos.  To prove the point, she brought some games.  One of them was made with long blocks that were nearly (but not quite) identical in shape, and stacked in a tower.  The goal was to remove blocks from somewhere in the middle of the structure and place them on top, building it ever higher.  Being a bright child, I soon realized that, eventually, the tower must fall.

And then she showed me how to build a sturdier structure, using the same blocks, with a wider base.  By putting more resources at the bottom, she said, the top did not reach as high, but was in no danger of falling.  "But it isn't the same game," I said, and she agreed.  "It all depends on what you think 'winning' is."

I got very good at these games, but never forgot the true lesson.  I still have the dream, but sometimes, I play with it before the chaos begins.  And, I keep a little pyramid model on my bedside table.  I don't have any other real memories of my mother.