Act 2/prologue

## Prologue

> A*s promised, Brie, Lemon, and Toy returned after what seemed like an extremely sleepless day of searching, and posted a dozen memos on a board Toy slammed into the ground. They seemed to be a combination of housing and paid-under-the-table job offers, a favor-for-favor type deal, pulling all the strings the three of them happened to have.*
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> *You were given the rest of the day to decide which offer you’d like to take, and coordinate with the other humans if you wished to stay with them. Space was extremely limited, so you were also warned that nothing was guaranteed. You were also told on top of it all, that even if they were helping you out, to keep the fact that you’re humans on the down low.*
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#### Business & Commerce

“1. **Market Square Stands:** There’s a bunch of merchants that often are away traveling on business and jointly own a wedge of various stands at one of the more popular market squares. I dunno them too well but hey, it’s something. They’re offer okay-ish pay and housing in a run-down hotel in exchange for working the stands.  - brie ”

“2. **Antique Store:** I ran into this older lady and spry looking fellow at this antique store - it’s a pretty big store, one of those ones you can walk in! You can live in the attic if you help man the store, which means keeping an eye on thieves and loading new shipments when they come. They couldn’t offer much money on short notice, but there’s lots of cool things you get to be around.  ~ Lemon “

“3. **Firm Interns:** I know an asshole who needs a few more interns around his advising firm. Dunno if any of you scrubs are into filing paperwork and making coffee, but he’s giving a pretty good salary and you get a nice apartment all to yourselves. Make sure to steal a lot of snacks from him.  - Toy. “

“4. **Cafe Employees:** Ooh~ This one’s really sweet. There’s a couple I’ve known for a while opening up a cafe, but they haven’t started hiring yet. Run the cafe - you know, baristas, cooks, cleaning, serving - and you can live in the lower level, since they don’t plan on renovating that section for a long while. They can’t offer much of a salary on top of a place to live though. ~ Lemon “

#### Labor & Service

“5. Delivery: Some old grannies that are really love me heard out my elaborate sob story about you guys. They referred me to the local delivery runners. Usually just people running food deliveries, or packages, that sort of stuff! I used to do it all the time so it should be easy-peasy. No pay, but free bikes and lots of good granny food, everyone says they can furnish up an old warehouse. Yay!

- brie ”

“6. **Construction and City Maintenance:** This one’s a weird pull but I realized they’re basically always down to hire people with no documentation and you guys built a ship?? So I broadly recommended everyone! It’s strenuous, but ooh maybe you’ll get to put up festival decorations? The income is good too! You’d all get an employee trailer to share as housing, huddle up!.

- brie “

“7. **Public Safety:** One of the worst jobs to have in the city is as a tower guard, but that means there’s almost always openings, and I know one of the recruiters would probably be fine with paying you under the table, everyone’s overworked and she’s desperate. It’s also one of the most boring posts over on the west side, so it’s pretty safe. You get decent money, get to own weapons, and can live in an unused station building back in the city, too! ~ Lemon “

“8. **Acting Troupe, Tourism:** A bunch of performers down at the lakeside have this communal living thing going on. They’re interesting folk. If any of you have talent, you can put on performances and help them out in other activities. In exchange, you can kick it with them in their big communal house. I guess you can keep whatever tips you earn. - Toy. ”

#### Academia & Government

“9. **Research Assistant:** There’s almost always someone who needs something in the academy, whether that’s getting an extra person to run surveys, or take a survey, or run and get references. There’s a professor we got in contact with who will let you live on campus in spare faculty housing, it’s a nice one. They can’t pay you, but if you’re not doing anything you’re free to audit classes.

~ Lemon, but honestly thank Felise for these connections “

“10. **Library Staff:** We had a lot of university leads actually! Usually they employ students, but with so many libraries in the city, staffing gets sparse sometimes. You’ll be volunteers at the one on the main campus ~ so close to the spire, oooh. In your off hours you’ll still have access to all the exclusive research resources too, or you could sneak into lectures? They’re also hooking you up with a dormitory, it’s decent!

~ You can thank Felise for this one ”

“11. **Sanitation Duty:** Sorry, that was actually just a nicer way to say you’re going to be custodians. Cleaning up hallways and bathrooms, erasing boards, mopping up labs and stuff. You basically get to be in the university whenever you want, even the off-limits places, oooh. If you try, maybe you could pretend to be a student? Haha, maybe don’t tell anyone I said that though. Still no pay, but humble faculty housing.

~ Felise for this one too ”

12. **Court Mail Room:** There’s this other person I know. They’re in charge of administration at the Courthouse, but they’ve been getting overwhelmed lately, so they’re willing to pull some strings if you volunteer in the mail room. Lots of trust since you’re in the office with all the paperwork, abuse it or don’t. They used to work in the academy before they switched over to the court, so they can also snag you a nice dorm in the academy.  - Toy. ”

After you’ve made your decisions and wait for your guardians to sort out your living situations, one last bizarre thing happens as you step foot in the city boundaries. Your phones buzz alive, all at once. The service provider, the bars, the wi-fi all show up as a single symbol: a blank square. Did you even have a phone? One seems to have been lodged into your belongings at some point if you didn’t. What the hell?

No notifications litter your screen. But. You open any application and refresh. It loads. Albeit, it loads a version of the webpage dated to June 29th, at noon precisely. You reload, you successfully pull up a page you didn’t previously have loaded, but nothing changes about this fact. You try posting something and it goes through with the current date and time. No reactions, no evidence of the world you left behind. In your hands, you suddenly found a functional version of the internet from the exact minute you’d left it behind.

#### **Summary**

* One last surprise, promise.
* Your phones suddenly have service. The provider shows up as a single blank square. Some benefactor watching over you, or some weird magic at play?
* If you didn’t have a phone, you find a phone in your possession. It’s a rose gold iPhone, you have no idea why.
* The internet and cellular service you have access to is dated to the day and exact time of the compass rose incident. It’s like you now have access to a copy of everything that was on the web at the time. Or, fuck, something worse than that, lmao.
* If you were to attempt texting another number of someone currently in the group, the texts would go through. Or like, email them, interact on twitter, etc. It seems you’re able to communicate this way.