COUNTER/Weight 31: Expertize with a Z

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Episode description[edit | edit source]

As The Chime makes their way towards The September Institute, they find that they'll need more than style and wit to get past the campus gates. In the years that have passed since Mako's time as a student, who remains for him to count on and at what will they ask in return? As the storm swells over September, time becomes more and more precious...

This time on COUNTER/Weight: Expertize with a Z

Keep it wavy, baby

Contents[edit | edit source]

Opening[edit | edit source]

On its first night, students and workers from Mode City pulsed through the Bacchus Biotech Recreational District like hungry blood cells, finally able to devour the nutrients and proteins they’d only seen in the neurovids. Above them, the so-called Pleasure Dome, a suggestive, energetic pink, blasted out imported vibrancy.

This was the trade Sinner Twelt had made. His opponents said that he’d sold the planet out, his mentors called him arrogant, his workers doubted that their young leader had their interests at heart, but he did. And he silenced his own doubt with the fact that the people of Service 2 had dug themselves out from under a Divine once. A couple of civilians from the Diaspora with good connections were nothing in comparison, and they brought opportunity. Their world will not be the provincial joke it was when he was born on it. It would have culture. It would have a reputation. There would be a way forward.

And so Sinner Twelt bought his opponents, he disavowed his mentors and silenced the workers who dared speak out. He took the bastardized name the outsiders used for him, but in exchange he found a new name for the planet. It couldn’t be Service 2 anymore. Instead: September. And he felt relieved when the outsider took it as her name too, and relieved further when the contracts came, and the shopping centers, and the new streets, and the university. But now, in the light of that gaudy dome, he realized he should’ve asked for more.

Plot[edit | edit source]

The Chime argue about whether to set off a fire alarm to make the receptionist go away. Mako just goes right up to her. She warns him she’ll have to file a report, but lets him bring out his “friends”. She immediately recognizes Aria, though Aria insists she’s just a big Aria Joie fan. AuDy can see through the cameras that the receptionist has reported back to some people in military gear.

As the sun sets, Mako brings the Chime through the alleys of Mode City and over to his friend Lazer Ted in the Bacchus Biotech Recreational District. Lazer Ted offensively hits on Aria and Cass and chats with Mako. He will get them ID cards for two credits each plus access to the Kinko’s he’s been banned from. AuDy insists they, at least, will only pay one credit and he agrees. At the Kinko’s, they’re vehement about not letting Lazer Ted in, so Mako hacks their system so that the ban has “expired”. Ted prints out everyone’s IDs, and takes AuDy to buy a suit, to which he attaches a pin that projects a hologram of a human face.

Mako briefly connects to Orth and Jacqui, who try to give a warning, through the poor connection, about a group called the Tzadik. A weather report the Chime passes by forecasts the rain becoming an upcoming, and unprecedented, blizzard.

Cast[edit | edit source]

Other Characters[edit | edit source]

  • Twelfth (intro)
  • Amira Kiani (receptionist)
  • Lazer Ted
  • Sarah (Kinko’s security/manager)
  • Berenice (suit seller)