Move 15 Recap
We continue our case study of rebellion participation by analyzing the behavior of several study members in the early morning hours following their arrival at Station Moongray.
Fluffy, Istradez, Mikodez
Istradez has had one too many head injuries and collapses into unconsciousness.
Mikodez tries to hack the station for evidence of past visitors from out of time, and plays tag with the baby mothling, whom he nicknames, variously, 'Baby', 'Crowned-With-Eyes', 'Pompom', and 'Noodles'. Around 01:00 he receives a message from Sasha, requesting that he retrieve Fluffy the Vraselian pseudo-dragon. He heads to the magistrate's quarters, where he finds two bored guards. Fluffy is making obnoxious teakettle sounds because she wants her evening snack. The guards are happy to make Fluffy into Mikodez's problem. He takes her back to the visitors' quarters, where he collects a DNA sample from Istradez and feeds Fluffy lots of candy.
Ashari, Gerae, Sasha, Sulen, Virmad
Around 02:50, Sasha returns Gerae to his room and secures him by the expedient of asking the grid to disappear the door. She asks the Rahal what Gerae meant by referencing signifiers, and is irritated that Virmad describes her as "Broken-Winged Moth"; she objects to characterization both as 'broken' and as a moth/Nirai. She heads back to the comms room and sets alarms to warn about weapons or unauthorized technology in the airlock of the Wasp.
A few minutes later, Sulen joins Sasha in the comms room, and asks her for assistance in printing a gun or gun replica. They explain that if something goes wrong in the conversation with the station administrator the following morning, they'd like to be able to make a plausible threat, but that they don't actually want to shoot anybody. Sasha is convinced that threatening violence without the ability to follow through is the worst of both worlds; the two argue.
At this point, Teo calls Virmad to complain that the teenager (Mikodez, posing as "Avrayen") has been attempting to hack the station grid, and asks Virmad, with a wink, to look into the matter. Sasha and Sulen listen to the conversation from the comms room. Sasha displays a message with advice on Virmad's screen during the conversation, irritating Virmad, who didn't think his conversations were being monitored. Teo and Sasha cut off Mikodez's access to the lattice by tablet and lokwor, respectively.
Virmad storms into the comms room to yell at Sasha about eavesdropping. Sasha pages Ashari, then explains that Teo probably wrote the spy virus that has been plaguing the ship and infected Iawa's tablet; Virmad is somewhat mollified.
Sasha tries once more to persuade Sulen to take a deadly weapon (she suggests an airgun), if they must have a weapon; this alarms Virmad. Sasha appeals to Sulen, asking "as a personal favor" that they protect themselves, and suggesting that Ashari would react badly if their "friend" Sulen were endangered. Ashari arrives just in time to overhear this appeal. Sulen sends Sasha a message agreeing to use an airgun, in an attempt to calm her. Sasha distracts Ashari by explaining the situation with Mikodez and asking what to do next.
Commitment to the Rebellion
The team's behavior follows the rule of thumb that changes in ideology tend to follow, rather than precede, membership in an insurgent organization. The conversation between Aricura Sulen and Zuhrovet Sikandaret (Sasha) is a case in point. Though Sulen defected from the heptarchate in a dramatic fashion, at this point they lack an ideological commitment to armed rebellion. Sasha, on the other hand, is by temperament and upbringing prone to violence, but her opposition to the heptarchate is currently rather vague: her primary reason for joining the rebellion was curiosity, rather than ideology. Though Sasha frames her appeal in instrumental terms, as a contract or bargain to avoid later retaliation, it represents a tacit assessment that Sulen might care about her emotional state, and an explicit admission that Sasha is monitoring Ashari's state of mind. It thus represents for Sasha an advance in emotional bonding with her team, which one might anticipate would later transfer to an emotional commitment to the rebellion as a whole. Sulen, on the other hand, began by proposing a literal (albeit potential) performance of violence, but may move closer to actual violent action.
Meanwhile, Virmad is in the early stages of realizing the extent of the commitment he has already made. He appears torn between his attraction to Teo and his desire to cooperate with the team. Ashari continues to resist commitments to persons other than Sulen, and attempts to obscure their commitment to Sulen as much as possible.
Mikodez, perhaps subconsciously aware that action precedes a change in allegiance, has been behaving erratically, in service neither to the rebellion nor to the shadowy figures that sent him to join it.
