User visit: Claudia Donovan

[a1enzo]

Enzo unlocks one of the upstairs doors and gestures Claudia inside. "Here it is. The digimat."

Comments

[claudiometer]

"God no. I can find what I need without getting into that."
Besides, viruses leave way too many traces of one's presence behind, if you know what to look for.

[a1enzo]

The attitude of the audience becomes rather more positive.

"What's it like, programming?"

[claudiometer]

"Totally awesome. And, okay, kinda frustrating sometimes, because you really have to watch what you're doing and staring at lines and lines of letters and numbers can get tiring after a while. But it's a lot of fun, especially when you get things to cooperate."
She'd phrase it differently, but since her stuff's been certified sprite-free...

[a1enzo]

A younger boy asks, "What's a 'dangerous object', to a User?"

[claudiometer]

"Welllll..." Claudia thinks about that for a few moments; it's one thing, in her eyes, to tell people at Milliways about the Warehouse. People in Milliways have already accepted a hell of a lot, if they're there. But this is a bigger crowd.
"There's stuff that's dangerous if you handle it badly," she finally says, "but to one extent or another it's still part of people's daily lives. Like, the stuff I use to put the purple stripe in my hair, or whatever color I feel like when I change it - if I swallowed it, I'd have some major problems, but it doesn't do anything bad if I put it in my hair.
"That's not the kind of stuff we collect. The stuff we collect... some of it could reach world-ending proportions, in the wrong hands. Some of it's just stuff that no one really understands well enough to use right."

[a1enzo]

Enzo steps in. "The details are classified," he announces. There are a number of "awwww"s from the audience, but young as they are, these are Guardians, and this whole User business is itself classified, so they can't really dispute the point.

[claudiometer]

"Otherwise, I'd cheerfully get into stories. ...If I could work 'em around the cultural barrier."
She would imagine magnetizing yourself to the ceiling doesn't have quite the same ring to digital life forms as it does to her (you know, where it's funny now that it's not actively happening).

[a1enzo]

It would have more the ring of INSTANT DEATH. (Magnets != happy fun times.)

"Any stories you can tell us?" Enzo asks. "About less classified stuff?"

[claudiometer]

"Well," she says, "not talking about work doesn't mean I can't talk about the people I work with..."
Pete would probably kill her if he knew she was telling some of these stories (especially the one where Leena made him help bake because he ate ALL THE PIE before anyone else could). But really, she's got just as many about her own shenanigans. She figures it evens out.