11:48 <Crion> So. The first job taken care of. Most of Aster's worries about the team, especially their competence, assauged. Discretion, we'll see. He's certainly not going to be living out of that safehouse. He came to Manchester to build a business. To build a brand. He signed papers with the vampires to do it. It's time to formally become...a small business owner. 11:51 <Crion> The first part, of course, is the permissions to do business in the UK as a foreign national. He already has a work visa that won't need renewal for some time, and he's not one of the sorts that current government have any interest in throwing out of the country. He needs a business banking account and a pair of licenses related to it in order to even get his d/b/a off the ground, let alone 11:51 <Crion> be eligible for local and...not federal. National? Whatever. The tax breaks. They're likely not as lucrative as in the United States, but they surely still exist. 11:52 <Crion> While that paperwork's going through: he needs to find real estate. This should not be difficult. A number of the less-established, fly-by-night testing companies will have gone out of business during the pandemic; those are the ones that will have relied on constant, low-level employee drug tests to get through, while not having the business and political connections to snap up COVID 11:52 <Crion> testing or vaccination site contracts. 11:54 <Crion> Especially if they, say, weren't willing or able to be accredited for anything other than piss tests for weed, speed, and nosebleed. He doesn't need their refridgerators, lab equipment, or other infrastructure; he just needs to make sure they have the right power outlets able to draw the right amounts of power, and the plumbing for installing eye-flush stations and the like. 11:57 <Crion> Ideally, Aster builds A. Aster Biologics (he's undecided on "A. Aster" or just "Aster;" he'll probably go with the latter, as alphabetical phonebook tricks don't work anymore, but there is a local competitor calling itself 'AlphaBiolabs' with which he's doubtless going to be sharing listing space) out, immediately gets crime lab accreditation to take work from Manchester emergency services, 11:57 <Crion> and then has enough room in the back for all the special stuff he's really interested in pursuing. 11:57 <Crion> The stuff you don't advertise on the top line, and that special customers know to ask for. 11:58 <Crion> If he has to turn to ancestral genetic mapping and paternity testing to pay the bills, he's already fucked up badly somewhere along the line. 12:02 <Crion> What does he need then? As far as public business accreditations that don't require pulling strings: ISO 9001, the certification that shows he knows how to run a business at all, is necessary. ISO 17020, 'Requirements for the operation of various types of bodies performing inspection,' is the crime scene accreditation, and his is still active in the UK from when he was with Scotland Yard, 12:02 <Crion> thankfully. 12:04 <Crion> ISO 17025, 'General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories,' will require a site inspection, however. Getting an inspector out here -- once there is a 'here' and once everything is set up -- will be the big hurdle. This is all done through UKAS, the governing quasi-public regulatory body that handles the concept of 'being accredited,' and things are thankfully 12:04 <Crion> a lot simpler now that the EU isn't directly involved anymore. 12:05 <Crion> Aster imagines that wouldn't be true if he were exporting to or interfacing with an EU territory, but he's not. 12:07 <Crion> To work with Scotland Yard and his old colleagues there, he'll then have to subject the space to inspection under what was referred to as "Crown Standard 17," which is very definitely not a public standard that most labs go through certification for. Would be best if none of his new colleagues were in the room for that one...except perhaps Wellesley. She might be helpful here, in fact. 12:09 <Crion> And then there would be whatever additional poking and prodding that, say, the Manchester police wanted to do, or the local hospital, or what not. Not technically required under law (at least not in the United States), but necessary for building good fences with officious neighbors. 12:10 <Crion> This will be, to every appearance and indeed to the truth of the matter itself, an actual business, not a front company. That means taxes, that means accounting, that means, probably, at some point, hired employees. 12:11 <Crion> He has the savings necessary to secure a commercial rental property, and he has the capital infusion to pay for deposits and physical assets; that shouldn't be a problem at all. But maintaining a payroll, even if it's just a lab assistant and a receptionist, means maintaining a list of targets...and security risks. 12:14 <Crion> This is a long-winded -- extremely so! -- way of saying that Aster is spending a lot of time in the safehouse now going through documents at his workstation, sighing, and grumbling; perceptive co-hunters likely have seen him Google Mapsing various possibly-meritorious buildings, most of which used to be either labs or...restaurants! Turns out restaurants have most of the electrical 12:14 <Crion> infrastructure and wiring already in place to support gas burners, big refridgerators, and a bunch of computers. They just also have very annoying floor plans, and public areas Aster doesn't need. 12:19 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's been mapping herself a bit; combining the corkboards Badawi set up with the maps Haldane has put together to attempt to create a viable map of the city's physical and social landmarks. She's a bit dissatisfied — this is all so analog. We should have touchscreens, live-updating digital maps... we're inside a beating machine heart and setting up like a 1990s police drama. 12:19 <Crion> Aster's more comfortable with that aesthetic, obviously. It's what the agents of VASCU lived for. 12:21 <Crion> He actually came in a few days ago and added cards with 'The Wise and Solemn Court' and 'Victus Indomitus' under a VAMPIRE heading. There's actually quite a few officers listed under the former...and nothing under the latter. 12:21 <Crion> Court officers, that is. Vampires. 12:22 <VoxPVoxD> Willie takes note of this as she collates. Does he have the location of their meeting-place marked down as well? 12:22 <Crion> Yes, though it'll probably take some digging for her to properly correllate what it is -- to him it was simply a theater beneath a Radisson. 12:25 <VoxPVoxD> Willie looks back at the wider room. The acoustics in here are surprisingly good given the angular shape and all the exposed wiring behaving as baffles. "That's a lot of vampires. Did one of you cadge a directory?" 12:25 <Crion> Aster: "They had the intention of being known." 12:26 <Crion> "I may have spoken too soon about other members of this team being in too close with our former quarries." 12:27 <VoxPVoxD> Huh. Willie's expression of surprise may or may not be apparent to Aster depending on how focused he is on his tasks. "Was there trouble?" 12:29 <Crion> "No. In fact, it was suspiciously smooth and pleasant, given I was deep underground, in the clutches of the undead, cavorting with them in their great stage-tomb. I suspect their Prince -- that's a technical, gender-standardized term, I believe -- hit me with some of their hypnotization. Mesmirization." 12:29 <Crion> "She was very compelling." 12:29 <Crion> "Looked almost exactly like Sigourney Weaver." 12:31 <Crion> He stares balefully at the board. "But no lost time. No sex. No fluid-swapping ritual of any sort. I tested my blood the morning after, in the sunlight. I remain to all standardized metrics, a living human." 12:31 <VoxPVoxD> Willie traces her fingers over the map. "Beneath the Edwardian?" 12:32 <Crion> "Simply one who appears to have had a vampire counter-sign and notorize his application for a business bank account and a d/b/a for his lab." 12:32 <Crion> Aster: "Yes. A very striking building." 12:34 <VoxPVoxD> A small noise escapes Willie's throat, worry dancing over her face which she coughs delicately to banish. "On what conditions?" 12:35 <Crion> Still staring at the board: "I had visions of the place as it was, once. Full of...trade unionists, I think, but in suits, giving speeches, having debates. I've never had the Postcognition module activate on its own like that before..." 12:35 <Crion> He glances up. "Hmm? Ah." 12:36 <Crion> "Two, and they won't surprise you. The first is that any action I take against a vampire in the region of Manchester and Salford has to be cleared through them first. Probably either the Sheriff there, or the Prince herself. I'm not fool enough to bind any of you to such a deal, so if you intend to take such action, do us all the courtesy of not telling me about it first. Or better yet, don't 12:36 <Crion> do it at all." 12:37 <Crion> "I'm allowed to 'sell stakes to Londoners,' but nothing local." 12:38 <Crion> Aster points. "Second -- and after a bit of thinking, I suspect this is intertwined with the comment the Prince made about London -- I am not to deal with or advance the interests of that second group, the Victus Indomitus." 12:38 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Is that a Catholic thing?" 12:39 <Crion> "I asked for a description of them. I was told they were 'blue-bloods who took Latin in grammar school,' and then for my American benefit, she compared them to the Confederate gentry of the antebellum South." 12:40 <Crion> He presses his lips together in a smile. "So if we must deal with them, they sound like your sort of people." 12:40 <VoxPVoxD> Willie looks down at her midshuffle notes. "What makes you say so?" 12:45 <Crion> Aster: "I used the word Prince repeatedly because I know that's the word you're supposed to use for the leader of a vampire court for a region. But look at the titles they've given themselves." He points to the notecards, where he's dutifully written those out. "'Mayor,' 'Constable,' 'Registrar.' There's no aristocracy or nobility to them. Even 'Sheriff' has been replaced -- in America, 12:45 <Crion> a Sheriff is just an elected county official, but here, the place where the word comes from, sheriffs serve the Crown." 12:46 <Crion> "That combined with their Labour posturing makes me think that their opposition conforms to a quite different set of standards...ones that would get a kick out of your accent, your station, and both of your heritages." 12:47 <Crion> "My professional advice is that you, specifically, avoid the vampires of Manchester entirely. But that's also my general advice, and I haven't been very good at taking it." 12:49 <VoxPVoxD> Willie folds her arms, eyes tracing the three-block route from her apartment and workplace from the nest of all the city's vampires. She takes a few steps backward, making the distance between them even shorter. A hand-width, a fingernail. An eyeblink. "Not exactly sustainable, is it? If we're going to be doing all this." 12:49 <VoxPVoxD> "You know, I've never met a vampire before." 12:49 <VoxPVoxD> "Well, I'm sure I have. But I've never met one the way you have." 12:52 <Crion> Aster: "Questions of sustainability have occurred to me. Especially given that last week, we were doing -- I'm fairly certain -- werewolf work." 12:54 <Crion> "All of VASCU's files on werewolves were either folkloric research material or from the 1920s at the latest, but the obvious naming practices of our client and the whole bit with the moon...well, I suspect werewolves can take a possessed tractor to the body a lot more easily than Bob ever will be able to." 12:55 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "In the short term I think I prefer that. Being asked to do monstrous ecosystem work that would ordinarily fall to monster self-regulation... it says bad things about the state of the world, but it doesn't breed enemies quite so rapidly as being called in to settle political disputes." 12:55 <VoxPVoxD> "Selling stakes to London, on the other hand..." 12:56 <Crion> Aster: "I suspect the 'Night Mayor' -- she is actually the Night Mayor of Manchester, though, I checked; it's a ceremonial position from the local chamber of commerce that promotes nightclubs and social events -- was being a bit aspirational there." 12:56 <Crion> "I'm making a forensics lab, not an armory." 12:59 <Crion> He sighs. "Bob's policy on pretty women would have him undercutting me out of business, anyhow. The Wise and Solemn etcetera had to be at least two-thirds female." 13:01 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "That's interesting. I'd like to read a longitudinal study on vampire generations to see how their demographics change over time. How they resist and succumb to waves of immigration, how gender oscillates over time... the classical vampire, Bob's colleagues' neurosis, of the sexual conquest, or sublimated sexual conquest, for example." 13:02 <VoxPVoxD> "You can paint a picture... a generation of predominantly-men kills and turns a generation of predominantly-women, and so on down the line... but it's just paint. No data, obviously." 13:05 <Crion> Aster: "Vampires were at the top end of our purview at VASCU in Philadelphia; thankfully, they were rarely interested in serial butchery. The public sort that gets law enforcement involved, that is. One got the feeling they did not take kindly at all to one of their lot exsanguinating a sex worker every Friday night and leaving the body out there to be found. One got the impression -- an 13:05 <Crion> impression that I think I've had very firmly confirmed for me -- that they're extremely social creatures, and terminally self-policing of public embarassments." 13:06 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "The machinery of aristocracy, if not the aesthetics." 13:06 <VoxPVoxD> "Am I really that obvious?" 13:07 <Crion> Aster waves a hand. "The obsession with exalted bloodlines and great families delineated and defined by custom and ritual is simply part of the human condition. As present in baseball players as it is in princelings of the realm." 13:09 <Crion> "You're probably a bit closer to them anthropologically than most, especially given that your condition uses blood -- both literal and figurative -- as a heuristic. But you're hardly alone there." 13:09 <Crion> "And there are of course all the very important differences." 13:12 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "When I was working in London, as I said, I never met a vampire. Given what I had heard, and what other hunters I met seemed to assume, I always wondered, were those leads being deliberately withheld from me? On the assumption of divided loyalties? Or perhaps the reverse. Perhaps the London night-city saw fit to treat me, and my gadfly's work, with kid gloves, playing on connections 13:12 <VoxPVoxD> I can't even see." 13:13 <Crion> Aster: "Would you like me to speculate, or permit that to remain rhetorical?" 13:13 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Do what you like. I can take it." 13:20 <Crion> Aster: "I think social elites in all anglophone societies -- and I'm only speaking for them to qualify the speculative range of this opinion, not to rule out its application in Russia or China or Somalia or etcetera -- interact with vampires far more often than they know, even and especially those of us professionally invested in hunting them, and that this isn't a mark of naivete or 13:20 <Crion> inattention. For instance. In 2008, the incoming federal budget didn't have a line for VASCU; it was defunded, rolled into the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I spent a very insulting few years being bounced between Quantico and the sourthern border as I was farmed out all over the DoJ and DHS. But then...suddenly, after the 2012 elections, the second-term administration quietly issues 13:20 <Crion> memorandum guidance informing the DHS and DoJ that VASCU is now a cleared contractor organization in a private-public relationship with the federal government. 13:21 <Crion> "And the federal money suddenly flowed again, like a tap had just been turned on...but we lifers, we who were invited back, got the sense that it still wasn't enough." 13:22 <Crion> "There had to be more money coming from somewhere...and there was. A private foundation funds a surprising amount of VASCU's business, and everything that doesn't directly interface with the federal government. In fact, there's reason to believe a lot of that funding is dark money funnelled out of completely unregulated super PACs -- basically completely unregulated political slush funds. 13:22 <Crion> Black budgets for the Beltway set. 13:23 <Crion> "And every year, VASCU holds a donor's dinner during the Christmas holidays." 13:23 <Crion> "And it's always a dinner. Never a brunch." 13:23 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "And always at Christmas, when the days are shortest." 13:24 <VoxPVoxD> "So this is rather a lateral move for you, then." 13:26 <Crion> Aster nods and pauses. "It was around here we -- myself and two colleagues, Dr. Samantha Gladwell and Managing Agent Joseph Koepka -- simply decided it was healthier to stop asking questions. We didn't have to be warned, threatened or intimidated; we had a good thing going, and we were in danger of fucking it up. And all three of us are still alive. But Joseph is managing the new office that's 13:26 <Crion> just been opened in Sao Paulo...and Samantha and I are out here." 13:26 <Crion> "I don't think that's a coincidence. I think someone did a risk assessment, and decided to get us out of Philadelphia and away from any corner offices we might be promoted into." 13:27 <VoxPVoxD> "Do you think you're safer here?" 13:28 <VoxPVoxD> Implied: do you think we are? 13:28 <Crion> He straightens. "So I think you've encountered vampires and their proxies a number of times, as have I, as has I suspect at least Rolf because your Human Office is almost certainly as lousy with them as your Home Office is, and I think generally speaking they're among the safest sorts of monsters you can be around." 13:28 <Crion> "They have an investment in society working the way it does, and so do we." 13:29 <Crion> "Unlike various sorts of paraphenominal practicioners and other 'wizards,' they tend not to make things explode." 13:29 <VoxPVoxD> Willie frowns just a bit. 13:33 <Crion> Aster either doesn't notice or doesn't remark on it. "And while I'm certainly less safe now that they've taken a direct interest in me, I'm more safe as part of a social unit they have to account for and bargain with -- and imagine that they can manipulate, or perhaps actually do so -- than I am as a lone atomic individual, and that's the same for all of you. Because my theory is that 13:33 <Crion> they see social units as civilizing, humanizing, and dignifying things; things that flatter their personhood. They see a lone man in the dark as prey." 13:35 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "How does that extend to the business you're starting?" 13:38 <Crion> Aster: "Dragging me down there and introducing me to the entire extended family certainly seems like adding me, in some small but relatively-important way, to their court. Perhaps as someone to toy with; perhaps as someone -- something -- to jealously scheme over. But most men that Suzie Cutsworth leads down into the Manchester sewers don't come out with notorized business documents in a 13:38 <Crion> manilla envelope. So I will be expected to keep this business within their general social radius in return." 13:38 <Crion> "Which is why I wasn't about to run it out of here, space for it or no space." 13:39 <Crion> Aster: "And permits allowing, of course. There is a significant barrier to entry to starting an accredited business right now. Getting inspectors out in the age of COVID is a nightmare governed mainly, I suspect, by social connections and bribery." 13:39 <Crion> "And I'd prefer to lean on the vampires as little as possible." 13:40 <Crion> "Besides, I doubt the Manchester Night Mayor has much pull with the UKAS." 13:40 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Still, it's not exactly something you can do alone, is it? Even if this Wise and Solemn Court backstops all of your property leases, secures all your permits, they won't be able to staff it for you. And staff are a liability to you, as you are to them." 13:41 <Crion> Aster: "Yes. It could be bothersome, both morally and practically speaking." 13:42 <Crion> He said that very clinically. 13:42 <Crion> Perhaps the receptionist getting gutted is just more paperwork to Aaron Aster; he hasn't had to think about it before. It probably depends on the receptionist. 13:44 <VoxPVoxD> He says everything very clinically. "I think the ethical and practical challenge is: what do you tell them? What do actively conceal? What do you expect to just sail over their heads?" 13:47 <Crion> Aster: "Well, for a receptionist, the hope is I tell them what hours the lab is open to walk-ins, they work the desk to cover a semester or two at school, then the somewhat uncompetitive wage and unpleasantless of my company compels them to move on to another job. Building a personal rapport with a college student only turns them into a target with no commensurate addition in value to the 13:47 <Crion> business, as well as generally being poor conversation." 13:47 <Crion> He takes off his glasses and rubs his nose. "A lab assistant is trickier." 13:48 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "True, but it also creates a churn of people who know a tiny bit and don't think very highly of you. Pressure points in an organization are structural; the character of the people in those positions is secondary." 13:49 <Crion> "Again, the idea is they go off and find a real job somewhere else after awhile. But it's a position that requires a great deal of trust. Especially if I stagger in with a chest wound one evening, or with one of you with a chest wound, and I need to use the mortuary bed as an ersatz operating theater." 13:50 <VoxPVoxD> This frown she makes no effort to hide. "The circle of trust widens. Not unlike a wound." 13:50 <Crion> Aster considers Willie's point. "True, but probably more applicable to someone at least allowed back into the lab. If someone wants to kill my receptionist, that's a decision they've made. I'm certainly not about to go rescuing a hostage." 13:51 <Crion> "And there's only so much they can know. No, I think the receptionist is more dangerous as someone who can, over time, be turned into an informant." 13:51 <Quaker> Badawi looks up from her newspaper. “Just hire a supernatural. Somebody who is looking to keep their head down and needs a day job.” 13:51 <Crion> Aster: "Perhaps I hire no lab assistant at all. Perhaps I can do all of the work myself. If it pays this well..." 13:52 <Crion> To Badawi: "Then the vampires are likely to have questions about what they know." 13:54 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "If you hire someone who is a known quantity to them, then they'll be more understanding and likely more useful. But it comes at the cost of them being harder to control or ignore." 13:56 <Crion> Aster: "Giving one of their blood dolls a cushy barely-show job at the desk wouldn't be the end of the world. It would certainly solve the issue of me having to care about their well-being; that would be the vampires' problem." 13:57 <Quaker> Badawi scratches her nose. “Then just hire a supernatural who the Vampires don’t know about or can’t control.” 13:58 <Crion> Aster: "That sounds like asking Sourjack for more referrals." 13:58 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Unless it's someone he can control, it's just trading one master for another." 13:59 <VoxPVoxD> "And unlike Jack, we know the vampires' address, in the Free Trade Hall." 13:59 <VoxPVoxD> "Is it really intact? After the Blitz and everything?" 14:02 <Crion> Aster: "It's rubble, but it's recognizable." 14:02 <Crion> Aster: "I assume if they wanted it prettier, it would be." 14:07 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "What kind of experience does a lab tech need? Is it someone you'd be able to train out of university?" 14:09 <Crion> Aster: "I'd prefer a master's degree in medical laboratory science but I suspect I'd quickly learn not to be picky. Ideally a self-starter who can do the mundane work themselves." 14:10 <Crion> "I've never misled myself into thinking I'm an especially effective teacher." 14:13 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "What about your colleague from Philadelphia? Dr. Gladwell." 14:17 <Crion> Aster chuckles. "As pleasant as that would be, being my lab assistant is a significant step down in prestige and pay from being the senior consulting doctor to and head criminal profiler of Scotland Yard's Special Considerations Unit in the CID." 14:18 <Crion> "As it is, I'm hoping for her to send me work from time to time, not move up here to Manchester." His face softens as he talks about her. It's an odd look on him. 14:19 <VoxPVoxD> "Perhaps—" She falters just a bit when she sees the change in his face, but tries to play it off as just re-collecting her thoughts. "Perhaps she has some contacts, I meant. An avenue to poach talent." 14:22 <VoxPVoxD> It's uncomfortable seeing sincere emotion on that man's face. She has the sense of intruding on something private, despite the conversation being anything but personal. 14:23 <Crion> Aster nods. "That would make sense. I probably should have thought of that. Thank you, Willie." 14:28 <VoxPVoxD> "You're very welcome." See, Bob is so eager to get it out that it's hard to take anything in particular by it, but this... "I should get going. I have to get on a work call at 7. Barbaric, I know, but the madmen at Treasury will be there for hours still afterward. It's spending review season." 14:28 <Crion> He blinks as he thinks of something. Maybe the reason he wanted to have this conversation in the first place. "Do you have any pull with the UKAS? It's technically a private body, but it's compliant with and governed by UK law and I suspect the membrane there is quite thin..." 14:29 <VoxPVoxD> "Oh! Yes. It's a private company, but it's under the aegis of BEIS. What do you need?" 14:31 <Crion> Aster: "I'm about to file a request for the Fall examination for certification under the ISO 17025 standard, which is accompanied by a site survey by the assessor and so on. I don't have the site yet, but the assessment isn't until November, and if I wait they're not going to do it again until the spring. I was wondering if some grease could be applied to those wheels. If the lab isn't 14:31 <Crion> ready by the assessment date, I'll still pay all the...agreed-upon fees, and wait until the spring or a reschedule." 14:32 <Crion> Aster: "I also need the same done for Crown Standard 17, which is essentially the same assessment but for, well, doing labs on monsters. I'm not sure if you even can access that; I might have to go through Samantha." 14:35 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I'll give Bianca a ring about the ISO. She's the acting director of the relevant sub-department. The other thing, yeah, you're probably going to need to go through the Home or Human Office." 14:36 <Crion> Aster nods. "Excellent. I supposed as much on the other thing, but should be able to have it taken care of." 14:36 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Very good. Have a good evening, Mr. Aster." 14:37 <Crion> He stands and shuffles his papers together. "Now, I must go print some things in triplicate, sign them, and see if the relevant local office has a COVID drop or if I must stand in line." 14:37 <Crion> As he leaves: "You too, Willie. Badawi." 14:39 <VoxPVoxD> Willie takes the long way home — walking half a kilometer out of her way so as not to come into eyeshot of the place she now knows to be crawling with vampires — and settles into her apartment. There is no call; the call was a week ago. But that place was starting to feel quite claustrophobic. 14:42 <VoxPVoxD> But now she's home, insofar as this dingy little flat is her home now. And the dough has finished proofing, the champagne is cold, and she hasn't checked Bumble in a couple of days... tomorrow is for tomorrow's problems. Let the night take them. Or the ground.