Logs:Defuse

Defuse
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Matt
In Absentia	Thanksgiving "Can we return to destroying the rift with memes?"
Location <PRV> Tessier Residence - Greenwich Village
Understated opulence claims this spacious and well-kept townhome, the decor throughout the whole of it of the highest quality and carefully chosen. The front door opens onto the entrance hall, a closet close at hand to receive coats and shoes -- the pale hardwood floors gleam underfoot, unsullied by tracked-in mess from outside. The living room beyond the entrance is all dark woods and pale earth tones, comfortable couches and armchairs and a thick soft rug laid down beneath. Two large and painstakingly aquascaped aquariums flank the entrance to the dining room, with several brightly coloured species of fish within. Most of the rest of the wall space, notably, is taken up with shelves -- shelves crammed with books of every subject and genre. A study branching off of the main hall is cozy, small, done in pale blues and lined with books as well around the large computer desk and smaller futon, though these rarer books are cased behind glass. Another securely locked door leads to the basement, and another to the full bathroom downstairs. The kitchen connects to the living room; in contrast, it is sleek and modern and well-appointed, stocked by someone who takes their cooking seriously. And takes their alcohol equally seriously -- to one side of the kitchen there is a fully-stocked bar. The back door to the kitchen looks out on a small well-kept garden. The dining room table still holds the remains of a dessert bounty. Dinner has at least been put away, but the pies and cookies are still laid out, not nearly as depleted as they should be for the company that was here earlier. The dishes, at least, have been cleaned up, almost a side effect of having the Hollands over. Lucien is, right now, making no move to clean up the remains of dessert. Instead he's seated cross-legged on the floor in neatly tailored jeans and a soft green long-sleeved henley by the base of the couch, his laptop in his lap and a bottle of Scotch at his side. "-- what if we just. Didn't even try to hide it." He's frowning at his screen before he tips his head back against the couch cushions. "Just made it sound ludicrous. Murder hornets. Cheese makes you immortal." Matt is stretched out on the couch, his head propped up on several cushions, a hardback copy of Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway in his lap and a squat glass of Scotch tucked against his chest in one skinny hand. Wigless, now, he's looking exhausted and pale, dressed in a moss green tee shirt with a paler green snake curled across the front, its coils suggestive of cursive letters, his blue jeans considerably more frayed than his brother's, worn through at the cuffs and buttery soft, baggy on his still too-thin frame. His head rolls to the side, his eyes slower to focus on his brother. "'Staten Island, Gateway to Shittier Parallel Dimension'," he says with an air of trying the words on for size, his free hand sweeping through the air as if to highlight the invisible headline. "Already sounds pretty ludicrous. The kind of a year we've been having? Plenty of people wouldn't even blink." "Mirror would not. Even need to work." Lucien's hand waves expansively in midair. "The memes would have eclipsed the story within the hour." He drops his hand back to his computer, but reaches for the bottle immediately after instead to take a swallow. "No panic. Only occasionally people coming by in hopes of a slightly-different-hellworld selfie." "Mmm. Mirror hasn't needed to work for months." Matt takes a generous gulp of his drink. "Satire, on the other hand, is basically dead. Indistinguishable from the actual news." He sighs, nestling himself deeper into the couch. "But really, the key is to stop S.H.I.E.L.D. from trying to stay in full denial mode well after it's too late. Common government mistake." "Hard to really cover anything up. Deep. Enough people know -- it would get out. Sooner or later." Lucien tips the neck of the bottle towards Matt this time. "The other direction was my other thought. Leak it but quietly. Sounds just as ludicrous, people dismiss it as --" He waggles the bottle vaguely, then exhales a soft laugh. "Like. Just imagine. We put it out as a Q drop first. Discredited the moment it is out. Of course --" His brow furrows, and his next laugh is more of a snort. "If they don't close it. That would backfire. Little bit." "That Steve knew well enough to tap a real professional instead of leaving it to the spooks is a credit to your...positive influence, no?" Matt salutes his brother with his glass before draining and waggling his his fingers at the rest of the bottle. "If you don't want to risk accidentally giving credence to the Qanon crowd, you could always leak it on Reddit or something similiarly low-stakes, but I admit the automatic anti-credence it would get breaking as a conspiracy theory is a brilliant gamble." He props himself up a little straighter. "Maybe split the difference and start it as a post on a feeder forum for one of the big conspiracy outlets. I'm sure Mirror's got a tinfoil hack in there somewhere." "Big risk with the Q -- cult, though. The potential for nutjobs turning up with twenty rifles apiece. Looking to invade another world." It's hard to say if the scrunch of Lucien's face is amused or pained. He rolls to the side, stretching out so that he can refill Matt's glass. "Gods only know what they'd make of B." "Alien, obviously. Might get her better treatment, a soupçon of curiosity before the violence." Matt gives a short, sharp bark of a laugh. "Easy fix, though. Say it's some other Staten Island precinct. Maybe keep rotating which one." For all that he's clearly inebriated by this point, his tolerance diminished by long illness, he manages to hold his glass steady. "Giving the NYPD a headache or three is just gravy." "Now this sounds complicated," Lucien complains with a frown. "Can we return to destroying the rift with memes? That was -- simpler. Less active cultivation needed." Matt has settled back down onto his side, now, nursing his replenished drink. "Very well, that was a good plan, too. Could use a good iconic image that's nothing at all to do with the actual rift." His eyes slide shut, his teeth grinding slow and just barely audible. "That monolith they found in Utah has potential. Choice balance of weird and real, and--with the right push..." He nudges his brother's shoulder gently. "Could. Take off. Thus spoke Zarathustra."