Patter pulled into the garage of his two-person home, watching the shutter slowly reel down shut, before he got out of his van and marched into the lift. The design of the house had been peculiar, even taking the idiosyncracies of the Little Sanctuary planning AIs - the house sat atop the garage rather than to one side like most of the two-person homes in the town, with access into the house provided by a series of staircases outside and indoors as well as a small lift good for two or three people. One did not expect too many people in here, and everything was sized accordingly. Patter shrugged off his hazmat suit and hung it on a special support that had been provided as part of his job for when work extended past shift hours, watching as a hose pumped sterilizing mist into the insides to kill every possible kind of funk that had built up over the past eight hours of calls.Yes, I know fishing trips last much longer. No, I'm not planning to bore the shit out of you with a fishing expedition on an ASFR story collection - there's a limit to my cruelty, okay? -handle2
Patter didn't look for long, before he hit the bathroom to make use of its rainfall shower, letting himself get squeaky clean, before towelling himself off and getting into a comfy set of loose pants and a worn-out shirt from an Arendtcore Reset Corps mess party several months back that was celebrating Little Sanctuary's 30th year of existence. He sat down in his bedroom, relaxing and looking at his collection of furry art on the wall. Nothing tasteless, just in case a visitor came by, somehow. That stuff was on his old model laptop - a bruiser that was slow but had survived four years of college, two years of job hunting, and the oddly long trip from Alaska down to Minnesota. His pay included rent and sensible power and water use, but not replacing the clunker PC. He smiled a little as he found his favorite artist "Rimosa" had posted a fake magazine cover of a weasel girl standing stark naked and shocked on the cover of a magazine on Windows computers, then faved and saved the post for later... enjoyment.
He blinked. "Oh yes." He'd almost forgotten his end-of-shift report. Calmly bringing up the form for reports, he typed away. Nothing of note happened, everything he was assigned was completed properly. Everything except...
Patter took a deep breath. Technically he was about to lie in a way that might cost him his tiny cosy little home and his job here. "Attempted replacement of Teacher Unit, 1x Lucy Feline Anthromorphic Educator Unit at Special Little Sparks educational facility. Unable to locate old unit, proceeded to insert new unit in and switch alcove to support replacement unit. Attempted brief search for old unit, not found. NMCNMM"
Patter chuckled as he used the acronym so many Reset Crew staffers had grown to love when confronted with a task way out of their job scope: Nie Moje Cyrk, Nie Moje Malpy. Hey, not my circus, not my monkeys. Not my responsibility to go hunting for a missing unit, basically. It WAS his responsibility to file a report after a shift, which he now proceeded to do.
He made a mental note to do a little work to excise and relocate the locator in the Teacher Lucy unit to avoid being called out on it. but first...
Patter shut the laptop down and turned off the bedside lamp. He had a long weekend after multiple additional callouts the previous month, and he was going to make full use of it. But first he had to get plenty of sleep...
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Patter wasn't one for late risings. He still got his desired eight hours of sleep anyway, waking up to the buzzer on his laptop and another shower, this time to clean the sweat from sleeping with only a fan on full blast in a warm summer night. One puff later, he grabbed his Fix-It kit from the shelf where he kept his work items and descended the lift into the garage to get working on.... stuff.
Patter felt the Teacher Lucy unit was a little lighter. Presumably being well-rested had improved his ability to carry stuff. Anyways, he wheeled the gurney with the anthrobot into the lift and out into the upper floor where his bedroom was, taking care to fold and push his bed into the wall behind it to free the room up. First things first, where was that locator...
He licked his lip as he raised a probe and scanner to find it, taking care not to rip the fur too much as he found the panel access button and opened up a small panel in the unit's back, just beneath its chunky shoulders. He fished in it and carefully ripped the locator out, a angrily glowing semi-dome on chip legs angrily protesting the theft he had just committed... Just like he'd worked out after months of poring over documentation at work, including bits he wasn't authorised to be read-in on.
It wasn't theft, honest. He'd return the unit to be scrapped first things first when the Disposal Line was back in business. He wrapped the component in a bag for later disposal, ideally as far away from his house as he could manage. The next thing he had to do was juice the Teacher Lucy back up.
Without the associated alcove, he couldn't trigger the unit's induction charging system, so he quickly wired up a old fashioned plug and carefully made sure it matched the listed voltage on the motherboard, before clicking it into the manual charging male plug deep inside the unit. And just to be safe.... he located the switch for the motion controller and flipped it off, just in case she attempted to move with the cable plugged in.
The one good thing about using a wire instead of induction was that it would charge much faster. Patter stretched a little and left the house in his house clothes, borrowing the work van with its logo flipped out of sight, resembling nothing more than a generic yellow van just waiting for some miscreant to scrawl "FREE CANDY" on its side. He needed a decent meal already... and a few additional parts that he could source on the side without going through the corporate supply system. Patter did not want to tip his hand early as to what he was doing with Teacher Lucy. As for recharging the van, he would use his own card. He was that scrupulous on the surface - he wasn't going to use his work card to recharge it if he was using it for personal matters.
He WAS, however, going fishing.
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Paul North was having a decent day fishing at the Minnesota River, or what little part of it ran through sanctuary. The sun wasn't too fierce, the clouds having diffused most of the heat and light - just enough to see what the fish were doing and encourage them to come on up for a free meal. The foldable stool creaked as he adjusted his hat, the words of which discouraged people from comprehending his sexual preferences and the relations of fish to his hook.
Paul blinked as a yellow van stopped near him on the shoreline. Minutes later, a lanky young man dropped his own foldable next to him along with a cooler and a small can filled with various half-rate artificial baits.
Patter calmly put a spinner onto his fishing rod, accompanying it with a small dollop of some sort of gel that fish supposedly loved. They did champ at it, that much was true. Catching something however...
Ten minutes elapsed before Patter got a bite... another two as the fish ran off with the entire bait. Patter cursed a little as he reached for his can of bait and tied on another bait.
Paul calmly observed Patter as he cast again. "Not very good luck at fishing?"
Patter nodded. "I have enough stories of the one that got away that nobody seems to mention about how I don't have any about the ones that didn't. Sad, innit?" The fishing rod twitched slightly as the Minnesota River's inhabitants examined the new offering Patter had made.
Paul North laughed again. "Story of our lives. Maybe you'll catch something big."
Patter nodded. "Maybe, one day- SON OF A BITCH, THAT CATFISH JUST UP AND WALKED WITH IT."
Paul watched as the river splashed downstream. "Third time lucky?"
Patter gritted his teeth and tied on another bait. This one was a bit odd... "Battery operated flashy?" Paul North offered.
Patter nodded as he cast again, the glowing doodad landing in the water briefly before sinking. "Luck be a Goddess today..." He murmured as he opened the cooler and cracked open one of two cans of Mudweil Beer. He took a swig, watching the bait bob calmly, as if hoping to catch something.... "Want one?"
Paul shook his head. "Alcoholics Anonymous. even the scent of beer could take me back to zero. sorry."
Patter ohs... then tosses the beer can and the rest of its contents into the river. He was already in trouble here anyways, this was not fishing season and he wasn't supposed to fish. He was a nice man who didn't want to drag others down with him.
Patter made a mental note in future to pack some zero-alcohol options when he fished.
A giant lunkhead suddenly grab bed the glowing bait and ... snapped Patter's line in a second. Patter fell backward into the muddy ground, wincing.
Paul looked on sympathetically. ""You have me as a reference for the one that got away this time, kid."
Patter stood up, looking very angry. "ONE DAY, You damned river," He shook his fist. "ONE DAY I'll catch something for real and you'll be crying!" Patter slammed his cooler shut and collected his gear. "Fuck this, I need a burger. Half an hour wasted for nothing is shit."
Paul North watched Patter pack himself back into his van and drive off. Kids these days, the old man sighed. Absolutely no patience in getting what they wanted. He leaned forward a little with some interest... a faint whistle from his lips...
"Mr Nost, that wasn't bait you used, did you?" He calmly observed to nobody in particular as he fished out his communicator to make a call back to the office...
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