Very late, but here we are with the Prologue.


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Prologue - All that is Good

None of us remember our first moments. Everyone, from the great to the
small, all have memories that start sometime after we are born. Yet
those earliest memories are still while we are very young. By that time
we have already laughed, cried, screamed, and asked Why, Why, Why?

Is that not the same for Places as well? Stand very still and Listen.
We all can take in a place and get a feel for its character and mood
ranging from the loose discipline of school, to what is hopefully the
quiet warmth of home, to the sense of ease at what would otherwise be
somewhere unremarkable.

Let us take a specific place and time as example. Straussberg
Tennessee. Specifically the Straussberg of the mid 90's. A decade prior
it had tried to build itself into a Destination for Tourists. A decade
in the future it will realize that money should have been better spent elsewhere. Yet in the Now is that euphoric time between the end of the
cold war, and the awful horrors 9/11 would herald.

-

The Mall of the Millenium. That was its official name. What it was
referred to as when it was talked about on TV. Its first thoughts, if
one could count a place as having thoughts, is how that name didn't fit
it at all. This irritation over its name rattled through its mind as it centered it's awareness at the arcade, one of its favorite places.

It saw and heard the moderate crowd of those young, or just wanting to
kill time, lining up at the diffrent machines. The smells and specific
sights didn't hold its focus so much as the mood of the place. That
combination of wonder, competetiveness, and an almost infectious sense
of joy. For it, though, it was a solid place to round off the day
before everything closed down.

Yet here the majority of its awareness floated because someone had lost something.

Finding this lost thing was not its job nor function. There were people
that found things all the time. What it was looking for might have
already found its way into one of the lost and found desks. Yet here it
was searching.

Searching.

There tucked behind the seat of one of the more ornate machines, a
fully enclosed racer, was a backpack.. The Mall knew what was inside
without needing to open it. Knew that the school books, papers, and the
like were important to the bag's owner, yet where those things were a
dull thing to its awareness, there was a book that felt more important.
It had no text, just pictures of people and things it didn't know
beyond that they were important.

So, it acted.

One moment the bag was where it had been left. The next it was gone.
Then the next it was sitting just beneath the counter to the lost and
found station it knew the bag's owner was headed towards. It did not
have to do that. Moving the bag as it did was more taxing than, for
example, nudging one of the mall's staff to getthe idea to search that
arcade machine and prod that person to getting the bag back to its
owner. There was a high chance it wouldh ave found its way to its owner
in time. It, however, preferred to make sure people's lost things made
it back to them before they left.

On to the next thing.

Its attention expanded, focusing on little as it effectivly listened to
see where it may yet be of use. Here someone working at hte food court
was given just a little nudge to keep them attentive. There a middle
aged man working at a shoe store was encouraged to not voice his mind
to the customers he showed clear annoyance with. Not everyone liked
working here, but it tried to keep them from making so many mistakes
that they would be out a job.

It considered the man and what it knew of him. Two kids. Wife. In spite
of the constant complaints there was this feel it could not explain
that the man did care a rather lot. Mostly because he was still working
a job he was dissatisfied with in spite of having clear skills that it
viewed as valuable. It considered the time this man had rearranged and
rebuilt the rear part of the store, uncovering a walled off segment.
Recalled the man inventory and re-order everything that he had found
and turned that room into space to rotate out stock as season and
demand dictated.

It saw the pictures the man had at the checkout counter. An old car
kept in decent, if inconsistant, repair. A house that looked tired, but
wasn't in outright disrepair. A garage it had seen over the span of
several months of swapped out photos, had been turned into a sort of
games and lounge area that still had room for a pair of cars. Yet
amongst all these were in apparent pride of place pictures of his
family; two teenage kids and a wife that wore dated, but attractive,
clothes, and a shaggy haired dog with more grey than not in its coat.

This man cared even if he was abrasive. That it could tell as it
listened to the man, albeit abrasively and with great sarcasm, point
out that what several customers wanted would have caused long term foot
pain. It didn't take the man's word. One thing it knew was how people
walked. It knew how often fashion might override good sense.

So, while it was not particularly happy with how the man behaved, it
helped as it could. Mostly this help was trying to get a sense of why
his customers wanted what they wanted, as it paid more attention than
the man himself did, and would try nudging the man into a choice that
might make customers the least unhappy at not having what they came for.

yet that man was not the only employee its attention was turned
towards. Spreading its awareness along its interrior space gave it a
sense of the wider state of things. This most resembled a person
leaning back from reading a web page and instead looking at the page as
a whole while scrolling, stopping only if something caught their
attention.

For it, that something was a couple walking out of a jewelry store.
There had been no raised voices. No obvious issues as the yblended into
the crowd. Yet as it's attention centered in the store itself the cause
of the hunch was made clear. Thieves. Gunpoint robbery.

It moved into action. Both doing what it could to make the pair of
robbers weary of everyone around them. Intensifying that sense that
they had been seen and were being watched. As the pair started blaming eachother for getting spotted it started nudging those it could. Mall
security was generally an at best showpiece and often mocked as a do
nothing job. Yet here they were. Approaching the pair even as it
relayed alarm, urging action when one of the pair drew a weapon.

Before shots could be fired three tazers were fired alongside a pair of
mace canisters emptied at the thieves.

Situation contained. Its attention flitted on to other concerns. In
time it drifted to a music store. Time to just, listen to the sounds of
what its people were listening to. It had no opinion on most of what
was played, just that here was a place of calm. People looking for
music to play.

Even as it took a few minutes for itself, it kept the edges of its
awareness open. These people were not just its lifeblood, but the
reason it existed. It remembered the grand speeches made when it first
opened. IT remembered grand words and a sentement about community and
future, and .... it knew it had failed to measure up to those lofty
goals. It knew nothing of the surrounding community, or that its
failure were for reasons outside of its control.

Yet it used that failure as motivation to be better. To be as good as
it could be even if that wasn't to match the lofty goals that were lain
out when it first came to be. These were its people. This was its
community. It was that simple.

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