Leon Default

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dialogue:institute/leon_default

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{
  "path": "dialogues/institute/leon_default.dialogue",
  "text": "~ start\nif is_faction_task_completed\n\tLeon: *He sets down the mechanical pencil and holds out his hand without looking up.*\n\t\tBack already. Let me see the count before you tell me it's all there.\n\t- I've completed the task [#complete_faction_task]\n\t\tLeon: *He runs a thumb down the column, lips moving, then makes a short notation.*\n\t\t\tReconciles. The numbers match what I logged out, which is more than I get from most of the people I send past the perimeter.\n\t\t- Continue => repeat_questions\n\t- Just passing through\n\t\tLeon: Then walk wide of the south yard. Everything in it is inventoried, and I'll know if it isn't. [#end]\nelse\n\tLeon: *He's bent over a leather ledger, ruling a line with the edge of his pencil. He doesn't look up.*\n\t\tA moment. I lose the figure and I start the column over.\n\n\t- I'm looking for work => faction_task\n\t- What does the Institute do out here? => institute_question\n\t- What happened at Dove Creek? => dove_creek_question\n\t- What's in that ledger? => ledger_question\n\t- Nothing\n\t\tLeon: Then you're a line I don't have to write. Appreciated. [#end]\n=> END\n\n~ repeat_questions\nLeon: *His pencil is already moving again.*\n\tWhat else? I bill by daylight and I'm running short of it.\n\n- I'm looking for work => faction_task\n- What does the Institute do out here? => institute_question\n- What happened at Dove Creek? => dove_creek_question\n- What's in that ledger? => ledger_question\n- That's all\n\tLeon: Then we're square. [#end]\n=> END\n\n~ faction_task\nLeon: *He flips to a page dense with crossed-out entries and taps it.*\n\tThis outpost runs at a loss. Twin Rocks sends half what I requisition and bills me freight on the half that arrives broken. So I budget for people like you - cheap, unaffiliated, and off the books. Work I can't justify paying a researcher to do.\n- What's the job?\n\t[#get_faction_task]\n\tif is_faction_task_accepted\n\t\tLeon: *He writes a description of you in the margin. Not your name. A description.*\n\t\t\tDo it clean and you become a recurring line item. That's the most security anyone gets out here.\n\t\t- I have other questions => repeat_questions\n\t\t- I'll get it done\n\t\t\tLeon: See that the numbers agree. Go. [#end]\n\telse\n\t\tLeon: Come back when you can carry your own weight in the column. [#end]\n- Not right now => repeat_questions\n=> END\n\n~ institute_question\nLeon: *He gestures at the canvas walls without enthusiasm.*\n\tOfficially, a forward research station. We sit close to the anomalies nobody upstream wants to drive three days to measure, so they park instruments out here and a coordinator to keep the instruments fed.\nLeon: The researchers take readings. I keep them in reagents, batteries, and clean water so they can keep taking readings. Knowledge doesn't preserve itself. Somebody has to pay freight on it.\n\t*A thin, dry line of a smile.*\n\tThe shamans up the road think we're chasing spirits. The Rangers think we're hoarding salvage. We're doing accounting. The wasteland just hasn't worked out yet that it's the only thing that ever has.\n- I have more questions => repeat_questions\n- That's all\n\tLeon: Then mind the inventory on your way out. [#end]\n=> END\n\n~ dove_creek_question\nLeon: *He stops writing. Sets the pencil down square to the ledger's edge.*\n\tA custody dispute. The Institute recovered a cache of pre-war ordnance in the field. The Rangers decided anything they escort becomes theirs, and our Sentinels disagreed at close range.\n\t*He flexes his ink-stained fingers.*\n\tI wasn't holding a rifle. I was three valleys back, signing for the crates that came home and writing off the ones that didn't. Eleven of ours, and an inventory I'm still reconciling.\nLeon: *His voice flattens.*\n\tBoth sides filed it as the other side's fault. The file never closed. Now every joint operation comes with an armed escort and a clause about who keeps the salvage. The Rangers will tell you it was a misunderstanding.\n\t*He picks the pencil back up.*\n\tMisunderstandings don't run eleven entries deep in my ledger.\n- I have more questions => repeat_questions\n- That's all\n\tLeon: Don't repeat that to the men in dusters. [#end]\n=> END\n\n~ ledger_question\nLeon: *He closes the book over his thumb, almost protective.*\n\tEverything. Every crate in and out of this outpost for five years. What it cost, what it should have cost, who shorted me and by how much.\n\t*He opens to a page and turns it toward you - columns of his own shorthand you can't read.*\n\tThe Frontier survives on what comes up the supply line. Food, ammunition, medicine, every bandage the Rangers wrap their people in. I know the quantity of all of it before they do. Where it came from. What it's missing.\nLeon: *He turns the book back toward himself.*\n\tPeople think a debt is forgotten once it's off their mind. It isn't. It's in here, accruing.\n\t*He pats the cover.*\n\tThis book remembers the region's accounts better than the region does. That's not power. It's bookkeeping. Though from where I sit the two look identical.\n- I have more questions => repeat_questions\n- That's all\n\tLeon: Mind you don't end up in it owing. [#end]\n=> END\n"
}