The (Abridged) Absence of Complete Dark

Chapter 4

"Yidarica! Why, it's been ages since we've seen one another, hasn't it?"

The familiar lilt in Muiren's voice, somehow, felt like a warm blanket being wrapped around Yidarica's shoulders as the two quickly embraced. "It certainly feels that way, Muiren. But I'm glad to be seeing you again. How have you been adjusting to your return?"

"It's been a time, but I think I appreciate life here in the city much more than before, now. I'm living with my parents for a little while, and that has its own challenges, but it's nice to be cohabiting again; I didn't realize how lonely I had been on my own. I've also started taking the Comtran again lately because of the move, and it's nice to be able to sit for a little while, rather than having to walk the entire way. How have you been? You must have been putting in exceptional work here if you've been named the leader of a project."

"Less exceptional work and more not shutting up about weather, probably," Yidarica replied as she started the sync's projection. "Speaking of which, did you happen to see the sunrise this morning? The cirrus clouds that were around at the time created some really beautiful color variance in the sky. I guess we have that warm front to thank for that; the warm air rising must have..." she trailed off then. And there I am, doing it again.

Muiren gave her a curious look. "What were you doing up so early that you saw the sunrise?"

"I couldn't sleep," Yidarica gave the control tablet a few more taps. Had she configured everything correctly? "As excited as I am for this project, I'm still nervous about it. Okay, I'm pretty sure everything is set now. We just need to wait for Shiori. Like you, I was only just told about this project yesterday, but she's done some of the groundwork for us, at least. We still have some foundations to place, but I think I at least know where we'll be starting."

"Ah, I see," Muiren hummed in thought. "Always good to hear that we won't be left in the middle of the ocean, so to speak. Although, even though I know I haven't been given the complete rundown on what this project is and how it'll go, I can't help but ask: what the hell has been going on to make it necessary for us to be implementing this kind of feature? You'd think people would be smart enough to know that if they're treading on muddy ground, they're going to eat shit eventually."

"Maybe so."

Both immediately turned to see Shiori's projection materializing in the room, somewhere behind them. The room didn't transform into a scene as elaborate as yesterday's meeting, but the light coming from overhead, simulating sunlight, was calming; and the few trees gave the space a more authentic feeling.

"You know, Yidarica said something very similar in our meeting yesterday. And while I'd remind you that the gift of foresight is not as widespread as we'd like to believe, there's another side to it we need to consider." Now fully materialized, Shiori walked up to her team. "And feel free to tell me if I'm just being an obnoxious twenty-four-year-old by saying this; but my life experience thus far has led me to believe that people, by nature, seem to really like pushing responsibility onto others. It leads them to, among other qualities, be extremely litigious. We're in a position where it could possibly be argued we're at fault for someone's hurt or misfortune– and you can't really say, 'Your Honor, this person is a fucking idiot' in court, so the next best thing we can do is play the legal game well enough that we're left out of the whole ordeal."

Mitigation in place of prevention was indeed a wise tactic, in cases like these.

"Something I don't think I did the greatest job at expressing yesterday is that it isn't our concern how we're informing people of the risk they're assuming; we're working on the most user-intuitive way to give them that information," Shiori continued. "Legal will give us the correct verbiage soon, so we just need to put it in both of our applications in a way that's likely to actually be read."